The Speak Life Podcast. Sharing Jesus in everyday life.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Evangelist Podcast. I am Glenn Scrivener. Uh hi, I'm Paul Feesey. Welcome to the Speak Life Podcast. What did I say? The Evangelist Podcast. Ah, let's start again. We are in 2019. Welcome to the Speak Life Podcast. I'm Glenn Scrivener. And I'm Paul Feese. Could have you with us today.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and we are just recording this. You don't get to see our beautiful faces this afternoon. For shame. For shame. We should be heard and not seen anyway, I think. Face for radio and all that. But uh we're just gonna do a slightly shorter uh podcast this week, but uh before we dive into our excellent topic of is religion harmful? Spoiler alert, answer maybe.
SPEAKER_01In moderation. In moderation.
SPEAKER_02Um we would love to let you guys know about the Speak Life Foundry. We've been withering on about it uh for months now, and it is bearing down on us on the 9th of September. Our interns will begin. Uh we've got uh three from Great Britain, and we've got three from the rest of the world, a New Zealander, God bless the New Zealanders after Sunday, goodness me.
SPEAKER_01You're feeling very dejected at the moment.
SPEAKER_02I would I would feel like angry if I was a New Zealander, honestly. But um, I don't want to say too much or I'll alienate all the English listeners, but I would feel angry. But anyway, um, so Max from New Zealand, uh, if he can you know get out of bed between now for September, if he's not too disgonsular. Uh he's a videographer uh living in Christchurch in New Zealand. He's coming over and we've got a couple of Americans and some Brits, and it's gonna be glorious.
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SPEAKER_02And what were we doing just this morning, Paul?
SPEAKER_01Just this morning we've been in the studio and we've been carting in the new soundproof panels and trying to work out where we're gonna put them, where they're gonna go, are they gonna go with the wall on the ceiling? What we're gonna do with the floor that's all hard. So very echoey at the moment. So hopefully we'll we'll get that all sorted ready for the start.
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SPEAKER_01I know, and then you put us in there and yeah.
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SPEAKER_01Um, I wouldn't say well, I'm not sure people ask me that so much, but you just say it, though. They just say it. Yeah, yeah. You do hear people say, you know, religion is you know the the cause of all wars or all these kind of things, you know. Um if people didn't believe in their Sky Fairy, people wouldn't be killing each other all over the world and whatnot, you know. Um the Sky Fairy Wars were particularly brutal at that. We still mourn the bloody ones. The grief is still too near. Um but uh but you know, we were talking about this before, and it's a very sweeping statement, isn't it, to say religion causes harm. Yes. I mean religion i that's a very broad category there, religion, isn't it? Because it when you say religion is the cause of all harm or religion causes harm, well I mean if someone just said I think religion causes harm, I would say, well I think I think you're right. Yes. Because I'm sure in the whole gamut of religions we can find at least one, if not more, where we say yes, they definitely cause harm, and because they're very negative, and even amongst, you know, kind of our team, our team, the Christian you know, the stuff that we think is right and good, there's gonna be people who are getting stuff wrong and are causing harm through it. So yes, of course, religion does cause harm. Um but um I'd wanna say, is that because religion itself is completely wrong? Um or is it because there are sinful individuals um in the midst of that who've done something wrong? And also then, if it were to say on the flip side, then if if you think religion caused all that harm, if we were to get rid of all religion, do we think harm would stop? Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And uh as evidence, let's have a look at the 20th century and kind of see what happens. The murder century, hundred million killed violently in that century, largely at the hands of atheistic regimes.
SPEAKER_01So And people would like and what we were saying as well, people want to do a lot of kind of gymnastics to say that those weren't atheists really. Yeah, yeah. You know, they were religious, you know. Hitler believed in God, therefore Hitler was a Christian, and therefore, you know, as I saw someone just yesterday saying something like that, you know, about it was to do with the Holocaust. That was it, because it was one of those memes of, you know, we will never forget, and then you know, 1945, we'll never forget 2019 picture of the people in the detention centres in the US, you know, we forgot, and then underneath someone would put, you know, like oh again, you know, it was all like because of people's belief in God. Right. And they're thinking, I'm not sure Hitler was doing that because he believed in God. Like, I'd I'd have some s serious questions about whether Hitler, yeah, well, he may have believed in some kind of God, but w was he a Christian? Yeah, I would have some serious questions. Yeah. Um, without wanting to fall into the old no true Scotsman thing there. But I think, you know, maybe there are some cases where you want to say, I'm not sure the fruit, the fruit there wasn't showing me like Christ.
SPEAKER_02There is the no true Scotsman thing happening all the time on this one. So like when when Christopher Hitchens wrote his book, uh God Is Not Great, uh, in this country it would the subtitle was The Case Against Religion. Uh in the US, the subtitle was How Religion Poisons Everything. So much better. That's such a they you know, they know how to they know how to sell books in the States. Yeah. Um but in order to make his case that religion poisons everything, he had to say that Stalin was actually a believer, and that Martin Luther King was in his heart of hearts not a believer and totally secular. Um to be rational and reasonable. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Not like a wacky religious lot.
SPEAKER_02But this is this is the thing. So what's interesting is one of the things people say is so harmful about religion is that it's dogmatic and it's resistant to evidence. But then you show someone like Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens the evidence that religion is good for you, and they'll reject it out of hand in favour of their dogma.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean that's something we yeah I cut from when I spoke on the resurrection talk. Um there were a few bits I cut because I felt they were just too confrontational, because there was a bit where I was asking people to look at the evidence, and and I just kind of left it at that and said, Here's some more books you can look at. And I did initially, I originally had a bit where I said, and maybe you're thinking I don't need to look at the evidence because it's a load of nonsense, and I basically just kind of said, you know, make you because you think no rational or reasonable person could ever believe this stuff, but then I said, Maybe you're not so rational and reasonable if you think that you don't want to actually look at the evidence in the first place. Yeah. Um I thought that might be a bit too on the nose. Um that's but that's true, isn't it? There are plenty of people who say, like, I'm I'm evidence-based, I'm all about rationality and reason. Have you looked at the evidence? Well, that's not evidence. I don't want to look at that evidence. I won't look at that because it's it's we can't look at the part. It can't be. Can't trust the can't have happened. You know, can't have looked at it. Yeah, yeah, that would never have happened, so it's not even worth thinking about.
SPEAKER_02It's so interesting, that one on miracles, especially, because like when somebody like literally there there are hundreds of thousands of people, at least in this world, who have claimed to have witnessed a miracle. And if any one of those people is are telling the truth, yeah, then naturalism is false. Like it just takes one of those. And then naturalism, the doctrine that all is just matter in motion, that must be a lie. And yet what's fascinating is that you know the the the truly rational person comes to you and they say, No, I'm I'm not going to look at any of that evidence. Um, but in favour of this dogmatic belief that they have that's called naturalism, that no no miracle must happen. Yeah. You know.
SPEAKER_01And we we can be susceptible to that as well, can't we? You know, so as Christians we can just n not respond properly to real argument and stuff, because we just kind of have our position and stuff. So we've got to be equally aware of that.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, and and on this issue, like, does religion cause harm, you know, well, yeah. And have Christians caused harm? Yes. Um but is the common denominator in all that harm the religious element, the Christian element? Or is the common denominator the human heart? Sure. And you know. So when someone says, Does religion cause all war? Um, it's quite it's quite good to say back to someone, well, just Google it. And and literally, you know, the first result that comes up is uh 7%. 7% of all war has been caused, uh has been religiously motivated. And that and that's taken from Philip and Axelrod's Encyclopedia of All Wars. They go through about 1700 conflicts. Seeing Guns N Roses, okay. Richard Axelrod Axel Rose. We won't go into the etymology of why he chose that name. We won't do that on this podcast. But uh Philip and Axelrod went through 1700 wars and they said the 123 were religiously motivated, and the majority of those were not Christian. Um prizes for you know the number one. But 123 are religious, and that's 123 too many. But what is the common denominator in all war? It's not God, it's man, you know. And so, you know, can can we be at least honest enough to to own the bad stuff in religion, the bad stuff in Christianity? But then we'll be open enough to the evidence to say that's not the only part of the story, is it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. I think the temptation whenever these kind of conversations happen is immediately just to batten down the hatches and put up the shutters, put up the defences and be like, right, we've got to hit back on this one. Yeah. And actually so no, you well, you're right, yeah, religion has caused harm, it does cause harm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But like people raise the crusades or something. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, they started it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I I think we've got to be open to that kind of thing, haven't we? Open to discussion.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and take it on the chin. And and John Dixon's just so so great on this. You can go back into uh previous episodes of the Speak Life Podcast, and and uh I interviewed him about uh their video series called For the Love of God, how the church is has been both better and worse than you ever imagined. And they're a great series of films, and if you go um search for For the Love of God film and you'll you'll find it online. Um and you should be able to actually watch most of the clips for free um if you watch them as individual clips. But the whole series starts um with John Dixon in Jerusalem talking about the bloodshed, you know, in the in the Third Crusade in particular, um, which was particularly brutal. Um and I just thought their approach to talking about the mixed um effect of Christianity down through the ages was great because they they were able to own um the bad stuff, and then they won a hearing for ah, but there's this other side. There are there are charities and schools and hospitals and universities and the scientific method and human rights and all these other things. Yeah. But they'd won the right to be able to talk about that because they had owned um the harm that was there in Christianity.
SPEAKER_01So it's kind of stuck covered in um Rebecca McLaughlin's book as well, Confronting Christianity.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it really does. And uh in the talk that you're um about to hear, I actually quote from uh her book, although I d I don't uh say that I'm quoting from her book.
SPEAKER_01You're acknowledging it now.
SPEAKER_02I'm acknowledging it now, and on the video I made sure there was a capt caption that said, This is from Rebecca McLaughlin. Um, because the origin of the talk that you're about to hear is um I was I was giving um I was preaching at a at an evening service um at a church up in London, and while they were interviewing me before I was about to preach, they said, and after this service, we're all going to the pub where Glenn is going to address the question, isn't religion the cause of all harm in the world? This was news to me. Wow. And so the guy leading the service said, and can you just give us a praisy of what we're doing in the pub? Okay. So I gabbled something. And then in between the service, and I like had half an hour to then make it to the pub and then do this this talk on Is Religion Harmful. I always get a few pinks in. I was getting I was texting Rebecca McLaughlin and I said, please could you send me an e-copy of your book? Because I have her book, and you'll uh have seen an interview with her if you've been uh watching the the podcast for any length of time. So um, yes, thankfully please help me.
SPEAKER_01Please help me seriously.
SPEAKER_02So she just sent me her book, and so I just read something from chapter three and um and then just said, disgust. No, I did more than that. You'll see. You'll see I did more than that uh in the talk. But um yeah, so that so that is that the talk the talk is actual footage of you on the spot. It's talk, yeah. So so essentially, like two hours before this talk, I was told that I was giving this talk. I didn't know you were doing this talk. But for at least one of those hours, I was doing something else, preaching. So then after the service. Oh man. I have to make my way to this pub and um figure out what to say. But as you'll see, that you know, the the overarching uh metaphor that I use is that I think of religion uh the way that a woman thinks of marriage, who's been dead against the institution all her life, but then she meets a guy, she falls in love, and she finds herself on the inside of this institution. Not because she loves the institution, but because she loves the guy. Sure. So why am I a religious person, so to speak? Well, I met a guy, and we've fallen in love, and we're on the inside of this relationship now, and you might call me religious, um, but it's not because I love religions because I love him. And then on the inside of the relationship, you start to see something about the institution. Just as on the inside of marriage, you get to see some of the reasons why marriage is shaped the way that it is. On the inside of the relationship with Jesus, you get to see why the religion of Christianity is shaped the way that it is, and uh and then from that I go on to explain how uh you might think of Christianity as benighted in these ways, but on the inside of the relationship it looks like this. Um and here's some of the good that it's done. Over to you. Why don't you think some further on that? So that's what it was, and uh yeah. So I I like I like flying by the seat of my pants sometimes. But um but I hope that analogy kinda helps people because I've I've been using it quite a bit in the last year or two, kind of developing it. Um, because I I do think it's a helpful analogy because as let's let's let's imagine this this like feminist who's been dead against marriage all her life, as she gets married, um, there'll be two negative impressions she's had of marriage. Um, two kinds of negative impression. There'll be one kind of negative impression that is indeed true. Like there are things about the institution of marriage that we practice today that is not right and is not according to its true nature. You know, so the uh the idea that you know women could not hold property until like a hundred years ago, um well less than a hundred years ago, in their own name. That's that's just that's not of the essence of marriage. What is that? You know, so there are things and there'll be things about the institution of of religion that are terrible, um and but they're not of the true nature of of Jesus. But then there'll be other things that this woman as she gets married, there'll be other things that she she had a negative impression of, but now on the inside she realizes that they're actually really positive things about Christianity. And then I go through some of the positives about Christianity and uh throw it open to discussion. So Cool. Brilliant. Well, should we have a listen then?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02And uh dive in. Let's dive in and um and do at the end, um why not now? Hit pause, go to speaklife.org.uk slash foundry, um, give your donation.
SPEAKER_01It's not written yet.
SPEAKER_02Receive that free ebook, and then come back and listen to uh Is Religion Harmful for the World? But thanks so much for joining us, guys, and we'll see you next week. Yeah, take care, enjoy. I think about religion a little bit like uh the way uh a woman who grows up hating the idea of marriage thinks about the institution of marriage. Okay, can you just imagine a woman who uh she's grown up in all her life, she's hated the patriarchal institution of marriage, she says, uh I'm dead set against this institution, this thing called marriage. And then you know how the story runs. Uh maybe at some stage she goes away to university, she her eyes lock on some lovely person across the bar, and she falls in love, and a few years later she might even find herself marrying that guy. And as she walks down the aisle and suddenly partakes in this institution called marriage, you've got to ask the question why is she doing it? Um has she been brainwashed? Does she now does she now believe in the institution of marriage? Would that be now a good way of describing what she's doing? Or I tend to think what she's doing is not so much buying into the institution of marriage. She doesn't so much believe in marriage as she believes in him, and he has converted her to this thing called marriage. So if you can imagine that story about a woman who's then setting into the institution, but she finds herself in the institution, and people from the outside say you're married. And she now has to come up with a whole bunch of different ideas that she has had about marriage. And actually, as she's now up close and personal with marriage, she starts to see that some of her objections to marriage were indeed correct, but actually, the way that marriage presented itself to her, it was not a faithful expression of marriage. So let's let's let's imagine that one of her objections to marriage is oh my goodness, like within the last kind of hundred years or so, women have not been able to hold property. It has to be held in their husband's name. Isn't that outrageous? Right? And so you can you can understand how that kind of practice makes her dead against the institution of marriage. But now, as she comes face to face with the actuality of a living, breathing relationship with someone she loves, she realizes that that rule about not owning property that had nothing to do with the essential kernel of marriage. So you see, one thing she did with her objection against marriage is she realized that actually the institution presented to her view of marriage. And as she's face to face with the reality of marriage, that objection falls away because she realizes that marriage isn't really like that. That's not part of the essence of marriage. Another thing that happens as she comes into this relationship called marriage is some of her previous objections, she realizes were false. She should not have had those objections. So she might have thought of marriage as this irredeemably patriarchal institution. But now, on the inside of the love relationship, she realizes that actually marriage is a very good thing for women because historically, men have been able to biologically father children and then get out of there and not have any connection to the woman that they've impregnated or the child that they've born. Marriage actually ties men to their partners, it ties men to their sexual choices, actually forces men to take responsibility for goodness' sake, actually it works against the patriarchal Islamistic society. And so she starts to see that her former objection to marriage falls away when she's on the inside of a love relationship. Now, let me take you out of that analogy and into this topic that we're discussing this evening. Is religion harmful for society? And I guess I just I just say I have no I have no allegiance to the institution of religion. I'm like the woman who's grown up all her life saying I'm dead set against the institution. I'm dead set against institutional religion. Dead set against the dead guy. And our eyes have locked, and I've kind of fallen for him, and me and Jesus now, we we want to be together, okay? And now on the inside of this relationship with Jesus, I'm having to reconfigure my view of religion. And I wonder if that's something that we all need to do. We need to reconfigure our view of religion. And some of our objections to religion, when we get up close and personal with Jesus, I think some of those objections, we will realize that actually the way that religion has presented itself to us, it was not faithful to itself. So I'm sure you can think of uh examples in religious history of people doing terrible things. I'm sure you're thinking of them now. You're thinking of the Inquisitions, you're thinking of the Crusades, you're thinking of witch hunts, you're thinking perhaps in more modern uh times of uh child sex abuse scandals. We can think of all sorts of ways in which religion has presented a very ugly face to the world. But, like with the woman and marriage, maybe as we get closer to the person of Jesus, maybe we'll start to see that none of those things are of the essence of Christianity. They're certainly not of the essence of Christianity. When you study the person of Jesus, you realize that here is a person of such transcendent love, such stooping self-giving, that actually all those things that you just imagined, the Crusades and the Inquisitions and all those sorts of things, are so utterly unchristlike. They are not of the essence of true religion, of Christianity anyway. So one of your objections, or uh one of your uh clusters of objections, might be that there are things in Christianity that present to the world that are so ugly, and I want to say to you, yes, they are. There are many things that are very ugly, that are presented to the world. The church has done dreadful things in the world. Uh, I've got a friend who uh likens it to uh Jesus has given us a great song to sing. He's given us a song to sing that is all about loving God and loving neighbor. He's given us a song to sing that that is all about sacrificial self-giving for the sake of the world. That's the song he's given the world to sing. Uh, Christians have very often sung off-key, and sometimes it's been an absolute cacophony. So that's absolutely true. There are definitely things that have been done in the name of religion, there are things that have been done in the name of Christianity that are utterly unchrist-like. But I would hope that as you get closer to the person of Jesus, you'll start to see, ah, but those things are not of the essence of Christianity. Jesus is one who is full of self-giving love. To be true to him is not to be the warmongering crusader, right? So what one one set of your objections might fall away as you come closer to Jesus. Another set of objections that you might bring to Christianity, you might have to reconfigure. You might have to rethink your objections to religion and to Christianity more specifically. Because as you come and see and study the history of the people of Jesus down through the ages, I think what you'll see is a remarkable gift to the world. A remarkable gift to the world. Now, again, you've got in mind the Crusades and the Inquisitions, and I understand that. But it seems to me that there needs to be no explanation for human beings doing terrible things in the world. There need be no explanation for that. That seems to be part and parcel of human nature. There is a tribalism that is hardwired to you and hardwired to me. So if you find a human institution like the church engaging in human practices that are abhorrent, in one sense, there need be no supernatural explanation for that. People are people. And people can really suck, okay? So the church has done terrible things. But what does require an explanation is how any group of people ever managed to buck that trend. How has there ever managed to be a group on earth that have actually resisted tribalism and loved their neighbor as their self? That seems to me to require a supernatural explanation. And actually, the the history of the church is really quite phenomenal. When you think of all the things that the church has contributed to the world, there's the birth of charities, hospitals, hospices, schools, universities, the modern scientific method, modern democracy, the development of modern secular politics and human rights and equality. All sorts of things that we take for granted, especially in the West, we take for granted so many of these things that are utterly non-obvious to the classical mind. Right? Just even think about the belief that I reckon probably all of us in this room share a belief that human beings are utterly equal. We have an equality that goes deeper than any uh any factor, any uh strength that you and I have, any amount of money that you and I have. Somehow, all of us in this room are equal. That sounds like a very religious belief, doesn't it? It's the kind of belief that would be absolutely nonsensical to an Aristotle or a Plato. You know, if you said to Aristotle or Plato, you know, this guy and this guy are equal. And Aristotle would say, well, okay, let's look at them. This guy is taller than that guy, this guy is stronger than that guy, this guy is richer than that guy, this guy is stronger than that guy, this guy, this guy has more economic value than this guy, this guy is nicer than that guy. In what sense are they equal? And and, you know, I think in the West, these days, we tend to say, oh no, but they are equal. No matter if this guy is an absolute scumbag, he has no economic value, he's a straw, he's he's an absolute weakling in this world, we tend to say, no, this guy and that guy, they are utterly equal. To the classical mind, they would just say, that is a nonsense. Equal in what sense? You're bringing this very strange religious view to bear. Because every examination scientifically of these two people, it does not, it does not convey to anybody that there is a sense of you know divine spark to any of these people. There is no sense of human equality that can be discovered by scientifically examining two people. We take it as a faith claim. We take it on faith, don't we? That people are utterly equal. Um this has been a gift of Christianity to the world. Written on page one of the Bible, is that men and women are equal, equally in God's image, and therefore worthy of all protection and provision. So, this is just one example of so many different things that Christianity has gifted to the West. The classical world was not going to develop a sense of equality. That needed to come from somewhere else. And so we've got the sense of equality and human rights, and the birth of charities and hospitals and hospices and schools and universities and the modern scientific method, and on and on and on it goes. Um, Christianity has done tremendous good in this world. Tremendous good. Alongside the bad. That it has done tremendous good. And to deny that it has done tremendous good is to lock yourself into a very dogmatic way of thinking. You've probably come across it in the in the uh the four horsemen of the new atheism, you know, Daniel Dennett and uh Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and uh who have I missed out? Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, I'm about to give a quote by Christopher Hitchens. The four horsemen of the the new atheist apocalypse uh are absolutely committed to saying, in Hitchens' words, that religion poisons everything. That was that was one of his great books. Religion poisons everything. I mean, Christopher Hitchens said that uh religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave, it is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you're born, and even worse, and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. It's a celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? We miss Christopher Hitchens, don't we? We we miss him. He he's tragically he died a few years ago, but but that kind of rhetoric is sorely missed in public discourse. But what really is striking about what Christopher Hitchens is saying there is he is dogmatically opposed to Christianity and can find no good in Christianity whatsoever. And you get it in people like Sam Harris as well. Let us to a Christian nation where he's he's utterly against all forms of religion in the world and can only see the negative in the world. And at that point, I just want to say to people like Sam Harris, I thought you were a scientist. I thought you wanted to look at evidence. Because we can do studies on whether religion does good or harm in the world. Uh, let me give you an example of uh some evidence that you might want to weigh. Uh in 2016, Harvard School of Public Health professor Tyler Vanderveel and a journalist John Sinith wrote a USA Today op-ed entitled Religion May Be a Miracle Drug. The piece begins. Okay, get this. If one could conceive of a single elixir to improve the physical and mental health of millions of Americans at no personal cost, what value would our society place on it? The authors go on to outline the mental and physical health benefits that are correlated with regular religious participation. For most Americans, that means going to church. Even to the extent of reducing mortality rates by 20 to 30% over a 15-year period. That's a miracle drug, right? If we discovered a drug that had those kind of effects, what would you pay for it? It's extraordinary. Research suggests that those who regularly attend services are more optimistic, have lower rates of depression, are less likely to commit suicide, have a greater purpose in life, are less likely to divorce, and are more self-controlled. More than that, they are more likely to vote, more likely to join societies, more likely to volunteer for charities, more likely to give money, will give greater amounts, will give blood. Blood's an interesting one, because you might you might think, well, if you're rich, then you can give away money and it doesn't matter. But we've all got this roughly the same amount of blood, right? So you can't make that excuse. Christians give more blood than non-religious people. Uh religious people report that they are happy, scientists say that spiritual beliefs are linked to a protective effect against oppression. Um these are the facts. Um and what's interesting to me is often you present these facts to scientists like Sam Harris, and they want to go over and tell a story about what religion did in the 1600s. And you're like, well, come on, let's let's be scientific about this. If you want to discuss whether religion has a positive benefit to society, let's look at the evidence. But I think we're not rational beings, are we, when it comes to these questions. We're not that interested in weighing the costs and the benefits and making some rational decision. We don't really work like that. We work the way that Christopher Hitchens knows that we work. We are heart-led creatures who don't want it to be true. And that's why we reject the evidence. And so let me just finish by at least painting you a picture so that you might want it to be true. I want your eyes to lock across the bar and to meet the man, Jesus, and to think to yourself, you know, I'm dead against the institution. But maybe maybe he could convert me. Okay? Let me just, in in the last few minutes, let me just paint a picture for you of Jesus. In the middle of John's Gospel, uh, John's one of the biographies of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, he gives this great description of who he is. And uh and as he's introducing himself, he does that thing that you kind of do at a bar. You say to one another, Who are you and what do you do? And Jesus gives us that introduction. In John chapter 10, verse 11, he says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And uh with those two uh statements, he's basically telling us who he is and and what he does. And you ask Jesus, Who are you? And Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. And to anyone who is listening in on Jesus, they would have learnt their Old Testament Bibles. They knew the 23rd Psalm. Maybe even you know the 23rd Psalm. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. It's the kind of psalm that is said at funerals. But that begins with this statement: the Lord is my shepherd. And a thousand years later, Jesus comes into planet earth and he says, I am the good shepherd. And people should have been swooning at that. People should have been fainting at the idea. Here is this man who is claiming to be God. He's claiming to be our maker. And look, I don't know what you believe about who God is, but I think so often we imagine an eminently rejectable God. We imagine the the North Korea in the sky. That's the kind of God that Christopher Hitchens very happily rejected. But I wonder if you look at Jesus and think, what if he is what God is like? I think if he is what God is like, I'm in. Aren't you in? Here is this kind of God who would step down from heaven to earth to stoop and serve and suffer and bleed and die for us. And then on the night before he dies, he washes his disciples' feet as a kind of an image of all this self-giving sacrificial service. And then he says to his people, Now that I've washed your feet, you go and wash others' feet. You know what he's saying? Now that I've loved you, go and pass it on in the world. And historically, that has been the case. Sure, we have not sung Jesus' song very well. We have sung off-key very often. But Jesus has given us a beautiful song to sing. He has given us this love which he's committed to us, and we've tried to pass it on. Very imperfectly. But we have tried to pass on this love to the world, a love that gives of itself, a love that is sacrificial, a love that honors others as much as you honor yourself. Jesus gave us this song to sing, and then he died on that cross, opening his arms wide to the world, to give himself even for his enemies, and rises up again, and he has established the world's most diverse, largest, growing sociological phenomenon the world has ever seen. That's what Jesus has done. I wonder if your vision of religion and of God is a vision of a religion and of a God that is just very easily dismissible. Very easily rejectable. I don't think Jesus is as easily rejectable as that. I think have a look at the Good Shepherd, because when Jesus says I am the Good Shepherd, he then tells you how he's going to prove that he's the Good Shepherd. And it's a stunning thing, really. If I was to claim to you that I'm God, and you say, prove it, what should I do to prove it? You know, maybe you're thinking I should make the stars rearrange to spell a certain message, or I could make mountaintops to blow their top, and or, you know, donkeys to tap dance and sing show tunes or something. I should do something remarkable, shouldn't I? But Jesus, to prove that he's God, does the most extraordinary thing. I am the good shepherd. And people say, prove it, Jesus. And he says, Alright, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. That's pretty extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, a good shepherd shows up early and mends the fences. What kind of shepherd actually dies for his stinking sheep? Here is the kind of God I think you can believe in. And here's the kind of God who in self-giving love has birthed a movement that very imperfectly reflects his love in the world. But I think, even though it's a very imperfect reflection of his love, it is nonetheless a true reflection of his love. And I wonder whether some of the things that I've said today might make you reconsider this institution called Christianity. Because of course, I'm not really calling you to an institution any more than the fact that the woman was getting married is because she loved the institution. She didn't love the institution, she loved him. And I just wonder if when you look around at the world and when you start to see, yes, the person of Jesus and the people he has established have made a difference, I wonder whether that will make you just have a look at Jesus. And I think when you have a look at him, then all of a sudden you won't care so much about the institution. But you will care about him. And on the inside of a love relationship with him, I think things look very different.