“Humbler Faith, Bigger God” with Samuel Wells

Show Notes:

Are you struggling with church? Do you have doubts and questions, but you aren’t sure where to go to talk them through? Do you have friends or family members who have been hurt by the church, or who have wandered away from the church, or, maybe, who have never been in church?

In this episode, Chris and Eddie are joined by Rev. Dr. Sam Wells, priest in the Church of England and vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in central London since 2012. He served as the Dean of Duke Chapel and is the author of 35 books about Christian ethics, mission, ministry, scripture, liturgy, and preaching. Today’s conversation is about his book, Humbler Faith, Bigger God: Finding a Story to Live By. This book came out of Rev. Wells 2020 Easter sermon, which he preached in an empty garden during London’s first COVID-19 lockdown. Humbler Faith, Bigger God is written for those who seek, those who have lapsed, those of other faiths, and those who are hostile to Christianity.

As a preacher, Rev. Wells says that people tend to respond positively to his preaching because he doesn’t skirt around the issues of the day. He doesn’t hide Christianity’s often difficult past, and he isn’t afraid to have the hard conversations with believers, doubters, and nonbelievers, because he believes it’s all about trust. “We can trust God, and because we can trust God, we can trust ourselves and one another.”

Resources:

Buy Humbler Faith, Bigger God on Amazon

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:02
I'm Eddie Rester. And welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 00:04

Today we are talking to Sam Wells, who is Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, and the Church of England. He's a priest in the Church of England. And he's written a book called "Humbler Faith, Bigger God: Finding a Story to Live By."

Eddie Rester 00:20

This is a book if you are, maybe, you've kind of decided "I just can't do faith, I'm not sure I can do church." Or if you're someone who wonders, "Why have my friends who've wandered, what can I say to them? How do I a conversation with people who've kind of put up the walls against faith?" He really takes seriously the critiques of Christianity in this moment, and begins to offer us a way not through apologetics, which I think is important, but a way through story and conversation, to begin to take seriously the critiques of Christianity, about what it is, and a lot of those critiques that we have to offer.

Chris McAlilly 01:00
I enjoy the tone of his writing and his approach. It both is rooted in what you would consider a traditional Orthodox understanding the faith, but it takes very seriously people's questions as a way of honoring them and saying, "I hear you." And not just doing that out of kind of lip service, but really allowing the challenges that are coming from outside the church to renew his own understanding of Christianity, of the faith, and to provide perhaps, I don't know, a more trustworthy faith to live by moving forward.

Eddie Rester 01:44

And near the end, we asked him about how did these conversations really impact his faith and his story. And he said something I think is important. He said, "I faced the worst and found the glory." I loved that, that he faced the worst and found the glory and that the psalms are still singing for him. And just a deep appreciation of his work and his book and deep appreciation of the conversation we got to have with him in this episode.

Chris McAlilly 02:15
I hope that you like the episode. And if you do, please share it with your people. Leave us a review, that helps other folks find the podcast. Thanks for being with us today on The Weight.

Eddie Rester 02:26

[INTRO] Life can be heavy. We carry around with us the weight of our doubt, our pain, our suffering, our mental health, our family system, our politics. This is a podcast to create space for all of that.

Sam Wells 02:39

We want to talk about these things with humility, charity, and intellectual honesty. But more than that, we want to listen. It's time to open up our echo chamber. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Chris McAlilly 02:54
Well, we're here today with Sam Wells. Sam, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us on the podcast.

Sam Wells 03:01
It's my pleasure. And thanks for inviting me.

Eddie Rester 03:05
Tell our listeners where you're serving now. I knew you during your time at Duke when you were the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, but you returned to London and you're serving a church there.

Sam Wells 03:18

So I'm at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square. Trafalgar Square is the place in London from which all the measurements come. So when you get on the M4 motorway, and you're driving from Bristol, or you're driving down the M1 from Leeds, and it says 42 miles to London or something, it's 42 miles to just 200 yards from where I'm sitting right here. It's bang in the center of London. St. Martin-in-the-Fields, there have been three churches on this site, but this one was built by George I in 1726. And, well, it says on the outside was built by the parishioners, but he was the first church warden. He had a lot to do with it, and it was a justification of his regime because he was partly from Germany.

Sam Wells 04:02

And it was a kind of mixture of architectural styles and it became the template for so many. You know, your First Baptist Church in your Mississippi town will probably look exactly like St Martin-in-the-Fields. It's got, you've probably never thought about it, but it's got a classical body and a kind of Gothic spire. And if you think about it, that's a clash of architectural styles. Well, it was never done before James Gibbs did it on this. So that in a sense, the most famous thing about St. Martin's is its architecture. But over the course of time, it was the royal parish church--still is, really, in a sense that Buckingham Palace is in the parish. So it's 10 Downing Street, where the Prime Minister lives.

Sam Wells 04:50

So we're as central as that, but also we've got a huge reputation for music. The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields is the most recorded orchestra in the world. We've got a big reputation locally for work with homeless people. We have a big reputation of social enterprises. We founded a business here 35 years ago, which covers a lot of our costs. And we've more recently founded the HeartEdge movement, which is a international, four continents movement for the renewal of the church. So there's a lot going on here.

Chris McAlilly 05:24
You can get a fine sandwich in the crypt as well, downstairs. Or you could before the pandemic.

Sam Wells 05:33

we suffered a lot in the pandemic, economically, we obviously couldn't open our cafe, either of our cafes, but we're kind of more or less back to normal now.

Eddie Rester 05:43

Well you've written a great book, "Humbler Faith, Bigger God." I find it fascinating you bring up the pandemic, because the pandemic was really the genesis of this book. You were preaching a sermon on Easter Sunday 2020. As all of us, I'm sure it was to an empty room on that Sunday.

Sam Wells 06:03
Empty garden, actually. I preached it in a garden.

Eddie Rester 06:09
It's hard to think, it's hard to remember those days now.

Sam Wells 06:12

It was a really warm period, actually, I mean, that was the best thing about the first lockdown. It started getting sunny on about the 20th of March. And it stayed sunny till the beginning of June. And it was sunny pretty much every, it was perfect weather here in the Southeast of England, and that redeemed it for most people. If you ask anyone from the south of England what their first memory of the lockdown was, they will say it was really sunny and actually we had a good time in the yard.

Eddie Rester 06:40
Well, your Easter sermon became this book. So what was it about that Easter sermon that kind of pointed you towards what became "Humbler Faith, Bigger God?"

Sam Wells 06:50

Well, what I did in that sermon was say, there was really two stories of the pandemic. And those were actually the two stories of God. So the first was a story about the pandemic is that we are fragile human beings, that we have created stories around us to try to make meaning but ultimately, some form of mortality will break through, in this case, a virus. We will die. We will try to make meaning around it, but it's all futile. And obviously, that's transposed onto the death of Christ on Good Friday. It was an East sermon. And that it was a beautiful failure, and that there is a great mystery about human life. Because on the one hand, we seem intelligent beings. We seem to be able to admire beautiful things, both of our creation and in wider, you know, your mountains and your sunsets and so on. But ultimately, none of it lasts. So that's story one.

Sam Wells 07:57

And story two, is there is a thing called existence, which lasts for a limited time, but at the back of it, there's a thing called essence that lasts forever. And the astonishing claim of Christianity is that, excuse me, that essence entered existence, at what we call Christmas. And, in fact, the whole reason for existence was for essence to make a relationship with existence. And that relationship is called Jesus. And that existence couldn't deal with a wonder of that gift, and had a kind of allergic reaction to it. And that's what we call Good Friday. But the even more astonishing wonder is that essence didn't stop there but came back to give us another chance, and to show that its eternal purpose was to bring us to be with God, in essence, forever.

Sam Wells 09:03

So the whole "being with," that notion I've written a lot about in various other books, is the central notion for creation, for Christ's incarnation, and also for Easter and forever--for eschatology, for heaven, whatever you call it--the whole thing is about being with. And basically I concluded by saying, you know, Mary in the garden in John chapter 20 turns from the cave, you know, from the tomb, she turns from story one to the person behind her, she thinks is the gardener, who is story two. That, in her turning, it is a conversion, as conversion is turning. And so I, you know, as you do rhetorically in an Easter sermon, I said, you know, this is our opportunity to turn with Mary from now to forever, from death to life, from story one to story two. She's turning. Will you?

Sam Wells 10:08

You know, that was more or less the message and a guy I didn't actually know who, based in the Midwest, wrote me an email said, "I really think you should make a book out of this." And so then there was a real challenge because in a way that may not be immediately apparent to everybody listening, I come from a tradition in theology that doesn't really do apologetics, as it's called, doesn't do the commending of the faith. In fact, Karl Barth, who's one of the sort of chief figures in that movement, always used to say "dogmatics is the best apologetics." In other words, an appropriate explanation of the heart of the Christian faith and the dynamic of the Christian faith is all you need. That should be compelling.

Sam Wells 11:00

It's a bit like saying worship is the best evangelism. Because you go into worship, you look at the other people, say they're having a good time, and you say, "I'd like a bit of this, please." At least, that's the way it's supposed to work. It may not work quite like that in every church. But that's the way it's supposed to work. But I reflected on that. And that's what a lot of my friends in that move, that part of the church and mentors and people I used to work with at Duke Divinity School, and so on, actually really think.

Sam Wells 11:28

However, here in London, I'm living in a largely secular world. And my children are growing up, you know, they're late teenagers now in a very secular world. And my young adults in my congregation, you know, they are people who every day have to justify the fact that they're a Christian to their family, to their friends. And so to say dogmatics is the best apologetics to them, I'm afraid is just not enough. And also, I am vicar, as you've just mentioned, at a church, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, that has a reputation for being, I guess to use an American word, progressive. And that's fine. But it tends to be more articulate, if I'm really honest, about what it doesn't believe than what it does. And it tends to be more articulate about other conservatives who they feel are very controlling and small minded. And we're not like that, of course. We're nice and friendly and inclusive, and all those sorts of words. Well, that's not enough.

Sam Wells 12:36

You know, you need actually to say what is the compelling, irresistible power of Christianity. You can't just say, "we're not like that lot across the road." That's indulgence. You've actually got to articulate. And so you know, in a sense, in what you could call a sort of--I was gonna say mantra, but that's not really a Christian word. But you know, what I mean, that kind of leitmotif, to use a musical term, of the book is, "Don't tell me what you don't believe. Tell me what you do believe." We're not going to argue over the details of the Eastern Orthodox have a slightly different way of expressing the view about the holy... Who cares? You know, let's go to the very heart of it and recognize that Christianity, the history of Christianity, is not a seamless story of glory. We've got some apologizing to do, there are some issues with God, and there are some issues with the church. Let's put them on the table, and out of those, let's articulate where the true glory lies so it's a mixture of honesty and joy.

Eddie Rester 13:46
So one of them, oh, sorry. Go for it, Eddie.

Eddie Rester 13:46 Go ahead.

Chris McAlilly 13:51

Yeah, I think one of the questions I had in reading the book is, who are the people that you have in mind? And I think you answered that a bit. You go a bit deeper, just right at the very beginning, in talking about some of the folks that that you are thinking of--five kinds of people: seekers, the lapsed, those of no professed faith, those of other faiths and those who are hostile.

Sam Wells 14:18

Yeah. Okay. So, two ways to answer your questions. I'll start with the way you've just put it just there. Those five categories, each have a chapter in my book, "Incarnational Mission." So in my book, "Incarnational Mission," which is a sequel to my book, "Incarnational Ministry," which is itself a sequel to my book, "A Nazareth Manifesto." They're all exploring the notion of being with, and so the first half of "Incarnation Mission" lists those five different kinds of person and then the last five or six chapters named five different kinds of contexts in which, you know, organizations and institutions and the excluded and government and what it means to be with all those different things you could call society.

Sam Wells 15:03

So going back to your five categories that you've cited, I get really irritated when Christians talk about, "The world isn't listening to XYZed." The world is a far too un-nuanced category. Obviously, in John's gospel, the world has a particular theological meaning. But that's not usually the meaning that people have when they say "the world." So what I tried to do is break the world down into five categories. There are some people who actually really want to believe, actually didn't grow up in the church. I mean, I know this isn't the case of Mississippi so much, but it's the case in most of America, that there are people who are growing up in entirely secular households, and they've got nothing against Christianity. They find it quite curious, and there's parts of it that quite appeal to them. Often Jesus appeals to them. And there are parts of it that seem just weird. And so that's the seeker.

Sam Wells 15:57

You know, the lapsed is the person that did believe and has had a terrible experience. And the lapsed is the one I'm most interested in, because Christians tend to be very dismissive of the lapsed, as if the lapsed were lazy, or were backsliders, or there was some fault in them that made them cease to believe. Well, in my experience, let me just tell you one story. Okay. So when I was a vicar in a church, 25 years ago, I met a woman who was about 94, who wanted to come to my church. And so I used to go up, and I used to wheel her down her wheelchair. And I got talking to her. And I said, "Well, tell me a little bit about when you used to go to church." And she said, "I was in Wales. And I was 17 years old,", wait no, "I was 19 years old. And I went to see the local pastor. And I told him that I wanted to get married. And he said to me, he saw that I'd had a machine accident at the mill where I worked, and I only had two fingers on my left hand. I didn't have the last three fingers on my left hand, and do you knnow what he said? He said, 'You haven't got a finger to put the wedding ring on, so I can't marry you.'"

Sam Wells 17:22

And I thought, coming back to church after 75 years was very generous of her. That was the minimum length of time you would want to be away in church, if you've been treated like that by a representative of the church. That's my story about the lapsed. She was technically the lapsed not because she was, you know, living a wild life, but because some representative of the church had behaved abominably towards her, using the authority of the Church for terrible purposes, for no good reason, for nothing that's in the Bible, for just a tradition of putting a ring on a finger. You know, just appalling. And if you take that story as symbolic of the things the church has got wrong, that's why people are lapsed. And that's why the fifth category, the hostile, is usually made up of the lapsed. But anyway, I'll come to them.

Sam Wells 18:14

So there's the seekers, the lapsed, those of no professed faiths, we've talked a bit about them.

Those of other faiths, we know who they are, and, then the hostile and the hostile are, in my experience, almost always the lapsed who've had a really, really awful experience with a pastor who has abused their authority, sometimes in terrible ways, or something like that. But the second way to answer your question is, I did sit down for a significant period of time with two people, one aged 60, and then one aged 31. And I said to both of them, Why do your friends not come to church? And why do you, why are you not sure about church yourself?

Sam Wells 18:59

And between those two conversations, I wrote down in 10 problems with Christianity. And then
I revisited both of those conversations with the two individuals and I refined the chapter titles and so the 10 chapter titles are all now questions based on, if you like, caricatures, of what's wrong with Christianity. So the first one is "Crutch for the Deluded," in other words, it's all be made up. The second one is "Catalogue of Betrayals,' in other words, suffering shows that God can't be trusted and lets us down. And "Fairy Tale for the Infantile" is the Bible is just a bunch of fairy stories. So you know, I just went through with the 10 questions like that, and that set the agenda for the book.

Eddie Rester 19:47

I think one of the reasons that I was so drawn to your book as I worked through it is because you do put the issues on the table, the things that people are saying, and struggling with right now and you see it very publicly. It's not like it was 30 or 40 years ago. If someone was angry at the church or been hurt by the church, they kind of slunk off in the darkness and didn't say anything. And now people are very boldly, confidently, courageously at times, pointing out "this is why I can't believe" or "this is why I trust Jesus, but I don't trust the church." "This is why I struggle so much." And in what I appreciate about you is you put the issues on the table, but you don't do it in an angry way, or a way that says, "look at these people who think the church is just a crutch for the deluded. This is why they're wrong. This is why we're gonna... This is how you break down their argument." Instead, you go back, and you talk about story. And you talk about the old story, the rival story, and then, you know, problems with those and what a new possible story might be. How did you come up with that framework to talk about all these the problems and the issues that people have with faith in the church?

Sam Wells 21:06

Okay, well, there's three ways to answer that. First of all, the first line of the book is "I'm a preacher before I'm a writer." I think the reason people like my preaching, the ones that do, is that I absolutely don't duck issues. So I was on the radio this morning, national radio, I talked about abortion because of the stuff going on in the Supreme Court in the States. And don't get into your minds that people in the UK aren't aware of what's going on in the States. I thought we need to have a conversation about abortion. Of course, abortion isn't just about a woman's body. It's about the Constitution in the United States, and the way all of that works. I mentioned some of that as well. And it's really about politics. It's really about fundamentally about how do we coexist with people with whom we profoundly disagree.

Sam Wells 21:49

So I think what people like about my preaching is it goes to the heart of the issue, and I don't, I'm not trying to... I believe in the God of Jesus Christ. I'm not trying to create some marketing package to sell something. I'm telling people what I profoundly believe, and I believe that that faith is liberating for their life today, as well as forever. And I want to communicate that as vividly as I believe it. And so it's not about, "oh, let's not talk about that," you know, or "that's a bit difficult," or, "let's talk about something more fun." You know, it's, "let's talk about the really hard thing."

Sam Wells 22:27

You know, it's a bit like a good marriage, where you see the difficult thing. You know, "You made that really rude comment about me in front of our friends, can we talk about it on the way home?" Rather than say, "Oh, let's have a few beers and talk about it tomorrow." You know, you're saying, let's make this the beginning of renewal of our relationship, you know, so that's the first thing to say. And that's where a couple that really trust each other, that's how they approach their relationship. Not all couples are at that place all the time. We understand that.

Sam Wells 22:58

Okay, so number two, I read, can I name? Well, I'll name one or two individuals. So Tim Keller, I read one of his books, "The Reason for God." And I thought, I'm sorry, Tim. But there's a real problem here. There's two problems. One is, I'm sorry Tim, but every story you tell is about how foolish those young people were, and how clever was your response to them. And I'm sorry, you can't tell stories like that. That's just no way to tell their story. But the more important problem was, because he doesn't have a kind of dialogue mechanism in the book. You know, he talks about other faiths, and he talks about this, and he talks about that. He doesn't have any way of doing either of the two crucial things you need to do.

Sam Wells 24:01

So crucial thing you need to do one is talk about the elephant in the room. You can't have a book about the Christian faith that is directed at, you know, the emerging generation that doesn't talk about sexuality. I'm sorry. Where have you been? You've got to talk about it. And you've got to talk about it Christianly. He thinks that's a dodgy issue. So he just doesn't go there. And I think what was the point in this book is not talking about what people were thinking about.

Sam Wells 24:30

And secondly, the other problem is he has no way of acknowledging that the church has done terrible things. You know, the history of colonialism, race--most obviously, particularly in the American context--you know, these huge issues, where Christians have got things terribly wrong. Clerical sex abuse, you know. You've got to name the elephants. And because those don't fit with his argument, he just avoids them. And I thought, Well, I'm not gonna write a book like that. I've got to go... You know, if you go back to the first principle, if people respect my preaching because I don't avoid difficult stuff, I've got to start with the difficult stuff and believe the Holy Spirit is speaking to the church through the difficult stuff, rather than say, oh, you know, it didn't really work then, but let's not talk about that.

Sam Wells 25:17

Now, the third thing, and possibly the most important thing, although it's so second nature to me, I've had to be reminded by others that this is what it is there's I wrote a book in 2004, called "Improvisation." And it's about the analogy of theatrical improvisation and Christian ethics, which is my academic field. And just very briefly, when an actor on the stage, you know, when Actor A and Actor B, Actor B does something to Actor A, it doesn't matter--they could shoot a gun, pretend, you know, they can do anything. They're gonna put their hand out for a handshake. Actor A has three options: Actor A can shake the hand, that's called accepting. They can, B, block by refusing to shake hands, or they can, C, over accept by fitting the shaking of hands into a larger story. And as an improvisation game, make it into meeting the King of England or whatever it might be.

Sam Wells 26:17

Well, what I wrote about in that book was how Jesus constantly over accepts. In fact, Jesus himself is an over acceptance of our rejection of God's ways. And most obviously, the resurrection is an over acceptance of the crucifixion. You know, the over acceptance, once you start spotting it, it's everywhere. The temptation narrative, Jesus doesn't reject the bread. And you know, he doesn't reject turning stones to bread, he over accepts by the bread of the Eucharist. You know, he doesn't reject the falling from the temple, he says, the temple is my body. Or, you know, all the time, what appears to be a little "no" is part of a much bigger "yes." And so the strategy of the book is, first of all, to be honest about the fact that what I call the old, old story, I'm sorry, you know, it doesn't fully work anymore. And that's not the story we should be defending. Without Marx and Freud and Nietzsche and Feuerbach and you name, it all the critics of the church--of whom I think Feuerbach is the most important but the least known--they all are a gift to the church, just like a critical friend is if they point out that you've got bad breath, or your label's hanging out at the back of your jumper, your sweater or whatever it might be. Treat them as gifts or not as threats. And they are refining fires to use Malachai's phrase, to enable us to distill what should have been Christianity all along.

Sam Wells 27:47

And so I structured the argument by saying, here's the old, old story, but here's what's wrong with it. Here's a rival story. And of course, most of the critics don't think they're a story. They think they're just a fact. They're a fact. And story is a stupid thing. And that's part of what's wrong with Christianity; it's just a silly story. What I do subtly, I hope, is actually render their critiques as actually a different story, a bit like I did with story one and story two in the original Easter sermon, and then say, no, it's all stories, sunshine. I'm afraid there's no, you know, there's no propositional facts that aren't located in a story.

Sam Wells 28:28

And I realized that more than ever before, during the pandemic, because I realized how people responded, a pandemic was all about what story they thought they were in, you know, did they think this was gonna end in six weeks time? Did they think this was actually the end of America? Or did they think this was a test out of which America would come out bigger and stronger? You know, all of that played into it. Do they think that this was an opportunity for controlling liberals to tell us how we should live? Or did they think this was an opportunity for those who have never understood authority in America to jeopardize the health of the whole nation? You know, people fitted it into an existing story. And so then I created this notion, not terribly original phrase, "a story to live by," to have the sort of sense of humility that it doesn't answer every single question. But then faith never did, and love never does. Love and faith and the most important things in life, and not about getting everything on right angles and getting everything squared off, and everything tidy in 32 clearly typed pages. That is not the way life works. But it's trust. That's what comes out by the end of the book. We trust, and it's a story to live by that we can trust. We can trust God, and because we can trust God, we can trust ourselves and one another. So that's it.

Chris McAlilly 29:51

Take one of the chapters. I mean, any of them would be fine and maybe you kind of work through kind of how you navigate a particular question. I mean, arrogant narcissism, it could be cruel fantasy, which of the ones you want to take, it's up to you. But I would love to kind of walk folks through kind of how you make the move.

Sam Wells 30:16

When do we do the one on the Bible, "Fairy Tale for the Infantile," I think that's, you know, everyone knows what the Bible is or thinks they do. We've got a sense of it. So, you know, we start off with, you know... The Bible, before the 17th century, people thought the Bible and classical literacists, you know, Cicero--literature, I should say--Cicero and so on, you know, Ovid, Virgil, Plato, and Aristotle, they thought it was all just the given sort of deposit of the wisdom of the past. And then from the 17th century onwards, you get this critique both from the scientific point of view, you know, that it didn't happen in seven days, that kind of thing, and then from the philosophical point of view, what about the peoples we're now discovering in other parts of the world that never knew this story. And so people start saying, well, this is just a story.

Sam Wells 31:23

And then, there are also moral problems, that's a third point of view from which people critique it, you know, God seems to be... You know, hang on, we're given all these 10 commandments, and then a couple of books later, Israel, in Joshua, Israel seems to be breaking all these commandments about not killing people and stuff. And God seems to be telling them to do it. You know, so what's going on? Do we think that, you know, what's going on there? So people start asking all kinds of questions. And that's, you know, that's the old, old story and what's wrong with it?

Sam Wells 32:01

Okay, so what's the rival story? You know, the rival story is, in simple terms, that, you know, there isn't a story, that there is basically atomized individualism. We've all got to make the best best of it. You know, story one, as I basically narrated in the original Easter sermon, and it's incredibly bleak. You know, it really is. You got your 70 years, and then you're dead. And there's no real memory of you. Yes, you can build buildings. You can have lots of children. You can write songs that people will sing for 100 years after you. But what then? You know, there's nothing. So that's the rival story. But the critiques of the rival story are actually we do live in stories. We do, as I said, about the pandemic, you know, so there's a sort of sociological point.

Sam Wells 32:58

But actually, more philosophically, the distinction between story and fact is a false one. All facts are located within stories. That's just how human beings function. So maybe we can go back to the Bible, recognizing that it's a story, but so is everything else. So what's distinct? What is this story telling us? And then I've got a few sections to the story to live by that says, try and take an obscure passage. So I take an obscure passage from Genesis about Jacob and Laban, which even those who have been to church most of their lives might only vaguely remember. And it's got humor in it, and so on. But you know, I chose it deliberately, because you could easily dismiss it, say, oh, that's just an old story from 4000 years ago, what's it got to say to us? And what I tried to do through that story is make it basically the point that we trust the Bible, because we learn to trust the Bible, because we discover that the Bible tells us the truth about ourselves. We trust it to tell us the truth about God.

Sam Wells 34:14

So then, you know, suddenly you you're starting to get some purchase here. You're saying, oh, well, no, the Bible is not just, you know, under-10-year-old's fancy stories. There's profound human truth here. And then you start to get a greater sense of how, for example, the crucial stories in our Bible--crossing of the Red Sea most obviously--is telling us exactly what liberation means, exactly how covenant and liberation are the two sides of what God wants for us. And then it's getting people away from a kind of childish view of the Bible to say, hey, this is amazing, that there's so much wisdom here. This is so exciting. This is fascinating to read. I want to see what you're gonna tell me next. Do you see what I mean? And so by the end of that chapter, you've gone from saying, "Oh, it's just a bunch of old stories that were written on papyrus 4000 years ago. It's got nothing to do with us," to, "This is doing a better job of addressing my biggest questions in life than any book I've read in the last 20 years. Maybe I should read it again." So that's the rhetorical approach.

Eddie Rester 35:26

This is one of those chapters that I think sometimes "this is one of the places Christians need to wrestle," because our default position sometimes is simply _Well, the Bible says, blank." I heard a preacher one time tell a roomful of preachers that for folks who've given up on scripture, telling them "Well, the Bible says this" is just like telling you, "the Quran says this." You would immediately discount. People immediately discount it because we've clung to the parts of the old, old story that don't speak to the world or speak to the concerns about Scripture.

Eddie Rester 36:08

I love what you said. You said a piece of it, a second ago, "we trust the Bible because it knows exactly who we are. We're the people who get into lifelong rivalries with our siblings, whose success or otherwise and having children causes envy, anxiety, self doubt, pride, who are perpetually manipulated by our in laws." I mean, when you're willing to read deeply into scripture, it does tell the story that we're all living already. We just... If we're willing to tell it at that level, I guess.

Sam Wells 36:37

So I think that tends to be the way I preach, tends to be not to say, "will you turn in your pew bibles to page 433? And read with me Isaiah 43?" Yeah, you know, I don't tend to do it like that. I tend to say, I wonder what's the most precious letter you've ever received? You know, I wonder if you only had nine sentences to say to your grandchild, who you realized you were going to die before you met them, I wonder what you'd write on those nine sentences? Well, I actually had an experience. My mother died when I was a teenager and left me a gift for my 21st birthday. When I was 20 years old, I went on holiday with my father. The house was burgled and that 21st birthday present was stolen. I don't know what it was, and I never will. But I want you to imagine how I'm thinking about what my mother would have written to me. Well, let me read with you, Isaiah 43. Let me read with you Hosea 11.

Sam Wells 38:03

These are the words, you know, in Isaiah 43, for example, this isn't in the book, but Isaiah 43, "You are precious, honored and loved." Well, that's what God wrote when God had only nine sentences to write to Israel. I think that's probably what my mother was writing to me. Maybe I don't actually need to see what she wrote because I've seen what God wrote to every one of us. She wanted to tell me I was precious, honored and loved. I know. I don't have to see her in her own handwriting. I've seen it in God's handwriting. I think that's enough for me.

Sam Wells 38:46

You know, so that that tends to be the way I preach. You've already created the appetite for that sense of God's got only nine sentences to write you. You know, what is the heart of it all? You are precious, honored, and loved. And then of course, you can say, well, isn't it interesting, it's written as a chiasmus. It's written where the first verse and the seventh verse are equivalent, and the second and the sixth, then the third and the fifth, and then the fourth one is the crucial one. And what does that one say? It says, You are precious, honored, and loved. And that's what it's all. And actually, that whole of creation is a big chiasmus, where the stars and and the sea are saying the same thing. And in right in the middle is Jesus, which is God saying, "You are precious, honored, and loved."

Sam Wells 39:33

Did you see what I mean? You're not saying, "The Bible says this, and therefore vote Republican." You're saying, "This is the heart of it all. This is what it all comes down to." God wants to be in relationship with you. Jesus is the the fullest revelation of God and the fullest disclosure of what it means to be a human being. I think the closer we get to him, the closer we get to the truth. Let's see what it feels like. So it's that kind, it's that way of talking rather than assuming, "Here's a book in my hand. My closeness to it represents my power, and I'm now going to impose that upon you by telling you what it says, and you have no right of reply." You know, we can't. We can't just do it like that.

Chris McAlilly 40:24

And I think it's the right of reply, there is a right of reply that you assume in those that you're talking to, and there is a desire for dialogue and an attempt to honor the questions and complaints and protests that people are asking, and to think of those protests or complaints as being clarifying for the old story. And I think it's how do you show someone that they're precious, honored, and loved? You take their question seriously, you know, and you don't try to say, "you're asking the wrong question." But you try to... I think that's one of the things that I see in your book is that you're trying to honor the questions that people were bringing to the Bible, or bringing to the church. And to show that this questions, in fact, do help us get to the deep truth that is trustworthy.

Sam Wells 41:22

And so I mean, part of it is a philosophy that says God doesn't need my defense. I think God's got this, actually. This isn't in doubt. This isn't in jeopardy. But I want to help people see how wondrous, you know, what wondrous love is this. And I have to recognize that a lot of my colleagues, and no doubt aspects of my ministry, have actually hidden that wondrousness, rather than revealed it. And as you said, my attempt to say "I hear you" is in that what's wrong with the old, old story and what the rival story is putting together.

Sam Wells 42:08

Now, you might be that that actually doesn't hang together a whole lot better than the first stuff. It's just a bit more in fashion now. And actually, say a bit more. Oh, you haven't got any more to say. Okay. Well, can I have a go now? So, you know, the second half of the chapter is all the story to live by. In a sense, the first two bits are foils in order to create trust and understanding, that I get what the problems are, I get there's a problem with the old, old story. I get that you've got a point. But hang on, that's not the end of the conversation. Can you just give me one more chance? And obviously, I've got to take that chance.

Sam Wells 42:08
But, you know, my push back is the section where it says the flaws in the rival story. And it's saying, basically, is that all you've got? You're the one that's been saying Christianity is a bunch of rubbish, and you're the one who in our culture, I'm not sure about Mississippi, but certainly in London, is the high status one from on high who's proclaiming devolution, and, you know, goodness knows what else, astronomy and so on, as being, you know, astrophysics as the answer to everything. And is that all you can say, really? Okay, well, I think it's my turn now. Do you see what I mean? There is a kind... Once you give the rivals, once you've initially said, "Look, okay, I get this, the stuff we've got wrong here, and I'm not going to stand up and defend it. Some of it’s historically located, and some of it is morally flawed. Okay, what have you got? Let's have a few pages where we see what you've got."

Eddie Rester 43:55

One of the things that I wonder is, as you wrestled with all of this, all of these challenges to Christianity, all the rival stories, what did it do to your story? What did it do to your faith or your preaching or your joy in life?

Sam Wells 44:15

Well, that's a wonderful question, Eddie. I'm really pleased you asked that question. No one's asked me that question before, and it really comes out of a pastoral heart. Thank you. I think it did me a huge amount of good because, let's take an illustration, an analogy I mean. Let's say, you've just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Actually, what you need more than anything else is to sit down with someone who can say, okay, in 18 months, that's probably going to be it isn't it? So let's talk about where you'd like to die, who you'd like to be with, what you feel you haven't done or haven't said, and to whom. Let's just go through all of those things. So let's go through how much pain you might be in. Let's go through whether you'd like a longer life with more pain or a shorter life with less. And let's talk about every single one of those things until we've talked out. Let's talk about what oblivion for eternity might be, or what being with God forever might be or being separated from your young children might be. You really need someone you can talk about every single.

Sam Wells 45:43

And when you have talked about every single one of those things, then I'm not saying death is nothing at all. But the sting is a very different thing. Because it's the inability to talk about it and the ability to face it that is the most horrifying thing of all. It's unspeakable. And yet, we actually have to all face it, I'm afraid. And in a sense, that's what baptism is. Baptism is facing-- whether you believe in infant baptism, or adult baptism, I don't think it matters--you know, is facing our mortality early in life. So we get that all out the way, and then we can actually really live with real freedom. So I found this a kind of baptismal experience of saying, Okay, let's go through the 10 big ones. Let's get to the bottom of the pond, as I like to put it in a pastoral sense, you know, let's go right to the bottom of that point, what's the worst thing that can happen? And what would happen then? And what would be worse than that?

Sam Wells 46:40

Okay, let's start with a really big one. It's all a load of doolally, that the whole thing is completely made up. And it's all wish fulfillment and God's a big beard in the sky. Let's start with that. That's the biggest one of all. And then let's take suffering and the Bible because they're the two most obvious next big ones. Okay. We're on chapter three. We're on chapter four now. We've done the three big ones, you know, how does that feel? And I just found it, as I was facing the dismantling of my community--you know, we cut off a major source of income overnight. We had to put people on furlough, and then the furlough money ran out, and we had to make lots of people redundant. And then it was very painful and controversial. And some people didn't go quietly and other people said, "No, you've got to save this person's job."

Sam Wells 47:26

You know, so that was going on. And I would have, and I mean, this is not just a figurative thing. There were a couple of occasions where I had to get on a Zoom, like we're on now. And I had to say to somebody I cared about, "There is not a job for you. I know we've had six weeks of you having a chance to try to explain to me how you think there is, but we have come to the conclusion, there is no job for you. And this is the final conversation, and we will be issuing redundancy papers on Monday morning." And you know, you feel absolutely awful. When someone's done nothing wrong, they've served the organization perfectly well and you would want to go on working with them for years, and you can't. So what do you do with the last two hours of the day? You know, you can answer another 10 emails, or you could write another 750 words of the book. Well, you know, which one I did. Because it became my kind of comfort blanket where I've faced the worst and found the glory.

Sam Wells 48:21

And actually, what you do, I found, when you face the most damaging things about Christianity is, you know, the song of the Psalms is still being sung. Because that's what the Psalms do. They face the very, very worst. "Where now is your God?" And they're still singing after 150 goes at it. And I found I was singing it, because that sense of, we've really got to the bottom of the pond now, we've really faced the worst, and yet, actually, I still think it's true. I think it is, you know, that. I want to not just, "it makes sense," but "it makes my heart sing." I still want to be living that story.

Sam Wells 49:13

So I preached my Easter sermon this year on the old Shania Twain's "Still Together," "Still Going Strong" ["Still the One"]. You know, that sort of sense of God and humanity, the other side of the cross, still together, still going strong. You know, they said you'd never make it. But we're still together. You know, that. And that was how I felt when I was writing it. It was a joyful experience, but a sober, a sober but joyful, you know, a humbler faith, bigger God experience.

Chris McAlilly 49:53

Well, Sam, thank you so much for taking the time for conversation with us. We were incredibly grateful. The book is "Humbler Faith, Bigger God: Finding a Story to Live By." And we're just grateful for your time today.

Sam Wells 50:08

You've been wonderful conversation partners and great questions and I wish God's every blessing on those listening to the podcast and anyone who chooses to read the book. I hope they'll find it as profound an experience reading it as I did writing it.

Eddie Rester 50:23
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Chris McAlilly 50:32

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guests, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]