The Eric Metaxas Show - John Lennox

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

Dr. John Lennox, Oxford professor of mathematics, discusses his book addressing the question, "Where is God in a Coronavirus World?" And Tyson Langhofer from the Alliance Defending Freedom provides an important Free Speech update.

For you Eric Mataxis trivia buffs out there, Eric's Secret Service codename is El Jerko. Please make note of it. And now the man who'll deny it, but it's true anyway. Here's El Jerko himself. My friend Eric Mataxis. Hey, folks, Susan Newark-Wilkerson forever. We are just now bringing on board a representative of one of my favorite organizations, the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Today we have Tyson Langhofer. He's senior counsel with them. He is also, as I read, Director of the Center for Academic Freedom with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Tyson, welcome the program. Thanks for having me, Eric. I know we'll be talking to another guest soon, but I wanted to home in on the issues that the Alliance Defending Freedom is working on religious liberty, as you all know, is as important to me as it is to all of you. So what are some of the things that you guys at ADF are working on right now? What cases are you working on?

Well, specifically in my area, I protect the rights of students and faculty at public universities so that everyone can freely participate in the marketplace of ideas. And unfortunately, many religious students and conservative students and faculty are routinely discriminated against on our public university campuses because they're expressing views that are kind of contrary. to the prevailing orthodoxy on campus. Well, so I know that there's a case, a SUNY college, where there's a case going on right now?

Where is that? Yeah, so we just filed a lawsuit against officials at SUNY Binghamton. It's a state university of New York campus. And the college Republicans at SUNY had decided to bring in Dr. Art Laffer, a renowned economist to speak on, economics and they were sponsored by the Young America's Foundation as well. And so some students came out several days before the event on a Thursday to promote the event on campus. And a mob of almost 200 students came and overturned their tables and

tore up their signs and so forth and essentially disrupted their ability to, you know, to promote this event. Now, wait a minute. You said Art Laffer. We're not talking in Coulter. We're not talking Milo Yanopoulos. We're not talking, I mean, art, Laffer, the economist, who gave us the famous Laffer Curve. I mean, I cannot think of a more anodyne, neutral, inoffensive kind of speaker. This is an economist. Did the mob just decide that they consider him, you know, the equal of Dinesh D'Souza or somebody? And keep in mind, you know, I'm friends with all the people that I just mentioned. But I know that woke mobs get triggered by folks like that.

But Art Laffer, the economist? I mean, seriously, I'm just a little amazed. I was too. I was shocked by it, frankly, because he was speaking about tariffs and trade wars. That's a topic that affects everybody. And he was speaking about it, obviously from a perspective that's not often heard on the college campus. And so it was important for students,

especially economic students to be able to hear that. In fact, after we filed this lawsuit, a parent of an economics major reached out to me and told me how disappointed his student was, his son was that he wasn't able to go hear this important speaker, who's a Nobel Prize winning economist, on a really important topic. And I may even, as a conservative,

differ with him in his position on tariffs and trade. I mean, this is pretty unfathom, a ball and this just shows you where we are. In other words, it seems to me what happened, Tyson, is that any time a conservative group brings anyone, they will be demonized, the speaker will be demonized and their ability to bring the speaker will be disrupted. In other words, it really doesn't matter who the speaker is. It simply matters that the organization is perceived as conservative or as Christian. There's no doubt about that, Eric.

You're absolutely right. And that's the problem. I mean, they say, they call it provocateurs, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what topic you're speaking about. It doesn't matter who the speaker is. If you're expressing a view that is deemed conservative or religious, you're going to be met with opposition.

And in this case, it was violent opposition, where they were destroying signs. And the real problem, Eric, is not just the students, but the university is complicit in this. In fact, after this mob attacked these students on campus, they ordered the college Republicans to leave and not the mob. And so the college Republicans were no longer able to remain there, but the mob was. And then the mob announced their intention to disrupt Dr. Laffer's event. They set it on social media.

They said, that's what we're going to do. The school met with the mob and these disruptors. And then after they met with them, they agreed to give them a room adjoining the room that Dr. Laffer was going to speak in. which has doors, they go in and out, they gave them that room knowing that these disruptors were going to come in and disrupt the event. And so they were complicit in this disruption. This cost a lot of money, put a lot of time in by these students to bring a man like Dr. Laffer in to speak, and yet they were unable to do it because the university refused to provide any sort of protection for these students simply because they were expressing in conservative views.

I literally know two economics professors at SUNY Binghamton, and I'm going to find out from them, their position on this story. This is a level of woke madness that is almost funny, except that it's not funny. Let me ask you, so where does ADF come into play here? Yeah, so what we've done is we filed a federal lawsuit against officials at SUNY Binghamton because they are essentially enforcing a policy of a, a Heckler's veto where they allow students and faculty shut down speech they don't like.

We've also sued these outside groups, one called Plot, the progressive leaders of tomorrow, which is an outside group, which is designed to simply disrupt events that they dislike. And then a student group on campus, which again is designed to disrupt. So we filed a First Amendment lawsuit against them in federal court, along with the attorneys that King and Spalding, we partnered up with. And we are asking the court to find that the university and these student groups were complicit in bringing this, in stopping this speech because they disagreed with it, and in violating the First Amendment rights of college Republicans. Well, I have to say that, you know, again, it's why I'm such a fan and supporter of the Alliance Defending Freedom, because this is a madness that is happening. and if it weren't for you all, this is the horror to me. If it weren't for you all, no one is doing anything about this.

I mean, college administrators are as cowardly as Democratic mayors, as cowardly as the leaders of corporations in America. They don't seem to have any actual transcendent values. They just go with the flow with the least resistance. And least resistance is caving to the petulant monsters posing as students. posing as students. No, you're absolutely right, Eric. In fact, here's the sad thing.

After this event happened, the college de-recognized the college Republicans. They de-recognized the college Republicans and punished no other students who had violated all kinds of rules. So that's the type of administrators we're dealing with. And the sad thing is, Sunni

knows about this. They had been sued at SUNY Buffalo several years ago for allowing a pro-life event to be shut down and a federal court slapped them down and said, this is not okay, and there's an order against them saying you can't do this kind of thing. So they know this is wrong, and they just continue in this pattern. If they don't stop, the colleges are going to be completely overrun by students who know that administrators are just completely in absentia.

Well, that's the issue is that administrators are effectively in absentia. They don't seem to care about the most basic things. And this is a state university in the middle of nowhere, Binghamton. This is not a place that is famous, you know, for woke madness, at least until now. I want to tell my audience how they can give to the Alliance Defending Freedom. I know you won't interrupt me because this is very important. Folks, you can call 800-5562770, 800-5562770, or you can go to adflegal.org. That's ADF-legal.org.

dot org slash Eric, ADFlegal.org slash Eric. And again, the number 800-556-2770, 800-556-2770. And I will say it again because there's noise in the background. ADF-legal.org slash Eric. Folks, this is very important. I want to thank you, Tyson, for being a part of the Alliance of Defending Freedom and being willing to come on this program and tell my audience what happening in America. you so much. Thanks, Eric. He grinned as he raised his little hit, he popped his shoe shine rag and he said, get rhythm. When you get the blues, come on, get rhythm. Hey there, folks. As promised, we are talking to our friend, Dr. John Lennox, comes to us all the

way from Oxford. I, too, have relocated to my kitchen where there is far less drilling than in the other room. So, John Lennox, you have another book out. We just spoke to you. Very recently about your book on artificial intelligence. That book is titled 2084. I hope people will look up that interview on our YouTube page for the Eric Pataxis show. But today we're talking about another book titled, Where is God in a coronavirus world? What led you, John, to write that book?

What led me to write it was the fact that when we were told that we needed to lock down, The mathematician in me told me that this is going to go global very fast, indeed exponentially fast, and it's going to be scary. And I wondered because I'm old and vulnerable, and my wife and I have to keep away from all kinds of society in a lockdown situation. Could I make some kind of contribution? And I sat down on a Monday morning and I thought, I need to write something because I really do believe that in situations like this,

the Christian faith isn't worth talking about if it is nothing to say. And of course, these are very difficult questions. There are no trivial or simplistic answers. But I do believe that there is something that we can say to encourage people to comfort them and to help them to think about all the issues that are raised. So I worked very hard for one week, sent it to a publisher on Saturday night, who hadn't seen it before, and by Wednesday it was in print form. And now it's in 27 languages.

Now, wait a minute. I want to get a hold of that publisher. That's remarkable. One of the complaints that writers like me typically have is that you write a book, and it takes forever to find its way into print, even if it's perfect, the publisher seems to need months and months and months. How in the world did you pull that off? I know this is kind of an inside baseball question, but that's just marvelous.

Well, he's a brilliant publisher. He knows the stuff. He knows the arguments. He writes himself. And he just instantly saw that this was something that either you did quickly or you didn't do at all. And so he did it quickly. but he is really excellent, rapidly becoming the number one Christian publisher in the UK. And who is this publisher?

The Good Book Company. They have a branch in the U.S. Really? You'll notice that I'm making a note of that. I do, yes. Well, that's a reasonable thing for an author to do. No, that is really wonderful because you're quite right. I mean, this book may not have much meaning to people,

in a year from now, and yet right now, of course, it's red hot. So you said it's already been published in many languages. 37, yes. And it's on the internet and quite a few of the languages like Russian and Chinese and South American Spanish. And it's available free in that way because it's the only way to get the ideas out. So I'm very encouraged by the response. Well, John, then.

It leads us to the question that you ask in the title, where is God in a coronavirus world? What do you have to say? Well, that's, of course, the topic that fills the whole book, so it better break it down a bit. And I think that there are different reactions, you see, to this kind of thing. We call it rather misleadingly natural evil,

but there's no necessary moral dimension to it. although there could be, and I can explain that if you wish me to. But what we're thinking about is the class of events, catastrophes, if you like, like earthquakes, pandemics, cancers, where we don't see immediately the hand of evil humans at work. And that raises very big questions. And I was introduced to this face-to-face just in the few. days after the New Zealand earthquake because I went to New Zealand and everybody wanted to know earthquake. Why? And the whole lot of reactions, you've got the atheist saying, well,

there you are. I told you so, this is just another nail in God's coffin. With this kind of thing, there can't be any God. And then you got the other people saying, well, you know, this serves people right. This is God judging them. Or this is the outworking of their karma. They've done evil in a previous life and now they're suffering for it. And then of course the Christians who reacted by saying that they wouldn't be shaken, even if the mountains fell into the sea. So that you've got a whole series of responses from different worldview perspectives. And they're exactly the same with COVID-19. I wanted to analyze them in the book. And the short answer to the question,

where is God in a coronavirus world, is to say that he's exactly where he was in a non-coronavirus world. That is, he is present in Christ, in Christians, offering people a message of forgiveness and hope and peace and dealing with a fundamental question at the heart of COVID, which is that it kills people. And we've no immediate answer to death outside of the message of the Christian faith. But we can deal with those things in detail as you ask me the individualized questions.

Well, the question that always comes to my mind has to do with the outworking of what we Christians call the fall, capital F. we know that something happened at some point whereby two human beings stepped outside of God's protection by doing what he explicitly told them not to do. Now, there are many people who may go along with the idea that all human beings are therefore tainted by that original sin, but then when you read in scripture that all of creation fell, that somehow, because we are the crown of God's creation, that act on our part somehow touched all of creation and that all of the brokenness in the universe, things like tornadoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and diseases, all of these

things entered into creation via the fall, sin and death and so on and so forth. And that's always been difficult to understand very clearly because people will say, well, wait a minute, did Adam and Eve sin and were there no earthquakes before that? It becomes a big question of timing. I wanted to know whether you had thoughts you wanted to share on that or whether you shared such things in the book. Well, I shared some of them in the book. I mean, these are very complex questions

and people have wrestled with them. But the basic principle is important, and that is how do we diagnose what has caused all of this? And on the surface, the biblical explanation, and I often say to people, look, don't reject it until you've listened to it and see if it makes some sense at all. There may be details that you can't fit round. Well, join the club. There are many details that I find difficult. But the basic idea, and it's profound because it connects moral evil with natural evil.

In other words, it connects a breakdown in human nature with a breakdown in physical nature. Now, that connection is a very important one, and scripture develops it in several places. But the original situation is that the moral evil was disobedience to God and His Word. That's the moral evil. But it brought human death with it. Paul is very careful to explain what kind of death is caused by that, by one man's sin entered the world and through sin death. And so death passed upon all men.

He's very careful, and it means men and women, of course, that at least we can say that human physical death is a consequence of the entry of sin into the world. It didn't happen to them immediately, of course, but it happened eventually. So there is a physical effect of a moral misstep. Now, they were told that they would still be able to do agriculture. They would still be able to do many things to live off the ground and it would grow, etc. But it would produce thorns and thistles and all this other kind of stuff.

So it does appear that what that sin produced was a damage to not only to human nature, but to the physical constitution of the world, and we are seeing the result of it. So that, we have to ask ourselves a question, Eric, does that make sense? And of course, historically, people have disagreed. Some have said, well, it's obvious there's a flow in human nature. Others have said humans are basically good, although the track record of that view is not very impressive historically. John, let me cut you off in the middle of that sentence.

We're going to go to a break. When we come back, we want to hear the rest of your thoughts on what is clearly a deep and important subject. Folks, I'm talking to John Lennox. The book is Where is God in a coronavirus world? We'll be right to that. Hey, folks, Eric Mattaxas here. The Trump campaign has a special offer just for you.

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paid for by Donald J. Trump for President Inc. Folks, I'm talking to Dr. John Lennox of Oxford, and we are talking about his new book, Where is God in a coronavirus world? John, you were in the middle of making a rather important, profound point, and I wanted you to just continue with that since I had to cut you off there. Well, I was connecting moral evil with what we call natural evil. And it starts in Genesis and we're told that the human race and physical nature at different levels has been damaged by disobedience to God. Now, in the New Testament, Jesus has one or two comments to make that are hugely important, and I concentrate on them in my book. On one occasion, he was on the temple

area in Jerusalem, and somebody in the crowd said, Lord, by the way, this is the place where Pilots came out and massacred a number of people as they worshipped. That's moral evil. And Jesus turned around and he said to them, do you think by the way that they were worse than anybody else in Jerusalem at the time? I tell you they were not. And then, and here's the fascinating thing, he went on to connect that with another incident, which was not moral evil, but natural evil. He said the Tower of Siloam fell on 18 people and killed them. Do you think, think they were worse than anybody else. I tell you they were not. Now, analyzing that is very important because it deals with the gut reaction that many people have that look, if these people suffered

in a Taurus-Syloan thing, which is not a moral evil, if they died of COVID, then somehow they're worse than other people. And here are two incidents, a moral evil, a natural evil, where Jesus himself tells us, they, I tell you, they were not any worse than anybody else. Now, I deduce from that something extremely important. And that is, as we look at COVID or earthquakes or anything like this, and look at the victims, we cannot necessarily conclude that they are worse. And than anybody else and are suffering for their individual misdemeanors or trespasses and so on. But then, and here's the important thing, Jesus didn't stop there. He said to the whole crowd, look, except you repent, all of you, you will likewise perish.

Now, I'm frequently asked, is COVID-19, does it have a message for us? And I think the answer to that is it does, very much so. And here it is that what happens with a pandemic or an earthquake is it makes people think first of their vulnerability, second of their mortality, and it's not long before they're thinking about eternity and the God question, which is interesting and reflects itself in the fact that the online church services in the United Kingdom have gone up four or fivefold what the numbers that normally come to church physically.

So that what these things do is they're a kind of wake-up call, as C.S. Lewis would put it, to alert people that they need to realize that one out of one of us is going to die. So we need to think about those big issues. and therefore I look at people who react and say, ah, this is God's judgment on those folks. The reaction to that is very interesting. It turns nobody to God. What it does is turn people on the folks that make those suggestions and they say, who do you think you are so arrogantly

presuming to know what God is doing in this situation. But what does turn people to God is the very deep reaction, raising questions of death and eternity that these things do, and then turning to God. And that's a very different thing. And finally, we must realize, of course, and that's an additional but important thing. Illness and death, of course, can be a result of our own misdemeanors. If I get blind drunk and drive my car into the Hudson River and kill myself, there my death is a direct result of my own personal sin. And there are all kinds of examples of that. But I think that Jesus was teaching a very profound lesson at that point. It is a profound lesson. And I think that the natural thing that people do throughout all cultures is they attribute accidents and deaths and difficulties to the person's

relative sin. In other words, they say, this has. happened because of this or you are cursed because of that. Only the Christian faith steps outside and says, no, we are all guilty. And therefore, if we're all guilty, we can also be all equally loved by God. So the idea that some people are cursed and some people are blessed, it's a really pagan idea, but it creeps into the church. When people have bad theology, they don't think very deeply about this. And they tend to think moralistically the idea of karma.

It's the same thing. If you're suffering, you're suffering because you deserve it. And therefore, why should I even lift a finger to help you? Yep. Yes. The karma doctrine is a cruel doctrine. And I came across it in New Zealand quite often.

And we need to make it very clear because that kind of thinking was around in the time of the New Testament. The blind man, for example, the disciples looked at a man blind from birth and said, Lord, who did sin this man or his parents? So he should be born blind and Jesus said neither. And therefore, if we want to be Christian in this, we must listen to what Jesus himself says

because it will save us from falling on our faces in analyzing what's going on. I want to come right back to this. It's a central issue for most people. The book is, Where is God in a coronavirus world? My guest is Dr. John Lennox. We'll be right to back. The preacher told to me and he smiled. Hey there, folks.

I'm talking to Dr. John Lennox. He's in Oxford. I'm in New York City. And he has a new book out called Where Is God in a coronavirus world? And, you know, John, I always laugh because I remember when Larry King had his TV program on, any time there was a disaster, he would bring on some minister, and he would always ask the same question. I frankly always thought it was an idiotic question. He would say, how can God let this happen? Where is God, you know, with this tsunami, whatever? I thought to myself, did you,

do you know nothing of history? The Holocaust happened 10 minutes ago. You're Jewish. You're asking now, where is God because the tsunami hit? Where was God a few decades ago when millions were butchered by a Nazi monster. You know, these kinds of evil things have always been with us. And it is a sign to me of our myopia with regard to eternity. We no longer think of those things. And so when something bad happens, we suddenly act as though everything has been wonderful until just now.

But if you have a sense of history, you know that death has always been with us. As you said before, one out of one people die. And these things in a way help us to see. as you just said, the larger reality that is always with us, that we are going to die and we need to think about it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think that's what the message is. Mind you, there are two sides to it.

There's the intellectual side, the people that are asking questions. And very often they are people who aren't suffering, but are watching suffering. And that includes many of us. But of course, there are people who are actually suffering and they need comfort and care. And one of the things that has really impressed me about the New Testament, there is an incident that brings together all sides of this.

In a tiny family of three, a brother, two sisters, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and the brother got ill. And they knew Jesus, but he was miles away. So they sent him a message saying Lazarus was ill, expecting him of course to come but he didn't come and this was very problematic because they watched they suffered they got no help and the brother died and then jesus arrives and the first sister meets him and says lord if you'd been here my brother would not have died now that's fascinating in the current situation she didn't doubt his power but where was he was he in life

or was he socially isolating or what was happening? If you'd been here, you could have done it, but you weren't here. Now, that is a creed occur from many people today. If only God was near enough to do something, I'm sure he could, but he didn't. And Jesus turned round to her and said, your brother is going to rise again. Yes, Lord, I know, he rises to the resurrection of the dead. So they enter into a theological discussion about resurrection within four days of the death of the brother. And Jesus staggers her by saying something she didn't really grip. Martha, I am the resurrection in the life. The person that believes in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live?

Do you believe this? Well, that really pushed her. But she remembered her sister at that point and called her and Mary arrived. and says identical words, Lord, if you'd been here, my brother wouldn't have died. Then she started to cry. And Jesus, instead of embarking on another discussion on the resurrection, he cried too.

And it seems to me that this is a crucial difference that our temperaments react differently to these things. Now, for COVID people, and we may well be talking to people that are suffering, They've had to say goodbye to loved ones without even hugging them properly through a plastic sheet. I can't imagine what it's like to have to do that. When someone is longing for a touch or a hug or something like this. And to be able to talk about Jesus as the good shepherd and that whole comfort aspect of Christianity,

that seems to me to be just as important as the intellectual side of answering the difficult questions. Well, what interests me is that there are many people who say that they're Christians, for example, who don't really believe what the Bible says, what Jesus promises us. In other words, if you know, I don't mean hope, if you know that what the Bible says is true, that we will never die, that when we die yet shall we live, because he died on the cross and if we accept him by faith, He delights in raising us with him into eternity. If we really believe this, we don't see physical death as the most horrible thing.

It's sad because we miss those who go, but it's glorious for them if we understand where they're going, if they believe in Jesus. And I really think that because we have so little death, relatively speaking, that we have medical technology, He seemed to be able to fix everything or away from. He's forced to deal with this question. And I know in your book, where has God in a coronavirus world? You deal with this, that this is the central question of life. And God is trying to help us see that he has actually overcome death. It's not a nice idea.

It's real. But he cannot force us to believe it. And it's funny to think that Mary and Martha, they didn't get it. They were with Jesus. They knew that he could help them. If they were in trouble, he could raise the dead. But they weren't thinking about the larger question. That because of him, no matter whether their brother is raised that day or isn't,

he really will be raised into paradise. I mean, this is something I just think we don't think about it enough. Yes, I agree. And therefore, as you look back at the history of Christianity, it's not surprising that the central thing that the apostles talked about was the resurrection of Jesus, because that gives you, as you put it very well, that gives you a different perspective of death. If you believe that death has been conquered through Jesus Christ, no matter how much sadness and suffering there may be, you know that. there's another side. But that's where atheism, of course, in my mind, fails completely because it has no ultimate hope. The idea that I live on my children gives me no ultimate hope. And it's very important in a situation like this, not to moralize, but to talk openly about what

we believe to be true. And you know that for both of us, the vitally important thing is that we believe Christianity to be true, not just that it helps give us an aspirin when we're going to head in. Final break and then another segment with our friend John Lennox. Don't go away. Folks, I'm talking to Dr. John Lennox. He's at Oxford. And the new book is, Where is God? virus world. John, it seems to me that a part of the problem that that militates against our facing eternity and facing the big questions and knowing that God loves us and is with us in suffering and wants to raise us with him into eternal life, part of the problem is that we have so much technology and there's this huge temptation to think that we can solve this problem

technologically. We can get a virus. We can get a and we're always just kicking the can down the road. I mean, even if Jesus could raise Lazarus from the dead as he did, so what? Lazarus has now been dead for 2,000 years. The fact of the matter is at some point, we leave this world, that's the inescapable issue, and we need to make peace with that and understand that God has a plan for that. It's not just about helping us avoid it and avoid it and avoid it. Eventually, no matter what, it comes and we have to face it. Yes, and the interesting thing about early Christianity, which many people do not realize at all, that the central hope it offered was not simply the resurrection, but was based on the resurrection.

And when Jesus was put on trial, and when he was talking to his disciples, he said that he would return. Now, when you say that as a scientist in the 21st century, people think you've gone off. your rocker. But of course, if he rose from the dead, that demonstrates that he's the son of God. And this world cannot think that it put the son of God on a cross and it's heard the last of him. And he told his disciples privately, if I go away, I shall come again and receive you to myself so that you will be where I am. And then to his judges, and here's a crucial thing, the high priest said to Jesus, Adolf, are you the Messiah? And he said, yes, I am, and you shall see the son of man sitting on the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven. At that point, they decided to crucify him.

So I make no apology for publicly stating that I firmly believe that Christian hope has yet to be consistent. And when Jesus promises to return, demonstrates who he is by his resurrection, and then ascends to another realm. We can be absolutely certain that he will fulfill that promise one day. And then the big picture will be complete in a sense because those who have trusted Christ will be raised and will be together with him. And that's the ultimate answer to death. It's very interesting that Paul's very careful when he says, the last enemy that shall be overcome is death. Death is still an enemy.

We fear it. We don't like it. Of course we don't. But it as an institution will one day be overcome by Christ himself returning. And that's big stuff, of course. But it gives a big enough framework for all of us to live in. What deserves me about the secular worldview is it's so tiny. It's so restrictive.

It gives you a tiny world to live in and it removes all ultimate hope. Who would want to get on a bandwagon whose wheels are about to fall off? We're out of time, but that's a good place to end. The unbearable bleakness of the atheist worldview needs to be called out. People need to understand that the bleakness of it itself is so, crushing that if there's any hope that what we're saying is true, people should look into it. John, I'm sorry we're out of time, but what a joy always to speak with you. The new book is Where is God in a coronavirus world? Thank you, John, for the book and for your time.

Thank you very much for having me on. It's always what of life's great pleasure is talking to you, Eric. Goodbye. You're too kind. Thank you.