The Sean McDowell Show - Why Christianity Makes Sense (w/ Bobby Conway)

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Does Christianity Still Make Sense? Years after Bobby Conway became a Christian, this question haunted him. Even though he was the pastor of a thriving church, it seemed as if his entire belief structure was dismantling. Bobby shares his story of coming to faith as a young adult, only to face unexpected intellectual doubts about the claims of Christianity. He talks about how he thought through issues like church hypocrisy, the moral failures of church leaders, and the increasing popularity of people claiming to be spiritual, but not affiliating with organized religion. *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *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

evil, church scandals, hell. How can anyone believe in Christianity in light of these kinds of questions and objections? Our guest today, you know who he is. Dr. Bobby Conway is an apologist. He's a pastor, formerly known as the one minute apologist. Of all the questions, which one was the hardest one to address? You know, that's a big question right there. He's a former skeptic, which we're going to get into. He tackles some of the toughest objections against Christianity in his latest book, which I love and endorsed, Does Christianity Still Make Sense? Bobby, it's been a long time and long overdue. Thanks for coming on the show. So excited to be on with you, bro i so appreciate your endorsement it means a ton

well let's just jump right into some of these questions and i want to know of all the questions you tackle in this book which one was the hardest one to address and why you know that's a big question right there. And anytime you know how it is, you get asked, what's the easiest? What's the hardest? Then your brain just starts trying to weigh it all out. And so it's difficult to know for sure which one is the hardest. I would say one of the more difficult questions I would answer to your question for me during

my season of doubt is the part where Christianity doesn't make sense. So, you know, as apologists, we're trying to offer a reasonable faith, but there are parts of the belief that we have as Christians that are hard to square. And so I know for me, when I was struggling through that season of the dark night of the soul, it was the tension I felt in trying to relate to the A&E, the ancient near Eastern world. And then also just some of those bizarre cryptic passages that were there that could feel like, well, am I just, you know, checking my reason? And have I just went out to lunch here? Am I just keeping my fingers crossed?

Like, how do I reconcile the seemingly absurd? So what I'd like to concede is when I talk about Christianity still makes sense, I'm not saying that everything about Christianity makes sense to me or that I can make sense of everything that we believe is Christians. But given cumulative case for case, worldview for worldview, what I realized in my dark night of the soul is to walk away from Christianity is to just inherit another set of unforeseen doubts. And so I would collect doubts where I couldn't make sense of things on atheism, or I couldn't make sense of things on agnosticism.

So I don't think we're alone in the camp of saying hey we can't make sense of these things but that was a tough one it's easier when you live in a culture to have chronological snobbery and just think we've got it all right and i know that that's not correct i really appreciate your honesty with this when you say christianity makes sense it's not that we can dot every I and cross every T and have perfect answers for every question. That's not the case. I mean, even J. Werner Wallace, a friend of mine and yours, cold case detective, says

when you win a case, there's still outlying facts and things you're not sure how they fit in, but the weight of the issue points towards a conviction. So I think it's not even just conceding, it's honesty and it's reality that there's questions we don't know, but every worldview has questions. So which worldview makes the most sense of reality, has the least significant objections? That's why I'm a Christian. Now for me, I think the hardest questions are about the problem of evil, which you deal with in the book, in part because they're intellectual and because they are emotive. And so maybe we'll get into that. But those are consistently the hardest ones where it's not just why does this happen out there, but my somebody that I love or I've seen this, that experiential level makes it tough.

Now, you hit that. The divine hiddenness problem is tough too. I think, uh, that's, uh, you know, the Schellenberg, uh, objection, you know, so you have these non-resistant, you know, seekers, so to speak. And I'm sympathetic to, you know, some of those arguments, but I don't think that can even stand up. So while the divine hiddenness or the evil and suffering objection are the most difficult, uh, I think that we can still provide answers for that. In fact, the crazy thing, Sean, in my doubts, when I was going through that dark night of the soul, it was the fact that God had revealed himself so powerfully to me through providential ways in my past that when I couldn't see my way through the, you know,

the windshield, I would look through the rearview mirror of these moments that I could not explain away. I mean, take for example, Sean, how about this for a story? A guy this past Sunday shows up at my church Sunday morning. He's up till 540 in the morning reading Doubting Toward Faith, a book I wrote eight years ago. He's going through despair and turmoil. And when he puts the book down at 540 in the morning, he looks up more about me only to discover that I live in the same town as him, that I pastor a church in Charlotte. And he ends up coming to church this past Sunday and he comes into the service and I'm kicking off a series called Does Christianity Still Make

Sense? And I'm opening up with a video that I produced on doubting toward faith of me going through my dark night of the soul. It was just what he needed to hear. What were the chances of this guy who was seeking God to help him that he was reading a book by a guy who would be starting a series off, showing a video from the book that he was reading from eight years ago? That's the kind of stuff that I can't explain away, Sean, that Christians have tons of these types of stories. That is my go-to book on doubt, by the way, but that's a conversation for another time. You describe yourself as a former skeptic. Tell us about that. When we're skeptic, what do you mean by being a skeptic? Later,

we're going to get to why you think Christianity makes sense, but tell us about that season a little bit. Sure. So in my book, Does Christianity Still Make Sense?, that was the publisher's move to call it a former skeptic. He answers today's biggest objections. I wanted it to be a near apostate answers today's biggest objections because my skepticism didn't come before I was a Christian. It came after I was a Christian. It came after I was a Christian. You know, I often say one of the dangers, I think, that can happen in Christianity is

somebody gets saved like I did, Sean, at 19. And I didn't even know what questions to ask. I was just trying to know, what do I do with my guilt? And what's the purpose of life? And those two questions were answered through the Christian worldview. Jesus gets rid of my guilt through his death on the cross. He came to give us meaning and purpose. But as I walked with the Lord, I started learning more about what it means to be a Christian. So I had been a Christian for about two years before I heard about the second coming of Christ. And I thought, wait, I wasn't signing up for a second coming of Christ.

I just wanted purpose in life and I wanted my sins forgiven. And then depending upon which church you're a part of, you know, all denominations are just different sized boxes that tell you how large or small Christianity is. So you get in a small tight box with a long doctrinal list and you go to the membership class five days after you're saved let's say and then the pastor gets up and he reads you the doctrinal statement and then you're signing at the end that you believe in the godhead you believe in inerrancy that's right well that's right to that person who's analytical he may have just been set up for a future crisis of

faith well i went off to bible college sean and i and I was at a strict Bible college, you know, not a choose one, and I was learning kind of the one view of everything. Well, when you just kind of learn the one view of everything, and then you start learning about alternative views, well, then that starts to make you feel like, well, how can I trust anything? So, for me, what I did in parenting was I told my kids, enjoy learning, don't try to conquer it. Know there's many different views out there.

Learn the views, think about the the views and then make a responsible decision well I was making decisions Sean on doctrinal beliefs based on a lecture I heard or based on a book that I read and then that was all getting challenged as I grew in my faith well somewhere along the line when I was at Dallas seminary I started struggling with my first the line, when I was at Dallas Seminary, I started struggling with my first bout of doubt when I was taking Dwight Pentecost, the life and works of Christ, and I was in the Synoptic Gospels. And so I was struggling with the Synoptic problem. I figured out how to work through that. Then through world travel, Sean, I started struggling about, well, is Jesus

really the only way? And I felt my soul just being tortured over the thought of, you know, hell and non-believers and people who'd never heard about Christ. And so I realized that like a strict exclusivism view that doesn't leave any room for general revelation to kind of help people, that had set me up to feel angst in an unnecessary way. And then again, some of the bizarre things. And then I started even thinking things like when I was working on my second doctorate, as you know, the PhD from Birmingham University in England, I found myself just thinking, man, like I committed to being a Christian, but I never really studied the different worldviews. How do I know I got this right? So it was kind of like what Francis Schaeffer told his wife in the midst of his

doubts. He's like, you know, Edith, I got to think this whole thing through again. And that's what happened. And I was in a dark night of the soul, ended up on antidepressants, suicidal ideation. It was agonizing, Sean, this long drawn out season of doubt that I went through. I so appreciate your honesty with this, that you're sharing publicly. You and I have had conversations about this off air, but that's interesting that the publisher chose a different term. People don't realize that publishers always take, in my experience, author suggestions and insights, but titles and covers, they have veto power. So that's huge. They were worried about the word apostasy not being able to

be understood by some. But when you think about Rhett and Link, when I listened to Rhett's story, I was like, man, that's the kind of stuff where I was in the middle of. So my story was like the guy that felt like I was losing it all, but I didn't come out as a progressive Christian. I hated my doubts and I was able to come through and make sense of it., but I didn't come out as a progressive Christian. I hated my doubts and I was able to come through and make sense of it. And so I'm thankful that I didn't go that route. I still consider myself a skeptic in the sense that I just question and I doubt things. And I know you're that way as well. Some of this is the way we're wired. Now before, one more question before we jump into some of your specific objections you deal with here is I've discovered in my own life a lot of what motivates me to write a book, to interview somebody is like my own questions.

What do I think about this? I still have doubts at times. I mean, I'm confident Christianity is true. I said this to my high school students. Maybe I shouldn't say this publicly, but I said to my high school students. Maybe I shouldn't say this publicly, but I said to my high school students last week, I said, you know what? I'm more confident that my wife loves me than that Christianity is true. I have literally zero doubt my wife loves me in his faithfulty, not even 0.00001%. None. Now, I have high confidence that Christianity is true, but I still have some

questions and I still have some doubts, and that motivates me. Is that a piece of your book? Was a part of this like you sitting down going, okay, I need to know, are Christians just a bunch of hypocrites? Why are Christians racist? Does Christianity devalue women? Were you in part really working out your own answers on this? I would say there is some truth to that, yes. But I feel like in a lot of ways, Sean, I can still struggle from time to time with my set of questions, but they feel more like questions than even doubt than in the way that I once experienced it. I don't get panicky like I used to, but I will say I was listening to a couple of stories of deconstruction and that can still create trauma in me hearing those stories. I can feel the, and so I almost can feel like, oh man, this just can create a little panic in me when anytime I start hearing that,

because it's just a reminder of that old narrative that played in my head. And so, you know, I realize that some of the questions that people have that do deconstruct, I mean, they're questions that a lot of us have at different times. It's just what's the best answer to those? So when I was constructing that book, I really feel like it was born out of a heart to want to say, look, I didn't become a progressive Christian. I felt like I was hanging by a thread. I could have walked away from it all and wondered if I was going to, but God helped me to find a way to live through this again. And so even though I'm answering these questions in the book, it doesn't

mean that given the particular day, I might find myself back in a little struggle with, okay, but man, you know, what's the deal with this? But Sean, as you know, I mean, we can't even come to the world news by nighttime and not have multiple interpretations on the events that happened that day. What else should we expect with a story from 2000 years ago that we're trying to get a handle of? That's a really helpful distinction

between just the agonizing, painful doubt that I haven't really experienced since I was about 19 and 20 years old and just having questions that nod us, that drive us to find answers. I think that distinction is really, really helpful. You know, I had a chance to interview Gary Habermas recently. As far as I could tell, probably studied the historical resurrection as much or more than, maybe in world history, certainly towards the top of the list. Has that 1,100-page volume that's out. He's working on volume two and then two other volumes. He went through a season of doubt for 10 years, did his dissertation on the resurrection, and then had another decade of really painful doubt where he was like considering becoming a Buddhist.

And I asked him, I said, if it weren't for that doubt, would you have done this research on the book? And it kind of paused and he said, probably not. And so as painful as it is, questions that you have and I have in many people watching can drive us to find answers to hopefully help other people who were doubting. Now, your story probably will not draw as much attention as those who abandon the faith. That tends to interest people more. Like, pastor doubts, stays in the faith. Like, that's not quite the headlines, but it doesn't delegitimize, I know, the honesty with which you have wrestled with these questions, which I think is significant. So I didn't prep you with any of these. I I didn't prep you with any of

these. I literally didn't even choose the questions. I never do an interview like this, but I'm like, I just want to see how Bobby, the one minute apologist, I'm going to time you. You have 60 seconds. No, I'm kidding. That's not true. I'm just going to pick a few of these. And then you don't have to give us, you know, a ten minute response. Just one or two significant things you think might help us with this. So towards the top, this is one of the first questions you deal with related to scandals in the church. Why are there so many scandals in the church? Don't these scandals and hypocrisy delegitimize in some ways the truth and authority of the church and Christianity? They don't delegitimize the truth because the truth is the truth, but they can cause people to not pay attention.

That can cause people to be not interested in looking. But what helps me, Sean, is to realize this, that scandals and hypocrisy are not a Christian problem exclusively. They're a human problem. Wherever you have people, you're gonna have scandals and you're gonna have hypocrisy. You're gonna have it in businesses, other religions. You can't find a camp of people that don't struggle with this.

But what comforts me is when I look at Jesus, Jesus was bothered by hypocrisy and Jesus was bothered by scandals, but Jesus died on a cross to forgive scandals and Jesus died on a cross to forgive hypocrisy. So when I think about other worldview options, well, I can find scandals and I can find hypocrisy so I can see the problem. But Christianity shows me that the problem is there, but it also offers the solution to it and it's Jesus.

And so that's comforting to me as a person. And so I would say that we shouldn't put our stock that people won't let us down. People will let us down. I mean, you know, you did your PhD dissertation on the apostles. We know their faith in Christ was not all that spectacular during his earthly ministry. I mean, you know, they bailed out Judas. You know, he betrayed him. Peter's denying him. They're scattering.

I mean, this is a group of people that were fickle. And so I think we are all capable of letting our Savior down, and we will let him down. And our job is to just say that, you know what, when we fail, we are still looking to the gospel as our solution. You know, Sean, you know, I had a relapse by over five years ago. That was a hard moment for me, pastoring a large church, 23 years without a sip of alcohol. Now I didn't have a relapse because I just wanted to go out and just, you know, get inebriated and go have an affair on my wife or anything like that, which I didn't do that. But I will say I was so depressed, Sean. And they say a statement, if you got a gun in one hand and a bottle in the other, take a drink. In other words, like if you don't see an option. And

unfortunately, I was at such a low, Sean, as a Christian that Jesus wasn't enough. Now, that's a bad commentary on me, but I was in so much pain that I looked to anesthetize myself. And I feel bad about that. And I had to repent of that and ask the Lord to forgive me for that. And I got back in recovery in no time. But all that to say, it's not fun when that happens, but Jesus tells us that that'll happen. But I'm so thankful that he didn't write me off, he didn't cancel me, that there's a gospel that forgives us. So I think that we just point people to the one who met the standard instead of focusing on those that don't need it.

That's a great response. Now, if I was going to be a skeptic, I might say, okay, Bobby, basically what you're saying is Christians have failures, but we see failure everywhere else, so we shouldn't be surprised. And yet Christians also are supposed to have the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us. We are new creations. Shouldn't we see a qualitative difference in the way that we live? And if our answer is, well, we don't see qualitative difference because everybody else fails, then what does that say to the power spirit inside of us? Yeah. And that's a big question right there. I would say it is true that there are people that

aren't believers that live virtuous lives, that are honest, that are faithful. And that, you know, I wouldn't argue against that. I would say that they're doing so because of God's moral law within them, whether they recognize that or not. But here's what I would say as it relates to my own life, Sean. I'm convinced that if it wasn't for Jesus, that I would be dead. So some would say, well, that sounds pretty weak, Bobby. You know, so you're saying Christianity is a crutch? Absolutely, it's a crutch. I'm a weak person.

I am disabled without Christ. I am absolutely in need of him. And the proof is that I know I would have drank myself to death. Sean, I have had half of my dear friends from childhood. They're dead. Last year, one of my childhood best friends, congestive heart failure, heroin addict, couldn't get clean. I went out and did a funeral. Another buddy couldn't get clean, shot himself in the head. I had another buddy that we were part of the same group that I'm talking about from childhood best friends.

They found him four days after he'd been dead laying in an empty family room. He drank himself to death, had another buddy go out in a boat and shoot himself in the head. And I was the ringleader of this, Sean. So all that to say, I do not believe that I would be alive. I do not believe. The Lord taught me how to be faithful to my wife. He showed me how to, he gave me motivation to wanna be good, not because I'm trying to earn something, but because he's a forgiving God and his kindness has led me to want to repent.

I don't think I would be married today if it wasn't for the Lord. And so, Sean, all I can say is when I look at my own life, it's been unbelievably different. If it wasn't for God's grace and in my life, I wouldn't have wanted to get cleaned up right away, but I wanted to honor him and I didn't want to break my family's heart by continuing to drink. So it was the Christian worldview that motivated me to hurry up and get my life back together five and a half years ago.

I appreciate you sharing again your story and being so vulnerable on this. We won't do it here, but a case can be made as a whole amidst the many evils and terrible things people have done in the name of Christ, whether Christian or not, that Christianity's contribution to the world is remarkable and stems from the worldview that Jesus taught. That case has been made elsewhere, but your story's powerful, and I appreciate you weighing in. So let's take another one here. This is obviously a sensitive one today, but let's dive in. You're not afraid. You tackle this in your book. Does God really care about my gender identity?

Well, I mean, I believe he does, Sean. This is a new problem. And I feel for people. I genuinely feel for people that are conflicted. But I look at our culture where we are today, and I listen to the promises that are being held out. And freedom, freedom, freedom. Hey, freedom's good.

I'm all for freedom, but we want the right kind of freedom. And the wrong kind of freedom will make us slaves. If we just do whatever we want to do, we will end up with vices. We will be hedonistic. We will destroy ourselves. And so what you're seeing in our culture today, even with young ladies, teenage girls, the depression rates are through the roof. The mental health is out of control. Like Sean, it was hard enough for you and I to figure out our identity when we were just believing in male and female. Can you imagine how hard it is to come to terms with your identity when the list is continuing to grow? Like it's not even fixed. It's like, oh my goodness,

I settled in on an identity. Oh wait, I need to check it out because the dictionary, it's been updated and there's other options for me to reconsider. I'm thankful for a stable identity that the Christian worldview offers to us. And so what we've done is we have a reductionistic vision in our culture and everything's about people's sex and sexual identity. And when you reduce your

identity to sexual preferences, what ends up happening is you can't handle to be challenged because you've got to guard it because that's all you got. And as Christians, we offer so much more of an identity than just a sexual identity. Yes, we can say that, you know what, we can help you to resolve some of the tension of the confusion of trying to wade through 100 plus pronouns. And we can help you to get back to, you know, understanding that God made us male and female. But I'm sympathetic and I understand why people are confused because of the marketing. It's constantly before us. It's on social media and people feel like they got to fit in to this narrative. And I just wish

we could slow down because there are decisions that are being made at such a rapid speed that I fear for our young generation. They're so confused, Sean. That's a really compassionate response. In one sense, the way you worded it, does God care about my gender identity? In many ways, because this generation often sees their identity in their gender. Beneath that is the question, does God care about me? And the reason he cares about our gender identities, because each of us, male, female, black, white, rich, poor, tall, short, you name the distinction, are made in God's image. And since God is the designer, he's the one who knows actually what's best for us.

And so when we lean into God's design, that's actually how we best flourish. So God cares about our gender identity because God made us for relationship with him and for others. And it's only when we understand his truth and his guidelines and live according to it that we can be set free. So I think that's great. You frame that in terms of, of freedom, but also compassion. One thing too, just to say on this as well, when I think about this, it is interesting to me because I want to say like, as a pastor, what I do a lot now, I mean, I end every church service with 15 to 20 minutes of live Q&A because I want people to have a space to process their doubts. And I say, you can ask whatever you want. Not only that, I really find that I have to start my message and topic always kind of establishing the why. This is a change

in our culture that I feel heavy as a pastor. You can't teach from this place of assumption. And so when it comes to sexuality, I say things like, well, why would God want us to have sexual self-control? Why does he have space called a marriage for this between a man and a woman? What's going on? Is God just some Victorian moral prude that he just wants to ruin our life? And I look and I think, Sean, I listen to the words of this culture and I've been there, done that grew up in California I lived the party lifestyle I was very promiscuous had lots of popularity with the girls that was the life that I was living and I collected guilt and consequences I couldn't I couldn't be faithful to my girlfriend because I was

always cheating and thinking about the next girl I could have sex with I was totally impulsive I was a slave of my appetite and my emotions. I lived by my feelings. I was out of control. I was a train wreck. And what truth does is it helped me to live above my feelings and above my desires and above my selfishness and allow me to consider the other. And so I think there's consequences happening all over this culture, but we aren't hearing about that as much. We're just hearing about, oh, we're getting liberated, but I think we're creating our own gallows that people are going to soon hang from, and we're doing them a disservice. And when I think about Christianity,

I want to go, look, why are we so bothered by Jesus? Like, what's the problem with Jesus? Like, we're talking about somebody who loves us unconditionally, who wants to forgive us of our sins, who has some moral guidelines for us to protect us from destroying ourselves, that wants us to live in heaven with them forever, that doesn't want us to have shame, that wants to forgive us, that doesn't want us to have guilt. And the reason that he has sexual boundaries for us is because, well, think about it. There would never have been an STD had we followed God's ways. Well, how about that? We wouldn never have been an STD had we followed God's ways. Well, how about that? We wouldn't have people cheating on their spouses.

We would have self-controlled spouses. We would be able to, you know, honor our spouses. We wouldn't be having affairs constantly. We wouldn't be collecting guilt because of this stuff. What if God in his wisdom was saying, look, I'm teaching you this because I want you to be a responsible family man someday. And I want you to know what it's like to love one woman. And I don't want you to be not directed by all of your impulsiveness because now we're living in a culture, Sean, people are like, well, you know what? The standard, they realize it's too much because why is it too much? Because they're slaves to their addiction. So what do they have to do? Drop the moral

standard to fit their slavery and say, let's do polyamory and let's just get rid of marriage because it won't work. Why? It will work, but it won't work because we can't be faithful because we bought the sexual ethic of our culture today. Deuteronomy chapter 10, Moses says, what does God require of you? Love, love, God, the heart, your soul, your mind, and strength and follow his commandments, which I am giving you for your

good. Yes. Your objective good. One question I ask students is how would the world be if everybody lived the sexual ethic of Jesus? Now, of course, you have to define that, that there's singleness. And if you're single, you're not sexually active. Biblical marriage is one man, one woman, one flesh, one lifetime. And students go, wow, there'd be no sex abuse. There'd be no divorce. There'd be no sexually transmitted diseases. There'd be no sexual trafficking. And they go on and on to realize for the objective good of society, God's commands actually set us free. So I love that you're framing it in that positive fashion. Let's keep going. There's so much more in your book. We could do a show on each one of these and more.

But the way you worded this is interesting to me. You said, why are so many Christians racists? When I first read that, I thought, I don't know that I'm convinced. Certainly not most. I don't even know if I'm convinced that many Christians are racist. So tell me why you frame that way. Do you think so many Christians really are racists? And what is your response to that objection? Not at all. I boarded that like as a question that you would hear somebody else asking as an objection to Christianity. So it's not my question.

I'm answering a question that people might pose to us as believers. And I think, you know, that idea, it's just exaggerated in our culture. And you know what? It's unfortunate, Sean, because, you know, you have stuff coming out like, you know, the book White Privilege and all these different critical race theory books that have come out. And it's problematic because now people like Robin D'Angelo, you know, I got to write another book, right? So I got to find more racism because I got to keep the books coming. Well, some could say, okay, well, Bobby, isn't that what you're doing? And I'm saying, that's what I love about Christianity is we're not coming up with a

new ethic. Yeah, as apologists, we might be responding to the issues of our day, but we're not doing so by, you know, coming up with new material in the sense that we're not looking at the Bible. We're looking at the Bible and we're trying to apply it. And so when I think about racism, it's unfortunate because there are people that have been taught under the grid of critical race theory and we got people thinking you know everybody's a racist and that's just not the case it's the same thing as it relates to christians uh you hear the statement you know that would that christians just hate homosexuals you know sean i Sean, I've been a Christian for 30 years. I cannot think of a Christian in my 30 years of being one that would have said, boy, we really need to hate the homosexual community. And I hate homosexuals. Now, that's not to say that there have not been a lot of wrong done by the church to homosexuals and i hate that that's happened and you know that

that that that's that's that's that's troubling but what i'm saying in my experience similarly with racism that the christians that i've had the privilege of knowing want to do life uh in a with people of different ethnicity and the christians that i know don't think that, you know, people who are gay are outside of God's reach. So I feel like what happens is, is these questions come at us and they're presented in such a sharp way. And it's not that the church has not got some black eyes. We do.

And I hate that we do. And I hate that I've contributed to the black eye at times just because I'm so fallen. But overall, I think that, you know, we've been race shamed and we've been love shamed by the LGBTQ. And I think it's just the enemy's material to get us sidetracked. And I think we need to just not believe this narrative. I think sometimes what happens in the church, Sean, is we start hearing the way we're perceived, and we actually believe that's the way we are. And I think that we sometimes need to go to bat for the reputation of the church and go, hey, there's some of that there, but I think you guys are love shaming here a little bit. This is

just not the overall consensus in the church. You know, I think we can make two mistakes when it comes to racism. I wrote a book for students and dealt with all these tough ethical issues. And I said, in part, although I didn't use the term, what critical race theory does is it doesn't ask, is racism present? But how is it present? So it might read it in when it's not present. On the flip side is to not recognize that racism can and still does exist. There was a massive study this week.

I was just reading the New York Times about 80,000 different resumes that were sent out in 100 different companies. racist differences in hiring and callbacks based on the names of people like Lakeisha versus Amy that were perceived to be black. As a whole, those with presumably black names got 9.5% less callbacks. Now that's enough that anybody should get paused and go, okay, there is still discrimination. Now that doesn't make a point between Christians and non-Christians, and there's a million questions about that study. But as Christians, when we see something like that, we have to pause and look within at our own hearts and say, have we allowed any discrimination? Have we allowed favoritism in any area to invade us in our hearts? Because the Bible says our hearts are prone to that. But we also have within Christianity the basis that everybody is made in God's image.

And that at the beginning, male and female, and the table of the nations, the world in Genesis, at the present in the church, and in the future, it's all ethnicities, all backgrounds. God values diversity. So we have built within the Christian worldview, I think, the best response to racism. So if it's out there, let's own it. Let's work on our own hearts. But we don't have to lean outside of Christianity. Let's lean to what is within, but we don't have to lean outside of Christianity. Let's lean to what is within the faith, which is why Martin Luther King Jr. was preaching from the scriptures because he knew it carried within it the soil to defeat racism. So good stuff. Now we keep going. Anything you want to add to that or you're good?

I would say that just that's so true, Sean. I mean, again, I'm just trying to balance out the extremes, right? I agree. It's not all racist. And I would never say there's no racism. And we should do whatever we can to eradicate all racism. I know that it's going to exist because the human heart's here. And it's a heart issue ultimately. I do think it doesn't always come down to just a black and white issue.

I think of my son. He was living in Hollywood pursuing acting. And he was told, Sean, you're not going to really have much of a shot here, though he has really good acting abilities. And he was told because he's a white straight male. So what he realized is he was going to be discriminated because he's not gay or he's not diverse in his ethnicity. And so all that to say, I'm not feeling sorry for us in this way. I'm just saying it doesn't always work in one direction.

We just have problems. And so if you go to Hollywood well guess what if you have a name like Lakeisha that might be an asset in that geographical location or if you're practicing homosexual that might have an asset there but it all that to say is what you said is the real point. We shouldn't be discriminating ever on the basis of names or skin color. We should realize that the heartbeat of God is that he loves all people. And that's what's so beautiful about the Christian vision. You get outside of that and shoot, yeah, you go to certain places in the South and African-Americans are

going to be more discriminated against, unfortunately. That's the beauty of the Good Samaritan story. Somebody who was ethnically and religiously different and yet showed love held up as a model. My only point is there are still some Christians who are racist. I agree with you that it's not most, but we have embedded within the Bible and embedded within the person of Jesus, the model and the teachings to overcome it. And we got to look within and do the hard work ourselves. All right, let's keep going. There's so many good questions here. I wish we could tackle all of them. Let's do this one. Doesn't Christianity devalue women? I think that some Christians have devalued women, but Christianity doesn't devalue women. When we understand the Christian worldview, it lifts women up. The Christian worldview is not

an oppressive worldview, but there are Christians within the worldview that have been oppressive to women, to other ethnicities, to the LGBTQ community. But the Bible is not oppressive. Now, what some people will say is because the Bible has moral standards, that it's oppressive. Friedrich Nietzsche would have been that way as the father of postmodern philosophy. You know, we got to cast off, you know, the religious cast because they're there to oppress us. Well, I'm sure that he saw some abuses of the church as well. But I think that somebody like Anitia was also interpreting anybody that's going to come at him with objective morality. That's oppressive. And so in a culture of moral relativism, anything that's going to come off objective is going to look like an oppressive move on our part. And so what I love about the scriptures, as you know, Sean, in the ancient

world, women weren't valued. I mean, it took two women's vote to equal the vote of a man. And then you see what the scriptures, they come along and Jesus lets women be the first eyewitness of the resurrection. You know, women were able to, you know, you have prophetesses. Women were in his caravan. You know, they had an influential role to play. Paul says there's neither male nor female. Now, some will say, oh, but what about Paul? I mean, it seems like he is oppressive when it comes to women or when it comes to, you know, slavery in particular. Why didn't he call out slavery? Well, Paul didn't have the right to overthrow slavery. Paul was

a churchman living in the Greco-Roman world. What Paul was doing is saying, look, this is kind of the government that we live in. How do we make the most of living out our distinct Christian values in this? And so similarly, there are things in our culture that, you know, we can't just say, you know, this is done for now because we're Christians. So we teach people, how do we live in the context that we're in? And that's what Paul was doing. It wasn't him saying slavery's okay. It was just, and it wasn't only the Christians that were doing this. It was the entire Greco Roman world. So sometimes it gets thrown at the feet of Christians. At least the Christians are trying to figure out, well, how do we honor each other in the midst of this brutal system that's been established? So yes, Paul, or yes, I called you Paul.

You're close, Sean. You're close, bro. You can call me Paul, man. I usually callosh if somebody makes a faux paul it's like josh i'm like yep that happens i'm used to it uh so there are some tough passages in the old testament deuteronomy etc in the writings of paul that i've had full shows unpacking those but when i answer this question i say if we just go to the beginning in genesis most ancient cosmogonies did not even describe the creation of women. The Bible describes it. Climax is on day six with the creation of the woman. It's as if God has done, he's like, I can't do any better.

And she doesn't come from his foot or his head, but from his side, right? Described as a helper, but God is also described as our helper. So it has nothing to do with superiority. Both are made in God's image, which is showing their level of equal value and really superiority over anything else within the natural world. Then you go to the person of Jesus. And about, about 15 years ago plus, put together a book, and there's a chapter in there by a friend of mine, John Lynn Fincher. We did the MA program at philosophy in the early 2000s together. And the title was like, Why Jesus is Good for Women. And she asked a question I'll never forget.

She said, of the world's great religious figures, who would you trust your daughter with for a day and i thought uh muhammad no joseph smith no buddha abandoned his family one of the key founders of jehovah's witnesses was at least accused of of a kind of sexual impropriety you go down the line, Jesus still passes the me too test now 2,000 years later with flying colors and women flocked to him in the sense of followed him and were endeared to him. Then you read Paul preaching on Acts and he goes from Thessalonica to Berea to Athens. And each time women believed, they saw this Christian ethic as liberating. So it's not to excuse the difficult passages, but when we go to God's creation, we go to the person of Jesus, his example, and his teaching.

I think Christianity offers the greatest liberation and value for women in the history of the world. That's what I would say. Yeah, Sean, that is so good. That is so good. You know what? I taught a class when I was teaching at Calvary Chapel Bible College called Jesus and the Moral Philosophers.

And my approach to teaching this class is I wanted us to consider the different moral philosophers throughout history in the West. And I wanted them to consider one question at the end of each journey through their moral philosophy is I said, I want you to imagine in a world with 8 billion people, what kind of world would we have if we were to overlay a Machiavellian ethic on all eight billion people? What kind of a world would we have if we were to overlay a Marx worldview or a Nietzsche worldview or a Freudian worldview? And I said, what kind of world would we have if we were all to overlay the Jesus ethic on eight billion people and really live it.

And I said, I mean, there's just no question that the world that you would produce would be way less chaotic. And so I just think that there's something powerful about the person of Jesus. And I like the way that you even illustrated by, well, which man would you wanna have to associate with if you were a woman? You're right. I mean, Buddha took off to go find what? Enlightenment by leaving his wife and child.

I mean, this is a different story we're living in as Christians. So Christianity makes better sense as a cumulative case. And that's what I do in this book too, Sean, is it's a fast read that the part one it's it's it's it's it's a biographical apologetic I include my story my my angst and all of that and then I go in and I wrestle with these questions and I also have a study guide for small groups if people want to do that and for moms and dads if they want to get with their kids and walk through the study guide Tyndale flew my son up and so it was my son and myself as a Gen Z having a conversation around these objections together and they can get the video series and so it's a resource that hopefully can be helping people because I believe Sean that's the biggest apologetic question of our

day does Christianity still make sense not that maybe people are thinking of it in those terms but behind every deconstruction story behind every every apostasy that happens, it was somebody who was wondering, does Christianity still make sense? And I think we can help our kids with this kind of a resource. And does it make sense is not just intellectually. I think questions have shifted from, is Christianity true? I mean, my father was speaking on college campuses in probably 80s and 90s and early 2000s. People were like, give me evidence, prove it, show that it's true. Now people question

whether it's good and even beautiful. And so the mistreatment of women is not really whether Christianity is true or not. It's just like, what does that tell me about the God behind Christianity? If I don't think it's good, I don't care if it's true or not. At least that's my experience. I appreciate that you deal with some of the cognitive questions, but some of the emotional ones too. All right, man, there's some tough ones here. Tell me how you answer this one since you mentioned it earlier on your personal journey. This is question 17.

How can Jesus be the only way to heaven when so many have never heard of him? Boy, that was a tough one. I can remember being in India in particular, Sean, and feeling that in a 1040 window. And so there's different views on this. You'll have some that will handle this by becoming universalists. This is what got origin deemed as a heretic. We get some progressive Christians that will want to go toward universalism. Rob Bell almost went there in his book, Love Wins, but I described him as a post-mortem nuanced purgatorial inclusivist in my response book. And so he kind of left a little bit of room with free will there. Then you have the inclusivist kind of like a C.S. Lewis and his dealings that other religious people can have an opportunity in. And then I would move toward

what is called a soft or a hard exclusivism. And the hard exclusivist would say, yeah, that's true. Jesus is the only way. And if somebody's never heard the gospel, then they're hosed. Then soft exclusivist could say, you know what? People could still be saved with general revelation, the moral law in Romans 2, the heavens showing that God's the designer, Psalm 19, Romans 1. If they respond to that light in faith, believing that God created this, that they've morally failed a good God, that God could forgive them on account of what Christ pulled off, even though they might not be aware of that information piece,

the benefits of the cross could be applied to that person. And for me, that's what I would be hopeful for. It's hard for me to imagine, Sean, that at the moment Jesus says to Telestai, it is finished, that now people who are geographically too many miles away and only have a week to live are going to be hosed because Jesus said to Telestai, when, you know, had he not said that they could have been saved by natural revelation in the faith that they had.

But now because the gospel is going to take a while to get to their geographical location that they're host. So I look at that and think, I would consider myself a soft exclusivist. I believe everybody that's saved, even under the old covenant, was saved because of what Christ would do. And people are saved today because of what Christ did do. But I think that there could be people that if they respond to God and say something like, I believe you're out there, that you created all this, and that you're good, and they recognize that they are morally inept, and they've fallen short of the standard that they sense from within, Romans 2, that God could apply the benefits of the cross to them. That's what I would be hopeful for. It's interesting to say that's what I would be hopeful for. And you also recognize that there's a range of views from C.S. Lewis all the

way through different apologists today. There's not just one response that's offered within the church. You know, one thing that I've said to people, I say, look, the fact that you say be hopeful is because there's something about us that doesn't like the idea that people who haven't heard can't be saved. Strikes us as unfair and unjust. That's a natural human instinct to this. But what's interesting is Jesus is the one who claimed to be the only way. And so the question is, if Jesus really claimed that, and I think he did multiple times, if we have his words recorded accurately against separate conversation, and Jesus really lived a sinless life, born of a virgin, performed miracles, rose on the third day, there's a certain

authority there in the words of Jesus that he knows about eternal life more than anyone who's ever lived. So I have my leanings in terms of what I think is the most reasonable response to those who haven't heard, but I often go back to Jesus and I say, this is downstream from if Jesus claimed to be God, claimed to be the only way. And there's a sense where I've got to go, I don't even know if I have that perfectly figured out, but if Jesus claimed it and he really is God, I better side with Jesus. Now the other point I say, and this doesn't solve it, but I've often said people, I've said, you know what? Part of God's job is to judge those who haven't heard. That's what it means to be God. But you have heard, haven't you? So you can't use how God may judge those who haven't heard to get yourself off the hook for what you have heard.

Yeah, that's something interesting, Sean. I was a Calvinist for probably the first 20 years of being a Christian. I read a book by David Baggett who sat on, you know, he reviewed my dissertation through Birmingham and great moral philosopher, but he wrote a book called Good God with Jerry Walls. And he was talking about Calvinism and the whole idea, he used the kind of if A then B. If A implies I ought to believe and B implies I can't believe, then how am I morally culpable? And that just kind of settled that for me, because as a Calvinist, we would say, you know what, whosoever will. But then I was like, OK, well, you're held accountable,

but you can't believe because regeneration precedes faith. And so therefore, there are some people that they can't believe. So if A implies I ought to believe and B implies I can't believe, then how am I culpable? Well, I would kind of even shift that over then into this question of what about those who've never heard? If people go to hell because they don't believe in Jesus

and they ought to believe in Jesus, well in Jesus. And they ought to believe in Jesus. Well, if A implies they ought to believe, but B implies they can't because of a geographical location, then how could they be accountable? And so I then take, okay, well, not to judge the earth, do what is right. He's not willing to any should perish. And I just try to wrestle with all that and i go it just seems like it's more fitting with the doctrine of god's justice that a implies that those who ought to believe leads to be that they can believe and that raised the question how can they believe if they hadn't heard we won't go down that road. But some would say if people were willing to believe and respond in the way you described,

then God would supernaturally get the message of Jesus to them to believe. That's more of a hard, you know, exclude particularism position. But hey, there's other questions in your book, such as why are Christians so obsessed with pro-life? Why does God allow evil in the world? We didn't really unpack that one. Can I be spiritual without being a Christian? How can loving God send people to hell?

What about miracles today? Really, the tough questions. I couldn't think of any big ones that I get asked that you don't wrestle with in at least some fashion here within this book. So let's wrap it up. Just finally, tell us this. Why do you think Christianity makes sense, still makes sense? For me, Sean, it just paints such a great picture for me when I consider the resurrection.

It's the one thing that I can't explain away. During my doubts, it was the very thing where some people study the resurrection as skeptics and then become believers given the evidence. It was me studying the resurrection, trying to explain it away, like in critic corner, if I was to try to explain away the resurrection, could I, what would I do? And as I, you know, considered the different objections, it took more faith for me to believe in the objections than the actual evidence that Jesus really rose from the grave. And so my reasoning went something like this. If Jesus really rose from the grave, then he really did die. And if Jesus really did die, then he really did live. And when he really did live, he said he was going to die and rise again.

And when he really did live, he validated the Old Testament. And then he also said that he was going to send the Spirit and there would be more truth to come. So I went through this process of going, okay, well, if the Old Testament was good enough for Jesus and he validated it in his first coming, then I'll trust given his resurrection that in his second coming, he'll also validate the New Testament. So out of the resurrection, I could go back and find redemption in his death. I could find purpose through his life. I could find confirmation in the Old Testament

to let all those questions that are driving me crazy be at rest because of Jesus rose, then he died and he lived and he validated it. And then I could trust in a second coming. And out of that, what was interesting, my way out of doubt was my way into faith to begin with. Like a child, I had to come to the end of my quest for omniscience. And I just realized that the resurrection and the death of Jesus, the gospel, is what I'm staking my faith in. And I believe that that is the best news and what it

offers is so much more robust than what any other worldview has to offer. And we hit on some of that today, Sean. And lastly, I would say, given even something like the problem of evil, what's so amazing about God is there are some things that we would have never known had there not been a world of evil. For example, we would have never known we need forgiveness and that God's a forgiving God if the world had always been perfect. We would have never known what grace was in a world where there was never a fall.

We would have never known our need of mercy if we weren't in need of it. We wouldn't have known that we were unconditionally loved if we met all of his conditions. So God is so good that even in a world in which he gives us free will, when we bail out on him, he comes through and says, okay, check it out.

I gave you the opportunity to live the way I wanted you to in this ideal world, but you didn't. But even in that, let me show you something that you never would have known about me had the world not went astray, that you're unconditional in his love, that he's unconditional in his love, that he's gracious, that he's merciful, and that he's a forgiving God. And what other worldview offers people that kind of a relationship with the creator?

I want to make sure people know that you're not pretending to answer all these questions in depth. Each chapter is about four or five, maybe six pages or so, but I think it's great for personal study. You know, I teach a high school class still. This is exactly the kind of book with a length that I could take a group of high school students through. Great for a small group study. It's really, really good, not only in terms of content, but in terms of tone. And I think people listen to this, pick up on just your pastoral caring tone and honest tone coming through as well. So it's great stuff. We're going to have you back.

Always fun. Now, before folks click away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot of other topics coming up. Near-death experiences, in fact, hellish near-death experiences. And then another show on, do near-death experiences point towards universalism these are huge questions i've got more on bible archaeology etc make sure you hit subscribe and if you thought about studying apologetics we would love to have you at biola all the information is below bob you're awesome man let's do this again soon Bye.