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It's hard to be against progress.

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After all, it seems a lot better than regress.

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But what about progressivism?

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Well, that's another thing altogether—especially the moral progressivism that's such a feature of the best and brightest of our culture.

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It's the idea that, just like technology, which is progressing all the time and getting better, so our moral beliefs and values and sensibilities

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are improving over time—that there's a relentless forward march to the moral status of humanity such that many of the beliefs and values we hold

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today will be seen for what they are tomorrow when we realise that they're outdated and that there's a new and better set of values to be had.

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When it comes to morality, you want to be on the right side of history, as they say.

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Now, Christians are often wary of moral progressives and moral progressivism, because it frequently wants to declare that

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the long-held moral beliefs or standards that we get from the Bible are not only outdated, but positively harmful or evil.

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And yet on the other hand, many of the causes that moral progressives or the woke progressives, as

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we sometimes call them—many of the causes they espouse do resonate with us as Christians as well.

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We do want the world to be a more just, more peaceable, more compassionate place.

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So what is progressivism exactly?

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How do we come to be progressives in our modern culture?

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And how should we think about this as Christians?

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That's our topic on today's episode of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast.

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Well, hello again.

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I'm Tony Payne.

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Welcome to another edition of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast.

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It's great to have you with us again.

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And today, I'm joined by Charles Cleworth.

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Hello, Charles!

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Hello!

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Nice to see you.

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Charles has been my colleague for the last six months here at Moore College, helping me teach moral theology.

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And it's been great to team-teach with you, Charles.

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But you are leaving us in, what, three days time or something?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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So I'm finishing up here on faculty, and my wife Ash and I and our kids, we are packing up and heading off to Aberdeen in Scotland.

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I'm going be doing a PhD at the University of Aberdeen in moral theology.

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Oh, excellent, excellent.

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Now, look, you always ask a PhD student, "Give us your elevator pitch: tell us in 60 seconds what it is that

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you're going to be studying for all this time." Are you in a position to do that yet, or is it still too soon?

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I think so.

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What difference does the cross make for evangelical ethics?

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Ooh, okay.

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You would think it would make some considerable difference.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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You'd like to think so.

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Yeah, you would.

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Yeah.

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I'll be thinking about that question in relation to a theologian called Oliver O'Donovan,

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whom we both love, and exploring the topic of the cross particularly in his thought.

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Right, right, right.

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Okay.

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Because the cross—there's so many aspects of the Christian gospel.

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It's a multifaceted thing.

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There's the person of Jesus Christ and his incarnation and his life and his teaching.

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There's the death of Jesus for sin.

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There's his glorious resurrection.

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There's his ascension and current rule.

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And all these things you would like to think would have a real shape and influence on how

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we live—on what it means to live well and what it means to do what is good on morality.

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But you're particularly going focus on the cross, because that's good.

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Because very often the New Testament does, of course, doesn't it?

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It does draw moral freight and kind of import for our Christian lives from not only what Christ has

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achieved on the cross, but the very nature of the cross and what it says about the Christian life.

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Well, I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with there, Charles.

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Yeah, I'm looking forward to going through the journey of thinking about it for a few years.

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Yeah.

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Well, we're sorry to see you go.

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And dear listener, I just decided I wanted to chat with Charles before he left the country, because we've

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had a great time teaching ethics—teaching moral theology together—these last few months at Moore College.

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And in particular, we've looked at different aspects of morality and of the foundations of Christian morality.

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And very often on these podcasts, we talk about a particular issue.

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We talk about something that's current and that we want to get into and think about from a Christian perspective.

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But in today's conversation, although we're going start there—we're going start with a particular presenting sort of

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question—we're going be digging down into some of the quite deep foundations of why we think something is moral or

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good at all, and how our society tends to do that at present, and why, as Christians, we often don't quite fit with it.

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We do, but we don't.

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And we'll come to that as we talk further.

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But to work our way into this topic, Charles, you were telling me about a WhatsApp group you're a part of—a social WhatsApp group that kind of bats

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back and forth about different things—and the curious experience you had being part of that conversation when Trump was elected the second time.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So I'm part of this WhatsApp group.

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Quite a number of people in it—a few Christians, mostly non-Christians.

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And I remember around the first election of Trump and then again on his second election, I remember this sense of shock and surprise.

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Now, regardless of what one thinks about Trump, and these particular people weren't particularly

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thrilled, but it was the particular reaction of shock and surprise that this shouldn't have happened.

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This was not what was meant to happen—almost as if there was a script that they were expecting to play

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out and then it didn't, and they didn't know how to make sense of what had, in their mind, gone wrong.

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It wasn't just that there was a different politician with—I got this sense from some people I spoke with as well.

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It's not just that there was a politician.

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All politicians, you disagree about their policies, their character, whether you think they'll do a good job, their vision for the country, et cetera.

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It wasn't just, "Oh, a politician has gotten in that was on the side I don't like, or I would've voted for

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the other side." There was a kind of visceral sense of there being a tear in the fabric of time or something.

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There was "Some—some cataclysmic thing has happened. And how could this happen?" I mean, how could the USA, the greatest country in the world, in

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many respects—like the biggest economy in the world, they've been a democracy for 249 years now on July 4th just passed—an extraordinary place.

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And they—how could they elect this person?

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And it was a sense of historic kind of disjunction.

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Something has gone terribly wrong somewhere for this to have happened.

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Mm-hmm.

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That—that's what you're reflecting in your kind of—

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Yeah.

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—WhatsApp chat?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Almost they couldn't make sense of it.

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It wasn't just, "Oh, this is a shame that somebody I didn't like got into power." I mean,

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these are all Australians, so in some respect, quite separated from our Australian context.

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But still, it's almost unintelligible how this happened.

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Yeah.

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What do you think was behind it?

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What did it make you think about?

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Yeah.

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Well, we've spoken about this—that there is perhaps this underlying expectation that actually, history

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itself has a script—that things are meant to be getting better, and things are meant to be going somewhere.

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And for many people, this seems in their mind to be a step backwards, not forwards.

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It's that expectation that things are meant to be going forwards somewhere that I think is so interesting.

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I guess we call that progressivism, do we?

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Yeah.

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Being a progressive.

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Yeah.

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As in "progress".

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History is progressing.

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History is getting better.

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This generation has advanced on the previous one.

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It's one of the commonplaces—one of the almost accepted maxims of our culture, isn't it?

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That we're going somewhere.

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It's like that phrase: you want to be on "the right side of history".

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Mm.

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And if you find yourself on the wrong side of history, that's bad.

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You've got to get with where history's going.

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It's going somewhere.

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It's progressing.

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It's getting better.

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There's moral improvement and progress.

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We're treating women better.

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Our racial differences are better.

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Everything's getting better.

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We're getting somewhere.

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In a sense, that's what progressivism is, isn't it?

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Yeah, and it's really interesting: that language of "the right side of history" is so

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interesting, because it was Barack Obama was actually someone who spoke about these things.

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He spoke about actually drawing on Martin Luther King, Jr.: "The arc of history is long, but it bends

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towards justice" and that history's going somewhere and you want to be on the right side of history.

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And there was this expectation that history was going towards justice.

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And I think for a lot of people, Trump and Trumpism, it seems like, well, the arc of history just got a kink in it.

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It just took a wrong turn.

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Exactly!

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And how could that happen if history is going somewhere good?

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And it raises this question, then, for us as Christians, for us as people, but is that the case?

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Is history going somewhere good and in the sort of contemporary world where, let's face it, we're in a secular world.

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We're in a very post-Christian kind of world.

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There's no Christian kind of narrative or story about where history's going.

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Where do you get the idea that everything's getting better?

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That's kind of what I want to talk with you about today.

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You have a great lecture on this during this last term with our third years,

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and you don't have to give it at the level of a third year ethics lecture.

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This is just a casual conversation.

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But I'd love to dig into the idea of how do we get this idea that's really a commonplace of our contemporary

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culture—that the world is going somewhere good, that morality is progressing, that each generation

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is more enlightened, that the world has improved since the previous generation, morally speaking?

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That is we don't have the outdated, primitive, backward attitudes of the 50s or even the 60s.

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We've come somewhere.

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Where do we get that idea?

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Where does it come from?

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Yeah.

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What I think is actually important, and what I want to touch on, is that this idea of progress is intimately connected to Christianity.

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And so, if you go back before Christianity to ancient near-Eastern cultures, that kind of thing, they largely had a cyclical view of time and history.

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The world wasn't going somewhere; it just went around and around.

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And I think in large part, this was connected to the cycle of the seasons—agrarian cultures.

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Winter came and then spring and summer and autumn, and you moved through the seasons in a cyclical way.

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And this was actually, I think, a way that they made sense of life itself—that actually life itself went around and around.

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But then with the birth of Christianity, the death and resurrection of Jesus, something unique and profound happened.

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It has its origins in the Old Testament.

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Of course, right.

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But particularly with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, was actually the idea

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that history isn't just going around and around; history is actually going somewhere.

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That history itself—the world itself—has a beginning and it has an end, and it will end in the different place to where it began.

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And so the Bible, it speaks about, you know, we began in the garden and we had the introduction of sin and the Fall.

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But Jesus has actually come to bring about a resurrection that will, in the end, bring a transformation

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about for creation itself, and it will be different and it will be transformed and perfected and renewed.

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And so you have a fundamentally different idea about time and history.

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Is this why as Christians, we sometimes resonate with the idea of progress and progressivism?

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Yeah, yeah.

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I think so.

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There's something in us that resonates with this idea that there is hope, that good will prevail.

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Actually, I got a little quote here.

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Oh, let me guess.

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It's from The Lord of the Rings.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Charles loves his Lord of the Rings quotes.

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And they're good too.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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I find an endless source of, uh, wisdom and reflection.

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I'll read this little quote.

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Okay.

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Um, it's from Samwise Gamgee.

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Mm-hmm.

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He's speaking to Frodo, and they're speaking in a moment of despair.

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And Sam says to Frodo, he says, "It's like in the great stories, Mr Frodo, the ones that really mattered.

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Full of darkness and danger, they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy?

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How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?

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"But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow.

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Even darkness must pass.

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A new day will come.

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And when the sun shines out, it will shine out the clearer.

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Those were the stories that stayed with you.

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They meant something, even if you were too small to understand why."

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And I find that so interesting.

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I think that resonates with us—that we do have this sense that actually, darkness will pass.

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The sun will shine out.

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A new day will come.

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And that resonates with us.

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It helps us to make sense of the world.

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And Christianity is where you find that truly and with a concrete hope in Jesus Christ.

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And of course Western history—our history, the history we are talking about, we're talking about the elections of people in the USA, and our morality

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and the sense of things here in Australia—and we're talking about Western views of history—that, of course, springs out of Christianity in some way.

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We're a culture that's been deeply, deeply formed by Christianity in many of our deep substructures.

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Even though, now, that's been largely evacuated with its content, certainly publicly, intellectually, culturally, how does that happen?

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How do we move from a point where you have a profoundly Christian understanding arising out of the promise of the Old Testament

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fulfilled in Christ, that the world is a certain kind of thing created by God, and that in God's purposes, his world and his people

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are going somewhere to be gathered around his Son in a new creation, that there's a direction to history and a fulfillment—how do we

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get from there to where we are now where we've kind of got this shadowy progressivism that is somehow insubstantial and unsatisfying?

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Mm. Yeah.

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So something happened in and around what's called the Enlightenment.

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And so the Enlightenment was kind of a movement that took hold in the 17th, 18th century.

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One way of explaining and making sense of the Enlightenment was actually an

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attempt to have a kind of Christianity without the Christ—without Jesus Christ.

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And so, many people will know that quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: "God is dead".

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What people often don't realise is the broader context of that quote, 'cause it's very interesting.

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And so, it's actually a story that that quote comes from.

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And Nietzsche's telling this story about a man who ran into the town square crying out, "God is dead! God is dead! And we have killed him."

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But what happens is the townspeople who come out to hear this man crying, they say, "We're not ready for it yet. Go back."

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And this story is Nietzsche's way of saying that in the Enlightenment, people wanted to hang on to the values of Christianity.

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They wanted to hang on to a Christian worldview.

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But they just didn't want the God, the Christ, of that Christian worldview.

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'Cause Nietzsche is writing in the late 19th century, looking back on the Enlightenment

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and saying, "It didn't really work, did it." Like, it's hard to have one without the other.

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But that's the point of that quote, that very famous quote.

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He's critiquing the Enlightenment from the other side of it, really.

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He is.

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Now, Nietzsche himself—now, his critique was actually, "They've kept too much of Christianity."

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Yes, yes.

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And so he said, "Look, if you're going be gone with God, better get rid of the whole lot. Get rid of all your Christian

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values that you're trying to hang onto." And he had his own worldview, which is problematic, but that was what he was saying.

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So in the Enlightenment, you have an attempt to kind of have a super structure and ideals

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and morals of Christianity, and even a sense of history and the world as going somewhere.

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Is that what you mean?

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To—

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.
Yes!

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—To have that sense that there is hope, that we're going somewhere, that there

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is a future that we are progressing towards, just as we have in Christianity.

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Except there's no God that's taking history anywhere and there's no creation.

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It's not as if the world is created a certain kind of place.

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There's just us.

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There's humanity.

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But for some reason, and somehow, we're still going somewhere.

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How does that work out?

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How do they try to explain that?

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Yeah, so with this kind of Enlightenment thing, wanting to hang on to Christian ideals, Christian values, but

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without the Christ, I think that extends to this idea of progress—that people, because of Christianity, they

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knew or they wanted, they hoped that the world was really going somewhere, that things were going be better.

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That the darkness would pass.

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And the question was, "How is that going make sense without a Christ to bring about a resurrection from the dead?"

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And so, this is where we can introduce another character.

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His name was George Hegel, and he tried to put out an attempt to give people this idea of progress, but without a Christ.

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And so, this is what people call "historicism".

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And he said that actually, history itself, the world itself, is almost propelling itself towards progress.

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And so, he had a kind of complicated philosophy.

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But he largely said, you begin in one position, one state.

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He called this the "thesis".

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And he said, at some point there's going be a reaction—a response to that, called the "antithesis".

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And so, you go from one state to the next state, and then there'll be a

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"synthesis", where these two different things come together to form a new thing.

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Something will come out of the opposition of those two ideas—that in some way takes you a step forward.

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You bring the best of the two ideas, or somehow in the collision between them, something emerges that's a positive synthesis, the positive new thing.

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So that new thing then becomes the next thesis, I guess.

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Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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And basically, history itself moves through a constant process of moving through these stages of

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point A to point B, producing point C, which itself becomes the new point A, and on and on we go.

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And it was this idea that actually, that's how progress comes about—that things are going somewhere.

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The term "Complementarian" was coined in 1988 to describe the view that God created men and women equally in his

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image, with equal dignity and purpose and equal standing before him as sinners and as recipients of his grace.

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However, in marriage and in leadership of the church, some roles and responsibilities for men and women are not identical or interchangeable.

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There is ordered complementarity of equals.

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Even though the term "Complementarian" was new, this view reflects 20 centuries of biblical interpretation and church practice.

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Join us for the next Priscilla & Aquila evening seminar on Wednesday 13th of August, 2025, when writer

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and theologian Claire Smith will examine the history of Complementarianism, not just for its own sake,

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but to help us gain a greater understanding of our current context and to identify areas of future focus.

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To find out more and register, visit the Priscilla & Aquila website.

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That's: paa.moore.edu.au.

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paa.moore.edu.au.

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And now, let's get back to our program.

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One of Hegel's most famous disciples, of course, was Karl Marx, or "disciple" is probably not quite the right word.

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But certainly, there's a lot of that in Marx—in that for Marx, in terms of economics, he saw the world as going somewhere economically—that there

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was a necessary history of economics that was going to unfold by the clash between capital and the bourgeoisie, and labour, the proletariat.

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And the out of the struggle—out of the rebellion of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, in a sense, against capital—would arise something

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new—would arise a new world, a new kind of economic order that superseded both, and that was going to be the communist economic order.

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And so, Hegel's philosophy is sometimes thought of as a dialectical approach that's back and forth between these two things.

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Marxism is a dialectical materialism—that the material fortunes and nature of the world and how the world produces

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its goods, and how labour and capital and goods and production happens, this too is happening exactly this way.

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Hmm.

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And so, the whole history of that has had such a huge influence on our century

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through the Soviet Revolution and the Communist Revolution in China as well.

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The whole movement of socialism, of Marxism economically, comes out of this idea of progress,

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that there's going be progress by action and reaction through revolution producing a new world.

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Yeah, 'cause most people probably haven't heard of Hegel and his ideas about history.

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But as you say, Marx, he took those ideas and he ran them through an economic

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paradigm, where he understood that we as humans are basically economic creatures.

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And so, that's how he made sense of things and that's how he wanted to bring about progress in the world.

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But perhaps his mistake was actually thinking that we were, at base, economic

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creatures, which is perhaps a contributing factor to why his ideas failed.

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But that's not to say people haven't taken similar ideas from Marx and tried

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them in a new way, which is where people will speak about cultural Marxism.

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And so, this is perhaps another milestone along the way: kind of associated with something

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called the Frankfurt School, where they said, "You know what, Marx, he was onto something.

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But we're not fundamentally economic people.

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We're fundamentally cultural people.

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And actually, fundamentally, it's not my money that makes me who I am; it's my identity, my relationships—

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The groups that I'm part of.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And so, then you began to get some of these ideas kind of transforming and developing a new language.

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And so, instead of having the language of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, it was similar language, but it changed.

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It became the "oppressed" and the "oppressors"—minorities and the powerful.

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And these began to be understood in terms of identity markers.

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And so, you could understand these along kind of ethnic lines.

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And so certain ethnicities were identified as those who are oppressed, and those identified as those who are the oppressors.

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And you can run it through the lens of gender as well—sex and gender.

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So women are often identified as the oppressed minorities and men as the oppressors.

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And just like Marx said that the oppressed need to rise up against those in power above them, so too there was this movement that actually

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the oppressed still need to rise up and bring about a kind of revolution, but not an economic revolution, but a cultural revolution.

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A revolution of identity.

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And of morality—of how we live, of what we value, of how we relate to one another, of how we think about

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sexuality, of how we think about the use of goods and what we do with our material things and so on.

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How we think about the environment.

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How we think about everything really.

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Hmm.

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One of the really fascinating aspects of this discussion for me, Charles, is how it kind of explains the rise of activism.

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Mm.

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It's been an interesting feature of my life as I think about it, looking back over the decades that I've

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had beyond you, how much it's become part of our culture that the way to bring change is to protest.

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The protest is an activism—is the form by which change happens.

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How do you get change to happens?

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We need to organise.

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We need to protest.

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And it's the idea that if there's an existing hegemon, there's an existing way of being, there's an existing kind of dominant culture.

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That's the thesis, right?

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That's the point A. I need to rise up in some sort of activist protesting rebellion.

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And by doing that, I'll produce change.

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And that change will be for the better, just because it will be.

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You could almost say it's more like culturalism Hegelianism than cultural Marxism, perhaps.

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Maybe that's more accurate.

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But it certainly is that idea that somehow merely by opposing and by complaining and

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rising up and seeking to tear down what is there, I will succeed in building something new.

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Mm-hmm.

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Even though I can't really explain what that new thing is going to be or how it will work, just the process of activism is what brings change.

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Mm-hmm.

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And I think it's that idea of those moves that Hegel talked about: you're moving from the thesis to the antithesis to the synthesis.

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And as you say, it's that moment of protest, of activism, of confrontation that brings about that change, which is why it's such a big thing.

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And you've spoken about this: that protest only ever moves in one direction.

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It only ever moves forward.

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It must deny what is in the past for some future that we aren't quite sure yet what exactly it will be—how

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we'll manage to provide for everybody and make society work once we've torn down the current structures.

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But we know that that's where the better future is.

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How do we critique this as Christians?

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Because at one level, we kind of identify with it.

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As you said before, it sort of resonates with us in that we too are looking for progress.

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We're looking for the end of history and for Christ.

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But not in a Hegelian back and forward kind of way, and also not in such a way that inevitably, whatever happens in history next is an improvement.

364
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Isn't that the implication of this kind of historicist way of thinking about things—that the future equals the good?

365
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Yeah, and that's one of the curious things about this idea of progress—that the very idea of progress itself means

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that whenever something moves from being in the future or the present to being in the past, it actually becomes evil.

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Bad.

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Something to be moved on from.

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And so, all the things we're fighting for in our culture will inevitably become the things that

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future generations will think are repressive and backwards and need to be protested against.

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And so, it actually includes this self-defeating critique that in a sense, it can never say anything is good—

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In itself.

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—in itself, because it will become bad.

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People will look back on it and think, "Oh, how backwards!" in the constant search for progress.

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You've got to get on the right side of history where we are and see that this next thing is actually where we've all been heading.

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Yeah, that's an interesting phrase, because there is a "wrong" side of history.

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Which, by definition, is the past.

378
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Yeah.

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And the right side will inevitably become the wrong side.

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Just given time.

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Yes.

382
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Which is such a curious thing: that the things we're fighting for now will be the things fought against.

383
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Protested against.

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There will be—progressive activists of the future will seek to overthrow them.

385
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Hmm.

386
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And in that sense, it's a kind of fruitless search, in many respects.

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I mean, one of the, I suppose, the critique from a Christian point of view is not only the logical critique you've just

388
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provided—that it always ends up denying itself eventually—but that practically and experientially, it's the case as well.

389
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You can't simply posit that when Hitler and the Wehrmacht emerged in Germany in 1930s,

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that that constituted progress, and that what therefore and thereby happened was progress.

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You end up having to deny any—well, because you've already denied any objective kind of standard or

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referent for what is good, you end up constantly having to change the goalpost as to what you judge is good.

393
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Yeah, and I think the Christian worldview actually presents something.

394
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Although it does resonate with this idea of progress, it frames it in a different way.

395
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How does it frame it?

396
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When the Scriptures describe our world in its sinful state—I think particularly of Ecclesiastes—it presents a world

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that is marred by sin, that our world by itself will never find its way out of sin, but things still happen in history.

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And so, I think what the Bible describes is sinful humanity.

399
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This world will only ever bounce from one thing to another—not going somewhere, but just reacting.

400
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And GK Chesterton is wonderful thinker and writer.

401
00:29:05,370 --> 00:29:09,840
He says, "The world isn't going anywhere by itself.

402
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:15,780
It simply wobbles back and forward", where you get, at one point in history, there'll

403
00:29:15,900 --> 00:29:19,740
be some wins—some good things that people say, you know, "That was really valuable.

404
00:29:19,740 --> 00:29:28,860
That was good." But mixed in with all those good things will be a whole bunch of problematic things that people will notice and they

405
00:29:28,860 --> 00:29:35,190
will react to. And they'll say, "No, there are a whole bunch of problems there." People will look at the 50s—1950s—and go, "You know,

406
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there were some good things there. But there are a whole bunch of problems as well." And so, you get this big swing—this reaction.

407
00:29:42,270 --> 00:29:46,800
But in fighting against that, we actually just trade one set of problems for another.

408
00:29:47,070 --> 00:29:51,180
There are some wins, there are some good things, some valuable things.

409
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But mixed in are just a whole bunch of other problems, because left to ourselves, sinful, humanity will never be able to get rid of sin.

410
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It will always be mixed into our attempts to justify ourselves.

411
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But the gospel presents something quite different—something quite new—that actually when Jesus Christ rose from the

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dead, something new did happen—that there was actually a new creation, that there was perfection, there was wholeness,

413
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there was redemption, and that this occurred in Jesus and his resurrection—and that this will encompass the whole world.

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This will encompass the whole creation.

415
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But not yet.

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And while we wait for Jesus' resurrection to, in a sense, become the resurrection of all things, it is only by

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participating in Christ through the Spirit that we can experience this hope, this newness, this new creation.

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So the newness of that new creation and the ultimate progress, in a sense, that we're all longing for and hoping for, it does become real and

419
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visible and actual in our world as people's lives are changed, as people do become united with Christ, as their minds and hearts are transformed.

420
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And therefore, as their lives are transformed, what they do is transformed.

421
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We'd say, as their character is transformed.

422
00:31:22,025 --> 00:31:25,025
So that change does become real and visible and new.

423
00:31:25,415 --> 00:31:33,055
It's just not in a way that you can trace in history—such that this age is better than that age, or that it's all becoming better all the time.

424
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In terms of historical movements and cultures and societies, we're wobbling back and forward, seeing progress in some areas and not so much in others.

425
00:31:40,645 --> 00:31:41,905
Or going backwards in others.

426
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But in the lives of people and in the lives of fellowships, in particular of churches and church

427
00:31:47,605 --> 00:31:53,635
communities, you see that new life and that hope made real and made substantial in the world.

428
00:31:53,725 --> 00:31:54,055
Yeah.

429
00:31:54,055 --> 00:32:00,830
As you're saying, there is a sense in which there is real progress in the life of the Christian, the person

430
00:32:00,830 --> 00:32:07,760
who is connected to the resurrected one by faith, which is what we call "sanctification", theologically.

431
00:32:08,050 --> 00:32:13,395
We are transformed from one degree of glory to another, as Paul says.

432
00:32:13,425 --> 00:32:16,185
And so, our communities can be, in that sense, transformed.

433
00:32:16,455 --> 00:32:21,195
And you have these outposts of the kingdom—these new communities where lives and

434
00:32:21,195 --> 00:32:25,095
relationships are still not perfect by any means, and where there's dysfunction of all kinds.

435
00:32:25,605 --> 00:32:28,785
Just read the New Testament: there's dysfunction of all kinds in those communities.

436
00:32:29,235 --> 00:32:34,100
But in which there is also real change and new life and, in that sense, progress.

437
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:41,300
Yeah, which is what the Scriptures call "the church", the gathering of the people who are connected to the Christ.

438
00:32:41,570 --> 00:32:44,510
Charles, you just reminded me of all the reasons why I wish you weren't going to Aberdeen.

439
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:49,640
It'd be great to continue having—we'll just have to have these conversations remotely.

440
00:32:50,060 --> 00:32:52,250
But we're going miss you here at Moore College and here in Sydney.

441
00:32:52,340 --> 00:32:58,880
But it's for a very good reason that you're going away—to think about all these kinds of things more deeply and to come back a wiser, better read man.

442
00:32:59,300 --> 00:33:03,750
As we round off, I guess I want to ask you one final question about us and Christians and progress.

443
00:33:03,750 --> 00:33:08,310
We've sort of sketched in a Christian way of thinking about being a Christian progressive, in one sense.

444
00:33:08,700 --> 00:33:14,760
When we're interacting with our friends, with the world, often as Christians we're, well, I'll speak for myself, but I think I

445
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:22,645
speak for quite a few Christians, we react against some of the kind of more extreme moral progressivism of the progressive left.

446
00:33:22,675 --> 00:33:30,115
And the kind of way we see that progressing makes us deeply uncomfortable, and we find ourselves opposed to many of those movements and

447
00:33:30,115 --> 00:33:35,754
many of those moral positions, which, because that's the progressive left, it kind of makes us the conservative right sort of thing.

448
00:33:35,905 --> 00:33:38,095
And we kind almost reflexively go there.

449
00:33:38,095 --> 00:33:46,435
How as Christians can we notice the problems that we've been speaking about and understand the underlying—deep underlying—problems in

450
00:33:46,435 --> 00:33:53,715
that system of thinking without just reflexively jumping in the opposite direction and finding ourselves with a different set of problems?

451
00:33:53,895 --> 00:33:54,135
Mm.

452
00:33:54,165 --> 00:33:57,135
Wobbling to the other side and finding ourselves with a different set of problems?

453
00:33:57,375 --> 00:33:57,735
Yeah.

454
00:33:57,975 --> 00:34:06,315
I think of Jesus before Pilate, and he says, "My kingdom is not of this world." And I think we need to always be on

455
00:34:06,315 --> 00:34:14,925
guard that we don't align ourselves with kingdoms of this world, whether it be on the left or whether it be on the right.

456
00:34:15,435 --> 00:34:21,284
And I think that means we need to have our eyes open to understand the world we're living in, to be able to spot

457
00:34:21,284 --> 00:34:30,495
these kingdoms of the world, to be clear-minded, but always faithful to the Christ whose kingdom is not of this world.

458
00:34:30,915 --> 00:34:34,205
And so, we'll see the left, you know, the progressive.

459
00:34:34,335 --> 00:34:36,025
Some people call it the "woke left".

460
00:34:36,554 --> 00:34:41,115
And many people find it very concerning, and they're worried about the left.

461
00:34:41,535 --> 00:34:46,255
But what we need to remember is we're not on the conservative right.

462
00:34:46,685 --> 00:34:49,380
We are the people who belong to Jesus.

463
00:34:49,710 --> 00:34:56,730
And I do wonder if we have spent so much time and energy worrying about the left.

464
00:34:56,760 --> 00:35:00,750
There is a conservative turn happening around the world.

465
00:35:00,780 --> 00:35:07,380
There is this kind of turn toward the right, and I do wonder if it will sneak up on us as Christians.

466
00:35:08,044 --> 00:35:19,325
We won't see it coming, and perhaps we might confuse ourselves with the right—that we've had the enemy of the left for so long that we've maybe—

467
00:35:19,415 --> 00:35:21,365
The enemy of our enemy has become our friend.

468
00:35:21,665 --> 00:35:27,815
And so, we don't tend to see the problems and dysfunctions in much the same sort of way.

469
00:35:27,995 --> 00:35:37,595
The philosophical and theological kind of vacuum that is there as well, as there is in much contemporary post- post- post-Enlightenment kind of

470
00:35:37,595 --> 00:35:45,450
thinking that we're in now, where there might be some hankering for some commonsense morality or for a reaction against the nuttiness that we see at

471
00:35:45,450 --> 00:35:52,080
certain points on the other side, but without any real foundation or understanding of what's happening and thereby just leading into other problems.

472
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:57,990
And I think insofar as we go right back to where we started our conversation, many Christian friends I know

473
00:35:57,990 --> 00:36:02,545
in the US, for example have cheered the election of Trump, because it's a poke in the eye for the woke left.

474
00:36:02,845 --> 00:36:10,885
He's a brawling, bruising, unsophisticated, rude, kind of middle finger to that whole world, and they love that because they're our enemies, right?

475
00:36:11,275 --> 00:36:17,180
But you've got to be careful: before too long, you find that the unspoken and un-Christian kind of morality

476
00:36:17,240 --> 00:36:22,250
of the Christless right, if I can put it like that, can be as damaging as that of the Christless left.

477
00:36:22,430 --> 00:36:22,730
Mm.

478
00:36:23,270 --> 00:36:26,960
Much more for us to explore there, and we'll do that in a future podcast.

479
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:33,830
One of the projects for next year here at CCL is to talk more about politics and our understanding of left and right, and how as

480
00:36:33,830 --> 00:36:39,980
Christians, we find ourselves as kind of strangers in the political landscape, not really comfortable in either of these positions.

481
00:36:39,980 --> 00:36:42,495
But that's something we'll come back to and talk about more.

482
00:36:42,495 --> 00:36:44,714
And you've set the table well for that, Charles, for next time.

483
00:36:44,714 --> 00:36:47,024
But in the meantime, thanks for coming and talking with us today.

484
00:36:47,024 --> 00:36:47,835
Really appreciate it.

485
00:36:48,075 --> 00:36:48,825
Thanks for having me.

486
00:37:03,810 --> 00:37:08,654
Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast from Moore College.

487
00:37:09,134 --> 00:37:13,544
For a whole lot more from the Centre for Christian Living, just head over to the CCL website.

488
00:37:13,544 --> 00:37:22,725
That's ccl.moore.edu.au, where you'll find a stack of resources, including every past podcast episode all

489
00:37:22,725 --> 00:37:29,330
the way back to 2017, videos from our live events and articles that we've published through the Centre.

490
00:37:29,570 --> 00:37:33,350
And while you're there on the website, we also have an opportunity for you to make an

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00:37:33,350 --> 00:37:38,150
tax deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre here at Moore College.

492
00:37:38,750 --> 00:37:46,430
We'd also love you to subscribe to the podcast and to leave a review so that people can discover our podcast and our other resources.

493
00:37:47,029 --> 00:37:51,560
And we always love and benefit from receiving your feedback and questions.

494
00:37:51,620 --> 00:37:56,990
Please get in touch: you can email us at ccl@moore.edu au.

495
00:37:58,490 --> 00:38:04,279
Many thanks to Karen Beilharz from the Communications Team here at Moore College for all her work in transcribing and

496
00:38:04,310 --> 00:38:11,745
editing and producing this podcast; to James West for the music; and to you, dear listeners, for joining us each week.

497
00:38:11,805 --> 00:38:12,645
Thank you for listening.

498
00:38:13,095 --> 00:38:13,995
I'm Tony Payne.

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'Bye for now.