The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God - Justin Brierley || THE WAY BACK

Glen Scrivener from Speak Life interviews Justin Brierley about his latest book 'The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God' - Why new atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again.
Justin's website: justinbrierley.com/the-surpri...
The Way Back is a series of interviews lighting the path back to faith. Christian author and filmmaker Glen Scrivener is speaking to a range of Christians and non-Christians about the current meaning crisis, and what we have lost in walking away from the Jesus story. In a post-Christian age, is there a way back?
Presented by Glen Scrivener
Music: 'Azlant' by Cody Martin
Edited by Thomas Thorogood
LINKS//
Subscribe to this channel for videos that see all of life with Jesus at the centre:
kzbin.info...
Subscribe to our other KZbin channel, Reformed Mythologist, to explore how the stories we love point to the greatest story of all:
www.youtube.com/@ReformedMyth...
The Speak Life Podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts:
iTunes: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6RTY21m...
Amazon: music.amazon.com/podcasts/e03...
Speak Life is a UK based charity that resources the church to reach the world.
Learn more about us here: speaklife.org.uk/
CONNECT//
Are you a creative Christian? Would you like to join us for a day, a week or 10 months? Find out more here:
speaklife.org.uk/foundry
Discord is an online platform where you can interact with the Speak Life team and other Speak Life supporters. There’s bonus content and creative/theological discussion. You can join our Discord here:
speaklife.org.uk/give/
Social Media:
speakLifeuk/
speaklifeuk/
speaklifeuk
tiktok.com/@speaklifeuk

[@karlj1564]

I like both of your podcasts. There is most definitely a way back to faith in Christ. One year ago I thought that Christianity was quite mad, and I was just too clever for god. I was an empiricist and beleived in science. I came to faith through the baptism of my Daughter, and listening to Tom Holland. Then I found Speak Life, and read Dominion. Six months later I'm going to church and reading the Bible. I also keep meeting Christians in the workplace (hospital).

[@SpeakLifeMedia]

Wonderful to hear! Bless you

[@malgorzatajakubowska-chaab3613]

I wonder if Tom Holland realises how he influences people 😊. Best wishes

[@Stupidityindex]

@@SpeakLifeMedia As if belief in a god were a good thing ... If there were a god, then would there be any demand for scripture interpretations by various podium-jockeys using fantasyland vocabulary? We really should address the social acceptance of large numbers of people speaking a fantasyland vocabulary & openly indulging in the deceit of religious belief as a tool of fascism. These are the wolves in sheep's clothing, we know them by their works: A wicked generation seeking signs when Jesus The Nailed says faith is worthless if you can't move mountains by issuing verbal orders to one. Freud wrote the antidote to Christianity is literacy. The Christians slapped their books on the Old Testament, & the Mormons glued theirs on to them both, thus proving Christians lack quality-control. Look at the verbose podium jockey speaking of faith & prayer as if we all should have a preference for travel with one foot in fantasyland. Nothing fails like prayer in a children's hospital, & there is talk as if God does not have a perfect record of doing nothing, as if we had no reason for the saying: God helps those helping themselves. A house divided cannot stand. We vote because Christians have no quality-controls, & we desire those governing not making suggestions travel is best done with one foot in someone's fantasyland. 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.'' It was secular law & order ending the inquisitions & witch-killings. One might expect a deity to make itself known to everyone without work performed in interpretations of old literature by guys like our verbose podium jockey. Theologians acquire grand titles without certification from a deity, & project certainty using fantasyland vocabulary in an academic setting to compensate for lack of reason.

[@williambranch4283]

@@Stupidityindex Freud is dead. Jesus lives.

[@digitalnomad9985]

@@Stupidityindex What precisely is the nature of your confusion? Do you not realize that God is true, or that faith is good? That faith is abused is hardly a criticism of Christianity. "It was secular law & order ending the inquisitions & witch-killings." Christendom ended the inquisitions & witch-killings. Atheist societies brought them back. From the Jacobin Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, through the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, and the Pol Pot regime; the result of a society based on atheism has invariably been bloodbath after bloodbath. The USSR alone murdered more of its own civilians than have ever been killed in all the inquisitions, pogroms, and purely religious wars in recorded history, and they only lasted: what? 80 or so years? Protestantism created the modern libertarian west. We (Protestants) implemented religious freedom, political freedom, academic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press FIRST, and thus caused the academic, scientific, technological, and material progress that followed; and most of the rest of the world hasn't caught up with it yet. John 8:32 "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Your rant has no arguments against Christianity. You're just calling us names.

[@beverleypender5931]

Come and live in South Africa, and you will be DESPERATE any type of revival. (Thank you for these fascinating conversations.)

[@chelebeaqueen]

the most surprising personal turn i have experienced over the past 10+ yrs is the realization and consequent sigh of relief that the framework i was encouraged to build myself without knowing, by most simply being a Sunday School student from before i can remember (hat-tip to the Congregationalists, who baptized my sister and i among many others), has never wavered, has weathered every storm that has pounded down upon my shores -- and, boy, there were some real doozies! having never explicitly denounced the faith i was instructed to have, and encouraged to keep and maintain, i see now it was The Main Saving Grace of a ratty old makeshift raft i climbed upon and rode to calmer waters. i have a feeling that it will buoyantly pop up to the surface again whenever i may find myself lost in a bottomless sea of surrounding doubt animated by the turmoil of existential torture. i best put some time into actively making repairs, now that i have conscious knowledge of this life-saving vehicle of miraculous porportions... 😉 thanks so much, gentlemen! God Bless. i, too, am patiently anxious and ready to be instantly called into service on this great, wholly shared, magnificent journey. (and Lord knows i may have already been so!) 🙏💫🙏

[@beulahnisly2982]

It was good to hear the two of you together in a great conversation! Thanks.

[@jonathanhagger791]

I could listen to you both talking for days!

[@Callisto74]

Awww! Justin! Come back to Unbelievable! You are sorely missed.

[@ThorogoodFilms]

Love this!

[@Anna-mc3ll]

Thank you for sharing this interesting interview!

[@garysweeten5196]

I have appreciated the past discussions on unbelievable. Today I am fascinated with some of the contradictions in your ideas. One, we want an awakening but fear revivals that regress to ‘guitars and tambourines’. Then you mention the deadness of the church means it is not ready for whatever it is you want. the final idea was ‘Keith Green’s music leading to conversion in the Jesus Movement’. Definitely piano and revival. You want a renewal that is intellectually pleasing but are praying for a ‘mystical awakening of transcendent stories’! I was awakened in Jesus Movement, called the 4th Great Awakening’ by a Nobel Winning Economist. The ‘churches hated the JM many of us were given the ‘Left Foot of Dis-Fellowship’! WE led a house church as. A result. I studied Francis Schaeffer and saw the benefits of a new way to do apologetics. It is face to face and interpersonally loaded with emotions. My Doctorate was on ‘Equipping Christian to Care and Counsel’. That is listening to tragic stories and telling great replacement stories. The Humanist Believers like Peterson is that part of the Renewal that softens the culture with stories and confrontation of bad stories. It makes people curious and confronts the cultural liars with Truth and Maybe True Truth. Shalom, brothers, as you struggle to see God move.

[@Stupidityindex]

Belief in nonsense. If there were a god, then would there be any demand for scripture interpretations by various podium-jockeys using fantasyland vocabulary? We really should address the social acceptance of large numbers of people speaking a fantasyland vocabulary & openly indulging in the deceit of religious belief as a tool of fascism. These are the wolves in sheep's clothing, we know them by their works: A wicked generation seeking signs when Jesus The Nailed says faith is worthless if you can't move mountains by issuing verbal orders to one. Freud wrote the antidote to Christianity is literacy. The Christians slapped their books on the Old Testament, & the Mormons glued theirs on to them both, thus proving Christians lack quality-control. Look at the verbose podium jockey speaking of faith & prayer as if we all should have a preference for travel with one foot in fantasyland. Nothing fails like prayer in a children's hospital, & there is talk as if God does not have a perfect record of doing nothing, as if we had no reason for the saying: God helps those helping themselves. A house divided cannot stand. We vote because Christians have no quality-controls, & we desire those governing not making suggestions travel is best done with one foot in someone's fantasyland. 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.'' It was secular law & order ending the inquisitions & witch-killings. One might expect a deity to make itself known to everyone without work performed in interpretations of old literature by guys like our verbose podium jockey. Theologians acquire grand titles without certification from a deity, & project certainty using fantasyland vocabulary in an academic setting to compensate for lack of reason.

[@elfootman]

LOL

[@williambranch4283]

Re-enchanting culture? Disney et al have taken over that. We need re-enchanted people. The culture be damned.

[@paulheinrichdietrich9518]

A lion? What does he mean?

[@dw8773]

lol... I wondered that too. I think he said 'lie-in', maybe meaning to sleep in as opposed to getting up for church.

[@paulheinrichdietrich9518]

@@dw8773 Makes sense.

[@Test_Card_Tom]

There's no problem in accepting that everything in existence has an intelligent designer (God) behind it. What's at question is religion(s) who attribute to that intelligent designer the idea that its concerned with the morality of mankind including cruel punishments for those who disobey its (apparently beamed to certain men thousands of years ago) rules and regulations on how mankind must live including the bizarre notion that it should be worshipped. Science may well one day bring mankind definitive proof of there being an intelligent designer (God) behind all creation. But the creator discovered is highly unlikely to be anything like that envisioned by the numerous versions propagated by disparate religions throughout the ages. In other words I don't think an intelligent creator is in the least concerned with who I fall in love with or have sex with any more than many of the creatures in the animal world it also created. Even if the universe does have an intelligent creator (God) it will always beg the question: What created that? Personally, I couldn't give a fig whether a God exists or not as regards the way I live my life. The only people who seem perplexed by the life we have are those who blindly believe in an unproven intelligent designer who they've convinced themselves demands worship from we mere mortals and threatens us with cruel punishments for disobedience.

[@williambranch4283]

17th century characters, Levelers and witches ... Socialism and Woke are nothing new.

[@williambranch4283]

Christianity isn't rational, it is relational. If one knows an actual Christian and they invite you to Church ... more Christians will result. The recession of Christianity in GB has more to do with the loss of locality, the village and its ancestral church. Industrialization and urbanization destroyed those roots. In America we never had this locality take hold, before long Westward migration and intermarriage destroyed denominationalism ... along with industrialization and urbanization. The desire to cram everyone into a megacity tyranny ... will generate new martyrs ... as it did in ancient Rome on the Tiber.

[@iain5615]

It is rational as well. It was rationality that brought me to Christianity. I had gone through multiple religions and atheist positions and ended up with atheism (a very reductionist view) and Christianity (a far more conceptual view) and based upon historical, social studies, etc. evidence found I needed far more faith to be an atheist.

[@williambranch4283]

@@iain5615 Exactly. Atheism is simplistic. Like trying to go past base 2 numbers to base 1 or base 0 ;-) Even Pythagoras wasn't that stupid.