Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Elliot Bewick: Will Gen Z Turn To Christianity? || SLP559

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Elliot Bewick: Will Gen Z Turn To Christianity? || SLP559 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm finding that a lot of my secular friends, they say that this is a godless universe, but they really believe in human rights.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: And actually they believe in human rights a lot more than they believe that this is a godless universe, like a lot more.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: People who oppose Christianity, they tend to oppose it for pretty Christian-ish reasons.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: What I want to say to my friends is secular, humanist, pick one.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: All those great humanist values, they have a history to them and they have a metaphysic underlying them.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to divorce yourself from that metaphysic, and I think what you're left with is we've descended from apes that love one another.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Does it not suffice to have certain fundamental truths, but maybe accept that morality isn't objective, it's subjective, and we did descend from apes.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean we should still love each other because we know that suffering is inherently bad.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any merit in something like that that's more subjective than is the Western experiment for the last 300 years?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was about to say the jury is out on whether that's working.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's working.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a story.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's this unimprovable story, right?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: In which here comes God the Son, Jesus Christ, to become God, our brother, into the human family.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's where your idea of equality has come from.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's where your idea of compassion has come from.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's come from that particular story.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: That is the original.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Something that I've wanted to ask you for a long time watching your content.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your perspective on the Jordan Peterson arc.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are leapfrogging Jordan Peterson into the kingdom.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know the story of the prodigal son?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, here we go.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I was very recently on Elliot Buick's podcast.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: He is the host of the Next Generation podcast, and he is well worth a sub.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you like the kind of cultural analysis we do here, if you like the kind of channel that trigonometry is, if you know that, he's been a big part of the success of that channel, and now he's striking out on his own.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Go and give that channel a sub and binge the rest of the interviews.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was so pleased to be given some time by Elliot.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: We started out thinking about how the post-Christian West is like the man who is soaring at the branch that they're sitting on, and from there we started to talk about literally everything.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was a fantastic conversation.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: I really loved it, and I'm sure you will too.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my conversation with Elliot Buick.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn Scrivener, welcome to the next generation.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, Elliot.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: You often describe people in modern secular society trying to ditch Christian values as soaring off the branch that they're sat on.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by this?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's something that Jesus himself alludes to uh way back in the Gospels.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he he talks about um the mustard seed that grows into the biggest tree imaginable.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And this is his description of what his kingdom is going to do.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's a stunning prediction for this like penniless preacher who's speaking in his distinctive northern accents, you know, surrounded by losers and no hopers.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, My movement is going to take over the world.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, who do you think you are?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: But that that was his prediction, like a mustard seed that sort of goes down into the ground and rises again, and eventually produces the biggest sociological phenomenon the world has ever seen.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's the prediction.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting is at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, chapter 13, that's where this parable is, he talks about the there are birds who, to begin with, they peck at the seed, and they seem so much bigger than the seed, and it's a representative of kind of satanic opposition to his movement.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: But then by the end of the chapter, he says the mustard seed will grow into the mustard tree, and the birds will perch in its branches, right?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you've got this idea that that which had opposed the word of Jesus and the message of Jesus will be enfolded by the kingdom that this message grows, and that tries they might to peck at the tree, um, they are actually opposing that which they are depending upon.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so this idea of soaring at the branch that you're you're sitting on has kind of passed down into common parlance is this idea of relying on something and at the same time trying to undermine it.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a performative contradiction.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what I notice nowadays about people who oppose Christianity, they tend to oppose it for pretty Christian-ish reasons.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So Christianity is it's unequal, it's cruel, it's coercive, it's unenlightened, it's anti-science, it's restrictive, it's regressive.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting about that is all you have to do is kind of turn those values on their head.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what are we saying?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're saying that equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress are these foundational values that are just self-evidently true.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if Christianity fails at any of these seven values, then we peck away at it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: We saw we saw at the branch.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: But my contention is it's Christianity itself that has given us such a value for equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so those seven values are kind of at the heart of a book that I've written called The Air We Breathe, in which I just notice that modern secular society is probably not as secular as it thinks that it is, that probably these kinds of values are the air that we breathe.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that if you pull at the thread of these values, I think you'll find this penniless preacher called Jesus.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find the movement, you'll find the revolution that he founded.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess a lot of what I try to do with people is say, I know you find the church to be all those things, bigoted and all the rest of it.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: I know you find it to be such things, but can we have a look at where we're standing?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: As we're as we're you know, pointing at the church, pointing our fingers and saying, Isn't it awful?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's have a look at our feet and figure out what we are perched on as we make those critiques, because I think we're actually standing on some pretty Christian-ish assumptions.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a fascinating flip.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as someone that's grown up very much in a secular area of the world in Brighton and Hove.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Most godless town in Britain, I think, in terms of the number of people who ticked the atheist box on the survey.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a bunch of people that tick the Jedi box in Brighton as well.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So there we go.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it's something that I hadn't even thought of before, this flip in perspective of okay, maybe we're denouncing Christianity now in modern society, but actually we're using the tools from Christianity to denounce them.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Could you dig into that a bit deeper for me by what you mean by actually we're we're using Christian values to judge Christianity in a negative light?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take the first two that I um speak about equality and compassion.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So equality is this idea that um every single member of the human family is the moral equal to every other member of the human family, no matter whether they are rich or poor, gay or straight, black or white, doesn't matter, we're all equal.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we all believe that.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: We all believe that so much that like if you deny that, you get kicked off Facebook pretty quickly.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like that's a blasphemy, you'll get excommunicated.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: We hold these things to be uh sacred as a value.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: But with equality, I mean, what is the scientific test that you can do to demonstrate that all people are equal?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what you know, if if you talked to an ancient philosopher like an Aristotle or somebody, and you said, you know, this person and this person are equal, Aristotle would say, well, e equal how?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, if that guy's a man and that guy's a woman, and that guy's a master and that guy's a slave, and that guy is a citizen and that guy's a barbarian, that guy's rich, that guy's poor, that guy's, you know, strong, that guy's weak.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: In what sense are they equal?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like equal.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like it would strike most of the rest of the world as a profoundly theological commitment to say that all people are equal.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Have you come up against any compelling arguments saying that without Christianity people are still equal?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can certainly say that.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: The the big question is on what grounds are we now equal?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and you could go to some biological grounds, okay, we all share a human genome.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's interesting.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the the the problem is the the Nazis also believed that, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um like Goebbels was once um told, you know, why are you treating Jews like this?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jews are also people.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, yeah, bats are also mammals, so what?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like what like what what is your point?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what follows ethically from the biological reality of Homo sapiens?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like what follows from that?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you you can try and think of um our rational capacities, for instance.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's a way that you can think that we are equal to one another, that we all have the same capacity for rationality.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is that IQ is yet another area in which there's this radical difference.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a highly contentious issue in science.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, are we going to press into IQ studies?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, and and to stratify a culture that way starts to sound really icky to us.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Why does it sound icky to us?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: My contention is it starts to sound icky to us because we're a lot more Christian than we imagine.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that feeling of ick, that's our Christianity doing the ick.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, it seems that the line is very much arbitrary when you take it away from a theological lens.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've I've seen you quote Vladimir Solovyov's uh sarcastic aphorism before.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Man descended from apes, therefore we must love one another.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Explain that to me.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: We descended from apes, therefore, yeah.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So so sometimes I I kind of do with the values um, you know, equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there's the secular stories.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can imagine a totally godless foundation for these ethics, um, you're involved in cognitive dissonance at that point, right?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we descended from apes, um, therefore we have inviolable human rights.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, hang on.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how does that work?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or we are the heirs of a brutal evolutionary history, and we should be kind to one another.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you and me, baby, we ain't nothing but mammals.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so let's honor one another's sexual boundaries at all times, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you just sort of go down the list, and and what I want to say to my friends is secular, humanist, pick one.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Pick one.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think all those great humanist values, they have a history to them and they have a metaphysic underlying them.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: You try and divorce yourself from that history, you try and divorce yourself from that metaphysic, and I think what you're left with is we've descended from a so love one another, you know, where the heirs of a brutal evolutionary history be kind.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um we are biological survival machines clinging to an insignificant rock, hurtling through a meaningless universe towards a total extinction, but things are gonna get better and progress and the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And like those beliefs in compassion and freedom and progress and kindness have come from certain Christian convictions, and we still have the beliefs.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: What we don't have are are the grounds that actually found those beliefs.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the cognitive dissonance that I'm trying to ease people of.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say to humanists, um, humanists become Christian because I think um that's where your beliefs really exist.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and Christians make sure you're properly humanist as well.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's I'm equal opportunities in that way.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Christians be humanists, humanists be Christians.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: This might be quite a midwit question to ask where I've started off thinking that everything needs to be grounded in some sort of rule that you can follow, and then the top of that curve, once I've done all my philosophy and thinking over the years, I'll come out the other side and think everything needs to be grounded in rules and truth.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I still want to ask this question, which is does it not suffice to have certain fundamental fundamental truths, but maybe accept that morality isn't objective, it's subjective, and we did descend from apes, and we should still love each other because we know that suffering is inherently bad and we wouldn't want someone to do what we would do to them if we were causing them suffering.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any merit in something like that that's more subjective but still playing on the fundamental truths of the universe?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is the Western experiment for the last 300 years and ramped up in the last 60 years and and like sent into hyperdrive in the last couple of decades.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: We we've definitely tried to have a Christian-ish morality in that sense, without any kind of metaphysical underpinnings.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was about to say the jury is out on whether that's working.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's working because I don't think um that's the way morality happens.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think morality happens by just having a proposition that you insist on and then punishing those who deviate from from that slogan.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how morality actually works is there is a story that orients us, there's a narrative in which we find meaning and significance and purpose.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean by that there's a story?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why why is there a story to morality?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think we are story-driven creatures, whether we want to be or not.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's you you've gotta like if you if you tell me about a relationship, you're gonna give me an analogy.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you tell me about your day, um, you're not going to say, I could summarize my day by using five S's.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um first we began with suffering, and then we're like, like, like you're going to tell me a story.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Everything about the way you orient yourself in the world is story-driven.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: The reason why you pay attention to certain things in the world, Ian McGilchrist kind of like tells us this in The Master in His Emissary.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's like this um uh, well, he's a lot of different things.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's a polymath, Ian McGilchrist, but but he is like a brain scientist, he's a philosopher.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but he basically says we have different ways of paying attention to the world.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there is one way of paying attention to the world that is only interested in facts that you can sort of derive logically.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: But he says, even the brain, that's kind of the left hemisphere of the brain, the right hemisphere of the brain need needs to actually integrate that into a story in which that fact is worth pursuing.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that fact worth pursuing?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: It can only be worth pursuing if you've told a story about the the value and the significance of this issue.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you want to be logical, and even if you just say, you know, just the facts, you are orienting yourself in the world in a way such as that is a fact that is worth me pursuing, and that's why I'm going to pot pay attention to that, and not the 10 million other bits of information that are flying at me second by second.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm constantly orienting myself in the world according to a story, and I'm constantly orienting myself in the world according to community, right?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I think we we don't really think ourselves into new ways of living.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like if if you want to get fit, you join a gym with other people, or you get a personal trainer.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: But what what is much less um successful for anyone trying to get fit is I've just made a decision by myself.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's an axiom in my mind that I'm just going to follow that, you know.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that is not the way anyone gets you throw yourself into a community that reorients you, and in the practices you find your thinking changing.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and so we we live our ways into new way of new ways of thinking.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, the idea that we would just um look to the UN Declaration of Human Rights or something, and just say, okay, I believe in these 30 articles, away I go, and we're going to have a you know a fully functioning society because we've decided on the on these slogans.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the way anyone operates.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's got to be a story that orients you, and there's got to be a community that's constantly reinforcing these values.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'd say to my secular friends is just, we've got a story.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's this unimprovable story, right?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: In in which, you know, here comes God the Son, Jesus Christ, to become God our brother, into the human family, and that gives us a like a dignity as humans, no matter who we are.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: He's plunged us down to death and risen up again to offer us a place in a family in which nobody is a Lord except him, and we're all brothers and sisters in the same family.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's where your idea of equality has come from.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's where your idea of compassion has come from.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's come from that particular story.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: That is the original.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think every other attempt to ground that story is going to ground them in a in a story that's a lot more anemic, you know.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the Brotherhood of Man.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, you can sing some songs, but the story that Christianity tells grounds those ethics in a metaphysic that really makes sense, in a narrative that captures hearts, in a community that is all around the world and down through history, and practices that reinforce them.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think trying to do that in the absence of Christianity is I think we're running out of road in the West.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's why.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a product of our economy moving from one based on currency and maybe even based on love, you could argue before that, to one of social credit.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you do something that looks good, that gives you more status in the world and therefore more influence, more power, more perceived love.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this idea of moving away from logic and this cerebral sense that we have to intellectualize everything and have an exact reason is counterintuitive and it doesn't sound good and snappy to say, actually, Glenn, I think that you should stop having a reason for everything you do that fits into a perfect syllogism and live an experience and learn from that.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's very difficult and it's it's hard to market that.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can you hammer this home point uh this point home for me?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's such a flip, it blows my mind left and right, this idea of experiencing things rather than thinking about it, because I fall into this trap, and I was talking to you about this earlier, that I like to rationalize everything, and it gives me a sense of confidence that I'm doing the right thing.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, if I didn't have that, I have to rely more on what you put in a Christian framing as faith.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm scared to rely on faith.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'd much rather rationalise everything.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense to me.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the culture, maybe maybe I'm just a product of my surroundings and how I've grown up.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but yeah, I've been taught through studying science as a core subject at school and just the way you frame anything, all the debates you see going viral online, that the best way of communicating, of thinking about things, of discussing things is pure logic.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um well, I I think the greatest intellectual tradition there has been in the world has has sprung from Christianity.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is the foundation of schooling, the way we imagine schooling, the kinds of education we think of as valuable nowadays.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Christianity, Christendom invented the university.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so what I'm not saying is be anti-intellectual.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm not saying is be anti-rationalist, but even the story we tell about science is now the way we know things.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: We you we used to rely on faith.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: That was the dark ages, right?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And back in the dark ages, and we forget, you know, all the products of the, you know, the so-called medieval the so-called dark ages, which you know, historians call the medieval period, um, that include things like universities, include things like you know, the generation of the language of human rights and just war and liberal traditions and parliaments and all that, all that great stuff came, you know, at the heart of the dark ages, so-called the scientific method came from Christian natural philosophers studying the natural world according to Christian presuppositions and birthing this thing that we call modern science, that we all kind of benefit from.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's I I think science is a profoundly Christian thing, and that's why, you know, my my chapter on science is right at the heart of the book.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: But this it's the story that we've told about science that I think has gripped imaginations.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: The story is we were mired in darkness, and then Copernicus put the sun at the center of the solar system and basically said, let there be light, right?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And there was light, and we all went, hooray! We have banished superstition and we are marching, you know, towards the light.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which you'll notice is a profoundly Christian-ish kind of a story, right?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, um, in the beginning there was darkness and then let there be light, and that we we have moved through great struggle and through the genius of somebody like a Copernicus into a Eureka moment who has brought us from darkness into light, and if we just follow the light, we can banish darkness and move to a better tomorrow.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a profoundly Christian-ish story.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: No wonder it has gripped Christianized and post-Christian minds, because it's the story that then says, ah, and now science will be our way forwards, as opposed to thinking science is one blessing among a much ra a much larger tradition that gives us not just science, but gives us a vision of the human person and morality and literature and art and architecture and music and and all these other things, which are so rich.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, the post-Christian West has latched onto science alone.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that narrows us, it narrows our attention.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: And at that at that point, you're not just saying goodbye to faith and religion and theology, you're kind of you start saying goodbye to objective morality, and you start saying goodbye to the humanities, and you start saying goodbye to all that great right-brained stuff, like music and aesthetics, and and and so I think even the desire to be simply a rational person and not a ra and not a person of faith, that is born of a certain story that people are inhabiting.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a very it's fundamentally not the most satisfying story, and it's a story that narrows us massively.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just want to say you can have your science and you can have your rationality, but I think it fits within a greater tradition.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this elicits instantly the thought of something I heard Alex O'Connor speaking about, and this is the idea of science explaining everything, explaining these rules of the world and how we came to be as humans.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: But he gives this example of it's like you walk through a forest and you discovered a book by Shakespeare, and it's got all these rules that follow.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: You've got full stops at the end of every meaning, and following the full stop, there's always a capital letter, and there's this certain rhythm that forms it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Each paragraph.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you can work all these rules out of the writing.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't tell you anything about the author of the book and and how they created it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Alex O'Connor is brilliant at telling stories, right?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: What has gripped your imagination there?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's the idea of a story.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And once you inhabit the story, you start to see things a lot more clearly.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that stories distract us from truth.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think stories actually embed us in truth and help us to pay attention to what's really important.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that analogy is fantastic.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can imagine a grammarian who is like a scientist who comes and they study the sonnets by Shakespeare and they derive all sorts of rules about how the sonnet operates.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like a scientist looking at the natural world and deriving all sorts of rules about how nature operates.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: But doing those rules of grammar does not obviate the need for Shakespeare, right?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: It does not get rid of Shakespeare any more than studying the laws of nature gets rid of God.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I often tell the story of like, imagine Betty the botanist, okay?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Betty is in her laboratory and uh she's been up all night.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Gareth, the lab assistant, comes in and says, Betty, have you been working all night?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Yeah, well, thank you.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yesterday you gave me that botanical specimen.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I was just thrilled to study it.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: And all night I've been doing spectral analyses of the leaves.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've discovered pharmacological properties that are going to help us in the fight against Alzheimer's disease.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: We've mapped its genome, it's a first for this species.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna get into Nature Magazine.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for giving me the botanical specimen.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And Gareth says, Betty, you moron.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yesterday it was February the 14th.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Valentine's Day.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was a long-stemmed rose.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Betty, do you understand what I gave you?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the big question for Betty is like, does she understand the rose?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And like, from one perspective, she understands the rose better than anyone has ever understood roses.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, she's an imbecile.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like, because what if what if the world is like that rose?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's that's my big point.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what if the world is like that rose and it's a gift from someone communicating love?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: You can go into the laboratory and study it.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And Christians invented the modern scientific method because we we appreciate the love gift and we want to find out a lot more about it.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: But to think that you've exhausted the meaning of the world simply by understanding its laws is like Betty thinking she's exhausted the meaning of the rose because she's mapped its genome.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if Gareth says, Don't you don't you get it?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: The the rose means I love you, if Betty then says, that's not written here in the genome, you like you moron.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: You moron, Betty.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like what like you are very intelligent in that little sphere, but that scientific understanding fits within a much grander vision for how we communicate.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I just want to say to people that you know the world is like that rose.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a communication from someone who actually loves us.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very good to do science, but it's not the only way of understanding the world or where it's come from.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: To push back a little bit, could you not imagine that maybe we're just inadequate as a human species at the moment at understanding the complexities of the universe and we need these stories to put it in a digestible way, but in 2,000 years' time, we'll look back at and laugh and think it's cute that we had to use stories to get by before we were smart enough to really be able to delve into the science of the universe.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Notice you've just told a story.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Notice you've just like like let's let's imagine that we are here and let's imagine a future like this, and let's imagine us looking back and and the the progress that's happened from this moment.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so, like, A, notice it's a story, B, it's a that's a faith claim to say I trust that uh a scientific analysis of of our world will at some point exhaust the meaning of the world.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there'll be a grand unified theory of everything.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: The physicist will like write it up on the chalkboard, she'll put the chalk down and say, there, done.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll all go, huh, well, that's that's it then.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, now what?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, um, but that's a faith claim, and it's it's faith in the intelligibility of the cosmos in a way that sounds really theological to me.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because like, if we are just biological survival machines, why do our brains have any purchase on the mysteries of the cosmos?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Why why do we think the Homo sapiens is able to do the equation and understand laws that exist like on the far side of Alpha Centauri and at the subatomic level?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who are we saying humans are to have to be able to?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: I actually believe that that is what we are heading towards.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: I do actually believe we can continually get better at science and we can comprehend more of the cosmos.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's my Christian beliefs that that make me think that, because I think we're made in the image of God, and therefore understanding the world is the sort of thing that that humans are capable of.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: So notice that it's a story, notice that it's a faith, faith-based claim, but then go back to Alex's analogy.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: That would be a little bit like the grammarian saying, you know, I I I genuinely think that at some stage we will have a kind of a grammar.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and maybe AI and large language models are kind of there already.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've we've figured out Shakespeare.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've we've totally derived all the laws about Shakespeare.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: That does not obviate the need for Shakespeare himself.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we're talking, we're making a category error.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking at different levels if we think we can exhaustively understand the universe, and therefore we have done away with the need for a cause of the universe or a purpose for that universe.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the fact that I tell a story doesn't undermine my point because I could be telling that story because I'm inadequate at thinking about it any other way.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right enough.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I completely agree with you on the faith argument and the fact that it's a category error.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to be very much a sort of staunch atheist growing up, and that wasn't even in a conscious way.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was just the product of my surroundings and the way we think about things.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: But by watching loads of podcasts and reading and listening to people like yourself, it's opened my eyes to this concept of a category error and the fact that belief that everything can be rationalized through science is a faith claim.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in my eyes now, I think the belief in science as being the answer to everything and being an atheist is as religious, if not more actually, right than being a Christian.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because what we're not saying, we're not saying that Betty can't do science and that it's not valuable for Betty to do all that she does with the rose.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: The only point at which I object is if Betty were to say um there is no meaning to the rose outside the genome that I've mapped.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, right, it's almost as if Christianity is Betty looking at that rose zoomed in, and Christianity agrees with that analysis, but just zooms it out more.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Completely.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And says you need Betty and you need Gareth, right?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and you and you need the left hemisphere and you need the right hemisphere.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think we've we've come to where we've come to in the West, kind of out of a teenage angsty rejection of the bad old faith.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we're we're very glad for the tools that science has given us, but we're we're now sort of camping out in this one area of life.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's diminishing us.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'm not saying is give up science, just become a faith head.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm actually saying that there is a grander vision for life and there's a there's a grander metaphysic that will ground your scientific scientific beliefs and your scientific endeavor, but it will also put that into conversation with the much richer world that we inhabit.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned earlier that the jury's out on our secular world not working before quickly retracting that statement.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad you did because the data shows that Christianity declined, I think, fo to 46%.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make sure we get this right.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: 46% in the UK in the 2021 census, which was the most anything fell by on that census.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: What does that tell us about modern society?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's it's interesting that you said just now that you sort of have identified historically as an atheist not because of any metaphysical belief.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you know, not because you read Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and you're an ontological naturalist, and and that here I stand, I can do no other.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um you are very um you are very typical of how everybody operates, actually.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think nowadays, like we we live in different cities, right?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right next to each other, okay.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um in my city, my town, okay.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm in Eastbourne on the south coast of the United Kingdom.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's God's waiting room.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's the kind of uh yeah, it's it's where people go to die.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and when I'm talking to people about faith, a very high proportion of them will say that it that they're a Christian, but in exactly the same way, I'll sort of press in and I'm like, oh, so what church do you go to?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't go to church.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and and so what convinced you that Jesus Christ is Lord?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's that's not what they're that's not what they're saying when they're saying they're a Christian.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sixty years ago, you had you had this sort of shelf with, you know, labels on it, and the Christian label was very prominent among them, and you put it on your chest, you went out into the world.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a Christian.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you a Christian?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm born in a Christian country, you know, I was baptized.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: So like whatever whatever it is, why are you a Christian?
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: It it's it's a nominal Christianity, Christianity in name only.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um so in in my town, in Eastbourne, there's a whole bunch of nominal Christians.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: I reckon in your town, Brighton, there's a whole lot of nominal atheists, right?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because nowadays there's still a shelf full of labels, and the Christian label doesn't look particularly appealing, but the atheist or agnostic one, sure.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's almost the default.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what are you?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Agnostic, atheist, whatever.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: You you put it on your chest, you go out into the world, it helps you navigate the world frictionlessly.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in the pub, somebody says, What do you believe?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: and you're an agnostic, you're an atheist, but you'll probably get onto a conversation about, yeah, but I think there's more, you know, and and what what those surveys are now doing a lot more with atheists is asking, having said that there is no God, you're then asked, um, do you believe in a higher power?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And a majority of atheists at that point very often will tick, I believe in a higher power.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Do you believe uh in life after death?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: And quite a number of them believe in life after death, do you pray?
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: And quite a number of so-called atheists pray.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, these are funny kinds of atheists, like funny kinds of atheists who um believe in an afterlife, who pray, um, who think that there's a higher power, that kind of thing.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what's going on, I I think just culturally speaking, um, if you are going to call yourself a Christian, um, that's going to put you on the outside of a number of different conversations in modern 21st century culture.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the sort of person who says that they're a Christian are much they're much more likely to be the sort of person who's going to church who actually believes that Jesus is Lord.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so nominal Christianity is is is massively shrinking, I think.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I think nowadays there's also an opportunity in in the sort of post-Christian culture is that people are kind of noticing that there's a very anemic thin vision for life, and there's a lot of people wanting to try out Christianity again, and people are discovering that, oh, I might be an atheist or an agnostic, but I'm a nominal atheist or nominal agnostic.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what what I'm discovering is there are a lot of people who in that boat are starting to show up in church.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: And they're just starting to they're just starting to say, I want something deep and old and rich and challenging and embodied, and the weirdness of the Christian thing is no longer a barrier.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: For a lot of people, it's it's becoming more and more of a bridge to faith, or or a bridge to at least checking things out, because I think the story's gotten old in the West.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's too thin.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're not able to really sustain ourselves from it.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so people I think are people I think are are up for the challenge of figuring out Christianity again.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: What that will how that will um show in statistics moving forwards, I I think there there has been a bounce back since COVID.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um we will see whether the bounce back continues or not.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: You believe in free will as a Christian.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Would this lack of nominal Christians shape up to actually give birth to these more moralistic Christians that haven't been born into Christianity and just accepted it because their family says that they should, they've discovered it themselves and worked out why they are a Christian and discovered their relationship with Jesus.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is there some sort of moral superiority to that in Christianity, working out yourself?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it the same working it out and spending 30 years doing that, being born into it and told to be a Christian by your parents?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I I got two kids.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I very much want them to be Christians.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think it's true.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think Jesus is Lord, I think there's this unimprovable story of God, you know, loving them to hell and back, and and I I want them to own that for themselves.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I I want their story to be I grew up in the midst of this, and it's been challenged in any number of ways in secular Britain, but I think it's a story that stands the test of time.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and I would I would love if their story is I grew up in it, and it's proved a solid foundation for me for the rest of my life.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: But my day job is to go around and and persuade other people who've never grown up in Christian faith to come in.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: And what's different about such people is you're exactly right, that there's there's this sense of you have to really own it for yourself and dive in with both feet in a way that cradle Christians haven't had to.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the ways I kind of describe this is um uh you know, the sea of faith is often described as like a tide.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so at at high tide, you know, back in you know, 1851 was kind of the high, high watermark of church attendance in in in England, and half the country was in church on a Sunday, every Sunday.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, the tide has gone out, you know, since then, and we are kind of at a low tide at the moment.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: But tides don't al always go out, and they don't only go out, you know, sometimes they come back.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things about low tide is at low tide you recognize what's underneath the sea of faith, and you you recognize, you know, maybe some things that are a little bit um frightening.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the will to power, you know, and just nature read in tooth and claw with without Christianization.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people are staring some of those consequences in the face and thinking that's a little bit scary.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think also at low tide, you figure out the shaping influence of the sea of faith, and you're much more likely to pick up a book like Tom Holland, the not the Spider-Man actor, but the you know, the historian, the cool Tom Holland, the historian Tom Holland, who you know wrote the big fat book Dominion, about how much the Sea of Faith, how much Christianity has absolutely shaped us from the ground up.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think people are starting to notice that that shaping influence of the Sea of Faith because it's low tide.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're starting to get scared about um what happens when we get rid of things like human rights and and and that kind of thing.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: And but what what what's also true about low tide is if you ever go to Le Mans Saint-Michel, have you gone there in France, off the Brittany coast, there's this incredible monastery that's sort of built on an island that is not an island at low tide.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: At high tide, um, if it's a very high tide, you can't get across to it.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's a church on the top of it.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: And what I think happens at high tide, what I think happens in the 1850s is you just bob along and you find you find yourself in church, right?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like my kids, they just they've just found themselves in church um because they happen to have been born into a into a Christian home.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: At low tide, if you want to get to church, you've got to make the trek yourself.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to make the pilgrimage, you've got to put one foot in front of the other.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so much of what I do in trying to persuade people about being Christians is um, yeah, we are not in 19th century Victorian England.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're not just gonna bob along and find yourself in church, but here are some steps that you can take.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, have you noticed the shaping influence of Christianity?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Have you noticed about human rights and equality and compassion?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to pull at those threads?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think you might find Jesus at the other end of it.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: Have you also noticed what might happen if we get rid of human rights and we are just biological survival machines?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: You don't believe that though, do you?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm finding that a lot of my sec secular friends, um, they say that this is a godless universe, but they really believe in human rights.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: And actually they believe in human rights a lot more than they believe that this is a godless universe, like a lot more.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then they start taking a step towards church and taking a step towards church.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's that's the journey that I I'd love people on the outside of faith to take.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, low tide means that that can happen more intentionally now.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: So to be super clear, you have free will, you have the choice to do good or bad in the Christian teachings.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: If someone inherently doesn't feel a strong sense of belonging with Jesus, but then they choose to do good.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a moral superiority to that compared to someone that's just born into good?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: I see what you're getting at.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I think I mean choice is so um interesting, isn't it?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um all sorts of TED talks you can kind of look, but what one's called the paradox of choice and how we actually become uh enslaved by um too much choice and conceptualizing the human person as simply a choosing individual who could go left, could could go right.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's not exactly how we operate, either like within the Bible or or just within psychology and sociology.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um but having said all that, it is absolutely better for you to recognize the humanity of somebody else and serve the poor, um, no matter what you can get out of it, um, no matter how uh weak that person is, no matter whether they can elevate you or do anything for you, there is a goodness that is intrinsic and inherent in you serving that guy.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: I completely believe that.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: So do you think it detracts from the goodness level, if we're to call it that, if someone's born into nominal Christianity and they make these decisions not based off of the awareness that they're serving someone else, but just because it's been, I guess the right phrase to use is programmed into them by their surroundings.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in a sense, we're constantly being programmed by our surroundings.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're constantly inhabiting a story, whether it's the Christian story or whether it's a certain secular story, or whether it's a Hindu story, or Muslim story, where we're constantly inha-inhabiting a story.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Usually the story is I'm the hero of some hero's journey and yay me, right?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and what will actually enable you to um to be moral, I think, is to de-center yourself from being the hero of your own story.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's what faith and and faith traditions are trying to constantly do.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're not the hero.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you about this guy who was the hero, his name is Jesus, and that sort of decenters you and then enables you, I think, more and more to look outside yourself to other people.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um but so are you getting at the question, is somebody, because they're not a Christian and yet they serve the poor, therefore there's there's a moral superiority to that.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not even serving the poor and they're not Christian, but that they're not Christian, they maybe live a very hateful life towards other people, and then they work out why that was bad, they feel the change of heart, they both have the cerebral sense of understanding what they're doing to other people, but also they feel this change of heart.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: They then convert to Christianity and they live a life of good morals and serving other people.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is that not more moral than someone who's simply programmed by their childhood, by their adolescence, growing up in a Christian school?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it goes back to the thing that we were talking about earlier about me being a nominal atheist.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have any merit in my views as an atheist.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't actually worked them out myself.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was just this zoomed-in rose through which I was looking at the world in.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: So could you not say the same thing for these nominal Christians that are inherently good, but they didn't choose to be good.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: You have basically just described Jesus' most famous story.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know the story of the prodigal son?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: So here we go.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: A man has two sons, an older brother and a younger brother.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: Younger brother does what younger brothers always do, and he's a bit of a rebel.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Dad, um, you know that inheritance that's coming to me when you die?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: You seem to be taking your time.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, could you either hurry up and die or give me the money now so I can take the inheritance and get as far away from you as I possibly can?
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, like this this kid, um, rebel, scumbag, like um, he yeah, especially given how good this dad turns out to be in the story.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: Amazingly, the father says, fine, have your share of the inheritance now.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: The kid takes the money, runs, goes off into the far country, and squanders the wealth in wild living, right?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's a really interesting story for the West as well.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can you can think of this as a cultural level as well as a personal level.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: Have we taken the goods of the Christian inheritance and kind of squandered them on self?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, what happens is the money runs out, the money always runs.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Out, he ends up in a pig sty, not a great place for a Jew to find themselves.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's he's got a job feeding the pigs, he's so hungry he wants to eat the pig food.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then he decides, okay, I've screwed things up royally.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go back to my dad and I'm gonna say, Dad, I've sinned against heaven and against you.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Make me like one of your slaves and one of your hired men, he says.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so he kind of trudges back with this sorry spiel.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: The father clearly has been like checking the horizon to see whether his son will come back.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: He runs to his boy, runs, you know, throws his arms around him, puts a robe around him, puts a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, he says, kill the fatted calf.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you've ever heard people say that's from this story, kill the fatted calf.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: My son was lost and he's found.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: He was dead and he's alive.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: So they begin to celebrate.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: But what we've forgotten about is the second brother, the older brother.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was the stay-at-home.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: He never left.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we are to imagine him in the field with the shovel and, you know, sweat on his brow.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's always been working for his dad.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: He hates that his father has forgiven his brother.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: He hates it.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he refuses to go into the party, and the father has to come out to him, and this older brother is like, Look, all these years I've slaved for you, you never gave me even a young goat just to celebrate with my friends.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: But when this son of yours, you know, comes back, having squandered his wealth on prostitutes, you, you know, you kill the fatted calf for him.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the father's like, My son, you can come home anytime you want, but you've got to give up on the pride of being the self-sufficient one who's always been in the house and you've always been working.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: You've just just come on the basis that you're just a son with your father.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're just a brother with your brother.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: Just come on the basis of you're invited to a meal for free.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: Come on that basis.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the the story ends with this elder brother who's always been around the Christian stuff, and he never actually just enjoys it as a child.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the rebel son is enjoying the party.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus is telling this fascinating story.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's a story of heaven and hell, but the the heaven of the feast, who is at the feast?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's the younger brother who's the rebel, is at the feast, because he doesn't come trying to claim anything.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: The older brother, who'd been around it the whole time, but had never understood it's just about my father's love, it's not about my earning, it's not about my morality, even.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a a free gift.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm being invited into this feast.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: He is outside the feast with weeping and wailing and the angry, angry gnashing of teeth, which is every way that Jesus describes hell.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's the most shocking story ever.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it basically says, you know, heaven is for the immoral.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it's the immoral who come home to just take that place at the table as a beloved child.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what a Christian is.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I I imagine the next day that that son went and worked really hard in the in the field and and did all the good stuff that you're meant to do.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it's on the basis of being invited home as a sinner who is saved, not as a moralist who has climbed to heaven.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: It feels to me as though everything I'm getting from what we've discussed the last few minutes is that there is a moral superiority in feeling these compulsions but not acting on them.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is i is that what you'd agree with?
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Moral compul compulsions to do what?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: To do bad.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, so yeah, don't don't do the bad stuff.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely don't do the bad stuff.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: But are you more of a moral person if you have more bad compulsions that you don't act on?
• 47:37
  unknown: Yeah.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, and that and that's I th I think that's true.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um there there are those who are tempted towards sins that I'm never tempted towards, and if I resist that, that doesn't redound to my greater glory.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: So in that light, could you in theory come up with a ranking of morality of different Christians?
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, sure.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's fine.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and but at the end of the day, you come in on the Jesus thing not because of your morality.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: You come in on the Jesus thing um as a wretch, you know, as as someone who I haven't earned it, but I'm offered it for free.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you come in on the Christian thing not because of your goodness, but because you've owned your badness.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, I'm a I'm a doctor for the sick.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: He says it's not the healthy who need a doctor, it's the sick.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't come to call righteous people but sinners.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I go to the doctor, I don't tell the doctor everything that's right about me.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots of things that are right about me.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: But when I go to the doctor, I tell him everything is wrong with me.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's the basis on which we we come to Jesus, um, not claiming our goodness, but owning our badness.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus, the doctor, puts us back together and and sends us out into the world, not as amazingly moral human beings, but as as those who have found a measure of healing for the badness that we've we've accepted about ourselves, you know.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's not really it's it's not a ladder climbing, you know.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: The Christian religion, the sign for the Christian religion is not a ladder, you know, it's it's a cross, which is kind of the opposite.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: I feel very inarticulate with the the points I've just put forward, but it's a it's a very difficult conversation to navigate.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's move on to something that I've wanted to ask you for a long time, watching your content.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's your perspective on the Jordan Peterson arc of Christianity, the the Petersonian approach to Christianity.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: What what do you think to his approach?
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: And also what do you think to his impact on Christianity in the West?
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: His impact is very large, I would say.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm having a drink with a guy tonight in Eastbourne who's just showed up in our church, and there's there've probably been a half a dozen guys in Little Old Eastbourne, a little church in Little Old Eastbourne, probably half a dozen guys have shown up in our church.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you sort of say, you know, what brings you here?
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll say, Well, I just thought that life was, you know, without meaning.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, sure, but why did you think the church was the place for the answer?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Well, I'll be listening to these podcasts.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, who are you listening to?
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: They'd look over both shoulders and like, well, have you heard of Jordan Peterson?
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Yeah, I've heard of Jordan Peterson.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting is that nobody knows that, you know, I make videos about Jordan Peterson.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's not why they show up in our tiny little church in Little Eastbourne.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: And this story is multiplied all around the UK, all around the Western world, really.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: That I think a whole bunch of people are recognizing the meaning crisis.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what Peterson does well, I think, is he's a preacher in so many ways.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he's a preacher of scripture, and so he will stand up and he will walk you through maybe an obscure story in Genesis, and he will preach it as a human text that humanizes humans.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that I'm a I'm a Christian preacher, and I learn so much from Peterson because I I think too often I just pre I preach the Bible as though it's this spiritual text for spiritual people to fine-tune their spirituality.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, No, it's a human text for humans to humanize them.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: And he will bring stuff out of the Bible that I'm like, oh yeah, that that's totally there.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: And why are we not saying that?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes he says something about the Bible and was like, that's totally not there.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where are you getting that from?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think his his ability to preach the Bible to humans to humanize them is immense.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what to bring it into conversation with the story I told about Luke chapter 15, the the story of the two sons, um, basically Jordan Peterson is saying to a whole bunch of people in a pig sty, like, go home, right?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: And here are 12 rules for life and 12 more rules for life, and and and notice that the guy in the the pig sty, he said, um, the speech he's going to make to his dad is, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Make me like one of the hired servants.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what Peterson does is kind of articulate what the good life looks like.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: And when he quotes scripture in Twelve Rules for Life, like that lands with a weight.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: I read a lot of Christian books.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: In very few of them do the scriptures land with as much weight as they do when Peterson like quotes from the Sermon on the Mount or something like that.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, whoa, yeah, this is wisdom.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think what he's trying to do is is tell people to go home, get your get your room in order, you know, tidy your room and be more lobster and all that kind of stuff.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and and a lot of people are showing up in church and they they want something deep and rich and old and biblical and challenging.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what I tend to do is tell them that same story that Jesus told, which is okay, um, Peterson has got you from the pig sty to the porch of the house.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: And what the kid does in the story is, I want to be like one of your hired servants.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, in the story, the father doesn't let him say that part of the speech.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: The father says, just kill the fat and calf.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're having this son of mine was dead and he's alive.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, You're not going to be a servant, you're not going to be a slave in this kingdom.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're a you're a son, you're a child, and it's not because of your goodness, it's because I've forgiven your badness.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's those who have come to the brink of Christian faith through Peterson, I think that's the next step for them.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: They they kind of see, okay, there is so much wisdom in the scriptures, um, I do need to get out of the pig sty.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the the thing that I I think needs adding is to say you come in not because you've obeyed the 12 rules for life.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: You come in simply as a child.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then all those Jordan Peterson books really hit home because now the next day you can work in the field and you can put those laws into practice, but you don't come in on the basis of your goodness.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: You own your badness and go from there.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: But there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are leapfrogging Jordan Peterson into the kingdom.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jordan Peterson's done a lot for me, even as an agnostic.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had a poster in my flat before I moved out the other week of his 12 more rules for life tour that I got from going to his ARC conference last year.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you were there?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was there, yeah.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was there, and it was the reason that I moved out of my flat in Brighton living with my mum, aged 18, yeah, because he gave this incredible speech there.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: That really the best way I can describe it is it unlocked the magic of life for me and that whole idea of adventure.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I think magic is a better word.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that was what inspired me to really go out and pursue doing something great and take the risk of moving out and absolutely bankrupting myself in the process.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I put that up in the flat as a sort of memory of the reason, or one of the key players anyway, and why I took that risk.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: Going back to your point about him quoting some things from the Bible and getting them wrong, how do you know with anyone, how do you know with yourself that you're pulling the right thing from the Bible and not just making up whatever fits your interpretation of the Bible?
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: And also, this is something I've never thought about before, but I can imagine that if you had a bunch of gobbledygook on a page and it was spread enough that there were institutions set up to worship this gobbledygook on the page, and you had people that called themselves priests that were reading from this gobbledygook and preaching to the masses.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't just read the gobbledygook, but they actually drew this deep, meaningful value from the gobbledygook that maps onto the world.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's more scientific, I think, than religious, because what you draw from the Gobbledygook book is what you see as working in the world.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is there not the possibility that that's all that the Bible is?
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's this sort of placeholder, and actually the stories are great, but it doesn't matter necessarily what the stories were because humans throughout the ages are gonna draw what they want from it and adapt it to the current society to work.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's a it's a good point.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I think um if it has survived for so long, even if you're just gonna use an evolutionary argument, like for forget any claims to it's it's divinely inspired or anything like that, if if you're just gonna use and and Peterson kind of has a very bottom-up understanding of the Bible, the reason why these stories have survived is because they help us survive, right?
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and therefore it's it's not gobbledygook, like if to use the evolutionary analogy, if um if you have gobbledygook genetic code, um that will lead to all kinds of deformities and you won't survive very long with gobbledygook code.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: The only kind of code that's going to be passed on and developed and um is going to survive selection is going to be the code that actually uh helps you live and survive, right?
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so and and so even from Peterson's kind of bottom-up understanding, and I and I think I think I think it's both.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the word of humans and it's the word of God, because I think the spirit inspired it and inspired the collation of these stories into the order that we have them in.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think there is divine activity as well as human activity, but even if you just go for human activity, I think what gets preserved in that ancient text is um has to be valuable.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then the the second thing I'd say is that some of the ideas are not the ideas that humans naturally have.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's a case of the stories have shaped the humans rather than the humans have shaped the stories.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: One very uh prominent idea is the idea that we're all in the image of God, right?
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: Something that Peterson like really zeroes in on a lot.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have this divine spark.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: You've never seen anything more godlike in the world than a human, no matter how rich or poor or weak or whatever.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is a profoundly um biblical idea that you don't get in other religious texts or in other societies.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: And because of that idea, that's why you get charity.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because actually, whereas whereas other texts are telling you there are lots of images of God, there's a statue, there's a statue, there's a statue, burn incense to this God, burn incense to that God, you are now doing your religious duty by offering vertically that you know religious sacrifice.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, what the Bible is saying is forget those images.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: You serve God by serving his images who are humans.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: So when you you know feeds the hungry, when you clothe the poor, when you visit the imprisoned, when you lift up the little guy, you are serving God in that way.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's not really the way that humans have have naturally operated in the world, but what it's birthed have been these unique things like charities and hospitals and hospices and and orphan care the way we think of it, and human rights the way we think of it, and the abolition of the slave trade, and all all these things came out of taking that story very seriously, the image of God.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it I I think it's a case of those stories have often corrected us and surprised us rather than being a gobbledygook that we then in um give meaning to.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I agree with you on the point that if we had that gobbledygook genetic code, we would cease to exist because it would be inherently flawed.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that holds up, but with with the Bible, for example, it's not as if the Bible came at the start of mankind and we know that we would have ceased to exist by now.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: It it came 2024 years ago, roughly.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, the Old Testament is much older than that.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: The Old Testament is the stories told within the Old Testament um are incredibly old and Peter's.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the New Testament.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, the New Testament, yeah.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do we not know that that's on par?
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I I feel like gobbledygook is too derogatory of a word, and it it it sort of it it it puts down the the Bible more than I intend to.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: It could just be a fable, yeah.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: How do we know that it's not on par with that and we just haven't ceased to exist yet because we have adapted the code?
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, interestingly, it it is a teaching that has founded civilizations, and so maybe maybe I go back to the very place where I started with the the mustard seed.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um the I mean, genuine genuinely, Jesus in Matthew chapter 13 says that the seed is like the word of God, okay?
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this thing that gets pecked at by opponents, and the opponents are like birds that look so much bigger than the seed, but the seed, Jesus predicts, will grow a civilization, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the predictions.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really bold prediction from a penniless preacher who's literally just been a builder's laborer for most of his life.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: He's put down the hammer, he's picked up, he's picked up the scriptures, he started preaching them, and he's he's basically saying, through this message, there is going to be the civilization that is built.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why Jordan Peterson is now going through the Sermon on the Mount, which is a New Testament text, is because just as Cain and Abel from the Old Testament and the story of Adam and Eve have built our world, actually, a lot more recent texts like the Sermon on the Mount, which is Matthew's Gospel, um, have utterly shaped the way that we think about politics and philosophy and economics and art and literature and law and and and everything else.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say the the survival value, as it were, even of New Testament texts, have proven themselves over the over the last 2024 years.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting that you say 2024 years.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this the year 2024?
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's the year of our Lord.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: The year of our Lord Jesus Christ, 2024.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we are we are literally counting back the the days since that seed went into the ground.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the proof is in the eating, right?
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: The pro the proof is in what this text has done.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't expect anybody to come to church and um in advance believe that this is the word of God.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think it has recommended itself to you know modern 21st century humans as something that is full of wisdom, something that has given life, given life to individuals and given life to societies.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's certainly worth our attention.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: And at that stage, I th I think people are people are ready for that thicker, richer, deeper, more challenging story.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they're starting to pick up Bibles.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: And in my church, you know, a guy just the other day, he just said, I I realized I didn't know anything about the Bible, so I ordered one from Amazon.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, what what translations did you order?
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Oh, the old one.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Oh, the old King James thing from 400 years ago.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Yeah, that's the one.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, where did you start reading?
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, the beginning, obviously.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm noticing there are a lot of people who are recognizing at low tide there's not a lot of wisdom out there.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: There is this ancient book that definitely has life to it.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's given life to humans, it's given life to civilizations.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's worth giving a go.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to wrap up this interview by speaking about Gen Z.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this hasn't felt too much like an interrogation.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's been great.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was speaking to our mutual friend Sophie Spittle before this and running a few of the things past her that I wanted to speak to you about.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she was saying, okay, and what are you gonna speak about that isn't apologetics and debating?
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, does it come across that way?
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I feel like I'm just asking questions.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I I feel like inherently just my beliefs in the world mean that any questions I ask of Christianity are gonna seem a little confrontational and and and doubting.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't take them that way at all.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's curiosity.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah what do you see as the future of Gen Z and Christianity?
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: How have you seen that unfolding in your church?
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: You've said that more people are coming along, and I've I've seen you speak about especially men looking for purpose coming.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like there's a strong possibility of a revival in the next decade, or do you think it could take much longer than that?
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: It might take much longer than that.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: The the thing about seed is you know, you don't sow the seed and come back tomorrow and say, Where's my tree?
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um the other thing about seed is you go down and then up, and the the pattern of the seed is burial and then rising again, death and resurrection, cross and Easter Sunday.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um that is the pattern of Christianity, and maybe the West needs to go a lot further down before we come back up again.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I am seeing signs of life at the local level.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um I go around and talk in a lot of different churches, and a lot of different church leaders are seeing exactly what I'm seeing, which is, as you say, younger guys especially, who want the deep, the rich, the old, the challenging, the embodied.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in a sense, the fish are kind of jumping into the boat in in a lot of different um church settings.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: And what used to be the challenge, the challenge used to be kind of putting up a flair and saying, we're relevant, we're so relevant, and and it was kind of yeah, cringe, really.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and Christians would try to like like even now there's like rave in the knave and all that, you know, like cathedrals putting on like parties in in the in the middle of Canterbury C Cathedral.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: Cool location.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: Cool location, um, but it was yeah, it was built for something else.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting is that cathedral worship is actually um perhaps one of the only growing parts of the Church of England.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like people going to something very ancient and strange is what Gen Z seems to be um really going for.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm finding just in local churches, people are showing up and they don't really know the first thing about the Bible.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: They they didn't recognize that the King James Bible, you know, oh, there's been an update in the last 400 years in terms of you know language and translation, and and and they're coming in with very messy lives.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're coming in through all sorts of social media avenues, and they've fallen down this social media hole or that social media hole.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's there's all sorts of different um discipleship issues, is this is the the technical phrase, like learning the faith.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: What we don't have to expend so much effort on is getting people in the front door.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: What we now do is we just go for long walks across the South Downs.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what we what we now do is, yeah, let's go for a walk over Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters, and we'll wind up in a pub and we'll be late into the night talking about, and we could be talking about anything, right?
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that I think is the future of um of the low-tide converts that we're we're going to see.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn, thank you so much for coming on.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_00: Where can people find your work if they want to see more of it?
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I would recommend people go to 321course.com because it's just it's just a way that people can get to the heart of the faith.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's looking at Jesus and his vision for God, the world, and you.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, people can go to 321course.com and you can find links to the rest of my stuff there.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my conversation with Elliot Buick.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: He is well worth a sub.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_01: Go and uh subscribe to that channel.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to check out the 321 course that I mentioned at the end, why don't you go to 321course.com?
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a real Christianity 101 for a digital age.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_01: It shows you Jesus' vision for life, his vision for God, the world, and you check it out, start an account.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_01: It only takes a matter of seconds.
• 1:07:34
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• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be well worth your time.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: Go to 321course.com.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now you've definitely now subscribed to Elliot's channel.
• 1:07:44
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• 1:07:45
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• 1:07:48
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• 1:07:49
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