The Sean McDowell Show - True Crime and the Gospel

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Can a graphic novel really help you think more deeply about God, morality, and the story of Jesus?Today, J Warner Wallace and his son Jimmy Wallace are here to discuss their brand new graphic novel, a creative and gripping crime story that challenges readers to examine life’s biggest questions. This full-color graphic novel for adults is one of the first available that Christian comic book enthusiasts can feel great about reading and uses J Warner and Jimmy's experiences as detectives and Christian apologists to bring comic book readers want laced with questions about the purpose and value of human life.READ: Case Files Vol. I: Murder and Meaning Paperback by Jimmy Wallace & J. Warner Wallace (https://a.co/d/1mwo4qy)*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowellTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=enInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

What is the connection between murder and meaning? And why would a leading apologist, J. Warner Wallace, and his son, Jimmy Wallace, make a comic book on this? Now, I gotta tell you guys, the moment I saw this, I was intrigued because murder and meaning, I'm like, there's philosophy, there's apologetics in this. I also love comic books. No surprise, my shirt, I mean, honestly,

my phone's got Spider-Man and Venom on it. So I was intrigued, but I suspect this isn't just a project for people who like comic books, is it? Well, it isn't. And the whole idea we thought about, how do we reach, how do we bite the apple from both sides if we're trying to make a case for something that's true about our Christian worldview?

I mean, most of our books, my books have been, here's the evidence for, here's the best inference from the evidence, blah, blah, blah. You know, this is a five steps, all of that. But it's not fiction. Fiction is different. Fiction is actually kind of draws you in in a way that's slightly different.

And I just listening, watching him growing up and the impact that comics had on him, I realized there's probably another way to do this. Look, what's great about graphic novels is they're basically a movie that's storyboarded in book form. So if you can enter into a visual culture in print, because we're not making a movie, clearly,

but this really is a movie, it's just in a book. And we get a chance to kind of bite the apple from the other side. So rather than be overtly, here are the principles of Christianity. Explicitly or systematically. I think you're probably going to be halfway through this book before you even think to yourself, is this a Christian book? Like, is this where this is going? Because the idea is that we are not going to land all the planes smoothly on the end of the runway.

Not everyone's going to get baptized and saved at the end of the book. You know, we're just gonna talk about where does your worldview lead you? And if you think about the meaning of life kind of stuff and the meaning of who we are as humans, detective stories do kind of expose that. Here's why. As we talk right now,

someone in America is being murdered right now. And you're not even gonna hear about it. It's not even gonna make the local news, more than likely. It'll make a stat sheet somewhere, unless that person happens to be a celebrity. And then all of a sudden, it'll make national news. So why is it that we treat some murders as if they are just kind of, that stuff happens,

but other murders are like, what separates the value of that first murder from the second one? So at least it raises an issue to think about. And we knew we could leverage that to make a claim about the Christian worldview. That we could design a story that shows characters who are struggling with that issue.

Like what gives my life meaning? What gives this guy? Why am I, you know, if you're on a homicide team, you know this. Homicide teams are you like 5D with a sergeant. So I'm gonna get every fifth homicide in the city. So if I happen to get the celebrity murder as a detective, you know we're gonna be like, yes.

Why? Why do we think that's? Because we innately think that some murders are more attention worthy than others. Well, we have to ask that, does that resonate with the Christian worldview? Where was that coming from? Like is my value determined by how much money I make

and how well, how much I'm known? If I get somebody who's homeless, who's maybe even a drug addict, let's say, who overdoses, do we even care? Why don't we care? Why do we think that life has less value than every other life that we're gonna work and investigate as a team?

So I think there are places in a narrative like that where we could at least examine those kinds of questions, right? So we're gonna jump into the story. I have so many questions based on what you said, but a lot of people watching this are familiar with your story. Hardcore atheists, at least that's the way

hard-headed atheists you described it, 35, examine the gospel of Mark convinced through forensic analysis. This was true to become a Christian written a ton of books on this. We've written a book together, but some people watching this are like, okay, who is this guy? Now I actually resonate with that because I've been the son of a famous topologist my entire life. That's a whole nother conversation we could have.

But I have a two-part question for you. Tell me why you are a Christian apart from your dad being an apologist, what is your journey to faith? And tell us about your practice right now as a cop, detective, et cetera. Okay, yeah, that's a big question. But I was eight years old when my dad came to faith. So yeah, he has his story that he's already an adult working in law enforcement.

I have a very short memory of my life before he became a Christian, but I was old enough to remember the process of, oh hey, the first time we went to church as a family, going through the, what do I think of kids ministry and all that stuff, right? But one of my earliest memories of my dad is him and his friends, his new friends that he now knows from church and doing ministry and stuff. You know, he jumped into ministry like pretty much right away. So now all of a sudden, he knows, of course, there's not a single thing he's done in life, like 50%.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, 110% all the time. But I think part of it was that as a kid, I didn't want to go to the kids ministry. I'd never gone to church before. This was not normal to me. And he's like, Oh, well, easy solution.

I'll just be the teacher. I'll just teach the kids. It didn't happen exactly like that. Simple. But one of my earliest memories was sitting around, you know, he'd have his friend, new Christian friends over having dinner and they would debate vigorously over little questions of theology about what's the nature of free will versus God's will? What's the issue with works or grace? You know these kinds of questions and I think partly it's

because he just loves to get into it but I think part of it is he's a new Christian. Some of them may have been new Christians. I don't know where they were at and they're all trying to figure out together what is our faith. We have this faith now. What is it really teach? how does it all work and as a kid I'm like eight nine years old I would just eat that up I loved it I loved it the almost violent debate so for me my perception of Christianity was it was this thing where you really took these big claims about reality and you competed them with other claims, opposing claims to see

which one would win out. And so for me, Christianity or just maybe life in general was about trying to figure out what the truth was. And it was about trying to find opposing claims and then kind of battle it out in the world of ideas to figure out what was true. And so that was always how I approached my faith and to this day I still see things through that lens. And I loved it. And so I have a huge love of faith and especially the kind of apologetic or theological side of it for lack of better terms.

But I also had a couple other loves that I was raised with. One was cop stories I would sit around the table with my dad and his dad when we go on family vacation and they would tell these gruesome stories Probably shouldn't have done that but but that's what you do I was sitting here stories where you tell some heinous murder they had gone to and my grandfather could Like go toe-to-toe with him. Well, I did I experienced this when I was a detective Third or fourth generation Wallace. I'm the third. You're the third. Yes. We're all named James Wallace

So I would sit there as a kid though and think man I don't think any of my friends parents have these kinds of stories. These are like crazy, like things you only see in movies. And so that gave me a desire, like, hey, when I grew up, I want to have those kinds of experiences and stories. So I had a love of faith and apologetics in particular, a love of police work. And then the thing that I brought that was maybe different than,

maybe the one area in which I'm different than my dad is I love comic books. And he was very supportive of that. Every month, he would take us to the comic book store and give us a dollar. We could go to the quarter bin, you know, where they're like, beat up comic book store.

I remember this. And I could get four comics for a dollar. It was awesome. And so he always supported like my love of comics. And I never grew out of that. Like you, to this day, I love comics. Whatever little time I have to read, which sometimes is not that much,

it's usually in comics. I love comic books. So I had these three loves, and then I did end up going into law enforcement, and now I've been in law enforcement for about 13 years. Oh, wow. So I had these three loves, law enforcement, faith, apologetics, and comics,

and that we finally were able to find some way we could work together and try to put it into this book. Got it. Okay, now hold off on the book for a second. Did you have a period of doubt? Like, is there a time where you're like, my faith was real or is it just like step? Because I don't remember, people ask me like, when's that moment became a Christian? I don't remember and some people are like, how can you not remember? I'm like, it just made sense to

me and I had different moments that were significant but in some sense it's made sense to me for my life even though I had a doubting period in college What was your experience like with that? I think I'm trying to think how to put this simply. I don't think Certainly there's lots of questions that we have to answer and so I don't want to say I've never had doubts I've never had some question that I need to wrestle with but I never really I don't think that the intellectual side of my faith was ever at risk. I think especially growing up with him as a dad, all our youth group, when he was our youth group leader, everything was very Apollo Jakes based, so the idea that this could be potentially not true was not really,

yes, potentially there's some issues, but really I've looked at all the other options, or at least in my mind, I've looked at the other options they're not as good at explanation and reality so Christianity I'm very comfortable that it's true I think for me and in terms of my walk I think more where I need to be and I continue to want to work on this is I need to be submissive to God's will in my life I need to hey is my prayer life really what it should be it's not that it's not an intellectual assent is not the issue. The issue is, am I being the kind of Christian

that I should be? Is my prayer life good? Am I involved in the type of ministry that I should be in? Am I using my gifts the way that, however you wanna kind of explain that, I think for me, that's maybe the areas where at times, and I think that this really motivated some of the story points We're not getting into the book yet

But there's definitely been times in my life where I got so focused on career that probably career became the main thing in my life Versus my walk and I think that's where I've really had a struggle is I need to keep God Centered in my life. It's never that I doubted that he was real a Christian is real But am I being submissive to what God wants for me? That's a lifelong challenge. I think it's interesting too. I think that for a lot of cops who are Christians who maybe have made their career their god for a season because it does consume you.

You put on the superhero uniform every day and there's a weird kind of relationship between what you do as a cop and what you read in comic books. You become a different person. You go through a transition area, you drive to work, you're starting to become that person. You get to work, you start talking to your partners, you're starting to become that person, then you put your gear on.

By the time you get in the car, you loaded your rifle, you got your stuff, all your gear gear bags in there, you sit, you clear your computer, your MDT, and now you're getting ready to go to the first call by that time you've become that person like you're now in a different character It's just part of what you have to do and I think what happened for a lot of cops who were christians Is that after george floyd and just the way the entire nation flipped Even in terms of their attitude toward law enforcement for that short season We suffered through four years of our district attorney in Los Angeles

who was miserable to work around. And it was totally anti-police. Okay, now I'm not speaking for you, I'm speaking for me. I'm observing this because, you know, I actually get to do a lot of counseling now with guys his age through the Billy Graham Association. There's 24 couples every summer. They're all his age.

And so now when you meet a 15 year cop who's been pre COVID and post COVID, they're completely different careers. It's like they're two, and I think what it's helped people do is once they realize the job can't be everything, and it's gonna be taken from you at some point, that you better make your faith,

you better like lean in and put your identity back in Christ because you put it in this other thing for too long. And now, thank God the culture stole it back. Let him take it. Your identity has always been in Christ. And if you flip that and you're overly invested in your career, you're gonna miss something beautiful. And I think Jimmy's kind of like at that point now

where he's like, yeah, what am I giving up in order to be this other thing that really isn't me? I mean, it is a part of me, but it doesn't define me. So you are 13 years in law enforcement, obviously have a ministry heart. You've gone on maybe two or three of these apologetic mission trips with our students, hung out with my son.

Doing this tells me that you at least aspire in some sense to make an impact, maybe do apologetics on your own. Was this your idea? What was the backstory to do a graphic novel? Who came up with it? Tell me the story between the two of you when you had the idea and started to talk about this. Was it awesome or what are you thinking?

Like I'm really curious. So I think it would have been a lifelong dream to say that I had done something in comics, but I don't think I ever thought that that was a realistic goal. I was even working towards, I don't think I thought that that was in the cards for me to be involved with comics.

Oh, so partly just anything in comics. You've done comics that much. Yes, I just loved comics and I think I would have jumped at any opportunity, but I'm trying to think how many years ago, a few years ago, I went back and I got a master's degree in applied apologetics and the whole purpose

of the program was to make sure that I really understood what I was talking about in apologetics and there was an application kind of emphasis on, hey, let's do something practical with it. And I just did that more for myself. I don't think I had a clear idea what I wanted to do with a degree I just that was the first goal was to get educated enjoyed it and you want I really enjoyed it Absolutely enjoyed it But God I think I already had a plan for how this was all gonna come together because right at around the same time

I was graduating with that degree We had heard that David C Cook which is the publisher this bug had purchased the small comics publisher. It was a small independent publisher in Colorado and they had purchased it with the goal of hey, we want to get into graphic novels. And so because we had previous relationships with David C. Cook through my dad and because they had bought this comic book publisher, we're like hey, the time is now, let's try to at least reach out to them and see if we can do something with them. And God had just lined up all the stars, I guess, for this to happen.

I love it, that's awesome. And it almost didn't happen because that's just the nature of the comic book industry, I think. This is a publishing house, I publish your regular books. They've also done comics in the past though, and they have the Action Bible, which is like the best selling Bible.

It's always battling for one or two. It's in the top 100 books almost every day on Amazon, the Action Bible. So they have, they know the power of graphic storytelling. But what I think is the challenge is always gonna be, you know, how do you make that a reality? How do you keep artists are hard to find and they're hard to keep?

There it's like a very creative, fluid kind of environment. And so we felt like there was times on this process, two years in now, about two and a half years in, where we thought this isn't even gonna happen. Like I'll be like, if it happens, great, I'll be pleasantly surprised, but I wasn't sure it was going to happen. And then here it is.

And so I think that process is much more, it's much more collaborative. So I could, for example, finish a book and submit a manuscript. And if I do all the illustrations, like I did in all my books, it's done. All they have to do is stick a binder on and get it into the market.

So that kind of a book you know is going to happen when you submit it. When you submit this script, you're only halfway there. We spent a lot of time crafting the script. And once you get it there, we are artist dependent. Do you have the artist to illustrate this? Why didn't you draw it by the way? Well, I think this is a different kind of art.

This is a different, so my, you know, it's like I can play guitar, but you don't want me playing in a band right now. Okay. So it's a different kind of art. So, and I think that as an architect, most of my drawings and illustrations, if you look at my books, they're very architectural.

Okay. Okay. Right? This is action. This is expression. This isn't just a diagrammatic kind of drawings like I do. These are like action drawings. And these folks, these two guys brought this to life in a way that was shocking for us

because we have this idea of what Michael Murphy is. But then when you see him. He's the character. He's the main character of the book. Then when you see him, you're going, oh, I'm so glad that I didn't draw him. So you told me like years ago that you were thinking about writing fiction.

Starting to read like Stephen King. And it was like, you were challenged to figure it out. And I remember thinking, I'm just not motivated to figure that out. There was nothing beside you. It's like, I gotta figure out how to draw this comic. You're just like, at this stage in my life. Well, I'll tell you what.

So what happens is like, so you know, everything has stages in life. And so I'm so glad to be involved with Jimmy at this stage because you have that stage of life where you're single and then you have to get married, but you're married before kids. Then you're married with kids. There's 25 years of your devoted life,

just supporting my family. And then my kids were gone, they're empty nested, and I retired, and then I wrote my first book. So I used the first 10 years of retirement to write 10 books. But now we're in a different season. He has children. That changed everything.

I'm now OPA. I'm now the guy who's gotta be available. Like this morning, I had banners yesterday, we did a conference together right last night and I was supposed to bring banners. I had them sitting by the front door but he came over with Emma, my granddaughter, and as soon as she walks in the door like I can't remember anything. I get to the event I'm like where are the banners? If Emma's going to be involved in this day nothing else is going to get done but Emma. So what happens is you just now I'm in this season.

So I think what I look at, this is probably as close as I'm ever gonna come to writing fiction now is helping Jimmy write fiction and it's gonna be visual fiction. And I think that, but here's the point. It's like, what's interesting about this book and I didn't realize it until we got it is that it's the artists.

Artists make the difference. This becomes a work of art. And it's unlike a book. I've written books that have art in them, but I never felt like when I gave it to somebody, I'm giving you a work of art. But graphic novels are different. When I hold it, I'm going, wow.

And I give my books to people and they're like, oh, thanks. You know? But when I give this to somebody, they're like, ooh. Ooh, ooh. I hear these noises people make. And I'm like, really? It's interesting. And we know people. We know people who are artists who do devotionals.

Ruth does devotionals, right? And her stuff is a work of art. It is. And you can't just talk about it like an idea, like you talk about other books. You have to hold it. You have to see it. I always think, hey, when I get one of Ruth's books

and I hold it, I'm like, I'm gonna buy two more. Cause I can think of people I wanna give this art to. That's kind of, now this gets us now into a category of culture of people who maybe wouldn't read a book that we would write, but would experience art. They wanna be involved, they don't want to get in it, and they want to possess it. You know, I noticed this about comic book people, and tell me if I'm

wrong, Jimmy. Like, it's the possessing of it that meant, why do we collect them? We give away our books after we read them, but we collect them. A lot of people collect them, but you're right, as a whole you're a lot less likely to do that. So it means something, the experience of it tangibly. So this is not just a book, it's a collectible. That's weird, right? That is true. Why is it we think of this kind of expression as a collectible?

Well, I think it's because it involves artists. If it was just the script, I don't think people would feel that way about it. I think it's how the artists brought the script to life. It's obvious holding this, because I am a comic guy, and just the way you described it brought me back to like 80s and 90s.

I'd have my comics in my room, so my friends would just start going through, I'm like, ah! Yeah, exactly. Be careful, you're downgrading the value of this you know what you're doing I don't look at my books that way I want to back most of them a lot I give away right but you write a comic book is different like that. Well you know the book you take notes in it right you circle things you don't never do

that I would I've got a bunch of. I have never broken the spine on them. Like I don't even want to damage the spine. I wouldn't do that with it. So let me ask you this question. When I was movies in the 80s and the 90s, Christian movies, were a lot like in my experience, I'm not throwing anybody under the bus, comics in the 80s and 90s that were Christian comics.

They were very preachy. The quality was less, and it's not the kind that I would give to somebody who wasn't a Christian, or even to my kids. It was like Christian music then, right? My dad gave me everything and I'm like, okay, there's two bands I can listen to, maybe. Like, how do you avoid the cheesiness, so to speak?

So two parts, either it just being cheesy or being too preachy. But how do you avoid the cheesiness, so to speak? So two parts, either it just being cheesy or being too preachy. I'll let you answer that. I mean, that was- Yeah, give your thoughts and then weigh in. That was something like we talked about right in the beginning. We really did not wanna be like that.

And I love to, like if I find it, if I'm in a comic store and I find old Christian comics, I always buy them, but they are nine times out of 10, super cheesy. And it's almost like that you're buying for the cheese at some point but I am a Christian it's a little easier you know it's definitely not something I would be if if I'm a friend and they like comics I'm not going to be encouraging them to read the Archie Christian comics even though I think that they're uh have

their own little charm. So when we did this we did want to say hey can we create something When we did this, we did want to say, hey, can we create something that is both compelling to someone who is either not a Christian or honestly, actually as a Christian, I think I wanted something that would be, I would actually enjoy, not for the cheesiness, not for because it's Christian, just something I would enjoy that would just encourage me in my life. Because most of the comics I read, I love to read crime comics, but they're not something I can recommend to my Christian friends. They have all kinds of scandalous things in there

that as a Christian, you've got to either hold your nose to, or you just gotta kinda, this is the nature of the beast, we're just moving on. I wanted to create something that at least as a reader, I would go, oh, hey, I can give my whole heart to this. But we didn't also want to kind of wimp out and go, now it's something that you could read and you wouldn't even fully realize it was Christian.

We didn't want to not at the end, we didn't want to pull our punches. We were too far. Yeah, where now we're not saying anything about God. We have something that's nice and family friendly, but it's not Christian. I wanted something that we could, we both wanted this, that we would create something

that was, was Christian Christian but somehow was not that cheesy thing that we've experienced or we'd seen other people fall into. So that was our goal. Whether we hit that or not, I'll let you tell us if we hit that. But I think the goal here, at least with this book, is most of the way through the story there's no indication that this is a Christian story. What we wanted to do is create a bunch of characters that start to, for their own reasons, ask questions that would lead you to think about God. And this, the question here is meaning. We've tried to create a group of characters that all are questioning

their own meaning or identity for a different reason. And I hope that as you're reading it, you're feeling that through the story. And then we will have, at some point in the story,ered the Christian answer for where you really should find your identity and meaning But I hope that by that point you've already felt it. You've already felt the question Where am I getting my identity? Where am I getting my meaning? I hope it's not too on the nose You're not going to open the first page and there's a bible verse or the main character is not a christian Okay, so you know, we're not let me let me the time. Is this discipleship? Because your books are all discipleship, not primarily evangelistic.

Right. Evidence that demands verdict, people don't know this, but it's actually discipleship. Right. More than a carpenter, he's evangelism. Yeah. If you try to do both, you can't. Yeah, I know. Which one is this? Well, I don't think it is either. And I think, you know, our friend Beckett Cook read the whole thing and he's, you know, is kind of situated in Hollywood and read a lot of scripts and done some set work, set design there. And he was like, why did you end it this way? Like, he wanted a happier ending. Because we're kind of used to happy endings. Well, we knew we did not want the planes to land smoothly. We don't want to have baptisms and salivations at the end of the story.

We want something real. And most of the time when you're even a Christian on the job, you're going to be treated the way the one Christian who is a character in this book is treated, which is not good. You're minimized usually. That's what happens in law enforcement. So we left him in that position. We didn't make him a hero. We just made him a voice, a voice of many voices.

And you're gonna have to kind of decide which of these is true. Here's what I think happens. I think a lot of us, when we produce Christian art of this nature, whether it's a movie, and I've been in Christian movies, or whether it's a graphic novel, we are overly ambitious. Perhaps because we're not sure

if we're gonna get another shot. Like, you know, we have this big budget thing we're doing, and this is a big budget thing. I'm just gonna tell you, it's not cheap to do a graphic novel. And you think to yourself, well, if we're only gonna get one of these, we gotta swing hard because we only get one chance

to do this. No, we didn't. We wrote this as if we're gonna do 20. Are we gonna do 20? No. But if you're less ambitious, then you know I don't have to go quite as far with each one. And that's more the nature of life. Like I've been talking about Jesus to my dad for years.

Okay, that plane is not landing yet. I wish it was. I don't know in the end, if it will. I don't know where he's gonna end up. And I think that's the way life is for most people who are talking to their family members about Jesus, especially if they're cops. So this is gonna be, also we know that this is, we pushed the limit in terms of what we could do. We're not gonna use profanity in the book, but this is the nature of law enforcement

and what you're gonna have to look at if you're working mirrors. So this is probably, Lisa Childers, her son read it and she wrote back and said, probably 12, 13. He thought if you're 12 or 13, you can read this. Well, that's because the glowing rectangle has already kind of introduced you to all. If you're watching anything streaming,

then you were already seeing worse than this. If you're watching just network kind of legacy TV channels at nine o'clock, you're seeing worse than this. But we also realized that if Christianity is true, it has to make sense in a very messy world that cops see every day. It has to make sense there. And that's what we tried to do here.

Does Christianity still make sense in this messiness? But we're not gonna take the messiness out. It's, doing this job sucks, and it's gonna have to stay that way. Because that's just the nature of the job. So if I tried to write this, anybody who's actually a detective, page one would know

that I'm a fraud. And I don't know what I'm talking about. A buddy of mine made a Christian film, great Christian movie, and it was about a basketball player. And at the end, he's like, this guy, you know, he got a scholarship to D1 school and he's like, he's got game. I'm like, he's not a D1 player. And I could see that in half a second.

But most people watching it don't really care. They're like, oh fine, he's a basketball player any more than I would a hockey player. Right, right. What is it about being a cop in your experience, both you and Wayne in this, that gives you a certain kind of insight to write this, probably nobody else could

without doing just massive amounts of research. I definitely think that we were fortunate that we did not have to do research. I don't know, maybe if you did enough research you could do something better than us. This is all from just experience that two of you have, which is research, but okay. Yeah, I think what we were able to do is just look around us. I think I'm very fortunate that I got to hear his stories, I got to hear my grandfather's stories, and I experienced my own career. Hang on. You heard his stories, but you didn't check them out.

You didn't double check. Well, I'm kidding. But most of those stories ended up on Dateline. Most of the things I would talk about is the stuff that ended up on Dateline. So what I think I've realized is that there's a lot of similar types of police officers. People that worked in my grandfather's generation who are similar. They're different human beings, but similar to people my dad worked with.

His stories are very similar to the stories that I've experienced, even though we're working with totally different people in different time periods. There's typical types of police officers. What we wanted to do was create a group of characters who, although they're not real, per se, this is not a true story, we just changed the names. I hope that if you are in law enforcement or you have somebody, a friend or a family member in law enforcement, you look at one of these characters and go, yeah, that's so-and-so, that feels real. Oh, I gotcha. Okay. And then when they go to the crime scenes, one of the things that I really did not want to do is have them,

I wanted them to actually take the steps that they would have normally taken if they were actually a police officer. So we created a plot that we just threw these characters in and said, what, if these characters were there, what would they have really done? And I think what's great is we've had so many years between us of law enforcement experience. It's, it comes natural. So I hope it feels very real, even though it's a fictional story. So you know what the part of the problem is too, is that the job does things to you. So it's like, even where I was trying to figure a way to analogize this, do you remember when,

not when you were a kid, cause I'm older than you, but when I was a kid, they used to have these rock tumblers that would make smooth rocks, right? I know what that means. Okay, good, good, good. You would put some kind of solution in this thing that would tumble these, anything you put in comes out as a shiny, like why would you care if you

Why would you even want a shiny smooth rock? But these rock tumblers would basically turn anything you could put in broken glass you could put in granite You can put in iron or whatever you put in whatever the shape is they all kind of come out The way you would expect given the process they go through well sadly We all come into this job with all of our unique features, but the job suddenly kind of starts to grind those away. And you end up in one of like five or six types at the back side of it, even though there might have been 100 types coming into the job. It's the pressures and the experience of the job that just evokes certain responses.

And those responses are limited. And so now you have a young department will be very, very diverse and very, very, you know, but the guys were in their fifties, they're all the same guys basically. And they're in one and they fall into these types. And so we have characters here, one character, the main characters in his fifties. He's, you know, yeah.

So we, is it hard to put the words in his mouth? No, we know that guy. We've worked with that guy. We became that, I became that guy. So we kind of know what put the words in his mouth? No, we know that guy We've worked with that and we became that I became that guy So so we kind of know what that guy is gonna say and if you got a guy who's 24 Who's new on the job or like 29 and newly assigned to detectives? I know what that guy sounds like too because I was that guy I think to we because we work around law enforcement we can see these common

mistakes or weaknesses that police officers have. And one thing that really stands out to me is the amount of identity people put in their work. And it can be great because a person who identifies, I am a cop, they're probably gonna come to work and work really hard. They're gonna be willing to stay over and work overtime

because this is who they are, you know? So that can be very practical for their work life, but it can be really detrimental to everything else in their life. I know so many great detectives who did amazing things in their career, but their family life fell apart, they got divorced, they weren't there for their kids.

Their life is in shambles, but they're a great cop because that's who they are. Well, that's a major weakness I see in the people around me. And it's a weakness that, it's a mistake that I wanna make sure that I don't make. And I think I've seen myself stray into that, trying to take too much identity.

So we've created the main character in this story is this guy who's a great cop. This is his identity, but he is now eligible. It's his day, he's now eligible to retire. So although he's still working, he knows the end is coming, but this is who he is. And so he has to grapple with this question of, without this, what am I, who am I, what can I find value in, where could

I find true identity in because once he retires he's not going to be anything anymore. And so I think that that really feels real to me because I see everyone around me struggling with this. People my age who are thinking oh I can still find identity in my work because I've got such a long career I could really become a great cop one day. And I see these people at the end of their career going, what do I do if I retire? A lot of cops die young or they go back into law enforcement

after a couple of years because they can't handle not being a cop anymore. And this is a real struggle. So I hope that the struggle of the characters in this feel real in that way. But that transcends being a detective, right? It has unique nuances, but that's true for teachers. That's true for everybody whose identity can be in their way. But that transcends being a detective, right? It has unique nuances, but that's true for teachers. That's true for everybody whose identity can be in their work. That'd be true in Christian ministry, like for all of us. Absolutely. Different fashions. So you know I teach the class at Talbot on the problem of evil. One of the things that we talk about is so often there's like a life experience, something that happens

that just kicks people thinking about God differently. Is that kind of lurking behind this? Cause the theme is like murder and meaning. So clearly the problem of evil and suffering is all through this. Is there some kind of experience that kicks this off and makes people think about evil in a way that maybe they were just keeping themselves busy and distracted before?

Well, in any series like this is gonna have to deal with the issue of evil in every single episode because you're dealing with murders. Okay, so that's true. But again, that's where the ambition thing comes in. So if I was good, we didn't focus on that because we think that's a future project. So we wanna be really focused on value

and meaning in humans value. For example, this is a serial killer who's selecting significantly more valuable citizens to murder according to the culture. That's interesting. So the first one, maybe you would just, no one wants to get assigned that case, but he's targeting more and more people

who are better and better known. And there's doing it week. So now we got to figure out how do we stop this guy because the next one who's it gonna be? Who's more important than that? Who's gonna be next time? Who's gonna be next time? And now suddenly they're interested over here. But why weren't you interested over here? Because you thought this guy had more value than this guy. So we want to examine some of that too as the characters are also, and we do have a voice. The only other old guy in the series is a minor character who will be able to speak a Christian worldview

into the story. But, and so his response as an old guy is different than the response of Mike Murphy, because he's just got a different worldview that helps him to navigate like, who am I? And so I think we have, and you're right, that's a story by the way, that's everyone's story. But I think the reason why true crime is so popular is because it magnifies everything. It creates a superhero story out of just regular things that we experience. You've got true evil, whatever evil you might experience in your life. When you see an investigative show where someone's

a horrific murderer, now you're seeing evil at its highest level. Then when you got to hear a superhero, in terms of human form, the detectives who are on the prowl for this guy become the opposite side of the extreme. But it's every, that's all of us in all of our lives. It's just that true crime stories

just put those things on steroids so you can see it better, right? And I think that's part of what we're trying to do here. But I think you're right. All those things these guys are struggling with that's in every single industry because it's in the human heart. It's amazing how much in comic books has come up. As you're telling us, I can envision a scene of a comic book I have where Venom is fighting Wolverine. And they're literally talking about suffering and pain in the world. You think fighting injustice is going to make you feel better.

There can't be a God. I'm reading this going, oh my goodness. The writer, I think of that one was an atheist and he had a certain take on it. So you can't get away from these big questions in a comic. Now you mentioned earlier that you had a 12 year old or 13 year old read this, Elise's son. So you have a 12 year old or 13 year old read this, Elise's son. So you have a kid's perspective. You had Beckett Cook kind of a Hollywood perspective.

Were you like any of the psychologists or other cops who read this or non-Christians, like who else weighed into this? Or you're like, since I'm a former Christian and I'm a cop, we got that piece. Like who else weighed into this? I don't think anybody, so this is what's interesting about this, right?

It's like any book you have, you have somebody in your head that you're thinking, I know Stephen King writes about this in the book on writing, he always talks about his wife was also trained as a writer, that he's writing to her without even like saying it. Like she's the first audience that he has. For me, that's always been my wife's mom, Suzy,

has always been my, like, what was Suzy think of this? For all your books, mine's the kid ones. Yes, and even I just think that she's got a person, she'll see things and she'll say, don't say that. Like she's protective, she's got a mama bear attitude. So she'll rein us in a little bit. And so she always, everything we do, she kind of gives her a stamp of approval.

I let her be the first reader, the last reader basically, before we send it to the publisher. So that I kind of at least have that sense that I want to be a good steward of what God's given me. And I know that she's more careful about what the impact might be on young people. And she'll tell us that's a little bit gruesome, but okay, I can live with it.

You know, she'll- She has good sense. Yeah, she has a better sense of that for us. Because what happens is we start to get desensitized to it. So we like, this doesn't bother me. We got a character who's got a, suffers an injury. And to me, that was like the least gruesome thing about the story.

But interestingly, that's been a couple of people have told us, yeah, that's the only thing that kind of keeps me from wanting to give it to a 10 year old. And I'm thinking, oh, okay, that makes sense. I wish I had known. Yeah. But again, we're trying to reach a broader spectrum here and these are real issues.

So I think that, I'm very happy with the idea that junior hires up are the ones who would probably consume this. I think if you're an adult, I'm sure I wanna reach you. And I think this kind of, we were at this conference last night, did you notice? It's a conference that was dominated by YouTubers as the speakers.

Okay, well, did you see how young the audience was? I know. Super, I mean, I literally was the oldest person that- I felt old, I'm like, at least I'm on stage with Jim here. I know, I know. I feel like a young guy. I felt like, hey, I'm like the oldest person in the room by 15, 20 years, and I've gotten 15 years older than you.

So I'm like, okay. I think 17, but anyways. Okay, I appreciate that. But the point is, you know, I realized like, okay. I think 17, but anyways. Okay, thanks, appreciate that. But the point is, I realized that, hey, this is the future of communication in a Christian context, is that I'm far more likely to reach a group now, a younger audience, with a visual presentation

than I am with a written presentation. You know this, if you're somebody who writes books and you go to a church service, the eight o'clock crowd is interested in your books because they all have white hair. The nine and 30 family crowd is interested in videos. So they wanna see what your video packages are. Well, why is that?

It's because we just have changed the way we're communicating. So that's why I knew we had to bite the apple from both sides, right? Like you can only deep dive ideas. That's why this, my books can be very ambitious and I hope they are, but something like this has to be a little more modest because otherwise it's going to feel like that story is just an excuse to preach something.

And that's not what this is. I think for myself, I'm a Christian who just thirsts for Christian media. There's just not a lot of media in all genres, comics, movies, music, whatever. There's just, in the grand scheme of things, there's just not a lot of Christian stuff out there. And I'm somebody who I want to live in the Christian world. I would love for everything that I read,

everything I watch, everything I listen to to be Christian. And it's very difficult to make that happen. I'm gonna listen to a lot of songs on repeat if I stick to just the good Christian music because there's just not a ton out there. So when we were creating this, I wanted to just add something to that. Something that I am thirsting for for myself. So I might be being a little selfish or self-centered and thinking that, but for me, I love apologetics. I love reading nonfiction, but when I'm reading nonfiction, I'm thinking about something. But when I'm reading fiction, I'm in it. I love reading nonfiction, but when I'm reading nonfiction, I'm thinking about something

But when I'm reading fiction, I'm in it. I'm in that world I'm living there and I feel it in a different way So even though we can say probably a lot less in terms of like, you know, the a apologic book of the same length Crowd probably say a lot more about value and meaning make it maybe a more fine philosophical argument But I feel it different when I read it in fiction. So that's something that I'm always looking for. I'm always looking for, is there a good Christian show that might exist or a movie?

Please, God, be something good, because I'm so hungry for that. And so I think all I wanted to do is just try my best to add something to that conversation. And I hope that that hits people where they're at. That would be interesting, not that you have the money or time to do this, is have someone read this book and then read one of your other books

and then come back a month or six months later and say, write down everything you remember. I know. I virtually guarantee they'd remember that's right. That's right, because you see it. Tim Muehlhoff did a book with J. with JP Morland and I think it's called God conversations and Tim's communication professor at Biola and he took like philosophical ideas and came up with stories and illustrations and in the intro of that book he's like we

remember 10% I can't write exact details but it's like you remember 10% maybe within a day of what you heard. The 10% you remember is all of it. Are stories. That's right. Are stories. So Jesus asked questions and he told stories. So any other just reflections on like

the power of story itself. I mean, Jesus wants to know what does it mean? How many times should I forgive a brother? Matthew 18, Jesus tells a story. Do I love my neighbor? Who's my neighbor? He tells a story. Why are stories so powerful?

I think that's kind of interesting, even the way that scripture is written. Cause if you think about like, if you're a new Christian, it would be more, this might be scandalous to say, it's more succinct and maybe clear to just read like the Nicene Creed. It's all just almost bullet points, right? This is everything we believe. But a new

Christian is gonna get so much more and remember so much more by reading the Gospel of John. But reading the Gospel of John is maybe not as clear or succinct or laid out in the same way, but it's probably more memorable. It's gonna feel different. And I think God understands there's something about us that this keeping it just in an intellectual lane is not, we don't, it's not everything. It's not to say that we shouldn't have the Nicene Creed, but I think there's a reason why scripture itself is written in this way. It is a narrative. It's like three quarters narrative. You know, if you are gonna go to church, we're telling somebody yesterday, if you go to church

and you listen to someone's sermon and you go, that was really good, what you're probably commenting on are his illustrations, not his exegesis. That's a fact. When he steps away and illustrates it with some personal story and you go, oh, light bulb, okay, and then you come back and go, that was good. What you're probably saying that was good about is his storytelling. And he always surprised me. I used to get kind of upset about this when I first heard it that how much of his moral formation did not come from the biblical teaching or the principles of biblical morality that maybe I was trying

to help him wrestle with. It came from superheroes. Well, I wouldn't say it was in opposition. It was not, it did not come from the opposition. It did not come from the Bible. It did not come from going to church. Okay so I don't want to overstate it but I do think like when I think about oh what are the things that really impacted me as a kid? One of the biggest things is Spider-Man. I grew up with a collection from my uncle that had a bunch of old Stan Lee Spider-Mans and the big thing with Stan Lee was he always had Spider-Man. He everything he was

going around with in his life, but finally the girl would go on a date with him on Friday and he'd be on his way. He's almost there. It's finally going to happen and Dr. Octopus attacks. And he's got to make the decision. Do I go to the date that's going to benefit me personally or do I do the right thing and mess up my life, but I did the right thing?

And he really taught me. And you even see storylines where Spider-Man decides, oh, I'm gonna quit this. I'm not even gonna be a superhero anymore because it just doesn't benefit me, but he can't. He knows the right thing to do is to go back, right? As a kid, reading that, it really taught me, hey, one of the moral values is self-sacrifice.

And I still take that to with me today. There is something good about being sacrificial. And yes, I learned that from the Bible, from my parents, from church, but really one of the ones that I felt the most was reading superheroes. And so I think I understand the power of fiction. Now I'm not putting myself on the same level as Stanley here, but we want to try our best to do something like that. Tell a fictional story that might hit you the same way. So here's, sometimes we teach doctrine first and then illustrated with a story. Yeah.

I actually think it's more powerful to tell a story and then pull why it resonates with people out of that story. So like the sacrifice of Iron Man willingly laying down his life. Like that's a gospel type of sacrifice that's there. When you see that and resonate with it and then pull the truth out of it, it feels less preachy and it just feels like, oh my goodness I get it. Christianity makes sense of that. Is that what you're doing here? Are you kind of telling a story and trying to pull out

from the drama of murder and then people reflect on it? I think people will be at least halfway through this and they're gonna go, oh, I wonder if this is a Christian story. So we want them to get into the story. It has to be good on its own. If the pages don't turn because you wanna catch this killer, then I get it.

We're not preaching anything for quite a bit. It's subtle. And it shows up, and even, I might not give gonna, we're not preaching anything for quite a bit. It's subtle. And it shows up in even, I'm not even gonna give away, but there's lots of little ways that we talk about value in the book that I think are hilarious. But we're just kind of throwing those value things out. Is this even valuable? Was that valuable?

We're just throwing these things out. At the end, we're gonna tie a knot around all of it, just in a little way. I mean, we had one reviewer who's a young man who's in Trinidad who reviewed, he's a comic book guy and he's got a comic book channel and he reviewed it. He loved it, but he said, you know, I didn't know, it wasn't sure what to make of it until the very end.

And that little, he mentions a few pages, he says, those pages for me put the bow on it. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to say, hey, if you get to this point, we're gonna, let me answer this question for you. If you got the question by now, let me give you a possible answer. But I'm not gonna overwhelm you with the possible answer.

I'm gonna respect your worldview. And in the end, the main character is kind of committed to his prior commitments. And he's not gonna move from his prior commitments any more than my dad right now is willing to move from his prior commitments. The way he thinks about now is willing to move from his prior commitments. The way he thinks about things. By the way, think about every jury you ever pick.

What you're trying to determine are what are your prior commitments? Because if there's, both sides do this, prosecution and defense. If your prior commitments won't prevent you from ever hearing anything I say, I don't want you on the jury. And both sides are doing this. We're trying to like, what are your prior commitments? And this is what happens in life. The half the characters you're gonna meet in life,

they're hearing you, but they're already committed to something else. Okay, so what would you say to this criticism? When I look at this, there's no cross, there's no Jesus, there's no Bible verses. There's nothing on the back that tells me, except maybe Crux Studios, because I know it comes from crucifixion, but that's probably not gonna jump out to anybody who's like look you've gotta

You gotta give them the gospel gotta be clear. So you might read halfway through not to the end Well, okay, so I'll tell you time so I'll tell you we would do the conference last night We have about 25 minutes to do our talks very short I don't do any apologetics talks probably the last three years where I don't preach the gospel and offer an invitation at the end of it. I just I think I started with me when I started working with Billy Graham Association I realized hey you know what there's no power in my case. There's no power in this book. The power is in the gospel. All the book does is say hey maybe you should hear the gospel. And if the book does that for my dad I just want my dad

someone somehow I want God's spirit to say, you know what? I wanna hear the gospel. Because he doesn't wanna hear it right now. And so I can tell you, it's wah, wah, wah, wah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's not hearing it. He's got all his prior commitments that are standing between him and the gospel.

So I think you're right. I wanna preach the gospel. Here's what we decided to do. Okay, so look, in the end of this, there's no gospel in this, but there's Christian truth in it. So then at the very last page, we have a QR code, and that'll take you to a digital presentation

of the resurrection and the gospel. Oh, that's awesome. Is that some of the other work you've done with the graphic? Yeah, so basically what it says is, you know, the truth is out there. Will you follow the evidence? Well, here it is. So you're inviting people.

So we're just inviting people to take a look at it, whether they will or not. I don't know But in the end I always felt like the biggest Complaint about Christian media and movies and entertainment is that it stinks I'm so tired of hearing that and I've been in movies where people was yeah Yeah, you know, that's that B role, B level movies. I don't even think some of these things are B level. I just think we now, we have just gotten an attitude

about Christian art where we don't even give it a second glance. So we just knew we had to do something. We wanted to do something. Okay, it's part of a palette. It's part of a larger, this is my 10th book. Okay, the other nine books are overtly Christian. Yeah.

Okay, so this is the one now, we're biting the apple from the other side. But you have to do both. It's not an either or. There's no right or wrong way. It's a collective effort. And I used to think, well, okay, somebody else will be doing this kind of stuff.

I'm just gonna be over here. But it turns out, because Jimmy, because he's the first bill on this because he's the first author on it. I'm just going to be over here. But it turns out because Jimmy, because I'm, he's the first Bill on this because he's the first author on it. I'm just here to kind of help him. Like here's my old man instinct says, you know, that's about all you can do when you're an old man

is give him the old man view. But, but be honest, I think that this is my, but this is the only fiction I will probably ever write is this stuff with him. And again, we're just collectively fighting the apple. So it's a fair say, this is like putting a stone in someone's shoe like Greg Kockel says. It's kind of in that vein, but doing it not conversationally, dialogue, tactically, through a story, that's what you're doing.

I think that there's like so many different barriers that someone may have to the gospel, and I don't think that the barrier is always that they haven't heard it. I think there's a lot of people out there who've heard the basic gospel story, but it doesn't hit them because they don't see the beauty in it. And for a variety of reasons, they don't see that there's truth in it, so therefore it's not beautiful. They don't see that they're a sinner, so therefore it's not helpful to them. You know, there's these various reasons why we might even hear the gospel, but still it does not resonate with us

because of some other barrier. What we want, we hope that the Holy Spirit would use a book like this to say this one barrier which would be, hey you can find identity in your own life, you can choose your own identity in your work or in your skills or what your wife thinks about you or whatever and that's satisfying. We hope we're gonna take that away and say that's not a satisfying answer for your identity. There's something better, there's something more beautiful out there, which is to find identity in God and what He's created you for. We hope that God would use that to take another barrier so the next time they hear the gospel, oh it is beautiful. There is

something beautiful about this. So I think that's, it might be a modest hope, but that's kind of what we're thinking. Remember what jurors, why jurors don't render the verdict you think they're gonna render is because they never were able to move beyond their prior commitment. And we don't get a chance in doing a case to remove the commitment. We have to ask that question first.

If you have the prior commitment, we're just gonna exclude you. Because we know we cannot move you during the course of this trial. We need you to be relatively neutral to what we're about to show you. And if you're committed against it or just completely committed for it, we can't use you.

Your prior commitments are that now this, these kinds of books are trying to soften your prior commitments. It's a little bit different approach. That makes sense. How on earth do you market this? Like how do you get it outside to the actual people you want to read it?

Are you trying to figure that out? Or like what's the- Well, here's what I would say. This is a collectible. It's a work of art. Not because of us, because of the way it was drawn, the way it was published. I mean, the book, I've never seen,

I've never been involved in any project that's this beautiful. It's, the moment I got it, like I did not expect it to be as sharp as it is. I kind of, because my prior commitments. You have prior commitments. I was like pleasantly surprised. They obviously put a serious budget in this. They put a ton of time. So I think what has to happen for this book is that once you hold it, you're going to want two more.

But some people may not even hold it, never get to their hands. But it's not the kind of book like other books. I can give you a sample online and you'll think, oh yeah, the ideas are such that I want to hear more about those ideas. This is an experience. And the only way to experience it, unfortunately, is to hold it the same way. You didn't want some messing up your comics. This is now a work of art.

You're not going to want your friends going, you know what I mean, hold this down. No, don't touch that way. This is something different. So I don't know really how to, but you know what? I'm also, I'm not ambitious about that. I mean, what I mean is, you know, I'm 63 and I've got two grandkids that I can't wait to get back to right now. So I'm just not that kind of ambitious person when my goal is book sales we did something that I think is beautiful and if people enjoy

it and then that's great but I don't it's not like you know of all of our your identities yes exactly I would hope if that's the thing that would happen. Well, but you know what, Sean? Of all the people we've worked with in the last 10 years, I was the only one you knew who came in retired. And it's a different attitude when you're retired. It's like, yeah, I don't have to do this, but now I get to do it. And every time I'll say to Susie, his mom, I'll say, oh, I have to go next week to this conference.

She'll say, you have to go? No, you get to go. That's a great response. And so I'm trying to figure this, you know, yeah, you to go? No, you get to go. That's a great response. And so I'm trying to figure this, you know, yeah, you're right, because I never had to go. So the issue is, this is what kind of same thing, this is a work of, I feel that I'm more in love with this project because I got to do it with my son

and it came out like this. And we didn't make it this way. The artists made it this way. So by the way, I haven't really hat tipped them enough, but the people who did the art are the stars of the show. Steve Crespo, Daria Farmer, Sonny, we were so lucky to have them on this project. When we first started talking about this,

we weren't sure who we'd get to work with. And I think God really blessed us with them. So yeah, we definitely want to give them a shout out. And they should be on the cover. And we argued for them to be on the cover. I think every comic book has the artist on the cover. And they both said, no, we don't want to be on the cover and we argue for them to be on the cover. I think every comic book has the artist on the cover. Yeah. And they both said, no, we don't want to be on the cover.

Oh, so they're on the inside of the of the fun. Yeah, that's where I have so many questions for you guys. We keep going, but I want to I've written actually. I haven't done the math maybe eight or ten books with my dad. And I love it. It's fun, but there's just something special about that process with him. And I even look at it a little differently now that he's done, and I won't be able to write any more books with him. I'll probably update some stuff we've done in the past, but just given where he's at, I won't be able to have that experience with him.

What did it mean to write this book with you, Dave? I was excruciating. No, it was honestly honestly it was very sentimental. I think everything about this was I don't even know if I can put into words what it meant. I think he's been a huge role model to me. I want to think that I'm hopefully emulating him well but honestly I mean even getting to see him last night speak it's been a little bit since I got to see him speak and I'm just very lucky to be his son. I wanna, I've seen the impact he's had on people's lives. I wanna have an impact as well.

I hope this does it maybe in a different way than he's done in the past, but I'm just lucky. It was very sentimental. Do you wanna keep writing and doing and speaking? Is that something in your future? Or like, I'm not trying to put, people used to ask me that stuff. I'm not putting pressure on you, I'm just curious.

I wanna serve God well, whatever that means, I want to serve God well. Okay. Yeah. You know, I think part of it's, if you think about it, when we were in the job, the job sucks everything out of you. You know, you're working in homicide,

people kill people on holidays, okay, like you're never home. And every time you have a murder, you're gone for three days, you're sleeping at the jail, like being done how many times, you're bringing sets of clothes to work because you know you're not gonna get back home again for a while. And just, there was no opportunity. I mean, I was his youth pastor.

I felt like I was, I felt bad that I was stealing time from our families. That's why I was glad I would not, I would never have been somebody else's youth pastor. I would have been his youth pastor because it was like family for us. We had to stay together. Because during that season, you're working as a cop.

There's no margin. So for Jimmy to be able to do this, this early in his career, he's halfway through. Well, that's, I don't know that, I wasn't doing, I was a Christian one year at his age, and I was not yet serving. I was probably sitting in his children's ministry because he would not go with, I didn't go with him,

but I wasn't yet leading it because I didn't know how to lead. I didn't know anything about scripture yet. So it took a little while for me to get someone to say, okay, all you have to be is one week ahead of the eight year olds, can you do that? Can you get one week ahead of the eight year olds? I said, I could probably do that.

And that's when this whole thing started for us. But I think once he's done, cause we get to leave early because we die early. Most people, the cops die in their fifties in California. And that's why we retire at 50. So I've been lucky so far. I've beat the odds by probably five years. My dad's beat the odds by 30.

Yes he has. So he can't complain. So the point is, there's a season for him still. A season where he can really be devoted to this. Last question. Sometimes when I do projects or books or even interviews, I'm trying to encourage other people to do the same kind of thing.

Is that a piece of this? Like I want to encourage Christians and apologists to do this kind of thing, or is that just something that came afterwards and that's not really a key motivation to you? Like do you think other apologists to do this kind of thing? Or is that just something that came afterwards and that's not really a key motivation to you? Like do you think other apologists should do this? Well, I think that everyone, you have to stay in your lane. We always talk about this.

What is your ex, right? What is the ex that defines you, that's so definitive of who you are that if I just mentioned the ex, they'll go, oh, that's Jim Wallace. I knew that was gonna be detective work. I knew it was gonna be this cold case stuff. That's not really who I am, no.

But you know, if you said, oh, he's got a grand, he's a grandfather with two grandchildren, three grandchildren now, that's a thousand billion people out there, right? So, you figure out what is uniquely you that God has given you, the experience he's given you, and then just run in that lane, stay in that lane, stay in that lane,

because this is the only thing I can write about. If I wrote about any other kind of drama, why would you care? Why would anybody care what I think about anything if it's not from this very limited perspective of here's what my life as a detective talking to thousands of witnesses has told me to expect,

this is how I evaluate, this is how I put inferences together, this is what deception indicators look like. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's just because that's the only thing I can offer. What else could I offer? You know, honestly, Jim, because I love you if you wrote a graphic novel on basketball, I still wouldn't read it.

Exactly. But this one is, I mean, the quality is there. The story is fascinating. I love it. I can't wait to go through it. Wish I had a chance before this there, the story is fascinating. I love it. I can't wait to go through it. Wish I had a chance before this, but I've been skimming through. I want you to hear, well, and I just got it to you because this is brand new.

It doesn't come out to anybody for another week. So this is, you know, it's April 1st. By the time we show this. Yes, you just dated it. Is this the first time you've done an interview with you? I've had more than that. Edit this out. What is happening?

You are the rookie in your thing. Yeah, yeah, no, cut it out. The book's available right now, but how long will it be available before they got to do another printing? I just don't know. So that's why I say this is a very weird genre. It's not like any other book I've done because it's a collectible. So how many collectibles will they make?

I don't know. I guess there's a lot of things I want to know about how this plays out. But I've written, like I said, I don't know, eight or ten books with my dad. And his name always goes first. And I think it should. You got your name first on the first book. I felt that this was wrong. I'm just saying, that's, you know, I would have put your name first, just, you know, if you were asking me.

I'm the only person involved in this whose name should not be on the cover You know you know we have in common. We both written books with your dad and our names both went first What that tells me is that of the three people sitting here only one is actually humble enough to go second That's what it's either of you guys. You know, we'll just let the old man keep thinking that. There's Stu over there. Oh man, I have so many more questions. But I love the link into identity. I love that it's a story.

I love that you're not pulling back on the reality of the drama. If you're gonna tell a story about murder, you gotta at least make it somewhat realistic. So I'll encourage my folks, pick it up. It's called Murder and Meaning Case Files by Jimmy Wallace and his dad. We'll just leave it there.

And while you're at it, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other programs coming up. And if you thought about studying apologetics, J. Warner Wallace does do a class for us every couple of years on practical apologetics. You do that probably better than anybody, whether it's on X or on YouTube or speaking or podcasts. That's a class he does.

We would love to have you in a class on apologetics. Thanks for tuning in, Phelous. This is a lot of fun. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you. you