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Andrew Sach: Are You 100% Sure You Want To Be An Agnostic? || SLP473 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, hello and thank you so much for downloading this episode of the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Thomas Tharragut, Media Producer at Speak Life, and today we bring you a conversation that Glenn Scrivener had with Andrew Satch about his book, Are You A Hundred Percent Sure You Want to Be an Agnostic?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a great title.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: This actually went out on our YouTube channel a while back, January 2022, but it this is the first time you're hearing it on the Speak Life podcast.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a great conversation.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoy it.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Andrew Satch is a writer and pastor of Grace Church Greenwich in London.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: He's co-written Are You A Hundred Percent Sure You Want to Be an Agnostic with Jonathan Gemmel?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's available on all good bookstores, the ten of those websites, Amazon, etc.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, enjoy the episode and I will catch you at the end.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, I'm Glenn Scrivener from Speak Life, and joining me on the line is Andrew Satch.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Andrew.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Glenn.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, now you have written a book together with Jonathan Gimmel.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Have I got the title right?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Is it Are You 100% Sure You Want to Be an Agnostic?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Have I got it right?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's the right title.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there it is.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's the right title.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: When did you decide that you had to have a comedy title as your book title?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So basically the reason that John and I work together is we have um well we believe in the Lord Jesus and we love him, but we also share the same sense of humour.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we thought the title was funny.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if you don't, then you probably won't enjoy the book, but it's not that's right.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's a filter, it's the first filter if you like the title.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um but it does promise so much about um the the comedy and the playfulness of the book, which I think is is really attractive about the book.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you start off with a questionnaire, for goodness sakes.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um what there must have been there must be a reason for this.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's not just that temperamentally you're humorous.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um what are you trying to do being playful, being comedic?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: What what what does that do to serve the purposes of the book?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the book is kind of it's targeted at people who aren't particularly interested in Jesus or Christianity.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're just very conscious we have to win a hearing right from the start.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I guess maybe 20 years ago you could have a book, Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead, like a kind of who moved the stone book.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: But now I think most people don't even care whether Jesus raised from the dead.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we're conscious that people start, they think Christianity is going to be boring, and we've got to persuade them otherwise.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um also we just don't want it to be heavy too quickly.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are some difficult things we say, but we deliberately say them later on because we want to draw people in and if it not be threatening.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people are agnostic because they're just wary of what they would find if they look too closely at this box of horrors that is religion, right?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's we're trying to kind of reassure people it's safe to go on this journey with us.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a bit of fun, it's not gonna be too heavy, although we are gonna talk about some serious things.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the the idea is to kind of make it light enough that people stick with it until we say some more difficult things.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and tell us like who are you both?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like what what and why why does Andrew Satch and Jonathan Gemmel care about this and why should we listen to to you two?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's the story behind you two as authors?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, well, I became a Christian at university, um, and I think so I'd growing up with a little bit of religion because I was in a I joined the church choir because my piano teacher suggested it, and um, I kind of did church on a Sunday in a little robe with a frilly collar, you know, from the age of nine.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I was quite cynical about actual religious belief and a Christian worldview.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and when I was 16, 17, I was kind of looking at all sorts of other things like pantheism and Quakerism, that kind of thing.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was also reading reading Richard Dawkins because I was about to study science at university.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So all of that added up to a kind of you know secular mishmash of beliefs, but not particularly interested in Jesus.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then I met at university.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the thing that changed it was I met some real Christians who loved Jesus and believed that um the gospel was true and lived as though they knew him personally, and that seemed very odd to me, but it was also very compelling, and it just made me ask a lot of questions.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I pretty much became convinced that Christianity was true, I think, in my first term at university, but I just didn't want it to be true.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this is another thing that we kind of engage with in the book.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is for people who maybe they're cynical about whether this has any rational, historical, scientific, you know, credibility, but also they just are really wary that Jesus would wreck their life.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that was certainly my fear.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I became convinced it was true before I became convinced that Jesus was good.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and I think you need both to come to him.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: What was it in the first term of university that made you think I think it's probably true?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want it to be true, but I think it probably is.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, um well, one thing was just Christians who actually lived a Christian life.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a bunch of Christian friends I've made at uni, and one of them was quite socially difficult.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I know how you treat socially difficult people, you just ostracize them, and when they're there, you don't talk to them, and when they're not there, you talk about them.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's just standard at my school, everything in every school, that's how you treat people who are a bit weird.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a guy, he was a bit of an oddball um at uh college, and the question is when he was there, they were kind to him, and when he wasn't there, they spoke well of him.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that's very unusual, you know.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: What that I'd not seen that before.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that that that really struck me.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I started talking to them about what they believed, they they believed that Jesus was, and it sounds so obvious, but Jesus was a real person who really lived.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know this is like totally obvious, but to me it hadn't been.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus was a religious idea, Jesus was a stained glass window, and the idea that if I could go back in a time machine, although I didn't believe in time machines, but if if you could suddenly beam yourself into the first century, you would actually encounter him because there he was.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that suddenly made a lot of these things very objective questions.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, did he actually live in um Galilee or not?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, did he really feed the 5,000 or did that not happen?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Did he really rise from the dead or is he in the team somewhere?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I know, I mean, always Christians have wrestled with those questions, but they were kind of new to me like, is this real, not just is this subjective?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, they had good answers.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I it was kind of that one of the big things was the lives of Christians, the historicity of the gospels, and then the coherence of a Christian worldview.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I started to realize that my own atheism didn't make a lot of sense when I examined it, whereas Christian foundations really did, and all of those things compelled me to say, you must trust Jesus, he is the truth.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and yet I thought, gosh, I don't want to because you know I'm scared of what that would mean.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: So you've gone on a journey sort of out of agnosticism and and to a kind of a confident trust in Jesus.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what about your co-author, Jonathan?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think John's grown up in a Christian home, so he's always um believed the gospel, but has had, you know, like we all have, lots of clashes with cynics and skeptics and atheists.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we early on we say this is the book that I wish somebody had given me as a 16-year-old, and John says this is the book that contains all the things I wish I'd said to people when they got me on the spot and I didn't know what to say.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a sort of a with hindsight better attempt.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: And your day jobs now, I mean you're you're a pastor of a church in Greenwich, so you this is this is part of your job.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: I I I take it on a on a daily basis, you're you're bumping up with people who have these questions.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, and lots of my friends do.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is really a friend a book for my own family and friends and neighbours.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, lot I'm imagining lots of the people that I know and love, you know, quite well as I'm writing it, who are who are mainly on the fence.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not they're particularly hostile to Christianity, right?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: But nor are they particularly interested, and I don't know, just seems a very sensible place to be.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm trying to dislodge friends from the fence.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: You you talk about three kinds of uh agnostic.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: You you talk about there's there's type one agnostic, and I I guess we should you know first of all say like what is what is an agnostic, first of all.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um the etymology of it just means I don't know.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So um the Greek word gnosis means knowledge, and but a in front of it it means not.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So if something's asymmetrical, it means it's not symmetrical.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: If something's agnostic, it means it's the opposite of knowledge.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: But so you could if you're being mean, you could say agnostic means ignorant, because it kind of does mean that.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it it's just the the stance that says I don't know either because I've not looked into it, or I think philosophically you can't know, or in most cases I think it's I just don't really want to know, I'm comfortable where I am.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: And you and you think it is that that third type is the is the bulk of where agnosticism comes from.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: You don't want to know.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think agnosticism as a philosophical position, you know, it's not possible to know whether there's a God.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about it, it's a is a kind of incoherent position because you're you're actually being very dogmatic.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I know that you can't know.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, like, how do you know that you can't know?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Are you sure about that?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so and you know, the first kind I don't know because I haven't looked into it, and that would be a lot of people, you know.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I there's lots of things in in the world that I don't know about that I could find out if I went to a library, I just haven't bothered to go to a library.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So some people don't know about Jesus because they've never asked the questions, but probably the reason they've not asked the questions is because I just don't know what I'd find if I if I looked, and I'd rather not.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that yeah, that was certainly me, and I think it's I think it's quite a lot of my friends.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so then take us on the journey.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: What what where do you want to take someone who is is happy to say, Yes, I'm agnostic, I'm unconvinced, and they put themselves in your capable hands uh for the next sort of six or so chapters.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what's the journey you take them on?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So um chapter one, we want to say, yeah, we we know where you're coming from, we get it.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um doesn't agnosticissible?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it seems humble, doesn't it?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're skeptical of certainty, someone who's too sure is arrogant.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're skeptical of violence, someone who's too sure might end up beating up somebody else who's too sure, and religious wars, and so yeah, that it's very attractive to be agnostic, and we want to say we we recognize that.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um then we have a chapter on this different kinds of agnosticism, so you haven't looked into it, you think you can't look into it or you don't want to look into it, and again, sort of say, Yeah, we get where you're coming from.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of my favourite bits, I can say this because it's not actually for me, it's from I got it from a friend, but he always says he was surprised by Jesus turning water into wine the first time he read John's Gospel.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't the science that um surprised him, although you know it is quite difficult to do scientifically, but um, you know, why shouldn't the creator of the universe do some party tricks?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: The surprising thing for him was that God wasn't going around the world turning all the wine into water because his impression of God was that he was desperately worried that someone might be enjoying themselves and had to stamp it out.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we have that, and then I guess the first sort of meaty chapter, chapter three, is we call it meet the truth, and just from that extraordinary paragraph at the beginning of John's letter, when he says that which was from the beginning, which we've heard, which we've seen with our eyes, which we've looked at, and our hands have touched concerning the word of life.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And on the one hand, he's talking about origins, you know, the beginning of the universe, the essence of life itself, and on the other hand, he's talking about a person that he met and saw and touched.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And for those two things to come together, I think is one of the most amazing things about the Christian, you know, the Christian gospel, that philosophical questions are a person.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So life is someone who he went on a boat with, and the beginning of the universe is someone that he ate with repeatedly.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and of course, the thing about that, as soon as you realize that the truth is a person, you can see why it's quite sensible not to be agnostic.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I sometimes give the analogy, like you know, you've heard a rumour that there might be someone called Andrew Satch, and you're not really sure, and you don't really care because it doesn't seem very significant.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: But then uh one day you meet me, and you know, it may or may not have an impression on you, but you're pretty sure that Andrew Satch exists after that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if somebody says, Oh, isn't he the Scottish guy with lots of ginger hair?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: You go, No, no, he's the Bog guy.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So there's things about me that are pretty clear after you've met me, and you're you're just not very agnostic about it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not I'm not agnostic about whether Glenn Scrivener was on a podcast with me wearing a red hoodie because I saw it, and that's the kind of I'm sure that the apostles have about Jesus, because they know him personally and they see him, and they and I mean again, every Christian knows this, but I think the implications of it, lots of people think religion's just philosophy and it's just big questions, and but we know it's an encounter with the real person, and you can be really objectively sure about that.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's really striking about the the methodology.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: You're going you're going very quickly to the gospels, you're going very quickly to the person of Jesus, the particularity of Jesus.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: When I I think kind of kind of apologetic y books for the last 30, 40 years um have kind of tried to deal with the um agnosticism question by by going to 30,000 feet and and talking in just more blandly theistic terms.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: But it was just as you were saying that then that I see the real wisdom of going concretely and particularly to Jesus, because actually going to 30,000 feet with a bland kind of omni-god, um, you can still kind of remain quite agnostic about such a figure.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the particularity of Jesus of Nazareth, you know, he walked those roads, he encountered those people, um, it it actually solves the agnosticism or or at least um problematizes the agnosticism quite a bit more by going particularly for Jesus.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Is that part of the reason why you went so specifically and early uh to the specificity of Jesus?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I I just think I always, I mean, it's a place of philosophy, and I'm glad that Christians think hard about philosophy, but um Jesus is the most compelling thing about Christianity, and I always slightly wince when I hear a talk that is all just about um you know Kant and Nietzsche.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and you think, yeah, some people are into Kant and Nietzsche, most people aren't.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And but I think everyone is into Jesus when they encounter him, or at least he raises questions to everyone.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: So he's just the most compelling thing about the gospel.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I remember years ago, I did I used to do quite often talks on science and Christianity because my background is as a a scientist, and um I remember doing one talk and somebody came up to me to congratulate me and said, That's such a great talk.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: I really loved it, and I was feeling quite full of myself.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I said, Oh, which you know, are you a Christian yourself?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Are you and he goes, Oh yeah, I go to the um the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, He's a Mormon.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, oh no, a Mormon loved my talk.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And as in it was it was just sort of theistic, you know.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I talked about there's a God, he's a creator, which Mormons believe and Christians believe, but I hadn't talked about what was distinctively Christian.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I was quite I thought I must never do that.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it needs it needs to be if if if it's only in the QA where someone says, Yeah, okay, I'll believe in God, but why Jesus?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's too late, I think.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: It should be Jesus right at the front.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: One other thing that I found um quite distinctive about your book is um you know uh it's presuppositional in in in so many senses.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: It it's coming from a point of view where um you acknowledge that everybody is coming from a certain place.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: We all have prior assumptions about the way the world works, and you work quite hard at not only expressing why Jesus is is the rational option, but also why the skeptic or the agnostic is also a believer in certain things.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um why do you think why do you think that's important?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um Well, I think sometimes I mean I read a lot of Richard Dawkins earlier on in my in my life, and he often talks about you know, religious people into belief as if he is some sort of you know, I only work by pure mathematical logic.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And yet there's a lot of creedal statements in Dawkins, and I think when they get unacknowledged, you think, oh, am I gonna be just a science person or a believer?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And believer stands for am I gonna leap in the dark without evidence?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just it's such a false dichotomy because you know the Bible never invites us to believe anything without giving us grounds for it and reasons why it'd be very sensible to you.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and as you say, you know, the the atheist is is very much a believer in certain premises.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we bring this out when we look at the Jesus healing the blind man in John chapter 9, and we just put side by side in a table what they presuppose and what they conclude.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the Pharisees, um, it's an axiom for them that Jesus is a sinner, they've already decided that because they don't like that he did a healing on Saturday.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then they can they also has a premise God wouldn't listen to sinners.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if Jesus is a sinner and God wouldn't listen to sinners, then obviously this blind man wasn't healed because God wouldn't have done a miracle to a sinner.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, which you can kind of see how they get to that conclusion from their premises, but the the problem is that all the evidence says this blind mind, this blind, sorry, I can't say it, this blind man was healed.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it actually becomes a very comedy chapter.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: You say the our book's funny, but actually John chapter 9 is very funny.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very funny.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're hauling the got the guy's parents before them, saying, Is this the man that you say was born blind?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, it's not really controversial.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, he is our son and he's blind, and like everybody in the whole village knows that, you know.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: But they just their premises force into a conclusion that clashes with the evidence.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas alternatively, he kind of works through logic where he starts as a premise.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know that I was blind and now I can see.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that happened to me, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And sure, God wouldn't listen to sinners.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if the person who healed me in this miraculous way, he can't be a sinner, he must be from God.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, he's on this faith journey that is based entirely on evidence and logic.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: But they've just got the presuppositions wrong, and so they're blind, ironically, to what's actually happened.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, it's a it's a powerful way of of teaching it that it is our prior assumptions that blind us.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yeah, I I think that that chapter sort of brings together so much that's distinctive about the book.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: There's the presuppositionalism, there's the comedy of it, and there's the there's the syllogisms all sort of all coming together.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then I guess you deal with the question of, well, how can I trust this John's gospel anyway?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, how how do how do you address that issue if people are like, well, I like the Jesus of scripture, but why should I trust the scriptures?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so obviously there's there's books that do this much better and much more thoroughly.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think Pete Williams' book, Can We Trust the Gospels, is just amazing.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love people to read that.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it's just a kind of a taster of that, so that there's something in this volume for the agnostic who otherwise would switch off.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we do the whole thing, I why well, to try and get people's attention, I start by um confessing that on the 12th of May 2013 I was arrested, which is true, and you'll have to read the book to find out why.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I my own experience of the court system, um, you know, it went to court, etc., and I use that to reflect on what are the sort of criterion for reliable evidence that we just use in Britain and apply some of those same criteria to the gospels.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's lots of the arguments that you'll have found elsewhere, but just in a sort of fun way.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: But so there's a little bit of that in the book.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then you do sort of a mopping up operation of other kind of uh other syllogisms and and and other arguments that people might make.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and you deal with things like the Big Bang, you even deal with things like the Trinity.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: So what what made you choose the those particular objections that people might raise?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think basically at each stage we're just trying to keep people listening long enough to hear more, and we're just conscious that there's you know, if somebody's got a a reason to dismiss it, like let's say I just come to the I I've become convinced that the gospels are fairy stories, and I'm not gonna listen for that long unless you deal with that objection.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or I'm convinced that the Trinity doesn't make sense logically, and that's just a I won't listen to that long unless you deal with that.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we're trying to keep people's attention long enough to say, look, wait, we will deal with your with your problems.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's not a treatise on the Trinity, but hopefully there's enough there in a paragraph to say, don't be too quick to dismiss this.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this uh this is actually a rational basis for this.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, so it is not the main thrust of the book, but we're just conscious of the what's the word, the people talk about defeater arguments here, you know, the thing that was the objection that otherwise would so much get in my way that I couldn't I couldn't continue.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then you get to the place where I guess you want to be able to challenge those on the fence that they can't sit on the fence um forever.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um I thought you gave some very interesting uh analogies there.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: So help help us with uh our friends who are just they're they're comfortably agnostic.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um I love the approach of the book in that you want to show them who Jesus is, you want to show them the the glory, the attractiveness of Christ.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: And but then at some stage you want to say you can't sit on the fence forever.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: What what should I say to my friends in that position?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we use uh a medical analogy, obviously, which the gospels also use.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus says those who are sick who have no sorry, those who are healthy have no need for a doctor, but those who are sick.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: So um sin is a sickness that is fatal, that leads to death, and Jesus as a doctor with the treatment.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think when you just sort of follow that through, it provides a very helpful analogy.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because of course you can't really be neutral about medical advice safely.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like if I go to the oncologist and he says, Andrew, you've got a tumour and it's serious, but if you start chemo now, you've got, you know, fairly good chance.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, oh, I don't know if I like that doctor, and you know, maybe he's just trying to rattle up business for the NHS, and um, maybe that's not true.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I go to an alternative um medical opinion and they say, Well, I think you look fine, to be honest, Andrew.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I've got a choice, right?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got I'm hearing different voices, but but I can't really be neutral because if I believe the oncologist, that means I start chemo.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: If I believe the person who says I'm fine, I don't do anything.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: But what if I'm agnostic about it?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if I'm agnostic about it, I don't do anything, which is the same as believing the second voice.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I I can't do neither.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I either take the treatment or I don't.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think that does work with Jesus because he says, You've got a problem, I've come to fix it.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can bring forgiveness and a new start and relationship with God, and you need that before the judgment day.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you can't, there's not a halfway between taking that treatment of repentance and faith and not.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: You you know, you you suspend judgment is the same as making a decision.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the other analogy we give again, which is Jesus one, is at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the two roads and the two doors, uh the narrow and the broad.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: But if you take neither road, you know, you're not going to arrive.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that again on a journey, you the one person who never arrives somewhere is the person who parks at the crossroads and looks at the sign and just says, Well, I'm not really sure.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can be sure you will not arrive at life if you don't travel down a road.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I just think there is there isn't a neutral.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um we try and yeah.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: What what do you do if at that stage your your friend just says, okay, that may that the analogy makes sense if we're talking about a doctor who's credentialed and you see the certificates behind them and they're they are from reputable kind of medical bodies.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: But currently uh, you know, if a homeopath told me I need to take this tincture of this or this tincture of that, um, I probably wouldn't listen to them.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh the analogy rests on the presupposition that um there is an authoritative voice that has spoken, and I'm just not sure that the church today has that kind of authoritative voice, such such that I'm still I'm still left in my my my kind of agnosticism.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: What what would you say to that?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean I do think the fact that someone warns you of bad news isn't enough to trust them, but you probably check at that point.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if somebody says, Oh Andrew, apparently a terrorist has placed a bomb in your house in that bag in the corner, you know, I might think, oh, I think that's just uh you know just trying to freak me out.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I probably would approach the bag quite cautiously nonetheless, you know, that it's just worth checking.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if I heard bad medical news, yeah, sure, you might look into it and get a second opinion and check the doctor's credentials and whatever, but you probably don't go, oh well I'll you know, think about that in five years' time.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's sufficiently unsettling that you just want to know one way or the other.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think that's the invitation.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're not saying because Jesus said something frightening, you should trust him, but certainly Jesus is inviting us to take it seriously as a claim.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's not he's not saying neutral things, he's saying provocative things.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if the result is someone says, Lo, I just I really need to find out if Jesus is a fraud or not, then great.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the problem the problem we're addressing is the person who says, I don't even care what Jesus says.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it it's it's deliberately provocative.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it, you know, if the next step is somebody starts looking at Jesus thoroughly, that's great.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're not saying get converted just by reading our book, but we are saying care enough to start looking at Jesus as a result of our book.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I I wonder if taking the analogy even further, for instance, if somebody's somebody said a terrorist has put a bomb in your room, um you know, the prior probability of them telling the truth goes up.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: If you know they work for the government, and then it increases if they work for MI5, and it increases if you know that they work on bomb threats, um, etc.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: etc.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: And and it increases massively if they themselves are taking that situation seriously.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if they're like, we're both standing in a room and there's a bomb, and you know, if if they are just carrying on as before, you're not going to take them seriously.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if that sort of ties up with your own conversion story and you know, you at university, it there's the character of the person telling you this, and there's the the certainty that they have and the confidence that they have in what they're saying, that actually goes a massive distance in in communicating how seriously the unbeliever should take these things, would you say?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, really.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean one of my favorite things in the book is it's basically a story of a friend of mine that um we got to include who we wanted to say, yeah, there's a lot of objective arguments here, and it's about logic and evidence and so on, but it's not just objective, you know, to know Jesus is a personally life-changing thing.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the combination of objective and subjective, I think, is compelling.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got a friend who um works in a former communist country, and he wasn't a Christian, but when the the um Berlin War fell and things opened up, a lot of people in his country flocked back to church, you know, in huge numbers just because they were trying to connect with anything that was pre-Soviet, and it it wasn't you weren't allowed to go to church in the Soviet times, and now you could say everyone did.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he thought, because he is quite an entrepreneur, he thought this is an excellent career opportunity.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be a pastor because you know, I'll get the um I'll get the keys to a big building and lots of people coming in and paying me for my services.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: So he started he set up as a pastor, and he realized he had to do a sermon on Sundays and he didn't really believe it, but he knew he had to say something interesting, so he kind of did.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I used to smoke a cigar on a Saturday night and try and come up with something.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, one one week he was doing the feeding of the five thousand and he just couldn't work out how Jesus had done it, and he was puzzling over it all evening, you know, how is because he thought Jesus was just you know uh an inspiring teacher, but how could he do this?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he was puzzling it for ages, and then he read a skeptical book that said, Oh, it's because Jesus was so powerful psychologically that people just felt full in his presence, even though they hadn't eaten anything.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: He thought, Oh, brilliant, this is so clever.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the next day he was feeling very smug and full of himself and went to church and preached this sermon.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end, a woman who was old and deaf and hadn't really heard anything he said, but sort of congratulated him for his sermon and thanked him on the on the door.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um, he said the light was at her face, and she she sort of paused as if she was caught in her memory for a moment, and and with a smile, she said, You know, God was so good to us in the gulag.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then she thanked him and and left.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he just felt absolutely wretched because he'd been cleverly and smugly explaining it all away.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And here was a woman who had suffered terribly under the Soviets as a real Christian who knew a heavenly father, he'd sustained her, and she was full of joy and he was full of cynicism, and he was utterly convicted by that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, that led to his own conversion.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, now he absolutely would defend that the feeding of the 5,000 are historical, and Jesus did it with actual bread and so on, but also it was her testimony of wow, you know, how is it that the people who suffered the most are often agnostic the least?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I had that experience.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually going to a funeral on Friday of a of a dear friend, her Christian friend, who's been struggling with um a brain tumour.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he was a great encouragement to me at the end of this book, and I was sharing with him chapters and so on.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, he died um a couple of weeks ago with absolute certainty and with thankfulness to a God who'd been really kind to him.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, people would say, How can a God allow someone to have a brain tumour?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he'd say, God has been so kind, and I'm forgiven, and I face eternity with certainty because the Lord Jesus will will raise me with him on the last day.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I I just think that is compelling.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that there's arguments and there's logic, and there's you know, and I think all those things really do stack up and align to back up the Christian worldview, but more than that, there's a savior who you can actually meet, he really changes your life.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's wonderful when you meet somebody he's he's credible like that because they really live the thing that they're commending to you.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's that's great.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: I was you you mentioned Elon Musk at the start of the book as a as an example of a of an agnostic.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: And just last week, was it he was on the Babylon Bee that they did a kind of a video podcast, and and the three guys from the Babylon Bee, which is a satirical humorous Christian uh website, they were asking Elon Musk all sorts of questions and they finished with this kind of throwaway um kind of almost mocking, and now Elon, we we're Christians, so we have to ask you, will you give your life to the Lord Jesus Christ right now?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then they were ha ha ha ha ha.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and actually what was fascinating is in the last five minutes, Elon Musk was far more serious about their Christianity than they were.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: And and he was like, Oh, is this the is this my opportunity now to talk about Christianity?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: And he seemed to have questions, but it's it seemed uh it seemed to me like the Babylon B guys kind of blew their opportunity because they were not taking Christian faith as seriously as Elon Musk was taking Christian faith.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it kind of Paul Van der Clay, who's a Christian YouTuber, kind of nailed it for me.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: He said, you know, with the Christ haunted, they they want us to take seriously our own faith, however weird it it might be.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: And a huge impediment, I think, to to our evangelism is that simply we do not take seriously the faith that we're can asking others to take seriously.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I just wonder, um, Andrew, as you get towards the end of the book, where do you think, in a best case scenario, you bring people to?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned a a questionnaire.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have a question at the beginning and the same question at the end, and we we call it the agnostic diagnostic, which we were incredibly pleased with.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I can I can say this because it's actually this is John, my co-author's humour, so I think it's brilliant, but um strongly agree.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've started on a journey that's already beginning to change my life.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Strongly disagree.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've already set fire to a corner of this book, and the warm glow I now experience from its pages is the first tangible benefit it's brought me.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the introduction to John's humour.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: But um yeah, I it it what we'd love for people to do is um to not be so sure that they're not sure, you know, to be a bit more agnostic about the agnosticism, and to realise the safe of the fence is not as safe as they thought or as comfortable as they thought, and that there might be something really beautiful on the Christian side of the fence.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: As in it's it's Jesus is worth getting off the fence for because what he's offering is I mean, it's true, it's rational, you don't have to throw your brain away, but it's also really good.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he wants forgiveness and life and joy.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And why would you hide from it?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, mate, there's been a lot of fake news about the gospel, I think.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: And people think I need to keep it at arm's length because um it would be, you know, we talk about we had a book launched last week and we served Schlur deliberately because there's a Jake in the book about Christian parties, Schler is Christian champagne, and so we serve that.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: But that's you know, that's people's stereotype of it's just a religion of don't, and it's just you know, your favorite Netflix show has to suddenly be songs of praise back to back.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: And um, whereas actually Jesus is a lot more exciting than that.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm gonna I'm gonna finish by saying you haven't asked me to do this because you very kindly had me on to talk about my book, but you also very kindly um sent me uh um PDF of your forthcoming book, The Air We Breathe, um, which I really enjoy, and maybe you talked about on this podcast and people know already, but it's basically saying um there's a whole load of things in our modern worlds that come from the gospel, but we didn't realise that's where they came from, hence the title of The Air We Breathe.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I really enjoyed that, both in terms of I think it's very compelling because you show historically um here are ideas like equality and human value and the sanctity of life and justice and you know a whole load of things that all come from the teaching of Jesus, but we didn't realise that's where they came from.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I just thought your last point about we shouldn't be too flippant about it.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what one of the things I liked about your book was not only it was a compelling argument, but you also showed that things that really, really matter come from Jesus.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and particularly I I I'd read the the book Sapiens because everyone on the tube was reading it in London.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I should read it as well.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I found it very troubling.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sort of very cynical origin story of how we came to be.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you take you take on that origin story and you say, Well, yeah, we've all got our stories, um, but actually only the God story, and only a very particular God story can um can give any kind of grounds for the things that we that we really care about.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, is it okay to crush somebody just because they're weaker than you and vulnerable?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I love that because it it's both compelling, and you realize there's there's a whole lot at stake here, and Christians shouldn't be on the back foot.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we um the gospel of Jesus Christ has shaped our world, but we need the Jesus Christ at the center of the story again.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, you haven't you didn't ask me to, but thanks for that as well.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I would I commend that and looking forward to it coming out.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: Oh well, thank you.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think like one thing that's common between our books is a there is a kind of presuppositionalism um to the air we breathe that that's kind of an historical presuppositionalism, you know.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: And and of course the caricature of the presuppositionalist uh apologist is that they are the most annoying like kind of evangelist you could possibly have, because whatever objection comes their way, they just say, Oh, how very Christian of you to ask, you know.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's the but that's kind of what if it's the nature of the case?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: What if we happen to live in a world that has been built by Jesus?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: If that is the case, then whatever criticisms you have of Christianity will ultimately be Christian criticisms.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a really interesting example of that yesterday.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: I was preaching on Luke chapter 9, where Jesus picks out a child, a little child, and places it by him, and he says, Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I sort of preached on that, and there was um a woman there, it was very exciting because she'd come to Christmas Carols, and we had a brilliant conversation at Carols by Candlelights in December.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then of course the the great problem is you then have the Christmas break.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: Are people going to come back to church?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, yesterday was the first Sunday she came to church and she brought her family with her, and it was very exciting.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: I sort of asked, you know, what did you make of it all?
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Yeah, I mean it's just just obvious, isn't it?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, children are brilliant, aren't they?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: The children are just lovely.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we then had a great conversation about well, why do we think that?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's been 2,000 years of the Jesus Revolution that have taught us that children are not an impediment and not like um to be exposed if they're disabled or you know, sent up chimneys, etc.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: etc.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: Exposed as in the cast out of the eye.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, left to die.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: Infanticide is kind of a human universal.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then you get Jews and then Christians saying, no, we will we will love everyone that comes our way, no matter how maladaptive to survival they think turn out to be.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so waking people up to the ways in which they are believers is um it's a big job because people they tend to think of themselves as agnostics, and therefore they tend to think of themselves as those without beliefs.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think one thing it's really crucial to do.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: The trouble is it takes such a long time to have this conversation with people.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it takes a long time to sit them down and say, you already believe a whole bunch of stuff that is nonsense without Jesus.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, like how would you say, Andrew, having having written the book and thought about this for for quite some time, obviously, job number one, they need to go and buy your book, but job job number two, if they're having conversations with people about these sorts of things, what what are the priorities they should have in mind for how they carry on a conversation with an agnostic?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think one of the things I want to say is like never apologize for the Christian gospel or for Jesus or for the words of the Bible.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um they make sense, they're coherent in a world that doesn't make sense and is looking for answers.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, and just you know, you don't have to say everything in one go, but one of the things I'm trying to do is speak the same when I'm talking to uh unbelievers.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: I speak to a Christian.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, a Christian, I say they're like we had a sermon yesterday from Andrew Latima, my colleague on God's sense of humor from the naming of Isaac.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's called He Laughed.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Andy was talking about all the different kinds of laughter in the passage.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's a sort of cynical laughter or the bitter laughter.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: What will am I gonna have a child in my own old age?
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: says Sarah sort of bitterly because she's childless and and sad about that.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the joyful laughter when God um gives her a child uh um a child and she says, Everyone's gonna laugh over me about this.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just so joyful that she's sort of giggling to herself to two chapters later and how different those two laughters are.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a great summon.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: It really, really encouraged me, and particularly about how we need to be more joyful at what Andy called God's hilarious grace.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so Andy said one of the ways you can answer the question, Are you a Christian, is by laughing.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: You go, I know, I know, yeah, I am.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're just doing it, you know.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's and um it it lifted my spirits.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and if I talk to a Christian, like I'm you know, I'm talking to you now and saying, Oh, it's a great sermon, all about God's laughter.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: But if my next door neighbor says, Well, how was your weekend?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the same conversation.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: But why not?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just just be don't filter your Christian worldview.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just say, Oh, we had a sermon just about God's sense of humour.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, Really?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think God's humor.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, he really does.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And how you know, God is so surprisingly kind to us that it's actually hilarious.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you we don't need to learn special techniques, just talk about the things we love about God, the same, whoever you're talking to.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: I remember you um you came to our church a couple of years ago and did a little training session, and you just said, just can you finish this sentence?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: What I love about Jesus is, and well, there we are.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can answer that question, you can be an evangelist, right?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the hope that he gives me is dot dot dot.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I I just think that's that's the secret.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be a um philosopher, you don't have to yeah, to win every argument, but just to talk about your Christian worldview in a way that gives hope and has a Jesus at the middle of it.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think that's very compelling.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all people did to me.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't talk to any mastropologists at university, I just talked to Christians, and that was enough.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: Very good words to to finish on.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Andrew, I hope people uh go out and buy the book uh by a bucket load.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's published by Ten Publishing.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: It is Are You 100% Sure You Want to Be an Agnostic?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Andrew Sachs, thanks for joining me.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, Glenn.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there we go.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: I love that phrase, you know, helping people to be more agnostic about their agnosticism.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's fantastic, realizing that the uh supposed uh neutral ground of sitting on the fence uh might not be as comfortable as we might expect.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: For more conversations like this in the back catalogue of the Speak Life podcast, I'd probably recommend episode one hundred and three, Talking to Strangers About Jesus, one hundred and four, God and Mission, and then episodes one hundred and five through to one hundred and eight are quick answers to quick questions that many of our agnostic and atheist friends probably have.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: So there are loads of episodes in the back catalogue about talking to people from all sorts of backgrounds about Christ: Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, New Age people, Sikhs.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: So do uh delve into the Bat Catalogue for more on personal evangelism and reaching out with the good news of Jesus.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: While I was away for the past couple of weeks, we had three episodes going out talks that Glenn gave based on his book, The Air We Breathe.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we had Why We Believe in Equality, Why We Believe in Compassion, and Why We Believe in Progress.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've had some great correspondence.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: So for Glenn's talk about compassion and the parable of the Good Samaritan, Margaret said, light bulb moment here, long time Christian, but never seen the parable from this angle before.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you, Margaret.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's really wonderful to hear.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have any comments about this episode or any others, you can email info at speaklife.org.uk and we will read some of them out on the show.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to be able to interact with you guys.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: If we didn't have any listeners to this podcast, we would just be talking to ourselves.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much for downloading it, and we pray that our content is a blessing to you.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's all from me.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for listening, and we will be back next week.