The Sanctuary: Walking With God Season 2 Episode 3 – Does It Take Seven Days to Be Saved?

Welcome to Season 2 Episode 3 of The Sanctuary: Walking With God! In this episode, theologian Dan Robb and scientist Mark Wadsworth dive into the new autobiography by Russell Brand, “How To Become a Christian in Seven Days”.  Is this really a “how to” book, or is it something else entirely?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

When you do things like that, when you drink, when you chase drugs, whatever it is you're doing, that experience that you're trying to duplicate is a phony version of what God wants to give you, free of charge. And the closest that we can come to it with our ability is some kind of intoxicant.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to the Sanctuary. It's a podcast about walking with God. I'm Dan Robb. I'm the theologian. This is Mark Wadsworth. He is Russell Brand's stunt double, which nowadays he doesn't really have a lot of movies. So he's not really doing a whole lot.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

I'd have to be his stunt.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

There you go. There you go. I'm sure because he listens to the podcast, he'll get a good kick out of that right.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

I'm sure he will. I'm sure we'll be getting a strongly worded email.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Strongly worded email.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

No, actually, we are uh I neither condone nor appreciate this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yes, I'm pretty sure. Well, if you haven't been on social media, then maybe you don't know about him and what he's been up to, Russell Brand, that is. Uh he wrote a new book. Um I had to read it or at least buy it to kind of look at it because if you Google it or you uh what anything on social media, you know, it's like you're gonna come up with all these things, but it's how to become a Christian in seven days subtitle. May take 50 years of sin and serious blank yes, to get started.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

I was just looking at the cover and I realized that those are flies.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Those are flies, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

That's that's very strange.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

It is strange. I think it has something to do with they're only alive for seven days or something like that. Oh, there you go. That's the only thing I could think of because he said he's using the word seven in here. And uh he's a clever boy.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Well, before we jump into this, why don't you tell everybody how to get away? Don't mean to step on your flyer defense.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

I just said that to make you feel bad. We'll talk about honesty here in a minute, too. Uh yeah, so it is. If you have a question, a comment, a conundrum, or a quagmire, or you question our sanity, which is also a question too, you can email us at contact at sanctuarybb.org or check us out on our Facebook page, which I actually do post on there. And um my mom doesn't know about it, but yeah, you know, it's okay. Uh, but you can know about it.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

The latest pictures of Dan walking down a hundred flights of stairs on his hands.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Yeah, that's really pretty cool. Yeah, all upper bodies. So no, no, skip leg day, no leg day. All right, so um yeah, thanks, Mark. Uh, you can also check us out on our Rumble page uh where if you just get tired of hearing our voices and you want to see what we look like, or you know what we look like and you still want to see us. Prayer, prayers suggested beforehand. Thoughts and prayers to you. And uh also you might want to go to that psychiatrist if you mean too. No, uh no, we're on Rumble too, and you can uh see all the fun and hilarity, and maybe at some point you'll get to see Mark's dog Nanook. It could happen.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

He could come flying through the door at any moment.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

He really could.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

He's decided he's super dog now.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

He is. Uh you just need to get a cape, you know. Yes. You already have a uh treadmill for him, so you know that's uh I didn't think that even existed, and then you had that, and I was like, wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

That's the only thing that we can use to wear him out.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

It's the guys, the guy's just got boundless energy.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Basically, what you're telling me is that if you ever had ever had had kids, you would be taking them to soccer games and all of that to tire them out. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Actually, I I will probably be letting the dog take them.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, that would be a howling good fun. Oh boy. Well, anywho, uh, so his book here. Um I saw it on social media on that InstaSnap, uh, I mean Graham, Instagram, Face Snap.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Face snap.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Face Slap, Face Slap, yeah. Tic Tac, you know, whatever, FaceGram. Ah, yeah, all those things. Anywho, uh, and if you go on, if you just Google like reviews of the book, you're gonna find everybody slamming the book, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Well, of course, because I mean he was like the poster child for satanic life.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Pretty much, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

And then he and then he became a believer.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yeah, and he does he does bring that up. And you know, from a Christian perspective, you know, I I read some pastor blogs, you know, and they're like, you know, the theology, and I just thought, you know, one, I'm like, okay, I I think they read the book, but I don't think they understand, you know, that he was an addict, an alcoholic. And I'm like, any well, the way he writes uh this book, which I'll show you again if you're watching on Rumble, that's my advertisement for it. Uh, is you're not gonna understand the book if you're neither of those. And he's really he's writing to people that, you know, are maybe more along the lines of where he was at or been down and out, or maybe disenfranchised by the church, you know, or wherever can't think they can find God, and he's he's writing it for that type of person there.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

So he's trying to help people who are going through the same struggle that he went through for 50 years.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Pretty much, yeah, yeah. And if you read it in that context, you'll you'll understand it in a whole new world because the cover, and I know he brings it up here in his book, you know. So I'm going to read some of these things, some of these quotes that I highlighted just because I thought, you know, better who better than to just tell you straight from the horse's mouth. But he's like the title of this book, How to Become a Christian in Seven Days, is figurative. It may take you longer, or you may already be Christian. You could be, as I say, be anybody, because being Christian is not about you or even me, but about who loves us both. Wow. So yeah. That's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Yeah, and he says little statements like that throughout the book where you're you think to yourself, like, this, you know, and he and he has parts of it where he just tells you like little blippets of things that he had done, and you're like, oh my gosh, you know, and you you can't, and but he but he also was like, I was all into that fame and into this and into that. And he goes, if any of those things could have brought me like peace and happiness, really, then I would have I would have achieved it. But he's like, I I've I found nothing of that. Uh he goes on in here and he says, uh, in this book, uh, I will offer you a humble testimony, what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. Well, that's straight out of AA. Like when you share in a in an AA or like any like 12-step program, they're gonna have they're telling the you know, it's what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. And that's how you share. You share what's going on, what with this, and then what it what's happening now. And it encourages other people who are either there in their first 30 days or there for the first time to go, okay, I should probably give this God thing a try. So having kind of thinking about it in that way, you look at his chapters, so it's not so much about seven days, you know, becoming a Christian. He starts off the first day, and it's sort of like his 12-step program, but in seven days, he's like, Your first day is honesty, and then he relates that to the Genesis, you know, creation account.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

You know, kind of as a just thinking about I have not read the book, but that's the first thing I popped in my head is it's like, yeah, I thought to myself, so this day, is it a literal day or is it a figure today?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

You know, yeah. Well, you look at the subtitle, or it may take you 50 years, you know. So yeah, it could be a figure. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, that is the thing uh about all of it is that it's, you know, if you're in that environment, one of the things, you know, I may have mentioned to you, you know, it's I'm always amazed when people come into an AA meeting or or share something, and you know, they talk about that first step of acknowledging, you know, you're powerless over alcohol, but then there's you turn your your care and your will over to God, um, that step. And it's like people have such a hard time because they may be atheist or agnostic. If not agnostic, they can kind of wrap it around a little bit, they can make the but the atheism, I've heard so many stories now of people that it's like it is so difficult to even get to that point.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I've heard stories about people who, you know, as you were saying, that in AA you have to give it over to God. And so there are people who actually have to make up a God for themselves, like the doorknob or some crazy thing like that. Yeah. So what is what is Mr. Brand? Is Mr. Brand doing that here, or is he actually on the right track?

SPEAKER_00 9:34

He's on the right track. He believes in Jesus and he points you to him. Um yeah, he says in this book on page, well, that's in the introduction here, but on in this book, How to Become a Christian in Seven Days, the tool I am directing you to is Jesus. It pretty much just tells you right there. So it's kind of like if you want to call it Russell Brand's Seven Steps to Sobriety, but going through Jesus, you know, you could say, yeah, that's and that's interesting. Yeah, he's like when uh he says here, he goes on, when we recover from addiction, we first reject drugs and alcohol or whatever, then eventually the person, the self who is dependent upon them, the old man or woman, must die so that we may be reborn. Wow, he sounds like Paul there. He does, yeah. He's like, then we turn, then we turn to God and uh he goes on there a little bit more. I'm not gonna read the whole thing. You know, I just found you know, a lot of the stuff that he said to be so reminiscent of that. So if someone wants to criticize him for, oh, he's not preaching a gospel, he is preaching a gospel message, but it's really gotta to a certain type of individual, you know, type of person. And so it's kind of like bringing them, because a lot of times people will come back to God through like an AA or some kind of sobriety program, celebrate recovery or whatever it might be, they might come back to God. Or the the person who is an atheist, you know, is is like there are story I've heard stories of them like finally surrendering their will over to God and making that, you know, I don't I hate to use the phrase leap of faith, but making that step, you know, taking, going in that direction, you know, and for a lot of people, it is this whole conflict of, well, I grew up in an independent fundamental Baptist church, or I grew up Catholic. I hear that a lot. I grew up Catholic and I didn't like that God. You know, and I'm like, I the whole while I was there saying that typically in meetings, I think to myself, well, I don't think God likes that God, you know, because that's not the God of the Bible.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Pretty sure he doesn't, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

So I'm like, whoever that God is, God's like, yeah, I don't like that guy either.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

He's probably right up there with Baal.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah, probably, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Uh he says here, he talks uh now the last thing he says here, uh, I wanted to be is a Christian. I've met Christians and I've seen them on television. To me, it seems that they're either inept, sexless, and drab, or so far the other way, intense, swivel eyed, and they even that and that and that even if they don't have I don't even know how what that word is.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Halatosis. Halatosis. Bad breath.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, okay. It sort of it sort of seems like they must. I can smell it through the screen. Yeah. And it it's kind of like, and he says here, and I wrote to the side, I was like, sums up churches. Like they all seem like they're trying to tell you or sell you something.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

And I I thought that's that would be the perfect way that I would sum up, not particularly the church I'm going to now, but churches that I've either worked in or have heard about, you know, here in this uh small town here in uh the state of Texas. So I think it's it's interesting, you know. You're not going for a Sunday sermon, you're going to be sold to something or an idea that the pastor put into it to make it, you know, sound uh digestible, if you will, if that's possible.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Sad.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

It is sad. So let's see here. I'm just gonna go picking out things here. Let's see. Oh yeah, here he goes. Um he gives these quotes in here. This is from a quantum physicist. I'm not even gonna, it's like Werner. Thank you, Sick. And it's the second day, it's uh maybe chapter two, the second day. Hope uh, he's like the first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist. But at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Very true.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Very true.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Speaking as a scientist, yeah, you know, it's I I throughout my career, I was always amazed at people who were very, very bright people, scientifically inclined people with advanced degrees and top of their field and had invented all kinds of things, who simply did not believe in God. And it boggled my mind because if you actually sat down and look at and analyze what it takes to do the stuff that they've been doing, yeah, it is inconceivable that that stuff could have just happened by random. Yeah, you know. So Heisenberg's absolutely right. Yeah, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing because it makes you think that you know everything there is to know. Yeah. And the more you get into it, the deeper you go into it. And when you start getting into the philosophy of things or the the causative agent of things, you can't explain it scientifically. You simply can't.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah. And I I think at the end of the day, it yeah, like you said, it's it's just it's not by random chance, you know. And I I've been struck by that, you know, hearing people, you know, talk about being atheists and all of that. You know, I just think so. You really buy in, you know, it really is about believing in nothing, but nothing is something, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

So that's the thing. You know, what everyone has to understand is that atheism is not believing that there is no God. It's it's the act of believing in the God that you want to believe in, which is the one that doesn't care about anything, didn't do anything, didn't create anything, didn't doesn't punish anyone, isn't there? Yeah, so you know, yeah, they say, well, it's because he doesn't exist. No, the way you act and say things, you know, he is he is real to you. Yeah, he just is the antithesis of the real guy.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, yeah, it he is. Um he goes on here in this chapter, he says, we are locked into a pattern that we cannot break. Let me tell you, that's true not just of the alcoholic or the drug addict, that's true of anybody. Uh it's just uh the alcoholism of the drug addict, it's so pronounced, it's so out there that everybody's gonna see it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

It's like the guy that's hooked on uh Dairy Queen uh uh blizzards.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Yeah, or the guy that's hooked on phonics, right? Forgive me.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Hi, my name is Mark, and I'm a blizzard addict. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

I'm Dan, and I am an addict of ice cream, H E B's cookies over Texas. Uh bring back buttercrunch. Yeah, still mad about that. Uh I'll write it in my diary tonight as I fall asleep and cry alone in the shower. Um no, uh we're liked into a pattern we cannot break, a behavior that plainly has a neurological uh correlate correlative. Did I say that? Correlative. Correlative, yeah, there you go. He's like, I'm not an expert in much, but I am an expert in addiction. And this is what I know. The addict is attempting to synthesize a divine experience, trying to defibrate the dead matter through chemical infusion. Yeah. And uh that's that's very true. And you know, I've been, I've heard from people that, you know, quite often, and I've heard it in a lot of I've heard it from people that don't go to church to people that are in church, and it is all about this chasing the experience type of deal. And one of the things he says, and then I'm not gonna read it, you know, but I I found it so profound. He he was going to Washington, D.C. had been invited by the president to go there, and so he does, and he just decided to do whatever it is that that came his way. He said, God, whatever it is that you want me to do, I will do it. And it kept going like he would show up to the airport, someone would see him and invite him, give him a ride. Somebody would invite him to stay. I think I think in one of them, he's like, I got invited to stay the night in a museum. And he's like, think not at the museum. Oh, yeah. He was like, I was like, everything, he was looking at it like God was doing something in my life. I was gonna be open to whatever it is. And I I opened it up by saying I was open to this invitation, and he's like, I'll go ahead, let's go for it, you know. Let me trust God and leave all the consequences to him. So he does all of that, and he says he comes across this person there, you know, outside the White House who tell who keeps mumbling something, there's burning bushes everywhere. And, you know, I have not been able to escape that saying that from the book, because I think, you know, everybody quite often, whether you're going to church and you're chasing that's that spiritual feeling, those warm and fuzzies that you get when the right when oceans the song gets there and they're getting ready to do the guitar leading up to it and the drums are going.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Don't pick on that. I love that song. I love her.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Okay, come on. And you're doing it, and you're going, I'm feeling it. And it's like, ah, it's great, but they don't play it every week, you know. They can't do that, right? They gotta they gotta space it out. But you know, or you might have whatever song that that you like, and you you get you feel that closeness, that song does it for you. And the the danger is we can turn that that time where we're worshiping to a spiritual experience where we're chasing it. And I've seen people try to chase it, and it's like it doesn't work out. And it and and even for people that aren't going to church, you know, there are spiritual experiences that they feel, and they are always wanting to get back to that that experience. But the reality is that if you open your eyes, there's a burning bush everywhere, and God's just waiting for you to acknowledge that he's there.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

The closer you get to God, the more you see them. Yeah. A lot of times they're there and you just walk right by, you know, because you're not you're not tuned into it. So he made the comment about you know, uh defibrillating dead flesh or something like that with drugs. Right. It made me think of what Paul said.