The Eric Metaxas Show - Carrie Lloyd

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

What is necessary for nurturing noble virtues? Carrie Lloyd covers these important qualities in her book, "The Noble Renaissance: Reclaiming the Lost Virtue of Nobility," which is filled with humorous personal stories.

You know, they say it's a thin line between love and hate, but we're working every day to thicken that line, or at least make it a double, even triple line. Now here's your line jumping host, Eric Mataxis. Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. As you know, I'm Eric Mataxis, and this is the show. I get to talk to people about all kinds of things. That's why we call it the show about everything. Today, I have a new friend on the program. She comes very highly recommended by a number of friends. Her name is Carrie Lloyd. She has a new bookout called The Noble Reesist, sorry, the Noble Renaissance, reclaiming the lost virtue of nobility.

Carrie Lloyd, welcome to this program. Thanks for having me. It's lovely to be with you. It's lovely to have someone who doesn't have an American accent. Thank you just for that in advance. First of all, you're a little bit difficult to sum up. I know that you've been affiliated with the Bethel Church, the great Bill Johnson has written the forward to your book.

And you've been involved in ministry, but tell us your story. I'm always interested in people's stories. What is your background? Where did you grow up? And how did you get to where you are now? Right. I was raised by two Baptist ministers as an only child. My parents took 13 years just to try and have a kid.

Finally had me for them. And then, lo and behold, it was quite a religious kid. Until I was about 23, my father died very suddenly. lost a lot of people through tragedy in those sort of five years between 23 to 28 became a very staunch atheist. I was the, I was the atheist that would see you in a pub and argue you under the table until you finally decided to leave your belief with God as well. And then through one counter and another and many arguments with myself and getting fed up and feeling fed up, I finally came back, humbled myself and became a Christian in my late 20s.

I then, at that time I was working in the film industry. I was working in a, advertising, a very decadent industry. And so I'd seen a lot of stories, a lot of world parties, a lot of interesting choices of behaviour. And then finally came to a sort of a space in my life where I was done with advertising. I was done with the parties and the decadence. And wanted to have a little bit more of a meaningful existence to take my place in the world just one more time and try again for a second time to get a better job at doing what I was doing. So end up going on a sort of pilgrimage to America. I don't. always loved America. You guys allowed this lovely thing called emotional expression, which we don't

have in England very often. And so it was kind of my permission to finally become myself over in America and studied at Bethel Church for three years. They asked me to become a pastor after that. And I was a journalist by this point. I was writing books and articles for women's monthly's magazines and then finally into the Christian literature genre. But not many people wanted you to be sort of humorous essay writers at that point in the church. Say that again, not many people wanted what? How many people want

humorous essay writers in the church? So I'm trying to sort of add in a new genre. Yeah, I've noticed this. It can be a problem. So the new book then, the noble renaissance reclaiming the lost virtue of nobility. I haven't read the whole book,

but as a friend of mine said about one of my books, I've read parts of the book all the way through. It's utterly meaningless, isn't it? But so when you say the not overrecha counts we're claiming the loss of virtue of nobility, what are you talking about?

What do you mean by nobility? Well, I think so many of us can easily preach the gospel, whether we actually talk it is another question. And so my heart was, when I was an atheist, I was slowly watching through osmosis, through an observer.

The ones that really did believe in the gospel were the ones that were able to echo it in the times of conflict in times of strife in very difficult circumstances. When they were facing adversity, they responded just as you would hope a Christian would. And so I became obsessed with the concept of noble people, nobility and character,

and found that not much of the church did that. But when I did find them, I felt like there was an invitation of the presence of God. And so for years I was studying just as a little student somewhere in the corner writing in a book somewhere. my observations of noble characters. And so over the last few years, I've been researching noble people, both historical, famous people that have become known for being legends of nobility,

but also no neighbors, the Aunt Susan's, that make coffee and tea in your local Sunday church service. I was really just quite fascinating. The Aunt Susan's. The Aunt Susan. That's so funny. Well, let me ask you, though, when people hear someone with an English, accent talk about nobility. Naturally, they think about the British nobility, which is something else entirely, and yet not unrelated. I mean, it seems to me that the idea of noblese,

that there is a connection between some forms of nobility and nobility of character. That's really, roughly speaking, been lost. We don't speak, certainly in American culture, but in the West, We don't speak about honor or nobility in the way that we used to. So is that part of what you're trying to do is trying to resurrect that idea of nobility of character? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's what A.W. Tosa calls. I'm totally with you. Everyone thought this was about aristocracy.

Everyone thought this was about the monarchy or trying to be a nobleman like Daniel and in the Old Testament. But for me, it was more about the excellence of moral beings, especially, when we're in the current climate of calamity and chaos, how do we set ourselves apart through the beauty of moral character? And for me, I think that was the most attractive part, actually, of the gospel. Even though I came from a supernatural church

and they were all about the signs and wonders of God, I was more obsessed with the evangelical that was kind of the people off the stage as one of the on-stage preaching. So you grew up, where did you grow up? I grew up in Manchester in some of the Polish parts of Manchester and we moved around an awful lot

when I was younger. My father became the head of the leprosy mission which after many years of being a ministry he decided that he wanted to look after the outcast and lost the rejected. A lot of people have forgotten the concept of leprosy even though hundreds of thousands of people were still suffering with the disease across the world.

That's how he became the advisor to Princess Diana which interestingly enough actually is 23 years today that she passed away. in the car crash in Paris. So I've been thinking about, and she was probably the first person that I watched in the sense of noble gestures

and compassion beyond understanding. You just referred to something that most of my audience, and certainly I am unfamiliar with. You said your father was some kind of advisor to Princess Diana. Tell us about that. Yeah, well, she basically had done

a very controversial thing. She was actually on a trip in 1990. who won for the Red Cross. And Mother Teresa told her to go to a leprosy mission hospital or a leprosy hospital. If she wanted to attach herself to the most rejected people in the world, she should go and see leprosy patients. So Princess Diana took a detour,

took off her gloves in a ward one day and decided to start shaking hands with leprosy patients, which was incredibly controversial, especially in front of the British press. The next day on the front covers, it was don't do it, die, with her shaking hands of the leprosy patient. And, of course, my father at the time was the executive

director of the leprosy mission. So he called Kensington Palace to thank her for what she's done in five minutes they've been trying to do for 120 years, which was kill the stigma of leprosy. It's not as easy as you might think it is to get. And so she was sort of diverted on the phone to my father and they started having a conversation. She said, what else can I do? And he said, well, you could be our patron if you'd like to be. And so they developed a friendship and they travel with each other across the world an awful lot of times looking at the outcast and the rejected of leprosy patients. And what she did for that charity alone is it's still extraordinary and beyond what anyone

else has been able to do. My goodness. Well, most people don't know that leprosy is not very contagious. It's assumed that it is. And I've only recently heard that. I don't know where. I also would assume that if you were the daughter of your father, then you may have spent some time in the presence of the voice.

royals, if not just Lady Die. Was that the case? Yeah, the first time I met her, I was 11 years old, and I was very, very nervous, and she was very good at recognizing when they tried to either make a joke or make some kind of light out of the fact that we were terrified of seeing her. And so it was very cold on January in 1991, I think it was. I was 11 years of age, and I was the girl that I practiced for two hours to kertz to her. and loamahos she bent over when she came to see me and said,

I hope you're wearing your thermals on because it's very cold in here, to which I decided to share whether I was wearing my thermal vest, which apparently wasn't the protocol to do with the more than a moment. Hang on, Carrie. We're going to be right back. Folks, I'm talking to Carrie Lloyd. The book is The Noble Renaissance. Don't go away. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to the author of the Noble Renaissance,

reclaiming the lost virtue of nobility. Her name is Carrie Lloyd, and here she is. Carrie, you were just telling us about your first encounter with Princess Diana. For most people around the world, we can't imagine what it would be to meet any of the royals, so to speak. And in our own way, for some reason, we revered them for something. Did you see among them, we certainly see it with the queen, a kind of of devotion to actual nobility, to the idea of nobility that we don't, maybe we don't see it among the younger ones, or we haven't seen it among some generations of the younger royals. Well, if you look at some of that, I mean, our queen has gone, has now, I think she's gone through 12, 13 prime ministers now in the sense of her reign. She's, she's learned and sacrificed so much of her life for the sake of the crown and country. And I think actually, you know, the television series, whether people agree with it or not the crowd,

was actually a very good portrayal of the kind of sacrifice she had to face an author of her way through her journey. And of course, I think when we look at the concept of nobility, we think that it's a gift or something that you have a natural tendency to do. But if you look at how they train the royal family, they're taught how to be able. They're taught to make the harder choice when we'd rather go for the easier choice. And so looking at the rural family in particular, I think they actually did set up a very good example of how to navigate the harder choices versus the easiest choices, which cause more fruit for their country than what it might be for their own personal vendetties. But having said that, it does come at a cost, so not everyone wants to make that cost happen. And were you or are you and your friends disappointed that Prince Harry decided to do what he did? It was kind of a shock.

Maybe it was a particular shock for me just because I had finished essentially binge-watching three seasons of the crown. And I had an appreciation for what it is to stand in that line and to serve one's country and there's something beautiful and noble about it. Were you all disappointed or does it make sense that he might want to have escaped the glare?

I mean, I can understand on a personal level, you know, even my own folks. were bugged at home when Diana was connected to us. We had to be very careful of privacy of the haunting and the paparazzi. You know, Dad's charity is one of the last six charities that she had. So we understood her need for going more and more private. We understood her need to get some of her own life back after the most high-profile marriage in the world.

However, the removal or the retirement, should we say, of Harry and Meghan didn't make any sense to me in the sense of security. When you're a member of the royal family, you have higher amounts of security than if you're just a celebrity couple. And one of the reasons, one of the dangers I think of Diana's death alone was the fact that she had had her title removed to her, much like Harry and Megan have faced. And with the removal of the title means you don't have as much governmental support or aid or security. And that's what's made me quite nervous about those two after their time. The solid part for me was really how it was handled publicly

and how it hadn't been dealt with behind closed doors in a way that I think the Queen and the family would have really appreciated. Yeah. Having said that, we don't know what we're going to go behind closed doors. It's, well, I have to say that I didn't know what I would think of the crown and it really revolutionized my view

of what is possible with TV, frankly. I think it was, it's one of the most. magnificent TV creations ever. I've never seen anything quite like it. So I don't even know, is there going to be a fourth season soon? I know that the boys, I know that Prince Harry and Prince William did not want a third or fourth series, didn't want a fifth series. They wanted to stop at Series 2, mainly because it's about to be more about their mother.

Yeah. So, because I... They haven't filmed it? I thought that they had filmed it was coming out in September. September? I don't know. I think so. I'm not sure of the release date. I mean, it took a long time between series two and three, so I'm delighted to see that they are carrying on. I'm asking you this question. This is very funny. Let's go back to something more substantive. What do you think of the Sopranos? Just kidding. Let's talk about your book, The Noble Renaissance. Of all the

things about which you could have written, why did you write about what you call reclaiming the virtue of nobility. I think it was because it was the one thing that still catches my breath. When I see people forgive the unforgivable, when I see them respond with such grace and mercy, and in a moment that they could feel rewarding of revenge on some level, when I see people make extraordinary amounts of sacrifice for the sake of justice, when I see people love the rejected and the outcasts.

It always caught my breath. And any story that was related to anything in regards to nobility was the thing that actually just drew me more and more closer to the understanding of the character of God. And so I felt like for me, it was a study of the subject made me understand more of the character of who God is and what he was trying to convey through the incarnation of Christ. So if I look more and more and more ability, the more and more I start to understand in my tiny mind, the more I get to understand who Christ was. And one of the VPs of Harper Collins was like,

we've done many books over the years about the gospel. We don't understand how we missed this whole concept of nobility. And it's true if you read back through the gospel and look at nobility just in itself, that's where some of the most miraculous things take place. I mean, I would say because of political correctness, really, nobility is thought of, you know, it's like the patriarchy. We just, we don't like fathers, we don't like kings anymore.

You know, we've moved on to something more egalitarian. I think C.S. Lewis did the best job of anyone I can think of, of expressing the nobility of nobility. I mean, the idea that he has these four pevency kids, you know, become princes and princesses. One of them becomes a queen, doesn't she? Does Lucy become a queen? I don't remember. But it's interesting that he had that ability to do that in fiction. And we don't really have anyone like Lewis these days.

But his Narnia book seemed to me to do the best job of conveying in fiction what I think are the ideas you convey in your book. Well, also, Lewis actually gave up on apologetics because he would get so slayed and tortured by so many critics. He gave up and decided to write more in the sense of fiction, which is a shame really because some of his apologetics works were some of the most phenomenal pieces I think that have ever been written. It's funny actually because his house, the kilns where he used to live,

I wrote my first and second book in the lounge that he used to write in. And I'm not joking, the kind of revelation in that house is extraordinary. I think I was up in about three or four in the morning writing in the same house. There's something on his house when he's writing a revelation. break in or did they know you're I broke in and then tested to see how noble people would be in their response that's no that is extraordinary was that through the CS Lewis Foundation that's right so I actually want to do little private tools and I just asked

is anyone using this room for the next two nights and if so can I pay to be here and we can pretend that I'm an Oxford scholar because they actually allow Oxford scholars to stay there yeah for sort of term residency so they didn't have many people there I've been there many times I filmed a CS Lewis documentary there and the first time I ever ate Turkish delight was in that kitchen

and I'm not kidding so it's but Lewis Lewis manages I think to convey these ideas of nobility so beautifully that you know the PC crowd looks at him

scans but he does the best job of talking about nobility. Anyway, I didn't want to get off on him. But so in your book, what are some of the things that you do talk about in your book being titled The Noble Renaissance? I kind of look at seven continuous patterns that I would see. When I was studying noble people, people that we believe to be noble over history, the William Wilberforce's, the Mother Teresa's. I was looking at the continual patterns of noble characters and what would these sort of virtues that they all carried. And so I found this kind of carousel of about seven different virtues that all create the

noble character. You can't have one without the other, which is why there's so few people that are actually noble. And I have to try and write this book, being very clear that I'm a student, not an expert of this subject, because I'm still very much learning and very much the beginning of this. Would you describe yourself as openly ignoble? Yes, I think so, until told otherwise. I just wanted to be, wanted to be sure that you would admit that. No, but it is a interesting because I've written about heroes, many of whom express these characteristics. You just mentioned two of them, Wilburst and Mother Teresa. And people often, they seem to worry when they read about these people because they think, oh, I can never possibly live up to that. And you realize,

well, that's the point is that these were normal people and you can live up to it, that God calls you to step into this and he'll help you. When we come back, we'll get into more specifics. I'm talking to Carrie Lloyd, who's in Mary Old England. I'm, of course, in less merry New York. We'll be right back. Folks, I'm talking to Carrie Lloyd. She has a new book called The Noble Renaissance with a forward by Bill Johnson. Carrie, I was just with Bill Johnson in California recently. I love that man, and I'm going to be speaking at a conference. They're doing, I guess it's next week. and I'm going to be preaching there in Bethel, I think in November. So I just love them.

What was it that led you to spend three years in Reading, California? Yeah, great question. Considering I was in some very cosmopolitan cities like London, it was going to take a miracle on some level to go to Reading, California, of all places. And I wouldn't be living there if I hadn't been for the church, quite frankly, just, but I'd never seen anything quite like it. I'd never really encountered miracles.

I'd never seen the glory cloud. I'd never seen these things that people talk about. But honestly, it was the kindness and a little taster of heaven in the sense of how they conducted honor and how they were kind to each other. Despite what you might find on Google, I actually found them to be some of the most kind and tender-hearted people that I'd ever met.

And so I would do a year, and then that was all I was going to do. And then I just kept on opening essentially, Andorra's box to discovering more and more of the brilliance of our Lord and the power of kingdom mindsets when we're actually just doing our own thing. And so yeah, Bill is, Bill is absolutely being actually, Bill has been a great, what do I, how do I call it a case study on the, on noble character because I think he reflected it an awful lot in my life. And I was very lucky to watch him up close in person with his family and how he navigated his daily, daily

encounters with nobility. I heard him preach at a Cheyahn conference recently, and he's the only word you can really use is profound. He's remarkably consistently profound in what he says. It's just amazing. But your book, The Noble Renaissance, you said that there are seven qualities. What is it? I'm not quite quite sure. Seven aspects. Seven virtues. Yeah. So basically sort of like everything from righteousness, how we respond to injustice, perseverance, integrity, humility, self-sacrifice, courage, wisdom. Facing pain, actually, was one of the things that I felt was very important to add into the noble character.

If we don't know how to face pain or process it, then we actually normally respond out of a sense of pain and therefore that's where we start causing hurt to other people. So how do we process pain, I think, is one of the most important parts of the book. and the irony There's no noun It wouldn't be forbearance It's forbearance more like patience I know I was wondering that

But patients didn't necessarily Hit the nail on the head In the sense of for me It's an intentional choice of Pyrrhosis pain With an executive Intention to get wisdom on that pain If I look at how Forbearance is that

Well it could be It could be It didn't come to mind. I mean, I wish I'd spoken to you a year ago. Maybe that could have been the title of that chapter. I always say that. So sad. No, so you, so there are seven virtues.

And let's talk about some of them because this is very important. In the church, we often don't talk about these things because we immediately associate them with works, righteousness, which is idiotic, but that's what people do. So let's talk about some of these things. Yeah. I mean, the first chapter, the irony, was that the book came out on Blackout Tuesday at 2nd of June when we were all putting Instagram black tiles up in the name of injustice and racism in America.

And the very first line of my book says it was witnessed in the kneeling of Dr. Martin Luther King on Selma Bridge. And of course, I'd written this a year and a half ago. I didn't even imagine that we would be facing what we're facing right now in America. So it's looking at how do we lift up the other side when all. we want to do is tear it down. How do we find what I believe the gospel kind of justices, which is the lifting up of the other side. Just to be clear, Antifa and the BLM movement are tearing down. It's actually very sad that what began as peaceful protests has been hijacked in this country,

and I talk about it all the time. But when we look back to folks like Dr. King and Rosa Parks and so many others, they had an unbelievable dignity to them. It's undeniable. Jackie Robinson's another one I wrote about, but that dignity and that ability to withstand whatever was coming against them, knowing that it would have been easier in a way to tear things down and that they had no voices around them calling them to tear things down. These are the people effectively who build civilization. So what did you call that virtue? I called it, we called it righteousness. I mean, the title of the chapter was really,

we called it past the milk because it was all about, we just look at some historical counts where, you know, England got really mad at Margaret Thatcher because she had taken away our milk at the ages of sort of 5 to 11. And so we, and then everyone was started to accuse her of trying to cause rickets and the early children of the school. That was one of her goals, one of her secret goals, yeah.

Yeah, it was a plan all along. And, of course, she was just trying to make some budget cuts. But I sort of look at that as a way about us crying over spilled milk. And equally, being understanding, I agree, it's certain injustices in the world. But how we respond to them is really key. Because if you look at the likes of William Wilberforce and Dr. Martin Luther King, they are very tactful in how they respond to injustice. And they're taking on the hit to themselves,

rather than causing more and more pain as we go along was probably the most profound method and strategy that actually changed the game. And sometimes it breaks by heart how we've forgotten some of those justies. That's a big one. All right, we're going to go to another break. Folks, I'm talking to Carrie Lloyd. The book is The Noble Renaissance.

We'll be right back. I tell you, chum, it's time to come blow your horn. Make like a Mr. Mum. And you're a zero. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Carrie Lloyd. She's in England, and I'm not. Carrie, you live in England, don't you?

I do. I actually live between California and here, so I have a heart for both. You live in California and England. That means you live in New York. I live in New York, so I could say that I live between California and England as well. We should get together. Honestly, you do live in England, but you do travel to Redding, California. Do you do that often?

That sounds exhausting. It is. I like trying to, I like to pretend that I'm the bridge between both countries and we're, that's why we're not at war with each other. That's right. That's right. Thank you so much, by the way, for your sacrifice. You're welcome. Anytime.

It's, we have a common friend in Ken Fish. That's how I first heard of you. But I want to talk about some of these. You mentioned, for example, Wolverforce. I know a lot about Wilberforce having written about him, but people in this day and age, particularly right now, they don't seem to aspire to that kind of leadership. I argue in my book on him that because of his truly Christian leadership, he averted England going down the path of France,

that the bloody revolution in France did not happen in England because of his genuinely self-sacrificial Christian leadership. What do you say about Wilberforce? Well, I think, I mean, he very much lived his community. convictions and you know he gave up gambling when he saw how heartbreaking it was for the people that were losing against him he established the the animal cruelty charity and I think owned a sort of crow that didn't fly like everything in his life was was filled with compassion and a heart for those that didn't have a voice and I think with his privilege and favor he wanted to be

able to help them. You just used the term the crow that didn't fly. Is that what you said? He had an actual pet crow that couldn't fly. How did I not know that? I wrote a book on the guy. I think your facts are off. My mother told me that, but she told me many things.

That is amazing. I'd like to add that to the next edition of my book. But Wilberforce was an extraordinary figure, and he said he wanted to make goodness fashionable. And of course, it sounds like what you're about. I hope to be about that. Goodness is not really fashionable in the West. Being bad is fashionable. So when people say that things are bad now, I often say, look at the time of Wolverford's and look at the effect that he had. And he was one person. It felt like some of the strategies he had was he would actually take those that were influential and powerful and almost put their face in the dirt to recognize what they were

causing the thing. He actually wanted to create a sense of conviction, not to shame people, but for them to recognize the ignorance of what we were carrying in our own favor or in our own class of favoritism, if that makes sense. I feel one of the things that was very deeply compelling was his sense of self-sacrifice. He didn't have to do all of these things. He could have just sat back in a nice large house in England and just enjoyed his heritage, but he felt there was almost a sort of ethereal sense of gratitude with his life and therefore it should be used for the sake of other people. And my concern that we have now is that we've forgotten that in exchange for significance, influential impact and making a good name for ourselves.

I don't think he ever went on a journey of trying to create a good name for himself. He just saw a problem and he wanted to try and find a solution. And the best leaders in the world, I think, are the ones that find solutions to big problems. Well, I think you're exactly right. And, you know, I get the idea that he could have easily been prime minister, but because of his extremely principled stands on many things, that wasn't possible. But he didn't care because he knew that he wanted to serve God and all that he did. Who else do you write about in the Noble Renaissance? I do look a little bit at Mother Teresa, mainly on her gift of integrity. She's quite a bossy little thing.

My father met her once. She was quite, even for her height, she was quite an extraordinary vocal in her thoughts and her ways. But it's very challenging, very, very confrontive. I think she must have been an age or something on the innogram. But she had this brilliant ability to discern when people were doing the right things for the right reason. And if they weren't through it, if they were doing the right things for the wrong reasons, then she was certainly very challenging on it. So I use different stories in there. I like

to teach through stories really. It's the best way for me to be able to explain and memorize it myself. And Mother's Razor had some brilliant ways of navigating those that were, there was this one story of this particular company that had taken this sort of ginormous check to her home for the destitute and dying and they're queuing up with film cameras and they're getting ready for the big show. And she used to take donations every Tuesday to her altar and just pass them and thank everyone in the line. And so this one particular corporation is ready to go. And I'd say hand over this huge check.

She just puts the check on the altar and goes next. And the next thing you realize is they are, sorry, you said thank you to everyone else in this this year. This is a substantial amounts of money. Did you not want to sort of thank them? She said for as long as that camera's on, I'm not saying thank you and you're here for all the wrong reasons. So she's quite challenging in people's own integrity.

And equally, no one could be. argue with that because of the freedom of how work and what she was doing. I have to say that she spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. in the 90s. And I watched many speeches because I was asked to speak in 2012, and they were all really boring, anodyne, bipartisan speeches until I watched hers. And it was her speech that inspired me to say some things that I said in my speech, that I said in my speech, she has, she had an authority that was amazing. She really did speak

with an extraordinary moral authority. Some people try to characterize it as though she was trying to shame the Clintons. And I don't, I don't think she was. I think that when you speak with that kind of moral authority, people become ashamed sometimes because they're convicted. But yeah, she was a character. Let's, let's, we'll leave it at that. Okay, so who else do we talk about in the book. Gosh. I think, I mean, actually, I do actually look at quite a few no-nameers, because I think exactly what you're saying earlier, everyone thinks you should do a gift or an anointe

or an implantation you're given, or it's a sort of handed down baton to the royal family in which you carry on the battle of nobility. And I actually wanted to try and find the no-nambors that just chose to make hard decisions and shows to take on the harder path for the sake of integrity and ability. And so there are quite a few people in that book that I talk about that you wouldn't necessarily know about. I do talk about Mary Schleser and Gladys Aylwood, certain missionaries. There's a woman called Helen Roseveer, just in the sense of her courage and living in the Congo, who was raped for about five months in the 60s.

Folks, I'm talking to Carrie Lloyd. We'll be right back. Folks, I'm talking to the author of the Noble Renaissance. It's a book. Her name is Kerry Lloyd. Carey. What is the sort of takeaway? He's just got a few minutes. left. If I think about all the years that I've been trying to study this subject, if I ask myself the question, what's the noble choice? I come out with a much better answer, surprisingly than the question, what would Jesus do? Which is what we all used to. I'm sure you had one too, the bracelet that we all used to wear around our rest to remind us what would Jesus do. If I ask, what's the noble choice, I'm more likely to do, I think, what Jesus would

do, because then there's less room for miscontextextualization. and less free for self-dustification. Miscontextualization. That's a problem Christians have, isn't it? They kind of think that, well, here's what Jesus would do. He would wear a robe and grow a beard and walk around the streets. And that's not really necessarily what we're called to do. So what is the noble thing?

But I hope you're not having bracelets made up, are you? No, I didn't go that far. I didn't think it was necessary. I just haven't sort of imprinted in my brain somewhere. But it's certainly a very good question when I'm faced with adversity and I'm faced with conflict or I'm faced with, you know, wanting to throw some chocolate cake in someone's face rather and go, actually, what's the noble choice in this one? Well, it's important, I think, that we understand that what you're talking about, you mentioned

it with Wolverford Force. One pays a price. In other words, it's what Jesus did. He says, I will take the blame. I will take the pain. and so that you don't have to. And that's what we do when we forgive someone when we say, God bless you when we could have said something less charitable.

We're willing to do that. And of course, theologically, the reason we ought to be willing to do that is because the Lord has given us so much. It's like if you have billions of dollars, you don't think twice about saying, I'll let the $2 go. That's really the economy of it.

That's agape love. But first, we have to know. that we are loved. First, we have to be filled up with God's love. And so I think a lot of people aren't doing that. And I think since you're a Bethel person, worship has a lot to do with that, actually. That if you're not really worshipping God, it's hard to get filled up with his love. And even just having honest conversations, I think sometimes we perform our way through the gospel. I think you perform our way even through our relationship with God. And I think the more honest we have conversations with God, the more likely we are to get wisdom and therefore this abundance of love.

that we encounter when we have honest conversations with the Lord. And so that's why processing pain I felt was so important because we actually get incredible amounts of love that we won't be able to get, even from the person we're trying to forgive, that there is this overwhelming overflow that starts to occur when you actually bring those conversations to the Lord. They can't necessarily be met by even a sorry from somebody else.

When we are able to lift up people in injustice is because we are so fully loved and are not seeking identity by the approval of other people. Well, Carrie, as we close, I just want to say since I know you come from the Bethel background, it just means a lot to me that you didn't wave a flag or do any kind of dancing kind of thing with silk or blow the show far. I just want to say thank you very much for not doing anything like that, because we're very reserved in New York and we don't go for that kind of,

those kind of histrionics and worship. or much more buttoned up, you know, what I mean. I do have a chauffeur just under my table, but I wanted to take... So far, we've all got to showfar someplace around here. But so right now, where do you go to church? Is there a Bethel-type church in London? There are a few alumni from Bethel. I know that Hackney Church in London,

they're just planting a new one here. Holy Trinity Bruncton was my church in London. And when I'm in California or in Los Angeles, Lee's one LA, which is T.D. Jakes' daughter, Sarah Jake's Roberts, and at Toro Roberts, I go to their church. So I try and keep it diverse and mix it up. So I stay humble. And where do you give your tides, sister? Just kidding. You don't answer that question. Don't answer that question. What news to me?

I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry we're out of time, but honestly, it's so good to meet you, Carrie, and to hear your heart and to know that you have this new bookout. folks. It's called the Noble Renaissance with a forward by Bill Johnson, the subtitle, We're Claiming the Lost Virtue of Nobility. Carrie Lloyd, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.