Faith and Fruitfulness: How to Thrive in Our Cultural Moment

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Glen Scrivener
because they’re living with this cognitive dissonance that they believe in compassion and equality and consent and alignment science, freedom, progress, buts, we are clever chimps, essentially. And we are the product of a brutal evolutionary evolutionary history and my clean twin insignificant rock hurtling through a meaningless universe towards eternal extinction, and things are gonna get better. Yeah. And like, Okay, well, where does this progress thing and this natural reality thing come together? Well in Jesus. And I think theologically that works. I think historically, that is how it happens. And I think existentially people start to see those things uniting when they come to come to Jesus.

Hello, and welcome to post Christianity. My name is Glen Scrivener. My name is Andrew Wilson, we’ve been thinking about our cultural moment of post Christianity, and looking at that in historical perspective. And we’ve sought the wisdom of people like Kyle Harper, as he’s talked to us about the first sexual revolution and that movement from pre Christian to Christian society. We’ve spoken to Carl Truman as well, and thought about some of the shift from Christian to post Christian society. We’ve been tracing through developments that I speak about in my book called the air we breathe, we’ve been thinking about 1776, and the remaking of the world. That’s your book, Andrew. And really, we’re wanting to put a kind of an intellectual map out there and saying, We are here. So we’ve been talking for hours about history. And now we want to land the plane a little bit and think about where are we now? And where do we go from here? So where does your mind first go to when you think with all the weirdness of Western civilization and how it’s being Christianized? In our cultural moment today? Where do we first think about some applications?

Andrew Wilson
Well, I love talking about this. I think this is because this is what we both do, isn’t it? You want to think about okay, so how do we how do we share the Gospel? How do we do apologetics? How do we parent kids? How do we disciple people? How do we build churches preach the gospel, all those sorts of things, where my mind goes, it will not surprise you to learn is things that I think we just because it’s what I focus on in my book, but I do think it can help us is to think about the way in which we’re given the world becoming weirder, the way in which the church, particularly in the late 18th century started to think about started to respond without necessarily even knowing why they were to the world as it was developing around them. And particularly, I try and draw out in the book, and I think it can help us today as well. In leaning into central Christian themes like Grace, freedom and truth are the three big ones I pick up. I think you can you see that in the the very strong emphasis on the personal experience of grace. And in a previous episode with Carl Truman, I talked about John, you know, just alluded to John Newton and people like that about how this very personal narrative individual experience becomes actually part of the way that we sing hymns and experience the goodness of God now how you know that the grace that saved a wretch like me, I was like this. And now I’m like that, and this very real, vivid, visceral experience of grace being very increasingly central to the way that Christians told their stories. And in my book, I talk about holodeck, riano, and Newton and others just about how like, wow, God did this for me. And it’s this very personal experience of grace. And how important that is, in a weird a world where the idea of a personal transformation is a very important story. And it has a lot of appeal the idea. And obviously, it’s very biblical. Paul says, I used to be like this, I now know this. But that that sort of very vivid emotional darkness to light transforming narrative is partly, you might say, is shaped by the spirit of the age, but partly is just good contextualization, to saying, This is what God has done for me. So there’s a very strong emphasis on Grace, a very strong emphasis on freedom, we touched on and talked about a lot of abolitionism in a previous episode. And I think that sort of seeing the idea that actually Christianity must be Christianity is freeing or it’s nothing. Now that doesn’t mean that we’re all what the world calls freedom is freedom. And actually, what we have to do is to broaden the Christian understanding of the world’s understanding of freedom from simply structural forces that might oppress you from the outside, saying, Actually, you need to be freed from something inside as well, Jesus saying, anyone who, because that’s the cost of the Judeans and John aids like we’re not slaves, we haven’t been anybody and it says, You’re a sinner, then you’re enslaved to sin. But if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed, and and therefore there’s a freedom narrative about redemption, not just from external forces, but internal ones. And then a strong emphasis on truth as well, which in our posttrial might come back to that a few minutes. I just think that sort of very strong emphasis on the need to grow And for all we’re saying, We’ve sawed off the branch we’re sitting on and we’re trying to stay there as Christian Post Christian society, Christian foundations is now self evident, let’s move on that actually a Christian appeal to truth. And saying, you have to be able to join the dots between what you claim to believe and what your foundations are. And if you if you’re trying to build on a Christian foundation, but you don’t believe in Christian foundations anymore, you kind of got to acknowledge that you’ve got to be able to see the connections between what you believe and what you what you actually believe, and what you claim to believe and see that there are ultimately different that that’s quite important as well. So I think those are sort of three categories I like using to think through in our preaching in our evangelism, the personal experience of the grace of God, which is increasingly important in a very workspace driven society, in which status and privilege mean that people have to either just have been justified by works all the time.

Glen Scrivener
Okay. Can I push back on that? And then we’ll go to freedom or go to truth? Yeah. But is there also a danger, though, where everyone’s telling the transformational story, and I wake up on one day, and I might be a different identity that that I might put into my Instagram bio today, as opposed to yesterday, in the personal transformation kind of markets? Has there not been such an inflation? That’s now of course, there is a place for me to give my transformation story of darkness to light in Jesus. But it is also relativized by everyone’s got their own story. And at that point, my testimony starts to be of less value, perhaps because, well, that’s what floats your boat. What floats my boat is that today, I’m non binary. And and I’ve got my own personal transformation story. So how do you balance those things?

Andrew Wilson
Yeah, I think absolutely is inflation, which is why the story ultimately has to be about the grace of God rather than about your experience of change. But I think that the way in which Christians will typically, it might well be, but often will be the way we talk about the experience of change will be the way of introducing the category of grace. But I think that there is a fundamental differences, as, as we know, between the I have undergone, this is the thing I’m trying now, this is the way I’m trying to be me. And this is the both the objects of appeals are something that God has done for me rather than something I’m now trying, but also this is a status or an identity that is given to me from outside myself, that is not dependent on my ability to maintain it, discover it or believe it with sufficient passion. Yes, it is actually something that is external. And I think that sort of as a line of love it just in the last song and Hamilton were Eliza hammers in the real Eliza Hamilton probably wouldn’t have asked this question. But the fictional one does, because she represents limb Miranda, and all of us who are watching it, which is have I done enough? Will they tell my story? Is My Story sufficiently compelling? Have I done enough and which is what the transformation stories are doing? I will find identity if I have a sufficiently dramatic way of narrating this story. And if I do enough to sustain that sense of status, or identity, or to justify my privilege, which is a big part of the modern narrative, like, I’ve looked at all these privileges, I got I’ve, you know, happily married and my parents loved each other, and I’ve got enough money and I went to Cambridge, all this, how do I justify that and my this is my friendship circle partly, what does a life well lived look like in like an all of those all of the time, we therefore trying to justify ourselves, but it is still justification by works. And that the grace story is to say, No, I’ve also got a transformation story, but it’s utterly different in shape, because it’s based on the grace of God coming to me, and it isn’t actually due to anything I particularly discovered or changed. My habits might be very similar today as they were yesterday. And although I think some of them hopefully will have changed I don’t look for my identity or security in those things. The grace of God has appeared it’s come to me it’s come from out beyond right and as grounded a totally different sense of identity and, and to actually cut the legs out from under my attempt to justify my own privilege, yes, or to even to ground my own status. Battles will stores book the status game I found so helpful like that we are really just we’ve got rid of an honor shame culture, but replaced it with just different ways of defending status. Yeah, and even Amish same culture. Yeah. And that that’s what that’s what virtue signaling is online. That’s what we were going I’ve read this and I’ve, I understand that and I know how to talk about this, I use the right terms for that. And it’s all just basically a new middle class status game that we all play to go. If I use that phrase, you know, that I’m a little bit more aware than if I’d use that one. And, and actually, what happens is when the grace of God comes as you just don’t need to think that way, or to try and justify yourself that way. In fact, you cannot justify your fall worse than that story would imply you are that you don’t just need tinkering at depth in life and right the grace of God. So in a sense, yes, it’s a transformation story, but it’s a transformation story where their primary actor is someone other than me, right? And when therefore you kind of are taken away from you either

Glen Scrivener
right? And but I think Christians need to be taught that I think we need to be taught a subversive form of the testimony because I think too often we default to the hero’s journey. And I’m the hero. Yes. And and you get people who start inventing wilderness years in their Christian story. Oh, totally

Andrew Wilson
hilarious as I was talking to, I’ve done it.

Glen Scrivener
Yeah, I’ve done it. And I was I was talking to somebody quite recently about, you know, how did you come to faith and he was, I was the most reluctant convert in the world. And I had all these years of wilderness wandering and interesting. And then like, literally five minutes later in the conversation, he was like, oh, no, I grew up going to church all my life. And his wilderness years were really about, you know, eight months when he was dating a non Christian and, and you know, and his great intellectual wrestling was was basically I think he readily stro bells. Yeah, case for Christianity or something. And that’s what sort of, but the incentives to kind of absolutely emphasize the wilderness wonderings are because we’re wanting to tell a hero’s journey, and I’m the hero, and I have gone down into the Dark Pit, but I have discovered either the intellect, intellectual credibility of Jesus, or, you know, you have the drugs and the gun guns and the, you know, car chases kind of testament isn’t that kind of thing, because we’re all trying to be the ones who go down into the valley, and then we somehow make our way back up. But the the frame I tell Christians to put around their testimony is I couldn’t have gotten through x without Jesus. In which case, like, an X is whatever suffering you know, can be locked down and could be the series of surgeries that you’ve gone through in the last couple of years, or whatever it is, but you’re in the darkness, and then the one from the outside comes. And and I think that’s a subversive kind of testimony that we’re that we tell nowadays. Otherwise, as I said, in a former episode, there are Christian testimonies that sound exactly like, yeah, very worldly testimonies about transformation that happened. And I think I think we need to set ourselves apart, both in the shape of things, I’m in the darkness, Jesus comes and meets me. And if I’ve grown up in a Christian home, a perfectly good testimony is why are you a Christian today? Oh, my parents absolutely. believed in Jesus, and they lived like it. Yeah. And it showed, and later on, I read some books. And you know, it made sense to me. But we feel what we can’t tell that kind of story because it doesn’t foreground me and my spiritual journey. Well, what if your testimony is not meant to foreground you and your spiritual journey is meant to foreground Christ and be if it redounds To the greater glory of your family or your church community? Well, that’s a great testimony, you know, and if you’ve got swept up in the Christian community that raised you, well, that actually is a great testimony to them rather than to me. Yeah. So all that stuff about testimony? Yes. Amen. I agree to it. But I do think there’s a subversively.

Andrew Wilson
Yes, it has to it has to foreground the grace rather than the transformation because sometimes the grace, the transformation, that in some ways, sometimes the gift of grace, meant that you were preserved from having to be the wretch like John Newton was, whatever. Now that I do think that the, the reason I find that the language of grace in the way it is increasingly used by 18th century believers so fascinating, is because they are already being shaped by and learning how to dialogue with a world in which the individual and what happens to them is incredibly important. And in the end, your personal story is always going to be important in a culture like ours. But I think the way to do that in a wise way is not to foreground, I used to be this terrible, I have to now make myself as bad as John Newton in order to make the story work. Yes, but rather to say the grace that save Newton and the grace save me say just very different ways, but actually, it’s ultimately rooted outside of the self. And that’s what’s uniquely Christian about it.

Glen Scrivener
Yes. Okay. Great. So that’s great. And then freedom. I love that, that we need a much richer account of freedom that is not just freedom from that

Andrew Wilson
scary 3244 Yeah.

Glen Scrivener
And you know, your excellent book with Elsa Roberts echoes of Exodus, you know, makes that point that the redemption out of Egypt is yes, you need to get Pharaoh off your back. But also the wilderness and you are to serve

Andrew Wilson
golden calves and fiery snakes and all the rest. I mean, as the story is only it takes you effectually out of Egypt by Exodus 15. Yeah, but you don’t get there. But actually the wilderness it takes up the rest of Exodus, the whole of the book of Numbers. Yeah, a bunch of Leviticus. You think? Yeah, this is actually a longer process of Israel’s healing from the slavery within, in some ways, the other gods to whom they would be captive, which in many ways is the whole of the rest of the Old Testament? Yes, fighting. So I think we are, I think a freedom narrative is very appealing to modern people. But I think we have to make it three dimensional rather than saying it is simply once I am free from the external forces of you know, whatever it was that I needed to be liberated I come out of prison and I can do whatever I want to say No, actually you doing whatever you want is probably going to make you just as much of a slave. Right as you being physically forced not to do certain things because there is slavery is just is multifaceted. It is not only external, it’s in fact, the internal one is often worse. Yeah. And I love the Hunger Games here. Because Anna talked about this in the book, I just found it really interesting that you can be enslaved in, in the sense that Katniss and the people are in the districts. This is the 1984 vision of slavery. Yeah, like you are, there are guns and cameras, and you can’t do anything without someone making you do something else. But then there’s also slavery in the brave new world sense in the people in the capital, are also enslaved to just sort of carnal desires, and, hey, let’s eat all the all night and then vomit and so we can eat again. And you know, the drinkin sort of fatuous, banal television. And yeah, the Brave New World Vision of world, the bumble puppy and all this stuff, you just think some of that just exposes something much deeper that’s wrong with us. And the way that people can Yeah, even just scrolling is, I mean, how people you feel like if you try and say to somebody, just put away your phone, or just stop consuming that sort of thing, how enslave people out of that, and particularly when it comes to something like sex, where freedom, the freedom narrative, makes it sound like the the way to be free is to just have sex with you, I think people become enslaved, and often actually have far more fulfilled, lives, and even sometimes even fulfilled sex lives by saying no to things and by saying yes to things, and just being able to be free from the thing that would enslave them to do more of the thing that they feel makes them happy. Knowing that actually happiness is a result of an freedom from internal passions, and not just external ones. Yeah, we have to show and even using freedom language to describe that process is I think, very important to discipleship.

Glen Scrivener
Yes. And we saw that with Powell Harper, talking historically about the impact of villages free Well, yeah, the church and that actually, the Free Will was first a phrase that was used in conjunction with Christians who are exploring the fact that you can say no to this biological imperative, and this very social imperative, to not be a virgin and those who said, No, we’re exercising a supernatural superhuman kind of free will, in resisting sexual urges. And so like, when we think of sexual freedom, we think it’s the freedom to indulge our sexual passions and a biblical and historical sense. It’s, it’s the freedom to say no to those libidinous desires that are just kind of washing through the culture. So freedom, grace, and then truth. Yeah. We’re living in a post truth age, though, Andrew, that’s not that’s not going to go down. Well, is it? Well,

Andrew Wilson
this is the thing I think, I personally think people post truth is usually at least in in our context in Britain, and maybe that there’s some people who are big fans of post truth, but usually it’s used with a lot of criticism is that post post truth as a way of describing other people’s disconnection from reality, rather than a sense of isn’t it great, none of us really believe things. And, and most of what we call post truth is really post trust. I think it’s, it’s more a critique of the organs of the trusted institutions and arbiters of good judgment in society of the last 100 years, whether it be a mainstream media outlet, or a particular form of scientific community. These people that everyone trusted, and the church clearly are not trusted in the same way. You know, people say I’ve lost my faith in science and progress. They say, I’ve lost my faith in the holy church. But if I ever lose my faith in you, you know, and that I think it’s that it’s like a loss of trust in the people we used to trust. And I actually think post truth is a strong, a strong point for, for Christians to lean into, not just because we do believe in truth. But in many ways, we’ve seen this as we’ve done this series already. And in previous episodes, that there is a very strong impulse to say these things are true, these things are false. That is lies that actually yeah, in response, whether it be in response to Donald Trump or response to just fake news, misinformation, people say, I want to believe in it. I don’t want what I believe to be untrue. And I certainly don’t want to act like I don’t care. But what the church can and should do, and not just say, well, this is a different vision of truth. I think 20 years ago, lots of people were concerned, there will be well, this is my truth, tell me yours, that sort of thing. But that that isn’t really even though people still use the language of here’s my truth, that what they really mean is this is what happened to me and you need to value that story. But they don’t mean there’s no such thing as truth, and no one cares what it is. The reason they’re telling you the story is because they think this is true, and it did happen to me and you should care. And that what Christians then need to do, I think is to see that there is within society a very strong desire to to join up what they say they believe with what is in fact the case. So that the moral imperative for justice or for it for action to do something particularly younger people is warranted by The way the world truly is, rather than just being what you happen to like, campaigning on that issue, doesn’t really worry me. But you start talking to young people like that or anyone about racial justice or about the environment or about people going under No, I don’t. I’m not saying this, because I happen to happen to be one thing I’m into, I want you to believe that this needs to be done. And that is a powerful opportunity for Christians. Because in the end that, you know, this sort of back to Ben Franklin and his self evidently saying, it isn’t self evident that these things, the reason why you believe that people are equal, and that there should be justice for the poor and oppressed is because of Christian convictions about the world that ultimately are ontologically true, they are grounded in the being of God, they are grounded in the way the world is created. And if you want to sustain those convictions, and you should, you just need to find their roots in who God really is. Yes. And if you do what Johann Harare does in the sorry, Yuval Harare. I’m gonna give you why he doesn’t Sapiens where he just says, oh, no, this is, you know, in the end, it’s not true. But we are a post truth species, we just gotta go with it anyway, people don’t know, you. It’s only if you’ve got a huge amount of money and privilege that you can get away with it. If you’re contending against serious injustice in the world, you have to believe that this is grounded in reality. And there’s a huge opportunity for Christians to say that instinct you have is correct. But it’s grounded in a different better story. Yes, that is fundamentally true. Yes. And this Christian story gives you foundations for what you want to believe that is far stronger than what you’d get if you if you’ve swallowed the sort of the materialist line about the way the world is, yes,

Glen Scrivener
yeah. And maybe Athanasius is a real help in this, you know, the, in the beginning of on the incarnation, the self, same word who made us in the beginning, yeah, came to us in redemption and and that integration of grace and truth, that integration of the Lagace of this world, the logic of this world, who became flesh, who became embodied and holds together these realms of nature and grace, that are so kind of contested these days. And you know, we’ve mentioned on a previous episode that it seems like the Christianization of culture has left us with beliefs in compassion, and equality and human rights and progress and the secular, none of which are derived from nature, none of which are the, you know, none of which can be logically demonstrated, but they are beliefs, their belief commitments, and in that sense, they are supernatural. So we’re very sure about that. We’re not so sure about nature, and biology. And if someone starts to make a claim about what is actually natural, that’s the most contested claim of all like, How dare you say what is natural, and people are very suspicious of those sorts of claims. So we have this sort of sense of some kind of grace, supernatural kind of kind of stuff, and beliefs and dogma. And we have the realm of the natural, and then you get Trad types, who like a sick of trans ideology, let’s say, and it’s the it’s the reassertion of nature. And it’s just and that could get pretty ugly, the manosphere, the manosphere, right back can get very ugly. And so you just get an edge, or you just get grace in which biology means absolutely nothing. And you know, society and family bonds don’t really mean anything, what really is, what really counts is your internal sense of your own identity. And that’s just sort of all grace. And here comes Athanasius reflecting on John chapter one, and the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and this sense of the supernatural and the natural together in Christ. And that might sound like really esoteric, but I was just really encouraged that this Easter, Mary Harrington, who’s written a new book called feminism against progress is pressing into all these issues about nature and grace. And she’s finding herself in some really interesting places and with some really interesting allies in terms of doing you know, writing for first things and finding herself you know, doing book launches with, you know, Christian organizations all around her. And she wrote a thing at Easter about, you know, the the great hope for the West seems to be this thing where the Word became flesh, that you there is a place where this stuff coheres, and consists, and it’s grounded. And because we don’t want to get rid of grace, we don’t want to get rid of compassion and equality and all these great things. We don’t we don’t want to descend into the manosphere. But we also want to, we also want to honor biological reality and our nature and people have a nature, don’t they? And there’s no such thing as human. We can’t just, you know, we can’t just go towards being post human, can we? Where are we going to go if we’re going to unite these two things together, and Mary Harrington is saying, Well, I guess kind of Jesus. Yeah, maybe that’ll be interesting to see. But that journey ends,

Andrew Wilson
oh man, it really will. I did some work in the, in the book on our very unknown late 18th century figure called Johann go on Harmon, who’s a German philosopher who does a lot of that and in a completely different register. But again, is talking about the centrality the Incarnation for really thinking about Christian truth and a Christian account of grace. And he’s really the first person to give like a, what he calls a meta critique of the Enlightenment, even he’s a friend of Kansas, Hegel and Kierkegaard all these guys think he’s a genius, the brightest man who ever lived along with Socrates, they just given these crazy epithets of, and of course, in the English speaking world, almost no one’s ever heard of this extraordinary conversion experience reading the Bible, and he gets saved while reading. I think it’s Deuteronomy five or something really, but really odd texts, or you know what, you’re the only guy ever getting saved reading that has this extraordinary experience, reads the Bible, and writes a commentary on it in the first three months of his Christian life, and then basically undertakes this hugely intellectually impressive, kind of side broadside against enlightenment thinking. And it’s separation of, ultimately, what he thinks of his word and flesh is you basically separated out the idea from the real and your problem is really that you haven’t reckoned with the incarnation. And he talks a lot about language and says that every time we have a conversation, we combine ideas, and the real you and I are talking now, because molecules are moving, and there’s, but they’re also expressing abstract ideas. And if you just thought about that, you’d say the reason why words do that is because the word does that. And in Christ, Word and flesh are united that we’re so we’re not Gnostics, and we’re not ultimately, Idealist or realist we do, we do both together every time we have a conversation. And we see both United in Jesus. And that actually, that’s the sort of account of truth of what the modern world is trying to do. And in Harmons day, and in ours in many ways, is to sort of keep the world of the bodily and the real distinct from the world of the ideal and the pure. And that actually, as soon as you have an incarnate Christ, you’ve just got these two worlds come together, which back to the thing about sex and masculinity and femininity is to say, Yeah, nature and Grace are, in that sense, made perfect in Jesus. And the incarnation is the sort of the focal point from which theological inquiry needs to flow. And Harmon is just a genius, because he’s able to see that, yeah, like, he has this lovely line on me. He says, it takes a prophet to contribute to debates, 200 years before they start, and harmonies like that, but I think that is, again, in in a, in a world that sort of wanting to wrestle with the grace nature distinction, as you’ve laid it out, and, and even post truth, that the incarnation is really the center point. And that’s why I liked what you said about Athanasios. I just think, yeah, that’s, that’s where we have to begin. And not just in the abstract register of thought like this, but actually just an ordinary conversations with ordinary people,

Glen Scrivener
because they’re living with this cognitive dissonance that they believe in compassion and equality and consent and enlightenment, science, Freedom progress, but but we are clever chimps, essentially. And we are the product of a brutal evolution. Yeah, evolutionary history and my clean, twin insignificant rock hurtling through a meaningless universe towards eternal extinction. And things are gonna get better. Yeah. And like, Okay, well, where does this progress thing? And this, this natural reality thing come together? Well, in Jesus. Yeah. And I think theologically that works. I think historically, that is how it happens. And I think existentially people start to see those things uniting when they come to come to Jesus. Yeah.

Andrew Wilson
So how can you talk about You talk a lot on I like it about joining dots. And helping people see the connections between which I know is what you’ve just done in that in that way. It’s really helpful of, yeah, this is the material story, you’re told this is the ideal story, you’re told. They don’t actually make sense together unless you bring the two together in Christ. Can you give examples of how you do that in if you like, ordinary day to day evangelism, your neighbor’s kids, school, you know, people at the school gate, ordinary life, you do this a lot?

Glen Scrivener
Well, let me let me first of all tell you a story that there’s no skill involved with the evangelist here. But I think in this cultural moment, there are certain fish that are jumping into the boat, whatever the fisherman does. And so I got I got the school gates just said to me the other day. I was talking about the king’s coronation, and we were having a picnic at church. And you know, he’s very welcome to that. And he said, You know, I’ve been thinking about coming to church for a while now. And he I said, why? He said, Well, it just seems to me like Christianity has absolutely built the modern world and I don’t know a single thing about it. I was like, well, church would be exactly the right place. You know, and sadly, he didn’t he didn’t come to that. But you know, we’re still friends and we’re on that journey, but but he is representative of a lot of people who are in this cultural moment who are kind of waking up to the fact that we are not these neutral people who just happen to be Westerners in a totally secular sense, but but that we are the heirs of a Christian heritage and to be unaware of our origins is to be a barbarian to some degree. So this this, this guy, emblematic of that was another guy I saw at a church I was preaching at, in another part of the country. And he just came up to me afterwards. And he said, Thank you for the air we breathe that was given to me by a guy I met in the queue, for the Queen’s like seeing the Queen laying in states. And so two very royal examples here. But he had 12 hours to wait in the queue to see the Queen laying in state. And he happened to be right next to a church pastor, who was also in Sussex, but they had a copy of your book, who had who had read my book, and was just having this conversation with this other guy and just got into a conversation about why are we here, really? And like, what is this connecting us with? And I think certainly in the UK, there are a lot of people who, through the death of the Queen and the coronation of King Charles the third, I thinking a lot about the religious heritage of this of this country. And after 12 hours in the queue with this guy, my friend then sent him a copy of the air we breathe. And at the end of the air, we breathe, it says, Why don’t you read the gospels, and he read the gospels and don’t write, I’m a Christian now, and started going started going to church and, and so there’s a cultural moment that’s happening among some people. I mean, the rest is history is, you know, hands down the biggest history, podcast, you know, around the world, and it’s one of the most popular podcasts on Apple podcasts. And and, you know, Tom Holland is sort of pushing that thesis and there are a lot of people who are, at least awakened to the fact that, oh, gosh, if I’m a lot more Christian than I thought, I better understand a little bit more about this. So there’s that. And then, you know, the other day, I was on a plane journey, and a guy I was with, happens to be a human rights lawyer. Okay. And so, just pressing into that, and then do you ever wonder, you know, where they’re from? And if we’re, if we’re highly evolved apes, why does that mean we have human rights. He’s like, I hadn’t thought about that. It’s like we had, we had a very long conversation on that plane flight, you know, gave him gave him the air we breathe, and we’ve been in touch, you know, since then. And so there are there are ways of pressing into this, but you know, even with my, you know, my next door neighbor, is my next door neighbor doesn’t have GCSEs he is, he’s not a human rights lawyer. Right? You know, he’s not, he’s not he’s not thinking in these categories at all. But we were just on the porch, together, we share, we share a porch on our on our street and and he showed me this, this Facebook video of one of the one of these beautiful moments that you see every now and again, where for instance, someone some of our family autistic, for instance, is brought onto a basketball team. And you know, they get you know, handed the basketball, and you know, they shoot and they miss but the the opposition like hand them the ball back, and he shoots and he misses again, at the end of the day, the handed back the third time, and he shoots the, you know, the roof goes off in the in the gymnasium, and like the the goosebumps, that are on and I was like what do you think? Why do you think where you’re at react like that? And he saw it’s just beautiful. But well, why what is it? And we just ended up having this very long conversation about there’s something super natural about that. Because the natural thing is, well, this guy would not make the cut. He’s you know, what, why? Why is he on the on the court? Naturally Speaking, this is this is bonkers. And you know, he’s written it that the opposition is, you know, handing in the ball, but this is supernatural. This is Grace. This is the inversion. And we started having a conversation around the fact that natural life is the survival of the fittest and the sacrifice of the weakest. the Jesus story is it’s the sacrifice of the fittest Christ for the survival of where the weakest so that we can not just survive, but thrive and pass on this compassion to others. And I think the reason why you’ve got goosebumps while you watch that is that you are in touch with something very Jesus, a very, and it is supernatural. You might not think you believe in the supernatural. And as it turns out, he did believe in the supernatural, but I was like the very the shape of what is supernatural, there is incredibly Jesus like, and we would go on to talk about Jesus and away we go, and he’s young, wanting to get baptized and he’s coming to church and it’s Praise God Praise God for that. And the other day, he shows me his phone. He’s like, I was like, what’s that? He said, I think it’s a poem and I was looking at that I think it’s a song. And then and then he was like, Do you musical as let’s go into, like, picked up the guitar and we started, he has written now nearly 50 songs in the, in the last three months, as as you know, he’s getting excited about Jesus. But so just to give you an example of you know, there are there are fish that jumped into the boat because of the cultural moment that we’re in. And there are people who are interested in the big ideas like the human rights lawyer. And then there are just people who show you a meme on Facebook. But I think all of them are testifying to the post Christian moment that we’re in.

Andrew Wilson
And it’s wonderful because actually it all in all three of those stories. I think we very early episode in this series, we talked about the fact that it’s much more, it can feel much more compelling to say to somebody, here’s what you believe in, here’s why your rights than here’s what you believe in, here’s why you’re wrong. And obviously, there’s in all of us, including me, there’s some things we believe, right, and some are wrong. But it’s such a wonderfully evangelistic offer. And similarly, we’re obviously recording this soon after the king’s coronation, we watched it with a group of friends of ours who aren’t believers, but he’s just fascinating how you just even you can explain, you’re just giving commentary on things that other people experienced saying, here’s a way of thinking about that feeling or that institution or that ceremony or just weddings, funerals. I mean, I’ve as a pastor, I just found as such, the, the gap between Heaven and Earth seems to become thinner Births, Deaths and Marriages, as the Church has always done, you just there’s something about giving birth to a person or seeing a newborn baby, there’s something about committing a person’s body to the deep, or to into the ground or to the flames or whatever it is. But that just makes that Then something about marriage as well, which just is, of course, the image of Christ in the church, as we all know, but it it also just seems to make people’s the gap between again, the ideal and the real or reliable, you know, the world the word and the flashy, just seems to get some the gap gets smaller people. I’m not quite calling it an incarnation. But you know what I mean? It makes people seem like, Oh, yes, there’s sort of this paradigm we live within which there is the world of things that actually happen I eat I sleep I have sex or whatever it might be. And then there’s this world of things I believe and ideas and mystical. It just they seem to become collapsed into one another. And people go hang on a second is the same world. Like it’s as if that’s that we’re really are meant to have those realms integrated. Yes. And the value and facts are one and the same thing and incarnation it and you just, it is wonderful to be able to comment as he you know what that touches that that’s a witness in your spirit to the fact that there is something various now obviously not very significant taking place. Not every nation has quite the correlational pageantry that we ever just had in the last week. And obviously many weeks, we don’t either, but there are so many you look for them. There’s so many ceremonies liturgies expressions in popular culture, yes, as you just said, Well, I’m one of those things, but you know, it was just, you know, think about an autistic kid throwing a basketball. So it’s not that they don’t have to be massive moments of national pageantry to work. But that you’re you’re providing an explanation for a resonance that exists in the human soul. It’s very fundamental. Yeah, yeah. very fruitful.

Glen Scrivener
Your awakening your awakening them to the fact that they are believers. Like one of the one of the inspirations for me writing the air we breathe was a friend writing to me and saying, of course, you realize, Glenn, I could never be a believer and recognizing that she lives her life by all sorts of beliefs, but she’s just she doesn’t think of herself in those terms. And she thinks that I’ve made a leap of faith and that she hasn’t as though she lives, like, at ground level navigating her life, I have reason and evidence which nobody does, you know, we treat one another as though they are individuals with right or

Andrew Wilson
if you don’t have beliefs that can’t be grounded in some something like that, then you you become like what culture in a few episodes goes calling it like you become a psychopath? You go, if you actually only acted on the evidence, you have the strong and the weak, right? You You’re not a pleasant person in the slightest. No, almost. Exactly. So of course, you’ll believe it.

Glen Scrivener
Yes, yes. And that’s doesn’t mean that she’s a believer in Jesus and she needs to come to know but but but for so many people, they just don’t think in that category. And I think that there are people of faith like me, and I’ve managed to sort of, you know, drum up enough spiritual energy, I’ve got the force coursing through my veins midichlorians are in my blood or whatever it is, you know, and sometimes, you know, she looks at me and she thinks she’s dodged a bullet and sometimes she looks at me and she thinks that I’ve hit the jackpot but but I’m a different category of person because I’m a believer and she’s not. You’re a believer that you believe in the supernatural. Because compassion is the nature right right. You believe in things that are incredibly Jesus shaped but you have this cognitive dissonance because you can you don’t need to take a leap you’re already midair. You need some ground beneath your feet. And let me introduce you to Jesus. I think that’s that’s a different strategy. evangelistically

Andrew Wilson
and I think it works in preaching as well. I can say this is obviously my you know, my both of us are preachers and I’m a pastor of a church. So you bet I think you can regular I’m at my guess would be that on the number of the listeners of this podcast are preachers as well. And actually I just find myself continually saying, oh, that’s where you get this. That’s where this idea that’s where you get that from. So you’re in it was any book that was it I mean Hosea at the moment, and it’s just amazing even there the number of times you can say, that idea. That is, I mean, even in our, in our culture today, in a Mercy is better than sacrifice or whatever. Little things like you might not have heard that phrase. But actually, the idea that you’d say the essence surely of religion, is that you’re showing kindness to the poor, rather than that you’re offering animal sacrifices are very strange. I know. But look, here, here’s where it comes from just continually going back to these things. And it is so helpful as a preacher to be able to say, I’m not just looking here for things that believe that Christians need to understand and to be able to live better. But in every text, I’ve got things that are that have shaped the world in which unbelievers live. Yes. So that, and in our church, we, you know, we do surveys, we know like 10% of the people who come to our church are not actually Christians, or wouldn’t say they were. And that’s, that’s quite a large percentage of people that I’ve read then feel like every time I’m over a nonclustered. They aren’t

Glen Scrivener
very different problem than 9010.

Andrew Wilson
But so you realize, actually, I’m in dialogue here with people who are aware that there are things about Christianity that don’t believe but there are many things in Scripture in almost every time I get up and read the Bible, that are providing foundations for things. And and this is back to your thinking about joining the dots between things you believe and things that the reasons why you should believe them. But you might not have seen the connections, and it’s so helpful. So I think it works in public preaching as well. Yes, ordinary evangelism.

Glen Scrivener
Yeah. And what’s helped my preaching more generally, is to see the scriptures as what John Calvin called them spectacles through which you see, life, you see God and you see the world in a different light through the spectacles of the scriptures, so that you your vision doesn’t terminate upon the text, but through the text, you are interpreting God in the world. Now take that to these issues. And if you really recognize that this bill, this world has been built by this book, then you look at you look at the problems of this world. And you see that, yes, the scriptures have an answer to them. But the scriptures have formed the very issues that we’re dealing with in the culture. So the other day I was preaching on one Corinthians 12, and you know, one body many parts. And I think, before I thought about the air, we breathe type stuff, I think I just would have preached that normally as this is about, you know, church, and it is right. But now I begin with, how do you figure out diversity, inclusion and equality? Such a conundrum, isn’t it? Everyone’s leaning in at that point, right? Because the reason why we’ve even attempted to have diverse communities of equals who are all included in the only reason we’ve spent this is because of one Corinthians 12 and Galatians. Three, and you know, the scriptures have given us the problem. And you know, we have twisted and perverted and detached ourselves from the scriptural truths that are there, and we’re faced with the problems of this world. But in returning to the original, there is just such a resonance with people. And so you I think you preach one Corinthians 12 in in a different way. That doesn’t mean that the point of one Corinthians 12, is how you run your di e. Yeah, in the workplace. But it’s

Andrew Wilson
di because we’re worried about di e the acronym problem.

Glen Scrivener
Yes, yeah.

Andrew Wilson
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s funny the icon is it is just as a color that says, you need to say yes, but no, but yes. Or if I got that from someone else, I don’t remember how it sounds like the kind of thing he did. But again, preaching and personal discussion is just, it’s, it’s harder to do in personal discussion, because it’s spontaneous. But the idea that you’re saying, and it’s great, what you just said, is a great example that you see, you see something in the world and you say, Yes, I want to affirm the desire for that thing, right. But no, that’s not ultimately the way to get it. And the reasons are, there’s an inconsistency there with the way you’re ultimately seeing the world. But yes, in that if you come to Christ, and you’d see it through the lens of Scripture, you get what you wanted, but you don’t get it. You actually get it better than you would have if you got it the other way. And that sort of yeah, yes, but no, but yes, and that’s

Glen Scrivener
exactly what I did. Because I kind of said, we who are baptized into Christ are baptized into one body. And I’d like you know, what we don’t get about diversity. Inclusion in equality is on the basis of saying sorry, the pieces that actually confessing to sin. And that’s the democratizing thing. Yeah. So that it’s not my identity that I bring to the table because if the problem with the IE without baptism without Christ is like it was me September. got to accept everything about me. And then I did this illustration about Christmas, you know, everyone’s welcome at our Christmas but our Christmas has a shape to it, you know. And if you want to do Christmas your way I want to do Christmas my way he wants to do Christmas his way. It’s gonna be an absolute pandemonium and chaos. And we are baptized into Jesus. And I said, you know, you got to come through sorry, river before you get to beginning and land. And that’s, that’s the shape. So it was very much a yes, no. And yes, because I guess it’s a gospel law gospel kind of thing. You know, and I think Helen Keller very helpfully gets us to see that law and gospel, the first part of a law kind of proclamation in a law and gospel sweep is to say about the goodness of the law, right, there’s something really good about this value. And we don’t fulfill it. And in Christ, you know, he does it for us, and now we can in him. And so gospel law gospel is that shape and so yes, yes. And no one. Yes. that would that would make a lot of sense. But yeah.

Andrew Wilson
And that is, yeah. So I think that there’s, we’ve talked a bit about evangelism in ordinary life. We talked a bit about preaching, we talked a bit about the conceptual frame behind it. Any just final things on the from you? Do you think on that, because I think you’ve done well, in particular, over the last few years, you’ve helped me certainly challenge in the church where needed, on thinking about our response to just about how we have responded, and how we were we’ve not done well as the church in a post Christian moment, anything to kind of speak into that. And just areas where you think ecclesial you’re like as the corporate family of God, yeah, when he’s go, these are some things just, I was gonna say, easy wins. That’s probably a crass way of saying it, but things that we need to make sure, in addition to this sort of more apologetic, ideally, back and forth. And in addition, also to some of the things we talked about with Carl Truman, about embodiment, hospitality, friendship, other things, you just think these are areas where I just think we need to get the church rights to help us in a post Christian moment. Well, I

Glen Scrivener
think keep Sunday special, is a really interesting phrase that used to in the United Kingdom, be the slogan for a movement to alter or to, to maintain Sunday trading laws. And so, you know, in the UK, it’s still the case that Sunday trading laws are different to the rest of the week. But it used to be that you, you know, pretty much most shops were shut on on a Sunday. And there was a great movement that was spearheaded by Christians to say, let’s keep Sunday special. And I am really interested in that phrase, because I was thinking the other day about what we need in our cultural moment as the church I think we need to keep Sunday special. But I don’t think in terms of let’s worry about Sunday trading laws, you know, and and maybe you think it’s a justice issue to campaign for better Sunday trading laws. And maybe you think an always on society is no good for the workers in Tescos. And the supermarket’s Great, okay, so that there is a case to be made for making that argument in the public square. But as the public square and the church become more and more different, it’s a threat to us, it’s also an opportunity, it’s an opportunity for us to be really, really weird. And, you know, I finished my book by talking about, you know, the acronym weird. And I kind of say, well, just by virtue of being a Westerner, you’re weird in that Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic sense. The church is called to be properly weird, you know, not just to believe in equality in an abstract sense, but what what does equality in our church look like? What does compassion look like in our, in our church, and mostly ministries and, and that sort of thing. And so let’s let’s kind of be properly weird in our church. And let us let’s make, let’s make 52 Mini Christmases. And, you know, we don’t have to burn ourselves out, you know, going to go into great expense about it. But let’s make these 50 to a wases. In the, in, in the Hurly burly of everyday life in which there are no boundaries, there are no thick lines anymore. We don’t we don’t stop something and then started again. Well, the church can and the church should and let us really Sabbath well together on a Sunday and and make it something that our families just love to be at. And then the, that 10% who come to your church, they, they feel that sense of freedom. Yes. They feel that sense of grace. Yes. They feel that sense of truth. Yes. And they feel that sense of arrest, you know, here here is a place that resists the conveyor belts, you know, towards productivity and pragmatism and is able to rest together as family. And I think if we can kind of capture that in our local churches. I think that’s so attractive and modern to modern day. Yeah. Nice. Well said. So we’ve thought about it. preaching and evangelism and church life. What about family? Andrew?

Andrew Wilson
Yeah, I think there’s, I think the same is true, we have to think through parenting in a post Christian context. And I what I found encouraging, I think the hardest age probably, to parent was maybe 10 or 15 years ago, when suddenly issues that you didn’t talk to your children about age six or seven, come up when the child is 12 or 13. And you realize I haven’t talked to them about this yet. Now, that was hard. And I feel for those brothers and sisters who were in that position. I think the nice thing about being where we are now in a very explicitly post Christian way, is that my I mean, it wasn’t nice. But my five year old made fun of me for being he said, You’re non binary or something, I can’t vote, it just he heard it at school at the age of five. And I think, okay, we’re now going to have to have a conversation earlier than we did. That’s an example in sexual ethics. But actually, generally, I think the anthropology and value system of the of a post Christian society that is very explicitly teaching children, at least in my case, they’re in state schools, and not be the story of everybody. But it isn’t in Britain is very common. But it means actually, I’ve got the opportunity to talk much younger than I did with my 14 year old, who has been fine as well. And I just think that sort of leading into rather than leaning away from the very sticky areas where you say, well, actually this, this is a really good feature of what’s being taught. And we read like that. This is that’s not true at all ism. And this bit comes from the Bible, you know, that this B here, that’s not why there is, and but actually, you get to do that, when in many ways younger, because the issues are being raised much younger, in the form of the Catholic thesis, and that is coming on to kids. So what you have to develop is, I think, comfortable where the term comes from, but the concept of counter counter cases where you’re saying every Catechism is designed to try and respond to an error in thinking in the Protestant Reformation, it was Catholicism, but today, it might be the ethics that you’re being categorized into at school and on all sorts of issues, particularly in sort of sexual ethics. And so you get to do counter data cases with a six or seven year old. And that I think, is probably a great opportunity in terms of discipleship to say, we can initiate this because you are being asked about this. You’re not it’s not you’re not cringeworthy yet. Because you’re so young, you want to ask you want to talk about it with me, and it’s a good opportunity. So I think there’s so many ways in which living in a post Christian moment means we need to think creatively about how we lean towards the areas of conflict and difference. Affirm what’s good. And again, it’s Yes, but No, but yes, in the context of parenting.

Glen Scrivener
Right, right, and to do so intentionally in a way that we weren’t forced to be intentional about that aspect of our parenting before now, but yeah, no, not at all conflict makes us think, more, intentionally more Christianly. Well, Andrew, we have covered a lot of ground over the course of this podcast. And we really thank you guys for joining us. Over the course of these podcasts. We’d really love for you to spread the word about them. So please do share on social media and get the word out. Post Christianity is a podcast of the Keller Center, which is a ministry of the gospel coalition. Thank you very much for joining us and Andrew, thanks so much. Thanks.