Hello and welcome to episode 399 of the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Thomas Thorogood, and the show today will be led by Glenn Scrivener and Paul Feasy. I will catch you at the end for some final thoughts and updates. Enjoy.
SPEAKER_04Well, hello and welcome to the Speakeasy. My name is Paul Feesey, and today I'm joined by It's Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_02Hello, Paul Feasy.
SPEAKER_04Hello, Glenn Scrivener. Are you right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, doing really well, thank you. Yeah. Good. Feeling okay. Had a good week. Had a really good week. We had a guest service at our church on Sunday, which was brilliant. There's there's a nationwide kind of missionary thing called a passion for life, which apparently 750 churches have signed up to. Right. And it generally happens in the spring, and you put on sort of evangelistic events to invite people to. But in our church, we've just decided, hey, we've got this thing that we already do. It rolls around every Sunday. We put on these things like you know, like 104 times a year. Um it's called church, so let's just invite people. And the church was packed. There's loads of people inviting folks, and I got to preach, and yeah, it was brilliant. Brilliant time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, what were you preaching on?
SPEAKER_02So John 10. Uh so I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. So like 15 words, but like there's so much in there, and we got to got to show how Jesus is your shepherd. So say to Jesus, please lead me. But he lays down his life like a lamb. So Jesus, you're my lamb, please forgive me. So that kind of a simple message, but um, yeah, it seemed to come home with a lot of people and had some incredible conversations with people afterwards. And yeah, so I I I I I was talking um recently to a guy whose whole job is um marketing and fundraising and sort of getting your message out to market, as it were. And he he always like deals with other charities um where their job is not really to produce a lot of stuff, like we produce a lot of stuff. And he said that like the problem with Speak Life is not that there's not content to share, it's like we we never bother to actually market it, we never bother to actually get it out there, we just make it and make it and make some more. Um, and so he's he's sort of trying to get us to think, oh, how how do we help people to know about all the great resources that we've got? And I thought to myself, that's a very much like the church. Like the church is totally in that situation. We've got we've got great product, yeah. We've got stuff that we keep pumping out every Sunday, and I just wonder whether um, you know, when we try to do stuff, like let's do a midweek pub quiz or whatever, and you're like, I don't know, we've already mobilized like 30 volunteers to make the Sunday thing happen. And we're we've got this well-oiled machine and it kind of rolls around and we know what we're doing on a Sunday, but when we think about evangelistic events, we think, oh, let's do this totally different thing where we've got to drum up 15 different volunteers and do this other thing that is not just the proclamation of the words. So I'm uh I'm a big fan, as you can tell, to just invite people to church, you know, build it and they will come. So fair enough.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, great. Well, good that you had so many people turn up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it has been good. Yeah, how's how's your weekend been?
SPEAKER_04Uh yeah, good, I think. Uh just trying to remember. Yeah, we went to um we went to Chartwells, if you've ever been to Chartwells, National Heritage. Okay. It was Churchill's house. Ah, although we spent most of it uh we didn't really get anywhere near the house. We decided to go and find all the little play areas. Um but it is not buggy friendly, as I discovered. Okay. Pushing the buggy around. So Libby was getting quite well, it was very, very muddy. And uh and so it definitely took a few of us to push up the hill. So the other four of you just Livy just smiling. It was a nice day out, but yeah, if you're going with the buggy, don't bother basically. Go somewhere else because not very good. But it's a nice place. So not a great advertisement for child wells. No, no, if I'm honest. But uh, you know, anyway. Um, yeah, so um today we're talking about copyright and the kingdom. Uh that was a kind of title on our thumbnail there. Um so you might have seen that Ed Sheeran has been in the news recently um as he faces a lawsuit in regards to the 2017 song Shape of You. Um Shape of You was number one for 14 weeks in the UK back in uh 2017 and became the best-selling song of the year around the world. You probably know it because it was just everywhere, couldn't get away from it. Um however, Sheeran's faced a lawsuit brought against him by songwriters Sammy Chocry, hope I'm saying that right, and Ross O'Donohue, who say uh the hook line of the song, or one of the hook lines of the song, rev resembles part of a song that they wrote called OY in 2015. Um now Sheeran has a history of borrowing elements from other songs, uh, but he claims to acknowledge knowledge when he does that and ensure that the relevant clearances are got from the different parties. Um, but despite that, this isn't the first time he's faced lawsuits, so he faced legal proceedings over the song Photograph, uh, which it was claimed shared the same chorus melody as a 2011 single called Amazing by X Factor winner Matt Cardell, and that led to the writers of the song receiving a share of the song's royalties and a four million pound lump sum in an out-of-court settlement, uh which is chump change for Ed Shearers. Yeah, just had it in his back pocket. Um and he's also faced illegal action over another song in 2017, The Rest of Our Life, uh, which was settled later that year, but it's unclear what the payout was. And he's also still involved in an ongoing dispute uh with uh I think it's the estate of Marvin Gaye over similarities between the song Thinking Out Loud and Marvin Gay's Let's Get It On. Um Sherman's not the only one who's kind of been accused of these kind of things, um, and he probably won't be the last. And the question really is where's the line between being influenced by other songs and plagiarizing them?
SPEAKER_02Everybody is derivative. Okay. We're all just copying anyway. Get over yourself. Right. So that's your opinion on the opinion on the whole thing.
SPEAKER_04You reckon there should be no copyright on these things, really, anyway.
SPEAKER_02Pretty much. Yeah. There's there's such a thing as Creative Commons license, which we s which we're kind of familiar with. Um if you can produce, for instance, soundtracks and put them as a Creative Commons license, or you can take photographs and put them as a Creative Commons license, where you basically say, Hey guys, if you want to use this, please credit me. Yep. And that's the thing. Right? Because I and I just I just wonder whether um if it is indeed the case that Ed Sheeran has ripped off Sammy Shakri? No, what's his name? Sammy Shackri. Sammy Shackri. If if that is the case, then what would be the biggest bump to his career is not that Sammy Shakri is litigious and has taken Ed Sheeran to court, but that Ed Sheeran kind of gives him a bump and s gives him a shout-out and like directs his very impressive fan base towards a Sammy Shakri song. Yep. Um whereas I I just don't think the litigation route is the is the way to go, and it certainly does come across as um yeah, it it it could be it could be people just having a go.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. So I mean the other thing that people have levelled at Ed Sheeran is that he um he does sometimes say, Hey, I took a bit from this song, often when it's a kind of bigger artist. But these kind of unknown artists you know like Sammy Shackery, because we're not familiar with the works of Sammy Shackri, are we, really?
SPEAKER_02Um that I call him Sami Sachri.
SPEAKER_04We don't we don't even know how to say his name. Um they get kind of trampled over, so he won't ref they'll say he wouldn't really reference those people. And then there's also the you know, there's been the inference that um sometimes not just people like Ed Sheeran, but big stars know they can do this because they can throw a lot of money, or their record company can throw a lot of money at a lawsuit that the little guy who really is just you know scraping a living, make maybe the odd gig here and there, doesn't have the money to fight that, and so you can just stamp them down a bit like in the what we had that in the post office case, didn't we? You know, a bit like we've yeah So you think the post office were the good guys? Is what you're saying? That's what I'm getting from this yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, should we should we listen to the the the two sort of side by side? So it's literally two vowel sounds that like that is what is at issue in this in this case. Um and so if I share it from my computer, which is kind of buffering at the moment, I don't know.
SPEAKER_04And people are gonna have a listen and let us know. What do you think when you listen to it? Do you think oh he's lifted that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. This is what I call the old McDonald part of both of their songs. We just come into Valve. Like, so the Sami Shakri is O I oh Wai O Mai, whereas the Ed Sheeran is O Wy Oh-LoY. OI. Oh, who's OI? I think.
SPEAKER_04Ed Sheeran is saying it's O Mai because he's saying O Mai OI OI, I'm in love with your body. Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_02Whereas Sami Shakri, you can see him kind of looking very pained. Oh why, oh my oh, why and I just think come on, let's have them both. Why don't we have them both? You know? Let's not fight. Let's just build on one another. You know?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, I'm willing to say that that, in my opinion, like I mean obviously they're very, very similar, but it's it's tenuous enough in my mind to be kind of these are just I wouldn't even have said what Ed is singing there is even a lyric. I thought that was just a kind of vocal riff. Yeah. So when he said, Oh, it's not OY, it's OI, because the line is OI'm in love with your body, he said it wouldn't make sense if I said why. I didn't even think it was part of that line. I thought it was just a vocal thing that you remember from the song either.
SPEAKER_02It's not like the most important part.
SPEAKER_04No. But he but interestingly, Ed Sheeran, there's a footage of him talking about this song, and he's not talking about this section, he actually talks about um another line in the song. Um and he says I heard the song, I knew the song No Scrubs by TRC, which if you're a certain generation, you will probably know as well. No scrubs from late 90s, no left. Late 90s scrubs, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then the passengers that are my best friends. Yeah, to holler at me. At me.
SPEAKER_04And he says I'd heard that, and so I was trying to riff off that. And so he then there is a kind of bit where it's very obvious that he's lifted that out. And therefore, the writers of No Scrubs are credited on the song Shape of You. Now, presumably they get a bit of the royalties from that as well. Now, what I I couldn't quite ascertain was I've seen Ed Sheeran saying, Oh yeah, I lifted that from there and did this. I've seen another bit where someone had said, um it was pointed out that this had happened, and they were added to the credits in the sense of like I deliberately lifted this, and until someone actually pointed it out, I decided I'd pocket all the money until someone said I had to give it to them as well.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. You know, so I'm a bit like Yeah, yeah, a bit like vanilla ice with under pressure. It was only after Brian May came to him with lawyers that he then decided to stump up and he paid them four million pounds or four million four million dollars, I think, 30 years ago to get the under pressure. So so he he now basically owns the under pressure and now he gets he gets royalties for under pressure.
SPEAKER_04So when you're listening to Queen, you're funding vanilla ice. Take a look in the mirror.
SPEAKER_02He's worth a lot of money. It's funny, it's it's it's one of those like like lies on the internet that um comes around. Have you ever been told that vanilla ice is so broke he works in a bike shop in LA? Yeah, for that. But no, he's worth millions and millions and millions of pounds. He earns $400 million a year just for ice ice behavior.
SPEAKER_04I've always said $400,000, not $400 million a year.
SPEAKER_02Oh, what did I say? $400,000. Oh, sorry, I meant yeah, I meant $400,000. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04$400,000 a year, which still isn't to be sniffed at. It is not doing anything anymore, you know, just letting it passive income, basically.
SPEAKER_02So basically using Queen and David Bowie is the best thing he ever did, you know, just to stop and collaborate and listen. And now we listen. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But see, that's there's there's there's some of the difference there, I think, is that we all know like if you hear a cover or a clear sample, a sample is is literally they've taken the literally taken the sound out of something else and they've used it in their production. And generally people have cleared that, yeah, or they know that there's a certain amount of royalties that will go to someone else because of that. Um except if you count Kanye West. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Kanye West, I think, famously had his he took Darth Punk's um faster stronger, that one, and he sampled that, and I don't think he asked them, and Darth Punk were very unhappy about it. And I think Kanye's thoughts were basically I'm Kanye West, I don't need to ask anybody for anything.
SPEAKER_02Um I'm William Shakespeare, Walt Disney. Um here's a question that we can ask people in uh in the uh comments is uh when you hear are you disappointed when you hear under pressure? Or are you disappointed when you say when you hear, alright, stop?
SPEAKER_04To be honest, I quite like the vanilla rice. I do quite like the vanilla rice one as well, actually, if I'm brutally honest. But uh Yeah, so I think there's a difference though, isn't there, when people cover something, because a cover might be an identical cover almost, or it could be a very fresh take on something. Yeah, but no one in that case is saying, Here's the thing I made entirely by myself.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_04I think the issue is when this someone is saying or someone is not saying, they're just going, I've heard something and I think that's really good. I'm gonna pass it off as my own to make money from that at the expense of this person.
SPEAKER_02Yes. I completely agree that that is the problem. And and I think copyright did not exist 300 years ago. Like pretty much at the very beginning of the 18th century was when the first sort of copyright laws came in, and they were only for sort of 14 years, they weren't for you know much longer. And if you wanted to renew copyright, you know, be beyond 14 years, you'd have to do it again and again. And and I think it's a real sign of expressive individualism. This this sort of this hyper-individualistic Western enlightenment idea that I am a kind of an individual all by myself, and I can have all these novel ideas, and I descend into myself. There's a sort of romanticism really about descending into myself and having my own bold ideas and and and not being a part of a tradition, not being part of a community, but rather locking myself away and having my own blessed thoughts that are sort of mine. I want to pr I want to present them to the world as just mine. Whereas prior to 1700, whether it's literature, you know, all these you know authors would just naturally write a line. And like you get this if you if you read like John Calvin, who's writing in the 16th century, he'll just drop in a line, he doesn't put like inverted commas around it. But if you knew that it was Cyril, well that's Cyril. And if you knew that it was Basil the Great, that's Basil the Great. And he j he just drops in quotes and he doesn't even like footnote them, he doesn't even say who it is, but he kind of expects the reader to think I'm part of a great tradition. It's mashup culture. I I think really interestingly, YouTube has reinvented something that is the norm all around the world and down through history, which is mashup culture. And it's just like, hey, I take that from here, that from here, put them together, whang. But I but I think the as you say, the the the real problem is secretly doing a mashup of this and that and then passing it off as your unique genius and then getting very rich off it. That's the big problem. Yeah. But but the idea that but but I think modern copyright is really problematic in that it criminalizes most people most of the time. Like mil billions of people are breaking the law every day. They don't even know it, and they don't even know why they're breaking the law. And if you explain to them how they're breaking the law in any number of ways, they they wouldn't be able to tell you. Like you know, it's it's illegal to change a single word of a song on a PowerPoint presentation at church. You know, how many how many churches were breaking the law this Sunday?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's illegal to make it's illegal to make copies of anything that was on broadcast TV. It it's illegal to make a copy of a C D. Remember those? But yeah, but but you know, technically, which we all did. For your own even just for your own personal use. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's totally illegal. And it gets to the point where like no matter what website you're on, what software you use, there's just that little button that's the whatever button, and you tick the whatever button, you have no idea what you've just you know, like said yes to because there's and and who wins out of all this? The lawyers like the lawyers are making a making a mint out of this stuff. And it I think it all does boil down to people being very precious and unbiblical about thinking that there is anything new under the sun. So I I you know Steve Jobs is famous for saying that good artists copy great artists steal, and that's shocking. And then he was asked, you know, where where does that saying come from? And he said Picasso, but no one can find Picasso saying it. And then other people say it's James Joyce, other people say it's William Faulkner. It's just the great irony that no one knows the source of this quote, great artists steal. But it's true, it's like we live in a mash-up world. This is totally a mash-up world from Genesis 1 onwards. And I think I think we're kidding ourselves if we think an Ed Sheeran or anyone is an individual genius who can launch onto the world their their brave new ideas.
SPEAKER_04Well, you're not gonna get any arguments from me about Ed Sheeran being a genius as someone who teaches guitar, he's the bane of my life.
SPEAKER_02Why? Doesn't he get people interested in guitar?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but to like it to the most mediocre level of ability, like you know, it's it's it's just you know, I'm being a bit of a snob about it. I'm just like uh I'm like here he is, he's got his four chords, which he's stolen from someone else.
SPEAKER_02They're good chords, yeah.
SPEAKER_04The thing is, I do always say to all my students as well, I'm like, you don't need to be technically proficient to write good songs because you know there's so many songs out there which use the same chords round and round and round. And once you've got a few basic chords, you can write great songs. Yeah. Um, but you know, and there's and and I do a thing, I do a thing with them where I when I've taught them certain chords, when they've got a few chords under their belt, I go, right, here's the four chord song. And I say, Right, which of these songs, a big list, I've got the chord progression. I say, out of all these songs, which ones do you know? Yeah, you know, and I just say, right, these are all the same chords. Yeah. You say that once you've got these four chords down, you can play all these songs.
SPEAKER_02Which is beautiful. Yeah, which is beautiful. It's the Packabell Canon.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, chords, isn't it? Well, even just the other day, like a kid wanted to learn this the Love Me Again John Newman song, which if you don't know it, you'll recognise it if you hear it, but I'm not gonna sing it for you. Um and he's and he didn't know what the chords were, and I was working it out, and I said, Oh, this sounds really familiar. And it's the same chords as Get Lucky by Darf Punk. Now the songs sound radically different, but it's the bait although they're in a different key, the chords, same basic progression. Yeah. So I'm there going, Oh, this sounds familiar. And I'm going, Oh yeah, I've pulled that to get lucky, you know. Um, and he's like, Oh yeah, I love that song. And I'm like, Well, it's just the same thing. You said you could mash it up, I said, Right, and work out a way to mash it up.
SPEAKER_02Well, exactly. So isn't it ironic that today the the producer who um produced Let Me Go There Which is one of our videos, which is one of our videos, our Christmas video from a couple of years ago was Let Me Go There, and I wrote a song to it with the four chords. And our producer, Michael Tinker, um, put it together, and we got a brilliant vocalist, and um and we we made the song, and then a few weeks ago, my sister was just listening to random songs on Spotify, and she said, Have you heard this? Listen in at 2 minutes 38, and I will I will play to you these two songs um at their relevant places and see if you can see if you can spot any similarities whatsoever in these totally independent creations. Alright, that's so that's that's number four quotes. Now I th I thought that Alm I thought that Alm song Um had come in later than this song, but it turns in M that my producer Michael Thinker says no. Actually, we got in there first before Forest Black came in with this song. Different key, slightly different tempo, remember?
SPEAKER_04So at that point you've done the complete about face on your original thing. Forest Black. You'll be hearing from my solicitors. You better lawyer up, Forest Black. We've got a GoFundMe page now to fund our lawsuits.
SPEAKER_02And you know, i there are these four four magical chords, and you know, those are just four notes over the top. And what are the odds? That there must be another fifty songs that use that kind of melody over the top of those four chords.
SPEAKER_04I suppose, but some of it is well, is to do with I mean, it's not just the the even the I mean, the melody is one thing, isn't it? And people often because you can't copyright a chord progression because it's so common. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And people
SPEAKER_04Say the melody is the thing. But even within a melody, you're going to find let's say you're playing over an A minor chord, you're not going to be surprised to find notes from the A minor chord in the melody, you know, A, C, and E, and then it changes to a G chord, you won't be surprised to find G's, B's, and D's being sung over the top of that because it's in the chord. So there's always going to be that element of the melody is led by the chords anyway. Um but it's so it depends, you know. I I don't know exactly what the notes are and what is being played there. Are all those notes kind of what you'd expect to be hearing, you know, you know. I was gonna say, is it quite a generic thing, you know, without meaning that in a negative sense, but is it just very much following what's going on there? Yeah. Um but I guess some of it comes down to is uh when the is it not just the same melody and things, but what about the orchestration of things and sometimes I mean actually that is remarkably similar as well. Yeah, yeah, so the lawsuit begins soon and um it will be. But yeah, I think the four million pound lump sum.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think you're right, it can't just be a core progression, it can't just be a melody, and it can't just be kind of orchestration, it's gotta be like all those things together. But I think we've just seen an example of those three things coming together like so similarly, and those two songs coming out within like a few months of one another. Um so that's always gonna happen, isn't it? And what do we think?
SPEAKER_04Because there were some other people who have been accused of this, um who'd also been I think Dua Lipa was recently pulled up on this about her song Levitating, and she was kind of pulled up by another group called Article Sound System, yeah who said that her song uh was very, very similar. Uh shall we see the clip? Yeah. So this is Rick Beatto, a YouTuber who's kind of comparing these two songs.
SPEAKER_00Let's check out the similarities. Let me play the Dua Lipa song first. That's actually both songs playing at the same time. I actually sped up the Live Your Life song so that it'd be the same tempo. But as you can hear, here's Live Your Life. Let's just do a leaflet.
SPEAKER_04So there we go. I mean, I mean, there's really a moment at the beginning there where Rick's like, I'll just pay you this one. Oh, actually, that's both of them at the same time. I mean, those are so similar. Yeah. Um to my mind, if that's not a copyright issue, nothing is. Nothing is like because even the it's not just the the orchestration is very similar, like the rhythm of it, the melody is basically the same, even the rhyme scheme is similar, you know. All night style like then there have been people saying, you know, again, that's just these are very common, common progressions of chords. Yep. You know, the rhythm is a is a common kind of Charleston type feel over the top. So where'd you go with it?
SPEAKER_02Like, yeah. And again, one of the places I want to go is is back in history, and you know, so Bach was always like taking like he'd take the Ave Maria and he'd like he'd write a write a cantata underneath it and and sort of mash these things up. And you know, although for him it'd be the the Ave Redemptor or whatever the Protestant version is, but but you know, and and you get this cantus firmus thing, which is which is just you like you take uh you take one melody and you add a different melody, and this is always this is always kind of happening. But if it is indeed the case that Dua Lipa like heard that song beforehand and said, I could nick that. Yeah, um, that's not on in in in terms of passing it off as as your own. Um Lee Fernie's made made some excellent contributions already in the top chat. He said, Imagine a world with no plagiarism, it's easy if you try. And then he clarified, he footnoted his top chat. If you could provide references in your top chat, he then he then says um lifted from Milton Jones.
SPEAKER_04So that's good because Milton will now receive some of the royalties for that joke. So that's okay.
SPEAKER_02He will receive 15% of your laughter. Um you can send that to him. Um also in the top chat, uh Jennifer Lynn Smith says when a songwriter thinks up a melody, it's not it's just not always going to be never thought up before. Yes, two people can randomly think up similar melodies. Absolutely. Um, and then Lee applies this to scholarship. He says, How does the relaxed view of we're all just a reflection of our influences fare? When we get to academic scholarship and biblical scholarship in particular, there was a recent scandal with Peter O'Brien whose books were withdrawn, and John MacArthur has faced recent accusations. And again, I think the the problem is first of all, we're trying to inhabit a world in which everything is everyone's own special little creation. Like if John MacArthur has study assistants who do the I d I don't know the the exact details of of this, but I know that sometimes pastors get their study assistants to basically take a sermon transcript of theirs and pretty it up and actually a whole bunch of different people have done the hard work. Right. And John MacArthur's name goes on the on the cover. If that's if that's what's going on here. Um again, the problem is that we we are thinking that this this knowledge is coming from the genius of John MacArthur and he is uniquely contributing to this, as opposed to being far more laissez-faire about hey, there's a community of people working on this and I don't need to take credit. So I think I think that's the trying to pass things off as your own is is already the problem.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And there's been I mean there's been discussions to do with that in regards to preaching, hasn't there? Like whether you some some people have been accused of just lifting other people's sermons entirely and preaching them. Um I don't know how we feel about that, you know, if you've just lifted because at the end of the day though, I mean all of our sermons are in some way built up off other people's work. Yeah. You know, and but and and I will sometimes listen to sermons, you know. I if I'm generally if I'm like I'm really stuck here, I'll go and find other people's sermons on the same passages and listen and go, I'm like, oh yeah, actually that's really helpful. And you might lift some illustrations or you might lift some ideas out of it. Um and what I won't do, I mean what I wouldn't do is say at the front, by the way, just to let you know, this came from so and so, this came from so-and-so. Now, if someone came up to Oshwards and said, Oh, great illustration on the thing, I'd say, Oh, great, oh yeah, I nicked it. You know, I always say that. If someone says to me and I took, oh, it wasn't mine, I said I got it from somewhere else. Yeah, um, but I wouldn't go out of my way also to footnote every single thing because everything would be footnoted. No, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. I've I've had the experience of actually watching and and being surprised. I remember wanting to watch a a trinity a sermon on the Trinity, and I I was watching this guy who I was sort of a vaguely aware of, but I'd never heard any of his sermons, and he just starts the sermon with, I'm gonna mainly be quoting Glenn Scrivenovna. I think he called me Scrive Shrivener, Glenn Shrivener. I was like, What? This is the weirdest thing. I'm hearing my own sermon kind of preached back to me. And he had no compunction about doing it. And and I think that's cool, like like get a better source than me. But if you're if you're just upfront about sort of saying that, then why not?
SPEAKER_04Do you think that's an do you think the only reason I wonder with whether people get funny about it? Like people think, oh, he preached my sermon, and now everyone thinks he's really good. And like, is it just because he you're not really care, you don't not so bothered about the message, it's just you want to be accolade about yourself. Like, exactly.
SPEAKER_02And what's the what's the yeah, what's that hackneyed quote? It's like it's amazing what you can get done if you don't care who gets the credit. Right. I think that's totally true. And like as an Anglican, at the end of the Book of Common Prayer, there are literally all these homilies, like some of them were written by Archbishop Cranmer, and some of them written by by others, but they were they were literally because they didn't trust the clergy. So they would they were just literally word for word, you can get up and preach this sermon on justification, and you would just read out the sermon. But again, we bristle at that because we want we want the expressive individualism and we want the genius of the individual.
SPEAKER_04It's funny though, because we people get very funny about you you mustn't copy other people's work, like you mustn't copy other people's preaches, but you also mustn't make up stories. That was that's why but then it's funny. I preached the other day and I had a quite a big story that I ran through the whole thing and and literally the first eight minutes was this story, and then I dropped back to it later. And the whole thing is entirely made up. And it all came off the back of because we had this conversation here where Nate said, Um people often say, don't they, you see people doing it online all the time. Can anyone think of a film where this happens and there's yada yada yada to get an illustration for their sermon? And it's like, well, what is a film? Just a made-up story. So why don't you just make up your own story that actually fits better, you know? And of course, what I did I didn't say at the beginning, this is a made-up story. I sold it as a kind of you know, I just launched into the story, you know. Yeah, I didn't say like this is real, and I didn't say this is fake, I just did the story. And someone came up to us after and said about it, and I and I said, Oh yeah, this is just a story. But you know, like whatever you do, someone's gonna complain, like basically.
SPEAKER_02I love the story of um John Chapman, who is uh a massive influence on a lot of different evangelists all over the world, including Rico Tyson, others in the UK. But he he was once preaching at um uh at St. Helens Bishop's Gate, and and at the end of the sermon, someone came up to him and said, I I really enjoyed your sermon, but why did you feel that you had to steal Rico's story? And Chapo just said, Rico, that bum. Brilliant. Who's stealing from who? And it's okay, no copyright in the kingdom. No, no, brilliant, brilliant.
SPEAKER_01This conversation went out live on our YouTube channel. You can watch it and all of our other conversations at youtube.com forward slash speaklifemedia. We're on the other social media platforms, just search for Speak Life UK. That will keep you posted. And why not join us when we next go live? You can also email comments and questions to info at speaklife.org.uk.
SPEAKER_04Speak Life is supported entirely by the generosity of people like you, especially through your prayers. If you'd like to contribute financially, regular one-off donations are much appreciated, and you can do that at speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. If you're a regular giver, you can request access to our Discord server where you can join us for more conversation and exclusive behind-the-scenes content. Let's get back to the podcast. One thing we've been checking about then for the last few weeks as part of our Lent series has been the Apostles' Creed. So we've kind of been taking a chunk every week, haven't we? I think we've done I've used track, we've done two chunks so far. Yep, this is a third week now in uh Lent. So we've just been taking a little couple of lines from the Apostles' Creed each week and just having a bit of chat about them, really, and thinking, what are these? Um what do they what do they mean? Now I'm gonna read out the first two chunks and today's chunk, because um last time someone said, I don't really know the Apostles' Creed, so yeah, it's worth kind of doing it. Um is it more of an Anglican thing generally? I mean, obviously it didn't start out as an Anglican thing, but to mostly Anglicans use it use it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean Anglicans have more creeds, and it was it was very much part of baptismal preparation, which was a Lenten thing, and you prepare you prepare your baptisans for baptism on Easter Sunday, and this is this is kind of the summary of the doctrine that you're really delivering to the people.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So it starts off, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, he descended to the dead. And that's where we're gonna stop for now, because that was our last chunk there. From a bit of a downer. Yeah, gonna stop there. Suffered under Pontius Pilate, yeah. Yeah, what happened next? Tune in next week. Yeah. Uh suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, he descended to the dead. So those are the kind of little lines we're looking at today. Um it struck me, kind of reading it, that I assume that when they say suffered under Pontius Pilate, they're really trying to ground the life and death of Jesus in a specific time. The Pontius Pilate. The Pontius Pilate bit. That this is a you know, you can say, you know, Jesus was crucified, and actually it was a historic event. Pontius Pilate was the guy who was in charge of this region at the time, so it's it's a historical thing, it's not you know just this kind of mythical dream time. Dream time that could have happened anywhere or any when. Yeah, it's a very specific thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, we've noticed that before with the creeds. Like you go to other religions, and if you sort of go to Islam, you hear all about a quite static God and a very busy humanity. So Allah's got his 99 names, and then they're all about sort of his perfections. And then humanity are all about doing the stuff, going on the pilgrimages and the prayers and the fasting and that sort of thing. Um, or Buddhism, you know, you've got your four noble truths that are quite static truths, and then your eightfold path. And so again, it's ultimate reality is static and humanity's busy. Whereas the Apostles' Creed is totally different. God is busy, God is the one doing things, and all we do is shut up and listen and believe stuff. And the story is a story that happens in our world, so God really, really descends down. And the named figure that we had prior to Pontius Pilate was the Virgin Mary. So there are two named um humans in the Apostles' Creed, apart from Jesus, but but the Virgin Mary, so you've got a teenage, Jewish, poor woman, and then you've got Pontius Pilate, who is a rich, powerful Roman like man. And it that sort of frames the story that Jesus really enters human history through the Virgin's womb and really dies under Pontius Pilate, the fourth governor of Judea. And so, yeah, it's really, it's really not dreamtime. This is really our history. God has left footprints on this earth. Um, and then what's really being underlined so many times, he suffered, was crucified, died, was buried, descended to the dead. It's like six words that basically say down, down, down, down, down, down, down. And the down and up language is brilliant in the Apostles' Creed. It's so simple, you know, a child can understand this. It's, you know, Jesus came down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, and then next week we'll find out that he rose, rose, rose, rose, rose, and and and up he kind of goes. But it it's again part of this story that we're telling. And it is the maximally great story. You could not conceive of a greater story because you could not have a higher figure, Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who descends to a deeper depth and then is raised again to a greater height in order to have a more enduring effect for more people on the planet. Like it's it's just it's just really it's it's a little bit like in in Ephesians 3 when it talks about how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Jesus. And you see how deep it goes, because he suffered, crucified, died, buried, descended to the dead. You know? And it's and it's also a a very surprising thing, and again, when you sort of lay it next to Muslim statements of faith, they're like, So your God died? Like what kind of what kind of what kind of God ends up on a cross? And you know, I I once did a debate with uh an imam from Nottingham, and I I sort of asked him, like, within Islam, is there anything that Allah has done to prove that he loves you? Like, has he has he actually has he actually shown up? Because you know, within Islam you you might go to paradise if you're a good good Muslim, but Allah will not be in paradise. He doesn't even descend, he certainly doesn't descend to earth, and he would never descend to the cross. And I s and I said, like, is there anything in Islam that Allah actually does in order to demonstrate love? And he said, Well, there's this this time when a woman goes to Muhammad, um, her husband treated her appallingly and divorced her illegitimately, um, but the law left her at a loose end. And then Muhammad received from Allah a special revelation that he could change the law of divorce, and that was a mercy to this woman. I'm like, wow, talk about a compare and contrast, you know, like Allah tweaked a little bit of legislation so that a woman could have a more fair divorce. And our God suffered, was crucified, died, was buried, he descended to the dead. And I sort of said to him, you know, if on if on the way to Friday prayers you spot a seven-year-old girl who has fallen into a canal, right? Um, but you're you're wearing your Friday best, like, what are you going to do? We know what you're going to do. Like, you're you're going to dive into that canal no matter how dirty you get, right? And you're going to save that girl, and you'll arrive at at the mosque disheveled and a hero, and everyone will praise you, and you know, you know that is the right thing to do. And yet, does God do that? Or does God stay at a distance? And like you know, you you know that the more glorious thing is actually to suffer, be crucified, die, be buried, descend to the dead.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because it's a love story, you know? He's plumbing, he's plumbing the depths, and that's that's what's beautiful about the creed. It's you know, our God actually does stuff. Our God is is not static, our God is a central character. You know, the the the other thing I I love thinking about with this is um Darren Brown was once asked what the secret is of his magic. Yep. And he said, you know, so many other magicians, they're just like the you know, the Paul Daniel. He didn't mention Paul Daniel, you know, the the sort of magician that just flicks their fingers and the the rabbit appears out of a hat or the the flowers appear from nothing up the sleeve and then boom. And it's all effortless, it's all click of the fingers. And he he says, What's uninteresting about that is that it's a god story that's being told, you know, because God, in Darren Brown's imagination, just effortlessly Deus Ex Machina, just right, yeah, yeah. Deus Ex Machina, the the the the god coming from outside the machine just quickly fixes everything. Yeah. And he said that's not very dramatically interesting. What's dramatically interesting is the hero story. And we all know what the hero story is. The hero story is that you in weakness you descend into the pit and you fight the monster and you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and somehow through struggle you triumph. He said, That's the story that really resonates with you. That's the story I try to do with my magic, not the god story. There. The hero story, you know? And you just listen to that and you just think, well, what if what if the hero story is the god story? What if the god story is the hero story? And the Apostles' Creed is like, here's the God story. It is the hero story. Yeah, you know, and you like this there's nothing better than this. This is this is this is just awesome. And so, like, and again, like you you hear about creeds and it's like, oh, it sounds sounds a bit dry and dusty. But my goodness, it's it's so radical. Because right at the heart of this creed, I don't know how many words there are in the creed, but I'm I'm pretty sure descended to the dead is is right at the center, which in ancient texts is the like the most important bit, it's the crux. Right. Well, in Latin the word crux is cross. Sure. Right at the heart of our vision of God is He descended to the dead. Um, it's it's stunning stuff, it's absolutely revolutionary, it's completely disruptive, it's utterly built our world. Little plug for the air we breathe. Book coming out very soon.
SPEAKER_04But I've got a book coming out called The Oxygen We Inhale. The Oxygen We Inhale. I just came up with that my own cell phone. I don't know where it came from.
SPEAKER_02Lawyer up, lawyer up, Paul Feasy. I'm coming after you. That's fine. See, I'd be happy. I'd be happy for other people. I mean, I've ripped my I've ripped off Tom Holland, who ripped off Larry Sidontop, who lift off all these other people. Like Tom Holland couldn't even get his own name. He just stole it from Spider-Man. I think you'll find the historian came first, but yeah, never mind. But yeah, yeah, but but in terms of a story being ripped off, like in one sense, all our stories are ripped off from this story. Like all the Marvel comics, like all the all the stories that the other Tom Holland, you know, stars in are based on this. And in another sense, it's totally um unparalleled, because in no other religion or philosophy is God Himself taking this journey. And yet this is this is you know the most high who is descending to such depths. So it's pretty beautiful stuff, I reckon.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, incredible what's in there, really, isn't it? We for those of us who maybe say these creeds quite often, it's easy to just kind of gloss over them quite quickly, isn't it, and not to really think about some of those things. We're so familiar with the idea of the God who comes down, yeah. Um gets his you know, gets his hands dirty that we kind of forget the radical nature of that to the society it was written in, and yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all pre-Christian and all non-Christian cultures find it a scandal, which is what the New Testament says it is. It's it's a stumbling block, it's a scandal, it's it's it's absolutely crazy. But but the beautiful thing about the the church service that we had on Sunday, um at the end of it, there was a guy who is is on the outside of Christian faith, he's been looking in for a long time, and I basically just said to him, Look, um John the Baptist, the first words he says of Jesus, behold the Lamb of God, look at the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And the whole of Christianity is basically you look and look and look at that sacrifice, the one on the cross, and you keep looking until you think that's ultimate, that's the best, that's the most incredible thing, that's glory. He is Lord. You keep looking at that, and and I just said, and and because of who it is and what he's there to do, he has he has descended in order to save us. It's the ultimate love story. You keep looking until you think there's nothing greater than this. And when you start when you start to think that, you're becoming a Christian. And fascinatingly, as I was sort of saying that, somebody sort of interrupted and said, Oh, would you like a biscuit? Would you like a biscuit? It was it was the best interruption, actually, because I got to shut up for a second. And he got to think about it. And there were tears in his eyes when he said, I've never thought about it like that. It is the great love story, isn't it? I was like, Well, yeah, you're so close to faith. Like when you look there and you think that's what it looks like to be God, that's faith. That's it. And you just say, I believe. Welcome to the club.
SPEAKER_04Great stuff, great stuff. Um, well, we'll crack on with the next part of the Creed next week. Hope you found that helpful. And uh, as always, if you've got more thoughts on either what we talked about on the Creed um or any of the bits we've chatted about into to do with kind of copyright and stuff like that, um, do let us know down in the comments. We'd love to hear from you. Maybe you've got other things, other songs you can think of that uh you can think of borrowed heavily from other places. But uh, so let us know your suggestions, but also let us know what you think about these topics as well. And uh yeah, thanks, Glenn. Good chat. Thank you, Paul, very much.
SPEAKER_01It is now time for the final musings of the podcast.
SPEAKER_03It's the final musings.
SPEAKER_01Well, you heard myself and Paul Feesey in that little jingle there, which we're just gonna be up front about this. That was based off the final countdown, which is a popular song. So normally I would do this final section with Paul Feasy, but we were actually very busy yesterday wallpapering the Speakeasy set. And that will be visible on Facebook and YouTube live streams shortly. Quick reminder that you can still apply to the Speak Life Foundry to be a student here for 10 months. Just go to speaklifefoundry.com and you can find out more. But thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next time.