The Air We Breathe with Glen Scrivener

Is Christianity no longer relevant? Today in the west, many consider the church to be dead or dying. Christianity is seen as outdated, bigoted, and responsible for many of society’s problems. This leaves many believers embarrassed about their faith and many outsiders wary of religion. But what if the Christian message is not the enemy of our modern Western values, but the very thing that makes sense of them?

I had this fascinating conversation with Glen Scrivener who helped me see how the teachings of Jesus not only turned the ancient world upside down, but continue to underpin the way we think of life, worth, and meaning. Far from being a relic from the past, the distinctive ideas of Christianity, such as freedom, kindness, progress, and equality, are a crucial part of the air that we breathe.

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Originally from Australia, Glen has lived in the UK for more than half his life. He was curate at All Soul’s Church, Eastbourne, where he and his family still worship. Since 2010, Glen has been Evangelist here at Speak Life and, in August 2014, he became Director. Glen is passionate about people meeting Christ and equipping Christians to share their faith. He’s often found speaking at Churches and Universities, producing online media in the studio, or in his office, writing books and other evangelistic material. Glen is married to Emma, and they have a daughter, Ruby, and a son, JJ.

You can find a copy of his new book here - https://www.thegoodbook.com/the-air-we-breathe

Contender: Going Deeper in the Book of Jude - This all-inclusive small group study on the book of Jude is out now. Check it out on the course page: http://courses.andymilleriii.com

Five Steps to Deeper Teaching and Preaching - I’m excited to share some news with you.  Recently, I updated this PDF document and added a 45-minute teaching video with slides, explaining this tool. It's like a mini-course. If you sign up for my list, I will send this free resource to you. Sign up here - www.AndyMillerIII.com or Five Steps to Deeper Teaching and Preaching.

Today’s episode is brought to you by these two sponsors:

Bill Roberts is a financial advisor, who has been serving the retirement planning and investment needs of individuals, families, non-profits, and churches for 25 years. He is a Certified Financial Planner and accredited investment fiduciary. Bill specializes in working with Salvation Army employees and officers by helping them realize their financial goals.  You can find out more about Bill’s business at www.WilliamHRoberts.com

AND

Wesley Biblical Seminary - Interested in going deeper in your faith? Check out our certificate programs, B.A., M.A.s, M.Div., and D.Min degrees. You will study with world-class faculty and the most racially diverse student body in the country. www.wbs.edu

Thanks too to Phil Laeger for the new podcast music. You can find out about Phil's music at https://www.laeger.net

Transcript

Welcome to the more to the story. Podcast. I am so glad you have come along today. We have a great show, somebody I have heard For a while I've listened to a red, and i'm thankful for opportunity. I get to a chance to engage his new book. But you're going to have to wait just a second to find out about that, because I need to tell you about the sponsors of this podcast.

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Andy Miller III: Bill Roberts is a financial planner who comes at this discipline from a Christian perspective, and he's particularly gifted at helping people who are serving in ministry, as they have to calculate funny things like housing allowances and that kind of thing. But he does this with the aim of helping people plan well for their retirement, so you can check out information about Bill at William H. Roberts, Dot Com. And you can find a link to him in my show notes. Also. We are brought to you by Wesley Biblical Seminary, where I work and serve as the Academic Dean and Professor of Theology and preaching.

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Andy Miller III: I'm. So thankful that this school is riding high at this point in the where where our country is, and what have an even higher institution and in higher education in our world all together. Right now we have one of the highest enrollments in our history, and we have students who are entering into our bachelor's, masters, and doctoral programs. We love for you to think about Wesley Biblical Seminary as we are training trusted leaders for faithful churches. Check us out at Wbs,

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Andy Miller III: E. D. You.

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Andy Miller III: And finally, I just want to make sure people know about a resource I have available. It is five steps to deeper teaching and preaching. It's a forty, five minute teaching session that I have in an eight-page document for preachers and teachers to help them get deeper in the Scripture with the aim of thinking how they communicate what they've learned better. So i'd love for you to check that out. I'll give it to you for free, if you sign up for my email list at Andy Miller, the third dot com That's Andy Miller. I I I

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Andy Miller III: dot com all right. I am glad to welcome into the podcast today Glenn Scribner, who is the director of Speak Life Glen. I am a fan of yours. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

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Glen Scrivener: Ah, thank you very much for how you, me, Andy.

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Andy Miller III: Yeah, Absolutely. No. Now, Glenn, tell us a little bit about yourself where you're from. I think that'll get people acclimated with you and understanding like, before we get into your new book, which i'm really excited to talk about.

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Glen Scrivener: Well, you would say, acclimated, I would say, climatized because I'm on this side of the Atlantic. And you you have to get acclimated to me saying, climate change like, Yeah, I'm. I'm from Australia originally, and I've been living for half my life in the Uk. Now i'm married to Emma. We've got Ruby and Jj. Are our two children. I'm an Anglican minister and the Church of England. But my day job is to work as an evangelist, and so I direct the ministry of State life, and we go out and preach to go school and

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Glen Scrivener: create resources that help people to understand the Gospel, and we train other people to do the same. So that's speak life.

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Glen Scrivener: Now, how did you get to the U. K. Was it through for education purposes, or yeah, my dad got a job? I was not yet fifteen years old, and with about six weeks noticed, we switched. We switched, We switched hemispheres and oh, wow, yeah. And then I went back to Australia. Then back here, and then I got to port it from here, and then we're back to stray year, and then I I got worried. You got deported.

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Glen Scrivener: Oh, yeah,

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Glen Scrivener: okay. But every every Australian has a story like this. But yes, I I married my wife in two thousand and three, and I've got the green card. That's not the only reason why I married her, but

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Andy Miller III: the sapphire.

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Glen Scrivener: It certainly helps. So, yeah,

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Glen Scrivener: interesting. So you you went through and become an Anglican, a minister and um. But but you're not necessarily like that's like That's your ordination, but your function in this nonprofit with this nonprofit that it have you started this nonprofit speak like, speak like I've kind of I've I've changed it. It began as the hour of revival evangelistic association, and just by the title. You can probably guess the accurate that it it it it. It began in nineteen, fifty, two, and

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Glen Scrivener: there was very much a Billy Graham kind of um evangelist at the heart of it, who went out and did the Crusades type thing, but he also had a radio ministry. And So he founded this. He founded this non-non profit as something to help us in proclaiming Jesus in person and via media media back in the day meant radio back. But I joined the organization in two thousand and ten, and we've been moving much more online and much more in terms of video.

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Glen Scrivener: But we still do the same thing. We still lift up the name of Jesus in person and and online awesome love it,

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Andy Miller III: And that's part of what you're doing in a different way in this new book that you publish, and I just want to encourage people to get it. The air we read Now, when when people see the title, they might even pick it up. And it it says how we all came to believe the subtitle, how we all came to believe in freedom, kindness, progress, inequality. So with people. See those those words? They might not think they have a Christian book coming their way,

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Andy Miller III: so help us understand what it. What is it. What is this image of the air we breathe? What do you have in mind there?

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Glen Scrivener: Well, they've done a great job with ftl to come up and all. Look at this. If you get. If you get a hard copy, you get the cheese greater addition. There there are. There are holes in the car to give you the the sense of

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Glen Scrivener: yeah values that we have blowing their way through the atmosphere. And I guess the illustration is is based on my experience in Australia. I grew up

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Glen Scrivener: there, as I've said, and when you're living in a place you don't really appreciate the atmosphere, and it's only now when I fly back into Sydney I smell how sweet the air is, because there are so many eucalyptus trees, so eucalyptus oil is kind of methylating the air. It's like a kind of a cough syrup.

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Glen Scrivener: I um constantly carried upon the breeze. It's a good smell. It's a good smell. It's a good. It coughs her. Okay, Keep going. Yeah, eucalyptus eucalyptus. Yeah, that that eucalyptus menthol kind of.

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Glen Scrivener: But it's a sweet smell that you do not notice because it is the air that you breathe, and sometimes you need to go out of the atmosphere and come back into it.

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Glen Scrivener: What you've been taking for granted the whole time, and I guess the contention of the book is that we have moral intuitions and assumptions and gut instincts that we take to be utterly natural and obvious and universal,

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Glen Scrivener: and what the book tries to do is take you out of your current environments, maybe by going around the world. But in this, in this book Really, we go back in history to pre-christian times, and show people that the moral assumptions and intuitions and gut instincts that we all share are by no means natural. They are by no means obvious that by no means universal they have come to us specifically from the Jesus Revolution. And so that's that's kind of a premise of book

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Andy Miller III: now. A lot of these scenes, then, are things that would be highlighted in Western culture, and you and I both come from Western culture, and I think this is last week the Queen, as we said in savage Norm, is promoted to glory. She's, you know, no longer. She absent from the body present with the Lord. But there's

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Andy Miller III: there's a highlighting at this point of Western culture, and there's even there's a questioning of it.

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Glen Scrivener: How much of what we're talking about. Here are things that are supposing and being a little bit of a critic, Supposing Western values. Yeah, Well, I'd say Western values are very contingent things. They are not these obvious moral intuitions that all humanity in all times of places have shared. And so I I go through seven different moral values. The wheel tends to hold in the West. I go through equality, compassionate consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, progress,

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Glen Scrivener: And I actually attach those to seven different stages in human history. With equality. I talk about the Old Testament with compassion. I talk about Jesus in particular in the New Testament, with consent in the realm of sexual ethics. I talk about the early Church with enlightenment. I talk about the abolition of the slave trade, and with progress. I bring us up to dates to the twenty first century. And my point is really that

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Glen Scrivener: all these values that we unthinkingly hold right have come to us through very specific historical developments, and that really matters especially. You have a kind of a rupture in the life of the Commonwealth. As the Queen Elizabeth dies

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Glen Scrivener: suddenly, What do you find? Well, you find

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Glen Scrivener: millions of people were showing up at cathedrals

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Glen Scrivener: and singing hymns.

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Glen Scrivener: Yes, yes, and bowing to the earthly remains of Her Majesty, who is the Governor of the Church of England, crossing themselves in periods of

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Glen Scrivener: intense mourning, and that morning is ritualized, and there is a pageantry that has Christian symbolism absolutely woven into it.

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Glen Scrivener: You notice that

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Glen Scrivener: you will also notice

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Glen Scrivener: people objecting to that, and people saying, Well, what about democratic ideals, right or isn't this very nationalistic aren't. We all globalists today or isn't this all about tradition aren't We all progressive today. But even in that debate,

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Glen Scrivener: who gave you the idea that we ought to be democratic

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Glen Scrivener: right? Who gave you the idea that we ought to be globalist? Who gave you the idea that we ought to be

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Glen Scrivener: progressive.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah, yeah,

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Glen Scrivener: um. And And and my contention in the book is no matter what side you land in all these different culture wars, it is Jesus who is shaping all of them? Wow! So it's. It's not just like they they think they're. You might think that they're moving against that that tradition. But what what they're actually moving toward is still a value that comes from the Christian worldview one hundred percent. I just I just received a letter from Humanists, Uk: which is a large

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Glen Scrivener: Humanist organization in the United Kingdom, and it's an appeal letter looking for funds. They are very worried by this sort of Renaissance in

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Glen Scrivener: the Christian establishment.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah, people going to church and people going to cathedral. They're very worried, and they're saying, Give us your money now. We need to. We need to fight the the incursion of sort of, you know, because of the Queen's death

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Glen Scrivener: because of the Queen's death.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah, wow. And so they're very worried about it, and which is which is interesting all by itself. But you read through this this appeal letter,

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Glen Scrivener: and what are the concerns? The concerns are for democratic representation. That's interesting. The concerns are, the church is rich, and is perceived to be powerful,

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Glen Scrivener: and we want to speak against that. The Church is perceived to be corrupt, and we want to speak against that. There are traditions that are holding us back, and we want to kind of progress towards a brighter future.

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Glen Scrivener: Literally, every single sentence is infused with a thoroughly Christian ideal, every single one, even humanism itself.

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Glen Scrivener: Ah, because where do we get the idea that humans have this particular value, this sort of inviolable dignity that is given to each person

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Glen Scrivener: equally, no matter who they are, their race, their religion, their rank.

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Glen Scrivener: Where do we get the idea of human rights and human equality, anyway? And so my my contention is, even if you're a died in the wool royalist, and you believe in sacral monarchy, or you believe in absolute, direct democracy.

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Glen Scrivener: You are on either side of a culture war that is really encompassed by the Christian vision of reality. We're all hurling Bible verses at each other. We've just forgotten the references. Wow! Interesting idea!

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Andy Miller III: Now I want to. I want to drill down on some of these issues that you've brought up these things that we experience in our culture that are connected. Rather, we realize it or not like like you say it's the air that we breathe. But I think talking about the Queen is interesting. I hope that i'll get this out in time when this is still like something that people are thinking about.

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Andy Miller III: I'm surprised even the way that i'm challenged by in that challenge, but it

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Andy Miller III: appreciative of the the liturgy that's coming through like the the way that, like the ah, for instance, like a doctrine of the resurrection of the body, is so clearly represented at multiple stages. Already we have any. Even I haven't even had the funeral like in um. Just this language is a part, and and I think. Unfortunately, if we would just take time to listen to what's being said, it could lead people to the place that they need to be,

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Glen Scrivener: and how beautiful it is that. Yes, you'll have the Archbishop of Canterbury Um. Besides the earthly remains of Her Majesty the Queen, saying, You know, ensure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead, and and and pronouncing these things. But that is said by every vicar, in every little parish, up and down the country, about

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Glen Scrivener: every person who dies. Everyone right?

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Glen Scrivener: Um! There There is a real democratization actually about the fact that this liturgy is. It is for everyone, and and the Queen is no exception to it. So yeah, I'm. I'm a fan of liturgy, and I and I think there's a There's a Renaissance and a rediscovery and a a retrieval

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Glen Scrivener: of of liturgy going on among a whole bunch of people, be they evangelical broadly, or be they people who are inquiring into the faith; and I'm. Finding that those who are most interested in the faith at the moment more more broadly

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Glen Scrivener: tends to gravitate towards more liturgical forms of service which is interesting.

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Andy Miller III: You know. I don't know if that's necessarily the case in the United States. But i'm really thankful that that is bringing people

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Andy Miller III: to faith and to Christian community in the Uk. There's something, I think we still have to get over the superstar Christianity here. That's just something about our culture of brainbound look the deeper people can get into that language of tradition, I think,

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Andy Miller III: talking about in the in the sure hope of the resurrection of our bodies. This is like something that ultimately gives people the final hope that they're looking for.

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Andy Miller III: And you, you say this kind of interesting thing in the book you say the extraordinary impact of Christianity is seen in the fact that we don't notice it. And my hope is that what's happening? I need to be more proper with Her Majesty the Queen

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Glen Scrivener: that people will notice it. People will notice what's going on. What what do you hope people will notice in this period where Western values are not being questioned or just being at least highlighted. What? What? What do you think can pull people in? Maybe it's different things. But i'm curious.

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Glen Scrivener: I think it's really important that we start noticing that the air that we breathe we start noticing that we are all people of faith,

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Glen Scrivener: my friends. A lot of my friends consider themselves to be totally post-christian, totally secular; and they are not only not believers, they feel themselves to be incapable of faith,

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Glen Scrivener: and in the sense I've written my book for them, because I want to show them that on a daily basis they are

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Glen Scrivener: living by faith, living according to these intuitions and these values that they cannot prove they cannot demonstrate them mathematically or logically. You can't do a scientific experiment and come up with a proof for human rights. And yet,

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Glen Scrivener: my friends live in costly ways, according to these

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Glen Scrivener: ideals, like compassion and equality, and consent, and all these things. And I just think it's so important to give people a vocabulary for faith when they have thought of themselves as incapable of it. You know, I think of a friend who wrote to me, and just she, she said just one sentence: Of Of course you realize I could never be a person of faith,

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Glen Scrivener: and and it's a sentence that's haunted me, because I know that she lives sacrificially for the sake of values that she cannot prove.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah. And what do you call that when someone sort of wages their life

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Glen Scrivener: on something that is not demonstrable, but in trust, they venture forth in order to be compassionate to somebody who might, you know, turn their back on them, treat somebody equally who has not yet demonstrated that they are worthy of equal dignity, you know.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah, um. And and yet I I just think it's so important because we lived for a while in the the wake of the new atheism

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Glen Scrivener: which Richard Dawkins could kind of characterize. You know people of faith as the faith heads, and I think

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Glen Scrivener: certainly a lot of my friends, and a lot of my generation brought into that lie that we are not ordinarily people of faith, and there are those that that other breed of person over there. These Christians who manage to be able to take a leap of faith,

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Glen Scrivener: and the whole point of the book is saying, You don't need to leap. You're already six miles in the air. Wow! You're living in this castle in the air, with absolutely no foundations apart from Jesus.

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Glen Scrivener: What's your strategy? Oh, sorry

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Glen Scrivener: they already interrupt you.

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Glen Scrivener: What's your strategy with your friend. How do you respond to her

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Glen Scrivener: to point out to

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Glen Scrivener: where she already believes? And I and I think I think that's so important in all kinds of evangelism is, there is a way of responding to the words that are coming out of a person's mouth, and I guess that's very important. There's also a way of addressing the heart that has given rise to those words, and that's really important. And it's also very important to point to the the feet of your friend, and where they are standing.

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Glen Scrivener: Okay, because what they are standing on, and how they are, what the the assumptions that they are making about humanity, and how life works and highest ideals Those assumptions go.

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Glen Scrivener: Um! Remarked upon they. They, they! They go unexamined for most people most of the time. And so, my my big point is that, my my friends, they think of um. They think of the church as unequal instead of it being compassionate, it's cruel. Instead of being enlightened, it's not enlightened instead of being science, it's anti-science, instead of being free, it's about restriction instead of progress it's regressive

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Glen Scrivener: and I just want to point out to my friends, what are you assuming, even as you accuse the Church of being these things, and we can where we can like wear those critiques, because sometimes they are right on target.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah.

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Glen Scrivener: But the point, again is not so much to take the words that are coming out of their mouth, but to point to where they're standing, and where they are standing, is

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Glen Scrivener: on the absolute rock. Solid assumption that equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress are foundational values that ought to be on it. Yeah. So you're already a person of faith. Where does that come from? And then a lot of the book is showing. Really, none of this makes sense without Jesus.

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Glen Scrivener: So let's get into one of these topics it could you mention several times, and I I know if we want to look into all of them, get the book right. But but let's look at a quality, for instance, like. And you've said a lot of people would assume that that's not what Christianity

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Andy Miller III: supposes that that's not all. But how is a quality rooted in Christianity?

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Glen Scrivener: One of the things you need to do is again, take yourself out of the atmosphere that you're used to, and place yourself in a non-christian or a pre-christian culture, and you can do that in the ancient world, and you can ask Plato or Aristotle are people equal, and he would say, Well, obviously not

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Glen Scrivener: you take any any two people, and you judge them according to any one metric, and they're going to be different. This guy is smarter than that guy. This guy's stronger than that guy, this guy's wealthier than that guy, This guy's more economically productive than this guy. This guy is a master that guy's a slave.

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Glen Scrivener: This guy's a citizen, that guy's a barbarian. This guy is a guy. This guy is a girl, and Plato would be saying on every single measure

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Glen Scrivener: there is difference, and and it leads to inequality. And then Plato would say, You know, if you were somehow beamed back into the fifth century Bc. And you know,

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Glen Scrivener: he would say. You seem to believe in equality. In what sense are those two people equal?

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Glen Scrivener: Where is it? It seems a magical idea.

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Andy Miller III: Yeah,

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Glen Scrivener: um! And where has it come from? Well, page one of the Bible you've got man and woman in the image of God sharing dominion over the world.

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Glen Scrivener: Now that idea of the image of God was in some ancient near Eastern texts applied to the king. Maybe the king is this God-like, person, because the gods of the ancient Near East were tyrannical kind of.

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Glen Scrivener: And so, you know, a tyrannical despot is probably a good image of a king in in so many ancient near Eastern texts.

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Glen Scrivener: But in the Bible everyone,

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Glen Scrivener: male and female, is kingly, is royal, and we share that equality. No matter. Our gender, our race, our wealth,

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Glen Scrivener: our class. It doesn't matter, it's, it's entirely equal, and then you bring it through into the New Testament. And what does Jesus do?

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Glen Scrivener: God? The sun becomes God, our brother,

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Glen Scrivener: and descends to the the bottom of the sort of the social hierarchy, as it were, to die the slave's death, and then rises up again to invite us into his family, and in his family there are no lords except him.

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Glen Scrivener: We are all brothers and sisters. It's a remarkably egalitarian vision for human worth and dignity, and it has very slowly but surely bedded itself down in our imaginations such that now

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Glen Scrivener: we think justice is about equalizing people.

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Glen Scrivener: If you see an inequality,

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Glen Scrivener: it's instinctive to us that that inequality must be unfair, because equality must be achieved,

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Glen Scrivener: and so justice involves equalizing people. Whereas you talk to a Plato or an Aristotle, and inequality, they would say, is woven into creation, woven into the nature of things, and justice means enforcing that inequality

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Glen Scrivener: right? And what's what's happened? There's There's been the most extraordinary revolution in our

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Glen Scrivener: in our moral compass, and it's It's all down to Jesus it really is. So it's connected to slavery. So a lot of people would say, Oh, Christianity, you know this enables slavery to happen for a long time. I mean? How is the equality and the slavery question connected?

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Glen Scrivener: Well, again, Plato or Aristotle would say, Nature teaches you. Some people are born to rule, and some people are born to be ruled over.

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Glen Scrivener: If you leave aside your Christianity, and you try to go toe to toe with Plato,

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Glen Scrivener: that question, you'll probably lose Mm-hmm not just because he's far cleverr than you are clever than I am, but I

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Glen Scrivener: it is. It is obvious to him that when you look at some people. They're very good at organizing their own lives,

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Glen Scrivener: and there are some people who are terrible at organizing their own lives, and wouldn't it be good if the people who are good at organizing others organized them, and the people who are not good at organizing themselves got looked after in that way. It sounds very rational, and there's there's no logical flaw in that argument.

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Glen Scrivener: There's nothing there's nothing. There's nothing logical about homo sapiens

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Glen Scrivener: that that means you cannot have a slave class, and every single society that has gotten to any kind of of level of development has been a slave society. Every single one.

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Glen Scrivener: We are the odd ones.

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Glen Scrivener: We are the odd ones. How are we, the odd ones? Will I talk about it in my chapter on Freedom,

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Glen Scrivener: but remarkably, there are a bunch of people who

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Glen Scrivener: take the image of God very, very seriously

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Glen Scrivener: preach

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Glen Scrivener: ends,

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Glen Scrivener: not only preach, but actually put into practice their belief in the equality of all people, and you get an abolition movement

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Glen Scrivener: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which overturned one of the great human universals in human history which is slavery, and we have gone. It is another evolution. We have gone from

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Glen Scrivener: slavery, being the great human, universal through the assumption that of course, people can never be property, of course.

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Glen Scrivener: Well, that, of course, is so obvious to us. It is the air that we breathe. But again it has come to us very specifically through the the Jesus Revolution.

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Andy Miller III: Yes, and and obviously, can we say this comes through the Jesus Revolution. But there also is this idea, too, that, connected, as you said to the first page of the Bible, How do we kind of work through the way that you say that it finds it? I don't know if you say climax in Jesus. But how does this relate like to the reality of that?

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Andy Miller III: Christianity comes from Judaism?

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Glen Scrivener: Right? Well, Jesus, the King of the Jews. The Jewish Messiah Ah embodies the the Hebrew expectations and hopes he is the Lord of the Old Testament. He comes. What happens in the New Testament is, is not really a a change of regime or a change in God's desires of morality, or any anything of a sort. But what had been kept within Old Testament. Israel

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Glen Scrivener: bursts the banks of the Jewish nation, and ends up flooding the world. Which is why the I mean the New Testament. Um, it never. It never really has to go into much doctrine in the New Testament in in terms of so, as the New Testament unfolds, What does the death of Jesus mean

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Glen Scrivener: the news? That's more to say. Well just read Leviticus. Just think about the Temple symbol, or just you know. Think about Isaiah. It will take you back to the Old Testament in terms of in terms of those doctrines.

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Glen Scrivener: But the big controversy in the New Testament is always Oh, what do we do with Gentiles wanting to come in on the Jewish Messiah? Do they have to become Jewish right?

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Glen Scrivener: And of course, if the answer to that question was Yes, then I think the Jesus Revolution would be contained and locked up continually within an ethnic national group. But the genius of the New Testament is

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Glen Scrivener: the the mystery that was kept hidden for ages, and is now revealed as Paul talks about it in a number of different places. For instance, Ephesian step the three Um and Colossians chapter. One is it is it is Christ in you, the hope of Gloria. And in you, you Colossians, you in Turkey. You're in on this. You are children of Abraham as well.

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Glen Scrivener: So I guess what you see in the Old Testament is a whole bunch of people who had these peculiar views. They they believed in compassion and equality and consent, and and all these great values. But it was locked up in in the New Testament. It it bursts the banks of Old Testament Israel, and it's flooded the world.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah, through you, all the nations in the world will be blessed less. Yes, yeah, I mean It's It's such a bigger vision. Okay, Now you bring up the other one. I think it's so interesting that you highlight consent as something. Yeah. So talking about that, like, how is that

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Andy Miller III: coming from the Christian tradition? How is that a part of like people people are generally going to assume that. Yeah, of course, this is something we all I mean, I think the word that keeps coming up in time. Time again is, of course,

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Glen Scrivener: Well, How do we get to that, of course, And particularly how is that related to How is the history of consent?

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah,

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Glen Scrivener: Ah, gosh! Such a it's such a big. The The sexual ethics of the Greco-roman world is just night and day from what we would take for granted

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Glen Scrivener: a high-born Roman male had the right to possess any body he so chose.

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Glen Scrivener: Only they in his family, be they a slave, be their prostitute prostitution was State-sponsored brothels were everywhere a trip to the brothel would set you back the cost of a loaf of bread. There are twenty five Latin words for prostitutes, and yet there is no natural way in Latin to refer to an adult male virgin

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Glen Scrivener: when you say Virginia. So you say, virgin in Latin, you're referring to a woman. It's just assumed. Yeah, there's no natural grammatical way of referring to an adult male.

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Andy Miller III: Oh, my goodness,

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Andy Miller III: I mean it! It sounds like Ah, it sounds like the way people talk about. Ah, we we ah are Wesley. Vocal Cemetery is in Jackson, Mississippi, which is the where the case that went to the Zerings Court, where Roe versus Wade was overturned. But so often in the discussions about abortion is this assumption that sounds like every if people are just going to get, people are just going to have sex with them outside of the

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Glen Scrivener: the boundaries of of marriage between one man and one woman. I mean it's. It's just going to happen Now you have to deal with that, I mean. So it sounds like It's similar to that time period. I just finished reading a book by Louise Perry called the case against the sexual revolution, and she's not a Christian in trans aid, but

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Glen Scrivener: she opens her book with a little snatch of conversation that a friend of hers had with an archaeologist, and the archaeologist came home from a a long day of digging, and he said We found another brothel, and this friend of Louise, Perry said. How do you know It's a brothel,

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Glen Scrivener: he said, because of all the baby bones. Oh, my!

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Glen Scrivener: Now

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Glen Scrivener: that massive burial sites! Ah, of babies is an indicator. There was a brothel. Why? Because we all know where sex leads,

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Glen Scrivener: and certainly before the pill that that is definitely where where sex would lead, and yet the the prostitutes would have the children, and then the um their master, would, you know, force them to commit the infanticide, which again is another human universal right? Right?

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Glen Scrivener: Oh, you know, it's very difficult to find human cultures that Don't practice infanticide. Of course we find that abhorrence. It was invisible to them as a problem how

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Glen Scrivener: i'm sorry to get you off. I talk about you. You're talking about being set, and I was but kind of blown away by this idea that there isn't a word just for a male of urgency. Yeah, it it is all linked. It is a link in that the unquestioned rights of powerful men to do what they want with their libidos. Of course it was.

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Glen Scrivener: It was not mirrored back in the female experience. There was a word for for virgin, and it just meant woman, and absolute chastity was expected of of women, virginity before marriage, and then complete faithfulness within marriage. They probably wouldn't have to wait long until marriage marriages at twelve were were very common in their own world,

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Glen Scrivener: so there was this incredible inequality,

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Glen Scrivener: And then the sexual revolution happened. And when I say the sexual revolution, you're probably thinking nineteen, sixty, s but one thousand nine hundred years before the swinging sixties. The real sexual revolution that has been for the absolute blessing of this world was Jesus standing up Matthew, Chapter nineteen, and saying, it's one man, one woman for life,

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Glen Scrivener: and that's that.

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Glen Scrivener: And and you know these red-blooded men who are following Jesus say, if it's like this, it's probably better if we don't get married you. Some of Jesus followers were married, so I don't know what their wives thought about Their husbands say. Probably better if we didn't get married. Ah! And then

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Glen Scrivener: but then Jesus says, Oh, there's one other option. You can be a eunuch for the kingdom right? You can for swear all sexual relations for the sake of of Christ and his King, and and that and

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Glen Scrivener: that's it.

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Glen Scrivener: That and fascinatingly. What that sexual revolution does is absolutely equalize the sexes. There is no more double standard.

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Glen Scrivener: Men cannot sow their wild oats, and then expect women to be chased. Men and women are to be utterly chased and devoted to Christ, and there's only one sexual outlet in man's marriage. Um! But that has been for the absolute blessing of the world. Another non-christian

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Glen Scrivener: Ah, Joseph Heinrich Joseph Henrick. Sorry. He he wrote a book called The Weirdest People in the world, and he traced through why Westerners are so bizarre historically and and and and internationally, and he says it's because of Christianity, and in particular because of the sex. So the sexual ethic of Christianity, because of a marriage and family program,

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Glen Scrivener: and he said, Absolutely. He. He uses this this phrase about the the church reaching down and grabbing men by the testicles. Right? Ah! Which is it was a precisely vulgar um way of putting it. But but he's basically saying, Constrain your sexuality, and it's It's not a million miles away from Jesus saying being be a eunuch for the kingdom. Right? Yeah. Um. And the Christian sexual ethic tamed rampant male sexuality because rampant male sexuality in the wild is such a destructive.

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Glen Scrivener: It leads to all these brothels, and it leads to all these cemeteries full of these tiny little children, who the fathers have no connection to, and then they move on.

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Glen Scrivener: Marriage ties. A man to his partner and to his children, ties a man to

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Glen Scrivener: his sexual choices in a way that biology, doesn't biology ties a woman to her sexual choices. Biology doesn't. Tie a man to his sexual choices. We need culture to do that. We need marriage to do that, and the imposition of Jesus sexual ethic was absolutely for the blessing and flourishing of the world. Joseph Henry, you know, talks about how the the West is particularly prosperous.

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Glen Scrivener: Because of this I mean he's an evolutionary biologist. So everything comes down to sex and reproduction for him, and I think it's a little bit reductionistic his analysis of these things, but he cannot get away from the fact that the sexual revolution of the first century

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Glen Scrivener: was transformative, and it, and it brings consent into the bedroom because it's It's got to be a man and a woman, and in one Corinthian seven. Paul says, you know Ah! A man's body doesn't belong to him, belongs to his wife's Wife's body belongs to her, and that mutuality Um! And you should only come together by consent, and you should only forswear sex

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Glen Scrivener: by consent, you know, to devote yourself to prayer, and then come back again. And so he brings equality into the bedroom, he brings consent into the bedroom. He brings commitment into the bedroom in a way that has been utterly for the blessing of the world, and I think that the undoing of that first century sexual revolution is not for our blessing,

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Andy Miller III: and that's what's happening, of course, in society right now is that we had um laws that and institutions that were recognized. I say that really specifically say, like marriage is as a pre-political institution is recognized by governments for the good of society, and I think that that's what's often missed. It's like not the the reason that Christians and traditions like mine would want to like

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Andy Miller III: encourage people to not live outside of God's boundary. It's not because we're trying to push the Bible on you. It's like We ultimately want the best thing for society as a whole, and that involves children, and the way and how a society is formed around the union between them and a woman. And my fear is like we're moving away from all of these distinctions. Most Western societies are, and I feel like we're almost in a place where

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Andy Miller III: this might seem a little little a negative view that we have to you.

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Andy Miller III: Let let society go and realize how good we had it with these rules like It's almost gonna have to cave in on itself,

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Andy Miller III: in order for us to see that this basis for understanding how we function with understanding of, with an understanding of consent, but also within the boundaries that Jesus recognized as a foundation for what we're going to do. We we're almost in a long game at this point.

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Glen Scrivener: Well, that's that's what's been great about doing. This book is recognizing what a very long game Um! The Christian Revolution truly has been, and you know so many of our brothers and sisters down through history have lived under regimes that that define sex and marriage in ways that are utterly antithetical to the Bible, and

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Glen Scrivener: many of them have absolutely thrived, not necessarily having their beliefs reflected, you know, on the statute books, but I think we we have to be the sort of

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Glen Scrivener: the sort of communities that are open to the refugees that are coming from the sexual revolution, and there are so many refugees from the sexual revolution. There have been also to disastrous um. Of the nineteen sixty s on Frantic, there there have been so many disastrous consequences for for children, and our understanding of ourselves, our understanding of gender and

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Glen Scrivener: um, I think we need to be. We need to be ready for those refugees. And wow, those refugees is helpful, right. I mean that's where we're going to be very quickly when you talk about ten, ten, fifteen years from now, when somebody who decided to, you know,

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Glen Scrivener: take their bodies and manipulate them in a ways and and hurt them it. We need to be right for the pastoral response to

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Glen Scrivener: can a refugee,

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Glen Scrivener: and I think there's a lot of hope, you know, when I read Louise Perry's book I've gotten to know her a little bit. Um Ah, personally as well, and and she's on a really interesting journey. And in terms of how she's thinking about these these things. She worked in a rape crisis center.

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Glen Scrivener: Um! When she learnt two things really, and and for ten years she was. She was working in an environment in which she recognized that sex is very meaningful. And you. You realize how meaningful it is when it goes wrong,

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Glen Scrivener: and that gender is really really really important. Um! And then she read another book that was um somewhat of an inspiration for my book. Um Dominion, by Tom Holland, right where he talks about the me, too. Movement as something that is a profoundly Christian thing, Because what do you call a Harvey Weinstein

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Glen Scrivener: in Rome? You'd call him a senator like you like Harvey Weinstein is is yeah. The The problem of Harvey Weinstein is invisible to an ancient person.

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Glen Scrivener: It only makes sense within a broadly Christian kind of understanding of things, and she she is pulling at that thread, and she's right. She's just written a book, a case against the sexual revolution where chapters are things like marriage is good. Men and women are different. Sex is significance. Listen to your mother. It's It's kind of um, and lots of people are are waking up to it. I I think there is an opportunity. If If we don't kind of sell the farm

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Glen Scrivener: right,

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Glen Scrivener: and jump with both feats into this sexual revolution, if we, if we plant our feet firmly on the actual, the good sexual revolution that's for the flourishing of the world, and do not lose our nerve. I think we'll see so many people sympathetic to our cause. And actually she is representative of so many people who are finding the sexual ethic of Jesus

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Glen Scrivener: their way in. We're so used to thinking the sexual ethic of Jesus is in the West. That's yeah, yeah. And that's the thing that we just need to. Can we just part that question. I just want to talk about Jesus and the resurrection, and and maybe we'll get on to the sexual way. Interesting lots of people that it's. It's their way in that. One thing.

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Glen Scrivener: They're saying that simply to believe in man and woman is being you. You're called a foe for that. You're called a bigot for that. This is somehow transgender genocide. Just talking about man and women. Loads of people are witnessing that, and they're starting to see. Hmm. We called the church bigoted. We called the Church Homophobic

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Glen Scrivener: Haha! Jk Rowling's not bigoted Jk rowling's not homophobic. Maybe the church isn't either.

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Glen Scrivener: I'm seeing it as a pathway for for lots of people to start getting interested in Jesus again.

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Andy Miller III: Basically, the apologetic task might be one to go towards these distinctions that are self-evident

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Glen Scrivener: right between male and female, as a way to get in as opposed to all the hard work we've done in defending the resurrection, even though I want to do that as well. At the same time. Yeah, that is such a interesting, And I think it's so clear, I think, as we see people responding to the the transgender revolution like, for instance, I think it it became so clear on, on, on social media when there was a

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Andy Miller III: an Ncaa swimmer who's six feet tall and is definitely like, has a completely different build than the two the other, the second and third-place people that

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Andy Miller III: were beat it and that that he she beat in that moment. So it's such an interesting thing. That's a way in now. You said you said something just a minute ago. We can't sell the farm.

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Andy Miller III: On this we can't we? We have to kind of hold to this original sexual revolution. What is a way that Christians could sell the farm?

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Glen Scrivener: What are some ways?

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Glen Scrivener: Well, I I think the world is noticing that it is impossible to have gender-neutral people that We are sexed.

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Glen Scrivener: We are either male or female.

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Glen Scrivener: Um,

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Glen Scrivener: but I I see that as somewhat of an endpoint for those who had earlier thought of marriage is

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Glen Scrivener: gender, neutral.

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Glen Scrivener: Marriage is not sex. It does not matter if you have a man and woman, or if you have two husbands, or you have two wives, and I I think there is absolutely a link between the error of saying a human

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Glen Scrivener: is gender neutral, and the error of saying that a marriage is gender neutral. And I think one way one way Christians have and can sell. The farm is by giving up on what Matthew Nineteen makes clear from the beginning. The Creator made them male and female. So

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Glen Scrivener: but once you once you stand on that, I think you can look historically, and you can say, look male, female monogamy as the heartbeat of society has absolutely been for the blessing of the world, and it's brought the greatest equality,

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Glen Scrivener: giving it up like with the case of Leah Thomas, that that that swimmer brings back male domination.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah, yeah, this is not for your liberation. This is not for the cause of equality. It's really not it. In so many ways it it suits men, I mean the sexual revolution of the nineteen sixty S. Absolutely has has suited men, and its current kind of iteration

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Glen Scrivener: kind of trans ideology utterly suits men, and has seen erasia of female spaces. And and

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Glen Scrivener: it it is not. It has not been for our blessing and out and our good. So you know why, Don't, we just go back to the original sexual revolution. Let's go back to the original

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Glen Scrivener: Um. Matthew Nineteen is fascinating because Jesus says, you know there's male and female. In the beginning the two should become one, and what God has joined together, let no one separate, and then he he does talk about like It's It's my gender identity, if you like, is very different. There are some who are born eunuchs. Right? Right? So interesting,

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Glen Scrivener: right? It's not okay. You. Um, That there are these marginal cases. There are these difficult cases, and Jesus is is not kind of eradicating or erasing the identity of those who find either an agenda or their sexuality difficult.

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Glen Scrivener: Be honest. I think we all do um. But there is something there is something good about submitting to what is already a given male and female is already a given. We all find it difficult to live into that

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Glen Scrivener: marriage. Is this given, we all find it difficult to live into that; and if we don't do that, singleness is a given, and we find it difficult to live in that season as well, however long that that season might be in a person's life it might be about the whole of their lives. But it's it's It's about just trusting that Jesus knows what he's talking about.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah. And and the guy who has actually built your world, he's founded civilizations. He predicted all of this two thousand years ago, and it's come true. Maybe we can just trust him on this,

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you know. That's what it boils down to. I guess

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Andy Miller III: I love it. This is such a different type of argument. Ah, Glenn, thank you so much for making it so clearly, and also just a great way into conversation. I hope that this will encourage people to do that. Now we've talked about consent, a quality um sexuality. But you're also Ah, you you have a chapter on Science and ah! Generally people think of Science and Christianity, or faith being at odds. How is this a part? How about even just our understanding of science. How much is that of

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Glen Scrivener: part of this air that we breathe?

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah. Well, ever since the nineteenth century, at the end of the nineteenth century a couple of very significant and influential polemical works were published about the warfare between Christianity and Science, and and we kind of like that story. We like the story

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Glen Scrivener: where, let's say, a a Galileo

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Glen Scrivener: um,

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Glen Scrivener: pursues academic and intellectual freedom,

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Glen Scrivener: and there was a big bad. He called the Pope

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Glen Scrivener: who hiss the Pope and the Pope comes along, and he says, No science. I hate science and Galileo. What a hero! He says. I don't care what you say. I will, you know, stand for truth, no matter what, and he is

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Glen Scrivener: found vehemently suspect of heresy, and he's in prison for the rest of his days. But he was right, and the truth will outs. And the scientific revolution has proved what a baddie that religious figure the Pope was. Okay, that's an interesting story. We love that story. We resonate with that story right? It's a century earlier.

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Glen Scrivener: There was this other guy, and he stood up against the Pope,

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Glen Scrivener: and he said, I don't care what you say. Here I stand. I can do no other.

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Glen Scrivener: God helped me, and his name was Martin Luther, and he kind of he birthed this Protestant reformation, and he's often called like this guy who stands between the times. He was the the last of the right, like last of the medieval people,

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Glen Scrivener: and the first modern man, because on sense of conscience, in the sense of what he knew to be true, he didn't care what the Pope said he didn't care what the Emperor said. He didn't care what tradition said. He stood up again, and those nasty religious people They tried to kill him,

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Glen Scrivener: but he stuck to his guns, and the truth was, you know the truth proved him victorious, and we're all Protestants now,

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Glen Scrivener: so isn't it interesting that the Galileo story resonates with the people who have been shaped by the Martin Luther's story.

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Glen Scrivener: Well, okay, well, why does the Martin Luther story kind of resonate with us.

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Glen Scrivener: Well, there was this guy, and he stood up against the religious powers and authorities. And ah! No matter what the forces arrayed against him, were, no matter whether it was Pontius Pilate, or whether it was Herod, whether it was the Pharisees, whether it was the Sadducees,

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Glen Scrivener: he was the truth, and they killed him. They actually did kill him.

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Glen Scrivener: And yet the truth won, and the lights chased away, the darkness, and religious authorities were revealed for the corrupt institutions that they were, and Jesus birthed, and a new kingdom. See, that's the original story that we love,

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Glen Scrivener: and that's why the Martin Luther's story resonates with us. It's also why the Galileo story resonates with us, and then, by the time you get to Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Ah, let me see if I can get the quote,

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Glen Scrivener: he said. Priests fear

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Glen Scrivener: the advent of science as witch's fear the rising of the sun, and it's. Why, although you you find it there, I'll take. Give you an example of this from my own research. So I i'm ah six generations into the Salvation Army. Ah, my my family came to the United States through the Ministry of the Celebration Army, but often like this is the I call it the there's a William Booth had a more or less ecclesiology like he's pretty much.

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Andy Miller III: The savage army is pretty much more or less a church, and even though he would say, we're not a church, or we're not seeking to be a church. I mean. Everything about what they did was functioning as a church is like a paradox of sorts. But there's a way that the often the arguments were made that the the savvish an army, or in any new movement,

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Andy Miller III: any like your movement, speak life. We're going to be more than other evangelistic agencies. Now, i'm not saying that you've said that. But the Salvation Army certainly, in our founding day, said we're more than

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Glen Scrivener: other churches or other. And so what was often when it happened is that William Booth would be positioned as this same sort of I mean, they would say it the exact same lines, like the Apostle Paul, people talking about him like the Apostle Paul, like Martin Luther, like the just, go down the list of all the heroes. So William Boost stood up against the San Hadron,

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Glen Scrivener: the Methodist new Connections conference, you know, like, and those that was kind of like the way that we want you.

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Glen Scrivener: We We want position ourselves to be in that same sort of tradition. So okay, did you find the quote? I did? I did. It reminds me of Um, Yeah. Another quote that I use in the book is that we are attuned to the Christ's story. When we find a Christ figure it hums like a a tuning for it just it just resonates. But, uh, Thomas Jefferson said, Priests dread the advance of science, as which, as do the approach of they like, Oh, my brilliant life! But but again it's this: this idea of the scientists

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Glen Scrivener: are in this Christ's position, and you know religion is arrayed against it, trying to shackle the sun. These These fools were going to be overturned by the scientific revolution. But of course, as a as a story it resonates with us. But let's be good scientists. We've got our hypothesis.

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Glen Scrivener: Let's test it against the evidence. But let's look at the data, and Let's let's see if our hypothesis might need revising. And when you go back to the scientific revolution, or I call it an evolution in the book.

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Glen Scrivener: Um, it. It is not the case that, breaking away from the Church led to science. It is precisely that natural philosophers at Christian institutions called universities according to a specifically Christian form of philosophy and study of the natural world overturns the the Greek, the Hellenistic, the Aristotelian views of science, and

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Glen Scrivener: brought about a scientific Revolution

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Glen Scrivener: did away with actually the the older, you know the older paradigms, and it did so

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Glen Scrivener: as Christians at Christian institutions, studying the natural world for Christian reasons, and all of them, including Galileo and Copernicus and Kepler and Newton. And all these all these guys

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Glen Scrivener: were profoundly Christian people, who, for whom the image of God was absolutely fundamental to why they did science. Because what you have with the image of God is the solution to a real mystery. The mystery is, Why does science work?

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Glen Scrivener: Why why does homo sapiens like clinging to this insignificant rock hurtling around the sun in the unfashionable western end of the spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. Why, why does you know three pounds of gray matter?

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Glen Scrivener: These two ears have any chance of plumbing the mysteries of the cosmos. What?

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Glen Scrivener: Why?

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Glen Scrivener: And actually the image of God gives you the solution to that.

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Glen Scrivener: Because what science depends on is that there are laws up above. There's a world out there, and there's my mind in here, and I can somehow look out at the world there

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Glen Scrivener: and plug it into theories about the laws up above, and there's a triangulation between those up above minds in here and the world out there. Why should that triangulate? The image of God tells you Why, on page one of the Bible we're told that humanity are in this privileged position of being under heaven, but having dominion over the earth,

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Glen Scrivener: and so we are to some degree able

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Glen Scrivener: to grasp some of the mysteries of cosmos, and it was people who believed in that who ended up doing science and the Cs. Lewis famously said. You know men became scientific because they expected the law in nature. They expected law in nature because they believed in a legislator, and it was precisely the Christian Church that gave rise to the scientific revolution. So we need. We need a hypothesis about about science and religion

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Glen Scrivener: that can handle the actual data because the actual data is science is one more gift of the Jesus Revolution. Hmm. The

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here

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Andy Miller III: we don't have too much time. I've already taken a lot of your time. But i'm interested to the idea of progress like generally. This is like people want to move away from Christianity to achieve progress. But i'm interested to think about like, what does progress look like

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Andy Miller III: when Christianity is removed from the equation

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Glen Scrivener: right? And I talk about a lot of very,

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Glen Scrivener: very despotic visions of of progress. So Chairman Mao, for instance, under his great leap forward in the one thousand nine hundred and fortys and fiftys oversaw the deaths of tens of millions. But perhaps forty five million died in Chairman. Now's great leap forward,

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Glen Scrivener: so that should give us real pause for thought. Whenever anyone says progress is simply a good thing,

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Glen Scrivener: you can say the same about Stalin's five-year plans. You know you you could say the same about um and any number of human beliefs that come on board my train. I am heading towards progress. Well, how do you know? So,

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Glen Scrivener: yeah, not all ideas about progress are equal.

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Glen Scrivener: But we have got the sense that Martin Luther King, Jr. Um gave to us. You know he was. He was quoting Ah, an Abolitionist preacher from the nineteenth century, when he said that the ark of history is long, but it bends towards justice

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Glen Scrivener: that kind of resonates with us. Why does that resonate with us. Well, Martin Luther King, and then the preacher that he um ah was citing would go back to the prophets actually. Um, and you know justice will roll on like a river, a never-failing stream, and and

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Glen Scrivener: beating of swords into plough. Shares and there will come this time. And of course Jesus talks about

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Glen Scrivener: His movement will be like a mustard seed. That's the smallest of all seeds, but it will become the greatest plant, and even the birds of the air will will perch in its branches, or it's like yeast, working its way through a batch of dough, or a chapters Later, in Matthew Sixteen, Jesus says

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Glen Scrivener: the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, and that's interesting, because gates do not advance. The Church advances. The

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Glen Scrivener: yeah, we we plunder Satan's kingdom, and that's what we have been doing for the last twenty centuries. So there is a sense of progress, and as it turns out,

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Glen Scrivener: we now take for granted some of the values of the kingdom, including equality and compassion. Right? Those things. So this first century Prophet got his prophecy, you know he nailed it.

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Glen Scrivener: He wasn't indeed, proved to be a a true prophet in in that sense. So there is. There is a kind of progress, but who is in charge of that progress.

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Glen Scrivener: Yeah, if you put human beings in charge of that progress. Well, it's very. It's very simple for me to say i'm on the right side of history. How do you know? How do you know that? Um! And then history just becomes this kind of cudgel that you bludge, and other other people with

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Glen Scrivener: you need to be able to leave the future in God's hands and entrust yourself to Christ's kingdom, in which he will be victorious, and the gates of hell will not prevail.

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Glen Scrivener: Um! And I I do believe in that kind of progress. But you're absolutely right to be suspicious of of people who simply believe in human progress because we we have not simply been promised this abstract train towards progress down.

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Andy Miller III: Yeah, interesting. This is such an interesting book, and I, Glenn, thank you so much for taking time to write it, and I love how it comes out of your experience as an evangelist like This is all like a way. I think you're trying to get in to serve people to help them come to Jesus and like It's a different. It's a different angle, and it's a different type of apologetic, and I find it be creative and helpful. And I love how you've been able to use resources that come from people like Tom Holland and Rodney Stark.

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Andy Miller III: But I think this book has a real great opportunity in front of it. I really trust that god's going to use it now

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Andy Miller III: before I um. Before we finish up I I always ask a question. My podcast is called more to the story, and There's a theological reason behind that, like I want people to realize there's more than just having your sins forgiven. There's the process and experience of sanctification. But Also I like to find there's more to this story

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Andy Miller III: of Lens script. So is there was there something you don't often get a share like you're. You're often sh sharing different things here. I mean, you told us a little about where you're from, I mean, do you like? Is there a hobby you have that you don't talk a lot about

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Glen Scrivener: um. I'll pick up a guitar any chance I get. I love playing playing along. Got a whole bunch of songs one of these days the world might hear them. But

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Glen Scrivener: okay, So you've written some songs.

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Glen Scrivener: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of these days there's there's more to the story, and he puts: Okay, I'm looking for it. Yeah,

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Glen Scrivener: that's great. Anything else you want to say, or anything. I should have asked you.

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Glen Scrivener: No, that's that's all fantastic at the And if people want to join us to speak life we do offer actually internships over here at Speak, why people can come to us for for one or two years we can sort out American visas. We've had about four Us. Interns over the last three years, and we Okay, yeah, love, to tell me, what would they do? What would intern to do if they spent a year or two weeks? You you spend some time with me and with my other evangelist thing more than luck, and we preach around the place. We produce a lot of media together.

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Glen Scrivener: We've got a large kind of video ministry. And then there's a lot of training. We do a kind of a

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Glen Scrivener: a Bible overview, and we talk about the intersection of ah creativity and Christian evangelism. So people will be really welcome to check us out at speaklife dot org

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Glen Scrivener: awesome. That's great Thanks so much for your time, Glenn, and appreciate your ministry, your writing ministry, and the work Gods called you to do. We appreciate you coming on the podcast. Thanks so much, Andy.