October 1, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of Christian Book Blurb, host Matt McChlery speaks with author Andrew Ollerton about his book 'God's Book: An Honest Look at the Bible's Seven Toughest Topics.' They explore challenging questions surrounding the Bible, including the relationship between science and faith, the implications of the New Testament's teachings on sexuality, and the cultural relevance of these discussions today. Andrew shares insights on how his book aims to equip both spiritually curious individuals and seasoned Christians to engage with these tough topics confidently.
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Visit Matt McChlery's website mattmcchlery.com
Visit Andrew Ollerton's website andrewollerton.com
Takeaways
- Andrew Ollerton's book addresses seven tough topics in the Bible.
- The topics are structured to reflect a journey from Genesis to Revelation.
- The book is aimed at both spiritually curious individuals and seasoned Christians.
- Genesis is not meant to be a scientific text but an origin story.
- Science answers the 'how' questions, while Genesis addresses the 'why' and 'who.'
- The fine-tuning of the universe suggests intentional design.
- Christianity introduced the concept of consent in sexual ethics.
- The Bible affirms the goodness of sexual pleasure within the right context.
- The teachings of the New Testament laid the foundation for modern sexual ethics.
- Young people are increasingly turning to the Bible for hope and meaning.
Sound Bites
"Genesis is not a scientific text." "God is for sex, not against it." "The Holy Spirit is reassuring you."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Christian Book Blurb 00:54 Exploring Tough Topics in the Bible 06:09 The Target Audience for 'God's Book' 07:34 Science and the Bible: A Complex Relationship 11:18 The Fine-Tuning Argument and Its Implications 16:58 Christianity and the Sexual Revolution 23:58 The Importance of Sexual Ethics in Christianity 30:07 Getting to Know Andrew Ollerton 38:32 Future Projects and Closing Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Christian Book Blurb brought to you by author and songwriter Matt McChlery Get abehind-the-scenes glimpse into the lives of some of your favourite Christian authors.
Hear about their books and faith.
Also, why not check out my website, mattmccleary.com.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Book Blurb.
(00:21):
It's great to have you with us and I am looking forward to having our discussion today.
I'm Matt McChlery and this is the podcast that helps you to grow in your disulphship onebook at a time as we chat with some amazing Christian authors all about their books, their
lives and their faith.
Now on today's show, I am chatting with the author Andrew Ollerton about his book that'scalled God's Book.
(00:46):
Quite a simple title, but I think that the subtitle gives you a bit more detail.
So it's called God's Book, An Honest Look.
at the Bible's seven toughest topics.
So we're to be doing some tough talking today, and let's just welcome Andrew to the show.
Hi, Andrew.
Hey Matt, good to see you, thanks for having me on.
It's great to have you with us.
(01:08):
Now you've got this book out called God's Book and you deal with several difficult topics,so I'll just read through what those sort of topics or questions that you kind of are
answering are for our listeners.
So you're dealing with things like, can we take Genesis seriously in a scientific age?
(01:29):
What about strange laws and customs, including slavery?
Does God condone warfare and violence?
Why does God allow people to suffer?
Do miracles and exorcisms really happen?
Is the New Testament's teaching on sex outdated?
What about judgment, hell, and the afterlife?
Wow, that, that, that there's a lot of contentious things in there.
(01:52):
Yeah.
Why did you choose these seven?
Because when we look at the Bible,
There's more stuff that you could have written about, so why go with these ones?
Well, the astute listener may have noticed that as you read that list, they are actuallyin an order.
They're not random.
They're trying to track with the actual narrative storyline of the Bible.
So really what you've just read goes from Genesis, the creation stories and sciencequestion, right through to Revelation and the judgment scenes and heaven and hell.
(02:19):
So what I really wanted to do was sort of not just pick the top five most Googledquestions or whatever.
Great though those kinds of books would be, but I wanted to do something that was moreearth
in the biblical narrative.
When you effectively saying to people, if you actually get into the Bible and imagine youwent from Genesis to Revelation, these are the topics that I think are going to be the
(02:40):
most difficult for you on that journey.
These are the roadblocks.
Imagine it like a journey.
These are the things that could stop you in your tracks.
Literally, I think a lot of our listeners probably have been stuck at points likeLeviticus and the strange laws.
And then
Other moments like the violence and the warfare in the Old Testament.
they're almost like the roadblocks, the issue of sex in Paul's letters in the NewTestament.
They're the roadblocks on the journey from Genesis to Revelation.
(03:02):
That's how I kind of structured it.
So they're not random.
They're in an order.
And my guess is they're pretty much the toughest topics for our cultural moment.
I'm not pretending that if you lived in medieval England, or if you today, if you lived inNorth Korea, I'm not pretending that these would be the top issues.
But we have been shaped by a particular culture, a way of seeing the world.
(03:23):
We have certain sensibilities and sensitivities.
I think given who we are, these are the ones that we find the hardest.
Mm-hmm.
That's really good.
And so who is the book written for?
I know you're kind of answering sort of culturally, sort of cultural roadblocks and thingsthat might get in our way.
So that's kind of why you've done it.
(03:44):
But who is it for?
Is it for sort of Christians who've been going for a long time or people who are justcurious or...
Yeah.
What are your thoughts?
Well, I know it's a bit of a cop out to say both, but I really mean that.
think, let me just explain it by a story in the Bible actually.
I've been really reflecting a lot recently on the story of Philip and the Ethiopianeunuch.
If you know this story, you have a black African VIP, the Ethiopian eunuch, traveling inhis own private chariot.
(04:11):
He's elite, he's educated, he can read, he owns his own scroll.
But it turns out that he's reading the scroll of Isaiah.
In other words, he's reading a bit of the Bible and he can't make sense of it.
And Philip comes alongside him.
He's stuck on a difficult passage, a difficult topic.
Philip comes alongside him, the Christian, from a different ethnicity and background andsocial status.
Philip's way beneath this guy in terms of social status.
(04:33):
This manfaras exceeds him in prestige.
And yet Philip sits alongside him and Philip obviously is able to, he's ready, he'sequipped.
So he's ready to help this dear man make sense of the Bible.
So if you think about that story, I've got both those people in mind.
I'm writing this book firstly for the spiritually curious, the Ethiopian eunuchs of ourday.
And I work with Bible Society and we publish this quite revival research which suggeststhat there are a lot more spiritually curious people coming down the road in our cultural
(05:01):
moment.
And many of them are actually turning to the Bible.
They're reaching out for the Bible sales are up.
I've met so many young men especially over the summer who have just reached
for a copy of the Bible on Amazon or in a shop and started reading, often just beginningat Genesis, because where else would you start a book at the beginning, right?
But they're often stuck, they often hit against things that they find difficult or hard tounderstand.
(05:25):
So I've definitely got them in mind for curious seekers, but I've also got the Phillipsand Philippers in mind.
In other words, the Christians who want to be able to sit alongside people who are askinghonest questions and help them.
But sometimes we feel
almost a bit tongue-tied or a bit frightened by the thought in case, you know, what if I'mnot ready?
What if someone asks a question and I don't know how to respond?
(05:47):
So I hope this book does both.
It's something that the Ethiopian eunuchs of our day can read.
It'll help make sense of their journey with the Bible.
And it's something that the Phillips and Philippas, the Christians can read to equipthemselves so they feel like not only do they have a better understanding of the Bible's
toughest topics, but they can share that and share their faith with more confidence aswell.
(06:09):
That's really good.
Now, I know I sort of read all the kind of chapter headings, as it were, as we wentthrough.
There's absolutely no way we can deal with all of them on the podcast today.
And of course, get the book.
That's where you get the really detailed answers to all this stuff.
It's called God's Book, quite simply.
So do go and get Andrew Ollerton's book, God's Book.
(06:30):
It will help you answer and understand and grapple with a lot of these questions.
But what I wanted to do, Andrew, today is to dig down into one or two of these sort ofareas that you deal with, just so that our listeners get a flavor, as it were, of what
you're saying and sort of how you're going about it.
So let's, as you said, where do you start a book?
(06:51):
At the very beginning.
So let's start at the beginning, the opening chapter about creation.
And you...
talking about science and the biblical account, can they sit together with some tensionthere, or do we have to pick a side?
Yeah, very good.
Well, I think, you know, this topic for many people who are not scientifically minded,maybe the one they almost want to skip.
(07:16):
It's like, you know, I'm frightened of periodic tables giving me a panic attack.
I don't want to go there.
I understand that, but you have to recognize that Genesis in the end is not a scientifictext.
It's not trying to give a how to build a universe, you know, DIY manual as if it's exactlytelling us exactly how and when these things happen.
Genesis ultimately is telling the story of our origins, an origin story.
(07:39):
And what I try and do in the book is show that actually part of the conflict betweenperceived conflict between science and the Bible is because we've tried to get the Bible
to be something that it's not trying to be and we've tried to get science to do somethingthat it's not fit to do.
Science cannot explain the meaning of life.
It can explain the mechanism of life but it can't explain the meaning of life.
(07:59):
They're two very different things.
Genesis
is not trying to answer the question, how old is the earth?
It literally doesn't come with any dates.
Now, if you believe that the six days of creation are 24 hour periods, at least you mighttherefore believe that the earth is young, but it still doesn't give you a date.
It's not like it comes.
And Christians over the centuries, most famously Archbishop Asher in the 17th century, anIrish Archbishop, James Asher, he tried to put a date on it, I think 4000 and something.
(08:27):
4004 BC or something and even gave it to the day.
I think it was in April that God created the earth.
I just don't think that's what Genesis is trying to do.
if you, you know, I compare it to, if ever you go into a shop and you ask someone, you'vegot an item of clothing and you say, you know, you say to someone, excuse me, how much is
this?
Have you ever had that experience and the person turns around and says, sorry, mate, Idon't work here.
(08:50):
know, it's nothing wrong with your question, but this is not the right question for thatperson.
We don't want to be asking Genesis questions it can't answer, or it's not trying toanswer.
We don't want be asking science questions it can't answer.
And so the way I summarize this in my book is I think it's a bit simplistic, so take thiscarefully because there's more to it than this, but in short, think Genesis is trying to
(09:11):
answer the deeper, sorry, science is trying to answer the how questions of life, themechanistic questions.
How old is the universe?
How has life developed?
How do plants photosynthesize?
Whereas Genesis is trying to answer the deeper why questions, not so much the how, but thewhy and the who.
You know, who is behind all of this?
And this is my point, you in the end, science can answer many wonders of the world, but itcan't even answer the most basic question of, well, who is behind the whole thing in the
(09:40):
first place?
We know that nothing comes from nothing.
There must be some kind of original cause to the universe that we inhabit.
But scientists cannot, that is the great mystery, scientists cannot answer.
And Genesis is saying effectively, this is the answer to the who question, in thebeginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
I'm not pretending, in my book I give, as you may have noticed, Matt, you've read it, Igive this, I try and go through these, different, what I call touch points and tension
(10:05):
points.
And I found that quite a helpful way to think it through.
I think there are some areas where science and the account of the Bible are actuallycoming closer together.
the more science discovers about the universe, the more it actually correlates with whatGenesis says.
So I've called those touch points.
I'm thinking about things like the Big Bang or the fine tuning of the universe or themystery of human consciousness.
(10:27):
Those are what I call touch points.
But I also acknowledge, I think there are tension points.
It's not easy to reconcile the earth being billions of years old, which is what thescientific consensus claims with the account in Genesis.
I don't think it's impossible.
but I'm not pretending it's easy.
So I'm not sort of naively saying there's no problem here, but I am recognising that inthe end they answer different questions, the who and the why, versus the how, and we need
(10:52):
to allow Genesis to speak on its own terms.
That's really interesting.
And I've been hearing of sort of changes of opinion, sort of amongst the sort of theintellectual and scientific communities, where you sort of had this whole sort of new
atheism push and all of that.
But now actually, we're hearing of quite a few of these sort of thinkers actually cominground to the
(11:18):
conclusion that actually Christianity is correct.
some scientists even sort of saying, well, actually, yes, there has to be a possibilityfor God for all this to actually hang and hold together.
So how does Genesis relate to modern science?
Yeah, yeah.
I quote in the book, I love a beautiful quote.
(11:39):
just says, this is somebody else's words, not mine.
Your first gulp of the natural scientist will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottomof the glass, God is waiting for you.
I've always loved that quote because often you find that people who have a small amount ofknowledge of science are the most confident to say there's no God.
Science can explain away God.
(12:01):
But the deeper you go,
you find that the more experienced professors, the more advanced scientists are the oneswho are actually even more ambivalent.
For them, they are discovering, uncovering the mysteries of the universe, things thatcan't be easily explained.
And I'm not talking here about God of the gaps.
It's not just things that where we put God in because we can't understand it yet, butscience will eventually explain it.
(12:22):
It's actually the things that we do understand, not things we don't understand.
So things we do understand.
that cause many scientists to actually pull back from atheism and say there is norational, natural explanation for things like why is there something rather than nothing?
Why is there consciousness and sentient beings rather than just chaotic unconsciousmatter?
(12:48):
know, life effectively, the mystery of life.
Even if you believe strongly in an evolutionary explanation for how life has evolved, itstill cannot explain the original moment where life came from non-life.
That is a mystery.
And so you're right.
This is where I quote in my book, quote controversial work by Stephen Myers, The Return ofthe God Hypothesis, but for that book really does chart an enormous
(13:17):
range of scientists, very high level professional scientists today, who would actually saythey're not necessarily Christians, they're not necessarily Bible believers, but they
recognize that there is mystery and it's more likely there's something behind what existsthan nothing.
And then I worked with a professor of physics who helped me enormously with that firstpart of my book.
(13:39):
Each of the parts of the book requires an element of specialism, so I drew on otherscholars.
And you know, this professional scientist, he's a Bible-believing Christian, and for him,his exploration of physics and astrophysics only confirms his faith rather than
undermining it.
And one of the sort of various ideas that you explore in the book is this idea of theGoldilocks universe.
(14:02):
Could you just explain to us what that is and how that sort of works?
Yeah, well, if you know the story of Goldilocks, know, the story of the Goldilocks and thethree bears and how they each need everything to be just right for them, you not too hot,
not too cold, all of that.
If you know that child, children's story.
And the idea is that the universe that we inhabit, in particular, the planet that we liveon, just happens to be not too hot, not too cold, just right.
(14:29):
Why is that?
Because again, many more brilliant minds than my own, many brilliant scientists havediscovered
that for things to be as they are, for this universe to be a universe that sustains liferather than destroys it ultimately, especially human life, which is relatively fragile and
vulnerable.
If our planet was tilted just a fraction more towards the sun or away from the sun,everything would either be frozen if it was tilted away.
(14:55):
Just, I mean, tiny fractions.
We're 23.5 degree tilt, it's perfect.
But if you tilt that even a fraction of a degree,
Mm.
Nothing works.
Every every water source on the planet is either frozen or evaporated.
You know, and that's just one of and in fact, it's not even the most startling feature ofwhat's called the fine tuning of the universe, which is effectively referring to over 40
(15:15):
consonants and variables that have to be exactly as they are.
You can't change them.
Even the tiniest fraction, the number of zeros that you add to the the to the probabilityof it being like this.
is so vast that one of my, one of the book, in my book actually quote someone noting thatfor carbon to form from stars, from the explosion of stars, for carbon to form, the
(15:41):
chances of that, everything had to be exactly right for carbon to form when stars explode,right?
Now we are carbon-based life.
I mean, it sounds a bit Hollywood, but we are, you know, we are stardust ultimately.
So we're not here if there's no carbon and for carbon to form was just unbelievablyunlikely.
Now I'm not a scientist, so here I'm channeling other people, but the point is, it's likewe've, the Goldilocks principle is it's like we've just stumbled across some house where
(16:09):
everything has been absolutely perfectly set up for us to live there.
What would you conclude?
You would conclude, well, someone must have done that.
That doesn't just happen.
That's not just an accident in the woods.
That's an intended,
habitat.
And so the principle, the Goldilocks principle, the fine tuning principle is to say, theuniverse seems to be set up for us to live here.
(16:30):
Who set it up?
And again, back to Genesis in the beginning, God.
Mm-hmm, really good.
And another chapter I wanted to dig in today is chapter six, it's answering the question,is the New Testament's teaching on sex outdated?
Now, you speak about how Christianity was actually the first sexual revolution.
(16:54):
I mean, we think of the the 60s, don't we, Woodstock and all that kind of thing, and
sort of label that as, that's the start of the sexual revolution and all that kind ofthing.
But you're saying that actually Christianity itself sparked a sexual revolution in ancientRoman thought and practice.
Can you tell us about this?
Yeah, again, not original to me.
(17:15):
I've been grateful to channel other people's ideas here.
But in particular, I want to mention a book called From Shame to Sin by a brilliantscholar, Karl Harper, who basically has helped along with others and more familiar names
like Tom Holland, the British historian, and his book Dominion.
They're all contributing to this core argument, which is that the ancient world, the RomanEmpire into which the New Testament was born, had absolutely none of
(17:39):
the values that we have when it comes to sex and relationships.
Let's take, for example, the idea of consent.
There was just no such thing.
In fact, Karl Harper makes the point that Christians actually invented the phrase freewill.
And the context in which they invented it was a sexual context, which is that a man canactually, has free will to not have sex with whoever he wants to.
(18:00):
In other words, a man can restrain himself and should restrain himself.
Christians invented that phrase because they were the first to really say,
A Roman master, a Roman free man, should not just use and abuse any lower social statusbeing around him for his sexual gratification.
In the ancient world, that was just assumed to be okay.
(18:20):
If you were a Roman master, you had slaves, you could do whatever the hell you wanted withthem.
They were your property.
were your, you know, there were no restrictions.
There was no such thing as consent.
No such thing as free will.
For the master, it was just merely his repository.
And the New Testament came along, the teachings of Paul, rooted of course in theJudeo-Christian scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures, Genesis saying that male and female are
(18:44):
made in the image and likeness of God without distinction between the concept of slave andmaster.
But then of course, Jesus heightened this because he took on the form of a servant, dyingthe slave's death in his crucifixion and rising again to call his disciples to preach good
news to all people.
And as Paul goes about this task after his conversion and starts saying things like, youknow, there is neither slave nor free, all are one in Christ.
(19:12):
If you apply that kind of idea to the bedroom, it's the makings of a sexual revolution,not just sexual, a social revolution of all sorts, but it has sexual implications.
And so that's my argument really, that we assume that it's obvious that sex must be withconsent.
we absolutely feel appalled at what Harvey Weinstein, for example, represents.
(19:34):
My point in the book is Harvey Weinstein would have gone down very well in Rome.
You know, that was just the way the world worked.
Why has the world changed?
Why have our expectations of sexual ethics changed?
Well, there may be other causes.
I'm not saying it's a singular cause, but the biggest cause, certainly this is theargument of Tom Holland and others, is Christianity.
It's the teachings of the apostle Paul.
(19:55):
And the point I'm making here is far from thinking therefore that that is outdated.
It's actually the very foundation we stand on.
To say that we don't need the New Testament's teachings anymore is to saw off the verybranch that we're sitting on.
In our abhorrence at the idea of rape, of coercion, of abuse, we are distinctivelyChristian in the way we think about those things, whether we are actually Christian
(20:18):
believers or not.
So that's the argument.
I mean, there's so much more detail I could give, but that's the basic idea.
Okay, that's great.
And rather than just saying, well, what are Christians against?
We're against, you know, abuse and rape and sort of coercion and all that kind of thing.
Yes, that's true.
But what are Christians for?
So what should a Christian approach to sex be?
(20:40):
Yeah, great.
I like the way you phrased that because that's so important.
Sadly, we've become known as that, that which is against.
But, know, the Bible is fundamentally on the front foot on the issue of sex.
It's for something.
Go right back to creation.
know, Adam and Eve being united, naked in the garden and united as one flesh.
God declares this to be good.
We believe God gave us our sexual
(21:01):
appetites and bodies were embodied sexual beings.
We could have reproduced another way without any need for sexual organs, but God haschosen that it will be this way, that the two should become one, one flesh.
And more distinctly than that, he's chosen that that should be pleasurable.
know, the nerve endings in the sexual organs is God designed, we believe that.
So you find in the Song of Songs, for example, in another part of the Bible, a celebrationof naked pleasure between the man and the woman.
(21:26):
So, you know, God is for sex, not against it.
Of course, the reason that we have to put boundaries around this is because anythingthat's beautiful and powerful can also be dangerous if it's taken out of the wrong
context.
You know, I love rivers.
They're such powerful, beautiful things, aren't they?
But if a river bursts its banks and floods, it's damaging.
And in the same way, know, sex is a beautiful, powerful thing, but it needs to be withincertain banks, if you like, within certain boundaries.
(21:52):
So on the one hand, the Bible affirms
the goodness of sexual pleasure and of reproduction in a family.
Having children is a gift and a glorious thing.
All of this is good.
The Bible affirms that.
The second thing the Bible affirms, and this is more into the New Testament now, is thatour bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.
So I pick up particularly on this in 1 Corinthians 6, where Paul is talking to aCorinthian church that's struggling to understand sexual ethics and to put them into
(22:17):
practice.
And one of things he says, far from just shouting at them and saying, stop being so rude,stop being so naughty, you know, I don't know what else he might have said, cut it out.
He doesn't do that.
He actually calls, he introduces the higher, the higher value, far from just being againstwhat they're doing.
He says, don't you know, he keeps saying, don't you know things you don't seem to realizeyour body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
(22:39):
In other words, he's calling them up to something more glorious, a better way of living, away of flourishing, which is to honor God with our bodies, to think of our bodies not as
mere natural matter or mere pleasure centers or mere, you know, just this hedonisticplight or even narcissistic view of ourselves.
No, we are God's temple, holy and pleasing to Him.
(23:01):
And so we've got something to live for.
And this is, can you imagine what that sounded like to a slave who had just been abusedand mistreated repeatedly by their earthly master?
And yet the apostle Paul says, but don't you know, you're a temple of God.
He loves you.
He's filled you with his own Holy Spirit.
You've got some dignity here and some worth.
So the Bible is for so many things.
(23:22):
And just finally, the Bible is also for the idea that whether we are married in this lifeor single, whether we have children or not, those things are never the greatest goal or
even the greatest love story.
The ultimate love story in the Bible is not Adam and Eve.
That's how the Bible begins.
But it finishes with Christ and his church, his bride.
(23:42):
And I make the point in the book that actually, if we try and find fulfillment throughrelationships and sex, we will forever be broken and frustrated because the meaning of
life cannot be found through those things.
They are really just the shadow of the reality, which is Christ.
One of the features of your book, just before we go for a short break, is at the end ofeach chapter you address a letter to one of your children, which I think is really good
(24:11):
because it really helps to kind of summarize the key themes and express the heart of whatyou've been saying in the chapter.
So I was wondering, could you just read us the letter addressed to your teenage son at theend of this chapter?
It's called making sense of sex and relationships.
Yeah, I'd love to.
is so I've got three, Charlotte and I have three children.
(24:34):
They're all teenagers now and this one's written to Toby.
So he's a young adult and I'll read the letter briefly to you.
Dear Toby, I may have told you before the embarrassing story of my first girlfriend.
When I was 15, it seemed like all my schoolmates were going on dates and they mocked mebecause I wasn't.
So one day I got on the school bus and sat next to a girl called Vicky who I'd neverspoken to before.
(24:57):
I need a girlfriend, I said, completely out of the blue.
To my surprise, Vicki agreed, but our first date was a disaster.
I didn't even pay for her McDonald's.
The next day we saw each other and Vicki did the decent thing and dumped me.
Doing something just to fit in or because of pressure from others is a miserable way tolive, Toby.
We end up using other people and we hurt ourselves in the process.
(25:20):
However, soon after Vicki dumped me, I began to discover a relationship with Jesus formyself.
I got baptized in water to say, I'm all in.
And then I experienced the Holy Spirit bonding me to God in a deeper way.
I remember one time feeling as though God's love had been poured through me like hotliquid.
After that, I didn't need anyone else.
I realized that my security and freedom would be found in living for Jesus.
(25:43):
I spent the rest of my teenage years single and I never regretted it.
In fact, the next person I dated was your mum.
I suppose my story is unusual and yours will be different, but I urge you to find youridentity in Jesus, not in romantic relationships, sexual orientation or even marriage.
None of these things will ultimately last, nor will they satisfy your deepest longings.
(26:06):
Whether you remain single or get married, some dreams will go unfulfilled and you willhave to say no to temptations and wrong desires.
But if you say yes to Jesus, you are guaranteed a perfect love.
that will never fail you.
Now with that in mind, here's a few things I've learned to help navigate sex andrelationships.
Firstly, follow the Maker's instructions.
God originally designed men and women to enjoy romance, marriage and sex.
(26:30):
God invented pleasure, the devil did not.
Though this world is now broken, God's way remains the best way.
Modern society has torn up the Maker's instructions and tried to replace centuries ofwisdom with whatever feels right.
But I look around and think, so how is this working out for everyone?
It seems the more open-minded we've gotten, the more broken-hearted we've become.
(26:54):
For best results, follow the Maker's instructions.
The Bible says God intended sex to be enjoyed within marriage, so kids grow up with asecure foundation of unbroken love.
Now, of course, I know it's not always this simple.
Many of our friends do an incredible job raising families in tricky circumstances.
But as far as it lies with you, Toby,
Follow God's plan, keep sex for marriage, and never break a promise that you make beforeGod.
(27:19):
Secondly, live like your body is a temple.
I know it's gym posters that say, my body, my temple, but the idea originally came fromthe Bible.
One of Paul's letters says to Christians who were playing around with sex, do you not knowthat your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?
God's spirit makes his home in our bodies.
What an incredible privilege.
So our job
(27:40):
is to make God feel at home in the way we live.
What might this mean?
Well, for one thing, Jesus challenges us not to look lustfully at women.
It's not wrong to be attracted to someone else, but we mustn't take the next step.
Jesus is basically saying, don't objectify women.
Don't reduce them to objects of lust.
That's exactly what pornography does.
(28:00):
It makes money through exploiting people who've been made in God's image.
Porn is addictive and it will destroy you if you let it.
But you are a temple of God's so don't live in the dirt or drink from the toilet.
Instead, ask the Holy Spirit to help you resist wrong desires.
Stay honest and accountable to Christian friends, and remember, even if you fail, Jesuswill clean you up and help you live his way again.
(28:25):
He never gives up on us.
Now, finally, look after those who are different from you.
What I love about Jesus is that he is totally uncompromising about sex.
and yet full of compassion for those who struggle.
On one occasion, religious leaders brought a woman to Jesus who had slept with someoneelse that she wasn't married to.
They humiliated her and asked Jesus how best to punish her.
(28:47):
But Jesus ignored them and doodled in the dust.
When they pressed him again, Jesus said that anyone who'd never sinned could stone her.
That pulled the rug from under their smug feet.
So they left.
Then Jesus said to the woman,
neither do I condemn you.
Go now and leave your life of sin.
Toby tried to be like Jesus.
(29:09):
He challenged people to leave behind any lifestyle that's outside God's plan and yet whenpeople failed or faced rejection from others, he stood by them.
He never let prejudice get in the way of sharing God's love.
Sadly as Christians we haven't always got this right.
We've either changed our beliefs to fit in with society
(29:31):
or we've highlighted the wrong in others to disguise our own.
But Jesus never sat around debating who's right or wrong.
He was too busy getting on with sharing God's love.
Now it's our turn.
We must keep ourselves pure from sin and offer hope to those who struggle.
Now that's tricky, but with God's help, I know you can do it.
(29:53):
Love you, my boy, dad.
What a great letter!
Really great.
Thank you for sharing that with us and we'll be back chatting with Andrew Ollerton allabout his life and his faith just after these so stay tuned.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you can help keep it on the web.
All you've got to do is buy me a coffee.
(30:13):
Head over to buymeacoffee.com slash Matt McChlery to make a donation.
There is a link in this episode's show notes.
So go on, buy me a coffee today and help this podcast to keep supporting Christian booksand authors.
Welcome back to Christian Book Blurb.
On the show today I'm chatting with Andrew Ollerton.
Before the break we're chatting all about his book called God's Book, an honest look atthe Bible's seven toughest topics.
(30:41):
This side of the break, Andrew, we like to get to know the author a little bit better.
You've already told us you have a family and three children.
Whereabouts are you based?
You're living in the UK.
Whereabouts?
Yeah, we live in the UK.
We live actually in North Cardiff, so in Wales, which we love.
Wales is a beautiful country.
I travel a lot with my work, so I experience lots of different places, but there's noplace like home.
(31:03):
Mm, lovely.
And what are some of the things you like to do for fun in your sort of leisure time?
Yeah.
Well, I love wild places.
I love mountain climbing.
I love adventure.
So, I guess if I, if I had my, my sort of perfect way to switch off, it would be somepretty, good hard exercise in the mountains, maybe climbing with a friend or two.
I love getting up to high places and sort of seeing the view.
(31:24):
And I mean, there's not always a view in the British, climates on mountains admittedly,but even when the weather's awful, there's something about taking on the challenge,
especially with close friends and
just getting away from the, you know, getting away from your phone, getting away from allthe notifications and the emails and just, I find that's where I encounter God most
actually.
So yeah, I love the outdoors.
(31:45):
That would be probably my happy place.
And are there mountains nearby Cardiff?
I know there's lots of castles and things in Wales.
Does that imply mountains as well?
Yeah, well, the Bracken Beacons are only about 45 minutes from where we live.
They're a lovely place to explore.
Wales is such a beautiful country.
If you drive up through the middle of Wales, it's incredibly stunning.
then obviously Snowdonia in the north, still a long drive from us.
(32:07):
But if you get up there, the mountains are even more dramatic.
I love going to Scotland as well.
Mountain climbing up there.
I love climbing in the Alps.
So, you know, wherever and whenever I can, obviously most of life is not spent on suchescapades, but I love it when I can.
So when you go mountain climbing, what do you pack in your, in your backpack to, to eat?
Do you have sort of particular favorite things you like to take with you or just, youknow, any old sandwich will do.
(32:33):
Yeah, food wise, any old sandwich will do.
The thing I'm a bit particular about is my tea, actually.
love tea.
And I have this little jet boil stove that is brilliant.
They're genius.
They just pack down really small and they heat the water up really quickly.
And even in some pretty ferocious sort of conditions, you can get the water to boil.
And I just love a cup of tea, but I'm quite particular about my tea.
(32:56):
It has to be Yorkshire tea for me.
I'm a big fan of Yorkshire tea.
You know, it has to be stirred three times to the right and four times to the left.
And then some little chanting over it and that kind of thing.
I'm kidding, but yeah, I'm quite particular about my tea.
So probably packing my, my stove and tea bags and milk is the most important priority inmy rucksack.
That and my Bible.
I always take that as well.
Very good.
(33:17):
And I imagine that stove makes it on its way with you if you go camping at variousChristian festivals and things as well.
Yeah, do you know what people often say, because I went to big church festival andcreation fest and other places where there's camping and we did camp at big church
festival and often people say to me, you must really love it here.
You love camping, don't you?
And I'm like, this is not my idea of camping.
Just to be clear, I love getting away from it all, not camping with 35,000 other peopleand sharing toilets with them.
(33:43):
So I have to say that that isn't my idea of fun.
It's wild camping I love.
Yeah.
I must admit that is a downside to big festivals.
The toilet situation can always be problematic, especially near the end of the week.
we'll move on from that.
So do you do other things other than write books or do you just sort of climb mountainsand write books and kind of that's it?
(34:09):
do you have a lot of other things going on?
I imagine you do.
That would be a fun life, but that's not the life I live.
As often is the case, the things you love doing are squeezed on the side of the things youhave to do, aren't they?
But I do love my life.
I'm very grateful.
I work part-time with Bible Society.
I developed the Bible course and the Romans course.
Some of us may have come across those.
(34:31):
That means I get to do quite a bit of filming work now.
So I end up doing, you know, working on
projects that end up filming content, which I really enjoy.
So script writing and then actually filming it sometimes on interesting locations.
We filmed the Romans course in Rome.
We've done some filming in the Alps and I've loved that kind of thing.
then sometimes, I mean, frankly, often it's just indoors, which is just more functional,but it gets the job done.
(34:55):
So I do that.
I work with other people on their projects.
I've done quite a bit of work as some listeners will know with Bear Grylls recently.
So I was very involved with him.
writing, helping him write his book, The Greatest Story Ever Told, which is now doingbrilliantly.
that's been fun.
So Bible Society and working with Bear and other people externally and then writing thebooks I write.
And I speak quite a bit now as well.
(35:15):
So at conferences and leaders events and sometimes in churches as well.
So if I'm honest, there's not much about my life that I don't enjoy.
I'm very, very fortunate.
Obviously it's busy and pressured, but I'm very grateful.
That's great.
Now you've said you've helped write or worked with Bear Grylls as he wrote his book.
And you also like mountain climbing.
So the question has to be, the next question has to be, have you ever gone mountainclimbing with Bear Grylls?
(35:40):
No, we haven't actually.
We've talked about it, but we haven't done it yet.
We've got a plan hatching, but it's not happened just yet.
But yeah, no, he's become a good friend and I appreciate him very much.
you know, his heart, he obviously lives in a different world to most of us, but his heart,you know, is very kind and honest and just wants to, as a Christian, he wants to share the
story of Jesus.
So I've been really privileged to work with him actually.
(36:03):
Now that's great.
What is the Holy Spirit doing in your life or is the Holy Spirit saying something to youparticularly at the moment that you won't mind sharing with us?
That's a good question.
think sometimes that's the more personal stuff, isn't it?
Just that reassurance of God's voice that you are His son, you're His daughter, and thatyour acceptance is not rooted in what you've achieved or what you need to achieve.
(36:25):
I think that's important.
Even as, you know, I'm just publishing this new book we've been talking about, and they'revulnerable moments actually, you put your heart and soul into this, but then it basically
comes down to everyone else as to how it does and how people receive it.
Probably writing those letters to my kids made it a more vulnerable book than otherwise itneeded to be, but I felt for some reason that I needed to do that and not shy away from
(36:46):
that more honest and personal touch.
So I think sometimes what the Holy Spirit's doing is just reassuring you and giving youthe courage you need to just keep doing the things that you need to do in His grace rather
than as some kind of competition or need to prove something.
That's important.
And then I think beyond my personal journey, think then culturally, I think one of thingsI feel the Holy Spirit is showing me more and more is that just how many young men,
(37:13):
especially, but not exclusively, young people are really reaching for the Bible and forhope.
mean, my focus in life really is on communicating the Bible.
So the quiet revival may pick up on many trends, but the one that has intrigued me themost is definitely the way that young people are reaching for the Bible.
I've especially over the summer, I got to meet several
younger people for whom that's their story and their journey.
(37:34):
And that really moved my heart actually, you sometimes that's, that's the work of thespirit, isn't it?
Is to cause you to feel things, feel God's passion, feel God's love.
And I felt that as I heard, you know, one young man for whom he'd reached the point wherehe was about to take his own life.
And God spoke to him when he was sitting on top of a quarry about to jump off and Godspoke to him and out of the blue, wasn't a Christian at all, never heard.
(37:55):
God's voice before, but God told him this is not how his story ends.
And he went down from, instead of jumping down, he walked down and went to W.H.
Smith and bought a Bible and just started reading it.
And I had the privilege of meeting him this summer and he gave his life to the Lord and isnow on a journey of faith.
And we're messaging a bit and helping him forwards.
But gosh, yeah, I mean, the Holy Spirit really puts that kind of story in your lifebecause he wants you to know that this really matters, that this is life and death, that
(38:21):
this isn't just a bit of an academic interest.
whether people find hope and meaning through the Bible or not could decide everything.
So I really feel that's a passion that's growing in me.
Wonderful.
Thank you for sharing that.
Now, have you got anything coming up soon?
I know you've just sort of released this book, but books take ages to go through all theprocesses of everything.
(38:44):
Are you working on something?
Is it another book or maybe it's a course or a video filming thing or what's coming upthat we can look forward to?
That's a good question, but actually I've been careful to not jump too quickly into thenext thing.
There are a couple of ideas brewing, but I'm not writing anything at the moment of anydeep dive.
I'm developing a podcast series with Bible Society linked to the quiet revival.
(39:06):
So that's piece of work I've undergone at the moment.
We've just released a new edition of the Bible course.
So that's been a huge piece of work, but that's now more about sharing it and getting itout there.
So I actually feel like I'm in a season at the moment where instead of hiding away andwriting new things on my own,
I'm more out and about sharing the things that I've been working on, whether Bear's newbook or this latest book, God's book, an honest look at the Bible's seven toughest topics
(39:29):
that I'm just releasing now, or the new edition of the Bible course.
And it's interesting, someone gave me a picture a little while ago.
They didn't really know me, so it was quite helpful.
They saw a lighthouse, you know how a lighthouse rotates.
And as it rotates, there are moments where it goes dark.
and then it sort of comes around again and throws out light.
(39:49):
And they said, you know, they felt that was important for me that there'll be seasons ofmy life where I just need to go, if you like, down into the dark place and just graft and
hide away and write and develop things so that I can then have moments where I'm throwingout the light again.
You you've got to kind of go into the deep place, the deep work in order to have somethingto then of value to share.
And that's really helped me actually to realize there are different seasons for me.
(40:11):
Sometimes it'll be in a season where I'm hidden away.
in the producing and writing phase.
And other seasons, they'll be where I'm out and about throwing out the lights that God'sgiven me.
And it's definitely one of those seasons for me now, which I'm enjoying.
That's wonderful.
And just before we go, where can people find you online?
Are you on social media?
Have you got a website?
(40:32):
And more importantly, where can people buy your books?
Thanks, Matt.
Yeah, well, you can follow me on social media, at Andy Ollerton on Twitter or X andInstagram.
Find me on Facebook as well.
My website, just to say with this new book, I should have mentioned earlier that alongsidethe book, there's actually resources for small groups and whole churches to go through it.
(40:52):
So there's video content linked to the book and a small group discussion guide.
And some churches from January will be actually preaching through the whole book as aseries with extra resources for sermons and notes.
So I'd love you to check that out.
Maybe it's a sort of an experience that you could go through with your small group, withyour young people.
A lot of our church are just launching this with their youth group so that they can reallywrestle with these tough topics together.
(41:15):
So if you go to my website, andrewolerton.com, andrewolerton.com, not only can you findout more about the book, but all of the small group guide video content free of charge
will be there for your small group and your church to use.
To buy the book,
Big shout out to St.
Andrew's Bookshop who are doing a great bulk discount offer because a lot of churches arebuying the book or small groups.
(41:37):
So go to St.
Andrew's website if you want the bulk discount.
But for individual purchases, I mean, it's on Amazon.
It's everywhere that you'd expect to find a book.
And it seems to be doing well and is discounted.
So I hope the listeners can grab a copy.
I hope it really helps them get confident with some of these toughest topics that probablywe've all bumped into if we've actually tried reading the Bible.
(41:58):
And I hope it's also a book that people can share then with others who wanted to find outmore.
That's fantastic.
Well, Andrew, thank you so much for joining me here on the Christian Book Blurb showtoday.
It's been great chatting with you and it's been fascinating reading your book.
So thank you for joining me.
Thanks, Matt.
Been a pleasure.
And thank you as well for listening to this episode of Christian Book Blurb.
(42:21):
Don't forget it comes out on the first and the 15th of every month, which means I'll onlybe back very shortly with another Christian author speaking all about their books, their
lives and their faith to help you grow in your discipleship one book at a time.
So thank you for joining me and I look forward to having the pleasure of your companyagain really soon.
Thank you and goodbye.
(42:42):
Thanks for listening to Christian Blurb.
with your host Matt McChlery.
Do give it a like, give it a share and let your friends know all about it.
We do hope to see you again soon on another Christian Book Blurb.
This is Christian Book Blurb brought to you by author and songwriter Matt McChlery Get abehind-the-scenes glimpse into the lives of some of your favourite Christian authors.
Hear about their books and faith.
Also, why not check out my website, mattmccleary.com.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Book Blurb.
(00:21):
It's great to have you with us and I am looking forward to having our discussion today.
I'm Matt McChlery and this is the podcast that helps you to grow in your disulphship onebook at a time as we chat with some amazing Christian authors all about their books, their
lives and their faith.
Now on today's show, I am chatting with the author Andrew Ollerton about his book that'scalled God's Book.
(00:46):
Quite a simple title, but I think that the subtitle gives you a bit more detail.
So it's called God's Book, An Honest Look.
at the Bible's seven toughest topics.
So we're to be doing some tough talking today, and let's just welcome Andrew to the show.
Hi, Andrew.
Hey Matt, good to see you, thanks for having me on.
It's great to have you with us.
(01:08):
Now you've got this book out called God's Book and you deal with several difficult topics,so I'll just read through what those sort of topics or questions that you kind of are
answering are for our listeners.
So you're dealing with things like, can we take Genesis seriously in a scientific age?
(01:29):
What about strange laws and customs, including slavery?
Does God condone warfare and violence?
Why does God allow people to suffer?
Do miracles and exorcisms really happen?
Is the New Testament's teaching on sex outdated?
What about judgment, hell, and the afterlife?
Wow, that, that, that there's a lot of contentious things in there.
(01:52):
Yeah.
Why did you choose these seven?
Because when we look at the Bible,
There's more stuff that you could have written about, so why go with these ones?
Well, the astute listener may have noticed that as you read that list, they are actuallyin an order.
They're not random.
They're trying to track with the actual narrative storyline of the Bible.
So really what you've just read goes from Genesis, the creation stories and sciencequestion, right through to Revelation and the judgment scenes and heaven and hell.
(02:19):
So what I really wanted to do was sort of not just pick the top five most Googledquestions or whatever.
Great though those kinds of books would be, but I wanted to do something that was moreearth
in the biblical narrative.
When you effectively saying to people, if you actually get into the Bible and imagine youwent from Genesis to Revelation, these are the topics that I think are going to be the
(02:40):
most difficult for you on that journey.
These are the roadblocks.
Imagine it like a journey.
These are the things that could stop you in your tracks.
Literally, I think a lot of our listeners probably have been stuck at points likeLeviticus and the strange laws.
And then
Other moments like the violence and the warfare in the Old Testament.
they're almost like the roadblocks, the issue of sex in Paul's letters in the NewTestament.
They're the roadblocks on the journey from Genesis to Revelation.
(03:02):
That's how I kind of structured it.
So they're not random.
They're in an order.
And my guess is they're pretty much the toughest topics for our cultural moment.
I'm not pretending that if you lived in medieval England, or if you today, if you lived inNorth Korea, I'm not pretending that these would be the top issues.
But we have been shaped by a particular culture, a way of seeing the world.
(03:23):
We have certain sensibilities and sensitivities.
I think given who we are, these are the ones that we find the hardest.
Mm-hmm.
That's really good.
And so who is the book written for?
I know you're kind of answering sort of culturally, sort of cultural roadblocks and thingsthat might get in our way.
So that's kind of why you've done it.
(03:44):
But who is it for?
Is it for sort of Christians who've been going for a long time or people who are justcurious or...
Yeah.
What are your thoughts?
Well, I know it's a bit of a cop out to say both, but I really mean that.
think, let me just explain it by a story in the Bible actually.
I've been really reflecting a lot recently on the story of Philip and the Ethiopianeunuch.
If you know this story, you have a black African VIP, the Ethiopian eunuch, traveling inhis own private chariot.
(04:11):
He's elite, he's educated, he can read, he owns his own scroll.
But it turns out that he's reading the scroll of Isaiah.
In other words, he's reading a bit of the Bible and he can't make sense of it.
And Philip comes alongside him.
He's stuck on a difficult passage, a difficult topic.
Philip comes alongside him, the Christian, from a different ethnicity and background andsocial status.
Philip's way beneath this guy in terms of social status.
(04:33):
This manfaras exceeds him in prestige.
And yet Philip sits alongside him and Philip obviously is able to, he's ready, he'sequipped.
So he's ready to help this dear man make sense of the Bible.
So if you think about that story, I've got both those people in mind.
I'm writing this book firstly for the spiritually curious, the Ethiopian eunuchs of ourday.
And I work with Bible Society and we publish this quite revival research which suggeststhat there are a lot more spiritually curious people coming down the road in our cultural
(05:01):
moment.
And many of them are actually turning to the Bible.
They're reaching out for the Bible sales are up.
I've met so many young men especially over the summer who have just reached
for a copy of the Bible on Amazon or in a shop and started reading, often just beginningat Genesis, because where else would you start a book at the beginning, right?
But they're often stuck, they often hit against things that they find difficult or hard tounderstand.
(05:25):
So I've definitely got them in mind for curious seekers, but I've also got the Phillipsand Philippers in mind.
In other words, the Christians who want to be able to sit alongside people who are askinghonest questions and help them.
But sometimes we feel
almost a bit tongue-tied or a bit frightened by the thought in case, you know, what if I'mnot ready?
What if someone asks a question and I don't know how to respond?
(05:47):
So I hope this book does both.
It's something that the Ethiopian eunuchs of our day can read.
It'll help make sense of their journey with the Bible.
And it's something that the Phillips and Philippas, the Christians can read to equipthemselves so they feel like not only do they have a better understanding of the Bible's
toughest topics, but they can share that and share their faith with more confidence aswell.
(06:09):
That's really good.
Now, I know I sort of read all the kind of chapter headings, as it were, as we wentthrough.
There's absolutely no way we can deal with all of them on the podcast today.
And of course, get the book.
That's where you get the really detailed answers to all this stuff.
It's called God's Book, quite simply.
So do go and get Andrew Ollerton's book, God's Book.
(06:30):
It will help you answer and understand and grapple with a lot of these questions.
But what I wanted to do, Andrew, today is to dig down into one or two of these sort ofareas that you deal with, just so that our listeners get a flavor, as it were, of what
you're saying and sort of how you're going about it.
So let's, as you said, where do you start a book?
(06:51):
At the very beginning.
So let's start at the beginning, the opening chapter about creation.
And you...
talking about science and the biblical account, can they sit together with some tensionthere, or do we have to pick a side?
Yeah, very good.
Well, I think, you know, this topic for many people who are not scientifically minded,maybe the one they almost want to skip.
(07:16):
It's like, you know, I'm frightened of periodic tables giving me a panic attack.
I don't want to go there.
I understand that, but you have to recognize that Genesis in the end is not a scientifictext.
It's not trying to give a how to build a universe, you know, DIY manual as if it's exactlytelling us exactly how and when these things happen.
Genesis ultimately is telling the story of our origins, an origin story.
(07:39):
And what I try and do in the book is show that actually part of the conflict betweenperceived conflict between science and the Bible is because we've tried to get the Bible
to be something that it's not trying to be and we've tried to get science to do somethingthat it's not fit to do.
Science cannot explain the meaning of life.
It can explain the mechanism of life but it can't explain the meaning of life.
(07:59):
They're two very different things.
Genesis
is not trying to answer the question, how old is the earth?
It literally doesn't come with any dates.
Now, if you believe that the six days of creation are 24 hour periods, at least you mighttherefore believe that the earth is young, but it still doesn't give you a date.
It's not like it comes.
And Christians over the centuries, most famously Archbishop Asher in the 17th century, anIrish Archbishop, James Asher, he tried to put a date on it, I think 4000 and something.
(08:27):
4004 BC or something and even gave it to the day.
I think it was in April that God created the earth.
I just don't think that's what Genesis is trying to do.
if you, you know, I compare it to, if ever you go into a shop and you ask someone, you'vegot an item of clothing and you say, you know, you say to someone, excuse me, how much is
this?
Have you ever had that experience and the person turns around and says, sorry, mate, Idon't work here.
(08:50):
know, it's nothing wrong with your question, but this is not the right question for thatperson.
We don't want to be asking Genesis questions it can't answer, or it's not trying toanswer.
We don't want be asking science questions it can't answer.
And so the way I summarize this in my book is I think it's a bit simplistic, so take thiscarefully because there's more to it than this, but in short, think Genesis is trying to
(09:11):
answer the deeper, sorry, science is trying to answer the how questions of life, themechanistic questions.
How old is the universe?
How has life developed?
How do plants photosynthesize?
Whereas Genesis is trying to answer the deeper why questions, not so much the how, but thewhy and the who.
You know, who is behind all of this?
And this is my point, you in the end, science can answer many wonders of the world, but itcan't even answer the most basic question of, well, who is behind the whole thing in the
(09:40):
first place?
We know that nothing comes from nothing.
There must be some kind of original cause to the universe that we inhabit.
But scientists cannot, that is the great mystery, scientists cannot answer.
And Genesis is saying effectively, this is the answer to the who question, in thebeginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
I'm not pretending, in my book I give, as you may have noticed, Matt, you've read it, Igive this, I try and go through these, different, what I call touch points and tension
(10:05):
points.
And I found that quite a helpful way to think it through.
I think there are some areas where science and the account of the Bible are actuallycoming closer together.
the more science discovers about the universe, the more it actually correlates with whatGenesis says.
So I've called those touch points.
I'm thinking about things like the Big Bang or the fine tuning of the universe or themystery of human consciousness.
(10:27):
Those are what I call touch points.
But I also acknowledge, I think there are tension points.
It's not easy to reconcile the earth being billions of years old, which is what thescientific consensus claims with the account in Genesis.
I don't think it's impossible.
but I'm not pretending it's easy.
So I'm not sort of naively saying there's no problem here, but I am recognising that inthe end they answer different questions, the who and the why, versus the how, and we need
(10:52):
to allow Genesis to speak on its own terms.
That's really interesting.
And I've been hearing of sort of changes of opinion, sort of amongst the sort of theintellectual and scientific communities, where you sort of had this whole sort of new
atheism push and all of that.
But now actually, we're hearing of quite a few of these sort of thinkers actually cominground to the
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conclusion that actually Christianity is correct.
some scientists even sort of saying, well, actually, yes, there has to be a possibilityfor God for all this to actually hang and hold together.
So how does Genesis relate to modern science?
Yeah, yeah.
I quote in the book, I love a beautiful quote.
(11:39):
just says, this is somebody else's words, not mine.
Your first gulp of the natural scientist will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottomof the glass, God is waiting for you.
I've always loved that quote because often you find that people who have a small amount ofknowledge of science are the most confident to say there's no God.
Science can explain away God.
(12:01):
But the deeper you go,
you find that the more experienced professors, the more advanced scientists are the oneswho are actually even more ambivalent.
For them, they are discovering, uncovering the mysteries of the universe, things thatcan't be easily explained.
And I'm not talking here about God of the gaps.
It's not just things that where we put God in because we can't understand it yet, butscience will eventually explain it.
(12:22):
It's actually the things that we do understand, not things we don't understand.
So things we do understand.
that cause many scientists to actually pull back from atheism and say there is norational, natural explanation for things like why is there something rather than nothing?
Why is there consciousness and sentient beings rather than just chaotic unconsciousmatter?
(12:48):
know, life effectively, the mystery of life.
Even if you believe strongly in an evolutionary explanation for how life has evolved, itstill cannot explain the original moment where life came from non-life.
That is a mystery.
And so you're right.
This is where I quote in my book, quote controversial work by Stephen Myers, The Return ofthe God Hypothesis, but for that book really does chart an enormous
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range of scientists, very high level professional scientists today, who would actually saythey're not necessarily Christians, they're not necessarily Bible believers, but they
recognize that there is mystery and it's more likely there's something behind what existsthan nothing.
And then I worked with a professor of physics who helped me enormously with that firstpart of my book.
(13:39):
Each of the parts of the book requires an element of specialism, so I drew on otherscholars.
And you know, this professional scientist, he's a Bible-believing Christian, and for him,his exploration of physics and astrophysics only confirms his faith rather than
undermining it.
And one of the sort of various ideas that you explore in the book is this idea of theGoldilocks universe.
(14:02):
Could you just explain to us what that is and how that sort of works?
Yeah, well, if you know the story of Goldilocks, know, the story of the Goldilocks and thethree bears and how they each need everything to be just right for them, you not too hot,
not too cold, all of that.
If you know that child, children's story.
And the idea is that the universe that we inhabit, in particular, the planet that we liveon, just happens to be not too hot, not too cold, just right.
(14:29):
Why is that?
Because again, many more brilliant minds than my own, many brilliant scientists havediscovered
that for things to be as they are, for this universe to be a universe that sustains liferather than destroys it ultimately, especially human life, which is relatively fragile and
vulnerable.
If our planet was tilted just a fraction more towards the sun or away from the sun,everything would either be frozen if it was tilted away.
(14:55):
Just, I mean, tiny fractions.
We're 23.5 degree tilt, it's perfect.
But if you tilt that even a fraction of a degree,
Mm.
Nothing works.
Every every water source on the planet is either frozen or evaporated.
You know, and that's just one of and in fact, it's not even the most startling feature ofwhat's called the fine tuning of the universe, which is effectively referring to over 40
(15:15):
consonants and variables that have to be exactly as they are.
You can't change them.
Even the tiniest fraction, the number of zeros that you add to the the to the probabilityof it being like this.
is so vast that one of my, one of the book, in my book actually quote someone noting thatfor carbon to form from stars, from the explosion of stars, for carbon to form, the
(15:41):
chances of that, everything had to be exactly right for carbon to form when stars explode,right?
Now we are carbon-based life.
I mean, it sounds a bit Hollywood, but we are, you know, we are stardust ultimately.
So we're not here if there's no carbon and for carbon to form was just unbelievablyunlikely.
Now I'm not a scientist, so here I'm channeling other people, but the point is, it's likewe've, the Goldilocks principle is it's like we've just stumbled across some house where
(16:09):
everything has been absolutely perfectly set up for us to live there.
What would you conclude?
You would conclude, well, someone must have done that.
That doesn't just happen.
That's not just an accident in the woods.
That's an intended,
habitat.
And so the principle, the Goldilocks principle, the fine tuning principle is to say, theuniverse seems to be set up for us to live here.
(16:30):
Who set it up?
And again, back to Genesis in the beginning, God.
Mm-hmm, really good.
And another chapter I wanted to dig in today is chapter six, it's answering the question,is the New Testament's teaching on sex outdated?
Now, you speak about how Christianity was actually the first sexual revolution.
(16:54):
I mean, we think of the the 60s, don't we, Woodstock and all that kind of thing, and
sort of label that as, that's the start of the sexual revolution and all that kind ofthing.
But you're saying that actually Christianity itself sparked a sexual revolution in ancientRoman thought and practice.
Can you tell us about this?
Yeah, again, not original to me.
(17:15):
I've been grateful to channel other people's ideas here.
But in particular, I want to mention a book called From Shame to Sin by a brilliantscholar, Karl Harper, who basically has helped along with others and more familiar names
like Tom Holland, the British historian, and his book Dominion.
They're all contributing to this core argument, which is that the ancient world, the RomanEmpire into which the New Testament was born, had absolutely none of
(17:39):
the values that we have when it comes to sex and relationships.
Let's take, for example, the idea of consent.
There was just no such thing.
In fact, Karl Harper makes the point that Christians actually invented the phrase freewill.
And the context in which they invented it was a sexual context, which is that a man canactually, has free will to not have sex with whoever he wants to.
(18:00):
In other words, a man can restrain himself and should restrain himself.
Christians invented that phrase because they were the first to really say,
A Roman master, a Roman free man, should not just use and abuse any lower social statusbeing around him for his sexual gratification.
In the ancient world, that was just assumed to be okay.
(18:20):
If you were a Roman master, you had slaves, you could do whatever the hell you wanted withthem.
They were your property.
were your, you know, there were no restrictions.
There was no such thing as consent.
No such thing as free will.
For the master, it was just merely his repository.
And the New Testament came along, the teachings of Paul, rooted of course in theJudeo-Christian scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures, Genesis saying that male and female are
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made in the image and likeness of God without distinction between the concept of slave andmaster.
But then of course, Jesus heightened this because he took on the form of a servant, dyingthe slave's death in his crucifixion and rising again to call his disciples to preach good
news to all people.
And as Paul goes about this task after his conversion and starts saying things like, youknow, there is neither slave nor free, all are one in Christ.
(19:12):
If you apply that kind of idea to the bedroom, it's the makings of a sexual revolution,not just sexual, a social revolution of all sorts, but it has sexual implications.
And so that's my argument really, that we assume that it's obvious that sex must be withconsent.
we absolutely feel appalled at what Harvey Weinstein, for example, represents.
(19:34):
My point in the book is Harvey Weinstein would have gone down very well in Rome.
You know, that was just the way the world worked.
Why has the world changed?
Why have our expectations of sexual ethics changed?
Well, there may be other causes.
I'm not saying it's a singular cause, but the biggest cause, certainly this is theargument of Tom Holland and others, is Christianity.
It's the teachings of the apostle Paul.
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And the point I'm making here is far from thinking therefore that that is outdated.
It's actually the very foundation we stand on.
To say that we don't need the New Testament's teachings anymore is to saw off the verybranch that we're sitting on.
In our abhorrence at the idea of rape, of coercion, of abuse, we are distinctivelyChristian in the way we think about those things, whether we are actually Christian
(20:18):
believers or not.
So that's the argument.
I mean, there's so much more detail I could give, but that's the basic idea.
Okay, that's great.
And rather than just saying, well, what are Christians against?
We're against, you know, abuse and rape and sort of coercion and all that kind of thing.
Yes, that's true.
But what are Christians for?
So what should a Christian approach to sex be?
(20:40):
Yeah, great.
I like the way you phrased that because that's so important.
Sadly, we've become known as that, that which is against.
But, know, the Bible is fundamentally on the front foot on the issue of sex.
It's for something.
Go right back to creation.
know, Adam and Eve being united, naked in the garden and united as one flesh.
God declares this to be good.
We believe God gave us our sexual
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appetites and bodies were embodied sexual beings.
We could have reproduced another way without any need for sexual organs, but God haschosen that it will be this way, that the two should become one, one flesh.
And more distinctly than that, he's chosen that that should be pleasurable.
know, the nerve endings in the sexual organs is God designed, we believe that.
So you find in the Song of Songs, for example, in another part of the Bible, a celebrationof naked pleasure between the man and the woman.
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So, you know, God is for sex, not against it.
Of course, the reason that we have to put boundaries around this is because anythingthat's beautiful and powerful can also be dangerous if it's taken out of the wrong
context.
You know, I love rivers.
They're such powerful, beautiful things, aren't they?
But if a river bursts its banks and floods, it's damaging.
And in the same way, know, sex is a beautiful, powerful thing, but it needs to be withincertain banks, if you like, within certain boundaries.
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So on the one hand, the Bible affirms
the goodness of sexual pleasure and of reproduction in a family.
Having children is a gift and a glorious thing.
All of this is good.
The Bible affirms that.
The second thing the Bible affirms, and this is more into the New Testament now, is thatour bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.
So I pick up particularly on this in 1 Corinthians 6, where Paul is talking to aCorinthian church that's struggling to understand sexual ethics and to put them into
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practice.
And one of things he says, far from just shouting at them and saying, stop being so rude,stop being so naughty, you know, I don't know what else he might have said, cut it out.
He doesn't do that.
He actually calls, he introduces the higher, the higher value, far from just being againstwhat they're doing.
He says, don't you know, he keeps saying, don't you know things you don't seem to realizeyour body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
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In other words, he's calling them up to something more glorious, a better way of living, away of flourishing, which is to honor God with our bodies, to think of our bodies not as
mere natural matter or mere pleasure centers or mere, you know, just this hedonisticplight or even narcissistic view of ourselves.
No, we are God's temple, holy and pleasing to Him.
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And so we've got something to live for.
And this is, can you imagine what that sounded like to a slave who had just been abusedand mistreated repeatedly by their earthly master?
And yet the apostle Paul says, but don't you know, you're a temple of God.
He loves you.
He's filled you with his own Holy Spirit.
You've got some dignity here and some worth.
So the Bible is for so many things.
(23:22):
And just finally, the Bible is also for the idea that whether we are married in this lifeor single, whether we have children or not, those things are never the greatest goal or
even the greatest love story.
The ultimate love story in the Bible is not Adam and Eve.
That's how the Bible begins.
But it finishes with Christ and his church, his bride.
(23:42):
And I make the point in the book that actually, if we try and find fulfillment throughrelationships and sex, we will forever be broken and frustrated because the meaning of
life cannot be found through those things.
They are really just the shadow of the reality, which is Christ.
One of the features of your book, just before we go for a short break, is at the end ofeach chapter you address a letter to one of your children, which I think is really good
(24:11):
because it really helps to kind of summarize the key themes and express the heart of whatyou've been saying in the chapter.
So I was wondering, could you just read us the letter addressed to your teenage son at theend of this chapter?
It's called making sense of sex and relationships.
Yeah, I'd love to.
is so I've got three, Charlotte and I have three children.
(24:34):
They're all teenagers now and this one's written to Toby.
So he's a young adult and I'll read the letter briefly to you.
Dear Toby, I may have told you before the embarrassing story of my first girlfriend.
When I was 15, it seemed like all my schoolmates were going on dates and they mocked mebecause I wasn't.
So one day I got on the school bus and sat next to a girl called Vicky who I'd neverspoken to before.
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I need a girlfriend, I said, completely out of the blue.
To my surprise, Vicki agreed, but our first date was a disaster.
I didn't even pay for her McDonald's.
The next day we saw each other and Vicki did the decent thing and dumped me.
Doing something just to fit in or because of pressure from others is a miserable way tolive, Toby.
We end up using other people and we hurt ourselves in the process.
(25:20):
However, soon after Vicki dumped me, I began to discover a relationship with Jesus formyself.
I got baptized in water to say, I'm all in.
And then I experienced the Holy Spirit bonding me to God in a deeper way.
I remember one time feeling as though God's love had been poured through me like hotliquid.
After that, I didn't need anyone else.
I realized that my security and freedom would be found in living for Jesus.
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I spent the rest of my teenage years single and I never regretted it.
In fact, the next person I dated was your mum.
I suppose my story is unusual and yours will be different, but I urge you to find youridentity in Jesus, not in romantic relationships, sexual orientation or even marriage.
None of these things will ultimately last, nor will they satisfy your deepest longings.
(26:06):
Whether you remain single or get married, some dreams will go unfulfilled and you willhave to say no to temptations and wrong desires.
But if you say yes to Jesus, you are guaranteed a perfect love.
that will never fail you.
Now with that in mind, here's a few things I've learned to help navigate sex andrelationships.
Firstly, follow the Maker's instructions.
God originally designed men and women to enjoy romance, marriage and sex.
(26:30):
God invented pleasure, the devil did not.
Though this world is now broken, God's way remains the best way.
Modern society has torn up the Maker's instructions and tried to replace centuries ofwisdom with whatever feels right.
But I look around and think, so how is this working out for everyone?
It seems the more open-minded we've gotten, the more broken-hearted we've become.
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For best results, follow the Maker's instructions.
The Bible says God intended sex to be enjoyed within marriage, so kids grow up with asecure foundation of unbroken love.
Now, of course, I know it's not always this simple.
Many of our friends do an incredible job raising families in tricky circumstances.
But as far as it lies with you, Toby,
Follow God's plan, keep sex for marriage, and never break a promise that you make beforeGod.
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Secondly, live like your body is a temple.
I know it's gym posters that say, my body, my temple, but the idea originally came fromthe Bible.
One of Paul's letters says to Christians who were playing around with sex, do you not knowthat your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?
God's spirit makes his home in our bodies.
What an incredible privilege.
So our job
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is to make God feel at home in the way we live.
What might this mean?
Well, for one thing, Jesus challenges us not to look lustfully at women.
It's not wrong to be attracted to someone else, but we mustn't take the next step.
Jesus is basically saying, don't objectify women.
Don't reduce them to objects of lust.
That's exactly what pornography does.
(28:00):
It makes money through exploiting people who've been made in God's image.
Porn is addictive and it will destroy you if you let it.
But you are a temple of God's so don't live in the dirt or drink from the toilet.
Instead, ask the Holy Spirit to help you resist wrong desires.
Stay honest and accountable to Christian friends, and remember, even if you fail, Jesuswill clean you up and help you live his way again.
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He never gives up on us.
Now, finally, look after those who are different from you.
What I love about Jesus is that he is totally uncompromising about sex.
and yet full of compassion for those who struggle.
On one occasion, religious leaders brought a woman to Jesus who had slept with someoneelse that she wasn't married to.
They humiliated her and asked Jesus how best to punish her.
(28:47):
But Jesus ignored them and doodled in the dust.
When they pressed him again, Jesus said that anyone who'd never sinned could stone her.
That pulled the rug from under their smug feet.
So they left.
Then Jesus said to the woman,
neither do I condemn you.
Go now and leave your life of sin.
Toby tried to be like Jesus.
(29:09):
He challenged people to leave behind any lifestyle that's outside God's plan and yet whenpeople failed or faced rejection from others, he stood by them.
He never let prejudice get in the way of sharing God's love.
Sadly as Christians we haven't always got this right.
We've either changed our beliefs to fit in with society
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or we've highlighted the wrong in others to disguise our own.
But Jesus never sat around debating who's right or wrong.
He was too busy getting on with sharing God's love.
Now it's our turn.
We must keep ourselves pure from sin and offer hope to those who struggle.
Now that's tricky, but with God's help, I know you can do it.
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Love you, my boy, dad.
What a great letter!
Really great.
Thank you for sharing that with us and we'll be back chatting with Andrew Ollerton allabout his life and his faith just after these so stay tuned.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you can help keep it on the web.
All you've got to do is buy me a coffee.
(30:13):
Head over to buymeacoffee.com slash Matt McChlery to make a donation.
There is a link in this episode's show notes.
So go on, buy me a coffee today and help this podcast to keep supporting Christian booksand authors.
Welcome back to Christian Book Blurb.
On the show today I'm chatting with Andrew Ollerton.
Before the break we're chatting all about his book called God's Book, an honest look atthe Bible's seven toughest topics.
(30:41):
This side of the break, Andrew, we like to get to know the author a little bit better.
You've already told us you have a family and three children.
Whereabouts are you based?
You're living in the UK.
Whereabouts?
Yeah, we live in the UK.
We live actually in North Cardiff, so in Wales, which we love.
Wales is a beautiful country.
I travel a lot with my work, so I experience lots of different places, but there's noplace like home.
(31:03):
Mm, lovely.
And what are some of the things you like to do for fun in your sort of leisure time?
Yeah.
Well, I love wild places.
I love mountain climbing.
I love adventure.
So, I guess if I, if I had my, my sort of perfect way to switch off, it would be somepretty, good hard exercise in the mountains, maybe climbing with a friend or two.
I love getting up to high places and sort of seeing the view.
(31:24):
And I mean, there's not always a view in the British, climates on mountains admittedly,but even when the weather's awful, there's something about taking on the challenge,
especially with close friends and
just getting away from the, you know, getting away from your phone, getting away from allthe notifications and the emails and just, I find that's where I encounter God most
actually.
So yeah, I love the outdoors.
(31:45):
That would be probably my happy place.
And are there mountains nearby Cardiff?
I know there's lots of castles and things in Wales.
Does that imply mountains as well?
Yeah, well, the Bracken Beacons are only about 45 minutes from where we live.
They're a lovely place to explore.
Wales is such a beautiful country.
If you drive up through the middle of Wales, it's incredibly stunning.
then obviously Snowdonia in the north, still a long drive from us.
(32:07):
But if you get up there, the mountains are even more dramatic.
I love going to Scotland as well.
Mountain climbing up there.
I love climbing in the Alps.
So, you know, wherever and whenever I can, obviously most of life is not spent on suchescapades, but I love it when I can.
So when you go mountain climbing, what do you pack in your, in your backpack to, to eat?
Do you have sort of particular favorite things you like to take with you or just, youknow, any old sandwich will do.
(32:33):
Yeah, food wise, any old sandwich will do.
The thing I'm a bit particular about is my tea, actually.
love tea.
And I have this little jet boil stove that is brilliant.
They're genius.
They just pack down really small and they heat the water up really quickly.
And even in some pretty ferocious sort of conditions, you can get the water to boil.
And I just love a cup of tea, but I'm quite particular about my tea.
(32:56):
It has to be Yorkshire tea for me.
I'm a big fan of Yorkshire tea.
You know, it has to be stirred three times to the right and four times to the left.
And then some little chanting over it and that kind of thing.
I'm kidding, but yeah, I'm quite particular about my tea.
So probably packing my, my stove and tea bags and milk is the most important priority inmy rucksack.
That and my Bible.
I always take that as well.
Very good.
(33:17):
And I imagine that stove makes it on its way with you if you go camping at variousChristian festivals and things as well.
Yeah, do you know what people often say, because I went to big church festival andcreation fest and other places where there's camping and we did camp at big church
festival and often people say to me, you must really love it here.
You love camping, don't you?
And I'm like, this is not my idea of camping.
Just to be clear, I love getting away from it all, not camping with 35,000 other peopleand sharing toilets with them.
(33:43):
So I have to say that that isn't my idea of fun.
It's wild camping I love.
Yeah.
I must admit that is a downside to big festivals.
The toilet situation can always be problematic, especially near the end of the week.
we'll move on from that.
So do you do other things other than write books or do you just sort of climb mountainsand write books and kind of that's it?
(34:09):
do you have a lot of other things going on?
I imagine you do.
That would be a fun life, but that's not the life I live.
As often is the case, the things you love doing are squeezed on the side of the things youhave to do, aren't they?
But I do love my life.
I'm very grateful.
I work part-time with Bible Society.
I developed the Bible course and the Romans course.
Some of us may have come across those.
(34:31):
That means I get to do quite a bit of filming work now.
So I end up doing, you know, working on
projects that end up filming content, which I really enjoy.
So script writing and then actually filming it sometimes on interesting locations.
We filmed the Romans course in Rome.
We've done some filming in the Alps and I've loved that kind of thing.
then sometimes, I mean, frankly, often it's just indoors, which is just more functional,but it gets the job done.
(34:55):
So I do that.
I work with other people on their projects.
I've done quite a bit of work as some listeners will know with Bear Grylls recently.
So I was very involved with him.
writing, helping him write his book, The Greatest Story Ever Told, which is now doingbrilliantly.
that's been fun.
So Bible Society and working with Bear and other people externally and then writing thebooks I write.
And I speak quite a bit now as well.
(35:15):
So at conferences and leaders events and sometimes in churches as well.
So if I'm honest, there's not much about my life that I don't enjoy.
I'm very, very fortunate.
Obviously it's busy and pressured, but I'm very grateful.
That's great.
Now you've said you've helped write or worked with Bear Grylls as he wrote his book.
And you also like mountain climbing.
So the question has to be, the next question has to be, have you ever gone mountainclimbing with Bear Grylls?
(35:40):
No, we haven't actually.
We've talked about it, but we haven't done it yet.
We've got a plan hatching, but it's not happened just yet.
But yeah, no, he's become a good friend and I appreciate him very much.
you know, his heart, he obviously lives in a different world to most of us, but his heart,you know, is very kind and honest and just wants to, as a Christian, he wants to share the
story of Jesus.
So I've been really privileged to work with him actually.
(36:03):
Now that's great.
What is the Holy Spirit doing in your life or is the Holy Spirit saying something to youparticularly at the moment that you won't mind sharing with us?
That's a good question.
think sometimes that's the more personal stuff, isn't it?
Just that reassurance of God's voice that you are His son, you're His daughter, and thatyour acceptance is not rooted in what you've achieved or what you need to achieve.
(36:25):
I think that's important.
Even as, you know, I'm just publishing this new book we've been talking about, and they'revulnerable moments actually, you put your heart and soul into this, but then it basically
comes down to everyone else as to how it does and how people receive it.
Probably writing those letters to my kids made it a more vulnerable book than otherwise itneeded to be, but I felt for some reason that I needed to do that and not shy away from
(36:46):
that more honest and personal touch.
So I think sometimes what the Holy Spirit's doing is just reassuring you and giving youthe courage you need to just keep doing the things that you need to do in His grace rather
than as some kind of competition or need to prove something.
That's important.
And then I think beyond my personal journey, think then culturally, I think one of thingsI feel the Holy Spirit is showing me more and more is that just how many young men,
(37:13):
especially, but not exclusively, young people are really reaching for the Bible and forhope.
mean, my focus in life really is on communicating the Bible.
So the quiet revival may pick up on many trends, but the one that has intrigued me themost is definitely the way that young people are reaching for the Bible.
I've especially over the summer, I got to meet several
younger people for whom that's their story and their journey.
(37:34):
And that really moved my heart actually, you sometimes that's, that's the work of thespirit, isn't it?
Is to cause you to feel things, feel God's passion, feel God's love.
And I felt that as I heard, you know, one young man for whom he'd reached the point wherehe was about to take his own life.
And God spoke to him when he was sitting on top of a quarry about to jump off and Godspoke to him and out of the blue, wasn't a Christian at all, never heard.
(37:55):
God's voice before, but God told him this is not how his story ends.
And he went down from, instead of jumping down, he walked down and went to W.H.
Smith and bought a Bible and just started reading it.
And I had the privilege of meeting him this summer and he gave his life to the Lord and isnow on a journey of faith.
And we're messaging a bit and helping him forwards.
But gosh, yeah, I mean, the Holy Spirit really puts that kind of story in your lifebecause he wants you to know that this really matters, that this is life and death, that
(38:21):
this isn't just a bit of an academic interest.
whether people find hope and meaning through the Bible or not could decide everything.
So I really feel that's a passion that's growing in me.
Wonderful.
Thank you for sharing that.
Now, have you got anything coming up soon?
I know you've just sort of released this book, but books take ages to go through all theprocesses of everything.
(38:44):
Are you working on something?
Is it another book or maybe it's a course or a video filming thing or what's coming upthat we can look forward to?
That's a good question, but actually I've been careful to not jump too quickly into thenext thing.
There are a couple of ideas brewing, but I'm not writing anything at the moment of anydeep dive.
I'm developing a podcast series with Bible Society linked to the quiet revival.
(39:06):
So that's piece of work I've undergone at the moment.
We've just released a new edition of the Bible course.
So that's been a huge piece of work, but that's now more about sharing it and getting itout there.
So I actually feel like I'm in a season at the moment where instead of hiding away andwriting new things on my own,
I'm more out and about sharing the things that I've been working on, whether Bear's newbook or this latest book, God's book, an honest look at the Bible's seven toughest topics
(39:29):
that I'm just releasing now, or the new edition of the Bible course.
And it's interesting, someone gave me a picture a little while ago.
They didn't really know me, so it was quite helpful.
They saw a lighthouse, you know how a lighthouse rotates.
And as it rotates, there are moments where it goes dark.
and then it sort of comes around again and throws out light.
(39:49):
And they said, you know, they felt that was important for me that there'll be seasons ofmy life where I just need to go, if you like, down into the dark place and just graft and
hide away and write and develop things so that I can then have moments where I'm throwingout the light again.
You you've got to kind of go into the deep place, the deep work in order to have somethingto then of value to share.
And that's really helped me actually to realize there are different seasons for me.
(40:11):
Sometimes it'll be in a season where I'm hidden away.
in the producing and writing phase.
And other seasons, they'll be where I'm out and about throwing out the lights that God'sgiven me.
And it's definitely one of those seasons for me now, which I'm enjoying.
That's wonderful.
And just before we go, where can people find you online?
Are you on social media?
Have you got a website?
(40:32):
And more importantly, where can people buy your books?
Thanks, Matt.
Yeah, well, you can follow me on social media, at Andy Ollerton on Twitter or X andInstagram.
Find me on Facebook as well.
My website, just to say with this new book, I should have mentioned earlier that alongsidethe book, there's actually resources for small groups and whole churches to go through it.
(40:52):
So there's video content linked to the book and a small group discussion guide.
And some churches from January will be actually preaching through the whole book as aseries with extra resources for sermons and notes.
So I'd love you to check that out.
Maybe it's a sort of an experience that you could go through with your small group, withyour young people.
A lot of our church are just launching this with their youth group so that they can reallywrestle with these tough topics together.
(41:15):
So if you go to my website, andrewolerton.com, andrewolerton.com, not only can you findout more about the book, but all of the small group guide video content free of charge
will be there for your small group and your church to use.
To buy the book,
Big shout out to St.
Andrew's Bookshop who are doing a great bulk discount offer because a lot of churches arebuying the book or small groups.
(41:37):
So go to St.
Andrew's website if you want the bulk discount.
But for individual purchases, I mean, it's on Amazon.
It's everywhere that you'd expect to find a book.
And it seems to be doing well and is discounted.
So I hope the listeners can grab a copy.
I hope it really helps them get confident with some of these toughest topics that probablywe've all bumped into if we've actually tried reading the Bible.
(41:58):
And I hope it's also a book that people can share then with others who wanted to find outmore.
That's fantastic.
Well, Andrew, thank you so much for joining me here on the Christian Book Blurb showtoday.
It's been great chatting with you and it's been fascinating reading your book.
So thank you for joining me.
Thanks, Matt.
Been a pleasure.
And thank you as well for listening to this episode of Christian Book Blurb.
(42:21):
Don't forget it comes out on the first and the 15th of every month, which means I'll onlybe back very shortly with another Christian author speaking all about their books, their
lives and their faith to help you grow in your discipleship one book at a time.
So thank you for joining me and I look forward to having the pleasure of your companyagain really soon.
Thank you and goodbye.
(42:42):
Thanks for listening to Christian Blurb.
with your host Matt McChlery.
Do give it a like, give it a share and let your friends know all about it.
We do hope to see you again soon on another Christian Book Blurb.
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