Hey you! Unsure of what to post on social media? Feeling out of your depth when it comes to global politics? Behind the times on the latest trends? Not completely sure which opinion will get you pilloried by mobs of angry strangers? Then try not posting anything! That's right, not posting anything is the new craze that's not sweeping the internet. Join the movement that literally no one has thought of as you let righteous indignation just sweep on past. Just take this hapless moron Wayne. Ever since making Facebook posts on US politics, Wayne's IQ has dropped 15 points, and he's developed shingles. Don't be like Wayne. Start doing what no one on the internet has thought of. Try not posting anything.
SPEAKER_06But wait, I'm a Christian. I want to have a distinctive voice online. We're glad to hear it, Bill. Here then is our foolproof three-step plan.
SPEAKER_08Step one, we've already covered it. Don't post stuff you don't understand. Step two, make it clear in your bio that you're a Christian. Some prefer Follower of the Way. Disciple of the Galilean. Part one to the net read. Or, if you're not ridiculously obtuse, maybe try Christian. That's step two. State clearly that you're a Christian. And then step three, and this one really is key, people, don't be a jerk. That's right, against all country inclinations and against the entire tide of jerkness engulfing the web. Try not to be a jerk. Both steps again. Resist the urge to post on things you don't understand. Make plain that you're a Christian, and don't be a jerk. Follow these simple rules, and you too might just survive this victory on exchange storm we call social media.
SPEAKER_07Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_08Or as they say in YouTube, hey guys.
SPEAKER_04Hey guys.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. So another another speak life-esque start there to the uh live cast.
SPEAKER_08Why not? Yeah, top three social media tips. I hope they save your life. They they hopefully. I mean, if people weren't jerks, wouldn't that be amazing? If I wasn't a jerk, that would be it would be amazing. As I was writing that, I was thinking to myself, physician heal thyself. Don't post on things. You don't understand.
SPEAKER_07I just never, yeah. I would never post anything on that. No one would happen, would I?
SPEAKER_08No one would. But that's the thing about social media. It makes you into like uh your own press secretary. And you feel like you've got to make a press release.
SPEAKER_07Well, I I I'm amazed how um how many people post things. So I'm very careful. I don't post things if I don't feel I I can verify a source. Right. And that's something I've learnt over time. Right. But I but but basically I've got people who are friends who are giving opinions on various things. Like Brexit, you know, maybe they're giving an opinion on Brexit, but yet they're also the people who copy and paste those statuses about notifying Facebook. And I think, well, you know, if you do that, you probably can't have an opinion on Brexit because You shouldn't get a vote.
SPEAKER_08Maybe so.
SPEAKER_07Just saying, throwing that out there. So Oh man.
SPEAKER_08Yes, yeah, yeah. And and the number of people who, you know, think they could do better as Prime Minister and you know, and they can't spill spell the word there. Yes. I'm like, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. And and the issue of uh bios that are just a little bit pretentious. Have you have you come across the Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Oh we should have done you should have said beforehand, we could have got our list of like favourite kind of ones that are just brilliant. Do you have do you have like a list?
SPEAKER_08Well no, no, I don't, but I could I'm sure I could have come across some that Follower of the Way, Disciple of the Galilean, and Pardon to the Nazarene. Pardon to the Nazarene, I'm going to adopt that now. Yeah. Why not?
SPEAKER_07Why not? Yeah, go for it. There seems to be a lot of people. The one I like best, the w the person's one I saw who I like is saying like all my views that just says all my views uh are my employees' views. Views are not my own, but they are my employer's views.
SPEAKER_08Views are not my own. Uh Joshua Lamacia uh from Sydney, Australia. Wow. Hello Sydney, Australia. He uh Mikey must be late over there or early. Uh yeah, very very late. Um I I I wonder whether he stayed up for this, but uh when I tweeted out my uh when I said, you know, stay tuned for the top three social media tips. Especially he actually came up with some three good ones, which I thought. Oh really? Um Still watching Speak Live. Yeah. Unfriend Glenn's filling. Let me guess, you can't un you can't delete your posts on the internet, number one. Remember that. Right? Right. It is global, it is irreversible.
SPEAKER_07Even if you do delete it.
SPEAKER_08It's still somebody screenshotted it somewhere and there's web crawlers that'll have picked it up. You cannot delete your posts on the internet. Wow. Just everybody pause and uh and remember that.
SPEAKER_07Well, that's all folks, we're off now.
SPEAKER_08We're gonna Well, you know, like the Oscars, like Kevin Hart, you know, so like something he tweeted was it eight years ago, ten years ago. Oh yeah. That's the reason why. Because he was he's supposed to be presenting this year.
SPEAKER_07It was a bit weird, the Oscars, wasn't it? Because like it happened. And I didn't really know it happened at well, I didn't watch it either, but I didn't know it happened until the next day. Yeah. Normally, like is that everyone's talking about it, but trending hashtags.
SPEAKER_08Well, I mean, it was it was like eight of the top ten trending hashtags. On Twitter. Yeah. Yeah, I don't really go on Twitter. Really? Well, that's that should be rule number two. Delete Twitter. Remember, so so Joe uh Joshua Lamacchia says, uh, you can't delete your post on the internet. Remember that. Number two, sometimes it's a Russian bot, but usually it's another image of God behind that avatar. Right. That's good to remember. Both both sides of that statement are good to remember. Sometimes it is a Russian bot. But it's usually another image of God behind the avatar. Number three, conversation is great, but offline conversation is greater. Yeah. Those are those are very good. Um but ours were don't feel like you have to post about everything. Say you're a Christian and then don't be a jerk.
SPEAKER_07So well that's that's I think that last one is is a just a good general rule of thumb for life. So you can take that into the real world as well.
SPEAKER_08So guys, see see how that works out for you this week. Um try not being a jerk and see if you have a different week. And then report back. Um brilliant Bill Lovell says, howdy from Texas. Howdy. Howdy! And then he says pretentious, what? And he spelt pretentious correctly. Very good. Very good. That sounded a bit condescending, didn't it? Not like you at all. Um, yes, we are thinking today, and we're gonna have a series in the next four weeks about the Bible. About just how immense the Bible is.
SPEAKER_07Yes. Yes. Sorry, you just threw me by saying in the next four weeks, because I was like, aren't we putting one out every night? But every night this week. So you're gonna get a little well, I think you're probably gonna see them in this anyway.
SPEAKER_08We're gonna see them in this episode.
SPEAKER_07So you're gonna see the whole series. The whole of this week. This week's series.
SPEAKER_08But then there are three other videos on the Bible.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, uh I know that, Glenn. Right. For those following along at home.
SPEAKER_08Thank you, Basil Exposition. For the folks at home, do you wanna Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_07So we're gonna get all of that through today.
SPEAKER_08We're gonna do, yeah, basically this this week's um videos on the Bible are about the Bible is huge. It's huge, it's immense. Where do I begin? Uh and then uh in the following three weeks, we're gonna think about the Bible is old, have we lost the original documents? Uh the Bible is improbable is week three. Can we trust the authors? And then the Bible is contradictory. How do we make sense of it? So, uh, but this week, uh I th I thought we could sort of launch in with um the Bible is huge, because often when people ask me questions about the Bible, I just always have to point out that your problem with the Bible has been given to you by the Bible. Because you live in the West, and you well, if you're happen to be in the West, and hello if you know, but um uh if you have been shaped by the Bible, and uh in fact the whole world's been shaped by the Bible, um then probably the problems you have with the Bible have been given to you by the Bible. And uh we've just got five examples of that one reality uh to take you through in this episode. Uh we're gonna think about how uh people say the Bible is unscientific, people say the Bible is violent, people say the Bible is judgmental, people say the Bible is homophobic, and people say the Bible is pro-slavery. And uh at every point we're gonna say, actually, the reason you think those things and the reason you point your finger at the Bible is because you happen to be standing on some assumptions, some presuppositions that are entirely biblical in their shape, and all that goes to show is that the Bible is much more immense than you perhaps imagined it to be. So should we have a look at number one? Uh here's sort of the introduction to this whole idea, and uh it deals with that first problem that people have in the Bible that the Bible is unscientific. Whether you believe in the Bible or not, it is an extraordinary book.
SPEAKER_00The Bible is, for better or worse, the foundational document of Western civilization, of Western values, Western morality, and Western conceptions of good and evil. It's careful, respectful study can reveal things to us about what we believe and how we do and should end, that can be discovered in almost no other manner.
SPEAKER_08The Bible has built our civilization, it has transformed billions of lives, it has shaped us all so much that even our criticisms of the Bible assume a biblical view of reality. You may have problems with the Bible, but the thing is you will end up assuming the Bible in order to critique the Bible.
SPEAKER_07So here are five examples of problems you might have with the Bible. Number one, the Bible isn't scientific. Critics will say the Bible was written by Iron Age goat herders. This was Sam Harris's fear about Jordan Peterson trying to get people back into the Bible.
SPEAKER_02My concern is that it keeps us shackled to these Iron Age philosophies and these Iron Age conversations where we should be having a 21st century conversation about everything, ethics included.
SPEAKER_07Sam's right that we definitely shouldn't read the Bible as a textbook for quantum mechanics, because the Bible is not that kind of book. It is pre-scientific chronologically speaking. It is non-scientific in the strict sense of the word, but it's not anti-scientific. In fact, the Bible gave us the scientific method. As C.S. Lewis said, men became scientific because they expected laws in nature, and they expected laws in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.
SPEAKER_08The Bible gave the West a view of nature, of our human capabilities, and of a grand order to the cosmos that birthed science. This view of the world was not obvious to any other non-biblical civilization, but science was built on that biblical world view. And even today the scientific enterprise depends on views of humanity and the universe that sound incredibly biblical. Like Brian Cox explaining the thinking behind the large headron collider. We do science searching for a face to creation, an underlying explanation, universal order, cosmic harmony. And we search believing that somehow the brains of Homo sapiens living here in a small corner of the Milky Way galaxy are able to grasp these higher laws. If we don't recognize how biblical the whole thing is, it's either because we don't understand the Bible or we've taken it all for granted. So rather than discard the Bible, I think a truly scientific approach would be to investigate the foundations. Maybe it's time we in the West picked up the Bible again. That's problem number one. Stay tuned for problem number two that people have with the Bible.
SPEAKER_07We'll save that. John, as quick as I can to jump out before you get the answer to the state.
SPEAKER_08The final jingle is worth hanging around for people.
SPEAKER_07It's worth being on the internet for. It's a treat. It's a treat. So yeah. Um so yeah, the science question. So when we went to Southampton the other week um for the university mission, the lunch bar, they got the science question uh kind of again. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm always quite surprised that the science one keeps coming up. Like I kind of just always think, like, are we not a bit past this now? Like, where people have this very cliched idea, like it's science versus religion and that's it. And and I think and obviously we're not. Um But I I I wonder whether part of it is and I think a lot of the actually a lot of these things not just the science one, but like as Christians, we are we've often given thought to some of these things because we have to, because we get these things thrown at us. Whereas if you're just happily going along following the the ways of the world and going with the flow, you're not gonna come up against many objections. People aren't you're not gonna find a lot of people just objecting to you know, there's n there's no one throwing stuff at science really going science isn't true. Right. Uh I mean there's a bit of that we know, but on the the on the whole, that's not the way society goes. Right. Um so they haven't got Christians attacking them again on the whole. Um just saying, well, it's either, you know, well, it's religion or science, yeah, and I'm gonna throw my religion at you. Yeah. Um so people haven't got to defend it in the same way that we do. Yeah. And I'm often just surprised in loads of conversations. I just you know, it like the resurrection talk came up again, and I just think, well, of course people have thought about the evidence for the resurrection. They have not just discarded it without thinking about it critically in any way, have they? Um then posted about it on the internet. Oh wait, they haven't thought about it at all, actually, have they? But yet they have a formal opinion.
SPEAKER_08Well at Southampton University, uh they they did a great thing, and Bethany Squires is watching again. Bethany Squires was uh was leading that that mission to Southampton. Hello, Bethany. But um yeah, wisely they put on the the first lunchtime talk was a scientist one talking about God and science and saying that they are not ultimately in conflict. Uh and it's always a good idea to get that question dealt with like early on. Because actually two weeks before the mission began, uh Southampton University Christian Union invited both John Lennox and Peter Atkins. John Lennox is a professor of mathematics, Peter Atkins professor of chemistry, both at Oxford, and uh and they had a uh a God versus science kind of debate. Did you hear any of that? I watched it all.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I watched it on YouTube.
SPEAKER_08And there's a moment where um John Lennox asks Peter Atkins, what do you say to the dozens and dozens of Christians who have won Nobel Prizes for science? And he said, Grow up which ironically sounded like the most petulant childish thing that anyone could possibly say Grow up. Um But but well it does with a professor of chemistry, he thinks it's a punch up, it's a fight, and Christianity is lost.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and I mean there are there are there are uh other debates probably aren't there where the scientists put forward a better case because Peter Atkins was basically a very I mean in all seriousness, not I mean not only was he incredibly rude throughout, which just undermines your position generally. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Especially when you tell other people to grow up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07But um he he really didn't hadn't really engaged with a lot of the stuff. He just goes, Well, it's all a load of nonsense. And you know, you you can dismiss anything if you just say, Well, it's all a load of nonsense, don't have to think about it at all. And he he really did come across as not having given any thought to it. As someone who was claiming to be all about rationality and reason and empirical evidence, he didn't seem to actually have done a lot of thinking on the issue.
SPEAKER_08Which is odd because you can go back twenty-five years and on YouTube you can look for uh William Lame Craig versus Peter Atkins. And these are the kinds of videos that actually deserve the epithet destroyed. Right. William Lame Craig absolutely did like destroy Peter Atkins in debate. Like we we're going back decades now, but he still hasn't he still hasn't learned that.
SPEAKER_07You'd think that you'd not want that to happen again. Yeah, but you know, he just sort of doubles down and it just you know I mean you see it with the Sam Harris clip as well, when he says we shouldn't be talking about these Iron Age kind of mythology things, twenty-first century conversations. But yet time and time again, when you sit down with people who who either are Christians or or aren't Christians and you open the Bible with them, they start going, like, Oh, I can't believe how relevant this is to my life. You know, and uh just just y uh you read through bits of Isaiah when it talks about what the people of Israel were like and you know, and there's the people who drunk in the streets and vomiting and all this justice isn't done. And you look at it and you go, This could easily be 21st century Britain, you know. Um and but I I think people like Sam Harris probably probably haven't done a lot of Bible reading on the whole.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. Um but they they want to fly a flag for rationality and and evidence-based reasons. Like, well, well, here's the evidence, why don't you why don't you have a look at it? Um so I think so often when the when the issue of science comes up for people, what they really have in mind is perhaps um natural selection, like the like the theory of Darwinian evolution, yeah, like as as one area of debate that is an area of debate between Christians and between Christians and non-Christians and within non-Christian communities as well. You know, there's that story of the the the Chinese geneticist who went to a a conference in California and he presented this conference in California where he happened to critique one element of one aspect of of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, and the room was just icy afterwards. And he and he said to his host, like, what what happened? Uh you know, they didn't like the data, like what they didn't like the way I presented, did I make any social faux pas? And he and he's just said, Yeah, you you can't really have a go at Darwin at at these kinds of conferences, like it's it's just not on. And the Chinese guy said, That's interesting. Like, in my country, you can't speak against the government, but you can speak against Darwin. Yeah in this country, you can speak against the government, you cannot speak against Darwin. Like So, you know, for for a lot of people it's a it's about a punch up over Darwinian evolution, but I I think it's it's wise to kind of go to 30,000 feet and and s like talk about the scientific enterprise more generally. Um where you know you you quoted C.S. Lewis in the video, you know, men became scientific because they whatever, they expected laws in the world. Right, right. And and so just the fact that science works is extraordinary. You know, Einstein said, you know, um the like the regularity of the universe, its comprehensibility is a miracle. Right? So like all the science depends on a miracle. Um and actually on the first page of the Bible you get an explanation for why that can happen. Genesis chapter one is often seen as like the site of of you know the battle which the Bible has lost. You know, because Genesis 1 has six days of creation and Darwin says no, and so the Bi the Bible is lost. But like zoom up to 30,000 feet and figure like let's have a more grown-up discussion about Genesis chapter one. What we've got in Genesis chapter one is a good God makes a good, regular, reliable world that operates according to evening and morning, and there are stars that come out, and then the moon, and then the s and then the sun, and then you know, you've got a regular, reliable, good world, a good God looking over it, and you've got humanity made in God's image, therefore they are able to grasp the mysteries of the cosmos. Um and actually to have those three things is the prerequisite for science. And until the Bible comes along, and without the Bible, you just don't have. You don't have those three things. Yep. You know, you've got you've got the Greeks who believe in like an orderer, a first mover above, uh, and they believe in human minds, but they don't believe in a good regular world that they can kind of investigate. Or you've got the Chinese who kind of believe in a uh a regular world that you can investigate and and sort of mines in here, but they don't believe in a a god that's going to, you know, give you the grounding for your laws. And so the Chinese didn't come up with science, they came up with great technology, and the Greeks didn't come up with science, they came up with great philosophy and maths and that sort of thing. But only the Bible is actually going to give you the scientific enterprise. So I say Genesis 1 is is really pro-science. Um and it and the Bible itself has given us the scientific method. So to call the Bible unscientific is odd. Yep. Odd. That's in a word. So that's that's our first problem that people kind of bring to the Bible. They will say that it's unscientific. Um but you know, but actually, when you take away the Bible, like Aristotle, Aristotle thought that, you know, men have more teeth than women.
SPEAKER_07Who is it who was something about bees? Bees, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_08He he said that bees have four legs. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. I mean you would have thought that I mean you could have got a bee.
SPEAKER_08Maybe count them.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, that would be a good start.
SPEAKER_08W what would happen? Like one, two, three, four three, four?
SPEAKER_07It's the equivalent of me just going on Facebook now and going Yeah. Bees only have four legs. Yeah. And someone else will see that and they'll go Paul said that bees only have four legs, so that's that must be true. But for a thousand years.
SPEAKER_08A thousand years p he taught it and people believed it because he didn't believe in a regular world out there that you could investigate empirically. He just believed that if you reasoned it out in your head, then this is the way things must be. And bees must, you know, belong to this class of of in insect, and therefore they must have four legs. You know, and away he went. You know, and and heavier items fall faster than than lighter items, and women have more less teeth than men, and and yeah, all all sorts of things. That like there are very obvious experiments you can do. But no one thinks to do the experiments. They're incredibly clever people, right? Aristotle very, very, very clever. You know, Plato and Aristotle together, you know, every every other bit of philosophy is just footnotes to Plato and Aristotle. It really is. But they they're not scientific because they don't believe in Genesis 1, and they don't believe in a good regular world that is open and accessible to the senses and that will triangulate with your mind in here and with the laws above. So we we think the Bible's unscientific because we we don't have an experience of a totally non-biblical culture. And then we would realise you don't have a leg to stand on at all outside of the Bible.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, you you can't see the forest for the trees kind of thing. You're so fish don't know that they're wet. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_08All that stuff, isn't it? Yeah, it's all that. So that was uh objection number one that uh the Bible is uh unscientific. But let's have a look at uh another objection that people bring to the Bible, and we'll show how actually uh the reason people have the problem is because of the Bible. So let's have a look at the Bible is violent.
SPEAKER_07Last time we were looking at problems that people have with the Bible, and we began to see how every problem we have assumes a biblical worldview. Well, here's another objection to the Bible that quietly assumes the Bible. It's violent. Think of the Wars of the Old Testament, for instance. We find the book of Joshua more than uncomfortable to read as the Israelites conquer the land of Canaan. But notice that discomfort, because you didn't get those qualms from the classical world. As historian Tom Holland points out about Julius Caesar.
SPEAKER_05in the cause of boosting his political career. And far from feeling in any way embarrassed about this, he's kind of promoting it. And so when he holds his triumph, people are going through the streets of Rome carrying billboards, boasting about how many people he's killed.
SPEAKER_07Caesar boasted that he had killed a million ghouls and enslaved a million more. If we're critical of war, it's probably because we've imbibed Matthew chapter five and twenty-six and Ephesians chapter six. There the Bible says, Turn the other cheek, put your sword away. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. It's the teaching of the Bible that gives us our problem with violence. The Romans didn't give us a problem with violence. The Greeks didn't give us a problem with violence. Islam didn't give us our problem with violence. When it comes to this objection to the Bible that it's violent, it turns out that we're standing on the Bible to make it. Stay tuned for the third problem the world has with the Bible.
SPEAKER_08There you go. Here we are. Yeah. Like the fact that you would even say that the Bible is violent as a problem probably means you've been taught by Jesus of Nazareth. Like, probably. Yep. You know, and and I that's why I think the Tom Holland example is just so interesting. Here's a guy whose speciality was both the the classical world of the Greeks and Romans and the world of Islam. And and so some of his great uh books have uh he's he's written two books on Rome and one book on the origins of Islam. And in both cases, when you when you look at a Julius Caesar who kills a million ghouls and enslaves a million more, or you look at Muhammad who waged war, um none of them think that the bearing of the sword like is something to be ashamed of or hidden away. Like it's absolutely, you know, strength and honour, it's absolutely, you know, that that kind of culture. Um so that like the I the idea that you would look at violence and then go, oh I don't like that is if we're thinking that way, it's because the Bible has taught us that. You know. If if we think that blood sports are repugnant and vicious and therefore, you know, something that is a vice, it's probably because actually Christianity has been teaching us on these things.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, when we see, you know, that we know out of Roman society, I mean, certainly uh there was there was no hesitation in gladiatorial games, you know, bloodthirsty sports like that, you know, that was your that was your kind of Saturday afternoon entertainment, you know, like going to watch the football. Well actually you go and watch the gladiators slog it out and be torn to pieces or whatever. Um but the very fact again, I I think i it's the case not again, it's the science not just with science, but with all these things and and other areas as well, like when we've talked about morality, there's these underlying assumptions under there that people have, and you want to prod and say, Okay, but why do you think that is wrong? Why do you think violence is wrong? Or any of these things? Why do you think people should be nice to each other and treat each other well?
SPEAKER_04It's just isn't that obvious?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, but it's that kind of thing, isn't it? And and I think that is the case that that people are just unaware. Uh because we you know, we said it earlier, didn't we? It's a g people take things as a given versus a given that this is what people like, but actually that's not what we see in history. Right. Um particularly from those cultures that uh Tom Holland talks about.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. So in the debates between Christopher Hitchens and Doug Wilson, um there's a documentary called Collision that was made about their their debates that they had back in the day, I forget when that was, maybe like 2009 or something. Um but uh again and again, Chris Hitchens would would ask, you know, what about the Old Testament wars? Um, weren't they evil? Uh and again and again, Doug Doug Wilson would would answer with the phrase, by what standard? Sure. Um and there's there's a great clip of of Christopher Hitchens saying, Uh good question and Doug Wilson saying, I know.
SPEAKER_07They got on quite well, didn't they? I think outside. I've seen a bizarre and this is a bit of a segue and something uh inter But I see th there's a clip of them in a cab. Yeah, that's collision where they're chatting. That's it, is it? Yeah. And one of them they they say to each other, What's the question you find most difficult to deal with? I think. Yeah. So worth checking out. Go and have a look at it. Collision is good.
SPEAKER_08Because they were they just went on a tour around the place and and um did debates uh in different places, and I think there was a book, and so they were both promoting the book together.
SPEAKER_07Struck me in that you know they seem to get along well off the stage. I mean, I wonder whether Lennox and Atkins will make a little cab tour like that. They did catch a they did get a car back to Oxford, the same the same car.
SPEAKER_08Oh, really? Yeah. Sat in silence. Apparently. No, apparently they got on really well. So I think I th th fr from what I have heard, John Lennox sort of said, Peter, why do you do it like that? He says, for theatre to like for theatre. Well, fair enough. Fair enough. You know, whatever. Um but yeah, we we take it for granted that life is valuable and that every drop of blood spilt is precious. Um just do a bit of history and you realise that that has not been obvious.
SPEAKER_07It's a very new idea. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Now there is something to be said for the fact that um like like seriously, we used to put people in stocks not too long ago. Sure. You know, and and um you know, dog fights and cockfighting is is still, you know, popular in different places and and um and probably, you know, uh just just even a few hundred years ago, people would go and they would watch a hanging and that was a day out, right? You know done for the whole family.
SPEAKER_07So we're not we're not saying that uh Christianity has entirely done the job in terms of but but I think a lot of that stuff is because i i we no one ever claims, even when they become a Christian, right that there's a complete transformation in the sense that I'm now no longer sinful. Right. And and those I think those those things are kind of in our flesh. You know, the the desire for you know, there is a kind of maybe I speak for myself here, I don't know. There is a kind of there is a sort of morbid curiosity within You know, I think we're you know, I think I think in human nat in seeing things we're not familiar with slow down at the car crash. Absolutely, yeah, and you get yeah, and you realise there's no reason for us to be going this slowly. Literally everybody has just crawled down to a crawl, haven't they? Um I think those things still go on because actually there's still you know the the we're the flesh is at war inside us anyway.
SPEAKER_08Yes. Yes. Yes. But yeah, what is it that tells us that that is wrong? Um well there was a guy. There was this guy who said, put your sword away. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Um a stunning thing to say, and it's the sort of thing that's got Tom Holland, uh a secular historian, really, really, really thinking, and it'll be very interesting to see the book that he comes out with, um, where he's kind of talking about his spiritual journey that sort of began by comparing biblical cultures to to the others. So I really look forward to to reading that. Uh let's move on to the the third objection that people make to the Bible, and we'll show how actually the critique assumes uh biblical values. The third critique is that the Bible is judgmental. The Bible's impact is so immense on Western culture that even our problems with the Bible have been given to us by the Bible. We've been thinking about different objections that people make to the Bible, which quietly assume the Bible's worldview. Here's the third objection people make to the Bible. It's judgmental. Some people look at the Bible's views on hell and dismiss it as a book of fire and brimstone. But even as the objection is being made, the basic outlook is shaped by the Bible. On the one hand, there is an underlying belief that the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice. That comes from a speech by Martin Luther King.
SPEAKER_01Let us read the lines that universe is long but it bends toward justice.
SPEAKER_08Martin Luther King has said it and it resonates with us. We have a sense that there's something called justice. There is right and wrong. There's a moral standard that is over and above us. But listen to how Martin Luther King grounds that belief.
SPEAKER_01Truth comes with the king. With a cosmic person, we have overcome, we have overcome we will overcome.
SPEAKER_08It is a biblical idea that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. But how do we feel about that? Well, the part of us that loves justice is happy with that, and the part of us that perverts justice is not happy. You see, all of us contribute to the injustice of this world. So actually, you and I want mercy. But where are we going to find mercy? Not in the Greco-Roman world. They went around saying strength and honor. Strength and honor, strength and honor, strength and honor. Vengeance was a huge part of their worldview. I will have my vengeance. But Christ comes in the Bible to take our judgment and to give us his grace. And he's taught us therefore to pass on the forgiveness that we've received from him. That teaching overturned the Roman world, it overturned the classical way of thinking. Now we think of forgiveness and mercy as strengths, not weaknesses, which is an extraordinary turnaround. So with those sensibilities, we come to the Bible and we are faced with judgment passages on the one hand and mercy passages on the other, and we don't know how to fit those together. But whatever problems we have with the Bible, really it's the Bible that has shaped our assumptions. Stay tuned for the fourth problem that the West has with the Bible. So that first one on justice being kind of the desire of our hearts. Um it's kind of it's kind of a yes and a no, you know. Um in one sense we like the idea of justice. Justice for our justice for the others. Yeah. Against others. That's right. But uh yes, to vote for justice is like Turkey's voting for Christmas in another sense as well. Isn't it? But but you know, you hear lots of people say, you know, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice, and and uh Barack Obama actually had that woven into a rug that's in the Oval Office, or at least it was in the Oval Office when when Barack Obama was there. Um so there's this there's this idea that we like that we're heading somewhere good. And you get even, you know, secular psychologists like Stephen Pinker kind of writing The Better Angels of Our Natures, and and he sort of talks about you know history's getting better and we're we're heading somewhere. We've got we've got this sense that we're heading somewhere. Um but of course, like unless you've got a grand narrative in which someone's in charge, um there's no reason that that will continue to be the case. Why why should we be getting anywhere? You know, like who's driving the car? Oh, nobody. But it's definitely going somewhere good.
SPEAKER_09Okay.
SPEAKER_08Now that's belief, right? That's faith. Come on. But you know, so Bertrand Russell, who wrote Why I'm Not a Christian famously, uh, at the beginning of the last century, uh, he talks about his beliefs, and his beliefs do not allow you to say what Martin Luther King Jr. says and what so many people want to believe. Bertrand Russell says that man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving, that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms. That no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave, that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins, all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. Amen!
SPEAKER_07But just try and enjoy your day, you know. Stop worrying. Stop worrying. There's probably no gods, just enjoy yourselves.
SPEAKER_08Within the scaffolding of unnecessary. Destined to death and you know, you know, you're not gonna you're not gonna start a an MLK MLK like you know movement. That seems unlikely, doesn't it? With that belief, are you? So, you know, but but so many so many secular people basically have Bertrand Russell's view of the universe, but they want to hold on to Martin Luther King's view of the future. Like pick. Honestly. You gotta pick one. You can't have both. But then you say, okay, well, I wanna I wanna pick the Martin Luther King thing. We're like, okay, so all things are heading towards justice. Okay. Have you been a source of injustice in the world? Oops. So we need justice. We also need mercy. Um and have you have you seen there's a there's a brilliant um Bono uh interview. Uh might have So there's this guy asking Bono about his Christian faith, and uh we must be going about 15 years now, but um the interviewer kind of asks him also, and Bono says says some amazing stuff. He does C.S. Lewis's mad, bad or god thing, and he kind of says, he's the sort of person who makes the claims that Jesus made, they they're either mad or bad, or or they must be who they say they are, and and so he makes that case, and then then the other guy kind of talks to him about um judgment and that sort of thing, and and and Bono says, Look, I'm absolutely convinced that there's something called karma out there that, you know, a man reaps what he sows and what you put out comes back to you. I'm absolutely convinced that there's justice woven into the universe. But I'm holding on for grace. I'm holding on because I need grace, because I've done a lot of you know, cruddy things in my life. And so, um and he he does this he does this really beautiful kind of law and gospel kind of proclamation to the guy. Um and it and it fits really into what we're talking about here, that yeah, I think there is justice woven into the universe, and I think the moral arc of the universe is bending towards some kind of judgment thing. Um but we've gotta therefore bank on mercy. And of course the Bible comes along and and and teaches that mercy triumphs over judgment, you know, and that for those in Christ there is now no condemnation. Um and and so there's there's wonderful mercy stuff in the Bible, and there is the reality of judgment stuff, and the West has been uh grown up with those realities. Yeah. And so we do believe in justice and we do believe in mercy.
SPEAKER_07And that hasn't grown uh that hasn't grown out of the classical civilization. And I mean you don't have even even today, I mean we we I think we talk about don't we kind of the maybe it comes up in the next video um about um homophobia sexuality and stuff. But uh actually the difference between like the East and the West. So the the the East has a far uh bigger problem with the idea of forgiveness because there's they're more much more about honour and shame and family and that kind of thing there. Yes. Whereas we all love forgiveness, but they don't really have an issue with the the kind of traditional ethics. Um so you you know when people uh you know people might think, you know, people would assume, wouldn't they, in the West, that forgiveness, mercy uh are inherently good things when everybody just recognises that again they're a given. But you say, well you actually just go to the West. I don't even want to go back into history, just go to the East and you'll find all these cultures where that is not a given at all. Right. And they would say, No, mercy and forgiveness are a weakness and a you know. I mean you don't get ahead in life by forgiving people and showing mercy. You want to learn them a lesson. Show some justice.
SPEAKER_08You know. No. You know, so here is here is a guy who's making a public confession of something that that he couldn't have been more clear about being ashamed of. Yep. You know, beginning, middle, and end of his recounting of a t tal tale of how he wanted vengeance on um on any any black man because a black man had raped his friend, and so he went, you know, walking through a part of town where he might have found a black man and he said and he he's talking about it in the context of isn't this appalling? I can't believe I did this. Isn't this ridiculous? It happened forty years ago, but what a what a monster I can be. And then the rest of the rest of Twitter was like, You can be a monster? You monster! Everybody, he's a monster, get him pitch walks at the ready.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. Yeah. But uh yeah, so is there forgiveness anymore, you know, and you you just think there's there's that great comment about modern life that uh these days everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven. Yeah. And that that was a pretty Greek worldview. You know? Everything's permitted. Yeah tarnished. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, yeah. And uh who was it who says about the Covington High kid um in the MAGA hat? He said, No one need ever forgive this kid.
SPEAKER_07Uh yeah, I can't remember who it was. Was it Razor Azlan, or was it?
SPEAKER_08I'm not sure it was.
SPEAKER_07I don't know. Razor Aslan said he'd punch him in the face. That was the that was his solution to the whole thing.
SPEAKER_08Uh yeah, which goes to show we are, you know, drifting from our biblical moorings, let's say. But yeah, so the the whole idea of judgment, um I think there's something deep within us that resonates with the idea of justice at the end of all things, and something deep within us that cries out for mercy. Um and actually uniquely the Bible gives that to us. Um so whatever whatever problems we have either with the judgment texts or the mercy texts, um, it's probably because we've been shaped for millennia by this book. Um cool, should we go on to clip number four? Here's the the problem, the fourth problem that people have with the Bible. Sometimes people say it's homophobic.
SPEAKER_07Let's explore a fourth problem people raise with the Bible. It's homophobic. Watch this compelling vision for same-sex marriage and notice how shaped it is by the Bible. In one sentence, this music video called Same Love is giving us a progressive vision for marriage. In another, it's portraying some incredibly traditional and biblical views. Here we have marriage being presented as the heart and soul of human hope, dreams, and flourishing. And a marriage here is a permanent, exclusive covenant union taken. Place between two people and only two people, and it's happening before God and society more widely. All of those things are profoundly biblical, far more than you might know. Think of all the ways you could order sexual relationships. Think of all the ways humanity has ordered sexual relationships in history. You'll notice that the assumptions behind this music video are incredibly biblical. It's just that they want this profoundly biblical idea of marriage to be open to people of the same sex. And the reason it should be open is that we've all come from God. That's why the song is called Same Love, because before God we're all the same, all equal. This is another thoroughly biblical view. It's taught on page one of the Bible that man and woman are equally in the image of God. At that point, the traditional comeback is that equal does not mean interchangeable. I love my children equally, but I don't love them interchangeably. So men and women are equal, but they're not interchangeable in the marriage relationship. That's where the disagreement happens. And you might take a different view. Okay, well, we can have that discussion. But even as we have the disagreement, let's just acknowledge that we're having a debate while assuming some incredibly biblical truths. The Bible is so huge, even our disagreements with the Bible come from the Bible. Next time we'll look at the fifth and final problem that we have with the Bible, that it's pro-slavery.
SPEAKER_06There it is.
SPEAKER_08Yep, there it is. And is this a problem that people have with the Bible? Is this a question that comes up in evangelism? Uh you bet that it is. Um But it it is interesting that, you know, it's it's only been relatively recently that someone like Peter Tatchell, who's uh uh uh a very prominent gay rights activist here in the UK, he's actually from Australia, he lives in in England. But uh I mean only only a few years ago really did he turn from um saying that you know, why should the gay community want marriage, which is just so obviously Christian? Like uh the the Bible like like the Bible's got this view for like monogamous exclusive you know relationships that are covenanted that you can't get out of um between only two people um for the rest of your life. Like okay, that's that's that was interesting, you know, but why why is it that you would want to say yes, that's exactly the kind of you know way we want to order sexual relationships, it's just we want to jump into that thing um as as gay couples. And so for for years and years and years, far for far longer in his life um than than he's um uh accepted gay marriage, he was against gay marriage because he was just saying, you know, actually marriage the the marriage you want to buy into is just utterly biblical. Yep and I'm not sure we want to do that. Why why should we want to do that thing? Um which is that's that's just really interesting to me. And I I just think it it it goes to show that like so often the debates that we have around gay marriage, for instance, um are just everyone's actually assuming a whole bunch of biblical stuff. Um just tacitly. No one's no one's admitting to it. Um so like even the idea that we should that there should be like two members together covenanted in unbreakable, exclusive love. Like like why should we why should we raise children in that environment? Why not a commune? You know, why not a kibbutz? Why not why not free love, baby? You know? Um But the very the very idea that everything gets funneled into like what are we gonna do about this thing called marriage? Um just goes to show how marriage has utterly, utterly shaped us in the West. Um for good. Absolutely for good. And then, you know, this the second argument that the gay community want to make is, well, because we're all equal, then we should all equally have access to that thing. Um but it but again, you know, the the idea of equality, um it's on page one of the Bible it's more difficult to uh to ground outside of the Bible, you know. So the fact that men and women are equally in the image of God is just an extraordinary thing for a Near Eastern you know book to say um you know three millennia ago or longer, you know. Um you know, Aris Aristotle, writing a thousand years after Moses, um you know, said that women are immature, deficient, deformed, and a bit monstrous. Um and you know the idea of the equality of the sexes or the equality of all people is just nonsense to him. You know, Plato, Plato taught that there are um there are people whose souls are gold, silver, bronze, and like gravel. And you can enslave the gravel people. You can totally enslave the gravel people, as we'll see. So like so like the assumptions that we bring, like, and and different people take different views, and and we we take a traditional view of marriage here at Speak Life. But but the even the even the debate goes to show how everyone on every side has been shaped utterly by the Bible. It's it's that massive.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Yeah. And I mean we I think we've spoken before about the the way that the idea of people being equal, it just isn't an obvious thing. It's not again a given as we see from Aristotle's views, but I mean uh kinda I swear we talk about someone else who said it doesn't you know not the j you just look at stuff and you s you say, Well look at this guy, yeah, he's six foot eight and sort of like a tank. Yes and there's Glen You know, in what sense is ego uh are we talking about the sort of saying and in i the word equal but loses any equal? If you start saying all these people are equal, yeah. Um you know, the person who's a genius compared to the person who can't do you know two plus two, like in what sense are they equal? Yeah. Um it doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_08Like it's it's it's a mythology to believe that, surely. You know, this guy is smarter than me, he's taller than me, he's stronger than me, he's richer than me, you know, he's better looking than me, he's healthier than me, but we're equal. You know, who's that guy? Who is he? Let's get him in. He sounds much better. But like, yeah, he's better than me on every every count you could possibly imagine. Oh, but we're equal. In what sense? What does the word equal even mean anymore? Um so so the the whole equal rights movements and all all that kind of stuff is like thoroughly, thoroughly biblical. Uh it's just that uh uh the word equal then becomes to mean identical. Sure. And instead of you know, so that that music video is called same love, right? Um but actually men and women are not the same. They're equal, but they're not the same. You know, and and no no parent says to their children, I love you interchangeably. Like I love you interchangeably. I I know I love you equally. And even if they say, you know, I have the same love for you all, we all know that that's not exactly correct, is it? You don't like you have a different textured love for different people. It doesn't mean there's higher or lower, better or worse. But equality doesn't steamroll at all differences. Um so that that's the sort of the traditional pushback against progressive views of marriage. Um but the idea of equality and the idea of marriage, um we're on home turf. This is this is the world the Bible built. It really is. So that was the number four thing that uh more four problem that people have with the Bible. And then uh fifthly, we'll have a look at the final critique of the Bible. Is the Bible pro-slavery? The Bible is so huge, even our disagreements with the Bible come from the Bible. We've been looking at five different accusations that people in the West often make of the Bible. Here is the fifth accusation: that it's pro-slavery. There are Old Testament laws concerning bondservants in Israel. That strikes us as at the very least troubling because of how we view slavery in the West. But why do we view slavery the way that we do? Plato and Aristotle taught that some people were born to be slaves. Muhammad was not just pro-slavery, he held slaves. But we think of slavery as obviously wrong. Why? Well, it is from the gospel of Christ, from the example of Christ, and from the teaching of the New Testament, which produced an incredible ripple effect that eventually led to the overturning of slavery. Historian Tom Holland puts it like this.
SPEAKER_05But compacted into this very, very small amount of writing was almost everything that explains the modern world. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, the Western world, as we take for granted. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yes, but also the way that the West has then moved on to shape concepts like international law, for instance. So the f the the the the the fact the bait you know, the concepts of human rights, all these kind of things, ultimately they don't go back to Greek philosophers, they don't go back to Roman imperialism. They uh ri they go back to Paul. Some of the humanists. His letters, I think, are along with the the the the the foregos It's a good clip.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. But you have to wait till Friday. Yeah, for the whole time Friday. Or you can go now and uh search for Tom Holland and Tom Wright.
SPEAKER_07Tom Wright, yeah, on Unbelievable. Yeah. Yep.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. He talks about the the ripple effect of the the the biblical teaching is just so utterly unlike Plato and Aristotle who's who taught that you know nature nature tells you that some people are born to be slaves and others are born to be masters. Some are born to be living tools who are wielded by their slave masters. Um and um the New Testament says otherwise, and the Old Testament says otherwise. Um obviously you've got this narrative in the Bible that goes from creation and there's uh total equality from Genesis 1 and 2, and then you've got fall, Genesis 3, and you do have the laws of Moses, which Jesus says in Matthew 19 are um deliberately non-ideal, um, but that are a response to sin, and that become fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who was the servant of the Lord, who became a ransom to release many, um, and then uh the Apostle Paul starts making these these revolutionary writings, and then Tom Holland says, Yeah, that's actually like the uh the stone dropping in the middle of the the the pond and the ripple effects go out. And uh and for Tom Holland, the secular historian, he he can see no other explanation for why it was that Christians and actually very biblical evangelical Christians who abolished slavery. The only kind of time anyone has ever actually uh overturned it. Uh and so yeah, so we might think that we've outgrown the Bible, actually. It goes to show that the we've grown from the Bible. We've grown within the Bible. Um and just as the Bible is a developmental text, as Jordan Peterson might call it, it's it's also a text that has developed us. Um and if we come to it and we read passages in the Old Testament, and there are there are various verses I don't know quite what to do with, and we've got a video with uh Peter Williams where he talks us through uh what to do with a couple of verses in in Exodus. Um but even the questions we have about why we're there bondservants in in you know in the Old Testament, um the fact that we're even asking that question is because the Bible has shaped us to to recognize that that yeah, we shouldn't rule over one another in that sort of in that sort of sense. Um the Bible is huge. Uh that is uh our first week on the Bible. Uh and then in future weeks we're gonna think about the Bible is old, have we lost the original? The Bible is improbable, can we trust the authors? Uh the Bible is contradictory, how do we make sense of it? And uh we hope that this will be useful to you. We also hope it uh it'll be useful for people who have started to take the Bible seriously because they see how the West is kind of drifting every which way. And there are a lot of people, and Jordan Peterson is part of a movement, a lot of people who are, you know, basically rediscovering the Bible um and wanting to know how to you know how to get stuck into it. How to get stuck into it. So next week uh we're gonna do a a video on, well, where do we begin if the Bible is so huge?
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Like what's the way in? And what is the way in, Paul?
SPEAKER_07Uh well, ultimately, the gospel is a good place to start. So picking up a biography of Jesus' life. So we're gonna look in our first video at whether we can really trust the gospels. Let's kind of delve into that a bit more. Um but I mean if you're listening now and you're already kind of thinking, well, I don't want to wait until next week, I just want to get stuck in. Um I mean, grab a gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Um I think Mark is a great one because it's a little short one, easy to read. Uh Luke is very good, I think. I mean they're all good, but so I wouldn't go for number three. No. Uh Luke is good uh because it's written for Gentiles, so um there's a lot of stuff in Matthew where it uh if you don't have a lot of knowledge of Jewish stuff, some of it just passes, can pass you by. Um so Luke is a great one because it's written for people who who weren't Jews, so Mark is shorts, they're both easy ones to get into. And then we also I think we talk on the video um in the bit we didn't quite get there that you can start looking at the Reading Between the Lines, which is our daily kind of Bible devotional, which is on Facebook and on YouTube. So they're all they come out every day on Facebook, they're already there, all on YouTube. You can get audio of them and stuff from our website um as well, speaklife.uk. Um and they kind of go through the whole Bible uh, or well, not every single passage, but they go through every day, little chunk, kind of famous phrases um that have passed into common parlance. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um and see how again that's another good example of how our world has been built on the Bible. Yeah, exactly. Just even phrases we use all the time.
SPEAKER_08365. You know, Shakespeare might have given us maybe a hundred, but yeah, the Bible's given us uh many, many more phrases. The Bible has built our world. Yeah, um, and it built Shakespeare's world, and Shakespeare is like yeah, inexplicable outside of the the um the context of the Bible, too.
SPEAKER_07Yep.
SPEAKER_08So, yeah, so stay tuned for all of that. If you would like to join us at the Speak Life Foundry, we are taking on interns starting in September, and applications are open. We've had uh some great applications already, and we'd love to hear from you or from somebody who you think might benefit from coming to join us. So, if someone is creatively minded, if someone's evangelistically minded, uh we want to take them and shape them in the foundry. So we'll go on mission together, we'll study together, and we'll produce media together, and it's gonna be a lot of fun. Come down to the Sunshine Coast and uh and join Paul and I and Dan and Nick and the whole team. And uh you can go to speaklifefoundry.com. Speaklifefoundry.com and there's an application form uh there, and we'd love to hear from you. And do do share uh the video there and share the link out with friends uh who you think might be good for it. Uh if you'd like to donate to Speak Life, we exist because of the generosity of others like you. Uh, you can go to speaklife.org.uk slash give, and there'll be uh details of multiple different ways that you can give, including tax efficiently if you're a taxpayer in the UK. But I think that ought to do us for today. I think so. And uh I think what's uh what would be a fitting way to uh to leave people?
SPEAKER_07I don't have it. You don't have it? Oh man! I that's that's why that video died, because I tried to add it, but this stupid program tried to add something just cut what I was doing, so Man Um Man. Maybe I'll just post I'll post ten hours of it on my Speed Life YouTube page.
SPEAKER_08Do you want to finish with the uh the opening monologue? That'll be that'll be fun.
SPEAKER_07Okay, the top social media. So just you know, in case you're out there and you're thinking, I don't know whether I'm quite at the level to apply for the foundry, um basically all you've got to do is surpass this level, and uh you're probably on on track. So awesome. So we'll say goodbye and uh see you next week with the monologue. Take care. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_08Hey you! Unsure of what to post on social media? Feeling out of your depth when it comes to global politics, behind the times on the latest trends, not completely sure which opinion will get you pilloried by mobs of angry strangers, then try not posting anything! That's right, not posting anything is the new phrase that's not sweeping the internet. Join the movement that literally no one has thought of as you let righteous indignation just sweep on fast. Just make this happen tomorrow on Wayne. Ever since making Facebook posts on US politics, Wayne's IQ has dropped 15 points, and it's developed jingles. Don't be like wine. Start doing what no one on the internet has thought of. Try not posting anything.
SPEAKER_06Wait, I'm a Christian. I want to have a distinctive voice online. We're glad to hear it, Bill. Here then is our foolproof three-step plan.
SPEAKER_08Step one, we've already covered it. Don't post stuff you don't understand. Step two, make it clear in your bio that you're a Christian. Don't prefer Fowler of the Way. Disciple of the Galilean. Or if you're not ridiculously obtused, maybe try Christian! That's step two. State clearly that you're a Christian, and then step three, and this one really is key, people. Don't be a jerk! That's right, against all country inclinations and against the entire tide of jerkness engulfing the web. Try not to be a jerk. Post steps again. Resist the urge to post on things you don't understand. Make plain that you're a Christian, and don't be a jerk. Follow these simple rules, and you too might just survive this Vitriol Exchange Storm week all social media.