Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Hitchens Hated ‘Original Sin’. Here’s Why the World Needs It. || SLP668

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Hitchens Hated ‘Original Sin’. Here’s Why the World Needs It. || SLP668 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us, waking and sleeping, who knows our thoughts, who can convict us of thought crime, who can thought crime just for what we think.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Who can judge us while we sleep for things that might occur to us in our dreams, who can create us sick, as apparently we are, and then order us on pain of eternal torture to be well again.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: To demand this, to wish this to be true, is to wish to live as an abject slave.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: We miss Christopher Hitchens very much.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: There he is in full flow talking about his way of characterizing original sin, as we'll see.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: He badly mangles it, but uh his rhetoric is on point, uh, wouldn't you say?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's incumbent on Christian communicators.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if we are going to present our side of things, I think we need to uh learn from Christopher Hitchens and uh learn to represent these truths in ways that will actually resonate with our hearers.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's totally possible, and I think it is totally necessary.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: We need this doctrine, whatever you're going to call it, we need to proclaim a gospel of being born in Adam and being born again in Christ.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: We need this gospel, and I'll tell you why we need it, and I'll tell you how we can go about representing it to culture in a way that might actually resonate.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, my name is Glenn Scrivener.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm from Speak Life, and if you like to put on a pair of Jesus lenses to look around at the world, even if only for a little bit, then this is the channel for you.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Please do subscribe down below.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Christopher Hitchens here is characterizing original sin as the doctrine that we are born sick and commanded to be well.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what do we make of that?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, first of all, I want to make some clarifications about what we're talking about when we're talking about original sin.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then what I want to do is I want to do a 4-3-2-1.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: I want to talk about four reasons.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, the world should love the doctrine of original sin.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Most of the world doesn't love the doctrine of original sin, but I think there are four reasons why the world should love this doctrine.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, three reasons why the world really doesn't love this doctrine, uh, two analogies that are really helpful in discussing the issue, and then one call to action.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: But first, let's get some clarity on what it is that we're talking about when we're talking about original sin.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: And let me set the scene uh by telling you a story.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: I was uh up in York giving some talks at an Indian restaurant, and uh after dinner I was talking about the Garden of Eden, and in the sorts of ways that I was speaking, uh, it caused one hearer to want to come forward and ask me a question later.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so after the talk, he comes up to me and uh he said, I enjoyed your talk, but just to let you know, I want to warn you so that next time you steer clear of this, but at times it sounded like you were dangerously close to that medieval doctrine, original sin.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: In the moment, I decided not to sort of take the bait and get into a conversation immediately about original sin.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I just decided to sort of let that pass and just ask a question back.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: And my question back was, what brings you here?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he said, actually, my sponsor invited me.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, Oh, your sponsor.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Yeah, I'm part of a 12-step program, and uh I've been clean from uh cocaine was my my sort of drug of choice uh for the last 18 months, and I'm walking the steps.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and I said, Look, that's fantastic, that's brilliant.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, well done for kicking the addiction.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: And he said to me, Oh, you know, it's not just me who's an addict.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: I've come to see that everybody is an addict.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: My drug of choice is cocaine, but other people are also addicted.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: I said, tell me more about this idea that you have.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Well, you know, for me, I I have class A drugs, but for other people it might be career or success or living for the weekend, or sex or money, or power or fame.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody is living for something, and that something is actually enslaving them in one way or another.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I love your doctrine.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Should we give it a name?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: He said, What do you suggest?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Well, in the first instance, let's just go with universal addiction.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Yeah, I like that, universal addiction.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's what we should call it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then I said, Well, and that is very close to the biblical doctrine of original sin.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Christopher Hitchens said, we are born sick.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh perhaps we could say that we are born addicts, and some people's addiction is a crack addiction, but for some people it is, as my new friend said, maybe it is about sex, money, power, fame, whatever it is.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: We are addicted to things that diminish us, and though we love them, they kill us.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: And this is not just what people walking the twelve steps are facing.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: This is what all of us face.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: There is a universal addiction, and we are enslaved not against our will, but our will itself seems to be turned towards that which will thwart us, that which will sabotage us, that which will enslave us.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: This seems to be the human condition, and it's everybody's condition, therefore it is a universal addiction.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: Now, that as an analogy doesn't cover all the bases that we mean when we're talking about original sin, but I think it's an interesting way in.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of this video, I'll give you two more analogies that I'm always using when I talk about this doctrine.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: But what are we saying when we're saying that we're born in Adam?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: What are the implications of us all entering the human family in the way that we do?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think you enter any family and already possess three things.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: You already possess an identity, a character, and a destiny.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: When you're born into any family, you are the possessor of an identity.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: And as we're born into the family of Adam, we are the possessor of an identity that is glorious in one sense.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: We are all born in the image of God, and we are all born in Adam.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: We have that identity that according to the flesh, we are represented by that one Adam.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: My children have the surname Scrivener, but in a sense, every human being has the surname Adamson or Adam Daughter.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: So there is a corporate identity that we all share.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there are also traits that we all share.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's a character that we all share.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: And just as there are certain character traits to scriveners, uh, there are also certain character traits to Adamsons and Adam daughters.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and those character traits are well described by Genesis chapter three, where Adam actually falls.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: How does he fall?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a suspicion of God that leads to selfishness, that leads to slavery to the thing that is killing him, that leads to self-justification as they played the blame game, that leads to just screw-ups and separation from God.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: All those S's describe the kind of sins that come naturally to you and I.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: We share an identity, we share traits, we share a character, in other words, and thirdly, we share a destiny.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: We are perishing.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: And death is the end of our lives.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: That seems to me to be a very realistic account of what it's like to get born on planet Earth.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't seem to me like those things are outrageous.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: It seems to me like they are descriptions of reality.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: That we are indeed joining the human family when we come into this world, that that family already has an identity, that that family already has character traits, that that family already has a destiny.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: In a sense, we're not saying anything we don't know at that stage.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: G.K.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Chesterton said that the doctrine of sin is the easiest doctrine to believe.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need a theology degree, you just need to read a newspaper to see what people are like.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: But original sin means we are born in Adam, and our destiny is death, and we need to be born again in Christ.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: We need salvation, we need to be born into a different family, to take a different identity, to be Christians rather than Adamsons and Adam daughters, right?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: That needs to be our new identity.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then we need these new character traits.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: These new character traits will start to be imbibed by us as we enter into the family.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: But these new character traits are well described by the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: There are new character traits to the new family, and there is a new destiny to the new family.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Hallelujah, there's a new destiny.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's not death and curse, it is life and glory.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: And let me tell you why this world loves the doctrine of original sin, or at least aspects of it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is useful as we try to communicate the truth to people.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: The four ways that this doctrine actually resonates with people, um, the first one is it's holistic.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: What I mean is we already know that we are born into a physical condition called life that is bound up in death.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: We already know that we have this terminal condition called life.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: We already know that we are perishing physically.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: The Christian just comes along and says, we are whole persons.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's not as though I am dying physically, but I am spiritually neutral or spiritually splendid on the inside.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: The Christian says that we are whole persons.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: We refuse to believe in the divorce between our physical life, which is bound up in sickness and corruption, perishing and death.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: We refuse to believe that there's the physical side there, but that then there's this pristine moral spiritual side to us, and it's just utterly splendid all the time.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: We we don't do that divorce thing.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: The doctrine of original sin says, Christopher Hitchens, of course we're born sick.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Of course we are.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: When you hold a newborn baby in your arms, if you were to map that baby's genome, you would discover there are all kinds of gene deletions and junk DNA.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: You'd discover there's all kinds of predispositions to certain conditions, and you ought to know whether you map that baby's genome or not.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: That baby is dying.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: That baby is perishing from the moment it is conceived.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Of course we're born sick.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like, of course we're born sick.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: And Christians are just holistic enough to say that the kind of corruption that actually is racking my physical body is a kind of corruption that racks my soul as well.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it would be an odd doctrine to think that we are physically perishing, but spiritually perfect.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: So the doctrine of original sin is holistic, but it's also realistic.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I think people are really glad for a dose of realism now when actually for the last 60 years we've been rebelling against the doctrine of original sin.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think our culture since the 1960s has basically said, no, we are born free, but everywhere we're in chains and we we want to sort of tear down the nasty institutions and society that's out there to shackle us.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: But inside we are free.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: We are not what the doctrine of original sin says.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: For the last 60 years, there have been a whole bunch of people who have hated the idea of original sin, but they have overplayed their hand so much that others are looking on and thinking, you know what?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's something to this doctrine.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because the people who tend to reject original sin can have a very Pollyanna-ish view of the human person.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And the people who reject original sin tend to hate nature, hate what we are born into.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: They hate the givens of reality.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: And instead, they're always, in a utopian way, trying to strive towards some kind of paradise of what ought to be.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: And in the last decade or two, uh, perhaps the the real front line of this fight between the reality respectors and the utopians is over the issue of transgenderism.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: On one side, there are people who say, I am born as what I am.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: My chromosomes are my chromosomes, my nature is my nature, and I need to work within those limits.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: The other side says, I might have been assigned male at birth, but I can identify as something other than my biology.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a big degree to which this side has overreached in the culture wars, and the reality respectors are not having it.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Those who have been suspicious of trans ideology are now recognizing nature and the goodness of reality and biology, and they're starting to sound like religious conservatives at times.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's made them think that maybe an old book like the Bible had some wisdom to it all along, because yes, the Bible talks about the way the world should be, but the Bible never forgets about nature and about who we are.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: In the last year or so, Louise Perry could count herself as one of these reality respectors who have pulled at the thread of their gender-critical feminism and found the Bible and found church and found faith.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Let's hear Louise in her own words.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: There are these differences between the sexes which are important.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm aware that the argument I'm making there ends up in the same place as the um Christian argument from natural law.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I have, since writing the book, um become Christian and have become much I I'm now much more willing to make these arguments in theological terms.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: One of the reasons that I ended up becoming Christian because I realized that if it were supernaturally true, you would expect it to be sociologically true.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And observing quite how sociologically true it is was very persuasive to me.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I know it has to be to others as well.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: James Wood on X, when he tweeted that out, uh, just did so with the phrase, the reality respecter pipeline is real.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I can attest to the fact that there are many people who are pulling at the same sorts of threads that Louise Perry has been pulling at and finding themselves in church and finding themselves believing.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, the stuff that this old book, the Bible, is saying about sin and nature and human biology and human identity, those things are proving their wisdom at a time when rejectors of the Bible are revealing their own folly.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: So original sin is holistic, it's realistic, it's also communal.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that really resonates with modern people.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, yes, we live in an insanely individualistic culture, but actually the language of community is hugely prized.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Sort of, we're in this thing together, and that's what original sin says.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: We're all in the same boat.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: There's no use pointing at the bad people over there.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: I am them and they are me, and we're all in a mess.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: Original Sin levels the playing field and brings us together to the same place.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it brings us to a place of, fourthly, authenticity.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: So original sin is holistic, realistic, communal, and it's also authentic.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, these days authenticity plays really, really well, especially on social media.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: If you can fake that, you've got it made.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: But the idea that I need to come clean with the deepest, darkest parts of who I am, uh, that's really important in our age, and actually original sin says that we are all the black sheep of the family, all of us.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: So let's stop trying to pretend to be on the side of the angels.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: So there are four reasons why a doctrine of original sin will really resonate, but here are three ways where it really collides with our cultural narratives.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it collides with the fact that we think we're immortal.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the myth of limitless potential.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, modern Westerners are in complete denial about our creaturely limitations.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: We spend our lives trying to escape our creaturely limitations and reverse our mortality.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: We do not face our physical perishing, we do not face our finitude, we do not face our mortality.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: So when a preacher comes and tells us we're born into a living death, we don't like that.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: We believe in the myth of limitless potential, and therefore the doctrine of original sin uh really clashes with our intuitions at that point.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the second thing we really don't like as a culture about the doctrine of original sin is that we think we are islands.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the myth of individualism.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: For all our talk of community, our doctrine of humanity is thoroughly individualistic.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: We have little time or place for interdependence and the claims of community on us.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: When you start telling me about my corporate identity and my corporate responsibilities, I am likely to get pretty offended.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so original sin will clash with that.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Thirdly, original sin will clash with our intuition that we are free and it's our decisions that make us free.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: This is the myth of choice.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's so foolish and it's so obviously untrue, but we are captivated by the idea that we create our identity through our choices.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: If you meet me at a party, I am going to tell you who I am by telling you my choices.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: I choose to watch these kinds of movies.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: I choose to listen to this kind of music, I chose to marry this person, I chose this job, I chose this town, I chose this degree.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: These are the ways that I identify when I talk to you.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, it's ridiculous because those sorts of things play around at the periphery of my identity.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: But the largest things about Glenn Scrivener, Glenn Scrivener had nothing to do with.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like, uh, would Glenn Scrivener be the same person if he was born in 12th century France?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: Even if I had the same DNA, would I be the same person?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: Of course not.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Where I was born, when I was born, my genetic makeup, my family, my friends, psychological dispositions, the things that people have done to me, all of these have shaped me at the very deepest level.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the fact that I like Radiohead is not really that important.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: The truth is, it's not choices that have made me.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: Largely, it's the choices of others that have made me the person that I am.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: And as I say that, I'm very close to the doctrine of original sin, and I'm very far from a cultural narrative that believes in the myth of choice.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: So there are many reasons, I think, why the world could and should resonate with the doctrine of original sin.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there are also reasons why the world hates the doctrine of original sin.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but let me give you two analogies to use and then my call to action.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: My two analogies that I'm always using in uh talking about the doctrine of original sin.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: The first one is quite particular to me.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, being Australian, I am the descendant of, among other people, Anne Forbes.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, seven generations above me, Anne Forbes uh stole ten yards of printed cotton from a London market.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: She was uh sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead for her heinous crime, obviously.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but she had her sentence commuted, obviously as well, otherwise I wouldn't be here.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: But her sentence was commuted from hanging to transportation to Australia, which at the time was considered a fate worse than death.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I always say uh the joke's on them, really.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she left the set of Oliver Twist, she wound up on the set of Home and Away.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think she did quite well from this whole crime caper.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Who says crime doesn't pay, huh?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: So Anne Forbes, one crime, one exile, and off she goes to Australia and she happens to marry a guy called uh Thomas Huxley, whose crime was riding his master's horse without his permission.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, joy riding.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: And uh literally joy riding, and he was transported to Australia.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: They met in Australia, married, and seven generations later, here I am.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Now, why am I Australian?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: There are all sorts of reasons why I am Australian.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have anything to do with any of them, but here is one decisive reason why I am Australian.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: One woman committed one crime and her exile has meant that, among other contributing factors, I am Australian.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I have been born far from the mother country, and that would really be a problem if my whole goal in life was to get back to England, get back to the mother country.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: It would it would sound really unfair if the setup is my great great great grandmother is exiled to Australia.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: I get born into Australia, and my whole task at that point is to work my way back to England and to pay.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: My own passage.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: That would seem unfair, wouldn't it?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: But that is not the story.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: That is not the biblical story.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: The biblical story would be as though Anne Forbes was exiled, but imagine the king, imagine the king passes down the sentence.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And the king says, You will go to the great southern land, and I will join you there.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine if that was the story.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the king went to join the convicts in exile and to make Australia into his royal home.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine that was the story.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then what would happen?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: If I get born into Australia in that scenario, then I'm born exactly where the king will meet me.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the doctrine of Adam and Christ.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: You see, our big problems with the doctrine of original sin turn out to be misunderstandings of the doctrine.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Most understandings of the doctrine of original sin are an Adam and Moses story.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: An Adam and Moses story goes something like this I'm born in Adam, but through the law of Moses, I'm going to try to obey and pay my way back to the fatherland, as it were.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: An Adam and Moses story says we are born in sin and we are commanded to be righteous.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's an Adam and Moses story.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: But the gospel is an Adam and Christ story, and that is so different.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: It is so different.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's not born in sin, commanded to be righteous.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually to be born into the exile where Christ will meet us.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: To be born in the place where the king makes his home.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Me being born in Australia does not distance me from the king because the king travels that entire distance towards me.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: And look, maybe I get born in Australia and I don't like the king and I want to keep running from him into the desert.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that is my prerogative as well.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: But it's not born in Australia has to make his way to England.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's born in Australia and the king emigrates.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: That is illustration number one about what the doctrine of original sin is.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: And my second analogy is Christopher Hitchens' analogy, okay?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: Christopher Hitchens says, We're born sick, commanded to be healthy.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: But that would be an Adam and Moses gospel, wouldn't it?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it's ridiculous.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: Of course it's ridiculous.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: You don't go to a doctor and have the doctor kind of beat you up and say, Why aren't you better?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: You go to the doctor so that the doctor will heal you.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the beautiful thing about going to the doctor when you're sick is that your sickness qualifies you.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like nothing else actually pays for the doctor.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: If you live in the UK, you know, and the NHS prides itself on being free at the point of access.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: And certainly Jesus is free at the point of access.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you come to him not in spite of your sin, but because of your sin.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: You come to the doctor not in spite of your disease, you come to the doctor because of your disease, and your sickness qualifies you.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus said, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, it is the sick.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well there's good news.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: Sin is something I definitely have.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: I was born with that.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: But that sin does not distance me from this God.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: This God meets me in my exile.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: This God is a doctor for my sin.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: And therefore I am born sick and offered the doctor.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Just as I'm born dying and I'm offered resurrection, just as I'm born hungry and I'm offered the bread of life, just as I'm born thirsty, and I'm offered the living waters.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: That is the doctrine that the Bible is speaking about.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it is so holistic and realistic and communal and authentic, and it's good news.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's good news for anyone who simply recognizes committed sin.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like you might not agree with the doctrine of original sin.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: We can talk about that later.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Let's first of all ask the question: do you have committed sin?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you have committed sin in your life, isn't it good to know that the doctor is the kind of doctor who moves towards you in your sickness, who has always wanted to move towards you in your sickness.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: If you have committed sin, the doctrine of original sin says the doctor will see you.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that leads to the call to action.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Call to action is the same as every single video we do here at SpeakLive.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Go and do 321.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Have you done 321, including episodes five and six, where we talk about Adam and Christ.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think it'll make a lot of sense about what we're talking about here.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's totally free.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: You go to 321course.com, you start an account and you're in.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: We won't spam you.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: We just want to offer you the good news of born in Adam, but born again in Christ.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: That'll do us for this video.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: Let us know what you think in the comments.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: Do share this video around with other people.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like the video and tell the algorithm you thought it was great.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: And uh why don't you subscribe to us so that we can see you on the next one?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: God bless.