Can Catholics and Protestants Agree on Why Christianity Is True? (Gavin Ortlund) | Ep. 599
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01:03 hey, I see you, but I genuinely believe that Christianity is true. If I was a 16-year-old kid and I didn't know if God existed, and I type in Christianity to the internet, and I just see people yelling at each other. I actively wrestle with this. Doesn't God command genocide? And then what about slavery in the Old Testament? Okay, these are tough.
01:25 There's definitely verses that seem harsh. to modern readers, to me. But if the ultimate message of the Bible is a God who becomes a slave and dies on our behalf, I mean, I can trust a God like that. Can you give me one argument that makes God's existence more probable than not? Oh boy, which one do we want to talk about? Gavin Aulton, thank you very much for dropping by. It's fun to be back. Thanks for having me.
02:02 Yes, indeed. you've got a new book. It's called Why Christianity Makes Sense. And I said to you this morning, I could have benefited from this book when I was a 16-year-old agnostic who on one hand really wanted the world to have meaning. Would have loved it if God existed, but was turned off by church and what I perceived as moralizing, which was due more to my desire to feed the passions than anything else, you know. But this is a really beautiful book. And what's cool about it is you have, because you're a. You're not Catholic, right?
02:35 Let's let the people wonder. Okay, so you have... No, I'm a Protestant. You have endorsements from Catholics like Robert Coons, brilliant philosopher, John Bergzmer. You have Orthodox endorsements, so... Timothy Paul is a Catholic who also endorsed it. It was grateful for that. Demetrius, wonderful Eastern Orthodox theologian.
02:56 Yeah, those meant so much to me. And it is an ecumenical book. It's just a basic statement of... God exists. I'm going to even put it as modestly as I do in the book. God probably exists. Jesus is compelling. The Bible has been good for humanity and faith makes sense.
03:16 So those are things I think we can all hopefully get behind it. Yeah. And I want to get into this and maybe offer some pushback. For example, how do we know God exists? And what about slavery in the Bible and these sorts of things? Because these were all the questions that I had. Did you ever go through an agnostic stage? Not officially.
03:32 but I've been through two seasons of tremendous angst where I was afraid, what if? And pretty deep dive into that. But I wouldn't have called myself an agnostic, but I was definitely struggling with angst and just the basic questions of what if I'm wrong. Was your dad a pastor growing up? I know he is now.
03:51 I believe he is now. Am I right there? He has a role at our church. He's kind of retired from his full-time role there. He was a pastor for many years and also a seminary professor. for most of my younger years at a seminary in Chicago. So, yeah, but I grew up in the church.
04:11 And then it was in college that first phase hit. But I'm so thankful now. I mean, honestly, I understand the angst of doubt. I think there's many Christians who are, you know, it's a dark moment when you ask these deep questions of what if I'm wrong? What if everything I've built my whole life on? What if I'm deceiving myself or something like that? And then it feels so lonely because you want to bring this up to a friend in the faith, but you don't want to be perceived in a certain way.
04:42 Right. We don't always do well with doubt in the church. And that's one of my passions is let's try to find ways to talk about this and normalize it to some extent. And there's different kinds of doubt. Right. Some doubt is more stubborn, but sometimes a genuine believer is just questioning. Struggling. Yeah.
04:58 And that's somewhat normal. I mean, it's great comfort to think that Thomas is not Judas. You've got doubting disciples who are not like Judas Ascariat. They're genuine disciples. And there's people in the church today. I mean, probably all of us to some extent will have those deep questions. I believe, help my unbelief. And I'm so thankful now that I went through those two seasons.
05:19 Because now I think, I hope I have a little bit more of an empathy and a pastoral heart for someone. To not just, because I think we can do great damage to people with, with triumphalist apologetics, acting like anyone who doesn't see the truth of our claims about Christianity is just unintelligent or something like that. Righteous. Exactly. So I hope I'm trying to speak to non-Christians in a way that says, hey, I see you, and some of these questions are really good questions.
05:49 Yeah. But I genuinely believe that Christianity is true. And it's been the greatest relief of my life to land back on that. and that's everything to me. And I believe it is good. I believe it is beautiful. So I just want to give my life to spreading that message. And I think now in the cultural chaos we seem to be in is a great time for evangelism.
06:12 It's a great time to talk about God, about Jesus. And the theme of this book is about the ache in your heart and the way the gospel intersects with that. So that's what I want to give myself to. And it's kind of an exciting time to talk about it. Now, C.S. Lewis famously talked about how Protestants and Catholics or Christians of different stripes shouldn't be arguing openly. I don't have the exact quote, so I might be embellishing here, but something to the effect that it sort of weakens our witness against the world. Now, obviously, there's a false ecumenism where we just pretend that it doesn't really matter
06:46 that we have these big differences. And then there is an appropriate ecumenism, which I hope is what's happening here, where two people who disagree on some fundamental things, also acknowledge that there are other things that we very much agree on. And like I'd want to say to my audience, buy this book for your 20 year old, 16 year old, obviously older, but this is, there's nothing in here that in any way speaks against Catholicism, as was illustrated by these endorsements from these Catholic heavyweights. But I guess I just want to ask what's your take on today's online apologetics? I think it's good that we disagree with each other and we do. so publicly. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do that. But I'm also thinking
07:29 if I was a 16 year old kid and I didn't know if God existed or if Christianity were true, and I type in Christianity to the internet and I just see people yelling at each other. Like imagine if right now I wanted to become a Muslim, which I don't. And I looked into that and all I found was people telling the other Muslims, like Muslims selling Muslims about how idiotic they are and how wrong they are. I'd probably go, okay, I'm going to, I guess I'm going to turn around and and that's my fear again not that we shouldn't have disagreements so that we shouldn't argue for opposition because our positions are important that the approach that i'm taking is very similar and i am not perfect in this and i'm learning as i go and i ask for forgiveness for where i fall
08:12 short but the approach that i'm taking is let's talk openly about our differences within christianity because they matter and it really does not help anyone if we trivialize them but let's also recognize common ground and come together where we can. And as simple as that framework is, why is that so offensive to today's internet keyboard warrior? Is it because the internet rewards bombastic, caustic rhetoric? Yeah. It might be like inflammatory stuff does way better.
08:44 If I threw this cup at you, Gavin, this episode would do so much better, which I will not do. But right, like this episode would do terrific if you rage quitted this interview. I'd actually ask you to do that. I could do a fake rage quit if it would help us out, whatever I can do. I don't know the answer to your question. I actively wrestle with this. It's a weekly issue for me, sometimes daily, thinking through what is this thing called the Internet and how do we function on it in a Christ-honoring way?
09:17 Questions rather than answers here, but I definitely think it's a fair observation to say there are unique temptations that we face that previous generations didn't because of the internet. We need to be mindful of that. And I definitely think it's probably a fair observation to say it's getting worse. The lack of charity is getting worse.
09:36 If a non-Christian is looking at and seeing Christians, I don't think they'd actually be turned off from Christianity by mere debate and disagreement. But the lack of charity in that, that is where I see the problem. And I think, I mean, our Lord is the example here. He is tough with his rhetoric and his speech. He is not a pushover. He engages people. I mean,
10:00 I kind of find it thrilling, how courageous he is in his dialectic with the Pharisees. There's not a single time in the Gospels he ever backs down from them. I don't think the calling of our Lord is to stop arguments or to stop caring about the truth. But I think the good question, it's so simple, I come back to it over and over. Do we love the other party? Are we praying for them? Do we wish well upon their soul. And are we aware of the way the internet is probably blinding us to that in ways we can't fully see? And that's where I try to, I'm just trying to take breaks and just, you know, center myself in actual relationships that recalibrate my heart in the right direction. So, you know, I don't have answers here, but I think it's good to keep reminding ourselves. The internet is
10:45 affecting us. Let's have charity. Let's keep debating our differences. Let's do so with charity. And let's celebrate the common ground we have, you know. There's so many wonderful Roman Catholic Christians I cite in that book. My favorite person, other than C.S. Lewis, to learn from is Blaise Pascal. And he is the chief person I'm citing in that book. Yeah, I want to get to that. Yeah, because it's interesting if, I think this is happening all over the spectrum. It's not just in Christian back and forth.
11:14 It's probably in other religions and it's also in politics. So what passes for a debate today is the sort of pierce. Morgan thing where you put five people up on a screen and have them try to shame the other person. But I think back to the debate we hosted at Steubenville where you and Trent debated. You both had an allotted amount of time and both of you were respectful and it was a great night. But it's almost like people don't want that. So I hosted a debate recently between a Protestant and a Catholic on the assumption of Mary as to whether it's biblical and or historical. And I know that it would have done better if I had just kept the whole thing open conversation,
11:52 dialogue. Like, but don't we want to hear someone out uninterrupted? No, we don't. That's the problem. We actually don't. What we really want is to see the other side shamed. Not when we're at our best, but there's something that appeals to us that we just want to be maybe justified in our own truth by seeing somebody else get made fun of, I guess. I don't think we should want that. I think we should acknowledge that we might want that to some degree and then go, but I shouldn't want that and I shouldn't encourage that. It's a good question of how do we function in a God honoring way if the market isn't even there for healthy debates. And my hope with that is just step back. And I have to remind myself of this to keep trusting my audience that there's enough
12:38 people out there who do get weary with the blood sport tactic. And I think that's true. I think that's true. And so then we say, let's speak to them and we'll just keep faithfully plotting. And I think there are enough intelligent, reasonable people. I mean, your channel does really well. These ironic videos that you put out, you just did a response to your critics on the intercession of the Saints is doing really well. And you're very ironic and it's also a well-produced video. But it is comforting to see that there is an appetite for that and that we don't have to keep stooping to the lowest common denominator. And I just want to say to my fellow YouTubers out there, like, I haven't done this well. I've failed in the past. And it's okay if you have. Like, I'm not throwing you under the bus
13:16 And saying that, it's just like kind of like a rallying cry. Like, what if we all tried to do better? Because I also see really good people doing the best that they can. And they're avoiding the blood support apologetics, as you put it, as best they can. Right, right, right. And maybe just one simple thing for me to say is where we fall short, thank our Lord that he gives us grace. And we can simply repent and just get back going in the right direction.
13:43 Because we're all going to fall short. But if we could just, those of us, I mean, maybe a helpful thing is to imagine if Christ were in the room with us and he's looking right at us. And we just, it's like the children and the Narnia stories when they're a little bit fearful of Aslan. And we just humble ourselves before him. And if we could all just sort of forgive each other every now and again, keep short accounts, pray for each other. And just remember, how do we show the love of Christ that he's shown to us to each other in the midst of our polemics? And then there's sometimes to pull away and just not getting engaged with real nitty-gritty stuff. But it's hard.
14:21 We're all going to be lifelong learners on this. Yeah, yeah. Well, how do you know when to respond to somebody? This is the great wisdom struggle of my life. Because you put out a video arguing that the intercession of the saints, that Catholics and Orthodox and Coptics and some other Protestants believe, you said it's not biblical, it's not necessarily historical or not as a, ancient as Catholics might wish to believe. And that was a short enough video. And then from what I can tell you, had 800 responses. And even if they were great, it's like, what am I to do? So what do you do? It takes more wisdom than I have. I genuinely don't know. There's sometimes when you're
15:00 responding to criticism. So one of my insecurities is I don't want my own audience to start rolling their eyes and saying, oh, he's always responding, defending himself. I don't want to be defensive. On the other hand, sometimes people are upset if you don't respond. Sometimes if it's an unfair criticism, and much of the criticism that I get is in good faith, fair, charitable, and so forth. But if there is an unfair criticism, then responding to that can have diminishing returns. But sometimes you have to. Just driving here this morning, I was wrestling with this exact question.
15:33 If somebody was saying something on X, nothing to do with Catholic-to-Protestant relations, and I was saying that what they're saying, what they're insinuating is not. true, should I point that out or not? And I thought, well, if I do, there's downsides to that. I get pulled into this conversation and so forth. If I don't, there's downsides. What's the least bad option? I don't know. And sometimes you're asking for wisdom from the Lord you don't have. Because the communication mechanisms we have right now are new technology. People have not had to think through algorithms. You know, John Newton gave a lot of great advice about responding to criticism, but he was not talking about algorithms.
16:12 And so this is new territory for us. So I don't know. The guiding question is what will serve my audience, what will honor Christ, what will advance my mission, which is gospel assurance. And sometimes that does mean responding. Sometimes I've responded,
16:28 and I've felt 40% of me has kind of felt hesitant, like, is this part of my flesh rather than the Holy Spirit? Or is it mixed? What are my motives here? Is it mixed motives? Mm-hmm. So it's tricky, but I'm just thankful we can come together and talk and have good conversations. Whenever we can clear the air, lower the temperature, I'm eager for moments like that.
16:50 Again, if all of us who are in these conversations who believe in Christ, so I'm thinking Catholics and Protestants, Eastern Orthodox and others, if we just slow down every now and again, forgive each other, picture Christ there with us, kind of re-center our frame on Christ himself, that's a lot. be good. But right now, if we don't have those resets, the temperature can just keep rising. And I'm a little bit alarmed at how much the temperature arises and where the internet can take us, you know, five years from now, what will it look like? Years ago, a husband and a wife in Lithuania sent me one of their handmade rosaries, and I was so struck by it, the weight, the quality, the care in every detail. It was seriously the most beautiful rosary I'd ever scene. Now, in collaboration with Theotokos Rosaries, I'm making two of their hand-crafted rosaries available to you over at DailyWire.com slash shop. Italian olive wood, gold, plated brass,
17:48 microbreed cord built for a lifetime of prayer, each one made by hand in Lithuania. These are not just beautiful rosaries. They can be family heirlooms that you would pass down. Use for personal devotion. You could also give them as a wedding gift, ordination gift, confirmation gift, or for graduation. Now, the first batch sold out right away. So, pre-order yours now at dailywire.com slash shop before the next batch is gone. That's dailywire.com slash shop. Now you said you've been taking more breaks. What do you mean by that? Well, this summer, I took an entire month off of work and social media. I did answer a few emails, but that was it. Tell me what that looked like.
18:32 How did you prepare for it? And what were the guidelines? Yeah, so I had never done this before. And I was actually a bit afraid of what it would be like. I love working and I worked really hard. And I didn't know if it would be, if I would actually get a little bit depressed to just completely pull the plug. But it was actually great.
18:52 The entire time went great. As I ended it, I actually realized, I'm not ready to end this, which was embarrassing. to think I took a whole month off and I still feel tired. But the backstory to that is it had been about 15 years of lots of pushing. A lot of books, a lot of travels, a lot of children, pastoring a church, starting two a few nights. And I just realized, I got to a point where I realized I need to have better rhythms for rest. And it was so great during that month.
19:27 I learned a lot about myself. I started writing a novel, which was kind of fun. About halfway through, I was not planning on it, and I think the mental space that I had, from not being on social media, created a desire to channel my thoughts elsewhere. And I surprised myself at how quickly that just kind of came into existence, and it just became a really healthy distraction. My kids were reading it, so I would write a chapter each night, and it was delightful to have my oldest two children come down the stairs in the morning and say, Dad, did you write another
20:00 chapter and I hand them the chapter. That's the litmus test. That it mustn't be too bad, right? They liked it. That's what I mean. So I don't know what's it about if I can ask. It's, this is pretty nerdy, but it is a fantasy novel. It is about how much to share about this.
20:20 It's with, it's being looked at by publishers now. So perhaps it would come out at some point. We'll see. Fiction is very different. The publication process is very different. And even the writing process. I found it was very vulnerable to write and put out my imagination on the table for review. But it's about 42,000 words, which is about the length of one of the Chronicles of Narnia.
20:41 So it's a shorter book. I like really propulsive, fast-moving fiction. The motif of it is trust versus certainty. So it's the evil sorcerer in this book desires certainty. and he wants to know exactly what will happen. And the good character learns he has to just walk forward without knowing what will happen. Oh, that's the motif.
21:08 I like it. It takes place in what feels like medieval Scandinavia. So it's an ancient world. And it was just fun to write. It just, you know, I never knew, so reading fiction can be a healthy distraction. I never knew that writing fiction can be as well. But it was so delightful to get into,
21:27 and that was part of what helped me see, I need to be doing better to pull away from the internet and just have these healthy corrective experiences, whether it's playing basketball at the YMCA or writing a novel or whatever it might be. Yeah, very good. When you say you were off social media, does that include YouTube?
21:46 Everything. And I worked extra hard in June to record a few extra videos. But I mean, you weren't scrolling and seeing who was angry with you. What a lovely thing. It was delightful. I told you this, but I did the same thing. I worked my tail. off in July and then I actually gave my phone away, my computer away and had all of August
22:04 off of the internet read a great book. So for me, I have to I have to go, okay, what am I going to do with the time here? And so I set myself three chapters a day of this particular book. And I said to my wife the first few days, today hasn't been one day. It's been three days, maybe four days. The days are so much longer when you're not continually distracting yourself. Yeah. And that actually leads us very nicely into the introduction in this book. You ask the question, like, is life without God absurd? And you quote Pascal, and that excellent quote that I love as well, where he says that all the problems of the world come down to the fact that modern man does not know how to sit quietly in his room. Talk about that. When I first heard that quote, I liked it, but I didn't really know
22:53 why I liked it. And I thought, that's kind of an interesting thing to say. Is it just hyperbole? What's his point? And then about five years ago, I read through Peter Craf's edition of his Ponce or thoughts, which is also great. I love Peter Crave and his own comments on Pascal are also really valuable in that book. But reading through Pascal in context, helped me understand his point, which I think is that we use distractions and diversions so that we don't have to deal with the ultimate questions. And to put this very succinctly, Pascal says there's two questions that are paramount, meaning and death.
23:35 What are we doing here and what happens when it's over? And when he puts it like that, you're like, wow, that seems correct. You know, it doesn't really matter what else is going on if you haven't solved these basic questions. But he observes that we distract ourselves from those basic questions. and we use diversions like entertainment to do so. And he's saying all of this hundreds of years ago, how much more true is that today where you never need to be bored
24:04 because even at a red light, even though you shouldn't, you can pull out your phone. And so I've thought about this a great deal for, what does that mean for Christian apologetics? If we're living in a time of tremendous distraction from spiritual questions, and we don't factor that in,
24:23 that's not skillful and wise. How do we speak to people with sensitivity to that distracted dynamic? And I'm very interested in that. I think beauty can be one strategy. The theme of this book, in one word, is the ache. And this is one way I'm trying to puncture through the distraction,
24:43 and the ache is the longing and the human heart for transcendence. And I'm trying to draw attention to that, And then circle back, every apologetic argument, circle back to the ache and try to show someone, what does the contingency argument mean for the ache in your heart? What does the fine-tuning argument mean for the ache in your heart and down the line? And I do think there are emotional implications for every aspect of our apologetic. And I just think we need to draw attention to that right now, or at least we're wise to do that
25:15 to help people really feel what's at stake. You know, a thousand years ago, people would find it probably harder to forget about death. Our culture is the most skilled in all of human history at distracting ourselves from death. And yet we need to think about that and we need to be prepared. And I've read studies about this, that even the mention of the fact that we're going to die increases the religiosity in the room. people are more attuned to religious questions when they are remember this so it's a way it's it's a way of trying to get into things with people and just show um let's remember why this matters so the first two chapters in the book are just about hey you should be curious about religion whether you believe in
26:02 god or not this should be of interest to you that's all i'm trying to do at the beginning i'm sure you remember this but in the poncés pascal says there are three types of people in the world um those who know those who have sought the truth and found it, those who have sought the truth and not yet found it, and those who neither seek nor find. And of this third class of people, he says, I can find no words to describe so pitiful a creature. And then he says, what must a man think to himself? I have been tied to this one corner of this vast expanse. I don't know who I am, what my thoughts are, all I know is that I shall soon die. And that's it. And I'm going to spend my days mocking those who are concerned with such a thought. Oh.
26:44 Oh, that's a good one. Because it seems to me, eh, like if atheism's true, there are dogmatic answers to the deepest questions we're all interested in asking. And if we're too shallow, if we've sort of like blown our brains out with TikTok and pornography that we're too shallow to even entertain these questions, in my experience, usually after the third or fourth beer, people will. And it seems to me that if you say to yourself, okay, why? why am I here? The answer, if atheism is true, is something like you, along with everything
27:22 else, has been coughed into existence by a blind cosmic process that didn't have you in mind. And there is no reason for your life. Like Dawkins would say the question, why is a silly question, the kind of teleological question. And I agree, like, ultimately at least. I mean, subjectively, there are answers to why. But all. Ultimately, it's like you're going to die. Everyone you know will die. I remember having this thought once. Let's get all depressed together and exalt the religiosity in the YouTube space
27:53 so we can start talking about God. This thought, someone will think of you for the last time. Like there will come a moment where someone goes, oh, Gavin Orland, yeah. And at some point, that will be. No one else will think of you. Yes. And we're so desperate, aren't we, to have ourselves build statues to me, You have like things named after me.
28:14 I don't want to die. And yet this realization is, is haunting. But anyway, what do you think about that? Do you think that's unfair to atheism, this idea that life is ultimately absurd? You can't ground the dignity of the human person if God does not exist. You may wish to, but you're just running off the fumes of Christianity. You don't actually have an ontological basis for such a crime. I've done some dialogues with atheists who have pushed back on me for saying something very similar to what you're saying right now.
28:42 I'm still persuaded with you and what you're saying there. And I think the older atheists, the French existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre, Nietzsche, even someone like Bertrand Russell, I think they tended to be more thoroughgoing in looking down the road on these questions than some contemporary atheists. I often give the construct of Nietzsche versus Sam Harris, Sam Harris, a contemporary atheist who's much more buoyant in his moral views. And I think the Nietzsche outlook is more consistent. It looks like that to me. One way I've made this point is to look at love and justice.
29:22 These are two things that we tend to care about. I remember the first time that I held my eldest son in my arms. That experience was one of the most powerful experiences in my life. I was feeling a love I did not know existed until I became a parent. Parental love is one unique kind of love. And I remember years after that, studying these things, I do think if you're a naturalistic atheist, at least, that is to say, you don't believe in anything beyond physical nature. I think our experience of love, and then what's just as brutal, I think, our experience of justice, are reductively explained by our evolutionary psychology, which just means it's what helped animals. survive. The reason we care about our children, the way we do, that particular experience,
30:19 is basically it boils down to the same reason we like sugar. I am convinced of that. I still don't see an escape hatch. If I were a naturalist, I would feel brutalized by that. And my conscience is the same thing. The conscience developed because of evolution only, with nothing else guiding it, no other factors. And so therefore, the feeling of moral indignation you feel when someone really wrongs you or the sense of admiration for heroism. All of that is just my brain chemistry working. And I've made this case more fully elsewhere, but I do find that dehumanizing. And I don't mean to say that every single atheist will agree with that or live like that. But the world view, I cannot make peace with that worldview.
31:11 And at least having that conversation is helpful for evangelism, at least inviting people to say, love feels transcendent. All of our music tells us that. How many songs do we sing about love lasting forever? And yet I think in my older book, I quote Frozen 2, where Olaf says he, because that movie actually has some themes about transients and permanence
31:36 and what really lasts. and at one point, Olaf, the snowman says, I found something that lasts love. And I think that's a profound philosophical statement. It's either true or it isn't. On naturalism, I don't see how it can be true that love is permanent.
31:53 But of course, for a Christian theist, and this is the theme of this book, Christianity could not be more enchanting. And I'll say this strongly, and we can talk this through and I can explain why I feel this way. But I don't think I could invent a religion so thrilling as Christianity.
32:11 Because Christianity says, yeah, love is permanent. Love is between the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit forever. It's the fundamental reality. And it is what spawned the world. It's where everything is headed. And the reason we have that transcendent experience when I'm holding my son or when we're falling in love or whatever it might be is a little clue. It's not my brain tricking me.
32:35 It's not a deception. it's a clue about what is most real. I find that thrilling. And if there's even, what I would say to someone is if there's even a 5% chance that that's true, it should motivate your attention, maybe even less than 5%. So here's my advice for Catholic singles using dating apps. Get off the dating app. No, seriously, I mean that. A dating app has one job to put itself out of a job. The whole point is to get you off the screen and sitting across a table from an app. actual human being. That's something I really appreciate about Catholic match. They're not just trying to keep you endlessly scrolling and collecting matches. They actually build tools
33:16 designed to move people toward real dates and ultimately towards sacramental marriage. You can use in-app video chat to talk face-to-face before meeting, which is especially helpful if you're long distance. You can privately share photos with someone you've gotten to know. And the messaging is designed to move you beyond, hey, how's your week? And toward, an actual date because you cannot discern marriage through a screen ultimately. You'll learn more about somebody over a cup of coffee than you're going to learn, you know, over 50 messages. If the conversation is going well, then you should ask, would you like to get a coffee Saturday? There, I just wrote the message for you. You're welcome. You don't even have to pay me. Now, women who are listening,
33:58 you're allowed to start the conversation too. That's not desperation. That's clarity. And men really like that, so you should be clear with them. And there are plenty of good men who are probably trying very hard not to come across as pushy. So reach out to them too. Pray about it, obviously, but then do something. Catholic Match is there to help you meet Catholics who share your faith, your values, and your desire for a holy sacramental marriage. So stop discerning whether you should discern, whether you should ask someone out, and just go and meet them. Find your forever at Catholicmatch.com. That's Catholicmatch.com. Go make the introduction. Match is free to download on the Apple App Store and Google Play, and it's free to create a profile.
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35:27 Visit Charitymobile.com slash Matt Frad. Use promo code Matt Frad for a free phone with every new line plus free. activation and free shipping. That's charitymobile.com slash Matt Frad. How do we re-enchant the world in this scientific age? After the boom of the new atheism that has petered out, it felt like Christians were trying to play on their territory. And sure, fair enough. I think we can marshal scientific evidence that point to a conclusion of theological significance, to quote William and Craig. And yet, Yeah, I think a lot of us are de-enchanted.
36:07 Is that the word? Like you look up at the sky, Jack Johnson has this song about when the stars used to be something like the holes to heaven or something like that. And yet if someone were to say that, someone might accuse them of being a simpleton, when actually they might be more correct. I've been thinking for a while now that the Lord of the Rings
36:25 is probably truer than any non-fiction book ever written. If you know what I mean. You know, this is the beauty of fiction. It taps into something that's actually more real. Anyway, what does re-enchantment mean and why do we need it? I don't fully know how to do it or what it means. I mean, maybe an entry point here is to draw attention to the arts. You mentioned fiction.
36:53 I totally agree with you. When I'm reading Tolkien, for example, I am experiencing something that I can't put into words and I can't or when I get to the end of till we have faces my favorite book by C.S. Lewis something happens. I'm facing something. I don't have words for it. Also with music. When I'm I have moments listening to music where I'm experiencing something that it feels transcendent and it feels more profound than I can put into words. And maybe a first step. for how we re-enchant the world is simply to slow down and pay attention to that feeling a little bit uh what i'm often the asides i'm making to the reader in this book often are let's slow down and listen
37:43 to the ache think of that moment in your life i mean maybe for people watching this video we can encourage them think about that moment in your life when you were listening to music and you experienced something that you can't quite put into words and i'm guessing of our viewers will be able to do that. Maybe in different ways to different extents, maybe not everyone, but music is a pretty universally powerful experience. Not every time you listen to it,
38:12 but there's, and that's an interesting thing, as the same song can hit you differently from one time to another. But I remember I was in 2017, living in Chicago, doing a postdoctoral research fellowship, and I started listening to Max Richter,
38:26 one of my favorite modern composers. And there was a moment where I was listening to Max Richter. and it was like a spiritual experience. I mean, there's just something so profoundly, exquisitely beautiful about music that sometimes you run into. And that led me into researching the philosophy of music, which shocked me how many high-level philosophers of music don't understand what that is, what is going on that causes music to have that experience. music acts like a language. It imparts meaning. And the great discussion in the philosophy of music is, why? How does it impart meaning in this very concrete, visceral way? It's not like words that have a symbolic referent. Music imparts meaning in this way we don't understand. And reading these high-level philosophers all puzzling over this, not knowing how to make sense of that, led me to develop my own argument from music against a naturalistic worldview. Which is kind of fun. But I'm just kind of fun. I mean, it could be as simple as just to invite our friends.
39:31 If we're asking how do we re-enchant the world, when was the last time you slowed down and just listen to music? Or you mentioned the stars. I'm the same. When we lived in Ohio, we had a trampoline in our backyard, and I would lie down. And sometimes I would say to Esther, my wife, I'll be back in five minutes.
39:50 I'm just going to go look at the stars. And I'd be out there for an hour. And it would go by so quickly. but the simple experience of just beholding the stars is a great way to re-enchant your own heart. There's something that you're looking at. And I have a whole video that the angels and the stars are associated from a Christian worldview.
40:12 Angels oversee the stars. So that's one way you could invite someone to consider this, but simply to look at the stars. I think punctures the distraction and the disenchantment to some day. degree. I don't know if I'm maybe maybe this is too anecdotal. No, I I think as human beings, maybe modern human beings, we're looking for something to add to our life to solve a problem. And we're very rarely open to subtracting something from our life to solve a problem. In other words,
40:41 right now if someone's watching us and they're like, yeah, that's true. I need to be enchanted. Is there an app? Maybe there's an app that I could help me. And I think what we probably don't want to hear is, uh, you need to remove things. You need to remove things. to remove the internet, you need to remove the phone, you need to, to some degree, that's a poverty, right? It's like fasting during the great fast or what have you. It's like we don't want to do that. I'd rather add a spiritual discipline. You see people do this and there's nothing wrong with that. It can be quite praiseworthy. But the idea of there being an emptiness and nothing, or I don't like that at all. And I wonder if that is part of it, that if we wish to be reenchanted, we have to
41:23 subtract things from our life that are redirecting us away from being towards something just to fragment our interior life, as it were. Yeah. I often think of those beautiful paintings that you'll sometimes see of a man and his wife on a porch, on a farm, maybe back in the 1940s or something. Or you might think of much earlier where people would sit around the fire and someone's knitting. And then I think to myself, okay, think of those beautiful images.
41:52 now put phones in there. And it's like, that's no longer, that's no longer the same thing. And it breaks my heart that so many people don't know what it's like to have a moment like that, or that we're collectively forgetting what it's like to have a moment like that. I'm such a, for lack of a better word, Nazi when it comes to using our phones at home. So I'll say to my wife, who's so beautiful, and I love her so much. I'm like, honey, I need you off the phone. and she's doing beautiful things.
42:23 That's the other thing about the phone. It's not that people are just wasting their time necessarily. They're paying bills. They're responding to somebody. There's always, at least seemingly, a good reason to be on it. So what I try to say to her and she listens because she agrees with me is, I need you off the phone by six. I need it turned off because what we're going to do is we're going to sit around as a family. We're going to say our prayers.
42:43 I'm going to read a book. We're going to make some tea. We're going to light some candles. And when we do that, it's so beautiful. but it makes me sad that families may not know what that means because there's always something to reach for and to turn my attention away from. Yeah. It felt good to turn my phone off about an hour ago before we came in here and it feels so good to just not, you know, just to talk. I have a very compassionate heart for young people who have not been set up for success in this area. No one's ever helped them, think this through.
43:14 They got a phone at a young age, and they've never really been fathered or helped or given some coaching on how to relate to their phone. And a big worry of mind is about loneliness in our culture. And so another thing, I'd love to encourage people toward, in addition to what we're saying about being careful, being on our phones too much, listening to music and this kind of thing,
43:37 is be radically vulnerable with other real human beings and tell people in appropriate ways what's really going on inside your heart. I think a lot of young people are so used to filling a relational void with their phone and with technology that they don't have deep friendships. And they may not be aware
43:59 of how much loneliness is a factor in their lives. And I'm in my 40s and I can struggle with a few days go by and I realize I haven't had a deep conversation with someone, maybe outside of my family or so forth. So I have to build in, you know, whether it's sports, or whether it's discussing a book,
44:16 or just, I mean, how many young men don't ever have the chance to sit around in the living room and just share what's going on in their life? And that kind of communication only happens through a screen. So that's another thing.
44:29 I think we can reenchant the world a little bit by having human connection. It's so simple. I think we need that. I think we've lost that maybe more than we even fully realize sometimes. I love, your compassionate tone here, because it can be tempting and certainly is easier to just sort of
44:48 be the old men in the room who are judging everybody. Yeah, yeah. But to look with compassion, you know, it's Aristotle called man a political animal, right? We flourish in community. And yet for most of human history, community didn't come about by people sitting around a table and agreeing that it would be good if we all lived in community. It was out of necessity that I had to interact with the librarian. or the gas station attendant or the teacher or the shopkeeper.
45:18 Whereas today, many of those, because of modern technology, are no longer necessary. I can order food to my door. Honestly, you might do this too. If I go to Walmart, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to look up where this thing is because that person's not going to know anyway. God bless them. And then you go to the checkout and there's no one there anyway, so you're not talking to anybody. And so my fear is that having never experienced the rich joy that community brings,
45:45 we will settle for the quick hit of modern technology, which really does give us something real quick. And I'm sad about that. Yeah, me too, me too. And I do have compassion. I would love to just encourage people, young people, to say, you can do this. You can take steps to reduce the use,
46:06 the use of AI. So I looked into this recently, top 10 AI uses in 2025 and 2006. And some of them were pretty frightening, like astrology, it's a big one. And it's interesting how they're changing. But the number one for both years is therapy and companionship.
46:27 So this is one of the things that's on my mind here. And I just want to encourage young people, you can do it. Talk to people. You know, build friendships for young. young men pursue if you have if you like a girl pursue a friendship with that girl in a god honoring way you can do that um people are are so lonely and fragmented what what are some practical ways you would encourage young people to befriend others because i've noticed i would say
46:55 maybe six years ago i i it occurred to me that my dating advice is not helpful to anyone under the age of 20 right like or 30 and i didn't realize that i I thought I was crushing it with the dating advice because I was giving them advice that I used in 2005, you know, and people would just look at me like, you have no idea what it's like. And I agree. I now know that I don't. But I think it's deeper than the fact that men and women are having trouble finding each other. It's that we don't even know how to be friends with even men or women with women. So if friendship has become increasingly more difficult, it's no wonder that dating has become increasingly more difficult. It's no wonder that dating has become increasingly difficult. So do you have practical, non-condescending ways that you encourage young men and young women to become friends, not just with men and women, but with their own sex? One thing I find helpful is pairing friendship with hobbies. So another thing we've often lost is hobbies. And this came into my mind when I was doing a study about pastoral longevity. What is it that makes so few pastors stay in the ministry for decades and so many
48:06 burn out after a few years. And the biggest two factors that were neglected, some things are obvious, like taking a Sabbath break. But the big neglected ones were friends and hobbies. And hobbies was interesting to me. And I thought that's true. A lot of pastors don't have any hobbies. They don't have anything on their day off that is fun to give your life to. But I find they pair well together. And if you can build hobbies into your life, for me, I love sports, just something about, I mean, I started playing soccer with some friends. They were all non-Christians in Ohio when I was pastoring a Baptist church there. And none of them knew I was a pastor.
48:43 Maybe some of them found out at some point. But it was so fun to just go. And I'm relating to people as the guy out in right center, not the pastor. And something about sports, I think, is a great, I don't know, it's just this, there's a larger goal that is happening that takes your mind off of. And it's amazing how you get to know people. through something like that. Or even just book discussions, you know,
49:08 like I do this with friends, I'll say, let's read through Dietrich Bonhofer's letters or something like that, or let's read through something and let's get together and have a drink in my living room and just talk about it, things like that. If you have a hobby, something to learn about, something to do, I'll play board games with friends, things like this.
49:25 So yeah, that's, but I like you. I don't have up-to-date advice on specifics. I'll be honest, that actually gives me hope when I see playing board games. game when I see people playing board games when I'll go into like a comic book store yeah and I see a bunch of people with their purple hair and their crazy get-ups playing board games I'm like they're not far gone I'm proud of them you know it's just anything it seems to me that forces people to sit with each other this is why actually what I know that there's risks associated with smoking a cigar but just to have a
49:56 couple of men get together and sit down and spend an hour or two together it's we need to do that more And I would be willing to bet that those who are listening to me right now, there is something in your area you could attend. Now, you might not want to because you might think it won't be fun or it won't be interesting or it'll be lame, but there's something you could just show up to. Like as a Catholic, I go to a parish where there is a book study that happens every week. I don't go to it. Why, you know? But there are things that we could begin to attend just to become a regular somewhere where people know you and see you. Very important.
50:30 All right. Can you give me one argument that makes God's existence more probable than not? And explain to me why it is in this book that you kind of, I don't know if you lowered the bar or if you were being more modest in your argumentation for the existence of God. Right. So the second section of the book gives three arguments, the contingency argument, the fine-tuning argument, and a moral argument. It's hard to pick one of these.
50:59 These are probably the three most commonly used arguments. I use them not because they're my favorite. My favorite argument for God is the argument from eternal truths, which is a bit more nerdy and a bit less useful, but it's interesting. But I just find each of these is pretty forceful. Oh, boy, which one do we want to talk about? I mean, I love the contingency argument because of Aquinas and the distinction between his and the Kalam and all that sort of stuff. I love you to lay it out for us.
51:31 Well, so I use Thomas Aquinas' third way in the book. That's Chapter 3. And I'm basically working through, I mean, I have to be honest. When I looked into these things, I was pretty amazed at how poor many of the responses to these arguments are. And one of the things I would love to shepherd people towards is these arguments for God really do hold up. They are pretty robust. They're taken seriously by top-level philosophers. They've stood the test of time.
51:59 and some of them are pretty good. I think the contingency argument is pretty good. It's basically a way of working through. We look around the world right now, and we find that there are many things that seem like they might not have been, and they do not need to be. In fact, pretty much everywhere we look.
52:16 We find things that have a history of prior causes, and we can imagine the causes being different such that they would not be here. Stars, for example, of moving around, They weren't always in the location they are right now. They're coming from a different location. So that just raises the question. Well, what's the prior history of causation there?
52:37 How far do they go back? And if we trace things back, there's been a very common intuition throughout the history of Western thought that the most fitting terminus for that threat of causation must be something that is necessary. that basically contingent things make most sense in the context of necessity. And so we're talking about a first cause here. And I like to help people think this through not as the first domino. So if you've got 100 dominoes, the first domino is domino number one. It is not simply earlier than the other causes, but we're talking about an ontologically distinct, uncaused first cause, something that is the same.
53:24 stopping point for explanation, for why anything exists at all. And there's a sentence in the chapter on this where I say, I think coming to grips with a contingency argument is almost as much an experience as a rational deduction. Because at least, again, to speak anecdotally for me, when I'm thinking this through, I have these moments where it falls on me afresh who God is. he is that which simply is that he is and what he is are the same and I find that
54:01 a pretty elegant way of making sense of why there's anything at all we all have to have some ultimate stopping point for explanations what theism is saying is the ultimate stopping point is the least arbitrary stopping point because it's simply unlimited being that doesn't
54:18 permit any alternate configuration. It couldn't have been something different. And so we're tracing the thread back to say the ultimate stopping point for explanations that makes the most sense would be that which simply is its own essence explains itself, is uncaused, and so forth. And I try to work through the emotional implications.
54:43 I find each of these arguments is very abstract. I totally, even as I'm explaining it, I'm halfway worried that it sounds too nerdy, but... Yeah, what's the emotional implication? Because you say with each of these, you brought it back to the ache. Okay. In this chapter, I think about the movie, the butterfly effect, which some people will have seen. I've thought so long ago, I can't remember much about it. So I hope it's not too inappropriate to mention, but it's this idea that imagine how your life could have been different.
55:15 And it's built upon this proverb that a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere else in the world and then that your life is totally different as a result of that. And it's just playing on this idea of imagine if there were some little tiny change early on in your life, your life would have gone completely differently. And that's a way of bringing contingency home to say, I don't need to exist and my life could be completely different. And I find there's an emotional space there to ask, okay, so if my life is just the very particular way it is right now, how do I come to terms with that? Is there any guiding thread that oversees this process or is it sheer contingency? And I find the Christian explanation for the existence of anything at all, I find it expansive. If you're a naturalist, I quote G.K. Chesterton to this effect in this chapter to say,
56:13 if you're a strict naturalist, it seems as though the universe is somewhat shrunk. But if you believe in a first cause, that's a different kind of being altogether. So we've got contingent things, and then we've got the necessary thing. Two different kinds of being. If you believe in that, I find that expands your worldview. It expands the possibilities. and it's kind of like, well, who knows what else could be out there? And I use the metaphor of Lucy opening the wardrobe
56:42 and going into Narnia. If there's a necessary being, reality just got expanded literally infinitely. There could be, you know, who knows what else is out there is the feeling in your heart. And I give the metaphor of someone who's been stuck in a cave their whole life. They've never even heard of such things as waterfalls or trees.
57:05 And one day they stumble, they're out and they see, you know, a forest and sunlight and so forth. The emotional implications of that are just unbelievable. I think going from naturalism to theism is even more. There's nothing more enthralling than God. You know, if there's an infinite person who's necessary and unlimited, it. That's way better than forests and waterfalls. That's everything. And I think because I've, in my moments of angst, have felt the emotional implications of naturalism as I perceive them, I experience these arguments like this. I find them forceful intellectually, but I also find them
57:51 very moving to think about. And they help me think about who God is, as well as that he is, if that makes sense. Yeah. I think it's important, too, to go along with what you were saying. there that we realize where arguments can lead us. I think people have this wrong idea that unless an argument persuades me, then it's not a good argument. And so we kind of put too much on a particular argument. Because when you think about it, philosophers can't agree on what life is or time. And there are certain things that we would absolutely take for granted that we don't need an argument for. And it would be shocked to realize that some smart person somewhere has a great argument for that if he were to present it to you, you would not be able to respond to him.
58:35 And I've been in the position several times in my life where I've been under the false impression that unless I know how to respond to certain objections, then I can't be confident in the conviction that I do have. And that's not an invitation to sit on my laurels and not engage the arguments. But in a way, it's a self-defeating idea because if I'm only ready to accept, a belief if I can defeat every opponent of that belief, then I'll never hold any beliefs, including that one, because I know there'll be someone who can defeat that one. Right, exactly. I'm very similar to you and how to think this through.
59:15 And I cast all of these arguments with the word probably. So all I'm trying to do at this point in the book in these first three arguments is say, Theism is probable, more probable than not. In fact, all of the arguments snowball together to get to chapter 13 or something like that. And all I'm hoping to do is get to you to 50% likelihood or above. Anywhere from 50 to 100, the arguments don't get me to 100%. The sheer arguments that I find them, you know, I look at them at different times and there's fluctuation and how convincing they are at different times.
59:54 For me, and so that the last chapter of the book, is on Pascal's wager and an appeal to people to say, just go forward. Yeah, I want to get to that. I'm really excited to talk to you about that. Okay, I think a lot of people who even haven't done much study and philosophy will say something like, I believe in God. But they'll say there's so many different religions that some people are of the opinion that to then deny all of them is the real open-minded position.
01:00:26 They're not true. They don't know what they're talking about. So why are you a Christian and not a Jew or a Muslim? Right, right. One thing I find helpful in thinking this through is that the idea that all religions are true or all religions are not true is itself one very particular perspective. And for that not to be given a free pass as though that is somehow much more humble or generous. It could be, but at least you need to argue for that. To say all religions are true, I think has some real problems.
01:01:02 I mean, right out of the gate, you start to think about all the down-to-the-roots differences. But I give three arguments for Christianity specifically in this book. One is Jesus' claims to be God. One is his resurrection, historical appeal. All of these are probabilistic. I'm really even with the resurrection kind of making an appeal to say, this is a good explanation. It's not the only possible explanation for the birth of Christianity, but it's a pretty good one. And then I give what surprised me the most an argument from fulfilled prophecy of all the arguments in the book.
01:01:40 And I could be completely naive about this because there's very little literature on this one, though I did cite two articles in it in the chapter. I find this the most forceful and most helpful for me personally. Maybe others won't. But the argument from fulfilled prophecy is fascinating. And to me, the strength of it is its cumulative nature. I just think the Old Testament is amazingly unified in its expectation for a Messiah. It's not just Isaiah 53, although that passage alone I find very moving.
01:02:19 It's that in the entire labyrinth of narrative that seems like... Genesis 3, right? Genesis 3, yeah. 15, the proto-evangelium. It starts there. Right, right, exactly. It starts. Do you agree?
01:02:33 Is that part of your understanding? Yep, I start with Genesis 315, the seed that will crush the serpent's head, and then Genesis 49, and the blessing of Jacob's children. And then what I try to do very briefly in the chapter is just give a sketch of how this hope for a Messiah unfolds. And to me, it feels like a Lego set that's been predetermined and you're getting piece by piece. And I don't like Triumphalist Apologetics. So I'm not trying to say that in this way of it's so obvious. But it really does seem coherent, this Old Testament story of hope. And so when I've got this figure that I think did, and I make the case, he did claim to be God, which is interesting.
01:03:16 And then so many became convinced he rose bodily from the dead, which is interesting. And then you say this person is arguably the most influential human being ever. The largest and most diverse religion is founded by him. In my opinion, this religion has done a lot of good for the world, and I'm literally basking in its fruits. The number of universities and hospitals and orphanages it has spawned is just amazing. And so I look at this figure and I say, not only is he very impressive, but he seems to have been anticipated. It seems that he's the one that this. this story was looking ahead too.
01:03:55 I find that pretty interesting. Do you have any Jewish friends or have you spoken to Jewish people about Christ? Yes. I find a lot of Christians have a lot of opinions about the Jews, but have never known one. And so I'm always like, well, it might be good to talk to one. What's your experience been in sharing the gospel? This is one of the few areas I do stray into a little bit. I don't do, most of my apologetics is, you know, I don't do a lot of apologetics on other
01:04:24 religions like Islam very much. I just don't feel called to that. But I do this a little bit. And there's been one or two Jewish rabbis I've interfaced with. And they have, you know, great arguments. I don't, that's why I don't want to be triumphalist about any one text. So, you know, you're into Isaiah 53 and you're talking through, is the suffering servant Israel as a nation or is it one messianic figure? And that, that is a little tricky to work through that. But I think, think a good case can be made it's really both and there is one individual who's uh looked to in those texts uh you work through um these uh prophecies in Isaiah and you know so what is it Isaiah 9 where there's a reference to El Gabor mighty God uh his name shall be called
01:05:09 wonderful counselor Prince of Peace and so you know you're in a debate there and my Jewish friend will say this is in reference to Hezekiah, King Hezekiah, whose name means mighty God. And so then you're debating, is that the best way to take Isaiah 9-6? And the fun thing about those apologetics conversations is they're very textual. We're really rooted in these written texts and less into philosophy. And I'm persuaded of a Christian view of these texts. Some of them are more difficult than others. some of the texts I would not put a ton of weight on in isolation,
01:05:48 but again, the cumulative weight of what we call the Old Testament as a whole, I find very compelling. And when I'm having travail or doubts, I often will think back on this and work through it, and I think the Bible really does seem like a beautiful, coherent, unfolding story. And if you've got a figure who's already so impressive in his own lights, Jesus of Nazareth, in his claims, and in his influence. And then it looks like he was in fact waited for and predicted. I find they're
01:06:20 very, very compelling. Men, when was the last time you gave everything you had to something? I mean, truly gave it your all and left nothing behind. That's what our Lord Jesus did. He gave everything for us. And as Christian men, we are called to follow him. Not halfway, not half-heartedly, not when it's convenient, or only when it's convenient. No, we're cool. to follow him with our whole heart. We're called to give him everything. But I understand that's easier said than done because all of us have things holding us back from becoming the men God created us to be. Distractions, attachments, old wounds, bad habits, the comforts of the modern world, things we turn to instead of turning to God. And that's why I'm really excited to tell you about Exodus 90.
01:07:06 Exodus 90 was created to combat those things, those distractions, all those things, extending the way between us and intimacy with God. You've heard me talk about Exodus 90 before. It's not just an app. It's not Catholic CrossFit. It's not merely cold showers and holy hours. It's a journey toward true freedom in Christ. For 90 days, you'll be challenged to pray, fast, practice asceticism and join a fraternity of other men who are doing it right alongside you. You'll learn to let go of the things that have a hold on you so you can give yourself more completely to God. The Exodus 90 challenge begins on January 11th. and I'm inviting you to join the Brotherhood.
01:07:45 You can join up for a single challenge or subscribe for daily formation every day of the year. Get started now, and you can join the Month of the Holy Rosary led by my good friend, Father Gregory Pine. Download the Exodus 90 app and visit Exodus90.com slash Matt to get started. We can find 20 minutes to read the news. Another 20 minutes to scroll through our phones and somehow get to the end of the day saying,
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01:09:23 What would your five minute response? It can be longer than that to Bart Ehrman be. Maybe you want to set up for us the objection that Jesus never claimed to be divine. Maybe you get some of that in John, but that's sort of artificial development or rupture, we could say, that was written much later. But if you read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you're not going to find a divine Messiah. And there's plenty of arguments for this. They'll say, Jesus saying the father is greater than I, even the fact that he's praying to the father seems to be an argument against the Trinity and so on and so forth. They'll say, what would be a single argument that you might present to show that Jesus Christ wasn't just the Messiah, but God.
01:10:08 Right. This is very tricky, and I did do a little bit of a deep dive in this, and I have to say that some of the counter arguments from someone like Bart Airman have some real force, and so, again, wanting to always be careful and one step at a time kind of approach here. But some of the appeals I would make is, first, I think a good case can be made in favor of the Gospel of John as eyewitness testimony. And by the time our discussion comes out, I'll have a video on my channel. I actually recorded it two days ago that will be out.
01:10:41 Send me the link so we can put it in the description. Oh, thanks a lot. Yeah, I hope that it's fun. I love the gospel of John. And I think that it's amazing to me to find these very good scholars who do not have a conservative evangelical bias. Coming back around to wonder, maybe John is dated earlier and maybe it was written by an eyewitness.
01:11:01 and in the video I go into that. So that's just one piece. I guess I'll just flag that here for attention that I'm not ready to let go of John as eyewitness testimony. But even from Matthew Mark and Luke, I do believe a good case can be made that in his own distinctive Jewish way
01:11:17 and in the context of ministry, Jesus did claim divine authority and identity. And it's tricky because, again, in all four gospel, John included, Jesus frequently conceals his identity. He's not walking around in any of the gospels, John included, saying, God is a Trinity, I'm the second person of the Trinity, here's what the word consubstantial means, and so forth.
01:11:46 It's very Jewish, it's very much in the context of his ministry, which is to initiate the kingdom of God. But in what he does, the way I make the point is from the Gospel of Mark, which many think is the earliest one. And from Mark 2 to Mark 14, what I try to show is that the whole unfolding dialectic, the whole plot is tension with the Pharisees leading to crucifixion. The reason for the crucifixion is blasphemy,
01:12:19 and the particular kind of blasphemy he's charged with does seem to be irrigating divine privileges unto himself. So Brant Petra, who you've had, on your channel and he had a wonderful interview with him. People could watch that to get a great case for this. His book on this was really helpful to me on this topic. He does some great work on this. But he's showing about the different kinds of blasphemy
01:12:42 that existed at this time. And it's right there in Mark chapter 2 verse 7. The Pharisees are saying, who can forgive sins but God alone? And that's the kind of blasphemy they're concerned about there. This is blasphemy, who can do this but God alone? That's right there at the beginning of my mind. Mark's gospel and you trace that as a thread to to mark 14 at his trial and caiaphas is tearing his
01:13:08 clothes because of the same concern of blasphemy and that is in response to jesus's statement about coming on the clowns uh from daniel seven and i just think this is old testament language for claiming divine authority which is exactly why and what the appeal i make in the book is look Caiaphas knew his Old Testament better than we do, and why should we assume we know Jesus' words and their effect better than his original hearers in that Jewish world? Their response, so right out of the gate,
01:13:46 and I hope I'm not talking too long here, but you're not talking enough. The third piece of this is Paul. Paul is writing earlier than the Gospels are written, and he seems to very clearly have some passages that indicate Christians were worshipping Jesus as God. Philippians 2, for example. He's quoting a hymn.
01:14:06 This is probably from the 50s A.D. And in this hymn, Christ is in the form of God prior to the incarnation. I think that's the best interpretation there. And he participates in the divine name, the king of kings and lord of lords. And so I look at Paul in the 50s. I'm not letting go of John over here.
01:14:27 And then I'm seeing he's crucified for blasphemy in the synoptic gospels. And I'm saying, I really think what is going on is though it's sort of veiled and concealed and in his own way in line with his purposes, he's not teaching a systematic theology class and when he's walking around, nonetheless, I think it is the claim that Jesus is making is, I am God. Now, he's God the Son. And so that's consistent with language about his father and his God. And we can talk through some of those verses as helps. But nonetheless, God the Son is still God. Have you seen that book, I don't know, atheists must have put it together with the supposed hundreds or thousands of contradictions within Scripture? I don't think I know the one you mean.
01:15:18 Yeah. Have you wrestled with some of these accusations? that the Bible cannot be inerrant because look at these multitude of contradictions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought about that. Do you address that at all? You know, I actually don't go into inerrancy in this book. I talk about moral issues, moral objections to the Bible more. Because I think someone could still be thinking through inerency, well, you know, just dive in, start seeking Christ and so forth.
01:15:47 I do have one video out addressing anerrancy. I tend to think a lot of those come down to the genre. of literature. Sometimes people don't realize ancient history is a little bit more flexible than sometimes we assume as modern readers. And an inerrancy comes after your faith in Christ. Right. Right. Like you don't go, well, I believe the Bible's an errand, but I don't believe in Jesus. It's the other way around. So you want to be like, okay, well, let's, even if it isn't anerrant, if we've got good reason to think it historically reliable. Totally. Then, yeah. All right. Well, what about some of the moral issues? So two that come to mind are
01:16:22 doesn't God command genocide? And then what about slavery in the Old Testament? Okay, these are tough. I mean, if there's... Just throw those out of you. Good luck. I'm going to have a cigarette. Well, maybe I'll ask for your help in talking this through so I don't talk super long.
01:16:38 Do a monologue here. I like monologues. Well, I wrestle with these ones a lot. I mean, maybe the first thing I should say is if people have questions about these topics, I do too. I mean, these are difficult. The last thing I want to say is that no one should have any questions or struggles with some of these verses in the Old Testament. There's some tough verses.
01:16:59 And one of the things I try to do is just say, let's not skate around any of the tough ones. Let's kind of just put them out there. I often say I want my children to hear the best objections to Christianity from me. And I think we serve our people well when we sort of put it out there. Like, okay, you've got verses in Deuteronomy that say, spare no one. show them no mercy, kill all the Canaanites. Every single one, kill them all. There's the verse.
01:17:25 Let's put it out there on the table and let's all wrestle with it. I will say that having wrestled with these two topics and each one has a chapter in the book, slavery and violence or genocide, I have become more convinced that the Bible has been a force for good in human history, even on those topics. And I know that sounds crazy to think. Do you mean in spite of those topics? I mean in engaging those two issues, I see even on those issues, I see where I believe the Bible has been a force for good in human history and a catalyst for human dignity. And I know that can seem counterintuitive.
01:18:09 The reason I say that on those two issues is because if even on those issues, the Bible is showing respect for. human dignity, then, you know, certainly on other things, it'll be easier to see that. So maybe we can work through this and I'll explain that. Let me just let me ask you directly, did God command genocide and is that morally justifiable? So I would say no. I would say no. And the key here is the way we define the word genocide. So genocide is typically defined as the killing of or attempt to kill an entire group of people. people. And what to get, maybe I'll give the brief overview first and then we can work through this. My big picture argument is that, uh, the command to kill the Canaanites was an act of divine
01:18:58 judgment upon evil and it did not concern all non-combatants. And so I make a two-pronged appeal there. The first part of that is to say, and this is the single most helpful thing for me in thinking this through. There's a difference between violence inflicted within a framework of punishing evil versus violence in general. So, for example, if a judge sentences someone to prison because that person did something evil, that is different than an ordinary citizen imprisoning someone in their basement. From that, the biblical text repeatedly emphasizes that the congences that the conquest of Canaan and the killing of people there is a judgment of evil. It is not greed. It is not xenophobia. It is the David who's terrified of the Goliath and needs to be repeatedly
01:19:57 said, don't be afraid, going to inflict divine judgment upon evil. And in terms of the quantity of evil, it does, boy, this is, like I said, this is a tough thing to talk about, because the things that were happening in the ancient world are so brutal that even for me to articulate them right now, I'm sort of pausing to say, how much detail do we go into? The two of the practices that are targeted in the biblical text as meriting divine judgment are horrific forms of beastiality and infant sacrifice, the burning, ritualistic burning of infants. And the biblical text portrays these as demonic. And it portrays the conquest of Canaan
01:20:43 as a kind of upturning of these demonic practices, vomiting them out of the land, these horrific practices. I did a study on some of the archaeological data of where you find all these, it's basically a graveyard for infants. And the question, it's a little bit debated in terms of whether that was Canaanite religion
01:21:04 in this particular one that they found or whether it was a common religion, and but it was it really disturbed me i i remember thinking oh that's what evil is the the burning of these infants uh it's here's why this topic is so brutal is because to understand the divine judgment i think we need to understand how bad it had gotten what was being judged and a skeptic could say no that wasn't really going on there and then we could have that conversation but at least we need to understand the biblical text portrayal of this event. It is portrayed as God, the God who is just saying enough is enough. You see all the way back to Abraham and Genesis, the sin of
01:21:53 the Amorites has not gotten enough yet. At a certain point, God says, so part of the answer to this, I think, again, I'm sort of prayerful and trembling as we talk it through. And just I think parents understand right now who might be watching this with their children. This is a good time to check out. I think so. I think just depending on the age of the children, just to be mindful, there's no way to talk about this without getting into the subject matter, which is, I mean, ancient human history is very brutal. In ancient human history, I think sometimes we can be naive, and this is why we have to go into it to understand texts written in the ancient world. And I think the reason I say these two topics are where we see the Bible's care for human dignity
01:22:35 is because we have to read them in historical context. and in their historical context, I am of the opinion that they were acting on behalf of human dignity. And part of that will be the depth of evil that was present in the world. And the perspective from the Christian, I think, is and can be, God is a God of both love and justice. He is allowed to intervene in his creation to judge evil.
01:23:06 Those historical judgments, anticipate the final judgment, ultimately we are accountable to our creator for how we live. And he's allowed to intervene and say, in particular cases, enough is enough. I give metaphors to try to help us come to emotional terms with this in the book.
01:23:24 And I talk about, imagine, like a gang hideout where horrific practices were going on. And a legitimate authority, like the police, comes in and invades and starts, stop and puts a stop to it. You would feel a sense of moral relief because of that. And I do think that what we know from the scriptures about the character of our God, what he's shown himself to be in the person of Christ, going to the cross for us, for example, I think we can trust that when God
01:23:57 does say, this is wrong and I'm intervening to judge evil, that we can trust him that he has good reason to do so. And so that is part of the issue here, but the other piece of it is, even so I don't actually think, and this is where I'm going to pause and frame this carefully to say, I don't insist that everyone has to agree with this next point I'm going to make. This is something I can see a legitimate debate about. I could see a good, a good reader of the text coming to a different conclusion. But I'm persuaded that the text is not referencing the destruction. of all people indiscriminately in that region. It looks to me much more plausible
01:24:42 that the commandment is using common rhetoric to refer to a decisive military victory and that there's all kinds of reasons to say this didn't actually mean you're killing the infirm, the elderly, infants, etc. The non-combatants are not the target in these passages in Deuteronomy and elsewhere. And I give a case, I give five arguments,
01:25:05 for why I think it's more plausible to see that the target as basically the political and military leadership. And once that end is obtained, you know, one of the things, one of the arguments is you have these commandments to annihilate, parallel with commandments to not marry and to expel. And they're often paired right there together. So it'll say, you know, go annihilate the Canaanites and don't marry them. Oh. or annihilate the Canaanites and expel them from the land.
01:25:39 Okay. Which, so you're trying to hold those two intention with each other and say, well, what does annihilate really mean then? Yeah. And then you see, oh, there's all kinds of language all throughout the ancient world where people will even speak of Israel being annihilated. And they'll even use the same merisms of old and young, man and woman and so forth. But we know that didn't mean the destruction of all Israelites. Rather, it meant a decisive military victory. So I'm a little bit down the rabbit trail here already.
01:26:09 So when my son, who plays rugby, for a university, said to me recently, we destroyed them. I mean, this might sound too cute an analogy. And like you, I'm not trying to do away with all difficulties in the passage, but is that kind of what we mean? 100%. I do think that modern sports rhetoric and modern debate rhetoric, we annihilate. We annihilated them, we mopped the floor with them, we utterly destroyed them. Slaughtered them. We don't mean that literally.
01:26:42 And I do think there's abundant evidence that in the ancient world, this kind of rhetoric was used for decisive military victory, not necessarily the killing of all the non-combatants. And there's some archaeological factors here as well where when we hear the word city, We think of mostly residential area. And actually in the ancient world, it may well have been. And Richard Hess and others have argued for this, that some of these cities in Canaan were not actually residential. And women and children, but military outposts perhaps?
01:27:18 Yes, exactly right. And sometimes you'd have others living in tents around who would flee. And then a lot of these garrisons or cities would sometimes have a tavern. and this is where Rahab comes into the story. So it's not necessarily only soldiers. You could have a situation like with Rahab. But it's not like the way we think of a modern city. What I don't want someone to think is to picture in their mind
01:27:46 Israelite soldiers going into a city like modern day Chicago and just killing every single person in the city. I really don't think that's actually what the story is about. I think it's, and I give it. a number of different appeals for this. At the very least, I would just hope someone would not assume that the language is strictly literal. I at least hope they would look into it
01:28:11 and be aware this is a scholarly discussion that the language that sounds universal to us may have actually been universal within a horizon. It may have been not the non-combatants over there. And then they can make up their own mind. I'm persuaded of that. That's why I don't call it a genocide. And by the way, another argument for this is over and over where you see that language right afterwards.
01:28:37 That's what I want to draw your attention to. Can you explicate this? I know what you're about to say. The idea that they keep showing up when they've been told, we've been told that they've been annihilated. Is that what you were going to say? Exactly. Yeah, hope us understand that. And that happens with specific cities where, and this is also the case with the Amalekites later in 1st Samuel, one of the biggest counter arguments, where the text will say they annihilated everyone in. in such and such city. Let's say Hebron, for example. And then, you know, you keep reading and sometimes one chapter later and then sometimes ten chapters later
01:29:09 or in the beginning of judges will say, and all the Canaanites living in Hebron. And that happens enough that it starts to make you wonder, what did they really mean by? They annihilated everyone. And that's one of the clues here among some others that, again,
01:29:27 I just will hope people will look into this and at least try to, give the text a fair shake to say, how did ancient language work? Sometimes I'm accused of being fast and loose on issues like this or in some of my views on creation and other things like this. I'm genuinely trying to read ancient literature.
01:29:45 Ancient literature doesn't always work in the way a modern reader expects it to. And there are these interesting idioms and phrases that we wanna work with and try to understand. And so I think that, So my appeal is on these two points is the issue of rhetoric, which I think reduces the tension a little bit insofar as, if that is right, God's commandment was not genocide, but rather a sort of crippling of the leadership. One scholar, John Walton, uses the metaphor of allied soldiers going through Nazi territory during the latter years of World War II, occupied France, for example, and what are they doing as they go. through. It's a decisive overturning of power. There is a lot of killing, especially of soldiers.
01:30:36 Nazi symbols are being taken down. New government and leadership is being established. It's this decisive turn of oversight and leadership. And that's the annihilation there. And that's a metaphor he uses. I hope people will at least think of through. So I have some good news to share. This is remarkable. Over 50,000 babies have been saved and more than 5,100 commitments to Christ through the ministry of pre-born this year alone. How is this happening? Well, here's a personal message from Dan Steiner, president of pre-born. He says, because of you, we can invite mothers considering abortion into a pre-born network clinic to meet their baby. And when she has that close encounter of the best kind in her womb, she is 80% more likely to choose
01:31:26 life. And friends, you can help make the first encounter possible for the next mother. Across America, pre-born network clinics are putting the gospel into action, surrounding mothers with hope and love and providing free life-saving ultrasounds. So will you join pre-born and the daily wire as we help rescue 50,000 more baby's lives? For $28, you can sponsor an ultrasound and help save a baby's life. To donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby. That's simple, isn't it? Pound 250 and say the word baby. Or donate securely at preborn.com slash pints. That's preborn.com slash pints and all gifts are tax deductible. Someone might listen and say, oh, isn't this convenient? Gavin says he takes the Bible literally, but when it doesn't serve his purposes or when he's embarrassed by it, he finds a
01:32:18 loophole. Yeah. I don't take the Bible literally, actually. I try to take the Bible in the way it intends to be taken. That's my motive. Of course, I don't interpret the Bible perfectly. But I don't think the Bible can be interpreted literally. The word literal has some different meanings. But there's so much in the Bible that is more apocalyptic or poetic, even ancient
01:32:48 historiography, the way that it works is a little bit different from modern history. And there's nuances there to pay attention to. So I don't want to take the Bible literally, I want to take the Bible in the way it wants to be taken. Yeah. That's right. And on this issue, if I really was persuaded that the text did was referencing the targeting of non-combatants, I would say so. I would try to face that. But I think there's some legitimate exegetical reasons to be more cautious about that. I'm not dogmatic about that, but I genuinely think, I mean, even just in the book I stack up six or seven times where another ancient leader will write about, I totally annihilated so-and-so. And we know that they didn't annihilate so-and-so. One of those is about Israel. You know,
01:33:44 Israel's been wiped from the face of the planet. They are no more. And we know that that didn't mean all the Israelites were killed. And so I think even just that alone, I think, should at least show that this, this isn't too egregiously ad hoc. Yeah. What about slavery? Oh. The other, the other one that is so difficult.
01:34:07 What was meant by slavery? And was it similar to the slavery we had here in the United States and that we hear about abroad? Okay, one of the points I've often made in the past, this is an area where I've learned to be more cautious. At one point, I made a mistake early on in my work in this, and so I'm always happy to try to correct mistakes. And I made the mistake of downplaying Israelite slavery a bit too much.
01:34:33 And I overlooked that there was, from Leviticus 25, the difference for Israelite servants or slaves and foreign servants, and I made the point that there was, that, well, Israelite servants go free in the seventh year, the year of Jubilee, and I overlooked the fact that that's only for Israelite servants, not for foreign servants, who serve indefinitely.
01:34:54 So I want to be careful not to act as though, not to downplay anything. But I do think when we hear the word slavery, we have a lot of connotations that come into our minds from our own more recent history that are misleading for us. And often slavery in the Old Testament really did serve more of an economic purpose. For example, if someone could not pay off their debts, they could sell themselves into
01:35:20 servanthood and serve for a period of time to do so. It was not, the idea of race-based chattel slavery is not what we are to picture in the Old Testament, it seems to me. And there's a number of reasons for that. But you know, the first thing I find helpful on this topic is to ask the more basic question of why do we think slavery is wrong to begin with? It really is a historically unique perspective. Plato and Aristotle thought, yeah,
01:35:54 slavery is just how the world should be. Some people are fit to be slaves, and that's pretty much everywhere throughout ancient history. And the reason earlier I said, what could be provocative, but I genuinely believe it, that the Bible has been a factor in favor of human dignity one reason for that is Genesis 1 and what I think ultimately was the first domino
01:36:19 that gets us to this point where we would see slavery as wrong and that is the idea of creation and the image of God and I think many criticisms of the Bible assume that idea and we think well everybody's equal so slavery's wrong we're cutting off the branch we're sitting on I really do believe that because I did a study on this and I wrote an article on this 12 years ago,
01:36:43 where does this idea of creation in the image of God come from? And I'm persuaded, and Tom Holland makes this point, is one of the little things he says in his book Dominion. He says something like the ultimate seed bed, because he's talking about the statement in the Declaration of Independence, we hold these things to be self-evident. All men are created equal, endowed by their creator.
01:37:08 That is a theological sentence. endowed by their creator. He's saying, that was not self-evident in the ancient world that all men are created equal. Where did that come from? And he says the ultimate seedbed was Genesis 1. And the reason I agree with that is I've looked into a lot of these creation texts in ancient Egypt and in ancient Mesopotamia. And there's a lot of them that talk about being made in the image of a deity or as the offspring of a deity.
01:37:39 but with only one exception, they're almost always for the royal figure. So a particular king or queen or pharaoh will be said to be the image of a deity or the offspring of a deity. And Genesis 1 comes along and it uses the same stock language from the ancient near east,
01:37:57 but it democratizes it for everyone and says everyone's made in the image of God. And today we tend to take that for granted and we may underappreciate what a watershed moment that was. in human history, that is a game changer. The idea that everybody reflects God, everybody's royalty, in a sense,
01:38:16 everybody has dignity. You see, we take this for granted in some of our criticisms of the Bible. Everyone has dignity. Where did that idea come from? Why does everyone have dignity? And I think the Bible has played a catalytic role in helping shape that intuition in our hearts.
01:38:35 So that's where I'm, so that's one, that's not the full answer. That's one thing to say here is I think that actually some of our problems with the Bible are caused by the Bible. That's a good way to put it. We're sort of, you know, shaped in certain ways with it taking it for granted. And then I gave a lots of difference appeals. I worked through, you know, Trent Horn and I did a dialogue with two atheists on the topic of slavery in the Bible about two years ago. It's a lot of fun.
01:39:03 They agreed. I don't want to misrepresent our atheist friends. But I think, if I recall, they did agree that Israelite slavery was unique in some respects. So what happened? The basic picture here is we've got this institution that is not God's ideal for humanity. It's not there in Genesis 1. This is not what God would have wanted in a perfect world. But it comes into existence everywhere after the fall.
01:39:29 And it is regulated in the Old Testament. And I would say two things about that. One is those regulations are not timeless ideals. They were given in a particular context. And number two is they were pushing in the direction of human dignity. Because two of the ones differences from Israelite slavery versus everywhere else is, number one, runaway slaves are not to be sent back to the master. That's in Deuteronomy 23. And there's this wonderful, beautiful little phrase, you shall not harm him in that legislation there in Deuteronry.
01:40:05 And then in Exodus 21, the master is prohibited from physical harm of his own servant. And that's different. All the other ancient law codes have a penalty if you harm someone else's servant. Yeah. But the Bible says, no, don't harm your own servant. And the motif that I detect all throughout the first five books of the Bible, what we call the Pentateuch, is this principle of, you go. know what it felt like in Egypt. So look out for the vulnerable party now. Don't mistreat the sojourner
01:40:45 among you. I find that thrilling because again, in its historical context, I see that as pushing in a certain direction that was not the background assumption. The idea that you don't mistreat the vulnerable party, that's not to be assumed in other ancient law codes and so forth. And so My feeling here is that the Bible is, yes, regulating this fallen imperfect institution, but it is regulating it in the direction of human dignity, while also pointing ahead to something far better. And I could say a little more about that, too. I think an interesting parallel that, you know, again,
01:41:31 I understand these are complicated issues. People can think this through, People only have to agree with everything I'm saying here. But, you know, could help someone to think this through, to think of parallel issues. Institutions that are not God's ideal, but he regulates in the Bible. One would be divorce. This is not God's ideal. But he gives instructions for it in Deuteronomy 25, I think, or 24.
01:41:56 And this is the passage that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 19. And he says, Moses permitted this because of the hardness of your heart, but from the beginning it was not so. Now those words, we could do a whole world of biblical hermeneutics in those words. Moses permitted this because of the hardness of your heart. So we're saying this law was almost a sort of concession to sin to curb the effects of sin in that context.
01:42:27 And that makes sense because laws are not ideals. We have laws today about gambling. That doesn't mean we think gambling is good. We're trying to curb the behavior. It's a law. And then he says, from the beginning, it was not so, meaning this is not God's ideal. This is something that is reflective of the world post fall. And from that, I think it's legitimate to at least ask the question.
01:42:49 For other institutions that God regulates, where may it be the case that they're not God's ideal? They're not what he wanted in the world, but he's regulating them. The laws are in response to historical circumstances. But then, and as long as I'm talking, I've got to say one last thing on this. And that is we have to remember Jesus hanging on the cross and his own teaching about himself as a servant. And I land the plane here for myself. There's definitely verses that seem harsh to modern readers. To me, you know, there's verses that are jarring to read.
01:43:26 Again, this is ancient history. It's a very different world. but if the ultimate message of the Bible is a God who becomes a slave and dies on our behalf, I mean, I can trust a God like that. And that's my ultimate belief. That's the big picture of Christianity is you've got a God who literally went on a cross to love you, to serve you. If we've got a God who became a servant in that way, I feel I can trust him while I'm sort of working through the little particulars, if that means. sense. Yeah, that's great. Thanks for answering that. I was in Ireland a few years ago in Dublin
01:44:05 and I was walking across the road. I think I was going to get a donut or something to my shame. And a young man spotted me, recognized me from YouTube, you know, ran up, started speaking to me. And he wasn't a Christian. And he said, I so want to believe in God, but I just don't know how. And we had a lovely little discussion where I asked him if I could pray with him. But part of what I said to him was, okay, well, just act as if God exists. Just do that. Why not do that? Well, I don't want to be a hypocrite.
01:44:39 Well, that's not a hypocrite. I mean, a hypocrite is someone who believes a stand that applies to other people, but not to himself. I think what you mean is you don't want to, what, be a liar or something like this. But it's like, well, that's not what you're doing either. You don't know. So why don't you just begin to act as if he does, even just for a little bit, and pray. And actually, Joe Schmidt, who was here recently, used the analogy of the flare gun. You know, he's like, if you had unlimited flares and were lost and it was possible that someone could find you and save you, shoot up a flare.
01:45:16 Right. And how it doesn't take much effort to offer a little prayer. Now, of course, I had some people who thought they were being clever in the comment saying, yeah, what a witch god. It's like, just the God, you know. Anyway, so I use that as a sort of introduction to Pascal's Wager, which is so lovely and brilliant and satisfying and so misunderstood. Right. So maybe you could tell us what is Pascal's Wager and how is it commonly understood before we talk about why it's helpful. Okay.
01:45:48 I love Pascal's Wager. It's the last chapter of the book. And it's a way of saying Pascal really understood the human condition, as we mentioned earlier. He really understands, this is why I love Pascal so much, is he understands we're going to make a decision. We're going to do something. Even if our decision is to not think about it, that's still a course of action that we're taking. And so the question he puts on to us is, in short of total certainty, what do we actually do? and he asks us to look down the road
01:46:22 and look at the different options, you know, suppose you're right, suppose you do believe in God, and then you're right versus you're wrong. Suppose you don't believe in God, don't seek out, you're right versus wrong. And it cashes out into four possible scenarios,
01:46:36 the calculus of which ultimately says, why not push in the direction of belief? And I think one of the worries that will come up here is the mercant, I call it the mercenary objection. Mm-hmm. Aren't you just sort of hedging your bets a little bit and so forth?
01:46:55 And Peter Craft helped me on this because he is a great section in the same book I mentioned earlier. Yeah, it's cool for those at home, Christianity for Modern Skeptics, I believe. That sounds right. Something like that. Something, Christian for Modern Something. Yeah, yeah. Check that out. Peter Craft.
01:47:10 It's an excellent commentary on Pascal's Ponce's. It really is. It's got a great edition of which Ponce is to read. And then also his comments are so great. My copy of that book is thoroughly marked up. But he says, you know, so the objection is, you know, just choosing to believe because it might lead to a better outcome isn't the same thing as saving faith. And Crave points out hopefully that that's true. But I think he says God stooped to conquer.
01:47:41 At least that's part of his argument. Yes. Right, exactly. And it was a great metaphor, which I'm probably butcher from my memory here. but it's something along the lines of a first date is not the same thing as falling in love. Ah. That's good. But a first date might is more likely to lead to falling in love than not going on the date. And so, you know, choosing to believe angling in that direction is more likely to result in a genuine faith. Why not? Like you said earlier, why not push in that direction? Why not pray? Why not seek God? And I have a very poignant section at the very end about Paul. language of feeling their way toward God from Acts 17. God put us where we are that we might
01:48:24 seek him and feel our way toward him. And I'm just trying to speak very pastorally to the reader to say, here's what that might look like. When you're genuinely in anguish, it might look like going to church. It might look like praying. It might look like reading the Bible. And this is what Pascal says to do. I mean, he's writing in a Catholic context. So he'll say, take holy water and do the things that Christians do. Why is that an important part of this? That is, why is this not just an intellectual exercise of trying to accept, do you think? I just know it helps me personally.
01:49:00 And it's like, it's this step of saying, even when you're not sure, this is still the better decision to make. And what that does is it takes the pressure off of certainty, kind of like my novel I mentioned earlier. You don't need certainty. Certainty is overrated. You don't have certainty when you're falling in love and choosing to marry someone. You don't have certainty. I don't even know what certainty means, honestly. Like, I've used this example before, but I'm quite confident that my wife is not a Russian spy.
01:49:31 But if you began to question me, at some point, I'd be like, look, I don't know. I just know she's not, you know. And so is that certainty? Well, yeah, but I don't, again, I'm not sure how helpful certainty is. I just have good reasons to think she's not and zero reason to think she is, and that'll do. And sometimes I might have some reasons to think something, but they're overwhelmed by the contrary reasons. That'll do. And I also say, forgive me, we're getting into epistemology now, which is one of my favorite subjects.
01:50:00 Like, if I was to tell you certain things that I am certain about, I mean that in different senses. Like, I'm certain I was born in Sydney. I'm certain I have a gray car, which is currently in Florida. I'm certain that I have four children. I'm certain that I work for the Daily Wire. You know, I'm certain I went out with a friend named Tim last night. But it's like, well, how certain are you? And then it's like, well, does it even matter?
01:50:28 How is that going to affect me? Right. I don't know. No, I'm with you. It's kind of freeing to take the pressure off of even I don't need to know that. And this is this phenomenal conservatism. which I find so liberating. Yeah.
01:50:41 In contrast to Cartesian epistemology, which no one really uses in any real sense ever, unless you may be a PhD or something. That's what I feel about Pascal is it's human. Yeah. It's livable. It's like, I can do something with this. I can relate to that. I can relate to Pascal's wager in the way I just generally live my life.
01:51:01 I don't have to exit my humanity and get into some intellectual space. And it's interesting that I brought up. Descartes because they were contemporaries living in a very skeptical age. Yeah. And writing in that context. And so it is interesting that Pascal is, yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. I think the metaphor I use at the beginning, and maybe this, I could mention this in case it encourages anyone watching this who knows that anguish of uncertainty.
01:51:32 Because I don't want to take away from the pain of uncertainty. I understand that can be a very dark. place to be, to genuinely not know about the most important questions of life. That's why I want to do apologetics. I hope it's a service to people to bolster them and strengthen them in their faith. But the metaphor is from that hideous strength by C.S. Lewis, one of his novels, one of my favorite books, and said, there's a character who doesn't believe in Christianity, but he's being basically psychologically tortured by evil characters
01:52:08 who've captured him and one of their commands is to spit on a crucifix and he says I don't want to do that and then he thinks but I don't even believe in this religion but then he thinks well even if I don't believe in it
01:52:22 I still don't want to do it and he makes the decision not he refuses to spit on the crucifix because he knows that if this religion were true that man would be on the side of good,
01:52:36 and the people who crucified him would be on the side of evil. And so he says, no, I won't do it, even though he's not a Christian. And I use that as a metaphor of, you know, be like Mark, the character there. Don't root out the things in your life that would be evil if Christianity were true. And then I use other metaphors in the opposite direction
01:53:01 to say, seek heaven and the joy of heaven. if it were real. And I think that's a very human and reasonable place. It's not irrational because we're not saying, you know, suspend your thinking. That's why I tried to get to 50%. I think Pascal's Wager, and Mike Rota has written a great book called Taking Pascal's Wager. I think taking, and I'm summarizing him here, but I think taking Pascal's Wager makes sense. If you're 50%, it definitely makes sense if you're 50% certain of Christianity or more.
01:53:34 maybe even 40 or 30 for all I know. But that's the scenario. So it's not irrational. It's saying lean into that probability because of the consequences because of what's at stake. And that's something people often get hung up on Pascal's wager as well, like which God. And you have to understand Pascal's wager before you run it or else, yes, we all agree it won't work. And so it seems to me that Pascal's saying something like if the Christian, God and atheism seem equally probable or I don't know how to settle it. I've done this. I've
01:54:12 racked my brains. I've put God up on the chalkboard, as it were, for so long and I don't know what to do anymore. In that situation, you can run it. But I agree. Like if you think that some other God, like the LDS God or something like that, were also probable, then yeah, sure, you would have another wager to run. Right, exactly. But I also think it would work just for somebody who just means creator of the universe. And they could start there and not immediately embrace Christianity. Yeah. What do you think this is?
01:54:42 I think it's just like this deep desire not to be fooled, which I think is fair. I don't want to believe in something that's fake. Yeah. I often think that Christianity is not too hard to believe, but too good. Because we have been so let down and so disappointed by our own stupid decisions. by people who promised us everything, right? From this will make your skin look better to this marriage will make you perfectly happy
01:55:11 or what have you. That when Christianity comes along and makes the promises it does, it's like, I can't be hurt again. I don't, I won't do that. Yeah. I once heard a psychologist say that joy is the most vulnerable emotion.
01:55:26 Sure. And I didn't. Man, that's good. I didn't understand it at first. And then I, you know, listened a little more. And I thought, and I've come, I've thought about that so many times over the years. It's really hard to let ourselves feel joy, especially if we've been deeply wounded in life. Well, this is why how many older people do you meet who are cynical and always mumbling, grumbling, I mean.
01:55:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, it's easy to do. Life knocks you around. Yeah. I know what that's like. You know what that's like. And then those knocks, they add up. they kind of snowball.
01:56:03 And then it's like it's exhausting sometimes to be joyful. And it's like, well, at least if I'm pissed off and grumbling, there's nowhere to go. Like, I don't have to be disappointed again. Yeah. Oh, I remember the day I married my lovely wife going into a bagel shop in the morning with one of my groomsmen. And this older woman found out that I was getting married that day. And she looked at me and rolled her eyes and said, run. and I just felt then and I feel now like so sorry for whatever happened to her
01:56:35 and not in a condescending way like I get it I know what it's like to have like to have like kick you in the teeth right right it just seems like it's a more it's an easier default disposition to fall into as we age yes and I sorry well just as you get all the tip to meet a joyful man or a joyful woman who's not naive to the sufferings of life that's impressive. Yeah, totally. My, like my grandfather was like that. He was in his 70s, we'd go to the driving range and hit golf balls. And I was 19 and he was 70 something. And we would just have fun. He had a great sense of humor. He was a profound Christian. He, my dad is like this as well, my parents, just they've kept their joy. And there's something quite beautiful about that. And I would love to
01:57:22 encourage again, I'm always thinking of viewers. Sometimes when we were recording these videos, I'm just mindful. There may be people watching who are struggling with these questions, and it's difficult, you know, I get it. Maybe they're wondering, should I take Pascal's wager, you know? But to take the pressure off a little bit in that vulnerability of joy, we could encourage them to say, heaven, if heaven is real, if Jesus rose from the dead and heaven is real, heaven can heal your wounds. And I'll get too emotional if I talk about that too much, but just, maybe I just leave it at that and say, you don't have to work up some great capacity
01:58:02 within yourself to feel joy. Because actually the suffering, and this is the glory of the resurrection of Christ, it doesn't deny the suffering. It's not, I mean, Jesus still has those scars on his wrists. It really happened, but it redeemed it. And God can redeem our suffering. So you don't have to be this really joyful person.
01:58:25 maybe you've been really wounded by life. And maybe to hope, to feel joy for you means to say, God can actually heal this. This won't mark me forever. Amazing thought God can actually turn it to joy. That's beautiful. I wanted to ask you, what was your encouragement be to people who want to read the Bible more?
01:58:46 My experience over the years is dealing with the reality that I don't want to read the Bible more. Instead, I want to want to read the Bible more, but can't pluck up enough enthusiasm often, unless I'm forcing myself daily to read my scriptures. But I thought it would be, I've got a Protestant pastor here. You think the Bible's important. Yeah, yeah. And I'd like, how do you, how do you, you know, how have you developed a love for Holy Scripture? And what is your encouragement to people who maybe want to read the scriptures but don't know how to get into it?
01:59:20 Yeah, yeah. A couple things that help me. One is audio versions. Some people just take in things better by the ear than reading. And I think that's fine. That can work great. Another thing is sometimes finding a really quirky book like Ecclesiastes, which is amazingly relevant to all these questions about the modern human heart.
01:59:44 One thing I do is I just read a very small amount. And I'll basically read until I find something to pray about. and then I'll write out a one sentence prayer. And so it's just one little nugget. I'm not trying to overdo it. And just a simple, you know, I might read one verse. I might read two or three. Just read enough that generates a prayer,
02:00:04 write out one sentence prayer, a little sheet of paper, put the paper back in, and then the next day I can see the prayer so that I have continuity, and I can think of that prayer throughout the day. So it gives me something to hang on to. And that helps me because I'm already reading a lot. I don't, what my soul actually needs most days isn't a long study of the Bible.
02:00:29 I mean, I believe in studying the Bible. Good. I'm pro Bible study. But I don't necessarily need that on a random Tuesday morning. I need, you know, to read it and think about it a little. But to be honest, I'm so overwhelmed most days that I don't need a full chapter. I mean, there may be some occasions where I'm going to do a real deep dive, but I might just pick up Matthew and find,
02:00:55 Blessed are the peacemakers, boom, all I needed. I already got a lot to pray about from just that. You know, you don't necessarily need, the intellectual amount doesn't necessarily need to be vast for it to touch your soul. And so sometimes just a little bit at a time can be a less overwhelmed. It's kind of like with people never go to the gym.
02:01:20 I say just go 20 minutes, three times a week. That alone makes so much of a difference. If just start small and then you can build from there. I was speaking of finding something that you're like, oh, I don't need to go further. I was doing this the other night. I was laying in my bed and I was reading John 15, vine branches. Right. And I came to that part where Christ says that he prays that his joy would be in you
02:01:44 and that your joy would be complete. Yeah? Right. And I just thought, wow, Jesus was joyful. Because if someone's sorrowful and grumbling and angry about everything said to you, I pray that my joy is in you. He'd be like, are you kidding? Is that ironic?
02:01:58 I don't get the joke. But just back to this idea of joy being a vulnerable emotion, but Christ was joyful. Yeah. Yeah. I want the joy of Christ. Yeah, crazy thought to think of, yeah, and God is joyful. I mean, that's comforting to me, even if I'm not feeling it. just to know that that is out there.
02:02:19 Like right now, Christ is not anxious. He's not thinking about 2007 and worried. Yeah. And it's like, even if I am anxious, I'm still comforted to know he isn't. It's like, that's an objective truth out there. As we wrap up, tell us about this book, what else you got going on, and I know we can't talk about
02:02:42 this fictional work, but I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. Yeah, that, so, We'll see if that when and if the fictional work, the novel, comes out. I'll keep people posted on that. So there may be more news to come. Other than that, I'm in a season of pretty busy travel and scaling a little bit back on just general. I actually really want to lean into general Christian apologetics over this next season and also devotional content.
02:03:13 You know, you made a point in an interview I heard recently, sorry to cut you off, to your point, that there aren't a lot of mere Christianity books out there, like just to bring someone to the divinity of Christ, because we all immediately think of mere Christianity. But in this interview I heard that you did, I think it was called Protestant Theologians or something. You made this point that there's not as many as you'd think. Right. Is that right? Yeah, when I was working on this book, I was kind of amazed. There are some books that are sort of introduction to Christianity. in general. I mean, mirror Christianity by C.S. Lewis is a great example.
02:03:48 Phenomenal. But there's not as many as I expected like that that are non-condescending, accessible, and general. And just trying to serve someone. That's why I, I didn't, I wasn't looking to write another book when, but the Lord really laid that on my heart. And I thought, I try to serve someone, you know, to walk them through, because I know what it's like when you're asking these deep questions. But I do want to get a little more into that. The truth is I'm, why do you want to get into that? I'm a little weary with the intra-Christian discussions. That doesn't mean I'll never do that anymore. But I'm just finding it is, it is taxing. It is sad. And I don't understand it all the time. And I don't understand how things go wrong sometimes.
02:04:39 So I'm just wondering what does it look like to go. See, I get into those things, not because I actually find them intellectually curious. They are interesting to study, but it's not like I, you know, I started my YouTube channel August 2020. In July 2020, I was not studying solo scriptura. You know, I just got pulled in to try to meet needs.
02:05:05 Now I've been in that space for enough time that you probably covered almost all Catholic Protestant issues, haven't you? I mean, obviously there's always you can respond to more, but... Yeah, I think so. Someone said that to me recently. They said, you put out a library of things, maybe not every nitty-gritty thing, but enough that just let it be, and I thought, it sounds kind of nice. Yeah, there is something, well, I mean, Protestants, right,
02:05:33 are called Protestants because they protested against the church, right? Go on, you can do it. Yeah, I guess. How about, let me make my full point. Sure. You can disagree with it if you want. Sure. In part, at least, like we refer to Protestants because they're protesting against abuses or against fault things they perceive to be false.
02:05:51 Right. It's just not always fun to be protesting. Please try to understand me. What I'm saying is it sounds like what you want to do is say like yes to something and not just no to things, as valuable as it might be to contradict. eras as you see them. Yes, I do agree with that. I see in my own mental vision, and I'm open to readjusting my categories, I see Protestantism as something that can have this same disposition of let's celebrate the positive. And the weariness I detect in the intra-Christian conversations, I think is something that's probably afflicting all of us, whether we're Protestants or on the
02:06:31 other side. I just see it as more of a dynamic of kind of, so I'm not seeing it as like, oh, you know, I'm tired of protesting. To be clear, like a lot of online Catholic YouTube channels are protesting too. It's not like we're all just celebrating what's great. Now we're clearly shooting across the bow as well. Exactly. I think the way Christians speak to each other has been, I'd have to use some pretty strong language to describe this saddening effect that's had on my soul at times.
02:06:58 And I'm not talking, for example, I can just think of Protestants right now and just make that point fully from just within my own tribe, not just Protestants, reformed, Protestants in my own tribe. I can just stay right there to make the point to say the way Christians communicate with each other truly is grievous at times. And I feel as though sometimes my soul feels bruised by watching it. And I think this is not what I want to give my life to to even participate in some of this culture. Now, what do we do about that? I don't know because I don't think we can completely pull away from things. And I'm not trying to act like I'm above the fray. I can fall into anything myself, but I'm just thoughtful about what does it look like for me to have a
02:07:42 really positive, constructive ministry? You know, I know you don't do a lot of interviews on your channel, correct? That's true. I do very few, yeah. But it would be really beautiful to see you interviewing someone like Brand Petra or some orthodox on the things that we agree on to kind of build that catalog of, does God exist, why think that, and so on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or even just conversations where it's not two trains speeding at each other. Well, you and Trent did a good job at that, I think about a year ago on his channel or something. Oh, yeah. There's plenty of people. That's the thing, is everyone I've ever interacted with in the Roman Catholic tradition and the Eastern Orthodox tradition in real life. Yeah. Have been delightful. It's been delightful, you know.
02:08:30 And many of those online as well, like a trend and many others. So even just having conversations where we're talking about our differences, but it's more of an oblique coming at it, rather than two trains, where it's the blood sport. And then things just escalate in weird ways that I don't understand. And the internet is part of the factor there. So I'm just asking the question, what does a God honoring ministry look like in 2006 when the world is so crazy? And everything you do gets sucked into directions you can't anticipate. Yeah. I think it's also true that each individual and each individual ministry has to discern what it is God is calling him to. Because it could be the case that others are called to respond to certain things, but then
02:09:18 others might find themselves in a season where it sounds like you want to do this, you want to begin to, yeah. And I've kind of done that, right? Like I am interested in apologetics. I find it intellectually stimulating. I've benefited from it greatly. But a lot of my interviews aren't that. Like some of my favorite interviews are just having a conversation with another lover of truth.
02:09:40 Right. And just talking through things. And so that's, that, there's a place for that too. And I, I've always said to people who start YouTube channels, because I'll ask my advice. I'm like, what do you love? What would you love to do if only 10 people ever watched? Go do that. Right.
02:09:58 Because people want to see people who love what they're doing. Don't just fill the niche necessarily. Right. There's something to be said for that. And maybe there's a way for apologetics to just have more humanity to it. Like you just mentioned a conversation with another lover of truth. That's beautiful. That's human.
02:10:18 I'm very interested in human apologetics. So that means, what does it mean to be a human being when you're doing apologetics? Well, you might say, oh, I forgot. You know, or you might say, oops, I made a mistake. Or you might say, wow, great point. Yeah. Or you might say, I'm tired. Let's talk about it tomorrow.
02:10:34 tomorrow, right? It's not this kind of, you're the slot machine and perform your service and give us the answer and that kind of thing. Do you think some of this has to do that you and I are getting old? Like, you've said a few things throughout this interview that I'm like, oh, thank you for saying that. But I'm sure the internet doesn't, by the internet, I mean, the algorithm, right, doesn't want you saying that. And what you've said is things like, I don't know. I don't have the answer. And I'm like, thank you. I think most of us feel like that. But we feel like we're not allowed to say that. Yeah.
02:11:07 And most of this conversation, too, does kind of confirm my hypothesis that the internet appeals to the seven capital sins. That if you go down the list of the seven or eight, however you number them capital sins, that's what thrives on the internet. Trent Horn used the analogy. He said there's no drive-through vegetable places. It's kind of a similar idea. So, like, lust, big on the internet. Envy, oh, there's a big market for that on the internet. you know anger pride it's like yeah it's just it's like the fast food thing it just appeals to our
02:11:42 lowest passions and we all have to be on guard against it what do you think it to throw a question to you at the end here it looks like to do that uh honorably because earlier we mentioned you know um there's enough people that are weary about those dynamics that we can try to serve them So in my thinking here, I thought, you know, okay, I feel like I'm actually where the Lord has called me. The things I'm doing, I really believe I'm where God has called me to be and I'm trying to follow him. And I think he's called me to put out videos and do what I'm doing. I'm trying to follow him. But then you have these moments where you're saying, wait a second, I'm in a context that appeals to the seven deadly sins.
02:12:26 Should I be here at all? And then you think, what does it look like to be a Christian? and love the beatitudes while you put out videos on YouTube. And, you know, for me, part of it is just appealing to those who are weary with the general trend and trying to just sort of... But it does feel a little bit like swimming upstream. Yeah.
02:12:55 Well, I mean, pornography will always be more popular than Dostoevsky, right? Always. But it's still worth having good translations and additions of Dostoevsky, you know, or Shakespeare or what have you. And there's always going to be a market for that of people who are tired. And I think I'm seeing that more and more. I actually have a lot of people comment under my videos and they're like, thank you for staying out of politics. Not that politics isn't important. Of course it's important.
02:13:26 It's great that people talk about it. But there's something to, I'm just going to do this thing. This is the thing I'm going to do. That's why when people say, like, why won't you debate? I'm like, oh, I'm not good at it. I'm really bad at thinking on my feet. That was my one disagreement with your substack post about me is, I think you probably would be good at debate.
02:13:48 Maybe not in the verbal interchanges of it is what you were referencing. But I thought the clarity with which you were seeing the differences there was, I experienced that as very refreshing. It's like, wow, this is really clarifying the discussion. I'm just not good, like, on the spot. I see. I clam up. Yeah, yeah.
02:14:06 Like, Trent spent so many years doing pro-life apologetics where he's holding images of aborted fetuses on university campuses. Yeah. That molded you. That enables you to be okay with conflict. And I'm okay with conflict, but I find it difficult. Yeah. And I also don't want to disservice to Christ in the church, honestly. Yeah, yeah.
02:14:25 And I know it sounds like I'm, this is like a humble brag here. And it kind of is because I wish more people were like me. Because I'll sometimes see people do debates. I'm like, yeah, you should agree with me that maybe you're not good at this. And that's okay. Yeah. Right, right, right. It was like when the new atheists were making the rounds, you know, you'd see William Lang Craig debate.
02:14:49 You'd like, you should be doing this. Thank you. You would see some others and go, maybe sit this one out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You might not be doing more good than harm. Yeah. what I'm taking away as we're talking right now is that the internet is like the Wild West
02:15:04 and we've all got to figure out for those of us who follow Christ, we've all got to figure out what is my calling and my role on the internet. And I think it's okay to struggle with that over time. You know, my own channel is kind of honed and developed over time. Well, I've also been cooled out
02:15:20 and I, like, there was this one time, I was on Twitter. I actually quit Twitter a long time ago. I still have the account but other people posts for me. And then one of the, I'm like, I'm going to download X again. And clearly not a good idea.
02:15:34 I don't know how people do it. I really don't know what they're made of that they enjoy being on X. I'm the same. I hate X. But I said something really snarky. Like this guy, this guy was a bit off his rocker, to be fair to me. And he said something, he said something. And I said something quite snarky back.
02:15:54 And it was the kind of snark where it was like, it would just fly under the radar of maybe acceptable, but it was snark. do you know Father Moses, the Orthodox priest? He's got quite a prominent channel. He's a Russian Orthodox priest. The name is familiar, right? I can't pull up. Big guy.
02:16:08 Can I put a guy. Okay, I think so. So he texts me. And he calls me out. He doesn't call me out publicly. He calls me out privately. He's like, why did you do that? It was a simple question.
02:16:18 My response, full on defensive. And everything in me was like, I'm not apologizing. You know, that pride thing that flares up in you? So that's what I said to him. And then he just gently, like, critique me one more time. I didn't like it at all. Don't like being called out. Don't like people criticizing me or telling me I'm wrong, actually.
02:16:36 About 20 minutes later, I'm like, yeah, he's right. So I got on Twitter and I made a public apology to this individual. And then I blocked him because he's not, he was, again, off his rocker. And Father Moses was great. He didn't push my nose in it. He's like, we get up. We keep moving on. What am I trying to say?
02:16:54 We live in a day and age where it's not okay to apologize. But if you've done something, something wrong. Like I recently had a fellow named Christopher West here. I was really rude to him actually for different reasons. But we, I apologize to him after. I apologize. It was not good. I was unprofessional. I was tired. I just acted like a clown. But I don't know. I feel like in this conservative culture, we've been taught not to apologize and not for no reason. When you apologize, you often legitimize the mob. So I get, I get it. And yet as Christian, we cannot take the position of Donald Trump that I've never apologized to God or I won't say sorry.
02:17:34 You just don't have that. Right. So I say that just in response to as we continue to go online. And I think it's really important to have people we trust around us, like two or three people who love us enough to go, I love you, that was a bit harsh. Or that actually is false. Yeah. What you just shared was beautiful about, you know, a friend reaching up privately. A lot of us, unfortunately, maybe, maybe be.
02:17:59 are on the internet and they don't have anyone. That's the loneliness thing again. They don't have someone who will do that. And so that's maybe a thing we can encourage all of us towards is do you have people who can hold your feet to the fire? But the other thing I was thinking as you were sharing that is what happened in you from feeling defensive to then softening that transition. I've been, this happens to me a lot where I'll be in one mode of thought when I'm receiving. Sometimes it's abuse or harassment even, but other times it's just more mild. but I'll be receiving something.
02:18:29 I'm in one mode, and then I'll go and have a very healthy experience, whether it be I'm at my church and someone prays for me or whatever it might be. It might be something as simple as a bike ride. And then I'm in a different mentality. And I'm just wondering,
02:18:43 it's something to encourage all of our viewers toward us as we're engaging on the internet. What are those things we need to kind of be able to step back and sort of soften a bit and sort of take a healthy, fresh look at things? It's easy to get stuck. and it scares me because I think a lot of Christians are genuinely stuck.
02:19:02 They're not having those healthy corrective experiences. They're just there online. Cage stage, as they call it. The seven deadly sins are there. And it's so the way Christians relate to the internet, that's a tough one. That's an important area. And I don't have it figured out. I mean, I'm learning.
02:19:20 I'm trying to do my best as I go. I think my solution is you don't have to figure it out, but you do have to find it troubling. wrestle. You're not wrestling with it. If like, no, no, my phone use, my internet use, what I say online is great, actually. It's everybody else. Okay, then alarm bells should be singing. But I think if at the very least you're watching this going, yeah, okay, you're right, I get it. And I got to wrestle with this. Then at least that's better than nothing. Yeah. Oh, man, yeah. Well, who knows when we'll talk again. And if the world will be even more
02:19:50 chaotic then, or we talked two years ago. And it feels to me, from then to now, it feels like some aspects of the world are more chaotic. I never know how much that's my own perspective anecdotally versus what others experience. But I do worry about how Christians are treating each other on the internet. And I think that's a fair issue to put on the table and say, let's slow down here a second. And even if it just means let's stop turning the temperature up, we just keep it. If it's like 450 degrees, just don't go to 451. That itself might be a victory because, Things are trending toward what I see is just much more aggression and combativeness and so forth. And what we often do in our arrogance is we appeal to Christ or the fathers or the saints to justify our own irrational anger.
02:20:39 Christ flipped over the tables. Yeah. Well, you're not him and you're much more likely to get it wrong, actually. Well, this church father, okay, but you're a dude with a camera and you're not him. Right. to a man who shall go nameless in which he's like, look at these scriptures, like about foul talk, about this, about how are you justifying this?
02:21:05 I'm sorry, we cannot go down this road. Like, you can be strong in your objections, but you can't act the way you're acting. Get us, get a spiritual father, Trent would say. And so right. And so, I mean, obviously there's gradations of this stuff, but I think we all know, okay, there are people on the peripheries
02:21:23 that we really shouldn't be engaging with or giving the time of day two. Like, unless they change their ways and start acting more seriously or more Christian, it's just best to ignore them completely, it seems to me. Right. Yeah, no, I'm totally with you. Yeah, it's tough. And I often make this point about, you know, the normalization of this more escalated rhetoric
02:21:44 and the way things are going on the Internet. And then I always want to clarify to say, if one of the pushbacks I get, someone is saying, you know, but there's this really serious problem. I need to address it and so on and so forth. And so my thinking is, oh, absolutely, sometimes we need to talk about things. But there's a difference between addressing a problem or an issue and giving a strong argument.
02:22:05 And what I think we're talking about right now, which is this more sinful anger. And I guess, and I'm looking at it from my own unique angle here, but it looks to me like we're building a culture on the internet. And the culture's not good. And I don't like this culture. And I don't think it's glorifying. Jesus Christ. And I don't know how to fix it. And I don't really know what it even is, but
02:22:30 something's happening. And we need to slow down and pay attention to it and just all put our heads together and figure this one out. Because the Internet's not going away, unfortunately. It's here. And then there's good things to the Internet, of course. But so. Gavin, thank you very much for coming on the show. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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