Hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast. My name's Thomas Thoroughgood, and today you will hear a conversation that took place on the Speakeasy went live on Monday on our YouTube channel, and it's Glenn Scrivener and Nate Morgan Locke talking about the recent murder of Sir David Amos, the MP. The show begins with a short monologue by Glenn about Sir David Amos, and Glenn introduces an effect that we're calling Pin the Blame on the Tragedy. And it's something that we're observing on social media in the 21st century. Then Nate will introduce the conversation with some reflections, and the show will continue as as per. So without further ado, I will hand over to Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_04Tonight on The Speakeasy, we discussed the game Taking Journalism by Storm. Pin the blame on the tragedy. It's a game anyone can play, no matter your mental age or emotional intelligence. Take a sensitive and complex issue and then apply to it the prejudice that you held long before you knew a single detail about the current crisis. The game involves two decks of cards, well shuffled. You pick up the top card from the tragedy deck, for instance, asteroid falling to Earth, and then you go to the blame deck, and hey Presto, Brexit is the cause. Genius, see? And listen, the link between these two things, that is not what's important. The grunts of tribal approval from your support base, that is everything. It's a game. So get playful. And hey, if you can't link asteroids to Brexit, should you even be a journalist? Let's try another example. Australian bushfires? Uh what's the cause? Uh Donald Trump actually, should this still be in the deck? I know we've got a lot of use out of it, but okay, one more election cycle. We're still ironing out some of the glitches, but maybe you can play at home. This week, why not blame tuition fees on Mark Zuckerberg, or QAnon on plastic straws, or plastic straws on QAnon, or the fuel crisis on the patriarchy, or earthquakes on immigrants. The point is not whether any of this makes sense. The point is a hot take so blistering it attracts millions of rage clicks for the entirety of a news cycle, or seventeen minutes, whichever is shorter. Unfortunately, this weekend, journalists were busy playing, pin the blame on the tragedy, and it was mightily unfortunate because of the poignancy of the tragedy. On Friday, much loved member of Parliament, Sir David Amos, was stabbed to death during his constituency surgery. One man has been arrested for the crime. Ali Habi Ali, a man known to counter terrorist services, had booked an appointment with David Amos and after the stabbing stayed around to be arrested, which he quickly was under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act. When family and friends grieve and colleagues have been reeling at the vicious attack, the UK's commentariat got to work to play pin the blame on the tragedy. But they did so with one arm tied behind their back, because the obvious blame card, Islamic terrorism, is a card that is apparently out of bounds. So like crazed Basil Faultis desperately telling themselves don't mention the jihadis, they have spent the weekend pinning the blame on pretty much anything else. Some have wanted to blame the government, with one ex police chief tweeting, This is what happens when you have a government that sows hate. The government itself has offered several lessons to be learnt. Among Pretty Patel's responses was the suggestion that we might end online anonymity, as though the tragedy were some nasty tweets as opposed to an actual stabbing. Labour MP Jess Phillips was on the BBC this morning lamenting our inhumanity to politicians. She said David Amos's death shows that MPs aren't always seen as human beings. As has been pointed out relentlessly on Twitter today, this was the same Jess Phillips who said she would, and I quote, stab Jeremy Corbyn in the front, not the back. Many of those were anonymous accounts, though, so perhaps they should look out. But why? Why do we seek to find a definitive cause for these tragedies? And why is the cause we fix on something we already believe anyway? If you ask me, it's because human beings hate to be out of control, and when tragedy strikes, we feel like we can tame the chaos if we have a theory, an explanatory cause. And so we pile our blame and our insecurities and our hatred onto this convenient scapegoat. Last month, Labour MP Angela Rayner went viral with a speech about Tory scum. Apparently Tory scum are to blame for the woes of Britain. Now there are people saying it was Angela's speech that is to blame for David Amos's death. And if not Angela's speech, then the coarsening of political discourse in general. Now all these things are problems, but none of them are the reason for this tragedy, which we have just witnessed. All the blame games that we're playing are just a riding of hobby horses we have already ridden. But we ride the hobby horses and we apportion the blame because all of us are scared witless by life's ultimate tragedy, death. But perhaps David Amos himself points to an answer. He was a politician known for his vocal faith. At the center of that faith is a tragedy, the death of Christ, and though we might seek to pin the blame on other people, the blame for that tragedy boomerangs back to us. We are the problem. I am the problem, and I can't shift the blame to anyone else. But amazingly, Christ rose again to forgive me and lift me out of the blame game. More than that, he lifts me eventually out of the tragedy of death altogether, and in that light I can face life and death, tragedy and blame with the hope of Christ. So, David Amos, rest in peace and rise in glory. And may that be the hope that guides us all. It's October the 18th, I'm Glen Scrivener, and this is the Speakeasy.
SPEAKER_02It was interesting. This was the first time I'd ever heard of Sir David Amos. And it was strange because not not knowing who someone was, and him not being sort of like this big celebrity national climbing politician. Yeah. I was actually quite refreshed to hear the story about who he was. Just to hear that this was a genuinely concerned representative of his people. Um I just found that incredibly uplifting because obviously you hear so much, which is you know, about terrible politicians doing terrible things and scandal and public life and all that sort of stuff. And then it seemed like, and by all accounts, everything that's been sort of posted about him in terms of personal engagements with him has been really, really positive.
SPEAKER_04Really? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, my one of my favourite ones is actually after it was a photograph that someone had put up of him, I think very soon after he'd been.
SPEAKER_04I'm just downloading it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And this can we pull that up at all? It's a picture of him in a um I've just um here we go. Someone must be able to find it. But it's yeah, it's a picture of him in a forest. There we go. Yeah. And he's dressed as a knight, wearing this kind of glorious, you know, rampant lion armor.
SPEAKER_04Is that his own standard? Who knows? And with he probably he probably has a standard. But look how look how gleeful he is. It's uh like he know he knows how to have fun, doesn't he? Like he knows how to not take himself too seriously.
SPEAKER_02And I mean, and that was one of the things that people were saying was that you know there were these examples of him. Um you know, he was always taking decoration very seriously, so at Christmas he would always insist that they do a big thing in his in his office at Westminster, and some year there was a massive inflatable Santa Claus that you know broke free from its moorings and floated off across across Westminster. And yeah, I mean, obviously, when you know when someone dies in in very surprising and and sort of sudden circumstances, you do tend to you know want to remember the incredible things about them. But but it's been interesting that even though he holds views which many people in a kind of progressive society might disagree with, so he's very, very pro-life, which of course I think is awesome. It's like brilliant. There's someone who's really, really pro-life. And the fact that I haven't heard of him is a shame. But yes, the the personal encounters people have had with him are so positive. And and that, you know, in one sense is it's both sad to discover, you know, obviously the awful loss of life, but it I found it in what in a way refreshing that there was this guy in politics.
SPEAKER_04Right. And when you think that everyone is like Disraeli, the you know, climbing up the greasy pole, and that's what a politician is like, it does make you think, well, how many actually, how many other constituency MPs are there? There's what, 650 in the in the House of Commons? Um like we I've I could probably name twelve, you know, like maybe fifteen, I don't know. Yeah um and actually and they're all terrible, right? Yeah, pretty much. Well, yeah, that's that's what you know them for. And you and they want to be in the top twelve, whereas David Amos did not seem to be want to be in the top twelve, and he and he took that title of minister very seriously. You know, it's a it's a fascinating um leftover of our our Christian heritage that those who rule us are called servants. You know, the old English for servant is minister. And you know, it's it's stunning that in when you think about the the Roman Empire, uh their great rulers were known as gods. You know, Caesar was a god, Julius Caesar was a god, and Augustus Caesar was son of God because he was son of of Julius, and and the things that made them godlike were the slaughters, you know, and how many people they'd enslaved. And to think 2,000 years later, we don't call our rulers gods, we call them servants. And David Amos seems like he lived up to the title.
SPEAKER_02And and in a way, what one of the things that's so so interesting. So we we were talking earlier on about the way in which if someone dies in in very sort of scandalous or or um surprising or rare circumstances, how how does the way in which they die relate to the life that they lived? Right? So so you could live a totally ordinary life and you know and be killed by a drunk driver or something, and people might say, well, uh that had nothing to do with the kind of life that this person lived, and yet through this sort of act, you know, their their life's been taken away. But what I found fascinating about uh his death was that obviously he died whilst doing his constituency surgery, yeah, being visited by the concerned people of South End, or also obviously he he thought and that's what he was there to do. Now what's interesting is that the guy um who's obviously the prime suspect, I don't know uh how you really call it a suspect when he sort of remained there on the scene. After the stabbing, he wanted to be able to get away. Allie at Harby Abbey. Yeah. Um Ali. He uh this guy's from from Kentish Town in North London, so he's not actually from David Um Amos's constituency at all. And it apparently because of his his desire was to, you know, just cause havoc, cause terror. It could have been anyone, any MP. He was just trying to get seen by an MP so that he could get close enough to them to perform this outrageous murder. And uh what an interesting thing that David Amos's his approach is to represent his people. Yeah. He's known as someone who was constantly holding the concerns of South End before Parliament. I'm gonna carry my people into the place of power. Yeah. And that means that he was accessible. Yes. He was the guy you could go and see because that's vulnerability. That that's one of the things he's got to do.
SPEAKER_04And he invited his betrayer in. So this guy just booked an appointment, and at midday you will be seen by David Amos. And, you know, it's so you don't want to overplay the Christ's significances along the way, but perhaps the fact that the story is resonating with us so much is, you know, I heard it described that, you know, the Western civilization um uh resonates with the Christ frequency, and all it takes is a tuning fork to set it off. And suddenly, you know, something something kind of hums. And when this story sort of hits us, it hums with such a significance, you know, he he invites his betrayer in this servant who is also a ruler, yeah, who stands up for you know, first he stood up for Basildon, that was his first sort of constituency until ninety two, I think. Um was it ninety seven? Until ninety seven, eighty eighty three to ninety seven, and then he went to South End on C. And and they used to sort of play bingo with his sort of Westminster speeches, you know, w how long until he mentions Basildon? How long until he mentions South East?
SPEAKER_02This is fascinating, isn't it? Because why wouldn't you be playing that with everyone who is a constituency MP sent by their constituency to represent them before in the corridors of power?
SPEAKER_04Yes, the fact that that's notable might not reflect well on every other one.
SPEAKER_02But in that it again, to to think, you know, we we if you talk about oh, this is our democratic system and it strikes at the very heart of our democracy, and you think, yes, absolutely it does. And people would probably say, Well, we go back to the ancient Greeks for our understanding of democracy.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02But this idea of our representative, our man who carries our concerns into the place of power, yeah. There's actually a strong priestly idea that you have you send your man with and and and as as the high priest wears the stones of the twelve tribes of Israel over his heart and on his shoulders. Right. As he goes through the tabernacle, he's now taking his people with him.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And the guy who's known, oh, he's gonna mention Basildon again. Yeah, well, obviously, because he's represent he's interceding for his people.
SPEAKER_04Aaron is gonna mention Dan and Naphtali again. You know?
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Dan. Always going on about Dan. Right. But that those were places, as well as tribes, yeah, as well as the people. And so the high priest is always meant to carry carry the local concerns into the heart of power. And actually, our parliamentary democracy has come from that. So, you know, who who was it who first used the phrase in English, rule of the people, by the people, and for the people? Here's a question for you.
SPEAKER_02And for those at home. I feel like this is oh, good question. I'm gonna say I think it must be Abraham Lincoln.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, good guess. Good guess.
SPEAKER_02Does Abraham Lincoln do it at the Gettysburg address?
SPEAKER_04He might well do. He certainly picks up, he certainly uses that language. He's not the first, he's not the first to use that language. So there he is in the 19th century using that language, but who first used it in the 14th century? John Wycliffe, in the preface to his uh New Testament translation, and after a meditation on the priesthood of Christ, he makes this incredibly political comment. So, I mean, th there are reasons why John Wycliffe was persona non grata and bottom was political.
SPEAKER_02Horace said that before John Wycliffe. If you don't get that joke, you should watch Lutheran satires video, Horace Reads the end. Or is it Horus Ruins Christmas? Horus ruins Christmas. Horus's determination to be the primary.
SPEAKER_04I love it. Nate Nate's jokes require footnotes.
SPEAKER_02And then you know this is YouTube. You're supposed to jump around, right? Surely.
SPEAKER_04And at three minutes forty-seven. The reason why that was funny is um and I'll explain it. But this idea of you carry the locality to the seat of power is precisely the reason why we have a Westminster system of government in which you know the the the secular rulers um were sort of trickling down from the papal revolutions of the 11th, 12th century in medieval Christendom, and parliaments are taken from from this idea that um whoever represents or who whoever rules over you needs to represent you and needs to have the closest possible proximity to you, and because Christ, the you know, it's stunning to think that the the one who rules over heaven and earth is is one who took Nazareth as his hometown. Like, you know, people might make jokes about South End on Sea, I'm not sure. We we might have a friend coming and talking to us on the Speakeasy later, uh, who knew David Amos. Um he's currently in a church meeting right now, but uh he might be able to um spend time with us in a second. But uh we can ask him whether people make make jokes of South End on Sea.
SPEAKER_01Um I mean we live in Eastbourne, so people're not casting stones.
SPEAKER_04We're not casting stones, but Nazareth was certainly a town about which they made jokes. Um and and yet it's fascinating in the book of Acts how often Jesus is described as Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus of Nazareth, this nowhere town like that that was derided. Christ owns that place. And even post-resurrection and post-ascension, he is known as Jesus of Nazareth. And so I I think it's an even extra layer of beautiful kind of Christ's significance that they've now said South End on Sea, we'll make it a city.
SPEAKER_02Just as it does seem like such a because that was one of his concerns. He was trying, there was a make your town a city, sort of I don't know, is it a competition or something? I don't know. But um and and he was, you know, was was lobbying and and working very hard to kind of get that for South End. And so it does seem an incredibly fitting thing to give this place that he was effectively representing. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So what else to say about David Amos? Sir David Amos, what why was he knighted? I don't know. I don't know. Can we find that out? We can find that out.
SPEAKER_02We have a team of wonderful people who are our interns uh beavering away on the tech deck. Um but yeah, well I want to know, yeah, when was when did David Amos become Sir David Amos?
SPEAKER_04Yes, so that he could ride that horse and be so thrilled to bits about it. I mean, just just stunning. Let's have a look again. I mean the grin. The grin is just oh he's he's having the time of his life, isn't he? Um so uh just an art of tragedy, really, to to see this man, this kind man, this servant, um doing what he loves to do in the in the midst of doing that, inviting in the very one who would betray him and getting killed in that. So I mean no no wonder it's sending shockwaves. Um but it's it's not the first time that this kind of tragedy has befallen ministers of parliament. There was Joe Cox in 2016, just before uh the Brexit vote, I remember, sort of June time. Yeah, I think. Um and there was the um the stabbing of a police officer um on Westminster Bridge who was guarding the the palaces of of Westminster um just four years ago, I guess that was. Um and so we we live with this this thing about terrorism, but it's interesting that that is not the conversation at the moment.
SPEAKER_02No, because that's not one of the the blame cards. Have you still got your blame? Here we go. Yeah, I've got plenty of blame to go around. There's plenty of blame to go around.
SPEAKER_04If anyone wants one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you've got it you it you've got to have something to blame. Um you've got to put the blame somewhere, and you particularly have to put the blame somewhere when you have a a sort of closed system, right? If you don't have you know categories for theology, then of course politics will rise to prominence and become absolute. And when you know the politics have sort of suggested that Islamic terrorism was well, that was something that was really early 21st century, but now we're sort of talking about something else. Yeah. Um and what we're talking about seems to be toxic political debate. Um what are the other examples of the case?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, social media. Yeah. It's it's about, you know, we we need to uh get rid of anonymous Twitter accounts as though this had anything to do with any kind of social media website and so on.
SPEAKER_02Um Yeah, it's and it would I what is bizarre, and maybe we'll get into this later on, but it it's it's it takes the agency out of the hands of the person committing the crime. Yes. Because even if they tell you, oh, the reason I'm doing this is is is X, people say no, no, you you think that, but actually it's Y. There's something else going on here. And you don't even know why you're acting in the way that you're acting. Yeah. And and and not only we are we not really listening or paying attention to to the reasons being given by the person perpetrating the crime, we're also jumping in as quickly as possible, as you mentioned in the in the monologue, with our own oh well, this is obviously what this is about. This is clearly so I think it was um Steve Chalk who tweeted um Is he head of the What's it called? The Oasis Trust or something like that. And he tweeted I well this man may have been involved in fundamentalist Islam or Islamic terrorism. He may have been involved in that, but he was definitely suffering a mental health crisis. And this goes to show why we should really make sure that we properly fund children and young people's mental health care and provision. Which has been his concern anyway for the last 40 years. And you think, well, how do you like you could say right by default, someone who goes and stabs someone to death that they've never met before must have a mental health issue. But in a way, you sort of think, well, clearly you've your category for what mental health is is is not based upon any kind of assessment of a person, but based upon a series of acts which must necessitate some kind of mental health issue, which could be remedied, relieved, and solved with an increase in funding into mental health provision. Now it might be absolutely true that we need to provide more money for mental health, but it might be also nothing to do with what this man, Ali Harby Ali, was doing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um so it it's the sort of nonsense of saying, Oh, I don't need to actually listen to what was going on. Right. This just go clicks a switch in my brain to go, this is this is the problem here. This is where the blame lies.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Which means we we never learn anything. We use events as pretexts for riding the hobby horses we were already riding, and we'll be riding long after we've forgotten this instant, you know. And that that is the the great tragedy um of this. And so we we've decided that we will come up with a game.
SPEAKER_02Yes, as we like to do on the speakeasy. We want to have a game this week. Last week we looked at some we heard some sort of stories, personal testimonies of either people coming to faith or coming out, and we had to guess which one was which based upon the language, because we recognized they sounded very similar. So um I think we have Jack Jack over there on the tech deck. Hello, Jack on the tech deck.
SPEAKER_04And guys in the live chat, uh, do feel free to play the game. Jack, explain the rules to us.
SPEAKER_00Uh sure, no problem, guys. Thanks. Uh so uh if you're ready to play the blame game. The rules are uh I'm it's basically a simple multiple choice quiz. I will read out to you the name of a specific tragedy, specific tragic event and the year that it took place in. Okay. And then I will list for you three uh potential excuses that were made for why this was such a tragedy. Um you will have to try and guess uh which one was actually said by an actual politician. Okay.
SPEAKER_04So the speaker in each case is a politician.
SPEAKER_00There is it's all politicians, and I'm afraid based on the website I got these from, I'm pretty sure they're all American as well. Okay. Yeah, so um yeah, they'll be quite localized to there. But um yeah, nonetheless, I think it should be quite an interesting experience to learn what sort of things were said. And after you've guessed, I will reveal to you who said it and the full context of the quote.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02Let's go.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so the first event was Hurricane Maria in 2017. Did the politician in question blame this event on a massive debt, B a breach of protocol, or C, not enough help from other countries?
SPEAKER_04Debt? A breach of protocol or lack of help. Or lack of help from other countries. I'm gonna reveal reveal my ignorance and say, was Hurricane Maria? Was that in the States?
SPEAKER_02Well, I yeah, I I'm probably not allowed to do that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And you were in the States in 2017.
SPEAKER_02I was in in 2017. Yeah. I mean, we know who was president in 2017. Donald J.
SPEAKER_04Why isn't he the answer is Dr.
SPEAKER_02D Donald Trump. Or maybe this is one of the things he said. So, right, I'm gonna go with a lack of help from other countries. Okay. Because even if it's not in America, I'm gonna say that was what it was. Um that was someone said, Oh, if America had helped. Nobody. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_04Oh, right, because I couldn't have divine retro retribution because they weren't helping other countries.
SPEAKER_02So, but I'm gonna go with the lack of help, which was C.
SPEAKER_04Okay, Jackie, you're with Jackie Knowles, who says C. Tracy H and Greg Doles are both going for B. What was B remind me of B?
SPEAKER_00The uh a breach of protocol.
SPEAKER_04Breach of protocol. I think Tracy and Greg are recognizing that this is not the kind of answer you would make up if it was not protocol. Nick Whitaker says, oh, it has to be budget.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04Ah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, so what are you going with? You'll go B.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna go B. I'm going C. Breach of Protocol. What is the answer? Well, um the answer is actually A.
SPEAKER_00Massive debt.
SPEAKER_04Massive debt.
SPEAKER_01Nick was right.
SPEAKER_04Nick was right. Whatever the money one was, follow the money, says Nick.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Uh President Donald Trump at the time said Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure and massive debt, is in deep trouble in the wake of Hurricane Maria and the consequences of it. Okay.
SPEAKER_02So Trump was involved. Yes, and it was tr yeah. Blame was Puerto Rico doesn't have enough money.
SPEAKER_04Infrastructure to withstand the hurricane. Was that his point? I mean, I'm I'm seeing it.
SPEAKER_02It wouldn't have been as bad if they were richer. I don't know.
SPEAKER_04Is that a point? I mean, sometimes those things are said about earthquakes. It's like well, I mean, like um the earthquake in like Haiti in Port-au-Prence, you know, um was of lesser magnitude than ones that sort of rock Christchurch on a much more regular basis. But so there is a poverty problem because there isn't the infrastructure to pay for things. So I I've just bailed double jumping out and we both got it wrong. So we're on zero points. Tracy H says, great job.
SPEAKER_03Hello, it's me again for the middle part of the show. We will resume Jack's game shortly, but first I'd just like to draw your attention to some Speak Life online rooms that we have. Um, Speak Life is a charity, we rely entirely on the generosity of people like you. So if you would like to make a donation, um, you can go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. And regular givers are invited into our online rooms where you will have access to exclusive content, and it's also just a great online community for Speak Life members and supporters, and we share prayer requests and projects and all short all sorts of things. So if you would like to uh join that, uh that's where you can go. Back to Jack, I will catch you at the end of the show. Okay, question two.
SPEAKER_00Okay, uh this one was about uh a shooting in Columbine High School. Um did the politician in question in this case blame it on a violent video games, B poor education, or C, depression and mental health?
SPEAKER_01Columbine in the nineties. What was it, ninety-six or something?
SPEAKER_001999.
SPEAKER_04Oh, ninety nine. Ninety nine.
SPEAKER_02That's later than I thought. I know what so it's it's it's um it's the Matrix and it's um it's it's the computer game. Computer games.
SPEAKER_04It's always computer games.
SPEAKER_02Because it was like a sort of Marilyn Manson and you know it's the pop culture that that's so bereft of of um it's nihilistic, and so that's why these kids are.
SPEAKER_04Wendy Lomont is all over this video games. She said on Twitter earlier. Also The Matrix was blind. Um I think I think we've nailed that one. Everyone's going A, Greg Goals, Tracy H. Well, we're all or we're all wrong. Yeah, we could all be wrong. What's the answer, Jack?
SPEAKER_00Uh the answer was indeed violent video games. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions said about the Columbine High School mass shooting, they are able to hook up to the internet and play video games that are extraordinarily violent.
SPEAKER_02Okay. But that was such that feels like such a period of time where that was a thing. When there was a sort of, you know, it was the blaming the ills of society on particular forms of pop culture, which was like uh which was a genuine thing. Before tw before we had Twitter to blame. Before we could blit it blame social media, we could just blame video games and films. Yeah. Um But I feel like they they did they talk about that in the the letters, the killers wrote letters or something, which in which they reference stuff. I don't know. I'm just I'm Yeah, yeah, yeah. Should probably just stop talking about this one. But anyway, thank you for that.
SPEAKER_04That's question number two. Question number three.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so question number three, uh the Las Vegas shooting, 2017. Did the politician in question say that the problem with this whole thing was A, the wrong president was in office, B, terrorism was the fault of this, or C there were not enough guns at the scene of the crime?
SPEAKER_02Oh, it'll be I think it'll be not enough guns. Yes. Which is ridiculous when you actually look at the the the situation in that because obviously it was one guy who'd hold up in a hotel room with a whole bunch of automatic weapons and obviously just shot people at a festival like they were like it was a computer game. Yeah. Um but yes, people I mean, yeah, I think the the not enough guns thing, you know, good guy with a gun takes out the bad guy with a gun. That is an American kind of perspective on it, which I mean it's been proven true in lots of cases where people have been taken out by you know, a carrying citizen. But um in that one I think yeah, maybe a bit of a stretch.
SPEAKER_04I think uh th the the the answer the wrong president was in office is so silly that it might be true.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04In that I could I could make up those other two like false answers. But I don't think I'd even think to say the wrong president in that point. So I'm I'm gonna say the wrong president. Okay, but you're gonna say guns.
SPEAKER_02I'm going with the so so Jackie and I get on so well. We always pick the same one. Uh Greg in and Tracy are with you.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Who's right, Jack? Uh well, I'd just like to thank you, Glenn, for indirectly praising my creativity because the correct answer was C, not enough guns.
SPEAKER_02So no one can come up with Jack. What Jack came up with? It was brilliant.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Brilliant mind. Um Have we got one more? Is there one more?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, there's one more if you want to do one more.
SPEAKER_02I think people are enjoying this. They're all totally, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Sure, okay. Well, uh number five, uh the event was Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. Oh yeah. So did the politician blame this on A, social media, B, lazy allocation of tax money, or C, it wasn't a tragedy in the first place?
SPEAKER_04Oh. It wasn't A.
SPEAKER_02Now I'm thinking, could Jack have come up with that? The darkest timeline in which Jack thinks someone could think. Because I think that's thinking, Jack. I think it's got to be the middle one as well. It's a tragedy. The the tax money.
SPEAKER_04Yes. I mean, there was a debate, wasn't it, about the levy? The the levy wasn't sufficiently strong, and wasn't there, wasn't there a debate about that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yes. I mean, the thing I remember about that, so obviously it's not too it's not social media 2005 because most of the social media channels weren't around. I think YouTube had just been invented that year.
SPEAKER_04But um and it has a tangential relationship to hurricanes, just just saying.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, no one's gonna blame we can't pin Active God on. All these people watching Charlie bit my finger. That's what's causing hurricanes. Um but no, the issue the the real sort of political mileage in that was um was how soon George Bush visited. Yeah, it was too late. He didn't visit in time or something like that. But yeah, I'll go for it.
SPEAKER_04And then Kanye on the um on the telethon next to Mike Myers. Have you seen this YouTube clip? We should get it for later. But um uh they're raising money for Katrina survivors, and there's there's a piece with Mike Myers and Kanye West, and and like Kanye goes off script. I mean off script. Oh, okay. And he was like, because George W. Bush does not care about black people. Let me see. And yeah. And Waynesworld is just there, like unsure what to do.
SPEAKER_02Cut to an ad break. So it's but this is politicians, not Kanye West. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, Kanye 2024. Who knows? Uh so I'm gonna I'm gonna say it's uh improper allocation of taxation. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that was B.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh that was B. I'll just tell you what the uh full quote was and the full context of it. Um the the the answer may have been a little misleading, but uh basically Representative Richard Baker said we finally cleaned up New Orleans public housing. We couldn't do it, but God did. That was his comment on the Hurricane Katrina. So it wasn't a tragedy. In his eyes, basically, yeah. I mean he backtracked on that a bit later, but it did little to walked it back, as they say.
SPEAKER_01Um thank you very much, Jack. That was a tricky one, but yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_02The blame game. We love playing the blame game. We should have a jingle for the blame game, we should do it every week.
SPEAKER_01Or in the blame on the tragedy. Plenty of blame to go around.
SPEAKER_02So let's just have a think about what it is that that makes people why do we go in with this preconceived idea to say, I'll tell you what why that's wrong. Or I'll tell you what what's to blame for that. It's this. Why did why do we do that?
SPEAKER_04Well, for one thing, we hate being out of control, and a tragedy that strikes senselessly is abhorrent to our sense of reality, and that would make us that would make us face the fact that we live on a a terrifying planet where literally anything could kill you at any moment. Yeah. And you are not God, and you are you are helplessly out of control. And tragedies like what happened to David Amos at midday on Friday could happen to you at midday tomorrow, and you're not in charge. Um Okay, we okay, I'm not gonna live in that world. There must be reasons. Yeah. And I need to have access to those. I can't I can't entrust those reasons to somebody else, aka God. I've got to know what those reasons are because I've got that that will help me get a handle on my life and and sort of place me in a world that is not so abjectly terrifying. So I I think there's there's that control aspect to it. And then there's the sort of the self-justification aspect to it that I've been riding this hobby horse for quite some time. And GK Cheston's got this funny line about um most people aren't content when their um theory is proved by data. Most people are only content when their theory proves all the data. And so we're we're we're all walking around with our little tiny little thumbnail sketches of the world that prove everything.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And anything that comes up on my Twitter feed, I know what that is. That's climate change.
SPEAKER_02What whatever, whatever the There's a couple of nice sort of illustrations I've heard people use on these things, which is um, oh, what's the phrase? What my net can't catch ain't fish. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so you think, oh, that's an interesting sort of thing. Yeah. And the the oh, I think this might have been from Cornelius Van Till, who was a Dutch uh uh sort of apologist in the 20th century. And taught presuppositional apologetics, which I don't know that much about having been to where I went to school. But um he was saying that on once people have discounted the idea of God, they're effectively like like a drunk man trying to find his car keys in the light of the street lamp.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_02And the keys must be in the light of the street street lamp because that's the only illuminated place. Right. So unless they're in here, they have ceased to exist because there can't be anything outside of this. And I think so much of of what we've seen over the weekend with this you know, the tragedy for David Amos is is people just saying, no, I only have political illumination. Yes. And so my only understanding of this must be down to what party politics has been doing. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And that's partly down to, okay, because the obvious blame card is okay, what the killer actually came with. Yeah. Like he came with his calling card, he's like, hello, and he's been detained under the terrorist act, terrorism act. Um, so you know, what's a what's a terrorist gotta do to get taken seriously these days? You know, but we don't want to go there. So we we we don't so we've kind of so that yeah, so that's the darkness that we're not gonna look into.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And there are other darknesses that we never look into, which is like things like me, I might be part of the problem. Yeah. We will never do that. And so we we need a problem that's sufficiently outside the family hunt.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got yeah, it's gotta be someone else. And you can and and we won't do the thing which says maybe there is something about Western society, which doesn't have to be the patriarchy and capitalism, right? It doesn't have to be these big kind of you know, bully boys of of the left. It just needs to be a lack of social cohesion which has multiple different reasons but seems to produce all sorts of um of uh implications in terms of the way that people think about themselves, about their neighbour, about the world that they live in, and which you know at root has just sin, you know, in it underneath it, and in all its multi, you know, um multifaceted uh elements. Yeah. And and and and one of the other things I this this made me think of was when there's a couple of occasions in the Gospels where people will point to someone in an unfortunate situation, whether it's the man born blind in in John 9, or you've got the um the the Tower of Silo which falls and kills people, or those whose whose blood um sacrifices, yeah. And in almost in in all those situations, Jesus says I wouldn't worry too much about putting the blame on the people who suffered.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And actually think, like you were saying earlier, about how this relates to your precarious, vulnerable position in the world. I it this is a time for personal reflection rather than for pointing the fingers and saying, you know, oh, they got what was coming to them, or this is because of some other terrible people over there.
SPEAKER_04Right, right. Which is you know, the the Cornelius Van Til um example is precisely that the the man is looking outside his house, you know, out in the street. Yeah. Because that's the comfortable place to you know to to find an an an issue. And it's very uncomfortable to find something closer to home. And like I I apply this to the you know, in the last twelve months, things about Ravi Zacharias, you know, came to came to light within the Christian church. And where did we want to find fault? Where did we want to put the blame? And you know, one very prominent evangelist came out with a blog post about a year ago when people were starting to take this this stuff seriously, and and people didn't really take this stuff seriously until it's kind of February of uh 2021. But one particular evangelist wrote this blog post saying, I know what the problem with Ravi Zacharias was. Um he was into intellectual apologetics.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_04And he he he was always a little bit too clever for himself, was was this Ravi Zacharias. And I'd always noticed this about him. Now, this actual evangelist um kind of endorsed every Ravi Zacharias book that was ever going and spoke uniquely. And universally in glowing terms about Rav Zacharias. And so, you know, suddenly after the death and after the scandal, he comes out and saying, Yeah, I always I always knew what the problem was with Ravi Zacharias. It was his intellectual apologetics. And you think, yeah, yeah, one minute he was giving the clam cosmological argument, and the next minute he was trafficking women for sex. It's an easy mistake to make. It's a hop, skip, and a jump. And you just like No, this was the hobby horse you were riding 20 years ago. You've been riding this hobby horse for years. And now this tragedy hits, and you want to fit it into a narrative that you've already had, which has nothing to do really with why he was trafficking women for sex and doing all sorts of financial, sexual, and spiritual abuse on people. But the and part of the reason is okay, we want to fa we want to fit it into a narrative, as Greg Dole says, everyone has a narrative they're looking to validate. And everyone's everyone has vulnerabilities and sins that they want to protect and keep eyes away from. And it's much it's much more comfortable to talk about intellectual apologetics than it is to talk about our own vulnerabilities to sex and abuse and complacency and the bystander effect and complicity with evil and structures that allowed and enabled the abuse. Much easier to talk about. I was never a fan of intellectual apologetics, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And and that idea of um oh you you mentioned this in in a different context. I think on Friday when the Friday's unlocked, and you were talking about um Procrusties. Oh yes. That's how you pronounce his name, the Procrustian bed. Um which is a fascinating uh part of the the myth of of Theseus. Um I was doing some reformed mythologist work on this. Take us through the myth, reformed mythologists. So so so Theseus is gonna go off, he's on this great adventure towards um Athens, and he meets a series of um terrible people on the way, right? And they're all kind of notoriously wicked, and they all have their own special contrived way of slaughtering travelers. Like they do this all all these different ways, and um so Pro Crustes is this guy who who basically has an inn, he's an innkeeper, and he has this bed, and he says uh one size fits all, right? That's that's the great thing about my bed, is no matter who you are, whatever traveller, this bed, ladies and gentlemen, come on, Theseus.
SPEAKER_04That's the number one thing I look for in a hotel.
SPEAKER_01That's it. I want a bed that's gonna perfectly fit me. Is this identical? Is this five foot ten? So if it's five foot eleven, I'm not interested. No, yeah, yeah. I only want a precise bed.
SPEAKER_02And he so so he says, I'll you know, everyone will fit fit on my um on this bed. And and the way that Procrostes gets everyone to fit on the bed is if you're too short, he puts basically it becomes a rack, and you are stretched out till you pop and you finally fit on the size of the bed. If you're too long, we cut enough bits off of you so that you fit into the bed. And in some ways, that's what's happening with this, you know, these these you know, pin the blame on the tragedy, yeah. Is we're saying, I've got my procrastinate bed, I've got an idea. Already decided the way the world is, yeah, but I know the way the world is, yeah, and see everything fits. But of course you just end up ignoring the way the world is and insisting on having your own very warped view of the world. Um now the gr sorry, just to continue the the Theseus story before he then goes to Athens and gets off to do the minotaur thing, he um he uh always flips the the script on these, you know, he doesn't turn the tables, he turns the bed on Procrostes and then kills Procrostes on that bed. Um and so Theseus wins in the end. Yes. That's just a very quick book.
SPEAKER_04And the yeah, and the redemption of it for us, I guess, is that the the tragedy at the heart of the Christian story is the death of God um and who is to blame. Um and you can you can play the blame game all you like and you can point the finger and lots of people do, but at the end of the day, those three fingers are pointing back at you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And the the blame for the death of God is me, because I do insist that this world revolves around me and my silly little you know conception of reality. And when God shows up, I put him on the on the Procrustrian bed, yeah and I say, This is this is not the God I was bargaining for, and so we chop him to pieces. Yeah. And we l we literally did that. Um but the flipping of the script in the Christian sense is you know, he rises up again to offer us peace, yeah, you know, and to and to invite us, you know, not onto a rack, but you know, to his table, where we belong, you know, all sorts, all shapes and sizes, on the basis of repentance, you know, which and repentance is a beautiful word, isn't it? It's rethink, think again. Yeah, yeah. You you thought God was the problem, you're the solution. Think again, pal. You know, God's the solution, you're the problem. But on that basis, you come and you're welcome. And I think and so there there's a brilliant welcome and there's a brilliant escape from the blame game as well. Because now I'm welcome at the same table as all the others, but only on the basis that I'm a selfish so-and-so too, and I'm a re I I'm now repentant by grace. And instead of dulling out the the the blame, now instead of dulling out the invitations, you know, come to the table and and join the party.
SPEAKER_02I reckon. No, I think I think the flipping of the switch, uh well, the flipping of the script, the turning of the tables, um, yeah, these are all good. Just on that, just another example of the um, you know, what buy net can't catch any fish. I try to I don't know if anyone else wanna remember this advert. It was an advert for a sh um a lager called Harp lager, which I think is Irish. Is that right? It's brewed by the Guinness guys, isn't it? Irish, Irish lager called Harp. Yeah. And the advert was brilliant because there was a barber shop, and the man goes into the barbershop and uh he sits down and he says what he'd like, and then the barber says, Oh, well, you could have a Lionel Blair. Now, just we should footnote this as well. Lionel Blair was uh you know, light entertainer in uh whatever, probably decades. But he said, You could have a Lionel Blair cut like mine, and then the guy in the chair says, But Lionel Blair doesn't have his hair cut like yours. And then the barber says, He does if he comes in here. And I've loved that joke for the whole like for I don't know, 20 years I've enjoyed 25 years. I've loved the phrase, Lionel Blair doesn't have his hair cut like yours. He does, he does if he comes in here, it's just and that's the way that that I think is the best example. You know, forget Pro Crusties in his bed, yeah, forget Cornelius Van Till, harp log, time for a sharp harp. If anyone else, if anyone has ever seen the advert, or if literally it came to me in a dream, I would like to know. Maybe we can find it on YouTube, but it's uh yeah, it's what happens.
SPEAKER_04So rest in peace, David Amos, and Rise in Glory, a man of faith. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Catholic who stood proud for his pro-life beliefs, and uh, you know, it's been very interesting hearing the the tributes to to David Amos and how full of faith he was, and how no one can kind of speak about his life without speaking about his faith. Yeah, which is interesting because I I I went online to try and find, you know, are there some quotes that you know he has about you know theology, like what what is um and I guess his legacy has been the fact that he has stood for things like pro-life issues on the basis of of his Catholic faith and saying, I was born a Catholic, I'll die a Catholic, I'm this is this is right at the core of who I am. And I guess that integrity has has spoken uh such volumes, really.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, and and you we obviously hope that genuine investigation is done, genuine you know, rethinking is done. I mean it would be it would be a wonderful thing if um if his death did bring about a change in attitudes within the political discourse. Because the political discourse is toxic and it's horrible, and people are mean to each other on Twitter, and etc. etc. And there are problems with mental health. And of course, we it would be wonderful if the the legacy of the tragedy was positivity and positive moves as the South End becoming a city seems to be. That would be a great legacy, um, but yeah, let we just we want to be people who are looking at the world and genuinely investigating what's going on in it and not coming with our preconceived notions and jumping in with a hot take.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02When when we there's absolutely no need to do so.
SPEAKER_03Well, there we go. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Speak Life Podcast. Just a reminder that you can watch these shows live on our YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash speaklifemedia, all one word. And these speakeasy episodes go out live at 8 pm on Mondays, and you can engage in the live chat, and as you heard in the show today, some of those live comments are read out, which is really exciting. It's a great chance for us to engage with our audience and answer questions on air. Well, thank you so much for listening, and God bless.