IS THERE MORE TO LIFE THAN THIS? | CHARLIE MACKESY

[Music] things that made me happy are when I've not got a looking a clock and eating good food really makes me happy every day just getting what you want she makes me happy sunshine use it just reading our device he'll feel electrified see I like to go out hang out friends go dancing I guess money also makes you happy something where you're not relying your money my nephew my wife is very happy thank you al I am living comes to watching them a pill beat mine United away be dragged I don't actually know what makes me happy what's not oh boy - life I'd like to think there's more to life - yes I do and whenever I stand here and look at you or people I just imagine how I felt when I first arrived here and I left after about seven minutes and the presiding feature of the situation was teeth a lot of white teeth a lot of smiling at me and I thought this you've got this huge agenda and you're trying to coerce mean something and there's a very strange noise going on thank you and anthem and so I left and I went I think I try twice and I left both really early like within the first evening and I was I thought the food was definitely drugged I I went I might the first time I went to a pub which is not far for me it's close no but when I went though those three friends might having a beer and I cherished them they said you know where have you been I said well just been to this thing and they said what sort of things that that's always ask a christiany thing and they went alright did they have guitars and I said yeah that's a case of Kelvin and and I probably agree anyway the point is quite weird that I'm here at all and I did sort of persevere and I turned to my seat and Here I am sweaty standing a microphone on the first night off and I would say to you that you know just because I am standing here and I am still have many questions there are still things I struggle with but I'd rather be here than not and I are on the side of belief than not and it helps me a great deal and it but if I've been asked the question they were asked on the film is there more to life than this I would have said yes but it's not religion anything but religion I was hotly against it I thought it was dangerous and I was it had it forced it down my throat at school and I was probably one of the worst sort of anti anything beyond the material particularly Christianity I would throw anything I could hurt more people and I was quite quite tricky with him I think I've been cynical in my life I was born probably with a genetic predisposition to cynicism we had I we had to have grace sort of you ever had grace for me as we had to my family were essentially atheist there was a Grace and if there was a god to me he just was an obstacle to food because you had to go through this thing and and and that was how he was I know how you see this divine thing or whether you don't but that was definitely how he seemed to be and at school you know went through college and I've said you know any religion is just a neurotic response to existence you know we're born into this world here you are you doing your best and some some people find it much easier to create an invisible friend to which they can talk and they give them different names and around the world they have you know it's all very very varied but I would say that's that religion is just various invisible phone who have different attributes and so you know as you can see I'm laying out my sort of table to show you just how I think I could act Sinha sighs many people here and I think that life is hard and I think religion often just poses more hoops to jump through to make it harder so why would you say well why bother why do you want to have to feel guilty why not just enjoy your life and Stephen Fry I love Stephen Fry and he said what after all is a halo it's just one more thing to keep clean and yeah and I think also that guilt was a hugely motivating thing and I don't like being made to feel guilty at all I have a friend called well gosh Robin is his name my brain is frying and and he has a son called Monty who I love and when Monty was about this size he was at the back of church and there was this formal prayer thing going on and the vicar was in the front and the vicar did this thing where he said let's pray and he said I'm sorry for things I've done wrong and they were about to echo his prayer and Monty who was on Robins and he looked at Robin said what's he done wrong and Robin said oh it's everyone here we go we all do things wrong and I and then he go of his destiny and he's at the back to me he was like my Balu Jim it says it came out instead of slide he wandered in front of everyone that you instead they're men you naughty naughty naughty people and when I heard that when Rahman told me I thought that was a perfect summary of how I saw you know Christianity particularly how its led is just made to feel terrible and the person saying it you know anyway and so that was me and and how I saw my friends saw it that way in his typical Onofre and why bother and atheism to me I was in a batch of quite a theistic thinking people ecology and me auditory was fine and my mum who I loved pieces always said Charlie you know just be kind you know forget all this these weird religions and weirdness and rituals and just if the world could just be kind it would be all right and Ella wheeler Wilcox wrote this she said so many gods so many Creed's so many paths that whined and whined well just the art of being kind is all this sad world needs and I'd have agreed with that a hundred percent that really and that was really all that was and a few things I don't we hope these kind of wet fish moments where where we have kind of huge changes in thinking and one of my wet fish slap in the face was unexpected and that was it was in a one of my chief arguments against any theism particularly Christianity which which were purported this God of love was suffering and I would say well doesn't really compute is it and I was in I was painting in in a far-flung bit of Zimbabwe I was living in a motor and I spent a lot of time with these people and they had very very little and the suffering in that part was extreme and I never really seen anything like suffering like this like cerebral malaria was rife HIV rates are very high it was you know high and what shocked me about it was a lady who in her mother had a little she had little handwritten thing on the wall that was nailed in and it just said I am the bread of life and then she had the word Jesus scroll under it and I said oh what's what's that do you believe in that then and she said she said yeah and I said okay I said it's a bit odd that you struggled to find bread but you you believe that and I was confused by this provision idea and she said oh you know it's a different kind of bread she said what feed see spiritually charlie but you can I've never been out this village but I know you come from the cold country but what feet what feeds you in your land and I thought well I don't really know mmm ecstasy sex I couldn't really answer what she meant I didn't understand the question and she said she smiled she wasn't remotely accusatory she's very very gentle and very kind but she just said one thing which really disturbed me and unsettled me for about a year and it was this she said you know you loved and I said I've got people who love me no no she said you do you know that God loves you and I said no he just said she loves you you are loved if you know that your life will change and I got quite cross and I thought well I said well I've an education I know things that you don't kind of you know you get very defensive and I was very defensive and I left a while later but the question never left me and it haunted me and I get my answers I don't know but I thought that maybe I would have a look deeper into the faith and I remember listening to the radio in my studio and I have a smelly turps ridden stinky studio and though there was Jack Higgins was being interviewed he was a very successful crime writer and the interviewer said you're very successful at me I mean you've really you've really made it what do you wish then you could tell yourself he could be 18 what would you tell your 18 year old self now and there's a long silence and he just said I forget she said you know I wish someone had told me that when I actually got to the topic there was nothing there and she thought what like nothing so well because there's something but not what I thought I mean I was hoping for something but this isn't it and it was amazing silence and it's gonna a cliche we all hear it but you know it you know he put his ladder against the wall he got to the top of the ladder and it wasn't what he thought it was and you know it got me thinking a lot and I was in I have been and still I'm in a sort of clutch of of artists and you know we've all been exploring things for a long time various place and you know you do I mean these guys I went on holiday with for quite a while with a few of them and it was one of those moments where one of my friends is extremely sexual successful painter like he gets six-figure sums now for something and I remember him sitting on the end of it at the bed three came into my bedroom I thought oh no and are you all right he said no I'm not and to use the f-word over and over again so this is this is this is and I said well this isn't it is it we've come this far we've done this what why is it what is it what we really really effing well won and he was really like all over the shot and I had a semblance of a faith but I just didn't leap into the well Jesus I I just said yeah it's a perplexing thing that we're all in this society on this train to succeed and and and is that really it and I suppose for me I knew something was wrong with us like in the human condition was strange but religion was never the answer and to me and I think that I've enjoyed reading atheists books a lot and this quite stressed alike and Christopher Hitchens is amazing have you have you have read him but he he he said this religion has ratted might've justifications thanks to the telescope with a microscope it no longer offers an explanation of anything important and I have agreed with that except ok but why then in spite of the telescope my audits discoveries does the human condition still hanker for transcendence why do billions of people still thirst spiritually why are we insatiable mitad materially what is this why Christopher Otis said that you know and I read your books and I loved them but when I read them I go to them hungry and they don't feed me I want to be fed the lady in Africa thing what feeds you your book doesn't feed me what feeds me I'm really serious here I don't want to live my life without being fed in this way and I suppose for me and Freud who I've enjoyed of you read Freud but he says this that religion is an illusion but the problem with it is that it falls within our instinctual desires what is that instinct why are we here what are we wanting what has not satisfied us despite everything and that was my hankering question and maybe at the instinct for it is exist because there's something there to satisfy it perhaps maybe and I was very hungover one morning and I was lying in bed and I was I could smell kind of cow manure coming through the window I sang with the friends and fun and I was woken by church bells and I'd got up and despite my head wandered up the lane and went into the back of the church and sat down and there were 810 pews and a vicar and a dress and two old ladies and there were a royal an array of different color books so have you ever seen all these been old churches and it was a green one and it was Bible I opened it up and a fella in the New Testament I was mildly interesting new testing because patife is the old lady in suburbia and I was reading it and it just said this and I will never forget as long as I live I could have said something terrible but he said this it said I have come to give you life and for you to have it abundantly and it was Jesus said learn from Jesus I have come to give you life and to have it to the full rates what it says I kept reading it and I kept thinking well what does that mean and religion to me wasn't life it was tedium guilt control all the worst things in my life that I don't experience so what was this and I discovered actually this and I actually tried to speak to the crafters but he was big so excited that he was otherwise involved anyway III I went to a nightclub about three nights later and I thought if you ever do this and this is a confession of mine and I find it very difficult to describe but I went on my own and it was crazy Larry's you know created eyes yeah it's crazy Larry's bike there got there went in and started dancing I mind about ten and I danced about one on my own and I don't um with the total belief that Christianity was spiritual and I was dancing freely with a God who loved me and I didn't tell you on this for years but it was amazing I didn't have identity a pint I just felt free it was incredible and and I saw it why I'm telling you this because I've slow discovered over the years the life is difficult faith is not easy it's a journey but it's life-giving and full of hope and profoundly rich and if you're the poorest person in the world or happy the richest person in the world that's not the issue it's far deeper than that far greater than that and it's I think why we're alive is to love and be loved and to be known deeply and how it's presented like I think the packaging like I don't have you ever been to UM Romania I went to Romania for a while and work with some doing some art with some teenagers and we're just in at the end of the week the English people are offered this kind of excitement this exciting tin of tuna and you know because apparently English people that's what they like and so we were given the tuner and you know Jim is nice but the package you really like the tuna dan do we have I've got the tin here but we have a picture of that please would you want to open that into it I mean it says crap and I've looked at into in South to Matt and I said to the guys over they won't church of people I said you know this is actually reciting reminds me of you know Christianity let's see it looks it looks crap but if you have the temerity and time and desire and you pour the thing it tastes quite good Dean that's a good analogy and they said no go away but I kept the tin because I do think it's true I think for most of my life it read look like the exterior and and I hate to say it a lot of times still does sorry but if you disregard the crap exterior and you dig deep and get your finger under that thing and pull and dig you'll find something utterly beautiful and I heard about Texan another Texan and he was on holiday in Devon true story and he approached the farmer and the farmer the text said how'd is this your farm sorry about the accident and and the farmer said yep he said well how big is it and the Texas rock or something that treat that tree did I treat to my ass there in the corner and the Texan mare and I have a farm where I come from and get in my car in the morning and drive by the time the Sun sets I'm still on my own me and the farm said yeah I used to have a car like that once nice so that's how I tell that is no really I'm just trying to get you know sisters my favorite joke I wonder to tell for no real reason but you should on a tenuous link basis describe to the fact that someone says one thing and then it's taken as another which was Christianity to me you know it was presented in a way like the turn and use connects by I sat next to a bishop I don't even met bishops and no bishops or enjoy bishops but I said it's a bishop at a wedding quite a while ago and he was in purple and he was very friendly and lots of tables on those marquee weddings and there was a tablecloth and stuff and and I was drinking he was cooking we were chatting and and I thought right now is my chance to hound this guy because I have many but like an alpha you can help people I was I handed him all night and I say you it's a stupid cliquey club you believe in this fairy queen you just parading around your purple clothes you're morally superior you're judgmental you don't like certain types of people you argue a lot blood but you know it's a spitting venom and what was amazing that him was he didn't really defend it he just smiled me yeah he was very very gracious kind man and he said he'd had two things he said he told me this joke and I wrote it down on the napkin I wrote everything he said and he said sorry two bishops we're discussing the moral decline in Britain and the first one said to the other I didn't sleep with my wife before I was born married did you and the other one said I don't know what was her maiden name and I my Isis spurted my yeah Bishop Bishop part of my wine on the table so why he's normally funny you know I like you and and then and then and then he said listen I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you what I think and I'm gonna you know take me a bit little it's the minute and then I gotta shut up my gonna drink and I'm gonna dance cuz that's just what I feel right now but I'll tell you what I'm here like just like this he said sometimes charlie none of us is perfect but I believe that we are perfectly loved it's the only reason why I agree to wear these silly clothes we are human we make mistakes that is our condition we get confused and it's messy and life is difficult but I believe that were loved and forgiveness and forgiving if we desire it and this is called grace charlie Jesus is all about grace and forgiveness and love and that's how change comes and yes there are moral implications and decisions we need to make but it's a gentle journey primarily a very quiet one and it's quite relationship and not an in club or an out club or an exclusive thing at all it's really all about love because guess what that said God is and it's cigarette instead and then he got up and on the dance floor - point was he did he said that and it was a wet fish in my face again not the lady in Zimbabwe and I went over to my friends on another table and I said see that guy dancing he just said this what do you think and they said don't you dare meander down that road charlie it's dangerous dangerous just leave it and I said yes alright you know calm down but I think he's interesting he said well you know just be moral just do moral just be kind my mum says just behind and lead a moral life isn't that good enough surely and in my loo I have a book by CS Lewis called Mia Christianity and I haven't read it but I stare at it a lot and because I know that it's you have those books you know they're good but you never quite read them but there are I've read about 1/3 of it off and on and there are bits of it that I have just underlined and sort of score with red bar and this is the bits of this Christianity that's what he says we'll teach you there in fact you cannot be good not for 24 hours on your own moral efforts and then it will teach you that even if you were you still wouldn't have achieved the purpose for which you were made mere morality is not the end of life you and may for something quite different from that and I love that because I think often we just get to the end of that think if you just do this it's enough and I saw Christianity is just doing that and it would be enough like it was Hoops the she failed all the time rules that made you feel guilty and rules actually if you look at them will never love you laws don't love you they just tell you what to do and ultimately you feel pretty guilty because you screw up and I think you know III think but you know but I'm talking to you really about this essence of love don't go like the tin like the depth of the beauty of it and I think we're terrible you're here I'm giving you talk and Christianity - about love and I'm yet I'm a hard-hearted cynical arrogant mug so I have a long way to go it's what I've tried to say and every human does and Gandhi who I love at she he said this I'm sure you've heard this quote is famous he said I like your Christ I don't like your Christians there nothing like your Christ and I would say that's chewing because it's probably impossible and such as His grace and love and if you've been judged one of the harshest Tyson in Deraa but Christianity was a ship volume of judgment I used to feel when I came near anything they look Christian if you've been judged for your lifestyle for anything from the church from Christians that here's my chance to say I'm really really sorry like it's ridiculous it's like it's no one's role to judge if a Christian has a job it's to love and forget that's it judgment isn't part of it and so I'm really really really really sorry and I think I I've joined this mouse can we have the mouse I've colored that mouse in I try to color in so it is all completely behind on it but apparently is you can see a couple can you see anything that comes out of there I think above the wheels but I failed point is the point is that to me was was Christian see if you colored between the lines like some really good nice not perfect people who prayed every day and never swore and if you did that he achieved that this is how it was presented you got this you achieved that because of how you were and you know how and yet Martin prom with that analogy is my everyday experience I'm probably on my way here I got really annoyed with a woman you know the way is that you know I was quite cross it's the next it's just this that's me on a good day wind behind me everything going all right maybe it's naive maybe after you know perfection personified anyway the great thing about that picture is for me what I've learned about this whole thing why I'm here standing talking to you it's a great relief and it's the greatest relief in the cosmos genuinely I really believe this is this that's it so we're messy yet loved wrecked yet loved profoundly deeply and that changes you and makes you less wrecked it makes you more kind by degree but no one really gets sir and the reason behind that is this the last little picture of skill is that and that's the cross and that's grace and that's freedom and that's you're free to be who you are and loved within that contacting you on the course you'll you'll learn about the cross on us I saw him for you with it but it's it's a beautiful thing and I'm just staring at my notes thinking they're actually quite boring so I'm skipping and I would say this lastly depth despite everything and all the Christians efforts to try to reveal what's inside the tin and that it looks really weird and I think I'm probably quite weird I think this building is quite weird and I went to a Alpha conference in New York and my friend Jaime who plays the guitar he was leading the worship for three days there okay where they sing and go god we love you know myself and he was saying and and he said to bikini plague percussion I said Rob vaguely he said can you go and buy a percussive instrument and help me because I'm just struggling here I saw his skull Bluff into mine and and I've only percussionist or I could find was this and it's banana but it makes it makes his son and so I stood this is true I said he stood on stage and they were a lot more of you they're like 4,000 people I stood on the edge of the stage and to three days for every song this reader and then the first one's going to scary ones were they all Julia and then they were slow smoky ones go you know and and so on and on and you know I I just did it because I was out see I felt that of a knob but I did it and and anyway I was at the end of the three days and I was leaving the building a lady came up to me promises she goes she goes excuse me excuse me I said yeah she can I just have a quick word and I said sure she said she said I just want to say a huge thank you to you for your worship and I said yeah you know we try no no really I mean it was pretty something I said she goes and I'd like to leave so I I just have one other question I said sure yes well why were you on stage for three days shaking a banana and she it wasn't miked so she saw this guy three days not an hour three days the conclusion she drew is if the Christians are with it is and all I would say to you is yeah they are but and I'll finish what I'm really saying now except if you if you can get beyond the banana yeah and if you can get to the tin and and and stay in grip your seats and and tolerate people that you don't necessarily like agree with and get to pull the lid off in your own way in your own time in your own heart and your own being with all the honest in all the mess and everything that you are and dig deep to find love and forgiveness it's the most priceless thing you will ever ever discover and I say that with every scope of my being as a cynic and someone who's still on the messy journey so I'd say just enjoy it and no question is a bad question the only tragedy is when you don't ask things you really want to ask in case they don't sound right but just ask them and be free thank you for listening

Channel: HTB Church

Views: 8,316

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Id: spXSNmYyvpE

Length: 29min 35sec (1775 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2016