The Sean McDowell Show - Truth in True Crime (ft. J. Warner Wallace)

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

What can we learn from murder investigations about human nature, living the good life, and how to find genuine happiness? The answer might surprise you. J. Warner Wallace has been a crime detective for decades, and in this interview, he shares personal stories and insights from his life and career. Each of these insights provides corroborative evidence that Christianity is true. READ: The Truth in True Crime, by J. Warner Wallace (https://amzn.to/4dLefD6) WATCH: "A Homicide Detective Investigates the Gospels" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AsvrNH4qd4) *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://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Modern researchers have discovered what factors most lead to human flourishing. According to our guest today, Detective J. Warner Wallace, Christianity predicted these factors long ago, and these correlations are part of a larger cumulative case that affirm that Christianity is true. Jim, I love your new book, The Truth in True Crime. I gotta be honest, it is not what I expected, and I mean that in a pleasant surprise.

It's so interesting. Maybe just out of the gate, why is this book so different? And how is it different from the other books you've written? You know, I thought a lot about you and your dad when I was kind of thinking the course of the books I'm going to write, because you're the reason why I wrote the first book. And I also know that at some point I got older and I realized I really wanted to write this book. And if I'm honest with you, I really wanted to write this book when I first met you. I was at the end of my time working as a youth pastor, serving as a youth pastor, and I'd started a church. But we took another trip with you. One last trip I went on, I think it was my last trip to Berkeley and we were training students and you said, you should write a book about the stuff you're using

to train students here. And that became cold case. And I never would have even probably written that book if not for your encouragement to write it. But at the time I was doing that, like I had been serving as a youth pastor and I truly believe that the, my students benefited from the approach that I took when I first became a Christian. So, so I, I started as all apologetics kind of all, all the time, you know, that was my, my approach with my own students in youth pastorate, but I was already transitioning because my kids were already like getting close to college age. And I was already starting to be a lead pastor of an adult church and that things were shifting. And, and my interests, you know, are, I've always been

broader than just well what was the case that first convinced me in the first year of being a christian then you spend the rest of your life trying to live it and you see so much too when you work criminal cases about human nature so this is a book that just like on your dad at some point i saw him shift his work toward the nature of living out the christ Christian worldview about parenting and marriage and doing the things that you do as a Christian, even though you might know the case is what brought you here. You still now have to live in it. And I always thought, well, look, if Christianity is true, then its documents should describe the world the way it really is.

It should describe us the way we really are. If it's not true, we won't. And it does describe us the way we really are. If it's not true, we won't. And it does describe us the way we really are. And you see this if you work in those critical moments when our true nature is revealed. And sadly, and I know a lot of cops and detectives who do these investigations, maybe they're not thinking that deeply about what it's revealing to them. But you know that if you're going to call me to ask a question, it is not going to be about the case for anything, because you know the case for everything. You're a Christian apologist. You're going to call me because you got this

weirdo that you bumped into that you're thinking, this dude's kind of freaking me out. What do you make of this guy? So that's the kind of phone call I get from everyone. And it's because in those moments when you're when you're investigating that those time when your character is completely breaks down, especially if this is a person who's going to commit one violent crime in his entire life or her entire life, this is the moment that's going to happen. It does give you insight into human nature and what we could do to improve our chances

of not being a victim, of thriving, even if we're never going to be a victim, how do we thrive and flourish? And so those are the things I've always wanted to write about. And I have been trying to write this book for years. I was telling people, when I talk about this book, I always say that I had to earn the right to write this book with some publishers because they know me under that banner of cold case Christianity. And if you look at my books, they really are all under that banner. But this one is where the rubber meets the road. And by the way, most of the time, when you're talking to somebody, this is a book that's really about human nature, the things we all experience, and how do we explain them?

How does the secular world explain them using the research that they've discovered and how does scripture explain them? And most of the time when you meet somebody, your opportunity to talk about the gospel is probably going to come under some point of duress, or you're talking about marriage. You're just talking about marriage, and you've got an inroad. Like, why do you treat marriage this way? Why do you look at identity this way? Why do you, all these different issues, just our life issues.

And most of the time, those are the open door to the gospel. Not, well, is the scripture reliable? Now, you might talk about marriage from a christian perspective or talk about one of these issues from a christian perspective and that person you're talking to might say yeah but i don't trust the bible well now you've got an opportunity to talk about the reliability of the bible but more than likely your conversation is not going to start there it's going to start with one of these issues of human life just of life and of flourishing so this is usually this book is full of where all my conversations typically

start. I don't, I, even as a Christian apologist, I very seldom will talk to people starting from that perspective. That's, that's in response to their concerns that I'm going to go down those trails. But most of the time when I'm just talking about life, it's about all the issues in this book. You're right. Most people don't realize that your typical apologist, maybe somebody like William Lane Craig or JP or Geisler, write apologetics content. Then you have people that are peers of my dad, like Geisler and Dobson, who write on relationships.

He's done both, which is unique, truth and relationships. And in this book, you're moving from making a cold case, although we're going to get into it, because you make a kind of, I would say like a corroborative case maybe for the larger Christian worldview, but it's almost like a self-help book at times. I'm like, wow, that's really good practical advice for my marriage, for my identity, for managing like so-called celebrity status. And we'll get into some of those things but maybe give us kind of a 30 000 foot view of what you're doing in this book okay i'm just telling 15 true crime stories now my my stories i'm very careful to change the details just enough to hopefully cloak the case so that no one will look at it and i do that because for a couple of reasons number one

sometimes victims don't want you talking about their cases. Or there's a couple here I can think of in particular, which I don't think they would probably appreciate. I've never used the real names of people. I very seldom ever will do that. Now, people who know my cases might look at it and go, I recognize that case from Dateline, but I'm trying to do my best to cloak it so that I have some privacy.

Also, we're in California where the Ninth Circuit can overturn everything, and they always do. So I just want to be very careful about those kinds of cases. But there's 15 true crime stories here. 15 rules for life. So, yes, you're right. There's an aspect of this that is self-help. But I don't like that term.

It's basically God's help. Yeah, God's help. But if you're struggling to get some help, this is the kind of book that this is also. And then these are also 15 pieces of evidence that can be used to corroborate that the Christian worldview is actually true because it describes you and I the way we really are. So that's the 30,000 foot view. And when I started this, I probably have 40 things I could have written about. And I wasn't sure how many chapters I would make this book. And I picked 15 because there was a season when I was working on this years ago when I called this book 15 to life because that's a murder sentence oh well these are like 15 life lessons you learn

from murders so I had this idea in my head everyone hated that title okay so we didn't end up using that title but I probably would have done 10 chapters if I was gonna call the book 10 to life. But there's no such term. The sentencing for murder is not 10 to life. It's 15 or 25 to life. So I had to go in one of those two ways. But that's why I picked 15. But I honestly think you could do a lot more than this because it is not just that the Christian worldview kind of superficially addresses. No, it actually dives pretty deeply into the core of our nature.

And pretty much at every turn, you will find something in scripture that affirms an experience you're having now. You're wondering, well, why do I feel this way about this? Or why is my response such as it is? Well, it is explanation. It can be offered through studies and you can talk to your counselor about it. But to be honest, if you're reading your scripture carefully it's been there all along and it's just a matter of you figuring out okay yeah this is this is what this is saying and some of us I think are better and I think at certain ages so when I was in my 30s and 40s I was pretty tapped out I mean I was busy and even though I was leading a church or leading a group, I didn't see all the stuff

I see now. And a lot of that's because you, and you know this in the last couple of years, you have to have health scares and other trials and traumas that open your eyes to, if nothing else, how other people are experiencing the world because you hadn't experienced it that way yourself yet. And then once you have, empathy is much easier to embrace, right? Because you kind of, so there are books you write, I think, when you're younger, and there are books you write when you're older. And this is kind of the trajectory that I'm on now in my 60s, that I've written the books. I mean, I did 10 years, it was

10 years ago that we wrote Cold Case. And so here we are 10 years later. And remember, when I started all this, I wasn't a young guy, I was 52 when I wrote cold case. So so I, you know, what am I gonna do? At some point, if I don't write books like this now, what am I going to do that? Right? I'm not guaranteed I'm going to have next year. So I feel like now is the time to write books that are more wisdom oriented, rather than just the evidence-oriented. I don't want folks to read too much into this, but when he was younger, C.S. Lewis writes The Problem of Pain. And then he goes through pain and lives life and writes A Grief Observed.

Very, very different stage in his life. Very different perspective. That's right. He had life experience behind it. Different focus here, but you've been doing this for a while, had more life experiences, and you can feel it in this book in a way that I've always, I told you from the beginning, I said, you know, when you write Cold Case Christianity, put your story in there, Jim, tell us about yourself. And you're like, the facts got to speak for themselves. And I've seen you

over the past 10, 12 years, tell more about your story, because I think it's powerful. So people will find some of that. And you know, the reason and you know, the reason why I was hesitant about that, because I've even got a video online where I always used to always say this, you know, I people ask, you'll spend this started for me, I think at Ohio State, I was doing a presentation on Ohio State, and spend an hour talking about the evidence for Christianity. At the end of it, somebody got up and said, that's all fine, but I want to know, can you share your testimony? This is at the end of this entire presentation. And I said, I'll be honest.

My testimony doesn't matter and neither is yours. What matters is what we just talked about. And the reason why I always took that view is because my family was replete with Mormons who were very quick to share their testimony and they and as a matter of fact there's almost a principle under Mormonism that that your testimony has God's power embedded in it and then I get to a point where you can't move somebody with reason you can share your testimony if you're backed into a corner you share your testimony and to me that doesn't demonstrate that Mormonism is true as as

articulate as you might be so I've always been hesitant sure but a lot of my testimony was sadly just what I was in cold case I mean this is what I did I sat down I went through those steps I emerged on the other side I mean I wish I could tell you there was something more dramatic than that but there really wasn't. So that's part of why I think cold case really is my testimony, just lacks that kind of. Now, here's what I think changed for us. It's all the stuff you see.

And certainly it's been amplified for us, Susie and I, in the last five years, working with officers who have been critically injured in a culture where they feel like they're just don't matter anymore look there are police officers who do things that end up on the news and we all know one shudders more when they see that than other police officers who are doing their best to do the job as ethically as possible but but that does happen but far more often are the hidden anguish of officers who no longer feel like they matter anymore, wonder what they're even doing, are facing prosecution for doing stuff that's absolutely legal, ethical, and important, and are often critically injured in shootings. Now, look, I know I'm dividing people when I even say all that because people have different

views of law enforcement. I get that. but once you've worked with people who are struggling in their marriage because they don't know who they are anymore they're doubting all the values they once held that you start you start wanting to write these kinds of things like that because a lot of what I talk about in this book like the whole chapter on identity really has been driven for me out of my work with officers who don't know who they are anymore because they've suffered some critical injury. So I just knew I needed to eventually get this on paper. By the way, you're going to hear what I call Emish, which is my granddaughter, Emma, when she is making noise in the background, I call that Emish. So just know you're going to hear that as because I have my granddaughter with us all the time. I love it. I was going to draw attention

to that if you didn't. And I'm glad to hear you sharing your story and have it come through in this book because I think we can make a mistake just giving facts and we can make a mistake just sharing a testimony. But I think a testimony shows somebody this has really changed my life. And that's true for you in ways we won't go into. This is something that I'm trying to live out. It engenders trust with people and people can relate to that and gives people hope. So I think ideally it's both. But your point about officers. No, no, no.

Let me just say something about that. You're absolutely right. In my maturity, I've changed the way I say it. Because sometimes you're trying to move people off the stick. And so you push hard to move them off the stick. But the reality of it is it's not an either or. It's a both and. But it has to be a both and.

So as before, I would say, hey, we need to be able to make the case for this. I want you to be able to share your testimony, of course. But at some point, why would I trust that that testimony you just shared is actually a result of something that's supernatural through God's spirit? Or because you don't think it's something supernatural through God's spirit or because you don't think it's something supernatural through god's spirit when a mormon does it you think they're actually have kind of fallen into something that they've self-realized that it's not it's not driven by god it's driven by a spirit that's very different than god so so i think you want to

do both yeah so you're right it's a both and it's not an either or well let's jump in there's 15 in this book we won't possibly get to all of, but this first one relates to the comment about some of the police officers you're ministering to feel like they've lost their identity. Now, we all know that people find their identity in a ton of things, work, accomplishment, possessions. I'd be curious what your research shows the kind of identity grounding that leads to human flourishing? And what, if anything, you think that does to affirm Christianity? Okay, some of the categories I'm going to use here, two of them are not my categories. They're categories that are done by people who study identity deeply, Eric Erickson, other people who have written about this. That is how you form identity, either from the outside in, it's a very ancient approach, where you look outside yourself and you say, what is this group that pre-existed me, that I find membership with, that I find kinship with? It could be a kinship issue. It could be a clan, a tribe, a nation, an ethnicity that you identify with. It could be the profession of your

family. I did some of that. And I have a chapter in the book where I'm telling a story about a suicide, that we attempted suicide that I went to, and why this person was so distraught because he had lost his ability to play football at the level that he wanted to play. And then eventually slipped into using drugs and narcotics and ultimately became suicidal because he was no longer who he thought he was growing up. And he adopted a position that his family were all great football players and he saw himself as part of that clan. But also we do, so we do that. We go outside in often to do that. I also do that. I have a three generation law enforcement family. I saw that as part of who I was from birth. I was born in my dad's academy. My son was born in my academy. So we kind of saw this generationally. The other way is to go inside out,

where you just simply say, hey, that's something innately unique to me, my desires, my preferences, my sexual preferences, my innate giftedness, or I wouldn't call it that if you're not a Christian, your innate abilities, what you're good at, something that's unique to you. You say, this is who I am,

and I want all of you on the outside now to recognize me for who I think I am from the inside out. So there's an outside in and an inside out. Now here's why I wrote the chapter. Here's what I discovered. I don't know if I really articulated it this deeply in the chapter, but if you looked at your life, all the peaks and valleys in your life, everyone's got valleys and those valleys occur at points of trauma.

Those points of trauma can be, I didn't get the job, something smaller like that. Or they could be, oh, I got critically injured. I'm disabled for the rest of my life. It could be, I lost the job. I used to be this for... It could be like me. I retired from a job. That troubled me more than I ever thought it would because...

Or it could be, I suffered a divorce lost my child there's all different kinds of trauma what I discovered is at every low valley of trauma in someone's life you will find that at the same time they suffered that trauma they experienced a dramatic shift in their identity in other words I have considered myself to be a happily married man I think I'm a good husband she divorces me oh now who am I I consider myself to be a happily married man. I think I'm a good husband. She divorces me. Oh, now who am I? I consider myself to be somebody who's never going to suffer with cancer. No one in my family has. Now I've got cancer. It's an identity shift that accompanies trauma. It also works conversely. Trauma accompanies identity shifts. If all you wanted to do is

to protect yourself from trauma, You could be careful about how you form identity. If you form identity in a way that can be shifted, that can be stolen from you, that you could just willy nilly, the change of your heart changes how you feel about who you are, then get ready. You're going to suffer some trauma because identity shifts are so connected to trauma that one can cause the other and vice versa. If on the other hand, you could connect your identity to something that transcends your circumstance and your heart, your desire. Well, then no matter what happens in your life, you're going to mitigate it.

Your values are not going to be as deeply rooted as they would have been. Because, for example, something as simple as retiring, I always used to tell officers, hey, you cannot retire from something. You have to retire to something. And what I really meant was you have to find a new way to form your identity. Look, we're Christians. We're Christ followers. The third way is not inside out or outside in.

It's topside down. If you form it topside down in something that is transcendent, something that is so much bigger than you and is impervious to shifting. And this is why identity, even when described clinically, it talks about the unchanging and stable way you view yourself. Like who are you? And so it turns out that the more unchanging and stable that view is, the less you'll you'll suffer, the less you'll experience trauma. So if you had no interest in Christianity, but you did have an interest in having less trauma in your life, and this is sometimes, sadly, how I approach it with officers

who aren't believers, is that we have to figure out a way to put our identity in something that doesn't shift. Now, of all the possibilities, I think Christianity offers the best resources for that. But that's not such, that's just, and by the way, you can see how that might be an open door to the gospel, an open door to why you might want to consider the claims of Christianity. And often, that's how we start with officers who are critically injured, who now are wondering, and it doesn't mean that your name has changed or even your title,

because you might still be a police officer. 90% of the officers we work with are going back to work on Monday, but they're just critically injured and they're changed. So what happens in the shift is you think, oh, I'm a tactically sound officer. No, I'm never going to get ambushed. I'm too smart for that.

Then you get ambushed and you're thinking, well, who am I really? Maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was. That little shift in identity is enough to shake you. And you can see how this might happen in every other field, even in terms of parenting. You consider yourself, parenting is your identity until one of your kids goes sideways. And then you're wondering, am I, maybe I'm not the kind of parent that I thought I was. That little shift is enough to trouble you.

And that's why we have to say, first and foremost, I am in Christ. And the day before this bad thing happened, I was in Christ. And the day after, I'll still be in Christ. Nothing about who I am has changed. Truly, because my identity was never in that. Now, why was I struggling with it? Because even though I was a Christian at the time I retired, I was not putting my identity in Christ.

My identity was in my work and in my achievements. And for a lot of us, we can talk the talk, but the reality of it is our identity isn't over there. Yeah, well, no, I'm a Christian speaker. Really? What's more important to you is that you're a successful speaker. I mean, I can tell you that that,

I started to reassess that in my own life after Robbie, after the Mark Driscoll affair and that podcast series on Mars Hill. I just asked myself, okay, where is my identity really? Let's be honest, do some soul searching here. I can asked myself, okay, where is my identity? Really? Let's be honest, do some soul searching here. I can't help anybody else. And if I'm still screwed up on this. So I think a lot of it was just some of this book is just me trying to figure out life. Like how to, how to, what am I that person? Yeah. I'm that, by the way, I can talk all the talk and all these 15 chapters. I

cannot walk it. I will fail repeatedly to walk the things I know are true. That's just the nature. That's one of the other chapters in the book is who are we really? Are we really this capable or are we really so deeply broken and so deeply fallen, so deeply rebellious that we're not able? Look, I read scripture. I'm in Job right now. I mean, I'm just going through every... And then as soon as I close the book, I feel like I forgot everything I just read. What is going on? Well, it's just our deep, our deep ball in nature that we're, we're, we, we know to do the right thing, but, but doing it as another, and that's why in this book, each chapter,

I have a chase, the lead section where I'm like, okay, Hey, here's the principle. You just learned it. Now, how can you do it? How can you make this real in your own life? Because every one of those chase the latest sections is my daily struggle. That's that stuff that I have not mastered. That's stuff that I know I have to try to master. And that's what's in each chapter.

I really appreciate your vulnerability in particular. The last time you went out with your son the day you're retiring and just pulled over and wept. Like I felt that was like, wow, you know, just to have you share that in your own struggles coming through in this book is going to resonate with people. You know, I've heard Rick Warren say it's not successes, but it's our failures and our pain that builds bridges with people. Success alienates and you lean into some of your own struggles. And I think it's going to endear the reader to really understand. You know, Dennis Prager wrote a book called Happiness is a Serious Problem. Yes, that's right.

And I love that book because he points out, this is based on his own research, that couples who experience the trauma of losing a child, the majority would get divorced or separated. And he said one of the key factors that prevented that divorce is if they had a philosophy of life that could at least make sense of such a tragedy like that and give them hope, didn't minimize the pain, but help them cope with it so much better. Now, he's obviously not a Christian. And so he's coming at this from the perspective of he would include Christianity but say Judaism. So my question for you is you've only looked at one of these. This seems to suggest that there's maybe some transcendent belief that helps us navigate trauma better. Are you saying this is evidential? Is this just suggestive? Is it to Christianity in particular or to other similar worldviews? Okay. So this is, this is great, great question because I often will say lots of terrible evidence for Christianity. Oh, look, everything is evidence. Everything is evidence. If he is the guy and I find his fingerprint there, everyone will say, oh, the fingerprints evidence. Well, yeah, but after he did the crime, he said a couple of things that only make sense if he did the crime.

That stuff's evidence too. It's not a fingerprint, but it's corroborative because what it does is that, yeah, if he is the killer, he ought to act a certain way afterwards. And sure enough, we see that he does. Okay. We're going to use that in our case proper. So the same thing happens here. There's evidences we're going to use for God's existence. he does okay we're going to use that in our case proper so the same thing happens here we there's evidences we're going to use for god's existence there's evidence we're going to use for the reliability of scripture but if this is true it ought to we ought to expect certain things to emerge on the back side of it it's manuscript evidence it's it's foundational manuscript of christianity it better describe us the way we really are and it turns out it does so is it evidence in that way yes but when are. And it turns out it does.

So is it evidence in that way? Yes, but when people will say, well, yeah, but it's not, everything is evidence. Everything, it's indirect evidence, but guess what? The fingerprint is also indirect evidence by its very definition. So it turns out that all of it is usable in making the case proper.

But I'm at a point where, look, I don't need to rewrite everything I've written about the case for. Now we have to ask the question, okay, what do you do with it? If this is true, it ought to have... It ought to... Look, I think that when your dad wrote the first version, he'd done it a couple of times since then, but the first version of Evidence Demands a Verd a verdict what was important to that generation is is it true is it evidentially true i don't even look that's important to young people anymore because when i say it's true they think

they're hearing oh it's true for me i'm not saying it's true for me i'm saying it's true but they're hearing it's true for me here's what they want to know I think is it good is it beautiful is it necessary that second question is something that I think that I wanted to explore I tried to explore it started explore with the person of interest and we're talking about hey is it beautiful has it caused us to embrace everything that we consider beautiful even if we're not a Christian literature art music education science the things that we consider beautiful, even if we're not a Christian. Literature, art, music, education, science, the things that we value as secularists, it turns out they're all foundationally grounded in the Christian worldview, as we experience them today. So, it's not just true, it's good, it's beautiful, and it matters.

Well, this is what this kind of book is about. And I think that I want to do both of those. When I'm finally done with all of this, I want to be able to demonstrate that Christianity is both true and good. And that's what's beautiful about looking, like for example, this idea is talking about trauma. How do we overcome trauma? That is something I'm so fascinated in because that's, we're about to start in less than three weeks.

We're going to be up in Alaska with the first four couples who are, I mean, two have already fallen out. Um, one told us, no, we'll be getting divorced this month. We're not going to be able to make it to, they can't even get to Alaska to give it a shot. They are divorcing before they go. So we now have to replace two couples and I'm thinking, okay, the whole question is going to be

you've suffered this thing and is there life on the other side of it and if so how do I get there without being permanently affected by this and we talk about this in terms of trauma right if you if you have a certain level of functioning you hit that moment where you're critically injured or whatever it is that happens you lose your child whatever it may be like Dennis Rager is talking about then you drop down to lower functioning. And if you stay in that lower functioning position, you're what we call PTSD. And we see a lot of people up there who have already been diagnosed clinically by workers comp and other sources as PTSD.

Well, they'd love to be able to return to their prior level of functioning. My hope, that's called resiliency. My hope is to do better than that because there's a rebound you can have after trauma that is much higher than you were even functioning to begin with. That's called post-traumatic growth. And the key, according to secularists for post-traumatic growth is something that they call meaning making. If you can make sense of your trauma in a way that shows you that there's some

actual benefit, something you are able to do now that you weren't able to do before, some role you can play, if you can make sense of it, if you can see where does that chapter fit in my overarching story, is it the last chapter? Story ends as a tragedy? Or is it the climactic chapter, the challenge that's resolved by the hero against the villain, and then something beautiful ends? Like, which chapter is it?

As a Christian, we know we have better resources than that because you can't just make up any story you want of your life. You could. But then if situations change and you realize that story is not any story you want of your life you could but then if situations change and you realize that story is not a very good story or your personal chase that's like developing your identity outside in or inside out what if there's an overarching transcendent true

story that your story fits in if you could find that now we're talking about meaning finding then you might understand like what is it that is supposed to... Am I stuck here? Is this the last chapter in my story? Every scripture story seems to have one of these in it. Job. I'm in Job. If you stop Job in chapter three and Job just says, this is my last chapter, it's a terrible

story, but it's not his last chapter. And trauma, post-traumatic growth will occur if you figure out where that trauma fits in the overarching story. Mark, he doesn't go with Paul and Barnabas, John Mark, and he ends up being a failure. If that's the last chapter in his story, he's basically in scripture for eternity as a failure. But it turns out he becomes one of the closest confidence to paul and peter writes a gospel and when you see those iconic figures john matthew luke and mark and no one is in the four the story doesn't end in the book of acts there's so many stories like this

jonah i mean i could go on and on jesus on the cross if that was the last chapter it's a tragedy the resurrection shows you that that was a necessary climactic chapter for the victory we have to be able to figure out where in our story the trauma fits and the people who can do that they thrive on the back side so we're always trying to help officers realize this is just the climactic vic this is the you don't stop the book here keep reading and of course the christian worldview offers resources and examples right resources in terms of we have a god who has written the overarching story who promises you eternity even what you might experience in this life is just a small blip on the scale of your lifeline so so it offers you that but it also offers you

many examples in scripture of people who luckily didn't stop in chapter three so it's important for us to be able to communicate both of those i think that's just one another chapter in this book i'm trying to help people to see because you see this all the time with victims families oh my goodness and i mentioned one in this one particular and it's a Dateline case, but this family was frozen, could do nothing for 30 years until the case was tried. And I thought, wow, they could have moved forward much quicker if they'd understood this principle, right? Because I think what happens is victim families kind of feel like, well, I want closure.

There is, you'd be lucky if you can get justice, but there won't be closure because when I get that justice and get that conviction, your sister is still dead. I can't fix that. So, and that's what, that's what really would close this would circle back to this. But it turns out if the Christian narrative is true and your sister died in Christ she's not dead she's she's none of us we all live beyond the grave the question is just what the state of our existence is beyond the grave and so I'm just trying to help families to see hey this is just this the climactic chapter it's not the last one one of the threads that goes through it is as I've read happiness literature one of the key factors is having a belief system or a worldview larger than yourself that you're a part of and you're kind of losing yourself to find and contribute to make sense of suffering and trauma.

And for each one of these, you're saying, let's look at our life through this larger lens, and the Christian worldview makes the most sense of it. So for folks watching, there's 15 that you walked through. You walked through identity. Another one is kind of suffering and trauma. This one intrigues me. It's towards the end, but I want to jump to it. It's how Christianity makes sense of the inevitability of death.

What does the research show about how that affects us? And why do you think a christian view lends towards more flourishing okay so the data basically shows this that the people who have the strongest sense of purse so there's this entire i love this research terror terror management theory this idea that that every decision we make today is actually dictated by something that only humans recognize, which is their own mortality. That we have a mortality salience and a death anxiety that no other species has. My dog doesn't know that it's 14. It only probably has another year and doesn't realize it. I realize I'm on the back three and I can see the clubhouse. Okay. So I recognize that there's, I'm approaching the end and it's our recognition that the end is

coming. That actually is the tail that wags every decision dog you're about to make today. That's their claim. And they've done a bunch of research on which I demonstrated the show in the book, but it turns out that the people who have the least amount of mortality, salience or concern or death anxiety are the people who think that, that believe in what is called a persisting self, a persisting self. In other words, if you think that atheism is true, then your self is not going to persist. And when you die, you're back in the dirt. You came from the dirt, you're back in the dirt.

That's the end of it. You get these 90 years, make the most of them because this is all you get. You don't persist beyond the death, beyond the grave. That's the end of it. You get these 90 years, make the most of them because this is all you get. You don't persist beyond the grave. Okay. But there's a lot of Near Eastern religions or attitudes, spiritual worldviews that would say that, yeah, you persist, but you're either reincarnated. So, or that this is all this experience is not even true. It's something that you only recognize by deep meditation that you can see the reality of what the world really is that either you don't persist, or if do persist you don't persist as yourself it's the persisting other self reincarnation for example the idea that yes you'll have another life but it won't be this one with these memories these

friendships these connections if you have a view that says that the self will persist who you are by your very nature will persist beyond the grave if that is the worldview you hold then you don't fear death now not as highly now i can tell you that they're at the same time are there christians who ought to hold that view but still have the same kind of anxiety yes because not all of us think deeply about the worldview we i remember listening to keller one time talking about this i thought thought it was brilliant. He said, under atheism, you have to not think deeply about the worldview you hold because it just leads you to be depressed because nothing's going to survive the heat death of the universe. And no one really knows who their great, great, great grandparents

are. And no, they're not going to know who you are in four generations and they're not going to care. And everything eventually, when a culture is consumed by another culture, sometimes the other culture is entirely eradicated. Nothing's going to make it out of the universe because the universe is heading toward a heat death. So what's the point? Enjoy your 90 years. Don't think too deeply about the fact that really nothing you're doing matters.

Nothing you're doing will really persist. So you could be happier under that world by not thinking deeply about the truth of the universe. Now, on the other hand, if you're a Christian, you will be more content and happier if you think more deeply about the nature of your worldview, because the promises that are available under Christianity are otherworldly, other-lifely. They are actually about the persisting self. And so when you're in this struggle, struggle one of things I have to be encouraged about is when you get a health scare as you say well I might this is what's so great about job have

you noticed that when job suffers all of that loss never is there a prayer in which job says father heal me give it back to me the The question Job has is, I don't understand. I need to know. Did I do something wrong? I need to know. He's more concerned about his standing before a holy God than getting the stuff back, than getting cured, than taking care of my temporal life. Why?

Because he knows he's headed there and he's really more concerned about the nature of God than he is about the nature of his own life. That's so interesting to me. And I think that that's what happens when you realize that you do persist beyond the grave. And if you're thinking deeply about your Christian worldview, that I'm more concerned about, well, look, I've got the justice of God demands that my sins have already been paid for by the act of Jesus on the cross.

So I am right before God. And now this may end, this period of life might end, but the next chapter, I remember, for example, when Keller got pancreatic cancer and somebody asked him about this issue of like, hey, what's changed in your life? One of the things he said was, I realize I'm not ready to do everything that God has for me to do in eternity.

I need to be better discipled. I need to know more. I need to get ready. In other words, he wasn't like trying to finish well. We always say, I'm going to finish well. No, no. He was thinking, I need to get ready well because there's this whole bigger chapter of life that's beyond the grave that I don't think I'm ready for that yet. So I thought, wow, there is the perspective difference between holding a view that is just resigned to the fact that you just die when you die and a view that says life begins when you die.

That's the difference. I thought it was interesting that I believe it's the last book Keller wrote on forgive. And I read it was interesting that I believe it's the last book Keller wrote on forgive and I read it and Clearly, you know, he brings in the resurrection and the basis of the Christian faith as he knew he was getting towards the end of his Life he leaned into his worldview. That's right With it well and think deeply about it and live it out rather than trying to deny it I think that's really a really powerful point that you're drawing out. And I was driving my daughter who's 17 to school, I think it was last week, and I said,

I said, hey, I got a question for you. What do you think is more powerful, death or love? And of course, she looked at me like, I'm driving to school, what are you talking about, dad? And I said, well, if there's no God, death wins in the end. Death is more powerful than love. I said, well, if there's no God, death wins in the end. Death is more powerful than love. I said, if there is a God, then love is actually more powerful than death. Isn't there something in our hearts that knows and believes that love is more powerful? Now, you kind of hint at that in your book. Is that a piece of evidence? How convincing is that to you?

Because it's kind of like C.S. Lewis's point about desire, which you hint on. If we have a desire for something, it's naturally met. Food, sex, friendship, et cetera. And yet there's kind of a desire for eternity, a desire for deeper love. How convincing do you find that line of reasoning? Well, I think it's only,

so I talk about this a little bit in person of interest. Sometimes you have something in the crime scene that points to the suspect before you ever meet him. So you get a fingerprint and the fingerprint actually identifies the guy by name. So you're actually knocking on his door because you found something in the crime scene that told you who he was going to be before you knocked on his door. Sometimes you have something in the crime scene though, that is like a button that's been torn off a shirt and you can't figure out where it came from because my goodness, it could come from anywhere.

It could be that it just was in the room before the thing even started. It could be that maybe it's coming from the victims. It could have come from the suspect's clothes, but I don't know. And it's not gonna identify the suspect in advance of that first door knock. But now I'm working suspects along the way

and I come across somebody who happens to have a shirt missing that very button. Well, now that piece of evidence I found at the crime scene is actually going to make my case in a different way, not because it identified him in advance, but because it corroborated him after the fact. And that's what a lot of this stuff does, is that if Christianity is true, then the world ought to be this way. And that will start to explain the buttons in the crime scene. And some of those buttons in the crime scene, our desires, our inclinations toward eternity, our inclinations toward identity and why does that matter? Why do things like celebrity, why are they so dangerous? Why are these things so precarious? Why are some things benefiting us? Some things are

actually detrimental to us. Well, that's all, those are all buttons in the crime scene that once you find that they belong on God's shirt, you go, oh, now this makes sense. So I think there are two ways of looking at evidence. One is that these, some things are just clearly point to this most reasonable inference and some things are corroborative after the fact. That makes sense. Now we've talked about identity identity we've talked about the inevitability of death facing suffering and trauma now to give people a sense of the scope of what you cover in the book you always have a chapter about dads in your research what is the science reveal about the need for fathers and again make the connection to why you think this at least suggests Christianity you're

about to talk about all the controversial stuff right so there's 15 chapters in here and there's stuff about how to manage your money there's stuff about in marriage there's stuff about and one of the reasons why marriage is important we talked about this idea that the Prager talks about of having this there's something that's transcendent something that's bigger that you are focused on and I before I ever became a Christian me, that was marriage because my parents did not stay married. My parents divorced when I was three. My mom never remarried.

I was raised by a single mom, hated it. It was dysfunctional. It was a mess. Back in the sixties, I mean, she was, by the time she was 22, she had a three-year-old and was divorced. So, um, it just was a mess. Um, so I always tell people that I love marriage way more than I love Susie, but I think it makes me a better husband because marriage is of the highest value to me. It was before I knew God. So it's this idea that you're pointing at something

bigger than your immediate circumstance that will help you on the day that you feel like you want to choke each other. Okay. Because you think, no think no no that's the marriage is the marriage is worth fighting for well it's worth fighting for because it's the one transcendent thing that i would have said before i knew god was the foundation of where i wanted to be well that's why this is important for me to talk about and a lot of the work i talk about with fatherhood that that i've been wanting to write about that and i had written about it on my website uh years ago because i i experienced it when i was working gangs and i was working gangs really before i was um a christian um and it was i mean i was i was concerned about whether i was going to be the kind of dad that would create the kind of mess i saw in the gang culture because

it turns out every single group i met i I worked with, every single one, whether they were white, Hispanic, Korean, black, whatever they were in different sectors of our city, every gangster had the same common problem. And the problem they had was not socioeconomic. It wasn't ethnic. It wasn't racial. It was lack of dad, period. And lack of dad looks different depending on the click so sometimes lack of dad was well i'd never know my dad because my mom didn't really know who my dad was that does happen it's i never knew my dad because he's been locked up my entire life that does happen i never knew my dad because he lived with us but he was always a bum and never paid attention to me and always drunk it could be lack of dad because i'm married. My mom married a workaholic who provided for us but was never involved in my life.

Lack of dad produces the same result, sadly, even if it could be what the dad might consider noble. Lack of dad matters. And I saw that in the gang culture. And I remember my partner at the time was younger than me. And Boys in the Hood had just come out, this movie. So he said, you got to watch it. I'm like, we do this for a living. I want to go home on my days off and watch Boys in the Hood.

No, he says, it's different. You need to watch it. So I watched it and it's got a character in there that understands this connection to responsible fatherhood. That responsible fatherhood can act as a safeguard for young men who otherwise will find that kind of mentorship in a peer group that could be dangerous rather than in a father who knows better. And our responsibility as fathers is so critical. And let me tell you what I thought was interesting about writing this chapter. A lot of young Christians that have reviewed the book, have read it in its development, and when we were doing the videos for the book,

this is one of those areas that they feel like, hey, the family structures are so different that to say that one family structure might be preferable to another is in some ways shaming those who don't adopt that family structure. That is not my goal. Look, I was raised this way, lack of dad I get it I understand what that feels like and I've

and so that's why even the chapter on marriage it's been repeatedly all the data shows this kids raised with two biological parents in a low conflict setting do better than other groups sorry the data shows that kids raised by two biological parents in a low conflict setting have higher metrics and about every way we met we measure flourishing whether it's academic flourishing whether it's economic flourishing whether it's a relational risk behavior whatever it is you'll find that the data supports this now is there a contrary data now that's emerged in the last 25 years? Yes.

And the researchers I quote in the book will tell you that that's got to be, that's been done under a bias, under an effort to be contrary to the data that was being developed for years. This is not something that is culturally malleable. This is something that's biologically fixed. When you raise your biological children, you have an insight into their behavior that non-biological parents just don't have. I only know that because two of my kids are biological and two of them are adopted. And you can see in your own kids like, oh, she got that from me

because I recognize that behavior. My mom would have said that's you, dude, right there. So it's that connection, that biological connection is absolutely helpful. And so although I was not raised this way by two biological parents in a low complex setting, and I did not raise my entire family this way, I do understand that the data favors that kind of upbringing. Now, why do I mention it? Because we could consider this important enough to cherish and to protect in a culture that no longer is even interested in marriage, certainly not interested in early marriage, and has come to believe that every kind of social family structure you can think of is just fine, including household units without a

father present. And that is a crisis we are facing in our nation that is growing. And we have to address it. And I realized that we think that we can solve this. Look, mentors do help. There's no doubt about that. could when you replace a because the mentoring role of the father is the most powerful thing but it's a it's a it's still a surrogate it's a surrogate for the ideal why would we ever promote anything other than the ideal yes we want to also embrace the surrogates and and rely on them when we can't achieve the ideal but if we just stop in even pursuing the ideal we're going to have to have a lot more surrogates and we don't even have enough as it is now so i think that this issue of of and why is this point because if we are designed in the image of a father creator why would we be surprised that

we've been it's not we don't benefit under mothers of course we do as a matter of fact when you look at marriage and the benefits of marriage especially especially in terms of longevity, health, mental health, physical health, it turns out that men always benefit more. Like women don't need men to benefit in those areas, but men do need women to benefit in those areas. So it turns out that both sides play a critical role. But what you see typically is not single family, single parent units led by fathers, which you see typically are single family units being led by mothers. So it's the father absenteeism that is the bigger current issue. And that's why I think it's worth addressing. And of course, I think it does tie in the Christian

worldview does have an answer for this, but of all the institutions that are offered by God for humans to engage in this, this institution, the institution of marriage, is sacred. It's affirmed in the Old Testament, and Jesus affirms it again in the New Testament. And although Paul will say, hey, I wish for some of you that you weren't married so you could be further committed to Jesus and the gospel, what Paul is saying is you're going to be married to something. You're either going to be married to the gospel and the mission of Christ on planet Earth, or you're going to be married to something. You're either going to be married to the gospel and the mission of Christ on planet Earth, or you're going to be married to a spouse. I would love you to be married to the gospel and the mission that I'm on also.

But if you're married to this spouse, you're not to love your YouTube podcast. You're not to love your job, your next book. You're not to love your next case. You're working the way that christ loves the church you're to love your spouse the way that christ loves the church if you're a guy and that's something i have to constantly remind myself because there's times when if you looked at my calendar if you look there's a chapter in here about idolatry if you look at your calendar and you look at your just your resources and how you're spending your financial time and and talent

resources you might think you love something other than your spouse so we can measure how well we're doing in these areas just by looking at our lives and asking the question where are we spending our resources because typically we spend our resources on the thing that we think gives us identity and that gives us the greatest value it's that it's an act of worship. So Jesus did say where your treasure is there, your heart will be also your time and resources and money. So you're absolutely right. I think one of the most important books I've read in the past five years is by Bradley Wilcox sociologist from university of Virginia and his recent book,

get married, makes the case that less people are getting married. When they do, they're getting married later. They're less likely to have kids. If they have kids, they're having less kids because we think other things are going to make us happy and help us flourish. But purely from a sociological perspective, it's actually getting married and having kids that demands more of us. But we rate our lives as being more meaningful and fulfilling. And so that makes sense. Hang on a second, though. You just said, Sean, that's important.

Because I think I'm a boomer. You're a Gen X. I think if we're talking to millennials, and this is what I've discovered, like we're having this conversation, we're going, yeah, duh. Okay. But if you're talking to millennials, they're going or do you single shaming

that's the first response I'm getting are you single shit no I'm not saying look if I if you think I'm shaming every alternative way to live based on every chapter in this book do you ever read Proverbs all Proverbs is is statements about how you ought not knew that if Or if you do that, expect this terrible result. Well, it's not that God is trying to shame the alternative. When I'm offering the best way forward, this is not necessarily shaming the alternative. But all advice, if you think about it in some way, does make a claim about the validity of the alternative. And so I think that when we say that marriage is important enough,

and here's how it came from me. When we're at Summit, and you and I do Summit Ministries, and you're on the porch at the end of the day, and kids are asking questions based on your talks, I always make sure I don't get off the porch without asking them, what is the most important decision you're going to make in the next five years? These are all high schoolers. Most important decision. And here's what they almost always will say unanimously, not always unanimously, very close, education. They're trying to find out like where at school are they going to go to next? What's their job going to be? They're applying for

schools. This is a big deal. Well, of course, the trajectory decisions are not quite that lopsided. That's what they think the most important trajectory decision. When I say trajectory decision, I mean some decisions, if you make them late in life, you can survive a bad choice. But if you make them early in life, they set you in the wrong trajectory. So you need to make those decisions early and you need to make those decisions wisely. The first trajectory decision, which determines all other decisions is worldview. What is the proper way to see the world? The second one one though is not your job or your mission or your education or your preparation it's your spouse as crazy as that sounds because i've just just practically speaking how many times have you met somebody who made great career choices and they've been married four times they're miserable and how many times you made people it's met people

who just you have an average job you might think well i'm not sure i could even be interested in that job but they've got a great marriage and great kids and they have a wonderful life and God has used them in powerful ways to preach the gospel through their marriage. It turns out that of those trajectory decisions, the reason why I think it's important is because if we don't start talking about this, if you weren't, look, young people will make a list of all the things they're looking for in their school. Oh, it's got to be a certain price, got to have a certain degree program, got to have this, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're making decisions. And how do I get there? Got to study for the SAT. Got to prepare this.

Got to have the certain timing as if schools actually took an SAT. But the point is you're going to be doing that, right? But now it turns out that no one's got any plan about how they're going to meet their wife or their husband. They just think they're going to dumb into that when they get to college. They're going to find that guy at church we have to be as intentional about every trajectory decision as we are now only about a few and if you're not intentional then yes you're going to find yourself wishing you had been more intentional earlier that's why i think these are important things to think about early one of the questions i'll ask either at Summit or my own kids or the class I teach at is this, I'll say, okay, students, you wake up in 30 years and you're in your 50s. Would you rather have a

lot of money and a successful career and broken relationships and an unhappy marriage or wake up with meaningful relationships, a good marriage, and just be struggling in your career. Now, always one smart aleck will say, well, I want both. And I say, I get it. Fair enough. But if you had to pick, the vast majority when framed that way realize, you know what, I want healthy, meaningful relationships. Then my follow-up question is, what are you doing now to secure that when you get there? And for people, you know, for you and I who are on the other side of that, so to speak, we can look back and see how that choices matter. But so many Christian, non-Christian kids are living their lives as if the career, as if, you know, the education they get are the most important things,

because that's really the drumbeat our culture is pushing. But Wilcox's data shows even young people married in their 20s report happier than those who are not married in their 20s. Oh, absolutely. The data actually shows that the earlier you do this, the better off you are. Not only that, it starts the benefits of this start not actually at the marriage ceremony. For men, it starts at engagement because people, men start organizing their life and becoming more responsible in preparation for marriage. So the data actually suggests that it's just a way of thinking about my role in life that starts

to make a difference. Look, it's not just that we have to be intentional before we're married. It's that I have to be intentional at every stage in my marriage. I'm 45 years into this relationship with Susie. And yes, I was very intentional in the first five years, but I want to be as intentional now. Here's how I typically will say it. Look, we're not guaranteed to get to 80. We're not. And some of us, our family genetics will make that even bigger challenge. So if you were to come to me in 15 years and say, Jim, I can give you another day with Susie, but it's going to cost you. And I would probably pay almost anything to have that day if I didn't have her in 15 years. I can do even better than that, Jim. I can give you not the last day you had with her. I can give

you a day like you had in 2024. What's that worth to you? Oh my gosh, it'd be worth everything. Well, I happen to have that day right now and I'm making decisions about how I'm going to spend it. And if I'm not intentional about that, my relationship with Susie, it will be lost. And I will find myself 15 years down the road wishing I had a day in 2024 again. So I think now, look, I don't want to become, my danger of course is I can't let it become an idol. I'm trying to balance all the, what is God calling me to do? But I did decide to be married. And when I decided to be married, I have to love that woman the way that Christ loves the church. My eyes are focused on that relationship first.

They have to be, and that's a decision. That's why I talk with these couples all the time. You have to make that renewed decision every day. Remember, when I started as an author and as a speaker, speaking around the country with you, I already was retired with a pension. Didn't need to do any of it. As a matter of fact, I'm sure Susie waited for all those decades for me to finally get to a place where I would be available. And what did I do instead? So I think in the end, it's something we have to be very conscientious about.

And we have to work hard to keep it a priority. And I guess here's what I'm saying. It's this whole thing of marriage where this is only one chapter of this whole book. But it's important to me, as you can probably see, is that when it's all done, if I go first and we're at the funeral and somebody asks susie how was it what like being married to jim i don't want her to go it was okay i don't want her to say that i want her to say that that that dude that dude gave it all that he he he lived what he preached on this issue and in order to do that i have to be really intentional to make a trajectory decision every day. And that's why I think that, you know, I don't know that I'm who am I to write a book on marriage.

But I think one chapter, especially when most of the murders I have worked have been people who didn't prioritize their marriage. And most if you watch Dateline, you're going to discover that about 70 percent of cases are some guy killing his wife or some wife hiring somebody to kill her husband. These are people who don't make an intentional decision when it comes to marriage. Jim, I've told you this. I think I've told you this, but outside of my dad, you are up there as one of the people who have most deeply influenced the way I think about my marriage and my priorities and my wife. And this truth you're speaking now are just a few of kind of the gut-punching moments in your book that everyone's going to go, whoa, I got to think about my priorities. Whoa, how am I doing here?

How am I navigating? And just be challenged to live better. Now, let me ask you this. As I was reading your book, I started thinking, well, if I was a skeptic on the other side, I might push back in certain ways. So for example, for each of these chapters, say the one on dads, you know, how would other religions assess this and could they account for it? And I thought, well, you know, Buddhism, Buddha basically abandoned his family. You know, Muhammad was a polygamist. You cannot be a great dad if you are a polygamist. You can't. Now, that doesn't mean Christianity does it perfectly, and others maybe can't, but you could have considered other religions, or for each one of these, could have gone through and said, I'm going to read the evolutionary literature, because I'm sure for each of these, I haven't read it, there's some evolutionary explanation that can allegedly account for the facts that you offer here. Why didn't you probe into some of those in this book? Okay. Well, part of it is that this is a different kind of book. And I knew that. I knew I could

have written a book for, I could have written 15 books for these 15 chapters. There's no doubt about that. And you easily could have done that. And I collected so much data. So I think there's no doubt about that because and you easily could have done that and and i i collected so much data so i think there's like 60 pages of footnotes in this book but there's another 200 pages in the pdf file that's online because there's just no way to get all the data and i i mean it's it's there's like three times more data than there are words in the book right now so i just felt like okay i'm going to be very concise on this. I wanna write a book that helps the people that I'm working with now employ, like press this into practice.

Now, yes, there's always gonna be an alternative that you can offer, an alternative explanation, like if you're working in a defense attorney, they're always gonna have an alternative. They're gonna have a robust alternative often, and they're never true. And we know that only because even after that six weeks of the alternative they've offered, when they finally convict the guy, and we convict them, the dude's going to confess

probably at the first parole hearing. So we know it's not true, but they offer an alternative story. We have to be very careful about alternative stories. If there is a God of the universe that created us and our biology is based on his design then why would you be surprised if there isn't some genetic transcendent nature of our so even if you did find that yes i can explain biologically why this behavior benefits us that's the whole point is the where does that biology come from why for example give you an example of this there's a chapter in here on our basic nature are we by nature good and innocent or are we by nature fallen and the question for evolutionists

is which of those two is true and what is it in the evolutionary paradigm that explains our altruism for example or explains our propensity toward evil for example how do you explain it and so i try to at least in that chapter, kind of show you what the alternatives are from a kind of entirely humanistic perspective. But here's what's great about this. Again, this is corroborative on the backside. So if the resurrection did not occur,

then there's no reason to consider any of this from a Christian perspective. That's why you start with writing books about why the resurrection is true. Because in the end, it's all going to come down to who's that jesus guy if that jesus guy is who he said he was well then i'm going to probably listen to him and now all of this makes sense from a christian perspective right it all makes sense i mean by the way i i defy you to to flourish in the way that you could flourish following these biblical principles.

If you just think that the entire world doesn't give a lick about you, the universe is entirely driven by space, time, matter, physics, and chemistry, is indifferent to your suffering, doesn't care that you ever existed or would ever exist, and you're just another piece of matter in a series of material cause and effects that view of life will not provide you the kind of flourishing that a transcendent view in which you are designed on purpose with a purpose and an identity you are known today and you have a life that will transcend beyond the grave in which you will still be known the self you are today will persist beyond the grave the resources offered by our world view explain why we flourish better if so i always say this way even if you don't believe christianity is true you'd be wise to live as though you did because you'll flourish at a higher level than you will if you accept the kind of finality and lack of hope under the alternative worldview that you just will. That's awesome. I asked this question in part so people watching and critics would have a sense of

what you're trying to do in this book. I had someone write a scathing review of a book I compiled called Apologetics for a New Generation for not answering apologetic questions. I thought, well, that's not the purpose of this book. It's about how to do apologetics for not answering the questions. And so each one of these could be a book in itself. In fact, as I read this, if anybody is thinking about doing a doctoral dissertation, they could almost take each one of these chapters, things like suffering and trauma, what resources do different worldviews have to approach suffering and trauma?

How about the inevitability of facing death? How about where identity is at? How about dads? Which belief system? And you can't go into it trying to prove Christianity. You've got to ask, what does the data show and which worldview has the best resources to address it? There's five or six doctoral dissertations right here. And I mentioned that because you're the one who helped encourage me to do my dissertation on the apostles you remember in berkeley we had our friend david fitzgerald challenge the deaths of the apostles and i remember going i don't have a good answer for this and i was like jim i gotta find a doctoral dissertation you're like well i have two boxes of books i was gonna dive into this gave it to me and i was off and running. Well, that's another story for another time.

Thoroughly enjoyed your book, The Truth in True Crime. And the title is going to grab people. I'll never write a book that says true crime on it, but you can put it on the cover. That alone is going to sell some copies for you. But I enjoyed it on so many levels. We'll do it again. But folks, before you click away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other conversations like this coming up. And if you thought about

studying apologetics, Jimmy, you're teaching a class this summer for us on how to do apologetics, you're adjunct. Our program can be done fully distance and online. Information is below. And we still have the certificate program. If you're not ready for a master's but want to kind of probe into some formal training, there's a significant discount below. Jim, I've heard your granddaughter a few times and I am pushing past the amount of time you gave me anyway. So get out of here, my friend.

All right. Thank you, sir. I appreciate you so much. Thanks for having me on the show, Sean. Appreciate it.