(CP) Popular TV host and writer Bear Grylls recently defended his support for friend and actor Russell Brand in his newfound faith despite allegations of rape and sexual assault against the embattled comedian.
“Russell, you realize, [it was] a privilege to face beside him as he was getting baptized; that may be a life journey for him,” Grylls, 50, told the Australian edition of The Daily Telegraph.
“I actually wish him well and his lovely family,” Grylls added.
Grylls, an outspoken devout Christian and the son of a former Conservative member of the United Kingdom Parliament, was one in every of two friends who assisted in Brand’s baptism within the River Thames this past April.
The next week, Brand posted a picture on Instagram of himself embracing Grylls and his other friend immediately after his baptism, writing, “Me, Bear Grylls, The River Thames and in fact, The Holy Spirit.”
Brand’s baptism got here lower than a 12 months after a joint investigation by The Times, The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches reported on allegations from 4 women who accused Brand of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse.
Brand has denied the “very serious criminal allegations” and confessed that while he was “very, very promiscuous” up to now, his sexual encounters were “at all times consensual.”
Grylls became friends after Brand was a guest on Grylls’ popular reality TV show “Running Wild with Bear Grylls.”
“Let’s hope all of that stuff works itself out in a great way,” Grylls said of the allegations against Brand. “And let’s hope those accusations aren’t true, for everyone’s sake, but I at all times try to live without judging anyone.”
“I stand beside many individuals … that is a privilege, trying never to evaluate, at all times to like, at all times be kind, support people wherever they’re.”
After the image of Brand’s baptism went viral, Grylls stepped down from his position of chief scout of the U.K.-based Scout Association, in accordance with The Independent.
“Faith and spiritual moments in our lives are really personal,” Grylls told the Daily Mail on the time of Brand’s baptism. “But it’s a privilege to face beside anyone once they express a humble need for forgiveness and strength from above.”
“Friendships after we undergo tough times are price a lot,” he added.
Brand has remained vocal since his recent Christian conversion, saying during a recent conversation that he’s “within the business of serving Jesus.”
“In surrendering to Christ, there’s something extraordinary about saying there may be this man, one other man, entirely God, entirely man,” Brand said. “But through some obligatory, extraordinary, metaphysical act just beyond the sting of rational understanding got here the Creator of this simulation got here into the simulation and told us ‘Hello, I’m God. I’ve come here. Here are some virtues and values.'”
Brand referenced Twentieth-century writer and theologian C.S. Lewis, whose books The Problem of Pain and Mere Christianity he has publicly promoted.
“C.S. Lewis talks in regards to the ‘stoics era’ … to assume that one might have the option to do at all times what one can do sometimes. You know, there are occasions where it’s like … ‘I’m not within the business of Russell Brand anymore,” Brand said.
“I’m within the business of service. Serve Jesus Christ. And it’s such a robust concept that I’m held alive by it. But surely, this parasite nature grips me again, and I return to egotism. I return to wanting and longing and fear. And all of those limiting things.”
© The Christian Post
