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Feb. 4, 2025 - Stay Free - Russel Brand

25:43

BREAK BREAD EP. 13 - WESLEY HUFF

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	It appears to me at least that we are at the beginning of a Christian revival.
	Wherever you go, people are talking about Christianity, sometimes in new terms, whilst people that know more about demographics and the motion of theological movements across time would say, well, what about the hundreds of millions of Chinese Christians today?
	Surely you consider that to be more relevant, but wow, I'm not able to dislocate my...
	Individualized consciousness was such ease as to even calculate that measurement.
	But I do know that one thing that has points to this revivalism is a show like The Chosen.
	People talk about Christianity in sort of cultural and, I suppose, conversational terms.
	But Wesley Hough is a person who, in a sense, is...
	Common to the list of beneficiaries of the Rogan effect, like Joe Rogan anoints or appoints someone in the way that Oprah Winfrey used to, with Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle or Dr Oz or Marianne Williamson, all could have flowed forth from the abundant abdomen of Oprah Winfrey.
	But now it's Joe Rogan that sort of begats the Jordan Peterson, Theo Vaughn, and now I would say Wesley Hough.
	Canadian apologist, theologian, and scholar.
	Wow, I didn't know that, that you were born in Pakistan.
	I'm so excited to have you on the show, Wesley Half.
	Thank you for joining me on Break Bread with Russell Brand.
	Well, it's just so great to be here, knowing who you are and growing up with your movies and everything else, and just seeing the clear work of the Spirit in your life recently.
	I'm just very, very honored and privileged to be talking to you.
	Thank you, Wesley.
	I would like exactly the kind of acclaim that you appear to be accruing.
	Let me demonstrate my understanding of it in this way.
	Just a couple of days ago, I was on a beach with a couple of Christian men.
	You know, it's all legit.
	It's all above board.
	And the two of them spontaneously...
	So I said, oh, you know who you've got to talk to?
	Wesley Hough.
	Oh, man, that guy.
	He explains it.
	He puts it in terms that the laymen understand.
	Oh, Wesley Hough.
	I'd already been talking a lot about Wesley Hough because I've seen Wesley Hough on Joe Rogan.
	Other people are talking about Wesley Hough.
	Everywhere I go, Wesley Hough, Wesley Hough.
	To the point where actually meeting Wesley Hough seems almost implausible and impossible.
	Wesley...
	How are you dealing with your new appointment as an accessible apologist and theologian, and are you able to manage significant new input using the inherent infrastructure, or does it feel disruptive?
	Yeah, I think there's a learning curve that you kind of feel at the beginning.
	Fortunately, I have a very good support system in terms of my wife.
	And people around me, my co-workers, my supervisor at the organization I work for, Apologetics Canada, and my pastor.
	I'm on leadership at my church, and so I'm one of three elders that is in a pastoral role, and they've been very helpful in terms of the navigating of that in a very practical way.
	I mean, I have three kids, another on the way, so I'm still changing diapers, and it feels like...
	A lot of things have changed, but I go home and it feels like nothing has changed.
	So I think it's just an unusual situation to be in, like you said, that Rogan effect that causes the wave.
	But I think it's just a testament to the fact that I could not have orchestrated any of this.
	It's purely a work of God to put down the building blocks in order to actually figure out what...
	What is transpired?
	It's very, yeah, I reckon, I'd love to understand more about what you just said there.
	I've undergone radical change recently, and I know that some people are cynical about it, and people in a sense are right to be, gosh, if you were generally cynical in the same way that I'm anti-authoritarian, I'd say it's...
	I mean, it certainly saved me a lot of unnecessary injections a couple of years back, my general anti-authoritarian and cynical perspective, which subsequently has been verified and validated by important data.
	What's happened to you is it seems like you've obviously put in a lot of groundwork, you've educated yourself and you have some very unique and particular ability to communicate and make esoteric information exoteric and accessible and that's a great, great ability.
	It's difficult to think of a more important ability coming out of academia and going into communication.
	But what's happened to me is like a significant spiritual change rather than a social change.
	I've had this very unusual thing.
	I know you'd have had spiritual changes at loads of points in your life.
	It's not a claim.
	I'm not making a comparative claim other than that this has just happened to me right recent.
	I'm meeting a lot of interesting people out of Christianity and just Christians, whether they're influential Christians or not.
	This person isn't necessarily.
	This guy Daniel I met the other day, he's a Christian war vet.
	I guess he's an amputee.
	That's one of the ways you could describe him.
	This man's so on fire for the Lord that he seems to be living in one of the most mystical aspects of Christianity and one that I reckon from an expansionist perspective, Would not dwell upon.
	In so much as because Christianity, when you talk about institutional Christianity, has an expansionist imperative, there's not, I believe, and I'd love your answer on this, this is where the question's coming, sufficient focus on the extraordinary supernatural mystical claims of Christianity.
	Of course, eternal life and the possibility for salvation and redemption.
	But then those supernatural claims are backed up with...
	By motifs and stories that somehow get lost when people use a 20th century post-psychiatric analytic to examine and even absorb the claims of Christianity.
	People go, oh well, it is better if you're grateful and you accept and you recognise the importance of sacrifice.
	Almost a secularisation of what would be called cultural Christianity.
	So that's why I want to draw your attention right from the beginning of this conversation to that angels...
	Demons, possessions, exorcism, dark powers in positions, dark powers in principalities, in high places, not battling against flesh, all summarised by my mate Daniel, former marine and vet, who says things like this.
	Everything's a burning bush.
	Everything's a burning!
	And I know, because you've been around Christianity a lot more than me, and you know a lot more about it, that you'll recognise that as a kind of a type, and as a strain, and as something.
	So, what do you think about this bold aspect of Christianity, this requirement for boldness, a requirement to bring to the forefront that we're dealing with something supernatural and powerful, and how do you as a teacher and an educator handle that?
	because it seems like a lot of the time people just sort of go, "Well, really, it'll just help you with your marriage breakup, feeling a bit blue down in the dumps.
	Well, instead of taking SSRIs, why don't you try Jesus?" Like, kind of making it innocuous.
	I wonder what you think about all that, Wesley Hough.
	Yeah, I think that's a really interesting observation, Russell.
	I think what you're capitalizing on there is something that highlights the fact that we live in a world that is inherently physical, but to ignore the spiritual component is probably to miss the point of the entire story and narrative.
	And I think that there are particular traditions.
	I mean, my tradition that I fall into, which is a, it's a reformed with a capital R kind of more intellectual stream of Christianity, has gone in terms of the calibration that you're talking about in a direction that is largely unhelpful sometimes, in that it almost falls into this heresy of denying that there is a spiritual aspect.
	That is inherent to the message of historical biblical Christianity.
	I'm a student of the Bible, and if you read the biblical text, particularly the ancient Near Eastern perspective of the Old Testament, there's a fundamental understanding of the crossing over of the spiritual and the physical that is...
	Always there and is sometimes very dangerous in that you have something like the Ark of the Covenant, which is this tangible presence of God, and there's a reverence to it and there's a beauty to it, but there's a danger to it in that God tells them to be very specific in how they move this thing around and treat it.
	And I think the particular...
	The era that we're in now, you know, post-Old Covenant, within the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31-31, where God writes His law on our hearts, is that in John chapter 1, when it says that the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, that term in the original language is made His dwelling, is literally tabernacled.
	It's the place where the Ark of the Covenant dwelt.
	And so...
	God dwelled amongst us and then dwells us with the Holy Spirit.
	And so we live in this powerful world where to just think of it as matter in motion is to swallow the post-intellectualism lie that I think you've recognized by running into your friend there and swallowing this idea that even though we...
	Give credence to, you know, the eternal God-man who stepped out of eternity into the humanity in the second person of the Trinity, that really we then live functional lives as materialists.
	But that's not the reality of Scripture.
	Exactly like you said, Russell, that our battle is primarily against principalities and dominions that are spiritual in nature, and that we need to be realistic in our understanding of the world around us to recognize that we live in a world that is just as spiritual as it is physical, and that there's an ancient heresy in the Gnostics that...
	And so I think it's, you know, keeping this framework in mind of a God who creates and ultimately is going to bring heaven to earth.
	Temporarily in the now but not yet reality that we pray in the Lord's Prayer that your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
	But in our ultimate hope, in the new creation, that is what will really happen.
	That those two realities, the physical and spiritual, will crash together in a way like they did in the incarnation that we celebrate at Christmas time.
	But that will be a fundamental experience reality for all of us.
	It's such an audacious claim, because it's nothing short of the assertion that your subjective experience, as either Russell Brand or Wesley Hough or whoever you are watching this, can become an altar for Christ.
	The crucible of consciousness itself becomes where you know him.
	Some obvious examples, at least they're accessible to me, I don't know whether they're obvious or not.
	Like, Elijah, small still voice, is pertaining to consciousness over a potentially pagan perspective, i.e.
	the earthquake and the volcano, etc.
	And then right at the top, Genesis, with the spirit moving across the water, and these allusions to and references to water and living water.
	Any framework has to be held together with tension, even if you're talking about the literal physical frame of a picture.
	It's held in tension against the other three sides.
	And what I'm trying to reconcile here is the attention that exists between, as you said, the dualism that emerged out of Gnosticism and the current sort of post-Drousseauian reverence for, you know, I'm referring to the sort of noble savage idea.
	How do we bring together, how do we bring together, Wes, this, the...
	Emergent notion, the incoherent notion, I want to say, that we appear to be reaching some sort of peculiar political end time.
	These cataclysms and collisions, these fractures and crashes that demand nothing less of us than a new framework.
	To be more specific, when you see apocalyptic visions like drones in the sky and all these orbs, when you hear the continual outlier, the outlier, Dialectic on demons and reptilians and Illuminati and sects.
	It's odd that these things have scriptural provenance in the Nephilim and demons and serpents and reptiles.
	This aspect of Christianity, this...
	It pulls upon the vivid mystical rather than the kind of psychiatric, emotional mystical.
	It feels to me like where a kind of libido is going to come from, that it is about carnality.
	Added to this, if I may, Wes, the idea that...
	Sexual intimacy and the erotic nature of Christ and the very vivid and deliberate metaphor of bride and bridegroom seems to be important.
	There is so much prohibition, censure and control around sex, I can't believe that it's not significant and not somehow connected to the direction of the energy and power that we're discussing and the idea that we are to become a dwelling place for him, a living tabernacle, a living tent, just a place for him to occupy.
	So do you think then that And what is the significance if you can...
	Add to that, please, Wes, of the carnality and the erotic when it comes to the acceptance of Christ and, you know, given this is break bread, even the eating of the flesh and the drinking of the blood.
	And you, man, you know about all this stuff that didn't, in a more literal translation of the Greek, something like, gorge yourself on his flesh!
	Devour him!
	Devour him!
	Yeah, I think...
	I think what we're dealing with is that God has clearly created things to be good.
	I mean, this is the very first page of the Bible, right?
	That you referred to when you say, you know, the Spirit of God is hovering over the face, the surface of the waters.
	And that what we see within the aberrations of sex or relationship or...
	The money, all these things that I think, you know, they have a purpose and they're created good, right?
	God created humanity to be close to one another in relationship because we worship a God of relationship, right?
	How does God, when he talks about himself in the Old Testament to the patriarchs and to his people...
	Outside of the Exodus, describe himself.
	Well, he doesn't use words like omnipotent or all-knowing, all-powerful.
	These are...
	True and needed theological terminology that describe the God that we see within Scripture, but God describes himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that it's fundamentally relational in the way that God communicates with us, and that that carnality,
	in a good way, right, with something like being fruitful and multiplying in the context of the covenantal relationship of marriage, or within seeing that God himself steps into a physical body, communicating that The physical is not evil.
	That the world around us is broken.
	It's marred by sin.
	But that there's an aspect of the fact that God created it to be good, which was fundamentally countercultural in the ancient world, where a lot of the origin stories, they didn't communicate that the world was good.
	They communicated that it was a mistake.
	It was an end result of the wars of the gods.
	And I think this kind of relational aspect you're touching on, you know, Going right back to Genesis, right?
	The earth was formless and void, and the darkness was hovering over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the surface of the waters.
	And then God speaks creation into existence.
	Let there be light.
	And what happens?
	There's light.
	But when it comes to living things, we see that God speaks to the earth, and it sprouts vegetation and plants, and it brings forth life.
	And God speaks to the waters, and it swarms with living creatures, and it brings forth life.
	But notice, Russell, when God I think it's verse 26 of Genesis chapter 1. When he speaks and talks about the creation of humanity, he speaks to himself.
	Let us make man in our image according to the likeness, our likeness, so that they will have dominion.
	Now, what happens when you remove a fish from the water?
	It dies, right?
	What happens when you remove a tree from the earth?
	It dies.
	And what we see is that this part of creation bit...
	A humanity who bears God's image, who chose cosmic rebellion by eating the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the only thing God told them not to do, it creates a rift between the creator and the creation.
	And just as when you remove a fish from the sea or a tree from the earth, when you remove humanity from God, we die.
	And so the perversion that we see within something like sex or possessions or, you know, even something like...
	The Bible talks a lot about wine and how good that can be, but there's a danger to it when we exist in this beautifully broken world and that gets perverted.
	And so it's not that these things in and of themselves are bad, right?
	God is not against sex.
	He's not against money.
	He's not against a good time.
	He's not against relationships, but all of those things.
	Can be broken and twisted and warped.
	And so I think it's fundamental that when we have these conversations about the spiritual and the physical and that we're trying to root that in the objectivity, right?
	I think you accurately said there is a subjectivity of it in that you wrestle our subject, Wes, I'm a subject, and we have these subjective experiences.
	But my old systematic theology professor would always say that things like tradition and experience have a voice and they have a vote.
	But it's God's word that has the veto.
	And so there's a framework by which we come to these things and make sure that they're grounded in something that's objective and that's actually, as Paul says, is spoken out by God.
	Where it appears, Wes, you've had an incredible impact is being able to provide connective tissue between the extraordinary claims that we've touched upon somewhat.
	Not the legalistic, the pragmatic application of these ideas and principles, for which a lot of people seem to require, understandably, verification.
	And I feel like some of the people that have been affected by you have been so, because when you talk about Christ, they believe that you're talking about something that happened, that is demonstrable and empirical.
	And I'm a Christian, so I've...
	Follow Jesus and I believe that I am redeemed because I accept Jesus Christ as my saviour and I turn away from sin and know eternal life.
	You know what I mean?
	That's what I believe.
	How are you...
	What is it, Wes, that you're doing that's convincing people that this is not, you know, any kind of variation or reduction of Christ but actual Christ?
	What tissue are you providing?
	You're making people believe that this actually happened.
	What are you telling people?
	Well, I think it's the, and I appreciate you saying that, that ultimately is my desire.
	If nothing else, I want to point people to Jesus.
	One of my favorite quotes is by this Moravian reformer, Count Zinzendorf, who said, preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.
	You know, when Jesus, when he says that we're going to stand before the Father on the final day, the encouragement is that we want to hear the words, well done, good and faithful servant.
	And that's always been a conviction and an encouragement to me personally, is that it's not good and influential servant.
	It's not good and profound servant or good and well-spoken servant.
	It's just a calling to be faithful.
	And when we come to the pages of Scripture, they're very approachable.
	That doesn't mean everything is easy to understand.
	But ultimately, I am a very simple person.
	And a lot of the things that I hope I... Am able to communicate to others is because of my simplicity in that I am first and foremost teaching myself.
	And if I can communicate these, sometimes very complicated and esoteric, and you know, especially when we're looking at Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic and Coptic and Akkadian, these other languages, if I can break them down into their simplest terms for myself, then hopefully I can do that for others in terms of the translating and communicating.
	I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding of Christianity that it's about the rules and it's about coming to God and doing things well.
	And you are saved not by your works but for the works.
	So the works are not secondary.
	You will know them by their fruit, Jesus says about his followers.
	And so I think, you know, I was reading this morning in the Gospel of Matthew, In my own devotions, and it really stood out to me, I'll share this with you, because the rich young ruler, he comes to Jesus and he says, Teacher, behold, someone came to him and said, Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?
	And Jesus' response to him is, first, he recognizes that this individual sees that he's good, and he says, you know, who is good but God alone?
	And he's saying, actually, you recognize that I'm good.
	We know that only God is good, so what does that mean about what you're actually recognizing in me?
	So it's kind of this secondary tacit admission that Jesus is claiming to be God.
	But he said, then he said to him, obey the laws, obey the commandments, keep them.
	Then he said, which ones?
	And Jesus said, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
	And the young man said to him, all these things I have kept, what am I still lacking?
	You know, if it was just about the rules?
	Jesus at that point, he could have very well said, you got it.
	You punched your ticket.
	You've done all the right things, right?
	And I think that's what the world often thinks Christianity is.
	I need to fix my car up before I take it to the mechanic.
	Because I don't want to be embarrassed by the mechanic thinking my car is making a funny sound.
	But that's not why you take your car to the mechanic, right?
	Jesus says, If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.
	Come and follow me.
	But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving, for he was the one who owned much property.
	You know, Jesus knew what his heart was.
	It wasn't about the commandments.
	It was about what was really going on in here.
	And that's ultimately what God wants.
	What people often miss is they feel like they need to fix themselves and they need to, you know, be more spiritual or do more good things or have some sort of intellectual ascent.
	And the very simple story of Christianity is that, you know, none of those things are going to work because it's not about that.
	You can never think or feel or know enough to actually live up to God's standard.
	But it's not about what you've done.
	It's about what God did in the person of Jesus Christ.
	That's a brilliant example.
	That's a brilliant example.
	Like the young man actually at the beginning of the discourse already knew Christ laid before him these are the commandments.
	Yeah, I'm doing that.
	Well, you know that thing where you're obsessed with money and you wouldn't want to actually give it up because you prefer that and that's really your God?
	Yeah, that.
	You've got to get rid of that.
	And I was thinking, what's my one?
	Mine is like some sort of version of that.
	I still sort of see myself as central.
	But I will say too that that was the pivotal and radical transition that occurred at the commencement of my still new and young walk with Christ.
	If you're watching us on X or YouTube or anywhere other...

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