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With Gareth Black
76 Plays4 years ago
New Solas Speaker Gareth Black joins the podcast for a wide-ranging discussion. Touching on his own experience growing up in Northern Ireland, Gareth explains to Andy and Kristi how he moved from an insular faith in a divided society to one that embraces questions and seeks to connect deeply with others.
Formerly a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, Gareth Black holds an MTh from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Bioethics from Kings College London. In autumn 2020, he will commence a PhD in end-of-life ethics at the University of Oxford. He speaks regularly in university and local church settings, and has pioneered several initiatives aimed at training students and teenagers in the intellectual defence of Christianity. Gareth is married to Amy and they live in Northern Ireland. In his spare time he enjoys playing sport, scenic walks with his Labrador ‘Murphy’, and volunteering with the Northern Ireland Hospice.
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Transcript
Introduction and Listener Invitation
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and thank you for downloading this episode of Pep Talk. If you're enjoying this podcast, why not get a free copy of my book, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist, or Christy Mayer's book, More Truth, by becoming a regular supporter of the podcast. Simply visit our website at solas-cpc.org, that's solas-cpc.org, and donate as little as £3 a month and we'll send your book as a thank you. On with the show.
00:00:37
Speaker
Hello and
Meet the Hosts: Kristy and Andy
00:00:38
Speaker
welcome to PEP Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. My name's Kristy, a research fellow at Oak Hill College in North London, and I'm joined by my cordial and delightful co-host, Andy Bannister. Andy, hello.
00:00:52
Speaker
Hi Chris, it'd be great to see you, bright eyed and bushy tailed and irrepressible as ever. How is life? You're into the country down there in London. Oh, scorching. Absolutely scorching. It's great. Lots of oak trees and bright, bright, bright sun. So I'm loving life right now.
00:01:08
Speaker
How about you? How's Dundee? Still, what? Three degrees? It's pretty good. Just above freezing, just above freezing. But it's no, it's no, seriously, it's about 23 degrees. I think it's unusual for Scotland. Usually our summer lasts about half an hour, but it's been about at least about four hours today. So this is this is great. So
00:01:26
Speaker
Who do we have on the show today, Christy? Who is our exciting guest all the way from another part of the UK? Drumroll please, I think, but tell us who we've got.
Guest Speaker: Gareth Black's Experience
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, we are joined today by Gareth Black. Gareth, welcome. Thank you. It's great to be here. You are, now let me just share a little bit about who you are. You are a solo speaker and you're based in Northern Ireland, aren't you? Is that right?
00:01:49
Speaker
That's right. So at the time of recording, I have joined. I've been with the team for about six or seven weeks now. Best six or seven weeks of my life, of course, now that Andy's listening. Yeah, I've come under the leadership of this guy, Bannister. He's shaped me in ways that I just can't articulate. It's profound.
00:02:09
Speaker
I'm so thrilled to hear that. I would also love to hear more about your Northern Irish context. That's right, isn't it? Yes, I'm based here just outside Belfast, but my work takes me all over Northern Ireland and over the border into the Republic of Ireland as well.
Understanding Northern Ireland's Cultural Landscape
00:02:31
Speaker
So I got a question for a starter, I guess, Gareth, is that obviously Northern Ireland, especially for perhaps American listeners who are not fully conversant with the geography of the UK, very much part of the UK. So is life the same there? Is the culture just sort of the standard bog standard British culture? Or are there some differences that you're finding as you try and engage in evangelism and spreading the gospel there in Northern Ireland? What are the similarities? What are the differences?
00:02:57
Speaker
Well, where I am in Northern Ireland, there's a lot of similarities. We obviously politically here come under the governance of the UK. But as an island, we're divided and have been for nearly 100 years or so politically between the Republic that's sort of independent and then Northern Ireland, which remains part of Britain. And that's a sort of long history that has a long history of kind of
00:03:25
Speaker
different political movements and things like that. And of course it influences our perception of our own identity. We're quite divided in terms of how we understand ourselves even
00:03:38
Speaker
whether we call ourselves Irish or Northern Irish, or there's a big city up in the Northwest, which is called London Dairy, but if you're of a different political persuasion, you call it dairy. So in terms of our understanding of ourselves, we're quite divided, and obviously that comes into play when it comes to engaging with people who come from different political persuasions, but I also think different ideological and spiritual persuasions as well.
The Impact of Sectarianism on Identity and Evangelism
00:04:07
Speaker
What do you think that sectarianism, that division, how has that influenced just the landscape of evangelism in which you're working at the moment?
00:04:16
Speaker
Well, I think a couple of ways, Christy, I was doing some research recently by social historians and they sort of talk about unionism in terms of those who sort of consider Northern Ireland very much to be part of Britain. They see themselves very much in terms of a narrative of sort of heroic struggle.
00:04:38
Speaker
There's a common phrase among the unionist community here that's called For God and Ulster and that kind of captures this conflation of some political ideas that come together and are mixed with an idea of spiritual realities and spiritual theological persuasions.
00:04:58
Speaker
And obviously in the 60s and the post-war era when the mainland Britain was diversifying and immigration was growing and all of these different cultural and ideological things were becoming more plural, Northern Ireland was very much locked
00:05:19
Speaker
into a sort of single sectarian tension between what was in reality sort of Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism, but it got conflated to sort of Protestantism versus Catholicism. We
Humor and Cultural Divisions in Northern Ireland
00:05:34
Speaker
actually tell a joke about an American tourist who walked into the wrong bar during the troubles in Belfast and he was confronted with the sort of head honcho who noticed somebody different.
00:05:46
Speaker
in his bar and he came up to this American tourist and said, you know, you're not from around here, are you a Protestant or a Catholic? And the American tourist said to him, well, actually, I'm an atheist. And the head honcho looked at him strangely and didn't like this reply and said, well, are you a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?
00:06:06
Speaker
So it's that kind of idea and I do think that's affected our perception of how we view other people. We've been locked in this sort of binary, this Protestant Catholic Unionist nationalist binary and it's affected how we engage, whether we engage with people who are different from us and that's been kind of entrenched
00:06:31
Speaker
in terms of our infrastructure, our schools are divided, our communities are still divided, even some of our employment areas are still very much along sort of political lines. And I just wonder how that has affected us in terms of now that that level of sort of globalization and ideological pluralism is beginning to influence emerging generations.
Balancing Passion for Politics and Evangelism
00:06:53
Speaker
How prepared actually are we to engage with people if our normal sort of
00:06:59
Speaker
mode of engaging with them has largely been one of sort of disengagement, suspicion and caricature.
00:07:07
Speaker
Listening to that, Gareth, obviously you're living in a context with that kind of history of sectarianism, but I think, you know, with things like social media and so forth, that kind of sort of tribalism that perhaps lies behind some of that, we see spreading across other parts of the country and the world as well, that people have this very sort of actual tendency now to divide themselves along political lines and sort of engage badly with the other. So I guess that's a more broader question.
00:07:30
Speaker
Given that Christians, as you've talked about in Northern Ireland, but sometimes Christians more generally can sometimes have a habit of collapsing politics and God into the same box, especially if you love God and love politics. And of course, in so doing, you end up alienating those who don't share your politics. How can we avoid doing that? How can we be people who care about politics? Perhaps that really matters to us, but also be people who are passionate about evangelism and don't let the one get in the way of the other.
00:07:55
Speaker
Well, I think the first thing, and it's a really important question, but I think the first thing to do is challenge the narratives itself. So obviously, culturally here, a lot of the sectarian violence died down in 1998 with the Belfast Agreement. So the violence stopped. But in some ways, this narrative of these two irreconcilable communities sort of living, just sort of tolerating people, that didn't change, if anything, we legislated for it.
00:08:24
Speaker
And obviously, you know, we're sort of living that out now and that's still really difficult because it's affecting our perception of ourselves and therefore our perception of other people.
Personal Reflections on Faith and Engagement
00:08:37
Speaker
But obviously, as Christians, we live by a different narrative. That's not to say that it doesn't have an effect socially or politically. But I think the real challenge is to find
00:08:48
Speaker
to find avenues and to find a basis in our Christian story for engaging and I've given I've spoken a lot about the kind of cultural and political background, but there's also a sort of Christian background to all this and how
00:09:04
Speaker
I guess Christians are being raised within the culture, whether they're being encouraged in different ways to engage. And my story was one where I wasn't encouraged to grow my faith or cultivate my faith in the soil.
00:09:23
Speaker
of asking questions. So in some ways, I did the same thing as has happened politically. I disengaged from those who weren't Christians. I had two hundred contacts on my phone. Maybe two of them were Christians. I was passionate and engaged in my own faith within the social structures and the echo chambers that reinforced it. But I had very little, very little sort of
00:09:48
Speaker
impetus or very little even interest in really engaging with people who didn't believe and often I just wrote it off in terms of again the caricatures that these people were just sort of dirty pagans and it was their own fault in some ways that they didn't know Christ or didn't want Christ or had the ethics that they had.
00:10:12
Speaker
You know, it's really fascinating to hear that considering that now you're in a full-time professional ministry and apologetics and your job now is to create these kind of cultures that are able to engage with those who don't yet know the Lord. What is it that changed for you and your story going from I'm so disengaged right now to present day, this is my bread and butter? What is it that brought you in and helped you to actually start engaging with these big questions?
00:10:42
Speaker
Well,
Transformative Role as Youth Pastor
00:10:43
Speaker
two things, Kristy, I think one was I became a youth pastor and I began to engage in young people who were heavily influenced by, you know, the Internet and by globalization. And they had sort of grown up through the church again with this sort of scaffolding of faiths or moms, a Christian, dads, a Christian. Most of my friends are Christian. There's a good Christian emphasis in my school.
00:11:08
Speaker
But again, they were seeing things, listening to things, engaging with friends who were beginning to adopt completely different ideologies. And so just this idea of, well, you know, this is what Christians believe and you're not meant to question it because this is what Christians, that just didn't hold water. It just wasn't sufficient for them. It just came across as sort of
00:11:33
Speaker
irrational and then when they had friends and family who were coming from a very different ethical position, it didn't just come across as irrational, the Christian position came across as immoral. And a lot of the reason why was because we taught these young people what to think rather than how to think.
00:11:52
Speaker
And so they knew and a lot of us knew about sort of what conclusions to give sort of on our on our statement of faith and our ethical position, but we didn't really know why. And it was the young people who really challenged me to think I need to
00:12:08
Speaker
be able to go a few steps back and know why I believe and what I believe, know why Christianity is a better story and also know how to help them read the narratives and culture and ask questions about it. So it was largely through that and then the second was just beginning to
00:12:26
Speaker
see that this was the way people came to faith in Scripture. I loved the Bible. I had begun to engage in Bible teaching and serious, in-depth study of the Bible. And as I began to think through how people both in the Old Testament and the New Testament came to faith and became convinced that Jesus Christ was Lord, I began to see a real precedent
00:12:51
Speaker
for articulating questions and being open about doubts and God being prepared to work through them with us.
00:12:59
Speaker
That's really fascinating, Gareth. And I think what I find interesting is that I think similar to you coming up through a church, I came up through a church background where questions are not encouraged and came into that, the sense that you can ask questions kind of later in my Christian faith. And now I meet many young people for whom and others for whom this is an issue. So I guess the question I have for you is for listeners who are listening to this and maybe are in a church context where questions are not encouraged,
00:13:26
Speaker
And either they're finding that difficult themselves, or in terms of evangelism, that's tough, because the church has a reputation somewhere where questions are not welcome. How can we start making a difference here? Because we want to go in all barrels blazing, attacking our church leaderships. But how do listeners pass through a church context where questions are not welcome? Are there ways that you've seen or can help slowly begin to change that culture in a more positive way?
Openness in Faith Discussions
00:13:52
Speaker
Yes, I think, again, two things come to mind immediately. The first is to be open with your own questions. So rather than come across with, you know, this agenda for everybody else and look, this is the way, you know, there's a precedent for this in Scripture, therefore,
00:14:08
Speaker
you know, let's create a universal mandate for every Christian, hold everybody accountable on the basis of how I see things. I find the things that have helped me most is just being around people who think this way, who take questions seriously and are prepared to be open and vulnerable and articulate the process and the journeys of their own questions and their own struggles.
00:14:34
Speaker
And this thing can often very much be caught rather than taught. It just gives so many people a license that actually, you know, being a Christian very much is about processing our questions. It's a relationship at the end of the day and relationships are about asking questions at the right time and then making a commitment on the basis of the answers that you get. And of course, that's a dynamic thing. It's not a static thing whether you can
00:15:00
Speaker
sort of sign your statement of faith or not. All of this is in process and it was for the earliest followers of Jesus and right through church history. And then the second thing is just try to engage as much as possible with non-Christians and realize that that will help to break down caricatures if they are there.
00:15:21
Speaker
It will also help you identify where people's own questions and sticking points are. I think it will just keep you on your toes, as it were, in terms of being someone who takes it seriously because you're not just invested in it as an abstract question or an abstract doubt. You're invested in it because it's your friend, because it's your colleague.
00:15:44
Speaker
And that will just, I would hope, and certainly has been the case for me, just give an increased degree of impetus and investment in continuing to engage with questions for your own faiths, strengthening, but also for helping sort of clear those roadblocks for other people towards seeing the beauty and the truth of the Christian story.
00:16:07
Speaker
That's so encouraging to hear you talk about this, Gareth, particularly just the role of questions in our own life before the Lord. They are utterly, they're critical and crucial in many ways. I remember I was talking to somebody the other day and they were saying that they were just told not to ask questions, that a lot of what's coming out of America and through some of these deconversion stories is because people have grown up
00:16:36
Speaker
and haven't been able to ask these big questions, like why suffering? What about other religions? And then slowly but surely in their late 20s, early 30s, they think there is no grounding for the Christian faith. There's no point whatsoever. How would you speak into that? Because I guess we could go either way, can't we? We can either go towards it's all about reason or actually, no, I'm going to leave that at the door.
00:17:02
Speaker
Well, I resonate with those stories a lot because it was my own story. And in many ways I can, you know, I became a Christian in my mid-teens. I was passionate about my faith, absolutely convinced from an experiential and kind of subjective point of view that this was real. But I can remember being in the sixth form centre in school and being confronted by a friend who wasn't a Christian about these types of questions.
00:17:29
Speaker
and to questions about the compilation of the canon and New Testament manuscripts. And the thing for me was I hadn't even heard those questions before, let alone thought through how to answer them. I had never in my Christian life realized that there even were questions like this.
00:17:47
Speaker
And at that stage, I just rather than sort of explore them and really engage with them, I retreated from them back into the sort of ghetto of my Christian echo chamber and just didn't think about them and just assumed that this was just somebody trying to, you know, who was a bit disingenuous trying to have a go. Obviously, I've radically changed that opinion and regret that that was my initial approach.
00:18:15
Speaker
And
Genuine Engagement with Questions
00:18:16
Speaker
I just think we really need to take people's questions seriously. And in some ways, you know, not sort of just defend ourselves by sort of writing them off or creating a context or a motive behind them. That's less than what we are. I think we need to receive people's questions as genuine until it becomes obvious that they're not.
00:18:42
Speaker
Obviously I left school a few months later after that encounter and never really got in contact with this guy. I just wonder whether things might have been different had I taken these questions seriously earlier.
00:18:57
Speaker
But, you know, that's that's a sort of, you know, an account from my personal experience. There's so much basis for this within scripture itself. And, you know, I didn't realize it at the time, but I certainly do now. And I love showing people from scripture. This is actually the way this thing is meant to work.
00:19:20
Speaker
That's some really helpful stuff there, Gareth. We're almost out of time, so I'm going to be very dangerous because I'm about to ask a question that could open up a whole other rabbit trail, but I just love a brief thought from you on this. Often, one of the things I hear when I talk to Christians about
00:19:36
Speaker
using questions, listening to good questions, taking questions seriously. A lot of people love it and find it helpful. Somebody will always say, but my friends don't have any questions. My friends aren't asking questions about the faith for me to engage with. My friends are apathetic, they're agnostic.
00:19:52
Speaker
Have you got any sort of thoughts in your own experience to sort of share with how you could perhaps generate questions, whether or not I'm coming at you straight away? Are there ways we can get those conversations going when you're dealing with someone who's perhaps more at the apathetic end of things?
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean,
Making Faith Public and Inspiring Curiosity
00:20:09
Speaker
the thing when I hear a question like that, the thing that always springs to my mind is is the one Peter three fifteen verse, you know, and you guys all know this, always be ready to give a reason for the hope that you have in Christ and do it with gentleness and respect. But obviously, just before that, Peter says, you know, set apart Christ as Lord in your heart. And I think there's you know, if if my friends aren't asking me questions,
00:20:38
Speaker
For me, it's a question of, well, how public is my faith? How distinctive is my faith? Is Jesus Lord of my life enough in a public way for my friends to see it and find it maybe peculiar or curious?
00:20:54
Speaker
um, enough to, you know, to ask questions. So that's, you know, that's the challenge to me as an individual, um, on just how public I'm actually being with my faith in order to generate questions. But the other thing is how invested am I in, in, in my friends' lives in order to, um, find the things that they do care about. So, you know, they may have a particular perception of Christianity
00:21:18
Speaker
that genuinely in their perception of that particular time has no relevance to them and no meaning for them whatsoever. But there are things that are meaningful. And I think that really good, you know, for being really good evangelists and Jesus does this so perfectly, you know, in the gospel, he's able to pick up on things that are meaningful for people that people do care about, whether it's the ethical questions, whether it's questions of race or culture or politics.
00:21:46
Speaker
or ambition or things like that. I think we need to be good missionaries in that old cross-cultural sense and actually be prepared to engage in the stuff that people are interested in. Yes, for the purposes of hopefully finding ways to connect it to the Gospel,
00:22:09
Speaker
but also just being really good friends and not sort of treating people as projects, but just being invested in people for who they are and what they are as image bearers of God. And trust the Lord. Prayer is a massive part of it. Trust the Lord that somewhere along that journey
00:22:27
Speaker
that there will be an opportunity for asking a question or engaging with something or something happening in one of your friends life that really does open up the door to a journey towards God.
00:22:43
Speaker
Gareth, thank you so much. It's such a pleasure talking with you this afternoon. Such great wisdom there for us. Gareth, thank you. Thank you so much. That is it for myself and the venerable Andy Bannister for this week, but we look forward to joining you in a couple of weeks' time with our next guest. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks. Goodbye.