Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / The Woke, the Anti-Woke, and a Whole New World || SLP553

Transcript

The Woke, the Anti-Woke, and a Whole New World || SLP553 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever thought about how your bank uses your savings?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: What if I told you there's a fully regulated Christian bank that aligns your money with your faith?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: When you open a Kingdom Bank savings account, you help to provide vital mortgages for churches, Christian ministries, and gospel workers who might struggle to secure one elsewhere.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Whether saving for yourself or on behalf of your church, your savings will support Christian ministries across the UK.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when you're ready to take your money out, you get it back with interest.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: If your spending and giving reflect your faith, shouldn't your savings as well?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Open a savings account with Kingdom Bank today and put your money where your heart is.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Visit kingdom.bankslash speaklife.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Kingdom Bank is a member of the FSCS and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is 2024 the year that Woke broke?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Many have thought that the election of Donald Trump means that we are past peak woke, and that that kind of progressive liberationism is in the rearview mirror as we march forwards to who knows what.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: But events in the last week have shown, at least me, that we are not past peak woke.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is not the year that woke broke, and that the battle between mask wearers and mask tearers will rage on while the Church of Jesus Christ offers its distinctive peacemaking message.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: What do I mean by all that?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's go back to the vote for assisted dying in the House of Commons in the aftermath of Parliament voting in favor to allow physician-assisted suicide.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think that vote, alongside the US presidential election, have shown us where our culture is, and we are not past peak woke.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Nor is progressive liberationism blasting off into the stratosphere, unencumbered by its Christian booster jets.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think we are in the warfare between the woke and the anti-woke, with Christianity offering a distinctive third option.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's a dynamic time, it's a dangerous time, but it's also a fruitful time for Christian mission.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Let me point to seven different areas that define our cultural moment right now.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: The first is the political.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: On Friday, the assisted dying bill went through with some very surprising bedfellows in this free vote of conscience.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: For those voting yes, we've got the Prime Minister Keir Starmer, we've also got the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the Conservatives, and we've got Richard Tice from Reform UK.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: For those voting no, we've got a fascinating alliance.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Diane Abbotts and Angela Rayner, and Kemi Badenok, and Nigel Farage.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's fascinating who finds themselves on the same side when party politics goes out the window and you have a free vote of conscience.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: It also goes to show that left and right are not the most fundamental divides when it comes to politics.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: David Goodhart has alerted us to the fact that there are the somewhere's and the anywheres, those who feel a particular allegiance to place and nation, then there are the anywheres, those who believe in a global community, a global village that we're all living in.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's a massive divide that was revealed especially during the Brexit vote.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Then there are those who are more liberal and those who are more authoritarian, those who allow people to make their own choices and those who see a much bigger view for the state and enforcing a certain vision of the common life on people.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: But perhaps the most salient division is between the individualism of those who are on the right or the left and the communitarian spirit of those who are either on the right or on the left.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: There is a certain kind of conservatism that says I do not belong simply to myself, but I have a tradition to steward and I have a society to take care of.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's very much part of a conservative tradition.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's also very much part of a socialist tradition that we are in this together.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: So slicing up the left and the right are these competing visions.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: On the right, you can have a very libertarian sense of I just belong to me and let the government and the state and society take the hindmost.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: And on the left, there is a certain sense of progressivism that is basically you do you, and you express yourself as an individual.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you are interested in identity politics, but really for certain progressives, that is for the sake of owning a particular identity.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Even when we claim to be part of the community, it's really about expressing our own individual self.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: So on the left, there are the more socialist thinkers and the more progressive individualist thinkers.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: On the right, there are the more conservative communal thinkers, and there are the more individual libertarians.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: And the vote against assisted dying was a vote for a vision of humanity that says, I am because we are.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: The vote for assisted dying was basically you do you, but this is you do you to death.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: Politics has fractured along a number of different lines, and it remains to be seen whether the old party structures can actually hold them together.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Secondly, what does this vote say about morality in modern life?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well it's interesting that the debate was hailed as being a great example of Westminster at its best.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: There was not a lot of grandstanding, there were not a lot of pointed fingers, which is fascinating because when the same people are being whipped by their parties to vote along party lines, and therefore not always according to their consciences, when they're doing the party political thing, they are often a lot more agitated.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it descends into things like this.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that how we now think about conscience as opposed to something that you might get the most worked up about because it is a matter of conscience?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't it interesting that conscience nowadays uh means you are less interested in it?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: This debate around conscience was largely conducted by people, especially on the pro side, people telling stories.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: I will start by recounting just a few of those stories.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: And what people on the pro side did not like is when accurate language was used.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Danny Kruger dared to say that the state would be sponsoring killing and that did not get a good reaction in the House.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Medics I met in Canada, specialists in assisted death, who personally kill hundreds of patients a year in their special clinics.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if all members have a difficulty with the language, then I wonder what they're doing here.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't this is what we are talking about.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I met doctors for whom this is their profession and their job, which they're proud to do.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: He also spoke of suicide, and and again, that did not get a good reaction in the house.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's what happens everywhere else, that assisted suicide is legal, including in Oregon.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: He's using the incorrect language.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's not suicide.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's offensive.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: Please correct your language, Mr.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a point of order, Dunic.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm grateful for I'm I'm afraid to say, and I'm sorry if offence is given.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: The fact is that the value of actually having a bill in black and white is that we do need to see what the law really is.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that what this bill would do, it would amend the Suicide Act of 1961.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: It will allow people to assist with a suicide for the first time.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm afraid that is I mean, I I respect the honourable lady's concerns there, but I'm afraid we do have to use the proper language here.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: Naming realities wasn't really part of what this conscience vote was all about.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Telling stories was.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what this shows is that our moral discourse is largely about vibes and very little about objective truth and reality.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thirdly, what does this vote say about life?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, it says nothing very different than the state of affairs we've been in for the last six decades.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Since the Abortion Act was passed, My Body, My Choice has held sway, actually, over our conception of humanity and who gets to claim the right to life.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: What is surprising is that since 1967 we haven't had euthanasia.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because the logic that says my body, my choice applies absolutely to competent individuals at the end of their life.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: If a mother can make that choice for her unconscious child, how much more can a competent adult make a choice for themselves about ending their lives?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: It has been surprising that we've held out against euthanasia for this amount of time.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yet it is still tragic.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: I was looking back at a statement made by someone in the House of Lords back in 1994, the neurologist Lord Walton, was representing a committee that was looking into legalization of euthanasia, and in 1994 he said society's prohibition of intentional killing is the cornerstone of law and of social relationships.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: It protects each one of us impartially, embodying the belief that all are equal.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: If this bill becomes law, it would remove a vital safeguard for equality of all under the law.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: But in another sense, that safeguard has been gone since 1967.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: Those people who have made it out of the womb alive since 1967 have been afforded that protection.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: But that protection is now being removed from even those outside the womb.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: But the UK seems to be moving in the direction of consistency on its ethic of life, and that is a tragedy because it is doubling down on its ethic of death at both ends of the lifespan.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever thought about how your bank uses your savings?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: What if I told you there's a fully regulated Christian bank that aligns your money with your faith?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: When you open a Kingdom Bank savings account, you help to provide vital mortgages for churches, Christian ministries, and gospel workers who might struggle to secure one elsewhere.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Whether saving for yourself or on behalf of your church, your savings will support Christian ministries across the UK.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: And when you're ready to take your money out, you get it back with interest.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: If your spending and giving reflect your faith, shouldn't your savings as well?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: Open a savings account with Kingdom Bank today and put your money where your heart is.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: Visit Kingdom.bankslash speaklife.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Kingdom Bank is a member of the FSCS and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: What does this say about inclusion?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Inclusion is such a value of our time, it's almost a transcendent value of our time.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: And yet think about a bill that was opposed by every single anti-racist charity in the country.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine that bill getting passed in the Commons.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's unthinkable.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, every single disability rights group in the UK has come out against this assisted dying bill because it removes the safeguards for the disabled and for any who might be given a terminal diagnosis.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: This bill makes vulnerable people even more vulnerable.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: And a coalition of 350 disability rights activists has opposed this bill publicly.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine any other human rights group being so united against a bill and having that bill pass nonetheless?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: What do we mean by inclusion?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: And do we include the people that we ought to include when it comes to inclusion?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Or are there preferred minorities who get protected and we've excluded others from the inclusive club?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: It turns out our vision for inclusion is not at all very inclusive.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: And of all the people that we should include, should it not be the weakest, the most vulnerable, the disabled?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: This vote reveals that so much of our talk of inclusion is simply sloganeering.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's a hashtag, it's a vibe.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: There is nothing behind it of any substance.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: This is part of the mask wearing that I will be speaking about later.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it leads to a whole bunch of people who want to do some mask tearing because they are sick of the hypocrisy.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: They are sick of the whitewash they want to push through to reality.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: When people hold aloft values like inclusion as though they are wholly writ, but they apply those values, like inclusion, non-inclusively, that makes everybody suspicious of every claim to virtue.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: Mask wearing leads to mask tearing.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: And where is actual virtue anymore?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's fourthly inclusion.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Fifthly, what does this say about post-Christianity?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: Now when I say post-Christianity, I don't mean that we are done with Christianity in the West.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's a little bit like the genre of post-rock.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever come across post-rock, Sigaross, as a band, for instance?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: They would sing nonsense lyrics, but largely you've got, you know, guitars and bass and drums and kind of a rock structure, but you don't really have verse chorus verse chorus.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's post-rock, but it's very clearly dependent on rock.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: And what's interesting about post-rock as a genre, that's the blip.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Rock will long outlive and outlast post-rock.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: In the same way, post-Christianity is kind of a tribute act to Christianity.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's utterly dependent upon Christianity.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: It might try and mess around with some of the structures of Christianity.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: And the interesting thing is the real deal, Christianity will long outlast post-Christianity.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: And when you're looking at post-Christianity, you can't help but think, oh, I've heard that tune somewhere else.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Post-Christian concepts like inclusion are incredibly Christian themselves.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Inclusion is an unthinkable ethic without the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: There is Jesus who is the top of the hierarchy, who descends down to the bottom to die the slave's death and to rise up again to invite us all into a family in which nobody is a Lord except He, and we are all brothers and sisters in the same family, whether you are Jew or Gentile, slave or free, man or woman, it doesn't matter, black or white, gay or straight, right?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: You are included around the same table, participating in the same common humanity, filled by the same spirits, enjoying the same status together.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: There is an equality, there's a diversity, there is an inclusion.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: These are all profoundly Christian concepts, and yet with post-Christianity, those values have been divorced from the Christian story and divorced from one another, which is why they've become so brittle, so fragile, so contested.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: And what is the filter that has allowed us to inherit certain things from Christianity and to leave other things from Christianity?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think it has been the myth of World War II.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: Alec Ryrey, a great Christian and historian, has spoken of World War II as this great superseding myth in the Western imagination.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: For 1900 years we've looked at Jesus Christ and we've thought, what would Jesus do?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: For the last hundred years we've looked at Adolf Hitler and we've thought, what would Adolf Hitler do and do the opposite?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas for 1900 years we had a pro-Jesus morality, now we've got an anti-Hitler morality.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: But that World War II mentality is to look at Hitler as this anti-Christ figure because he was.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Hitler was trying to do the obverse of what Christians had always done.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: Christians had believed in equality, Adolf Hitler had pursued the master race, and of course the Arians are superior, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Christianity has an ethic of care and compassion for the weak.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: After all, it's the fittest who were sacrificed for we the weakest so that we the weakest might survive and thrive and pass on a compassion revolution.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: Hitler wants to turn that on its head and to euthanize the disabled, right?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Hitler is anti-Christ in that sense.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so a post-war, post-Christian sensibility is not so much let's do what Jesus did, but let's do the opposite of what Hitler did.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: But trying to reverse the photo-negative of Jesus doesn't really restore you to the original.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And what we get is very brittle, very fragile, very contested.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: But what happens in a very Christianized post-Christian sensibility is, well, if Hitler tried to bump off the weak and the poor and the marginalized, we will have a national health service and we will look after everybody.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: And if if Hitler was going to racialize the world, then we will believe in equality.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so care and fairness become the two moral sensibilities that reign supreme in the liberal Western imagination.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Jonathan Haidt does some great work on this in the book The Righteous Mind.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: He goes through five basic moral foundations.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: There's harm versus care, that's the compassion ethic.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: Then there's fairness versus reciprocity, and uh that's the equality kind of uh ethic.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Then thirdly, in-group versus loyalty ethics.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Then there's authority and respect, and fifthly there is purity and sanctity.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Now Height notices that conservatives tend to value all five of those moral foundations fairly equally, whereas liberals tend to value the first two above all others.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there are historic reasons for that.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: First Christianity, and then the post-Christianity of our World War II myth in which we want to be anti-Hitler, and if you want to be anti-Hitler, then equality and compassion are going to be your supreme values.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: Care and fairness are everything, and of course they are incredibly important within Christianity, it's just that they are integrated into a broader story about God and humanity and the world and destiny and meaning and purpose.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: In Christianity, there is a positive vision.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think in so much post-Christianity there is a vibe, there is an anti-Hitler sentiment.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: But what we saw in the House of Representatives was a debate between two Christian-ish visions, one vision for the sanctity of life, another vision for the right to choose.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: The sanctity of life traces right back to the first page of the Bible and the image of God.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: That very doctrine gives rise to the invention of the individual and the belief in human rights, and that we should have a degree of autonomy in our own lives, that people are not property.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: The doctrine of the image of God led to the abolition of the slave trade and led to us feeling like we are free individuals who should be in charge of our lives, and the right to choose absolutely came out of the sanctity of life, actually.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: But those two doctrines exist integrated in the Christian story, they float free in a post-Christian world, and the post-Christian mind sees these two values as fundamentally opposed to each other, floating free from one another and floating free from the story in which they are integrated.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: To the point where, again and again, people who had a belief in the sanctity of life were poo-pooed as these religious holdouts against modernity.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: Journalists like Polly Toynbee or Lewis Goodall were saying that Christian views should be flagged and treated as the kind of the private judgments that people can have in a modern tolerant society, but should have no part to play in a discussion about euthanasia.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Which is, of course, blind and hypocritical.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's blind because those views have absolutely shaped the Western mind.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it's hypocritical because everybody has metaphysical views when it comes to this subject.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: Why are Christians the only ones who are not allowed to have their views?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody has religious views in that sense.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's blind and it's hypocritical for a post-Christian mindset to look at Christian views on the sanctity of life and to think that they should have no part to play in the debate.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: On the right to choose side of things, all we have left is this sense that people are not property and I own myself, and my right to choose is all powerful.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: There are some distinctly Christian ideas at the heart of that, but they are now coming to us through expressive individualism and it's just you do you and it's you do you to death.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, going back to the morality point, it's all vibes.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because no one's thinking this through with any degree of consistency.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if we are truly to say you do you, then we are committed to saying you do you to the person who is on the bridge about to jump off.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: What what are we to say to the person who is suicidal in that moment?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Are we to affirm their choice and perhaps assist them in their suicide, give them a push for good measure?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: We recognize that choice should not reign supreme in that situation.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: We also recognize for for the majority of people who think that hard drugs should not be legalized.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: We say that there are certain choices that you ought not to make.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: You are not allowed to throw your life away in that way.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: Even if you think that you should do it, I'm not going to let you because love does not allow you certain choices.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: Certain choices destroy you, and there's something more important than your choice for self-destruction.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: There is you.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: There is your life.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: So we don't allow people to throw their lives away in suicide ordinarily, or on drugs, or in gladiatorial games.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: We would not legalize Squid Game.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: And if somebody made the autonomy argument for Squid Game, we would say that is outrageous.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you just allowed certain desperate people to gamble their lives away and kill one another for entertainment, we should not say you do you.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: We should not allow certain choices to be made because there is something more important than choice.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: There's you yourself, there's humanity, there's life itself, and there are certain choices that are anti-life, that are anti-human.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: We could have a sensible argument about that.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: We could do some moral philosophy, except that in a post-Christian world, vibes are all.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: And vibes sweep away reason and they sweep away the Christian heritage that has been shaping this nation and shaping the West for centuries.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's very interesting that Tom Holland, the author of Dominion, has tweeted out in response to somebody on Twitter saying, I wonder how Tom Holland reflects on all this in light of Dominion stuff.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: I heard him say that it will be interesting to observe how fast society departs from a Christian worldview after it stops worshipping the object of that said worldview.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder if this, speaking of assisted dying, I wonder if this is one point of departure.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: Tom Holland tweets, absolutely it is.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: This is a sign of post Christianity, and it is a pretty dark sign of it.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: As Tom Holland tweeted out on the day of the vote, very sarcastically.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's lucky we have a famously competent state, a well funded health service, and courts with plenty of time on their hands, or I'd be worrying that this is a terrible decision.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: Translation, this is a terrible decision, and it is a post-Christian decision.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: So that's fifthly, this decision tells us that we are in a mode of post-Christianity right now.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Sixthly, what does this say about the culture wars?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: When Donald Trump was elected last month, here is how the free press wrote about it.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Donald Trump ended his first term in disgrace, hit with a second impeachment after his supporters stormed the Capitol on January the 6th, 2021.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: The 2022 midterm candidates he endorsed, Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake, all went down in flames.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: In 2023, he was declared guilty of sexually assaulting the writer E.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Carroll in a civil case.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: This past May, he was convicted in a Manhattan court of 34 felony counts for improperly reporting hush money payments.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Overall, he has faced 116 indictments.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Even now, the New York State Attorney General is trying to punish the Trump organization with nearly 500 million in fines, claiming that he unlawfully inflated the value of his properties.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: And yet here he is, America's 47th president.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: With a majority of the popular vote with the House and the Senate and the Presidency.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: And this is why people were saying this might be the year that Woke broke.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because here was an election in which someone is presented to the electorate as Orange Hitler.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: It was very commonly said in the mainstream media, places like MSNBC and CNN, that Donald Trump is Hitler.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Now remember, if our founding myth is the Hitler myth, then you can never vote for Hitler.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: You just can never ever do it.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: J.D.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Vance, Donald Trump's running mate, uh actually back in 2016, wondered aloud in a private message to a friend whether Donald Trump was in fact Hitler or not.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: That kind of came out.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: Lots of people have wondered, is he Orange Hitler?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: And remember, in a post-Christian world, vibes are all important.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if that vibe attaches to you, then surely that is the worst epithet that can be said of somebody that they are Hitler-like.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it didn't matter.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Donald Trump is the 47th president of the United States of America.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: And is that a sign that the Hitler narrative has faded, that we've gone beyond the World War II narrative, which was the successor to the Christian narrative.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: And now we are in a post-post-Christian world.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what's going on?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Are we now in a post-woke world?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's think about that for a second.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: There are certain votes in the last eight years that would suggest maybe we are post woke.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: But other votes, like on Friday, that suggest that we're not.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: Since 2016, there have been a number of votes in which what is basically presented to the electorate is are you going to be one of the good people or are you going to vote no?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Or to put it in terms of Trump's elections in both 2016 and 2024.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Are you going to be one of the good people or are you going to vote Trump?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: And what's interesting when it comes to the Brexit vote, what's interesting when it comes to obviously Trump's two election wins, what's interesting when it comes to uh the voice uh referendum in Australia, for instance, what happened in Ireland, uh, a referendum in March about the redefinition of the family.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in all these cases, what was basically being presented was are you going to vote with the nice people or are you going to vote no?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: And there have been some very strong votes of no in that sense.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think Brexit was definitely a vote against what elites were going to tell us, the voice vote, I think the family bill in Ireland, I think Trump's two election victories have basically been the victory of the masked terrors.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now I've referred to this already.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: What I what am I talking about?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: If you overplay your hand when it comes to virtue and pretended virtue, and you present yourself as we are the compassionate ones, we are the equal ones, we are the inclusive ones, but actually everything that you bring into play is incredibly partial and quite cruel, then you are a mask wearer, and at some stage the mask tearers come along, and they don't just disbelieve your claims, at times they disbelieve all claims to virtue.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I can't help but think that there's something of that in a Trump vote as well.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: There is an electorate that's fed up with pretense that wants to tear down the mask, but alongside that tearing down, there could be a tearing down of a lot more than just pretended righteousness.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Some people want to tear down whole systems, so angry are they at the pretended righteousness of the mask wearers.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: So is that where we've gotten to?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think that is what the culture wars are kind of about.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: There is the woke versus the anti-woke and the mask wearers versus the mask tearers.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: There is a kind of virtue that shades so often into virtue signaling, and then there is a hatred of virtue signaling that ends up becoming a hatred of virtue itself.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: There is with a post-Christian vibe the desire for a certain righteousness, a certain virtue, but that virtue often shades into virtue signaling, and that provokes the anti-woke, where they despise the virtue signaling, but so often that can shade into despising virtue itself.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: And we get the mask wearers and the masked harrers.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Christians do not have a dog in this fight.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: We believe in true virtue.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: His name is Jesus Christ, and he is above the mask wearer and the masked hairer.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: And here, seventhly, is the opportunity for the Church of Jesus Christ.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: The Church of Jesus Christ is neither with the woke or the anti-woke.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: The Church of Jesus Christ is not a part of that fight.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: We are a place of refuge for all those who are sick of that fight.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: A place that upholds the dignity of all people to make choices about their lives because we uphold the sanctity of life, because we believe in the image of God, because we believe in Christ, the image with a capital I.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: All these things hang on him.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: And he is the place of refuge for those who are so worn out by these culture wars.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: And here is an opportunity.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: There is a nastiness to a world of mask wearing, and there is a nastiness to a world of mask tearing.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: There is dystopian wokery and dystopian anti-wokery.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: And there is a community of people who will not abort their disabled children, and who will not bump off their elderly relatives.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: A place where we do not chase after bespoke lives or bespoke deaths.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: A place where inclusion really bites, really matters, but is really practiced to all.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: A place where compassion means real action, real sacrifice, real commitment, not just a hashtag.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: But we will have to live out this counterculture, not just preach it, live it out.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: And in amidst all the sinking sand and as these storms of cultural moments hit and hit and hit, we ought to be found as the place of solid ground.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: We ought to be found as the refuge in this very trying time.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to find out more about the refuge who is Jesus Christ, then you can go to 321course.com.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: Start an account, you'll be in it within seconds.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: You can binge the whole thing in a couple of hours, or you can do it over eight different sessions.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: Deep thinking, stunning animations, a real chance to see the refuge who is Jesus Christ.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: 20,000 people have done it.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Will you be another one of them?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: Go to 321course.com and please do hit subscribe so we can see you on the next one.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Bless you.