Pints With Aquinas - A New Era Of Apologetics, Ecumenism, and Arguments for Faith (Gavin Ortlund)

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Gavin Ortlund is a pastor, author, speaker, and Christian apologist known for his deep theological insights and commitment to gospel assurance. As the President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville, he has authored several books and numerous articles, making significant contributions to contemporary Christian thought He is also a dedicated family man, married to Esther, with five children. 🍺 Get episodes a week early, 🍺 score a free PWA beer stein, and 🍺 enjoy exclusive streams with me! Become an annual supporter at https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors: Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/matt Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Strive21: https://strive21.com/matt 💻 Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 Store: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com/

How do you respond to that? Is that? What are you doing there? Are you? Are you like, oh, cringing? Yes, it's a little bit of a cringe of, oh, yeah, yeah, no, yeah. A lot of evangelical churches have become a little tiny rock concert of worship songs and a TED talk. That's a sermon. It's very culturally thin. You

You just say whenever we're good Yeah, okay So this is it Gavin Orland good to have you great to be here back. Yeah, this is fun. Yeah, this is great So I was in Italy recently and I saw on your social media that you were in Italy. Mm-hmm So it was wonderful just to hang out yeah I enjoyed it did you get so I posted that picture of you and me outside of st. Peter's Gavin has a massive announcement he's still not becoming Catholic did you get any I don't know rumblings no no your followers are very gracious all the comments are very kind and no it's great to have I mean that's what I was thinking about coming here it's great to

have friendship whenever we can and just a positive relationship across different traditions. Yeah. Yeah, you and I just found out that we were born the same year. You're probably looking at me being like, like the hell am I that old?

But yes you are. Yeah, yeah, 83 babies. I don't know if you feel this. I feel my aging and it's a strange thing. I gave a talk to law students two nights ago and I was Referencing movies all three of the movies. I referenced none of them No one in the room had seen them or heard of that like what what were the movies contact?

Oh, yeah, okay contact. It's not I mean, it's not the most popular movie. It's not that bad. It's a little nerdy maybe, but it's a great movie. It is, yeah. You know, 1990s, Matthew McConaughey. Yep. No one had heard of this movie and I thought- Jodie Foster? Jodie Foster, yeah.

Great book as well, Carl Sagan. And no one had heard of it. Okay. I thought, oh man, I'm getting old. I'm that old guy now talking about the movies back in his day. But you said you referenced three. Trying to remember the other- So like three strikes. You said you referenced three. Trying to remember the other. So like three strikes.

Yeah, I won't be able to remember them all. I remember realizing that people hadn't heard of Braveheart. Because Braveheart was the movie that you would talk about at men's conferences and men's talks. Right. And then there came a point where people were like, I don't know. I know it's strange. Yeah, in my 40s now. And the the older I get the faster the years go by

and then as we've been talking about the world keeps changing. So it's fascinating to look out and say, okay, how do I spend my life now trying to help? And yeah, it's a strange, it feels like a different world from the 1990s. I wonder if it's like the stage we're in right now because there's kind of like this uptick You're born you go to school you you have these aspirations You get married you get a career You can take care of them and that's usually when the midlife crisis happens because it's like where's the adventure? Everything's too stable. I want to upset everything just so I can do something wild

but I wonder if this experience that we're going through of like kind of feeling like the world is getting, I feel like the world's getting away from me and I don't understand it anymore. But I wonder if that, is that what every generation felt? I know there's always different particulars. Or do you think maybe this is very new given how fast technology is advancing?

Yeah, yeah. I'll be curious for your thoughts about this I just asked someone and I asked people this a lot who are older than I am Have you ever seen a time quite like right now and the last person I asked that question to is a retired minister He's probably in his 70s and he said he's never seen a time like now. So What sense what does he mean? I? Think he was referring we were just talking generally about the culture and polarization the increase of extremism The loss of a sense of stability. It's actually hard for me to communicate exactly what it is

It's kind of a feeling you can look at little particulars, but then there's this general sense I feel it through the comments I get on my channel a lot just many young men what it is, it's kind of a feeling. You can look at little particulars, but then there's this general sense. I feel it through the comments I get on my channel a lot, just many young men who feel a bit listless, feel a bit lost, feel a bit unmoored, and they're just trying to find something stable, and everything feels like it's in flux. And it didn't feel like that when I was growing up, but that's the same question I have then as well. Does everyone feel this at a certain point in their life? But as I listen to others of different ages, it does feel like some things are really unique right now. So even the young people are experiencing that flux like you might be. It's not that because of your age and stage of life,

you're experiencing something that they're not. You get the sense that people of different generations are feeling the same thing? That's my sense, and you know, it's just my view from the cheap seats, I guess. I asked my dad about this a lot, my dad just turned 75, and he talks about the late 60s as a time where there was a lot of tumult, assassinations, you know, great anxiety, but I think I recall him saying that right now feels more intense than that and it you know it honestly concerns me in the trajectory of it. It doesn't seem like what's generating the anxiety right now is something that is short-lived. So far as I can tell it's technological changes,

how communication and information are shared, and it seems like unless we make changes that won't necessarily automatically get better on its own. So I'm concerned. I have five young kids. I think about what will it be like for them as teenagers. Yeah, it's just interesting to think about, and then you say, okay, what can we do about it? You know? Well, even from a psychological point of view, it seems to make sense that faith can really ground you. So, if your children love Jesus Christ and they read the scriptures and they worship Him, they surrender their life to Him, they trust in His providence, then at least that

is an anchor into something ontologically stable while the world shifts. I think there's that old Carthusian motto that said, the cross stands while the world turns, or the cross remains still while the world turns. But I can't imagine just drifting through modernity without an anchor and anything stable right now. It seems like you just get tossed to and fro from one ideology to the next.

I feel like I've lived long enough that I've experienced when things have been in vogue and in the middle of it, it feels like this is gonna be the thing forever. So I remember, you know, kind of being agnostic and into sort of different Eastern spiritualities in my teens that felt like the new cool thing that was very loud.

I think there was a while, yeah, when atheism just felt like, you know, back in 2000 and what, seven, eight, nine, 12, you know, around that time, the new atheist thing, that just felt like this is the new thing that's not going away. There were all those memes about idiot Christians and evolution doing away with them. And then I remember feeling a time

where I'm like Catholicism is so attractive, and now I feel, at least from my cheap seats, that orthodoxy is the new thing. I don't know if you see that from your Protestant world, but it's like, this has got great curb appeal, you know, because you've got the tradition, without the papacy, and without some of the Catholic particulars. It's weird to live long enough to realize, okay, I can't be just jumping about to whatever is in vogue, because there's a pull of what's in vogue. I don't know if you've fixed your hands, I feel like being drawn into different orbits. Anyway. Yeah, no. Yeah, and that all tracks with me, and what I... the one sort of hope that I have is what I want to give my life to, and that all tracks with me. And the one sort of hope that I have is what I want to give my life to,

and that's the re-Christianization of our culture. Whatever I can do to spend myself. It's actually joyful and freeing to think, okay, we face these strange times. So you give yourself to it, and you say, use me, God, however you can, to help. If I can do anything, and the one thing that is happy is to think it seems like in that instability there are people who are asking deeper questions,

and I do think there's an open door for young men, for example, who are looking for something stable. Just this comes off of your first point of if you don't have a sense of groundedness in your faith, what do you really have? And I think we feel that more right now. I sense that as I talk to people, this sense of there's a real hunger for roots, a real hunger for something of substance that I can really base my life on. And of course, I think that gives us an opportunity to tell people of Christ. So, you know, I suppose there's a positive side in that way of you might have an open door to... but it's a challenging question. How do

we sort of sow seeds that will slow down secularism and bear fruit over the long haul? And it's also challenging, I mean, doing evangelism right now, that also feels different than the 1990s. You could assume some Christian categories to some extent in many conversations a few decades ago. It seems like today even the basic, you know, you might think of sharing the gospel with someone sometimes as just connecting dots. They might, this person might already have a sense of God, they might already have a sense of guilt and needing forgiveness, but it's harder if, and so you're connecting the dots, you're helping them see what that means for having faith in Christ. It's harder if the dots aren't there, and you have to sort of start further back and begin at

the very, at the very base of just starting with the idea of God, the idea of accountability, the idea of I'm not self-made and the deepest thing and the greatest thing isn't to be authentic to myself. We kind of need to start way back at that point, it feels like, with most people today. Yeah, I go back and forth between sort of being afraid of the challenge but then being excited about it because it is daunting. I mean as a father, you know, I don't, I think it's okay to admit we can feel anxiety ourselves about where the world is at,

but I try not to, I also don't want to live in fear, so then you say, okay, you know, you think of church history and what Christians have faced in other times. And then we would feel pretty pathetic if we felt sorry for ourselves just because we happen to be living in a time where Christianity is waning a bit. And you see these, I mean, one of the times I've studied is Christianity going into Scandinavia. And the Vikings, they were not nice people. And the, the particular kinds of suffering and persecution, and I can't talk about it too long because I get emotional whenever I talk about persecution, something about it strikes me, but the particular kinds of torture that these Christian missionaries in like the

ninth century, 10th century faced when they went into that culture. It's very inspiring and it really puts things in perspective. So if we ever start feeling sorry for ourselves, a little bit of church history can help us. Yeah. It's interesting what you say about trying to kind of anchor ourselves to some heritage and that there is this desire for tradition in a way that there probably wasn't when you and I were teenagers. It felt like we were all trying to overthrow tradition, right?

Question authority, disrespect teachers, disrespect the police. But even, like you think of the kind of American conservative movement, there's this real desire to kind of go back to that, to go back to our founding fathers. Even that, and that doesn't mean it's a bad thing, just because it's this desire to go back. It's just that, yeah, maybe we see the chaos of the moment and we go, no, this is not doing it for me. We need to go back further into the wisdom of the past. Yeah. Yeah, and I have more questions than answers about all of this, but it is fun to talk and it is refreshing to just come together and just think about it like a strategic missionary.

You know, so I get great inspiration from the Apostle Paul in the Book of Acts and just his wisdom of when he's in different contexts, the way he will communicate with people, and he's wise in how he... You know, so just to give an example, I don't mean to dive too deep into the Bible and theology here, but in some of his speeches, he just quotes from the Old Testament, it says, these scriptures are fulfilled, Jesus is the Messiah, because he's speaking to a Jewish context. That felt like a little bit more like evangelism, at least in most places in like the 1950s, if not a little bit

maybe the 1990s, though even there we see changes. But now it feels like more of an Acts 17 moment. And Acts 17, of course, he's in Athens, and I love that speech. I think about it all the time. Tell us why. Well, so he starts way far back. He starts with the basic idea that there's a God and that we are creatures. He made us. He doesn't live in temples. I love the fact that he quotes their poets. There are even people who think that Paul failed to preach the gospel in that passage. And I always think... You mean people who read the Scriptures now or people back then?

I'm referring to biblical commentaries. Ah, oh I see, yeah. That are so maybe, you know, perhaps just too systematic in their understanding of what the gospel is that they would say in Paul's speech in Athens, he didn't quite get to the gospel yet, and he didn't go far enough. And I always think if we're critiquing the Apostle Paul, we probably should slow down and let him instruct us about what is the gospel message. But it

is so different, though. You can understand how someone might say, wow, this is changing the categories, because he basically just talks about God, talks about idolatry, and then he talks about the resurrection of Christ and the need for repentance. But he doesn't go into the same sort of categories that he does in these other speeches. And I just think it inspires me because I think people around us right now need to hear what is actually an offensive and bracing message, namely they are creatures, they are not self-made, someone made them, this person who made them loves them, but you are not just free to

invent yourself. And that's countercultural right now. You know, the idea that we will give an account of our lives to God. That basic message, I think if we're being faithful to the gospel, people will hear us and they'll feel this sense of, whoa, you just stepped on my toes a little bit. That doesn't just come in easily to my worldview already. There will be friction points, and I think this basic idea of accountability to God, I am a creature, I am not God, I do not determine my life, I do not have the answers to find happiness or righteousness on my own, and the basic gospel

appeal of submission to God. It's so basic, but I do think actually that's a place we need to start with a lot of people, for whom we cannot assume that that is a category in their thinking and it will be offensive at times, but I also think it's hopeful because many people right now are so deep. I actually believe this. A lot of people are in despair. Depression and anxiety is high, but even one step beyond the depression and anxiety, and I don't want to project this too much out there, but I do sense this a bit. There are people who are feeling without hope at all. They have nothing transcendent to live for. They feel a flatness and a barrenness. 100%. Prodigal son type feelings, you know, you've gone off and squandered all your money. But there's no father to return to. Yes. Just suicide pods, Netflix and porn.

Yeah. Yeah. And so then we say that's the happy news, there is a father to return to. But that starts with the return, that starts with recognizing, you know, a sense of, I'm accountable to this person, I need to ask for his forgiveness, and we have the happy task of telling people he is kind and he will forgive you, but the very call to repentance itself is countercultural. So, you know, it's interesting, but for those who are in the prodigal son state, I think some people will experience that, even though it's bracing, as like a light in the darkness. It's like, ah, freedom from self. – Do you think the concept of... I think it's obvious that the concept of God has been so

mocked, cartoonized, if that's a word, that a lot of people just cannot take God seriously. I think we'd be more open, many people it seems to me, would be more open to the idea that we are characters in a video game. You know, this is all virtual reality. If someone could come in here and kind of make that case Because it sounds sciency. I think a lot people would be like wow And would feel yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this could be true Yeah, but you come in and talk about God and heaven and clouds and angels and things like this and it just sounds silly

Oh, how do we reverse that? Mm-hmm. Well, how have you reversed that when you've sought to evangelize? This is so interesting. I did have a conversation with a friend, a philosopher friend once, who helped me understand how common a sort of simulation hypothesis theory is right now, which is kind of related to some of the things you're saying. And it makes me think of C.S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy, as his defenses are getting broken down as he's slowly coming to just be a theist before he becomes a Christian. And there's some passage in there which I won't get exactly right, but he's talking about how one fights for one's remaining comforts, and he's talking about calling God Spirit

rather than God, capital S Spirit. And you know, but the defenses are sort of getting broken down to the point where finally he's able to just sort of acknowledge, okay, God, you exist, your personal God. So you know, this good question is kind of along that process of getting to theism specifically. I don't have great wisdom about this. I do sense the same challenge. I think there's great spiritual openness more so than there's necessarily openness to the idea of the Christian God who is holy, for example, who is a moral lawgiver. You know, these things are not necessarily popular.

So I think the only thing I know how to do, I'm actually not a great evangelist. I would say I'm naturally not skilled at evangelism. Evangelism meaning sharing our faith. One-on-one is what we mean or? Well, I probably do a little better actually when I'm in front of a larger group of people than one-on-one. Neither evangelism per se, I just don't think is my primary gifting, but I've worked really hard at it, and so I would say through hard work I've come up to like maybe mediocre. And the one thing that I find usually doesn't go

wrong when I'm in the middle of a conversation is trying to go straight to Jesus and try to give my friend, whoever it may be, as fully orbed a portrait I can of the character of Christ, who is absolutely enthralling, because he is far more morally intense than we might have the sense. I mean, he's stern. With the Pharisees. His indignation is real. He's not a pushover. He's tough. Yeah, imagine if... I mean, we've heard the phrase whitewash tombs so often that we may not hear it anymore. Imagine if Christ never said anything like that, and then here on today's show you pointed at me and said

something like that. People would be like, what the hell? Why would he say that? He's saying he's dead inside and he just tries to appear righteous You know, but that's a pretty yeah brood of vipers. Are you kidding? Brood of vipers and just the way he never backs off. I mean when I'm having conflict with someone I'm often tempted To back off for fear that I'm falling into sin So I all often just kind of bow out because I'm like well I don't want to get into a mode where I could be angry. Yeah, but as I'm falling into sin. So I will often just kind of bow out because I'm like well I don't want to get into a mode where I could be angry. Yeah. But as I'm looking at Christ I'm thinking I don't I can't locate a single time in

the Gospels where he actually backs off the Pharisees and says something like well you know we might be misunderstanding each other or something like this. I mean he just relentlessly pushes. We're using the same words but we're meaning different things. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, happen. So you go right to Christ when you evangelize. And so the sternness is there but then if I can help someone see that Jesus does not hate them, Jesus loves them, he wants to give them eternal life. What the will of Christ for that person is everlasting life. I just did a video on the Apostles Creed. The last words in there are life everlasting. Oh, how happy to just think about that right now.

Bodily resurrection, never-ending joy, ever-increasing joy. That is what Christ wants for us. Yeah, wants for us, that's right. And if I can help someone see that, I feel that that will probably, for me personally, that's what the domino that falls. But then I say, okay, this is a God I can trust and submit to him. If I can help someone else feel that, I think that will help them, to your question, go from the general spiritual openness to the openness to the Christian God specifically. Of course, that takes the Holy Spirit's work in someone's heart, but I don't know how else to do it other than to try to bring them to Jesus. I take comfort in, you know, C.S. Lewis, brilliant apologist, but I take comfort in, he gave

a talk once where he said, the old idea of just giving an altar call and telling people to come to Jesus that works for most people I'm butchering the quote but something like that and I found great comfort in that maybe if they're in church Yeah, of course. I'm probably doing an injustice to see us Lewis Which your point was it feels out of touch with today well and modern man. Is that what you mean? I think out of touch with today? Well- And modern man, is that what you mean? I think my point was actually to take some comfort

in Lewis's comment that- Oh, I see. That it's helpful that we don't, because I can overcomplicate this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And over, because I like to think about theology, I can overly intellectualize evangelism. But like repent and believe.

Sometimes a simple heart appeal of just, is your life working? Yeah. Can I tell you about a God who loves you? And, um, I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography. It is called strive 21.com slash Matt. You go there right now, or if you text strive to six, six, eight, six,

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partners and things like that. Strive 21, that's strive21.com slash Matt, or as I say, text Strive to 66866 to get started today. You won't regret it I think increasingly you've read some of the ponce's by Pascal. Yes. Yeah increasingly. It feels like he's the apostle of modern times And I think that would have worked with me when I was in my agnostic days If some would have have had have come to me and went what if it's true like just like what if we just pretend it's true mmm, what would that be like Would you want it to be true? And if it is true, then presumably you could try it. And if it's not true, well, who cares? You can just talk to yourself and call that prayer and whatever. But if it is true and you live as if it isn't, that seems more embarrassing, ultimately.

If it is true and you live as if it isn't that seems more embarrassing ultimately. So maybe try to just try to do it like try to entrust yourself to the good Jesus who the Christians say love you. What if that was you know something like that? I think I think when it comes on too strong our defenses go up and maybe there's times for that. But I just think like modern skeptical man. Yeah, I like talking about it this way, like children don't need to understand snow in order to play in it. And I don't need to understand prayer or the kindness of Jesus, or how God can possibly be aware of me right now, my parents right now in Australia, when I can't be aware of my four children at the same time. It's like I try to

understand Him through me, as if He were made in my image, but I don't need to figure that out. It's like I think the only way God could be present to me is the way a man is present to a hive of bees He doesn't know all of them. He's just somehow sees them as a sort of collective But there's something about okay. Don't even try because he's apparently infinite according to the Christians and instead Just just surrender to him. I give you my life I give you all that I'm worried about and I trust in you. I trust in you, Jesus." And I think inviting people to do that, to entrust themselves to the beautiful heart of Jesus and not try to understand it, and just to see what happens, you know? Because even if Christianity is not true, if that works, that's all right. Just do that. It's wild to think that at the end of the day, when we die, if the Christians are right, then the atheists

and Christians will know that the Christians were right. But if the atheists were right, the atheists and the Christians won't know the Christians were wrong. Right. Yeah, yeah. Which is, I know that's a kind of skeptical, low bar way of stating things, but it is interesting, and I think it helps, I think it resonates with the skeptical person, maybe. Yeah. I love what you're saying, and Pascal's wager, the it resonates with the skeptical person. Yeah, I Love what you're saying and Pascal's wager the way you're kind of teasing it out to me It's just a sensible way to live in light of the fact that we're not infinite We don't know everything and I like to take this, you know looking down the road at each alternative

suppose someone watching this video is 50% in each direction between Christianity and agnosticism or something like this, and to encourage them to look down the road and just consider the full implications of both, just kind of like you're saying, and it is hard to take in how stark the contrast is. It seems to me, and we need to do a lot of work to fully build this case, but if you look down the road with atheists, let's suppose there is no God

It is hard to state how dark that is What it means for our human nature for love for the way that I feel about my kids So that's one of the most important things in my life that feeling of love I have for them when I think about if that's reductively explained by evolutionary psychology, basically I feel this way because it helped animals survive in my animal ancestry and that's it and there's nothing more. And if I really try to live

on that basis I do find it dehumanizing. I do find it tears away everything that I think gives life value and meaning and hope. But then you look down the other tunnel and you say, okay, what if it is true? Even if someone watching this is only 5% open, that still might make you at least want to keep exploring to see because of all that's at stake, because like we said, eternal life, you know, I think the Christian view of the afterlife, a pastor named Tim Keller used to talk about the idea of resurrection as it's not just life after life, it's the best possible form of afterlife, because implicit in this idea of a Christian afterlife is that for those in Christ, actually

evil will serve unto greater glory and joy. And the suffering that we have endured in this life will somehow not just end, but result in some happy achievement in heaven. And that is so thrilling to me. You think of Jesus, the body of Christ in heaven right now with the scars still on it. So he's still got these holes in his wrists and ankles, and he'll have those for eternity presumably.

And so the suffering he went through has achieved something that is turned to glory. And I think that's true for every Christian. When we get to heaven, our suffering won't just be over. Somehow we'll see what we endured for Christ will have accomplished something we couldn't fully have anticipated. So if I'm looking down the road at these options and I look down this road, if we can help our friends to see the beauty and the enchantment of it, I don't think that automatically settles every question. I just feel for me and in my experience of evangelism, it's a big

piece of the pie. Yeah, I think that's right. And also at the end of the day, I would rather be wrong with Paul, Thomas Aquinas, and Timothy Keller than right with Nietzsche and Dawkins, which might sound like intellectual submission or something, like I've just given up on the case for God, but that's not it. That's not it. When I look at arguments for God and I look at arguments for atheism, I definitely feel like atheism gets swamped. But I might be different in this case. I don't find any particular argument for God terribly convincing. Any more than I find arguments for why I have free will terribly motivating or convincing,

or arguments for why the external world is real terribly convincing. You know, or you think of Hume, who denied the self as traditionally understood. Suppose I read him and I come to doubt that even Descartes was wrong, you know, and maybe the self isn't what we had thought it was. If you gave me an argument for why I exist, you know, I go, oh yeah, but once I stop reading the argument, I'm no longer gripped by it. But I go on believing in free will I go on believing in the self and I go on believing in God. I Don't know. I just what am I trying to say? I don't know. I think I'm trying to say that I don't believe in God because of arguments Any more than I believe in free will because of arguments, but if you were to line up the argument side by side

I don't think the arguments for atheism are intellectually convincing. Whenever I find atheism convincing in the sense that I feel like it's somehow drawing me into its orbit or imposing itself upon me, it's because of the vibes, the vibe of atheism. This like, where is this God? Like what is heaven exactly? Where is that?

And as I start thinking about it, it can seem silly. Like you just talked about the body of Christ in heaven with scars. Like what the hell are you talking about? There's a part of me, right? It's like, what does this even mean? And at that point, I like to think of an analogy that Dr. Peter Craeft gave me just the other,

recently on the show. He said that asking is there life after death is like two unborn babies in the womb. So do you think there's life after the womb? And one says, no, I don't think so. I think this is the only life we've got. What about you? And he says, yes, I do. And he said, what do you think it's like? And he said, well, I think it'd be a lot larger, you know, maybe warmer, more of a springy kind of cord attached to us or something. Like the baby has no clue what life after the womb could possibly be like, nor does he realize that he's there now in the sense that heaven will be somehow an extension of this. And so that kind

of an analogy helps me to think, yeah, because sometimes it's like the more specific you get about heaven, you know, even in your head, like golden streets and things like this. You're like, that sounds stupid. That sounds like, forgive me. Right. You think you know what I'm saying. Some people are going to be terribly offended by that. No, no.

And they will tell us. It sounds, there's a part of me that's like, that just sounds ridiculous. It sounds like something, someone obviously made up to make people conform, to behave. Same with hell. My experience is very similar to yours in terms of the role of arguments. I don't believe because of arguments. The honest truth is I think I believe in Christianity because of something I can't fully articulate. It's just this deep existential reality that's kind of right in there with my conscience somewhere, but I can't fully articulate. It's just this deep existential reality that's kind of right in there with my conscience somewhere, but I can't fully put words to it.

But I will say I went through two seasons of working through doubts about my faith, and each time the arguments were nourishing. They helped stabilize me like walking up a steep staircase, you have a railing you can hold on to, they're helpful. And so I don't have this all worked out in my mind. I know these arguments can play a role, but they don't. To me, they get to probability, and then what closes the gap is this more existential thing that the Holy Spirit is doing that I can't fully articulate that gets me from like 65 percent or 85 percent depending on which day to the hundred percent because there is a kind of certainty in my heart that I can't fully articulate like the way I know that I love my wife

but I don't I cannot prove that and it's not an argument that gets to the certainty but the arguments have a role and they do something and like you the problem of evil comes along and it creates this sort of storm Clouds in that remaining probability space and you sort of have to work through that That's why I have great compassion for people who go through seasons of the dark night of the soul where they're working through doubts And so forth and sometimes the rest of us don't always help people when they're in that place That's that's a scary thing that sometimes christians go through but it is interesting and I this relates to a broader disillusionment that I have about arguments in general, of what is the role of arguments? And do they really cause people to change their mind?

Because I've found myself now in the business of giving arguments on YouTube videos, and I'm willing to rethink everything in terms of the role that that plays Because when two different people it's one thing if someone's looking for information And then I put out a video they're looking for information they come along they watch the video that can help them terrific but when there are two clashing perspectives I Have been dismayed at seeing how limited arguments are for getting us out of that impasse. And I'm sort of rethinking everything there in terms of just, what do we do when we are in that place? Arguments seem so flimsy compared to all the factors

that go into why we disagree about things in and out of the church, just throughout the world. So is it even worth giving arguments on the internet? I mean that's a, you know, one way to put it. Surely it is sometimes. But what is the role and what do we do about that? What do we do? You know, how do we address that? I don't know.

It's kind of an interesting psychological or sociological question that I am thinking through. Because I think it's not bad to give arguments, it's not bad to say, here's a belief, here's why this belief is plausible, and let me give some sources and so forth. But surely there are times in our disagreements where I, for example, must do better at just figuring out, let's stop the arguments and figure out some other way to sort of work at something. I don't know does that make sense at all? Oh my goodness yeah absolutely it makes a ton of sense. One thing I find

there's a lot I've got going on in my brain right now but you know one of them is chat GPT. All right like whatever argument you have for whatever position you hold there's a good chance that chat GBT will beat you unless you are like the world's premier expert on this particular topic. Maybe it won't. But that isn't a sign that you're wrong either. That's what's tough about it.

Like I don't think there's anything you could say in today's interview that would make me abandon my Catholicism. I think you're probably a much better apologist than me. And if we were to argue about Catholic distinctives, I'd be like, ah, I don't know. Let me call Trent or Jimmy, you know, and likewise, like if there was a point of Protestant doctrine that I could argue and you were like, I don't know, you're probably not going to be like, all right, yeah, okay. Um, I mean, maybe, maybe, but I think it's more like attraction.

I think, I think we're first attracted to something and that I don't just mean in a trivial sense, but like there's something beautiful coherent Morally good in some system or some people that attracts us Which then makes me maybe open to what they have to say So I would think that if someone is watching that debate Let's say that you did with Trent on my channel and they were like, I'm open to Protestantism.

Like there's this beauty, there's this tradition there that I was told didn't really exist that, you know, Gavin's, you know, joining the dots. Then when you start speaking, now they're open and almost like want you to be convincing. What do you think? Yeah. This relates to a, I guess this ties into the broader cultural question that we've been talking about, about what is going on in our society. And one challenge I think we face right now is how we disagree with one another. Okay so Just you know, it seems as though we're losing the ability

I'm not not even just talking of Christians, but just across the board to disagree without assuming That the person on the other side is either evil or stupid or something else even worse, maybe and side is either evil or stupid or something else even worse maybe and I don't know what is causing that or causing that to accelerate but it's worrisome for a society when we lose the ability to recognize that there are sincere people over there. One thing I'm noticing is that I'm not doing this it's kind of come out of nowhere I feel like I'm seeing it over the last five years or a lot of people seem to be accusing the other people of being liars.

Are you seeing that? Oh yes. Yeah, like he's a liar, he's lying. And I think, okay, well maybe he is, but how do you know, how are you so confident? How do we know, yep, exactly. How do you know he's not just a, he really thinks this, and is,

why are you assuming that he's a liar? Because I already corrected him in my last comment. So he knows. So he's lying. Yeah, yeah. 100%, it's so interesting. Yeah, again, I don't have answers on this. It's an interesting challenge to think about. How do we do this?

I mean- And then I wonder, like, maybe there's something wrong with me, like maybe I'm not like strong enough to like say those things or feel as confident as they do. Like, my gosh, you know? But then I think, but I just don't feel that way. So I can't, I can't call other people liars. I mean, I guess I would call them a liar if I heard them say something like, I don't think this is true, but I'm going to say it anyway. Like, or if I overheard them saying that,

then I'd go, okay, I've got a good reason to think that that person's lying. Yeah. Surely, surely there's some point at which we can call someone a liar. Where that point is, my concern is we get there too quickly, many times. And we assume the worst. The thing that's interesting for me is just what is it about human psychology that makes it so hard to hang in there in the midst of a disagreement and remain friends over the years? And what is it that causes this tendency for a deterioration of relationship and of goodwill along the way as we just remain so, you know, whether it be a Catholic Protestant difference or some other kind of difference, you know,

five years goes by and it's hard to retain the freshness, the open-heartedness, the goodwill that we may have started the relationship with. Yes, 100%. What causes that? I don't know. But like the debate that I did with Trent here on your channel was an example to me of just a great If I had one word to describe that it would be the word fun. It was just a great just you know from beforehand

We're driving there to the debate just Chatting in the car about our families about all kinds of things and then we have the debate then afterwards It's just like we're hanging out and then same with the next day and part of that That was a great experience for many reasons part of it was probably just the crowd there as well Just great people, you know But I I look at things and I say why is it so hard to have an experience like that? Where we're debating across differences and especially over time and I've been thinking about this a lot lately because we all make mistakes I make mistakes and so I will offend someone sometimes or I will say something out, you know

maybe they did correct me and I forgot or I Didn't comprehend their point or something like this But there's this idea in the Old Testament of the year of Jubilee. Mm-hmm. We can't allow debts Okay, what do I do that with my kids occasionally? Oh? Parents say to them today is a day of Jubilee Jubilee day So anything you confess to me will be forgiven and there'll be no punishments. Oh, man occasionally I do that because I want their heart. I don't want them to hide things from me continue does it work Yeah, I say if you stole someone's bike you could tell me that and they'd be fine like obviously I'd have them

Yeah, repent, and yeah, but repent and there'd be no punishment, there would just be celebration. It's a good thing to do. If you feel like your children are distant from you or hiding things from you, say, listen, I promise, you come, you tell me, I won't tell the other kids. And I've had, oh, it's been so beautiful. I had a child come down at night

after I thought everyone was asleep. I was the only one in the house. My wife was somewhere and she came down and she was, said she, that's okay, I have two girls and two boys, was weeping and confess something. And he was the most, I just hugged her and I love you so much. You're so beautiful.

You know, you're so good. I'm so grateful for your honesty. I just want your heart. Don't hide from me. It was lovely. Beautiful. Anyway. Well, I'm always happy for parenting help

because I've got five kids and I need all the wisdom I can get I might try that sometime It also is interesting to think about for Christian relationships and even amidst our different traditions and amidst when we're let's suppose We're because I think it's okay to You know like we did a debate, you know, we can tend for what we believe to be true. This is fine This is good vigorously. Yeah, This can honor our Lord to do this. But then what happens along the way is probably,

we do so imperfectly because we're sinners and we make mistakes as well, so it's not only sin, it's also just error at times. And so over the years, there's an accumulation of potential offense that different parties may feel, sometimes justified, sometimes not justified. But what if we just had a year of Jubilee or a time of Jubilee every now and again where, even just at a personal level, I just said, okay, every now and again, let's just try to start fresh and not just forget anything that

that is we're holding on to. To me, this would feel like Christianity, you know, if if there's anything that's at the heart of Christianity it's that God is a forgiving and gracious God. He treats us as you treated your child, as you just described a moment ago, he loves to forgive. Surely that should be played out on some level. Now I understand this is complicated because some people may be of bad faith. And so perhaps, and I actually think this is another thing I need to get better at, is learning when do I not engage, when do I engage. There's all kinds of people where I might have, it might actually be the honorable thing

to do to simply ignore them at times. I think that's sometimes okay, because it might be that by engaging with a particular person, nothing productive will result. And so I'm trying to learn about when is it that and when is it not. When could I use my efforts elsewhere for the good of others, yeah, or myself, yeah. Exactly, because any efforts I put there are efforts I could have been putting into something, but for normal relationships, where, you know, what does that look like, to have a spirit of forgiveness? Yeah. Can I give you an example? I think a lot of Christians,

and I think understandably, find themselves frustrated with Jordan Peterson, because he's using our book, and he's using our terms, but we get the sense that he means something else by them. And we also get frustrated because we see him being the spokesperson of this conservative group called the Daily Wire. And we think, well, if you're going to have like a religious spiritual guy, could you at least have someone who believes? And I don't mean to be rude, but it doesn't seem like he believes what Christians are saying. But my point is simply that I think when people got an inkling, oh wait, he's kind of open to Christianity. Or maybe he's open to Catholicism.

His wife just converted. We're on his side. We're his cheerleaders. We're his defenders. And then we get really exhausted really quickly because he hasn't converted quick enough. And then we hate him. Hate's too strong a word. But we become bitter, we speak about him

with a kind of dismissiveness, but rest assured, if tomorrow we heard he was praying the rosary, you see? And it's like we, I mean, look at your own life and your own, I don't know your story, but your own journey of conversion. And you think, well, did it happen overnight? Did it happen in a month?

Did it happen in a year? For some people, yes, but it takes a while and we just lack patience, I think, with people. And maybe it's because we would like questions resolved. Maybe it's something like that. I think also we treat people like arguments, right? So if a Catholic sees a Protestant say, why do you worship Mary? The Catholic maybe thinks, oh come on, this is, I've responded to this a thousand times. So they call him a liar or they treat him with the disdain that they think the argument ought to be treated like. But maybe he just learnt how Catholics think about Mary and thinks he's got a good reason for thinking Catholics worship Mary. So I don't, in charity, say, let me hear it. Okay, I'm not sure if that's right because of X, Y, and Z. We don't do that.

Instead, we go, oh, come on, this has been refuted. You see what I mean? Like, he's the argument. Right, exactly, yeah. Something like that. Your comments make me think about the time factor for relationships involved where, for the first,, so like you think of a presidential approval ratings one year into office versus toward the end of a four-year term, usually it's higher and then it goes lower and there's just a natural dynamic with that where you get sort of weary of someone after two or three years in a way you're not after nine to twelve months. Same with pastors. When you first become a pastor of a church, done a lot of study about this, it's really fascinating, the cycles.

So there's the honeymoon period, and then a lot of people will talk about, and I was amazed at how much data there is to support this, that two to three years in, there's usually a first crisis. Five to seven years in, there's usually a second crisis. If you can survive the second crisis, you're usually in it for the long haul. Might be like marriage.

Right? Yeah. Maybe so. And unfortunately, actually, that the most pastors, the average is three years, average tenure for a Protestant minister, a senior pastor at a church is three years, which tells us a lot of people don't make it past

an early crisis. Transitions like that are hard because you're coming in as this person to an entire church that has its own culture, and so a new leader can create friction and change. But anyway, surely it works something like this in some of our relationships as well, where over time something's great upon us a bit, and we would like for a person to make faster progress than they may be making. One of the wisest things somebody said to me is

as a minister don't expect people to learn in two years what you learned in ten years, which is so simple. And as soon as they say that you think of course I shouldn't do that, but we tend to do that, We tend to think, well, we've told them. I told them last Sunday, you know. What more do I need to do? And of course, none of us change like this. So surely patience is a factor in our relationships. Yeah. I mean, can you think in your own kind of YouTube history, have there been things that let's say Catholics have said, or Orthodox have said, or whoever who's opposes your view, where you're just like, this person is not listening. Like, they're not, it seems like

they have bad faith. And then how do you determine that then? Since we can't read souls, and yet since it seems to be a reasonable assumption at some point that this person has bad faith. Yeah, that's hard. It's hard, yeah. And all of this is the answer is yes, that happens sometimes and I'm still learning how to make that evaluation. And I've gotten better at it, but I don't feel as though I've got 20-20 vision because it's hard to sometimes tell and I think we always want to err on the side of caution if someone is just absolutely blatantly about a factual matter publicly repeating a mistruth I reach out to this person and

the response doesn't yield any sort of possible disagreement of interpretation, but it's just a factual matter that is then continues to be publicly stated. That would be a point where I would just cease dialogue. And someone could fault me for that, maybe that's wrong, but that's just a boundary I draw Partly because of my own sense of limitation as we said earlier you can't engage with everybody So I want to give my efforts to those who really seem like they're Sincerely leaning forward doing their best to function in good faith, but there but it happens a lot where you'll get

And and that's why I mentioned the time factor. So I've been on YouTube for four years now. Wow. I got bored a few months into COVID. That's when it started. And started in August of 2020. Just started making videos. Never dreamed it would be anything. And then along the way sort of found YouTube is a way actually to sometimes meet needs, and it actually is really fun, and there's lots of positives, there's also lots of challenges,

but I sense the time factor for me. It felt, it did feel different three years ago versus now, and I do see a lot more suspicion, and so that's interesting, and so you say, wow, okay, what do we do about that how do we how do we steward our conversations well I bet that when you came out of the gate there was a lot of Catholics who thought okay here's a reasonable fella yeah so we'll just set him straight and then when you weren't

set straight yeah then we have no more time for you you think that's got to be something like that it probably is and Protestants are probably the same way I wonder if you get more heat than someone like some of these more kind of to use the word in a dirty way kind of fundamentalist Protestants, you know, who may not be intellectually savvy. I wonder if they kind of just written off, but they would like you on our team, please. Yeah, that's what I think about Peterson. I wonder how much of the anger is we want him on our team. And I wonder how much of that is we're not that convinced of our own faith, but if he could join us then that would help me.

Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking about this on the drive here this morning of... I was thinking back in my life on times where I have felt anxiety because of a counter-argument against me. I was thinking about what that felt like and then I was thinking okay if I ever am in an ideological clash with someone where I have the misfortune of causing an anxiety or some sort of unpleasant feeling on the other side then I need to

be remember what that felt like for me. me. So for me it was the moral argument, which I still believe is a good argument for God, but about five years ago I was doing some research on it and I realized, I was hearing counter arguments and I realized, this is more complicated than I realized. There's a lot more, there's a whole landscape I had not considered previously in terms of smart atheists who are, and I remember what that felt like. It was an uncomfortable feeling. It put me from a position of resolution into a position of tension and uncertainty.

And we, I think all of us hate that, some of us maybe more maybe more than others it feels we want to be closed and certain You don't like living in the tension of things open-ended So I you know, I don't know what I'm well, I'll say There was an old Christian named Francis Schaefer An apologist who used to say if I treat apologetics like a game Then it will become cruel and it will destroy both the other person and me through the cruelty of it. I have, and he said something like, I have to remember, he's talking about evangelizing people,

non-christian, secular people, and he's saying, when I'm puncturing their worldview, if I'm helping them look down the road, like we mentioned earlier, I need to be, they must sense that I care for them, and I must be there. He says basically, if I knock them over, I have to catch them. Now that could come across in a condescending way a little bit, perhaps, because we all, of course, want to be open to ourselves getting knocked over at times, too, and not assume we're always right about everything. But nonetheless, if we are right about something with, say, a non-Christian friend, they need to know, they should feel a sense of we're caring for them as a person.

And it shouldn't be about I'm winning an argument and that's just the end of the matter. And I can't quite remember how I got onto this, but it just feels like... Mason- I love what you had to say about anxiety. I think it was Fulton Sheen who said, remember it's entirely possible to win the argument and lose the soul. It also reminds me of how Jimmy Akin once said to me that a long time ago he just made the decision never to expect anyone to change their mind in front of him. And when he said that to me, I didn't even know why he was telling it to me. It sounded so obvious. And then I realized, oh, wow, I definitely do that.

And then you think, when's the last time you did that? Like, when's the last time I changed my mind in front of somebody while they were arguing about something that really made up the fabric of who I think I am? Like, what would it take for me to be open to abortion? Do you know, man? I'm not saying that's something to be open to. I'm just saying, take any belief that you hold

as part of who you are such that if it reversed, your relationships would change, your job would change. That's scary. That seems very wise to me. Don't expect people to change their minds on the spot. In front of you. He's just never made the decision. Well, if nothing else for one's own calmness and sanity, that seems like a wise expectation to go into. And then if someone does, you're present pleasantly surprised. But to not expect that, I'm going to remember that. Yeah. I had someone come up to me the other day. I was they ran up to me and they were they were discerning Catholicism. And I think what I say, I mean someone come up to me the other day, they ran up to me and they were discerning Catholicism.

And I think what I said, I mean what I said, I also think it's a good tactic. Does that make sense? Right. When I say it's a tactic, I don't mean it in a manipulative sense. He came up to me, he was a Protestant of some stripe, and he was open to Catholicism. And I said, okay, well, say to the Lord, I love you, Jesus, and I don't want to offend you. And if by becoming Catholic, I would offend you, please slam the door and lead me away from this. So I didn't mean that. And that's really all the, and I gave him my rosary.

That's what I did. That was my, that was my tactic. Um, but I think it's good because, uh, there's another line I remember Jimmy saying to me, he who is talked, uh, he who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. Isn't that good? So just, I don't know. Have you ever thought to yourself, would it even be possible for you to become Catholic? Or I'm not trying to make this about a Catholic thing, Orthodox, whatever, like atheist. Have you ever thought, like, what the hell? Am I really open to that?

Because I'm not sure I am. Maybe. Or maybe I am in some sense, but I'd have to really, I don't want to say I am too quickly, because you know how people say that. They're like, oh no, I'm open to the truth wherever it leads. And you go, well well I mean yes and definitely not because what would that mean for your life what would that mean for your marriage what would that mean for your children yeah yeah you think about that

I do think about that yeah it seems like it's probably wise what you were just saying of not being too quick to speak on this My natural personality probably sets me up Well, it sets me up for failure in many ways But on this particular question it probably helps me a bit because I've never been one who's very good at just sort of going With the flow. I've also been someone who's always intellectually curious and tends to just kind of go this way and this way based upon what I'm thinking and studying so I'm my I'm not saying at the moral component of this I'd be better at but just the personality component

I think I find a little easier I've been through a few of those seasons where I've asked the deep questions and The deepest quite thing in my life is my faith in Christ, where I've really worked through that, like Schaeffer himself did, from the ground up. And that I'm so thankful for those experiences because it resulted in this kind of stability that I feel in my heart now, that I, not to say I never have any questions or doubts, but I really feel a freedom and a joy and a confidence in my relationship with Christ, that I'm committed to Christianity, it's the most important thing in my life. And I think those experiences furthered that. It was like I believed it already, but it went down deeper. And the metaphor I've sometimes used, some theologian Used I think it was John Owen is a tree

you think of a tree going through a terrible hurricane and storm and it's bending over so much to the side that you think it's Dead you think it's surely it's it's not gonna make it but the storm it loosens the soil and storm loosens the soil and causes the roots to go down deeper so that after the storm has passed the tree is now much more solid in the ground. And that's what those seasons of doubt have done for me. And I'm not necessarily saying that's a good or a bad thing or that everyone will have that experience. That's just been my experience. But so when you ask about, you know, would I be, would I be willing to kind of rethink things? I think I would because of those two experiences where I sort of did that.

You know, I really thought through it from the ground up. Um, but like I said, it's probably wise to be careful to give a 100% confident answer to this. Um, but you know, just maybe I could, we could turn this into an encouragement confident answer to this. But, you know, just maybe we could turn this into an encouragement for someone watching this. If someone watching this is going through a season where they are struggling with doubts and anxieties,

which I've come to see is a huge percentage of, especially younger people right now. And I've even had to come up with my own term, intellectual anxiety, to describe where I think a lot of people are at. And maybe it'd be, we could even come back and talk about that if you want to, but, because I think it's interesting to part of the culture right now, but, but if someone is there just to give them an encouragement that actually I think God can use

those seasons to deepen us and ground us a little bit further. So if someone out there's watching this and they're feeling the sense of instability and, you know, maybe the roots are going down to deepen us and ground us a little bit further. So if someone out there is watching this and they're feeling this sense of instability, and maybe the roots are going down deeper. Maybe God is using this to really, and maybe 10 years from now, you're going to be able to speak to your children or your friend in a way,

and you will understand how they feel, and you will be able to shepherd them and help them in ways because of that very travail that you are going through. So that's a happy thought. Some of that anxiety God can use in a process. But I do think the anxiety is big right now. I say intellectual anxiety because it feels like we're bombarded with more information than human beings are used to receiving.

I mean, take something much less lofty than religion. Take diet. Take, you know, exercise. Yeah. You know, like, suppose you have a sore back and someone says, well, you should be doing sit-ups, and someone else says, that's the worst thing you could be doing for yourself. What you need to be doing is this, and somebody else says something else.

And they've all got letters after their name and they're all equally enthusiastic and they've all got their books and like John Eldridge put it, he says the internet has made us weary pragmatic, cynics or something like that, skeptical pragmatists, something like that. Because we can't take in this much conflicting information and we don't have the time or the intelligence or the intelligence or the background education to sort through it. And so you go, I don't even care. Just let me try something if it works, it works.

And we, we, we, we, he said one of the consequences of that is we start to hate mystery. Ah, that's interesting. I'm not sure why he said that. Maybe it's because we get exhausted by not of not knowing and trying to. One thing I find interesting is again what's funny is my wife is actually two years older than me but because technology developed slower in Australia than in America we have like this we have you know it's almost like I'm five years older than her because of how you know that yeah but I remember, you know,

being a teenager and the internet didn't exist, obviously. And so you just thought, well, if I can argue against this Christian, then I'm right. And if I can show him he's wrong, I'm right. Or if let's say I'm a whatever Catholic and I show the Protestant why he's wrong and maybe I can can't so I go To my other Catholic in the same town and he can show him he's wrong then I'm right and now we exist Where there's definitely someone smarter than you who can unless you're you know at the peak of your little narrow field Who can respond to you who knows how to refute you, who if he were in this room – I'm not talking to you, you know – but like, could specifically shut you down and

you wouldn't know how to respond to him. And it's also possible that you couldn't find someone else to shut him down. So I guess what I'm asking is, how does one not have intellectual anxiety while maintaining opinion while knowing he actually can't defend his position mmm Because that's kind of all of us like no one can kind of defend it unless you're yeah You know William Lane Craig maybe on the Kalam argument and you're debating somebody else like maybe then you can yeah But even that is a that's a thin slice that he might be able to defend. Yep

Do you see what I'm saying? I'm right there with you. And the decision fatigue, I mean several times recently, I'll be going to some event and they'll ask me what food I want and I will tell them, I have decision fatigue, just get me something, I don't care. Yeah. And it's, you know, another experience I had recently

is a friend helped me put in a new lamp in the ceiling of my study and Then he said oh to turn it on you just download this app And I thought I'm already tired. Yeah, it took me a month To download that app and figure out how to do it because I put it on my to-do list and it just felt so Taxing to learn how to download it. And of course, this app is extremely complicated and lots of things I really don't want. I just want to be able to flick a switch

and turn the light on. Right. But that's, it's, yeah. And then, but it's interesting. You think about, okay, so that's the world we live in. But for most human beings, what was it like? 800 years ago, or 1800, it was... 100%.

You didn't have this. If you wanted knowledge, you would go, maybe you go to the priest in your village and you listen to what he says and now you know. And that's it. And so that's the normal human experience, and here we are. And you say, okay, what do we do about about that when everyone on my street believes something slightly different? Although maybe that's becoming increasingly less so as the internet funnels us into different silos anyway Yeah

And as we all move to we we increasingly move to put to regions of the country that are like yeah Yeah, which affects things, but I'm not talking to the people in those regions. We're still online Yeah, which affects things, but I we're not talking to the people in those regions. We're still online. Yeah, it's weird Yeah, I think it's weird is like I feel like if we got a very intelligent Hindu Let's say to come in here that he could explain to me why Hinduism actually makes sense and I'd be like, okay Yeah, I guess I see that but I I'm actually not interested in listening to you. Mm-hmm. Does that make sense? I don't mean that in a rude way. I just mean there are so many worldviews that I can't be interested in doing a deep dive into all of them.

And so I purposely shut them out and quadrant them away. Now, if I choose to enter into that realm of apologetics, then it seems to me that I have a duty to not purposely misrepresent that position and therefore might have to do a deep dive. But the idea that I need to know all about Zoroastrianism in order to then reject it or Mormonism or something. Yeah. Do you think that a reasonable way to live is to simply pull away from the internet for most of our decisions. And I'm not saying we wouldn't necessarily if you

need to go to the doctor look up on Google where the doctor's office is. But in terms of when you're trying to make intellectual progress through an uncertainty, we simply avoid the Internet to do that except for a few areas where we are going to do a deep dive. So there might be a few things where you really need to do your homework and research them for whatever reason, but for garden variety decisions we simply try to use the internet less. I don't know, I mean for me I just find it

so comforting to just go back and read books when I'm trying to work through something. It's just a comfort, partly the physical feel of books, but also just it doesn't, I don't know fully why, but there's something that happens when I've got a stack of books or articles or whatever, as opposed to when I'm getting information through the internet and the experiences are so different. And I don't always know what is going into all of those differences, but I know that when I'm with my books, I feel as though I am able to make intellectual progress on studying a topic and I don't have that unpleasant sense of dizziness because of the kaleidoscopic options all around. So because I'm trying to think of

a solution here and in the world in which we live I actually don't see easy solutions other than mitigating the problem through lots of discipline and chosen limitations. I don't know. I mean, it's an interesting challenge. What do you think we do about it? I think most of us kind of live life until it stops working and then we look for another solution. I think that's, you know, to your question earlier about arguments working

or how are arguments persuasive, I really think maybe it's something like that where we live our life and while it's working we're not interested in other arguments. When it stops working in some serious way, now I'm open to a solution. Something like that. I shared with you a moment ago, and this will sound like a tangent but it's not, I hope, that when we first moved to Steubenville three and a half years ago, my wife became incredibly ill and was hospitalized three times within a few months. We moved in the middle of winter and so we concluded it's the weather. You know, we came from

Atlanta, it's much colder here. So what did we do? We went down to Florida. Now, while in Florida, since the weather was more temperate, she became better. And that confirmed our hypothesis, which turned out to be false, because we just spent six months in Austria and the frigid cold over the winter months, and she was fine. And so then we had to reassess

and realize it's something about Steubenville that was making her sick. And so now we've moved to Florida, not because of the weather. But my point is this, like we have these like epistemic systems that are coherent. But just because a system is coherent, it doesn't mean it's right. You can make Star Wars a coherent story, and it'd be false. You could have a Star Wars skeptic say yeah Well, how come this happened? You know, well, that's because he was sisters with Princess Leia Ah, you know just because you can show that a world is consistent doesn't mean it's right But but then it's like I don't know if you but if you're living a coherent world, that's false I feel like you're going to hit a wall, hopefully.

You know, like let's say you, you live the transgender ideology kind of paradigm and you're able to make all of the bits fit somehow intellectually, but you run into reality somehow and the S and the kind of, the kind of epistemic system isn't working anymore, and you then need to look for a solution which might then change the entire paradigm. I wonder if it's something like that. Like I think some Catholics have become so disheartened by Pope Francis today that they would say that has been the thing. Now, I don't agree with them, but they would say that's been the thing that could have hit against the wall of reality that then opened them up to some sort of set of accountism

or Protestantism or orthodoxy, which then made their world work again. What do you think about that? I don't think it's terribly insightful. I just think it's, that just seems to me how most of us live our lives. Like I'm not interested in becoming Mormon, thank you, or Protestant. No, things are working fine. Like things seem fine. I'm really quite happy here.

Mm-hmm. But if you started giving me arguments that showed that this is actually wrong and I didn't want to listen to them, and then I got scared, and so then I asked my biblical Catholic professors, and then their answers weren't any better than mine. Now I'm getting more anxious. I'm gonna try to make my Catholic world work still because there's too much trouble to undo the whole thing. Yeah, but then I can't seem to make it work anymore and now... Yeah, as we're talking about this, I'm coming into greater clarity in how I'm thinking about it, and you know, I wouldn't want anything I've said to give a viewer the impression that it's hopeless and don't study because you're never, you know, it's

always going to be equally complicated and you won't actually ever arrive upon peace and settled convictions. I don't think that's right. Thank you. That's a great clarification. I'm glad you said it. Yeah, and just for my own comments, just to be, you know, I think actually, because there's lots of times looking back as a 41 year old, I can look back and say, you know, I studied that and after about, you know, several years of sustained research, I actually came to a peaceable place in my heart about whatever topic it may be, and now I've just lived peaceably since then and

it's great. And so I do think we can study something, make progress, and arrive upon a livable confidence in it. And I think what I'm so, I said feeling more clarity about this, I think what I feel is the sense of just the need for patience along the way and humility to be willing to course-correct when we hit a wall as you say, but patience over the long haul and what I would love to say to a viewer as well is I think we should avoid the idea that after it's on the other side of mastery of a subject when I've got my PhD in it or when I've read enough books

then I will feel a kind of existential peace in my heart. I do believe in credentials and study and the process, you know, but I think the Proverbs 3 verse about lean not on your own understanding, trust in the Lord with all your heart, this sense of, you know, I like the word lean there. I'm leaning toward the Lord and I'm not looking to myself. There's a heart posture. I think that breeds a kind of, I think that that helps us fight against that intellectual anxiety. And so that along the way, and I don't know how all this works, but along the way I'm looking to the Lord, I'm trusting in Him, and along the way, when I hit a bump and I need to rethink things, I say, okay.

And there will be peace in our hearts if we come to terms upfront with the fact that, hey, you know, I can even make a resolution. I can say, if the truth redirects me from this lane to this lane, I will follow, and we decide in advance, I'm gonna follow the truth, and that brings peace. And then along the way, as we're studying it, the Lord gives peace, and then through the process of study, I believe studying is really valuable. As we work at things, as we read books, we can acquire a greater degree of confidence in something, and I've experienced that on various issues. So, you know, we can acquire a greater degree of confidence in something, and I've experienced that on various issues. So you know, we want to shepherd our viewers to help them understand it's not hopeless, but it's hard work and I

think humility and patience and trusting in the Lord throughout the process of our travail will help, like oil in the engine, a lot when we're working through anxieties. so many such an excellent clarification I think what you and I are trying to do is give voice to the intellectual anxieties that you and I are not immune from and which we don't often see we don't see a lot of epistemic humility on YouTube channels that are just about defeating their opponents and telling them they're idiots and are going to hell and so I to hell. And so I think that's what we've been trying to do.

But I fully appreciate what you're saying. Yeah, we can have confidence in what's true. And I think the internet tells us we can't. I think that's part of why we're so confused because whatever you believe, there's always someone who believes something different that could perhaps argue you under the table and what someone who believes something different that could perhaps argue you under the table and what are you to do with that? And what's going to happen when

neurolink is in all of our brains and chat gbt is somehow synced with that? Like you think about how futile that would work as an apologetics. Like imagine if you and I were debating something right now and but all we're doing is going back to chat GBT, but we're doing it kind of somehow. Yeah, it's like, hmm. Surely one ingredient that I could throw out just that has been helping me in my own personal life in all of this that must help is just greater time with other people in bodily presence. And just being in a room together over a beverage, talking, less time looking at a screen.

I know for me, I've been biking a lot and just within the first five minutes of being outside and the simple act of looking at the trees. It's like, wow, being outside, looking at the trees, I just suddenly feel different than I did when I was looking at a screen. It's easy to spend a huge amount of time looking at screens, whether it be my computer, my phone, or something else.

It can become both work and evening relaxation if we're not careful. Everything from the alarm that wakes us up in the morning to the last thing we do, it can be screens all the time. Surely that is not helping us. When I, I just, again, I'm not enough of a psychologist to know all the reasons why this is the case, but I know my own experience is when I just go

and hang out with people and just talk and embrace all the limitations and inefficiencies of that because it's not efficient to go to a party and just talk with people. I'm an introvert and so there's lots of that pulls you outside of yourself in all kinds of ways and it's not an efficient way of spending your time in the sense that you're you know seeing results from it but it's just healthy and you just feel more normal and I'm, I think loneliness is a big issue in our culture as well. I think young men often have no

one with whom to share their heart and to say here's what's not working in my life, here's how I'm actually doing and we, and part of that surely is spending so much time on a screen. The world just feels better and it looks less dark after you've been with a friend and you've shared what's on your heart and you've said, here's how I'm actually doing, put it all out there and you're not doing it through a screen, you're just there together

in a bodily form and you're just talking. And you know, like how many young men in our culture have the experience of sitting in a living room around in a circle and You go around in an environment that feels safe. It's not forced. It's not you know, you break the ice first, of course But you just have a chance to say how are you doing? And Then you just share what's really going on in your life. I says this is a scary thought I suspect there are many people who have never had that experience in their entire life to sit with other men, young men sitting with other men of the same age to share their heart. And I think loneliness is a

silent killer. Some of the problems of our culture we see front and center, some of them feel like they're harder to notice at first, but this also would be a huge difference between us and people 800 years ago. 800 years ago, you work all day out in the field with your brothers and your sisters and your cousins, and you're with people, you live in community, and then you share meals with people, and you talk. And today, you know, even our meals, we can be on our screens distracted. And so, I, this just seems like something that's helpful to keep reiterating to our young people is find that. When I was a youth pastor way

back in the day, I did a thing on Sunday evenings called Fight Night. And it was, I had to explain it to the parents. It was just a time for spiritual fighting. Just get together, have fun, do something silly, have fun, and then eventually end up just going around and saying, and just saying, what's not working about your life that the rest of us can then intercede for you about and pray for you about? And what surprised me about it is how young men responded to that. It felt like they were coming alive. Many of them had never had a safe environment to unburden your heart and experience a community of support from other people around you.

And they, you know, you just, for whatever reason, you are born, you go through your life, and you just never have a chance to do that. And so people would respond and I thought, that seems like it's becoming a rarer experience and it's just something we're thinking about as a society, how do we address loneliness? Japan recently has a cabinet member to address the problem of loneliness because Japan realized how bad loneliness was for mental health and even physical health. Have you heard of these hikikomori people?

No. It's a Japanese word that refers to recluses who never leave their home. Mmm. Ever. Mmm. Ever. And so everything is done online. Mmm.

And I don't know if this was satire or not, so don't quote me, but I don't think it was, that you can rent grandchildren in Japan. You can actually maybe look into that Josiah, because it sounds really bad, and just kind of hang out with them for the day, because your kids aren't having kids, and you're an older person who would like to be with a younger person. No, I fully agree with you. I think what's so difficult is everyone knows that what you just said is right. But how is it even possible? You can hire any relative. Husband? I think that's called prostitution but... Yeah. Wild. Yeah like you know because I think it's so difficult when you're

going contrary to the pull of a culture. Yeah. And, and whether we like it or not, everything is becoming electronic and internet-based. I hate that so much. I, I, I was in Europe and I'd, you know, I'd go to a restaurant that I can't just do the QR code. I'm like, give me a paper menu because I know I don't want to be part of the movement that makes paper menus obsolete.

And then I will be, if I scan this bloody thing I refuse to go there but it does feel like we're all going there my dad was in the Navy in Australia and he said that there was a long list of Who got the Lord of the Rings book next and it went all around the ship and you think are they doing that today in? the Navy or is everyone just like on their screens? And it's hard not to become the old man who's complaining about the state of the world today, but if things suck, then we can complain about them legitimately, I suppose. So what do you, I mean, do you, do you personally find the internet as intoxicating and sort of gripping and

enslaving as other people do? Because if you don't then I'm not sure how good your advice is gonna be to me and the rest of us, right? If you do feel that pull and grip, is there specific things you've done to distance yourself from it? This, so, no, I do feel that pull and it's a, you know, I wrestle with this tension of on the one hand, I don't want to act as though every, no one should be on the internet, social media is all bad. There are so many positives and we- I hope this is one, right?

This is the irony. Exactly. We're talking about this on, and you and I would probably have never have met if I hadn't started a YouTube channel. Starting a YouTube channel has been such an enriching experience in so many ways, there's positives. It's that thing of, it almost feels like it's, you know, before when cars were invented

but seat belts had not yet been invented. So the technology had not quite caught up, the safety mechanisms had not quite caught up to the power of the technology. That's a simpler fix, you just add seat belts to the cars. It almost feels like we're there with the internet and with social media, the power is there, we haven't built the seat belts, we haven't figured out how to regulate that, and to your question, I mean just the simple... so I do have strategies, I mean that so simple things of... so I have regions of the house that I act as though

there's an invisible wall that my phone can't pass. So there's certain rooms of the house where I just will never ever bring my phone. So there's a geographical barrier there. Mason- Do you have to exert self-control constantly to do that? On that one I don't because it is a habit enough now and it's easier to get around you just walk to a different room. The harder one is the time barriers. In different seasons I'll have different barriers. Sometimes it's been Saturday noon to Sunday noon, where I'll take a 24 hour period each week and just detox. So good, dude. And it's embarrassing how much that simple thing is like, oh wow, this is a lot different

from what would have happened if I hadn't made that effort. You know? It's embarrassing how easily we become enmeshed. So it's time barriers like that. Simple things of the do not disturb function and then deleting apps and or putting apps hiding them within so I have to work harder to get to the app. Well, but now they get around that, right?

You just scroll right and there's your most used apps. The buggers are always. What I do is I actually have no internet on my phone. I've blocked the internet through the, through the backend through settings and I give my wife the password. Nice. And then I then I have, which is actually really pain sometimes because you might go to the airport to try to get on Wi Fi to use an app that can access the internet but isn't a browser but you can't because it needs to open up the browser for you to kind of accept the conditions of the Atlanta airport.

Something I keep saying is what level of inconvenience are you willing to embrace to live a more simple life? And I'm kind of embarrassed because I remember, what I'll do sometimes, I'll definitely do a digital Sabbath very often. I'll give my phone and computer to like my daughter. I'm like, here, go hide this for me. You know, it's kind of fun. It's, I just, I don't want to see it. And I remember once I said to my wife, he just put this somewhere, I just said, we just put it in your drawer. I'm like, if I had self-control sufficient to just leave it in my drawer, I would,

which is sucks, man. It's sad. And I'm not that embarrassed to say it because I feel like the phone and the computer Hack into us in a way that really make it difficult. It honestly feels like a third arm or like it's like Telling me to live without my arm for a day. You're like, okay I'll give that a shot, but it becomes so second nature Mm-hmm that I would like give my phone and or I'd leave it in the office and I go home I got nothing on me. Mm-hmm, and I'll reach for my pocket. Yeah, and I'm like I had on my phone Yeah, phantom reach. Yeah, but I do think this is something we have to continually struggle with because I find that after 24 hours or a weekend I'll often do that Friday to Monday. I just feel so good. Yep. I don't even want to pick it back up

I really don't there's no desire. There's no, and I also find, I used to do this, I'd take August off of the internet entirely, so last day of July to the first day of September, I had no internet. And I would find that I would actually crave entertainment, but in a healthy way. Maybe, maybe it's, I don't know if it's ever healthy to crave to watch a movie or not.

Maybe it isn't, but it felt healthy. I'd be reading a book all day, drinking my coffee, hanging out with the kids, and I'd say to Cami, my wife, hey, let's watch a movie tonight. And I was excited about it. But with the phone, if you're watching things all day long, it's like eating all day long and then expecting to enjoy a good meal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can go on about this for hours. We're all there wrestling with it, right? I mean, and surely many people watching this can relate to this as well. And I love this idea of it's okay to admit that the algorithms are smarter than me. So they will get their tentacles into me and it's okay to just admit I'm not, by sheer instinct, I'm going to lose. So I have to have some kind of larger strategy and then just think, okay, what that is. I like your idea of having someone else hide it. I know that sounds so pathetic. If you have an office outside the home, that's a good place to leave it though. Yeah, that doesn't sound as pathetic. Yeah. Asking your

daughter to hide your phone does sound pathetic, admittedly. But for me, just the simple thing of spending time with people, it's interesting. Another way I'm changing is I get older. When I was younger, the kinds of things I would enjoy most would be, I'm an introvert, so I really prefer sort of one-on-one conversation as opposed to just mingling in the crowd. 100%. Weirdly, I'm almost changing somewhat. Really? Yeah. This is the strangest thing about that I never would have expected but I

actually crave these times to just go to a party which is not not typically something. No it depends on of course yeah who's there. But I've had some of the best times just have you know have a bunch of people over and have and just like kind of nerdy but just play Settlers of Catan and just just hang out and just talk and put your phone in the other room while you do that and something about that is incredibly therapeutic. Another simple thing I find therapeutic these days is doing yard work. So here's another embarrassing thing I'd never mowed the lawn until six months ago. Ever. In my life never mowed a single lawn

Okay, lived in California never needed to never had grass. Okay and moved to Tennessee by a house suddenly I got it and something about seeing instant results Being outside you work. It's it looks one way you work now it looks another way and Nothing else in life really feels like that, especially staring at a screen or in, not just the internet, but also pastoral ministry is not instant results like this. And so something about that. So, you know, there's ways we can fight back with all of these normal human activities that are good for our mental health. I think too, training people that you're not going to respond to them when they text you

right away. That sounds however that sounds, but I don't want to live my kind of life where I get a text and you expect a response right away. I don't want to live my life like that. And so I imagine that's probably really important as a priest or a pastor. You know, it's like, look, I'll respond to everyone like the next day or something like that. Because I actually have things to do and I don't want people coming to think that I'll just respond to them if they reach out to me when I'm with my wife or children

or whatever. Yep. And for me, as someone who could be tempted to not want to disappoint someone, I've had to learn more in the last year than I've ever had to learn of just say no to things when you need to and allow people to be disappointed with you. Because the escalation of people who will want me to read their book or who will want me to come and do something that just honestly is so unrealistic for me. I'm just trying to constantly declutter, and and so the amount of things I have to say no to, to have healthy rhythms is embarrassing, and I feel bad. I would like to say yes to more things, but just

learning the discipline of I am going to be okay with disappointing people at times when I need to say no. Again it sounds simple, but it's one of those skills. Mason- Well as your platform has grown, I'm sure a lot more people want your attention. Bregman- Yes, and even it feels, because I don't ever want it to be, I just always want to have the right motives. I always want to serve people, and so sometimes I could question myself and say, do I have the right motives for this? But I actually think it's okay to set those boundaries. But yeah, over the last year it's been absolutely crazy just the, just trying to learn that lesson. Say no, and if it's what you think is healthy and what God would want you to do,

just be okay with disappointing people and just say, I'm sorry and and I actually find most people are understanding of that. Yeah, I Think I I'm trying to be honest here. I think I'm really good at saying no You're better than I am. Yeah, but I'm you know, I'm wondering I Get asked a lot. I remember someone sent me a Manuscript recently and asked me if I could read it and like review it by like a days and I don't even know the person yeah so I don't even respond to people oh yeah no I don't either there's something that I wouldn't respond to you that's what I'm I have an automated email but I'll have friends who reach out and want me to read want me to blurb a book and I feel bad but I I just know

I'm at that verge of I've got to declutter yeah I've got to do that and so they say living life with margins. Hmm. You heard that? I like that phrase Yeah, because you know, it's funny Someone will say hey, can you give this talk at this place and you're like, when is that next February? Sure Exactly, and then next February comes. February has stuff in it that you don't even know about yet. Mm-hmm So I tend just to say no to almost everything now. Yep, me too.

I say no to almost everything, travel included. And part of that is my kids guilt me. They know how to guilt me. They'll say, dad, why are you going? And I'll say, well, I'm going to do this thing. And they'll say, but you could just say no, right? And they'll say, and I'll say, well, yeah. Well, why didn't you just say no?

It's like, oh, thanks a lot. But so that's an added incentive. When you have five young kids, it actually is difficult to travel. I think for me, what makes it difficult is my pride. It's not the fear of disappointing people, which I think can be a vice or a shortcoming. I think my shortcoming is more, I don't wanna seem pretentious.

Yes. But that comes from my pride. Like I want people to think well of me. And when you're asking me to review my book, and I just think this is not really worth my time. Oh, yeah. But you're going to start saying no to everybody. You know, you I think again, I'm proud of this, that people are thinking, who does he think he is? And that of this, that people are thinking, Oh, who does he think he is? And that bothers me. Yeah. Because I want them to think well of me. God have mercy on me a sinner. Dang it all. I think it's probably my pride as well. And I didn't realize that until you said that. You're welcome. Thanks a lot.

How do you think YouTube has changed you? And if you continue doing what you're doing on YouTube for 10 years, and we did that sliding door movie, remember? Where Gwyneth Paltrow is like split and she lives one life and another. Maybe you never saw the movie. I don't think I've seen that one. There's two of you from this point on. One of you continues YouTube for 10 years, one of you quits it today. And now that I'm sitting here in front of two Gavin Ortlund's which one's better or worse and why yeah?

This is this is a sobering question It's a weird sci-fi question to it's a daunting question because I do see the potential downsides I frankly do find it challenging to manage the noise of having a YouTube channel and the the turbulence along the way which by which I mean everything from the the potential constant clutter to the harassment and belligerence Which is a real factor and and you know I think I think that that's the right term for it at times, harassment. I mean, they're there, so all that. I think what the, so

the sort of course correction I'm currently making to try to address that is really reigning in. Because I like to engage on the comments. I like to read the comments. I feel like it's a way I can say, hey, the least I can do, if you left a really thoughtful, sincere comment, the least I can do is engage. Of course, as it becomes harder and harder to do that. But also just response videos. This is probably also pride that I haven't realized was pride, that we're talking about this. But there's this part of me that when I hear a response and the argument that is given in response, I think I can refute that I feel that I need to because I feel this sense of obligation. Yeah, and

and what if someone just watches that video and they're convinced by it. And now even though rationally I know that's wrong, there's sort of an immediate instinctive impulse that I want to engage with that. And I think one thing for ten years out is I will need to just be better at making peace with being misunderstood and hated. And just be okay with it. Make peace upfront with that. And I sort of have done that already, but I think that's... if you're in a public spot, that kind of thing happens. You will be misunderstood at points, and you will be hated at points, and to make peace with that upfront, and to try to... you know, honestly, the real reason I am on YouTube, I do think, is I feel God

calling me to it. I really do. It was not a, getting to my current point, it was not actually an easy process of discernment. I really do sincerely think I'm following God's call for my life, and I see fruit. I mean, the, it's astonishing to me to see, wow, it's working. You know, the things I'm doing I see some positive fruit from. But then there are the, what I call the turbulence, and so there's the thing of how do you pursue the good and shut out the turbulence. I think for ten years I'm going to need to just really dial back and constantly focus on keep my eye on

the prize, and the prize is Mark 10 45, the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and so I have to every single day come back to I'm doing this to serve. For the person out there with intellectual anxiety, I am doing this to be their friend and to help them and to try to, you know, even just be a friend along the way even if an answer doesn't come forth but I find focusing upon that is tremendously helpful for me it helps me shut out the turbulence so anyway ten years from now I hope to be constantly focusing back on that initial goal that I had that got me into it in the first place which is to try to meet needs and for better or for worse YouTube is a place where needs can be met

Young men go to YouTube with questions Philosophical questions religious questions for better or for worse this is a mechanism that our culture uses to catechize young men and If there are not healthy answers on there, they'll find something because people are desperate for answers. And so yeah, I think what I hope to do is over the course of the long haul is keep circling back to that originating goal, which is the fun bit of it, and that is to try to meet needs. And the great secret of life, I think, is if you try to serve other people and try to meet needs you end up being enriched

yourself and so it's a happy thought to try to do that and but it is turbulent waters and so I'll need to keep growing in my ability to just know what to tune out and what to focus on that kind of thing and I think that's a never-ending process of learning. Yeah I like Trent's a never ending process of learning. Yeah, I like Trent's rule that he doesn't do response to response videos. I think that was like a nice, even though you, I get your point that like sometimes you feel obligated

because you know you could perhaps respond and you don't want someone just to think that was the last word when what you're saying is the right thing. But I think that's really a great way not to have undue pressure on yourself. Like, hey, I'm going to respond to this person. I don't do responses to responses. So if this person would like to sit down, then I'm happy to look at my schedule to see

if I'm free. Yeah. I think all through all of this and have not yet arrived myself at my own rubric there. Because I have had times where I'll do a series of back and forths and they go really well. I'll have times where I'll do a dialogue and I'm glad I did it. Then there's other times where you realize I just need to have some sort of guardrails because I can't respond to everything. And so yeah, where that precise set of boundaries is for me

I've not exactly located, but I think Trent's rule is a good one. Men, have you checked out Exodus 90 lately? If you've heard of Exodus 90 before you're probably thinking of cold showers and Lent But the Exodus 90 app offers so much more It's the number one freedom app to help you become the man you were created to be I've been following along with the app's daily scriptures, reflections and disciplines. It's really fantastic. It offers a powerful take on the spiritual life for men today. Download the Exodus 90 app today and join men from around the world for Advent which starts on December 1st. Experience Advent differently this year by breaking out

of the religion of the world. Join the man of Exodus 90 and Monsignor James Shea, president of the University of Mary, who is the spiritual guide for Advent this year on the Exodus 90 app. We will rediscover the hope that God lays out for us in the coming of His Son into the world. Go to Exodus90.com slash Matt to learn more about Advent on the Exodus 90 app that's Exodus 90 Dot-com slash Matt to join men from around the world this advent starting December 1st We have into video games growing up. Oh, yeah regular Nintendo Oh, come on because we're the same age always last I like asking people this stuff because super Tecmo ball

No, I know that is ah maybe 1992 NFL, regular Nintendo football game. Oh, okay. That was our big one. Yeah. But Zelda, Metroid, these kinds of games. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean the NFL game, obviously in Australia,

we didn't play that, so that wasn't popular, but Zelda, yeah, it was fun. What about the computer when it came out? Did you play Doom, Quake? I didn't, I had friends who were into that and for some reason I never did. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, isn't it? Powerful to the point where I've taught my kids how to play Zelda. Yeah.

And it's therapeutic, it's fun for me to teach them. Like the original? The original Zelda. You can play it online. Yeah, it is a powerful thing. So I remember playing Doom which is a first-person shooter one of the one of the first and For some reason YouTube the other day showed me Someone playing it on an original PC. Mm-hmm. Do you know with the tower and the big fat? Yep monitor and

The clicky clicky keyboard. Oh yeah. Nostalgia. Yeah. Brings you right back. So what's going on? I had this thought the other day that, and it's not at all insightful or new,

that fundamentalism in the negative sense of that word, obviously the fundamentals are good, but when people use that in the negative sense of that word obviously the fundamentals are good But this when people use that in the negative sense, I imagine that would arise in a time of doctrinal confusion or Rampant heresy. Like things are confusing. We need to buddy batten down the hatches. We need to be a lot clearer than we're being Um Is that what's happening in Protestant world?

I think what you just laid out there is one of the things I see happening now. So I did a video on this recently. I didn't watch it. I'd like to though, but I haven't seen it. It's about exactly. I mean, actually the way you just introduced this is very similar to how I introduced that video.

One of the things that I said at the beginning though, is I guess I'm sensitive to the term fundamentalist being used for anybody who's just to the right of me. And so, you know, if you might hold to the most basic, modest, you know, I recite the Apostles' Creed and now I'm called a fundamentalist, and so I'm kind of sensitive to that. So I want to acknowledge, I tried to start off the video kind of acknowledging this term can be misused as a just a way to attack someone. Also there's some positive things of fundamentalism historically. So I, you know, the video is all about the 20th century, which it's amazing how much, you know, we talk about church history and we usually think of the church fathers and so forth, but even even rewinding the clock 80 years puts us

in a historical context where I think we can learn a lot. And you have this dynamic playing out where as to speak anything critical I will say here and in what follows is about Protestants. So the mainline Protestant denominations are going liberal, and so you find, you know, the 1920s and the 1930s, there's this movement of revolt against this. And initially the term fundamentalist is a positive word. It's not a negative term. It just means you believe in the fundamentals. And one of the great eventual evangelicals, Carl Henry, used to say in the 1930s, we were all fundamentalists

together. You know, before this term got associated with certain things that aren't so good, but as you go forward in the 30s and in the 40s and in the 1950s, and I try to trace this out in the video, you see a second split. So there's the first split between the fundamentalists and the liberals, then as you go forward within fundamentalism, you see another split between the fundamentalists and as they came to be called the evangelicals. And the difference there is not that one is more opposed to liberalism, they're both opposed to liberalism, but there's a difference of posture. And, you know, But there's a difference of posture and you know, I think it's fair to say that well just to speak descriptively a lot of the concerns about fundamentalists

would be an anti-intellectual posture, anti-cultural posture, and sometimes a belligerence, sometimes a tendency to fragment down and down and down, dying on every hill, you know, every hill is a hill to die on. And so what I was observing in the video is it seems like, now we fast forward 80 years, and it seems like at least in some ways I wonder if there are similar dynamics working out in the contemporary Protestant world, where we feel a new undertow of liberalism. That's a nice, I like that analogy. Undertow? Yeah. Yeah, it feels like that, you know, this little pull in our culture. I mean, think about where the

Republican Party is today versus 30 years ago, you know, the world is changing rapidly and we feel this pull in a liberalizing direction, in a more secular direction, and so in response to that it seems like it's the least surprising thing in the world that there would be a temptation for reactions against that to fall into fundamentalist tendencies in some of the negative things that are characteristic of that term. And so I'm wanting to be very careful here, and it's really refreshing to talk about this in a sense of Protestant and Catholic, where we can almost sort of compare

notes about the challenges we're facing in our own contexts and how we can sort of strengthen one another or even just help each other think about it, because I want to be careful, because I'll have people say to me, so the big thing is I'm trying to say, okay, we need to resist liberalism, we also need to do it in such a way that doesn't fall into the errors of historic fundamentalism. For example, just plain old mean-spiritedness or fighting too much, you know, dying on every hill, not doing what I call theological triage. And so we're trying to get the balance right, and I'll have, but I'll have people say to me, you know, this,

that isn't the real threat, you don't know what time it is, you don't know how urgent the hour is, you are running around on a sinking ship with a fire extinguisher, you know, you're just looking at the wrong problem that isn't a real thing, and I try to consider that, and I, you know, I think they're... okay, you ask, okay, what can I learn from this? But at the end of the day, it seems to me some of these things that I see, so the big picture here is I think there's a concern of an overreaction, and lunging so far against liberalism that we fall into other sins and errors of an opposite nature. One example would be slander.

It seems to me slander is becoming more common in the world. It seems to me that the internet fuels that. And sadly and tragically, I think I need to say, I think it's becoming more normal for Christians to slander one another. Hatred. I think that Christians sometimes hate one another, and I think we do that more now than we did five years ago perhaps. At least it feels like that to me. Again, it feels like the internet fuels that. Now, so if someone wants to say, trying to address slander and hatred is running around with a fire extinguisher on a sinking ship, I want to say no. We have to oppose liberalism with the integrity of Jesus Christ, and with truthfulness, and with charity. And that means how we treat each other in the body of Christ matters.

And that's not a small thing. It does matter. Now the tricky thing, and where I will be curious for your thoughts on this, is how do we do that but find the right balance here? Because to me, it's really easy to react to one error. And so I could, you know, it's like the pendulum, right? I could be reacting to what I regard as fundamentalist tendencies, and in the process kind of become naive about liberal dangers within evangelical Christianity.

And it's like when any, when your eye is on this one problem over here, it's really hard to remain keenly alert to this other problem at the same time, but of course, faithfulness to Christ calls for these, you know, opposing virtues to be conjoined. And that is so hard day to day. If someone who's more, and I'm not trying to use the word fundamentalist as a smearer word for anybody, but if someone is further to the right than me, attacks me, I can very easily start to feel less concerned about people to the left of me.

If people to the left of me start attacking me, I can very easily start to, I'm not so concerned about these errors over here to the right of me and so forth. And I know not every error fits neatly on a spectrum like this. but to the extent that we can kind of chart out different postures towards modernity, something that I think about a great deal these days. What does faithfulness look like right now? How do we genuinely oppose

the undertow of secularism and liberalism of our times without falling into sin in the process. And I think 20th century fundamentalism does have some cautionary tales for us. I mean, some of the things that happened were, you know, it got nasty. And I see nastiness today. How will we persuade the world that Jesus is risen from the dead if we are vengeful toward one another in the body of Christ. And I'm just talking among Protestants, for example, though I suspect it's not only that. But so then you ask, so what do we do? Because to me, that is not a small question. You go to John 13 and John 17. John 13, the passage about, by this all men will know you are my disciples.

If you love one another, he's washing his disciples' feet, saying, I gave you an example how you treat each other, washing your feet, serving. Go to John 17, there's the prayer for unity, and it's, so that the world will believe you have sent me. So love and unity are necessary for our mission. People will not believe,

they will not find Jesus credible if we are hating one another. And love and unity of course is complicated. And then you have things like our blessed Lord saying it would be better for you to be thrown into the ocean with a millstone around your neck, rather than causing one of these little ones to fall. You also have Paul saying things like, I wish your hand would slip and you'd castrate yourself. My problem, I think, and then you also have people who of course point to Christ making the whip. Yeah, for me there's a lot to say, but you know we know that anger is, it

can be an appropriate reaction and it's about rectifying an injustice and it sort of propels us to do that. My fear in likening ourselves to the blessed Lord in the temple or likening ourselves to Jerome who used spicy language against his interlocutors is that when neither of those people and we should be careful and realize that when it's very hard to be angry and not sinning and to not sin, when you say that you're seeing a lot of kind of hatred and vengefulness today, I agree with that, but how do you know it's those things? Because you know we since we don't know the heart of another, to claim that they're lying is quite a... What is it that you're seeing? Is it just the kind of

spirit of like bitterness? Because I think that's something objective. Yeah, no, that's a good question. And let me throw out another verse that just... into the mix and then try to answer your question. But the other verse that just came to me that might be good to throw out on the table is also from Christ and Matthew 6 about if you say to your brother you fool Then you are in danger of the fires of hell And I mean God have mercy on me a sinner. Yes, that's how I feel

Yeah, because that that passage is especially I mean I preached through the Sermon on the Mount at our previous church and it was Every every week I felt as though the passage was like a wrecking ball from the Holy Spirit just to demolish any pride We have because those verses in the Sermon on the Mount really get into the interior places of our hearts where we can fall into the sin of murder, in this case, in ways that actually are very accessible and easy for us to fall into. And to answer your question, I don't always know exactly... I mean, I don't know, I don't have a clear sense of...

Here's how exactly you figure out what hatred is and when... So I don't necessarily feel compelled to say well, you know this one incident was that thing I'm talking about I think it's fairly intuitive that in general There is that dynamic and I think there are at least some interactions one can observe falling out on social media where it's How do I say it? I mean it seems pretty clear that there is not goodwill, there is not good faith. So what are the metrics of that? I mean, untruthful speech, an inability to wish well upon another person. A desire to see them shamed rather than repent,

even. I've used this analogy in the past that I have to ask myself, what would I rather? Would I rather Joe Biden be ashamed by being denied Holy Eucharist at Mass because he's a terrible blasphemous Catholic? Or would I rather him kind of repent on a few things and see some progression in the right direction? And sometimes I'm not sure, and that's a signal to me that I've gone sometimes I'm not sure, and that's a signal to me that I've gone far afield. Yeah, that... my dad once wrote a list of all the one-anothers that we don't see in the New Testament. So we see a lot of great one-anothers, like wash one another's feet, for example, John 13 we already mentioned. But there's a lot of one-anothers we don't see embarrass one another in the New Testament, shame one another, scold one another. And when you said embarrassed, I mean, that would be a great example of where it seems

like we use Twitter nowadays to pile on someone and we want to scorn them. We want to shame them. We want to degrade them. I mean, that's kind of why the quote tweet was invented. I'm sure there's other reasons, but no, it's to slam dunk on people. And the terrifying thing is that Christians participate in these cultural dynamics to a great degree, and I think, you know, all of us, we don't want to be aloof and say, oh, I'm never tempted in this way. All of

us can fall into sin. But it is a question to think through in our times is how do we get this right? How do we have the, you know, so you mentioned those passages where Christ, you know, He has the whip, so forth. How do we encapsulate that aspect of the character, the beautiful character of Jesus Christ, but also have the compassion that is reflected in the character of Christ in 2024 or in 2025. What does that look like? I think that's a kind of question that's good to sort of hold out in front of us and never...

I think it's important that it makes us uncomfortable. Before we quickly refute Gavin Orland and tell him of all the exceptions because doesn't he know about this, that, and the other? Sure, all of those might be valid but Before you do that, maybe just allow it to make you uncomfortable Because I think if you're on YouTube doing response videos and you're not kind of cognizant of that tension How do I respond without shaming without seeking to embarrass? If you're not cognizant of that, that's probably not a good sign. Yeah and

the temptation that I that, that's probably not a good sign. Two of the things that I have noticed with fundamentalist tendencies that I think are good to be alert to, we've already kind of mentioned this shaming, the sort of mean-spiritedness that has evolved with shaming someone. Another thing is when we find our identity and what we are against more than what we're for, so what really makes me feel good and what really makes me feel like this is who I am is... Preach. Because it seems like this is a common... I'm not with those people there and I'm actually attacking them and... My identity is negative. It's less about what I love and more about what I oppose. 100%. Whereas what a happy thought. You know, and this is, we get to invite people to this. This is

a good thing. Find your identity first and foremost in being a child of God and then in building up. You know, the ultimate thing is we want to build up in Christ, and then from that and out of that comes any sort of polemics. And that, I mean, that's hard to get that tension right and get that order right, but even just to conceptualize that, I find helpful. So it's first positive. It's first I want to build something. I want to construct something positive, I want to, I want my life to be helping the kingdom of God move forward in tangible ways. Now along the way that will require polemics and that will require opposing errors, but the main goal isn't just that, the main goal is I want to build something. Just even to

articulate that I find a helpful reminder in our times because it's very easy to get swept up into, and it's easy. I mean that's the other thing is we can all admit we get, we're not perfect. We get swept this way and this way but we just have to course correct and come back to the goal. So that the other thing though that I find really needed right now is the ability to triage issues. What does that word mean? I've heard you say that before and I don't even know what the word means, let alone theological triage. It helped me. Forgive me for not explaining it the first time. I'm sure most people do know what it is, I just don't. Well I guess it's an old medical, I

didn't really know it until I started getting into these, but you know for a nurse on a battlefield will triage injuries So it's a system. It's a way of ranking the level of urgency For a particular problem, okay, so you know tier one might be the leg is cut off and they're bleeding out So we need to immediately address. That's what triage means okay in tier two could be a serious injury like a broken bone but it's not life-threatening at this exact moment and maybe tier three could be something less severe and I think I know that idea can be abused yes so as to sort of flatten out and be a minimalist and we never want to do that but it seems like there is a need like that in theology.

Not every issue is a tier one issue. Not every doctrine belongs in the Apostles Creed. I just did my video on the Apostles Creed. One of the things I just kept thinking about is how small it is. And that there's so much, you know, there's nothing about the rapture in the Apostles Creed. There's so much that could have made it in there and it didn't. And that itself is instructive to think about what did make it in there. Not to say that's all that's important, but it's just an example of where sometimes we can, you know, to speak of Protestant churches, for

example, the rapture. Great example of an issue that tends to get a lot of focus, and yet sometimes the views that are the default options aren't very historical at all There's other issues like this where studying church history helps me and realize We can die on the wrong hills We can fight over too much or we can fight over too little and so we need a sense of triage of how and So I have a whole book on this topic But even just to put it out on the table and identify it it does seem like this is probably one of the fundamentalist

tendencies we need to be aware of if liberals This isn't fair to either liberals or fundamentalists, but to state the tendency liberals tend to not die on any hills or very few Liberals tend to not die on any hills, or very few. Fundamentalists tend to die on every hill, or too many. And the goal, of course, is we want to have wisdom. And I think there's warrant in the scripture for this way of thinking. You think of Christ talking about the Pharisees and their tendency to strain out a gnat and swallow a camel, or he speaks of the weightier matters of the law. It just seems common sense as well, you know, not everything is equally important, and so we have to sort of prioritize.

I don't know, I'm talking a lot, but... No, it's resonating with me. I also think, though, those smaller things are sometimes tokens or indicators of other views one accepts, you know. sometimes not. And so I get your point. I think from a Catholic perspective, we'd want to say that a faithful Catholic should not only submit to those teachings that have been taught by the church, but a faithful Catholic should also not demand uniformity where the church allows for diversity of opinion or custom.

So if the church says that... Another way of putting it is there are certain things that the church, let's say, commands. Let's say that the scriptures are inerrant or something. There are other... Or going to Holy Mass on Sundays. There are other things that she encourages, like the Holy Rosary as a devotion, let's say. There are certain things she permits, such that, well see, now this is when you get into

the dicey territory, that one can hold to different views of evolution that are still permissible within the general teachings of the church, let's say. And then there are things the church forbids, right? And I think sometimes, yeah, we don't get those categories right. And so we end up demanding what the church encourages, or we end up encouraging what the church forbids, or we end up permitting what the church commands, you see? And so in Catholic circles, you know, I think, for example, like the Holy Rosary, right? That would be a prayer that is thought to be a traditional prayer that has been, and it is a traditional prayer, and it's a prayer that's been encouraged by many saints. But it's also like a kind of indicator, maybe like the

yarmulke for the Jew, that I'm serious. And so if one isn't praying the rosary, then maybe that's an indicator that they're not serious, or if they are praying it that they are, when maybe that's not true. So that's interesting, and I'm sure that's not unfamiliar to you because you've interacted with a lot of Catholics. Other things might be that someone might get very much into the traditional form of the Mass, and that person might say that Catholics should not attend the newer form of the Mass or Eastern forms of the Divine Liturgy or Divine Liturgy or something like that, thereby demanding that someone accept what the Church hasn't demanded. Yeah, so it sounds like... And just

sorry to round off that thought, I think this goes back to what we said earlier about a sort of fundamentalism arising at a time of doctrinal, confusional, widespread heresy, it seems to me that these are like safe spaces that we create in a storm. Man cannot live within chaos. Man wasn't made for chaos. Chaos is and ought to be frightening. When you are in a time of chaos and are afraid, you do and should seek security. And so I think we have these

systems and rituals and indicators that say this is safe. And that's where we seek to... Yeah. And that's not wrong, but it can end up inflexible and rigid. Yeah. I'm curious to ask you about this because so it sounds like in both of our traditions, we have sort of various frameworks for thinking through what issues are more important, what issues are less important and so forth. In my context among evangelicals in the United States,

I'm recognizing this sense of polarization where we find the leftward pole, we find various reactions to that that are different and are causing different camps that are emerging. There are losses of alliance and more, there's more fragmentation that I'm seeing. I'm curious, do you, in terms of the sociology of how you see this playing out right now, I mean, are there comparable dynamics that you see in your context? Yes, 100%. And I think that's why Catholics need to stop it with the look how divided you Protestants are. That kind of made sense to me under John Paul II and Pope Benedict, but there's a lot of fragmentation among Catholics. Is that true? I mean, I wouldn't say it's to the extent of Protestants because I think those who would be demanding things the church suggests might be the vocal minority on YouTube. But there is a lot of division among Catholics today.

There are, you know, because of the things I've just said, you know, you shouldn't be attending this mass, or he's not even the Pope anyway, and yet I'm claiming to be Catholic. And so there is divisions among Catholics, and we just have to accept that reality. And I think it should humble Catholics a little bit, quite honestly. Here's an idea of the indicators that I was talking about, right? So someone might see a legitimate sin like two men laying together, to use that phrase, or two women. And they might be right in judging that masculinity and femininity are being squashed, are being

eradicated in mainstream culture, say. That's something to be upset about. The sin of two men or two women laying together is something that ought to be condemned. The scripture condemns it clearly. But then they might go from that and say, if a woman wears pants, she's sinning. Or they might see rampant unchastity and conclude that a man and a woman shouldn't be kissing unless they're married. And so it's almost like, how pure can I be? I've heard it being described as a purity spiral. Just like you have these sort of woke Olympics, where people on the left are continually outwoking each other to show how enlightened they are.

There's something similar on the right to show how serious we are. And I joke, but I wonder how long it will be until you find the conservative male saying, no, I actually mean it, she shouldn't leave the kitchen. And you're like, no, you can't mean that. No, that is actually, that's a silly joke. But yeah, we're not immune to that spiraling on the right as those are on the left. Just for us to be able to recognize that to me is a positive step in terms of, I think there can be a naivety.

So people on the right, as they are reacting to liberalism, they are seeing the various woke spirals, for example, of outperforming one another. And just to be able to recognize there are comparable temptations that can obtain in this direction as well. Simply putting that on the map, putting it on the radar screen, to me is helpful because it just makes us more alert to the legion ways that we can fall into error. Sin is tricky, right? As soon as we start pushing in one direction against sin, there will be other sins that we can fall into and not realizing it. I don't know, I just, to me it's that,

I'd be curious to ask, not to put you on the spot personally, but just to talk about this, is how do you find the right response where we are avoiding, we have sufficient sort of intensity and energy in the opposition to liberalism without falling into the anger, or let's say, a sinful anger. And where do you find that balance? Because that's the great... You know what I was saying earlier about how when there's sins over here you're reacting

to, it's easy to kind of downplay these sins and vice versa. Yeah, like if if well give me an example, maybe that'll help. Let's suppose that you are concerned about a deterioration of understandings of masculinity and femininity. Rightly so. And so you are attracted to a sort of re-emphasis of not just pre-modern Christian views, but just pre-modern human views of gender difference.

But you brought up a scenario a moment ago where I see this a lot, not that exact thing of a woman cannot leave the kitchen, but I do see expressions of masculinity that are held up as an ideal that are just not the way of Christ. They are harsh, they are authoritarian. It's not the beauty that we see in Scripture, it's not the beauty we see in the example of Christ. And so you're looking at something like this and you're saying, how do we help our people, how do we help our young men fight in both directions at the same time and take both matters seriously? Because sometimes you'll say, I'll hear people say,

oh, yeah, there's sort of the sins of the far right, but those aren't really a big deal. And it feels as though it's that thing of, well, we're so concerned about sins in this direction, we're not as concerned here. And again, it happens in the other direction as well. I don't even have a coherent question, let alone an answer. It's just sort of... But this is fun. We're kind of, we're trying to grasp in order to... I mean, as a Catholic, right, I feel like I'm blessed in that I have the Scriptures and I have the living tradition and teaching office of the Church and the catechism of the Catholic Church. So let's say I see, I don't know, people

pointing to genital mutilation of children. That makes me very, very, very angry. Well, I can't go so far the other way because I also have the Catholic Church teaching me that it's more appropriate to refer to people who have same-sex attraction as that. Not gay, not lesbian, because the people created the image and likeness of God

who are deserving of our love. I can look at the catechism language and go, okay, well, I don't wanna... That might not be a great example because I'm thinking off the top of my head. But I suppose, like, if I'm trying to remain faithful to the teachings of the scriptures through the church, then I have someone to kind of correct me or reign... Like, here's another example, right? I am open to the death penalty in principle. I think the church is as well, and yet there's been a movement away from that, which initially made me very uncomfortable because I wasn't sure what was happening.

And yet as trying to be a humble son of the church, I submit myself to this teaching and understand it, ask clarifications, and then submit to it. That's nice. Even if it's wrong, it's nice. Like, it's nice to have a living authority that can go, no, no, not that way, this way. Okay, thank you. Maybe that helps with rejecting this while not going too far in the opposite direction. Also, I'm probably aware that I certainly do that. You know, like I see, you know, I guess we're not all called to do the same thing either. You know, you mentioned a moment ago, you know, you might not be focusing on the right things someone might say to you. But are we all meant

to focus on the exact same thing, or can some of us be focused on some things and some on others? Like, is it okay if most of my attention goes to the drug addicted in Steubenville, while a lot of your emphasis goes to the porn addicted more globally? Is that okay? Surely it is. Like, well, is it okay if your ministry is teaching and educating people about abortion while mine is educating people about, you know, the negative effects of racism? It's like, well, obviously abortion is worse than racism. But does that mean I do we all have to be equally attentive to the worst sin and educating people like that? That doesn't seem right. It seems like there are different body parts, you know? Yeah. I don't know.

There's a bunch of thoughts that don't aren't coherent either. No, no, it's, it's well, it's, yeah, it's therapeutic and useful just to talk this through. And I just even just identifying possible dangers I find helpful. Because because yeah, that what you say about one's personal calling differing from another one's personal calling, that's helpful. In a Protestant context, like at my local church, we have a statement of faith that goes into masculinity and femininity and gives not heavily detailed and high-handed, but I really love our church. It feels like a healthy church.

So they have teaching, so this also can serve as sort of guardrails, like you were saying, that can help us. But I guess the only thing on my heart with all of this is just how do we shepherd the next generation that is rising up, many of whom I see radicalizing in different directions. And it just seems like... Mason Hickman It seems like to not radicalize in one way or the other is to be called a coward. It's like, you know, you have to be on, you know, that old show, this one goes to 11.

You have to be 11 on one side or the other and any kind of like, well, just hesitation or nuances seen as, as cowardice. I also think I have maybe more sympathy to those on the right who are trying to regain an understanding of appropriate sexual expression interaction than I do the left, because I think we've left the path of reason as it pertains to what men and women are, what sex is, etc. so that it shouldn't surprise us that as we seek to get back on path, we're going to see aberrations and oddities. I'm thinking of the tradwife phenomenon that we like, that kind of seems a bit weird, but okay, I guess that's okay.

Or you'll have people making maybe strong statements about how men and women should interact. I think that's kind of par for the course, given the confusion that's resulted after the sexual revolution and whatever preceded that, that I'm not even thinking of. It's just when people start demanding things of people that in my from my tradition, the church doesn't. That's when it's like, you got to be so careful.

Yeah. Right. No, that makes sense. And I mean, so for me, when I think about the issue you raised about just gender and like, let's say, what's our ideal vision of marriage and how a husband and wife relate to one another? for a modern egalitarian society. It was also countercultural for many patriarchal societies because very few cultures would have the idea that a husband gives up his life to love his wife. I mean, the idea of the radical selfless love of Jesus Christ, this, you know, as husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. So that's a particular calling that put, that calling itself, it seems to me, pushes against the worst extremes in either direction. Because my concern about some of these hyper-masculine trajectories is they look nothing like a Christ-like love. There's not that self-sacrificial service that informs what it looks like. So, you know...

For me, when it comes to questions like that, I sometimes think it's helpful to read people who are writing at a time outside of the raging controversy. Because it feels like whenever you're within a raging controversy, you tend to get extremes, and it's hard to know which way to look. What if, you know, so one thing I like to do is I love St. John Chris systems, the commentary on Ephesians five. Have you read that? I have not. Yeah. It's quite beautiful. You know,

he'll say like wives should not seek to be the head of their households. They shouldn't stubbornly contradict their husbands. This is enough. That's the language he uses. And then he tells husbands, like never call your wife by her name, but always by, I mean, this is a suggestion, I'm saying we have to do this, but always with like a term of affection, you know? See how Christ brought his bride into submission, not by acting like a tyrant or through threats, but through a sort of loving consideration and tenderness, you know? So sometimes I think that's helpful because like in all honesty, we don't know today apparently what women are. Like what is a woman? We don't know. What's a man? I guess we don't know that either. What is marriage? Well, we're not sure what that could be in any kind of thing. What is sex?

I mean, that could refer to any kind of illicit sexual act. We're very, very confused. So I, sometimes I like to like look at the scripture and then to try to interpret that through those who weren't in the middle of that controversy and go okay well if that was good enough for him and that doesn't seem contrary to scripture to me and that was something that was held prior to this sexual revolution that's confused us all then maybe that's worth a damn. I love that idea. Going back to someone who's not in the midst of the controversy. Let me give an example of that that has helped me in a Protestant context, probably an area where on the triage issues, your tradition probably does better, would be in the realm

of creation. At least from my vantage point, American evangelicals, we tend to polarize over that issue a lot more, it seems like like than other traditions. But so I went back, I spent a year of my life studying Augustine and my entire job for a year was to read Augustine on creation. Wow. And absolutely fascinating because I came to feel, this is a strong statement, that it's the most important foundational doctrine for him, for Augustine. I didn't really realize that before I started reading him, but creation

is central to his thought, but also what he said is similar to how I experienced you describing John Chrysostom, in that he's not as adamant about certain things as you might expect. So Augustine, very comfortable with, I mean, I'll give an example, this will shock people, but I promise it's true. Book eight of the literal commentary on Genesis, first section. Did God create Adam? Was Adam a real person? And was the Garden of Eden a real place? And he says there's three schools of thought. Some yes some say no some say both it's he's both a real person and a type of humanity and Augustine says yes it's both so he affirms a historical Adam and a real garden of Eden but he gives I'm almost hesitant to say it because of for fear I

might miss site it from memory or it will trip someone up. I'm sure people will let you know in the comments. Oh yes, exactly. They'll clear it up for you. Oh yes, we'll look in the comments. Yeah, he basically makes concessions that are surprising in terms of allegorical ways of reading not only Genesis 1, but even Genesis 2 and 3. He says you have to have a historical narrative there,

but in the details of that, he's very open-handed, and he'll talk about. So, Adam's body, did God create Adam as an infant who then grew up, or did he create Adam as a fully grown man? And he says, either way, and he's open-handed. And he also, way and he's open-handed. Yep, and he also I think he's interacting with origins view But he basically says some Christians hold to an allegorical view of even Adam and Eve in the garden and they're still Christians There's that's triage. Yep. Yep fascinating I'll never forget that and it definitely corrects my tribe a lot if we take Augustine seriously as we should but tribe a lot if we take Augustine seriously as we should. But point being it's a great example of no one's really having the same exact science faith dialogues in the early fifth century that we're having today. And so Augustine's

voice is especially helpful because it comes from a less polarized time. Yeah that's right, that's a good point. Like what he's saying to quote William Mankregg is not a forced retreat in the face of modern science. This is something he's saying well beyond the controversy that currently, yeah, that's, I like that analogy. Yeah. So going back to the past, voices like this can help us. And even I will say also to the 20th century and 19th century, even some of the fundamentalists, I'll say this, some of

these people, you know, I'll give an example, a J. Gresham Machin, 1920s Presbyterian, extremely conservative, wrote a book called Christianity and Liberalism. The whole idea is liberalism isn't Christianity, these are two rival religions. He's a fundamentalist, And yet he was remarkably open on other issues that we face today. So doctrinal issues about views of the end times, his view of the Protestant Roman Catholic conversation, much more generous than what one will often find today. So all these kinds of things, you're like, okay, this is J. Gershwin Matian. And so my point is even a hundred years ago, we can find voices that give us a little bit of perspective on the escalation of extremes that we're seeing right now.

Jason Vale I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful. If you don't like it, you can always quit. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd.

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it all. Just go check it out. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd. The link is in the description below. It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories to them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com slash Matt Fred. One thing I've noticed in Protestant Catholic relations, and I don't know if this is a correct assessment. I suspect it is. I'd be interested in your point of view, is that Protestants knew their Bible really well, and I think it's fair to say there was some

anti-Catholic bias in America, I think it's more than fair to say. And you know, you've got the jack-chick tracks and things like this. I think after a while Catholics kind of got tired of being beaten up, and they like developed some apologetic muscle, and to the point where they were like, please, please come at me. And they kind of became more on the offensive against Protestants, maybe 80s, 90s, early aughts. And it's funny to see how this kind of goes back and forth, because I am seeing, I would say like 10, 15 years ago, I wasn't hearing a lot of anti-Catholic. Okay, that's a wrong way to put it. I don't like using the word anti-Catholic, because I wouldn't say anti-Protestant if a Catholic thought you were wrong. So like using the word anti-Catholic because I wouldn't say anti-Protestant

if a Catholic thought you were wrong. So I won't say anti-Catholic. I wasn't seeing people on a sort of muscular offensive against Catholics 10, 20 years ago, but I am today. And I wonder if that muscular offensive against Catholics is in part a response to the Catholics response to the anti-catholic, you know what I mean? How these things kind of go in cycles. You will have better historical perspective about that because if

people can believe this, I actually have not been deeply entrenched in the Catholic Eastern Orthodox Protestant conversation until about four years ago. Wow. And I've gotten pulled into it to my own surprise, trying to help people and answer questions. And I will be honest, I think I was a bit dismayed at just the lack of Protestant representation on YouTube when I began.

I didn't necessarily feel that there were great, there were some, but not very many voices necessarily defending Protestantism well. You tended to see a little bit more of some of the things you've described of a very militant posture, or one tended to see just complete avoidance of the conversation. So there's lots of great Protestant YouTube channels that just don't talk about these kinds of issues, they do other things. I was, you know, I just watched debate after debate where the Protestant gets demolished, or and

or maybe doesn't have a very grounded perspective even in historic Protestantism. And so of course that's not true of everybody. There are some thoughtful Protestants out there doing great work. May I ask who do you think is doing decent work? You don't have to agree with everything they're saying. Yeah, no. But who are some Protestant YouTubers addressing the kind of Catholic Protestant distinctions? Are you like, yeah, they've got some good things to say?

Yeah. I love Jordan Cooper's channel. Yep. I like him as a person as well. He strikes me as a good man and a reasonable person. Even the things we're talking about about our culture. He strikes me as one of those people I look to and I see him as trying to carve out a sane pathway in terms of working through like the culture war issues. But also, Lutherans are great. Lutherans are often very erudite and deep in history and sensitive to philosophy and all the things that evangelicals tend to be weak at intellectually.

I often find Lutherans are great. So I love watching his stuff and I've enjoyed doing things with him. There's lots of, the thing is, there's lots of great Protestants out there doing great work that isn't as visible on YouTube. So I tend to always encourage people to read books and just see what's out there. So I think, you know, Kevin Van Hooser at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School theologian I greatly esteem. He's written on these various things. He strikes... where I'm coming from is broadly where I would locate someone like him, and that is trying to find the healthy balance between not attacking, not being the anti-catholic for lack of a better term,

not failing to appreciate our common ground. I think we are fellow Christians. Now at the same time, we don't want to trivialize our differences because they matter. And so, you know, I think it's appropriate for us to contend for the truth where we differ and to make arguments so Trying to find that middle space which I think is the healthy space but also the trickiest space to be in And I see him and his work is something like that. Maybe another person. Oh, there's so many I could try to think of in terms of books Okay, I asked you I'm gonna throw out some Protestant denominations Ah, I don't want you to give me like a few word

answers. Do you know what I mean? I just want to see how you think about these things because I'm outside of your tribe and I don't, you know what I mean? Sure, sure. Baptist. Ah, the Baptists. Well, I take a lot of abuse for being a Baptist.

And I will say that I feel a little defensive of Baptists. What I will say, and forgive a little defensive of Baptists. What I will say, and forgive me if this answer is longer than what you're... That's all right. Take your time. So I think historic... I make a huge distinction between historic Baptists and the contemporary perception of Baptists. Not an unfair perception, but just the sociology of how the Baptist tradition has unfolded. Because, you know, if you go back 300 years ago, Baptists weren't so huge.

Today Baptists are, you know, the Southern Baptist Convention is massive. It's so many people. But 300 years ago it was the Congregationalists and the Presbyterians and others who were the larger, and something has changed. So if you go back and you look at like foundational Baptist documents and theologians, they're, I would say, right in there with the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists and others in terms of stature. But what's happened is I think Baptists have developed a reputation for being a bit more populist, maybe a bit more anti-tradition, anti-intellectual,

but I don't necessarily think that's necessary to a Baptist identity or fair to all Baptists. So, you know, of all the Christian traditions that need to do retrieval and rehabilitation by doing things like reading Augustine on creation or whatever it might be, Baptists are a tradition that especially seem to be in need of that. Also, Baptists have some strengths, and so there's some things I really admire about the Baptist tradition, and one of them will be the emphasis on personal conversion. However much that might be dumbed down at times, I think it's a great thing to emphasize the need for personal conversion, and with evangelicalism more broadly as well. At its best, that's a really

wonderful thing. What about Assemblies of God? What do you think of anything of the Assemblies of God? Oh boy, another large and sort of amorphous tradition in terms of my experience with it because I don't have enough personal experience to have handles on it. But for Christian traditions, I'm more charismatic or continuationist in my own theology and practice for Christian traditions that are in that vein. My experience has been, it really depends upon where you're at and who you're interfacing with to what you might find, but some of the finest Christians I have met have been Pentecostals, they have been just the radical love and kindness that I

have experienced from people in that tradition. Is there a similar interplay in Protestantism as there is in Catholicism? There was a big charismatic renewal within the Catholic Church. I don't know when, 70s and 80s perhaps. And that bore a lot of fruit. There was also scandal involved, especially when every kind of emotions are kind of given, I won't say free rein, but more emphasis things can get out of hand. There's like a, I think I'd say a pretty significant backlash to that now, such that people don't want any kind of display of emotion. Is there something similar within evangelicalism where maybe you look back and you were kind

of embarrassed by some of the shenanigans that took place and we don't want any of that anymore, that's too messy, we're gonna just... Right, I think I could say yes, that from what I can see looking back, a lot of the movements that have been more charismatic in nature seem like they have more often than not, I think I can say, fallen into some kind of scandal that would affect the kind of general perception of that movement, and so that's something that I wrestle with is as one whose theology is there, I will admit that I can't reconcile all of my sort of church experiences with my theology in

that I don't necessarily have a lot of places I would point to and say, here's an expression of continuationist theology that is really working. I sort of look out and I say, sometimes I'm not sure, sometimes it doesn't look good, but I don't necessarily see a wide range of expressions of that that seem really working and healthy and so forth. So that's something interesting that I don't necessarily have an answer for, but I will say that just within Charismatic and Continuationist circles, I have just met some of the most tremendous, tremendous Christians.

Is there a desire on the part of many Protestants in America today that you encounter to have more liturgical worship? Yes. I think the biggest thing that I see in Gen Z, and in younger people in general, is this thirst for stability, roots, substance, and stature in worship. It's just, again, like an undertow, and I think that that plays into conversations among Protestantism and the non-Protestant traditions, the other Christian traditions. I think it plays into what you see of a significant movement towards Anglicanism. I can't tell you how many of my friends are now Anglican. My dad and two of my older siblings are Anglican. My other brother is a Presbyterian

minister. Does that bother you without getting into it? Like is it, no, no, no, no. That's OK. Yeah, they're within the fold kind of thing. Oh, yeah. We're very, I suppose, ecumenical in that sense. We just sort of delight in the conversations and have fun just talking it through.

I was happy for him. You know, it just is a good fit for him. But yes, I see a massive, and know, it just is a good fit for him. But yes, but yes, I see a massive... and that's it. It's interesting. It's so interesting that this is, you know, to come out of my silo and to come into yours and to see the exact same thing is happening. Right? That's interesting. So you say the same thing's happening in your circles? Oh, for sure. Like, younger Catholics are very desirous of tradition and traditional liturgy,

traditional piety. And what's fascinating is I think a lot of Catholics wouldn't incorrectly point to the abuses after the Second Vatican Council and say this is a reaction to that, not in an irrational sense, but in a we need to get back to tradition. So it's interesting that y'all, without that history of the Second Vatican Council, obviously, and the shenanigans that took place after that, are doing the same thing. It's like, okay, maybe this is something broader that transcends denominations, if we can call them that, to say that there's something in modern man that is desirous of roots and tradition and to be linked to something larger and deeper and more. Yeah, that's interesting. It's so refreshing for a Protestant and Roman Catholic to come together and sort of compare notes on our common challenges and

Learn from each other and be strengthened by each other and how you know, you know without minimizing our differences But see we have a lot of similar Temptations and similar Challenges coming against us that we're both trying to sort of navigate I think for the Protestants, especially evangelicals, a lot of it would be the seeker-sensitive kind of movement in like the 90s and early 2000s, where it's sort of making it really easy to come into the church.

Yeah. I remember that. It's funny you say that I went with a friend to her seeker-sensitive, a term I had never heard of in my life, church. And it was interesting because the pastor was up the front, you know, in the kind of ripped jeans and the tattoos kind of go, which is fine. And he was saying things like, if you're new here today, it was very much. And I thought this must have been like, okay, so maybe once every few months, they have a service. And she said, no, this is every week, every week. Is that what does that do? Like, what how do you respond to

that? Is that what are you doing there? Are you like, oh, cringing? Yes, it's a little bit of a cringe of, oh, yeah, you know, yeah, a lot of evangelical churches have become a little tiny rock concert of worship songs and a TED talk. That's a sermon.

It's very culturally thin. Now, what's interesting is now there'll be a backlash to that. And then there'll be a despisal of maybe the good things that were in that. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. And, and I, uh, you know, I grew up in the, in the Presbyterian context and went to really healthy churches. Now I look back and think I didn't realize how good I had it.

I remember in high school being at a church that was fairly liturgical. We would say the, the Apostles Creed and pray the Lord's Prayer every Sunday and there was a sense of it was actually rigorous and wonderful and healthy and human and it was really great. So I'm not, of course these are tendencies and you find exceptions, but then it felt like in the 2010s, there was in my circles, kind of the big thing was the gospel centered movement,

Calvinism became very popular, which was interesting. And then, but now, what I see now is, give me the Lord's Supper every Sunday, give me liturgy, give me substance, give me depth, which is I think a healthy heart cry. It is fascinating we're seeing this in all the denominations. Like, I'm not Orthodox, obviously, but

what I hear when I listen to my Orthodox brothers and sisters is sometimes I'm going to upset people, you know, maybe talking really well about, say, the Russians and how the Russians celebrate the liturgy as opposed to the Greeks or some who are like, now it's about going Coptic. And you know, like this seems to be in every kind of tradition, this going backwards, like into, and that's not a bad thing. Nor does it mean it's wrong, just because this is a reaction. This might be the way we should be going. It's interesting we're seeing this in Catholicism and Protestantism, if I'm right, in orthodoxy. I presume you're probably seeing something similar in Islam, if they live in the West, in Judaism, I'm not sure.

They would have to tell me. But like, what is happening then that if that's right, and I don't think it's too far-fetched, that you've got all these traditions that aren't necessarily interacting with each other, desperately wanting tradition. Yeah. What is, so, because that's not a commentary just on what's taking place in our little church because if that were the case, then you shouldn't be doing the same thing, nor should the Orthodox or the Jews or whoever. But it's like, maybe it's both, right?

Maybe it's a reaction to what's happened in our church. And then also maybe just being somehow separated from our families. like I live in America, my family are in small towns South Australia, we don't live by our families anymore and we're all... Yeah, I watched the interview you did with Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy about a year ago, love Michael, he mentioned, he does a lot of work in his sort of Islamic apologetics. That's not something I do, but he mentioned that he sees an uptick of sort of fundamentalist tendencies in that context, which I thought was interesting.

And it speaks to what I wouldn't have known about, and that's even outside of Christianity, do we see a similar cultural dynamic of maybe this is the theme of this whole conversation we've had, is instability out there, the search for stability in the heart. And you know, we believe of course, ultimately that stability is Christ Himself, the Rock. But then, for how we live out our faith in Christ, for, you know, I will say that for Protestants, I think it's a wonderful thing

that this thirst for liturgy is there. We need that. And it's, so, you know, hopefully we will deepen. Actually one of the videos I'm gonna have come out is how evangelicals need church history and talk about worship services and basically areas where what we've identified as some weaknesses need to be redressed, and church history can be helpful in that task. I was gonna say, I like how you put that, I thought of another word that kind of rhymes, so there's instability out there leading to a desire for stability instability within here, which sometimes leads to an inability to deal with kind of

To be expected Instability, you know, you got your grand instability that we can't deal with. But then there's the instability of our little lives that we shouldn't expect to cease this side of heaven perhaps. And sometimes we become too upset about those little things maybe, I don't know. Maybe that's being too clever. No, no.

You've always run the risk of trying to, you know. If only you could squeeze that all into the title of the YouTube video. Yeah, good luck. Well, this has been a real pleasure. I'm so grateful for you coming. I like, I don't know if you don't like traveling, but I dislike it immensely. And as we said, you and I are both trying to say no to things, and you said yes to this, and I'm very grateful for your

friendship and for coming here. Where can people learn more about you and the work you're doing? Thanks, and thanks for having me. I absolutely love the conversation. Grateful for your friendship as well. Yeah, Truth Unites is my YouTube channel and there's also a website, truthunites.org. You can check out writings and other things on the website. And boy, I wish I was more interesting, but it's that simple. That'll do. And of course, people want to see your debates. You've debated Trent on solo scriptura here at the university. What other debates have you participated in? I've done maybe five or six debates. Well, by now it's maybe seven or eight, but then other dialogues as well. Those, yeah, if you just punch my name into YouTube, those will

come up, some with Eastern Orthodox priests and scholars, some with Catholics, some with atheists. My, well, this is what I can say, for 2025, so I always plan out my videos a long time in advance, and then it always changes to some extent, but it's fun to dream. I like to plan and think. So for 2025, I have a couple of buckets that I'm going to focus on. One of them is the Doctrine of Heaven. Earlier when I was sharing about those words, eternal life, in the Apostles Creed striking me, that comes out of my general sense of, I think actually one of the needs right now that can really speak to modern unstable hearts is a greater understanding of what heaven is. A lot of Christians are actually afraid of heaven,

I've discovered, so that's going to be one focus. But another thing is going to be more on atheism and more on, well, so many evangelicals who are deconstructing their faith and leaving the church, which I would like to address more. So that's going to be a huge focus of Truth Unites in 2025. I look forward to learning from you. Thanks so much. Thank you, Matt. Enjoyed it.