Well hello and welcome back to the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Thomas Thoroughgood, Media Producer at Speak Life. So grateful you've chosen to listen to this podcast out of all the podcasts you could be listening to right now. So we better get to it, haven't we? Today we have a talk that Glenn Scrivener, Speak Life director and main presenter on this podcast. This is a talk that he gave at Highfield's Church in Cardiff in October 2022. And in this talk, he addresses the issue of why we believe in equality. This is based on a chapter in his book, The Air We Breathe. You can get that on the Good Book Company website or Amazon wherever you get your books. It's also available as an ebook and it's available on Audible as well, with Glenn himself reading it. So do check out the Air We Breathe if you haven't done so already. But yes, this talk is about equality, and then in the next episode of the Speak Life podcast, we're going to be looking at compassion, and then the one after that, we're going to be looking at progress. So three air we breathe talks given by Glenn coming to your devices. Enjoy.
SPEAKER_04Do you think that everyone believes? Everyone is a believer? We tend to divide people up, don't we? There are believers and then there are rational people. But we we tend to do that, don't we? There are some people who are able to take a leap of faith. We'll think about that in a second. And there are other people who just live life according to reason and evidence. Okay? There are believers and there are sensible people. We tend to divide the world up in that way. And this weekend, we're saying, no, everyone believes. In fact, everyone is a believer. You navigate your life according to some very deep-seated moral intuitions and values and assumptions and gut instincts that you cannot prove under laboratory conditions. You just can't. But you believe in this stuff really, really strongly. And that makes you, sorry to say, a believer. It's not just Christians, it's not just Bible bashes, it's not just faith heads. All of us navigate life according to some very foundational beliefs, thought structures, morals, intuitions, gut instincts. And in this session tonight, we're gonna think about everybody believes in equality. Um, I'll just define terms. Everybody believes in equality. I think everyone here, probably, believes that every member of the human family is the moral equal of every other member of the human family. No matter their race, their religion, their sex, their sexuality, their wealth, their class, doesn't matter. We're all equal, right? You believe that, don't you? I mean, you get kicked off Facebook if you don't believe that pretty quickly. Off you go. You believe in the moral equality of every member of the human family. But what we're gonna investigate tonight is the question why? You have a belief. I'm not trying to convince you to believe. I don't think I have to convince you to believe. What I really want to do is give you some foundations for the beliefs that you already have. That's what we're gonna be looking at uh tonight. And it's kind of based on this book that I've written called The Air We Breathe. I wrote The Air We Breathe uh for a friend called Sally, um, not Sally Gobbitt, but uh a different Sally. Uh and she is a friend of mine uh who one day she wrote me a letter. Do you remember letters, kids? Yeah, they were they were a thing. And in this letter, there's a sentence that I'll never forget. She said, Um, I hope you realize Glenn, I could never be a person of faith. And she was just so emphatic about it. I could never be a person of faith. And I think Sally has this view of faith that's a little bit like the Star Wars view, right? In Star Wars episodes four, five, and six, some people have the force. And Luke really has the force, right? And he happens to be on the light side of the force, so that's good. We like that. And the force enables him to do things like mind control and teleportation and these woo kind of things. Interestingly, in the prequels, episodes one, two, and three, they give a biological explanation for the force. Do you remember? What is the biological explanation for the force? I'm gonna out all you Star Wars fans. What's the biological explanation? Midaclorians, right? Yes. Dave knows you know. Sorry to point you out, but nerd! Midaclorions in the blood, right? And if you have a lot of midaclorians in the blood, that means you have the force. It's it's fascinating, isn't it? They had to go for a biological explanation. As though without the biological explanation, we could never believe in teleportation and mind control. But now we've invented a thing called midachlorines. Makes perfect sense. But anyway, some people they have a lot of midaclorians, some people have no midaclorians. My friend seemed to think that I had the midaclorians, right? For faith. I had something within me, and maybe I had the faith gene. And some days, my friend Sally, she thinks that she dodged the bullet. And some days my friend Sally thinks that I hit the jackpot. But either way, she says, I could never be a person of faith. She's constitutionally unable to believe. And maybe that's how you feel this evening. Maybe you come here, might be the your first time in inside a church building. You're just exploring these things, but you wouldn't really call yourself a believer. Uh, if that's you, then you're like my friend Sally, and I made this video for you. Let's have a look.
SPEAKER_03This is Sally. Sally is a rational person who could never make a leap of faith like Robbie up there. Look at Robbie. He's a faith head, floating around unsupported by anything. No. Sally simply goes by the evidence and the assured findings of science and reason. I mean, obviously, Sally believes that all people are equal. That's just normal. And that society must protect its weakest members, obviously. She is certain that consent is essential to sex, and that education, not coercion, is the path to enlightenment. She trusts science and what it can deliver the world, she is certain that all people should be free, and she's concerned to reform the evils of yesterday as we progress to a brighter tomorrow. Oh hey Robbie, what are you doing down here? That's right. Sally is a believer. Because none of these morals, assumptions, or deep intuitions are the result of logic or scientific experiments. You can't prove equality, compassion, consent, or any of these values that we live by every day. We believe in these values, we stake our lives on them, but they're not the kinds of things you can deduce logically or demonstrate scientifically. It turns out that Sally is a believer. She doesn't need to make a leap of faith, she's already living at a great height. Day by day, minute by minute, she assumes any number of values that cannot be proven with mathematical certainty. The solid ground she thinks she's standing on is not the ground of simple logic or reason. Actually, the values she lives by are founded on something else, something she might not have considered. And without that foundation, the values she lives by don't really make sense. You see, Sally lives her life based on the values of the Jesus Revolution. She doesn't know that's where her values have come from. She's never been to church, she's never read the Bible for herself, but she's grown up in a culture built by Jesus and the values he has injected into the world. Sally has been assuming some deeply Christian truths all along, even if she never really examined them. But if she takes the time to look where she's standing, she might just find that she's more of a person of faith than she thought. Sally's challenge is not to take a leap of faith. Through the Jesus Revolution, history has already taken an almighty leap. Sally, along with the rest of us, are already in mid-air. What she needs is some ground beneath her feet. And it's Jesus alone who can provide it. That's the argument of the air we breathe. It charts the advance of the Jesus Revolution, from Genesis to the modern day and from equality to progress. It's for the Robbies of the world, who are happy to be known as believers. And it's for the Sally's, too. For those who thought that they were incapable of faith. It turns out that through Jesus and the growth of his movement, beliefs are far more common than we think. They are the air we breathe.
SPEAKER_04So that video was made by Jack, who was one of our interns, and he came down for 10 months to speak life. That could be you if you want to come down and uh and make cool videos like that. Um but the whole idea of a leap of faith um is fascinating, isn't it? Um Sally thinks to herself, I could never take a leap of faith. And of course, the the the most the most popular kind of cinematic depiction of the leap of faith is Indiana Jones. Um do you know in The Last Crusade? There he is, he needs to cross this chasm that is unbridgeable, and he hears his father calling to him, and he realizes that he must just, you know, step out into the unknown. And he summons up within himself enough Midachlorians, right? He screws up his stomach muscles in order to believe, and so he takes the step and thud, his boot lands on solid ground. The bridge is there, his faith is rewarded, Indy's a hero, right? Because he managed to summon up enough faith to believe. Um, that's a nonsense view of what faith is, okay? That that's not what faith is like at all. I am not encouraging anybody to take a leap up into mid-air. What I want to do is point out you're already in mid-air, okay? You don't navigate life according to iron laws of physics and logic and mathematics and scientific experimentation. You don't wait for peer-reviewed journals to come out before you make value-laden decisions. Every minute of every day you're making a value-ladison. And it's based on moral assumptions and intuitions that go far beyond reason and evidence. You're a believer. You're already mid-air. I don't want you to leap. I want some ground beneath your feet. I want to try and give you foundations for the values that you already hold. That's what we're trying to do. And so in the book, I kind of talk about these seven values: um equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, progress. We're not gonna have time to go into any of these really apart from equality tonight. But just to give you a rundown of where we're heading, because we're gonna talk about more of this tomorrow at church, 9.15, 11:15, we're gonna talk uh about compassion. The Jesus Revolution brought compassion in a very specific sense into the world. And we want to talk about that tomorrow. Um, and then we're talking about consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress. We're gonna think about uh tomorrow night at 6.30. So come back to think about more of these things. But equality, it is the belief that every member of the human family is the moral equal of every other member of the human family, no matter their class, their race, their ethnicity, their gender, their sexuality, doesn't matter, everyone's equal. And then this the second value up on that list of seven is compassion, okay? You and I, we all believe, Sally believes, everybody believes, that a society should be judged by the way it treats its weakest member, right? That compassion, mercy, the protection of the weak, that's that is not a weakness, that's a virtue. You believe that, don't you? Everyone believes that. Consent. Elite men do not have the right to the bodies of other people. They simply don't. Consent is right at the heart of our sexual ethic, right? Enlightenment. You and I believe in the power of education and that we should forward our ends only by persuading people, never by coercing them, never by force, never by violence. We should always forward our ends through education and enlightenment. You believe that. Science, you believe in the goodness of science, and you believe that science can be done. You believe that this three pounds of gray matter has some chance of grasping the deepest mysteries of the cosmos. That's pretty cool. It's not a human universal by any means. To think that the human mind is somehow fitted to understand the cosmos. That scientific method has erupted in a specific time and place for specific reasons. Come through the Jesus revolution. You might want to ask questions about that. We've got a QA time afterwards. There'll be a QR code, Slido, you can ask your questions in the break. Freedom. You and I believe that people are not property. You are in possession of your life. Okay? We believe in freedom. We believe in progress. Martin Luther King Jr. said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And we should reform the evils of yesterday as we progress to the future. Don't you kind of believe that maybe? What I want to say throughout this weekend is that those beliefs have come uniquely and specifically through the Jesus Revolution, and they have not come naturally through the processes of evolution. And I don't think they can do. Okay? Perhaps you look at these seven values and you just say, ah, but Glenn, those are just natural, universal, obvious values. At which point I say, Well, let's do a comparative anthropology and let's see. Because no, they're not natural, they're not obvious, they're not universal. Perhaps you say they are just the values of secular humanism. And I guess at this stage, I'm gonna do the most controversial thing I'm gonna do tonight, and it might generate all sorts of questions from you. Jop down those questions, because we really want to hear those on the Slido. But I I want to pull apart those two ideas, secular and humanism. Um, you know, secular, the idea that we can have a worldview completely divorced from religious values, right? We can we can look at the world in a value-neutral way, and not with the inheritance of the religious traditions, we can navigate life according to a secular vision. That's what the secular bit means. Um and then the humanism is all this stuff here: equality, compassion, human rights, human equality, the dignity of people, all that kind of beautiful stuff. So this is humanism, this is the secular. And I just want to ask the question did these humanistic values come from this secular vision? And I want to say they didn't historically, and they can't logically. So, on equality, I guess what are we? We are biological survival machines, right, and we are very clever chimps. Okay? We're very clever chimps with inviolable human rights. And I just want to ask the question these human rights that we have, did that come from that secular, that purely secular view of the human? And I want to say that historically it didn't come from that secular view, and that logically it can't come from that secular view. That's gonna generate questions, isn't it? Okay? If that's not generating questions, you haven't listened to what I said, okay. The secular view, we are clever chimps with inviolable human rights. And I'm saying to you, if you're living in that secular humanist world, you've got what's what's known as cognitive dissonance. Do you know what cognitive dissonance is? It's the these two ideas in your head that don't actually fit together. And they're clashing and they're constantly clashing because the secular view is not that I'm a person of inviolable value and worth and dignity, the equal of every other human being. Simply not. But you believe that. Oh, that's that's dissonance. And I want to relieve you of your cognitive dissonance, okay? And I want to say to you that this humanistic value did not come from the secular worldview, and that it can't come from the secular worldview, okay? Like I say, this is the spiciest part of the talk. If you can hang on for another three minutes, we'll be through this, and then you can ask your questions um after the break. But, okay, so compassion. So the secular view is that I'm a biological survival machine and I must look after the weak. Did that come from that? And I want to say, historically, this did not come from that. It just didn't, historically, and logically, I don't think it can. On consent, um, the secular view is you and the baby, we ain't nothing but mammals. So let's honor one another's sexual boundaries at all times. And just did this come from that? I don't think. Historically, this came from that. In fact, I know historically this didn't come from that, and logically, I suggest to you that this can't come from that. Um, on enlightenment. Um, again, we are the heirs of a brutal evolutionary history, and we must forward our ends only by persuasion and never by force. Did this come from that? Historically, this absolutely did not come from that, and logically, I don't think it can. Science, this three pounds of grey matter is solely the result of natural selection. And I can trust it to fathom the mysteries of the cosmos. Science did not erupt from a secular worldview. Freedom. Um we are the heirs of a brutal evolutionary history, and to imagine a master race is an unconscionable evil. Why? Why, if that's the only foundation we've got. See, our belief in freedom did not come from the secular worldview, and I don't think it can come from that. On progress, I am a biological survival machine clinging to an insignificant rock, hurtling through a meaningless universe towards eternal extinction, and things are gonna get better. I can just feel it. Okay, we're through we're through the spiciest three minutes, okay? I'm sure that will generate questions. Don't don't forget to jot them down. I would say that the values that we live our lives by, all of us, whether you've ever set foot inside a church before or not, we all live our lives by these kinds of values. And I just want to say uh secular humanist, pick one. Pick one. Otherwise, massive cognitive dissonance. And I want to relieve you of that cognitive dissonance. And when Sally is asked to choose between that view and this view, Sally, nine times out of ten, maybe nine point nine times out of ten, she chooses these values, right? She chooses equality and compassion, consent, and enlightenment. Of course she does, and she lives her life by those values. And I just I want to relieve you of the cognitive dissonance, and I and I want to invite you to consider where these beliefs have come from. We'll have a look at equality in particular. Um, this belief in equality. What why do we think that every member of the human family is the moral equal of every other member of the human family? Because that's not an obvious thought to have, is it? I mean, have you met people before? People are really, really different. Massively different. And if you if you assess any two people by any one measurement, what are you going to find? Difference. What are you not going to find? Equality. You and and all the ancient thinkers thought this. You know, you you go back to sort of Plato and Aristotle, these sort of fathers of of modern well, modern modern philosophy really comes from Plato. I mean, they what what do they say? All of modern philosophy is just the footnotes to Plato. These epic thinkers, two and a half thousand years ago, um, absolutely did not believe in equality. Absolutely not. You know, Plato would would grab two people and they would say, Look, look, this guy is taller than that guy, and he's stronger than that guy, and he's wealthier than that guy, he's from a higher socioeconomic class than that guy, he's a master, he's a slave, you do the math, right? They're not equal. In what sense are they equal? In what world are they equal? You point to any two people, all you're gonna find are the differences. Well, in what sense are they equal? And why would we value them the same? They are clearly not valued the same. Where do we get this idea from? Well, I I trace it through in the book, but you know, here's one place you can turn to to ground the belief you already have. Page one of the Bible. On the next slide, we've got Genesis chapter one. On page one of the Bible, this is extraordinary, especially if you if you know anything about the ancient Near Eastern world and the literature of the day and the religious texts of the day, this just lands like an absolute asteroid. At the end of this creative process, God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. So many extraordinary things in this. If you know anything about the kind of the cosmogenies, the origins, stories of the universe in the ancient Near Eastern texts, or the Greco-Roman texts, or in all this mythology, the gods are warring, the gods are subhuman in their ethics, right? I mean, the the gods of the ancient religions, serial rapists, warmongers, just nasty, nasty pieces of work. And in all the ancient Near Eastern texts, humanity is created in order to do the work of the gods, that the gods can have a breather. They are created as slaves so that the gods won't be so exhausted running around doing God things the whole time. Genesis 1. Here we are, and God makes man and woman as king and queen of all creation. That's what the word dominion kind of means, that's is in the next verse in Genesis 1, verse 28. They are to have dominion as king and queen, they are royalty, and they are made in the image of God. In some of these other texts, uh, the king is thought to be an image of God because I guess a tyrant is a pretty good picture of what some of these gods are like. But here, male and female together are in the image of God. We are all royalty. All of us. It's an extraordinary picture of human dignity right there on page one of the Bible. The story develops all throughout the Old Testament. And then in the New Testament, here comes God the Son, and he is called the image of God. Do you know that about Christ? He is the image of the invisible God. Jesus is what God looks like, which is kind of that's one of the meanings of Son of God. If you've heard of Jesus as the Son of God, it means in one of the meanings is it's like he's a chip off the old block, he's exactly like his dad, the exact representation of his father. Along comes Jesus Christ, and he comes as man, right? I'm using it in in that ancient universal sense, as one of us to walk planet Earth. And what ends up happening to Jesus? Well, he is the one who comes right to the bottom of the pile. He is an itinerant preacher with without any even two pennies to rub together. He lays aside his hammer, aged 30. He was a carpenter, he becomes an itinerant preacher with nowhere to lay his head. Eventually the authorities catch up with him after just about three years of him shooting his mouth off. And he is executed as a blasphemer, according to the Jews, as an enemy of the state, according to the Romans. And in that final scene on the cross, the centurion enforcing Roman authority and might thrusts that spear up into Jesus' side. And you talk to any ancient person and you say, What do you see when you look at that? And an ancient person sees the hierarchy asserting itself quite rightly too. You see imperial rule cracking down on a troublemaker, and quite right too. Because for an ancient person, justice means enforcing the inequalities that are woven into the world. So different to today, isn't it? Today, when we think of justice, we think of equalizing people. It's unjust that one person has more than another person. It's a very modern thought. Ancient people would wouldn't think like that. Ancient people think that justice is the enforcing of the natural inequality that is woven into the cosmos. And why should you think that it should be anything different? Well, you know why you think it should be different. Because we've been looking at that symbol for 2,000 years, and we have come to see, even if you're not a Christian, you've probably come to see that the figure on that cross, he's the hero, not the centurion. That the one on the cross, having descended from a great height to join us at the bottom, to join us in the gutter, to die the slave's death, which is what crucifixion was, he's the hero. He's doing what is truly virtuous. That the true picture of glory is not being able to dish out the violence, but actually to nobly take the violence for the sake of others. We've been looking at that image for 2,000 years. We've been shaped by that image for 2,000 years. Christianity has been doing its work on us. Whether you've ever clapped eyes on a Bible or not, Christianity has been doing its work on us. And we have started to see the glory of the despised and the weak and the downtrodden and the marginalized and the ones at the fringes. We've we've started to look at not just Christ on the cross, but all those who we might consider to be undesirables. And we've said, there's a dignity even there. Why is there a dignity even there? Well, the Christian story is God has so dignified the margins, he has descended to them. And so the highest descends to the lowest to die the slave's death. And yet he didn't remain dead, he rose up again in order to invite us into his family. And that's interesting, family. The family that Jesus invites his people into is a family in which everyone is brother or sister and nobody is Lord except him. And so hierarchy is profoundly undercut in the Jesus story. On the next slide, we've got uh the Apostle Paul writing to a church in Galatia, it's modern Turkey. He writes these famous words about life in the church, the early church of the first century. He says, So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. For all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. There is a profound unity in this family that Jesus is inviting the world into, and we all have an equal welcome at the same table, dining with Christ. That is the great vision that took hold in that first century, and somehow this countercultural movement called the Church of Jesus Christ grew. I mean, that that should absolutely blow you away. We'll think about this tomorrow night if you want to come back at 6:30. It's absolutely extraordinary that a movement that follows a crucified man would grow under the thumb of mighty Rome. In the midst of that hierarchical empire is a family that is growing and growing and growing to the point where, in the fourth century, suddenly it's Christians who are emperors, it's Christians who start to be in charge of things. And some of the ethos of the church starts getting into the character of government, of state, of rulership. And Jesus, who said it's the Gentiles who lord it over you, but not so with you. Whoever would be greatest must be least. For even I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many. Jesus says that in Mark chapter 10. Suddenly that becomes the character of what we think true greatness looks like. Greatness is not enforcing hierarchy, greatness is actually stooping to the marginalized and the weak in order to serve them and lift them up. It's a profoundly equalizing thought. But you step outside this Christian worldview, and you know, here's a a Roman thinker called Celsus in the second century. He was uh he was a very spicy uh guy in terms of his uh opposition to Christians. He said this in the second century AD. He said, the radical error in Jewish and Christian thinking is that it is anthropocentric. They say that God made all things for man, but this is not at all evident. In no way is man better in God's sight than ants and bees. Do you see how the Christian story is striking the ancient world? Christians come along and say, yeah, humankind, we're in God's image, we're the most godlike thing on planet earth, we rule, we have dominion. And Celsus is like, well, what makes you think you're better than ants? What makes you think you're better than bees? What makes us think we're better than amoeba or bacteria? Bacteria are very successful biologically, aren't they? There's a lot more bacteria than there are humans on planet Earth. They're very successful, right? If your metric is survival and reproduction, they're brilliant. Bacteria are better than us. Uh what standard are you going to use to think that humans are anything special? Biological standards won't really work. And the ancient religious standards didn't really work. Man is in is no better in God's sight than ants and peas. And the radical error, it's so anthropocentric. You know what that means? Human-centered. So humanist, these Christians. Can't stand them. But Celsus lost the battle of ideas. And the humanists won, aka the Christians, okay? Who put this radically dignified view of the human person into our human cultures, and it has propagated. But you step away from this story and you get people like uh Yval Noah Harari. Do you know Yval Noah Harari? He's written a couple of runaway bestsellers, including um Sapiens and Homedaeus. He is uh an historian, and he wants to, in this clip that we're gonna see, take aim at the view of human rights. And he's going to step, he's gonna do the whole the holy secular thing, okay? And he's gonna say, step away from any religious associations you have in your thinking and try and give me a justification for human rights. Yval Noah Harari says, you can't do it because human rights did not come from a secular worldview. Let's have a look.
SPEAKER_01But what I want to emphasize is that exactly the same mechanism underlies all other forms of mass-cale human cooperation, not only in the religious field. Take, for example, the legal field. Most legal systems today in the world are based on a belief in human rights. But what are human rights? Human rights, just like God in heaven, are just a story that we have invented. They are not an objective reality. They are not some biological fact about Homo sapiens. Take a human being, cut him open, look inside, you will find the heart, the kidneys, neurons, hormones, DNA, but you won't find any rummites. The only place you find rumites is in the stories that we have invented and spread around over the last few centuries. They may be very positive stories, very good stories, but they are still just fictional stories that we've invented.
SPEAKER_04So the story about human rights goes hand in hand with the story about God and all that kind of stuff. And Ivan Noharari is saying, well, that's just a fictional story that we can and must do away with. And the human rights story is a fictional story that we can and must do away with. And I think he's absolutely right about the link. He's absolutely right that we got the idea of the inviolable human rights of each person in the human family from Christianity. On the next slide, uh, one of the most famous statements of it is Thomas Jefferson was the chief framer of the Declaration of Independence, 1776. He said, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Um, probably the most unbelievable thing about that statement is the word self-evident. We hold these truths to be self-evident. I mean, there's the only thing self-evident about human rights is that they are not self-evident. There's nothing self-evident about them at all. Harari is totally right. You cut someone open, you don't find human rights written into the genome, right? There's nothing. That statement only makes sense if you put all the emphasis on the we. We hold these truths to be self-evident. As we invent the American Republic, we're gonna have a go at this thing called equality. Others can join if you like. We're gonna say that all people are created equal. And we're gonna run with that. And they've been running with that, that, you know, more or less, for a quarter of a millennium. But these truths are not self-evident at all. And Yuval Noah Harari says they're not self-evident at all. And the only reason that the Americans wrote that was because of the Jesus mythology that had saturated their brains, infected them, and and started them thinking in those sorts of terms. Um I think Tom Holland, the historian, puts things um with great clarity here in his big book, Dominion, The Making of the Western Mind. He writes uh that all men, this is this is the historian Tom Holland. This is not Spider-Man, sorry. Um this is the cool Tom Holland, this guy. Um historian Tom Holland said that all men had been created equal and endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were not remotely self-evident truths that most Americans believe they were, owed less to philosophy than to the Bible, to the assurance given equally to Christians and Jews, to Protestants and Catholics, to Calvinists and Quakers that every human being was created in God's image. The truest and ultimate seedbed of the American Republic, no matter what some of those who had composed its founding documents might have cared to think, was the book of Genesis, where we began. Now, do you believe in equality? Do you believe in human rights? You're a believer. You are a believer. You don't need to take a leap of faith, do you? You are already six miles in the air. And my plea to you is to get some ground beneath your feet. Because there are some Yval Noah Hararis around who will say to you, ah, you don't need God, and you don't need equality or compassion or consent or enlightenment or science or freedom or progress. All that stuff that comes bundled up with the Jesus revolution. You don't want that, because you don't want to live your life according to faith, do you? Well, I'm here to say you probably already do live your life according to faith, and you don't need to take a leap. You need some ground beneath your feet. You need Jesus and the revolution that he can bring, not only to society, but to your life, because let's face it, you and I we don't live according to equality every day, do we? I certainly don't. Do you treat every other member of the human race as though they are like this image of God? This kind of royal figure walking around planet Earth with dominion and worth and dignity. And do you do you treat every single human being, no matter how they present themselves to you, do you treat do you treat everybody the same in that regard? You fail at equality. I fail at equality. What we really need is that Jesus, who descends down into our mess, dies on that cross, forgives us for all the ways that we're bigots and haters. He dies for all that nonsense, rises again and says, Start again with me. You can all be brothers and sisters in my family. It'll be great. And you can learn how to be equals with one another in this thing called church. That's what Jesus does to us, as we all fail at the equality ethic. But don't think of yourself as a simple, rational person. You're a believer, and you need Jesus to make sense of those beliefs. That is my talk. What I'd love you guys to do is now think of the spiciest, thorniest questions you can possibly shoot my way. And uh Mike's gonna give you some details about how you can uh put those on the Slido, and uh after our rest, I'll have a go at answering some of those questions. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_00It's really helpful. The first question is is really trying to understand that if we believe in equality, why are there areas where there is a sense of inequality? And the first one asks, if Christians believe in equality, how would you explain the disagreement of gay rights?
SPEAKER_04Thank you. Yeah, a really good question, and I'm sure it was top of mind for a lot of people, and probably that's why it's been upvoted that many times. I think both legally and theologically, we need to have a category for being and a category for behavior, and those two things are quite different, aren't they? And you you must never discriminate it against someone for their being, must you? Um but actually the the law discriminates about behavior all the time. So, for instance, if I was a vegan and I said uh I believe meat is murder, okay, I think consistently I could also say I absolutely love every member of the human family. I happen to have this moral belief that's based on a vision for all of life, and therefore I am against that particular act. And as a vegan, I can even love you as you're biting into your Big Mac. I can even love you in doing that, and I can love the person who you are, and I cannot like the behavior. And I think we all we all have that understanding that being and behavior are quite different. In the same way, under the law, everyone should have a fair trial, shouldn't they? Okay? You have a right to a fair trial under the law, and your being, therefore, is protected. Your behavior is the thing that is in question. And I think, you know, Christians would say that absolutely every member of the human family, gay, straight, queer, questioning, intersex, whoever, whoever you are, you are absolutely in the image of God, a complete equal to every other member of the human family. We also have beliefs about sexual behaviors. And if you want to ask about those questions about sexual behaviors, there's a chapter in the book called Consent, where I talk about the sexual revolution of Jesus and why we happen to hold the particular sexual ethic that we have. But within that sexual ethic, we uh we have a very uh a very different view of sex to everyone. It was different back in the first century, it's different in the 21st century. We we've kind of resigned ourselves to being different on this. We kind of think sex belongs in a marriage between a man and a woman for life, and it doesn't exist anywhere else. So really whoa. That's that's a that that is a very distinct distinctive view, okay? But if you read my chapter on consent, you'll see how actually that view has built in the modern world in ways you can't even imagine and has led to extraordinary prosperity uh and and and extraordinary dignity and extraordinary equality in this world. If you don't believe me, you can read the consent chapter. So on the gay rights issue, I would say um, I would say something that that I think would challenge both the Christian and the non Christian. Have Christians been homophobic against gay people? You bet we have. Is that a crying shame? Yes. Is that something for which we should repent? Absolutely. Um So that's the challenge to Christians. Okay, there has been a knee jerk homophobia to the Being of certain people. And I think that is ruled out of court by the Christianity that we claim to hold. But then here's the challenge for the non-Christian. Are we allowed to say that sexual ethics is of a certain kind and that certain behaviors are out of bounds? Are we able to make that distinction and say, look, for us, we're like the vegan who says, look, we're just not going to eat meat. That's just for us, meat is murder, might the vegan might say. Or for us, this particular sexual activity or that particular sexual activity is out of bounds. And we can say no to particular behaviors while doing our absolute dandest to say yes to the being of every single person equally. That's the that's that's the sort of the challenge of this. But it's not a unique challenge to Christians on sexual ethics. It's a challenge to all of us. If we are going to honor one another's being, but also have a view about how people behave. I hope that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00You raised some really interesting, profound sort of understandings of the world we live in and the ground uh we stand on. And I think that video with Sally was a good example of that. But some would ask, why what do you mean when you talk about a Jesus revolution upon which all this is based? Could you open that up a little bit?
SPEAKER_04Um so Tom Holland, the historian, the cool one, the tool, the cool Tom Holland said that Christianity is the most disruptive, the most influential, and the most enduring revolution in human history. Uh he's absolutely right. And that there couldn't be a more disruptive revolution because you couldn't have a higher figure descend to a lower depth to upend the world. Um you you you you couldn't have a more enduring revolution because why on earth are we still talking about him 2,000 years later? Um you couldn't have a more influential revolution because honestly, he has shaped the moral framework of the whole world. The West, yes, but um through the mission of the church uh throughout the nations. And so the Jesus Revolution is another another name for Christianity, and it's just trying to recapture the subversive elements of what Christianity is saying. God came and died and then rose up again and invited us into a whole new way of being. That's a revolution. There has never been a revolution as as radical as the Jesus Revolution, and really the call to become a Christian is the is the call to become a revolutionary.
SPEAKER_00I I suppose one of the questions that sort of spins off that is when you speak about the the Jesus Revolution, particularly Christianity, how do you relate that to other faith and religions? Do they have the same fundamental values, or are you saying there is something unique?
SPEAKER_04At this point you you have a challenge. Like, how do you honor different religions? And I would say the best way to honor different religions is just to allow themselves to explain themselves on their own terms rather than I I think the kind of the paternalistic thing that Westerners tend to do is we've grown up within Christianity. It's the air we breathe, and therefore, in a very colonialistic spirit, we kind of imagine that it must be the air that everyone else breathes. Everyone else must be Christian-ish, mustn't they? And every other religion must be roughly the same as we are. Do you hear how colonial that is? Right? Um I think the best way to honor the distinctives of the world religions and to is to let them speak on their own terms and to go to your Muslim friend and and and just say, like, what do you think about these issues? And your Muslim friend will give you a different vision of the world. And at that stage, it's it's it's up to you which vision of the world you prefer, okay? But I think the way to actually honor the different religions is to consider them for the differences that they have. I think it's a very common view to see that essentially the religions of the world are similar underneath, but they've got different clothing on, right? Um and I think it's exactly the other way around. I think actually the different religions of the world are saying very, very different things, but they all talk about ritual washings. You know, some of them are in the Ganges and some of them in the Jordan River. They all they all talk about certain foods and diet and all that kind of stuff. I think actually the similarities uh between religions go go only so deep. I think the differences are quite profound, and you get that if you actually do an honest kind of comparative religion, right? So um yeah, there is there is a great differentiation, I would say, between between the religions of the world.
SPEAKER_00I think one of the things that you you brought up really powerfully tonight was this whole view of humanism being the outworking of this Jesus revolution you've been talking about. But I think some people would uh find that a new thought. I wonder if you could open up why you think humanism is actually based upon really the values of Jesus.
SPEAKER_04So we went back to Celsus, didn't we, in the second century, a Roman writer who hated Christianity because it was so anthropocentric, so humanistic. And he was like, well, obviously the gods don't really care about humans. We were only created to be slaves. Um and so the humanism, the the unique dignity and value of each human being was striking the ancient world in a very profound way. And it's always kind of struck people. Um, you know, one of my theological heroes among many is John Calvin, who would have called himself, he's a Frenchman living in Geneva, called himself a humanist, um, absolutely a Christian. Um there are many people in the Middle Ages who are calling themselves humanists, and what they mean by that is simply those those values that, you know, if I was standing on the stage are uh here, stage left, right? It's it's the values of the equality and the humanity, the the compassion, um, all those great things. Secular humanism comes along and says yes, we we have derived those from walking away from church. And I I think that's bad history, and I think that's bad logic. And so I say, let's reclaim it. Let's be humanists for Jesus. Um, because I actually think the surest foundation for a true humanism is God the human. How else are you going to actually give this inviolable dignity to the human? How are you going to do that? Well, Christianity comes along and says, here is Jesus, he is God the human. It's the highest view of humanity that it's possible to have. So I want to retrieve the word. I want to reclaim humanism for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00I think following up on your uh question really about uh how we understand other religions, uh, one of the questions that's come out is that if you say everyone believes in equality, what about Islam that teaches that man is superior to woman? I mean, how would you interact with that question?
SPEAKER_04Um So Islam has a uh has stories that are similar to the stories that are in the Bible, but it it it it it doesn't have uh the male and female in God's image in that in that same way. Um and lots of things unfold from there. And this is this is part of me saying different religions are different, they just are. And uh and I don't think uh I don't think we properly honor the different religions of the world by treating them as though, oh, but what they really meant was oh, but if they knew what we knew in the West, do you hear how paternalistic that is? Do you hear do you hear how colonial that is? Um they absolutely have a have a different view. And it comes from a different view of God in in Islam, Allah is uh a monad, a single individual to which we all must bow, and that is submission. And so you're hearing a Christian's view of Islam, and obviously a Muslim will have a very different view, but for me, um that theological trajectory means that there is a real problem with that which is different. And I think I think there is where we like diversity and we hate being monochrome and that that kind of thing, I think Islam is much more comfortable with everybody dressing the same. It's much more comfortable with that. It's much more comfortable with everybody dressing the same as Muhammad did in the seventh century. Um and it has a lot greater difficulty in in honoring diversity and difference. And I think that goes back to certain theological differences. Now at this stage you're saying, oh Glenn, he's saying negative things about Islam. And I'd say two things about that. One is I'd say I'd say I'm trying to think through Islam on Islam's own terms, and the second thing I would say is by what standard are we assessing inequality and judging it to be a negative? And I would I would say that the kind of the chill I feel in the room as I talk about Islam is quite a Christian chill, actually. Because as a follower of Jesus, I am to love that which is distinct, love that which is different, and I do want to love my Muslim friends. I do want to uh honor what it is that they say about what they believe. Um, and you want me to do that too. And I would just I would just urge you to notice that. You want me to be equal in the way that I treat another religion. You're right to do so. I just say it was Jesus that taught you that.
SPEAKER_00Time's rushing away from it. So I I've got one more question, but I think if people have questions I that I don't get to, please do come up and ask them. I'm sure he'd be very happy to chat with you about it. And this one I think is one that's just really reaching a lot of minds at the moment. If you we reflect on the failures of the Christian legacy, i.e., moral supremacy of Christianity justifies the colonization of other cultures. Um, how does that fit in to uh some of the things you've been saying?
SPEAKER_04So yeah, that's that's a that's a really good note to end on because it might sound like Christians have all the answers. Whereas actually it should be the most challenging thing in the world. Christians purport to follow Jesus and they purport to believe in equality and compassion and consent, and therefore the chief violators of those values are Christians. And the huge danger of hypocrisy is that Christians say to the world, We have taught you these things, aren't we wonderful? Whereas actually the Bible again and again confronts the people of God as the worst offenders in all these things. So in the Old Testament, the prophets who are always railing against, you know, there's this nation and they're dreadful, and there's that nation, they're terrible, there's this nation, they're awful, and we are the worst. That's what they're always doing. They're always saying, there's this value that's being violated over here, there's this value that's being violated over here, but we are the chief violators. You come through into the New Testament in 1 Peter chapter 4, it says that judgment begins with the house of God. The first people in the firing line for the judgment of God are are us, those who claim to know about equality and compassion and consent. And so in my in my book, I I talk about all the ways the church has been unequal. Or I I talk about all the more prominent examples of the church being unequal and cruel and coercive and unenlightened and restrictive and regressive and anti-science. I I talk about those things. Um and it's really important to own those things and to say, yeah, that's terrible where the church has done that. And it's even worse when the church does that, because we should know better. But what do you notice? If you if you think of something that is unequal, cruel, coercive, unenlightened, anti-science, restrictive and regressive, what would you call that thing? That's the worst, isn't it? That's like the worst. Well, why is that the worst? Because we know that those seven things are the best. We just know, even as you critique the church, you cannot help but assume the values of the Jesus Jesus Revolution. You are that far deep into Christianity. It truly is the air that you breathe. Such that your chief c critiques of the church, and I've got loads of them. I've probably got you might not be a Christian. I bet I've got more critiques of the church than you do, right? Just as I can tell you everything that's wrong with my family in a way that you you don't even know, right? Because I'm in it and I see it. I'm in Christianity, I see the problems, you see the problems. We're standing shoulder to shoulder at that stage, we're pointing at the problems. There are all sorts of ways that the church has been unequal and cruel and coercive and anti-scient and unenlightened and all those things. But as we shoulder to shoulder point our finger at the church, I am going to strengthen that critique and say, it's worse than you even thought, but then I'm going to point at our feet. And I'm going to say, what are we standing on, by the way, as we make this critique? And what we will be standing on is either Jesus or it's thin air. If you don't have Jesus beneath your feet, then why should you expect anything to be equal or compassionate or consensual or enlightened? Why would you expect anything to be that? If we're biological survival machines clinging to an insignificant rock, why would you expect anybody on earth to attain to those values? But you do, and I do. We want to hold people to those values because they are significant, they are meaningful. And I want to give you ground beneath your feet, but I promise you, only Jesus gives you that ground beneath your feet. If you've got problems with the church, I've got problems with the church too. We need you. We need your critique. So let's stand shoulder to shoulder, let's point our finger at what needs to be pointed out. But as we do that, let's look at our feet and let's figure out where we're standing. Because I think only Jesus gives us the grounding that makes sense of all those values.
SPEAKER_00Glenn, thank you ever so much. I think it'd be good just to give Glenn a hand. Excellent one.
SPEAKER_02You're still listening? Great. You seem like the sort of person who's interested in Speak Life stuff. In which case, I've got an exciting opportunity for you. Speak Life Intensive is coming up September 18th to the 22nd. This is an opportunity to join us in our studio in Eastbourne on the south coast of England, where you can meet the team, learn the craft, and catch the vision. The theme for the September Intensive is Proclaimers and Storytellers, and we have a really exciting program lined up for you. So maybe have a listen. I'm gonna whiz through it now, and have a listen and think about which day would be of most interest to you. Obviously, it would be great to have you here for all five days, but if you can only make it for one day, such tickets are available, and I'll explain the details of how to book in a sec. But have a listen to this timetable and think about which day you'd most like to come down for. Monday morning, Nate will be doing a welcome and introduction, followed by Glenn doing his first session on proclaimers and storytellers. At Speak Life, we don't view those two things as being in conflict. So that'll be really interesting. Then we'll have lunch afternoon first session. Seb will be talking about designing orcs for Warhammer. He'll be our special guest. That's not one to miss. That's his job. Designing orcs for Warhammer. What a way to make a living. So that'll be really interesting to get his perspective on that as a Christian. And that will be followed by Max Patterson, who used to work at Speak Life. He'll be talking about visual storytelling. So he's a really talented cinematographer. He knows so much about the camera and lighting and how to frame a shot and lens choices, and he'll be looking at some case studies of really exciting projects that he's worked on, maybe a couple of Speak Life projects he's worked on as well. So hope that will be of interest to you. Tuesday morning. Glenn will do part two of Proclaimers and Storytellers in the morning, followed by Nate doing part one of Theology of Storytelling. So if you know anything about Nate, you'll know that he is obsessed with stories. And he talks about them a lot on his channel, Reformed Mythologist and Popcorn Parenting, that podcast he did with James Carey about thinking about Pixar films and Disney films with your kids if you have children. So Nate will be doing a bit of a deep dive into the theology of storytelling. So part one will be Tuesday morning. And then afternoon, he will be doing a workshop for the whole afternoon about 3-2-1, which is Speak Life's very own evangelistic course. And Nate and some of the others involved in the creation of 3-2-1 will be talking about sort of the rationale behind this course, just giving you a bit of a deep dive into it and why we've taken the approach that we have, how we've used some of the creative elements to supplement Glenn's teaching that's provided within the course. So I think that'll be a really interesting session, especially if you're interested in using the 321 course or thinking about how you can share the gospel in an online space and also in churches. That's uh what 321 aims to do. Wednesday morning, Nate will do Theology of Storytelling Part 2, and Glenn will do Proclaimers and Storytellers Part 3. In the afternoon, we'll have special guest Mike Hood, who is a Christian spoken word artist, incredibly talented, so it'll be great to hear from him. And that will be followed by a workshop from Oh, Thomas Thoroughgood, that's me. Yeah, so I'm doing a workshop about audio storytelling. And then Thursday morning, Glenn will do Proclaimers and Storytellers Part 4. And Nate will be doing Theology of Storytelling Part 3. And then in the afternoon, Nate and myself will do a session about storytelling and the attention economy. So really thinking about the online space and how we are living in an attention economy. We've colonized land, now we're colonising human attention, and just thinking about what that means for storytelling and Christians kind of wading into the online space, how we go about that. And in the afternoon, Max will do another workshop on visual storytelling, Max Patterson. Then the Friday is just the morning we kind of wrap up at lunch. So in the morning, there'll be theology of storytelling part four with Nate, and then there'll be a plenary session where you have an opportunity to kind of ask questions. So that's kind of it. That's the timetable. So we're really excited about it. I should mention that each day begins with prayer and worship. So it's a really great opportunity to draw alongside other Christians and just begin the day in worship and prayer. That's absolutely the right way to begin a day, isn't it? And there's a delicious lunch provided on each day. You'll need to source your own accommodation for the evenings. How do you sign up? This is the very important question. Very simple. Go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash intensives. Speaklife.org.uk forward slash intensives. And that will take you straight to the form to sign up. And as I say, you can sign up for the whole week or you can sign up for a day ticket. So we really look forward to having you here at speaklife. Why not sign up to the September intensive today? Well, thanks for listening. God bless, and I will catch you next week.