Sunny Banana

Andy Bannister | Men, Machines, And A Not-So Holy Beard #29

• The Chaplain

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Something is shifting. The old script—more science equals less God—no longer fits the moment, and faith is making a comeback. With Andy Bannister, we explore how the edges of AI and physics are reopening big questions about meaning, purpose, and the origins of intelligence. From fine-tuning to the ethics of machines, the conversation moves beyond slogans and into the risky, refreshing territory where truth matters again.

We dig into the classroom, where students are more open than cynics expect, and where AI functions as theology in a lab coat. Andy shares stories that puncture lies—like the claim that religion causes most wars—and we look at what the data and real conflicts actually show. Then we take up a delicate challenge: do all religions lead to the same God? Respecting difference becomes a form of love, and clarity a path to better conversations.

Finally, we talk about men, meaning, and the hunger for a life that asks something of us. If reality is relational at its core, then place, community, and responsibility are not optional extras. We explore meekness as strength under control, the cost of discipleship as formation rather than therapy, and why rigor is drawing people toward practices that shape the heart and steady the mind. It’s a candid, hopeful journey through faith, reason, and the kind of courage that builds a life.

If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review telling us what challenged you most. Your voice helps others find the journey.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome everybody to the Sunny Banana. Sunny Bunani. I see you. Today we have a very special guest and a wonderful privilege to have Mr. Andy Bannister with us. Andy Bannister is a author, speaker, and broadcaster, and he is also the director of Solas, which I'll we will hear about in a moment. I've I've worked with some of uh Andy's books when I'm teaching philosophy, namely The Atheist Who Didn't Exist really came in handy with uh teaching arguments for and against God. And we're just gonna have a lovely chat about faith and spirituality. And yeah, so welcome Andy to the Sunny Banana.

SPEAKER_03:

Jared, it's great to be with you, and probably you win the award for the most entertainingly titled podcast that I have been on.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah quite as well.

SPEAKER_03:

I've been on many, but Sunny Banana is fantastic, so it's great to be with you.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. As I just uh so you know, so sunny bunani in Zulu means I see you. It's a wonderful greeting, actually. It's a greeting in South Africa. So I say I see you, and then the person says, I also see you. So it's more of like a not just a how are you, yeah, I'm fine, and you it's uh oh, I love that, I love that, and some great theology exactly there, right?

SPEAKER_03:

I think immediately back to Hagar and in that wonderful, you know, one of the first people in the old testament to I think to name God, and of course, you know, the one who sees it. And so I love that, I love that aspect of the Christian faith that you know, no matter how you could be the lowest of the low, but there is one who sees, and it's the Lord.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh man. Like it's also it's a bit ironic that we're on a Google Meet now and we're talking through technology, but it's all about the the human and being relational and being communal, which I think religion and faith is its superpower, really. And we'll get into this because something's something is going on in the culture at the moment. Well, let's let's start there, perhaps. Because are you going to the conference on Saturday by any chance?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, the surprising rebirth.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Do you know what? I am not going, Jared. But the reason I'm not going is for relational reasons because I travel quite a lot for work.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

It's a free weekend, so family is really important. Yes. So, you know, when that when that came up, I was like, oh, I'd love to go. But I got a choice of that, or going with my family to my aunt, to my wife's aunt's 90th birthday. So I will not be surprisingly rebirthing. I will be eating surprising amounts of birthday cake.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm aware of the conference and I'm aware of the whole surprising rebirth kind of piece. I know, I know Justin Briarly, I know Glenn Scrivener, those guys are really, really well. But you're going, I believe.

SPEAKER_00:

I am on my way. Yeah, I'm going there. So really looking forward to it. Love John Lenox and all and a lot of the speakers that are going to be there. So very exciting times. And I wonder if we can start there, as I said. So you posted something about the rise for scientists to reject God. Uh, can you tell us where yeah, can you tell us more about do you remember that post about a month ago or so? I'd reckon. Yeah, comment on what's going on.

SPEAKER_03:

I think that post from memory, because you're, you know, the joys of those of us who spend our lives too much on social media is we forget what we post and when. There's been a whole number of things going on in culture, haven't they? And this whole surprising rebirth piece, the whole quiet revival thing, but also the growing number of scientists, I think, who are beginning to go there has to be something kind of out there. I think that was the post right. And to go, there's a couple of stats to pick this up. This is a book that's come out of Europe, the title which temporarily escapes me, was in French originally translated into English, looking at faith and science, and sold half a million copies in Europe, now being translated into English. It was being reviewed very favorably in the mainstream media. Then I think the thing that's surprised me in recent years, Jared, has been um particularly on the cutting edge of science and technology right now, is people talking very positively about faith again. To give you one example, I've done a lot of work in the last year in the whole area of AI, artificial intelligence. In fact, I nearly, before I went to university and did theology and then got a PhD in Islamic studies, I nearly did AI. I was going to study artificial intelligence and linguistics back in the in the early 90s, and God had other ideas. But I've been reading my way back into the field. I'm writing a book on it next year, Lord willing. And I became struck by the number of thinkers in that field who are quite open to spiritual things. The most recent example, I just on the plane back from an event I was speaking at in Sweden last week, was reading a book by a guy called Ray Kurt Kurzweil. Ray is probably one of the most well-known authors and writers and intellectuals in the area of AI. He's the guy who popularized the idea of the singularity. That's the idea that maybe in the future humans and AI will merge and we'll sort of live forever in the cloud. Um completely bonkers idea, personally, but Ray has been a champion. So he is incredibly well known. Literally, in the opening introduction to his latest book that came out early this year, uh The Singularity is Neera, he talks about the fact that he believes a whoever is the title he gives with a capital W created the universe because something had to kick start intelligence. Intelligence doesn't come from nowhere. Yeah. And then in about sort of uh the third or fourth chapter in the book, he's got six pages on the fine-tuning arguments. He thinks that the numbers that power the laws of physics are so carefully balanced, it's beyond doubt that in some kind of intelligence kickstarted the universe. And this, you know, this is not a guy you'd have had pegged as any kind of theist, and he throws it in without controversy. Um yeah, there is something going on in culture right now across the board, right? Yeah. The days when, say, Richard Dawkins could just assume that to be a scientist meant you'd be skeptical. I think those days are over.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. The thing is, what I see in a school is that no one really understands that these original well to say the original scientists, but scientists a long way back had a faith in God or an understanding of the divine, and so that's what drew them to study the world, study the world, study the earth, and make their discoveries in the first place. You know, it came out of a faith rather than a you know, because I think youngsters today would just accept that scientists, oh, you you must be atheists and you can't you can't possibly believe in God.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I think that's slowly changing, but I think you're you're you're broadly right. One of my favorite examples of this was a few years now, about seven or eight years ago, I had this amazing kind of story that they had uh you mentioned John Lennox. So there's a Christian campus group at this university had they'd arranged for John Lennox to come to an event on science and faith. And I think it'd sold out. So the atheist society on campus decided they wanted to put on a competing event. So they approached, I think, one of the I think it was even the head of the physics department to say, Oh, could you come to an event on site the wonder of science, I think, or something like that. So anyway, the Lennox event had about 600 people in it, Jared, and I think the the atheism event had about 30 people. And one of the one of the Christian group went over to sort of sit at the back and observe. And he said, the funniest thing happened. At the end of the talk, came to the Q ⁇ A, and one of the, I think the president of the atheist society stood up and said to the physics professor, Oh, thank you for that presentation, but you haven't anywhere explained why you think that science demolishes religion. You know, could you say anything about that? To which the head of the physics department went, Well, that's a ridiculous idea. I'm a Christian. And what was hilarious was the atheist guys had assumed that because he was you know this eminent physicist, he would therefore be an atheist, and they hadn't bothered to check, and it just looked hilarious when actually you ended up with two science of and faith events happening in in neighboring lectures.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

I think those days are changing slightly. I still think what is happening, and I see this a lot in schools and universities, Jared, is you have the the the teaching profession. So, you know, your your kind of age group and and up, you know, who came when they went through university, went through teacher training, they'd have imbibed the new atheism and this kind of secular stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

But then you see the young people are beginning to go, now that can't be right, or there's more going on, or whatever. I saw some recent survey that that showed that I think now it's only 15% of young people under the age of 20 are atheists. 85%, uh it might be more than that, actually, are no longer identity. I think it's, yeah, I think it's about that number, would say they believe in in something. Now, that doesn't mean they're all confessing Christians. We've got a lot of work to do, but it doesn't mean they're coming in going, yeah, there's obviously no no God.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, one more story, and then turn back to you. I I was doing an event at a school in Dorset last week or the week before. I'd done a I'd done a little mission week earlier in the year. I'd got to know the head of art, religious studies, and philosophy, not a not a Christian, uh kind of liberal Jewish background, I think. Agnostic, I think is how he described himself. He found out back in February that I'm interested in AI, and we got chatting, and he got me in two weeks ago to come to an event for their philosophy society at this school. So about about 30 teenagers there. And they got me to go to an event on AI and the evidence for God. And my thesis basically was that artificial intelligence actually reinforces the arguments for God. And we had this amazing evening, and then the QA came, Jared. There was no pushback, there was no, you know, atheist, you know, uh sort of you know annoying people in the audience. It was students asking lots of, hey, this is interesting, and what about this? How does this work? And I was like, wow. And then afterwards, he sent me this lovely email, the head of philosophy, saying, That was incredible. You need to, I need to get you in to come and do this with the younger ones, because I hadn't realized, you know, that he said they were on fire. Yeah. Afterwards, they were talking about this. So I think we are in very exciting times.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a beautiful thing to hear, sort of that humility in front of information and knowledge. And you know, even as Christians, we we we we we dance off online, you know, because we we want to share this truth with the world that we that we've encountered through God, and we're in a world that gets so offended at things. How do we tell them something so beautiful? How do we share this thing? Because as you were talking, I was thinking about this, and and allowing people to be more bold, and not because I I believe that's what you're saying is absolutely correct, but I think there's a lot of people that I feel like one of the books you've written, How to Talk About Jesus without looking like an idiot, is like a lot of young people today, and many many people today maybe feel a little silly talking about religion, but I think as you say, that is shifting. Uh, just to go back, you said something about the the the Swedish author said something about whoever the name of God was or the name of Oh, that was Ray Kurzweil.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, he's he's an American writer. Yeah, I was reading on the plane from Sweden. Yeah, he used the word who whoever, yeah, or uh which I liked that I thought it was really interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, although it gets me thinking about truth now. So so the one book you wrote about do Muslims and Christians worship the same God, and as a youngster, I was also I was quite happy to say, Oh, they will, you know, everything leads to the same God, it is the same God. Yeah, you know, this whoever thing. So I wonder if you could comment on first that book and and sort of the the the out on of that book, perhaps if you uh yeah, we can briefly talk about this idea of are religions all the same, or does truth matter?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah. Oh wow, I mean talk about jamming many questions together into one, Jared. That's that's great. That's not a good question. Well, let's start with does truth matter? Do you know it's really interesting? On the one hand, we live in an age where people would say, well no, you know, what's true for you is good for you, and what's good for me is good for me. You know, we do live in this quite moral relativistic age, and when it comes to religion, people are very quick to go, you know, maybe every religion is just a different path up the mountain. But on the other hand, the same people become old school modernists when they, you know, fly on an aeroplane. If you got an airplane and the pilot announced over the PA system, hey, you just let you know, you know, I'm a postmodern pilot. So when we're up in the air, I'm gonna invite anybody who wants to come up here and press the buttons they want, what could go wrong? You'd be off that plane terribly fast. If you went to see the doctor, you know, with stomach pains and you said, Oh, do I got this really bad stomach pain? He's like, Oh, well, you know, this is really quite serious. You've got an ulcer, which if you don't treat it might kill you. But on the other hand, I don't want to enforce on you, you know, I'm in my my view of medicine. So I'll tell you what, come around here to my desk straw. I've got thousands of different pills, take whatever you want, whatever you like, that's fine. You wouldn't be going, oh my word, this is such a wonderful doctor. You'd be going, tell me what I need to treat what's wrong with me. So it's only in the areas of morality and the areas of religion that people get all gooey around the edges, I think. I think truth does matter. You know, truth actually, we live or die by by by truth, quite frankly. I mean, literally, as we speak, I could look through my office window and we've got some builders in the in the garden doing some work because it turned out the gas company put the gas line in the wrong place and went through our drain. Now, if they start getting all post-modern and rewiring my gas pipe in a different way, life could get quite exciting for us. So I'm hoping I've got a bunch of modernist builders out there this today, not post-modern. So truth matters. Um now religion. Yeah, people do say, Oh, you know, could all religions be true? But often what I think that gives away, Gerald, is they haven't studied any of them. You know, if a student came to you and they said, Oh, Gerald, I've worked out this amazing secret. I've worked out I only need to buy and read one book because every book in the library is the same. They're all the same book. You know, it's just publishers trying to rip us off. So I'm just going to read the one book. I'm assuming you would pat them on the head and go, brilliant, oh, well done. You found out the great eternal truth that will save you a fortune. You'd go, mate, you've clearly only read one book. You know, once you've read two, you know, it doesn't take a moment to discover that they are all different. And when someone says to you all the world's religions are the same, to me, that's usually a sign they haven't bothered looking at any of them. It's actually a sign of laziness, actually, because actually, when you go and talk to people in different faiths and do the work, Muslims do not believe the same as Christians. I actually think it's really insulting to our Muslim friends to go, I don't need to listen to you because I studied Christianity, so I know it's the same. And then when you do study them, and that was the what led to the book. So I did a PhD in Islamic studies for long and boring reasons, and so ended up knowing Islam really, really, really well. And it's I discovered fairly early on in that journey, Jared, that the you know, the God described by the Quran is not the same as the God described by the Bible, they are radically different. Take pretty much any characteristic of the God of the Bible. And I take five in the book. I go, you know, the God of the Bible is a God who's relational, he's a God who can be known, he's a God who is love, he is a God who is holy and utterly good, and he's a God who has demonstrated his love through suffering in Christ to deal with that, you know, that brokenness, that rebellion uh in us, what the Bible calls sin that separates us from him. Those five descriptions are core, they're fundamental in the Bible to Old and New Testament. The Bible talks about them thousands of times. You turn over to the Quran and you have a God who's not relational. Allah is not a God who who relates. That's not being rude, that's simply what the text says. He's not a God who can be known, his commands can be known, but he is very clear that you can't know him. He's not a God who is love. Nowhere does the Quran make that claim. Holiness is interesting. He's a God who who gives commands and gets wrathful at disobedience, but he's only called holy eight times. And the in the Bible, he's dot he's called holy 300 times. Yeah, and then he's not a God who's who's who's suffered in and through Christ. The Bible denied, the Quran denies the divinity of Jesus, for example. And you stack those differences up and you go, this sounds quite different. And to use an analogy before I pass back to you, you know, if you and I were chatting and we and and we thought we had a friend in common. I mentioned I got a mate of mine who goes to a church in London called Steve, and you go, Oh, I got a mate called Steve who's in London. He's probably the same as your friend. Like, okay, yeah, my friend's from South Africa, and you go, Well, no, your friend's from China. My friend is six foot tall, you know, your friend is five foot two, my friend you know, plays soccer as a hobby, your friend hates soccer. How many differences do we need to get? It's not the same Steve that we're talking about. Yeah, I think logically applies to God that gets a point where the differences become so great. Yeah, I think maybe we need to go. This is possibly a very different God we're talking about. And again, I want to be respectful in saying that. It's not being rude or pejorative or any of those things of going, we don't need to be afraid of difference. Let's talk about it honestly.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that's important to note to say we love our Muslim brothers, we love our Jewish brothers and and sisters, but we are it's I think it's more respectful to say we we don't have the same God and we and be more logical and more thoughtful about the whole thing, where I think we're when we say it's all the same, I think problems, problems can arise.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and just very quickly, very, very quickly on that. You know, I was talking to someone on the weekend who does a lot of work in schools, and he told me this lovely story. He'd come across this 13-year-old uh girl, uh turns a school in London. She's from an African background, she's a Christian, and he was asking her, he was saying, So how do you share your faith at school? Because she's at school with Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and Jews, very multicultural. And this 12-year-old, 13-year-old girl, I think her name was Joy, gave this beautiful answer. She looked at my friends, she said, Oh, when I'm talking to my classmates, I say to them, Hey, what do you like the most about your God? And I told them what I like the most about my God. And I thought that is an absolutely superb way of showing your faith in multicultural context. Because it actually recognizes this difference that your God is not my God, but it's not getting rude and insulting, you know. Talk to your Muslim friends, what do they believe? And then you say, Let me tell you what I love about the God of the Bible. And that from the mouth of a 12 or 12 or 13-year-old girl, I was like, that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm gonna borrow that. That is beautiful, and you use such great analogies there so far. So, like with the with your the book, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist. What sticks out the one thing that sticks out for me is the kettle. I think the kettle doesn't work in the in is a story about a the appliances downstairs don't work. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Try to paint it, trying to they try to blame it on the colour. This was, I think, uh the chapter where religion is, which is quite a big topic at with teenagers, that religion causes all wars and it's all about violence. I think that's that chapter. Um correct me if I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_03:

I've got the dead right. That's uh that's Sven and the Art of Refrigerator Maintenance. So yeah, yeah. So what we try and do in the atheism exists was I when I was engaging with the new atheism when that book first came out, and we're just on the 10th anniversary edition, because although the new atheism is largely over, its arguments are still kicking around.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Was to go, I it struck me, Jared, if you take some of the arguments of the new atheism, like religion is the cause of all wars, for example, or science has buried God, or you know, there's many we could point to. If you take the argument and you put it in a different context, often a funny context, you see the you see the stupidity. So that example is, yeah, people who say, you know, religion is the cause of of all wars. Yeah, I I yeah, I use the example of a you know, sort of a friend of mine who's yeah, who's who's whose refrigerator isn't working and his kettle isn't working, and you know, his toaster isn't working, and he concludes the one thing they have in common is that they're all they're all paint, they're all they're all white. So maybe if he paints them a different color, they'll start working. Whereas actually the real cause is the is the fuses blown. And with our atheist friends, you know, Dawkins, who you know did a TV documentary for Channel 4 years ago called The Root of All Evil, when he pointed to religion, yeah. Going, actually, the academic work that has been done has shown that you know religion is a tiny cause. There's um there's a massive two-volume book called The Encyclopedia of Wars that looks like I think it's 8,000 wars across the whole of recorded history, and they conclude I think it's it's something like 7% religion is the main cause. And it's easy, and and you can see that by the way, when you look at contemporary examples. If you look at, say, the the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this hugely complicated situation there in the Middle East, and you know, it doesn't matter which side you come down on. But here's the thing: often people look at that and go, well, that's a religious war, right? It's Jews and Muslims. It's not, it's a land issue. It's primarily you've got very, very different people groups competing for an area of land, which both sides say they've had for a long time and been there for a long time. And you could remove, you could wave a magic wand and remove Judaism and remove Islam from the setting, and Jews and Palestinians would still have an issue that somehow they've got to sort out. So it's easy to be lazy and go, the cause is religion, where largely, largely it isn't. Largely it's actually, you know, much deeper issues. And so, yeah, it's a very it's very common to make that mistake. And of course, by the way, you know, if you're gonna play that game, you can flip it round and say, well, you know, how many hundreds of millions of people has atheism caused the death of? Because Darling, Mao, Pol Pot, yeah, so on. Now I would I would not want to make that argument. I think it would be unfair to my atheist friends to hold them personally responsible for the cultural revolution. But the point being, if they're gonna do it to us, we can at least raise the question.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I um I think I supplemented that book. I used it for a philosophy lesson, but I supplemented with the the quotes of Alexander Solzeneaton, which always pops into my mind what that is the line between good and evil runs between the heart of every human being, down the middle, you know. So when there are humans involved and fallen humans, as we Christians believe, you know, there's gonna be it's gonna be messy. It's gonna be might be in the name of religion, or it might be in the name, you know, it's just it's just a messy thing, isn't it? So moving on a little bit here. So today is men's mental health. I wanted to throw this in here. Yes, awareness day and so so being a man and uh we're talking about masculinity and that at the school. So uh one thing that occurred to me that's quite interesting, and I'd love to hear your opinion on it, is a view of what a man is or how men should be is heavily influenced by the culture's idea of God.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my word.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, not a popular view actually amongst people in my circles, in my industry, but I think there's a very strong case to look at this, especially in history, how a culture views the divine, and then how that influences what a man is and what his responsibilities are and how he how he relates to the world and people and to God.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, where do we start? Why don't we start with something less controversial and then work our way in? I would say that what people think about God determines what kind of society that you're going to you're going to build. So there's a very famous English theologian a few decades ago called Colin Gunton, and very, very influential. King's College was where he was based, died in his early 50s, which was a shame because we, you know, Colin was doing some great work. And one of the things that Colin was doing was a lot of work on the implications of the Trinity. And he was doing an entire systematic theology based on that. Because if we've got Christians, we believe that God in his very nature is three persons, that's going to affect everything. And he was working his way through. So he wrote a book on creation, revelation, on on the Trinitarian theology, got as far as the book on anthropology, what it means to be human. And then we we sadly lost him. But one of the points that Colin made was that, you know, as for Christian societies that were founded on a view of God as three persons in relation, that should make a difference. And he made this point. He said often, you know, atheist critics will say, well, you know, theology is just you know politics projected into the sky. So the medieval peasant looks up there, he sees the castle, he thinks, hmm, I've got a lord, it's the it's the king, maybe there's a bigger lord up there in the sky, and that's how theology begins. And Gunther went, No, no, no, no, no, no. That's the wrong way around. Societies are created in the image of the God that you believe in. And he made the point. Why is it, for example, that the majority, not all, when we're very careful to be fair, but the majority of Islamic countries are totalitarian single powers. Well, it's very hard to avoid the conclusion. If you have God created like that, you have Allah who is absolute will, he gives law that must be obeyed unquestionably, he's not relational, he's not a father, he's not a friend, he's none of those things that as Christians we believe God is, as well as being sovereign, then obviously that then trickles down. And you know, historically, Islam had a caliphate that worked that way, and so on down to today. Christianity, on the other hand, has always tried to hold together the one and the many. So, yes, there is one God, but that God is also many. He's Father, Son, and Spirit. And so Christian societies, when they functioned well, have tried to hold together that balance between the one, the state, which has some power, but also we recognize the individual as well. And it's in the interplay of those things that our societies have been created. We haven't always got it right because we haven't always worked out our theology consistently. So I would say actually, what kind of God you believe in is going to answer is the first thing to ask before we get into the question of masculinity. You know, theology is not a neutral kind of subject. And by the way, to look back to something we said about earlier, one of the things that I think was so came out in that school session I taught on AI and theology is that actually theology is becoming ever more important because all of the questions in artificial intelligence, one of the most cutting-edge scientific subjects going on right now, they're all theological questions. Yeah. You know, what's good and evil? What's the purpose of life? What does it mean to be human? You know, what is the good life kind of kind of look like? Are we just meat-based machines as human beings, or are we more than that? On and on it goes. And it's one, you know, very popular university level introduction to the field, written by a non-Christian on its inside cover, says all the big questions and artificial intelligence. Sorry, no, artificial intelligence is just metaphysics by another name. Metaphysics is the posh word for theology. So it's all about theology. So I always say to students, you know, you obviously teach you know young people of going, if you want to be at the cutting edge, forget going and studying physics, mate. You want to study theology, yeah, philosophy, because that's you know, quite frankly, where the big money is going to be and the big work's gonna be done. Sorry, I slightly derailed your your excellent broader question.

SPEAKER_00:

No, that's that's wonderful. Like it's it's it's opening the discussion on what it means to be human because I think that's what's at stake. We I just read uh Paul Kings North Against the Machine.

SPEAKER_03:

He's oh I'm two-thirds of the way into that book. Isn't it isn't it astonishing?

SPEAKER_00:

Incredible book, incredible, and the the the the four P's, the past, people, prayer and place and place, yeah, and place it's gonna it's gonna become so important. I I think and uh it's lovely. It's lovely. I think I think uh the response to the rebirth, I think this is what's happening. I think when when I spoke to the iconographer Aiden Hart, we spoke about that Christianity, especially roots down the person in their humanity, you know, it brings and makes you more human than you ever been before, is like what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_03:

And on those P's, by the way, I mean that begins to get us into the masculinity question that you you raise. And by the way, I mean, yeah, to people listening, I I I couldn't recommend Kings North's book more more highly. I don't know about how you do how you read your books, Jared. I I underline, I'm terrible. I I underline books. I'm struggling with that one because I want to underline literally every I mean that paragraph and that paragraph and that and that story is he's an incredibly gifted writer, very well-known writer, actually, very you know, very influential literary career. And he's one of the guys who's come through the whole surprising rebirth. He played around with spiritual stuff, but I think it's really only the last few years he's come right and gone. I'm now I'm a Christian, very much Christian. Yeah, and the book is brilliantly written because he doesn't put that, he doesn't do that deliberately at the fore. When you know that, you're like, okay, this makes much more sense. I think he's trying to win people in. But on those things, I mean, take things like you know, the importance of place and the importance of family and that kind of thing comes through in community. Yeah, I think one of the reasons why men are struggling a lot in our culture right now is we're rootless. Paul talks in that book a lot about how the machine, which is the phrase he uses for this utterly consumeristic, data driven that reduces everything to its economic value, just corrodes everything. And so we have a generation of guys who are rootless because historically, and the Christian faith has a lot to say about family and fatherhood and the importance of where you are and the community you're in, you take those away. I think guys end up drifting, going, Well, what am I supposed to be here to? To do because the answer is you're supposed to be here to fight. I don't mean militarily, I mean fight for the best and the good for your community, to be a leader in that, in the fact to build families and invest into the lives of your children and your and your wife and your community. And that by the way is saying nothing about the role of women. Anyone listening to this going, but what about women? There's a whole conversation there to be had. I'm not a woman, I'm not going to speak for you. Take that away. I think no wonder young men are struggling to go, what am I supposed to be doing? What am I supposed to be championing? What does it look like to be heroic and strong and take a stand if you remove those places away? And then the prayer piece, too, is a hugely important piece. You look back through the history of Christian spirituality, you know, it's full of men who just blazed a trail. I'm a great champion of the of the Celtic saints, because you know from the North Jared. So I love the story of people like Bede and Aidan and Cuthbert who would walk out of the North Sea, you know, up to their waist, up to their up to their neck, and just pray, you know, surrounded by nature. That was that was pretty heavygoing. You know, any guy who thinks that spirituality is a bit wimpy, I go, those guys were not wimpy, mate. Those guys were pretty full on. Um, or I look at someone like my friend Wes Huff online, you know, online stuff who's known as Wes Buff because the guy works out and to go. So I think I think, yeah, so I think that's one of the reasons for this crisis of masculinity. And then what happens, I think you get two directions, don't you? You get you get people going into men's mental into mental health issues, with people just utterly depressed and rootless, and I just don't know what I'm here for, or you get the utterly toxic masculinity, yeah, you know, stuff that can happen too that is that is out there and that people find because they're looking for something. I remember first coming across this right through the whole Jordan Peterson is phenomenal where whatever you make of Jordan, again, you don't have to take a stand on what you think of him. It was more that millions of people are tuning in and watching him do three-hour long form videos on the Old Testament. Yeah, and the majority of his listeners are young men in their twenties.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And you watch that for a while and go, they're looking for direction, they're looking for purpose, they're looking for meaning, and they're looking a lot in for father figures. You look at the number of young guys who are growing up in the UK without without fathers, and no wonder that they're rootless. So I think this is part of the whole surprising rebirth, Jared and the Quiet Revival, too. There's an opportunity for the church here to really speak to this, not ding them around the head and say you're bad for being men, but going, hey, man up, actually. I like the phrase man up. There's a there's a whole conversation about womaning up, but again, that's for our friends over on the you know who are women to wade into that one. Yeah, you and I to be saying to young men who are you know in our care, yeah, you know, stand up straight, borrow Jordan Peterson's phrase, but not so we just talk about lobsters, but so we can actually live for Christ, which is what we were intended.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've only realized lately, I was at a Bible study last week about meekness. And a friend of mine, an absolute incredible person who's a convert to Christianity from paganism, arm wrestler. I want to have I want I want to have him on my show. I want to talk to him. But he's he's he's inspired me so much. But anyway, he's talking about these the horses that had to be broken in, the the wild horses that had to become they were absolute beasts, but they were their their their their strength and their wildness was tamed, and that was meekness because I always thought meekness was something like almost of a weakness, it was showing it wasn't good. I don't know, I didn't understand it until he explained this. And it's like men also need to just it's they need something for self-control, they need discipline, and to their masculinity must be channeled through virtue and ultimately by the hand of God and guided uh as God as the how do I say the one who controls the horse, you know, and we are horses, we are the horses, and yeah, that's a nice analogy, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03:

There's also something to about you could extend the analogy, it occurs to me slightly of going that all power needs sort of training and focusing, yeah, doesn't it? I mean, if you've got a sort of you know, I I spent sort of you know six years before I lived in the in England living in Scotland, and you go walking the hills there, there are lots of hydroelectric schemes where they put little you know power stations into the streams, but often a stream that's running all over the place to make a hydroelectric thing where you've got to focus it, right? Get the water into a channel and you focus it, and that can turn a turbine, generate power. You could train the horse, yeah. Um, you know, in the military, you know, it would be the same. You don't just take younger recruits to go right off you go. There's a process of focusing and shaping. And then it was interesting. I was speaking at an event last week uh with a friend, and he we he was talking about discipleship in his session, and he made the point that the word discipleship is not mentioned in the New Testament. The word disciple is, but discipleship isn't. The idea is there, but the word isn't. But that got me being a word nerd. I went looking, okay, where does that word ship on the end of discipleship or workmanship come from? Well, it's actually an old English word that originally comes out of sort of the you know sort of Germanic, and it and it's the idea of actually it's closer related to shaping. It's if you were a workman and you had a piece of wood, you would shape it and mold it and form it into the thing it's got to be.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

I think it's the true with with with men that I think we have missed peace in the modern church in discipleship more generally. You know, all of us need discipling, men and women, but the discipleship's gonna look a bit different because of the natural leanings that we have. Men are by nature physically stronger than than women. Women are on average, not always. And I never realize you'll have people going, but I know an individual man or woman, yeah, I know. But on average, women are more empathic than men and more tempted, I think, you know, by some of the routes that can take you. And so discipleship is gonna need to recognize those gender differences. But actually, I think we need to do a lot more work in the church of going, okay, how do we take these skills that God has given you as a man, as a woman, and then shape that appropriately so that you can, you know, live life to the full. As Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and have it to the full.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So when you said in the channel, I mean, I was in the channel on Saturday. I didn't I did a park run and I jumped in to see wow, well, the channel. And you reminded me when you said Bede and those Celtic saints. And I just wanted to share something with you. I've had a change of of sort of conversion, and I'm I'm I'm joining the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the the reader or one of the servers said he looked out at the congregation. There was more catechumens, which the people coming to this church to be initiated into the Orthodox Church, then there were Orthodox people, and and nine of them out of the ten men and and arm wrestling rough converts to to Christianity. And it's it's beautiful to see. And uh yeah, I I found a I've found a church that is asking something of me. You know, it's uh it it it's it's asking me to take responsibility and to carry a cross. And to yeah, yeah, and it's not about it's not my it's not about being tough, it's not about being rough, it's about accepting that challenge with faith, with God, that God is going to walk you through this, and this is for your your development and your move towards the kingdom.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. And it's interesting by the way, you mentioned that you did the park run of going, you know, we don't we don't struggle with the idea that if you want to excel at running or any kind of sport, you you put the work in. You know, my my daughter, you know, is a is a rock climber, for example, and to go, you know, she puts a lot of effort in on the climbing wall and whatever to working out to get that skill. She's really she's really kind of honing that. Because if you want to succeed, then you work hard. In some parts of the church, I think we have sometimes forgotten, you know, that that call of Jesus to take up the cross, which is heavy, it ain't gonna be easy and follow. And I was speaking, I mentioned earlier, I was speaking in in Sweden on the weekend for an apologetics conference. But one of the sessions they had me speak on was I did a session called The Cost of Discipleship, where we looked at that passage in in uh the in Luke's gospel. It's there in the other gospels too, where you know Jesus says to his disciples, Who do you say that I am? And Peter's the one who says, Oh, you're the Christ, you're the Messiah. And now Peter, probably at that point expecting Jesus to go, yep, you're dead right, and I'm the kind of Messiah who's going to go and kick some Roman butt. Come on, let's grab our swords and go to Jerusalem. But Jesus completely inverts it by predicting his death and then saying, You need to take up your cross and follow me. And then I talked about the fact in the modern church, we have downplayed that a bit. There is a temptation to turn Jesus into our therapist, yeah, rather than actually there's a cost. And then I came across a couple weeks ago, the organized the organization Open Doors that works for the suffering church, has put an amazing resource, Open Doors UK, put a book out earlier this year called Witness, and it tells the story of 10 different uh Christians suffering for their faith in other parts of the world, but then rather just leave it with a hey, let's feel sorry for them. What's the lessons we can learn for our discipleship? So I told the story of these three amazing Indonesian ladies who uh a few years ago got arrested for sharing their faith with street kids, thrown into this absolutely scummy prison, something that could have destroyed any of us. But actually, they started by cleaning up the prison wing down on their hands and knees, scrubbing it with buckets. That came to the attention of the governor who couldn't work out why they were doing this. They started leading Bible studies and all this other stuff, and after two years in this high security Indonesian prison, they had led 49 of their fellow inmates to Christ. And you tell that kind of story and go, I think we in the West have a little bit to learn about you know getting again some just some rigor back into us. You know, I appreciate listening to this, you know, we don't want to turn Christianity into you must do better or and Jesus will like you more. The wonder of the gospel, Jared, isn't it? Is Jesus gave us everything before we give anything. But then he turns to us and goes, Come on, I've given you everything. Yeah, what are you willing to give up and follow kind of me? And I think men particularly, I think we like a challenge.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

I think that's the other part about masculinity. Again, not saying uh uh, you know, our female folk don't too, but there's something in the male psyche about we like a we like a challenge, we like to get out there and try something adventurous. You know, I'm a I'm a big fan of the golden era of expedition in the early 1900s, whether it's the polls or Everest or whatever. You know, give blokes a challenge, we like to go for it. And I actually think in the church we've softened that slightly. So I'm doing the funny thing is when you said I've had a change, I was waiting, wait for it. I'm gonna guess my first guess of beast and Orthodox, my second guess would be Catholic, because I've had friends who've gone the same when partly quite revival, by the way, is the the Orthodox Church, as you know, yeah, the Catholic Church are growing to partly because I think it's as you say, people want some rigor and something's got a bit more structure to it. So there it is always bubbling away.

SPEAKER_00:

I've always loved the Orthodox confession and expression, and and it just you know the beer suits you, Martin Shaw. Thank you. Martin Shaw falls Kings North and Fall Kings North, and then you hear about this and just it just pushes you, and then my friends also converting, and then so I've decided that. But um, Andy, we've uh I'm looking at the time, and there's so much more to ask, and I'd love I'd I could keep on talking for for days on end about this stuff. And I've just want to say from my side, thank you so much. And my listeners, I'm sure they would have they uh loved this this chat, and I wish you all the best. I wanted to ask you more about Solas and what you're up to. But uh thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_03:

You are um you are very welcome, and thank you too for fighting the good fight. To go, it excites it encourages me that we've got really good, you know, thought-through Christians like yourself and others in that front line when it comes to education. Because to go, there's a you know, I started public ministry doing schools work in the late 1990s, so I I have a real a real heart for schools because you've got young people who are increasingly searching and seeking, and uh a huge opportunity when they've got Christians around them who they can ask you know questions about this stuff. So keep doing what you're doing, keep fighting the good fight, keep growing the beard, and and we can always do another episode at some point in the future.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, sorry, yeah, there's a there's a there's a a chart to holiness of beards, and this is only a little bit holy apparently, and then if it could yeah, anyway, anyway. Thank you so much, and and God bless your work, and uh yeah, would love to have you again soon and we'll catch up again.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, fantastic. Well, thanks for having me on the show. Good.