We're in a series all weekend thinking about this phrase, everyone believes. Okay? And again, that might rub you the wrong way, because you might be here as a guest of somebody, or you might have seen some advertising about this weekend, and you've come not as a Christian, and you don't particularly consider yourself to be a believer. Perhaps you consider yourself to be just a just a normal, average, regular, secular person, just like everybody else, right? But the whole point of this weekend is to say uh whether you've ever set foot inside a church or not, whether you've ever clapped eyes on a Bible or not, you're a believer. And you believe in all sorts of things that can't be proven scientifically, they can't be demonstrated logically, they are not the result of a peer-reviewed scientific experiment, okay? The way that you live your life is by certain gut instincts and moral intuitions and just a feeling that, for instance, all human beings are equal. Wouldn't you say? All human beings. No matter what class you are born into, no matter what race or religion or gender or sexuality or how much money you've got in the bank, how strong you are, how fast you are, it doesn't matter. Everyone's equal, right? You believe that, I believe that, everybody believes that. If you don't believe that, you get cancelled instantly. It's just, it's a you're you're a non-person to not believe that. We all believe in things like equality. But you can't prove equality. In fact, the moment you try to prove the equality of two different human beings, what you will notice about those two different human beings is all the ways that they are different. One is faster than the other, one is stronger than the other, one is wealthier than the other, one is more economically prosperous than the other, right? There are all sorts of differences between any two people. And if you went to an ancient person and you said, this person is the equal of that person, an ancient person would chuckle and they would just say, What are you talking about? That person is a master, and that person is a slave. That person is a citizen, that person is a barbarian. That person is a man, that person is a woman. That person is rich, that person is poor, that person is strong, that person is weak. What are you talking about, equal? And we go, yeah, but they're kind of they're kind of equal, right? What what what argument would you reach for at that moment to prove that we should treat every single member of the human family equally? What a Plato might say, an ancient philosopher Plato, he would say that nature itself teaches you that some are born to rule and some are born to be ruled over. And if you forget everything you've ever learnt about Jesus and the Bible and a Christianized worldview, it's hard to argue with Plato. He's a very clever guy. They say that modern philosophy is just footnotes to Plato, right? And when he says, Nature itself teaches you that some are born to rule and some are born to be ruled over, you know what he's endorsing there. He's endorsing slavery. Well, in fact, he's not really endorsing slavery because no one is attacking the institution in 400 BC, right? He's not endorsing it, he's assuming it. And he's telling you that nature itself teaches you that some are born to be masters and some are born to be slaves. And his argument is just look at people. Some people just can't get their act together. They just don't have that aptitude. They're not capable people, they're not able, they're not able to run their own affairs. And wouldn't it be good if all the capable people were put in charge of the people who weren't so capable, right? And they could just organize the lives of those people who just they bless them. They can't really get their act together. So wouldn't it be good if the people who can't rule themselves get ruled by those who are good at ruling? Wouldn't that be great? That's what Plato taught, that's what Aristotle thought. That's what every ancient person thought. And we go, yikes, no! How dare they? We're all equal. Who gave us that idea? And the argument of the book is basically, through the Jesus Revolution, in other words, through Christianity, that there are many such values that have been injected into the bloodstream of not only the West, but all over the world, in which equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress have become commonplace ideas that you don't have to argue for. And you realize that you don't have to argue for equality because the moment you try to argue for it, you realize how bad you are at it. You're really bad at arguing for equality, aren't you? I am. Because it's the sort of thing that you have to assume rather than argue for, right? You assume the moral equality of all peoples. You assume compassion, right? Compassion is this idea that to look after the weak is not a weakness in itself. It's a virtue. And a society should be judged by the way it treats its weakest members. Don't you think that? You think that, you believe that. We all believe that. But it's a belief. You can't demonstrate it. In fact, you would be a monster if you tried to scientifically prove this maxim. Imagine what the scientific experiment would look like to prove compassion. You've got one bunch of people who say our society would run much better if we eliminated all the disabled. Imagine you have such a society. Unfortunately, in the last hundred years, we haven't had to imagine such a society. We've been faced with such a society, but in the interests of not invoking Godwin's rule, I won't name the society, but imagine that there was a society that says our society will run better if we eliminate all the disabled. Okay, at that point, we don't say to them, okay, run the experiment for 10 years, report back the results, we'll try to replicate the study in another society somewhere else, and in 20 years we'll hold a symposium and we'll try to figure out whether a society really does run better if we eliminate the disabled. Okay? A purely scientific my w worldview would say, do that. Get the facts straight. Just get the data, right? Run the experiment. 10 years of eliminating the disabled over there, and ten years of protecting the disabled here, and we'll have a symposium, people will present their results, and we'll figure out which society flourishes better. Do you think we should run that experiment? Right. And we didn't think he was a great guy, did we? We don't want to run that experiment. And we think it would be evil to run the experiment, which means that you don't first and foremost believe in science, do you? You first and foremost believe in compassion and equality, don't you? There are some scientific experiments that would be unconscionable to run. Okay? You do not live your life according to science. Of course you don't. I hope you don't think you live your life according to like rationality and science and evidence. Nobody does. You don't. And if you did, you'd be a monster. Nobody does. There are many scientific experiments that would be really interesting to run and would be thoroughly wicked. Because things like equality and compassion run much deeper than our supposed desire to be simply rational people. We're not simply rational people, we're believers. We believe that all people are equal. We believe we must protect the weak. With consent, we believe that elite men do not have the right to possess the bodies of other people. We believe that really, really strongly. The Me Too movement was such an assertion of that, right? And yet, Harvey Weinstein, when judged by the standards of the Roman Empire, what would you call what Harvey Weinstein did by the standards of the Roman Empire? Business as usual. What would he be in the Roman Empire? A senator, probably. A celebrated senator. Okay. And yet, nowadays, I don't need to argue for the fact that consent is central to sex. I don't have to argue for that. We assume that, and if you don't assume that, that's that is just an unconscionable evil. Enlightenment. I mean, so many of you here are students, and so many of you here are studying subjects, which, sorry to say, might have nothing to do with the employment that you later on find, right? But we still don't think that's a waste of time, and and probably you have spent 15 years studying things that will have no economic value whatsoever. But you kind of think it's just a good thing in and of itself to learn stuff. It's a bonkers idea, really. But just learning, not vocational skills, just stuff. Let's learn Latin. Why? I don't know. Just good to get to know stuff, right? Let's do particle physics. Why? I don't know. Is that gonna help you to be a banker or an accountant or no? It's just it's just stuff. It's good to learn stuff, don't you think? I don't have to argue for the goodness of enlightenment. Enlightenment goes deeper than just education, it's the idea that you do not forward your ends by coercion or force or violence, but by persuasion. You must have the consent of other people in all kinds of areas of life, and therefore you need to persuade people and educate people and enlighten people. You believe that? I believe that, everybody believes that. Science. I mean, I had a great question last night. Somebody said, is science really a value? It's a good question. I'm not saying that science itself is a value, but I'm saying our belief in science has taken on this kind of status. During COVID, what did we do? We followed not just science, did we? No, no, no, no. We didn't just follow science. We followed the science, didn't we? The science, right? And at that stage, you you start to see that science has attained a kind of a uh a level in our society that that that is calling our trust, it's it's it calls forth our confidence, it calls forth our allegiance. We follow the science, and this the science will deliver us from evil and do all those sorts of things, right? But we we believe in the goodness of science, and we believe that science can be done. And where did science come from? Well, you can read in the book. I've got a whole chapter on how the modern scientific method emerged in Christian universities with Christian scholars for Christian reasons. Freedom, we all believe that Plato was wrong. We all believe that Plato was wrong, okay? We should not have masters and slaves. No persons should be property. And you should be in charge of your own life, okay? We all believe that. We don't need to argue for it, we take it on faith. Progress. We're thinking about progress tonight. Martin Luther King famously said, and he was taking a statement from another preacher a hundred years earlier who was fighting against the slave trade in his day. But Martin Luther King popularized the statement. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And if people didn't believe it in the 1960s, then some of the gains of the civil rights movement made people believe that, yeah, maybe there is an arc to the moral universe. And maybe it is bending towards justice. Well, where did Martin Luther King Jr. get that idea from? Well, I didn't give his full title, did I? He's the Reverend, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a preacher who packed more scripture into his speeches than most preachers do with their Bible passages, right? He he packed the Bible in, the prophets about the righteousness will roll on like rivers, and justice like a never-failing stream, about the day when we will beat our swords into plowshares. He was speaking with biblical hope about marching on towards a better tomorrow. And nowadays we tend to believe him because we look back to the abolition of the slave trade and we look back to the civil rights movement and we start to think, you know what, there were some evils, and somehow we managed to reform them. Maybe there is a pathway forwards, maybe things are getting better. It's gotten to the stage where we're so enamored with the idea of progress, we think that merely stating the date is an argument. You know, I can't believe we're talking about this in 2022. As though the fact it's 2022 has any moral bearing on things, but we all believe it, right? We all we all believe. I can't believe it's 2022, and some terrible thing, right? We all have started to believe in progress. Now, all these things are beliefs, none of these things are provable scientifically, and they've all come to us through Christianity. That's that's that's my contention. On equality, you would not have human rights without Jesus, and then North African Bishop Augustine, and then medieval Christendom, and then the Declaration of Human Rights, which was framed by Jacques Meritain, a Catholic thinker. You wouldn't have these things without Christianity. Compassion. We wouldn't have hospitals or orphanages or hospices or charities without this Jesus Revolution. The consent. The kinds of sexual assault that we are all rightly disgusted by were invisible to the ancient world and became visible through the Jesus Revolution in terms of enlightenment. Where did this belief in schools and education come from? Where did universities come from? Science, where did the scientific method come from? Freedom, the abolition of the slave trade, where did it come from? Progress, the the civil rights movement was in many ways a profoundly religious thing. Where did all these ideas come from? And just tonight I I want to take you back to ground zero of the Jesus Revolution and show you where it came from, and it came from the most unlikely place. It came from an itinerant preacher called Jesus, who didn't have two pennies to rub together, and he has overturned the world. It's quite a story. But it starts in Mark chapter four. Let's have a look. Mark chapter four, and here is Jesus, he's an itinerant preacher, he's just given up his job as a carpenter, and now in his distinctive northern accent, he's shooting his mouth off in some backwater of a long-dead empire, and he's plotting world domination. Who does he think he is? And to give some idea, you know, he he is a carpenter from Nazareth. If if he was alive today in that sense, if he'd come in 2022, I guess he'd be like a car mechanic from just outside Kharkiv in Ukraine, right? Think of a car mechanic in small town Ukraine, okay? Under the thumb of a mighty oppressor. Still got the grease under his fingernails. And he starts talking about taking over the world. It's just an extraordinary thing, isn't it? I mean, I don't know if you believe in miracles this evening, but you know the first miracle Jesus did? He turned water into wine, famous miracle. A lot of people think, you know, if God ever showed up, he would turn the wine into the water. But no, Jesus is the kind of God who comes and turns the water into the wine. And I don't know whether you believe that that miracle happened or not. Here's a miracle that has actually happened. Jesus, this car mechanic from rural Ukraine, this carpenter from Nazareth, has turned God forsaken execution on the cross into world domination. It's quite a miracle, isn't it? Water into wine, he takes God forsaken execution, turns it into world domination. Whether you think the water into wine thing happens, the world has been dominated by that figure on the cross. Here's a miracle that's actually happened. I wonder if you've got an explanation for it. So in Mark chapter 4, back on the slide, we've got Jesus beginning his revolution. How does he bring his begin his revolution? By persuasion. Not by force, not by violence, never by that. By persuasion, by words. Again, Jesus began to teach by a lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake while all the people along the shore at the water's edge. He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said, Listen, a farmer went out to sow his seed. So here is ground zero of the revolution, and it just starts with something so ignominious, so small, so tiny. Just words. But think of think about the analogy with seeds. I mean, seeds, they look pathetic, they look weak, don't they? But if you hold an apple seed between your fingers, you've got enough there to feed the world, don't you? Because you put that seed down into the ground, bury it, it'll rise again. It'll create a tree. And that tree will create many apples, and those many apples will create many more seeds. Plant all those seeds. What have you got? You've got maybe like a hundred trees now. Okay? Well, those hundred trees, how many apples do they have? Thousands. How many seeds do they have? Tens of thousands. Okay, we'll plant them. In the next generation, how many trees have you got? And then how many trees? Very soon you have enough apples to feed the world, don't you? Just with a seed. Looks so weak, it looks so pathetic, just like Jesus himself. Looks so weak, looks so pathetic, but bury him. See what happens. Bury him, he rises again. And he gives seed to his followers. They scatter that seed and they scatter that seed and scatter that seed, and pretty much they spread the word to the whole world. And this is the way. The seed that goes down into the ground, it's interesting. The very first title for Jesus really could be seed, actually. You know, in Genesis chapter 3, the Garden of Eden, everything is unraveling. And the Lord comes and preaches the gospel, essentially, and he says, the seed of the woman will crush the snake. The seed of the woman will step on the snake's head. That seed will be struck, but he will bring the death blow to evil. Right from the beginning, the the seed is a title for Christ. And it shows the way that Jesus will bring about his revolution. By being struck, by going down through weakness, he will bring about an extraordinary victory. And you trace that through the Old Testament. There is this hope that for unto us a child is born, for unto us a son is given. And the government will be upon his shoulders?
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_02And he'll be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government there will be no end. And he will reign on David's throne, upholding it with righteousness and justice from that time forward and forever. There's that messianic hope that the one who looked so ignominious is going to triumph through his weakness and take over the world. Well, Jesus is the seed, and he goes down into the ground, he rises up again, and he creates a following. And the followers now have seed in their pockets. And now we start scattering the seed, the word of the kingdom. And it starts to do its work. Jesus says, as he was scattering the seeds, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. He'll explain that the birds represent satanic opposition to the word of Jesus. But he's not faced. Jesus is not daunted even by satanic opposition. He's like, oh, never mind, just keep on scattering. Keep on preaching the word. Never mind. So you go into the next soil type. Some fell on rocky places where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow, but when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and they withered because they had no root. He goes on to explain. This is people who are instantly really happy about Jesus and they rejoice in him, but then it's tough to be a Christian, and so they back off and they fall away. And Jesus says, That's gonna happen as you tell people about me. That's gonna happen. But don't worry, don't get flustered, just move on. Scatter seed on the next soil type, the next kind of person. Other seed, verse 7, fell among the thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. And then that kind of soil type is like people who are choked by wealth and worry and wanting. They love Jesus, but they love other things as well. And it really chokes the life out of their Christian, uh, their Christian witness. And Jesus is like, okay. That will happen too. You'll tell friends about Jesus, and they'll fail to bear fruit in their lives. Never mind. Keep going. Keep spreading the seeds, spreading the word. Because verse 8, still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew, and produced a crop, some multiplying 30, some 60, some a hundred times. Wow. You have good seed. There is good soil. And how good is this soil? Hundred times what is sown. That's 10,000% yield. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good return on investment, isn't it? And Jesus is telling his people look, I'm the seed, I go down into death and rise up again and bring an improbable victory over death and hell. And I give you seed, and now you can speak to people about me. And there might be satanic opposition. Never mind. Keep speaking of me. And there might be people who are really shallow followers and they fall away. That's okay. Keep speaking about me. And there are other people who are choked by wealth and worry and wanting. That's okay, keep speaking about me, because there are some people who will just lap it up. And they love it. And they become fruitful Christians, and then they've got seed in their hands, and they start scattering it, and they start scattering it, and they start scattering it. And here we are in the year 2022. Or to give it its more correct title, the year of our Lord, 2022. 2022 years since what? 2022 years since him. Since this total nobody, this carpenter from Nazareth, this car mechanic from outside Kharkiv, 2022 years since he shut his mouth off, in some backwater of a long-dead empire. And we're still talking about him. Extraordinary, isn't it? And how has it happened? It's happened very simply. He has gone down into the ground and risen up again, and he's given us seed, which is the words to proclaim about Jesus. And that means, look, if you're a Christian here tonight, you've got seed in your pockets. As you go back to halls of residence, you go back to your homes, you've got seed in your pockets. You can just make little words of witness about Jesus. You can say things like, that's what I love about Jesus, dot dot dot. You can complete that sentence. And that's like throwing out a seed. Maybe it'll land on good soil, maybe it'll land on thorny soil, I don't know, but you can just throw that out there. That's what I love about Jesus. You can finish that sentence however you like. That's like seed. It might sound weak and pathetic. Well, seed looks weak and pathetic, but my goodness, it's powerful. Or you can say, that's what I love about my church. Dot dot dot. You finish that sentence, you're doing brilliant evangelism. Brilliant evangelism. That's what I love about my church. You're testifying to the body of Christ. Wonderful. Or you can say to people, I couldn't have gotten through X without Jesus. That's a powerful thing to talk about. I couldn't have gotten through lockdown without Jesus. I couldn't have gotten through the redundancy without Jesus. I couldn't have gotten through those operations without Jesus. What is it for you? I couldn't have gotten through X without Jesus. You say that in a conversation, it feels vulnerable. It feels weak. You might think to yourself, what good is this? Well, if you didn't know any better about seed, you'd think the same, wouldn't you? What good is this? Looks like a tic-tac. I'm just meant to throw this on the ground? Really? Yeah, really. Scatter. Okay? Don't batter down doors. Scatter seeds, scatter seeds, scatter seed. And you know what? For the last 2,000 years, Christians have been doing this. And the message of Jesus has taken over the world. In an extraordinary way. On the next slide. At the end of Mark's gospel, Jesus reflects on how the kingdom grows. He also said, this is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground, night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up. The seeds sprout and spouts, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself, the soil produces grain. First the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grape is ripe, the grain is ripe. He puts the sickle to it because the harvest has come. Next slide. Again he said, What should we say the kingdom of God is like? Or what parable should we use to describe it? It's like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants. With such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade. Where did we last see those birds? Remember those birds? What were they doing? Those pesky birds. What were they doing? Get away, you birds. What are they doing? They're gobbling up the seed, aren't they? What are they doing now? They're perched within the kingdom that Jesus has grown. They that had opposed the kingdom now are enfolded within the kingdom and depending upon it. Isn't that fascinating? And it's true today. You can very rightly bring critique against the church. You can very rightly look at the church and say, I see inequality where there should be equality. I see cruelty where there should be compassion. I see coercion where there should be consent. I see unenlightened people rather than enlightened people. I see anti-science people rather than science people. I see restrictive people rather than free people. I see regressive people rather than progressive people. There are times when you can point at the church and you can absolutely rightly say there is inequality and cruelty and coercion. You can say all those things. But you can only say them because of the values that Jesus has given us: equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, freedom, science, progress. And to say, I reject Jesus because of that inequality and compassion, it is genuinely like soaring off the limb of the branch that you're actually perched upon. The birds in the tree, even as they oppose the word of the kingdom, they are depending on the kingdom that Jesus has grown. Now I don't know what questions you've got about this, but I'm just gonna finish with a challenge, and then you can talk to your neighbors and drum up the thorny questions that you can send my way. And I guess my challenge is this how do you account for this? How do you account for uh a carpenter-turned itinerant preacher turning the world upside down? The Big Bang is a theory that's only like a hundred years old. And you know how physicists started to infer the Big Bang. They looked at an expanding universe and they thought to themselves, you know what, if you press rewind on that and you go all the way back, at some point there is a zero point. At some point, there is a singularity. There must have been a bang because I see the expanding universe. That's what they did. They saw an expanding universe and they inferred a bang. You can do that with the Jesus revolution. Okay. There are more followers of Jesus Christ on planet earth today than there were yesterday. And there'll be more tomorrow, and there'll be more the next day and the next day. That prophecy from Isaiah, 2,700 years old, that prophecy of the increase of his government, there shall be no end. Apparently that's true. That prophecy that Jesus made that he would grow the greatest kingdom on earth, he got it bang on the money. And we look around the world and we see the expanding universe of Christ's influence in this world. And I just want to ask you the question hit rewind. When was the bang? Well, historically we know when the bang was. The bang was in the first century. And the bang somehow happened after he was crucified in ignominy. As he chokes to death on that cross, his last words are, it's finished! You can translate that as, I did it! Like, what is he a loser or a winner? Is he merely a victim or is he the victor? Because from that weekend, there has been the most extraordinary bang and the most extraordinary expansion of the Jesus Revolution. What is your interpretation? What is your explanation for the growth of the Jesus movement? I put it to you that it is absurd to think that this merely naturally happened. What naturally happens to people who are crucified is that they are forgotten and we move on. What has supernaturally happened is that this Jesus got up out of the tomb and has spread his kingdom just as he predicted. That's my contention. I wonder what you make of it. I'm gonna stop talking now. You guys can turn to one another, you can start uh asking yourselves the different questions. I want you to generate really the spiciest question you can possibly generate. Because we want to have a good Slido time. Uh can we have the slide up for Slido? Brilliant. Oh, we've already got questions. Excellent, awesome. Keep going. And don't forget to upvote as well, because that that really helps us sort which are the most popular questions. So why don't you turn to your neighbours? Have you got anything more to say, John? Or yep. So why don't you turn to your neighbors, generate those great questions, and we'll be back in five minutes. Awesome.
SPEAKER_00That's great. Um I don't I I think as a church we should give some um have a whip round for for Dave. These these chairs have looked better, state. Um one of one of the one of the legs on this chair is just about to fall off. So if I do go, don't worry I was expecting it, Glenn. I think you're alright. I think you've got the better chair, so we should be okay. Um we've got some um questions up on uh Slido. Thanks so much for uh putting them in. I guess just a nice one to start this um is what's the most memorable thing that you've learnt whilst writing this book, The Air We Breathe? What struck you?
SPEAKER_02Oh gosh. I think um so I've got those seven values. They actually map onto seven different epochs. So um equality maps onto Old Testament era, compassion maps onto New Testament, consent maps onto the early church, enlightenment maps onto the medieval period. Um, and that was that was the big um that was the big myth busting moment for me. Because I I don't know if when you think of the medieval period, don't you think of the dark ages? And like historians don't call them the dark ages anymore because it's it's difficult to call a period that invented the university and parliaments and human rights and cathedrals, um, and Chaucer and Dante. It's hard to call that dark, actually, when you when you look at it. Um, and so getting a gaining a greater appreciation for all the light that was there in that thousand-year period was um yeah, that that that that was a real that that really overturned some prejudices that I had. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, thank you very much. Um the great thing about Slido is the questions are at the top. You know, when we had the student lunch, we had questions, I could weed out some of the questions like, is Australia a really dangerous place to live? But um with with Slido, you haven't got that choice. So um let's go for the first one because that seems to have had a lot of thumbs up as well. Um could it not be argued that we're trying to attribute things to Christianity that could just as easily be attributed to non-Christians?
SPEAKER_02I guess the part of that question I want to press into is like, who's the we? Uh, could it not be argued that we are trying to attribute things to Christianity? And like honestly, it's it's not just Christians who are doing this. Um those people who don't believe in human rights, for instance, um, very often they they don't believe in it because it's Christian. And they that you know, Yval Noah Harari, we we looked at a clip of his yesterday, and he's just very clear. Um, you know, human rights have come to us through the Bible. And I want to get rid of the Bible and I want to get rid of human rights. Peter Singer is someone else, someone else who doesn't believe in human exceptionalism and and equality in the way that probably a lot of us uh would think. And the reason is he says, well, it's a Christian thing. And why should we why should we be so darned Christian about it? And then you you you look at you know more secular historians like uh Rodney Stark or um uh like Larry Sidentop or like Tom Holland, and these these are not people who are trying to bang the drum for Christianity. They they have you know no allegiance to confessional Christianity in any way, shape, or form. Um this argument that things like human rights have come through the influence of of Christianity is is pretty accepted in in um in the academy. What's been interesting is that you know Tom Holland's trying to bring it out into the popular level, and then people are sort of saying, what, really? From Christianity? Um and I I think partly that's um partly that's because so the abolition of the slave trade. Um, Christians, I mean, which again was a profoundly Christian movement. Abolitionism was a profoundly Christian movement, and particularly Quakers and Evangelicals uniting in this country. Um and in order to enforce the abolition of the slave trade to Catholic and Muslim lands, they had to sort of translate the language of we're in the image of God and this is a sin against the creator. Um, in order to really spread that view around the world, they had to start saying instead of it being a sin against the creator, it's a crime against humanity. Um and they had to secularize the language in order to have it sort of accepted by Muslim and Catholic lands. And so a lot of the gains of Christianity have been kind of anonymous gains and kind of secularized in the language that comes out. So I get I guess we we just have to go through each of these values and and figure out um who are the non-Christians in particular that could be uh that could be said to have have founded these values. And you can read the book and figure out whether I uh whether I make a compelling case or not. Great.
SPEAKER_00Okay, thank you. Uh I should have said before we started, um, we're gonna go to about quarter two, ten, two. Um, and so um, but if you need to leave before then, then please feel free to do so. We're just gonna carry on till that time. Um the next question we've got is if we're attributing the truth of Christianity to its growth, could Islam not make a similar argument for its own truth?
SPEAKER_02Um I'm not trying to say um might is right. Um I would say A, um, the fact that there are 1.6 plus billion Muslims in the world probably should make all of us interested in what they think. It probably should make all of us curious um into their value structure, because it's it is the second most um influential value structure in the world. And and probably that would do us all good if we actually looked into Islam and figured out um it its own value structure. Um the difference between the growth of Islam and the growth of Christianity is really remarkable when you think about it. I think Islam is the mirror image to Christianity in so many ways. It's well, it's it's the it's the inverse of Christianity in so many ways, in that um to modern Westerners, uh Islam feels quite alien in terms of what it's saying, and yet you go back to 7th century Arabia, and it's exactly what you would expect. You know, if you stir the part of late antiquity, you kind of you kind of get a second Moses figure like like Muhammad, and you get um the need for a book, and and it and it makes total sense in its original setting, and it feels alien to modern 21st century Westerners. The exact opposite is the truth is true with Christianity. Um Christianity is the air we breathe. Those values are second nature to us now, but go back to its inception, go back to first century Roman Empire, and if you stir that pot, you don't get a God on a cross at all. Um you you go back to the first century, and people starting to say, oh, that one who is bleeding to death in ignominy, he is Lord. That's the last thing anyone would expect. And actually, the the growth of Christianity is incredibly surprising given its origins. The growth of Islam is much less surprising given its origins. So I I would I would just do some compare and contrast work there.
SPEAKER_00Great, thank you. Um I guess you know you you're talking about how um since the first century the growth of uh Christianity and if you'd sort of um stirred the pot of um uh the Roman thought at that time that you'd you wouldn't get a um a God on a cross. Um I guess the the question we've got up there about sort of the revolution not starting with God's revealed oops, sorry, did this revolution not start with God's revealed in law, God's precepts and standards rather than 2,000 years ago? Can we not still a lot learn a lot from God's law?
SPEAKER_02Oh, a thousand percent. A thousand percent. So um the illustration I use in the in the book is that um in Old Testament Israel, there was like this this reservoir of this very different kind of people with a very different view of God, a very different view of reality, but it was intentionally locked up within the people of Israel. In Jesus, that movement bursts the banks of ethnic Israel and floods the world. And and that's really that's really what happens in the in the progress from Old Testament to New Testament. It's it's this very distinctive vision for life that is locked up in ethnic Israel, bursts the banks of Israel, floods the world in the New Testament. Or I just heard a great um illustration, Jay Warner Wallace says, if you're going to go with the explosion kind of metaphor for Jesus, um the Old Testament lit the fuse, right? Um, all throughout the Old Testament. It's lit the fuse, and then bang, Jesus, and then the reverberations. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um I'm gonna I'm gonna skip the second one but go to the third one if that's okay. Uh did the values, so we're thinking about you looked at compassion. Um we looked at compassion together this morning. Uh so I guess it's someone who's either sort of picked that up again today or has been thinking about that over the day. Uh, did the values like compassion not exist before Jesus in ancient times, as you mentioned, or did they exist in a different way?
SPEAKER_02Um, everyone loves their children, you know. Um I I mentioned a saying from the Roman Empire that um uh every day you should do something helpful for your friend and something harmful for your enemy. Every day you should do that. Um and it sounds like just very prosaic advice, the sort of thing that you would cross stitch and sort of put on a wall hanging somewhere, you know. Harm your enemy and help your friend. Um and and and to be honest, that that is that is how we tick. That is how the human animal ticks, okay? We are tribal creatures, um, and of course we are very compassionate to those who are in our tight circle, and if they're lovely, and if if our blood sugar is you know sufficiently elevated, then we will love the lovely. That's what that's what all of us are like. And I don't I don't care what race, religion, time period you live in, of course we're all compassionate in that sense. Um, but the idea that you should love your enemies is so bonkers.
SPEAKER_01So bonkers.
SPEAKER_02You know, you get Nietzsche jumping up and down in the 19th century, like like basically say, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
SPEAKER_01Why are we loving enemies? This is so dumb. It's Christianity, Christianity has done this, it's made you mad.
SPEAKER_02And then, you know, he dies of madness. Um But like in a sense, he's he's not wrong about how different Christianity is and how we have just become acclimatized to this idea of loving every single member of the human family right to the very fringes, including the weakest and the least and the last and the lost, and even your enemies we are to have compassion on, all bonkers, nuts. Um that so there's something very, very distinctive about the biblical view on compassion. So that that's how I compare that. We are we are gonna go to consent, aren't we?
SPEAKER_00Well, I was I was gonna move away from it in the next one, but well, let's do that then if you've if you um now you've mentioned it. So yeah, um, how did uh Jesus create consent?
SPEAKER_02Um so yeah, that's that's chapter three of my book where I look at the early church and I look at the original sexual revolution. Um and When you think of the sexual revolution, you probably think of the 1960s, right? But many secular historians like Kyle Harper, like Joseph Henrik, they would say like the real revolution, the real sexual revolution that has absolutely transformed our view of gender, sex, sexuality, is the first century revolution, the one that Jesus brought. And ground zero for that revolution is Matthew chapter 19, and there Jesus says, look, when it comes to sex, it's one man, one woman for life, and there's no getting out of it. That's your lot. Oh, and there's another option. If you don't want to go with that, lifelong chastity. There you go. And those are the two options. And it sounded nuts to everybody, including Jesus' closest followers. Like his followers are saying, if this is the way, it'd be better if we never got married. And and like when we're never told what the wives of those disciples thought, like as they say that out loud. But here are these red-blooded men, and they're and what is Jesus doing? He's absolutely curbing male sexuality. Um and that has led to the greatest prosperity. Um, so Joseph Henrik is an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. He wrote a book called The Weirdest People in the World about how we in the West are so weird. Why are we weird? Because of Christianity. Again, he's not a Christian. He's just like every we are so peculiar and we don't notice it. The air we breathe is so fundamentally Christian and we don't understand it. And it and it wrecks social science because we we do like 95% of all our psychology tests on Western students. Because, you know, it's it's easy with a Western student, apologies to all you students, but you know, if you're a 19-year-old, you're offered a slice of pizza, you're gonna do the study, aren't you? Right? And we're testing, we're testing this weird mindset that has been so utterly Christianized over 2,000 years, and we think that that's how the human brain works. And Joseph Hendrick's like, we we need to we need to start again with psychology, because we we have thoughts that a Christianized mind is a normal mind. No, we are weird. And he coined the phrase, the the acronym weird, Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. And he he's an evolutionary psychologist, he's not a Christian in any way, shape, or form. And he's he's like, the reason we are weird is totally because of Christianity. He's got the biggest, fattest book to prove it as well. It's totally because of Christianity, and in particular, he circle, he he he kind of um focuses in on the sexual revolution of Jesus. He calls it the marriage and family program, where Jesus basically says it's one man, one woman for life, and in that the man is tied to his sexual partner and his sexual choices in this lifelong monogamous bond that is for the absolute liberation of women around the world. You might think, what? Marriage for the liberation of women? Don't take it from me. Take it from Professor of Evolutionary Biology. Um because what what happens when men are not tied to their women and their children? You get elite men taking all the women, and um that's no good for the majority of men, it's terrible for all the women. Um and it it leads to all sorts of dysfunction in society. You can you can kind of read his book about that. So the Jesus revolution starts in Matthew 19. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and he brings mutual consent into the bedroom. And he says, look, a man's body does not belong to him, it belongs to his wife, and the wife's body belongs to the man. And if they have sex, it's by mutual consent, and if they if they abstain, it's by mutual consent. And it's an absolute bombshell. It's just an asteroid falling into the into the ancient world. Really? Totally transformed our society. So I I I I urge you to read um From Shame to Sin by Kyle Harper, who's a historian looking at that first century revolution, or The Weirdest People in the World by Joseph Henrik. Or I think there's a book back there. It's only six pounds as well. Um and I have a chapter on on consent, but um that was another eye-opener, like when you said in in terms of um things that have really helped me in in the research, medieval period, but also that first century sexual revolution. Um, it yeah, it's it's it's eye-opening.
SPEAKER_00Brilliant, thank you. Um, thanks also for revealing to everyone my philosophy on how to do student work. Um, just just to remember lots of pizza. Just a reminder after eight is after this, and we'd be sent to be doing pizza. So um I'd like to get sort of um more personal with sort of how do you know God is real? I guess you know, in in your uh message this this evening, it said I I couldn't have got through X without Jesus or God, and so you know it's not just theory, it's experiential as well. So I I guess um how do you know that God is real?
SPEAKER_02Um like this this argument is not an argument for whether God is real or not, um, but I hope it opens up ways that you can press into faith. I hope it opens up uh your mind to the fact that you already are a believer, you already give your life to certain values that you can't prove. And what about Jesus as the source of that compassion and equality that you already love? Um because there is something about um encountering the self-evident goodness of a truth, which is quite similar to encountering the self-evident glory of Jesus. Um I look at the sun, I know it's bright. I taste honey, I know it's sweet. I look at the violation of consent, and I know it's wrong. I look at instances of inequality and I know it's unjust. No, I just know I know it in my bones, and you know it in your bones. And then I look at Jesus on that cross, and I see him with his arms wide open to the world, praying, Father, forgive. And I know that is the highest, deepest, widest, most glorious vision of what God must be that it's possible to look upon. I just know it. I how do I know that God is real? I look to Jesus and I think to myself, well, if if God's not like him, forget it, but if God is like him, oh, he must be like him. He must be the sort of God who would descend down to the lowest depths and die that slave's death with his arms wide open to the world. I know whatever else is glorious in life, it's that. So I just urge you to keep looking at Jesus, keep looking at Jesus until you start saying, Oh gosh, I know that violations of consent are wrong, I know that violations of equality are unjust. And I know that he is tops, he's great, he's glorious, he's he's he's Lord. And as soon as you say that, it's like bad luck, you're a Christian, you know. It just it just kind of sneaks up on you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's great. I think when when you're um uh struggling or something in life has gone wrong, um it's great when people can sympathize uh with you. It seems better when people can empathize, but you know, the fact that Jesus is coming to do something about that struggle or that's it. It's it's a wonderful message to to look into further. Um we're running out of time, but 23, isn't it? In in emphasizing Christianity, be sorry, in emphasizing Christianity, being responsible for good values, do we risk losing the message of sin and Christians being broken people in need of a savior?
SPEAKER_02So uh you need to read my book and because um throughout I continually raise the points that, oh, and here is this terrible example of inequality in the church, and here is this terrible example of unenlightenment, and this terrible example of anti-science, and this terrible example. So to say that Christianity has brought those values into the world does not mean that Christians are good at those values. Christians are the worst. And that's what the Bible's message constantly is. You know, the the prophets would look at all the other nations and they say, yeah, that's not so good, that's not so good, that's not so good, but we we're the worst. Right? And that's and that's the message that Christians have for the world, right? It's not that it's not that because through the Jesus Revolution we've come to see equality as the highest good, we are good at treating people equally. It actually means that we should be the first in the queue to say sorry when we don't treat people equally. Because we of all people should know better. And the other thing to say is in bringing these values to our attention, it actually becomes really, really condemning. And what have we found as a society, as we've walked away from confessional Christianity and going to church and actually believing in the king of the kingdom, what we've done is we've gotten rid of the king of the kingdom, we've clung on to the values of the kingdom, and now we are living in such a judgmental atmosphere, aren't we? Where we're very sure about equality and compassion, and very sure that that person is violating equality and compassion. And it's it's an astonishing development, isn't it? Like, I think the prediction from the 20th century was that as as people walked away from confessional Christianity, we would become less sure of our morality, less sure of our own righteousness. Has that been the case? That has not been the case. We are ever more sure of who the terrible people are and they're all over there, right? And and we have not we have not become amoral. We've become incredibly moral and incredibly moralistic. Because if values are all you have, well, values cannot forgive you, values can only judge you. You need a person to forgive you, right? And that's that's that's another reason why. Okay, look at the values, step one. Step two, realize that you do not live up to those values at all. You violate them all the time. But step three, praise God that if you pull the thread at those values on the far side, there's a person, and that is your salvation because values cannot forgive you. Values can only condemn you. A person can forgive you, and here is Christ, full of compassion for you. And so, actually, through looking into these values, you can you can you can go through a whole kind of gospel narrative of here is the good life, we fail, Christ succeeds on our behalf and forgives us and sets us on our feet and sends us out into the world to live out his kind of his kind of life. So I'm not at all trying to um diminish sin or the sins of Christians. I'm actually calling out the sins of Christians. But hallelujah, we've got a savior who embodies those values, but he does more than embody them. He actually forgives us for when we fail them. That's what we really need.
unknownGreat, okay.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. We're gonna we're not gonna have time for two more. Um so the next one we've got is so what do you say the theories in social science about how society's work are leading us towards or away from Jesus?
SPEAKER_02Ah, that's really interesting. Um there's a it's a great book that's forthcoming by Chris Watkins, uh, who is um, among other things, a political philosopher, and um he's about to come out with a book called Biblical Critical Theory, in which he's kind of dealing with some of these issues and and showing how because we are living in a world that has been shaped by the Jesus Revolution, then some will grasp hold of one particular truth and run with it, and some will grasp with another particular truth and run with it. And we've got our culture wars. Um, and in our culture wars, we're basically hurling Bible verses at each other. We've just forgotten the references, right? Um, and so what do we need to do in all our social sciences? I think is just keep your wits about you. Um keep reading your Bible, and there will be truths out there in the social sciences that that are wonderful, that are um surprising and confronting and bringing you um truth and reality that you hadn't considered before, and there'll be other things that you'll have to sift and weigh and think, no, that's that's kind of working against the grain of the Jesus Revolution. So uh again and again, as we work out the Jesus Revolution, there'll be things that sort of go with the grain of the biblical Jesus, and there'll be things that go against the grain of the biblical Jesus. Um some of your studies could take you towards Jesus, and some of your studies could take you away. Um that's kind of the nature of living within a society shaped by by this revolution.
SPEAKER_00That's great, thanks. And that's what we're trying to do here, is just giving an opportunity for those of you who are not Christians but wanted to look more uh into what Christian faith is, or if you want to come to the Life the Hope Explored course that we have in uh two weeks Sunday, uh, to really think more about what is the values of Jesus uh linked to uh Christian faith and then ask some deeper questions in those ways. We really um appreciate the fact that uh you've come along this evening. Um, I'm just gonna give the last voice if this are if this is okay to the Christian in the room, um, because some people may have uh invited someone and then they've couldn't come last minute. And um in times like this, it's always I wish you would come with me when I go and speak to my friends, so I can just point them to you. And so, how do we actually help people begin to question the foundations of their belief and values in a sort of one-to-one context?
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's really difficult in a one-to-one context. I've obviously done a lot of research for the book, but that doesn't mean I'm brilliant in a one-to-one conversation, bringing it around to this topic and navigating the the various waters of it. Um, there are some things that actually a book is the best thing to give to someone and say, go away, or a podcast, or a short video. Um, there are some things that that you won't get to the bottom of in in just a short conversation. I think in a short conversation, what I'd urge you to do is do what I was saying about the seed. Just constantly be thinking, how can I talk about my church? That's what I love about my church, that's what I love about Jesus. I couldn't have gotten through X without Jesus. Um I don't think you have to have great philosophical arguments to be able to witness to your friends. Fascinatingly, the Jesus Revolution has kind of done its thing through something as weak and ignominious as just the seed, as just these weak little conversations that we have, dropping in a word about Jesus here and there. And he is the one who grows his kingdom. So don't worry about having incredibly deep conversations with people. Um befriend them, love them, talk to them winsomely about Jesus, and that seed will find good soil.
SPEAKER_00Great. Thank you so much, and thank you so much for uh all the help that you've given us over this weekend. We really appreciate it. And so, should we show our appreciation to Claim?