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With Tony Watkins
52 Plays4 years ago
In today's episode we think about the relationship between the Gospel and our culture. Is there merit in finding touchpoints between the two, or should we always seek to share the "pure" or "transcendent" Gospel? Our guest Tony Watkins finds that arts and media can provide helpful inroads for the Gospel into individual lives, as we consider the values, needs, and aspirations found in our shared culture.
Tony helps Christian leaders relate media and the Bible through his writing and teaching, and is studying for a PhD exploring connections between the media and the biblical prophets. He is the Media Engagement Network Co-ordinator for the Lausanne Movement.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello friends, this is Andy Bannister. Thank you for downloading and for listening to pep talk. We are a holy listener supported podcast and we'd love to have your support to make it possible for us to continue to produce episodes. You can get behind the show by visiting solas-cpc.org, solas-cpc.org and click on the donate button. Thanks so much and I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Meet the Hosts
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Kristy and as ever, I'm joined by my wonderful co-host, Andy Bannister. Andy, hello. How are you doing, mate?
00:00:46
Speaker
doing well and wonderful. That's fantastic. The checks and the posts, thank you for that very kind introduction. Yeah, doing well, getting sort of steadily rained on up here in Scotland, but that's that sort of path of course. Absolutely difficult.
Guest Introduction: Tony Watkins
00:00:59
Speaker
Well, we are actually joined today by someone who's very bright and sunny and I'm really delighted actually that he's able to join us today and that's Tony Watkins. Tony, hello. Hello, I don't think I've ever been introduced as bright and sunny before.
00:01:13
Speaker
You are though. Gosh, we all go way back, don't we? And then whenever I think of you and see your face coming up, it just fills my heart with joy. I'm really, really pleased that you can join us today. Well, just by way of introduction, you are. I mean, I've got your bio in front of me. Basically, you do everything. But to put it into a short sentence, you are a speaker and writer on media culture and the Bible. Does that about sum you up?
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, under normal circumstances it does. Yes. Normal circumstances being non-pandemic times, because I don't seem to do much speaking these days. Yeah, well apart from now. So we're glad that you're speaking to us. And you're based in Southampton, aren't you? Yeah, that's right. I've been there a very long time now. Gosh, how long have you been there for? Oh, I dread to think. 37 years, I think it might be. Wow. Yeah, you wouldn't think I was old enough, would you?
00:02:11
Speaker
Well, we were not going to say a word because that way, that way, pain lies. So we won't start by insulting you.
Bible and Culture: What's the Connection?
00:02:20
Speaker
Tony, in that bio that Christy read there, she talked about culture, media, the Bible. I guess some people's minds, those things don't go together. You know, how to sort of culture and media, you know, film, TV, that kind of thing. And the world of the Bible kind of fit together. How do those things belong together? Obviously, do in your mind.
00:02:41
Speaker
How does that work and how can that help us perhaps think about communicating into culture big question I know but yeah sure Yeah, they absolutely fit together. They they can't not fit together Because well fundamentally if we think about the the nature of the Bible itself This is God's true perfect authoritative revelation
00:03:07
Speaker
But that is given to us through the words and even through the personalities of human authors. It was revealed at particular times in particular places. Every bit of the Bible is
00:03:22
Speaker
absolutely immersed in its cultural context. We can understand the Bible pretty well just by reading it, but if we want to get some of the nuances of what's going on there, really understand what God is saying, we have to make allowances for
00:03:39
Speaker
for the fact
Gospel and Cultural Relevance
00:03:40
Speaker
that Paul or Isaiah or whoever is writing in a very different world and we need to think about what these place names are and the customs and the culture. So the scripture itself is embedded within culture so we can't get away from culture. We are created by God to be cultural beings but the whole business of culture which I
00:04:03
Speaker
tend to define as human beings, understanding, interpreting their world, developing their world, relating to each other within the world. So that whole business is an expression of the image of God within us. The whole business of culture comes out of being God's people. God reveals himself within culture. Jesus comes in the incarnation, comes in to be a human being within culture.
00:04:31
Speaker
So there is absolutely no way we can ever get away from culture. And of course, we live in a very particular culture. We live in wherever you're listening to. I'm here in South Coast of the UK. It's 2021. We have particular things within our cultural environment to think about pandemics and what's going on in the media and all that kind of stuff. And if we want to be faithful disciples and effective in mission,
00:05:01
Speaker
in the culture we are now, we need to think how do we understand that and how do we understand that in relation to what God has already revealed himself in other cultures at other times. That's a complicated process when you start getting into it.
00:05:17
Speaker
How do we actually go about understanding that then, Tony? Because I imagine that some of us might be thinking, or the next question is, well, isn't it just about articulating the pure gospel in that, you know, yes, there are these kind of times and places at which
00:05:36
Speaker
and these people lived and they wrote and they spoke and the incarnation and everything, but surely doesn't the gospel kind of transcend those categories? So when we're talking about engaging with media and culture, for example, aren't they just two separate things? Obviously there is a very profound sense in which the gospel transcends any time and place. But if God reveals himself in history and through history,
00:06:06
Speaker
God has somehow chosen
00:06:10
Speaker
to make his revelation not transcend time and space. Jesus comes in the line of a particular people, chosen people who God had dealt with over a couple of thousand years, not because there was anything special about them, but because God chose them to be his means of revelation to the world. Jesus comes as the culmination of that. He's the true Israel.
00:06:39
Speaker
And he comes at a particular time and place. So even Jesus of course transcends time and space because he's eternal and yet he limits himself to within it. We are thoroughly stuck in it. And so I feel the appeal of saying, yeah, we just get on and preach the pure gospel. But how do we do that? And what does that actually mean? I think it's got to mean that I find
00:07:09
Speaker
ways of being faithful to Scripture but expressing the Gospel in ways that my friends and neighbours can understand. John Stop kind of riffing off Spurgeon really used to say that we need to listen to both the Word and to the world.
00:07:28
Speaker
riffing off Spurgeon saying we should read the Bible, we should have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other or something to that effect. And Stott used to say we should listen to the word and to the world. We don't listen to them in the same way. We listen to the word to sit under its authority. We listen to the world in order to understand what its hopes and dreams and aspirations, what its hurts and fears and
00:07:52
Speaker
and brokenness are so that we can apply scripture, we can apply the word intelligently and sensitively and powerfully into the situation where that person comes.
Surprising Cultural Expressions of the Gospel
00:08:05
Speaker
So even if we want to preach the pure gospel, if we're talking to one of our friends, we will particularly home in on those aspects of the gospel that speak to them and their particular circumstances. If their world is falling apart, for instance, then we may want to point first to the
00:08:22
Speaker
to the comforting nature of God, that it's possible to go to Him and to discover peace. Ultimately, that peace is through the cross, but we may be stressing that aspect. In another context, we may be stressing God's holiness. So we will always pitch our message to our audience.
00:08:46
Speaker
And if we do that on a one-to-one level, I think we need to do that on a wider level and think in terms of how do we pitch the gospel, how do we present the gospel faithfully, but in a way that resonates in our particular cultural context. I think one of the things that has struck me, Tony, and you've talked about this, as have others, is that when we listen to the culture,
00:09:13
Speaker
like you say, as often you find sort of points of contact in surprising ways. And obviously, you know, Paul does this in the book of Acts, famously in Athens, the speech of the Areopagus, but in our own culture, sometimes you find those points of contact in unusual places. And one of the books that you're kind of well known for, I mean, 16 years ago, you wrote it, but it's as relevant as it ever was.
00:09:35
Speaker
Your book, Dark Matter, a thinking fan's guide to Philip Pullman. And, you know, Pullman sort of comes and goes in terms of, you know, his profile. It's grown recently because, of course, the BBC have been readapting his dark materials.
00:09:50
Speaker
novels. I know some Christians who know Paulman would go angry atheist and they're quite anti-Christian, quite deliberately trying to write an alternative to the Narnia stuff allegedly and do a very sort of different view of reality and fantasy and so forth but I know other Christians like yourself have gone well hang on a minute even in Paulman and even in things like that you can find kind of points of contact, you can find ways and how does that work in practice with a cultural product but perhaps at first glance you might go
00:10:19
Speaker
Gosh, what on earth do we do with this? Yeah, absolutely. Pullman is, as you say, well known for being not just a strong atheist, but quite an outspoken atheist. Though he does say quite strongly again and again that his beef isn't with God, he doesn't believe God exists.
00:10:39
Speaker
I see no evidence of God. I'm not persuaded that he exists, but his issue is not with God or the idea of God, but with religion and the misuse of power within the religious world. He does insist on that quite strongly, but he does feel like he's attacking God sometimes as well.
00:11:04
Speaker
The thing is that the Pullman, like every other human being, is made in the image of God. And that is a profound truth.
00:11:12
Speaker
that however much he wants to set himself up in rebellion against God, nevertheless, there is something of the image of God still within him that expresses itself through a desire for truth, a desire for goodness, a desire for beauty. Those are fundamental things that are part of being made in the image of God. And so when he writes, he cannot help himself but to express
00:11:38
Speaker
particular ideas and values that are fully consistent with a Christian worldview. So he values, for instance, puts a very strong regard on truth, courage, self-sacrifice, moral responsibility,
00:11:57
Speaker
He interprets those in a particular way, of course. He doesn't see those within a Christian framework. And if you suggest that these are actually fundamentally Christian values that he's kind of riding on the coattails of, he gets quite stroppy and says, why do you beep Christians think that you have a right to all the values in the world? He said, can't people who are atheists be perfectly decent, good people? And of course they can.
00:12:19
Speaker
There can be as moral as any Christian, and sometimes they put some of us to shame. So we're not saying that you cannot be moral as somebody who is not a Christian or who is an atheist like Pullman. Of course you can, but it's where those values come from. And Pullman
00:12:39
Speaker
is very much writing out of a tradition of having grown up in the UK. His grandfather was a Church of England minister who he respects extremely highly. He says he's the biggest influence on his life. And in fact, Paulman describes himself as a particular kind of atheist. He says, I'm a Christian atheist because that's the God I'm reacting against. More to the point, I'm a 1662 Book of Prayer
00:13:05
Speaker
Church of England atheist, because that's the world that I grew up in. And he cannot get away from using that kind of language and some of those kinds of ideas. He is also in the great tradition of English literature, which is so thoroughly immersed in scripture that however hard he tries, he's never going to get away from that altogether. But he doesn't try. He's very happy to engage with explicitly religious ideas.
00:13:33
Speaker
because there is this longing innate within him to find what we might call transcendence. He longs for something above and beyond the physical world. He insists that this world is all there is, that there ain't no elsewhere, and yet he keeps having to smuggle back in
00:13:55
Speaker
within his fiction, stuff that is not part of the ordinary physical material world. So there's magic. There are angels. The angels in his literature are a particular kind of angels. They're not what we
00:14:14
Speaker
When we talk about spiritual beings, we mean beings that have no physical nature at all, whereas the angels in his world, they're just very thin. They're composed of these particles of consciousness that are actually kind of like subatomic particles, in a sense. But he
00:14:34
Speaker
Particles of Consciousness is interesting, you see, because there he's smuggling back in this idea of a God-like force, because all of these particles of consciousness throughout the universe kind of collaborate together and guide people within the fiction, within his dark materials. They can control things, they can manipulate circumstances, they can lead people. It's a very God-like thing.
00:15:01
Speaker
And he has to smuggle this in in this kind of way because he has this deep longing for God and yet he rejects the idea that God is there. So somebody like Paulman, however hostile they are, their ideas still are rich with possibilities for making connections.
Engaging with Culture: Advice and Insights
00:15:20
Speaker
How do you think we go about making those connections? I mean, you wonderfully picked up on the explicit religious ideas and transcendence and consciousness. And I'm just thinking if we're listening to this and we're just thinking, wow, I've never thought of Pullman in this way before. There are so many kind of points of contact and his writing is so rich and it might not be his dark materials. It might be a different kind of cultural piece or film or series or whatever, but how do we go about
00:15:51
Speaker
exposing these religious ideas with our friends in everyday life. What might that look like for us? At the most simple level, looking for those points of contact and points of tension. So where is there a resonance with the Gospel and where is something in tension with the Gospel? I think that's
00:16:14
Speaker
at the most fundamental level, that's what we're trying to identify. We don't want to disagree with everything that somebody says because when they start talking truth, we don't want to disagree with them talking truth. So points of contact, points of tension. But I think three useful questions is what kind of
00:16:36
Speaker
three useful questions are rather sorry about my slip of grammar there sorry about that um can't have that going on even even when it's spoken um you encourage me no end
00:16:49
Speaker
Oh, the quality is slipping. Yeah, so three questions. How is the world being viewed within this television program, this film, this book? What kind of understanding of the world is there? How is it imagining the world to be? Where does it see the goodness in it? Where does it see the brokenness in it? That kind of stuff. Secondly, what is this book or film, television program, whatever,
00:17:17
Speaker
within it, what is being loved, what is admired, what is hated, and what is being completely sidelined. And that third thing, what's being ignored, it's kind of other elements of the Gospel or elements of what we believe to be reality because we have a Christian worldview that has just been left out of the frame altogether. So you read
00:17:42
Speaker
I've been doing some work on Douglas Coupland the last few days. Canadian writer came to fame in 97, I think, with his book Generation X, which defined the term Generation X. He invented the term and has written something like 20 novels since. And in that first book, Generation X, it is an entirely secular world. His characters make no reference to God. They live in
00:18:12
Speaker
in a world where he just does not feature. You get a few books on and he's starting to bring in very explicitly the idea of God, in particular famously The End of Life After God, which was his fourth book, I think, where he says, here is my secret that I tell you with an openness of heart I doubt I'll have achieved again. My secret is that I need God.
00:18:35
Speaker
And there's this longing for God coming out. But in that first book, it's just not there. So the whole spiritual realm, spiritual side of reality, it was being ignored by him. But he loves, there are things that he loves, community and so on. There are things that are clearly being hated. You can see this with Pullman. He loves truth and self-sacrifice, as we were saying just now. He hates power being misused. He hates religious authority
00:19:02
Speaker
And he ignores a basis for his values. And then the third key question is, how is this book, film, television program, how is it imagining a better world? What do they see is necessary to make the world a better place, to make life more fulfilling, to make society work better, to make
00:19:26
Speaker
to deal with the brokenness within me those kinds of things so how is the world being viewed what is being loved despised or ignored and how is a better world being imagined.
00:19:37
Speaker
That's fantastic practical advice, Tony. I suppose we're almost at the top of the show, almost at the 20 minute mark. And as you were talking there, I reminded of a story I was told once by a friend who's quite effective kind of evangelist in the workplace. And I remember sort of talking to him about how he was reaching out to colleagues. And he said one of the things he'd found actually
00:20:02
Speaker
was, you know, for a long time he tried, you know, having sort of Christian mugs or wearing a Christian t-shirt and stuff and achieved nothing. But then he found actually taking interesting books, as he put it, you know, into the office. You know, Pullman, you know, Screwtape Letters was about the most Christian he ever got. And just leaving his life around his desk, started conversation. Oh, you're reading that. And then just like you were saying, he'd found the way of going, yeah, what interests me about that book is this.
00:20:30
Speaker
And he said, you have far more, you know, achieve far more gospel conversations with sort of books and novels and so forth. And he ever did try in a more blatant way.
Conclusion and Farewell
00:20:40
Speaker
And I wonder if we missed something actually in all of this and what you've shared is very helpful.
00:20:44
Speaker
I think there's so many opportunities. Everything that we watch, everything that we listen to, everything that we read has potential for doing this kind of thing with it. I think there's rich possibilities that we are really not making good use of.
00:21:04
Speaker
Well Tony, you've given us lots of food of thought in terms of how we go about that. I'm really grateful for taking time out of, I know you're busy schedule to talk with us this afternoon. And so once again, thanks for being our guest on pep talk today. That's a very great pleasure. Thank you for having me.
00:21:24
Speaker
And for all of you listening at home or on the road or wherever you are, you take your podcasts, Chris and I will be back with another episode of Pep Talk in two weeks time with a different guest and different topic. And we hope you'll be able to join us then. Thanks so much as ever for listening and bye for now.