Pints With Aquinas - Tyranny is Here. The Church In America Must Fight (Eric Metaxas) | Ep. 536

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Eric Metaxas is a bestselling Christian author, speaker, and cultural commentator known for works that inspire faith and moral courage. He’s the author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, a critically acclaimed biography of the German pastor who resisted the Nazis, as well as Amazing Grace, the story of abolitionist William Wilberforce. Host of The Eric Metaxas Show and a frequent voice on faith in the public square, Metaxas blends storytelling, apologetics, and history to challenge believers to live boldly for Christ in a skeptical age. 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early, score a free PWA beer stein, and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors:  👉 Seven Weeks Coffee – Use promo code MATT for up to 25% of your first subscription order + claim your free gift: https://sevenweekscoffee.com/matt 👉  Exodus 90 – Join Exodus 90 on August 15 for St. Michael's Lent: https://exodus90.com/matt 👉  Truthly – The Catholic faith at your fingertips: https://www.truthly.ai/ 👉 Hallow – The #1 Catholic prayer app: https://hallow.com/mattfradd  💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas 🎵 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 PWA Merch – Wear the Faith! Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com

Pines with Aquinas is brought to you by Truthly, which is a groundbreaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live and defend the Catholic faith. Start your seven-day free trial today when you download Truthly on the app store. If the church in America does not stand against these horrors with boldness and unity, it's game over. All this kind of stuff which you think of when you think of totalitarian regimes, to see it on any level in America was astonishing. If the church had been the church during the rise of Hitler, the Nazis could not have abrogated those freedoms and, you know, human rights and nobody dreamt that it could happen. That's the point. What if we have an opportunity now to take background that we thought we had lost forever? If this is to happen, it's going to require individuals to repent of their insanity.

For sure. To get their passions subordinated to reason. If you can go to a church where they pretend that it doesn't matter how you vote, I thought, look, what dead satanic pseudogast? Are you caring about if you turn your back on them? This is an issue that God Almighty has called you to stand for them out of your faith. What battles do you see emerging on the right that Christians ought not to be quiet about just because their team are trumpeting them? Well, I guess... Thank you so much for watching Pines with Aquinas.

Before we get into the interview, I'd like to ask you to please consider subscribing over 58% of people who watch this show regularly are still not subscribed. So please do it. It's a quick, free, easy way to support the channel. We really appreciate it. Thank you for, you know, come on. It's a huge sacrifice, but what are you going to do? Well, it kind of is actually. Traveling is the worst these days.

Actually, it's funny. I was going to say, if I get, you know, paid to give a speech or speak some place, I've lately been saying they're not paying me to speak. They're paying me to travel. Because the speaking, that's the easy part for me. The schlepping, the traveling, it can be a big deal. but I'm very happy to be here, genuinely. Did you used to travel a lot more than you do now? No, I travel more than I ever have, probably.

Kids are older, have more free time in that sense? No, it's none of that. We just have our daughter and my wife managed things, but it's just, I guess I've become more in demand over the years. I don't know, I suppose. Yeah. Now, you have something called Socrates in the city. Is this your project?

Oh, absolutely. We started, shockingly, 25 years ago. That doesn't make any sense. I saw the logo. Chronologically, I have to admit, yes, this is correct. So it was 2000 when we began it. And it was something that, it's just so funny because someone, our daughter had just been born. And my wife, Suzanne, and I had just moved back to Manhattan.

She'd lived there. We met in a church in Manhattan. but we just moved back to Manhattan and this friend of mine said, would you like to start a Bible study for seekers? You know, that's kind of like that was the trendy term. Everybody's a seeker, which is, of course, not true. But I thought, of course, you know, be delighted.

I'm in Manhattan now, let's do it, whatever. So we started getting these conversations, what's it going to be like? And then one day I was having a conversation with a dear friend who's still a very dear friend, Oz Guinness, who's been a big influence on my life, a real Christian intellectual, just glorious human being. In the conversation, he said, well, why do you do something like a forum where people ask the big questions and, you know, to really open it up? And I thought,

yeah, that would be better because Bible study has this kind of religious, you know, it can be off-putting. It's like when C.S. Lewis talks about, you know, stained glass. People can be put off and you want to invite them in. How do you invite them in? And so we were thinking, thinking, and then that's when we came up with the thought, because I'm Greek, of course, I'm predisposed to, toward Socrates. And I thought, Socrates in the city, yeah, that's, I think sex in the city was, you know, and I thought to be really countercultural, Socrates in the city, let's talk about. I didn't even make that connection. Yeah, well, I mean, it's so long ago. It's not really relevant, but I just remember, you know, 25 plus years ago.

And that the idea is that Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. And that really sums up, I think, the Christian life, right? I want to care about what's important, what's good and true and beautiful. Can we talk about those things? Can we think about those things? To think that Socrates dared, you know, centuries before Jesus to ask the big question, seemingly, I guess innately, since he was created in God's image, having a sense that it's worthwhile, that there are good answers, that the questioning of one's life has value.

And I thought, what a beautiful way in, because of course, those of us who are Christians think if people dare to genuinely ask the big questions, it will lead them to the Lord of Life. There's no way, if you're honest about the big questions. You know, we have this sort of little secret that we know that there are answers and that it is not meaningless. So if you can engage people, so we said, let's do Socrates in the city. Initially, we wanted to do it as a conversation series where I would interview people. But then, I don't know, something happened early on and it was too difficult. And so we said, we'll just do lectures for a while.

So I'll do goofy, semi-comedic introductions, and then people will talk and then the audience can ask questions. But then we shifted back quite a few years ago. I said, let's do the interview thing. Because I always felt that that was part of God's calling on my life, is to have conversations like my friend and hero Dick Cavett did for so long, you know, long, interesting conversations with a variety of people. Of course, these are much more intentional because we asked the big questions. But anyway, that's the long answer to you bringing up Socrates in the city.

the short answer. I have short answers if you prefer. No, that's good. We probably have a similar, similar style or a similar kind of affection for conversation because, you know, pints with Aquinas, the idea there is, you know, if you could sit down with Aquinas over a beer. So the idea was to bring the angelic doctor down to the riffraff and converse about the things that interest us. And so getting to talk to people, you know, with diverse backgrounds and interests about the big questions. I've always love that. Yeah, it's delightful. Obviously, as I'm sitting here, I'm well aware that this everything I was just describing is very close to your heart and you're doing something

extremely similar. So, but that started 25 years ago. And is it like a monthly thing you do in New York? It's not a, it's not a time thing. There were periods where it was roughly monthly or whatever. It's all about funding, you know, because it's expensive to put on a big event. We've now started to do something called Socrates in the studio, which is more like this, without a big audience at a big event.

so we can do more content that way. But it has huge YouTube following for what it's been over time. It's really caught on. And so I'm excited about it because what's more wonderful than the idea that people, in the privacy of their own home, could be exploring the big questions. You know, a lot of times I think we're as Christians, there's pressure put on us that, you know,

you've got to have a conversation with someone. But when you're doing it with another person, what enters the equation is they want to save face or they want to argue against you. But if you just let people think about things on their own, if they're watching, I know that there are people just watching Socrates in the city because I interviewed someone that would be interesting to them and they kind of want to see what's that about. Somebody who, in many cases, is not a Christian or whatever. And so it kind of lures people into actually thinking.

Yeah, I like that. which is i like what you say about the defensiveness because it's always shocking to me and i'm sure it's perhaps surprising to you when people come up and say they'll say to me you know the podcast really brought me to the faith and i'm shocked by that because i don't think i've ever been like changed by a video maybe i'm just old um but i think that's right if people can sit down and watch without their defenses up because that certainly happens to me if i get into an adversarial conflict now i'm in i got to somehow save face because i'm an idiot and i'm concerned about those things No, so that's the, and the same thing is true of books.

You know, I often feel on my radio program, I'm trying to lure people to buy a book because whoever I'm speaking with my guest, you can't really get into everything. But if that person will say, well, that's interesting. Then in their own quiet reading a book, they can think about that. So whether it's a book or a video, the point is that people have the freedom to have certain thoughts that they would not if they're in some confrontational conversation with a believer, you know. Now, I suppose most of your interviews revolve around the faith in some way, faith in some way. I saw that you had like RFK Jr. on at some point.

So do you just delve into the political from time to time? Well, actually, that's interesting. I'm glad you brought that up because I can say we never do political on Socrates in the city. Now, in my radio program and in other places, I will get into the political. But Socrates City is meant to be about the big questions, the eternal questions, which, of course, can lean into politics. But the reason I had, I mean, I do so many guests with Socrates and City that every now and again, you can go slightly off brand without wrecking the whole brand. And so RFK Jr., there are a number of figures like this, that whether political or apolitical, you just know that it will be an interesting conversation. in the case of his coming on, because he was running for president, it was ostensibly

political. But I tried to frame it in my introduction and in the subsequent conversation as something that is apart from politics. We're talking about the big questions. And to some extent, not every Socrates' conversation has to do with faith either. Again, I keep thinking that if you're simply talking about the big questions or things of importance, it can't help but lean towards. toward truth and faith, even if it's not explicit.

So, but with him, I thought, well, I probably wouldn't get him if he weren't running for president. So let's have the conversation. But in the introduction, I framed it quite deliberately and saying, look, we're talking about the big, we're going to talk about the big questions. Now, whether I was able to get him to follow along is another thing. But it was. Man, if he ever writes a book one day, I'd want to read that book. Oh, actually he has.

Has he talked about the amount of how many arrows he's taken over the last year? No, that he has not. Come on. That's going to be an amazing story. That's a lot of courage. Don't you think? No. Listen, not only is the answer to that, yes.

Let's underscore this by considering the fact that he's married to someone who for the longest time starred on curb your enthusiasm with Larry David, who is viciously leftist. I mean, when I say viciously leftist, I mean, he's not. you know, sort of leftist. I mean, he's the kind of person that if you're going to think the way, if you're going to go like RFK Jr. and go work for Trump, that's a deal breaker in terms of friendship, whatever. And so when people put friendships on the line the way RFK Jr. did, that's the definition of courage because no one, I put myself on the front of the list, wants to lose a friend. It's heartbreaking. It's very tough if you feel an obligation to do something

and you know that there are people that are not going to be able to deal with that. They're going to think of me as the enemy or something. So RFK Jr.'s, courage. And really, when you think about it, too, the practicality, the pragmatism of saying, I have certain things I want to do. If this president is going to allow me to do that, that's a big deal. And how could I not take that deal? Well, it just goes to show that what the change he believed he could make, it was worth coming under the Trump banner. I mean, absolutely. And of course, it has to say something about Trump, that you're willing to pull somebody in who you differ with on many things, but you believe somehow this guy, RFK Jr., he cares about America. He cares about

truth. He cares about kids. Let's see what he can do. So that's a wonderful thing. But just to get back to the Socrates thing, so I don't, I think that we're very purposely apolitical and not just political, but it's not about current events. It's about the big questions with the idea that you can watch something 10 or 15 years after we've done it, and it's as relevant. One of my favorite conversations ever is with Dame Alice von Hildebrandt. Did you ever meet her? Alice, I never met her, no. She, oh, she was a dear friend, and just, you talk about a hero of the Catholic faith. I mean, she was such a joy to talk to, and that conversation, I know, has changed people's lives. They've told me this, and it's, I guess it's 10 or 11 years ago that we did that. So, you know, to talk

about the big questions, sometimes, again, explicitly theological, and in many cases not, so yeah. Okay, what's Manhattan like these days? My wife and I would go every year for the last eight years, maybe the last three years we haven't gone, and it just seemed to us, and just subjectively to get increasingly worse and to feel more dangerous. Listen, as somebody who lives there, I think that's mostly nonsense. It just goes to show you how the news affects us. I mean, I live in New York, my family, we live. live in New York. Has it gotten worse? Yes. But it's so incremental that to talk about. I mean, I knew New York, I knew New York well in the 70s when I was a kid. That was bad. The 80s was

bad. It is nothing like it was back then. And so, but this is all the news. You take it in. You hear about this. You hear about that. And it's, you know, no, it isn't the city that it was 15 years ago. but I cannot imagine that I'm yeah I mean just when people say that I think well what are you seeing I mean I'm seeing a lot of fellows dressed up like women and it's and it felt increasingly I've not you haven't no I don't know where do you go well coffee shops and you walk around there's all these tranny flags everywhere and well it depends where you walk around yeah because I do not see that that's wild well I mean you have to I love to go back I remember being in New York and thinking I have finally found a city that can keep up with me. And then I would go back home to wherever I was and it felt like going from a podcast in double speed back to single speed. You're like, what the heck is going on? Yeah. It's a beautiful.

No, listen, I have a great affection for New York. I was born there and we've raised our daughter there and I met my wife there. And I really have great love for New York. If the Lord calls us someplace else, you know, we were. We were really kept there in part because both Suzanne and I love our families. Family is so important. And her family is in New Jersey about an hour and 15 minutes away. My family is in Connecticut, about an hour and 15 minutes away.

So we were able to see our families constantly. And now her parents have passed away and my dad has passed away. So things have changed. But that was a big part of it. This is where we are. This is where our people are. this is our world and our church family and our friends yeah you wrote a book forgive me i'm forgetting the name of the title letters to a christian church or what was it letters letters to the

american church sorry letter to the american church and it sounds like at least part of what you were concerned about in that book was the silence on part of the church not standing up to the insane ideologies that are being pushed on us yeah love you to talk about that but also it feels like there's been a sea change oh of course there has been a sea change praise god yeah there's been a... Have you noticed that even in New York, that people have the freedom now. I'd be like, yeah, that was kind of a fever dream. It's good to wake up from that. Listen, I don't want to get to current events or political, but it was my... The reason I wrote that book, in a nutshell, and I can say bluntly that I know the Lord

has led me in my career, and that's all have cared about, right? So when I wrote the book on Dietrich Bonhofer, which came out in 2010, that was a monster moment in my life, and And I wrote it because my mother grew up in Nazi Germany. My father grew up in Greece. My mother grew up in Germany. They both left in the 50s, met in an English class in New York City. I wrote, I tell this whole story in my book, Fish Out of Water. When I'm sitting here with you, I want to say water.

Water. But fish out of water. And I tell that story. And so the story of my life growing up, both my parents were constantly talking about growing up, during World War II. Wow. And so my father went through hell in Greece. The communists tried to take over after the war.

You know, just went through hell. My father lived it. My mother grew up in Nazi Germany, lost her father in the war. He was killed. She was 10 years old. The whole thing, they were not on board with Hitler. I knew that most German, you know, my brothers, they were not on board with this, but what choice do you have?

My goodness, you know, it's like, so the Bonhofer book, really, without getting further into it, it. When I wrote that book, I never really have much of an agenda. I just thought, oh, this is an amazing hero of the faith. It's like Dietrich von Hildebrand. I mentioned Alice von Hildebrand, you know, her late husband, Dieterogne. These are heroes of the faith in the context of totalitarian regimes. And so I just want to tell the story of Bonhofer because I knew about it because my mother grew up in Nazi Germany and I thought Bonhofer was a voice not just for the Jews, but for those German Christians who were not on board with the Nazis, so I wrote the book.

Okay. So in the course of writing the book, I never thought it would be such a big deal. I mean, that's an understatement. I never dreamt that it would be anything like a big deal, but it ended up, you know, selling a million copies, translated into 20 languages. No one was more surprised than I. That's not some false humility. That was really true.

I just wanted to finish writing it and move on. But it struck a nerve for many reasons, but I think the principal reason is that Bonhoeffer, in a way, had been hijacked by the theological liberals. They had, for 50 years, presented him as some kind of agnostic humanist. And so I think a lot of people who loved Bonhofer were confused by this. So my book clarified this in a way for the first time, and I didn't even do it intentionally. I just thought, I'm just going to tell the story of Bonhofer. and in the course of actually telling the story in his own letters and diaries,

you just think, that's not who he was. He was a profound Christian until the end of his life. Anyway, so it was kind of a reclamation it ended up being, you know. So the book was very popular. But I say all this because the takeaway, as I was writing the book, I thought, you know, this story that I'm writing, which happened principally in the 30s in Germany,

it feels familiar. Like it feels like it could happen. in America. And what's at the center of the story? The center of the story is the failure of the church, mostly the Lutheran church, but the church in general, to see what was happening and to stand boldly, courageously against it in time to stop it. And the bigger point is they could have stopped it.

The Lutheran church, particularly in Germany, they had the cultural power if they had stood en masse in the beginning. They had the ability. But there was a lot of dithering and a lot of those kind of religious excuses. Like, well, we don't do politics. It's not a, we just want to preach the gospel. We just want to have a nice church service. And it was that failure to discern that, no, now we must stand against this evil. Bonhofer was trying to wake up the church to get them to do that. Of course, he, like most of the prophets, he failed. The church, You know, they did what they did. And before you knew it, the Nazis had taken over and you see that.

So I say all that because in recent years, I felt something dramatically similar is happening in America. We don't have to get into the litany of madnesses, but there were many things that lines were crossed that I never thought in my lifetime. They would be crossed, any of them, you know, whether you believe in an election might have been stolen, you think, that'll never happen in America. That happens in third world countries. You wouldn't believe that that cultural elites would force people to go along with certain narratives and if you dissent that you would be punished and all this kind of stuff which you think of

when you think of totalitarian regimes. To see it on any level in America was astonishing for anybody paying attention. And I thought, this is exactly why God called me to write the Bonhofer book because it happened very similarly in Germany. Nobody dreamt that it could happen. That's the point. That's the why it happens because the people are thinking, we live in Germany. This is the country of Schiller and Bach and Goethe. And we, you know, we're the most civilized country in the world. What can happen here? And so you let your guard down and then before you know what it's happened. And so letter to the American church was me trying to make the case to American Christians. have we in fact been guilty of what the German church was guilty of?

Have we said, oh, I don't want any trouble. Oh, we don't do politics. We don't, we don't, we're just going to do our, you know. And I thought, theoretically, that's a mistake. It's not just practically a mistake. It's a mistake, theologically, and it says that God calls us to stand against evil, just as he calls us to stand against slavery, right? You know, you don't say, well, that's political.

That's on the ballot this year. It's 1860, and slavery's on the ballot in our church. We're not going to touch that, you know, because we don't get into politics. And you think, wait a minute, wait a minute. Who's kidding whom? This is about human beings. This is a moral issue, and I have a moral obligation. And in the sense, those who are opposed to the Christian view can use the term political as a cudgel and say,

ah, don't, don't, don't, you know. But you realize, well, we're not being political. We're speaking in slavery. This is we have a mandate from the scripture, from our faith, to speak against evil. And so I think that it's a very normal thing, particularly for Americans and Westerners, to kind of go along thinking, well, I don't want to be the one to cause any trouble. And I thought, if the church in America does not stand against these horrors with boldness and unity, it's game over because, you know, Bonhofer always said that the church is the conscience of the state.

in other words, if the church fails to be the church, it all goes south. Let's not kid ourselves like we can have. I mean, I'm writing a book now in the American Revolution, and I wrote a book called If You Can Keep It, where I talk about the absolute centrality of faith and virtue to this American experiment in self-government. So anybody who thinks that we can have self-government and liberty and freedom and all this great stuff without people of faith, there's no way you can have one without the other. Now, of course, the other side of it is you can't force faith, you can't mandate faith, you can't legislate faith and virtue, so it has to come up naturally. And so there's this profound connection. And so if the church hadn't been the church,

if you hadn't had sufficient people of virtue and faith in 1776, America could never have come into being, period. There's just no possibility of that. And similarly, if the church had been the church during the rise of Hitler, the Nazis could not have abrogated those freedoms and, you know, human rights and it. And similarly now in the last, let's say, five years, if the church is the church, you get a radically different outcome than if the church says, oh, we don't want any trouble, we're just going to go along with things. you don't, you lose liberty, you know, to sum it up. You lose it. It's not guaranteed that you can keep it forever. And so that's why the book's called, if you can keep it, the one that I'm just referencing, because Benjamin Franklin was asked, leaving the constitutional convention, what kind of a government, have you given us, Dr. Franklin, a monarchy or a republic? It's a famous line. And he says, a republic, madam, if you can keep it. In other words, it requires keeping. And I think Franklin understood and all the founders understood that at the heart of it all is people of faith, people of virtue. You cannot have freedom without that. And so, Letter to the American Church was really me trying to speak to the church now and say, this is it, folks, like this is it.

It's not going to be it in 20 years. Like, this is it. If we lose now, we don't even get to fight in 20 years. It's over. And that I knew was not overstating the case. I always say, I wish I were wrong. I so wish that I could be persuaded that it's just my emotions have carried me away. But not at all.

I think that that was the case. And I think that the recent election is just one of those things. It's not, in other words, it doesn't solve everything, but it makes it possible to kind of keep going and to bring faith into the center of public life. It certainly seems to have been a referendum on the LGBT stuff, the DEI stuff, the transing, the kids stuff, such that I wonder if whoever the new Democratic frontrunner will end up being will maybe take their foot entirely off the gas. Oh, sure. And so for that reason, do you think if someone was to pick up your book today, do you think that, as we said, the sea change has occurred, do you think people would be like, oh, this isn't as, this isn't relevant anymore? No, because there are many, many Christians. I'm speaking specific. Listen, all the books I've written I wrote for everyone. Every book I write is for everybody, except Letter to the American Church and the

sequel, Religionless Christianity, both are directed specifically to Christians, only to the church. And there are many, many, many church leaders, Christian leaders, and Christians who have not themselves gotten this memo. In other words, enough have gotten it that we see this, change that you're talking about. Like we see it. But there are tons of Christians who don't understand what has happened or that they have a role. Because look, you know, when we say a sea change has happened, it's kind of like saying like, we won that battle. We're still in a war. Yeah. There are many other battles ahead. There are battles today and tomorrow and next month, the next year. What battles do you see emerging on the right that Christians ought not to be quiet about just because their team are

trumpeting them. Well, I guess I wouldn't frame it that way. Here's what I see. I see that we have been given an absolutely outrageous, unmerited gift from the Lord that we get to now breathe and not just have freedom, but potentially increase freedom, right? In other words, I keep saying, you know, imagine a world. I'm going to be referencing. Oh, my books. I've written too many books. Any subject that interests me, ultimately, I've written a book on it. I wrote a book called Is Atheism Dead? And we can talk about that later because some of it is so, it is so fascinating what has come up in the world of science. It's shocking. And that's why I put it in my book. Shocking evidence for God from science. I mean, truly shocking. Now, I say this because I think to myself, we grew up in a world, I grew up in a world, where the basic cultural undergirding is this idea that science is at odds with faith. People of faith are somehow, they're in a little pocket, but they're not in the real world. Science clearly makes the case that you don't need God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

Now, we know that's not true, but that's been the culture. That's the zeitgeist that we have, we've been swimming in this water. We've been drinking, breathing this oxygen. It's everywhere. Cosmos, you know, came out in 1980 when I was a kid, you know, Carl Sagan took it. It's all there, and it's pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed, and it's this narrative that's been pushed. In my whole lifetime, it is everywhere.

And I think to myself, imagine if we have an opportunity now, and I think we do, if the church will be the church, to flip this narrative. In other words, if science, as I say in my book, is atheism dead, is pointing dramatically to the existence of God, not, oh, we have some evidence, no, it is open and shot. It's like the evidence is kind of like, do we have evidence that the earth? earth is not flat? Oh, you're kidding, right? Yes. It's been decided. It's like overwhelmingly clear. The earth is not flat. The evidence for God from science has become as clear, as overwhelming, but no one knows it. And that's why I wrote the book, I thought, when I found all this stuff

from, you know, various authors, I thought, this is crazy. And so I think to myself, what if we have an opportunity now, given this sea change to which you're referring, to take back ground that we thought we had lost forever, to repeal the sexual revolution. In other words, you know and I know, a lot of the people listening to this know that God created marriage. He created sex to be inside marriage. It's a beautiful picture of the coming together of male and female in his image to create life and family. And we all know this is true. This is not some parochial, Catholic, Christian. This is true. Imagine that that idea over 50 or 60 years has been wiped away. What would it be like to bring, would it be possible?

Maybe it would have to be by the grace of God, we know, but to go back. So that most people, not never everyone, but that most people would begin to know again, yeah, that's true. Yeah, I should get married. I should find a spouse and we should have a family. That's at the heart of everything. Yeah, and it's going to have to be personal responsibility, not legislative, obviously. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, you know, the alternative is clear. Either man governs his passions and so finds peace, or he allows himself to be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. So if this is to happen, it's going to require individuals to repent of their insest. humanity to get their passions subordinated to reason. Well, look, there's no doubt about that.

But the culture has a lot to say about what people think possible, right? You know, as if you're growing up the way, I mean, it happened to me. I was, you know, in college. And I didn't know anyone who thought sex outside of marriage was wrong. Yeah. And I thought it was a little bit wrong. That's funny. But then I thought...

I'm the same. I'm the only one. I'm slightly younger than you, but same. thing anyone of my friends would never have thought that there was anything wrong with sex outside of marriage. Right. And so the thing is those things affect us. In fact, it was wrong if you were to claim that it was wrong. Well, there you go. That's when they became judgmental about me being judgmental. So if you think about it, the culture, we used to live in a culture in America, I'm saying, where everyone knew sex outside of marriage was wrong. It didn't mean that no one did it,

but everybody knew, it's probably wrong. I keep thinking that we have a much. I keep thinking that we have a moment now, a really, really glorious moment, a gift from God, a gift that we, to say we don't deserve it is a great understatement, that we may be able to flip these narratives. There may be a moment where things got so bad that people who ordinarily would have never awakened, have awakened, see it, and go, you know what, right. It's like waking up after a hangover and going, what the hell just happened? But that's, and I think that, and so I think that that's what this is, that there's a, there's a, a passion, at least among some, to get this stuff right, to say, wait a minute, what have we been doing? And so I feel that, I mean, I talk about this in a lot of speeches that basically, so you think, okay, let's say, you know, anybody who thinks politics is everything is nuts, right? Now, I often say politics is very, very important, but there's a lot more to life. And so if you, if you, you elect somebody, you know, let's say, oh, Hitler was not elected. Okay, now what? Well, that's the

point. Okay, so now you have an opportunity to do many right things that you wouldn't have had. So politics is actually important. Who is elected? But then the point is you've got to do what you can do. And so we have a whole culture now where, you know, we can even, let's say, have conversations about things that we couldn't have had if it things gone. another way. So there's a kind of a freedom. And so I keep thinking, okay, so we've got to now, with joy, try to take back the ground that's been lost over the decades about what is the family, what is the real meaning of life, what is what is marriage? Is marriage a beautiful thing between a man and a woman for life? Or is it just whatever or is it nothing? I think we have

an opportunity because of the wild breakdown. Yeah, the boot has been taken off our neck. have a time to get up and do something? So it was a friend of mine, I think, I don't know, some months ago said we need to, you know, repeal the sexual revolution. And I remember thinking, what? Like, that'll never happen. And then I thought, wait a minute. What if God says, yes, yes, I'm giving you an opportunity now to, you know, to say what everybody has secretly been thinking, this isn't working. The divorce and all this stuff, it's painful.

It's created tremendous pain and dysfunction culturally everywhere. And that's just the sexual revolution. But, you know, when I talk about my book is atheism dead, what if we have an opportunity to flip that narrative that? You know what? It looks like science clearly says there is a god. Now, we can argue about who that is and what you're supposed to do about it. But for sure, the evidence is overwhelming.

Now, if you want to be some dedicated atheists, you refuse to accept the evidence. But the point is that's... What does it mean to say it's overwhelming? because I don't feel like it's overwhelming. Well, see, this is what I'm trying to say. The reason I wrote the book and the reason I'm so passionate about it is because even people like you don't know what's in my book. And I don't mean that it's about my book.

It's evidence that I discovered in all these different places. And when I finally saw it, I thought, this is insane. I need to put this in a book because I didn't really quite see it myself. No Christian that I know sees it. And if Christians don't know this, how in the world can non-Christians be persuaded? because most Christians, we're still operating in a world, which is, you know, it's the hangover the 60s. Like, we've all kind of decided that, you know, well, okay, I'll frame it this way. Why is my book titled, Is Atheism Dead? In 1966, Time Magazine puts this bleak lie in the middle of

every American living room. Time Magazine cover story is God dead. Now, that idea, whether it's the death of God or the irrelevance of faith, you know, you can trace it back to Matthew Arnold's poem in the mid-19th century. You can go back to, it started with Darwin in 1859. These ideas have been trickling down, you know, what I call the trickle-down theory of culture, not economics, right? They trickle down from the academy,

from these, you know, from these ivory-tower precinct, through the decades, and you see these moments, the 1920s was a classic moment of, you know, tremendous loss of faith and, you know, you see it in culture, but it doesn't really become front and center in American culture until the 60s, that, you know, Henry Luce, Yale graduate, he decides he's going to use the power of his publishing empire to put this bleak idea that probably we all know that, you know, there's no God. Okay, on America's living room tables. And so that changed the culture from that moment on.

So Time Magazine had a lot more power back in the 60s than it does today. Well, that's the understatement of, you know, the millennium, right? It has no power today. It's a joke. But the point is it had huge cultural power in the 60s. So it says what all the intellectuals, all the smart people, all the cultural elites, they're already thinking this, but we're not going to, you know, risk it with John Q. Public. in Topeka, but now they're willing to risk it and they put it out there. So I say this because

from the 60s, so in my lifetime, since I was born in the 60s, this has been the general idea that we all kind of know we're living in a post-religious culture. There's still some pockets of, you know, here and there. But all the smart people, all the people in the know, we all know there's probably no God and probably life has no meaning. We evolved by accident from the primordial soup so your life has no inherent meaning or dignity or whatever, but we have to kind of live and make the best of it, right? And so you have people like Woody Allen rather wonderfully in many of his films really asking these questions, not being happy about it, but sort of saying, isn't this what we're saying and how do we live and how do we, you know, and then you

had people before that, you know, Jean-Pol Sart and Camus saying, how do we live in a life without meaning? What do we, how do we, you know, so there are people that kind of honest about this, but I think the bottom line is that the whole culture kind of bought this idea. idea. And what I say in my book is atheism dead is since the 60s, the evidence from science, and I can go into it, but has piled up mainly having to do with what we call the fine-tuning of everything. That science, as science has progressed, we have had the ability through science to see things that we could not have seen in previous decades and centuries, right? And so suddenly go, whoa, we now can see that there's no way this or this or this could have just happened.

So how do we account for this? You know, the obvious answer would be, well, it was intended as a designer, an intelligent designer did this. Now we can discuss, we can argue about who that designer is or the details, but we know it didn't just happen. I mean, if I flip a quarter and it comes up heads a thousand times in a row, we know something's going on. This is not random.

So this has been happening. And actually, there are two... So it sounds like you're saying that, okay, we've always had arguments for the existence of God. Aquinas' Fifth Way is his argument from teleology, for example. And yet, it sounds like what you're saying is modern science is not actually taking issue with these philosophical claims. No.

They're bolstering them. Well, I'll say this. I wrote a piece. It was the first piece I had published in the one. Wall Street Journal about 10 years ago. And the title of it, short piece, 850 word op-ed, Science increasingly makes the case for God. And it dealt with what we're talking about, this fine-tuning, which I'll get to in a minute. That article went more viral than anything could go. I don't know. It made that, the article was the most popular shared article in the

history of the Wall Street Journal by more than double. Like, okay, why? Because the hunger, your average human being has a hunger to know. There must be a God. I sort of think there's a God, but everybody's saying that science is at odds with God. So an article in the Wall Street Journal that says science increasingly makes the case for God astonished people and they wanted to know more. And that's what led me to write the book. I said that there's a hunger here, right? so maybe I can tell you well so the book we're making a TV series based on the book is atheism dead and I think that you know many more people are inclined to watch a good TV series than read a book but the thing that I keep saying is that the evidence has become so

overwhelming that I know most people won't believe it until they see it for themselves because we have all taken in this narrative this secular narrative that you can't help it, but think that, well, it's got to be an issue of faith. It's got to be, well, yes, but what do we mean by faith? I mean, one plus one equals two. I can look at it a thousand ways. It's true. But if you've lived in a world that tells you that science is somehow at odds with faith

or that they're at least very separate, you know, people will say, well, these are two different ways of seeing things, you know, like, meaning what? That one is objective and one is subjective. So I had over the years read many books, just to focus on the science here, that talk about the fine-tuned universe, okay. And it got to a point where I said, this is getting ridiculous because you could talk about a fine-tune universe in 1980 or 1990, but it has become now so overwhelming that anywhere you look on the macro level, on the micro level, on the subatomic level, on the level of the vast universe, wherever you look, you see signs of design so outrageous that you, you just. you know, you have to stop and think, look, there's nothing to talk about. It's clear that God did this, or it's at least clear that it couldn't have just happened. There's no way that this could have just happened.

So I think when that evidence piles up, it sounds hopelessly vague as I'm talking about it now, but when you begin reading one thing after the other, you know, you put this evidence in front of somebody, say, okay, what do you make of this now? Like, you know, it really is, I mean, one, the simplest example, which you don't need much modern science to determine it. But I'll never forget because it's so simple. If you know the solar system, you know, you know, that Mars has two moons and they're, you know, one of them's nine miles across. The other's like 14 or whatever. You know, there's these little rocks that they call moons and, you know, Mercury has no moons and Saturn has, I don't know, this many. And, you know, if you know

the universe, sorry, the solar system, and then you say, okay, Earth has one moon. Okay. I remember I did the math on this like 25 years, 20 years ago, I was writing my first book. The diameter of the moon is almost exactly 1,400th the diameter of the sun. Okay, it's just a fact. Almost exactly 1,400th the diameter. So diameter of the sun is 400 times that of the moon. the distance from the earth to the moon is almost exactly one four hundredth the distance

of the earth to the sun this means that in the sky from the point of view of earth only the sun and the moon look precisely the same size precisely And this is what gives us eclipses. And so when you think about this, again, if you know the sizes of other, you know, moons around the planets and stuff, you go, what is this coincidence? This is insane. They're exactly the same size from the point of view of Earth. Why is that? Does that seem on any level of randomness?

Is this possible? Why do we just have one moon? But why would it be exactly the same size? It's not close, but exactly the same size. And again, it doesn't prove anything. But if you're just honest, you'd say, well, it seems like God designed it. It seems like he designed, you know, one is silver, one is gold, they're in the sky, they're beautiful, they're precisely the same. One is 93 million miles away, and the other one is 240,000 miles away.

But to us, they look exactly the same size, and we have eclipses and whatever. Now, again, that's a very simple example of what I'm talking about. but it makes you pause. It makes you say, well, that's just so, so odd. Another one that's not so complicated is, which is similarly uncomplicated, I should say, is the existence of Jupiter. Jupiter is a gigantic planet,

but so far away that, I think it's 400 million miles away. So, you know, if you live in a nice place, you can look up, sometimes you can see a pinprick of light in the night sky and you say that's Jupiter, right? But we now know from science that if Jupiter were not there, I mean, if this giant gassy planet were not there 400 million miles away, science can now say that there could be no life on Earth. And you say, well, that's crazy. What are you talking about? Yes, we now know that Jupiter is so large, it has such gravitation. pull, that it pulls asteroids and meteors and everything away from Earth in its general direction. And that if it were not there, so many asteroids and meteors would hit Earth that there would just be no conceivable possibility that life could be here. And you think, well, I didn't learn that in science class, but that's not a religious fact. That's a scientific fact

that we now know that we probably didn't know 40 or 50 years ago. But we now know that. So you go, well, that's interesting. So if it weren't there, we wouldn't be here. How interesting that it's there. How nice that it's there. But everywhere you look, whether in our solar system, in the universe, in the beyond our solar system, whether you look on the biological level, the chemical level, the atomic level, everywhere you look, you find things like this, that if something weren't precisely as it is.

I mean, another example is, you know, if you say to a scientist, to one of the big bang happened. Okay, 13.8 billion years ago, the whole universe arises out of nothing. Time and space are created out of nothing 13.8 billion years ago. That's a whole other conversation, which I devote a chapter to in the book. But what they'll say is that the four physical constants, the electromagnetic force, gravitational force, the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, These four fundamental forces were determined.

Their value was determined within one millionth of a second after the Big Bang. And if any of those four fundamental forces had been different by 0.000,000, let's say, there would be no universe. Now, you know, scientists who are looking at this stuff, they're stymied because they say, well that's that's nice so here we are in the universe living but if any of these forces had somehow been different why are they what they are why why were they set in stone a millionth of a second after the big bang and we now know doing the calculations that there simply would be no universe if any of them were any different I mean again it sounds made up but this is what science

says this is not religious people twisting science this is science and so And so I've forgotten because I haven't read my book in a while, but I wrote it four years ago. But it's just everywhere you look, you see this evidence of design. And some of it is, you know, more accessible, you know, to the layman. But it's just gotten so overwhelming that I thought somebody needs to put this in a book because nobody would believe it that science has now gotten to the place where we can see these things. We couldn't have seen these things 100 or 50 years ago. Yeah.

And there's obviously a lot of great Protestant and Catholic writers pointing this out, William and Craig, Ed Faser, John Lennox. Oh my gosh, yeah. And John Lennox, I write about a lot of him in the book. I mean, there's a number of books. Ignatius just put out a book this year, which I haven't finished reading. But everywhere you look, you see this stuff. But God has called me to the culture.

And I know that your average person doesn't read these books or hasn't heard. of John Lennox. If you're really interested, maybe you have. But a lot of people have not. And so I said, we need to take the, you know, put the cookies down on a lower shelf and to say to everybody, the opposite of what Time Magazine was saying to everybody in 1966, like, hey, have a look at this. That should at least give thinking people permission to accept, to accept it. I think most of the beliefs we hold, many of the beliefs we hold, we hold due to peer pressure, which is why people vote like their neighbors do. And so if it's just in the culture that God doesn't exist and people who believe in God are idiots, but we should be nice to them, then people

naturally tend to where they think they'll be intellectually respected. Precisely. So I think, yeah, by pointing some of this stuff out, we're showing people, no, no, you can be intellectually serious and be a Christian. Were you an atheist at any point? I mean, you went to Yale. I don't think I was ever an atheist, atheist. I think I was an agnostic.

I really, I was raised in the Greek Orthodox Church. I was an altar boy. I never seriously questioned it. But I think a lot of people have this experience in different churches where you're not really getting any apologetics or any clarity. You just go because it's what your parents do. And if you love your parents and you love the community, the church community, you don't question it. But neither did I understand it at all. So by the time I went to Yale, I was suddenly immersed in an environment utterly hostile.

to any kind of serious faith mocking or sneering of it I was suddenly immersed in an environment that was absolutely anti-patriotic that would sneer at, you know, patriotism and, you know, God and country. And so I never really fully accepted that worldview,

but neither did I have the ability to stand against it. So I drifted with this zeitgeist and I took it in. I drank enough of the Kool-Aid that I was seriously affected by it. I mean, in my own life and in my thinking, you know, what's right and wrong and who's to say? And I don't know. And so all that peer pressure, all of that environment affects each of us, whether we like it or not.

And I had not been, as I say, trained to know that this is true and this is not true. So when I was pushed, I really, I was quite lost. And so that's how I described myself. I was quite lost, and I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was an English major, graduated, and just drifted, really trying to write, but what am I writing? I was really very lost, and I always say things got so bad that I ended up moving back in with my parents. Now, imagine my parents are working class of European immigrants. They send their kid to Yale, the American dream, and then he comes back two and a half years later.

but you know I'm looking for the meaning of life what's going on and they're thinking what like what you know and it's funny because I always say that the parents of my friends would say oh Eric's just finding himself but my parents would be like yeah Eric should find himself a job and like what's wrong with you like we came here we have no college education we had nothing we met at work and we killed ourselves and we raised our kids and we get you send to you a university and now you're like what's the meaning of life like what is wrong with you which sums up where we are in the culture, right? In other words, you have everything, and it leads you to meaninglessness and confusion and Anui and despair, and that's the culture that we live in. And so, yeah, so I moved back in with my parents. I was 24, and it was one of the worst times of my life.

I was so lost, and I, you know, my father made me get a job. You're not just going to, like, hang around the house, right and pretend to write short stories so i uh i got a job as a proofreader at union carbide in danbury connecticut this is like i mean the worst thing imaginable a corporate environment a horrible corporate environment in my hometown it's this international chemical conglomerate union carbide but what can you do with the yale english degree not much i mean let's be honest so i was able to be a proof reader but it was it was so unbelievably off

fault, bleak. But in the course of that year, one of the graphic designers there, who was a very serious Christian, began sharing his faith with me. And I was really not interested very much. I was like, you know, keep your distance with that weird right-wing Christian stuff. How did he initiate it? Truthfully is a groundbreaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live, and defend the Catholic faith with clarity and confidence, whether you're navigating a tough conversation, deepening your understanding or looking for daily spiritual guidance, Truthly is your companion on the journey.

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One question, one course and one prayer at a time. Start your seven-day free trial today. download Truthly on the App Store. Because it often does come off really cringy and awkward when people try to... I don't remember. I only remember that I always being a kind of, you know, not wanting to be confrontational, you know, kind of just pretended to go along and agree and go, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm not like against Christianity or I'm not.

But of course I had no clue what I believed. But so I sort of let him. say what he wanted to say. And I think a lot of people do this. When I've shared my faith, they just kind of will nod. And they don't want to argue, but neither are they going to buy it. And I think I was there for a while, and we would have lunch, and he would talk. And so I was kind of taking it in, but not really taking it in, not allowing it to come in all the way.

Or if he'd say, well, we should go to church together. I was like, no, not interested. Or we should do a Bible study. No, thank you. You know, I would just sort of cringe at those, like, I don't want to go further. A long story short, around my 25th birthday, I had an absolutely, undeniably miraculous dream

where the Lord spoke to me unequivocally, clearly, which absolutely overnight changed my life. I went to sleep wondering if anyone could ever know whether there was a God and woke up knowing Jesus is Lord and game over. I beg you to tell me every aspect of that dream, please. Well, let's see. The reason I knew the dream was from God was. was because it wouldn't have made sense to anyone but me.

It was like tailor-made for me and my life. It was tailor-made to blow my mind. So what do I mean? I mean, around age 25, on my 25th birthday, you know, if somebody had said to me, you know, like, who are you? You know, tell me, what's who are you in your core? Who are you? Probably three things would have come up.

one would have been my identity as my father's son as a Greek immigrant. The Greek part, I mean, any Greek, I always joke around that, you know, if you're raised by a Greek and a German, since my mother's from Germany and my father's from Greek, if you're raised by a Greek in a German, that means you will be raised Greek. So, you know, I went to the Greek church and, you know, so it's just the Greeks are so zealous for their, you know, ethnicity, that whole, they're just, you know, the favorite hobby of every Greek is being Greek. It's like such a thing, right? With good reason. I mean, there's, I get it. But that was a big part of who I am. And just because my love, my, my, my deep love for my father. So that's,

that's a big piece of who you are. Or at least it was a big piece of who I was. It was, it was, it was, it was a vital part of my identity. A second part of my identity, you know, in my my middle years, let's say, um, was fishing. I mean, if somebody said, what is your, what's your hobby? What do you do? I was always fishing, usually with friends, but it was kind of my thing, the fishing. So, you know, fly fishing, bass fishing and whatever. That was like, that was my thing. Um, but the third piece later on, I went to, I went to college early, so I was 17. was the life of the mind. When I went to college,

I had this innate desire to figure out the meaning of life, even though I wouldn't have said it consciously or explicitly. In other words, I'm reading these books, the great Western canon. I wanted to be an English major and all this stuff appealed to me. But what was really behind it,

when I would write papers, it was like I was trying to figure out the structure of the universe and the meaning of life and, you know, what does this book say about what it is to be human? And this was innate. It's not like it was some Christian project or it was even, as I say, explicit. It was just what I did when I encountered great literature because it was like I was looking for truth in these books.

So I was kind of looking for the meaning of life. So there's these three things that going into this dream, you have to know them about me. And also, it'll come together in a minute when I tell you the dream. dream. But the other thing was that my father, you know, being an evangelist for being Greek, once we pulled up at a traffic light, so it's like maybe 1979, and there's a chrome fish on the bumper in the car in front of us. And I even know where it is in Danbury, Connecticut, where I grew up. And he says, you see that fish? Do you know what that is? No. That's, and he says, because the ancient Christians use the symbol because the Greek word for fish is Iqthus, because it's an acronym.

The letters, you know, spell out Isus Christos, Theos, Imon, Sotir, or Ios Sotir. Jesus Christ, Son of God, our Savior. So the word fish written in ancient Greek was used as the early Christians as an acronym so that the fish symbol meant Jesus Christ, the son of God or Savior. So when you saw the fish symbol, it meant Jesus Christ, son of God or Savior. So my father's telling me this, really more than anything, probably excited about the fact that it's a

Greek word, that he's telling his son about this Greek word, right? But that really stuck with me. So I talked about the fishing, I talked about the Greek thing, and then the life of the mind. And the life of the mind, I should say, before I tell the dream. So I was always trying to kind of figure out, you know, the meaning of life and all this different stuff. And around maybe my senior year in college or the year after, I came up

and only an undergraduate could be pretentious and arrogant enough to think, I think I've solved the meaning of life. Here's what it is, right? And so I came up with this idea that it's kind of a Freudian-Yungian idea, right? That our soul, it's like a frozen lake. If you have the ice is the conscious mind and that the goal of life is to drill through the conscious mind to touch the water beneath, which is the collective unconscious, which is the godhead or the divine. And all religions are doing the same thing. They're trying to encourage us to, you know, drill through the conscious mind to touch the collective unconscious. Whatever the heck that means, did I know, no, but it sort of satisfied my, you know, immature desire to understand things.

For a mysticism that made no demands on me. You know what? That is precisely well put, absolutely beautifully put. That's what it was. A mysticism that made no demands on me. I'm going to use that. So I had these ideas in my head, right? Well, around my 25th birthday, my uncle had just passed away. So something was shifting in me. The guy at work, my dear friend Ed Tuttle had said, well, you know, when my uncle was in this coma, my people, my church were praying for your uncle. which really moved me, should we pray for your uncle? And I was so touched by this. Something happened, something shifted. We went into a room and we prayed at Union Carbide. And I just remember thinking, that was real. I don't know what to think about it,

but that was, something is real here about this faith and about praying. And I just could feel something. So my uncle died, but something is going on with me at this point, where I'm somehow opening the door a crack. And a week or so later, I had a dream. And here's the dream. I'm standing on a frozen lake, Candlewood Lake in Danbury, Connecticut.

So this is the lake I had fished on. I was on a bass tournament on Candlewood Lake. You know, it's where we grew up. And in the dream, it's a glorious winter's day. So super bright blue sky, super bright sun, the snow and the ice super white and you know like really beautiful and i'm ice fishing on the lake and so there's a hole you know drilled in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the in the sticking out of the hole is like the snout of a

fish like a pickerel or a pike which of course never happens in a million years if you're ice fishing and i look down into the hole and i see this fish sticking at snitching it's out of the hole. And I think, well, what's this? So I go down and I, you know, pick it up by its gill and hold it up into the very bright sunlight. And because it was a pickerel or a pike, it has this kind of bronze coloring. But in the dream, it was utterly golden. And in shining in the bright sunlight, it looked absolutely golden. And then I realized in the dream, it is a golden fish, like a fairy tale, because I'm looking at it in the dream. It's alive. It is made of gold. And I knew in the dream, within a second, it just kind of fell into my head that God has just

one-upped me with my own symbol system. In the dream, I knew that God was saying, Eric, you wanted to drill through the ice, to touch inert water, to touch some energy force, some divinity. I have something better for you. I have the golden fish, Iqthis, my son, your savior, Jesus Christ. I knew in the dream as I held up the golden fish that this is Jesus Christ, the son of God, our Savior, that God has shown me on my own terms. that he is the answer to everything that I've been looking for, that Jesus is the answer. And in the dream, I knew this,

and it was clearly like a vision within the context of a dream. And I said, this is, you know, I knew in the dream that I had found what I was looking for. I knew in the dream that what I didn't even dream could be true, that you could know God, that you could know that. I knew that it was true in the dream. And in the dream, I was filled with joy. I knew in this moment, this is real, this is true, and I just was filled with joy in the dream.

I knew this is real. And so the next day I go to work, and I tell my friend about the dream, he goes, well, what do you think it means? And I said, it means I've accepted Jesus. Whoa. And I never would have used that phrase. I would have cringed to use that phrase. How wild that a dream would have such an impact on you. So did you wake up once the dream ended, or did you just wake up in the morning and then remember it?

I do not remember. And that's so, I think maybe that's God's mercy not to let me remember any of this stuff, but it was so, I mean, it was instantly life-changing, instantly life-changing. The next day. How did your life change practically? Well, the most clear thing that happened practically was that I had for three years been a relationship with a young woman. And for most of the time, we'd been sleeping together. It was the only person I'd ever slept with in my life. So I was not. a libertine, but I knew instantly I can no longer do that. And I told her and I've accepted Jesus and I can't do that anymore. And so instantly stopped that. And how did she respond? That to me is the most clear, you know, you just willing to full go six. Well, because you know, because I suddenly knew that whatever I have from God is infinitely more valuable than anything I'm going to give up. I mean, it's like one of these things. You just, I can't say it was a calculation. It was It was a knowing that whatever God has just given me, I don't ever, ever, ever, ever want to risk losing that.

There's nothing in the world that can compare it to what I have. And so I don't think she responded well. She was not really where I was. She tried to kind of come along. I felt an obligation. Was it the sort of thing where you said we can be together, but we can't. Oh, for sure. No, no.

And in fact, I thought not long after that, like, okay, then, you know, I guess now we have to, you know, get married and, you know, all this different stuff. and I proposed, and by God's grace, we did not get married. It would not have worked, but it was really, that's one of the clearest cases of how everything changed. The other thing was, suddenly now I'm zealous to learn more about God and the Bible and whatever, so suddenly I'm jumping in and reading and, you know, telling my friends, some of whom are horrified, you know, like, what? Yeah.

You did what? What are you talking about? Do you mind if I share a dream that I had with you? Listen, I think I've talked enough for five podcasts, forgive me. That's why you're here. That's why you're here. But I, shortly after my conversion at the age of 17, I was an angsty, agnostic, went to Rome in Italy on a pilgrimage, and I came home like one of those Christians so

happy, it makes you nauseous. That was me, just so in love with our Lord. So I had this dream one night, and it was this sort of kind of had a realism to it, like that it was it a dream or that I experienced it that I've never had before. I was looking desperately for something through a dark cave. and I didn't know what it was. I just knew that I was desperate and anxious to find it and I was rushing here and there

and then all of a sudden I see a chalice filled to the brim with Christ's blood and it was atop a little wooden box and I don't know why. To me that was just a symbol of its holiness that it wouldn't just be on the floor, right? And everything in me rejoiced at this thing that I have finally found

and I was rushing to pick it up And as I did, this strange little dog rocked. It didn't walk. It rocked back and forth. It had a bent tail and no whites in its eyes, just full black eyes. And it came between me and the chalice. And then its bottom jaw fell down. And it screeched and screamed a human scream.

And I woke up more terrified, I think, than I've ever been about anything in my life. and I watched a lot of horror and write horror stories in. That definitely seems demonic. Yeah, totally. And this was weeks after my conversion. And I had a couple of dreams like that that I've never had since. And, you know, this is the thing with atheism, hey? Like, you can always demand more evidence.

It's sort of like, how do I know if I should marry this woman? It's like, well, look, there's some reasons to think that you should marry her. Yeah, but I'm going to keep this up on the chalkboard. For and against it. Okay, so eventually you've got to make a decision for her or you'll get nothing, and this is very Pascalian, right, but for me, sure, I could have explained that away, just a weird dream, maybe you had too much cheese the night before or something, but there were multiple experiences like this where I had to just go, yeah,

I give myself to Christ, and if I'm wrong, then that's okay, I won't know, and nor will the atheist, because he'll be in oblivion as well, and he won't be out of point to me and say, see, I told you, that sounds kind of cynical, but I'm intending it to be. I think we've got very good, positive arguments for God's existence, the reliability of the Gospels, and all that. I'm in full agreement with you. But anyway. Well, but I mean, this brings up, you know, a little while ago I was talking about my book, is atheism, dead, and evidence for God. There is absolutely overwhelming evidence, but then there is this mystical side.

God spoke to me in a dream. Why? because he knew that I needed the miraculous. I needed something revelation to kind of, you know, I was very gummed up intellectually, very confused and very tortured. And sometimes God speaks to us in this different language. And it was a language, of course, calculated to blow my mind. I mean, you know, you talk about reading somebody's mail.

clearly the author of this dream, this parable, knew me intensely. I mean, the fishing, the life of the mind, the Greek, the word, the Greek, for it to come together like this, it's the Lord's way of saying, I know you, I love you and I know you. That's, you know, it's like when Jesus says Mary after the resurrection, you just want to cry. the idea that he knows you, he loves you, that's everything. And then the intellectual arguments, for me, I think that once I came to faith, then I started reading books and I thought, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, all these years, I've been living in a world where there's no evidence for God

and all the smart people know God doesn't exist. And now I'm thinking, wait a minute, that's not right. And then I keep discovering voices and people and books and things that where have they been hiding all these years. And you realize we live in a culture that is so secular that you don't see this evidence. And so it's been a passion of mine. I really believe it's the Lord's calling on my life in various ways, sometimes very obliquely, sometimes more explicitly, to help people see the evidence is real. It's everywhere. You've just been living in a world that won't look in this direction. And so I feel, whether it's through Socrates and

city or through the books I write or through anything that I do to help people see that on my radio show to say that there are these amazing people who believe this stuff and you know if you turn on the TV you'll never find them I grew up in a world that they didn't exist yeah it's I mean once you've bought into the Christian faith as I have as you have you begin to realize that there is a concerted effort by the world the flesh and the evil one to conspire to show us that you're an idiot, God doesn't exist. And whenever the Christian is portrayed very, very, very often, he's the psycho, the racist, the idiot. Well, and that's, again, that's the world. Which is really interesting, actually. If you were just to try to assess that from a natural

point of view, like, why think that? Since that's clearly not true. Well, that's how you know we're in a spiritual battle. It's not just whatever. We're in a spiritual battle. And there is, you know, just the rank hostility to faith. It's so, it's so interesting. If I, I, I, I, mentioned to you before we started talking here that I'm writing a book on the American Revolution. And one of the things that has to be part of the book, because it's so obvious, is that the British upper classes mainly in Georgian England had become not just irreligious, but boldly irreligious, boldly sinful and sneering about you know, whatever, biblical morality. And Wilberforce, I wrote a book called Amazing Grace

about William Wilberforce. He grew up in that world where to be a serious Christian, you would be mocked and sneered. There was a viciousness against it. It wasn't just, well, we're not Christian. It was there was a vicious hatred for people of sincere faith. And you think, why would that be? And so many people in the United States, which was then, of course, the 13 colonies, were people of simple, serious Christian faith. I mean, it was just, many of them had just migrated here for those reasons. It was part of the culture. It was just who we were in the 13 colonies.

But the attitude of many of the British elites toward them was very sneering and nasty. And you think, well, why would that be? And it's obvious that there's a kind of a, they feel your piety makes them feel guilty. I think that's right. So they have to hate you. I think if the church tomorrow changed, its position on sexual morality and say it actually turns out we're wrong, it's all relative, do it if you want, go bananas, then there would be a mass acceptance of Christianity.

Well, you already see it because there is, there has been a shift in many churches, and this is what I try to stand against, you know, to soften our views on this and this and this, and this. And it really is fascinating because you don't, that is the one, I guess, it's the one most threatening thing that, you know, you tell me what to do. Because the world doesn't get upset with us when we condemn insider trading and racism. I think it's that without God imagine a scenario in which God doesn't exist, which I don't think you can do, but for the thought experiment, the highest form of pleasure and transcendence is the sexual act. Oh, it's the most sacred thing there is. God designed this glorious sacred thing. And again, that's the point. So if you're the

devil what will you attack what will you try to rip away and i think it's funny because it was jordan peterson of all people who made me notice this recently but the image and i see one on your wall here the image of the mother and child that is was for most of the most of the west the Christian West. It was the most sacred image, the mother and child, the mother and child. It's just fundamental. What does it mean to be a woman? Look, this is the greatest woman who ever lived. The mother, the mother and the child. That idea that the greatest thing a woman could ever be is a mother. It's sacred and beautiful. That was part of the culture. That was part of Christendom, whatever. The idea of the father.

as the self-sacrificial, that I will die for my family, whatever. So Jesus is the ultimate man, Mary's here. That idea, of course, in our lifetimes and longer than our lifetimes, has been torn down and torn down and torn down. So God's idea of the family of the mother and the father, having sexual union to create life, this absolutely glorious transcendent idea, which is the picture of the bride of Christ and Christ.

And it's so beautiful. So to have that torn away and have this materialist lie and say, you know what, you're just material and it's just a sexual act. But the imagery back to sex in the city of these effeminate men and their free whores, this is what's extolled. This is what's raised up for our admiration. Well, that's exactly. I mean, and it's so, I mean, yeah, how do you get away from the idea that ultimately it's satanic? Because where does it lead? Does it lead to anything good?

No. Can it? No, it cannot. It's like, you know, you're kicking against the goads. You're betting against the house. God created reality. And at the end of the day, it cannot work. God will forgive you, but nature will not. Yeah. That's, I don't know who said that, but I like that. It'll kick the crap out of you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So why did you leave Greek Orthodoxy? I never left Greek orthodoxy, nor do I repudiate it. And I've been, it's kind of interesting because you know, when you think about where you come from, I came from this secular lost world into Christian faith. And at that point, all I cared about is what is true. I know Jesus is

Lord. I know the Bible is true. So I didn't really care where I was getting it. And I'm one of these pretty rare, you know, evangelicals, if I'm going to describe myself that way, who is very pro-Catholic, very pro-Orthodox. In other words, half of the people that I read are, you know, published by Ignatius or, you know, I don't, I don't care. To me, truth is truth. It's either true or it's not. And so I found myself somewhat inadvertently, you know, following the path of, you know, where had I come to faith? Where had I found? I say it's like I was a drowning man and somebody throws me a rope. I'm not going to ask, because it's the color of the rope who's holding you know, this saved my life. And so initially, the guy who was sharing his faith with me,

my friend Ed Tuttle, he was going to talk about this rarest of rare things. He was going to an Episcopal church that was charismatic, that was evangelistic, evangelical, that was Bible believing. I mean, it was glorious because you had the liturgy, you had the sacraments, you had the worship, it was all there in one, it was unbelievable. And so I, there was a church in Dary in Connecticut, which was really the suma. It was, it was, I happened to be living in New Canaan, Connecticut at that point. And he said, you know, there's a church about a mile from where you live called St. Paul's Darien, and the rector there, Terry Fulham, he's like, you can't even believe it.

And believe me, when I tell you, you don't know what you have when you have it. I mean, he was one of the greatest leaders of the generation. He was this, but he was actually philosophy professor. at a college in Rhode Island, I forget the name of it, who decided to become this Episcopal priest. And so his sermons were very evangelistic and just glorious. And the worship was glorious. And the whole thing was just, you know, I thought this is it.

You know, I don't really care to say, I'm an Episcopalian. I'm a Christian. I don't care about, you know, the Episcopal church, most of which had already gone apostate by then. But I just thought I'm not about denominations. I'm about Jesus. And, you know, I just want to make sure that, you know, know, that's what's going on. So I felt very free to take from wherever I could. I mean,

there was a book. I interviewed somebody for Socrates in the city a couple of years ago, Eugenia Constantino. She wrote a book, Greek Orthodox, she's the wife of a Greek Orthodox priest, and she's herself a scholar. And she wrote a book called The Crucifixion of the King of Glory. And it is, without any doubt, one of the finest books I have ever read. It is a, it's not, it doesn't describe itself as a devotional. But when you read this book of scholarship, it's so well written, so beautifully well written,

so accessible, that it is a devotional. You cannot read it and not become closer to Christ. It's unbelievable. But she's an example of somebody in the Orthodox world that when I hang out with her, you thought, well, I never experienced this growing up

in the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church I grew up in was the Greek club. It was my father's friend. who, most of whom, are absolutely delightful, wonderful human beings, but they knew very, very little about the faith. And I think you find this in different traditions, especially immigrant traditions, where they don't know we need to pass on the guts of the faith. The culture is so tied in with the religion.

Right. To pass on the religion, it's just to pass on the culture, whether it has any theological substance or not. Yeah. And so, so, you know, when you send, you know, me as a 17-year-old, like a sheep among wolves to go to Yale University, you know, suddenly it's not. So, so I grew up in that world, but never got the basics. I didn't have the apologetics to say, well, no, I really do believe this. When we say Christos Anesti, Christ is risen, I know that that really happened and here's why and there's no doubt. I just thought, I don't know, I have no idea what I believe. And so. I've always been on a search for truth, you know, that wherever I can find it. So many of the authors, one of my favorites, he was such a dear friend, Tom Howard, who wrote a book called Chance to the Dance, which is published by Ignatius, one of the greatest books I've ever read.

He was a convert to Catholicism in the 80s. And he became an extremely dear friend. So, you know, hanging out with somebody like him, Alice von Hildebrand, Peter Craved. I want to tell you about some amazing coffee we were sent recently. it was from seven weeks coffee, which is America's pro-life coffee company. They are on a mission to fund the pro-life movement one cup of coffee at a time. The reason they're called seven weeks coffee is because it's at seven weeks that a baby is the size of a coffee bean. And it's the same time a heartbeat is clearly detected on an ultrasound. They donate 10% of every sale to

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thought the faith is the faith and uh I I who is that who was that fellow who just passed away he was baldheaded died of cancer New York City Protestant pastor I love him Keller love that fellow he was a friend tell me about it yeah no he was a friend he wrote the forward to my Bonhofer book um he the the the only thing is that as the year years have passed. My affection for his approach has waned. Not my affection for him. What was his approach? Well, it was a lot. I mean, you mentioned it a moment ago. If we speak against insider trading or racism, we will win friends. Now, there's a very positive and practical side to that, right? I mean, why do I say racism is wrong? Because the view from the

scripture makes you know that it's wrong. And if you say that it's wrong and you don't believe in the God of the Bible, then tell me, where do you get it from that you, because your friends told you it's wrong? Like, you know, there's no, if you believe in Darwinism, then why is it wrong? It's nothing's wrong. But certainly not that. But so Tim Keller, he took that tack, you know, in sophisticated Manhattan. And of course, it appealed to me because, you know, I could invite people or whatever. But in the end, it was disappointing because what it does is it encourages a level of, in my book, letter to the American Church, there's a chapter. And the title of it is the idol of evangelism. And I think a lot of people in the evangelical church in particular had, maybe they were weary of the

culture wars of the 90s. And so they said, you know, let's just pull back and punt here. We don't need to get into that. Let's just talk about what we can agree on, or let's stop pretending that we have to be political. We don't need to be political. And the bottom line is, well, sometimes, of course, you do. If you believe the unborn are made in the image of God,

you've got a problem if you want to pretend that you don't need to be political. This is, you know, it is. This doesn't mean that you make an idol of politics. but if you make an idol of evangelism such that I will never speak about that or that or that. And I think that that's what happened to Redeemer Presbyterian is that they had... Was that the church he was right?

Yeah, my wife and I went there for a while and most of our friends came from there. And so I have tremendous respect and love for Tim and Kathy Keller. But it got to a point where I thought, well, the culture's changing. We need to be on the front lines on some of these issues. that it's affecting, you know, the trans issue, the issue of sexuality, the redefinition of

marriage. These are things that are not, in other words, I think that there are a lot of people in certain evangelical precincts who said, well, these are not gospel-related issues, which I think is nonsense. No, it is. And nonsense is that will be the nicest word I could use. And they make it seem like the only thing that matters is evangelism, conversion, conversion. And then I say, and have said often, conversion to what? To what dead gospel? In other words, if you're not speaking up for the unborn, if you're not speaking up for kids whose parents are so confused that they would allow them to be confused about their identity. And in other words, if you don't feel the church has a role here, then you're part of a different church than I am. And I think that Keller

found himself being in a way at the forefront of that kind of thinking because for a while it's it made a lot of sense but I think you know and this is why I wrote letter to the American church is that you have to discern the times the Holy Spirit wants us to be aware of where we are in history if I'm alive in 1932 and Hitler's on the rise that's not the same as being alive in 1840. It's different. And I have to say, what is God saying to me now? There is an aspect of God, whereas what is he saying now? Some of the things he says are simply eternal and other things impinge on where I am in history now. What is God saying to do now? And if you're alive in Poland in 1979, you know, your faith is going to make you stand against, you know, the Soviets and

These things are not escapable. And so I think, again, some people can overfocus on that. But a lot of people were so critical of those who were overfocused on it that they themselves ultimately were overfocused on avoiding that stuff. And so if you can go to a church where they pretend that it doesn't matter how you vote, I thought, look, if it were 1985, if the Democratic Party is represented by Gary Hart and Richard Gephard and DeKakis, and that's another universe. They weren't preaching cultural Marxism, which is atheistic. That we were agreeing on, I mean, if it's 1960 and JFK is, you know, he believes that, you know, we should love our country and we should, I mean, you have to determine where you are. And, you know, and so what I often talk about is if you're alive in 1860,

would you say, well, we don't do politics. We don't get into the slavery issue. How can you not get into that issue? And you say, well, that's political. Well, it's like, well, sure, it's political, but you're not doing it because you're political. You're doing it because you care about the slaves. The polis. These are human beings.

And you turn your back on them for some quote unquote gospel. What dead satanic pseudo gospel are you caring about if you turn your back on them? This is an issue that God Almighty has called you to stand for them out of your faith. And so it's not an issue of whether you want to be political. It's just what is God saying? What are the issues? And so I think that it really broke my heart as things went really, really crazy, you know, in the last, I don't know, eight years or something to see so many people act as though, well, well, we don't need to take sides. And I thought, what are you talking about?

You're not picking a savior or a pastor, but you have an obligation as a citizen to take a stand here. So if you don't stand with this imperfect soul, hoping that they might do the right thing, then you're inadvertently promoting this imperfect soul who is very dedicated to doing the wrong thing, at least on many issues. And so I think that, you know, the example of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, I mean, I have to say, I'd never dreamt in my lifetime that we would be able to overturn Rovi Wade any more than as a kid I ever dreamt the Soviet Union would cease to exist. I just thought these things are givens never going to change. And by the grace of God, through the courageous leadership of Ronald Reagan in one case and Donald Trump in another case, really courageous leadership that led to the dissolution. of the Soviet Union, this monolith, totalitarian monolith, gone. And Roe v. Wade, gone.

And I remember when Trump was talking about, I'm going to appoint justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. I thought George W. Bush never would have dreamt of saying that. I mean, even though maybe he secretly hoped or whatever, but there was a level of boldness. And I thought you can fault any politician for any number of things. But I thought, wow, this is. And you know, it's interesting, too, because even if it were cynical, even if it were to do, I'm going to say this because there are all these Christians, you know, faithful Catholics and seriously evangelicals, this is really important to them.

So I'm going to say this to get their vote or I'm going to even do this to get their vote. That's what politicians are supposed to do. They're elected by we, the people, to do our will. It is our will, not their will, right? So we elect you to do what we want you to do. And so, but the fact that we're sitting here on the other side of Roe v. Wade, I can't, I just, I can hardly believe it. But there were many, many, many Christians really who had, you know, been hanging out in these cultural elite circles. They thought, oh, I don't want to be, I don't want to be tagged as one of those, you know, Neanderthal, you know, Catholics or fundamentalist Christians or whatever that all there.

that I'm more sophisticated than that, you know. And that, that I think was inadvertently what happened with Tim Keller's tribe. There were a lot of people in that world, David Brooks or David French or Russell Moore or who's the head of Christianity today, which has gone to the dark side, or Francis Collins, who is the head of national institutes of health. These were all, you know, these culturally elite Christians who I was thrilled to call friends or whatever, but they all drifted in a direction that I think some of them were seriously complicit with evil. Some of them are today.

And so I had Francis Collins speak at Socrates in the City, I guess it was like January 2009 or Christmas 2008. and I would never, ever, ever do that today. Even in my book is atheism dead. I cite him as a scientist who's a Christian, whatever. And shortly after the book was published, I realized he has dramatically abdicated, you know, his role as any kind of Christian leader. He, in fact, there's a great book that just came out called Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, written by John West of the Discovery Institute. And he talks about how a lot of these Christian leaders, they got so close to power that they began really advocating for the people, the views of the people to whom they'd gotten close more than for the Christian faith. You know, it's like somebody says, okay, you're king, now what do you want to do?

And by the time you get to be king, you're like, well, I'm just going to do what the other king did because I've lost any clarity on what's right or wrong or whatever. And so a lot of those folks that I would have, you know, not long ago said they're my friends, I've had to really push away from them, which is grievous because you hate to lose friends or whatever. But a lot of them have pretended that you can be apolitical in all circumstances. And I think, you know, again, on the issue of slavery, there are certain times when the church being the church, you know it's it's going to be political or the people who don't like what you stand for are going to call you political no I like that it all it almost feels gas gas lighting I don't think it is oh well no I think guess I think whether it's

intentional or unintentional it's this same effect as gaff sliding it has the effect I would say but but but it goes further than that because they actually say I mean I give an example is like I mentioned David French and Russell Moore's a head of Christianity today that they came out with a curriculum for, I don't know, evangelical churches or something about how to deal with politics. And the ostensible message was, we need to be above the fray.

We need to be unpolitical, apolitical, right? But it was clearly skewing left on everything. In other words, it was kind of like, if you don't want to be political, in other words, really what they were saying without saying is that you don't want to be like those, you know, jug-headed, you know, harsh right-wing, you don't want to be like that. That's political. You want to be here with the sophisticated

people. But the sophisticated people are advocating for demonic things, for terrible things, but they kind of make it seem nice. And you're sort of, you're being loving by not opposing them. Whereas I think a Christian would say, no, I'm being loving by opposing them. And I can oppose them lovingly, but I have an obligation to oppose them because lives are dependent on what I say or do. And voting, of course, is just one thing. But, I mean, if I have an ability to advocate in the public square, it affects people. And I think of all the people whose lives are destroyed because of Christians who said, well, that's not my job to get involved. And I think, well, no, of course it's your job.

Just as it was the job of German Christians to stand against the Nazis for the sake of not just the Jews, but for so many millions, it was your job. Because as a Christian, you claim to believe that Jesus defeated death on the cross. so you have no fear. You're free to live your life. And, you know, again, I think that that's why I wrote letter to the American Church and the sequel, Religinalist Christianity, because I saw so much of this happening in our time that that lie was being promulgated again, that, you know,

just preach the gospel. Actually, there's a story in religionless Christianity. I don't know if I tell the story in my Bonhofer book, but it's definitely in Religionless Christianity. Where there was a pastor, a great man, Martin Neemuller, who, long story short, he was fooled by Hitler and he was a great pastor, but he was one of those who was fooled, just like many great men have been fooled today. They're not inherently evil or desiring to be fooled. They've just been fooled, but, you know, he was fooled by Hitler

and he gets a meeting with Hitler finally in early 34 to sort of hope that he can have a dialogue and say, you know, my furor, you know, like what's going on? What are you, what is your administration doing to the churches and to the things going on and, you know, and in the meeting, you know, the Nazis in the meeting basically attack him and he's really blindsided because he thought, you know, we're friends and we can have a conversation, but he's now sees their true colors. And to defend himself, he says, you know, but my fear, I care about the Third Reich, you know, I'm not some communist or some, I really care about Germany, I care about the Third Reich. And Hitler cuts him off and says, I built the Third Reich. You just worry

about your sermons. And what he meant, and this is the devil's view of the church, right? In other was, you just worry about your meaningless little theological, fussy, religious stuff. Anything that bears on reality, that's my business. So in other words, it's like in China, you say, oh, I want to be Christian. They said, great, we have some churches that are official churches. You go into those buildings, you do your little rituals, and when you come out, you bow to the secular authority of the state. That was what Hitler was saying. In other words, as long as your sermons don't dare to touch on anything real, right? In other words, the idea of the inherent dignity of human beings, or as long as your

sermons are just about stuff that will not cause people to rise up against evil, feel free. and I'll take care of everything else. And that's kind of the world we're living in. We live in a secular world where people try to marginalize faith. And again, this is by the grace of God, I think, changing. But where it's sort of like, well, yeah, you want to have your little useless religion that doesn't bear on anything. As long as you don't dare say anything about your quote unquote biblical view of sexuality or marriage or the human person or that. As long as you know, as long as you keep your mouth shut on all that stuff, you can do your little religious stuff.

And you think, whoa, that's, a real Christian can't take that deal. That's right. It's like they're saying, as long as you treat it like a fairy tale, or will allow you to be into Batman or Superman, you can choose your superhero of choice. And if you nerds want to get together and geek out about stuff, fine. But don't pretend it's real and has any implication on how people should live. So there are certain people, I would say, like, I didn't know, what's his name again, Kathy? Tim Keller.

I didn't know Tim, but he seemed like a stand-up fella. He was. So I would imagine that there are certain sort of evangelicals and others who have really good intentions. They want to bring people Jesus Christ, and they don't want to immediately turn them off, which is presumably why they're not immediately talking about the things that will turn people off. You see this like Hillsong and Joel Austin, which I think they're probably a lot more nefarious, perhaps. No, listen, I think that you, I could argue both sides. There's a case to be made.

It's not a case to be made. It's a fact that you shouldn't be looking for trouble unless the Lord calls you to look for trouble. There's a time when the Lord calls you to confront evil. And I think what you then find is people who have a kind of a constitution that says, I don't do that. I just like to, you know, I like people to agree with me. And again, there's a place for that. But I mean, the scripture says, you know, be at peace with all men where possible. In other words, yes, it's good to be wind.

You shouldn't be looking for trouble, but there's a time when people are going to want to cut your head off if you don't agree with them. And at that point, you have a decision to make. You want to agree with them, or do you want to trust the Lord? And I think that there are so many in the church who they read political involvement as harsh or partisan or beside the point, whatever. and I think clearly they're missing the point. They're not, they don't understand the evil that can be done.

Bonhofer didn't say it, but it's often associated with him, that silence in the face of evil is itself evil. So this idea that I'm not going to, I mean, again, the German church is the classic case. They said, well, we just want to do church. We just want to preach the gospel and have these services. And the Nazis will let us do that as long as we don't talk about this or this or this. And so we'll take that deal and we'll evangelize more people and the faith will be, promoted and you think will it? Or will the church be disgraced for generations because of your

silence? I think that's basically what's happened in, you know, certainly in Germany. I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding hello.com slash Matt Frad. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful. If you don't like it, you can always quit. hallo.com slash Matt Frad. I use it.

My family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations, and music, including My Lofi. Hello has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries. It helps you pray, helps you meditate, helps you sleep better. It helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer. There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get. get through it all just go check it out hello.com slash matt fred the link is in the description below

it even has an entire section for kids so if you're a parent you could play little bible stories to them at night it'll help them pray fantastic hello dot com slash mat frad all right okay so here's a question we've got some wonderful locals members chiming in kael and doran says what was your favorite line or joke that you wrote for veggie tales ah well i don't know that i have one and i can't claimed to have written very much for Veggie Tales. Most of what I wrote with Vegetales was not produced. I wrote half of Lila Kindly Viking, which was the Hamlet Omelette Parity. I remember Phil Vischer says to me, you're a Yale English major. We're doing a kind of a Gilbert and Sullivan thing,

but then we've got another thing, like a Shakespeare thing. Would you do like a Shakespeare veggie parody? And I thought, are you kidding? What a dream. Let me think about this. So I came up with the Hamlet Omelet story, which was all ultimately that I wrote that was produced. I wrote, all kinds of stuff, which I think was gloriously clever, which they never produced. I wrote something called the Gord of the Baskervilles. I wrote something called The Boy Who Cried Waffle. I wrote a bunch of stuff, but, you know, they could only produce what they produced.

Probably the greatest thing I got to do for Veggie Tales was they let me be the voice of the narrator on the Esther video. Okay. So if you listen to the Esther video, that's my voice. I'm the narrator on the Esther video. Glenn Duncan says, I assume the Angel Studios Bonhofer is based off your biography, if you've seen it, how well did they do

in portraying the real-life Bonhofer? That's a little complicated. The bottom line is, everyone should see the film. Everyone should see the film. It is a magnificent film, and yes, it's accurate. It's absolutely wonderful. um it is not officially based uh on my book whatever that even means it's the story of bonhofer

but i i feel very strongly that when a when a faith film comes out it's kind of like a man for all seasons 50 years ago brilliant movie it is so important for people of faith to support the film and especially when it's so good and but this is terrific so this came out i guess last november in 24 and it is It's magnificent, and it's not, you know, you could bring anybody to it, a secular person, a liberal person. This is not a film made, you know, for Christians who think the way we do. It's really made for everybody, and it really threads that needle brilliantly. So circling back to earlier in our conversation, we talked about we have an opportunity right now to sort of influence culture, to try to call people back to sanity. Angel Studios seems to be primed to do some of that.

I've been impressed with some of their more recent productions. There are many, I cannot, of course, think of them now that I'm here, but there are many folks doing stuff like this. In fact, we at Metaxus Media are doing a number of projects along these lines about, you know, let's take back the culture. Let's bring truth into the culture. So the Azatheism Dead TV series were producing. is just one, but there are a raft of these things.

And I think we are at the beginning of not just revival, but reformation in the classic sense that you don't just say, okay, people are getting saved, but now it will affect culture. It will affect culture. People will live in a different world because the Christian faith is more and more a part of that world. It's not apart from that world,

as we were talking about earlier, where, you know, the devil and totalitarian dictators, they want the faith to be in that corner. And I think a lot of times Christians have complied with that view of the faith, that we're just going to sit here in our little religious corner. And you think, no, you're supposed to take your faith and proclaim it into every corner of the world, into every part of the world, politics, culture, education, science.

Because it's true. What we believe is true. This is not, again, some parochial religious reality. it is the key to all of reality. So I'm very excited, and I'm most excited about the cultural aspect, media and folks creating things, by the way, for everybody. This is not just creating stuff for Christians.

It's creating stuff for anybody who's interested in truth and beauty and goodness. So we're living in exciting times. I think we have a tremendous opportunity. Jake says, as a huge fellow CS Lewis fan, I would love to hear about one or two of your favorite books of his and what you love about him or them. Also, can you tell us about your impressions of the late Walter Hooper of what's your three-part interview with him on Socrates in the city multiple times

and regret never being able to meet the man in person before his passing? Just thinking of Walter Hooper, what a joy, what a privilege it was that I got to interview him. People should know that this listener is referring to for Socrates in the city about 10 years ago I knew it's so funny I thought sometimes I'm motivated

by rage I thought how is it that no one has ever done a long form interview with Walter Hooper this is a man who knew C.S. Lewis personally was his secretary and really was his literary executor did more for C.S. Lewis

which if you watch the video you'll be astonished that half of us wouldn't know about C.S. Lewis, if not for Walter Hooper. It's hard to believe, but it's true. And so I said, I want to go to Oxford, England, to film a bunch of Socrates in the city interviews, but the main one would be with Walter Hooper. And I want to interview three lengthy, you know, we did, I don't know, three 90-minute interviews or something like that, because he knows Lewis better than anybody. So if people want to go to Socrates in the city, you can't imagine. And he is one of those folks, I mentioned it earlier, that, you know, he was a convert

to Catholic. And I have to say that when you're around that kind of a Catholic, as a non-Catholic, you just think, my goodness, the treasures. What a joy. And so, of course, he was friends with Alice von Hildebrand, whom I've mentioned, and Tom Howard, whom I've mentioned, and Michael Ward, whom I haven't mentioned. I interviewed him for Socrates in the city about his book, which There are two titles because he did two versions of it, but one is Planet Narnia and the other, and I'm forgetting the title. But my interview with him in Oxford,

one of the greatest conversations I have ever had. And it's about Lewis and about how Lewis, how the seven Narnia chronicles, each one of them corresponds to one of the seven medieval planets. In other words, C.S. Lewis, who was a medievalist, knew, excuse me, knew this cosmology of the seven medieval planets. In other words, there's the moon and the sun considered planets and moving the sky, and then the five that we can see. So, Saturn and Jupiter and Mars and Mercury and Venus. And each one of them, you know, when you think of Mars, you think of the

God, the Roman god Mars and Marshall and war. And when you think of Jupiter, you know, jove, jovial, every one of the seven Narnia chronicles corresponds to one of those medieval planets. And I don't want to get into it here, but Michael Ward writes about it so gloriously in my interview with him, it shows a depth to C.S. Lewis that is truly astonishing. And it made me, love Lewis. When anybody asks me what's my favorite Lewis book or books, I came to faith late in life and I did not read the Narnia Chronicles till I was 30. And I thought, these are some of the greatest books ever written. Just theologically, they have helped me to understand things that no purely theological book ever could. And so I recommend them because Lewis and his friend

J.R.R. Tolkien, who I'm guessing your listeners may be familiar with, both of them understood that fairy tales and these kinds of stories are for everyone. They're not for kids. They're for everyone, for kids and adults. And Lewis's ability to write in the genre of fairy tales in the Narnia Chronicles, I mean, it is absolutely breathtaking. And again, there's so much there that it makes me think Lewis is some of it. I mean, if you want an example of how screwed up our culture is, in any normal world, C.S. Lewis's books would be taught in any university.

His book, one of my favorite books of all time is his book, Peralandra, which is one of the so-called space trilogy, that Ransom Trilogy. But that book ought to be taught alongside Paradise Lost in a survey course of literature. It's one of the greatest works of literature of the 20th century. because we live in such a secular world that has allied itself with modernism and postmodernism and materialism that's hostile to faith. He is utterly ignored in universities. And I think that's

lunacy. It's absolutely, one of the greatest books ever written is Perilandra. And so, so yeah, those are just a couple of cities. I could go on. We could talk for an hour. Which one is that? Is this third of the trilogy? It's the second of the three. Because I read the first one and I'm so sorry. I'm sure it's my fault. Didn't like it at all. No, no, listen. This is, I'm glad you're honest because out of the silent planet, which is the first one, I don't love. Paralandra is absolutely amazing. Can you read that without out of a silent planet? I think so. I mean, if you know the basics of out of the silent planet, you know, just to give you a little background. But, oh, it is so amazing. It's basically a reprisal of Paradise Law. And it's C.S. Lewis, only a genius, like C.S. Lewis could pull this off. But it's this idea of an unfallen planet. And so the Adam and the Eve on that planet are, they're not yet fallen. And the devil effectively shows up to try to talk Eve into falling. But it's so brilliant. But there are passages in it as a writer, as a writer's writer, which I would fancy myself. to be, who cares about words and literature and language, not just the ideas. The writing is some of the

most transcendent, glorious writing in the English language. There are passages toward the end of Paradise Loss that are unlike anything I've ever experienced. I'm sorry, Parilandra. Both. Paradise Loss is a much tougher slog than Parilandra. At the end of Parallandra, there are passages that are just breathtaking. And so, you know, I was raised at Yale. you know, oh, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Faulkner, or whatever, I throw them all in the garbage compared to some of C.S. Lewis. There's no doubt that if we didn't live in a hyper-secular world, especially the academy, Lewis would be, he's like Shakespeare. I mean, it's like he's written a library of literature in every genre practically. And, yeah, Peralandra is, it's beyond

anything. The final book in that trilogy is a completely different kind of book. It's brilliant in its own way. But Perilander is my favorite. I have to read it now. Thanks for getting me excited about that. What about one of his nonfiction books? You know, it's so funny. Just like, you know, you feel bad when you say, I didn't love the first event. I feel bad and there are people that are going to be horrified. They're going to shut this off right away. I never. I never. loved, well, I don't want to say it so strongly. I guess a lot of times people talk about mere Christianity. And I think there's certain things. I remember my friend Ed Toddle when he was kind of witnessing to me, you know, in my 24th year, in my confusion, he gave me a copy of

mere Christianity. And it didn't speak to me. It wasn't what I needed at that time to convert me. I needed a crazy miracle dream or whatever. So mere Christianity, there are books that I I still would call them great, you know, not just good, they're great, but they somehow don't sing to me. And the same thing with the screw tape letters. I've written a couple of parodies of the screw tape letters because I love it, but I can't read the whole book. I read a few, and then I'm fatigued because it's difficult to be reading this demonic, you

know, like there's something about it that I find ultimately fatiguing or off-putting enough that I want to put it down. but I've written, I think on my website, if you look at Ericmetaxis.com, when it's so long ago now, but the film, actually it's gone out of my head, my goodness, what was the horrible film that was so critical of the Catholic Church that came out 20 plus years ago? Well, no, I mean, I can't believe that it tells you that I'm, I must be really fatigued. What was it about? That I can't remember. With the, with the, with the albino figure and the, it's like, I want to cut and then go look it up because this is terrible. We can't look it.

I can't think of it. No, but I mean, how crazy that I can't think of it. This is crazy. I can't even think of the name of the guy who, Tom, Tom. I don't even know what to look up. No, it's, it's, it's, so far I've got a movie. Oh, oh, oh, the Da Vinci Code. Oh, of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so, but can I, should I keep talking? Just keep talking? Yeah, yeah, of course. Okay, so when the Da Vinci Code movie came out, Yeah. A friend of mine said to me, Eric, this is a brilliant idea, I thought. I said, you should write a review of the Da Vinci Code, the book, in the voice of screw tape, praising it.

So I wrote an essay called Screw Tape on the Da Vinci Code, which I'm pretty sure is on my website. And, of course, I praise it to, you know, the skies because it is diabolical. The Da Vinci Code, it's critique of the church, it's critique of faith, whatever. It's all lies, confused lies, lies designed to confuse. But I wrote it in the voice of screw tape, which, you know, which, you know, I think people will find entertaining. But actually this brings up a bigger question that we've been talking about a little bit.

When the Da Vinci Code came out attacking, you know, not just the Catholic faith, but Christian faith, I thought, here you have this, you know, amazingly talented novelist, not that I like his work, but talented novelist writing a novel that is able to fool enough people

or entertain enough people and it sells all these copies. And then, of course, Hollywood makes a movie of it. And I thought that's what we need to do. We need to be speaking into the culture. Instead, what happens, a number of Catholic intellectuals, a number of evangelical intellectuals write books published by Interversity Press or whatever, telling us what's wrong with the Da Vinci Code or whatever.

And you think, okay, who's going to read that book? Who's going to hear of that book? They're not going to bump into that book. So you're saying this, so it's not that it doesn't have any value, but you're not speaking into the culture. So I thought the least I can do is mock the Da Vinci Code and the voice of screw tape, so it's on the same cultural level that it's mocking in an entertaining way. That's the answer that it deserves. The idea of like a very serious essay or something like that, most of the people who read that, they already know that they don't like the Da Vinci Code. So in any case, I have to say that that was, it was funny because the voice of screw tape was perfect, you know, for, let me praise the Da Vinci Code and the voice of screw tape.

But there's so much, Lewis, listen, he is, he's a literature unto himself. I mean, he wrote so many different kinds of things. One of the books that I love that he wrote is called Preface to Paradise Lost. It's just magnificent, you know, long essay on Paradise Lost. And when you read that, you understand how he has the ability to write Paralandra, which is like an answer to Paradise Lost. But yeah, there's so many things that he wrote. What else is that I can't think of right now.

But some of his essays, some of his letters, Walter Hooper edited his letters, just reading Lewis, just. you know, fills you up. The Great Divorce, of course, another work of fiction, very short, but brilliant. I can't say enough about C.S. Lewis. Speaking of Peralandra, what is your hot take on aliens? And do you think our obsession with aliens is a sort of religionless cultures grasping at something transcendent? Well, I wish it were only that. I think it's a demonic deception. And I don't think we've seen the end of it, I think...

What is it demonic? Well, here's the nutshell version. If you read my book Is Atheism Dead? You see that to create a planet with life takes so many things. It's like if there were 200 dials on the wall behind me

and every one of them needs to be perfectly calibrated, If they move a millimeter, the whole thing goes kablui. When you recognize that, you know, people say, well, you think there's life in the universe or there's other life in the universe? The facts would say there shouldn't be any life in the universe. There shouldn't be life on planet Earth. And the essay, I think it's at the end of my book is atheism dead. I reprint the piece that I wrote in the Wall Street Journal about how when you look at what it takes

to create life in the universe, it takes so much. much that there shouldn't be life anywhere and absolutely, I mean, nowhere, including here. It simply shouldn't be. In order for it to be, God has to design everything perfectly, perfectly, perfectly on a level that we can barely comprehend. Therefore, this cavalier assertion in our lifetimes, oh, I'm sure there's life around the way. That assumes Darwinism. It assumes that, you know, nothing will eventually lead to life, which is, it ought to be mocked. In other words, that is not just wrong. It is a level of ridiculousness that it makes anything else look sensible.

It is completely ridiculous. One of the reasons I wrote the book is Atheism Dead is because of a guy I met, a nanoscientist who talked to me about abiogenesis. And in other words, forget about evolution. How do you get from non-life? There's no life. And then suddenly every scientist says four billion years ago, single-celled life appeared on planet Earth. you go okay great how did that happen to go from non-life to life it's an infinite thing i mean the simplest life is so complex that the idea that it could just happen or something like that

so there should not be life anywhere in the universe it seems you have to acknowledge god probably made it because there's no way for this to just happen so if you believe that this cavalier idea that oh there's probably other life in the universe it's like no there probably isn't. Now, if there is, God created it just as he created us, because there's no other way for it to exist. So to get to aliens, this idea that they're all these UFOs, they come from other galaxies and stuff, I would guess, it's an educated guess, that it's a demonic deception, that these are, you know, intelligent beings that are not, they're probably demonic. That's, you know, the people that I respect who've looked into this, most of them say that they think

what that is, this is a satanic deception, but it's a deception that you could see how it would lure many people into believing it. In other words, you're not denying that there have been certain sightings that are legitimate. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, I'm sorry, yeah, no, without any doubt, I think that it's real, but just like I know that angels and demons are real. This is reality, and then the question is, what are the details? But I think that... Have they shared with you their reasons as to why they think they think they? This is spiritual. I know Tucker Carlson was on Joe Rogan show talking about this,

and he surprisingly received very little pushback from Joe when he said that these things are angels or demons. Yeah, well, I don't know who he talked to, but I have, you know, talked to a number of folks. There's a great scientist, Hugh Ross, who's written a number of books that really got me going along this path of the fine-dune universe and apologetics from science, and he has made the case a number of times,

including on my radio show, why he believes that. I think, I don't, I can't remember human details now, but every time I look into it, that seems to be the most logical thing, that yes, this is real, but no, these are not aliens from another galaxy. These are, you know, interdimensional beings, which is to say that they are beings that are not of this dimension and, you know, they're not people. What are they?

So I believe that that's as close as we can get. Okay. Aidan Driscoll says, Would you say you are overall encouraged or discouraged by the state of the church today, American, Western, Eastern, Global? Do you sound like an optimistic fellow? The state of the church, I mean, I think what has happened, you know, to me in the last number of years is, and I guess it's what happened to Bonhofer, is you ask the question. is you ask the question, what is the church? It's very easy to say, oh, the church is this.

The church is this. Well, we know there are people in the church that are not working for God's purposes. Are they of the church? What are they? We know that there are churches that seem to be looking the other way when evil happens. Is that the church? So it depends on how we want to define the church. But I think that there will always be prophetic voices speaking the truth.

and there will always be people who are at least ostensibly part of the church who ignore those voices and a thousand years later praise them but stone them and kill them, you know, when they're speaking. And I think that that's always, you know, it's the wheat and tears. It's not just believers and non-believers, but within the church, we will find out who in the church is faithful and who is willing to risk his life for the faith. And I think I am, I have been at least recently encouraged that some people woke up who were asleep, that we have moved the dial in the right direction, move the needle in the right direction, that there are people who finally understood that, yes, I have to speak up, yes, I have to vote,

no, I cannot remain on the fence. And what I've said over and over, it's that, you know, people have been persuaded, and Bonhofer was trying to get them off the fence. And there's always been people in history that they're persuaded that there's this third way. There's this, and Keller talked about this a lot, Tim Keller, there's this third way. It's kind of like this neutral thing. I'm not left. I'm not right.

And usually that's an encouragement to, you know, let's say, sit on the fence and say, well, that doesn't concern me. I'm going to be right here in the safe religious space. face. And what I believe, you know, prophetic voices have said, Jesus clearly said it to the religious establishment. George Whitfield was hated by the clergy when he's preaching the gospel in the fields in England. You have these figures that are speaking God's truth, but they're vilified by the religious establishment. So it makes you wonder, okay, so who really is with God and who is, you know, and but I'm convinced, I mean, one thing I'll say, I know God called me to write my book letter

to the American church. I don't say that lightly because I believe Lord's would be, been with me in my career and writing my books, but that book in particular, that message to the American church, I felt overwhelmingly God told me, you must write this. And so I am for that reason, genuinely hopeful that God wouldn't have called me to write this book saying to the church, you know, need to wake up. You need to be the church. Now's the time to be the church if there weren't some reason. And so I'm generally encouraged. I think the results of the last election that I have hope. But again, the whole idea is that so now the church has this opportunity, this amazing opportunity to take ground that we have lost over the decades to the culture. And so that's a long

way of saying I'm hopeful. Final comment comes from Catholic Idiot, not his real name. He says, I really enjoy the Socrates and the city interviews. No question. Just keep doing what you're doing. So maybe as we wrap up, tell people about that and where else they can find you online. Well, Socrates in the city, now my daughter is running it. And so we're doing all these initiatives with it so that more and more and more people are aware of it and seeing it. So I'm very, very excited because I know people come up to me sometimes as they do to you and say, oh, you know, this changed my life or this helped me in my path to the faith. And even when it's not doing so explicitly, again, that's the idea, is that if you talk about

the big questions reasonably, there are people who are hungry. So Socrates and City exists for those people. And I am thrilled that, you know, we've even got a new streaming platform, Socrates Plus. And so that's something that it's growing dramatically. I have a radio show and a podcast is the Erk Mattaxas show, which is pretty different from Socrates in the city, in that we talk about current events, not always,

but I have all kinds of fun conversations on that. Sometimes it's silly. I'm doing a lot more on Instagram. It's interesting. My team said, I mean, you've got to get up. People want to hear what you're thinking about this and this and this. So I'm doing more on that. But I am really excited right now about I think I mentioned I'm writing a book on the American Revolution.

And I'm very, very excited that next year is the 250th anniversary of the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world. And I don't say that as a rah-rah American, but that this is God's idea that we can govern ourselves and that this idea the whole world would want this idea. It's not for America. It's that America can share this concept of religious liberty and liberty, and that it would spread, that other countries would say, I want that. I want transparency, and we want, you know, to take our government back from the elites who are governing us and so on and so forth. So I've started this new Instagram account called Supercentennial, because I think nobody's going to remember. The 250th is like semi-quincentennial, which nobody knows. So I've coined the term supercentennial.

So I have a new Instagram account called Supercentennial, where E.D. day I or someone else is giving a fact like this happened 250 years ago today in American history. And I think that this resurgence of the right kind of patriotism is very healthy and it goes along with some of what we've been discussing that it's crazy not to love freedom and liberty rightly ordered. We're not talking about freedom to do wrong, but freedom to do right and that we've had to drift very far away from it for people to appreciate, oh my goodness, we're going to lose this. We need to do something about it. So I'm going to be doing more and more on the supercentennial Instagram page as well. But, you know, I'm everywhere.

I'm on X. I'm here. I'm here. I'm there. I'm everywhere. But my main website is just my name, Eric Mataxis.com. And people can find me. Can find all. the other parts of me probably at Ericmetaxis.com. Awesome. Thanks very much for me on the show. Thank you. Thank you.