Well, hello and welcome back to the Speak Life podcast. My name is Thomas Thurgood, media producer at Speak Life. And this weekend just gone, Bank Holiday Weekend, we had a lovely time, a lot of us from the Speak Life team, attending Bible by the Beach, which is our most local Christian conference. It happens every year on the South Coast in Eastbourne, where we are based. And it was kind of all hands on deck because Emily, who works for Speak Life, she was at the Speak Life stand in the Expo Centre for the whole weekend and had some great conversations there. Glenn and Nate were helping to lead some of the sessions from the front, the big kind of evening sessions with Bible talks. And Nate, Eleanor, and I were involved in the youth work actually. And also Chris, who works for Speak Life, she is a trustee for Bible by the Beach. And then a lot of the rest of the team were kind of attending the sessions as well. So it was great, actually, great to meet so many brothers and sisters from around the country and around the world, actually. And we also met quite a few listeners from the Speak Life podcast, and it was great to be able to catch up with you guys, meet in person, and hear how your lives are getting on, how your ministry is getting on. I was able to catch up with uh a couple who I know listen to the podcast, and they have a baby now, and I got to meet her in person, so that was really wonderful. You know who you are, guys. Lots of love. Well, this episode of the Speak Life Podcast is about Rhett McLaughlin. Do you know Rhett McLaughlin? Well, he is of the duo Rhett and Link. Uh he's he's the Rhett in Rhett and Link, the very successful YouTubing duo. And in 2020, they kind of announced on their YouTube channel that they had been Christians, and they also announced that they had walked away from their faith. And now, five years on, Rhett McLaughlin himself went on Alex O'Connor's podcast within Reason, and the two had a very interesting conversation. And in this episode of the Speak Life Podcast, you will hear Glenn reacting to it and sharing some thoughts, and we pray that this will be a blessing to you. Just to let you know that episode four of the three to one podcast has dropped this morning, actually. So you can get the three to one podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and we're releasing those one episode a week. But remember, you don't have to wait. If you go to three to onecourse.com and create an account there, if you haven't done so already, then you can listen to all eight episodes of the three to one podcast right now on that platform. And that's where you can also get the footage of those conversations because we shot them in high quality at the Hailsham Pavilion Cinema. Well, that's all from me. Over to Glenn Scrivener talking about Rhett McLaughlin's conversation with Alex O'Connor.
SPEAKER_03Rhett McLaughlin described his Christian days like this there was full confidence and no curiosity. But now he's deconstructed, so it's the reverse.
SPEAKER_00I think those two things have reversed at this point in my life. Right, right. Very low confidence in my perspective and high curiosity for all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_03Now he has full curiosity but zero confidence. But he's not the only one who has deconstructed. Yeah, I feel like that's been happening to me over the past few years as well. And deconstruction happens to all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. Not always from Christian to non-Christian. Sometimes it happens the other way around. Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Rhett McLaughlin from Rhett and Link Fame was on Alex O'Connor's podcast recently describing his deconstruction. What do you make of deconstruction? I think there's a number of different ways you can think of deconstruction, some of them positive and others negative. The negative kind of deconstruction happened in Genesis chapter 3. Do you remember what the snake said to Adam and Eve? He said, Did God really say? And the fall unraveled from that questioning of God's word. The voice of the serpent, the voice of Satan really, was a voice that said, Deconstruct what you think you know about the Word of God and start again. Start again from the basis of mistrust, of doubt. And that has been a very negative kind of deconstruction. But Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 gives us a very different model of deconstruction. Here is the deconstruction that we must have. Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount as he introduces people to the kingdom of heaven and he says, you must deconstruct from what you've been told about the spiritual life. You've heard that it was said to people long ago, you shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. He goes on in verse 27, you've heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. He goes on in verse 38. You've heard that it was said, eye for eye and tooth for tooth, but I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. Verse 43, you have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. In every instance, Jesus is referring back to things that people had heard. Some of them were verbatim, the word of God, some of them were very human interpretations of the word of God, and Jesus calls on his people to deconstruct from some of the myths that have grown up around the Word of God. God never said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. He never said hate your enemy. Humans had made additions to the Word of God that have to be deconstructed. And you have to begin again with Jesus. Deconstruct from human wisdom, even if that human wisdom comes clothed in religious power, deconstruct from human wisdom because Jesus says, I tell you, on the basis of Jesus we are to deconstruct and reconstruct on a different foundation. What do you make of deconstruction? Well, it depends what kind of deconstruction we're talking about. Are we talking about the serpent in Genesis chapter three? Are we talking about Jesus in Matthew chapter 5? One more famous example of deconstruction in the last five years has been Rhett and Link. It was one of the stranger deconstructions. In other cases of Christians abandoning the faith, they often went on to Instagram and lamented their lack of belief using hashtags like authentic following my truth or still believe in love. Rhett and Link took a different turn. They had to, because in their 15 years online, they had never actually explained that they were Christians. So in order to come out as ex-Christians, they first had to tell people that they were Christians. And so for a couple of podcast episodes, they let people know that they had been Christians, really very, very serious Christians, missionary level Christians. So having described that they were Christians, they then let on they weren't Christians, just as everybody thought they weren't. See, it's a very strange deconstruction. But since 2020, Rhett and Link, Rhett especially, have been telling their deconstruction story again and again. And they've been telling that deconversion narrative in a way that's actually quite reminiscent of the conversion narratives that they were used to telling when they were Christians. You see, their Christian period was very, very Christian indeed. Rhett and Link were in fact missionaries with crew Campus Crusade for Christ, which exists on 5,000 campuses around the world. Rhett describes their mission like this.
SPEAKER_00In between being engineers and being professional YouTubers, we were professional Christians. We worked full time with Campus Crusade for Christ as, you know, campus missionaries, for lack of a better word.
SPEAKER_03So that was the Christianity that they slowly deconstructed from. But let's ask ourselves the question, what kind of deconstruction is this? And who, in this conversation between Rhett McLaughlin and Alex O'Connor, who is deconstructing? Is it only Rhett? And is such deconstruction happening only in one direction? Stick around and we'll find out.
SPEAKER_02I appreciate you taking the time to to spell out some of some of your beliefs. I mean, like I say, it's it's it's perhaps that uncomfortable thing five years ago whenever it was that you decide you want to do this because you know it's not it's not the most user-friendly topic in the world for a lot of people. But at the same time, you want to you want to be open with people and it feels a bit weird to if you're gonna let people in to any degree, this is such a big important part of your life. You kind of have to have to let it be let it be known. And hopefully in those five years you felt like that was worth worth doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think so. I I think the real struggle at this point I I have no regrets about having told a story and being honest about it.
SPEAKER_04I think that the struggle is you know what good what's the net good of me talking about these things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, right. Um because I think that And this is only some this is something I've been thinking about more recently because I do there are some people I think that I just don't I don't want to disrupt if their faith is working for them, I'm not interested in disrupting that just because I might believe that it's not true and that there's some sort of delusion.
SPEAKER_03I think this is so interesting. So Rhett does not regret sharing his unbelief, sharing his deconstruction story. Um, and I think he finds that it has been helpful for him to put words to what has been on his heart for so long. But then his secondary consideration is I don't want to disrupt other people. I I I want it to be for the blessing of others and not to disrupt them. And again, I I wish that more evangelists were like that. Um the from the overflow of the heart, I want to share about Jesus and I want it to be for your blessing and for your good. And I emotionally and psychologically do not need you to respond in this way or that. I emotionally and psychologically am very content in Jesus, and I'm very content in my faith journey right now, such that what you do with the Jesus that I offer to you is not going to radically destabilize me. I just wish you good, and I think the best thing in the world is to be in Christ and to receive him. But my sharing Jesus with you is not because I need you to respond in a certain way. I think that's the healthy way to share your faith. And I just wish that Rhett had known that freedom as a Christian to share his faith from that kind of heart rather than from a heart that shares faith in order to get a certain response from you. But for whatever reason, he now feels a freedom to share his deconstruction rather than his faith in Jesus. And one of the things that's interesting about that is as you continue to tell your story, you're then telling your memory of the last time you told your story. It happens in Christian testimonies, it happens in deconstruction narratives. In both cases, the Christian and the ex-Christian tell their story again and again and again, and that story changes. And the pivotal moments that you kind of name as the pivotal moment in 2020 might not be the same as the pivotal moment that you now mention in the year 2025. That happens when Christians tell their story. It also happens when ex-Christians tell their story. And pivotal moments shift and change. And maybe one day I'll do a video on the ways in which Rhett and Link's deconversion narrative has changed over the last five years. And I'm not saying this is duplicitous, and I'm not saying that this is just what ex-Christians do. It's what Christians do as well. In the telling of your story, you reinforce the narrative that you live by. That's why I think it's actually a very serious thing for Rhett to keep on telling his story to such a large audience, because I think there will be reinforcement effects that happen when you tell your story in this way. And I'm not denying that there aren't reinforcement effects when you tell your Christian testimony. Either, this is the way that human beings tick. And I want to draw attention to the way in which Rhett's deconversion narrative has a religious shape to it because we are religious creatures and we cannot help but follow along religious tracks. If you're deconstructing, you might think that you're escaping from the world of testimony, the world of church, the world of motivated reasoning, the world of plausibility structures and community that only reinforce the beliefs that you already have. You never escape from that. As a Christian, you will be in that cycle of a community that is a plausibility structure that reinforces your faith. You will tell your story and you'll tell your story again, and that will reinforce you in Christian beliefs. That is true. The deconstruction world is exactly the same. You will find yourself telling your story again and again. You will find yourself with motivated reasoning. You will find yourself with incentives to believe the sorts of things that you want to believe. You will find yourself with a community that surrounds you, that provides you with a different plausibility structure and that takes you in a different direction. And that will reinforce the journey that you're on as well. You can deconvert from Christianity, but you cannot deconvert from the need for a conversion narrative. You cannot deconvert from the need for communities of faith. And notice how Rhett talks about that. When he talks about his move to LA, Rhett and Link moved to LA to do their TV show and their YouTube channel. And it was a different community that set them on a different trajectory.
SPEAKER_00It moved very slow because, again, I didn't have all these YouTubers talking about this stuff. I had to make the decision to be like, I'm going to buy this book and take the time to read it. And I'm still like living my life. I'm not I'm not a like a voracious reader. I mean, I read quite a bit, but it's you know, it's pretty slow. And I'm Link and I are trying to build a career and we're trying to like make ends meet, and this is early days of YouTube. So I was a bit scared of where this might lead. And I think I just had this idea, because again, you know, where we come from, everyone else in our families are not just Christians, but they're strong, committed Christians. This is the most important thing in their life. You know, we grew up looking down on cultural Christians. We we we could spot them. That person just goes to church because it's the thing to do. But we go to church because this is the most important thing that we could do is having communion with other believers. And you know, and so I I think that it moved very slowly because of that.
SPEAKER_03So there was a Christian community that was reinforcing them in the beliefs that they already had. That was true in their Christian era. I argue that it is also true in their Los Angeles era. You can deconvert from Christianity, but you cannot deconvert from the need for a religious community that reinforces your faith. That that that is the lesson that I think we're we're learning here.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell I was getting into the historical Jesus stuff in like 2010. I like look back at some of my journal entries, and that was when it was beginning to kind of fall apart, like the Jesus part was falling apart.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Ross Powell We'll get into the intellectual side of Ritz uh deconstruction in a second. I want to talk uh here about the community aspect.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell But we moved to LA in 2011. So one of the things that that happened, Lincoln and I had a a series where we were making these local commercials. Several of them had gone viral in like the late aughts, and we ended up getting a TV show on IFC. That's why we moved out here. So we moved out here with our wives and kids all together in 2011. And I kind of thought to myself, this is maybe an opportunity to start over a little bit.
SPEAKER_03I've just interviewed Dr. Sarah Irving Stonebreaker. Interestingly, she's coming from an atheist background, and her moving to a a new country and a new city was precisely the uh the permission that she gave herself to actually start going to church. It it happens in both directions. You find yourself in a new place, and you have a fresh permission to be a different kind of person, or to at least escape some of the ruts that you might have fallen into in the past, and to some degree reinvent yourself. Um, this happens in both directions. It happens when Christians become non-Christians, it happens when non-Christians become Christians.
SPEAKER_00You know, I went to a we went to a church that we had some friends at that we knew from out here, and it was in Hollywood, and it was like the music was awesome, and everyone was so cool, and they wore like the cool hats. It was like it was like hipster church, and it was so much different than what I came from. And the way they talked about these issues was it was just more nuanced and gray, and I found myself thinking, like, I think I could, I think I could do this. I think I could do this because, you know, I guess ultimately if you backed this person into a corner, he'd probably believe. The pastor would probably believe all the stuff that I believe, but holding it a little bit more loosely, and maybe I can kind of have this thing, like, I love Jesus. And I I I remember writing in my journal, you know, when when Peter talks about, you know, when Jesus is is asking him if he's gonna leave, and he's like, Well, where else would I go? Yeah. I I thought the same thing. I was like, what am I what am I gonna do? Become an atheist, become become non-religious, become a different religion. It's just like, even if I'm not sure about this, I'm sure that Jesus is good for me. Yeah. I'm sure that these ideas are good for me, and this idea of believing in resurrection, and like this. I can I can kind of just maintain this. That's where I was when I moved out here. I really like that Jesus-sented instinct.
SPEAKER_03I just wish that that Jesus-cented instinct had informed more of the apologetics that Rhett was doing and consulting when he started his deconstruction journey. There's actually a Jesus first way of addressing some of the issues that he had about creation and evolution and all these sorts of things. But I think the way that Rhett was taught creation and evolution was in this utterly Christless way, in which basically you have to believe in Genesis chapter one, followed by Genesis chapter two, and if you agree with chapter one, then you can agree with chapter two, then you need to believe in Genesis chapter three, and then after that, Genesis chapter four, and then Genesis chapter five, and then the flood in Genesis chapter six, and then you gotta believe Babel, Genesis chapter 11, and you kind of incrementally build up the confidence in the Bible per se. And then Jesus comes along in the New Testament, and we really like this guy, but first of all, we need to deal with the the stuff that is BC, right? Before Christ and apart from Christ. And a lot of creationist ministries set things up that way. They basically say, well, if you if you don't believe the first chapter of the Bible, how is anyone going to believe in Jesus later on, as though Jesus is after Genesis, right? As though Christ is not the eternal Son of the Father filled with the Spirit, as though he is not Lord, he just comes along a lot later in the story and is dependent upon Moses and is dependent upon the early chapters of Genesis. Um, it's not that way around at all. Jesus is not dependent on creation. Creation is dependent on Jesus. I just wish that this instinct that Rhett had and perhaps to some degree still has was informing those earlier questions to believe that Christ really is the foundation and and creation is a later thing, actually, than the Christ issue. It seems here that all the foundations have been kind of knocked out for Rhett because of creation and evolution debates, all these foundations are knocked out so that now he's just clinging to the historical Jesus of the Gospels. Um we were never meant to simply cling to the historical Jesus of the Gospels. Okay, the rest of the New Testament letters um do not simply give us a picture of this, you know, preacher from Nazareth. They give us the picture of the cosmic Christ through whom all things were created. The Jesus that we cling to, or rather, who clings to us, is a far more robust and ancient and foundational person than the Jesus who stands on the top of a whole bunch of apologetics about creation and evolution. So no wonder like all these foundations have been stripped away. And he's left with a Jesus who he loved and perhaps still loves. I don't know. I don't know whether Rhett still loves Jesus. I I think he might, actually, given the way he talks about Jesus. But the conceptuality, the framework in which Jesus is being presented is that there's a whole bunch of questions about science and faith that need to be kind of the foundation. And then there's this historicity of Jesus question that stands atop this kind of tottering uh edifice. And and he wants to love Jesus and he wants to cling on to Jesus. But I think he's put Jesus on on a very uncertain foundation, and that foundation's gone. What can he cling to? He wants to cling on to Jesus, but he has made Jesus as frail and feeble as the apologetics that he began with. And man, isn't this a challenge for Christians? I'm a Christian wanting to share my faith with others. I never want to make Jesus as frail and feeble as my apologetic arguments. There is a true sense in John chapter six of where else have we to go? You alone, Jesus, have the words of eternal life. I don't know anything about anything, but at the end of the day, I think you are Lord. And Christians, we need to do evangelism and apologetics in a way that truly honors that from Genesis to Revelation. But there is Rhett. He has moved from Bible Belt America to Los Angeles. He's got the groovy hipster kind of church that is giving him some Jesus, but the kind of Jesus He feels he can cling to has been made into a very frail, uncertain conclusion to an argument. As opposed to the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. So where's Rhett gonna go from here?
SPEAKER_00That's where I was when I moved out here. That lasted such a short period of time because when I would stop and I would just think about it, I'd be like, yeah, but it's probably not true. It's probably not true. And I started finding people who had been through similar things I could talk to about these things. And you start just finding there's people who have and it and also I started finding people, I can't remember exactly the they weren't really talking about it on YouTube, but there were people writing about it in blogs and that kind of thing. And you just start finding, oh, these people don't believe this anymore, but they're still good people who want the same thing out of life. Because we thought my wife and I thought our marriage would end. We thought we wouldn't have anything useful to share with our children. You know, when you when you when you believe this the this this idea that you've got the truth and that this is the most essential truth, and it isn't just about your salvation, it's about your life. Like your marriage is based on this commitment to Christ first. Yeah. Your kids in every decision that you make about them is based on this biblical understanding and this framework. You're gonna throw that out. What are you gonna do? What's gonna happen to your marriage? What's gonna happen to your kids? But then you start finding all these people who ha don't know what they think about it anymore, and they like still have solid marriages, and they're still their kids are still good kids who are just trying the best that they can.
SPEAKER_03So there is this wrench moving from one kind of community to another kind of community, but one thing Rhett could not deconvert out of is the need for community and the need for a spiritual kind of a community, a community of value in which you order your lives according to something that's highest, including marriage and family and all those sorts of values that are incredibly Christian-ish. And if you want to know how Christian those values are, you can read my book, The Air We Breathe. But I think those kind of values about equality and compassion and freedom and progress, these sorts of things have come to us from a very Christian place. And that spiritual community is still a spiritual community, and it still has some pretty Christian-ish presuppositions. But Rhett's deconversion was not simply moving from one worldview to another worldview. It was not simply moving from one kind of doctrine to another kind of a doctrine. It wasn't moving from one set of truths to a scent to to a different set of truths to a scent to. Beneath and above, and surrounding that was one plausibility structure to another plausibility structure, one community of faith to another community of faith.
SPEAKER_00Here's how he puts it a little bit later on. It's been a long process, but we found people who were also navigating it, found our own community, and I think that that was a a big part of our sort of moving out of it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It was a hard process finding such a spiritual community, and it's becoming an increasingly hard process to find such community because we're such atomized individuals in post-Christian society. We not only believe in the individual, which is a beautiful thing to believe in, that my rights are inviolable and no government can oppress me as an individual, that my rights cannot be lost in a shuffle of the greater good. Um, the invention of the individual was a profoundly Christian thing and for the great blessing of the world. Unfortunately, the invention of individualism has been one of the things that the West has bequeathed to the world. And it means that finding community is ever more difficult, especially if you step out of an expressly religious framework. How are you going to find community? Now, it was a hard one thing, but eventually Rhett found community, and it was another kind of community of faith. It was another kind of community of value. You cannot do without these kinds of plausibility structures. As difficult as they are to create, they found their own community, and that community is shaping them. Just as them telling their deconstruction story, them telling their ex-Christian testimony, just as that has shaped them, so community has shaped them. So individualism makes it very difficult to form these kind of communities. Also, when you walk away from express religious commitments, it makes communities much more difficult to create.
SPEAKER_00And Rhett kind of describes this. And so I just think that there's this magic and this mystery that I sort of want to-that's my faith. There's some magic and mystery in the universe that I don't want to explain away, and that I'm willing to throw the blanket over that and call that God.
SPEAKER_03ACDC's Roadie said that uh God is the blanket that we throw over the mystery to give it a shape. Okay. And so God is just a a title, a placeholder for the things that we don't know yet.
SPEAKER_00There's some magic and mystery in the universe that I don't want to explain away, and that I'm willing to throw the blanket over that and call that God. But I understand that that's not a there's no dogma in that that's gor we can organize a movement around. Yeah. We don't go to some house of worship and and say, okay, today we are going to worship the blanket over the mystery. Yeah. And so that's a that's something I'm trying to figure out. Like, what is it And it's compatible with evolution. Is that universal you know, Unitarianism, or or you know, is is that is there some tradition that I can find a home in that like acknowledges the mystery? And so far, yeah, I'm kinda like I don't think so. I don't I'm not super motivated to figure that out.
SPEAKER_02But very, very LA sort of I don't know, man. Let's not let's not put a label on it, man.
SPEAKER_03That is so incisive from Alex at that point. Um because d do you see what Alex has just said? Like Rhett is saying, you can't really uh form a community around such an esoteric dogma. Like Christians can form a community very easily around the Nicene Creed or whatever, like whatever kind of dogma that Christians have, it it seems to have been quite good at creating community. It's been doing it for 2,000 years. Whereas if you just believe in the blanket over the mystery, etc. etc., that is not going to form a great community, is it? That maybe we just need to be okay with that. And what does Alex say? Alex says, ah, that's very LA. Ah, LA is a community, though, isn't it? Like the the kind of that's very LA that Alex is referring to is people who are open to magic, open to mystery, open to not knowing, and they have formed a community. Do you see what Alex is saying? They have formed a community. Rhett has found himself in that community, and he's found himself sharing the same kinds of dogma as those who are in the LA community. Do you see what Alex has done? I think that was very incisive for Alex to say that. Rhett is saying, yeah, we didn't really find a religious community. And Alex is like, you found LA though, and LA found you, and you feel like you are not in a spiritual community that is reinforcing dogmas. Well, don't be so sure, Rhett. Maybe you are indeed in a spiritual community. That what you've deconverted out of is not the need for a spiritual community, just the kind of spiritual community that you're in. Rhett McLaughlin, you did not deconvert from the need to share your faith, as your many deconversion stories have proved. You have not deconverted from the telling of your testimony. You continue to tell your testimony. In fact, you tell your testimony a lot more now than you ever used to. And you have not deconverted from the need for spiritual community. You are in a spiritual community, and that spiritual community has shaped and is shaping you. Now, what am I doing? I'm not telling Rhett's story the way Rhett has told his story. I'm starting at the end of the story where we're discussing things about plausibility structures and communities of faith that reinforce what you already believe, and how the telling of your story redoubles your belief in the thing that you say. I'm pointing to some sociological and psychological reasons why Rhett has deconverted. That's not what he foregrounds. What he foregrounds are are some of the intellectual concerns regarding creation, regarding the historicity of the gospels and that sort of thing. Why have I not begun with the intellectual concerns that Rhett begins his story with? Well, I don't dismiss those intellectual concerns, and we're going to address them in just a second, but what I do say is I want to put them into a framework that much better accounts for human persons, for the way that we tick. And here's something that I think Rhett has learned from his evangelist days that he really does need to deconstruct. And it's the idea that we are first rational creatures, that we first figure out our dogmas, and then we decide to have plausibility structures around them, and then we decide to have these communities of faith, and then we go and evangelize and tell our stories. That is a rationalistic understanding of the human person that I'm afraid our brand of evangelical Christianity has taught him and has taught a lot of the world. Evangelicalism often falls for rationalism and often capitulates to rationalism and expresses the gospel in rationalistic terms to people and gives people the four spiritual laws and takes them through one after the other because we kind of assume the modernist outlook on how the world works, on how people operate, and we contextualize our gospel to that, and we basically think rational and to some degree moral truths will come to bear on a person's mind and conscience. And having brought to bear those truths that we can summarize as four spiritual laws, then the person ascends to all four and bang, they're a Christian. Now, secondarily, we start to get them into community, and then we start to get them to share their testimony and share their faith, etc. etc. Humans don't operate like that. And I think Rhett's deconversion shows us that they don't operate like that. So one of the things I would like to see Rhett do further, if he's going to take fruitful steps towards Christian faith, is to deconstruct a little bit more. I think he needs to deconstruct from the rationalism that foregrounds the intellectual and instead have a much more holistic picture, a pastoral picture, a heart-driven picture of the human person, a communal picture of the human person. I think that's where our faith commitments make sense. Nevertheless, um creation and evolution was a big issue for Rhett. And let's dive down into that just briefly.
SPEAKER_00Christian apologetics, you know really consists of people who are like, well, the truth cannot be questioned. The truth we've predetermined that this is true, and now we've got to find a way to buttress that truth. And there's a there's a tenor to those arguments that they don't hold up very well under scrutiny. When you get the answer to the answer, to the answer to the answer, you just keep finding like it just seems like s this these people seem to be interested in what actually happened, and these people seem to be interested in the truth that they hope that happened. And that was a huge flip for me because what again, as a Christian, what I thought is we have the truth, they have the desperate attempt to be anti-God. Right? You know, we're we were taught that these these evolutionists, these professors uh the who are teaching this kind of stuff, like they they're sinful, they're deceived, they don't want they they they desperately don't want God to exist, so therefore they gotta come up with these ideas in order to explain them away. But when you're like, uh actually, first of all, most of these ideas came from Christians. You know, the age of the earth, these geologists back in the day, these were just every most people were Christians, it's just the fact of the matter. And they were like, oh, this is but God must have done it in this way. Yeah. And then when they find evolution, okay, God must have done it in this way. Um and so the scientific stuff, there was there were plenty of people who taught me like it's okay, you can believe you can yeah, you can believe that. You can be a theistic evolution, evolutionist. Uh you probably still need to believe in a literal Adam and Eve because the atonement still needs to make sense. You know, original sin's gotta make sense. And I was like, okay, yeah, that those arguments seem like we're just trying to marry two disparate ideas.
SPEAKER_03I actually agree with both Rhett's former self and Rhett's current self. Uh Rhett's former self would have said that there are those who are against God who don't want a divine foot in the door, and they sort of shut the door onto any rational argument or any other kind of argument for God's existence because they don't want the universe to be like that, and many atheists have gone on record as saying precisely that. I think there are incentives in that direction, in which people who don't want the conclusion there is a God to whom you belong with every atom of your being. Um, there are many people who have the incentives to be against Christian arguments. That that is true. I also agree with current Rhett, and current Rhett thinks that there are incentives for apologists to consistently um deny any evidence that would go counter to their thesis, and being sure of the truth, um, they will then look at the evidence, but they're not really looking at the evidence, they're only looking at those things that will buttress their own prior beliefs. Now, who's right? Is it that the scientists are biased and the Christians are truth seekers, or is it that the Christians are biased and the scientists are truth seekers? I agree with both rets, okay? Both Christian rhythm and deconstructed ret. I I I agree with them both. There is motivated reasoning happening all the time. But here's what I'd say about Christianity, and I'm just riffing on C.S. Lewis here. Christianity is not so much the conclusion, it's it's as much the method as it is the conclusion. I believe in Christianity, says C.S. Lewis. I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun, not only because I see the sun, but because by the sun I see everything else. There can be a sense of looking around the sky and figuring out where is the sun? Oh, there's the sun, there it is, okay. And there can be a sense of looking at evidence and discovering Christianity, I guess, but it's not usually possible or advisable to stare directly at the sun. Usually what we do is study everything else in the light of the sun. And so Christianity is less like the conclusion to the argument, more like the premises. It's less like one datum in the world. It's more like the method by which you're studying. It's more like the investigation. It's less like the scientific conclusion, it's more like the scientific method. So then Christians who are sure of Jesus and who then say that they want to do the science or they want to study the world rationally in different ways, are they being um intractably and perniciously biased in assuming Christ and then going into the world? Well, they might be, depending on what you think is pernicious bias. A scientist can doubt all sorts of theories, but a scientist can't really doubt the scientific method. The scientist operates by the scientific method, and the scientist, by assuming this particular scientific method, could lead to X conclusion, Y conclusion, or Z conclusion. But the one thing the scientist can't do if the scientist wants to remain as a scientist, she cannot deny science itself. She cannot deny the scientific method by which X, Y, or Z are ascertained. It's one thing to say I'm incredibly open to pure investigation, I am a neutral observer, I dispassionately assess the facts and simply follow where the truth leads. Um, nobody actually operates like that. You cannot programmatically operate like that in the scientific realm. You've got to assume that, for instance, the scientific method is the way to assess the natural world. That's a bias, but it's an inextricable bias to the whole project. There are also many value-based judgments that we make in life that are biased, sure, but not perniciously so. I imagine Rhett, just like I, am opposed to scientific racism. And yet scientific racism was put forward with uh all the confidence of the scientific method. And if the subtitle of On the Origin of Species is correct, then it's the preservation of favored races in the struggle for survival. And for the next hundred years, after the origin of the species was published, uh, there was all sorts of scientific racism. Things like a search for the missing link, things like human zoos, things like eugenics. These were all in the aftermath of Darwin. And actually the first Christian objections to Darwin were far less to do with the science, far more to do with the morality. Human exceptionalism is something we must not do without. The absolute equality of all people and of all peoples, of all races, uh, that is a non-negotiable. Wouldn't you say I would say that? I'm very certain that Rhett would say that as well. But why? Why is he not open to wherever the truth leads? Why not press into certain scientific studies that might talk about the difference and perhaps even difference in value between races? Why aren't you open to that? Well, no, we're not neutral between these sorts of things. If you want to call it a bias, we are biased towards the full human equality of every member of Homo sapiens. We we kind of are, we're biased in that way. And equivalently, I believe that Jesus is Lord. I think he is the light of the world. I think he is what illuminates this world in a way that is so superior to every other way, and in a way that is self-authenticating. Just as the scientific method recommends itself in its success at looking at the natural world, I believe that Jesus recommends himself in his success at looking at all of life, the spiritual dimension in particular. So Rhett and Alex they talk about creation and evolution, and they both admit that Christians take all sorts of views on creation and evolution. But interestingly, the one thing that all Christians can agree on when it comes to evolution is human exceptionalism. And I just think Christians are right to believe, to really believe in human exceptionalism. At whatever stage, if you're Dennis Alexander, you're a theistic evolutionist, and at some stage God has put the image of God on human beings. At some stage in our evolutionary development, that has happened. You might think that's arbitrary. Dennis Alexander says, no, but humans really are special. Ken Ham, a young earth creationist, he puts that human exceptionalism right at the beginning of his process, which is only a 6,000-year-old process. And you might think that Ken Ham and Dennis Alexander are miles apart. And in some ways, they are miles apart. In another sense, they are both affirming what we cannot do without, which is that we are not simply clever chimpanzees. There might be many, many things that we share with animals, but there is something exceptional about the human person which makes humans to some degree sacred, and grants an equality to all members of Homo sapiens that is a dignity that is not shared by all life. You can say that you don't believe that, you act as though you do every day. Alex acts as though that's true every day. Rhett acts as though that's true every day. Alex briefly tried the vegan diet for a little while. And tangentially, that is one way of doing away with human exceptionalism and saying that there's no such thing as human rights, that's speciesism. It's all just about animal rights more broadly and let us live accordingly. Alex just found it for health reasons an unlivable proposition. I would say that not only for health reasons, also for moral reasons, we cannot treat ourselves the same as we treat the animal kingdom. There is a human exceptionalism. And everybody from Ken Ham to Dennis Alexander believes in that human exceptionalism. And I would say that even Rhett believes in that human exceptionalism. I would say that even Alex believes in that human exceptionalism. Does that answer every question that we have about Darwin and the struggle for survival and biology? No, it doesn't. But it's the sort of question that you can have within the faith. And it should not be the sort of question that makes you seek answers outside of the faith, because outside of the faith, outside of the Bible, as T. S. Eliot has said, without everything that the Bible has given to us about the status of humanity, all we are left with with a human being is just a very clever, adaptable, mischievous animal. And you might say you believe that. I don't think you live like that. I think you live into the truth that there's such a thing as human exceptionalism. If you believe in human exceptionalism, you belong within this motley crew called the church that can contain uh Dennis Alexander and a Ken Ham and everybody in between. But Rhett has wanted to step outside this Christian community and continue to ask merely scientific questions, but those merely scientific questions have all kinds of value, moral, ethical dimensions to them. And I think he's made a portrayed there. But that was part of the journey. Part of the journey was, well, if creationism is false, what else am I wrong about? And this again is a real criticism of evangelism the way so many Christians do it. As though we've just got this house of cards and it's all it's all based on a certain reading of Genesis, and you take it, you take away that one foundational blow. The foundation is not Genesis, the foundation is Christ. But in Rhett's deconstruction narrative, first goes creation, and and then you know, maybe a global flood was was uh false. Maybe the Tower of Babel is a stupid um way of you know conceiving of the generation of all the languages, and then he gets to Jesus, and then he starts reading the historical Jesus stuff, and did Jesus really rise from the dead? And he seems to have a problem with the sort of the five minimal facts arguments that are often given for the resurrection. I've got problems with the five minimal facts um argument for the resurrection. In fact, Alex O'Connor beautifully articulates my issues with the five minimal facts. Here he is on Chris Williamson's podcast talking about the ways in which Christians set up the problem and the ways that such Christians can be answered. It's
SPEAKER_02It is a fascinating mystery, like uh you know, something very strange happened on Easter morning because how do we explain the fact that this man gets crucified by the Romans and then people claim to see him after he died? And we're willing to be put to death for that belief. Now Okay, maybe he didn't die. Unlikely, as they say, the Romans knew how to kill people. Then a few days later people are claiming to see him. Maybe they're lying. But then you don't tend to go to death for something you know to be a lie. You're willing to be put to death for things that you think are true that are false, but very rarely are people willing to die for beliefs that they don't actually believe themselves. That doesn't really happen. So they probably weren't lying. Or maybe they were hallucinating in groups. One of the earliest uh gospel uh New Testament sources is the is the the letters of Paul, the earliest. And in one of those letters, Paul refers to Jesus having appeared to five hundred people all at once. And in some of the gospels you get at least some group appearances, at least more than one person, and sometimes, you know, groups of disciple, uh the the the twelve all seeing Jesus all at once. You don't get group hallucinations like that. And so it doesn't seem like they were they were they were mistaken either. And so if they're not mistaken, they're not making it up. What explains the fact that these people claimed to see him after he had died? And the the Christian apologists will say that the only real plausible explanation is that he really did rise from the dead. Now, it's a it's an interesting argument and it's quite powerful. However, my my response has always been that this sort of process of elimination is very clever, and that's how it it's usually run, but it can go the other way. I mean, imagine I were trying to prove that there was such a thing as a group hallucination. I know it's extraordinary, but there was a group hallucination, and I tried to prove it by saying, well, what are the other explanations? Or maybe they lied, well they wouldn't do that because they wouldn't go to death. Or maybe a man rose from the dead, but come on, that doesn't happen. That that breaks all the laws of physics. So the only remaining option is this. Kind of depends where you start. But it is weird. Something very strange seems to have happened on that morning.
SPEAKER_03Isn't that brilliantly done by Alex? I I I completely agree with him. It it depends on like where you put the Jesus explanation in your story. Um, if he comes at the end, then uh obviously he's the conclusion and he's the he's the last one that we need to cling to. But that's not the way that I argue for the resurrection. If we're going to talk about history, let's talk about the history of Christianity. On Good Friday, Christianity was dead and buried. Very soon after, Christianity had risen from the dead and took over the world. And the Christian explanation for that resurrection is, well, of course, Christianity rose from the dead because Christ rose from the dead. And no other force is a good explanation for that resurrection. No other power explains the explosion of Christianity in the world. If there's been a big bang of Christian civilization, well, what is the big banger, right? As Wes Huff would say. What is that which has unleashed such spiritual power? Is it Peter and Paul and the other disciples kind of making up a story? Is that is that your explanation for the greatest sociological phenomenon the world has ever seen that says has pressed itself into every atom of the world? Like, is that your explanation? Peter? Paul? The other disciples? And then people spreading that lie in order to get into trouble because it did them no good to tell that lie in the first century. And and that's your that's your explanation? I don't think that's a good explanation. But really, the explanation for the resurrection is not really the history since the first century or the history of the first century. It's Jesus Christ as he's presented in the scriptures, Old Testament and New. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 says that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised again on the third day, according to the scriptures. Doesn't so much say according to history, although I think it was absolutely a historical occurrence, but the frame in which you see the resurrection of Jesus is not so much the frame of history as though there's this neutral discipline called history. It's the scriptures. The scriptures provide the proper framework in which to understand Christ and all he has done. And if from Old Testament and New Testament you understand this Christ, well then of course he rose from the dead. If Jesus is Lord, then of course he overcame death. If he's not Lord, then of course he rotted in a Jerusalem tomb. And the reason why I believe in the resurrection is not so much because I've gone back into the five historical facts, and it's not really because I've looked at twenty centuries of Christianization and I've inferred the source of uh that grand explosion. I'm a Christian because I've encountered Christ in Scripture and I've thought to myself, well, I think he's Lord. I think he's tops. Without him, death is Lord, because death just swallows men and women's soldiers and empires. Death is Lord of all, unless someone can prove themselves to be greater than death. And I'm not naive about it. I do see that death is the super heavyweight champion of the world, but I just think in Jesus death has made its match, and I've encountered Christ in the scriptures, the Old Testament, scriptures, the New Testament. And by the Spirit, I have come to see him as Lord, and therefore, because he is Lord, of course he's risen from the dead. If he is Lord, it would be so stunning if he rotted in some Jerusalem tomb. But no, I I think he's Lord through Scripture by the Spirit, and that's why I believe that he is alive and confronting me in the scriptures today. I'm not saying that this is the argument that will persuade you or will persuade Rhett, but I am saying it is the consistent proclamation of the Christian rather than to make our apologetics and evangelism as frail and feeble as our rational arguments, as our arguments for six-day creation, or as our five minimal facts arguments about the first century. The foundation for our proclamation is that Jesus is Lord. And as we declare the risen Son, the risen S-U-N and the risen S-O-N, Jesus, as we declare him, he illuminates everything else and he makes sense of, oh gosh, that's why human exceptionalism is really a thing. Oh, that's why Christianity has exploded from nothing and has taken over the world. Because Jesus has risen from the dead as Lord of all. And at that point, we can return Jesus back to Rhett. Because I I think Rhett loves Jesus, but I think Jesus had been packaged in a rationalistic apologetic that was actually quite fragile. And when that foundation crumbled, Rhett has wanted to hold on to Jesus, but he's not sure that he can. And part of my advice to Rhett is um deconstruct further. Deconstruct from that rationalism and come to read the scriptures again with Christ at the center and cry out to God and and and say, Jesus, show yourself to me as Lord. His person is the foundation for everything else. But you know, I just want to point out one last thing from this video. Um it was very well put by Rhett when he talked about his rationalistic Christian days. Um I want us to notice what Alex says in response. Let's have a look.
SPEAKER_00Especially in those days, in the college days, there was zero curiosity about whether or not I might be wrong.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, it that wasn't even up for debate. There was no there was full confidence and no curiosity. Um and I am in a very different place. I think those two things have reversed at this point in my life. Right. Right. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Very low confidence in my perspective and high curiosity for all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I feel like that's been happening to me over the past few years as well. And I think it's for the better. It's less entertaining and it's less fulfilling on a superficial level, because it's nice to be able to even when you're just talking to somebody, it's nice to be able to at dinner when somebody asks you what and you think, right, here it is, I'll lay it out, here's my beliefs, and here's why I think this, and let's have a discussion about it. It's less fulfilling to sort of go, you know what, man, I've got I've got kind of no idea, but but here are some thoughts. But I think it protects yourself against the kind of spiritual crisis which you inevitably run up against when that first domino starts to fall.
SPEAKER_03Fascinating. Rhett says his rationalistic Christian days, he was full of confidence and zero curiosity, and now it's the other way around. He has zero confidence in things, uh, but he's full of curiosity. And and Alex says it's the same for me. Alex is deconstructing two, okay? Because his full confidence was in atheism. His full confidence was a Christopher Hitchens view of the world, okay? And he had full confidence in that and zero curiosity, and he's been open enough to say that that was his position with atheism. Alex is deconstructing his atheism, just as Rhett has deconstructed his Christianity. And listen, I've deconstructed as well. I was a rationalistic Christian who was always trying to do it for Jesus, and I was in a kind of evangelicalism that utterly burnt me out. We've got a video on our channel called I Gave My Life to Jesus About a Thousand Times. And it's about me as a teenager really wanting to do it for Jesus, do it for Jesus, do it for Jesus. And my goodness, did that burn me out? And I and I think Rhett and Link have been burnt out by that kind of high-pressure Christianity. And they deconstructed and sort of left the church. Um, I deconstructed from that in order to meet who Jesus actually is. And it's not my life offered to God, it's Christ's life offered to me. I deconstructed from an unhealthy Christianity. Rhett has deconstructed from an unhealthy Christianity, and Alex is deconstructing from an unhealthy atheism. Where are we going to all land? I don't know, but I think it's really interesting to watch this space. Who has deconstructed? Just Rhett? What about me? What about Alex O'Connor? And are we at the end of that deconstruction and reconstruction journey? I want you to tell me in the comments. So please do let me know what you think about this video. What you think about Rhett, what you think about Alex and his journey. And if you want to see a vision of life with Jesus right at the center, why don't you go to 321course.com and check out Life According to Jesus? You can start an account, it's utterly free. We won't spam you, but you can see life again with Jesus at the center. That'll do us for now. Do subscribe to us so we can catch you on the next one. God bless.