Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 442 of the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Thomas Thoroughgood, media producer at Speak Life, and today we're just going to draw your attention to the very exciting resources accompanying the Air We Breathe, which is Glenn Scrivener's latest book. Now I'm sure many of you have read the book already or heard about it. You can get it from uh the Good Book Company website, uh, or that will direct you to all the places you can get it. So it's uh available as a paper copy, you can get it as an ebook, or you can get it as an audiobook on Audible. And we also made a set of videos to accompany the book, one for each chapter. So it's Glenn just giving a bit of a summary for the chapter, and then there are some questions and Bible studies that go with those videos as well. Maybe you're doing a little book club and working through the book and you just want some talking points, you can use it there. Uh, you can also use it if you want to do a Bible study with someone who isn't yet a Christian, but maybe you're reading the book alongside them. And in this episode of the podcast, you're going to hear the first two videos so you can get a little taster for what these resources are like. So, kicking off with the intro video.
SPEAKER_00I don't know what you think of Christianity, but my friends always say to me, Glenn, I could never share your faith. I could never believe in the supernatural. And that's why I wrote this book. It's called The Air We Breathe, to show that the values we already hold are incredibly supernatural beliefs. If you believe in equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress, then you are a believer in the supernatural. And you say, how could that be true? I thought the supernatural was just about gods and fairies and angels and pixie dust. Uh no, these values are not natural values. They are particular to the society that we live in. They've become the air we breathe, but actually they are really bonkers ideas that have come to us uniquely and specifically from the Jesus Revolution. I trace it out in this book, tracing through how these seven values have come to us through Christian history. I start in Genesis, I go through to the New Testament, I then go through to the early church, then we talk about the medieval period, I talk about the scientific revolution, I talk about the abolition of the slave trade, I talk about World War II, I talk about humanism, I talk about human progress, and then I ask, what explains it all? My contention is that it's the Jesus Revolution that gives us the air we breathe.
SPEAKER_01So there we go, that was the introductory video, and you can find it on our YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash speaklifemedia. If you scroll down there, you will find a playlist that we've made for the air we breathe, and that includes all these chapter videos. When you watch them on YouTube, you can find the discussion questions in the description box below the video, and you'll also find a link there to the Good Book Company page. And on the Good Book Company page, you can actually download a PDF discussion guide with all the questions and Bible studies that accompany the videos. So lots of resources there that are easy for you to access, and we pray that they will be a blessing to you and your friends. Here is the second video in this series in which Glenn discusses chapter one of the air we breathe, the night before Christmas.
SPEAKER_00The very first depiction of the cross is a piece of graffiti known as the Alexamenos Graffiti. You can go to the Palatine Hill Museum in Rome today and see it. There on a cross is a figure with the head of a donkey. And off to one side there is a figure with his hand raised in veneration. The caption says it all Alexamenos worships his God. Now it's very difficult for comedy to stand up over the years, but I think this satire is just as biting today as it was about 1900 years ago. Because what this graffiti artist was saying is that anyone who worships the God of the cross is worshipping a donkey. It is asinine, it is ridiculous, it is grotesque, it is absurd to worship somebody on a cross, and yet that is the Christian claim. And that Christian claim met the Roman Empire back in the first century, and it was like an asteroid landing on planet Earth. Think of the cross. The crucifixion. Crucifixions were an implement of torture, they were a method of execution. They were the way that the Empire kept the slaves in check. It was uniquely the slave's death. And this is how people were able to live safely among a throng of millions of slaves in the empire with the threat of torture and violence. You see, the ancient world was a world where there was an incredibly steep hierarchy of being. At the top of the hierarchy, there were the gods. At the bottom, there was the cross and those who were crucified. The gods at the top were terrifying beings. They were warriors, they were vagabonds, they were tricksters, they were serial rapists. In the ancient Near Eastern myths of creation, and in the Greek and Roman myths of creation, the world has come from slavery and battles and chaos and death and tricksters and war. And out of that the gods have made humanity. And in the ancient myths, the gods make humanity to be slaves for the gods, to relieve the gods of their work. Humanity are brought into being. So humanity are brought out of chaos through bloodshed and war in order to be slaves. Into this world, the cross is preached. Into this world comes an announcement, a heralding that the God of heaven is very different to Zeus and Mars and Artemis and all the others. The God of heaven has actually descended all the way down to be with us and to be for us and to die upon that cross. The highest God, who is so much greater than those squabbling, warring deities, has also made himself so much lower and degraded himself so much to die the shameful death of the slave. This is the Christian claim that when Christ shows up, it is the highest descending to the lowest depth in order to bring the world back to right. It's quite the claim. And we will never understand how scandalous Christianity is unless we understand the night before Christmas. But we'll also never understand Christianity unless we keep on tracing the story until Easter, where we see this God dying upon this cross, this most high descending to this greatest depth. But if you can see all the way into that darkness, maybe you can start to see the light. Maybe you can stand alongside the Alexamenos of this world and see on the cross a God you can really believe in. That is the argument of the night before Christmas.
SPEAKER_01It also won awards for its contents, so the Gospel Coalition Award for Evangelism and Apologetics in the book category. It also won the apologetics and evangelism category in the Christianity Today's 2023 book awards. So we're thrilled that to see the the impact that the book is having. It was an absolute passion project of Glen. He's been thinking about the the content in this book for years, really. And I think it's such a a great way into conversations in this current current time we're experiencing, certainly from my point of view in the UK, uh from spending quite a lot of time watching discussions on YouTube, it sort of feels like the novelty of of new atheism has has been wearing off a little bit. A lot of people have pointed that out. A lot of people are uh going to figures like Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Louise Perry, people who uh see the value of Christianity and see the fruits of the Jesus Revolution in our culture and wouldn't necessarily call themselves Christians, but uh are beginning to recognise what we'd lose if we walked away from the Christian story. The air we breathe effectively says yes, so we can see all these fruits from the Jesus Revolution. So what was the Big Bang? What actually uh set off this cascade throughout history that has profoundly shaped our sense of human rights, our morality, all sorts of things in the West. You'll you have to read the book, uh he it explains it much better in the book than I can. So there we go, the air we breathe. Do read the book if you haven't done so already, and do check out the resources surrounding it, and let's keep these conversations going. We're so thankful to all of you podcast listeners. I know I say this quite a lot, but I genuinely mean it, uh, because we're at the start of a new year now, and Buzz Sprout, which is the podcast platform we use uh to release our podcasts, it gave us some stats from the past year. We're listened to in 135 countries. I don't know if I can name a hundred and thirty-five countries. So wow, that's incredible, isn't it? Listeners all over the world. And the Speak Life podcast was in the top five percent of all BuzzSprout podcasts in terms of average downloads in the first seven days when we release a new episode. So we're just blown away by that. I mean, I a lot of people are quite surprised when they uh come to our studios in Eastbourne that that we're actually quite a small team. So thank you for drawing alongside us in this journey uh as we uh try and make resources to bless the church and to help all of us uh proclaim Christ more and more. At Speak Life, we're often thinking of ways that we can bring you backstage and and say thank you for the ways in which you've supported us. And so we have Blue Sky Monday, which is on neck well, this coming Monday, the 16th of January. You can go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash vision. You do need to go to that link and fill out the sign-up form to get the Zoom link uh for the night, and then you can join our actually interesting Zoom call where we'll be accompanied by Rachel Rachel Jordan Wolfe of the Talking Jesus survey to uh look at some of the stats about uh evangelism in the UK, and I think you're gonna find it incredibly encouraging, and you're gonna get some some really cool Speak Life sneak peeks, and there'll be some games, and it'll be a great chance to hang out, uh connect with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team, and you can do it all from the comfort of your living room due to the wonders of Zoom. So looking forward to seeing as many of you there as possible. We will be back soon with some really interesting conversations coming up. I realise it's been a bit of a hiatus when it comes to uh podcast interviews. Uh, sometimes uh they come thick and fast, sometimes there's a bit of a gap, but we are really, really excited, and I genuinely mean that for some of the conversations that we're about to have on the Speak Life podcast. So do stay tuned, subscribe to the podcast, and I will see you soon. God bless.