The Speak Life Podcast, sharing Jesus in everyday life.
SPEAKER_01Three years ago, the world was split over a dress. Was it blue or was it gold? Personally, I saw the dress as symbolic of our fractured society, and I urge people to overcome the divisions surrounding the dress and to unite around the truth that the dress is blue. It's quite obviously blue. I don't know why we're still talking about this. Do you not have eyes? Look at it, you morons, it's blue. Three years on, I would like to draw on that same peacemaking spirit in order to address the latest global phenomenon splitting the world. This week we've seen the audio equivalent of the dress. People across the globe are listening to the same sound and hearing two different things. No, I'm not talking about Yanni vs. Laurel, though if you listen carefully, he's clearly saying lobster. Lobster. See? But actually, I'm referring to the sermon during Saturday's royal wedding. Michael Curry's address was heard by perhaps two billion people, making it one of the farthest reaching pieces of Christian communication in history. But the whole thing seemed like blue dress versus gold dress, Laurel versus Yanny all over again. Many listening to it heard a powerful testimony to God's love, others saw it as false teaching that can only be shunned. It seems to me that much of the reaction followed what people already thought of the Episcopal Church, of which Michael Curry is the presiding bishop. And that's completely understandable. If you have seen the Episcopal Church ruthlessly suing biblically orthodox US parishes who have conscientiously split from their denomination, if you know that the Episcopal Church has been sanctioned by the Anglican Communion over the issue of marriage, and if you now see Justin Welby inviting Michael Curry of all people to the starring role in a wedding of all things, I understand why you are not favorably disposed to the sermon. Personally, I don't think he should have had that platform. But if you knew nothing about the Episcopal Church or Michael Curry beforehand, which given there were two billion viewers, would be pretty much 100% of the listeners, then you probably heard something very different. I heard a sermon that was incomplete in a thousand ways, wrong, I think, in a couple of ways, but overall it was more theological than most of the sermons I hear from evangelical pulpits. It was actually about God, the triune God, the God expressed in Christ, in Christ crucified, actually. The God whose love flows into the world such that the source of any true love encountered in the world is in fact God, and not any God. The triune God, the God of Jesus, the God of the cross. That was the overwhelming burden of Michael Curry's sermon. This theme of love drew high praise from many outside the church. Jeremy Vine tweeted, the preacher is doing 50 in a 30 zone, and it's brilliant. Ed Miliband tweeted, Reverend Michael Curry could almost make me a believer. Now, to be fair, there seemed to be different responses in the chapel itself. Princess Beatrice was checking who actually authorized such a sermon. Elton John was asking himself whether he could feel the love tonight, answering with an emphatic no. And Tom Hardy spent the sermon wondering whether the graves that he'd just dug were too shallow and whether the bodies would soon be discovered. But overwhelmingly, there's been a positive response to this sermon. So how should we feel about that? I think the platform should not have been given to Michael Curry, but now that it's happened, God has used it for immense good. I think Curry's sermon ought to have talked about the ways that love goes wrong. The problem of the human heart, if you ask little old me, the glaring lack in the sermon was a compelling account of how love goes wrong, how it gets twisted, how our hearts are hard and broken and need healing. That could have been brilliantly engaging if he'd pitched it right, and it would have set him up for framing the cross as more than just exemplary, more than just revelatory, but as actually salvific. It would also have kept him from giving the impression that human love will bring heaven to earth. That was an impression you could legitimately draw from this sermon, which would be unfortunate. But do you know what the overwhelming impression of this sermon was? That the love we prize does not come from us, it comes from God. There is a God of love who flows out into the world, and while we're all at this wedding celebrating love, we need to realize that this is a flow that begins in God. Now that message is not the gospel, strictly speaking. Without an account of our twisted loves, i.e. our sin, and then God's response in redeeming love, i.e. his salvation, it's not the gospel. But the sermon was actually about God. And wouldn't it be terrible if we preferred to hear about the steps that we must take to be saved and bemoaned the fact a preacher used up all his time on the nature of God? Let me discern a couple of things that I think are unfortunate in certain critiques of the sermon. If you criticize it because it was popular, you might be in danger of nursing a persecution complex. Sometimes in the sovereignty of God, the gospel is wildly popular. It's called revival. And the good news is good news after all. You cannot draw a straight line from popularity to unfaithfulness, and you definitely can't draw a straight line from unpopularity to faithfulness. There's nothing inherently noble about unpopularity per se. Secondly, the sermon has been critiqued for being Christianity light. Now I think there is such a thing as Christianity light, it is pernicious. Richard Nieber once characterized it as a God without wrath, bringing men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. That's not even Christianity light. That is a false gospel, pure and simple. But I don't think this sermon by itself should be seen as proof of that error. And surely, isn't it secular humanism that is Christianity light? That was Nietzsche's critique, and he was right. All the social justice causes are basically religious, just with the good substituted for God. Therefore, can't Curry be seen as reappropriating all that godless activity and insisting that its source must be God, the God of the cross. And more than this, I would worry if anyone felt like the love of God is Christianity light, but when you push deeper, you get into Christianity heavy. Please don't tell me that Christianity heavy is the real deal, weighed down by a God whose depths lie beneath his loving veneer. Finally, I worry when Christians tar every other Christian who enjoyed the sermon, as though they must be undiscerning or deceived. Maybe they have discerned the errors and the dangers, and maybe nevertheless they are rejoicing to hear of the love of God preached with passion. And maybe that's a rebuke to Orthodox Christians. Maybe the world is more willing to hear preaching than we are to preach. And maybe our flock are more hungry for food than we have been offering. Maybe they've had to get it from a shepherd who shouldn't have even been there. Well, that's our fault. May we preach with greater fervor and deeper conviction a Christianity that is weighty, weighty, with the love of the triune God. It's May 22nd, this is Speak Life, and you're watching the live cast.
SPEAKER_03Hello! Have you been there? We don't know if we've been on. We're just going with it. We're rolling with it. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So Samantha Taylor has said, what is sad is that people were so surprised to hear passion preached from the pulpit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And uh and I said about how almost immediately after his dermot, O'Leary said something like, Oh, that people in the UK have never heard anything like that. And I thought, well, they have dermot, but you probably don't go to church. I mean, there's a lot of churches where it's not like that. But there's also lots of churches around the country preaching like that week in, week out. Yeah. And that's just the way it is. So there is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And and let that be a judgment to us. You know, I I was at a Bible teaching conference uh a couple of years ago where a guy who was not in our circles but a uh strong believer was at the conference and he pointed to the person who'd just been speaking from the lectern and he said, Did that guy actually believe anything that he said? Um So, you know, maybe Dermot has been to that guy's church.
SPEAKER_03We've all been there though, haven't we? Yeah. It's the it's it's you know, obviously we're gonna talk about this wedding thing in a little bit, but thinking back to the previous wedding, you know, William and Kate, I don't know who it was who gave the address. Obviously. Oh okay. Bishop of London. Fair enough. Yeah. I can't remember a word he said. Yeah. I do remember it being as dull as dishwater. Right. Read with all the enthusiasm of someone reading a phone book.
SPEAKER_01Wow, maybe you should revisit that sermon and learn from it. All I remember is it was on St. Catherine's Day, um, with which is Catherine of Siena, this great saint who is a holy anorexic, and she has inspired like a whole bunch of particularly women to starve themselves nearly to death. She starved herself to death, and she is described as a saint because of her, you know, holy living, and and she was given the you know the first the first quotation of the sermon. You know. So, you know, it's it's just very interesting. Like people say, ah, you know, um Michael Curry um quoted Martin Luther King, who was a serial adulterer, and you know that's that's true as well. But uh, you know, you might you might dig into uh the lives of uh many of the people that you quote from the pulpit and discover that they are not pristine. People like I don't know, David. Um funny that, isn't it? Um Jill Ford says, hello, hello, Jill Ford. Uh Jill Kane. Uh yeah, makes makes the good point. It was a wedding address, and I think we will we will get on to that with the stuff.
SPEAKER_03Probably it is probably the the the the the only thing you'll need to hear about this wedding speech, you know. Forget all the other articles you read.
SPEAKER_01This is the definitive hot take all your money back. That's our guarantee to you. Um But uh before we dive into any more about uh that sermon, um let's talk about what's been going on. Uh on Saturday, um I was up at Unbelievable the conference.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I didn't get to meet the guy who does the unbelievable uh um sound waste of a death. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever it's called. Um yeah. Um, I'm still kind of looking to meet you in my yogurt there. Thanks, Andy. Zoom in on the yogurt. Uh so I was at Unbelievable the conference. We had a great time at the brewery up in London. And uh I bet you did. And Justin Briley proved that he could organise at least an apologetic conference in the brewery. Um the brewery is just the name of a conference location, yeah, setting. Anyway. And uh so I was doing a couple of different seminars. I did one with Andy Bannister on the top five hard questions that were asked. Let's see if you can guess. What do you think the top five hard questions are that people want to know about?
SPEAKER_03Um Do you think there'll ever be a race between a boy and a shark? No, who would win?
SPEAKER_01That yeah, I I would have been stumped by that one.
SPEAKER_03That's probably what number one.
SPEAKER_01It was conducted in an online forum, so it probably could have been that.
SPEAKER_03Um I don't know, stuff about sexuality.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_03Really? No. No sexuality stuff on that. Gosh. Uh suffering?
SPEAKER_01No. Not even in the top five. Isn't that interesting?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01There we go.
SPEAKER_03That was me too. Not sexuality, not suffering. I know.
SPEAKER_01Not sharks. Not science either. That wasn't that those are usually the the three big S's, aren't they? Sex, suffering, sexuality. But yeah. Sharks. Oh, I d I just had sex twice, didn't I? Bit of a Freudian slip. Totally a Freudian slip. Science. Science is the third one. And he's getting my brain back on a track. Ips me on the sixth man. Um actually, here are the five. Hell, how can a loving God send people hell? Um Old Testament violence, what's going on in the Old Testament Wars, um, the Bible, how can anyone trust it today? Why isn't God more obvious? Which was um a very interesting one and think something that I think evangelists should think a lot more about, because I'm hearing the question a lot more. And as Andy and I were thinking about what resources to commend to people, we couldn't really. Can you think of anything that you give to somebody who says, why isn't God more obvious?
SPEAKER_03No, I mean there was a book ages ago. I think it was more for the Christian, though, you know, if if God why doesn't God make himself clearer? Oh yeah. Was that Paul Williams? I don't know, to be honest. Oh yeah. But I'm not sure if that's that's that I th I got the impression that was more like for Christians trying to discern, you know, where sh what should I do with my life? Like, is God giving me guidance or whatever? But I might be wrong, I've not actually read it, but Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um I only thought of like David Bentley Hart's like massive book on uh the experience of God, being consciousness, and bliss, um, which is not for the faint of heart. And uh so yeah, I I think there is um space for a popular introduction to the question of if God is is real, why don't I see him? Because like my basic answer was, well, how how do you know you're not experiencing him right now? You know, the Bible says in him we live and move and have our being, and you're this you are this lightning strike of magic meat. You are this like Thank you. Your body is amazing. Thank you. Which is a quote from Ali G. Anyway, um, so uh you know, you you you're the center of personal consciousness, I'm the center of personal consciousness. Keep it together, man. Yeah, hold it in. And we you know, we're having a semi-rational discussion, you know, in which goodness, truth, beauty, and love are all kind of prized as these ultimate values, and we're living in this incredibly fine-tuned universe for life and all that kind of stuff. Um and and now I've got to like tell you that God's obvious or not? You almost want to say, Isn't it obvious as you look round? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But uh people's minds blinded. Exactly. You know, that's what we get in Romans 1, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Romans 1. So God is maximally revealing himself and he's maximally s suppressed by people. Um can't see the wood for the trees, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, so that was where I went with that one. And then what was the fifth question? Uh, other religions that Andy Bannister had a look at. And uh you'll have to go to Unbelievable the conference to to get all that content, but we uh had to go at those questions. And then uh also I gave um a poem I pre prepared. How did that go? Um Mixed Mixed. Well I I wrote it just for the conference and and therefore I'd finished it by the Wednesday or something. I've written it on the Wednesday and then um didn't exactly commit it to memory. But I was relying on this little Bluetooth microphone microphone, um speaker in my ear. Yeah. And uh and it worked fine in rehearsal. But I think in rehearsal the the room was not filled with hundreds of Bluetooth devices. But suddenly, yeah, when everyone was in there, it's it started dropping out. Like I I'd I'd read out the poem to myself, and then it was playing it to me. And it's after the first line it started dropping a syllable, and that started dropping whole words, and then it started dropping whole sentences. And uh So what did you do? Did you were you able to get through? I uh I was actually in the end. I I I kind of stopped it and then I used a uh a teleprompter that someone was holding up in the fr in the front row. So belt and braces. Wow. And we got through, but you pulled it off then. You're done alright. Oh well. Um God was gracious. And later on this week on um the premiere, people are going to release that poem, so we'll let people know about given. Uh a different recording of it. Isn't it? It that's a real life point of view. Or there's just a stumble in the middle where I go, um, can you go back? Thank you. And then that's it. So they'll they'll cut that bit out, and then the rest is fine, I think. I think. I don't know. Great. So look forward to it. Given the new poem, and then we just released uh a video of you preaching on Hosea. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So preaching on Hosea, really, I mean, it we're doing a sermon series on it at church, actually we've just wrapped it up, so um, I think I might have been the last no, it was last but one. Okay. Um had to tidy things up after we brought it up. The car crash, you know, tidy it away. Uh yeah, no, it's um yeah, it's a good series though. Um and I wasn't particularly familiar with Hosea before I uh preached on it. Um there's a lot of good stuff in there. It's all good, you know. Um but uh yeah, I mean have it check it out. Hopefully hopefully you you'll you'll like it. It'll be edifying. I was edified.
SPEAKER_01Well I thought, you know, what is uh what's typical evangelical conservative evangelical praise is like I thought it was clear, faithful, helpful. Thank you, brother. Um which is always like uh when when people say that to me, and that's what they you you like uniformly say at the end of a sermon. You know, thank you, brother, that was clear. Yeah, you know, you you explained that, you flattened it out. There's no there was no contours, there was nothing interesting about it. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, yeah. It was very plain. Thank you. Thank you very much for making it plain. And I'm like, I I don't get encouraged by that encouragement, just so people know. It's very pedestrian, isn't it? That kind of thing. What do people think preaching is? It's it's like I a couple of years ago I I gave pretty much the same sermon to a conservative evangelical Anglican church, and then in the evening to a charismatic church, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it was pretty much the same sermon, and after after this conservative evangelical Anglican, you know, uh congregation, they all came up to me and said, Thank you, Glenn, that was very clear. It was very clear, thank you. And I preached at the at the Charismatic Church and they said, Thank you, that was really liberating. Really liberating. I thought, isn't that interesting? Like I think both of them were were probably kind of affected in the same way, it's just the vocabulary that they learnt. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Like in the I thought it wasn't I thought you were gonna say that with the more charismatic lot, they were they were much more exuberant in there rather than just a difference in language.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well they were, they were they were more exuberant. Um but yeah, but the the category that they put good sermon into was whether it was liberating or not. Whether whereas for the Conservative Evangelical Anglican Church it was whether it was clear or not.
SPEAKER_03Did I tell you about when I preached at um uh I preached at All Saints uh uh 9 15, which is a much more traditional congregation, and the lady came up to afterwards and said, Thank you for that. I stayed awake for the whole thing. Okay, well I'll take that as a win, you know.
SPEAKER_01My favourite was um I did I did a talk on comedy and Christianity and and I opened with um Life of Brian, of course, very, very funny film, very funny film, but ultimately it's a tragedy. That was my big point. But I'd lost them instantly. As soon as I said very funny film, and as I as I looked out, I was looking out at a sea of sort of great pairs and I was doing the maths, I was like, oh okay, so 35 years ago when the film came out, these guys would be about the age of those who would write off an angry left to the beachborn or whatever. And this woman came up afterwards, and and her sermon feedback was I dated it, I dated it. And so, what, Life of Brian or my talk? No, your talk! I dated it. Brilliant. And that that was that was a brilliant impression of her, by the way. You haven't met her, but like I'm I'm impressing myself by that impression. Don Garrett says, Good morning from Wichita Falls. Hey. T X? Is that Texas? I just see him saying, yeah, Texas. He's not just saying tanks. Tanks. No, okay, Wichita Falls. Nice. I'm going on Wichita. Must be kind of breakfast time over there, I'd have thought. Oh yeah, you're waking up. Waking up to the live cast Sandy Medway. Sandy Medway says there is something about the lack of pursuit in us and our culture of entitlement. We expect God to do it always, and he already has, but we want him to do it again and again and just for us.
SPEAKER_03Oh, in the sense of that question about why isn't God too obvious. Right. Like we we feel we're so entitled, like put it on a plate for me. Yeah, exactly. Which you could argue God has done, but you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's like when a when a a friend said to me, I said, I I asked him, what would it take to make you believe in God? He said, if the stars rearranged to spell out the Ten Commandments, then I'd believe. And I had a couple of thoughts to say to that at at once, which is extraordinary for me. I didn't two thoughts a month is usually my average, but I'd had a few coffees that day, and and miracles happen, uh, as we shall see. But I my first thought was to say, you know, actually the current arrangement of the stars is already miraculous. You know, the fact that there is a cosmos that's finely tuned for life and you here in order to see it is a miracle, orders of magnitude more improbable than stars rearranging, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That was what I thought I was gonna say, but then I sort of had this second thought and I said, actually, would you like such a God? You know, if God if God just rearranged the stars in the sky to tell you to behave, would you like such a God? And he instantly said, Oh no, I could never like God. But if he if he showed up, I guess I'd have to bow on the knee and I'd have to, you know, acknowledge his his presence. And I just thought at that stage, like we both disbelieve in the God that you disbelieve in. Like this God who's just gonna show up in order to yeah, in order to make us bow. Actually, the Bible says we're without excuse, because in him we live and move and have our being, and everything is kind of preaching to us about Jesus. We have suppressed that truth. And so what God has done has shown up under our noses in the person of Jesus. And instead of you know revealing himself in the stars, he reveals himself in the scars. And that becomes his way of actually encountering everybody. So from the highest to the lowest, God has really comprehended all of creation and said, Here I am. So we really are without excuse. Alan Wichels has joined. Hello, Alan. Yes. Um so should we get on to the the the sermon? The sermon. Um now uh in in the monologue I kind of talked about um Laurel and Yanny. If you haven't come across Laurel and Yanni, there's there's this guy reading out a word and he's saying Laurel. He's literally saying Laurel, but you can hear it as him saying Yanny, which isn't even a word, but you know, some people hear Yanni.
SPEAKER_03What do you hear when you hear laurel or yanny? When my wife played it to me, she didn't say do you hear yanny or laurel? She just said what do you hear? And I can't remember what it was. I I said something like it began with a Y, but I was like, you know, like it was something in completely incomprehensible. Yeah. So and then I saw the thing and then I was like, I heard Yanny more than I heard Laurel. Did you? That means you're younger, apparently. Really? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you can you can hear higher trebley sounds, and that's overlaid to make it sound like Yanny, I think.
SPEAKER_03There was another one with trainers recently, wasn't there? Like a pair of trainers, like are they pink and white or grey and something or other? Really? Yeah. They're blue. They're blue for they've always been blue.
SPEAKER_01What are you? They're flip-flops. And I think what's what's similar between that and the sermon is that people come. And if you if it's been framed to you as Laurel or Yanni, now you're now you're gonna hear it in a certain way. And I think if you've already got preconceptions about Michael Curry, already got preconceptions about the Episcopal Church, of which he is the presiding bishop, then you're going to come to the sermon in a certain kind of way. And and there is a background to this, and the background is that the Episcopal Church is under sanctions from the rest of the Anglican Communion, particularly because of its stance on same-sex marriage. So on the issue of marriage, there are sanctions against the Episcopal Church. And at the same time, Archbishop Justin Welby, and I think it is him, has asked Michael Curry to come in to the biggest wedding going and to preach at a wedding in which those vows are different from the vows that Michael Curry would wish that there were. And and you know. So I can understand why people are thinking this guy should not be there.
SPEAKER_03Sure. But I I suppose the thing that's uh and this is why you're gonna get so much of your money's worth from our conversation today, is obviously you went in knowing that. Um and I'd never heard of the guy. I thought I had no idea who he was, I didn't know whether, oh you know, maybe this is the pastor of Megan's church in wherever, if she goes to church. I don't know. Right. Um So I had no preconceptions about this guy at all coming into it. And I sat there and I, as I was watching, I thought, it's not too bad this. It's not too bad. Like, yeah, you know, because and I'm well as he started, I thought to myself, I'll give him marks if he mentions Jesus once. Yeah, because I I once heard someone say that every time they hear a bishop preach, they always start at ten. And um they every time they mention Jesus they take a mark off, and they said it's wonderful because at the end of the sermon you can say thank you for that bishop, ten out of ten. But um so I was like, if he mentions Jesus, that'd be a good start. So um and he did. And I've been to weddings where I've heard talks and not not even not even a whisper.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um even people from our kind of Christianity can fail, can fail in wedding servers. Absolutely, you know.
SPEAKER_03Um and I I think as we'll as we kind of think through it, we'll see. I think very much what we've just said, that I think if you came into it with this uh background in your head, I think you can be a little bit ungenerous in your reading of it or your hearing of it. And I've also seen a number of things where people have said, you know, this was said or that was said, and I've read back through the transcript a number of times, and I just think sometimes, no, that wasn't said. Right. You know, and and even I think there's a difference sometimes between what people say and what people hear. Yes. Um on all sides. Yes. You know, so I mean someone someone said, you know, a a non-Christian was saying what they took from it, and they they said how he they loved um how he said that we should love ourselves. Right. And I think I've read through this transcript loads, and he never says that at all. I think he added it, ad lib. I think he added. Okay, right, maybe okay, yeah. And while you're at it, love yourself. Right, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think he added that ad lib. Okay, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But I think you know, there was a lot of things, particularly for the more conservative side. And you know, here's the thing, I'm a conservative evangelical. My theology is is pretty conservative, um, as it would be. Um, but I often find myself a little bit at odds with other conservatives because we can just be a bit ungenerous, we can be a bit heavy-handed and judgmental. Yeah. Um, yeah. You know, as we all can at times. Yeah. But sometimes we, you know, it's a sledgehammer approach. And I felt maybe that's what we're getting here. So I mean it'd be good to look at some of the bits, you know, to actually think what he did say. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So what what what did he say? I mean, his his text was from Song of Songs chapter eight, right at the end where it says, Love is the very flame of God, the very flame of Yahweh is love. Um, and so like jumping off of that and then using one John, chapter four, God is love. Um I I think, you know, what was striking to me was was the very s the specificity of it. I it would be very easy to hear him say love, love, love, and it just sounds like a Beatles track, right? But actually, he's constantly wanting to bring it back to the source, who is the triune God who is expressed in Jesus and most particularly in Christ crucified, which is a very specific naming of the love that's out there. Um, so it's not just this capitulation to hey, everyone loves love, isn't love lovely, wouldn't it be lovely if there was some kind of divine love? Yeah. You know, I think it was more anchored than that, and and it was very specifically the God of Jesus, the triune God expressed at the cross. That is the source of what we're celebrating with the marriage.
SPEAKER_03Well, I and I I I I remember thinking as he was talking and he started saying, you know, God is a God of love. He basically did the whole kind of remember when you fell in love, isn't it amazing? Um and and then he basically did the whole thing, didn't he? That like, well, it's because we were made for life of love by a god of love, you know. Right. And I was thinking to myself, this sounds very Glen-like, you know. This is Glen's thing. Oh no! This is Glen thing. But this is this is But this is a good thing, you know, like it's tapping in why because you do that thing, don't you, about like, you know, why why is it that relationships are the best thing? Yeah, it's those it's those interpersonal things. Um, and I thought, yeah, he's tapping into that. Um undoubtedly, and you know, and and I think a good sermon anyway should start with tapping into people's lives. Right. You know, it's it I I don't I don't think it's generally a good start to sermon just to be like in verse one it says blah blah blah. Right. You've got to get people on the train to come on the journey with you. There's no point getting to the destination at the other end and left everyone on the platform. Yeah. Um and people were thinking, yeah, yeah, love is amazing. And and I felt one of the unhelpful or well unfair criticism was that, you know, someone had said that his his his basic gist was, if only we could all fall in love more like Meghan and Harry, um then everything would be better. And I think you know he I don't think he said that at all because he pointed to he said, you know, actually we're not just what he says here, the love of which you speak is not only for couples getting married or just for interpersonal relationships. And he goes on to talk about a god of love who sacrificed himself to save people. Right. You know, I feel I feel he did, you know, when he quoted the spiritual song, the one during which I thought he was talking about a bomb. Yes, the bomb. There's a bomb in Gilead. I was like, there's a bomb in Gilead. It's like flip a neck. This is edgy, you know, like risky. I was thinking no one read this before, did they?
SPEAKER_01Like they can't mention bombs. Apparently in speed, there was just a balm on the box.
SPEAKER_03There's just a balm. Like a jar of balm on the bottom somewhere. Yeah, and and so he's talking about this this balm of Gilead, and he said, Love has power to change the world. Well, what was that love he was talking about in this sermon? And then he said about this spiritual song, there's a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. If you can't preach like Peter, can't pray like Paul, you can tell of love of Jesus how he died to save us all. That is the balm in Gilead. You know, so that love, the love that can change the world is the same love he was saying, as far as I was concerned, it's the same love that heals a sinsick soul. The love that is shown by Jesus dying to save us all, um unself, you know, he he mentions it's an unselfish sacrificial redemptive love. Um and the example he gave was Jesus dying for sin. Now, yeah, could he could he have been clearer? Yeah. Sure, of course he could have. Um I would say implicitly, in what he said, it's implicit that of course if he's saying that you know Jesus died to save people from sin, there's a need for salvation. Um but yeah, you could have made it explicit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um that's what I wish. I mean, I I wish I wish that off the back of speaking about the the glory of love to that he would have spoken of and you know why the world is so messed up, you know, you know, you know why we find it so hard to believe in love, because we're rubbish at it, because we twist it, because we're unloving and unlovely, and we need a redeemer uh for all the way that our hearts don't love. And you know, Tim Vasby Burney has just just sort of said, you know, his issue with it was um uh it seemed to me that the the Bishop Curry's sermon was offering love as the solution to the world rather than Jesus, which reminds me how often our sermons offer something else rather than rather than him. Um so I think I think if he if he had mentioned more, or at all really, that our hearts are the problem here and and the way that love gets twisted is the problem, and God loves us nonetheless and comes to us in Christ and redeems us and forgives us through the cross and sets us on our feet in order to go on loving, I think that would have given it a gospel shape.
SPEAKER_03I think that's true, and I think that's a fair criticism that we do often do that, but also I think you've got to remember that even the most faithful conservative evangelical will get up and say things like that and make the same error of presenting it in that way. Right. And it's and I doubt people would be as quick to jump on the conservative evangelical the people who are jumping on Michael Curry would probably not be quite as quick to jump on the conservative evangelical who they perceive as being on their team. Right.
SPEAKER_01Because that's contextualization. But when the wrong person does it, it's capitulation. So yeah, I think I think there's a lot of it. There is a bit of that.
SPEAKER_03But you know, I th I think you know that he my basic thing was a lot of it, I thought, after I'd heard who he was and a bit of his background, you think this could have gone a lot worse. Right. You know? Right. Given what even without his background, you know, there's there's there's lots of preachers who get up and do a far worse job.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. Um And I don't I don't hear anyone complaining about the job that he did. Like once he got there. Well, in in in terms of his preaching style, his rhetoric, his homiletic was was um passionate and isn't that great, and he, you know. And and people don't criticize his personal character. By all accounts, he is uh a wonderful, warm, loving man. Um I st I still think he shouldn't have had that platform just because of his views, because of where he stands, and because of the the the the politics of uh the Anglican Communion and and and all of that. Um but given that he did have that platform, I thank God for the way in which we can now, you know, use that and and and speak to others about the love of Christ that they've heard of through this sermon.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that's that's definitely it's an opportunity, isn't it, now to jump on it.
SPEAKER_01And actually well, yeah, it's an opportunity, isn't it? And we'll we'll think about that in a second. Michael Lerman has said, love you guys on your show, but surely we can't ignore someone's background and where they're coming from so that we hear them properly. Um yeah, uh well for those of us who know his background, myself included, yeah, I'm yeah, I would say that I don't think he should have had that platform. Um but I I would say also that 99% of the people listening don't don't know his background, and and yep, I I I would say that he shouldn't have been in that position. Now that he was in that position, um I'm glad for the way that God has has used this situation in order to preach the love of Christ um to two million people.
SPEAKER_03And I mean it's easy to criticize, isn't it? Like and right sometimes, you know, it's good to critique. But I think there's also wings of evangelicalis I can't even say evangelicalism, who just would never have been happy unless he got up and done six boxes of two ways to live. Right. You know. Um which personally I think is a not a great gospel out illustration anyway. Um absolutely, of course. Um but I don't think it's yeah so yeah, I mean, has it has it got everything in it? No. Um people you know, some people saying it wasn't the complete gospel, but I don't think in one sermon many people do always preach a complete gospel. That's a the gospel is a is quite a large thing to fit into ten minutes, you know. Um you can zone in on areas of it and point people towards good news.
SPEAKER_01One thing I I've uh struggled with is if people online if Christians online who dislike the sermon judge other Christians who did like the sermon as though those Christians have no discernment or have been deceived. Not it's not necessarily that that case. Um like I say, I I think you can make a uh a very strong case that Michael Curry should not have been the preacher on that day, and I would listen to that case and I would agree with that case. Um but it's not necessarily that if someone liked the sermon, that they aren't ill-discerning, you know, deceived Christians. And I think maybe the challenge is that a lot of Christians have heard food for their souls in a way that they they might be missing in their own contexts, that actually the love of God preached with passion in that kind of way might be lacking in their spiritual diet in their home church. And maybe maybe maybe part of the reason why people are like really flipping out over Michael Curry's preaching the gospel, he's preaching the love of Christ and he's really passionate. And maybe like the reason that that that strikes us as odd is because it's just not common enough. And if it's not common enough, it's our fault.
SPEAKER_03And and why do we think that is though, I wonder? Because I mean, maybe we're into slightly different territory now about preaching and how people preach, perhaps. But but I mean I would say from you know, li m moving in in kind of conservative evangelical circles primarily, I hear loads of really faithful teaching. But I also hear a lot of preaching that I just think is it was faithful, but like oh, I wasn't that grabbed by it. Like you know, it was just boringly presented. Yeah, it was clear, it was clear, yeah. Um and it you know, think I think back well, I think there's often this thing that if people have a lot of this thing that it feels like people just reading off a sheet of paper sometimes. Um and it's amazing, isn't it? How you know we can be passionate about football or something and we can just go off the you know, we can just absolutely unleash about football, blah blah blah blah blah. Not me, because I don't care about football, I hate it, but um and then we get to talk about Jesus like and yeah, Jesus did this, and Jesus is really amazing, right? Like um Yeah and we all need the love, the amazing love of Jesus. Yeah, no, you go, yeah, it really sounds yeah, you sound amazed by this. And of course, you know, we're all different, you know, we're British and or when you're not, but yeah. Yeah, well Australian males are pretty uh you know, the whole stiff upper lip and unemotional, but there's there's not a lot of passion. Yeah. Joy. Maybe we need to address how we can teach our preachers not just to be faithful proclaimers, but how to be engaging and liberated and joy-giving and passionate about what they're saying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that seems to be what has communicated to the a wider audience. Um I think again, if he had just read his script um from paper, then people wouldn't have noticed. But he read it from an iPad. iPad people. iPad.
SPEAKER_03He is surfing the digital wave. Some people said some people were like, and he's tweeted in the middle of the wedding.
SPEAKER_01But he yeah, so he um he preached it with passion, and I think that's what it has communicated to people. Um I th I think if you'd read it out in the same voice as as an English bishop, um, nobody would be talking about this. Um I think so there's definitely a lesson about passion.
SPEAKER_03I think as well, like we just the way people responded, I mean it's been incredible, isn't it, really, that people are talking about it. You know, I think we had a tweet came through just before we came in here, didn't we? Someone saying that they were in the queue at Lidl and a man started talking to her about that sermon. And you think, that's crazy. That is the conversations people are having. And it's those opportunities, isn't it? But there there is a I've seen a few at uh bits coming around where people are saying, ah, well, look, if everybody loves it, it must be bad.
SPEAKER_02Yes, right.
SPEAKER_03Right, because you know the world should hate you. If you're doing it right, the gospel should be offensive. Yes. And I saw a great exchange going on between two people on Twitter, not people I know, but um, and basically that was the thing going on saying, look, everybody loved it, and actually you know, Jesus says the world will hate you if you do it. Right. And the person brilliantly came back and said, Well, yeah, that's true, but sometimes people don't hate you because of Jesus. It might just be that you're a bit unpleasant.
SPEAKER_01Oh which itself might have been a bit unpleasant. You know, and on it goes. But yeah, I d yeah, there does seem to be a persecution complex going on if if popularity by itself is enough to make us say that must have been unfaithful. Yeah. Right. I mean, flipping Peter, you know, 3,000 people added to his number him.
SPEAKER_03Which was on Sunday, right? Pandering with populist nonsense that everybody wanted to hear.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, maybe the good news is good and and maybe maybe some people by a sovereign act of God, by his spirit, um, it's just not black and white as that, is it?
SPEAKER_03You can't just say, oh, if people liked it, it must be bad. Yeah. And if it everyone was offended by it, it must be doing it right. It could be that you're just generally offensive and not very winsome and good at preaching. You know, all stuff like that, you know. It works both ways.
SPEAKER_01I mean yeah, and there are those are the two failures of logic, and the second one is even worse than the first. The the the first failure of logic is to say if it's popular, it must be unfaithful. Well, not necessarily. What about revival? You know. Secondly, the the but it's even worse to say if I'm being unpopular, I must be faithful. Yeah, yeah. Oh dear. Yeah. Not necessarily.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you can just make you just be a jerk the whole time. You can be being a jerk for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01Suffer for the name of Christ, says 1 Peter 4, but not for being a meddler or a what was the other yeah, in in 1 Peter 4.
SPEAKER_03So, but I I I don't know, are we are we wrapping up on that a little bit or are we still going? I was just gonna say I I I thought what uh a friend of mine said on my whether on one of my Facebook uh threads was really helpful. And he he kind of just wrapped up and said, This guy, whoever he is, probably has been given this opportunity today by man because of his watered down and wrong beliefs, as they sit nicely with the modern age. But the Lord has had the last word as he's used this guy as a mouthpiece today, and maybe never again to preach the love of Jesus Christ. If you didn't know who Jesus was today before hearing that preach, I'm pretty sure people will be wanting to find out, and that calling in pursuit is the Lord's. And it's just this sense of I think I think we should take that, you know, that actually, regardless of his background, what he got up and said on the day wasn't hugely so far off mark that it would cause huge damage, I don't think. And actually, God confounds man, you know, God can work even through stuff, you know, whatever the motives are, yeah. Christ is preached. And I know some people will be sitting there going, no, Christ wasn't preached. I would say be a little bit more generous on some of it, you know. Um and also I think just as part of our witness, you know, part of our witness is uh I mean I'm seeing it on Facebook already, it's just causing massive division. Right. Um I don't think it's a good Christian witness for us on Facebook at the moment, perhaps to be to be at loggerheads. Yeah. That's ironic, here we are doing it live on Facebook. But you know, we should just leap on it, and then we can gently say to people, you know, who maybe we've got non-Christian friends who loved it and you and you're not that keen on it, maybe you think there were big issues with it, just have a chat with them. You don't have to go, no, it's all wrong, he's a false teacher. Doing him at the stake, you know. Why not just say, Okay, well, you know, I thought he said this and that was good. What did you take from it and just have a conversation?
SPEAKER_01So let's Yeah, so let's now talk about how we can m you know make the best use of this. Um I did come across uh a good little blog post by um Jules Middleton um how your church can respond to that sermon, some top tips. So we've put that in the uh in the comment section of the live cast uh on Facebook, or you can just Google uh Jules Middleton Apples of Gold and you'll find uh her little post, how your little post, so diminutive, uh great post uh how your church can respond to that sermon, some top tips. Um but I mean just yesterday I was I was playing cricket and I was sitting um waiting to bat and there was a an older couple who had just come to the cricket ground and they wondered why we're all playing on a Monday, and I you know joked that well, we're all vicars, and so we all you know we only work one day a week, so why not? And uh we got into a conversation, it it was at least half an hour long, and um guess what was front and centre in the conversation the whole time? The royal wedding, and not just the royal wedding, the sermon. Definitely the sermon. And we were talking about that sermon, and I was using all my marriage illustrations of you know when I married my wife, you know, we w we said, All that I am I give to you, all that I have I share with you, and everyone was laughing in the congregation, because they were, because they knew that we had nothing to offer each other except you know student loan repayments and made that joke and they thought that w they thought it was funny because they hadn't heard it fifteen times. I did have a good laugh during the royal wedding for richer or poorer, you guys. Yeah, yeah, sure. And um and I said, Well, yeah, but the Great Wedding is actually the prince sets his love on us, the pauper, and we're full of debts, and he'll he's full of riches. We become one, he absorbs all our debts on the cross, he gives us his riches in the resurrection, and let's be one with Christ forever. Love is is really the way, and and they were loving that. And they hadn't been to church in 20 years, and I was encouraging them to get back to their local church where you know where they were. And it was a great conversation. And and when we tweeted out that we're gonna have this live cast, um uh the vicar's wife, uh, who I know, she tweeted back um saying, There's a chap in the queue in Lidl who's just started now talking to me. That sermon was the first thing he mentioned.
SPEAKER_03And you know, cues in Little When was the last time the people of this nation were talking about a sermon? Right. Like in popular culture. Right. Right. I I mean I literally don't know when it was, but yeah, you just got to leap on it. Even if you think it was completely flawed, even if you think it was complete heresy, use it. Just leap on it.
SPEAKER_01Now use it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I completely understand if you think he shouldn't have been there on Saturday, but today is Tuesday. Um let's be using this for gospel good, and there's such gospel good that can come from it. Yeah. Brilliant. Well, that's our that's our hot take. That's our hot take on it all. Um, and there's loads of great comments on Facebook. I haven't got time to get into them because uh we need to move on and wrap up within the hour. But um let's so do do visit Facebook and and tell us what you think about that sermon, and we can keep on uh having the conversation in the comments. Um but we released a thorny question uh last night. We're in a series on suffering, and what was our thorny question that we uh thought of last night?
SPEAKER_03Uh so last night's one was why is the world so bad? And uh so it's our third part of four parts? Four parts? Yep, four parts. If you've not had enough suffering, you can get some more for you next week. Tune in to speak life. But I think we've got a clip, haven't we? You got a clip of last night's thorny question.
unknownLet's have a look.
SPEAKER_03The problem of evil is often seen as the final nail in Christianity's coffin. Given such suffering in the world, surely no one can believe in a good God, can they? Well, actually many people have come to faith precisely because of the existence of evil.
unknownC.
SPEAKER_03S. Lewis is one of them.
SPEAKER_00Wow, who are my influences? C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia films? They were great. I first two are killer, I hope he writes another one.
SPEAKER_03Here's how he put it in Mere Christianity. My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man doesn't call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? Here's the argument. If every line in the universe is crooked, well then no line is crooked. Because what is crooked when there's no such thing as straight? In the same way, if everything morally and spiritually is crooked, then nothing is crooked. Because without an ultimate good, then nothing is bad. Not ultimately. Not bad with a capital B.
SPEAKER_00John Piper is bad! I don't just do bad things, I am bad!
SPEAKER_03So are you. But we know that there are bad things in this world, truly bad. Not just painful or grotesque or maladaptive to survival. Some things are evil. But if there's evil with a capital E, there must be good with a capital G. And that means God. In fact, for us even to have a problem of evil, here are all the things we need to have in place. We need to have a universe, and that's already pretty improbable. But not just any universe. We need a universe so ordered it contains life. Before we talk of how the cosmos has been spoiled, we need to have a cosmos. And the odds of us having a cosmos and not just a chaotic mess of rocks and radiation are incredible. Before we even get to the problem of evil, the headline story is the problem of good. How have we had it this good to get to this kind of ordered world that could go wrong? So we needed Yeah you're not gonna hear from me. I think the real headline good news is that uh John Piper's soon gonna be bringing that tour of his Michael Jackson album to the O2. Come and hear him.
SPEAKER_01Bam! That used to be my ringtone. Oh, John Piper. That that that particular really is bad. I love the internet.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. This is why it's made.
SPEAKER_01This is like back in 2006. They didn't have such things back in 2006. This was like an early meeting.
SPEAKER_03The first kind of yeah.
SPEAKER_01Amazing, amazing. So big issue here with um suffering for this episode, and we're we're doing lots of different episodes. So this it if you only make this kind of point on the suffering question, it could sound callous or it could sound distant, it could sound like you're just interested in in philosophy debates, not in comforting people. Um but I I think at some at some point you need to address the the intellectual issue of the suffering question. And I think it's it's really good to point out that all our experiences of suffering are experiences of fallenness. That actually um everything that I experience is something that's bad, is something that's that was good and it's been twisted, it's been perverted, it's somehow been corrupted in some way, and therefore our very experience of suffering is actually a testimony to God. It might not seem that that might seem nuts to say, but actually when you when you drill down into every single experience of of suffering that you have is an experience of something that's meant to be good, that's somehow gotten twisted. You know. Yeah. So we use the the illustration of uh the Venus Demilo. What's the what's the take us through that one, uh Paul, the the Venus Demilo that you discover.
SPEAKER_03Um say you find the Venus Demilo, then you've got different options of as to what you might think, you know, when the when this guy comes across it, you could just think, well, it's a random block of marble, because you know, well, it it it it can't be a statue because look at it. It's no arms or anything like that, it's just a lump of rock, like all the other lumps of rock. Or you might go, well, this is a Greek goddess, and clearly Greek goddesses didn't have any arms, you know. Just look at the sculpture. Yeah, you might think that the sculptors, Greek sculptors, were clearly not very good at what they do because you know that they can't even put arms on the bottom. Yeah, armblind. Somehow. Or, and is the most sensible option, you think this is a a good sculpture and it's fallen and it's now broken, damaged in some way. Yes, what it should have been. And that's the sensible answer.
SPEAKER_01Which is what everyone would say. Yeah, literally everyone everyone knows that. You don't even need to argue for, you know, maybe Venus was armless, you know. No. Um But the but the stupidest answer of all would be to say, oh, because it's corrupted in this way, it has no arms, therefore it's pretty much the same as the rest of the blocks of of of you know marble that are there that are formless. Like that you no, you can't say that. So what you must say is there's something good that's been corrupted, and and therefore actually every experience of suffering that we have is an experience of something that's good. Life that gets corrupted, death. Something that's good, health that gets corrupted, disease. You know, something that's good, relationships that gets corrupted. You get divorce and family breakdown, etc. etc. You know, every experience we have is is actually an experience of fallenness.
SPEAKER_03I think that C.S. Lewis quote is really helpful, isn't it? You know, the as he as he thinks about it, where did I get this idea of just and unjust, of you know, right and wrong or things like that. Um I mean I I think actually a big part uh it's part of this question, that it's a big part of all evangelism, I think, actually is challenging people's assumptions. People people do just assume, don't they, there is this good and you know, then then things are there's bad and there's good, and you think, okay, but where have you got that good from? Yeah, yeah. And to start to push people on that, um, you know, well, why is that the case that you think that's good? What if someone over there decides that's not good? You know, so who decides what's good, you know, because at the moment we think, you know, in this country we think slavery is very bad. Yeah. There was a point when we thought slavery was good. Yeah. You know. So Aristotle taught, that's what Plato taught, you know. Sure. So, you know, yeah, you've got to have well and this is what C. S Lewis gets to, isn't it? He's thinking, well, where has this come from? That there really are things which are evil and there are things which are good.
SPEAKER_01And I think the thoroughgoing naturalist materialist could just say to you, Oh, look, it's all just a mess, isn't it? And maybe maybe I don't want to call it evil. Maybe it's just it's just unpleasant and it's grotesque and it's ugly and it's painful and it's maladaptive to survival. Um but I'm but at that stage you lose the ability to call it wrong, like truly and properly wrong. And actually one of the one of the the deepest, most guttural responses you make to suffering is that this should not be. But the atheist robs you of that. Because there's there's no reason why you could say it should not be.
SPEAKER_03And you can just push the examples, can't you? You know, you you would never you'd be hard pressed to find someone who holds that position who you could then press and say so you know, Auschwitz is not necessarily wrong. It's not nice, but it's not wrong. But who are we to judge, really? I mean 'cause some people thought it was good at the time. There'd be some who were very much behind it. And you just lose any ability to judge right and wrong, then to actually bring a judgment on someone and say so-and-so should be punished for things either. You know, you lose all those things that actually we prize.
SPEAKER_01And isn't it interesting that you know, so Jordan Peterson often we were gonna go through a streak thing like every time Jordan listens to Peterson gets a mention. But he, you know, his his kind of arguments are are often they they begin with, okay, so post-Holocaust, there were the Nuremberg trials, and we decided that there's such a thing as a crime against humanity. And we don't care if within Nazi culture this is what you do, this is a crime against humanity. There is a there is a broader category uh that you have violated, and it is supranational, supra-cultural, supra historical. Um and and so but but he kind of earths it in, okay, so the Nuremberg trials, we've recognized this. And you're like, well, yeah, but is this just a castle in the air? Like, what is this founded on? Like if it if it truly is, if there truly is right and wrong, it's gotta be grounded in more than the Nuremberg trials because like the comeback to that could be, well, that's just because the Allies won. There wouldn't be a Nuremberg trials if the Nazis won. Yeah, right?
SPEAKER_03We can move those goalposts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so even Peterson who's trying to like build this kind of objective framework or something close to an objective framework, um, I don't think it ultimately works, but I do think it testifies to the fact that we need one. Because we need it we need Nuremberg trials to be able to make those kind of judgments. So we've gone.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we do need one, don't we? But it also in many ways it's it's kind of ingra it seems to be ingrained, isn't it? I mean obviously it there are people who go off away from that grain. Yeah. But we do instinctively know we see things and we go, this is wrong. Yeah. You know, that is evil. You know, we or or we see, you know, we we don't look at people caught in you know, caught in addictions and think, oh that's a shame. We go, oh that's this is terrible. Like we we know that that's not how life is supposed to be. Right. We don't just think, oh that's another choice. Yeah. Or you know, even if it's not a choice, even if we don't think it's a choice, you know, we think, oh that's just a shame it's happened to them. We know that that isn't an abundance of life. There is a there is a life that should be lived a certain way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01This is a grain to the cosmos, and this is going against the grain, but you know, what right do we have to think that life should go well like that? And I think so often in in this whole series that we're doing, I keep coming back to the thought that what we really should be doing to to people outside the faith is to invite them to have a problem with evil. Because right now people don't have the problem with evil that they need to. So Jesus really has a problem with evil, because he really is the ultimate good, and when he shows up on planet Earth, you know, in Mark chapter 1, this this you know leper comes to him and and Jesus, you know, I I think the modern translations get get the Greek right here. In uh Mark 1 verse 41 it says, filled with anger, he reaches out and heals the man.
SPEAKER_03Isn't the same at the tomb of Lazarus? And the same at the tomb of Lazarus. Some versions say filled with compassion, but there's more an anger at death, snorting with indignation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he's he's and he invites us to have his problem with evil. You know, the Bible calls death the final enemy, and he treats it as an enemy, and actually, because there is an ultimate good, Jesus invites us to actually actually have a problem with evil. And I I just wonder whether we should do that more in conversation with people. When people say, I've got a problem with evil, say, good, you know, you need to have a problem with evil. But do you have any right to have a problem with evil? If you believe that the world is just chaotic, then what's going on is not wrong, because random, you know, molecules colliding with each other is not wrong, it's just what chemicals do, it's what molecules do. So inviting people to have a problem with evil, I think, is is one of the first things we can do as Christians. And then we want to show them the Christ who joins them in the in the suffering and who walks them into a solution. Yeah. But um but that's what this episode's been all about, really. Um establishing that in order to have a problem with evil, which you should have, there needs to be a heck of a lot of good from which we've fallen. There needs to be a finely ordered universe, there needs to be conscious beings like us, and there needs to be ultimate values like goodness, truth, beauty, and love by which we judge other things to be evil. Where do you get all that from? You know, you've got to get over these gargantuan hurdles before you can even have a problem with evil. Um so yeah, the headline story is the problem with good. Um in our next video on this subject, we'll get more personal about how Jesus actually walks us through, because all that stuff can feel a bit more uh philosophical. But uh next time we'll discuss how it is that Jesus joins us in the Valley of the Shadow and walks us out to Feasting Joy. That will be next time. But I think that's pretty much all we've got time for, really. Yeah, we're coming up so 1.59. Back to work, people. Back to work. You've you've enjoyed your lunch, you've uh enjoyed your matchless hot take on that wedding sermon. We can we can now spend our afternoon being abused for our responding to the comments. Great comments. We're really glad that you've joined us. Uh, we are here every Tuesday lunchtime, and uh we'd love you to join us. Do like uh Speak Life uh as a page, and uh then you'll get this showing up in your feed. Uh, you can go and subscribe on YouTube as well, where this will appear later on this week. And you can subscribe to the podcast, which is the audio of this that'll go out on Friday. Search for the Speak Life Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01I think that'll just about do us. What do you reckon? Yeah, I should think so. I should think so. I should think so. Alrighty. Well, God bless everybody and uh see you next week. Take care. See ya.