The Speak Life Podcast, sharing Jesus in everyday life. I've just visited my homeland of Australia and I've been reminded once again how strangely my countrymen behave around pedestrian crossings. Have you ever been to Australia? Then you'll know what I'm talking about. You arrive at the pedestrian crossing and you see 20 otherwise liberated, sophisticated, carefree individuals turned instantly into dead-eyed slaves, lost in groupthink, looking up to a little man towering over them who says, no, don't stop. That is what you will see at the lights everywhere in Australia. It does not matter if there are no cars in sight. It does not matter if tumbleweed is blowing down the street. Australians will stop. They will obey. They will look up to the little man and watch attentively for his permission to cross the road. That is not how I cross the road. I'm a very busy man, places to see, people to do. I come to the intersection and I press the button four, five, six times. I don't care if I've just seen you press the button. How can I trust you to press the button? We've never met. You might be a total button pressing moron. How do I know? If you want a button press, you gotta press it yourself. But I'm not pressing the button to change the pedestrian lights. I don't care about the pedestrian lights. I'm trying to change the traffic lights. To slow the cars. It's the cars I'm worried about. And when the cars slow, even for a second, I will cross the road. Green man or no green man? Often in Australia, I'd find myself breaking free from the herd, stepping out onto the streets, sort of tutting as I go, repressing the urge to stop in the middle of the road and look back and say, wake up, sheeple! Look, I'm not being mown down by traffic. Lightning is not striking. The little red man is not shooting little red lasers at me. I'm free! You're free! You're grown-ups, you can cross the road. Throw off the shackles of the little man towering above you. Walk into the future, my brothers and sisters, live! I want you to live. I'm thinking that as I cross. I'm thinking that every single time I cross the road in Australia, but I don't say it. Instead, I just cross the road, deliberately walking slower than my normal pace, just to demonstrate how much time you actually have to cross this road. If only you'd rouse yourself from your self-inflicted servitude. As I get to the other side, I do a little as I step through the street zombies on the other side of the road, and so I walk down the street, a full 20 seconds ahead of the losers behind me. And as I stride forwards into the future, there is a part of me that envies them. You know, they they know where they stand at least, stuck under their little red man. They seem like they've got nothing better to do. They must have much more inner peace than me to just stop like that. It must be nice to be so carefree. It must be nice to have so little in their lives going on. And it must be nice not to have to worry about getting run over. You just entrust yourself to the little man above you. You let him worry about the dangers around you, so you don't have to. But in the end, I consider myself too grown up, too hungry for experiences, too free to ever subject myself to their dead-eyed slavery. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how most modern Westerners think about Christians, right? If you're a Christian, you are one of those strange people stuck under an image of a little man who towers over you. You are a dead-eyed slave to the figure thrust up into the sky who is there to tell you, no, don't. Stop. While the rest of the world marches on, you Christians, you are lost in groupthink. The grown-ups in the world are free, they have things to do, places to go, they are hungry for experiences, but you are too afraid. You entrust yourself to your little man. Shut your eyes to the rest of the world, and maybe you do have a bit more peace, a bit less anxiety. But you're a child, enslaved to the little man above who tells you no. But if you see Christians that way, you have misunderstood Christianity entirely. Christianity is not about halting under the no of a little man above you, it's about the great God of heaven who stooped down to love you and liberate you. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. So says Colossians chapter 1. Not a little man that we thrust up into the heavens. Jesus is the source of life who stooped down to pour himself out for us. Maybe like me, you don't like to get stuck at the traffic lights, okay. But that's not Christ what what Christianity is like. And here's the danger for all of us don't get stuck with a false view of Jesus. Jesus is the God who sets you free. It's the 11th of September. This is Speak Life, and you're watching the live cast. Welcome to the show! Hello, everybody. Here we are. We're doing the the robot dance. Everything is jolting around.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, let us know if uh this is actually any better. Like the um Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Christopher Dempsey has said that we're a little bit uh shaky and juddery. Are we still shaky and juddery? Let us let us know. I'm just trying to see on here whether I can see what we're doing. Ah, who knows? But we we're we're in full control of the situation, people. Don't worry. You're dealing with professionals here. Well. What film is that from? Hey, don't worry about it. I'm a professional. Professional what? Do you know? No. Okay, let us know in the comments.
SPEAKER_06Come on. Maybe it's maybe it's a generational thing. Darren Hill says it's working fine now. Working fine now. So we think it was just the initial video. Great, perfect now, says I met Vital. Perfect. Now that we're on the screen. Now that you're on the screen. I was on the screen, it was not so good. Although Christopher just said No!
SPEAKER_07Very negative. Very negative, Christopher. Check your attitude, man. Um Yes, uh Ferris Bueller's day off for those watching at home. That's that's the point.
SPEAKER_06Do you know what? I've never actually seen it. Shocking. I feel like it's one of those films that you're supposed to have seen, but I've not.
SPEAKER_07This is a generational thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, were you were you alive when I was born? What year did it come out? Uh ooh. 80. I'm gonna guess 86. Okay, I'm gonna guess 86. What yeah. Ferris Beulah. 86!
SPEAKER_0686. What point though?
SPEAKER_07Oh, I don't know. Uh June 11th. June.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah, I would have been a few months old.
SPEAKER_07Oh, very good. So you are um and speaking of dates, uh, today is that day of infamy, isn't it? Uh September 11th.
SPEAKER_06Um yeah, it seems like a blink of an eye, doesn't it, in terms of yeah, I mean it was this massive thing, and we're just saying earlier how, you know, you said, Oh, should we talk about 9-11? And I was like, Well, why? And I hadn't even really twigged that today was separate. Because there'd be no it wasn't like a build-up to it. It wasn't kind of, you know, oh, it's coming up to this many years, and it's just kind of here we are now on the day, and Yeah. And I I mean I always look at the news in the morning and there was nothing, you know, there was nothing in the news to kind of say, you know, any marking of it.
SPEAKER_07There's nothing to say that was September eleventh, anyway. How was I meant to know it was September 11th? Nobody. So it's literally on every page of the newspaper. But I read a newspaper, yeah. Who does? Remember? That was that was before your time. Exactly, yeah. Um yeah, I was in Australia. It was about eleven PM when uh yeah, my dad my dad told me and said, Yeah, you you're gonna want to come and see this, and so yeah, stayed up all night watching. Just yeah, incredible. Wait, it would have been daytime for you, you were over here.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so I would have been in maths, I think. I was in a maths class. Um so it would have been about two o'clock in the afternoon, something around that time, because we were about five hours ahead, I think. Um but then I didn't know about it until I got home from school, because this was before your smartphones and you know, even even before WAP was there on your phone. Um and yeah, so when I got home through the door, um my mum said, Oh, you want to see what's on the news. And then, yeah, I mean it by that point it was on the tele like every channel, you know, all the time, you know, for hours and hours. I'm not even sure at that point if the second I think it must have hit, the second blade must have hit by then. But I know I'm pretty sure neither of the towers had collapsed by that point. Yeah. Um so I think we watched that live.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. But it's amazing, yeah, that's you you have that memory of something 17 years ago, and it's it seems like the blink of an eye. And yeah, I s I saw on Facebook somebody was asking, what happened 17 years before you were born? Just to give you the sense of if someone's born today, how ancient will September the 11th feel to them? Um and I guess what 17 years before I was born was 1961. Mm-hmm. And uh Yuri Gagarin had just gone into space. Uh they just started building the Berlin Wall. Um people uh people started riding the bus, the free the the what were they called? The free riders. Um what happened in 1961? Here we go. JFK was inaugurated as the 35th president of the U United States. Remember? Remember back when they had presidents like that? Remember, you know, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
SPEAKER_06Didn't he have an affair with Marilyn Monrose? No, yeah. I'm not sure he is the paradigm of uh you know the white knight.
SPEAKER_07No, but in terms of uh oratory, um yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Well seventeen years before my birth of me would have been nineteen sixty-nine, which feels ridiculously long before because it I guess because it f you know it feels like two decades apart, you know. Yeah even though it's not you know what I mean, sixties and seventies. Um ridiculous. Right. He probably still had the same voice.
SPEAKER_08So it's probably still very husky.
SPEAKER_06Woodstock. Woodstock was that yeah, and apparently Yeah, yeah, and uh so obviously that was a big one. Um I'm don't I was it's gonna I I I feel like I should be saying, Oh yes, of course, I remember well. But we just established it was seventeen years before you're gonna um and Nixon apparently was president became president that year. There you go. So, you know. There you go. We've got Christopher Dempsey said he was driving up the M1 near Milton Keynes, and he said it reminded him of the day Kennedy was shot, it was that significant. Yeah. And actually, I suppose it it for people, there it is a kind of you do remember those big moments, don't you? I mean, I don't know whether we've had anything as big as that really since. Maybe maybe like the next kind of most significant event after that I would remember is like the London bombings. Yeah. About 2004, wasn't it? Five. Five, yeah, two thousand and five, yeah. Um but I remember like w doing a Christian union, like when I was doing youth work a few years ago, and I made some reference to Osama bin Laden, and basically these girls were just like, Who's that? And I was like, You don't know who Osama bin Laden is. And then I was like, hang on a second, how old were you in 2001? And they were like three or two, and I was like, Well, okay. But you just you know, for for us it's like you just assume everybody knows about 9-11. But with like my kids, well not that we're gonna be talking about it with them at any near stage, you know, very young. But I mean it's just not on their radar, you know, it's it's whereas for us it was a that significant event.
SPEAKER_07You're getting old though. Getting old, yeah. Aging youth workers. You know, I uh I go and speak to the youth and I say it's like in that scene in Howard's End. And because this is Do you remember when we had rationing? Uh very good. So um uh we've just had um the uh if you if you manage to see the monologue at the beginning, um if I wasn't too jumping, if you managed to hear what I was talking about, I've just come back from Australia, so uh spent some time uh seeing family and uh doing a little bit of uh preaching around the place as well. But uh yeah, that that thing about Australian pedestrians really really bugged me. Because I'm a busy man. I've got places to go, people do. It's you know.
SPEAKER_06Is it because like in the States they have the whole jaywalking thing, don't they? So like you have something. I've never been sure quite so it is actually against the law to cross the road at the wrong point or the wrong time.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, as it is in Australia, when it was pointed out to me after I ranted and railed. You were like Romans 13. Yeah, yeah. People were like, well, we need to obey the state, right? And okay, maybe. Maybe, but still. Yeah. Um so I I was a bad boy. Crossing the road. Such a rebel. When the red man says no.
SPEAKER_06Some people just want to watch the world burn. Chaotic evil, right here.
SPEAKER_07I am chaotic evil.
SPEAKER_06But I was saying to you when we talk about this, that yeah, so I don't really wait for the green man if there's no cars coming. Or if I've got kids with me, wait for the green man or there are children waiting. No, I won't go because I want to set a good example.
SPEAKER_07Absolutely. If you want to be a dead-eyed slave because you know you're a youngster, that's fine. If you've grown up though, if you're a mature adult.
SPEAKER_06But I was saying, like, when you go to America, I was saying the thing that threw me the first time is they don't there's n there's not nothing to tell you that cars can still turn right.
SPEAKER_07Yes.
SPEAKER_06When something says walk, and I think I'm safe, just start walking and car comes around the corner. Yeah, yeah. Ridiculous. And that's when you need to say, I'm walking here!
SPEAKER_08I'm walking here.
SPEAKER_06What movie's that from? Uh I don't know, but it's John Voigt and um Dustin Hoffman, isn't it? Which wasn't, you know, it's not in the original script. You know that was improvised. Right. Because they didn't get permission to film. Okay. And so they would just did it in the street, and that's so it was a genuine reaction from Dustin Hoffman. So there you go, that's my bit of trivia for you today. In Midnight Cowboy. Midnight Cowboy.
SPEAKER_07There we go.
SPEAKER_06Oh, is that the um that's got that song Sunvoid? That's the one Everybody's Talking to Me, Harry Nielsen. Okay. There you go, go check that one out as well.
SPEAKER_07That one? No. Uh yeah, yeah, it is that one out there. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And verse two is just wow, woo, I remember it well. I think Harry's forgotten the words.
SPEAKER_07Very good. So I spent summer in Australia, so I did uh did a few different things. Um meeting family, preaching in different places. Um I did uh a bit of mission in um Sydney, so in some very funky, very cool churches in the inner west of Sydney, kind of where every every man's got a very groomed, waxed, uh, you know, kind of you know, naturally sourced wax. Do you have a feel you should just have a beard you take with you on the floor? All things to all people. You know. Contextualization. And there I come, you know, just woven out of hemp. Um carbon neutral. It's carbon neutral. It's that kind of place, and everyone like like the restaurants aren't just, you know, aren't just Taiwanese cuisine, it's like Northwest Taiwanese cuisine. And it's all because I mean the the Northeast is just So last year. Yeah, disgusting. So last year. And um But you know, to give you an idea, so I did I did like a um uh we we had an outdoors event of spoken word and um acoustic nights under a massive Morton Bay fig tree, uh in a in a graveyard. Okay. It really worked. They lit it up really nicely, and there was a DJ like playing some groovy funky things that the kids were all listening to, the bleepy bleepy music. And uh I got my finger on the pulse. And they got me up and I did a did a few poems, and um and some of them were sort of front and Jesus was front and center, and some of them were just you know, I wish I were a fish and kind of fishy on a little dishy.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that works. See?
SPEAKER_07Um and poems about the big issue and accents and things like that. But anyway, like halfway through um doing this mission, I s I doing these poems, I said, um, you know, the reason I'm a Christian is because um I kind of think the poetry goes all the way down. I I think that actually spoken word goes all the way down. I think creativity and beauty and truth and goodness and love go all the way down. And it's not just that these kind of nights are a thin glaze on the top of dead rubble, but actually underneath are the everlasting arms as a father loving his son in the joy of the spirit, and this is this, you know, universe that we live in. And because Jesus is who he says he is, I I think that tonight is not just the thin glaze on the top of dead rubble, it's actually connected to something really big. And uh and like this this girl came up to me afterwards and she w she was like, I just think that's a because I was all I've I've always thought that, you know, like maybe uh do you think love is because I've always thought that. Uh but maybe is Jesus is the And she was like blown away and gabbling kind of and that sort of thing. And um and I said, um, oh, would you like a book where I kind of talk about this a bit more? And I gave her a love story. And she literally started opening up and reading it in front of me. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know how long to let her go. And then she had a question about something halfway down page one, and I was like, Oh, okay. And um, yeah, she was she was absolutely, absolutely loving it and and awakened to that kind of thing. So just interesting contextualizing your ministry in different places and you know, a spoken word night under a big fig tree.
SPEAKER_06In a graveyard.
SPEAKER_07In a graveyard. That yeah, one of the services at this church is called church in the graveyard. Um which is a very Christian thing, isn't it? Actually, you know, life among the dead and graveyards are God's acre, aren't they? They are God's fields. We plant the people like seeds, you know, you got your tomatoes there and your carrots there, and you and you label them with the tombstones, and then up they come, a bumper a bumper crop. Yeah. When Jesus returns. So church in the graveyard was there. And so, yeah, did lots of did lots of mission in Australia and that was fun. And now I'm back in the UK and uh and hitting the ground running. And and one of the things I did in Australia was interview John Dixon. And uh, if you guys get our podcast, um you'll have heard uh the interview that I did with John Dixon.
SPEAKER_06And the the link's in the comments on this, isn't it? Brilliant. You can get a link to that. Brilliant.
SPEAKER_07So if you're on Facebook Live, you can see the link to that interview. And it was it was uh a really um paradigm-shaping conversation for me, uh, with John Dixon, who's kind of a hero of mine. He wrote um lots of books when I was a teenager that I read that were very significant for me, um, as a young sort of church-going lad. And uh and so I got to meet him and talk to him. And uh one of the reasons uh I got to speak to him is that he's just done uh a film called For the Love of God. And it's a great project um where they try to go back over Christian history and they try to own um the negatives of of church history, um, but also portray the positives of church history. And so it's called For the Love of God, Why the Church is both better and worse than you can possibly imagine. Um so we've got a little clip of it, and um I think this should wet whet your appetite for for the love of God.
SPEAKER_01I'm utterly ashamed of it. I'm ashamed that the name of Christ has ever been associated with a bomber in AK-47.
SPEAKER_05The history of the West has been mostly Christian, and that history is mixed.
SPEAKER_04Here is where the Crusades began. Salvation for taking up the sword.
SPEAKER_05The crusaders burst through and slaughtered men, women, and children. There are plenty of circumstances for Christians as need for Muslims. Religion is a really good banner to march under.
SPEAKER_02This was where Adolf Hitler proclaimed his vision for the Third Reich. And what was the Christian church doing in response to the unfolding madness?
SPEAKER_04Should Christianity be understood as oppressive for women or as liberating? The hammer of she witches was a bestseller for about 200 years.
SPEAKER_10This is one of the most beautiful places in Hawaii. It's also a natural prison.
SPEAKER_04Diseases, land grabs, and outright massacres led to the annihilation of entire communities.
SPEAKER_01To lose the land was a tragedy. Even though we aspire to this idea of living in God's image, we often fail completely.
SPEAKER_02What does it look like when the church exists for others?
SPEAKER_04There's no denying that Christians have sometimes played completely out of tune, but they've also played it beautifully and with lasting effect.
SPEAKER_05Join us as we travel the globe and back through history to uncover the truth. The church is better and worse than you ever imagined.
SPEAKER_07So do go to uh betterandworse.film um which uh yeah will get you in touch with all the resources. Because actually, the the better and worse film is a 90-minute cut of four hours of material. And you can get the whole four hours of material uh on that website. They they originally uh filmed kind of four different episodes um taking you through different aspects of of Christian history. Um and it's been turned into a course that you can do, and so I I I think it could be a great course to do with uh uh skeptics who very often you know raise that objection. You know, what about all the hypocrites and what about the crusades? Um and so you can actually take them through um a kind of a guided study of all this. And as you can see, the production values are are terrific. What really what really struck me was um the approach of For Better and For Worse. And the approach, um, you know, when they're talking about the Crusades, their approach is not to say, Yeah, but the Muslims started it, right? Like their approach is not to say, you know, the Crusades weren't as bad as you thought you might have thought they were. Um actually in the film, what they do is is they say, Did you know that on the way to Jerusalem uh crusaders were like slaughtering Jewish villagers for practice, right? It's worse than you than than you ever thought. And these people, you know, they were writing in their diaries how much they loved Jesus, um you know, still bloody from the massacre. Um so you can't just sort of say, well, that's that they didn't really love Jesus. Yeah. But many of them claimed to, and claimed to do it in the name of Jesus. So what do we do with that? And so it's a it's a great posture to take to actually own all of that and to say, sorry, it really sucks. Um and that really helps you to win an audience for saying, Oh, but have you noticed have you noticed why it is that we hate the Crusades? Have you noticed why it is that we tend to think it's it's dreadful to take up a sword like that? Yeah. It's probably got everything to do with Jesus.
SPEAKER_06And in in the interview that c when you interviewed him, um that comes out, doesn't it? This idea that Jesus has given us this uses his analogy, doesn't he, of a beautiful tune. Yes. And that but it so as Christians we're to live that in tune with that to sing along. But yet throughout history in lots of different ways we haven't. Um and hear all these examples and you say, yes, own it, but like you say, being able to say to people the very fact you you recognise there is a good tune because you you're you you see that there is deviation from it. Right. The very fact that you're saying this is not good shows there is a good that you hold to. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a lot of that well, all those good secular values, they're not really secular values, they come from Christian faith, and a lot of people I think probably now, particularly in this day and age, even more so, people are ignorant of that, aren't they? They just assume that good Christian Right the good values, they don't call they don't think of them as Christian values, they think they're just good common sense values, but they've grown out of Christian society. Totally. Christian faith in into the West. Yeah. Whereas in other cultures that's not been the the way at all.
SPEAKER_07No. No. And so that's what I mean, John Dixon is um uh he's got a doctorate in in history, you know, the first century is is kind of his his speciality. And I I think that really helps him as an evangelist and as an apologist, um, to be able to compare and contrast the Christian worldview with what we might imagine to be just natural secular values, because he can just point to the Greco-Roman world with great authority and and say, like, it was a brutal time, you know. You have Julius Caesar, you know, um, celebrating the fact that he's he's killed a million ghouls and enslaved a million more, and you know, and that's that's not like you know, so so Julius Caesar would have been proud of the Crusades. No doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt. Julius Caesar would have been absolutely proud of the of the Crusades, you know. He just well, he would he would have wanted them to have been more successful. You know, why do we need four of these things? Like, why why can't we just get the job done and smash the opposition? That's that is the way that a good Greek or a good Roman kind of thinks. Um and you think of you know some of the other values that might have influenced the West, and you you think of Islam, for instance, and and again they they would take a very different view. Obviously, they take a different view of the Crusades, but but you know, in terms of the wielding of the sword, um, it is not at all obvious within Islamic theology, you know, that that is in and of itself a bad thing. It is obvious when you've got your leader, Jesus, saying, those who live by the sword will die by the sword and put away your sword, and the kingdom of God is within, and turn the other cheek and love your enemies, you know. Um so yeah, this tune that we all want to hold Christianity to account by, it's just great to be able to say, yeah, Christians have really failed at that. Because actually what you what you are also doing is saying, Yeah, but the tune. Tune's pretty good, don't you think?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_07And so, yeah, so we had a great conversation about kind of losing well was is a phrase that John Dixon kind of sort of it's a c it's a phrase he uses quite quite a bit, actually. Like like what what were your impressions, like listening in on the on the conversation?
SPEAKER_06Uh yeah, I mean, I think uh because he talks about or basically you talked about being a a witness and the fact that you know, the word witness coming from that idea of or from the Greek word martyreo, mm-hmm and you know, obviously where we get the word martyr. Yeah. And to be honest, uh you know, obviously we we did Greek when we were studying and stuff. I'm not sure and and obviously we uh uh uh we knew it meant witness, but I'm not sure I ever really made that connection.
SPEAKER_08Right.
SPEAKER_06You know, that you're in in witness, like in your everyday life, yeah, there is this sense of martyring yourself. Um you know, I think you say on the interview, don't you um you know witnessing is or mart being martyred is the kind of ultimate witness. Right. It was for God. Like how does he witness to what he's like? Yeah, so Jesus' witness is to come and be martyred, isn't it? Yeah. And actually, if we are martyr, if we are being martyred as in our witness, that is in by definition you are losing. Yeah. You know, yeah, yeah, you know quite a lot. Or at least it looks like you're losing. Right.
SPEAKER_07Um Right. Uh but you can lose well. Yes. Yes. And so so that witness will necessarily entail loss, it'll entail martyrdom. And also, but even as you're being mown down, um, that will be a witness to the world of the kind of Lord you follow, the kind of Lord who would turn the other cheek to his enemies and and that sort of thing. Um and so therefore, I think that gives you a really interesting posture to the world, especially as Christians are becoming increasingly, you know, persecuted for their faith in a world that is increasingly saying, Christians, uh, you don't have your privileges anymore. You you don't you don't get to by rights um legislate the morality of the West. You don't by rights get to have a a seat of power. Um and as we lose that privilege, we've we we tend to think that we're losing a right, right? Yeah, and we get very angry about that, and how dare we lose our our rights and that sort of thing. Um and I think John Dixon's voice is really necessary to to say, um, hang on guys, uh th it was only ever a privilege. We like the the church really was invited to run schools, run hospitals, to do the charitable work. We were invited to do that because we did it really well. And now that we lose the power in in terms of the state, um, well, okay, let's lose well. Let's, you know, be martyred. And the the blood of the martyrs is the seat of the church, as they used to say in the in uh in in the early church. So are there therefore ways that even in personal witness we can kinda we can kinda model that. And I think I'd I'd recommend that people kinda at least follow John Dixon on Facebook if you if you're on Facebook, um, to see um the way he engages really graciously um on these kinds of issues.
SPEAKER_06Um I think the thing that struck me most, and it's come up in a a number of our discussions or things we've looked at, like um you know, there's this sense, isn't there, in which you know, churches, Christians were the ones with the hospitals and the charities and all this, and and people were saying, Well, this is a great thing, and now we're or or the schools or whatever, and now people are pulling, they're saying, Well we like all those things, but let's take the God part out of it Um and they're saying, Look, you can have all these good things without religion, without without Christ. Um But what the what the conversation pushed into a bit was that you can say, Yes, those are good things, but but why do you think they're good things? Right. And and actually it's always that trying to push back at people's assumptions that underlie things. So there's they just have an assumption that of course to help people, you know, the weak or whatever, let's take the hospital or whatever, the the weak and the sick and the vulnerable is a good thing, and you want to say, Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah there's some common ground there, but I want to know why do you think it's a good thing to help the weak and the vulnerable? Because that is not something that has come out of the Greek and Roman culture. That was not considered to be obvious in the society of that day and even a lot of societies in the world today.
SPEAKER_08Right.
SPEAKER_06So why do you think that? And and you have and and I think what people will find is if once you keep pushing and pushing, you say you only think those are good things because of the Christian values. Exactly. Um and just trying to push back.
SPEAKER_07You have in mind the beautiful tune. Yeah. Um let's let's think a bit more about that beautiful tune. And um in um in the film, uh, For Better and For Worse, um well the film's called For the Love of God. Uh subtitles Um The Christian Church is better and worse than you'd ever imagined. Um, they they press into like these these cultural values that we have, for instance, of humility. Yeah. Like we we definitely think that being proud and bigging yourself up is not right. Pretty much a good thing to do. Um but it was the most obvious thing for a Roman, you know, to do. Like you would absolutely the power and strength and honour. Yeah. What film is that? Strength and honour, man. You know. That's what it's all about. Gladiator. You know, you knew that. I didn't know that. Oh, you didn't know that. No. Call yourself a youth worker.
SPEAKER_06You only ever watch Twelves as a youth worker at most. That's as far as you get. That's true.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, but strength and honour, so yeah. Um, Princess Bride, school of girl over it's good. Shrek. Um But yeah, yeah, the whole Roman society is built on strength and honour, strength and honour. And you know, the idea that humility, mercy, kindness, and forgiveness would be the bedrock of your morality.
SPEAKER_06Well, the thing that came up in the the discussion as well was the idea of equality, and you're saying, you know, if you said to a pagan Greek person that all people are equal, they'd be like, well, what on earth are you talking about? Right. What about this person who's stronger than the other person? Am I boring you, Glenn? What about the um What do you mean you need to ask? Just so you know. What about the person who's born stronger? You know, surely they're not equal, you know. They're greater in strength than the other person who's weaker. What about the person who's born smarter or the person who's born creative and the person who's not? Right. Um, no, but they're equal. Yeah, yeah. But then and and it's what? And so yeah, in what way is their equality there? You know, surely you the the word equal loses any real value there because you it just it does. Um and I think you talk in the interview, don't you, about how people try and make an argument for equality, but it does fall down further back down the road. Um you know, oh well equality is a good thing. So what comes on the interview? Equality is good because we see that people do better when they're treated equally. Okay, that's true, but like that doesn't mean people are equal. Yeah, so so that that's a different thing altogether. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um it's a castle in the air. Like, what are your foundations? Yeah, so it's like so you can so you're saying people aren't necessarily equal, but we could pretend they're all equal and treat them like they're equal. Yeah. Um but people don't want to say that. People want to say everyone is equal. Yeah. But it's what's your basis for that? And of course for us it's easy. You know, you can say, well, image you will. Literally page one of the Bible. Literally. Yeah. It's like it's there. You know, we've just got that. But of course, there's nothing really to there there's no there's no foundation to that belief if you don't have that.
SPEAKER_07If you don't have the and it then becomes it then becomes very scary because you're like, oh, your culture, you you like treating everyone equal. Um well w we like killing off min minorities. Um and it's working out really well for us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_07It worked better for us. They were they were kind of holding us back. Yeah. These guys were taking all the food. Well, think about them. More food. So, you know, that's I know I know we want to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67, but why don't we just euthanize them? Right. At 67. Is it like Logan's run? Is it 30? Yeah, I I think we can Well. I'm 40, so I think I think at least at least older than me. Constantly. Constantly just older than me. But yeah, what are what are your foundations for for doing that? And so as as yeah, so I I just keep coming back to that illustration of the song versus the singer, and I think it's really, really, really useful. I'm gonna be using it a lot in my in my evangelism to say, yeah, you're right. We have sung this tune abysmally at times. Uh, what do you make of the tune itself?
SPEAKER_06And I think also what was helpful in the discussion is he talks about how Christians, if you look back through history, tend to have swung from one extreme to the other. So either it's been all about like the right theology and living like here's the morality, and being very much anti-like, oh, you're not being very moral, let's be very down on the society, or it's swung the other way and gone, no, we need to be very compassionate and loving. And he's saying, But actually, Jesus, he railed against the Pharisees and you know, and and Jerusalem and all the terrible things going on out there in public, but yeah, he still went and sat at dinner at the table with the sinners, right? And he says there's a sense in which perhaps as Christians we're not very good at doing that, right. And actually we need to be able to do both, yeah. Um, and that hold that kind of intention, with the hope as well that the other side will also do the same. You know, they won't just be like, Christians are all terrible, you know. Because I think he uh it comes up again, doesn't it, about Christopher Hitchens saying like nothing good has ever come from religion, and it was like, well, so Martin Luther King was secular, it was a very not religious thing, yeah.
SPEAKER_07You know and Stalin, because he was such a monster, he must have been religious. He must have been a religious guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06So actually, you know, when you when you caricature like that, that's unhelpful. So you you hope that both sides will.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_06But then in a sense, we shouldn't necessarily expect the other side to do that. No. Because we're singing a different tune.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_06You know, we're singing the Christ tune. Yeah. We shouldn't be surprised if the other side don't mimic that at all.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Um and it also helps, I think the John Dixon approach kinda helps when we've got such a polarized society that's that's very much going left, right, and nothing in the middle. Um and as we're yelling at each other and playing identity politics and just not able to listen to each other, um, it could be really um tempting for we as Christians to say um to to react against um persecution, let's say, from the left, and then to identify with the right, you know, and then suddenly we are an evangelical.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah, and we we just become associated with the right, and then we just champion in anything on the right, and like, oh, you know, I've I mean, you know, mentioned before that, you know, had some really interesting conversations with guys in Eastern Europe um who are kind of ahead of us culturally speaking. They say they po they're post post-Christian in in their environments. Um and and they're kind of warning us here in just the post-Christian West to say, you know what, um you don't want to be identified with with just the conservative movement on the right, because you know, in Hungary and in Russia there are there are you know these right-wing movements that many of them want to claim to be Christian and yet they are just nationalistic, you know. Um Yeah, and so that actually the the the church needs to kind of be able to uh operate in a different space, not right, not left, somehow from above. Somehow from above, we've gotta we've gotta try and do that.
SPEAKER_06And so And the thing about that though, so these people that who maybe let's take the far right and who would say yes we're Christians and they're doing things and you go, Well that's terrible. Yeah. So the temptation there is to say, well, they're not really Christians. Right. Right. But how is that any different to the crusades stuff when we've just literally just said we we Yeah. And maybe there's a difference in that when you look at the Crusades or you look at the the the st the evidence we have from the people who were doing it, you read their stuff and you think, these guys do actually seem like they had a real faith. You know, it wasn't just you know nationalistic.
SPEAKER_07But you still call them home from the crusades and you Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, obviously.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Yeah. So you still you still want to stand against what they're doing. Um But yeah. Yeah, so it's it's interesting times. It's interesting times when we are um we are as believers losing cultural power, and we are losing. What do we do? Do we react against that and harden up and become more tribalized? Or, I mean, we we were reading um here in the office uh Jeremiah 29 yesterday, which is just really striking. Um here you've got the Jews had lost a lot of cultural power, you know, they've been they've been exiled, and there they are in Babylon, and they are not in charge of things anymore, and they are a minority, and they are being persecuted, they're being killed at times. Um and yet, isn't it striking? It's like pray for the peace of the city.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Um, and bed down in Babylon and bless the culture, because if Babylon goes well, it'll it'll be well for you. And so it's just this overwhelming thing of like bring peace and prosperity and shalom to Babylon, and in the same chapter, it's and don't listen to those lying prophets among you, who are just these tribalistic liars, who are telling you the things that you want to tell you about your own strengths as as Jews, and and and it's like it's so the opposite of what we want to do these days. These days, having lost cultural power, we want to say, Oh, it's the nasty Babylonians, and we're gonna rally around whatever prophet will make us feel you know good about ourselves.
SPEAKER_06And there are also you know things in that passage as well about you know why has this happened where you've not listened to the word of God. Right. And you go, well, maybe is there a chance that some of the reason we've lost all this cultural power is because actually, as a church, we in the West generally started to wander quite far. Right. Um That's the first thing we should think. You know, maybe it's not it's the classic, it's not we we always think like it's not us, it's them. But actually in the Bible, God's a bit more like, well it's you. Pretty bad, but it is you.
SPEAKER_07It's you. It's like that that verse about blasphemy in the Bible, like everyone's like, Oh, the the the culture is blaspheming. Actually, like twice in the Bible it says, um, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_07Because of you, God's people.
SPEAKER_06Like this this is why. But I mean it came uh another thing that came out in that interview is you know, John was just saying about really it's just always meeting opposition with love, you know, so speak with grace, hold your convictions, but do it with a gentleness. He said that that kind of runs right through the New Testament. And you know, and and just in a stupid example, not not from a Christian point of view, but just how you can meet stuff. So I mean when I'm not here and I'm doing my other stuff, like doing my guitar stuff, so over the summer I didn't do videos, I just well not guitar videos, I did reactions. Reactions, yeah. And I've never had so much abuse in the spa you know, in a small amount of time. Yeah. Because people feel very passionately about their band or whatever. And there were a few times where people would say, you know, they'd make some comment. I mean, uh an example would be, um, you clearly don't know anything about good musicians, great musicians, you know. Yep. And and everything in me wants to come come straight back and be like, I think you see at the beginning, you know, that I said I don't know who this band are and blah blah blah. That's exactly the point of this, you know, blah blah blah. And you want to be quite smart.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And and I sat on it and I just and I said back at one point, I said, Well, I know a lot I I think I know a lot of different great musicians, but I don't know who these guys are, so why don't you just enlighten me? And this guy's demeanour completely changed and it's just like, oh well you should check this out and that but initially it was just like you're an idiot, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And but so you took it on the chin, took it on the chin, and even though initially it wasn't my it wasn't my gut reaction. No, no, yeah. So but but but I I think you know, it's made me think, because part of my thing was, well, I although perhaps, you know, if you are on my guitar channel, you're not necessarily aware that I do what I do here.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Because there's not like a clear link. There was a part of me going, You could make the link somehow. Yeah you could find that link. And there we need to be good. Here I am over here doing my speed life stuff, and then on the other side of the week and just like idiots like all over the future. I was like, that's never really not gonna be a great witness, so maybe I should try and respond in a different way if I do respond.
SPEAKER_07But John Dixon says in that interview very helpfully, look, you're not really engaging with that person, you're you're engaging with a hundred people watching.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that was really helpful.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. There are a hundred people. Well, for him, there are a hundred people watching because he's got five thousand Facebook friends. But um But yeah, yeah, but it is always I mean, I I remember that when I went to Speaker's Corner and I was engaging with the imam at Speaker's Corner, and in a sense you're talking to the Imam, but really you're talking to the guys hanging off his coattails um who are just watching and and wanting to see something different because perhaps the person you're engaging with is entrenched, um, but certainly not everyone listening is is.
SPEAKER_06You can win the argument and people will think you're a total jerk. Yeah. And you can lose graciously and lose well. Yeah. And people will respond well to that.
SPEAKER_07Am I wrong? Wrong, Walter. What's that from? The big Lebowski. Um You get like B Fat Zero. It's not a good day for me. You're not really Walter. Before my time to do it. You're just uh yeah, and I'm not gonna finish that sentence. So um so that was John Dixon's. If you if you haven't checked out that uh podcast, um that could be a great introduction to you, to our podcast. Go on to iTunes, onto Android, however you get your your podcasts, and uh yeah, subscribe to us and and listen to that John Dixon um podcast because I learnt a lot and I I've listened to it three times now. I was I was in on the interview and I've listened to it twice since.
SPEAKER_06Um there's lots of good stuff in there, I really enjoyed listening to it.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Um let's just finish. Um uh Moya Jackson says uh the churches started schools and hospitals long before the state took over. That's why they are named things like St. Thomas's and St. James's. Um great point. And yeah, wouldn't that be a cool thing to say? Ever noticed that it's called St. Thomas's? I wonder why.
SPEAKER_06And but I mean I think uh but again it's that idea, isn't it, that actually we we assume, like of course of course everyone should have an education, everyone should have be looked after in their old age and you know, and the welfare state. We assume the welfare state, but the church originally was the the welfare church. Yeah, yeah, totally and and now the government has taken it over. Yeah. But which is why it makes me cross when I see Christians who get who are getting uptight about the government doing a bad job of the welfare state. Yeah, I'm like, well it's not their job, is it? It's our job, isn't it? So maybe you should stop moaning and get out there.
SPEAKER_07I like that. I like that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I I mean maybe it you know, as uh it's a great way for us us to witness, isn't it? That um you know, as as governments, councils, whatever it is, fail to be able to do these kind of things, churches can. And I think it's in John was this article you put here, um the John Dixon one, yes, uh he mentions that, doesn't he? Like secularists need to think carefully about the social cost of ousting Christian organisations from their deeply embedded place in the fabric of society. Without massive tax increases across the board, it's unlikely that society can maintain the programmes currently provided by church organisations. Yeah, yeah. So we're in a great position there to actually just still do what we're doing, yeah. Maybe even more so and say, well look, there we're good. You know, there's beautiful tune there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. And we're playing it kind of in key, kind of, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I mean, you know, there are far more Christian youth workers than there are government, you know, state sponsored youth workers and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, all very, very true. Um let's let's just finish with um something that we put out yesterday. We're gonna do two videos on this topic. Um so switching switching gears really to uh Jordan Peterson and as ever. Um Jordan Peterson. We need a bell in a carpeter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this time, this time I'm critiquing uh Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, uh, who have had a series of debates, and uh they've released now three of the four debates, and they'll release the fourth one soon, I I think. And um, so I mean two guys who are, you know, thoroughgoing evolutionary psychologist types, uh Sam Harris is more a neuroscientist, um, but they do not want to be um they do not want to be relativists. They want to be moral moral realists, they want to say there is right and wrong, there is good and evil, um, and both of them seem to have an idea that they can get to an objective standard of good and evil. Um so uh we're just gonna have a look at uh a clip from uh the video that we put up last night, which uh references these debates. And what we're gonna see in this clip is how they actually characterize the position of the other person, which I thought was a really nice touch. I think we should see this a lot more in debates. You have to put the other person's position as absolutely strongly as you can. You have to steal man their position rather than straw man their position. Um so first we're gonna see um Sam Harris um critiquing himself as though he were um Jordan Peterson, and then we'll see the reverse from Peterson. Let's have a look.
SPEAKER_03I don't understand how valuable stories are, how deep they go, how the degree to which stories encode not only the wisdom of our ancestors, but quite possibly the wisdom born of the hard knocks of evolution of the species.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_03So there's no telling how deep the significance of the information encoded in stories goes. And there's a class of stories that are religious stories, and they're religious for a reason, because they're dealing with the deepest questions in human life. They're questions about what constitutes a good life, what's worth living for, what's worth dying for. Uh these are things that if each individual just thrust from onto the stage of his own life, uh not knowing where he is, and tasked with figuring out how to live all on his own, or even in a uh in a collection of of uh others who are similarly unguided by ancient wisdom, uh this is not knowledge we can uh we can recapitulate for ourselves easily. And so we we edit or ignore the these ancient stories at our peril, at some at minimum, at some considerable risk, because we don't know how much we don't really know what baby is in the bathwater. And uh so we should have immense respect for these traditions.
SPEAKER_00Sam believes that there are two fundamental dangers to psychological and social stability. Um, religious fundamentalism, essentially, on the right, and moral relativism and nihilism on the left. Flip Sam's argument is that we require a value system that allows us to escape these twin dangers. One stultifies us and the other leaves us hopeless, let's say. And that value system has to be grounded in something real, and the only thing that he can see that actually constitutes real in any provable sense, and there there's a certain amount of historical and conceptual weight behind this claim, is the domain of empirical facts, as as they've been manifested in the sciences and technologies that have made us incredibly powerful and increasingly able to flourish in the world. And so I would say that's Sam's argument and his and his criticisms of my position. So Okay, so you you you write my next book, I'll write yours.
SPEAKER_07So that's their two positions, and I I really liked that they were able to kind of articulate uh the other person's view, um, which is something that uh we should all aspire to be able to do, you know, even if you're in a you know and and in a in a better way than just going, so you're saying that's it. You're saying we should all be lobsters? What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but uh yeah, to steel man their position rather than straw man their position. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um yeah, it's really it's it seems such an obvious thing, really, that we should be able to go, look you know, well let's just be clear. Yeah. Are you saying that this is the case, this is the case, and okay, great, now I know what you're saying, we can Yeah. 'Cause it's frustrating, isn't it, when you're when other people misrepresent what you say. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07But it's so helpful. Do you remember back in Reading University, we were um on a mission there, and there was a a a Muslim guy came up after a talk, and we got into a really long conversation. And uh there was a guy called David Pickersgill, who c who um was uh a minister, he was an assistant minister at the time, a curate, and uh at at one point there was four of us having this conversation with this Muslim guy, and it was mainly me and the Muslim guy going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then uh David Pickersgill, who uh I think Chris Dempsey, I think you know him, uh he kind of stepped into the conversation and did this beautiful thing where he just sort of said, um Hamid wasn't his name? I think Hamid was a good one. Hamid, yeah, he said, um I mentioned him in a sermon the other week. Did you? Yeah, yeah, he's made an impression, I suppose. And and he's kind of said, Okay, Hamid, it it seems to me like your objection is something like this. And he's just sort of stepped back and he said, uh, your concern is X, Y, and Z. And and he did totally steel man Hamid's position. Um and and it totally opened him up and he said, Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And and then and then David was able to say, Ah, yes, so that's that's the foundation you're coming from. See, we we don't believe what you fear that we're saying. We're not saying what you fear that we're saying. Yeah, but because he went to 30,000 feet, because he tried to describe the terrain a little bit, and and to be fair, uh it just progressed the conversation heaps better. And I still remember it like five years later or four years later, or whatever it was. Um so yeah, characterizing the other person's position. That that was what was really good about this debate. Um also the fact that Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson both of them want to avoid the swamp of moral realism. Um of moral relativism, rather. They want to be realists. Um they they want to say what's objectively good and what's objectively evil. Um and they think you can do that, and in the video I kind of show how they both have a concept of a logos that sort of stands above the flesh and is able to adjudicate among the flesh. So for uh Sam Harris that logos is our rationality, because that's what the word logos means. It means meaning, logic, rationality. He he just thinks we if we just think clearly enough about things, we can get there. Yep, okay. You know. Um to which Peterson didn't say in these in these things, but he could have just said what he always says, 20th century. Case closed. Yeah, you know, um, what about the scientific racism? What about, you know, um, all of that. So so Harris thinks that just our rationality can look down on the moral landscape and adjudicate what is higher, what is lower, what is good, what is evil. Um Peterson says that there is a logos uh because um the archetypal hero from all our stories that has emerged over 3.5 billion years of evolutionary progress, the archetypal hero, the hero of all heroes is the logos, the Christian idea of Christ who comes and sacrifices himself in the service of truth and yet something is reborn from that. He judges all else as good and evil. And so they've both got this concept of a of a logos. Um but if you have a look at the video, you'll see that I don't think either of them escape from uh the swamp of moral relativism. Um and I just like we'll do another video next week, and so we can talk about this a little bit more, but I just I just want to A, say I think it's a laudable aim to try to avoid the swamp of moral relativism. I really think it is. I really think we want to hold on to the idea that there is right and wrong, there is good and evil. Um because if you lose that sense, um then you end up like uh Alex O'Connor. Alex O'Connor is the cosmic skeptic, and uh he's got a YouTube channel uh with about 200,000 um subscribers to it. Um and here he is um making an argument that uh you don't really need to to be uh a realist, you don't really need to have objective moral standards. You could convince a Nazi that they were wrong uh simply using reason. Here's Alex trying to make his case.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I'm not claiming that it is objectively true that the Holocaust was wrong. Instead, I'm going to show that despite the fact that it isn't objectively wrong and can't be shown to be objectively wrong, we can still convince people subjectively that it was wrong using reason. This is because even if myself and a Nazi don't agree that the Holocaust was bad, there will always be something at some level that we subjectively do agree upon. And this is what Sam Harris alludes to in pointing out that we all experience pain as bad. For instance, suppose I meet a Nazi who thinks that the Holocaust was good. I naturally disagree. Now let's say that we discovered that we both subjectively agree that our own well-being is a good thing. This is a subjective feeling, entirely subjective. But one we agree on. Based on this, if I can convince the Nazi that the Holocaust harmed all of our well-being, and this Nazi believes that things that harm his well-being are bad, I would have logically convinced him that the Holocaust is bad, even though it's based on a subjective assumption, just because we both agree on that assumption. So if the Nazis had won World War II, and most people did believe that the Holocaust wasn't wrong, it would still be possible to say that those people are incorrect in their moral opinion, but with reference not to objective reality, but simply to their very own subjective core beliefs. If the ruling Nazis believed, say, in the smooth running of society, and so do I, subjectively, then the contention is no longer was the Holocaust good, but instead, was the Holocaust conducive of a smoothly running society? If I can show that it wasn't, and that it harmed society, I could demonstrate that the moral opinion of the ruling Nazi party was wrong, even if I can only do this on the basis of subjective notions.
SPEAKER_07So just this idea, I d uh I would just reason with the Nazi. And if we could both agree that a civilization runs better when you don't enslave its population, then you know, then I could have saved the Nazi from their Nazism. And you're like, well slavery is actually really useful, you know. Clint's economically Clint's Krivener 2018. Just like But if that's if that's your metric, if your metric is the smooth running of a society, I could I could think of a a hundred different minorities that you could enslave or execute and now free from their shackles, we can rise and and become a much more productive society.
SPEAKER_06Like what is he on? I mean unwanted babies, things like that. Unwanted babies. People with disabilities, I'm sure that would make life a lot easier.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Yeah. So just this this idea that rationally you can rise above it all and you reason with the Nazi. Um and and as though the thing that's adjudicating the whole conversation is, well, what leads to the mo most smooth running society? Like anyway, um, so at least at least couldn't possibly go wrong. What could possibly go wrong? So at least with Peter Peterson and Harris, they want to say, um, nope, there is an objective standard. Um, what's interesting, um, so Lee Fernie has just uh said uh do we know what Harris and Peterson make of the Christian understanding of grace?
SPEAKER_08Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_07And I think that's a really that's a really key question because um both of them have this this idea of a standard that can judge you from above. Um, but do they have the uh uh understanding of a forgiveness that can actually cleanse you, set you on your feet and and have mercy on evildoers. Yep. Um and I think I I think actually with with Peterson and Harris, uh I think Harris ends up being ends up having a Christless view of grace, uh in that he just kind of it eventually dissolves the category of evil. Eventually he does. Yeah, yeah, he does, doesn't he? Eventually there there isn't really no such thing as evil, it's just biological malfunctioning. Um and so you could call that a kind of grace, but it's a it's uh yeah, you're you're absolved from your guilt because there is no such thing as guilt because there is no such thing as evil. And so Harris kind of falls off that side of the horse and he has a Christless grace. Peterson has a Christless law. He is Mr. Law, like totally. Tidy up your room, be more lobster.
SPEAKER_06He didn't think 10 was good enough, so he's added two more.
SPEAKER_0712 rules for life.
SPEAKER_00No, with 20% more law!
SPEAKER_07That's that's Jordan Pear. He's Mr. Law. Um, and so yeah, he is very much a Christless law, Harris is very much a Christless grace. Um, so why don't we have the Logos, who really is the Logos? Why don't we have Christ who is full of grace and truth? The word that became flesh, John 1.14, you know. And I think I think that is the solution to to what Harris and Peterson actually want. Um and in next week's video we're gonna have a look at um answering the objections that Sam Harris has against Christianity. Um he sort of raises things like slavery and Old Testament laws and the horrors of sacrifice and things like that. Um so we're gonna answer those and show how Jesus really is good news. Um if you want to avoid the relativistic, nihilistic swamp, uh, if you want a truth that is really true, and if you want a grace that'll actually forgive you, uh come home to Jesus. That's what we'll look at next week. Great, should be good. Brilliant. Uh Ben Virgo has just said, woo-hoo! Well, on that note, um thank you, Ben, for tuning in. And uh is it just because he knows it's ending? Phew! He should have said. Um so guys, uh, do share the wealth. This video will be available as of pretty much the next five minutes uh as something that you can watch at any time and uh do share it with your friends.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, podcast to be out on Friday. So you pick it up Friday.
SPEAKER_07Uh subscribe to YouTube as well. Um we really want to make some noise on YouTube, especially on in with these Peterson and Harris videos, because that's where Peterson and Harris have so much of a uh a following. And wouldn't it be great to actually uh engage that audience in some of this stuff as well? So subscribe to us on YouTube, that that would really help us get us us get seen on YouTube as well, and uh share the wealth. Sharing is caring.