Today on the Evangelist Podcast, who's afraid of religious extremism?
SPEAKER_00The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_01You're listening to the Evangelist Podcast, the show where we discuss all things regarding telling the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm Andy Brinkley, and I'll be joined by Glenn Scrivener in a moment to answer some direct questions from students at Reading University. But before I go on, I'd like to thank everyone who's left a review for the Evangelist Podcast. It helps us to get seen by more people and makes us more likely to show up in search results when people look for it. So I'd like to say thanks to someone just calling themselves Pastor, who says, Andy and Glenn do a great job in this podcast equipping and encouraging believers to share the gospel. I've been greatly helped and blessed. So thank you to Pastor. If you'd like to leave a review, you can do this simply by going to speaklife.org.uk slash TEP and clicking the links there. Also, there's all the links there to subscribe if you want to get this more regularly. Okay, so last episode of the Evangelist Podcast, Glenn and I said that we were going to talk about angry evangelism, but that'll have to wait this time. Basically because Glenn's away and will be away for the next two weeks or so. He's doing university missions. So Glenn has sent a recording of what one or two talks, the first of which we're going to hear now. So here's Glenn at Reading University.
SPEAKER_03Take it away? Okay. Yeah, and I love the I love the QA time. It helps me to backtrack on the stupid things that I say, and uh you can call me on it, and I really benefit from that, and hopefully you'll benefit from it too. So uh, whatever I say, if it sparks off a question, do uh think about it, write it down, um, and that would be great. So we're thinking about this subject of uh religious extremism and radicalism. Uh it is a big issue, and not just in the news today, uh, it's been a big issue throughout human history. Uh Blaise Pascal uh was kind of the world's first tweeter. He uh if if you know anything about mathematics, you know about Pascal's triangle, don't you? Um but that's kind of why he's famous. But the big thing that he did, he was a very deep thinker and a philosopher, and he wrote these things called pensées, these thoughts. And he'd have a thought and he'd just jot it down, and it would only be about 140 characters long, and he'd just sort of fill these notepads with these thoughts. And one of his thoughts was um men never do evil so very cheerfully as when they do it in the name of religion. Um and he was a signed-up Catholic and loved being a Catholic, and he was a, in a sense, a deeply religious man, and yet he could look at a history which was unfolding in Europe in the 17th century, uh, and he could see um the 30 Years' War, he could see the things that were done in the name of religion, and he was able to say, men never do evil so cheerfully as when they do it in the name of religion. Uh, a more modern tweeter, Richard Dawkins, said this 12 days ago on Twitter. He said, if beer if bearded man kills, it doesn't mean he killed in the name of beards, but here's the bit I want you to focus on. Many have killed in the name of religion, none in the name of atheism. Um I wonder what you think about that as a statement. Is that true? Um have people killed in the name of religion, and have they killed in the name of atheism? Uh, and actually, I I just want to do a brief deconstruction of that in terms of the terms that we're talking about. Um has anybody ever killed in the name of religion? I can't think of a single one, can you? Can you think of anyone who's strapped bombs onto themselves and has said, in the name of religion, I do X, Y, and Z? Um actually, I think our thinking about religion can be really fuzzy, and I think our thinking about religion uh can be incredibly Western, arrogant, colonial, and modern in a way that actually excludes the vast majority of people's experience of what religion actually is around the world. So let's think about this this issue. Has anyone ever killed in the name of religion per se? No. People have killed in the name of certain religious doctrines and ideologies. Uh perhaps, as Blaise Pascal was uh saying the things that he was saying, there would be witches who are being burnt in the name of various so-called Christian ideologies. So, yes, that kind of evil happens under the banner of certain religious ideologies, and certainly people have killed in the name of Allah, people have killed in the name of Jesus. And so, what we're talking about here is evil that is perpetrated not in the name of religion as this broad umbrella term, but in the name of certain ideologies, certain particular religions, certain particular branches of religion. And I don't think this is nitpicking, I think this is clarifying perhaps the key term in our question for today. Um, what do we think about religious extremism? When you ask the religions of the world, what do you mean by something as basic as God? Uh, you are about to receive about as many different answers as there are religions in the world. Uh, if you go to Buddhism and you ask, you know, what is your concept of God? Well, Buddhism is non-theistic. Uh most of the branches of Buddhism do not have a God, do not believe in God. When you go to Hinduism and you ask, who is God, you will get various answers at various points. Uh from some perspectives, at some points, Hinduism is non-theistic. From other perspectives, it is polytheistic. From other perspectives, it is monotheistic. You go to Islam and you ask, who is God? And there is a basic and fundamental doctrine that whoever God is, God is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You go to the Christians and you ask, who is God, and Christians will say, there is nothing more basic whatsoever than that God is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so when you go to the major world religions and you ask a question as basic as who is God, you get answers of there is no God, there are many gods, there is one person who is God, Allah, there are three persons who are united in love, and that's the Christian doctrine of who God is. So even on something as basic as is there a God, I think you'll find that secular humanism today is on that question perhaps closest to Buddhism. Um, on that particular question. Non-theistic, not particularly anti-theistic or atheistic, but non-theistic. But that's a pretty basic issue, isn't it? Is there a God? And yet all the religions are saying very, very different things. What about another question, and perhaps an even more deep question about religions, is what is a religion? You go to the various religions of the world, and again, you're about to receive as many answers as there are religions. What is a religion? For some, it is a deeply and intensely internal and personal experience of spirituality. For some, it is basically a set of cultural expressions out there in the world. For some, it is about storytelling and community building. For some, it is about a set of dogmas, a set of beliefs. Now in the West, we tend to zero in on that one, don't we? And we say, I know what a religion is. A religion is a set of dogmas. And usually in the West we mean it's a set of dogmas that are about the supernatural, which again is a massively Western post-Enlightenment concept that just does not translate across cultures. The supernatural. By that we tend to mean does this religion believe in a god or gods? Does it believe in angels? Does it believe in an afterlife? That kind of thing. But again, even that assumption about what the supernatural is can tend to be quite a Western notion that doesn't really get at the world's experience of religion. So I think it's really important as we ask the question who's afraid of religious nitpicking, uh, who's who's who's afraid of religious extremism, um, that we think about this issue of what is a religion anyway? Uh Pascal Emmanuel Gobry is a journalist with the National Review. Uh, he made an excellent comment about uh Hinduism. He said, sometime in the 18th century the British informed the Indians that they had a thing called religion. And that this religion was called Hinduism. Somehow they had got by for thousands of years without this crucial piece of information. Um I think there's there is so much Western colonialism on this issue of religion. We come to another culture and we we wonder what is Hinduism really? We give it a label Hinduism when actually the features of Hinduism are just markedly different from what it is that we call Christianity or Islam or any of the others. So do people do people kill in the name of religion? No.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_03I mean it's it's such an ephemeral term, religion. And it's an umbrella term that contains within it such a a huge array of different beliefs and different practices within it. Has anyone ever killed in the name of religion? No, never, not once, not once. Has anyone killed in the name of atheism? Again, no, not once, not once. But within those umbrella terms, have there been witch burnings that have been justified by certain Christian texts in Christian scriptures? Yes. Yes, there have been. And perhaps we can think about that. Uh is there a group of people calling themselves Islamic State who are basing themselves on certain readings of certain religious texts? Absolutely. Does that stuff happen? Yes. Is it scary? You betcha. But is that religion? Um, no, that is one expression of one form of radicalism. But then we come across to the atheism thing, and Richard Dawkins says, um, it's not on the screen anymore, but Richard Dawkins says, no one has ever uh killed in the name of atheism, and yet there have been certain branches of certain atheistic ideologies that have left millions of dead in their wake. Uh, Stalin's particular form of communism left tens of millions dead in Russia. Mao's did similarly, Pol Potts did similarly. And if we survey the 20th century, uh, often called the murder century by by historians, a hundred million people died violently, largely at the hands of atheistic dictators. So, this question of has religion ever killed people? No, religion in general hasn't killed people. Has atheism ever killed people? No. Not that general term atheism. But are there doctrines that people have devoted themselves to that have caused great harm in the world? Yes, there absolutely are. And so we need to think of which doctrines are the truly healthy ones and which doctrines, if pursued to extremes, will lead to great harm in the world. And you know, this this question is is uh really uh often raised together with another big question, which is um, does religion cause all wars? Have you ever heard somebody say um religion causes all wars? Um I'd encourage people to just Google Philip and Axelrod's chronicles of uh their encyclopedia of all armed conflicts. They detail about 1800 wars in the history of humanity, and they say that about 123 of those 1800 have been religious in nature. 123, and most of that has not been Christianity, by the way. Now, 123 is 123 wars too many. Everybody in this room can agree to that. But it's only 7%. 100% of all wars have been caused by human beings. And as you look at the carnage that there is in the world, as you look at the murder century of the 20th century, you might be tempted to say, who can believe in God after the 20th century? But wouldn't a good question to ask be, how can anyone believe in humanity after the 20th century? The common denominator in all war is not God. The common denominator in all war is human beings. So what are we going to do about that? Well, I suggest to you that there is actually a response that we can make. There is something that can actually bring peace to our hearts, and we pray peace to the world, and it is a kind of religious extremism. It is a kind of radicalism. Do you know what the word radical means? It means going back to the root, getting back to the basics of something, and pursuing it to extremes. But I want to suggest to you that there are bad things to pursue to extremes, and there are wonderful things to pursue to extremes. Think of the Amish, for instance. Uh would you call the Amish extreme in their religious devotion? Uh, here are people who live in communities by themselves, largely in uh America, and they refuse to live according to modern technology, and they devote themselves utterly to the teachings of Jesus, in particular, the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, in particular, his teaching on turn the other cheek, go the extra mile. If someone sues you for your coat, give them the shirt off your back. Love your enemies, bless them, and do not persecute them. Okay, this is this is what the Amish extremely devote themselves to. And perhaps you saw uh a few years ago there was uh uh a terrible shooting in an American school in which there were largely children of the Amish community there. And uh after that mass shooting, uh the parents from this Amish community came on camera and said, we follow the teachings of Jesus, and we tell you now that we forgive the shooter. We forgive him. That is radical, don't you think? That's totally extreme in their religious devotion. I hope you agree. But who's afraid of the Amish? Are you afraid of these religious extremists? You couldn't find more extreme religious people, and yet who's afraid of them? I'm not afraid of them. Maybe the world will be a better place if we copied some of their extremism. Think of Mother Teresa. There she is, who not only is radical in her devotion to the poor, but has radicalized many other people to become radically devoted to the poor? Who's afraid of the Sisters of Mercy? You see, it's not it's not good enough just to say extremism is a real danger in society. Well, extreme what? Extreme what? Yes, if you follow a warlord to extremes, you will become a warlike person. You will. But what if you follow someone like Jesus to extremes? Who's afraid of that? Last year, how much time have I got? I've got about five minutes, okay. Last year there was a uh a survey done of um faith communities in the UK, and uh the survey was just about what kind of social action these faith communities do in the UK, and they weren't able to get a massive cross-section in the answers that they got back, uh, but simply extrapolating from the data that they got, um, they reckon about three billion pounds worth of volunteer hours were given to the UK uh community by faith groups. And uh, this is not, you know, Christians having choir practice, this is not leadership meetings among churches and mosques, this is stuff that is done for the community, for society that would otherwise not get done. And I know some of these people who are extreme in their devotion. Um, in my little town, Eastbourne, on the south coast, uh, we're only a town of 100,000 people, we've got 66 churches, we've got 45 Christian charities. And again, the stuff that we do, there's 350 midweek activities that we do in our little town that are run by Christians that are for the community, that are not for church people. They are for the community. I think that's pretty radical. I think that is putting into practice an extreme form of your spiritual devotion. Um, but let me let me just um point you to one place where Christians go to say, you know what, if I followed this to extremes, I think the world would be a better place. Do you want to pick up one of these that we've given to you? These are our gift to you. It's a John's gospel. There are four biographies of Jesus in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Uh, this is written by one of the eyewitnesses of Jesus, uh, the beloved disciple, John, and on page 80 here, I just want to point you to a story that Christians have been going back to for 2,000 years, and it's a passage where Jesus does something radical, and then he wants his followers to be radicalized along the same extreme religious devotion. So, perhaps you know this uh scene. Jesus washes his disciples' feet, page 80. The big number 13 means it's chapter 13. It was the hour, it was just before the Passover festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who are in the world, he loved them to the end. The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God, so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel round his waist. After that he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? Jesus replied, You do not realize now what I'm doing, but later you will understand. No, said Peter, you shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered, Unless I wash you, you have no part with me. Then, Lord, Simon Peter replied, Not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well. Jesus answered, Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet. Their whole body is clean, and you are clean, though not every one of you. For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said, Not everyone was clean. When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. Do you understand what I've done for you? He asked them. You call me teacher and lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. Okay? This is radical, okay? According to Christianity, here is the Lord of heaven and earth. Here is the one who existed before the world began with his Father and the Holy Spirit. Here is the Son of God who's come into the world. Why has he come into the world? Actually, to bleed and die for us on a cross. If you want to ask me about that, you can ask me about that in QA time. But here he is the night before his execution. And you would think that if you were about to be executed in the morning, your mind would be on other things. And yet, what is Jesus taken up with? What is he concerned with? The others. His stupid friends who are about to run away from him, desert him, deny him, and even betray him. Judas Iscariot is here this night, the one who would betray Jesus. Jesus knows this, and yet what does he do? He gets up from his place of honor at the table, he takes off his robe, the clothing of a king, he puts on a towel, the clothing of a servant, and he washes and dries his disciples' stinking feet. This is the hot Mediterranean Middle East, dusty roads, sandals. This is not pleasant. This is the slave's job. You got the worst slave in the household, or the slave with the worst job in the household, to go around and do what Jesus now does. And Christians believe here is the King of heaven, the Lord Almighty, stooping down to wash and dry our dirty feet. And it's just a portent, it's just a token of what he's about to do on the cross tomorrow. The same hands that wash those feet would be nailed to a Roman cross. He would bleed his own heart's blood, even for his enemies, and he'd pray, Father, forgive them. This for Christians is our vision of who God is. And a Christian is someone who radically devotes themselves to this vision of who God is. God is, according to Christians, radical, self-giving love. And if that's who He is, then Jesus says, as I've washed your feet, you should wash other people's feet. A Christian is someone who receives that radical love and wants to pass it on to the world. So that's why Christians give three billion pounds of volunteer hours to society. That's why Mother Teresa does what she does. That's why the armies do what they do. That's why those kinds of Christian extremists radically devote themselves to service and to loving others. Which means I think if you become this kind of radical extremist, you become not more likely to kill others, you become more likely to give your life in service for the other. And I just want to commend to you this kind of religious extremism. When I was your age, I picked up one of these gospel accounts and started reading through about who is Jesus. And I was just so struck by this man of self-giving love. And I thought to myself, wow, if this is what God's like, I'm in. Count me in. And since then I've been trying to radically devote myself to who he is. And I think, even if you're not a Christian, you should want me to be radically devoted to him. Because I think your world's gonna be a better world if I'm more radically devoted to the footwashing of God. We can ask and answer questions all about well, what do you do about the crusades? What do you think about those witch burnings and all those horrible things that were done in the name of religion? We can ask those things in the QA time. But I really commend to you this John's gospel, and I just ask you to why don't you just pick it up and read it for yourself and get to know this Jesus? Because I think his radical love is good news for the world. Thanks very much.
SPEAKER_02Can you explain to me how God created the world? What's the evidence that God created it? Oh, great. Okay.
SPEAKER_03Um, so we've got a world. Um that gives us uh a lot of data. Um let me let me let me tell you what a lot of people say, and it's not it's not necessarily a particularly Christian answer, but it is a more generically belief in God answer. And then I'll tell you specifically what Christians say. Um so we look at a universe that is extremely well fine-tuned for life. Um, yes, there's lots of stuff that goes wrong with the world, but you need to have a world, and you need to have life on the world for it then to go wrong. And so um you can look at things called cosmic constants, things like the speed of light or the gravitational constant, things like that, um, that scientists have discovered have to be just so in order for this to be a life-sustaining universe. So, for instance, the gravitational constant, which describes the rate of expansion of the universe, um, it has to be um within a an infinitesimally small range um in order to produce a universe. So you've got the Big Bang. The Big Bang needs to bang enough that the universe kind of escapes its own gravity, but it can't bang so much that we fling out into heat death. And you might think, well, what's the range that uh must be so in order for this universe to be held the way that it is? And scientists have figured it out that it's one in ten to the power 120. Um if it's one in 10 to the power 120 less, then the universe crunches back. If it's one in ten to the power 120 more, the universe flings out into heat death. Now, to give you some idea of the magnitude of that number, um, the number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be around 10 to the power 80. That's 10 with 80 zeros after it. We're talking about 10 with 120 zeros after it. And that's just one of the cosmic constants. There are many more like that. And so a lot of people have looked, and that this is not a particularly Christian or a uniquely Christian thing to say, but a lot of people have looked at the universe and the way that it is, and they've seen marks of design, and they've said, yes, there's a designer. To give the more specifically Christian answer, we kind of we believe that Jesus is the one who's come into this world, who is our maker, and he says, Well, you can get to know me. Um, you don't have to go into a laboratory and do all the experiments in order to figure me out. You can be introduced to Jesus personally and you can read about him and in you know know him as this figure of history. But the Christian answer as how do we know the maker of the universe is that he has personally shown up in time and space. And he makes these claims like he was the creator of all things. In a couple of uh chapters time in this John's Gospel, Jesus says he is older than the universe, he was there with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and they made all things together. Now, when somebody says that kind of stuff, um they're either insane, or they are really trying to deceive you and not very nice, or they're telling the truth. And I just uh you know urge you to have a look at Jesus and think to yourself, maybe he is telling the truth. If he is, then we can have not only knowledge that there's some kind of grand architect, some kind of designer at a distance, we can actually know a God of love who's shown up, and I think that's good news. So I point you in those two directions for evidence.
SPEAKER_02Um so another question is um religion inevitably involves religious leaders forming their own interpretations of religious texts and acting upon them. Does this not in itself make religion dangerous? Is there a difference between believing in God and following a religion?
SPEAKER_03Yep. So if you've got texts, there's gonna be disagreements about the interpretation of those texts, and therefore aren't you then gonna have factions and all that kind of thing? So that that in itself is let me let me answer that part of the question first. Um I think you get that with any text, whether it's religious or not. So um there are a lot there are there are many interpretations of Marxism, for instance, but you cannot read Das Capital and think that Karl Marx was, you know, pro-free markets and he was just really a neocon kind of capitalist. At that stage, you've got an interpretation of that text that goes beyond the bounds of all sanity. And I think I think something similar is true with the Bible as well. There are various interpretations of some of these religious texts, but I think if you start to say that, for instance, uh the duty of Christians is to kill their enemies rather than die for their enemies, I think that's a bit like saying Karl Marx was really a free market capitalist. I think at that stage you've gone beyond the bounds of that kind of faithful interpretation of the text. Um the fact that there are differing interpretations of the text, and the fact that there are different denominations around the world, you know, that it that is a bit of a shame to Christianity. The fact that there are 40,000 denominations of Christianity in the world, that is a great shame. And it does point to this hermeneutical problem. How do you read these different texts? But in none of them, in none of these 40,000 are they saying that uh we should wage religious wars in the name of Jesus. You cannot faithfully read the text and say, in the name of Jesus, I kill my enemy. Um so and the last bit of the question Is there a difference between believing in God and following a religion? Is there a difference between believing God and following a religion? Um, yeah, absolutely. There's a massive difference. Um and there are loads of religions that don't follow a God. Um, and there are lots of religions out there that don't look like our Western notion of what a religion looks like anyway. Um And there are lots of gods out there as well. So my only thing would be um there are, as I've said, loads of different notions about who God is. Um how do we know that we are not just dreaming up who God is out of our own head? How do we how do we make sure that I don't just think to myself, I'd quite like a God who was like me. So I'm just gonna imagine a God who's a bigger version of me, and I'll put him in heaven, I'll call him God. And he'll never disagree with me. Oh no, because you know, he and me, we're we're basically the same. So, how do you make sure you don't do that? Because actually, there's been loads of people who've done that in the history of religion. They've basically imagined God, and warlike people have imagined warlike gods. You know, what a surprise. And, you know, very meticulous people have imagined a God who's basically an accountant and a fine-tuner, and and you know, we tend to think of God in our own image. So, how are you gonna stop yourself doing that? And at that stage, I would just urge you to have a look at here's the claim. The claim is that God has shown up in order to reveal himself in a surprising way, in a way that disagrees with our intuitions, but in a way that, at the end of the day, we say, oh, that's very attractive. And if God is like that, then I'd be interested. So I just, I'm not trying to get you into a religion, but if you want to believe in God, I just urge you to think, how do I make sure I'm not just believing myself and my own notions? And at that stage, Jesus coming into the world could be good news for you as you check him out and figure out whether that's what God's like.
SPEAKER_02Um, how would you explain people who justify their actions by saying, God is telling me to do it, such as false prophets?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So many people have come and said, you know, didn't George Bush say that Jesus told him to invade Iraq? And they, oh, you know. Um how do you do it? And at that stage, this book becomes the solution rather than the problem. Um the fact that you've got a religious text to kind of go back to is a help when people, out of their own pretty little heads, start to say, you know, I want to do this thing and I want God to rub a stamp it. The fact that Christians have a book to check it against is actually a massive safeguard. And so, how you guard against it, actually, the New Testament is full of people saying, whatever anybody says to you, check it against the Bible. So Acts chapter 17 tells a story all about that. The book of one John is taken up with that question, the book of 1 Corinthians has this issue quite a lot, in which these biblical writers are saying, don't just take anyone's word. Just because someone says God told me means nothing. If it accords with who Jesus is as found in the scriptures, then we've got something to start with. Um So absolutely, just belief in God is not a rubber stamp to be able to say whatever comes into your head and give it the rubber stamp of God. Absolutely not. That's why the that's why the Bible is good news, I think.
SPEAKER_02Um would the world not be a better place if there was no form of religious extremism, both good or bad?
SPEAKER_03I think it's inevitable. And I mean, and what I mean by religion is inevitable, um, not in the narrow Western post-Enlightenment sense, but in the sense in which the vast majority of human beings experience religion. Religion is inevitable. In terms of uh a means of storytelling, in terms of a means of community generating, in terms of cultural practice, in terms of um living a life that is greater than me and that is in you and is in tune with the cosmos and ultimate reality and things like that. That that is just an expression of our humanity, and to stamp that out starts to be the most totalitarian thing you could possibly imagine. If you want to prevent people doing that, you are the problem with the world. Okay? If you want to prevent people expressing that religious side of themselves, then that really starts to be the kind of totalitarianism that Stalin really expressed himself in Russia, and tens of millions paid for it with their blood. So let's not go down that route. Um, and let's just let's just acknowledge that there is a religious side to people, even though we don't like in the West the word religion. Most Christians in this room, I tell you, most Christians in this room don't like the word religion. I don't particularly like the word religion. Uh it tends to suggest to me uh a ladder that I've got to climb in order to be better than other people and reach up into heaven, okay? And that's not that's that's like the total opposite of the Christian story. The Christian story is Jesus, the one from heaven, comes down because I'm not better than other people. I'm rubbish, right? So, would the world be a better place if they got rid of religion in that ladder climbing sense? You betcha. Um but Jesus kind of is the abolition of that kind of religion. Um so again, I would urge you to have a look at him.
SPEAKER_01That was Glenn Scrivener answering questions from students at Reading University a couple of weeks ago. So if you'd like to get more of these episodes of the Evangelist Podcast, you can easily subscribe at speaklife.org.uk slash tep. That's speaklife.org.uk slash tep. And you can do that from your phone as well as a tablet or whatever. Next week we may have another talk from Glenn. You'll have to wait and see. Uh so thanks very much for listening, and uh we'll speak to you next time.