Why did you want to speak to Tom Holland?
SPEAKER_10He would like to cut hands in the ether waiting to be discovered. It's as theological as believing that the Lord Jesus Christ was from the dead sisters.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Yeah. How do you both uphold the equality of the sexes and the difference between them?
SPEAKER_01I mean it's all derived from Christianity, isn't it, in the end, isn't it? I mean, this is the thing with so much secular ethics and politics. Everything in the end comes to much Christianity, even if it's not explicitly speculative.
SPEAKER_14Why is it surprising to hear this from Louise Perry?
SPEAKER_02We're at a very interesting time. It might not be possible to cover over the God-shaped hole. That's an interesting use of language, isn't it? Yeah, we do try to cover over the hole.
SPEAKER_05That's very different from filling it. The sort of more organized religion side of it, that's a bit I find a lot less appealing.
SPEAKER_02Constantine actually said you're gonna struggle to get people my age going to church.
SPEAKER_11Not that much older than you, we're always church. We're always supposed to be sharing life, sharing the joys and sorrows and being there for each other.
SPEAKER_14Why do you think that was our most uh listened to episode? Well, hello and welcome back to uh the Speak Life Podcast. I'm media producer Thomas Thurgood, and I'm joined by I'm Glenn Scrivener. Hello. We've reached a bit of a bit of a landmark in a sense. This is our 500th episode of the Speak Life Podcast. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_14How does that feel?
SPEAKER_02You've been doing this for over ten years. You can tell as we look at some of these clips, you'll see. So Max Patterson was kind of media producer bef before you, Thomas. And I remember on one of his first days at Speak Life, he was looking at an older video of ours that must have been like two or three years old. And he he looked at it and says, Oh, Young Glenn. And I was like, You, Young Glenn? What do you mean, Young Glenn? But yeah, he he lost the job. And then we got you in, and you've been on Tenta Hooks ever since. Trying not to put a foot wrong.
SPEAKER_14But you're gonna see you're gonna see a few clips from Young Glenn. I should just clarify, Max left on very good terms, and he does come back quite a lot.
SPEAKER_02He does come back into my mind uh on a regular basis when I'm kind of looking in the mirror in the morning. Young Glenn, where's Young Glenn gone? Where's Young Glenn? It feels like a long obedience in the same direction, you know, which is kind of what the Puritans used to say about the the benefits of sticking at it. And you don't generally think in those terms when you think of social media, do you? You think in terms of it's just content, get it out there, it's very now. But when you look back at 500 episodes, it's just like, okay, there's a long obedience in the same direction, and here's to 500 more.
SPEAKER_14Okay, Glenn, well, we're gonna start with a bit of fun. Your first ever episode of the Speak Live podcast. Oh wow, I haven't heard this. So this What year was this? Yeah, this was from March 2013, over ten years ago. Yep. And it was about University Christian Union missions.
SPEAKER_02Ah, this is so apt because right now it's University Christian Mission season, and there's probably like a hundred CUs putting on things right now in the UK. So this is this is good to remind ourselves of. Amazing. So this was with Andy Brinkley, who was he sort of media producer? Media producer for very many years uh for Speak Life. So hello, Andy, if you're listening.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, and it was called the Evangelists Podcast back then. So let's have a listen.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelists podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you with Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_13Have I ever done a podcast before?
SPEAKER_02I don't think I've ever done a podcast before. Um I'm new to these things, so ever wanted to? Very much so. And uh, you know, you're the you're the pro at this, so I'm following your lead.
SPEAKER_12I listen to a lot of podcasts, but uh I probably only actually featured in two.
SPEAKER_02You're a gourmand, not a gourmet. Is that the French phrase? If you if you love food, you're a gourmand. And if you cook food, you're a gourmet. See? See? So now we're now we're podcast gourmets.
SPEAKER_12Very good, yes, very good. I'm cultured, see.
SPEAKER_02So there we go. Wow. What's it like uh hearing that? It's um so Cooper and Kerry have words, uh great friends of the show, but that they have a podcast and they say no waggling on the tea, you know, a golfing term. Like when you when you get to the first tea, you just whack off. Whereas that was a lot of waggling.
SPEAKER_14A lot of waggling there. Well, let's uh let's see uh what happens when we get to episode 18. So you had a bit of a chance to kind of get into the swing of things. You started talking about actual theology and stuff. Um I'm sure I did with episode eighteen. Oh, yeah, no, eventually. Yeah. Um so this was an episode that you said uh reached quite a few people. It was what atheists get right. Yes.
SPEAKER_13The last thing that we've got, which uh where atheists have have got it right, is God as commonly understood is a monster.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The God against which so many of these guys rail is a monster and is rightly condemned. So um so we've we've got lined up a a clip from uh Chris Hitchens. Let's just let's just listen because I mean his his rhetoric is just stunning and it's just a a joy to behold. Um here is the god that Christopher Hitchens does not want.
SPEAKER_07Some people I know who are atheists will say they wish they could believe it. Some people I know who are former believers say they wish they could have their old faith back. They miss it. I don't understand this at all. I think it's a it's it's an excellent thing that there's no reason to believe in the absurd propositions I just uh admittedly rather briefly rehearsed to you. Um the main reason for this, I think, is that it is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave, it is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can can who can subject you, who must indeed subject you, to a total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, I say of your life before you're born, and even worse, and where the real fun begins after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, who? Who could possibly who could possibly want that? And to that, what do we say? No way. Not me. No thanks. No thanks. And and absolutely, it's the CCTV camera in the sky, the North Korea, which uh obviously Christian Christians uh have a very different doctrine of God, you know, because we believe in Jesus, the Son of the Father, full of the joy of the Spirit, you know, our understanding of God's interest in our life is that his interest is entirely shaped by love. You know, here is a father pouring love and life onto his son by the Spirit who gives his son into the world that we might know him, that we might be drawn into the life of this God. Um this God does want to know you. And he and he and he does he does know our thoughts. He does hem us in before and behind, as the psalmist says in Psalm 139. But that knowledge is very different to the the the North Korean, you know, Stasi's, you know, knowledge of you. That knowledge is is the knowledge of someone who loves you more than his own life. Um you know, my my wife is there when I wake up in the morning, and she's there when I go to sleep at night, and she knows my thoughts, and she wants to ask about my day, and she interrogates me about you know, but because it's my wife, it's wonderful. You know. When somebody loves you, the fact they've got their eyes on you is a is a wonderful thing. You know. She explained to her mother what she'd been learning in Sunday school. And she said, you know, God God sees everything that we do. And the mother mother said, That sounds horrible. And the little girl said, No, he just can't take his eyes off me. It's that. It's that. And you know, and but if God is a celestial North Korea, then absolutely reject him the way that the Christopher Hitchens does. But if we're talking about the the God of Jesus, then suddenly this this God is different. You know, I of I often think of um of love songs. It's interesting how love songs um they can often sound totalitarian, can't they? You take good care of yourself, you belong to me. Like as a love song, that's sweet. If that's the North Korean Health Service saying it to you, you know, watch out, you belong to me. And we've got all these, you know, in in France sort of chains, uh sort of uh symbols of love, and when you get married, there's all sorts of things about locks and keys, and locks and keys, that's enslavement, isn't it? Well it's either enslavement or it's love. And from the outside it might look like enslavement. From the inside, if you've got this this god, then it's love. And then if it's this god, if it's this god of love, who wouldn't want this god? Who wouldn't want this god in their lives every waking moment? Who wouldn't want an eternity of this? That even after we're dead, but that we live in the presence of this God who is so self-giving, who is so loving. Christopher Hitchens pushes us in the right direction. He he pushes us to reject an eminently rejectable God. Um but as we think a little bit deeper about Jesus, he forces us to see a a far greater God and a and a God who is really worthy of our trust and faith. I believe that what that guy says.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, I agree. That's been quite a big part of your approach over the years, isn't it? To say something a little bit controversial, like, oh, Christopher Hitchens, one of the four horsemen of the new atheism. You're like, he's he's right about this, but he's not right about the Jesus God.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean Christopher Hitchens, I mean, if he didn't have that voice, how far would the new atheism have come? I mean he just he pearls like a Wolverine, doesn't he? And it's just it's just like like if he if he had like some if he was like a redneck, you know, Celestial North Korea, no, thank you for it's like that nobody's gonna listen to that. But yeah, the voice is so much of the thing. But but yeah, saying what atheists get right, that was definitely um our best performing podcast in that year, and I think it was our best best performing podcast for a number of years. Um because yeah, people people are surprised by that and you want to subvert their expectations, and yeah, you want to you want to agree with what you can agree with, and with Christopher Hitchens, you just say, Yeah, if God is like that, no thanks. Um, but I think you've got the wrong end of the stick, Christopher.
SPEAKER_14Hmm. So then we fast forward a little bit to episode 198. So uh this was from 2018 when you sat down with a friend of the show, you've already mentioned sitcom writer James Carey, and you chatted about Easter and comedy, and this was off the back of a book you did called Divine Comedy.
SPEAKER_09Right. Easter is funny. What's what's so funny about Easter? Everything's funny about Easter.
SPEAKER_02Um not only the big picture, uh so at a big picture level, uh, Easter is the grand comedy. Uh you plumb the deepest depths and then you go to the highest heights. Because that's actually the shape of comedy, classically speaking. Dante said that a tragedy is a story that begins in joy and ends in pain, and a comedy is a story that begins in pain and ends in joy. So, what is a comedy? Well, Easter's the ultimate comedy, isn't it? Because Jesus plums the ultimate depths, enters into our tragedy to give us the happily ever after. So from that angle, Easter's a total comedy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then there's the issue of just the ironies of Easter. Um, the the way in which this story unfolds is at times it's not laugh out loud, funny, but but it is.
SPEAKER_09I wouldn't open with a the comedy story. Yeah, but it it's comic. It works immediately because although I uh so I think your overall thesis of or Dante's thesis of tragedy ending in you know sadness and comedy ending in joy is true. From a, if I may say, as a sitcom writer myself, yeah, uh the um jokes and and comedy on a small level tend to work in terms of incongruity, things that things that shouldn't be that are next to each other are put next to each other. Yes. I'm not convinced I mean, trying to write a book on this at the moment. I'm not convinced that there is a grand unified theory of comedy because the moment you c you have a plan, a joke comes up which doesn't fit any of the rules, and that's what jokes do, they kind of break rules. They're pretty anarchic, yeah. But at the same time, Easter throws up loads of really weird incongruities, not only about who Jesus is, but then what happens to him, right? The story of Easter from Palm Sunday through to Good Friday through to um the the resurrection on Easter Day, which this year in 2018 is April Fool's Day. Hence talking about Easter and comedy.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, so how has that helped you in your evangelism to frame life as either being a tragedy or a comedy?
SPEAKER_02I think once you re recognize that tragedies can still be grand dramas and they can be tremendous adventures. Because when you when you say, you know, to somebody you've got a tragic view of life, they're like, oh no, because my life is still meaningful and I can still have a laugh along the way. Well, that's true. Tragedies, you you do go up first in a tragedy, and there is all kinds of struggle, but the end is tragic. And I think what it one of the things that it does is it just opens people's eyes to the fact that our modern view of life is already tragic. And your only shot at the comedy is Jesus, because he's the only one who's offering a hope for these bodies in this world. He's like, he's genuinely the only one. There is no hope apart from Jesus, which might sound like a a bigoted fundamentalism, but but actually when you do comparative religion, it's just true, you know. Islam, the future is not this world, paradise is far away. The Eastern religions, it is not an earthly future, an embodied future that you have. In atheism, there's the heat death of the universe. There's literally no hope for these bodies in this world apart from Jesus. And so you say, look, the only hope for the comedy is Jesus. And isn't the shape of your life right now quite tragic? And even the stuff that is sold to you as so attractive in life, it's basically try and get on top, have as many experiences as you can as you can, enjoy your brief moment in the sun. Because it's all ending really, really badly. Right. Costa have a new flavour of That's right. Have you tried the pumpkin spice latte and all that kind of stuff? And and that that's the And I'm going on holiday to Marrakesh, so that's that's nice to look forward to. You know, alongside the heat death of the universe, it's a it's an utterly tragic thing. And so actu actually saying there there is a view of the world that is unique, and it's the it's your only shot at avoiding the the tragedy. Will you consider Jesus? I think that's that's been fruitful over the years.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, I heard Richard Dawkins say once that the atheist view that you know this is all we have, and we have our perhaps 80 years, and then that's it. He said that almost makes life more meaningful because it's so fleeting. What would you say to that?
SPEAKER_02I think Christians are not simply saying that there's a a a greater quantity of life that we will receive when we're resurrected. It's not like you know, it's a it's a very rainy day in Eastbourne today. It's not it's not like that. But for forever. Yeah. It's not just a greater quantity of heartbeats, it's a different quality of life. And I think when you see the resurrection life that Jesus pioneers in in in the Eastern narratives, it is long country walks, you know, talking about the stuff that's really important late into the night, and it's lots of feasting and joy and reunions and barbecues on the beach and f fishing with your mates and seeing Jesus face to face, you know, this battle-scarred lover. You get to the end of of uh of the gospels and you and you see there's a quality of life that when you look at it, you think that is the life. I think you know, the the Bible would ex make us expect that we are acorns now, we're going to be oaks. Yeah. There is a continuity between this life and the next, but we we see through a glass darkly now, then we will see face to face. There's there's a qualitative difference that means all the life in the world will not be enough, and we will we will require eternity in order to live that life.
SPEAKER_14At the moment, what we've looked at so far has been quite a lot to do with the new atheism, but then the conversation began to change, didn't it? And Justin Briley has picked up on this brilliantly in his his new podcast, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. So in 2019, you reached out to the historian Tom Holland and you asked him for an interview. Why did you want to speak to Tom Holland?
SPEAKER_02He was just coming out with his book Dominion, which was sort of summarizing and and popularizing an argument that many people have made, which is that the West is far more Christian than we like to imagine. And the fact that we don't think the West is very Christian is because Christianity has done such a number on us that the things we take as self-evident and obvious are the fruits of Christian civilization, and they've become so successful in shaping our ways of seeing that they don't feel revolutionary to us anymore. And yet Tom Holland was continually saying that no, the Christian revolution is the most profound, it's the most disruptive, it's the most enduring, it's the most influential revolution that there's there's ever been. So I reached out to him on Twitter. He loves Twitter, I love Twitter, and uh he was an absolute gentleman and and said yes, and so that's the first of three or four interviews I've I've done um with Tom, and uh yeah, went up to London and and chatted.
SPEAKER_14Amazing. And in this clip, he talks about human rights.
SPEAKER_02Some of the things that are often kind of um said to me, especially by by humanist friends, they will they will say, um, obviously Christianity has played a part in Western liberal values, um, but uh even without Jesus Christ, we we would have gotten to where we've gotten to.
SPEAKER_10No, I mean I mean and and it's so odd that it tends to be people who who valorise science and Darwin and the theory of evolution, but I mean I'm entirely with Stephen J. Guild on this, who says, who famously said that um if you rewound the clock of Earth's history, you would not get humans. There's nothing inevitable about the way that that evolution has gone. And and I think the same is true of historical contingency. There's nothing inevitable at all about the emergence of um the qualities or the val the values or um the teachings of of Christianity at all.
SPEAKER_02Could we though have generated some kind of universal human rights and that that sort of stuff every time materials?
SPEAKER_10Why would you? I mean the the idea of human rights, I mean the idea that human rights kind of hangs in the ether waiting to be discovered is is as theological as believing that the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead and sits at the hand of God the Father. Yes. I mean it's it's it's it's it requires a leap of faith. Yes. The difference is that Christians recognise that belief in the divinity of Christ requires belief. Whereas you know, lots of people just assume that human rights are something that exists but they're not. They're the result of specifically legal developments in medieval Christendom, the the the emergence of of um this theory by the canon rights lawyer, by by the canon lawyers in from the 12th century onwards. It it doesn't just spontaneously emerge.
SPEAKER_02Yes. But you hold dear to your heart those liberal values. You personally hold dear to your hearts that that the weak should not be cast off and that there's there's an equality or something. Yeah, but I recognise now that they're not you know that they're Christian values.
SPEAKER_14Wow. Yeah. Believing in human rights is as theological as believing that Jesus was raised from the dead. That's a pretty killer line, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the and the link should be obvious, really, because that is the vindicate like Christ rising to the right hand of the Father is the man for all men, who has been exalted to the right hand of the Father and therefore to the place of dignity and honor that is unlosable. So that is the vision of humanity having an inviolable worth and dignity forevermore and take away Christ risen from the dead. Um at what at what stage can you have human rights? Well, some people come along and they say, Well, humans, we just decided to grant ourselves human rights, at which point you like who's we? And why why is it like like like everyone in Homo sapiens? And is that not speciesist? So we've shrunk the circle that far. Why don't we shrink the circle ever fur ever further so that it's a tighter and tighter circle where we've we've granted ourselves these rights? But if you're granting yourself rights, then you're basically inventing rights rather than discovering them. So Tom Wright uh Tom Holland really kind of opens up this this question are human rights discovered or invented? And I think at a gut level, Tom Holland wants to say human rights are a discovery rather than an invention, because I don't think anyone wants to say we've We have just decided to grant worth when you look into the eyes of a child who's about to be cast off on the rubbish heap. I want to believe that there's an inviolable worth and dignity. Well, is there or isn't there? And the Christian at that stage can say, no, there is, and that's why certain Christians have a certain language for describing human rights, but that's not an invention, that's a discovery, it's a thing that's already there. But to imagine that human rights are there waiting to be discovered is a theological vision for the universe. And so, and that's the challenge for Tom at that stage. Like, um, surely there is actually a theological account of the universe that says when humans finally got uh got around to naming human rights, they weren't inventing them, were they? They were naming something that is, that does kind of hang there in the ether, that is woven into the universe, that Jesus is Lord, and then that's why. And so that's that's where the conversation is at. And Paul Blackham and I had a had a great conversation on this channel talking about Tom Hollands and Jordan Peterson and Yuval Noah Harari and uh the interaction of all those things. But yeah, we talk about that a lot at Speak Life.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, and another figure who's played quite an important role in this meaning crisis conversation is Douglas Murray. You interviewed Douglas Murray for our reset series. What were you trying to do with that reset series going back to Genesis and how did you get hold of Douglas Murray?
SPEAKER_02Well, it wasn't part of the great reset, even though it was it was around the time of lockdown. And I think there was an independent invention of that title, reset, because I think a lot of people were thinking, um, yeah, okay, after the pandemic or after certainly the first round of lockdown, um, yeah, what is it that can ground us? What is it that can be foundational for us now, now that so much uh has been swept aside? And so we actually went back to Genesis chapters one, two, three, and four, and I wanted to talk to a whole bunch of people, uh, whether Christians or not, about whether those chapters can actually provide some foundations for us moving forwards. And it was it was great that uh that Douglas Murray said yes. You've expressed many times a hope that we could somehow depoliticize ourselves. I mean, everything is so fraught, everything is is everything is heightened to the level of of a kind of a religious truth claim at the moment. And I I think in the in the absence, in you know, after the death of God, there is a power vacuum, and suddenly politics is taking that place, and then entertainment has to take the place, and and sport has to take the place of politics. Everything gets promoted, and you've many times said, you know, can we cool our jets a bit? Can we step back? How can we do that without having something else properly in that sort of highest place of our ideals and imagination?
SPEAKER_08It may not be possible, and I should put that out there because it's you know it's an argument against self-interest in certain ways, but it may not be possible. I mean, there are an awful lot of things that you can point to in society at the present uh that have a God-shaped hull. Um so maybe it's not possible. Um maybe when I describe the change in the metaphysical system that we're currently going through, it may be that that that that change is um is a boomerang of some kind. Uh it may be that we become something totally different, or maybe we would go back to something that we would recognize. Um but it but it may be the case, I just stress this, because it it might not be possible to cover over the God-shaped hole. I do think that the various um attempts to make other things fill that gap are almost uniformly difficult. I mean, I almost use the word problematic.
SPEAKER_02Hashtag problematic, yeah.
SPEAKER_08Not a word I'm fond of, but there is something highly problematic about people replacing God with politics because you end up with a fervency that might well, we recognize it when it's used in religious terms, you might end up with that same feverishness in political terms, and they may actually make the business of politics impossible, among much else.
SPEAKER_14His voice is almost at the level of religion, it really is. And I love that you got him to say the word, and then he just owns it afterwards as well, yeah. Yeah, but what's he touching on there at the end? That's quite profound, isn't it? About how have we become less religious as a society in walking away from the the Christian story, or have we become more religious in some ways?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And I have said with you know, the air we breathe, my book that's kind of about all of this, that the culture wars are just we're hurling Bible verses at each other, we've just forgotten the references. And it seems like we're built to hurl Bible verses at each other. It seems it seems like the religious aspect of human beings is ineradicable. And therefore, yeah, getting getting rid of God's, there is no God substitute, and Douglas Murray, as he says, he's got a lot of self-interest in trying to come up with one. Um I I think, you know, he would his best shot at that would be sort of art and literature, which is what what he tries to go for. Um but I mean it's interesting to note that the art and literature that I would say probably captivates Douglas Murray more than any other, is stuff that was generated during the high medieval period. And or at least the classical music, for instance, that the that he so loves has has certainly grown out of a distinctly Western and Christian tradition. Um and so absolutely can we put goodness and truth and hierarchy, uh uh goodness and truth and beauty like high up in the hierarchy? We absolutely can, but only only because those things are the fruit rather than the root of that which is which properly belongs to the top of the hierarchy, which is God Himself. And so, yeah, uh Douglas and Tom are in this interesting place where they recognize the huge costs of the so-called death of God, um, and they don't have a replacement for it. I think Tom Holland is much more willing to say, um, yes, the the route is probably let's get back to church, um, whether Tom himself can can believe. Um, Douglas Murray was uh a a believing Christian into his twenties, actually, before sort of walking away and becoming great friends with Christopher Hitchens and the and the new atheists. Um he is on a journey. Does that mean he'll come back to faith? He doesn't know. I think he's less less sure about that, but it's a really interesting moment to be in when lots of people are pointing out that the the Western story has run out. It comes from a Christian place. There's nothing to replace that Christian story that that looks like it could do the job. Now what? And Speak Life is here trying to say, how about Jesus? Should we should we try Jesus? Yeah.
SPEAKER_14Hi folks, it's Thomas Thorogood here, media producer at Speak Life. You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bits on the podcast. It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will. And so we have a very exciting thing called the Speak Life Discord server. It's an online platform where you can interact with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team. We have bonus content, creative theological discussion, and lots of fun along the way. So if you want to join that, you can just go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. Okay, back to the podcast. Yeah, the God-shaped hole can only be filled by the Jesus God.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting that he he says that you know we've tried to cover over the hole. And I think that's a that's a that's an interesting use of language, isn't it? We yeah, we do try to cover over the hole. That's very different from filling it. Yeah. Yeah, and with Jesus. And and especially especially actually actually the God-shaped hole at the heart of the West is not simply God in the abstract. When we think about something about like human rights, it is very much the God man that we have at the heart of the West. The the this humanistic desire to elevate humanity. And as Tom Holland has said, you know, that is as theological as saying that Christ rose from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father. Yes, because the the the shape of the whole that the West has is not simply there's a celestial North Korea. Let's return to that. And and that, I fear, is what makes a lot of people say, I don't want to go back to God, because that actually they're fearing the Christopher Hitchens vision of of God. But again, what Speak Life are trying to do is we're trying to say, okay, but what you can return to is a much more compelling vision. It's the Jesus God, it's the it's the God man, it's it's the one who went to hell and back for you. Is that a God that you could uh you could find yourself trusting again? And we're finding that there are some people making that journey, and we pray that there'd be more.
SPEAKER_14Now for this next section, that perhaps we're an evangelistic ministry, and perhaps some people were surprised that this was an area we started talking about. So February 2021, we were making videos and podcasts about church abuse, and in particular the Ravi Zacharias scandal, and that led to a conversation that you had with Lori Ann Thompson. So could you just take us through from that first video you made to speaking with Lorianne Thompson? Why do you think she wanted to speak to you?
SPEAKER_02In 2021, I I did a video that was by a lot of different measurements, sort of our most successful video of 2021. And it's it was a very surprising success because it was talking about the the grotesque evil of Rabbi Zacharias. And you know, here is this apologist with an apologetics ministry with uh an absolutely catastrophic fall from grace. And the way I attacked it was by sort of preaching verse by verse through an obscure Old Testament passage, and it was to Samuel chapter 13, and I talked about the rape of Tamar, which is just this shocking event in which there are four different men who actually end up abusing her, and it's it's not just uh Amnon, who is the crown prince of of Israel, but he has this wicked advisor called Jonadab, and then Tamar's brother Absalom kind of tells her to hush up and be quiet, my dear, and and then David the king is just totally impotent through the whole thing, and it actually takes four different men to create the environment in which this poor woman is abused. And I I kind of said, Look, um, Ravi Zacharias is Amnon, who are you in the story? And and I think that resonated with a lot of people, and we had loads of people saying, I've been able to because somebody named the evil, I was able to see things a bit more clearly. I was able to see like the explanatory power of the scriptures that this you know 3,000-year-old document is is like speaking into the into the modern world, and people be began to be able to trust Jesus again, be able to trust church again, and perhaps, you know, get back into church. And so it was it was a surprise that that video did so well, and Lori Ann Thompson reached out, and she was um at that stage probably the the most prominent uh victim of Ravi Zacharias and somebody that he, while he was alive, was trying to silence and and through all sorts of legal means. And and uh and so I was just so uh amazed, really, that she um she wanted to tell her story and she wanted to tell her story to me. So I was it was probably the most nervous I've ever been being an interviewer. I I had I I was like sitting at this table and I had all sorts of pieces of paper saying, remember to hit record, and and but she was amazing and the wisdom of that woman having gone through what she's gone through, and she was just and it wasn't just the the apparatus of the ra Ravi Zacharias and and and his people around him that were arrayed against her. She was just disbelieved by everybody. And for her to actually cling on through that, she came out the other side with profound wisdom, and I'm sure she wouldn't wish her experience on anybody else, but I'm glad to call her a sister in Christ who is now offering such wisdom to other people in difficult circumstances. So I've got I've got big respect for Lauriane.
SPEAKER_14Yes, and we've got this clip of her talking about the difference between Christendom and Christ.
SPEAKER_02I noticed in your in your victim impact um statement you you used the word Christendom and and you've used it you know in this in this interview as well. Um you said, you know, I trusted Christendom. That trust is irreparably and catastrophically shattered. I yet believe Christ, and then you go on um about him. Um is is there a difference in your mind between Christendom and the body of Christ?
SPEAKER_06Um my circle of trust is really small now, as you can well imagine. Uh and uh the concept of family is really, really important to me. I I'm a mother in a family and I savagely protect my children, probably a little too much. Um and so I have been deeply wounded in the by the body of Christ. Uh and more recently, since these bot allegations and the Miller and Martin report have come out, I've uh people who have reached out to me have been and been part of the body of Christ have been really healing for me. Um so I do hope that there will be a time when I can return to the body of Christ and it will feel safe, and actually not just feel safe, but be safe. Um Christendom, I I think one of the problems for me, and I think many people would identify with this, is that I came from a pagan family, a non-Christian family, and I just presumed, and I presumed so wrongly, that predation was something that was outside of the church. Uh, and so I just I presumed if you if you profess the name of somebody so beautiful as Christ, that you must be beautiful too. And I was just really wrong about that. Um dead wrong almost. And so uh I'm wiser now, and I would be much more careful and conscientious in the future.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So we've got we've got sort of Christendom, the sort of the military-industrial complex, um and they, you know, make that go to the wall. Um we've got but the yeah. Can we yet distinguish that between that and the body of Christ? And can we yet distinguish between that and Christ Himself? Um who is Jesus to you and who who has he been to you through this whole process?
SPEAKER_06When people are abused by a religious professional, a cleric of any sort, there are many wounds: financial, sexual, physical, um, social, cultural. But by far the worst wound is the spiritual wound, and there's all manner of evidence that you know that I could quote for that, but also that just personally, when great evil is perpetrated in the name of great good, it conflates the two. So uh at one point I saw a trauma-informed therapist for a really long time, and and in fact, still do about once a month, and she said, make a list of what what is Satan and what is Christ, and then compare that to some of the abusers that you've known in your life. One of the things that saved my faith is actually seeing Christ as a sexual abuse victim. When I was even when I was a wee girl, evil scared me, and um, you know, I was drawn to the body of Christ. My neighbor took me to an Anglican church, and I just loved going to church. You wore a skirt, and um, you know, the people sang and they said beautiful things, and words have always been important to me, and you know, I had a lot of shame, and and forgiveness of sh sin and shame was freely offered, and I had no identity, and Christ said he would bestow an identity. I had hardly any family, and here was a family willing to have me and not really have me, celebrate me and give me important things to do, even if they were small, it felt important to me. And you know, after all of this, I really sort of presumed that the body of Christ and its head had been sort of severed. Um, but actually, uh through all of this, in more recent events, I have met the most delightful and beautiful people who um, you know, maybe don't have the biggest platform but have but do have the biggest hearts, and it has really restored um their love and their apology, not only their love, their apology, but their action um has been a deeply faith-restoring process for me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_14Wow, I remember editing that from home during lockdown and found it an incredibly hard listen for obvious reasons, but there's a there's a real note of hope in there, isn't there? And how someone who has been so wronged by people claiming to act in the name of Christ, but she can still see beauty in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was someone who was stripped naked and left for dead, and yeah, became a victim for all victims, and and so when she speaks of Christ like that, that's so beautiful, and can reach uh people in in ways that that that I can't. And um there's a wonderful interview that she gave to Karen Swallow prior, who's also been on this channel, but in 2022 at the Restore uh conference, and people should look look up Karen Swallow interviewing Loriane Thompson and uh and again the she just is like this this big sister wise kind of warrior who has been who has been through it all and she's battlescarred and she's come out and the hard-won wisdom of Lorianne just shines through in in that video. I really, I really commend it. And you can you can see the way in which yeah, God has used and is continuing to use Lorianne Thompson. So yeah, God bless her.
SPEAKER_14So that was a conversation across across the Atlantic. The next one we're gonna turn to was much closer to home. So Paul Feasy, who used to work for Speak Life, I remember this day well. It was June 2021. We were recording a video in here, so you both turned your phones off for the the video. We recorded the video. Paul turned his phone on at the end and had just received news from his wife, Becca, that his daughter Libby had been rushed to hospital.
SPEAKER_02They were convinced she was gonna die, and it was it was it was really, really, really, really bad. Yeah. And and Paul and Becca were just amazing about it. And yeah, after after a lot had blown over, uh, we decided to do a video entitled My Child Almost Died. Um, because yeah, that was the reality of it. But the the wisdom, again, the hard won wisdom um coming out of Paul's mouth was um was something to behold.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, so here is a clip of Paul sharing some reflections on that.
SPEAKER_04In terms of in the church, uh so I mean I think what we saw was just like this is what the body this is how the body of Christ should work. Because everyone rallied round us, you know, people were praying, people were bringing us meals, the even though the kids were at home, they were being dropped off at um people were saying, you know, oh they can come and have a sleepover, you know, like some of their friends at from the church and things. And it really I was brought to mind of that, you know, it is that stuff in 1 Corinthians about the body, and we rejoice with those we rejoice and mourn with those and mourn and stuff, and everybody you know, we every part um you know every part has its own function and stuff. Um so there was a real sense in which I was just like, well, we're seeing seeing what the church should look like in action, really. Um and Steve, our vicar, said, you know, he said, You're teaching us to pray. Um you know, and he was he said, you know, thanks for sharing what was going on kind of in detail because it meant we could pray. Um I remember him saying like he came up that first Friday and he said, Yeah, we had a pr he said we had a prayer meeting this morning, you know, it was I think it was all on Zoom. And he said, Oh, so many people were there. He said, No one ever comes. He said so it's like revival's broken out. Um But I remember one of my one of my friends said, you know, this whole thing is like an evangelistic event because not only was the church praying, you know, you you you'd put a post up and you'd get hundreds of comments on it, and people were praying, and but there were lots of non-Christian friends, you know, from school or whatever, who were obviously looking in and seeing all this, and and there was a real awareness of just like this is on display for them to see, like they're seeing what we're going through. And I suppose they're seeing our faith. There was never a sense of like, well, we've got to we've got to make it look like we're you know holier than holy, you know, like really coping in the if we weren't, you know, it wasn't like that, but there wasn't an awareness that like, wow, people are looking in on this, and you know, uh Becca had said she had people say, like you know, your church is amazing because they're just boggled by the idea that there was that kind of community 'cause you you take for granted, I think, when you're in the church that kind of community 'cause it's just normal to you, but it's not for other people. And the more I think about it, I I mean I look back over, you know, however many years we've been uh Christians I can't I can't think of a another event that's gone on in my Christian life which has been more of an evangelistic witness, you know, where they you know you'd have to do a million men's breakfasts to to get to this point, you know. So there are uh things I don't think you can you can know about Jesus. And not I'm not saying you have to go through something like this, but until you go through sort of the desert, the furnace, whatever. Yeah. There's things you can only learn there.
SPEAKER_14How many men's breakfasts have you done? Less than a million, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02It just goes to show, doesn't it, the the life the these kinds of crisis moments we spend our lives trying to run from, but like just witnessing Paul and Becca and the and the family go through that from the outside, and you you see they are really living the kind of life that you wouldn't want to wish on on your worst enemy, but there's something about the reality of Christ carrying them through, and there's something about the the reality of everything else that's unimportant burning away, and the church coming together and praying, and s you know, family sort of pulling together, and like friends from all over, and that reliance on on God, and it's and it's like you don't want to say that you know life is really all about catastrophe, but catastrophe brings out what really life is about. And we saw that up close and personal with with Paul and Becker, and and and I think they were shining lights for Jesus through that. And yeah, and the good news is that Libby is is doing well, and yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, and it was incredible to see the response of Speak Life followers and listeners. I would get emails from listeners of the Speak Life podcast saying, Oh, can you pass on best wishes to Paul and the family? We're praying for them. And yeah, it was just it was amazing, wasn't it? Yeah. We now turn our attention to another important figure in this current meaning crisis conversation, Louise Perry. And you interviewed her about her book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which had quite a big impact, didn't it, in terms of a feminist has written a book called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. That's quite significant.
SPEAKER_02There I am on Twitter, again, being cheeky on Twitter, saying, Louise, how about an interview? And she was she was very keen to do one, and uh it was it was fantastic. I loved it. I can understand why sort of a third-wave feminism would uh third wave feminist would say, ah, if you press in too much to the differences between men and women, you're going to lose the equality. Now I I think if you've got a spiritual dimension, there's a little bit of a backstop there, and that men and women can be equal before the eyes of God and different in their sort of material reality. But if you're gonna have a materialist feminism, how do you both uphold the equality of the of the sexes and the difference between them?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, I think you can still say, I mean, it's all derived from Christianity in the end, isn't it? I mean, this is the thing with so with with so much um secular ethics and politics, and you know, everything, everything in the end comes um comes back to Christianity, even if it not explicitly so. I think it's quite possible to say in a secular way that you can you can affirm the moral equality of the sexes um and our equal value as human beings without necessarily insisting on our sameness. You know, as Tom Holland points out, that we are we are um we may be a post-Christian culture, but only just. And I think that that is still very much in the waters that we do still we do still prize egalitarianism, for instance, um, and protective of the weak and charity and modesty and all of these virtues, which actually um many people would be surprised to know come directly from the history of Christianity in the West. Um so yeah, I suppose I can't help but kind of touch those buttons in talking about these issues, even though but I think it is quite possible to to do so without without without necessarily having a theological foundation and without being a believer and speaking to people who also aren't believers, um, who have been some of my most positive readers.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm sure that I'm sure they have been. Yeah, yeah. And like I guess like the whole Western experiment is is sort of based on, you know, can can can we preach these virtues without having to go, you know, upstairs. And um and and I guess as as Tom Holland says, you know, it remains to be seen whether we can you know maintain the fruits if we cut ourselves loose from the roots.
SPEAKER_01Um that's an ongoing experiment, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And I say, why take the risk, Louise?
SPEAKER_01Um come on home.
SPEAKER_03Nice try again.
SPEAKER_14It's amazing a bit, isn't it, when she's just like, oh yeah, it all comes from Christianity. Fine. Although she isn't like that, is she? She's now she's sort of not really ashamed to say, yeah. She's not a few.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. She made that, she uh went out of her way to make that point to um to Jordan Peterson when you know, when she spoke to him recently, and on her own podcast, she's always talking about going to church, and you know, she classes herself as a religious, not spiritual, in that you know, she wants to do um that thing that Douglas Murray has pointed towards and Tom Holland is attempting, which is, you know, can we go back to Christianity? And and s she doesn't yet sign up to the metaphysics of it, um, which is another way that Tom Holland puts things, but um she's very open to all that. So it's yeah, really interesting things are going on.
SPEAKER_14A lot of the things she says in the the chapter headings of her book wouldn't sound surprising coming from a Christian. Right. Why is it surprising to hear this from Louise Perry?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you could sound like sour grapes, couldn't you? Like if a Christian just wrote that, it would it would sell 300 copies and uh and that would be that. But yeah, because she wrote for The New Statesman and um uh yeah, that there is something about that, but it's we're at we're at a very interesting time, and and Louise Perry will say this herself. You know, she wrote the book at exactly the right time when saying obvious things sounds wild and controversial and enervating when when it's just things like like literally her chapter headings like marriage is good actually. Men and women are different, actually. You know, the most obvious things, yeah.
SPEAKER_14Radical monogamy. Radical monogamy.
SPEAKER_02It's just monogamy, people. That's all it is.
SPEAKER_14Well, on the subject of marriage, we now come to our most listened to episode of all time, episode 445. You talk to Reverend Dr. Paul Blackham, who is uh one of our favourite guests. Friend of the show. Absolutely. And you asked him about the gay marriage debate within the Church of England. So this was around the time I think it was around the time of Synod, wasn't it? So the prayers of love and faith had kind of started to be introduced, and there was the next level of debate. And why did you want to get Paul Blackham on the channel?
SPEAKER_02I knew he'd be spicy, I knew he'd be fiery, and I knew he would uh issue epox on both your houses, and uh and so he did.
SPEAKER_14Here it is.
SPEAKER_11The strategy would be not to say the problem is same-sex attraction, it isn't. The problem is fundamentally being unfaithful to Christ across the whole board of sexuality, gender identity, marriage, and the shape of life that we have as church together, instead of showing life together, instead of church being my actual family, you know, water is thicker than blood in the Bible. Right. And yet it hasn't been. It's like, oh, see you next week.
SPEAKER_02And you mean by that the water of the water of baptism binds us far more than than familial times.
SPEAKER_11And instead the church is all too often, and I'm gonna carry too slightly, but it's just that sense of, oh, see you next week for another another long lecture. Lovely, see you next week for another lecture. Jesus will be like, What are you doing? Oh, this is church. Whatever that is. That ain't church, church is all day, every day. It's how we live all day, every day, and yet we get together sometimes to remind ourselves of the words of Christ and feast on his body and blood and things. But we're always just we're always supposed to be sharing life, sharing the joys and sorrows and being there for each other. How can a person who is locked out of a heterosexual marriage have family if it's see you next week for another uh long lecture? It's ludicrous. That's where the repentance has to happen. There's a rottenness and a sickness that's that meant that that has been acceptable and tolerated. And then we wonder why we're a lunatic fringe at the edge of society and nobody believes it. Nobody believes we have the answer to life. Of course we don't have the answer to life. That is absurd. We're we're like, we're you know, anyone looking at me going, they don't know how to live. Let's get together once a week for a long lecture. Like loads of communities are better than that. Pub. Go to your puppies that has a better family life than that. And and obviously gay and lesbian people have often had much better communities than that. And sometimes when people have become a Christian, they find they stick with their old family because it's there for them. You know, and that's true. People with all kinds of addictions. The addiction group is a much better family there for you, sharing life that joys us out and church, and now go, I will get together for a lecture once a week. What's that? Look, I'm I'm rambling on, but you get my point. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_14Why do you think that was our most uh listened to episode? Oh, you just have to poke him, and out it comes.
SPEAKER_02It's just like and well, I I think look, there's a there's a way of saying apox on both your houses that is just, oh, we're just centrist dads in the middle, and we're just and we're just gonna sort of poke a little bit that way, poke a little bit that way, but you know, in the end we're just compromised. Whereas I th I think Paul has a uh a richly Christ-centered vision that that does say, yes, the bishops failed the Church of England with those prayers of love and faith. They absolutely did. But but I think there are conservative Christians that fail the the vision of Christ in that we we don't actually prioritize churches family, and instead we make into the centerpiece uh the nuclear family and then put you know put all our attention on that. And Paul rightly calls, yes, the bishops to to repentance, and you can listen back to the podcast and you can see the way that he he calls the bishops back to repentance, but he also just calls regular churches back to focus on Christ himself. And I think that's the that's the that's the vision where actually you know how how are we going to navigate all these controversies? And it's got to be by repenting and believing, you know? Not not just by well, we've had it right all along and the other guys just need to catch up. What do we need to repent of? And I think Paul Blackham challenges us, and it was a very popular episode, as as well as being uncomfortable, it was very popular because I think people recognize that that he's absolutely right that you know if if we're going to have a a Christ-centered vision of sex and marriage, it's going to require of us uh a more radical vision for what church life is and what the you know the family of of God is meant to be day by day, not just Sunday by Sunday. And and I think people have responded to that vision because it is what we're actually after. And you know, put put that together with the clip about Paul Feasy and and his family, and it it was at those crisis moments that you got to see ah, church is suddenly we're suddenly broken out of our tiny little, you know, um nuclear family bubbles that we silo ourselves away into, and suddenly the needs of a brother or sister kind of break through modern life that's incredibly atomizing and actually force people back into being the family that we're made to be. And and Paul is just saying that's what it should be like the whole time. And and so I think it's a challenging message, but it's also an attractive message. This is this is actually what we want.
SPEAKER_03Hmm.
SPEAKER_14Well, we come to our final clip, which was from fairly recently. You had a conversation with Constantine Kisson from the trigonometry YouTube channel. And in this clip, you ask uh Constantine if he'd you'd ever be up for reading the Bible.
SPEAKER_02If somebody ever says to me they don't believe in God, my next question is, well, which God don't you believe in? And they end up describing some kind of distant individual, high on power, low on personality. Zeus, basically, with a thunderbolt ready to hurl, and I kind of say, well, I I don't know about the thunderbolt, but the rest of it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. As though God is kind of a super being within the created order. And I at that stage I always sort of think, you know, if if Hamlet ever wondered where Shakespeare was, you've got you've got two different answers to Hamlet. If Hamlet's like, where is Shakespeare? I don't believe in Shakespeare. Show me Shakespeare. Like one answer is Shakespeare is is actually nowhere in your universe. And another answer is Shakespeare is your universe. In him you live and move and have your being.
SPEAKER_05And and and I think that's I mean, that's a that's a a line from So how does how does the universe have a son that it sends down into itself to spread a certain message and to die for the sins of the people that it's created?
SPEAKER_02So imagine that Shakespeare wanted to make himself known to Hamlet. He could write himself into the play as William Shakespeare.
SPEAKER_05And you know Do you not think it's quite a weird thing for Shakespeare to do, though?
SPEAKER_02Apparently it's so Dorothy Sayers did did this in a in a detective novel. Um she sort of fell in love with her protagonist um and decided to write herself into the story so they could they could actually meet. Yeah. Have you had look into the like the Jesus stories, read the gospels, that kind of thing?
SPEAKER_05And and it's I not really not since I was like very young. Yeah, yeah. Is this a live conversion? Is this what you got me on the show for?
SPEAKER_02Just to see Constantine, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Constantine was of course the the emperor who brought Christianity to the Roman Empire. Exactly, exactly. You want me to follow in his footsteps, I think. I do just for the clicks, obviously. That would get a lot of views. Um if I could convert live on air. Um, this is all very interesting. Look, by the way, the conception of God that you were talking about, which is God being the universe in which we all exist, uh that isn't really particularly counter to the way that I experience or think of the world. Um the other stuff which in which human beings get involved, uh, the sort of more organized religion side of it, that's where I have um that's that's the bit I find a lot less appealing. Yes, for sure.
SPEAKER_02Good night for coming on.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, yeah. Maybe you're not quite as subtle as as you think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I wonder live on YouTube, that would be great, wouldn't it? I I love that I made the joke and then Constantine explained the joke to me.
SPEAKER_03Comedian, a professional comedian. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_14But it was a great conversation. I do recommend people check out the whole thing where you talk to him about how yeah, God is is like Shakespeare is to Hamlet. Not quite the same as what you were saying there, as God is the first.
SPEAKER_02God is the universe, which is interesting, yeah, because that that's why he said, You're you're saying God is the universe, and I could get on board with that. Which is just interesting, just in in general conversation and evangelistic conversation as well, you know, what you're saying, what gets heard, um, can be can be two different things. But interestingly, when I said that to Constantine, you know, what if we're Hamlets and like God is not so much like the king of Denmark as opposed to the Prince of Denmark. He's like Shakespeare, he's not like one more character in the character list, he is the author of the whole thing. And then then Constantine said, Well, well, then why are the whole Jesus stuff and why did he have to come and die? Which was great that he then said that, because it's just like, well, because then the author can write himself into the show.
SPEAKER_14I know quite a few people who are like Constantine and that they're very happy to say, Yeah, I think I think my my values have been profoundly shaped by Christianity, yeah. But I can't imagine going to church. I can't imagine people from my generation coming to church now, really. Is that still a thing we'd do? Yeah. So what what's going on there? And is this kind of the next step in the meaning crisis conversation? Is like now people are on board with the Tom Holland thesis. What what's actually going to get people to come to church?
SPEAKER_02Well, Constantine actually said you're going to struggle to get people my age going to church. And I'm like, I'm not that much older than you, Constantine. I think we're pretty much the same age. But um, so yeah, but there there is certainly that that sense that oh church is just something for other people. Um, but I think I would relate that back to what Paul Blackham was saying. Like, no one's gonna believe our message if we don't actually have life. You know, we say we've got we've got the meaning of life. Well, show us how you live. Oh, a long lecture every every week. Okay. Um there is there is better community. There will be better community down the pub. There will be better community in the LGBT community. There will be better community among YouTubers, there'll be better community in lots of different places than the local church. Um, and so that that's our challenge, really, is is not just to have all the right answers, but to but to be the family of God that's living out the life of Christ with one another with one another. And we get those two things coming together. And let's point to the good news stories. You know, when Paul Feesey, you know, had that catastrophe, actually the church came around him in remarkable ways that made the rest of the world kind of sit sit up and listen. And there are people like Tom Holland going to church, and there are people like Louise Perry going to church, and they're finding things that are kind of scratching where they're itching. So um it's it's not it's not like this whole negative story, but we've got to not only have the right arguments, we've we've got to be the family that Christ has made us to be. And I think you get those two things coming together, and and that's that's when revival happens, really.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, if the church is a healthy body, it will just grow. That's kind of the nature of the case, rather than pointing fingers at people outside the church and just saying, Oh, why don't you just come in kind of thing? Yes. Like sort out the the house.
SPEAKER_02No, exactly. And and and and at that stage, so growing the body is the same as reaching the world, if you really understand, you know, how the mission of God actually works. Growing the church is the same as reaching the world. Um, so yeah, it's not it's not about wagging the finger at Constantine Kisson, it's it's about you know living the life that Christ has given us to live, and the world will be reached in that way. Glenn Scrivener, thank you very much. A pleasure.
SPEAKER_14Well, there we go. It was so great to be able to reflect on the past 499 episodes of the Speak Life Podcast. Very difficult to choose ten highlights. Why not let us know your highlights? You can email info at speaklife.org.uk. And if you want to listen to the full episodes of any of the clips we've played in this conversation, you can look at the show notes, uh, the description beneath this episode on whatever podcast platform you're on, and all the episode numbers are there. We also put out a version of this conversation on YouTube, which is basically the same except the first two highlights are different because that focuses more on the YouTube back catalogue. There's a lot of overlap, of course, with the Speak Life podcast, but YouTube is a slightly different thing. So if you do want to check out those additional two highlights, you can watch the start of the video on our YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash speaklife media. But finally, I just want to say a massive thank you to you, listeners, whoever you are, wherever you're listening, we know we have listeners on every continent apart from Antarctica. But no, seriously, we make these episodes from our little studio in Eastbourne and send them out and see what happens. So the fact that you've chosen to listen to this podcast, whether you're a new listener or whether you've been listening for years, is a great encouragement to us, and we hope that our resources will continue to be a blessing to you. God bless and keep speaking life.