Latest / Thinking Class / #044 - Glen Scrivener - Why Human Dignity And Human Rights May Not Survive Without Christianity

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#044 - Glen Scrivener - Why Human Dignity And Human Rights May Not Survive Without Christianity · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking with Glenn Scrivener.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn is an ordained Church of England minister and evangelist who preaches through writing, speaking, and online media.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn is also the director of Speak Life and the creator of the 321 Evangelism course.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Glen and I talk about the profound impact of Christianity on Western values, the personal journeys that lead someone to faith, and the cultural shifts that have resulted in a meaning crisis.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: We also talk about why it is important to understand the Christian story as foundational to human rights and societal values, how the Christian narrative provides a unique protection against tyranny, and offers a framework for understanding human dignity and responsibility in a rapidly changing world, and much, much more.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn's a delight to speak to, he's deeply engaging, and he balances history and theology in a way anyone can understand, but without diluting the message.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he has this uncanny ability to be able to make something simply understood while giving the listener a sense of the depth of the message he's trying to convey.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: There was much more to say, yet time and indeed Glenn's responsibility to pick his children up from school meant we'll have to resume our conversation in the future.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: But before we dive in, you'd be really helping me out if you clicked subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to or watching the show on, because the more subscribers we have, the more guests we can attract, and the faster Thinking Class grows.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, John.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn, it's it's my pleasure.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think I discovered you through a recommendation from Tom Holland.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think he was on a not personally, I don't know him.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, hopefully one day uh he was on a podcast and he he mentioned you, and I think he also endorsed your your book, The Air We Breathe.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh similarly, Justin, Justin Brierly, uh, I've I heard recommendations from him and and then I came across your book and and read it and found it to be quite prescient for uh where I was in uh looking around at the values that we talk about abstractly, or you can often hear politicians and people in leading positions of corporations and elsewhere in public life talking about these these abstract values of of compassionate compassion, kindness, equality, fairness, justice, and and you I suppose the the book, and I don't want to summarize it all for you, is that the crux of the matter is the reason why we we place any importance on those things at all, that we place such primacy on them in how we govern our societies and in how we make decisions and how we treat other people, is because ancestrally, for the last couple of thousand years, we believed in the figure of Jesus Christ, the stories contained within the gospel, and of course the messages from the Old Testament.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything that you would add to that?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned the the crux of the matter, and I think that's that's exactly right.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Crux, the Latin word for cross, and and I think it's a very odd society that puts at the heart of its vision of God um a figure on a cross choking to death with his arms outstretched to the world.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a really odd vision for God.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the peculiarity of a culture that orients itself around Jesus Christ and Him crucified is the best explanation for the peculiarity of what we see in the West, because I think I think the values that we tend to hold dear are quite particular and peculiar values.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess the book is an attempt to pull at the threads of some of those values and say, at the at the other end of those values is not just an abstract political philosophy, it's not just an uh abstract meta-ethical theory.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it is a particular person who is incredibly subversive.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned Tom Holland, he he says that the the Jesus Revolution, aka Christianity, is the most disruptive, the most influential, and the most enduring revolution in human history.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that disruptive aspect to Christianity is something that I really wanted to get across in the book.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: The peculiarity of the West is because of a peculiar story that we have centered ourselves on.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And what I really want to do is get people back to that story and sort of to kind of reorient themselves to the strangeness of the beliefs that we kind of already hold by taking you to the foot of the cross and showing you the source.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned that you were trying to make sure that the values inherent within that uh Jesus revolution do not become some kind of abstract political philosophy.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I I've noticed that there has certainly been a turn toward faith.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't necessarily say in giant numbers, but there's certainly a countercultural movement going on, not necessarily coordinated.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's bottom-up, organic, people being drawn toward Christianity in a world which seems to have, or at least within the Western world, speaking here from Britain, which is probably largely atheist in a Christian sense these days, at least amongst the the the the British, um, is you you you have people being drawn to it for various reasons.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I wonder whether you see people being drawn to it because of the it can also be boiled down to an ism, like an abstract political philosophy, that it seems like a good system to govern things, or when you're doing your ministry, do you find that people are generally drawn to it because of personal conversion experiences rather than an in an intellectual ascent to the values?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think the personal thing is uh is always at the heart, actually, of of people's turning to Christ.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And um there's a saying, you know, you rarely look up until you're flat on your back.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I would say there are various cultural influences that are at play, and there are various moments and movements in history that we're a part of, but you don't tend to pay attention to those uh until who knows what happens.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you get the redundancy or the diagnosis or your father dies, or what whatever, whatever it is that happens, and suddenly you're flat on your back and you and you start to look look up.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, whatever happens down through the years in terms of people turning to Christ, there is always that that profoundly personal dimension to it.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I think undeniably at the moment there are people who are seeing that the story in the West has kind of run out of road, and uh there is such a thing as a meaning crisis, and we actually have fewer and fewer resources with which to navigate the the personal tragedies that all of us are facing.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so um definitely I think people are looking at uh the recession of Christianity into the rear view mirror and starting to miss it, and we're starting to see um alternative ideologies and alternative um narratives that uh you know offer to orient you in life and and give you meaning, significance, and purpose.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people um are either dissatisfied by those or terrified of those.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so that there is there are a number of refugees from the meaning crisis, I think, that are showing up in church.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: There was a guy in our church just recently, he he showed up and he he said, Look, I I realized that the Bible has built uh the modern world, and I don't know the first thing about the Bible.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So two weeks ago I ordered a Bible from Amazon, and I just said, Oh, what translation did did of the Bible did you order?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he just said, you know, the old one.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: I said, The King James Bible?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Yeah, that's the one.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, where did you start reading?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, Genesis, obviously.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm seeing that guy everywhere.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm seeing that guy, and and quite quite often this this kind of movement uh does tend to be quite a male movement.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Guys in their 20s and 30s, recognizing that Christianity has built the West to one degree or another, and that without it we are to some degree lost.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, you know, a number of my neighbors have started taking themselves off to church and even taking their families off to church, uh, because they've recognized that the story in the West has has kind of they they've lost the thread of of that narrative that used to orient us, and and people are are wanting to throw themselves into church and throw themselves into something ancient and embodied and challenging and meaningful.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And and they want to do something meaningful with their lives, and they're starting to figure out that the way that we have traditionally found meaning is in this ancient story, and they're they're giving it a go.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was interesting you talking about that there seems to be at least one of the thematic uh uh movements towards the faith is amongst males in their 20s and 30s, and it made me think about how Jordan Peterson speaks about how his crowd that this audience that he had built when he burst on the scene 2016 were they were they were mixed, but he what he found is a lot of the men were craving responsibility, and then it it got me thinking as you're talking, Ben, about a book that I'd read a few years ago by um he is a neuroscientist, and uh he he's also uh some other uh medical profession, but anyway, he's uh he's called Antonio DiMasio and he wrote a book called Descartes' Error, and within that he talks about the different stages of brain development, you know, the usual prefrontal cortex, which is how you make your executive decisions or the executive function uh doesn't mature until you're 25, and it's at that point that you've got that fully adult brain you're gonna stay with forever.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So everything that happens before that that's pretty important.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: But what he also talks about is when you start getting around mid-30s, is that you have uh this tendency to want to steward the culture you were brought up in, that you want to become the uh guardian of it in some way.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you haven't previously lived that way, you suddenly start to see that it's something that needs to be kept going.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like we are wired to carry on a tradition.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, where am I coming with all these trains of thought?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is there is there a worry, for instance?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you you say you see this guy everywhere that you know we know civilization's built on this, and he he goes ordering the Bible so he can pick it up and go, what's this all about?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: What's this all built on?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a worry that there's been such a uh a total uh uh wiping away in some respects of an understanding of that history and tradition between the ages that there'll be people reaching those 30s points and they're looking around and going, I don't even know where to look.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: What is it exactly that I'm trying to save and what am I trying to orient my life around and why is that important for me to to to save?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do do you or or do you think do you think that people will always be able to find the answer because no matter what, the church will endure regardless of the lowest ebb that it's at?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, church, uh you you you use the uh analogy of ebb, and I and I think that's exactly right.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's ebb and there's flow, there's high tide and there's low tide.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um another sort of analogy that's more you know anchored in the scriptures is there's full moon and there's new moon.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the the the moon is meant to be reflecting the light of the world, the sun, uh into the world, and sometimes the moon uh is very bright and sometimes the moon is less bright.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I um the the the fortunes of the church will absolutely ebb and flow uh and wax and wane and all those other um analogies quite a lot.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think because we are at such a low ebb at the moment, because of because of low tide uh as regards the sea of faith, I think there's certain things you see at low tide that you don't see at high tide.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um high tide conceals things, and high tide faith conceals things.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um when you think back to 1776 and Thomas Jefferson is able to, and and and Benjamin Franklin helped him with this, but that they were able to see that it's self-evident that all men are created equal and have been endowed by the creator by certain unalienable rights.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's that's self-evident, isn't it?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, interestingly, actually, Thomas Jefferson wrote, uh, we um we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it was Benjamin Franklin that put a line through sacred and undeniable and just wrote the word self-evident.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it was this real shift at a real high tide moment in terms of Christianization, but it was this massive shift from the the idea of human rights and human dignity being uh a sacred truth, a revealed truth, a scriptural truth, a religious truth, and Benjamin Franklin saying, no, no, no, no, we we now can consider these truths to be simply self-evident.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's simply the outcome of reason and evidence that will get us to our kind of secular humanism.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: And interestingly, you know, we've been trying this experiment for 250 years.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, can't can we ground the value of the human person in mere self-evident truth?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Can we ground it in reason rather than in sacred scripture, in revealed truth and that that kind of thing?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting that in 1776, when faith is at high tide, you start to take all the biblical truths for granted and consider them to be self-evident.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: At high tide, you can consider all these things to be the air with air we breathe, which is the you know the title of my book.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like we can consider these things to be um just obvious, natural, and universal that of course all people are endowed with inalienable human rights.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um what happens at low tide, and we are most certainly at low tide in terms of the sea of faith and in terms of church attendance in the West, what happens is you see what's underneath the sea of faith, and you see what was always there, what was what's ancient and has always been bubbling uh along.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think it becomes more and more obvious to people that there's nothing self-evident about human rights.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you if you take away from our vision of humanity, everything that the scriptures have taught us, and simply um look at our genome or just cut us open, um you won't find human rights inside.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: You you you won't find you know dignity written into our our genome.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we at that scientific level, we are animals the same as every other animal, and there's no sanctity to us, there's no um there's no supernatural when all you're you're looking at is the natural human person.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: But what that means is you haven't just gotten rid of God at that stage, you've gotten rid of the human as we have been considering him within Christendom for centuries, millennia.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so what's happening now, I think, at at low tide is people are figuring out that the things that we hold dear, like human rights, are not at all self-evident, they're they're not at all natural, obvious, or universal.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: They come from a particular story in which God takes humanity to himself and he takes all of humanity to all of humanity to himself in the person of Jesus and raises up all of humanity to the to the highest place in the in the death and resurrection.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: And from that particular story comes the moral sense that we have that that all people are equal and and equal in moral dignity and and and that kind of thing.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And there are two ways you can learn that that beauty of human dignity and and human rights.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can learn it from scripture, but you can also learn it from its opposite.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: You can also learn it from what happens at low tide when people start to say, no, we are simply animals, there is no human exceptionalism, there's nothing sacred to the human, and therefore we are just a part of this world.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that's that's what the Nazis thought, right?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it and it and it justified like in like uh unconscionable evil.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think at low tides, we we are starting to recognize um what it was, what what it is that's natural about human beings and what it is that's been taught to us by the Christian story.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And in the absence of that Christian story, people are feeling the lack.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: So at the low ebb of the church, I think there are there are very obvious reasons why people are now seeking the Christian story once more, because we're recognizing that without that Christian story, the things that we have taken for granted don't make sense anymore.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what I want to say as a Christian is we'll return to that Christian story, not in order to add this absurd, nonsense, supernaturalist vision to your life, but actually in order to ground the beliefs that you already have.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: You already believe in the unalienable right of human beings.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like you've been you've been taught that.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I I I want to give you the grounds for for actually believing that you articulated so much more clearly than I could have possibly done what I've been thinking about recently, which is that by Christianity falling away from society, that we have become less human in the process, and that actually those values which you have said we've come to hold as self-evident, but really they are the products of cultural practices and beliefs over an unbelievably long period of time, is that without those we become more like animals because we have nothing we we don't hold each other to be sacred, we don't we don't um symbolize the the passage uh we don't sub symbolize particular periods of life like a birth, like a coming of age, like a a union of of people and souls, like uh marking the end of a life in a certain way, is if it's all stupid, if it's all pointless, if it's all made up, and we're just animals, then you can have a pretty unremarkable life where you have none of those things.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can have a totally different way of interacting with people, you know, if they aren't sanctified in any way, if they if people aren't in inherently dignified as as people, as individuals, then you know, as you as you alluded to with the Nazis, you can treat people however you want, which is not to say that if you're not Christian, that means you're a Nazi.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that faithlessness, faithlessness in the Christian religion, it's it's kind of like I don't want to fall into this kind of scientistic worldview or or language here, but it's it's almost like this cultural um tool that's been that's come through evolutionism how that we've actually reached a certain a much higher peak as a as a species by having come across the Christian story, and without it we recede from that.
• 20:55
  unknown: Yeah.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: What do you make of that?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I I mean one response to saying that um that I commonly get is people sort of say, oh, okay, well, it it happened to be um just arbitrarily, just contingently, it happened to be through the Christian story that we developed a language around human rights, but we would have gotten to an articulation of human rights anyway, with or without Jesus of Nazareth.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I once put that question to Tom Holland, and and the his his kind of his scornful laugh at that time uh we turned into a meme because um the and and he then said, look, the the idea that human rights are this thing, this sort of platonic ideal that just hang there in the ether waiting to be discovered is as theological as believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm quoting verbatim now from what Tom Holman said.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the the idea that human rights already exist, and just like Newton didn't Invent gravity.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: So Christians did not invent human rights.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: They just discovered a thing that if it and if it wasn't Newton, it would have been somebody else who invented gravity.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if it wasn't the Christians, it would have been somebody else who invented human rights.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Holland said, no, absolutely not.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think, if you think that human rights are already a thing, and any old any old story or system could simply bump into them, you already hold to a very theological view of the human.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: A very particular view of the human, because the particular view of the human that undergirds human rights is a view that says all people, male, female, black, white, gay, straights, rich, poor, we are all moral, the moral equals of one another.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that that equality extends to the very fringes of the human family, no matter how weak or poor, no matter how economically viable we are, or or any any of these things, that that vision, that vision of equality, but also that that vision of human exceptionalism, that that vision that from the outside we are so valued, um requires a certain number of things to be true.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because if Thomas Jefferson, for instance, said that, you know, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that people like us have inviolable rights, we would all say, Oh, you know, how how dare you, um, Thomas Jefferson, what what gives you the right to have a little coterie of humans, and everybody on the outside of the club doesn't have that status?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: When you say we have human rights, the big question should always be, well, who's we?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing about human rights is you've you've got to you've got to have a we that is non-arbitrary.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to have a we that extends to the very fringe of the human family, but also a sense of we hold these truths to be self-evident that is non-arbitrary.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because as soon as you say, well, um, it's arbitrary that humans have gotten to the top of the evolutionary tree and therefore we we conclude ourselves to be king.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um why why why doesn't a subset of human beings just say, no, actually, like forget it, should just be landowners, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And let us never forget Thomas Jefferson held 600 slaves, as he said, we hope these truths to be self-evident that we're all equal, right?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um never never let that be forgotten because there's always that massive question mark over okay, if if humans are exceptional, says who?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the Christian story is that somebody from outside the human has valued the human and has valued all humans in that single humanity and has lifted all humans up to the highest place.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as you've said that, you've said you've said the Christian story, right?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: You've just said, you know, God has become man and has exalted humanity to the to the highest place, which which is a uniquely Christian story to to tell, you know, the story of the incarnation.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so both myself and and Tom Holland would would would both kind of push back, I think, against those who would say human rights are a thing, and Christianity happened to bump into that thing.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, the what is inherent to human rights is kind of a doctrine of the incarnation, which is an already explicitly Christian kind of a thing.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It does, it does.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose the follow-on question that seems obvious to all of that now is that let's say Christianity, the church, its ebb gets lower, it it ebbs, it ebbs even further.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we might talk about how we want compassion, we want kindness, we want equality, we want freedom.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: But how long will they hang around for if we don't ground our cultural practices, our institutions which were largely built around them, the things like rule of law, for example, also sprouted out of this tradition.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: How long does all that stuff hang around for?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: And is it possible to live with these as abst ideals abstracted from the story, in your opinion?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Oz Guinness has called us a cut flower civilization.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Ayan Hersey Al Lee uh at the art conference last year, um going on for about 12 months ago, uh, she was on a stage with uh Oz Guinness and Jordan Peterson and John Anderson, and uh and Oz Guinness was just finished saying, you know, we're a cut flower civilization, and the the root was this profoundly Christian thing.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it was in that context that Aion Hersey Arlee, who was um very much at the heart of the new atheism, came out as Christian and said, Um, we absolutely are this cut flower civilization.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have come from the Bible, from the Judeo-Christian heritage.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: She came out as you know, I'm now going to church.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And she was actually the one who injected the note of hope there because she said it might be a cut flower civilization, but we've got seed packets, and we can get out there and we can scatter the seed of yeah, which which is a profoundly um biblical analogy.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the first parable Jesus tells is the parable of like sowing the seed, and the seed is the word of God.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and um Ayan's been on a wonderful you know journey in that in that way, and uh she came onto our channel recently to talk further about how the cut flower civilization actually woke her up to everything that Christianity has has given to the West.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it it you know through both that and through some personal um uh difficulties led her back to Christian faith.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I I don't think these things exist by themselves.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think um the liberal values that we tend to prize come from a place and they need to be nurtured by um the vitality that actually gave gave rise to them in the first place.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um Tom Holland was asked, you know, what do you see as the future?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he he kind of laid out three different futures in an interview that he gave to me a couple of years ago.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, one one future is maybe we don't need Christianity to have these values, and maybe we can just cast off every um every every you know bit of Christian heritage and blast off into the stratosphere.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: The the booster rockets of Christianity got got us where we were, but we don't need it for the future, and we can kind of blast off to oblivion or or whatever.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe maybe it's just progressivism all the way and it sheds every Christian skin.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Possibly.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, option number two for the future, there might be a real anti-woke backlash against that.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it that that could end up being quite Nietzschean, uh, Nietzsche who hated the the compassion ethic of Christianity and and wanted to go for power instead.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: That that could be option number two, or option number three, Christian revival, and maybe the you know the church in the west catches up with where the church is in the rest of the world, because the church in the rest of the world is doing wonderfully and and and growing in incredibly in Africa and South America and parts of Asia.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um so maybe the church in the West Um the tide comes back in.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember when he said that, thinking to myself, I think it'll be all three.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I I can I can see Christian revival happening in in the West.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can definitely see that happening.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I can see things becoming more difficult for Christians, perhaps so difficult for Christians that that you know some of us end up in prison within my lifetime, you know, simply for some basic, you know, proclaiming some pretty basic Christian truths.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I can see an anti-woke backlash um that might be that might get pretty nasty as well.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I think history tends to be a mess like that.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's that's my best shot at figuring out what what happens in post-Christian Europe.
• 30:32
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• 30:34
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• 30:46
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• 30:49
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• 31:01
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• 31:08
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• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that all that all seems plausible, and uh uh it it's probably not possible to see institutions end up only being able to govern with one particular worldview and have everyone understand that, you know, and and and to live by it.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean at that point, I suppose you're getting a bit totalitarian, and I guess most of Christian faith is based on you coming to it and having discovered it and not just having it forced upon you.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and yes, I I think we also come from a tradition, particularly those of us in the Anglosphere, which you know seeded out of Britain, has had the traditionalists, the non-conformists, the dissenters, and they all had lots of disagreements about how they might govern society, but the one thing but they did also agree on the central story.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know if we'll ever get back to everyone agreeing on the central story and them all being around, but it shows that you can you can live amongst each other um with different worldviews.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, clearly some of them are going to be a fairer, more just way of treating people than than others.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I couldn't help but think as you were talking about how Christians in your lifetime you you we could feasibly see them going to to jail for proclaiming Christian truths.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're we're probably already on that route, but uh obviously that itself smacks of the Christian story with with Christ having been put to death for um for him speaking the truth or and for him being unfailing in his um treatment of others and uh in in dignity and uh speaking truth to power.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: So yes, we will we will fight we'll we will we will live through it and that that I suppose brings me to We will die through it.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, GK Chesterton said Christianity has died many times in its history, but it's also come back to life again because it knows the one who who knows the way out of the grave.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's the GK Chesterton kind of um yeah, yeah.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it it it it that that ebb and flow is actually baked into the story, I think.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Chesterton, he's eminently quotable, isn't he?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um you you you wrote in your book that Christianity protects us from tyranny.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why does it protect us from tyranny?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very disruptive story, the Christian story.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like take yourself back to the Old Testament and you've got uh Pharaoh.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Surely Pharaoh, the you know, this this emperor, uh, you know, the the the head of the greatest superpower of the ancient world, surely he's the hero, isn't he?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: And yet in in Christian scripture, in in the Hebrew Bible, here is this this figure who is just the the arch baddie.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and somehow through no particular virtue of their own, the the people of God are this bedraggled mob of slaves who they don't even really believe Moses.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: And Moses doesn't even want the job of being being this savior figure.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the God of the burning bush meets Moses and says, We are coming out of tyranny, we are coming out of this overlord uh called Pharaoh.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and so the whole story is this story of redemption, which which means you know buying you out of slavery and buying you out from under uh this tyrannical overlord.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the the the Israelites come up out of Egypt and they go through the Red Sea, but the slaveries don't end just because you don't have um a megastate over you.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: The the people of God figure out that simply because they're free of um economic and political slavery, there is still spiritual slavery.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then the story continues.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're in the wilderness, and and because of their unbelief, they end up in the wilderness for an entire generation, and an entire generation of Israelites kind of die out because of unbelief.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it turns out that there is a deeper slavery than political slavery or economic slavery, there's a spiritual slavery.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um fast forward into the New Testament, and here comes Jesus, who is explicitly again and again saying that he he is bringing a bringing about a kind of a cosmic exodus, kind of a cosmic redemption, that your true overlord um is Satan.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and he has he has come to redeem us out of that.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he says in John chapter 8, um, whoever sins is a slave to sin.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh the Israelites, interestingly, in John chapter 8, they they say, What are you talking about?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're slaves.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: We've never been slaves of anyone, say the Israelites, which just goes to show like how ridiculous our self-justifying hearts are, because if if a centurion was like overhearing the Jews saying, We've never been slaves of anyone, I wonder, I wonder if he could suppress a chuckle at that point because they've been slaves to the Egyptians, but also the Philistines and the Moabites and the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the and the Medes and the Persians and the Greeks and now the Romans, right?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Who hadn't they been slaves of?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And yet the story had always been to take people out of that supreme allegiance to the power, the king, the the tribal lord, and actually put your put your faith in a God who stands above the state, and also to turn away from the spiritual slaveries that are the things that really shackle us.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever sins is a slave to sin, says Jesus.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it's it's my desires.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I look for love in all the wrong places, and the the things I look for as solutions in my life end up being the problems, but I keep on returning to my problem as though it's a solution.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: And in a sense, I am the most tyrannical force in my life.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no, no one has sabotaged my freedom better than I have.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's be honest.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: No one sabotaged my happiness, no one sabotaged my own success better than I have.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus comes to smash all kinds of tyranny.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's the there is the tyranny of the state, and and there there is the tyranny of political and economic slavery, but there's also the tyranny of me and my own heart and my stupid desires that enslave me.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole message of Christianity is this freedom narrative.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: It rolls on into the New Testament.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what's fascinating about Christianity, and and it is um completely novel in the history of the world, is that you can become a Christian, and that doesn't stop you from being a Mead or a Persian, and it doesn't stop you from like being a Galatian or being a Philippian or being uh a member of any city-states or any empires.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the apostle Paul starts writing these letters to the the early Christians, and he's like, Oh, yeah, no, you don't have to become circumcised.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I I know it's a kind of a Jewish thing because it's the Jewish Messiah, and we've got these Jewish scriptures, and we still believe in the Hebrew Bible, but don't become a Jew.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need to become a Jew.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can you can be a Philippian.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he writes to the Philippians um in Greece, and he and he says, you know, to those who are in Christ and in Philippi, which means so spiritually speaking, your location is in Christ, but your your geographical location and even your political allegiance, be a be a citizen of Philippi, but just know that um really your citizenship is in heaven and you do have a higher Lord.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And let's do the Jesus thing.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Jesus said, pay taxes to to Caesar, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, but give to God what is God's.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is and Jesus and Paul, the New Testament, the whole Bible is kind of saying, you can be an Australian as I am, you can be a Brit as you are, and nevertheless, um paying taxes to that earthly power, the Jesus story both affirms you in your um uh political identity, yes, fine, um nationality-wise, ethnically, you have you have that kind of identity.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a far greater story in Christ that that truly orients you to the degree that you can faithfully serve the Roman Empire, to the to the degree that you can faithfully serve Caesar, serve Caesar.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: But at some point, your allegiance to Christ as Lord will mean that you have to say Caesar is not Lord.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um but there there is this there is this quietistic kind of um impulse in the New Testament that that that's it's not a revolutionary document in this in the sense of let's march on Rome.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's quietistic in in one sense, but it's also profoundly disruptive in another sense, um, because it it just it says Caesar has no right to to claim the the highest position.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: He has no right to claim himself to be Lord.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so Christians have had a history for 2,000 years of being hopefully trying to be as good a citizens as we can be, but also of being the most disruptive movement in history, um, because we have a higher a higher allegiance than than the state.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: And isn't it interesting that as Christianity recedes, um what other spiritual forces rush in to take the take the place in that spiritual vacuum?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the state is 100% um uh is uh a competitor to allegiance to God in in lots in lots of different ways.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, God provides and protects for you, you know that that that's a very biblical definition of who is God, he's the the ultimate provider, the ultimate protector.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: What does the state, especially the state in 2024, promise to do for you?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Promises to provide and protect for you.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that there is that competition between God and the uh God and the state.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it is no wonder that as Christianity is on the wane in the West, um that authoritarianism is um is absolutely a competitor that rushes in to take that to take that place.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I think to the degree that we we immerse ourselves in the Christian story, there's a there's a very healthy resistance uh to tyranny that's that's just woven through the story.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: The point about the state almost becoming deified is one that I'm sympathetic to.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you if if anyone was to look at uh how people respond in times of crisis um or perceived crisis, whether blown up through um media attention or whatever, is what's the government going to do about it?
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone looks to the government for answers.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Effectively, we have come to outsource our lives, our livelihoods, our futures, our health to the state.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, religion can't necessarily provide for absolutely everything practically, but one thing that I think has been lost is that if you read the the novels, the diaries, the accounts of how people lived even through the Industrial Revolution, uh, no matter what their class, is that you know they had the King James Bible and probably John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress by their bedside if you're in in Britain, and there was this sense of responsibility, not just for yourself and to overcome your misdeeds uh and your vices and temptations.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was certainly lots of Christian movements that kept a lid on too much alcohol being consumed and calling it the demon drink.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that was Methodism, uh, and that was in the working class communities.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, whereas, you know, now we tend to live in this post Christian society quite hedonistically, you know, people live for the weekends, uh they they r don't restrain their desires so much.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: um communities which were once built around the parish church or whatever else uh uh in terms of your community was that there was a there was a there was a strong centre and everyone was cohering themselves around uh the Christian story really um and all of the practices that that entails and they were able to look after themselves their families their communities play their part see themselves as stewards of something bigger than themselves and not just about living in the present with infinite choice about me and with absolutely no one to answer to no judgment and in fact we live in a the don't judge me culture right there's no one wants people to cast judgment on them in some way now I know in the Christian story it'll there is a um there there is a line which is do not judge lest ye be judged which is which can sometimes I think be misread to say you should never judge but actually it's more to say do not judge unless you know you're actually trying to live the right way in that particular moment too you I think it's possible to be able to help people along and to say that actually there's a better way of comporting oneself but provided you're not being a hypocrite along the way and without any of that we can live really freely we can expect the state to pick up the the pieces when we when we fall down in fact that's where we look toward we we almost don't want to take responsibility for ourselves our communities we just want to say we pay our taxes you deal with it yeah I mean I I've just been in a in a part of the world where um I've I've an elderly relative and he's very unwell and there is no social safety net around him and uh and and that is a scary place to be and and and that does that does feel like a less than Christian place um to have arrived at um when yeah when when somebody is vulnerable and and there is literally like no one around to to to kind of help him but where where we've arrived to um in in which the state has gotten to the size that it's gotten to uh I I think is one indication uh uh of the the the the lack of Christian influence on on our society I think and another thing to add to that is um I think we've become more judgmental horizontally among ourselves um in the absence of the judgment of God right um and and that might appear to be a a a contradiction like surely you would think that once you get rid of religion you'll become less judgmental I think the evidence is in and it shows that that hypothesis is false um we we love judging we love judging a a heck of a lot and you know Dostoevsky you know what's the the famous line you know without God everything is permitted I I think I think now we're discovering without God everything is preachy, really, really preachy.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: One of the reasons I think well let me see if I can think of two reasons.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: One reason is in the absence of the Christian story being that around which we orient ourselves we have plumped for values in the abstract and you know my chapter headings in the in the book are these abstract values equality compassion consent enlightenment science freedom progress uh we we we love these as as kind of slogans but they can become kind of hashtags they can become very thin things but they can also become cudgels with which we beat somebody else you're not being compassionate enough you know hashtag be kind we say because I think what's happened is that the fruit of the Jesus revolution has been detached from the roots of the Christian story and now they exist abstractly as these values but but values those those values are now virtues that are run amok as GK Chester said he is eminently quotable isn't he um these virtues have gone mad right and they've been divorced from the Christian story and divorced from one another and now they are that just these abstract things be kind well okay but how?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like it it that you need context for this compassion is more of a vibe when it's just detached from the story and so what we've got is values and values can't forgive you right values can only judge you.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: You need a person to forgive you and what we've done is we've dethroned Christ from from the the top space in in in our um thinking and the values have have risen up to be that which judges us but then all we have is judgment because who is sufficiently compassionate um who who sufficiently honors um equality and freedom and progress who who sufficiently none none of us none of us and so what we're all doing is we're we're all guilty we have no one to forgive us and so we we all just blame one another thinking that by blaming somebody else we're absolved of our own um lack of compassion and and so it becomes incredibly hated it becomes quite vicious it's a mercy free forgiveness free zone and where you might have expected amorality to reign actually we're finding that we we enjoy morality even more than we thought we would enjoy amorality because we we enjoy being right and righteous.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: And fascinatingly we we then become in a Christian understanding we become a lot more like the Pharisees in the gospels right um those with the sort of the binoculars and the clipboard and the pen and trying to you know tick off righteousness and and give people black marks for for unrighteousness we found ourselves in that space occupying the space that used to be occupied by the religious right um it used to be the religious right that were the naysayers um it turns out that the the authoritarian left has discovered a great um a great pastime in the sort of moralizing that the left used to accuse the right of it's it's a fascinating dynamic.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly is changing gears a little bit and uh excuse me for starting off with a with a vignette which seems uh entirely incongruous to the rest of the conversation I was reading an article by Matthew Crawford recently an American philosopher who's uh very interesting got a great substat called Archadelia and he'd been on holiday in Croatia and he is also a recent uh a recent convert I think in the last few years and he his headline was Christianity is sexy and um the reason why he wrote it was uh he was there with his wife but he noticed he was surrounded by lots of bikini clad women and what what he was noticing you know he wasn't being untoward toward his wife was that they're not being hassled anywhere they're not being obviously looked up and down or or ogled and then he got thinking well he's surrounded by effectively Catholics and Orthodox Christians of which have which have built that part of the world for again over a thousand years and and the argument he's making is Christianity sexy because it suppresses male desire it recognizes women's dignity equal dignity through the Christian faith and through many generations it has allowed women to be able to express themselves and to go out scantily clad and and in particular in places like Croatia where effectively they know they're surrounded by other people who have been from that cultural background and they can be they they're safe to walk around and and you wrote within your book that Christianity kickstarted a sexual revolution that predated the 1960s long before and perhaps you can put a more a a theological basis to what I was talking about so we're not just stuck with bikini clad women in Croatia.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well it is interesting isn't it that at the start of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus kind of talks about the problem of lust and and he just refuses to lay the blame for the problem of lust at the feet of women and their attire and instead he he tells men um to figure out where they're you know the the male gaze is what Jesus wants to uh refocus rather than female attire and and that that it's it's astonishing how revolutionary that is you know we um we can all think of cultures in which um the blame is laid and we can all think of even Christian cultures in which the blame is laid uh largely um at the at the feet of women and the expectation is is largely that that women should uh control the way they dress rather than men should control the way they look um but jesus was way ahead of the curve on on being uh a radical egalitarian in that sense and what the first century sexual revolution uh is all about is basically going to Matthew chapter five where the Sermon on the Mount is written and then going on a few chapters to Matthew chapter 19 and Jesus kind of there kind of brings a vision for sex and sexuality that is rad radically egalitarian.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: So if you imagine that the the kind of the natural state of male-female relations and certainly the traditional state of male female relations is that women have always been expected to um be chaste and monogamous virgins on their wedding nights and then you know completely faithful throughout marriage men on the other hand and you can think about this both in terms of evolutionary biology but you can also think about this in in terms of um traditions around the world and down through history men have always been given much more of a free pass to sow their wild oats and um and they have not been expected to be virgins um to you know to the point where actually in in Latin to talk about a virgin is to talk about a woman right um grammatically it is difficult to talk about a male virgin in Latin and and in in a in an ancient understanding of course a man is not going to be a virgin and if you're talking about a virgin you're talking about a woman and so women have always been expected to be very restricted in their sexual um decisions and and and lifestyle and men have been freer if you like and and the and there's been a great difference.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: What Jesus does in Matthew chapter 19 is just say you know sex belongs within marriage between a man and a woman for life that's your lot the doors are locked no one gets out of this thing alive right and the red blooded men surrounding Jesus it's even recorded in Matthew chapter 19 they say if this is the case it would be better if we never married now Matthew does not record uh what the disciples' wives thought about that question later on that night I imagine if Peter's wife said what do you mean it'd be better if you weren't married what are you telling me like um but red-blooded men considered the sexual revolution of Jesus to be incredibly inhibiting and but it was utterly equalizing.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: You were you were expected to be virginal on your wedding night the way that women have always expected to be virgin on your wedding night and you're expected to be faithful within marriage the way women have always been expected to be to be faithful throughout marriage.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: And what this birthed um was really the the the first sexual revolution I think and it was an utterly egalitarian sexual revolution that the 1960s sexual revolution was egalitarian in the opposite direction.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: So through technology like the pill and and through social attitudes basically women were said oh you can be now as liberated and as expressive sexually as men had always been allowed to do and so the the equalization happened in the opposite direction in the 1960s.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: And in a sense our our our sensibilities about sex and sexuality are a mixture of the original sexual revolution that Jesus had which I I think is is the the more romantic revolution but it's a mixture of that first century revolution and then the 20th century kind of sexual revolution and we're kind of figuring that out but um I would I would direct people to a couple of books um to read on this but one one would be Kyle Harper's wonderful book from shame to sin um uh a classicist and ancient historian he um kind of looks at the way that the the Christians utterly rewired everything we think about sex actually largely through those two bits of teaching you know Jesus basically says in Matthew 19 you know sex is for marriage and Matthew 5 just says and outside of that that context don't even think about it you know that's that and Kyle Harper says you know all all of our erotic energy is to be cramped into one frail sacred union called marriage.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know that's that's the that's the Christian vision.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: But then the other book I'd I'd invite people to have a look at is uh Joseph Henrik he's uh evolutionary biologist at Harvard he's written a book called The Weirdest People in the World where does the where does the peculiarity and the prosperity of the West come from he says it's from the marriage and family program that the the early church brought and one one of the things it does is because it's radically egalitarian um it's it means that you you won't have involuntary celibates or you'll um you'll diminish the number of incels involuntary celibates out there because it's it's radically equalizing the the the playing field.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know you don't just get Genghis Khan who gets all the women one man for one woman which is you know it's like socializes um sex and marriage out there in the culture and that but therefore men are tied to their women and to their children through the the bond of marriage and you know Joseph Henrik he's not a romantic but he just calls this the testosterone suppression system and he says the the early church reached down and grabbed men by the testicles which not the most romantic way of putting it but uh from an evolutionary biology point of view that that is kind of what happened and and I think that first century sexual revolution has been for for the prosperity of our civilization and and so I I would you know neither Kyle Harper nor Joseph Henrik um claim to be Christians but I would just point you to if you if you're looking for the wisdom of why Christians are so weird about sex um I would I would point people to those books.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah it is fascinating I I've certainly had these these conversations with with people before where they believe that um the the chastity within christianity has been all about keeping women down and as you've just outlined no the same standard applied to everyone uh what I couldn't help but think toward the end there with the grabbing by the testicles remark is uh there are some young blooded young red blooded males out there warming up to moving towards christianity until they heard that line and I suppose the only way we can win them back on this front is the the the other way of looking at this is that um women benefit from this so much insofar as uh we also benefit from it that we get to get to know someone so intimately that get to to treat them as though they are cosmically significant and not some kind of sexual chattel that we can just pick up and put down and within that um it civilizes us it it gives us a depth of human experience that we could have never experienced otherwise if we just went round like Genghis Khan treating everyone as he did and leaving them on the wayside and causing much harm and distress along the way and that's the I suppose that gets all the way back to the the Christian story of everyone's endowed with the same dignity and that's why it's it's it's worrying with the recession of Christianity because without emargo day without the we're created in the image of God every single one of us being equal that it opens the door for us to treat whether sexually or otherwise people as less than human and we've got plenty of examples from history as to why that is not good uh both for them for us for civilization so Glenn it's it's been an absolute pleasure and I I don't want to keep you all day because you'll have lots to do um before before you go there is a question that I like to ask every one of my guests which is what have you changed your mind on in the course of your life that you once thought to be set in stone and what was it that made you change your mind oh lots of things.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like in researching the book I changed my mind a lot on the Middle Ages.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: I I think I I like most people consider them the dark ages and just full of you know battles and bubonic plague and that that's that's kind of it um and that was mind blowing really looking into the the the riches of of what the Middle Ages uh were were all about and and uh the the influence that they still have on today but it oh gosh I I think I think the it's such a boring answer because I'm in my 40s now and I think the thing I'm really realizing is I have I had a temperamental love of being on the outside and being a voice crying in the wilderness being a dissident voice and if you look at all my YouTube subscriptions there they've they've all got the name dissident or rebel in them somewhere you know and it's it's all like kind of and all my substack you know subscriptions they've they've got the word heterodox in there somewhere you know like and I think getting into your 40s you start you start to figure out oh no but you want to build don't you like you can't you can't be you can't build anything on just eternal skepticism and and a number of different and that means a number of different shifts in thinking but but I think they they all the the number of different shifts that I'm having at the moment I I I think I see that they orbit around this thing that that happens when I I guess you've got to grow up at some stage and figure out how you positively build stuff because it's too easy to critique and I think a lot of my mindset is is shifting along those those sorts of lines and I I I guess the I guess what has made me do that is you know I've got a couple of kids you know and um figuring out how to how to build a a little cosmos, a microcosm as a household um you you start to see the the that actually cynicism is a hollow thing and constantly being a rebel or heterodox or dissident um is a is a cheap thrill uh and that building something solid uh takes a heck of a lot more um creativity in lots of ways and it it it takes a heck of a lot um more of your heart and mind uh to be thrown into than than the the cheap thrills of throwing stones from the outside.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's something in that for everyone I mean dissident energy is uh necessary clearly but it needs to be channeled somewhere and if it is based on values then in the end you have to put your money where your mouth is or at least stand there's probably a better analogy but you need to be able to walk the walk and not just talk the talk and as you say it's it's hard it's difficult to create something and as I think uh Douglas Murray has has said before and I'm I'm sure he paraphrased it from somewhere else is it's much easier to destroy than it is to rebuild.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's there's much out there that does need to be reformed and potentially even moan down but instead of focusing purely on that you could just focus on building what it is you think you need your family needs your community needs the world needs and then that's a very different approach to life and and I I know I know exactly what you're talking about this multi-generational thinking it's uh it's a stage of life I'm I'm currently approaching and I I've noticed that that mindset shift happening having again done something similar to you years of dissident energy swirling around uh and you you you've talked about wanting to build what what are you building at the moment what are you working on Glenn well I mean people can go and see it if they like uh it's called 321 it's a kind of an introduction to the Christian faith that uh assumes no prior knowledge I I don't assume I know I've rabbited on about Christianity the whole time I don't assume that uh uh the listeners here um have any familiarity with Christianity necessarily but I I do think if it has built our world it's worth uh getting to grips with It and so we've done this sort of Christianity 101 that makes sense in a digital age.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: People can go to 321course.com, start an account and go through the course.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's utterly free.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: We won't spam you.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I don't think you'll understand yourself or your world if you don't understand this Christian story.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this is my best effort at explaining it from the ground up.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Glenn, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck with that, good luck with building, and I hope to speak to you again in the future.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's been it's been an utter delight.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: With you too, John.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Glenn.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 1:07:05
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• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.