The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW The Truth in True Crime

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

What investigating death teaches us about the meaning of life.  Former cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace, thetruthintruecrime.com,  looks at lessons learned about human nature from 15 of his most interesting crimes  Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

All right, welcome back. And joining us now is J. Warner Wallace. He's been a guest once before. We've talked about his background. He was a cold case detective. This is somebody who goes back and investigates murder cases, things that don't have a statute of limitations, murder cases where perhaps all the witnesses have died,

and he's just going back looking at the physical evidence of it. He's now written a book called The Truth and True Crime, and I love the tagline here. When Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life. It looks like a fantastic book, and so I wanted to get him on to talk about that one as well. Thank you for joining us, sir. Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. This is my favorite book I've written so far, so I'm glad to talk about it. Oh, it looks like a great angle and, you know,

and something that is, you know, really affects all of us. And everybody loves the crime aspect and the things that you glean from it, too, are really interesting, I think. Yeah, I think there's actually some hidden, like, I was not a Christian through all my career, but through, you know, the first eight years or so, I was not a believer until I was 35. I became a believer by examining the Gospels kind of from a forensic perspective. How do we know or why would we trust if we tested these people as eyewitnesses? Why would we even think, number one, that they are written by eyewitnesses or even anybody who had access to eyewitnesses? And if you did believe that, how would you test them to see if they could pass the test? Now, once I was in,

I started to look at human behavior a little bit differently, right? If you work murders, you are seeing people at their rawest point, the point at which all of the kind of bars are off. I mean, this is, it's sadly, when you get to the point where you're willing to do something crazy like this, it's probably because you've been pushed to a certain limit and your true nature is now going to be revealed. And it really, I think, exposes all of our true nature. So I wanted to write a book that just talked about, like, what are these attributes,

the 15 attributes of human flourishing that I discovered in 15 separate crime stories. And then talk about, you know, is that something, number one, yeah, secular people, they do studies on this, and they confirm that these are 15 things that if you simply embrace these 15 principles, you will have a better life. But it turns out these are 15 ancient descriptions of human nature from Scripture that people, for the most part, think they're discovering them in the last three decades, when in fact, these have been on the pages of the New

Testament for 2,000 years. And so, I really wanted to do a book where I kind of demonstrated that. That's amazing. Yeah. And why did you do a forensic investigation of Christianity in the first place? Well, I was 35, so it was probably about 1995 or six, right in that range. It took me about 18 months, I would say, to complete that stuff that I was so skeptical, and not raised around Christians, or anybody really who believed in God

in a way they could articulate. So I didn't have like a leg up, like somebody who could say, hey, look at this, or look at that. I had to come at it raw. And so I bought my first Bible. I was 35 and it took me a while to kind of go through the Gospels. And I was just tearing them apart from just word usage.

You know, all the attributes. I wrote about this in a book called Cold Case Christianity. And that book just kind of covers that journey. But that's something that it'll get you to the point where you might believe it's true. Look, I think that as a boomer, as somebody who's older, I have a high value for whether something is true or not. And there are people in my generation who would probably agree. But I don't know that that's the case for young people, Gen Z and millennials. I think they're not as concerned about whether something's true because they've co-opted that word. That word doesn't mean it's true anymore.

It means it's true anymore it means it's true for me that's right it's true based on my lived experience or it's true based on how i have applied it to my life doesn't mean it's true for them now when i use the word true i'm using it in a more objective way but it's true for all of us whether we like it or not i think that this generation i'm talking to now is more concerned about whether or not it's good because they believe they've been sold by the culture that Christianity is the source behind every evil intent misogyny racism homophobia whatever it may be um it's really they are going to attribute to it to this traditional Western culture worldview that we hold as Christiansians so so i wanted to show that yeah but if you didn't

believe in christianity you're probably already employing its teaching if you're flourishing and and the more you detach from its teaching the more you're going to struggle so i i just look this is what we're seeing in culture and and and so i wrote a book this time which really looks at all of the data. So most of my books, I spend a lot of time researching. And although this book has about 50 pages in the printed edition of footnotes, there are 200 pages in the PDF file we provide online. Why? Because I want you to see that if I'm making this claim, it's supported by the data. But it turns out that that data simply supports what was claimed in Scripture

2,000 years ago. So, it's eye-opening for me to realize that our human, it makes sense though, think about it. If we are designed by a Creator God who knows something about us and we are in His image, then it turns out that that book we have called Scripture, called the Bible, ought to describe us the way we really are. And if it does describe us the way we really are yes and if it does describe us the way we really are you could consider that at least i was listening to a pundit uh who usually talks about politics recently who's jewish and when asked you know when he defends why

he's jewish he says well because it turns out that these principles work. I thought, oh, that's interesting. And he sees that as an evidence that the worldview is true. Okay. And by the way, that may or may not be an evidence that your worldview is true. But it strikes me that if your worldview is true, it ought to describe you the way you really are. And so in that sense, it could provide you with some insight into your human nature and how you could flourish. Yeah, it would be necessary. Not necessarily sufficient, but it would be necessary for that to be true. Yeah, that's right.

Exactly right. Yeah, what's the most surprising thing that you found out about human nature in investigating this? Well, so every chapter is a crime story, right? So in one of these stories, I talk about celebrity and how sometimes when you are a local, especially in the gang cultures, if you're somebody who's known locally, you kind of become like a celebrity in your own neighborhood or at least in your own clique or your own gang. And I've got one of these stories here to show how detrimental our pursuit of celebrity is. And the reason why I wrote that chapter is because I don't think it's just it's not just a few of us who are seeking celebrity anymore. I mean, there are no gatekeepers. You know this, even think about it. We are able not to develop our own personal platforms without a gatekeeper at NBC, ABC, or CBS that used to be, or Salem, whatever the radio station was, that used to be the gatekeepers that kept people from

becoming a celebrity. Those are gone. So now all of us, if we can develop a following, we can make it from zero to a million listeners without any support. And that's where I think we have to be careful. It turns out that one of the most powerful attributes that we could adopt as humans that would change your life. As a matter of fact, if you simply embraced this virtue, you will have increased flourishing in every single metric that we use to actually measure human flourishing. Longevity, mental health, physical health, the deepness of your relationships, that improvement will improve your marriage. I'll make you a better employer, a better employee.

You'll learn at a higher level. You'll get better grades. You'll make more money. I mean, every way that we measure flourishing improves if you simply adopt this one thing. And it's really the opposite of celebrity. It is the attribute we know as humility. Now, they've been studying this for about three decades and looking at all kinds of studies that are out there that talks about how humble people succeed at levels that are far higher than the rest of us and why that might be true. Okay, fine. But it turns out that humility is one of those things that I think if I asked people, hey, what do you think the one attribute you could adopt that would help you in every aspect of your life at a higher level than anything else, I don't think many people would come up with humility.

Yeah. But it turns out, yeah, it is actually the thing we need to embrace. Now, what's interesting about that, think about every worldview that's out there. None of them leverage humility like the Christian worldview. What I mean is, if your theistic worldview, your spiritual worldview, encourages you to do these certain things to reach the highest level that your spiritual worldview offers. In other words, if it is about earning something, it's a transaction between you and God, a transaction between you and the universe. There's no way to avoid pride in that kind of a system, because at some point you're going to look across the room and say, I'm doing better than that did. We measure based on our achievements right and i have a friend uh who's now no longer with

us named mike adams mike and i would travel and do a lot of events together and he used to always tease i'll write this book uh how to how to become uh humble in 10 easy steps and how i made it in eight you know it's like this there's no way that you can pursue humility without at some point doing just the opposite and becoming prideful. So, it turns out that humility is something you, it's an assessment. Spurgeon calls it the proper assessment of who we are before a holy God. Now, Christianity leverages this because it's the one worldview that says, no, it's not a transaction. There's nothing you can do to earn this.

As a matter of fact, whatever the highest thing you think you hope to achieve in your worldview is, we're going to give it to you. It's a free gift over here. Why? So that Paul says no one can boast. It's an antidote to pride and celebrity. It's an antidote to look what I did. It's look what's been done for me this view requires us to begin in humility because of people say okay there's god and it's not me well that's a very humble position i'm not the god of my own i'm not the center of my own

decision-making universe well this begins and ends and our savior says have this add pulses have the attitude that jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but instead emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant. In other words, it's all humility start to finish. And as difficult as that is for us to achieve, if we don't recognize its power in our lives, we'll never even try to submit. We'll never even begin to let go of the things that possess us.

So I just want to spend one chapter in these 15 chapters talking about the role that celebrity plays. And by the way, almost every crime you're going to commit is driven but these three prideful motives. It's the pursuit of money, the pursuit of sex, or the pursuit of power. Now that pursuit of power, that's a huge category of misbehavior. And that's where celebrity fits. All of us, look, you and I both, would we like more people to listen to what we're saying? course we would so although we might protect ourselves from the pursuit of money and the pursuit of sex knowing that that can derail us we don't usually protect ourselves from the pursuit of celebrity in fact what we typically do is want to increase that area of our life so we can we'll argue oh because i want to reach more people with this divine message. Really?

Yeah. So we will increase this celebrity. Now, here's the danger in it. And this is a different chapter, but there's a danger in this. I have never known anyone of those three motives for misbehavior. And there are only three. There's not a fourth motive. There isn't.

And you can discover this secularly working as a homicide detective, or you can discover this on the pages of scripture because John writes about it in one of his letters. But the point is, there's only three motives out there for stupid. And if you don't protect yourself from those three motives for stupid, you will eventually do one of them. two because the other two become available to you on the basis of what you've achieved in the third so you see this in even christian leaders right where they fall for someone why well here's why in my opinion because as a congregation or as your deacon board or your elder board they're trying to protect their pastors from the sex and money but everyone wants their pastor to be known more so they can build a bigger church. And when you increase your celebrity, you only open the door to the other two. So you're, you're, this is why I've struggled with this,

even in writing this book, because as I'm writing this book, if I'm going to heed my own advice, I have to do less of this because it turns out all of this talking about a book you've written is about you trying to amplify your platform amplify your influence in culture and that's i think there's a good by the way all three of these things have been designed by god for his glory and for our good we just happen to distort them so sex money and power is something that god is giving us in a positive way.

This is another chapter in the book. It's a chapter about a guy who was basically homeless and was killed. And I'm thinking, what are these three motives? What did this killer have to gain from this homeless guy who was so sweet? They called him Santa Claus because he looked like Santa Claus. And he was as sweet as Santa Claus. And what does he offer in terms of sex, money, or power that would be worthy of killing him? Well, here's what happens is that when we focus on those things that are given to us by God instead of on the God who gave them to us, we're stopping one level short of our worship.

And we all worship. Everyone worships whether you're a believer or not. There is something that you think is of utmost importance that you dare not take that from me because that's the thing that I covet. And this idolatry is what causes us. So in this particular case, this poor guy had slipped over. He was recycling stuff. Every day he would go out, spend the first half of his day picking up trash cans. He's going through trash cans, picking up recyclables. Then he would take them to the recycling half of his day picking up trash cans he's picking going through trash cans picking up recyclables then he would take him to the recycling center and get just enough money to go and he would buy alcohol and food in the afternoon and that was his

day every day very very workmanlike and he had slipped into an area of our city that another guy who was doing the same thing felt was his alley. Don't be picking trash out of those two cans. And although the amount of money that Santa Claus probably got from that was pennies, dollars, maybe, it was enough. So he confronted this guy. He confronted Santa Claus and said, don't be doing that anymore at a recycling center. And Santa Claus kind of just blew him off. Well, it turned out in that one moment, he had triggered the two of the three things. Number one, he had disrespected him. So the idea of power, authority, respect, that's in the third category.

Now I'm upset because you disrespected me in front of my peers. Two, you're taking pennies or dollars. But because I've turned both of these things, I covet them at a high level. I've now turned them into idols. You dare not try to destroy my idols. And that night he stabbed him to death over virtually nothing. This is the power of idolatry. And by the way, it's not just people you work and work in homicides.

It's all of us. And so on that chapter, what I try to do in every chapter is show you, hey, if this is your struggle, whatever these things are, here's a way for you to address it. And in this chapter, I just ask 15 questions. You want to know what your idols are? Because we all have them. Ask these 15 questions and you'll probably identify them. And then once you've identified them, you can start to actually think, okay, look, it's something that God has created rather than the God who created it. We simply have to transfer our worship up one level just from the level where we're stopped in god's creation and back to the creator and so it's something that if you do it you will flourish

you will you will not number one you'll protect yourself from stupid and number two you'll actually start to pursue the things that contribute to a meaningful life and when you do that you do that with uh thankfulness because when you say when you thank god for what that is and sincerely think about what it is that god has given you you look at it as not something that you've achieved uh then that does move it to the higher level and yeah there's this with that right now again i'm gonna I'm skipping across a number of different chapters here. But yeah, I think you're right. I think that part of it is, is that what I've discovered, and it's true of all of us, is the least thankful people are the people who think they have nothing to be thankful for. Or the least forgiving people are the people who think they have nothing to be forgiven for.

So it does turn out that a proper assessment of who you are, because it's really easy for me to think, well, everything I've got in my life, I achieved that. Yes. I am the reason for all my success, the reason for everything I've ever possessed. Okay. If that's your view, well, that kind of pride is, it doesn't lead any more positive. That's right. Because anytime anyone challenges that that might not be the case, you're now offended.

And so it turns out that whatever it is we've worshipped, that becomes the master. The master that you dare not question. The master that I'm now willing to give up tons of time for, resources for. I got to say that, you know, I had that early on when I was young, I had a lot of success with a lot of stuff very easily. And I did think it was what I had done. And, and I got to say,

it was such an amazing blessing for God to take that away from me and humble me, you know, and that's exactly what it was. And I thank God for that, uh, taking that away from me. Well, the biggest blessings of my life.

And you're absolutely, I think you and I, as guys, we are even more prone to this because, and this is a different, this is chapter two of the book, it's an identity issue for us. I mean, a lot of it is, is that I don't have my, as a Christian, I ought to have my identity in Christ, but the way we form identity, and I covered this in the book, we don't typically form it that way. What we typically do instead is we form it as men in our achievements, in what it is we've achieved. So if I ask, you know, who are you, David? Well, you're going to say, I'm the host of the show. If you said, who are you, Jim? Well, I'm a cold case detective. Okay, is that who I am? Look, I haven't been in a Dateline episode in three years okay i i need at some point you need to say okay who are you really champ and and this struggle of identity is so key to how we function in the world because identity is really exposes our forms of worship because i guarantee as men we typically form our

worship based on what we do you know identity when you study it study it in the surveys and the research on this, it's inseparable from value and purpose. And unfortunately, a lot of us form our identity based in reverse. In other words, we ask the question, where am I valuable? What am I good at? What do I have purpose in? That's who I am. Rather than say, well, no, who am I? I want to form my value and purpose based on my identity first,

not my identity based on my value and purpose, because that's the problem. Because there's nothing but pride that comes out of forming your identity based on what you're good at, because it's about what you're good at. So this is, and it's the biggest one single move that leads to contentment is to reform your identity, not based on what you can achieve, but based on what you receive from a holy God. That is amazing. When you're talking about that, you say, you know, how do you define yourself?

Is it the show that you have? Is it the book that you've written? Is it the career that you have? It makes me think back to the Austrian Empire when they would have their emperors die. They had these big elaborate funerals, and they would take them to this amazing crypt uh actually i've been there with my family to to see this thing and it truly is amazing and they would have um as they bring the body into the crypt they would knock and the person inside would say who goes there and they give all of the big political titles you know he's an empire emperor this and the king of that and

all the rest of the stuff i don't know him and then they would knock again and they say who is it and he would give family relationships right that he has i don't know him and then he'd knock a third time and it would say um and he'd say a humble sinner franz joseph i know him enter you know that's kind of an interesting awesome yeah that's an that's an awesome just a word picture of what we're we're talking about here yeah no this is something that um is and i don't know how much time we have on this but let me just say i've got a friend named joe martin who's a doctor who is a philosopher and a theologian we got plenty of time by the way okay so he's he's he says that men are all about the asians when we have conversations it's all about the Asians.

And I think it does expose how we form identity. So, for example, he would say when we meet another guy, we shake hands and we say, what do you do? The first Asian is occupation. Okay. That's the first Asian. And we're not really asking, what do you do? We are because of how we form identity as men. We're asking, what do you do? We are, because of how we form identity as men, we're asking, who are you?

Now, as we ask that, all identity, remember, is comparative. It's not about, well, how wealthy are you? It's how wealthy are you compared to this guy or everybody else? That's how you know if you're wealthy. How smart are you compared to others? Sadly, identity is formed by comparing. And that's why it's so prideful, right? Because we have a tendency to say, well, I'm better over here.

I'm better over there. So occupation is the first Asian. And then when we're measuring, we're saying, okay, well, I know what that job requires in terms of education, second Asian. Now we're saying, well, he's better educated or I'm better educated. We're measuring. Here we are in that first conversation with another guy and by asking what is your occupation we're starting to measure the other asians second one as as education third well we're asking well i know what that makes if you're a you know a surgeon i know you're making some or if you're you know an accountant whatever it is you you're measuring you know a surgeon i know you're making some or if you're you know an accountant whatever it is you're measuring you know compensation that's the next station so so at some point then you're

asking too how good are you at this you could be a doctor but just be a terrible doctor reputation is the next asian what are we doing here well we're measuring based on right we're assigning value based on the answers here. And if you're a guy, if you're a cop especially, you could be somebody that's got nothing more than a high school education and you're working as a parole officer and you're not even making that much money. You've never tried to do anything other. But if you're six foot eight and cut like a Greek god, you're still the biggest dog in the room

because now it's about intimidation at the last station. So I think he's got a point. It's very enlightened. I'm sure that for all of us, if you're not a guy, you're a woman and you're listening to this, then there's probably some other level of, but be honest, we do this all the time. And because identity is comparative, it really takes, it rears its head most notably in group gatherings where you're introducing yourself because now you're getting the opportunity to compare. Well, there's the danger in it. And identity becomes the thing that sadly is behind so much of our trauma and struggle.

This is a separate chapter of this book, but I'll give you an example of this. We would do a lot of work now with officers through Billy Graham Association in the summer. So we're getting ready to leave in two weeks here to do the first of six weeks of counseling for marriage resiliency for officers who have been involved in critical incidents

and now they're struggling in their marriage. And sometimes they only get there before they get a divorce. get a divorce they say we're not coming i always say just hold on just try to get through this trip first before you make a decision that big but this is the dire straits they're in okay i i discovered probably three or four years ago that the thing that is the biggest struggle for officers is especially if you're injured is identity It turns out that if you were to look at all of the trauma in your life, whatever it was, if it was an injury you suffered, a divorce, a loss of a job, a child being lost, whatever you lost, whatever it was you suffered in the trauma, you'll see that at that same point you were suffering the trauma, you had a relatively

dramatic shift in your identity. You thought of yourself as married, now you're divorced. You see yourself differently. Identity is simply how you continuously see yourself. The self is at the issue. And every time you suffer a trauma, you suffer an identity shift. So, it's interesting that trauma typically causes an identity shift, but the opposite is also true. An identity shift often causes trauma. So if you wanted to protect yourself from trauma or minimize the kind of trauma you'll experience, you need to put your identity in something that can't be shifted, stolen from you, taken from you, bruised in some way, damaged in some way damaged in some way and of the three ways that we form identity inside out outside in or top side down only one of these three ways is stable enough to protect you from shifting if you're forming your identity outside in where you say like this is how the ancients did it you

know i uh what this this thing outside of me existed before i was ever born and i'm just going to reach out and grab that and form my identity. So it's a tribe. That's the tribe I was raised in. It's the name of my family name. It's the profession of my family. We're all cops. So that's like who I am. Okay, that's outside in identity. And I'll let us do some of that inside out, based on my desires, my preferences, even my sexual preferences. I'm going to ask you outside of me to identify me based on my innate heart's desires. Okay, that's inside out identity. Both of those are unstable. Because at some point, your job ends.

You're going to retire. Then who are you then? Or you're going to get injured. Or your desires are going to change because your heart is fickle. It's just the nature of it. Well, then get ready to suffer some trauma in the course of your life. Now, if you formed your identity topside down, where you put it in something that's transcendent and unchanging,

then you're going to have lows in your life, of course, but they're going to be not quite as deep. Because the day before you suffered the injury, you were a child of, you were in Christ that day. The day after you suffered the injury, you were a child of, you were in Christ that day. The day after you suffered the injury, you're still in Christ. You're still the same. God sees you the same way. Now, are you going to struggle because you're injured?

Of course. But who you are hasn't changed. And it turns out that's the thing that we struggle with the most, even in an injury. It's not so much just the pain of the injury. It's who am i now and and that's why we have to kind of really be serious about our our identity formation or we're going to find ourselves it's about human flourishing it really is yeah and of course you know it's about integrity we often think about integrity is how other people perceive us or something but it really is

uh how you perceive yourself do you have that integrity and you have that integrity if you're thinking about that from top down. This is so wise. I'm really enjoying listening to you talk about this. And I think about how unique things are right now. As you began talking about that, you said, you know, this lure of being famous or a lot of people following you, that all comes with the social media stuff. It truly is amazing to me to see that and how that has transformed younger people.

And it is such a transformational thing to think that there is some value in having a bunch of people that you don't know, you know, following you and everything. I'm going to tell you. Focusing on that. It's amazing. Yeah, that is something that we take for granted, David. We take it for granted because, yes, we are now in an age, the information age has become the identity age why because um so how do we start if you go on our social media platforms what's the very first thing we have a moniker like what is the public name i'm going to adopt that i want you to see me as yes second we're going for the bio now we're

going to list a series of priorities identity priorities in the bio so all of this then we're going to put a bio. Now we're going to list a series of priorities, identity priorities in the bio. So all of this, then we're going to spend the next how many years on social media posting only in a way that amplifies the way I already want you to see me. That's right. So I'm not going to reveal something of myself that violates the identity I've already established. And even if I'm not even thinking about it, my posts always expose who I am. And there were times in generations prior where you didn't know who people were in the way you know who they are now. Having access to everything we think gives people complete access to who we really are.

And I think we know that if we're a public figure. And so we're careful. I never post anything about my family on social media. I stay pretty focused in that area of what it is I'm trying to communicate related to the gospel. And I just stay focused on that. Now, that gives people a view of me that's not actually true. It's the view that I'm crafting for them. And we have to be aware of that.

But everyone does that. I mean, I see people I follow who you think all they do is eat. But it's not just that we are in some way forming and sharing our identity. It's that we are also revealing our idols. We're revealing our priorities. We're revealing the stuff that we think is so consequential, so important that we are willing to proclaim it. That's one of the ways you can see what your idols are. Ask yourself, like, look at your social media streams.

I want to know what your idols are. I can kind of figure it out if you've got a social media platform. That's right. We've got a full life log that is up there. It's such a shallow thing to talk about with social media. It's there so that you can glorify yourself. Isn't it interesting that in the last days people become such lovers of self? To the extent that we've never had

those tools to it was always there but we've never had the tools to magnify exactly level yeah and i think at some point we are going to have we're going to see that this is not beneficial to our well-being and we're going to voluntarily pull back a little bit or we're going to reach a point in our lives where we're going to burn out on it. And we're going to put, so you might be more active on social media at some point in your life than you are later. But I'm also trying to be very careful not to be the old guy who's just shaking his fist at the moon, right? Because I use social media as much as anybody else, but I do want us to be very practical about it. Like, look, if we're trying to protect ourselves from what causes us to do bad things, we have to have a very honest assessment of who we are.

Are we, and this is a different chapter in the book, but are we by nature innocent, born innocent, born virtuous, and we are corrupted by our families, by our environments, by the systems that are in place, even from government systems? Is that who we are? Or is the flip true, that we are by nature fallen and depraved enough that no matter what system you put us in, we'll find a way to corrupt it, even religious systems? Which of those two things is true? We need to figure that out, because if the second is true, which has always been the

claim of the Christian worldview, that we are by nature fallen. Well, now we can explain certain aspects of what happens in culture, and we can put our resources in the right direction. Look, Luther put it this way. We are so inwardly focused that we can take even things that are good and corrupt them and do them for selfish. You can even behave uber morally morally but you're doing it for selfish reasons yeah even our efforts to do something godly are entirely depraved and selfish is what his claim is this is what you find also in the modern studies about altruism like people are

trying to figure out like how could it be that someone who's uh could be a pulitzer prize winner can also kill his his spouse or her spouse how could that be how could it a Pulitzer Prize winner can also kill his spouse or her spouse? How could that be? How could it be that there's somebody who for the last 30 years has been an exemplar in our community? The deacon at the church, the doctor who delivered my babies, yet 30 years ago, he killed his wife. How could that be? There's no way he could be that duplicit, is there? This enigma of man has to be sorted out.

Now, what I see in the studies is that, yes, we do have good examples of the altruism of humans. Humans are capable of great altruism. They are, until it doesn't serve them personally. So, in other words, the studies show that humans are usually pretty generous until resources get tight then we start hoarding toilet paper well why are we doing that because we are at our base nature self-serving and even when we are doing good for others it serves us in some way that's why we're doing it we want to be seen a certain way very seldom do you see people who you know do good things who aren't proclaiming to you that they do good things.

That's how you know they're doing good things. Well, that's because that proclamation is what they're really after. Yeah. Okay. That's the truth. If that's the case, then now we can make a proper assessment of our own condition. Number one, it causes me to know that I am not trustworthy. That I am no different.

Number one, it's leveled the field for me. So I never went into an interview once I had this realization. I never went into an interview and thought I was somehow better than the guy I was interviewing. No, I knew that we're all the same person. And, but for the grace of God, I, my buttons haven't been pushed the way that this poor guy's buttons have been pushed. Now, look, this is not to, to, is not to try to elevate people who do bad behavior. I'm a justice guy.

So we're going to take care of this. But I recognize that I am just like him. We are all just like him. When you watch an episode of Dateline, I'm hoping you're not sitting there going, yeah, what an idiot. I hope you watch it with a certain amount of introspection and you're thinking, oh, that could easily have been me. Yeah. Because that is where humility begins.

It begins when you realize the proper role. By the way, if you know the fallen nature of humans, if you know that's really true, well, that also changes the way you establish systems. This is why our country was built in a way that had the kinds of checks and balances between the three arms of the federal government. Why is that there? Because the people who formed it knew you can't trust people. You can't trust humans. We are by nature fallen. If we don't have a way to check and balance each other, if we don't have a community, basically, this is why the Christian worldview is not lived in isolation. Because this is why marriage is so important this is another chapter of the book, why marriage is so important.

Because I have, I'm close enough to another human that I have given her permission to tell me where I'm wrong. I've given her permission to help shape me toward what it is God wants for me and if you're not in a relationship with somebody who you know well enough to have given them permission to tell you what an idiot you are right now and you don't have true friends yeah and you don't have the kind of relationship that'll that'll urge you towards something better so it turns out that those are other things that sociologists have discovered it was a chapter in here about true friendship. Well, why? Because I've worked so many cases where people were killed by somebody

they thought was their true friend. Well, so what is the nature of quality relationships? What do we, what, we need to kind of dig into that because it turns out that there are some relationships that if you're listening, that you're holding right now that are hurting you,

that are detrimental to your wellbeing. And that might at some point, by the way, likely if I'm, the first thing I'm gonna do if I'm working your homicide is I'm gonna look back at all your relationships, because the chances are that it's somebody you knew really well who killed you. And in the end, we have to ask the question,

what am I doing wrong that I'm hanging out with somebody who i have not in some way uh vetted better you know so i think a lot of this is important for us as christians to say oh yeah by the way the scripture has an antidote for that this christian's got great guidance for that we just haven't been paying attention in this generation it seems yeah you you have a statement many crime stories are centered around poor relationships you know not having a relationship or having a relationship that's going to, I guess, goad you into that, right? Some way. Yeah.

I mean, this is why. So if you're looking at what causes, and we've got enough time, I think, here to cover this. If you look at what is causing, what really describes relationships that will cause you to flourish. It turns out that studies show this. One of the longest studies ever done on human happiness, looked like 60-year study, that was done and really revealed that it is your relationships that are at the key, the core of what causes you to feel content, to be happy, to have a satisfying life.

But it's not just any kind of relationship. It turns out it's the kind of deep relationships that you cannot have with hundreds of people on social media. So there's three things, three things that lead to the flourishing in your relationships. Here they are. First, you need deep, committed relationships with people you've given permission to be like a brother, to say, hey, you know what, dude, you're off the rails here. And that has to be with a small number of people. You can't have those kinds of deep, committed relationships because they require a certain amount of vulnerability and a certain amount of time. So if you're somebody who says, I know lots of people, I got lots of friends. Well, they're probably not then these kinds of friends. You need to have a small number of deeply committed relationships with third

piece virtuous people. Now, here's the reason why. I've met lots of folks who are deeply connected to others who are not virtuous, and they're basically a part of their crime family. And so you can have deep connected relationships that lead you astray because there's no virtue. Now, here's the tricky question is what do we call virtuous? Who gets to decide? So there's a code of ethics amongst gangsters.

Is that what is virtuous? What they say is because they would say, hey, if you offend us, we're going to come over there and kill you. That's just the code. You knew better before you did that. You should have known that was coming. Yeah. Because we know that's what you're going to get. And so who just gets to decide what is righteous,

right or wrong, virtuous, who gets to decide that? Is it a group of people or is it a single individual? Or is there something that transcends all of us that it overarches all communities? So it turns out that virtue is something that does require a transcendent, unchanging, overarching virtue giver. The authority that we would actually say virtue is grounded in.

Because if we say it's grounded in groups, then get ready for all kinds of stupid. And we're already seeing this because what's virtuous to even politically, what's virtuous to one side or the other is very different. Then we're arguing as if there's no transcendent overarching virtue. So this is one of those areas, your relationships, that does benefit from a worldview in which you can ground virtue objectively. There's a couple of places where that happens in this book, but this is one that's very important. Because we can say, you tell your kids all the time, but don't be handling those bad people. Who gets to decide they're bad?

This is now suddenly is going to have to cause us to think about how do we ground good and bad? How do we ground righteousness? And if you're going to ground it in just the opinion of people, well, that's every case I work. At some point, we have to be wiser than that. And that's why I think it's important for us to adopt the one worldview grounded in humility that provides you with an objective transcendent source for virtue. That is such great wisdom.

I'm really looking forward to reading this book. And, of course, it's just come out. But it is available now, right? Yes, it's available now. And I appreciate it. You can learn more at the truthintruecr.com, the truth and true crime.com. And because I'm so sensitive to the idea that this should not be about us just building a platform and trying to sell something.

What we do at that website, you'll see there's a ton of free stuff that comes with a purchase. We simply wanted to try to level that a little bit, right? So that you don't feel like this is about spending money on a book. I really want to advance the causes that are in the book, and that's the challenge, of course. Excellent, excellent book. Again, it is The Truth in True Crime. That's I-N not and. TheTruthInTrueCrime.com And just before you go, I know you've got to go, this message is from Gard Goldsmith on Rockfinney. He says, thank you both. Cold case Christianity is excellent,

and in the conversation today, I'm reminded that the trap that even catches people who try to spread freedom messages or biblical messages, it seems that one must be aware of commoditizing oneself, difficult to promote one's work, even freedom or biblical work without that promotion, becoming self-promoting rather than praising God. That's absolutely so good. So good. Yeah. That's absolutely. So good. So good.

Yeah. That's a great observation. He's written me before. He loved a cold case Christianity, which he got the first time I interviewed you, but I'm really looking forward to the truth and true crime. And again, there's a website,

the truth and true crime.com. Thank you much. Thank you so much for joining us, sir. Excellent stuff. And such wisdom. It truly is amazing looking forward to reading it myself thank you well i i'm indebted to you thanks so much for having me on well thank you

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