Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 438 of the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Thomas Thoroughgood, media producer at Speak Life, and today Glenn Scrivener and Nate Morgan Locke are talking about the Harry and Megan documentary mini series, which has just been released on Netflix. So I will hand straight over to them for the conversation. If you would like to watch this conversation as a video, you can find it on our new YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash at the Speak Life Podcast, and that's an at symbol like you'd use in an email address. And you can find it there.
SPEAKER_04We're Angel's fear to tread. We're talking about H and M. My name is G, and uh joining me is NML. There we go. Apparently that's what we're meant to do. Just just use the initials. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07I've been uh after my reaction to H and M, I've been referring to myself as Piers Morgan Locke. Okay. But no, I'm not because I didn't want to get into this topic. We are here. We are here.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and uh the with all the dangers, we are kind of uh embracing the danger of stepping into this maelstrom of media chaos. Um part of the danger of talking about Harry and Meghan, whose uh documentary is now completed, I guess for now. The six parts have just dropped on Netflix.
SPEAKER_00It's really hard to look back on it now and go, what on earth happened?
SPEAKER_04The danger is that they are avatars of something much greater, and then obviously the royals are avatars of something much greater. The media that covers the royals is cartoonish in lots of different ways. The t certainly the tableau press is cartoonish. Social media and the new media world is pretty cartoonish and caricaturist in in what's going on, and so we're all arguing about caricatures of avatars, of grand principles and universalizing kind of ideas and concepts. And who knows if any of this actually relates to the human beings that are Harry and Megan and William and Kate, and let's not forget all the other people who are involved in this. Um so th those are some of the dangers, don't you think?
SPEAKER_07And and because we're in the we talked in the last episode about uh ethos, pathos, and logos, and now we're in the realm of mythos.
SPEAKER_03Oh, come on.
SPEAKER_07Actually, I just started reading uh a book I've been wanting to read for a while. Narrative apologetics by Alistair McGrath. Really, really helpful book. Um but yeah, just talking about the what is what's the power of persuasion? The power of persuasion is story, right? And you need to tell the story, you need to tell your story, yeah, and you have to use the things of story, which are these deeply rooted characters and types and uh archetypes. Um and so we have what is apparently a great love story. A fairy tale. A fairy tale.
SPEAKER_04Yes. A great love story framed both at beginning and end as the fairy tale of the princess marrying the prince, and she gave up everything to be in his world. And then he gave up and then he gave up everything to be in her world, and the grand finale, and I predicted this before before they got to the end, they would end with love wins. And that's final line Love wins love wins, which is um a hashtag, I guess. Or it's a farewell from Rob Bell.
SPEAKER_07That's very soon. Um yeah, so the the beloved wins thing. So when so Harry Harry opens that and it's in the first episode, this is a great love story. And the problem is it isn't. Right? It really isn't. It is It's an okay love story. Well Charles Fraser, I'm sure we'll get into his his article uh that he wrote in Unheard, talks about it being of an incredibly ordinary romance. Yeah. Right? And it is, it is so ordinary. Yeah. When they're telling the story of how boy meets girl, yeah, it there are no s no real stakes, there's no real obstacles. Yes. There's I liked you, you liked me, we met on the first day, it went well, we wanted to do another one, it was well. Our lives are busy, so we had some scheduling issues. Yes. I kept having to leave uh Canada and fly to the UK. Right. Oh, that's hard, it's pressure. And there was all this issue around the press coverage. Yep. But there's no jeopardy. There is no, there is nothing. It's not like, well, it was going so well, but then some message um from the palace came and said, You must not marry this woman. Yes. And so then I said, by golly, I can't. Yes. And then I looked at her again, and then of course I had to give up my agreed riches.
SPEAKER_04Exactly.
SPEAKER_07So but there's nothing of that in their coming together story.
SPEAKER_04So there's opulence and affluence because it's it's not like they met at a wimpy burger. They met at a very highfalutin restaurant and and and the the flights that they had to have, it's not bombing down the M1 to see your you know, beloved on the weekend. It's flying first class from Canada and and all that.
SPEAKER_07So and and being, you know, that they're at great pains to show, particularly Megan's friends, in the first few episodes. She was a woman in her own right, with her own humanitarian work, with her own activist profile, with her own groundbreaking role on suits, right? She was already this absolute global superstar who was being used by the UN and all the sort of stuff. And she met this wonderful Prince of England who's, you know.
SPEAKER_04Prince Charming.
SPEAKER_07Who's gonna be there? And you're like, well, so where is the that's not a fairy tale story?
SPEAKER_04So what's interesting is that they broke it uh after three episodes and then sort of dived back into the story in episode four. And the what was interesting is that was around the wedding. So the wedding is what happens in in episode four. Yeah and I think in in your typical storytelling kind of arc, the inciting incident is this call to adventure and and something goes wrong, right? Um that that means that you will have to step out of your safe environment and into you know the struggle. Into the unknown. Into the unknown. And what's interesting is in this story, the wedding is the inciting incident rather than the fairy tale ending. The the wedding is where things start to go wrong. And I wonder whether that's a sign of the kind of stories that we're telling about ourselves. You know, the wedding is the inciting incident and ever and things kind of go wrong, but the happily ever after, I guess, is they're back on Instagram and you know the they're they're able to kind of enjoy expressing themselves with a kind of Californian freedom. Yeah, and that's the happy ending rather than the wedding being well.
SPEAKER_07That's what's interesting to finish episode six with the the wedding speech that Megan gave, right? And the Love Winds thing. And also you're still finishing on Harry's literally driving off into the sunset, right? Multiple shots of him reflecting on that sort of stuff. So it's still using a classic ending and the the call back to the wedding as like, oh no, we still need to land on a wedding, we still need to have the happy couple in their, you know, their mansion in California and to be gathered, you know, with their family around them, right? You still sort of need that sort of thing. But the wedding of Windsor is one that's that is being used, as you say, as a sort of inciting incident. I mean we should probably get on to the I mean I I really struggled to watch it, I really didn't enjoy watching it, and I and I I was got very sort of angry watching it because it is so, so profoundly narcissistic. Notwithstanding any of the potential abuse or harm or bullying or all sorts of of awful things that might have happened, right? And lots and lots of what they're saying might be might be true, right? It might the the whole documentary might just be one truth bomb after another, and it all stands up and will stand up, you know, to scrutiny, right? Saying that that it all might be there, this is still profoundly narcissistic. This is not the this is exposing a worldview that is so ego egotistical, so uh so self-aggrandizing and self-congratulatory that it actually makes you less able to hear the questions of abuse, um trauma, bullying. Actually, those things are are are swallowed by the narcissism of of this film or of this series. That that so yeah, but I don't know why.
SPEAKER_04I think you've had a stronger reaction to it than than me in terms of like probably most people I think it'd be fair to say because I I'm like, yeah, I'm not sure I can believe your framing of events here, Megan. I think there's a I think there's a track record of you saying things and then when fact checkers come in it it proves not to be the case. Um but I so I think on the so let's go with the avatars. So um so Megan and Harry in this fairy tale are representing independence, liberty, self-expression, expressive individualism. That's the riding off into the sunset in California. They are expressing that. And of course, on the other side is the old world of the institution of royalty of duty. Now, when when their side kind of metastasizes, it's all about ego, right? Um what they would say is ah, we have released ourselves from the cloying kind of um bondage of not having a personality, not being able to have a voice, and we have finally been able to break free, and there's a there's finally an eye that can have a view that can speak. Of course, when that metastasizes, it's all about I. It's all about me, and it becomes the egotism. There it there is on the the royal duty side a metastased kind of version of that in which people they do get their hooks into you and they bleed you dry because it's all about the institution and there is no place for me. Right. Where's where's the where's the place where's the role of the individual in the institution for the individual in the institution? And you know, the there's a there's a clash going on there because because that side can metastasize too. And there there there is a danger of the the crushing of the person in order to serve this institution that just rolls on down through the centuries. Yeah. And I think and and that's what's being presented to us. But if all you're hearing is egotism, yeah, then you're not gonna hear the the genuine kind of hey, hang on, yeah. I was crushed here, I said I had suicidal thoughts, and that was just brushed away. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07You know, and and I can see the point that you say, you know, um, if you go into an institution already with a mindset of of self-promotion and and of having a publicist, and and like this might not go very well, okay? It's it's quite possible to say there was a real lack of a prof oh, sorry, a a profound lack of of forethought in terms of what a an English uh prince marrying an American actress was would would produce. It was almost like everyone was just going, oh let's not worry about that. Yeah. Apparently. Because the two things are so utterly uh sort of against each other. The the the correct comparison I think to make is I mean there's lots of comparison made between between Kate and and Megan, and we can go into the fact that that's actually there's some comparison made, and it's lacking in any real information about what's going on there. But the comparison is really between Megan and Queen Elizabeth II. And so you have someone who is, as you say, is is is is the institution, right? And who is the role, and who is who has done it's sort of been about sort of self-denial through and through and through and through, and a did you how well did we get to know the person? Well, we got to know them pretty well, but it took us 70 years or so, and it was all quite sort of protected. And then someone who is about uh growing their name, like im increasing their celebrity, getting bigger roles, trying to grow the influence, and those two things are are not going very well. So I think I think from my point of view the issue is you have the aspirational actress against the sort of downplaying institution. That those two things are working completely oppositionally.
SPEAKER_04And interestingly, she seemed to come in and think that the institution was a a a public-facing thing, and that behind closed doors well, you don't curtsy in private, do you? And when we come come indoors, there's not a level of formality regarding the queen, is there? She clearly didn't fathom that. And that's and and I believe her about that. You know, she like she she talks in in the early episodes about she just wasn't prepared for the fact that when they got home from a function, they didn't kick off their shoes and down some gins and just let their hair down. There was they they really took this institution seriously all the way down, and that this family all the way down was also an institution. It's not that above the surface level there's the institution, and underneath there's a f she didn't find that. And part of that, I think, is about the nature of the royal family, and part of that is English people, right? And and and and yet I I think that culture clash was being mapped onto the the institutional royal side of things, such that you know she couldn't really get through. I mean, and someone who's grown up in California is is is not going to understand British. You know, and I mean to call the royal families posh is like redundant. But how how does a Californian come across posh English people? Um that's always going to be an issue. But I I I think she she couldn't quite believe going into this thing that the institution went all the way down and that there is something right and proper and good about curtseying, let's say, um, even if it's in private. And it's not and that's not just for show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not and at that point I th I because I think she had an idea of royalty that's more like celebrity life in California than royalty as it actually is in the old world. And the the there's that kind of misunderstanding. And and I I think, yeah, I I believe her when she says I wasn't really prepared for that. You know.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Yeah. I I I think the the the struggle in terms of what preparations were taking place sort of for them as a couple and for for her kind of joining the family in in all sorts of ways, is that you've actually got two quite different ideas being presented at the same time and not challenged as being so which one was it kind of really going on? So you have the idea that I had to Google the national anthem.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_07So that well, I mean, it's not not that big a deal in one sense, but by the same token, um, you're being told you were not allowed to send photographs or invite certain people to the wedding, sort of thing. So so on the one hand, you have this thing which is I was completely left alone, I was ignored, people turned their backs on me, and there was no support, no introduction, I had no idea what a walkabout was. I had to go to Nottingham. I mean, like that's genuinely one of the best things. Like, but then we had to go, and I couldn't believe it, we had to go to Nottingham. Squee? Yeah, but then actually, we nailed it. We nailed Nottingham. We were so good. We were like the best people at visiting Nottingham ever. No one had ever visited Nottingham like we did. We practically invented Nottingham, right? So there's so it's like set up like within the storytelling of the documentary, it's set up as though it's a big ordeal. So is it that you weren't prepared? Yep. And you had to go through these things with no one giving you any instruction whatsoever.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Or is it that you were being controlled? Every single part of your life was being sort of checked and and you were being crushed in into conformity. Yes. And you think well, uh those two things very difficult. Pick one.
SPEAKER_04Uh that was that was one of I think I counted nine um dilemmas in the in the documentary that really struck me, where I just wanted to ask, which is it? You know, uh is it respect our privacy or watch our documentaries?
SPEAKER_06Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04Which is it? Um is the media a pack of wolves or do they write out checks? Um is it wrong to sell your story to the media, including using your mother and children without their consent? Or is it fine?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um is the most important thing about Meg her race, or is she just another girl? And at points there's one, and at points there's the other. And I can I well understand that in different contexts that comes to the four more. Yeah. But if you're always in charge of when it's important and when it's not important, then other people are gonna say, well, oh, are we allowed to notice? Are we not allowed to notice? Which, you know, should we all make much of the racial makeup of the royals? Which from one point she was encouraging us to do, yeah. Or must we never mention it?
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally never.
SPEAKER_04Um is Lilibet's red hair and blue eyes noteworthy? Which the documentary says it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or are we racist racist for finding that interesting?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I found that interesting.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Right? Oh, red hair. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I guess I guess that's more from her dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Are we are we are we even allowed to say that? Quite possibly. Quite possibly. Yeah. Um is prejudice really bad, or are the Brits all tin pot jingoistic racists? Which there was especially in the early episodes.
SPEAKER_07There was a lot of kind of flag waving, yeah. Look at those Brexit-loving British people. Um and and another thing, which is which is to say, you know, that there was a it really interesting build-up to uh Meghan's um Star on the Rise, right? That that the royal family were all in attendance at some event in November 2019 or something. Uh they've all got their sort of um remembrance sort of poppies on. And they and the next day and they were at they were at um Buckingham Palace, and they go for breakfast, and no what's happened. The whole royal family was there, and who's the telegraph put on the front? It's Megan. Oh, she's too popular. She would have been a popular population. She's too popular. Yeah. She's her her her star is in the ascendancy, and people get jealous, right? And then that gets compared with exactly the same time, gets compared with Diana speaking about going to Australia and um see it's all your fault. Yeah. Um, they're going to Australia and the crowds wanting to have Diana walk down her side, their side, rather than have Charles, and so that kind of thing. Yeah. And the jealousy. And again, you think, okay, what's going on there? I mean, that's genuine, that's real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. Absolutely fine. It's fine to do that. However, you've also got at the same time, um, she was getting all this bad press. She was hated by the British press. Yes, that's the first thing. The British press were constantly saying nice things about uh Kate and they would say terrible things about Megan. Look, all these articles, bum, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, side by side. It's so atrocious. Yep. So which one is it? Is it that the press loves you and everyone's jealous, and then they come in? Yep. Which is one timeline that doesn't fit with this thing in 2019, just before they they announce kind of the thing.
SPEAKER_04And so I I think though those dilemmas where one side of the dilemma is being chosen at one point, and then another side of the dilemma is being chosen at another point, is a sign that we are taking these facts and pressing them into um a very set fairy tale narrative, you know. You know, and and manipulating the the facts as as we go. And and I mean the the thing that really bugged me is is this really a documentary?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say. Yeah, once you once you are telling a story and you see that tension, you need to ask the obvious question, which is so which is it? Yep. And there was absolutely zero uh pushback questioning of their their sort of cause of events, which I suppose even the questioning with a you know sort of that sense that this is. My truth is that if you question my recollection of the events, you're questioning me, you're somehow sort of invalidating me as a person because I can't actually I'm I'm so deeply involved in my own understanding of the truth that to be challenged on it would be would be to attack me personally.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And that is what makes the documentary so well, and because you know that there can't really be a genuine comeback from the royals, you know. Will William's not gonna do six hours on Netflix.
SPEAKER_07Well that's that's the thing, it's like now's the time for us to tell our story, right? So you're gonna get the their their series of events because apparently the other side has been told.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07We've literally not heard there there is no documentary series about you know William and Kate.
SPEAKER_04And I think that's that's so interesting about new world new media power versus old world, old media power. Um, because there is there is such a thing as institutional power, and of course the royals are powerful, like in a very old world sense. And of course, the kind of the legacy media, of course, the Daily Mail, of course tabloid press has a kind of power, like of course they do. But of course, Netflix does, and Spotify does, and Instagram does, and someone who is good at harnessing social media has an incredibly different kind of power. And it it does remind me a little bit about some of the church abuse stuff that we've we've covered uh in the last couple of years, that within the church there is a very ancient kind of a platform called the pulpit, and there's institutional power, and there's a very new media that is not constrained in the same ways and has more possibilities for calling things out at the same time, and you get that kind of clash of um how how are we how are we going to forward our interests? And what's fascinating about that is both sides do not generally acknowledge the kind of power that they have. So an old world kind of a preacher who's just used to the way things have always been is not always alert to the fact that what you say from that pulpit carries a power and a weight and a spiritual authority that can really damage people. Yeah. And there is such a thing as spiritual abuse, and and there there is a way of misusing that kind of authority. At the same time, on social media, there is a kind of a wielding of power, a very different kind of a power, but often without the acknowledgement that the things said online carry weight, and you've got a battle that's incredibly mismatched in different ways, and and it is right to raise problems with the institutional power. And we've we've used this platform here to raise problems with institutional power, and I think that's absolutely right, but I need to own the fact that okay, in our tiny little church sphere, I'm quite good at wielding that, and I can say things, and just because it's a YouTube video, doesn't mean it doesn't have power, doesn't have real-world consequences. And is and is and it doesn't mean I can't crush people using new world, new media power. Just as the old world, old media power can crush people. And I and I think part of what's so difficult about this clash is that neither side is good at acknowledging the power that they have and stewarding that and acknowledging that and figuring out, you know, I can hurt people with this thing.
SPEAKER_07The Royals can hurt people, Netflix can hurt people, you know. And just having, as we mentioned it from the outset, this idea of avatars or sort of archetypal figures which which which which aren't real people and which don't take into account the whole person that is before you. Yes. And there is, you know, the the tabloid press obviously does a a terrible job because it it just creates caricatures for us, and we just sort of, you know, we've talked about um you know, Liz Truss, you know. Like, what do you think of Liz Trust? Do you think of Liz Truss as an entire human being with all these different as aspects to her, or do you just think of her as um you know ironically, the curtsy as well. The curtsy, yeah, yeah. That's how we remember curtsy. The balance. Um so you have you got this sense that this is a real genuine person in front of you with fears and failures, yeah, with with guilt and with shame, and with who has who has sinned and been sinned against, and that real complicated thing that makes a human being. Yes. To have six hours of a documentary mainly about Megan rather than being about about Harry, and not to have any genuine sense of her as a person is she the it was it it's all here, it's all from from this at an at arm's length and the gushing you know f sycophantic kind of friends saying how difficult everything was means that she doesn't exist as a real person, right? There is a real person behind that, yeah. And that what's so awful about this this series and what what's such a a shame is that you don't actually get to know that person.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_07Because they are either the the pure innocent victim who's never done anything wrong, or they are the most glorious star that has ever shone in the sky because of their brilliance and their their genius. Yeah. Yep. That is not a real person. Right. And we didn't you don't get to know this person.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and the and I guess that's the that's the real criticism of I guess progressivism as a whole. So, you know, in in my book The Air We Breathe, I I talk about the seventh value, I talk about progress. And here's something that Christianity has given to the world, and Martin Luther King Jr. said the arc of history is long, it bends towards justice, it's profoundly Christian, it's profoundly prophetic idea, it's biblical. Um, but there are different kinds of progress. And I make the caution that, you know, not everything that comes under the banner of co of of progress is good. Um, you know, just look at Chairman Mao and the great leap forward that killed tens of millions of people. Perhaps that's not progress. Yeah. And perhaps not everything that is under the banner of progress is good. Um where it goes wrong is so often in the failure to acknowledge any kind of sin in me or in the other person. Yeah. Because I don't acknowledge sin in me, then there's there's not the humility and the honesty of where I've gone wrong. And because I don't kind of think of the other person as a sinner who can be forgiven, then they are just an evil person who must be, you know, squashed in the rolling tide of history will crush them. Good. Um, and I I think in some ways that this this kind of comes together with Martin Luther King Jr. Um he was he was quoted by Michael Curry, who gave the sermon um at the wedding. At the w the wedding in Windsor, yep. The wedding in Windsor, Harry and Meghan. I thought I thought right there you've got a brilliant um interplay of there's Harry and Meghan having a beautifully modern wedding in lots of different ways. Um and there's George Clooney, and there's David Beckham, and there's Elton John, and and um people are flying in from around the world, and there's a there's a an aspect to which it's it's a celebration of modern love, and it's you know held in Windsor, and it's it's ancient, and you've got this Episcopal bishop, you know, giving the giving the sermon. He starts with Martin Luther King.
SPEAKER_01The late Dr. Martin Luther King once said, and I quote, we must discover the power of love. The redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world a new world. For love, love is the only way. There's power in love.
SPEAKER_04And he kind of waxes eloquent about that. And at that point, he's trying to engage with the Megans of this world, and he's trying to engage with the George Clooneys of this world, and say, here we are celebrating love as this modern thing. And love in this modern thing is let's have a blowout for a wedding and let's write our own vows and let's, you know. Um but what's fascinating is both what Martin Luther King meant and what Michael Curry went on to say in the in the sermon. Martin Luther King, when he said love is the most redeeming power in the world, it was in a sermon called Love Your Enemies. And so that love is not love the lovely, love people who are on your team, love people who are on the on team progress and cancel the rest. Um it's very much in the context, I think he preached that sermon in 1957, and he had a lot of enemies. Yeah. And he really knew what it was to love across, you know, barriers and and and have people um make very serious death threats. And you know, his house was bombed, and who knows how his his you know uh wife and child survived that. Um, but he was he was talking about love your enemies, which is a very different kind of a love. And then Michael Carey goes on in the sermon and he talks about um the love that we're meant to show is the sacrificial love of Jesus. And he says, you know, Jesus did not get a certificate for the way that he loved. People were not praising him for his expression of love. He it was love to the loveless shown.
SPEAKER_00He he he didn't he wasn't getting anything out of it. He gave up his life, he sacrificed his life for the good of others, for the good of the other, for the well-being of the world, for us. That's what love is. Love is not selfish and self-centered. Love can be sacrificial.
SPEAKER_04That that was the day where Megan did her speech about love wins. That was the day when she told her fairy tale about the princess and marrying the prince, and in the end, love wins. But the sermon that was sort of echoing in everyone's mind as she said that gives us two very different visions of what love is. And it's not primarily the romantic love of two people like having an Instagram account together. It's it's the sacrificial love of Jesus, it's the love across boundaries, it's the love of enemy. And I guess my my big thing about the documentary is yeah, love wins, but which love? Which love won in that documentary? And I and I think it was the trite modern self-expressive one.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. It's it's it's interesting how the marriage uh is apparently the thing that this documentary is about, right? Harry and Megan. Um the wedding ceremony was remarkably absent and not not a point of interest, right? We have something about they're gonna sing oh uh what were they gonna sing? What was the song? The choir. It was sort of this kind of old star choir. Yeah, they're gonna be amazing. They sang that. And we had the thing about the drive up uh in which Megan and her mother were incredibly surprised to see all these well-wishes. As though she'd literally become a competition winner the day before. You know, and so glad that she was able to just have a moment eating some what is it, croissants and drinking samosa and feeling peace on the day before. Not interesting, right? Not and no jeopardy, right? And but but what would have been interesting would have been to really push into what was said in that sermon. Yeah. And to to look at what it was that they were promising to do and the way in which uh the marriage ceremony actually functions. But that is for their purposes of no interest. Yeah. Because what's interesting is that we are a perfect couple who have nothing against one another. There was nothing in there about the the the challenge of being married. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there were there was there was fam family is really difficult, keeps breaking down and and you know, Megan. On both sides. Yeah, talks about how she wants it, you know, from the beginning. But we had we had she read out recited a poem about that she wrote when she was eleven about divorce. We didn't investigate that. That was a really interesting thing. Oh, you're both both children, products of divorce, they both use the same phrase. Right? Megan was divorced before she got married to Harry.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_07There was no interest in that at all.
SPEAKER_05No.
SPEAKER_07The prospect that what are the what might have been the causes of divorce, what is it like genuinely, other than you know, why did anyone get divorced?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Apparently just a thing that it just happens in the world.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_07But but all of these sorts of genuinely interesting questions about the nature of love, about the sacrificial nature of love, about the need to love across boundaries and to to to love, as you say, to love those who are undeserving of it, yeah, is just completely absent. Yeah. And this is just a saccharine, you know, um need for the fairy tale. Fairy tales are so much more interesting. You're right.
SPEAKER_04So much more interesting. You're right. You're right. Um, there's no plot, is there? There are there are protagonists, but no real plot. Yeah. Isn't that? It's it's old world, old media, new world, new media. And they've gone in their separate ways. Yeah. Yeah. The end. The end. So where is the marriage? Yeah. Where is the love across boundaries? Yeah. Um so what are so why are we doing this, Nate? Um, so I put on Twitter, you know, Nate and I are gonna talk about Harry and Megan. Quite a few people have like, why?
SPEAKER_07This is the one that people did not want us to make. Um I think part I think as I said begin at the beginning, the the the narcissism that I'm taking from this in terms of how it is so so it's saturated our our our view. You know, people talk about th moral therapeutic deism, right? This is kind of but the morality's changed. The morality is just to thine own self be true, and you know, it's there is there's a real sort of prosperity gospel link to this, in fact. You think look at the you know, the spirituality espoused by Oprah Winfrey or by Tyler Tyler Perry. This is this is a deeply seductive self-fulfilment. Yeah, gospel which which people need to be on their guard against. And I think as you know, uh those who want to speak life, we want to say that there is something so much better than this presentation of the human being. Yeah. There's no mercy in this documentary. There is there is just look at me. It's it's it's it's there's no contrition. There's there's nothing there that that that we know as Christians is the basis and is the grounding of our of our of our salvation and our our our peace. Yeah. You know, that was that whole thing on on truth. I can't have peace without truth. It's like, well, this was not truth. You may have said things that were true, yeah, but you are not this person. And presenting yourself as this person, you can't be that no one could be that person.
SPEAKER_04Well, if you if you are that person, there's a problem. Because the there was there was a great shallowness there. Yeah. Really? Yeah. And I just I just wanted the interviewer off-screen just to like push back at something. Ask some tricky question. Um and I think I think for me, there's the Giles Fraser um wrote a great article for Unheard that you've referenced already. And and he kind of points to these two different conceptions for for what life is is like. And and am I obligated only to the things I've chosen to do? And if you believe that, then your team Sussex, you know, or are there obligations that are incumbent upon me, whether I've chosen them or not?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And actually that is that is more a traditional kind of view, but Giles Fraser's point is is that is what love is actually. That if you if you foreground choice and the expression of the particular and the expression of me, you end up losing love, right? Because it then does become narcissistic. Of course, the you know, as I've said, you know, the problem with the traditional is that where is the sense of me? And am I entirely lost in this institution that just grinds along? But that's not the only way to cast it. In its healthiest sense, love is I belong to you even when I don't feel like it. I belong to you before I chose it, and you belong to me in spite of all the all the things that you might do to not deserve my love or to reject it. Love is about the unconditionality of belonging to someone across divides and in spite of your choice. And like where where I see like the gospel kind of explaining all this is that liberty and the sense of self has been a beautiful fruit of the gospel in this world. Um, the ancient world did not have a sense of the beautiful princess who can stand on her own two feet, right? Yeah, and it was it was very much authority and dominance. And the Christian revolution has brought us this sense of self, this sense of particularity. And and first it sort of brought us this sense that okay, it's not just fate, and it's not just going to be tragic because Jesus rose from the dead. Love won. Yeah. Love won over that one inevitability, which and it that suddenly birthed this this idea that okay, there's a there is a happily ever after, and it birthed this sense that in union with Christ, the the one necessity in life can be transcended. And it's and you started to believe in choice and you started to believe in freedom. And actually, the sexual ethic of Christians started to teach people this sense that you can choose. Because there were Christians who are saying no to the sexual economy of the ancient world and saying, I'm just gonna be chased. And and churches would publish their virgin lists as it's like, look, we can choose against the necessities of sex and death. Sex and death is not in charge, Jesus is in charge. I'm freed from sex and death. Um, and then politically, what happened is you know, Larry Sidentop talks about this in Inventing the Individual, is that you had this sense that okay, we're all souls before God equal, and Christ has invited us to table so that we're all brothers and sisters, and nobody's Lord except him, and and and suddenly I'm not lost in the shuffle, I'm not just dissolved into the collective. I'm a I'm a person who Jesus knows, and he feeds me with his body and blood, and and and there's a particularizing thing that kind of happens. So liberty is sort of the daughter of love. You know, love has come in the person of Jesus, and liberty has been like her daughter. The problem is liberty has run away from home, and and squandered wealth in the far country, and and now kind of comes back home and and you know knocks off knocks off love and claims the estate for herself. And what is actually liberty is being branded as love. And so and liberty is now you know tweeting love wins. Yeah. But it's not it's not it's not that love across difference, it's not the Christ-like cruciform love. Yeah, you know, it's this new thing that uh is not worthy of the name.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and yeah, and so obviously we will continue to um try to proclaim the love that is worthy of the name, and that's uh the name of Jesus, and and so as Speak Life we kind of exist to uh to help people love Jesus, who is love himself, you know, God is love. Uh this is how God showed his love amongst us. Um that Christ is um God's expression of love towards us in in sacrifice. Yeah. God loves Meghan.
SPEAKER_04He does Harry, and you know and none of this means that there isn't a world in which Harry and Meghan having an exit from royal duties is the wrong thing to have done. Could have yeah. Or to have spoken out if if things unfolded the way she says they unfolded about her suicidal thoughts, um, then you know, let the light shine and and all that kind of stuff, if if that if that is true. Um and so it's yeah, it's not that it's not that Jesus wants you to remain in a in an abusive institution no matter what. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and and I suppose the great thing about this is uh well, it's also the worst thing about this, is that this story is not over. Oh yeah. Um this is going to continue to run, and yeah, there are real people involved, and yeah uh the grace of God is still being extended out by Christians and churches uh around the world um in the hope that people will find will find Christ. Absolutely. And uh yeah, but uh I don't really want to watch any more of those episodes.
SPEAKER_04But somebody somebody said um we're just we're just waiting for um William and Kate's kids to grow up so that unfortunately the spotlight just searingly shines on them, and uh we can move on from this particular drama. But uh yeah, we yeah, it's um now we can move on. We you and you and I can move on, I think. We've done our duty. We we watch this documentary, so you don't have to. So let that be a lesson.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. NML, thank you so much. We'll see you again. Go less. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_02Well, there we go. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you found this episode helpful. Do subscribe to the Speak Life Podcast on your podcatcher of choice if you haven't done so already, and then you'll be the first to know when we've released a new episode. But I will catch you next time. God bless.