Theology in the Raw - Sharing Your Faith Without Being Weird: Lindsey Medenwaldt

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Lindsey Medenwaldt is an assistant professor of business and economics at Northwestern College in Iowa. Lindsey has written two books: Bridge-Building Apologetics and her recent (co-authored with Dr. Douglas Groothuis) What If Jesus Is Right? will be released in August 2026. Lindsey engages extensively on the topics of apologetics and worldview as a writer, editor, teacher, and speaker. She has a Jurist Doctorate, a masters in public administration, and a masters in apologetics and ethics from Denver Seminary.Time Stamps:00:00 Introduction 01:42 How Lindsay Became an Apologist06:20 When you Don’t Know the Answer07:49 Apologetics without being Argumentative11:32 Making friends as Adults 14:20 Evangelism for Introverts 26:20 Moving from Small Talk to Big Faith Conversations 30:06 Evangelism on a Plane 35:47 When you can’t Figure out what to say 40:36 Political Division and Evangelism 45:49 Social Media and A.I impact on Relationships 49:37 Gen Z, Relationships, and Human Connection57:39 What if Jesus was Right? Biblical reliability matters See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The thing about talking about our faith is we're all told to do it. This is not like a negotiable thing that's offered in scripture. Go talk about me, Jesus says, unless you're an introvert and then you get a pass. Like, that's not what he said, right? That is a thing that has really struck a chord with me in my life is, Lindsay, stop using your introvertedness as this excuse to not get to know people. There are no guarantees that we're going to be comfortable with the things that he calls us to do. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Raw.

My guest today is Lindsay Meddenwalt, who is an assistant professor of business and economics at Northwestern College in Iowa. Her first book, Bridge Building Apologetics, was released in 2024. And her second book, co-authored with Dr. Douglas Grotice, is called What If Jesus Is Right? It comes out in August, 26. Lindsay engages extensively on the topics of apologetics and worldview as a writer, editor, teacher, and speaker. She has a jurist doctorate, J.D., also a master's in public administration and another master's in apologetics and ethics. This is a free-flowing, super down-to-earth conversation about how to talk to people about faith and how to defend your faith when necessary and how to go about it a way that's not super obnoxious as some of us have fallen into, I'm sure. So really love this conversation.

It's super practical and down to earth. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Lindsay. Medin-Baldryl. Lindsay, welcome to Theology Draw. I am so curious how you got interested in apologetics. I feel like apologetics is this, like, distinct field where people are either way into it or they don't care about it.

Like there's not a lot of fuzzy line between apologetics and that. So what was this something that you were interested in your whole Christian life or fell into into you more recently? Yeah, I would say I was not interested in it my whole life. I am a missionary kid. And I guess evangelism has been something that I've been interested in. But the word apologetics was very foreign to me. My husband became a Christian while we were dating, which is, you know, we were, we were not

equally yoked when we got married. So let me just make that clear. But he was definitely on a journey toward faith when I met him, and apologetics really got a hold of him. C.S. Lewis, Lee Strobel, a few others. And he started researching it and becoming really interested, and he actually became a Christian in part because of apologetics and, of course, the work of the Holy Spirit. I, on the other hand, was kind of like my faith. I have been a Christian since I was five. I know Jesus is real. I don't really need to know what the Kalam cosmological argument is.

I'm not really interested in arguing with people because that was my perception of what apologetics was. I think it's a lot of people's perception. That's why I think I had as a bad rap a little bit because I think people are kind of tired of arguing and fighting and, you know, they feel like apologetics is that. You're going to kind of, you know, overwhelm people with all this evidence until they just cry uncle and say, okay, okay, you know, which obviously doesn't work most of the time. Right, right. And I, I love people. Like I said, as a missionary kid, like truth and love was a

really natural thing in my family. We would constantly talk to anybody on the street about anything. I think my mom is probably the world's greatest evangelist in many ways because she will talk to you wherever you are. She often finds people like, in Walmart. And it's really fascinating to me. But apologetics in and of itself was not something that was interesting to me. I thought, I knew that the Bible was true. And no one had really challenged me on that point up until my 30s, I suppose. Well, then my husband Jay decided he wanted to go to seminary, so he got out of the Air Force and decided, hey, I'm going to go ahead and go to Denver seminary, and I think I'm going to get a degree in apologetics and ethics from there.

While we were doing our research on this, big change from going from military life to civilian life, we discovered a 50% off discount for seminary for spouses. And I'd already been to school. I'd done graduate school at that point. I had had, you know, my JD, and I said, you know what, what if I go, if they let me in? if I go and I just learn about apologetics so we can have cool conversations over dinner. So I literally went to have these fantastic conversations with Jay at the dinner table so that I could understand the words that were coming out of his mouth.

And the rest is sort of history. God definitely directed my path a little bit differently. And I met some people along the way, including some great professors like Douglas Grotice and Craig Blomberg. and they sort of fed into me and nurtured this desire to know more about why I believe what I believe is true. There was a particular assignment that really changed the trajectory of my life and my thinking. I was challenged by Dr. Grotice to have a conversation with someone who was not a believer. And I didn't have to have any answers.

He made that very clear in the assignment. He's like, you're a first year apologetic student. You have no answers. You don't need to know the answers. Just let them ask questions. And in that conversation, at the end of it, I walked away like literal tears because I didn't know the answers to some of the questions that she was asking. And I felt really convicted in that moment.

Like, do I really know what scripture says about these things? And do I know why I can believe the historicity in the Bible? Instead of just saying the Bible says it's. true, so it's true. Circular argument. What's the evidence? What are you supposed to say when someone said, when you don't have, when someone asks a hard question and you don't have the answer?

I've had lots of experience with this, actually. So I just say, I don't know. I don't know, but I'm going to find the answer for you because I believe that there are good answers available to us. There are experts in these fields that have been studying for years and years in many cases. And there are no new questions under the sun, which is a little bit of a muddying of a Bible verse. But I really believe that the questions that are being asked today are the same questions that have been asked in the past. There aren't really hard questions, so to speak.

But I think where we go wrong is we try to answer questions that we don't know the answers to. And then we start to make mistakes. One of the things I encourage people to realize is that you're not. not going to know all the answers and that's okay. I think our kids, I'm a mom, they give me good experience in this because I am often asked questions from my kids that I don't know the answers to and it would be really bad if I taught them to just make up stuff on the spot. Instead, I say, you know, I don't know the answer to that question, baby, but let's go look for it. And I'm sure somebody smarter than I am has come up with a good answer to that question. And typically we're

we're pretty good about finding the answers. You wrote a book, I'm not sure how many years ago, called Bridge Building Apologetics. Sorry. When did that come out? Yep. I think it was 2024. Time is a really weird thing, Preston. I think it was 2024 is when that came out.

Talk to us about that. I mean, I can kind of guess. I haven't read it. I've been reading your most recent book, What If Jesus is Right, that you wrote with Professor Grotis? I haven't read your previous book. I could probably, well, I think I could guess what bridge building apologetics is, but I would rather have you explain what that is. So, yeah, unpack that.

What is bridge building apologetics? So one of the things I already talked about was this idea that apologetics is all about arguing or getting people into faith through having debates. And that really turned me off. I was not interested in going to war with people. But you're a lawyer. Does that come naturally? You would think.

You would think that would come naturally. But a lot of law work is actually done behind the scenes at a desk. It's not done in the courtroom. It's mostly not what you see in the movies or on television. And so, you know, not a lot of arguing in courtrooms. A lot of searching for evidence and finding answers to questions. And that's really what apologetics is. It comes from the Greek word apologia, which means to give a defense.

In the context of Christianity, it's to give a defense for the hope within you. We get that out of 1st Peter 315. And evangelism, having been a root in my life, my parents did a really good job of making that an important part of my life. I thought that apologetics going to war in all of these concepts didn't have a place for me. And then I started just having conversations with people and asking them what they believe. And that really led me down a path of, well, how can we have better conversations? How can we build bridges? How can we plant seeds and not weeds? And for me, that became a book. I wanted to be grounded

in truth. I won't compromise the truth. Whatever is found in scripture, I'm not going to compromise that for the sake of your feelings. At the same time, I value you. you genuine friendship with you. And so I respect you enough. I see you as an image bearer. I see you as somebody that God loves and wants to call his own. And I'm going to have this genuine relationship with you, but I'm also not going to stop affirming the Bible as true. And for me, that's bridge building, is having these firm foundations of truth, the core of Christianity, but also friendship and genuine relationships with people. So the bridge is the relationship.

It is. It's not, so does it also include, and maybe it doesn't, like conceptual bridges? So you meet somebody who's, you know, kind of a, I don't know, what we used to call them hippies, what are they called now, just somebody who like is really into creation care and earth, the kind of granola, you know. Conceptually, well, the Bible talks about creation and it has a high view of creation. And there could be a conceptual bridge there where you see. start to introduce the Christian God to somebody through a lens, a biblical lens that is maybe might most resonate with this person as kind of an open door. Could that be a bridge

as well? That's exactly a bridge. I've got no problem with finding bridges wherever you can find them. It could be in your favorite brand of coffee. It could be in somebody's idea of who God is. Whatever opens the door. But really it starts with a hello. Like we can't overthink this concept. I think we do. Friendship is a hard thing, especially coming out of the pandemic. We've seen this shift to even more isolationism. A lot of Christians aren't even going to church anymore, so they don't really have Christian friends that they can see at least once a week, you know, and worship together. And making friends as adults is really hard, too. We don't, we don't really get to know our neighbors anymore. We've gone from the front porch to the back porch.

And a lot of neighborhoods, not mine, but a lot of neighborhoods have fences and they're like privacy fences. So they're literally built to keep people out from your space. Wait, you don't have those things? We don't. We don't have fences. It's the most wonderful thing. We live in a really idyllic place, which is all of our yards are sort of connected. And it was a shock to us when we moved here from Texas because in Texas we had the privacy fence where we didn't see our neighbors. We were all in the backyard and nobody saw each other. Here, if we're in the backyard and our neighbors are in the backyard, we go and have conversations with each other. Or it's, hey, you want to come over and hang out by the fire pit or whatever it is.

And we're not doing that as much in the American culture and Western culture as we used to. And I think that has really impacted the way that we relate with others and also the way that we think about others. We have caricatures in our minds of certain types of people that we hear about on social media or that we hear about through the news. And, oh, I could never be friends with that kind of person or a person who holds that belief. They put up a political sign in their front yard and you're like, well, I'm never going to be their friend. we've got nothing in common as if one political sign tells you everything you need to know about that person. And so really bridge building is about getting to know someone. Stop overthinking this. Just go and have a conversation. What are their names? Where do they work? Do they have

kids? What are they interested in doing? Do they like movies? Do they like Mexican food? I mean, there's so many ways that we can build bridges with people without even getting in to the faith conversation. the more that you know someone, the more likely that those conversations will happen much more naturally. Where do you go to church? Oh, you don't go to church. Is there a reason why you don't go to church? And those kinds of questions just kind of naturally flow, the better that you know someone. I want to kind of almost state the obvious of everything you're saying. Because I was going to, two minutes ago, I was going to ask a question, can you give us some just really basic tips on how do you even get to know somebody? You know, like, because some people have it easy. They just get to know people so quickly and they're in relationships with people.

It just comes naturally. Other people, it's really hard. What's the difference? But I just want to make an observation. Everything you said was how to do with asking questions and showing genuine curiosity, right? I mean, you said, what are your names? What do you do? Where do you work at?

Tell me about that. How do you? Those are all like, you're asking really genuine questions followed by it. Not, hey, how's it going? Good. And you stare at each other. Like, who's going to go next? You know, it's like, that's just not, I don't know, but it sounds so simple. But it's, it's, I know a lot of people that I could be talking to them for a long time. And they wouldn't ask a single question. I've been asking a single question. You know, it's just kind of like, I don't know. Is that, is that come naturally to you? Do you have to learn that? What's your advice to other people that maybe have a harder time building that bridge of relationships? I think actually I'm a good example of. of someone who it doesn't come naturally to, I consider myself an introvert. And for a long time, I use that sort of as an excuse to not get to know people. Oh, I just, I just want to sit in my house and read or watch movies or whatever else. Get a little too close to home. I think it's ironic that

God calls us to things that sometimes we're uncomfortable with. There are no guarantees that we're going to be comfortable with the things that he calls us to do. And the thing about talking about our faith is we're all told to do it. This is not like a negotiable thing that's offered in scripture. Go talk about me, Jesus says, unless you're an introvert and then you get a pass. Like that's not what he said, right? Go be fishermen of men. And that is, that is a really thing that is really struck with me, struck a chord with me in my life is, Lindsay, stop using your introvertedness as this excuse to not get to know people. I would be the person on a plane that would put my headphones in and have my book and be like, do not talk to me, right? My mom, I've already mentioned her, she's sort of the opposite of

who I am in a sense of like she'll talk to anybody. She started praying for me when I was traveling. Instead of just safety, it was give Lindsay some divine appointments. Let her meet people on the plane. I did. I started meeting people on planes. People just started talking. They would go through the headphones. They'd be like, tap, tap, or, oh, I see you're reading this book. Tell me more about that. Like, what is happening? We can be good at this if we allow the Holy Spirit to work through us and stop using this fear of conversation as an excuse not to share our faith or to even talk to people. Start by when you walk by somebody, if you're, like, we walk a lot in our neighborhood, if you walk by somebody else, say hello. Like that's a really simple way to get started, right? It's just, just start saying hi to people. And I can already hear people saying, well, that's weird. Why would you just talk to people like that when you're walking by them? Why is that weird? I will push back gently on that. That should not be weird. That should just be a natural thing that we do

is we say hello to people. The other thing is that. question thing that you asked about. I do ask a lot of questions. I am naturally an inquisitive person. I am a learner. I love to research. And so it's not that I'm researching a person when I meet them, but I do tend to ask a lot of questions. One of the people that I studied a lot in seminary was Francis Schaefer. And one of the things that he said was if he was ever in a conversation with an unbeliever and he had an hour, he would allow that unbeliever to speak for like 55 minutes. Wow. And then he would speak for five, right?

He would ask them, do you mind if I share what my perspective is? And he would do that for five minutes. And that has really been the way that I kind of try to operate in my life. And I've had specific examples of that happened to me in my life where I just let them talk and I learn. And then meanwhile, I'm praying inside. God, please give me an opportunity to have five minutes. But people do like to talk about themselves. So asking them questions allows them to share things that maybe they don't typically get asked to

share. I wonder, do you find, and I don't know, we're kind of chasing this rabbit trail, but it's interesting to me. Because I'm just, I'm a student of relationships. And people, and why are people wired a certain way? Why are people, why is this person really connect? this person isn't. How come this person knows how to ask questions and this person doesn't? I don't know.

I'm just curious about the diversity here. Oh, I forgot what I was going to say, but I found it. Do you think introverts are actually better question askers? Probably. They don't want to have all the pressure of talking. Exactly. Like I,

most people that talk a lot, like in the conversation, they have used probably, they've occupied maybe 80% of the noise. I don't know, in my experience, they're typically more extrovert. And for me, as an introvert, I don't want to talk. But I could ask a question. That's easy. It takes 10 seconds, you know, and then you just sit there and listen, you don't have to talk.

And then when it kind of, you start to land a plane and you ask another question. And then, so I don't, that sounds negative. I don't mean it that way. But I mean, I want, so if somebody is. very extroverted. And man, they can talk for an hour without realizing they just talk for an hour. I wonder if in these kind of situations, they need to be like, like, we're disciplined to like say, hey, just don't let the other person talk. And an introvert might be, their challenge might be, hey, don't avoid this person. Like, go in and ask a question and, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a beautiful way of, of creation, right? God didn't make us all exactly the same way. And we're all blessed with different gifts. And some people are just going to naturally be the kind of person who can share and they're outspoken about things. It's, it's lovely to watch people who are extroverted just talk. And they're so free about it. And there's no buildup for them. For me, it's like, oh, I'm going to have this conversation with a new person. I better rehearse that. And it's running through my mother. And it's running through my Like, okay, if they ask this question, how will I respond? And what might the follow-up be? And I have done a lot of practicing on my own of different conversations I might have with people from different worldviews. Like, if I meet somebody on a plane who is from Eastern philosophical worldviews, how might I interact with them? There is a book called neighboring faiths, which I think it might be in its third edition. But it's by Winfrey Corduette. and in it he says, so he goes through these different worldviews and religions, and you have chapters

and chapters, let's say, there's several chapters on Islam. And then at the end, there's like an evangelism piece, and it says, so what happens if you meet a Muslim? Oh, okay, so now we're putting it into practice. Like, what does happen if I meet a Muslim? And I think the first step is to don't make any assumptions about them, right? You built up your knowledge, you have a general working knowledge of somebody who is from that worldview, but that person is a person, an individual human being with different thoughts and perspectives who may or may not agree with the things that you read in the book. They might have different underlying beliefs or they might think certain things about that worldview. And that's where questions can really help us out is, I read that

Muslims believe in this. Is that true in your perspective? Or can you give me more clarification on that. And people are probably wondering, like, how do you meet Muslims? Well, it depends, right. Are you, are you open to that? I have found the more open I am to meeting people from different perspectives and worldviews, I run into them more frequently. And I'm not as closed off as I once was to that idea of, like, what if I say the wrong thing? I mean, we say wrong things all the time, right? It's about being humble enough to admit it when we get something wrong and saying, oh, I had that perspective of people from your faith and maybe that's not actually accurate. Yeah.

And being willing to be told differently than what you might already believe about that person. Sometimes if I'm like skittish about asking a question because I'm not sure if it's offensive or whatever, I think just, I mean, depending on the person, but I mean, just kind of saying that, you know, like you meet a buzzum and you want to ask a question about. like, I don't know, like, why do, why do, I don't know, just off top of my head, like, why do women wear, you know, head coverings or, you know, how come there's different styles or any like, I don't know, is that offensive? You can just say, hey, I'm curious, you're Muslim and I've always wondered this.

And I'm so, you know, sorry if this is, I don't mean this to be offensive or maybe you don't only say that. Once you say that, can I take it as an offense. You know, I just acknowledge like, hey, I'm ignorant, but I'm curious. I would love to know this, this and this about your religion. Most people are pretty forgiving if you weren't it wrongly or something, you know. Exactly. That's my experience.

And I want people to know that is like if you get something wrong and you are humble enough to say, oh, I didn't know that or I didn't understand that or thank you so much for sharing that, it goes a really long way and building this relationship. And often it will result in people asking questions. about you. That's the other thing about having conversations, right? One question leads into another question, and before you know it, there's a dialogue, not a monologue. And that, for me, is really laying the groundwork for maybe you'll have a faith conversation with them, and maybe you won't. It depends on what God is ordaining

and what the Holy Spirit is doing in that particular moment. I use that planting seeds, not weed's idea in my first book because I want Christians to plant seeds that can eventually bear fruit, good fruit. And when they meet my mom in the Walmart, they're ready to go, right? I personally have, you know, I don't have very many conversations in my past where I've literally led somebody to Christ by saying a prayer with them. But I've had a ton of seed laying conversations where this is where you can go in scripture to find Jesus's interaction with so and so. And this is what we can learn about that interaction or Jesus taught in this parable, such and such. This is how we can relate it into our own lives and what it means to be a Christ follower. And then the people who are

gifted with leading people to Christ and through a prayer and whatnot, I believe that the Holy Spirit will lead them along that path. We're just building them up. And then the moment comes where they're ready to accept. How do you move from those kind of initial conversations? You're building the bridge. You're related to them. You're asking questions. How do you move from there to a faith conversation? Like, do you, I don't know, like, do you let it happen naturally? Or are there specific, like, memorize questions that are kind of transitionary questions? Is there a strategy to moving it to a faith conversation? Because I think most people can say, okay, I can get on board with, you know, meeting somebody,

talking to a neighbor, or asking you to learn how to ask good questions. It's moving to the faith conversations with faith conversation, which I think scares some people to death. It does. I think being open about your own faith can help a little bit with that. Like, I can't meet with you on Wednesday mornings because I'm going to Bible study or I, Sundays are reserved for, you know, church and family or whatever it might be. And then, oh, I remember you can't go to that because you go to church on Sunday mornings. Can you tell me why you go to church on Sunday mornings? I've actually had people ask me that kind of question. Some people are much

more willing to just jump right into the faith conversation. We see examples from scripture. I was thinking about this recently. Jesus has a lot of interactions with people. And I call him in bridge building. I call him the ultimate bridge builder because he obviously, he's truly God, truly human. So he knows people in and out before he has these conversations. That's a bit of an advantage that we don't have. But he, in some cases, will immediately cause somebody to transform their lives. So Zakias, after a conversation with Zakiya's over dinner, Zakiya's life is transformed. Right.

We see Paul completely transformed in a minute. There's a situation where we don't actually know what happens in the end, and I don't like to make assumptions about things that aren't in Scripture. But Jesus's interaction with the rich young ruler doesn't really end the way that people would expect it to end based on other narratives we find in Scripture when Jesus is talking to people. Like the dude really turns his back and walks away from Jesus. And that has been an illustration to me in my own life. life, like, okay, maybe people aren't open to having a conversation about faith and to be willing to be okay with that. And I think a lot of that, you know, I open this first book with a chapter on prayer and end it with a chapter on the Holy Spirit. And I think those two kind of bookends

are really important in the life of a Christian because you could rehearse as much as you want the questions you want to ask. But you never know who Jesus is going to lead you to. Right. I don't know who I'm going to sit next to you on a plane. I don't know who, what students are going to come into my classroom. I don't know the people that I might meet at church on Sunday morning. Maybe there's a new couple who comes in.

I don't know who God has in store for me. And so being a willing vessel like Paul was to be able to engage with people and not know. It's a little bit scary because, especially as Westerners, we love control. Like, what do you mean? I'm going to go into a conversation and hope for the best. Well, yeah, because we are all different people with different perspectives and different life experiences.

And we got to remove these, it's not really blinders. I said the word before caricatures that we have of certain types of people. and be willing to meet people where they are. Yeah, totally. Can you, I'm curious, if you could think of a couple. I would love to hear one really amazing mind-blowing encounter you've had with somebody where the unexpected happen, where God worked in, you know, just crazy, perhaps even miraculous ways. A hardened heart was melted before your eyes.

And then I would love to hear another experience that was like that was the most terrifying, disastrous apologetics encounter. Either you did everything wrong or like you did everything right and it just blew up in your face. Do you have a couple scenarios like that just to put some? I have way too many examples. Okay. I think the biggest one for me that I've been jamming on for the last couple of years,

Maybe it's only been a year. I don't know. Time's weird. But it was, I was on a plane, and I was super frazzled because the plane was delayed. And I did not have a very long layover connection in Chicago. It was 15 minutes. And I was kind of freaking out, like, how am I even going to make it to my – it's not possible. I'm going to miss my flight.

I'm never going to make it home. You know, how we catastrophize. The lady next to me was also panicking. which is, you know, not great. We're sitting in this little plane and we're both panicking, and I said, what's wrong? It was a basic human interaction. Like, why are you panicking? I'm panicking too.

And she had a different problem. She was going to have like an eight hour layover in Chicago before flying over to Heathrow. And they had made her check her bag. So everything that she planned to have for that eight hour layover was now in the bowels of a plane and she was never going to see it again until she got to England. Great. So we're both in this together. Feeling a little frantic. She starts talking about faith almost immediately. And I am like, you don't even know me. Why are you sharing these things with me? But I mean, I didn't say that out loud. But at the same time, I'm like, I've been studying World View and World Religion since I was 17 years old. And you're saying a lot of words that are like forcing me to pull these file folders from my brain and hopefully I'll be able to respond, right? She was talking about her previous Buddhist beliefs, how she used to believe in New Age. That was actually how we got into the conversation

because she was talking about how it would be so great if we could just meditate the pain, the stress away, maybe do some yoga or whatever. And she goes about talking about Hinduism and how she dabbled in Christianity briefly and really bought. into Christ's consciousness, which is not a Christian ideal. But then she looks at me after sharing all of these things, and I'm really excited. She'd been talking almost literally for an hour because this was an hour and 15-minute flight. She was like, so what do you do? I'm just coming home from an event where, you know, I talked about Jesus for a couple of days. And she goes, oh, are you a Christian? And I said, I am.

She goes, so, tell me about your favorite interaction that Jesus had with somebody. And I was like, wait, I can't talk to you about, like, all the things that you just got wrong. Like, God, come on. I've been training for this. And so I put all the little brain file folders away and watched her just listen to me talk about Jesus. And after I gave her the first answer, which was. Zakias, he's one that I go to pretty frequently. She said, can you tell me another? And then can you tell me another? And I was like, interesting. This is like talking about the hope within me.

Like this is what Peter was talking about in 1st Peter 315. And so I sort of moved it into a gospel conversation. And it became a, this is what Jesus's interaction was with the thief on the cross. And, you know, I truly believe that, you know, Jesus is my hope and this is why. And then the plane landed and she literally shoved me off the plane so that I could catch my next flight. And it turned out that while we were in the air, and this is sort of the miraculous side of it, my flight had actually changed to a different gate while we were in the air and it was right next to where we landed. So I just had to plot around to the next gate. instead of trying to have to run across Chicago or Hare, which was going to be a nightmare.

I reached out to her. I don't often do this, but I had collected her name and I knew what her career was and where she was from. And I found her information and I emailed her and I have followed up with her. And it's become kind of a, this is who I pray for. And that is a really, I think that was a transforming conversation for me. as well, kind of humble pie a little bit, like, oh, you know all of this stuff, but do you know me? And for me, that is a really important question to ask is you can have all of this knowledge.

You know, we've gone to school for so many years and we've studied all of these things. And yet, who do you say that I am is what Jesus asks his disciples? And that is a really important question. As far as the failures. I love that. I love that she was asking about tell me your favorite story of Jesus. Usually people are like, well, what about sexuality and how come God doesn't like gay people? Or like, usually it's stuff like that.

Like that's probably felt like a curb ball. Like, wait, you just want me to tell you about stories? Yeah, it was not even like a problem of evil question. It was like not hard. It was truly like the hope within me. And I think that God ordained that not just for her but for me as well to kind of, hey, you've got all of the stuff that you can answer, but can you answer this question? And I have failed in many ways with those hardball questions, right? Like I don't pretend that I am an expert in all of the

things. I just love people. And if you're going to ask me a hard question, it probably comes from a really hard place. And usually my follow up right after you ask a question will be, can you tell me where that comes from. What is causing you to ask me this question about whatever it is they ask? And then I learn more, and that helps me relate with them better, but it also helps me kind of take a breather. Like, oh, there's a hard question. I need to breathe for a second. And so I think it's really important for us to realize that we're not expected to know all of the answers. That's not what Scripture tells us. Have every answer possible to all of the questions that have ever been asked. It's can you answer about who is the hope within you?

Yeah. And that's important. I love your question. Where is your question coming from? Hmm. I love that because your response to, it might be the same question, but if asked by two different people with two very different things leading up to that question in their life, your response to that question is probably going to look quite different, you know?

Yeah, I mean, somebody asked, you know, yeah, what does the Bible say about, you know, homosexuality or something, you know. I'm sorry. That's kind of your thing. No, it's cool. Kind of my thing. I'm really grateful that God did not call me to that. Well, you talk about it a little bit in your research, but. Yeah, but it also is one of the main questions that comes up 50% of the time, if not more, you know, in these kind of encounters.

But, yeah, so I mean, but if you ask, well, I'm curious. where is this question coming from? You know, one person could, you know, well, my brother's gay and, you know, we grew up in the church and, you know, he was outed by our dad who was a pastor who ended up, it came out that he had a 10-year affair with other women, yet he was, you know, condemning gay people for the, you know, there could be a whole history of, it might not even be about struggling with Romans 1 or something, you know. But another question might be totally different, but there might be a totally different background

to that question. but to your point, you don't know that really valuable storyline by the question unless you ask, where's this coming from? I think that's brilliant. I want to hear the less the positive story. Yeah, I mean, I think I kind of started with one, right, with seminary. And I bombed. I mean, when I said bombed that conversation, it was basic stuff like, how do you know the resurrection actually happened. I could not, I could not answer that question. And I had no, I had no idea. Deer in headlights, I was looking at her through whatever platform we were using at the time. And I was like, I'm not supposed to answer that question, but I don't actually know that

question, that answer. And she kind of looked at me like, well, don't you think you, you should? Yes, I do. I do actually think I should know the answer to that question. And again, that humility side of being willing to say, I don't know, but I'm sure that there are good answers somewhere. Let me do the research and find reliable sources that will tell me the answers to this question. And, you know, if you're in the seminary context, you're hopefully surrounded by reliable sources and your professors. So I could just walk down to the, you know, the classroom building and pop in, you know, to who whoever's office and ask the question, ethics questions, and all sorts of things that come up that are, again, coming from a place of, I'm not experiencing that because I'm not living your

life, but tell me more about where that question's coming from. You know, I wrote this book around a time of a pretty major election in the United States. Yeah. And one of the, One of the issues that always comes up with elections is a pretty popular one. It's not just homosexuality, it's abortion, right? And one of the questions I think about is, what do you do if one of your neighbors puts up a sign for a pro-abortion candidate? As a Christian, what do you do, especially if you have this underlying relationship with your neighbor? I'm going to assume now that you know their name. and that you've had some kind of conversation with them in the past.

What do you do? You have a couple of choices. You could just ignore it and kind of make a bunch of assumptions about why they support that candidate. Or you could go over to their house and say, hey, I saw that you popped up this sign. Can you tell me more about why you support this candidate? Oh. Okay. And now you've entered into this.

It's not a hostile conversation. It's just literally, like, why do you support this candidate? Because if you have a sign for a particular candidate, you probably have thought about why you support them. Most people aren't going to spend money on a sign for a candidate unless they've thought about it, at least a little bit. And if they haven't, and you ask them that question, they'll be like, oh, I mean, these are the reasons. And then you can maybe lead into a different conversation if that's where the conversation goes. I get asked a lot. I know you probably get asked a lot about sexuality issues.

I actually don't get asked a lot of questions on that. I get a lot of these questions. Like, how do I talk to my neighbor who is a Muslim? Or how do I talk to my neighbor who might be gay? How do I even have a conversation with that person? And for me, it's such an odd question. I'm not judging where that comes from. But it goes back to your previous point.

This is we just have a hard time talking with people. I give an example and I actually got critiqued for this by other Christians when the book was published that maybe I was going down the wrong path. But I'm all about inviting people over for dinner because I mean, okay, I've gotten worse at it since I have become a professor because time is difficult. But this idea of having people over for dinner and getting to know them, a lot of Jesus's interactions. happened over meals. I think a lot of great conversations happen over meals. A lot of barriers are torn down over meals because we're eating and we're happy. Everybody likes to eat and we're happy. So when you have a Muslim neighbor, for example, this is the example I use in the book, and this is an example I use frequently because I've actually been here. If you are going to

have dinner with a Muslim, it should start with, do you have any dietary restrictions? I put that in the book. I said, you know, you should ask, you know, if they have any dietary restrictions. And one of the critiques in a review was you shouldn't care if they have dietary restrictions. Just serve what you're going to serve. Well, what? And I really struggled with that. That was one of the reviews.

That's a weird critique. Like, yeah. I say that with anybody come about if they're like or have, you know, they can't eat gluten or they're, you know, have allergic reaction? Like, isn't that just basic? I mean, sometimes I don't ask, but if they volunteer, I'm like, well, I don't care if you're gluten-free or whatever. We're serving bread for dinner, you know, like, that's just, anyway. They said that was a step too far. That's why you got ignore those kind of review. I'm not so good at ignoring, I'm an introvert. So I like, it goes in and that I have to process. But this, this idea of inviting people over to dinner,

ask the normal questions. If you know that they might have dietary restrictions, don't assume they do, but ask, hey, do you have any dietary restrictions I need to know about? If you have a vegetarian coming over for dinner, you're not going to cook the mistake. Right. Or you shouldn't, right? Or to your point, gluten. Even as a professor, if I'm bringing snacks to class, like I ask my students, do we have

any allergies and what are the allergies? And they're always several, right? You're like, I can't have milk. I can't have gluten. Whatever it is. And I try to bring a snack for everyone so that everyone can, you know, be happy with their snacks. I just think that's a normal thing to do, but apparently it's not. And that is interesting that bridge building is almost countercultural.

And I think it does go back to this idea of isolationism. And we just want to live our lives and be in control of our circle and what we do. and we're not actually that interested in other people. And I think that is a really sad state of affairs, is that we have all of these ideas about theology and truth and whatnot, but we're not actually getting to know the people that God has placed right around the corner in our lives. Do you find that to be generally true that people just aren't that interested in other people? And is that gotten worse through social media, COVID, AI, whatever?

Like, are there social factors that are making that? Or do you feel like just in general, people are just not truly deep down interested in other people? I mean, I'm not a social scientist. I haven't done like studies on this as purely anecdotal. But over the course of the research that I've done for both of the books that I've written, and various articles that I've written, I've found that. that people really just aren't that interested in other people. They're okay not going to church because why do I want to interact with anybody on a Sunday morning?

I share the fear of turn around and talk to your neighbor. I get that. We did it this Sunday. And it's like, go talk to people. And I'm like, why are we doing this on a Sunday morning? Why? Because it's healthy to be in community with other believers, right? To be in fellowship with other believers.

I think with COVID, that definitely sent us into, it's okay to only have conversations through a screen. I don't even need to go to work anymore. Some of my best lifelong friends are fellow employees, people that I've worked with in the past. If I had only met them online, that relationship probably wouldn't exist. But yet, so many of us are okay with it. And I'm not saying you shouldn't be okay with working online. It's just that has closed. just off from people. It makes it a little bit more convenient to be alone. A.I. Generative AI is an

interesting thing. We talk about it very briefly, I think, and actually I might talk about it in both books very briefly. But this idea of letting generative AI be the person that I talk to. So now people are not even going to real-life therapists. They're using generative AI as their therapist, as their friend. I read a story of a guy who left either his wife or his girlfriend for his AI-generated girlfriend. You talk about that in your recent book. Yeah. And for me, that's wild, right? But then it goes back to the question. Tell me more about why, what even led you down this path. I'm very interested in that person and wondering about, you know, the decisions that led him to leave his real-life girlfriend or wife for a computer.

And for me, Christians should be countercultural in that way. We should want to be in community with one another. We should want to exercise courageous hospitality with the people around us and recognize that for me, God has put me in a particular place at a particular time with particular people. And I believe that to be true of everyone, for better or for worse, right? Like, we don't always like the people we're around. And yet, I ask myself, why has God placed me here? Why, why does God want me to interact with this person, even if it's for an hour on the plane? And sometimes it leads to a faith conversation, and sometimes it doesn't. And I am okay with

friendships where we never talk about faith. I'm literally okay. with that. Maybe we only talk about the sport that our kids play, right? I still consider that laying seeds and being a good Christian who cares genuinely about the people that God is placed in my life. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. It will be interesting to see the social or relational effects that kind of chatbots and AI will have on people. You know, kind of like now we're kind of experiencing the aftermath of like, not aftermath, but it's been around for a while, but like, you know, Gen Z and growing up as the first generation where, you know, social media was just kind of

the norm, like they don't know life apart from social media. And how that has affected the way they interact. with embodied people or don't interact, you know? Like I know several friends who are like bosses of companies, they say, oh, I would never hire Gen Z for like customer service. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you see memes and whatnot on social media of Gen Zers not being able to be waiters or waitresses because they just don't know how to interact. And I think that's a caricature. It's a caricature. It's a character. about lumping all Gen Zers into that. But we've heard, even in, I teach in the business and economics department, And we've heard feedback from some of our advisors, like, hey, make sure that you're teaching your students how to communicate well.

So I've actually made it part of my curriculum, is how do we have a conversation? What does it mean to listen? Well, for one of my classes, I had them keep a listening journal. And so when other students were giving speeches, they would, instead of evaluating the speaker, that was my job, they were evaluating themselves. What body language do I have when I'm listening to this person? Am I nodding my head? Am I asking thoughtful questions? Not just what was the most interesting thing you learned, right? Am I actually listening to the words coming out of their mouths? And then they rate themselves. Oh, I did a great job on this, but I could do better here. And it's been a really fruitful exercise, I think, for my students as I've had them in other classes later on in their student careers and saying, you know, looking at them as listeners. They know they clear their guests, except for, a pen and a paper. And that's, it's really important. I wonder what that, going, what I was, why I brought Gen Z in social media was, was now we're kind of in this phase where everybody's going to, you know,

cloud or chat GPT for stuff. And I, you know, I use it, you know, fairly often for, like, I've gotten into a marathon running. And so I, like, training schedules and this and like if I had, you know, Just as a, you know, it's not, it's not perfect, but it's pretty, I'll take the information, cross-check it with an exit. Oh, yeah. And it's like, oh, this is actually really, really good stuff, you know. And, but it's, I feel like it's getting more personal. It's weird. Like, it sounds, like, almost like, now it's using like the personal, like a, and now, maybe I didn't notice it before, but now it's just because my conversations with it.

feels so, you know, like, I would, well, you know, and it keeps track of what you said. So it's like, well, since you've been struggling with this, you know, tendon pain in your, in your, in your glued, I would probably, you know, I would recommend laying off, um, this, it just sounds so like it. I'm like, this is getting weak. This is, I don't know. So. Does it know your name? I would, I, I assume so. I, I, it has to. Is it ever said, this is great work, Preston? No, I don't think so. Mine knows my name. Okay. Which is weird. Yeah, mine.

Isn't that weird? Yeah, I mean, and it's not just my, like our generation, it's Gen Ziers. I actually think there's more pushback from Gen Ziers on this personalization of AI than maybe even boomers. Oh, you saw the college graduations, right? There was something, do you know what I'm talking about about? Names, college graduation, AI was used to like generate the names and it totally. botched the whole thing. And there are people like students booing when people were celebrating like in their speeches. Yeah. Something about, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think there's actually a pretty

big pushback. Not necessarily by students who want to use generative AI to help them with their homework. Right. That is an issue. That's a separate issue. The question becomes then are Gen Zers relying on AI for a relationship. And that has been interesting because I look at my own daughters. I look at my students. And they seem to be on a course correction a little bit, really seeking out that human connection rather than I'm just going to chat with you online through text. They're having FaceTime, right? And it's just a normal thing. Who are you talking to? Oh, I'm talking to name the friend, right? That is a step in the right direction. I think versus, you know, I'm just going to send a text or there's a friend group that I'm in.

It's just three of us. I think every woman has a three-person group and we do. And it's just jiffs and memes, right? That's all it includes is a whole bunch of like, that's how we conversation. And it works for us, right? We have other conversations. But that's generally what it is. I saw this and I thought of you kind of thing.

Jen Ziers seem to be on the opposite. it like instead of let's texting, let's, I'm just going to go get coffee with so and so. And they're much more willing to just go leave or mom, can I go to Colvers? I'm going to go hang out with my friends for two hours at Colvers. Okay. That sounds great. And they really are connecting with their friends. And I'm seeing less of, I'm very observant of people, especially like in restaurants.

And I'm seeing less of this with young people. Interesting. I'm actually seeing it more with people our age, for my parents' age, not with young people. They've got their phones to the side, and they're actually looking at each other. And it's actually quite beautiful. And I think it's something that we need to, as Christians, consider as well because we're seeing a shift. So many people have talked about this decline in biblical values and how generations have it's kind of gone down. I actually think that it's going up.

I think young people are much more interested in the personhood and divinity of Jesus. And they're willing to have more conversations than people may be in our age group. They're not necessarily going degenerative AI for those kinds of answers. Or they might use as at a starting point and then ask those questions to people that they trust. And I think that's a great trajectory to see. and I hope that it holds true. Yeah. Those, I always, I always get annoyed at those, like,

decline in biblical values. They're always so selective, you know? Yes. Like, it's usually like, I don't know, not the good all political, but it's usually like white men who think the 1950s are like the heyday and biblical, look at all these families and everything, you know,

wow, there was like segregation going on and Jim Crow and lynchings, you know, like, or biblical, like, did people like care more about the poor in this 50s or more? You know, like, which values are you championed that you bemoan the decline? You know, like all of them are just some pet ones that are sometimes more political than biblical. And anyway, we'll leave that alone. I think a lot of people don't want to talk about politics. I mean, how many families even will like make rules?

Like we're not talking about religion and politics. But it should be the most natural thing for families who love each other to have those conversations. like, oh, you support such and such or you do this and tell me more. Like, it should be the safe space. It should, unless you make it the benchmark of your faith. Like, you're on this side, then you're correct. If you're on that side, you know, whatever. But talk to me before I let you go, your latest book, What if Jesus is right? Examining Jesus' claims about himself in a world full of falsehoods. You go through, yeah, lots of stuff about Jesus's, you know, kind of these misperceptions of Jesus, you know, is he just a moral teacher? Is he this, is he that? You know, I'm curious,

and you address this in, I forget what chapter was, I just read this morning, like, before we could even go to Jesus's own claims, we have to first back up and say, how do we know that the record of these claims is even accurate? Like, do you find that often comes up in a conversation or do people not even really think along those lines? Like, again, kind of like establishing the credibility of the Bible before we can even use the Bible to talk about this person in Jesus. I actually just watched a reel this morning. It was a response. That's the whole deal these days is like those response ones where you're watching something and it's got the person looking below and they give a response to it. There's a puppet I follow. Maybe you know this puppet. I

don't actually know his name. But it's a puppet who gives responses to some ideas people have about A puppet. I don't know this puppet. Well, he's like a purple puppet with like green shoelaces. Anyways, I don't know his name. Somebody in the comments will comment and be like, yeah, that's this puppet. Right. It's that puppet. Anyway, one of the response videos for this puppet was about a lady who was saying, basically, you can't trust what the Bible says is true. You get a lot of the It was a telephone game arguments. There's a pretty, he's not, I don't know how famous he is, but there's a comedian who has a very couple of minute video that has kind of made, it's gone viral, I guess is the word, where he says he can't believe people believe the Bible because it's just copies of copies

of copies, copies, copies, copies. Those ideas are taking hold because they're quick videos done in normal fashion with, influencers, right, who seem credible. And there's danger in that. There are a lot of talking heads on social media. And it's not just experts who are giving the information. It's people who have perspectives for certain reasons. Maybe a lot of times, and this is not always the case, but a lot of times it's somebody who's been hurt by the church or someone in the church. and they haven't taken the time to research the questions. They're just now making the assumptions that what they believed was false.

We see this a lot in cult survivors. They will come out of a false religion, and then they're like, everything must be false. There's no way any of this is real. It's actually really hard to share the gospel with somebody who has come out of a cult situation because they have been so hurt by scripture twisting. and then throw the baby out with the bathwater, and Bible must be false too. I think giving historical information about how the scriptures came about is important. Not all of us are going to be New Testament scholars.

We cover it in one chapter, I think. And it just boils down some of the biggest things about can you trust what the Bible says about Jesus if you can't trust the Bible? No. So you have to trust the Bible. here's why you can trust the Bible. And then in the end notes, we give like a bunch of different sources that you can go to for more information because big, big books have been written about the historical reliability of the Old Testament and the historical reliability of the New Testament.

It's not something you and I can cover in three minutes. But what I can say is that these ideas that are making the rounds on social media about why you can't trust the Bible are completely unreliable. And there is a good reason to believe that what we read in Scripture is true and trustworthy. And I encourage everybody, skeptics and believers, to find those answers so that you can be confident to know that what we find in the Bible is true. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Yeah, you have some great resources listed here.

Craig Blomberg's. You know, one of my favorite. I can't believe you got the study under Blomberg. Yeah, yeah. He endorsed this. I think he endorsed your book, right? He did. He did.

That's right. And he endorsed this one too. And my first one. Yeah. He's, he and his wife, Fran, are brilliant human beings and lovely examples of what it means to love Jesus well and be bridge builders. He's so humble and such a brilliant scholar and yet so just humble.

Yeah. Go Google him if you don't know who he is. people because he's he's great. Wes Huff. He's got, can I trust the Bible video series online? Uh huh. At Wesleyhuff.com.

He's making the rounds, right? So people know that name. If they don't know Craig Blomberg, they probably know Wes. They probably know Wes Huff. He's been on a very popular YouTube channel recently. And I thought that his series was really accessible. I think some Christians will be like,

oh, I can't study that because I don't want to go to seminary. It's too much. It's too heady. It's an argument we hear about. apologetics all the time. Yeah. Oh, it's, I'm not that intellectual. I'm not asking you to be intellectual.

I'm just asking you to know the answers. And there are easy people to listen to. I think the way that you present people on your platform is really accessible. The way that this conversational format is so important because it shows people that we can have real conversations about really important stuff in a non-hostile environment. Right. It's not what you see typically on social media behind anonymity. But we're face to face and we're enjoying each other's company and we're talking about,

in some cases, difficult things. Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks so much, Lindsay, for being a guest on Theology and Raw. I had no idea that you were an avid listener, you and your husband, Jay. So it's exciting to have you on this platform. Thanks so much for all your just down-to-earth practical wisdom. I love, I mean, you've been to seminary, you have a JD, so you're. you are a scholar, but you're also just like a normal person.

So I love how you bridge like the scholarly side of things, but in a way that doesn't feel like that. Just feels so down to earth and natural. Thank you. That means a lot. Thank you. Oh, yeah, that's a sweet spot. So, yeah, encourage people to check out your two books,

Bridge Building Apologetics and What If Jesus is Right, the most recent one. So, yeah, thanks for being a guest, Cynthia Jero.