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May 15, 2022 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:05:31
Rev Jamie Franklin
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I know I always say I'm excited about special guests, but I really am.
I'm so looking forward to this conversation with the Reverend Jamie Franklin.
Jamie, we're going to talk about Dostoevsky and particularly the Brothers Karamazov.
But I think before we, you know, before we get into the into the literary stuff, we should just catch up.
How are you doing, mate?
Yeah, I'm all right, James.
I'm okay.
I mean, I've got, you know, just life is exciting and full.
I've got my fourth child on the way, coming soon.
So, yeah, the bun is very much almost ready in the oven.
So that's quite exciting.
We just bought a seven-seater car, which feels like a big thing, big responsibility, having this massive car.
Yes, I'm very happy for you.
Low children are an heritage of the Lord.
Well, they say, James, you should practice what you preach, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I do think now more than ever that having children is a kind of an act of defiance against the system.
Absolutely.
Trying to depopulate us.
I mean, are you with me on that one?
I'm completely with you, James.
I believe that the whole...
All of these things, all of these sort of trends in culture, I believe ultimately they tend towards the destruction of humanity.
It's actually a cult of death, all of it.
If you think about it, all of these agendas result in the eradication, the elimination, the displacement of the human race.
And I believe that there's a very, very strong, and this is something Your listeners won't be new to them, but there's a very, very strong anti-human agenda that's at the heart of the climate change movement.
It's all about not having children.
It's about displacing humanity from our rightful place as the stewards of creation.
It's about blaming us for It's also, funnily enough, paradoxically contains this idea that if we give power to a small elite group of people that we can control, you know, we can control the weather and sort of Make up in some way for the damage that we've done, but obviously part of that is depopulating, is depopulating the earth as well.
So it's true, it's true of climate change, but it's true of all sorts of other agendas as well.
You know, the pro-abortion lobby, I believe that ultimately the transgender movement is about, is about Reducing the amount of human beings there are as well, because it's all about sterilization and the challenging the normativity of the family and so on and so forth.
So all of this stuff, I believe, ultimately, it's all part of one cult of death.
And that's why I oppose it so much.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think a lot of people who oppose Woke culture and think that this is the battleground, don't seem to be aware that this is just one theatre, one small theatre, in a much, much bigger war.
I mean, I can see why they're concerned because, as you say, Culturally, over a period of decades, we have been guided, if that's the right word, towards a position designed to undermine the family, to stop us breeding.
So first of all, you had the various feminist movements, which were designed to get people, get women out of the home, stop them being mothers, get them into the workplace.
And inevitably that has an effect on the size of people's families.
Then you've got the next stage, which is the promotion of homosexuality.
And I'm sure, you know, you and I, you know, we're not homophobic, although in a way, the very creation of that term homophobic is in itself Part of the agenda.
It's designed to prevent criticism of these social currents.
And then you get to the... It means you can't discuss.
It means you can't discuss it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So many things are like that.
And then you, once society's got used to the idea that, yeah, everyone's, everyone's, everyone's a bit gay, then you go to the next level craziness, which is transgenderism.
And you've got girls who might previously have been called tomboys, now Apparently they're born in the wrong body and you've got gender reassignment.
It's satanic, isn't it?
Yeah, well, I believe that the agenda, as it applies to children, is simply evil.
So childhood, to anyone who knows any children or can remember their own childhood, childhood's all about freedom.
It's about being free to To experiment, to try things out, to say things which are stupid and crazy.
And it's all about testing your way of being in the world.
And it's inappropriate to take everything that children say at face value and to say, well, we've got to take that really, really seriously.
So one of my children, I've got two boys and a girl at the moment, one of my boys puts on Nail varnish.
You see my wife using her nail varnish and he puts it on every once in a while and he likes wearing it.
Now, that's an experiment.
I don't expect he'll be doing that when he's 25 years old.
I don't expect he'll be doing that when he's my age, right?
So, but it would be entirely inappropriate if I said to him, oh, you know what?
Do you sort of sometimes feel like maybe, you know, you're not really a boy and somehow internally you actually feel like you're a girl?
Because I see you're putting this nail varnish on and you take it really seriously and then you start putting ideas in his mind.
And then, you know, when it comes to his being, you know, 12 years old, you say, well, you know what, since you sort of feel like you're a girl, maybe we should give you these pills which stop you going through puberty.
And so you literally retard the biological growth of a boy or girl by doing that.
It's not only about their reproductive system and their genitals not developing, it stops you entering into biological adulthood.
So as a boy, your bones, for example, won't grow in the same way if you take those puberty blockers.
I'm sure it's the same for girls as well.
Then they would if you weren't taking them.
And then you say to them, well, you know what?
When you're a certain age, you'll be eligible for gender reassignment surgery.
And what that really means is we'll chop off your meat and two veg and replace it with a A vagina.
I mean, it's absolutely insane.
It's absolutely insane.
And I completely agree, James.
I think it's an attack on the God-givenness of our sex, which ultimately, as a Christian, I believe God intended for humanity.
God made us male and female.
It's right there at the beginning of Scripture.
It's something which is reaffirmed by Jesus Christ himself.
He quotes specifically that verse when he's talking about marriage.
So yeah, I believe it's a work of darkness.
I believe it's an assault upon humanity, and I believe it's an assault upon childhood as well, which is the really pernicious aspect of it.
The war ground, the battleground, like in so many areas, is our children, and they must be protected.
You've just reminded me, Jamie, why I really must do more podcasts with men of God, with people who just totally get that this is a spiritual struggle.
Because, you know, I mean, I try every day To, to ask God, and let him fill me so that I can be a better person.
And so I can sort of do his, do his, you know, do good works on earth for for him.
And I suppose, I suppose also that there is the imitation of Christ thing, isn't there going on that, in fact, you, you, you know, I can't remember whether I mentioned this to you before, but it was your, You were one of the kind of staging posts on my route to rediscovering my spirituality.
You spotted it in one of the first podcasts we did and you mentioned it.
I thought yeah actually Jamie's got a point um this is going on and and it's and it's and it's great um yeah I well thank you one of the reasons we're talking about I want to talk about Dostoevsky is that probably like you I have recognized that much that is in our culture is designed to weaken us and undermine us and guide us from the truth, steer us away from the truth.
And that applies to, of course, everything in the mainstream media, which I don't touch.
Everything on, anything on the BBC, be it news or what passes for popular entertainment, anything that comes out of Hollywood.
TV is really, even though I'm a TV critic, I kind of...
I resent having to watch this stuff because I'm aware now, once you understand the hidden agendas, it becomes so transparent and you see it everywhere.
Oh, yeah.
I think the only remedy against this constant indoctrination is to seek out those areas which are untainted.
One of them would be pre-modernist art.
I mean, I think art was sort of captured by the CIA in about the 1940s or 50s.
But, you know, you can go back to the greats, you know, Titian or whatever, and Vermeer, and find truth and beauty there.
Literature.
Any literature written sort of pre-1950, but certainly the greats like Dostoevsky.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tell me, when, when did you, I mean, for me, Dostoevsky is the man.
He is absolutely the pinnacle of, of novel writing.
When did, when did you first come upon him?
Yeah, I started reading Dostoevsky when I was a teenager.
I'm not I'm not sure whether I understood.
But then I think with Dostoevsky, the whole thing is a journey of understanding because you're not going to you're not going to get this the first read through of anything.
So I read Crime and Punishment when I was a teenager.
I also read Notes from Underground when I was very young, well, much younger.
You know, I may that may have been at university.
I don't know.
Have you read Notes from Underground, James?
No, I haven't.
Tell me about it.
It's such a great, it's such a great novel.
It's one of his earlier, it's one of his earlier books, but it's quite, it's quite short.
So I've got a Penguin Classics edition which comes with another early story called The Double, but Notes from Underground I think is really the first sort of inkling of the novelist that he would eventually become.
It's really the paradigm of that kind of, You know, sort of solitary, bitter, paranoid, angry young man type novel.
I almost think it's a bit like The Catcher in the Rye, but sort of set in St.
Petersburg in the 1840s or something like that.
It's very, very funny.
I remember being in hysterics reading it.
And it's just a kind of deep, penetrative psychological insight into the sort of atomized nature of humanity in this sort of Proto-modern St.
Petersburg society, but it's incredibly funny, it's sort of deeply existential, and it's only short.
So if anyone's looking to get into Dostoevsky, absolutely read Notes from Underground.
I always get it mixed up with House of the Dead in my mind, but Notes from Underground first, and then definitely Crime and Punishment, because I think that's a longer book, but it's I remember hearing you talk about that, you've read that one as well haven't you?
I love Crime and Punishment and I'm glad you mentioned about Dostoevsky's humour because I've got a theory that I want to run by you which is that I think that our corrupt culture It there are forces which steer us away from things which are actually good and true and and beneficial to us.
So, for example, Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky has this reputation in the broader culture as he's so heavy.
He's so difficult.
He's so depressing.
He's none of those things.
And yet I, you know, I mean, for goodness sake, I read English literature at a halfway decent university.
If people like me... Yes, great university, great university, James.
If people like me are not going near Dostoevsky because of this forbidding reputation, then heaven help all the people who haven't read much.
But yeah, yeah.
Okay, so take... Yeah, no, James, James, let me, let me come in here.
Let me come here.
This is a really important point about the canon, right?
Because the canon of English, I read English literature too, albeit at the University of Kent.
Although, interestingly, James, I always tell this to people, I did English literature and philosophy at the University of Kent.
And you think, well, you know, big deal.
What's the big deal about that?
Well, that was the same degree that was taken by Kisu Ishiguro, the novelist who wrote The Remains of the Day.
What is one of the best, I think, writing today?
Yeah, he's a great novelist.
So I count it something that gives me pride to have done the same degree as him.
Anyway, the point is, is I read English literature as well.
That was my first degree.
And one of the things I think now is that the canon is under attack, but this is such a significant thing.
Because the whole idea of a canon of English literature, of anything, is about receiving something with gratitude from the past.
It's about something being passed on from one generation to another.
People discover truth and goodness and beauty and they say, this is something we're going to preserve and this is something we're going to pass on to the next generation.
And this is the essence of all society, all civilization, education, religion, culture.
Morality, all of it, is transmitted in this way.
And this very notion is under attack today with this sort of, what would you call it, the cult of the present moment.
Only the present moment matters.
All of that stuff in the past, we can just chuck it It's all a load of rubbish, it's all a load of nonsense.
This is a profoundly arrogant way of thinking about anything, that we are, you know, this moment now, and I myself, I'm the arbiter of all truth, of all culture, of everything that's decent and good, and I can just reject everything from the past.
And this is poison, James, this is poison for our society.
So that's why it's so important to engage with whatever field you're in, to engage with the canon, the thing which is The things which are given to you from the past, and to really wrestle with them, and if you don't find value in them, to try and understand why you're not finding value in them, and to really look for it.
You know, you've got to dig with this stuff, you've got to make an effort, otherwise you won't get anything, and you'll just be trapped in the present moment.
Yeah, sorry.
No, I love that.
You've just made me think, actually, that how unlucky Most people are studying English literature today, or any kind of literature, because those courses are designed to deconstruct and undermine and negate all the truth and beauty there.
So, for example, it's poison, it's poison.
It's not about, I mean, I was, I was, I occasionally mentioned, How blessed I was to have one of the best tutors currently living, a guy called Peter Conrad, who did not take this approach, he did not take a kind of Marxist approach, he did not take a feminist approach, he did not take, he did not sort of take that sort of, the new criticism or the deconstructing, all these, all these fancy ways.
Yeah, Derrida, Foucault, all that stuff, yeah, yeah.
Everything designed to Take you away from the experience that most normal people would have between you and the author.
Yes, yes.
Crime and punishment.
Let's briefly mention that.
Because, you know, even if one hasn't read a book, one has in one's head, I think, an idea of what the book is about.
And I had this idea in my head, I knew that it was about a guy called Raskolnikov, who is an axe murderer.
He bludgeons two innocent women to death with an axe, and you can't imagine a more horrible crime than that.
And you think, well, how am I going to enjoy this?
How am I going to?
For starters, why would I want to identify with somebody who's an axe murderer?
If he's the hero of the book, where's it going to go?
Why?
Why should I care?
But you read the book and you find that Raskolnikov is an extraordinarily sympathetic character, despite the fact that he is a murderer.
And I mean, spoiler alert, he does find Redemption, which, of course, is one of the themes we get in Dostoyevsk, isn't it?
Tell me about that.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
So so I think the sort of central thing with Raskolnikov is you see his his thinking about what he's going to do.
You know, he comes up with this plan that I'm going to kill this old woman.
She's got all this money.
You know, she's not doing anything with it.
And she's just she's just this sort of twisted, bitter old witch.
And, you know, the world would be better off if she was dead anyway.
And I'll kill her and I'll take her money and I'll do something great with it.
And the most important aspect of that is because he keeps on saying to himself, because I am a Napoleon, meaning, you know, I'm a great man.
And the rules of morality, they may apply to everyone else out there, because, you know, we need to keep things sort of ordered in society.
But really, there are great men like me, like Napoleon, and we can break the rules, because there is a sort of greatness to us.
And therefore I'm going to go and do this.
I'm going to take the money and I'm going to do something great.
It's always very vague, you know, like, like these, like these, you know, utopian dreams always are.
And then, you know, as soon as, and then this is the thing, this is what's so powerful about this.
It's all about the tyranny of ideas, right?
These intellectuals have these ideas and they think, you know, Forget what we've learned through experience.
Forget what's been passed on from generation to generation.
I have an idea.
And then I'm going to impose this idea on reality.
But as soon as reality hits, the whole thing is an absolute disaster.
Because, of course, it's not just the old lady who's there.
Is it her daughter or her granddaughter?
It's been a few years since I've read it.
But somebody else is there.
There's another woman there who's a younger woman.
Yeah, exactly.
She witnesses the crime, so he kills her as well.
And then, of course, the sort of, you know, the...
The reality of murdering another human being kills his soul, gradually wears him down and kills him throughout the novel.
And there's various other things going on.
There's a kind of a sort of a prostitute who's actually a sort of redemptive character.
You know, it's a deeply powerful portrayal of God's grace.
In somebody else's life.
But I think that's the central thing.
And you know, I think Dostoevsky there, what he's doing is he's training his guns on utilitarian thinking about morality, that morality is just about consequences, really.
And this is absolutely endemic in our culture in the way that political decisions are made today.
It's like there's nothing which is really moral.
The only thing that matters is what an action leads to.
So theoretically, if you've got some miserly old woman who's got a load of money and she's not doing anything good in the world, we could just kill her and take her money and redistribute it.
Because there's no such thing as... there's no real good or evil.
So if we can bring about something better through that woman's death, Then why not just kill her?
Now, of course, it's always the Christian worldview that's pressing in.
You know, it's this Christ haunted worldview that's always pressing in with Dostoevsky that he does so subtly and so powerfully because you just can't do that.
You know, you just cannot do that.
If you kill an old woman, you have violated the sacredness and the dignity of a human life.
And it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter that you thought something good would come of it.
It's evil and there is good and evil.
And that reality is what powerfully comes through in the story.
You know who would have totally endorsed Raskolnikov's position?
George Bernard Shaw.
Have you seen that terrifying footage of George Bernard Shaw saying that there ought to be panels to assess people for whether they are functioning members of society?
And if they're not, then they should be Kill.
I mean, that was that was he.
Yeah, it's a strain of thinking.
It's been with us for a long time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And James, if I may, if I may bring it, you know, bang up today, I think that the I think that this utilitarian eugenics way of thinking is is that is is the is the principal way that people who are in favor of abortion argue for abortion, because because their arguments are always and they're always framed in terms of what are what are the consequences Of not aborting children.
The consequences will be, well, they're born into a, you know, a difficult situation that would be too hard for the mother, the mother won't be able to look after them, etc, etc, etc.
But that, that, that's a utilitarian argument and it doesn't reckon with the sacredness of each human life.
Yes.
Which is, which is the Christian position.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was going to make another point about, about the, what we're talking about before the, That's right.
Yes, yes.
I think I think that Raskolnikov's position is one that his sort of the deal he makes whereby he persuades himself It's okay for me to kill these women, even though it's an abominable crime, because good will come out of it.
I will do good things.
And I think, okay, most of us don't have the option of killing our women to get their money.
And yet, I think so many of us do on a smaller scale, the thing that Raskolnikov does.
For example, say you, this is one of my favorite things.
Say you work in the city.
And you've got this massively well-paid job, and you are required by your job to create this financial product which is just dogshit.
And you are selling this dogshit product, which has no value at all, onto another company.
This is what happened with collateralized debt obligations and all those junk mortgages which caused the 2008 crash.
And yet, loads and loads of people in the city went on with this, and they probably said to themselves, okay, So technically, I'm probably doing a bad thing because I'm not creating value.
I'm just I'm selling poison.
But with my salary, I can make my wife happy.
I can give my children a good education.
I can achieve all these.
I can be the Napoleon of my world and make it okay.
But it doesn't make it okay, does it?
No, it doesn't.
No.
And it corrupts your soul.
You know, that's the thing.
And that's, I think, what is shown so powerfully in Raskolnikov's life.
It corrupts your soul.
It impairs your ability to discern good from evil, truth from lies, light from darkness.
So I think you're absolutely right.
I think I mentioned on this podcast before, when I was here, One of the things that's impacted me so powerfully, actually, over the last few years is a particular chapter in Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, when he's talking about not lying.
And also, this is a great theme of Rod Dreher's book, if you're aware of it.
Live Not by Lies.
It's called Live Not by Lies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's that when you lie, when you When you're forced to speak and live a lie, it gradually erodes your capacity to know what the truth is.
And eventually you cannot tell the difference between truth and lies.
And you, as it were, become a lie.
So you can't even notice when you're lying anymore.
And that's what the...
That's hell, James.
That's literally what hell is.
I believe that hell is actually something that we choose to do to ourselves.
You can't get out of it.
There's a bit in Scripture where Christ talks about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit can't be forgiven.
Now, why is that?
It's not because God can't forgive sins or won't forgive sins because God will forgive our sins.
So I think blasphemy against the Holy Spirit must be something that we do to ourselves.
You know, so we impair our souls so deeply that we lose the capacity even to want to live in the light and in the truth.
And I think that that's what that kind of thing is about.
Yeah.
You've reminded me of a scene in C.S.
Lewis's That Hideous Strength.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is, I mean, I think it's a very flawed novel.
I'm not sure how good a novelist C.S.
Lewis was, but thematically it's brilliant.
The way he He shows you about how we're all corrupted, or we can be corrupted, by our desire to become accepted into the inner circle.
And of course the inner circle is Luciferian or Satanic, and the hero or the protagonist.
There's a scene, do you remember it, where as part of his kind of initiation into the world of evil, in order to get on, he has to sit in this room
where everything is asymmetrical and it's got this this horrible horrible art it's like it's like there are hotels like this in London that somebody sent me a link to it the other day a hotel where you can see that it's it's designed it's sort of anti-beauty it's kind of satanic yeah and and yeah Symmetry and, and, and the golden mean and stuff.
These are, these are divine.
Motion, yeah.
Anyway, let's move on to The Brothers Caramel and Softwood, which I think is probably my favourite novel I've, I've read.
Is it yours?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's the greatest work of literature I've ever read.
I mean, when we talk about favourite books, I mean, it's hard to say, isn't it?
Because sometimes a great book for you personally is something which really grabs you and you can't put it down and you read it in a couple of days.
And it's so exciting.
I just read Dracula.
I've never read Dracula before, read it in about just over a week.
I don't normally read stuff that quickly, but I couldn't put it down.
Brothers Karamazov is a book you've got to wrestle with, you know, that it's almost, you know, I don't want to be sort of blasphemous, but it's almost like the Bible.
It's like, you can't read it quickly.
You've got to, you've got to wrestle with it.
You've got to really live with it.
And you've got to think deeply about it.
And in terms of its depth, I do, I do believe it's, I do believe it's the greatest work of literature I've ever read.
And I think, I think it's the most powerful, the most powerful statement of the truth of the Christian worldview that there is, in terms of a deep reckoning with themes of suffering, evil, morality, atheism, the consequences of atheism for society and for human life, I can't think of anything that I've ever read that's remotely comparable to it.
Yes, although of course we've now made it sound slightly forbidding because it sounds like it's a sort of ordeal which is anything but.
So some of the things that surprised me about it, you mentioned earlier about how funny Dostoevsky is and there are some He has this rich cast of characters, and they're almost...
Dickensian, but they're not as irritating as Dickens' characters.
They're not caricatures.
I'm thinking particularly of the character of Mrs Hochlikoff, who's this wonderful, this rich woman, sort of do-gooder.
She's absolutely hilarious.
And you love scenes in which she appears.
I can't remember whether any other... You've read it more recently than me.
Did you know that Dostoevsky read Dickens?
I knew that he was one of his influences.
I think he's learned from Dickens.
He's never saccharine or cloying, which I think, but I'm not a big Dickens fan.
I know some people.
No, I'm not.
I'm not particularly.
I'm not hugely.
I mean, I respect him and there are books like Great Expectations, which I really deeply love.
But I think you're right.
I think the morality, the morality is really on the surface with Dickens.
It really feels like you're being preached to sometimes.
Absolutely.
Whereas with Dossier it's much deeper, I think.
Yes, it is, it is.
And I think the Russians generally... I read an introductory essay to... oh, what's the first...
Sort of Russian novel, Oblomov, is it?
Oh right, yeah, no, I don't, I've not read it.
But what it is that characterises Russian literature, and one of them is its psychological insight.
I think you get much more than from any English writer I can think of.
So sell it to people who haven't come across it.
What's it about?
If that's even possible.
What's it about?
Well, I was thinking about how to approach this, James, because it's a thousand page novel and it's about everything, you know, it's about the human condition.
But if I was to bring out three central themes, I would say that it's about freedom.
It's about human freedom, the consequences of human freedom.
It's about the existence of suffering and evil and how that is compatible with the existence of God.
And it's also about Morality and the existence of morality and that is linked to the question of suffering and evil.
So if I may, a brief excursus on that.
The character of Ivan is really a central character in the whole novel because he's an intellectual atheist and on Ivan's lips are the most famous words, passages of the whole of the whole of this book, which are right in the middle of the book, there's two chapters, there's one called Mutiny, and there's one called the Grand Inquisitor.
And in Mutiny, Ivan Relates three stories, I believe it is, which are about, they're all about the suffering of children.
They're all about horrendous and evil and completely unredemptive things which have happened to children.
They're actually, interestingly, drawn from newspapers that Dostoevsky Found in his own day.
So these are real things that happen.
And Ivan says to Alyosha, who's his brother, he's a holy man, he's a good man.
He represents traditional Russia.
He says to him, Even if there is a God, I want nothing to do with him.
He says, I'm giving my, if there is a, I think he says, if there is a heaven, I'm giving my ticket back or something like that.
That's an absolutely central, that's an absolutely central idea in the whole novel is that if there is, if there is this good God in heaven and he can do it, whatever he wants, but he allows this, then I want absolutely nothing to do with him.
So that's, that's really, really central.
But the character of Ivan then, It's involved later in the novel, and spoiler alert, you know, the book is not really about the plot, so I don't think this ruins it for anyone.
But later in the novel, their father, the Karamazov father, is murdered.
And it turns out that their illegitimate half-brother did it, and the older brother, Dimitri, is being blamed for it.
And Ivan finds out about this.
Right.
And it turns out, when Ivan finds out about this, it turns out that he had a conversation earlier in the novel with this Smirjikov, this half-brother, in which he implied that because God does not exist, Anything is permitted.
And so Smirjakov took that and went and killed the father and stole some money from him.
And then he comes back to Ivan later in the novel and says, look, I've done this and you told me everything was permitted.
So what what can you possibly say to me about it?
And so Ivan is then caught in this dilemma where he he he feels the guilt of this This idea which he has given to Smirdyukov.
I mean, Smirdyukov is a deeply cynical character.
He's using it, you know, to justify his actions.
But nevertheless, Ivan realizes that what Smirdyukov is saying is true.
It's right.
It does.
If there is no God, there is no morality.
And so everything is permitted.
And then he Towards the end of the novel, Ivan decides to tell the truth in the courtroom that actually it wasn't Dimitri, but it was Smirjakov, and that he himself is implicated in it.
And so what it does, James, is it illustrates, powerfully illustrates the unlivability of atheism.
Because for exactly the reason I've just said, if there is no God, everything is permitted.
But life cannot be lived like that.
It's unlivable.
And eventually, Eventually it will trip you up, and it happens to either in a very powerful way.
Yeah, yeah.
And you mentioned Ali Osher, who is one of the three, the three brothers, well actually four brothers, I suppose, if you count Smirkoff.
Yeah, four brothers.
And Ali Osher is, we meet him when he's a trainee monk, And I love those scenes in the monastery.
It reminds me of my trip to Mount Athos.
It sort of brings it to life.
And of course, in the monastery is Father Zosima.
Tell us about Father Zosima.
Well, Father Zosima is actually a sort of Christ-like figure.
It's interesting.
He's actually based, I believe, on a monk that Dostoevsky met when he visited a famous monastery.
I forget the name of it.
But do you know this backstory that Dostoevsky's child, who was actually called Alexei or Aloysia, died while he was writing this novel?
And that's who the character Aloysia is named after.
And Dostoevsky was taken to a monastery.
As I said, it's a famous monastery, I can't remember the name of it, but he met a sort of Christ-like figure there.
And the Zosima character is based on that real-life monk.
I mean, it's hard to describe this character, but he's a vividly kind of holy character.
I think one of the most there are maybe two things.
One of the most powerful moments is earlier on in the book, this mother who's lost a young child, as Dostoevsky did, comes to him and she's absolutely sort of heartbroken over it.
And, you know, she's pleading with she's pleading with him and sort of pouring out her heart about, you know, this young child that she's lost.
You know, she sees his boots and his little boots and she just she burst into tears and she She can't, she can't live anymore.
And he gives this, he gives this profound speech where he talks about how the, you know, these children are so bold before the angels of God and, and how they, you know, they've, because of their boldness, they've joined the ranks of angels.
And it's, it's, it's incredibly powerful.
I don't know whether you remember that passage.
No, I remember it definitely.
I remember so many of the scenes vividly.
Yeah, so for people who don't know me, I host a podcast called Irreverent Faith and Current Affairs, and that's irreverend with a D at the end.
So it's like the word irreverent, but with a D. It's like a play on words, if you see what I mean.
And it's me and a couple of other bickers.
We're Church of England bickers, Tom and Daniel.
And the thing is, James, is people think Well, you know, some people might say we're controversial, but really all we think we're doing is just representing a straightforward, orthodox, Anglican-tinged view of the world.
And, you know, we have a bit of a laugh and we look at current affairs and we try and sort of give some analysis and guidance and direction from a Christian perspective.
But you can find us, you can find us on, we're on Rumble and Odyssey.
We left YouTube because we don't, we don't like its censorship, but we're on Rumble and Odyssey and we're on all major podcast platforms.
So Irreverent Faith and Current Affairs.
So please do follow us if you'd like, if you'd like to listen.
I can, I can heartily recommend Irreverent Pod.
I think it's, I think it's fantastic.
I think probably we're going to be too late.
Actually, the very first viewers of this might just, It's been time to catch your event.
Tell us about your event.
Well, the event's tomorrow.
It's sold out, actually, James.
I mean, it's not... Let's not plug it.
Well done!
I really want you to do well.
Thanks, yeah.
I mean, I appreciate that.
Because I'm aware how badly you're paid in the Church of England.
And I want you to be supported, and particularly given that you're doing the Lord's work.
I mean, you know, unlike some Archbishops of Canterbury, I could name.
Yeah, well, yeah.
So James, I mean, I really, really appreciate your support.
Yeah.
So the event's tomorrow in Spitalfields in London.
So we're going to that that London place they've got now.
And yeah, it's going to be it's going to be super fun.
We're all going to be there.
We've got a few great guests.
Calvin Robinson, Laura Dodsworth.
Oh, your brother is coming.
My brother Dick's going to be there.
Yeah.
About being a Christian, but having problems with the church, which is, you know, very, very understandable.
Can people watch it when they're seeing this?
No, we're not going to record it.
We just decided, you know, just to keep it a bit more sort of intimate.
And I mean, to be honest, James, I don't...
You know, I don't, I speak the truth when I'm, when I'm here, you know, speaking to you on our podcast, I speak the truth, but there is a limit to how frank I can be.
So I'm just, you know, I think it will just create an atmosphere in which we can be a little bit more open.
And so, yeah, it's just kind of an experiment really.
And if it goes well, you know, we might be able to do more and do bigger, do bigger events and that kind of thing.
But the thing I've always liked, I'm sure you find this as well, when you're doing podcasts, it's like you're, you're, You're not with anyone.
You know, I'm just sitting on my own in an office right now.
And I know lots of people listen, but you don't really get the sense of that reality.
And actually being out there and meeting people, you know, when I went to the protest last year, or we did another event recently in Colchester, Meeting people is just great, you know.
It's so great to actually meet people and, you know, to hear about their stories and it just gives me such a sense of life and encouragement.
I'm sure you find the same.
I feel exactly the same thing.
It's something extraordinary.
It feels to me like being a Christian in the early church.
Right.
There's something about the, I mean, without getting sort of too holy about it, it's a bit like you feel the spirit moving, moving through you and love.
It shines through in a way that I think, I think things like the vaccine, the so-called vaccine, have actually Quite literally cut people off from their spiritual side.
They've cut them off from God.
I mean, this is what, was it, Steiner was warning about in the early 20th century.
And there is a definitely different feeling among those who are awake, the kind of people we meet in these events, and it's really exciting.
Yeah, well, many, many people have been brainwashed.
I mean, quite, quite frankly, it's yeah, I mean, we've we've we've spoke about this.
We've spoken about this before, haven't we?
People have been inculcated.
They've been given a view of the world, which for them is unquestionable.
This actually I mean, if I could make a segue, James, this does relate to one of the themes in The Brothers Karamazov, which is that of freedom.
So, the Grand Inquisitor.
The Grand Inquisitor is a story about, is it 14th century Spain?
Is it 14th or 15th century Spain?
Yeah, I think it is.
It's during the Inquisition anyway.
Yeah, it's during the Inquisition.
So, you've got the Grand Inquisitor.
Christ comes to Toledo, I think it is.
He raises a girl from the dead and he is arrested by the Inquisition and the central The central charge that is laid to Christ, laid at his feet, is you want to make people free.
You want to give people freedom to make their own decisions, and you don't want to coerce them through, I think it's sort of miracle Authority, or there's another one, it's based on the Three Temptations of Christ by Satan.
But anyway, so the Grand Inquisitor is saying, you want to give people freedom, but what we want to do is take away people's freedom.
And if we take away people's freedom, we will make them happy, because they won't have the responsibility, they won't have the anxiety, and they won't get it wrong as well.
So we will tell them what to do.
And you, you are jeopardising all of that.
And that, that is incredibly powerful, because it illustrates the, the diabolical trade-off, which is offered to us by a totalitarian government.
It's, well, actually, you know what, being free, making your own decisions is actually really difficult, isn't it?
And you might get it wrong.
And, you know, why don't you just let us Control you, then you'll be happy, you'll know what to think, you'll know what to do, and you won't, you won't hurt anyone.
You'll learn nothing and be happy.
Yeah, exactly.
All we have to do is just give us, just give us complete control over you.
And that, that is, we've seen the manifestation, but the important thing about that is it's the manifestation of all totalitarian thinking.
You know what, James, 40 years after Dostoevsky wrote this book, only 40 years afterwards, Christianity was illegal in Russia.
Because of the Marxist revolution.
So Dostoevsky saw, rightly, that when you remove the sovereignty of God from a nation, from a civilization, you inevitably transfer that concept of sovereignty to a totalitarian state.
And that was what was happening in the early 20th century in Russia.
It's what's happening now in our country as well.
We're far more totalitarian in our society than people are even aware.
When you think about the encroachment of the state into every single area of life, every area.
James, if you want to move your bathroom sink, From one side of the room to another, you're probably going to have to go to the state and ask them for some kind of permit, some kind of regulation.
Certainly, if you want to, you know, if you want to put an extension on your house, when you die, the government's going to steal some of your money.
I mean, it just it just goes on and on and on.
The state is everywhere.
And it's for this reason.
It's because we've given them our We've given them our freedom.
We've given them our capacity to make decisions.
Yes.
And the other thing, which I think is one of the many things that is extremely relevant to our times, is that I don't want to spoil the climatic court scene.
Yeah, I think I already have.
Yeah, well, I mean, just to repeat, anyone who thinks they can't read the book now because they know what happens, they know what happens to the brother's dad, doesn't matter.
It's not a plot driven book.
You've just got to let it wash over you.
It's not that kind of book.
No, it's not that kind of book.
But yeah, Dostoevsky is very good.
He presents you, the reader, with all the information.
You know exactly what happened.
But then he shows how easily people are, can be misled, how society gets misled into these ideas.
And people decide that they know what the truth is based on hearsay or a persuasive barrister or accidents of quirks of fate.
He's very, very good on the kind of, the sort of groupthink, the mob mentality.
And he shows that to be the enemy of truth and goodness and justice.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I think it's right.
Come on, go on.
No, I just wanted to go back to, we left sort of Father Zosima hanging.
One of my favourite scenes, and I found it really funny.
I think it was one of the funniest moments in the book.
Which is where Father Zosima dies and there is a great expectation among the monks that, like all saints, his body will not be subject to putrefaction.
It will remain, it will sort of presumably exude the scent of flowers or something.
And gradually it dawns on the followers of Father, the particular acolytes of Father Zosima that, hmm, maybe they should open the window because that body, and then the words slowly spreads that Father Zosima's body is putrefying, which must mean, and this is actually another example of what I was talking about, which must mean that he wasn't a saint after all.
So they suddenly discount all the really beautiful things he said.
And this is a testament to the brilliant writing skills of Dostoevsky.
The way he's enabled to create lines for this saint, which are absolutely plausible.
He has Zosima say exactly the right things to a grieving mother.
The things that would end her grief in a way.
Do you like that scene?
I do very much.
And there's also a very, very funny scene, which for me is the comic highlight, where I think it's a monk who's a sort of a hermit called Father Ferrapont.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rival monk who hates the sort of cult of Zosima comes in and he denounces him as and he says, you know, I can see all devils everywhere in all the corners of this room and everything like that.
And it's a very, very funny.
But yeah, so what's that about?
The body decaying?
Now, you know, in any other novel, with any other novelist, that wouldn't happen.
The saints, you know, his body would be preserved.
But there's a profound disjunction, isn't there?
A subversion of your expectations.
I remember reading Rowan Williams wrote a book about Dostoevsky, and he said he thought it was about, you know, God's freedom to sort of manifest himself in any way he chose.
But I wonder whether it's about, you remember that thing I said earlier about miracles sometimes acting as a kind of coercion, you know, there is a miracle you sort of have to believe.
And in a way, it sort of makes faith more difficult.
If his body really does just start to decay, you start to think to yourself, well, was he a really holy man?
Was the Holy Spirit really at work in him?
Why in that case is the body decaying?
And in such a, you know, the implication is in such a horrible, disgusting way.
And, you know, there's a really interesting detail later in the book, again, spoiler alert, but when the boy, Ilusheka, I think that's his name, dies, that's his diminutive form anyway.
When he dies, there's a line which says that his body smelt rather sweet or something like that.
It's only sort of one line, but there's almost this implication that this child's body, the holiness and the sacredness that's associated with the death of this child, may preserve his body.
So that sense of a body being Preserved because of the holiness of the one who died is sort of transferred to this boy at the end.
And that's a very, it's a very strong, it's a very strong thing in orthodoxy that this really does happen.
I haven't really looked into it, but I have seen photos of saints who are, you know, they are putatively dead for decades and they, you know, you can still see the flesh on their hands and all that kind of stuff.
Really, one of the powerful lines for me, James, I don't want to go on and on and on about this, but one of the powerful lines for me from Father Zosima, which has stayed with me, I read this book for the first time a few years ago, this is my second reading this time, but there's this line which Father Zosima says, where he says, in life you will be faced with many, many times when you come across a thought and that thought is so objectionable to you, you find it so
Disgraceful and disreputable that every fibre of your being will want to take it by force.
But in that moment you have a choice to take it by force or to take it by humble love and always take it by humble love.
And to me, that's one of the most profound and beautiful things I think I've ever read, because it speaks so profoundly to our day-to-day experience.
I'm constantly beset by stuff that I find absolutely objectionable.
And if I just allowed myself to just let loose and give vent to all my anger and my frustration, every time I see something like that, I would become consumed by it.
But actually, The power which Christ unleashed into the world was the power of humble love, which Zosima describes as a, I think he describes it as a fearful thing or something like that.
And it's like through that character's life, through his humility, through his gentleness, he conquers the world.
I think that's incredibly beautiful.
Yes, no, absolutely.
I wish we could all emulate, well, Fathers Ross and Rossi, but that's that's the Christlike ideal.
But but Alyosha as well.
There's the scene where this gang of horrible boys throw, they're picking on another boy and throwing stones at him.
And then Alyosha gets in the way and one of the stones hits Alyosha.
Another another point where Alyosha gets his hand stabbed, doesn't he, by what by one of the boys he's trying to try to help.
Yeah.
Most of us would just go like, well, I don't know whether we'd beat the shit out of the boy who stabbed us in the hand, but we wouldn't take it as well as Alyosha does.
And yet you look at Alyosha's response and you think, yeah, he's so gentle that he makes other people good.
And he, he, he creates good in the world through his, through his behavior, which again, it sounds pious, but I, I, I guarantee dear viewer and listener, You will love Alyosha.
He is one of the most sympathetic characters in all literature, I would say.
Some people think he's their favourite.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I agree.
I agree.
And it is a real challenge, isn't it?
I mean, talking about the culture war, for example.
You know, I find so many things in our world, James, so disgusting and disgraceful.
And, you know, it's a challenge, isn't it, to think, well, how do I engage with those things, not through Not in the same spirit, but in a spirit of humble love, whilst still speaking the truth and still engaging in a robust way, but without allowing myself to be mastered by anger and hatred for the people who are espousing these abominable things.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's really difficult.
I mean, it's certainly an area where I fall short.
I mean, I'm quite, I'm suffering fools.
And actually, what I'm really, really, absolutely ruthless on is sloppiness of thinking.
I've got this, I've got this telegram channel.
And the thing I really, really burn Burn people for, is kind of lazily repeated, received ideas, where they haven't really engaged with the argument, where they're not in full possession of the facts, and yet they're venturing their crappy opinion.
And I'm sorry, here it is, my hackles are rising, but you know, I kind of think that I think that it's important to think critically and to think rigorously.
It was one of the, you know, one of the things that I was lucky to have with my, with the way I was taught at university, and most people are not taught this, that you have to be able to think from first principles and construct your argument.
It's not just about, oh yeah, I reckon because I read somewhere that like, bugger off, you know.
Well, people still trust the media.
I mean, why is the media so... So it's two things, isn't it?
People trust the media so much.
And social media gives you a sort of... It gives you a publishing platform, doesn't it?
25 years ago, whatever, you couldn't have done that.
The only people you could share your opinions with were people who would be willing to be in the same room as you or be on the end of a phone and so on.
But now everyone's got a publishing platform.
And I do this myself, it's so easy just to not think very deeply about what you're saying or writing, whatever, and it can be out there immediately.
And so that is why you get, I don't think we're anywhere near understanding how this works properly, the power of this, the way that ideas are proliferated, how they're propagated, because you hear something, you just repeat it, you can just retweet it in less than a second.
And then it's out there.
The idea is out there.
It's proliferating.
And I think we have to train our minds to protect ourselves from this, from this information to have, you know, you need a filter.
You need to filter this information.
You can't just accept it.
I mean, you know, so it says, it says this in the Telegraph.
It says it in the mail.
It says on the BBC.
So what?
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, that's where I'm at nowadays.
I just, I don't trust, take the thing with, you know, the thing that's going on with Ukraine.
It's like, my view, James, is I just don't have a clue what is going on.
In, in Eastern Europe right now.
I don't know because I'm on the end, I'm on the receiving end of a propaganda apparatus.
Okay, so I have my, I have suspicion that I'm being lied to.
In fact, I'm certain I'm being lied to.
But I, but you know, there's no way I'm going to sort of uncritically accept what I'm being told and start propagating it in this kind of, you know, in this sort of morally, Morally self-righteous way that, you know, I understand that situation because I've heard about it on the BBC and I can sort of stand on my soapbox and say, you know, who is right and who is wrong in that situation.
How on earth can anyone in our society really know this anymore?
And this also relates to this thing about proliferation of information.
We think because we've got more information, we're better informed.
It's the opposite.
It's like we can't tell what's true and what's not because there's so much now.
It's all in your face.
It's everywhere.
So it's impossible.
Well, listen, we could talk about Karamazov for hours and maybe we'll come back to it.
I think we've just dipped our toes into the water.
But actually, maybe we should end just talking about that thing that you sort of slightly invoked there, which is discernment.
Which is a quality that Christians are supposed to have, but I have to say, looking at a lot of churchgoers, and this is my problem with churchianity as opposed to Christianity, they seem to be woefully lacking in it.
But tell me a bit about discernment.
Where does it come from?
I mean, that's a really good question.
So, speaking as a Christian, I don't know, I mean, I'd have to think about what I'd say to people who are not Christians.
Well, isn't that the reason to become a Christian?
Yeah, but the reason to become a Christian is because you know the truth and the truth will set you free.
Absolutely.
Absolutely it is.
So, discernment.
I'm just trying to think of, well, you know, I've got, so, God reveals himself to us as the truth, as Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is the truth.
So in the Christian belief system, the truth isn't a separate set of propositions or anything like that.
I mean, there are propositional truths in Christianity, but fundamentally Jesus Christ is the truth.
So that in itself protects you, or at least it should protect you, from ideology.
Because ideology is always, it's always about taking one aspect of reality and making it ultimate, right?
And they always end in "-ism", as well.
So, you know, communism.
It's about making the communal aspect of civilization ultimate.
Feminism is about deifying women, ultimately.
Fascism is about the deification of the nation state, and so on and so forth.
Socialism is about the collective in a different way to communism.
So Christianity, I think fundamentally what it does, I mean obviously it's salvation to know Jesus, but one of the things that it does is it protects you from that ideology.
So you don't You don't uncritically embrace any of it.
You stand back from it.
You say, well, actually, Jesus Christ is the truth.
So I'm not going to transfer my allegiance to some abstract set of ideas that has been dreamt up by some intellectual in the 19th century or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I think that's absolutely right.
I don't know if that makes sense.
No, that's really good.
I like that.
I like that very much.
Actually, there was one other thing that was raised about Miracles and I'm sort of torn on this one.
Okay, go on.
So the other day I listened to this fascinating podcast or interview about the Turin Shroud Right, yeah.
When I'm at the podcast, I know what the Turin Shroud is, but yeah.
I thought you would.
And you remember, in the 1980s, scientists discredited the Turin Shroud.
They discovered it was a medieval fake.
And you think, well, there's lots of organisations that would have a vested interest in discrediting the Turin Shroud.
Anyway, This podcast was fantastic.
You come away absolutely convinced, a hundred percent, that the Turing shroud was real.
We know what Christ's blood group was.
We know exactly the way that his image was imprinted on it.
We know how the shroud was laid.
We know exactly what wounds he had from the blood and stuff, you know, when he stumbled.
And we also know, using quantum physics, How, how the resurrection is, is scientifically possible.
I listened to that podcast and I thought, part of me thought, this is great.
This is fantastic.
It just confirms that I've backed the right team.
But I was already strong enough in my faith when I listened to it that I didn't really need that proof.
It was just like, yeah, well, it's nice to have it confirmed.
But at the same time, I have to say, we all go through moments where, you know, it's like, Things are getting so shit.
The world is going, is getting so bad.
It's really kind of, you know, have I, have I, you know, is this, is God, is Christ the answer?
Is he going to make it all okay?
And those are the moments where you do kind of yearn for, like two of my podcast followers have had, to see angels.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
So, so yeah, I mean, I hear what you're saying.
So, I think the most interesting story that relates to what you said in Scripture is the story of Doubting Thomas.
Okay, so you've got the disciples, they're all, they're all afraid because Christ has been crucified, and then the risen Christ appears to them.
And then they go and tell the Thomas about this, Thomas is one of the other disciples, and he says, unless I see the marks in his hand, unless I touch the wound on his side, I will not believe.
And that's often taken as a kind of, you know, he was being cynical, you know, like he's some kind of Dawkins-style atheist who would, you know, just, he's, he will not believe.
But actually, I think that for whatever reason, there are people whose disposition is that, you know what, a miracle or some evidence or, you know, dealing with something and dealing with the intellectual arguments for the truth of Christianity and so on.
That's actually really helpful for them.
And of course, in the story, Christ does appear to Thomas and he gives him exactly what he wants, right?
So he says to him, you know, take your hand, put it in, take your finger, put it in my hand, put it in my side.
Don't disbelieve, but believe.
And of course, the New Testament is filled with signs and wonders.
So it's not like, it's not like God has a problem giving us Signs.
Giving us what we need to believe.
Because God wants us to believe.
It's not a trick.
He wants you to believe.
He wants to give you what you need to believe.
But there is a twist.
Because Christ says, blessed are you, he says to Thomas, blessed are you who have seen and believed, but also blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.
Now, again, people juxtapose those two things and they say, well, that means that it's better to believe blindly.
But I don't think that's what it means.
I think that it means that there is a sense in which there is a sense in which belief is a disposition of the heart and the mind.
And that you can be just as blessed in believing without those miraculous signs as you can be with them.
So I think it's actually quite a psychologically nuanced thing that Christ says.
But I do really believe that that central observation is true.
The world is enchanted, James.
There are miracles, but you have to be willing to receive them.
You have to be willing to see them.
God doesn't write in the stars, Jesus is Lord.
He weaves this stuff into creation, into our everyday experience, such that we might seek him and find him in those things.
I don't know if that makes sense.
It does, and that's a really good way of ending this particular podcast.
Jamie, I think we're just going to have to do more, because actually there's so much stuff I want to talk to you about in this vein.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
And listen, I hope your show goes really well.
Thank you.
Everyone, check out the irreverent...
podcast, irreverent.
It's really, really good.
I highly recommend it.
And again, if you like this, you're going to love my other stuff.
It's really, really good.
Please support me on Patreon, on Subscribestar, on Locals, and on the other one I haven't mentioned, Substack.
That's for my essays.
And yeah, thank you for listening.
Thank you for watching.
And Jamie, thank you very much.
Thanks so much, James.
Really enjoyed it.
Good.
Oh, and read Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov.
You won't regret it.
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