Truth Unites - Comparing Christianity vs. Open Spirituality

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund interviews Josh Chatraw and Jack Carson about Rhett McLaughlin's comments about their book, Surprised By Doubt, and why Christianity is a better option than open spirituality. Surprised By Doubt: https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Doubt-Disillusionment-Invite-Deeper/dp/1587435594 About Josh: https://www.samford.edu/beeson-divinity/directory/Chatraw-Josh About Jack: https://www.liberty.edu/ace/articles/faculty/jack-carson/ Richard Bauckham's introduction to the gospels: https://www.amazon.com/Gospels-All-Christians-Rethinking-Audiences-ebook/dp/B002OSXN9G/ Peter Williams' Can We Trust the Gospels?: https://www.amazon.com/Can-Trust-Gospels-Peter-Williams-ebook/dp/B07DNF73F2/   Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

What story gives us meaning and significance and what story even makes sense of the fact that we care about meaning and significance? We live as a moral code. We want things to be fair. And yet we have this sense that things aren't right, that this world is broken and that's deep in our bones as humans. I think that's something we share with Ret and Link. Hey, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I'm here with Josh Chattro and Jack Carson.

And we're going to talk about their outstanding book, Surprised by Doubt. Some of you will have seen a video of mine talking about this. as well. But Rhett McLaughlin had some really thoughtful interaction with this book, and he's in the book. And so I wanted to give them a chance to share a little bit, reflect a little bit, just a charitable engagement. And maybe it'd be a good place to start by just saying, what made you guys choose to interact with Rhett? Because I know that was done out of respect and appreciation for him in some ways. Yeah, I mean, I think Brett, as well as Rhett and Link are great storytellers. They're creative and and smart transparent guys and as I followed their story as they were sharing their

deconstruction story it was just clear there was an honesty and a vulnerability about them that was resonating with so many and so as we said in the book I mean we we know this kind of open spirituality space is it's kind of hard to kind of pin down and given even obviously given the name. And so we recognize that as as as as as as ret was articulating kind of what he was going through in his story, that he doesn't serve as a representative for everyone in any kind of an exhaustive way that might be in that camp. But we thought at least leading off the chapter with his story would help people relate to this space. And I think a lot of people have. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, you guys were very respectful and very thoughtful throughout the book.

But tell so what were some of your. initial reactions when you watched Rhett's video, what stood out to you? One of the things I'd want to say just right off the bat is that we agree with Rett that people who aren't in the Christian house, leave the Christian house can be moral people who find meaning outside of Christianity. Good Christian theology should affirm this. I mean, we believe in a God who has created us as creatures in a meaningful world, have meaningful relationships, and by God's grace, we can live in a variety.

of meaningful and very moral ways. That grace often called God's common grace is what helps both Christians and non-Christians find meaningful relationships and live in moral ways. And so I want to affirm that and say that I am deeply sorry that people have told him he wouldn't be a moral person

in any way, shape, or form after leaving Christianity in that way. we also want to affirm for him that we don't think he's trying to build a religion. I feel like that was a big point he wanted to emphasize, and we want to make it clear that we don't think he's building a religion. The way we describe him in the book is as inhabiting a space, specifically because we want to be clear that there is a real difference between some kind of formalized set of dogmas and RET's approach, which is emphasizing not being tied down to any particular belief.

beliefs or sets of dogmas. But I think, Gavin, as you pointed out really well in your video, it's one of the things that makes it difficult interacting with this space that is open spirituality, because people inhabiting this space do often evaluate other spaces. They evaluate Christianity, often on moral levels. They make moral judgments, and they weigh out the significance and value of this space, and often don't want to reflect on inhabiting a space themselves, that they're not existing a sort of view from nowhere.

And so I think it's obviously right and fair for them to make moral judgments. I mean, as humans, we all do this. But I think it's helpful to emphasize that they are doing this from a particular position, that open spirituality is inhabiting a space in our culture. It's adopting views. and it's not just operating from a place of common sense that everyone sort of has universal rationality.

And I guess finally, I would want to agree with him and even push forward the agreement that we cannot prove Christianity in some sort of coercive way. He was using words like factual and scientific, logical, and I think a certain part of what I want to say is that he is right that we can't prove Christianity. And to Rett's credit, we believe certain parts of the Christian church have acted as if you can do that.

They've acted as if Christianity is the common sense approach, and there's no questions to be asked, no reason to have doubt. And when someone grows up in those parts of the church where Christianity is framed as common sense, obvious belief, the standard they learned to instinctively hold is just that. a sort of hard, rational, mathematical, proof-oriented standard where everything, when it comes to these deep beliefs,

has to rise to this level of coercive, rational proof. And I worry that for many people growing up in those parts of Christianity that operate on that standard, particularly the smart and curious ones, it'll eventually lead to deconstruction and deconversion because it doesn't hold up to that particular standard. One of the concerns I know you both have is seeing the interaction with Rhett in the book and the open spirituality perspective, which is just one small portion of the whole book, kind of seeing that in context with the broader argument you're making in the book. So maybe you could just comment on the bigger picture of your book a little bit.

Tell us about this book, and maybe you can talk a little bit about this house metaphor that's come up so much, too. Yeah, yeah, thanks, Gavin. I just want to, I just want to kind of have a footnote real quick on what Jack was saying. and then dive into that. Because later in the book, we do talk about the importance of evidence, science, and facts, and the kind of arguments that you make on this channel and we appreciate them so much. They're really important. And what Jack and I, though, are getting at is a kind of, he's mentioned the word,

a kind of posture that's formed. And one of the reasons we use the attic is we want to help people see that there's a kind of, way or the house metaphor is that there's a way in certain corners or in certain rooms of the Christian house that gives you a certain posture that leaves you with kind of certain expectations of how Christianity works that we want to push back on before we get to some of the evidences and historical claims and diving into some of that. And so we use this metaphor of the house. We're borrowing it from C.S. Lewis, where he talks about getting people into the hallway of this Christian house. And of course, he recognizes that there's different rooms in the house, and you need

to land in a room. But his goal in mere Christianity was to say, I want to introduce people to the front door and get them into the hallway. And the premise of our book is, yeah, but what happens if you've grown up in the house all your life, but you haven't just grown up on the main floor? kind of robust understanding of the great tradition that there's many rooms and things we can learn from these different rooms as part of the historical faith, but you've actually grown up in what we call the attic. And the attic in so many ways is a reaction to modernism. It's reaction to the kind of pluralistic world that is happening in Western culture, the moral decadence of Western culture, And also this kind of the gains of science and this feeling like, okay, we need to prove science or we need to have kind of a certainty as you might with two plus two or basic logic.

And so in response to that, I think well meaning people have responded to certain things going on in modernism and have made people, whether intentionally or unintentionally, who are growing up in this attic. feel like that's kind of how Christianity works, that, you know, we have all this evidence and the evidence is coercive, as Jack just put it. And if you're not seeing it, the way we see it, you're either stupid or you've got some kind of motive there that is blinding you and you're unwilling just to see what's so obviously there. And I think that helps explain some of the reactions that that retin link God, it was, if you're not seeing this, then you're just, it must just be because, well, it's clearly that you're not dumb. So it must just be that you just want to do whatever you want. You don't want this to be true. And again, I think you're warning about let's not

be quick to judge these motives as wise, but also it's kind of understanding, well, why would people be so quick to jump there? It's because in this kind of space, there, there, they've adopted this kind of actually rather modernistic view of the big questions of life, as if we can put the question of God under a microscope or if we can two plus two our way to God. And so part of what we're trying to do with this metaphor is to say, hey, actually, if you leave that kind of posture behind and you change your posture and you come downstairs to the main floor with a different posture, with not demand. a kind of coercive certainty, but recognizing a kind of different need, a different posture

to look at the big questions of life. Then when you go and you look at the central claims, people will often see those, well, actually a little differently. People aren't expecting there be some kind of 100% proof, but they actually see that as actually a stronger case than they initially saw it when they were deconstructing. Maybe you can say a little bit. little more about that word posture. What would you see as kind of the ideal posture that we should have when we're thinking about these kind of big questions of life? So in the book, what we do is we talk about kind of four options here. Okay. One is you clinch your teeth. And so you see that there's other people out there who disagree with you on these big questions. You clench your teeth and you make fun

of them. You know, I think sometimes even as Christians, we can do this. And I think sometimes we do this over, as you've experienced with this program, is that people disagree on some highly charged issue, and sometimes we don't listen to each other. And so it becomes polarizing and it short circuits dialogue in good thinking. And so that is a kind of approach, and you might put the new atheists on one hand, and you might put someone who's kind of really deep into the attic on the other side. And they're both kind of taking this clincher teeth, mock the other side. And that's just short circuits good thinking and productive dialogue. The second kind of posture would be to focus narrowly to achieve certainty.

And there's different ways to kind of get at this, get at this. I think one of my favorite stories here is the New York Times best-selling author, Paul Kalanithi. Now, some of you maybe have heard of Kalanithi. He died very young, actually. but he's writing his New York Times bestseller when breath becomes air and he tells of how he grew up in a devout Christian home. And he eventually, he has this interest in science and medicine. He eventually goes to Cambridge and Yale School of Medicine. He's a renowned young neurosurgeon.

And along this kind of academic scientific journey, he moved away from the religious upbringing that he grew up in. So not that different than Rhett and Link. And he adopted what he describes as an ironclad atheism. And he concluded that these are his words, enlightened reason to offer a more coherent cosmos than Christianity. And it's unreasonable to believe in God. Now, we know that that's not where Rhett is now. And we're thankful for that.

But in this story, anyway, he, Kalanithi realized he had a problem. there as he kept working this out. And this is what he says. He says, the problem, however, eventually became evident. To make science the arbiter of metaphysics, it's to banish not only God from the world, but also love, hate, meaning to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That's not to say that if you're believing in meaning, you must also believe in God. it is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides us no basis for meaning, and therefore life itself doesn't have any.

So he goes on to explain while science, which he's a firm believer in science, it's rooted in a kind of what he calls, and I love this word, manufactured objectivity, manufactured objectivity. and it makes the most useful way to organize empirical reproducible data. So that's what it's doing and that's good and that's helpful. And it's at the same time, it's power to do so to kind of reproduce this data and organize it. Its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most essential aspects of human life,

hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue. So to get at this kind of objectivity, you're subtracting out what Kalanithi came to realize the most important things about life, about humanity in some sense. And so for many, and even I just wonder if in some sense this is where Rhett is and why he's saying he believes in God is this kind of recognition there's got to be more than to life than simply kind of what science to sure results of kind of science or this kind of manufactured objectivity. And so I think the other kind of posture here that one might take is to simply shut your eyes to the question.

And that's, you know, if the manufactured, objectivity doesn't provide the values and resources that Kalanithi describes, then for some, it's just to say, I'm just going to kind of jump into nowhere. And so where we're wanting to say space, it seems like in the open spirituality, they're kind of saying, well, I'm just going to live in kind of nowhere. I'm going to jump into this. And what we're trying to show in that chapter is, well, no, hang on, that space isn't nowhere that's got even if you're not thinking about, even if you're not reasoning about these things you're inhabiting a world of certain values and what you find significant and and a story whether even if it's unarticulated about what the good life is and you're

living that out and you're in some sense wagering on that you're wagering on that but you're not actually thinking hard about being consistent or you're not thinking about how things cohere And so in some sense, you're wagering blindly on the spirit of the age. And for us, that's really, that's problematic. It's, it's, you're saying on one hand, Christianity is not logical, rational. And then there's this kind of blind leap of faith into this nowhere space. And so I think that's kind of the frustration. And you were mentioning this in your video, Gavin, where it's kind of like, we're offering this critique of Christianity for being.

the critique is it's illogical you know or it doesn't you know it doesn't have good evidence and and then it's a kind of saying well but this space isn't a space so it's you can't really critique it and so much of our argument is well it is a space you're living it it's a way of life and so we want to suggest a fourth posture and it assumes a couple things it assumes that we can't as jack said prove in a kind of mathematical way or scientific way that God exists that's coercive that everyone's going to agree with us. But we just say that's not how the big questions of life work. You can get shallow, you can get shallow answers to smaller questions, which are valuable and good. But for the big questions of life, for the question of God, it's not simply a matter

of coercive evidence, but it's a matter of what's more reasonable. to wager on. And we would suggest, and what we argue for the book, the best kind of way to approach that wager is not to simply zoom in, but to zoom out on the whole human experience. The, you know, our history as humans, our condition as humans. And let's put all the kind of evidence, because all of that is evidence, human nature, history, all of that. And let's look with this wide angle view, rather than kind of trying to.

to zoom in or clench our fist and not have the conversation or try to ignore the question and stop seeking because that's still wagering. It's like the best way to wager is let's let's have these conversations and take a wide angle view. As you've said, Gavin, admit we are making truth claims of some sort and that's inescapable. And let's let's go forward and let's put everything on the table. I love your comments. And I think to give an encouragement to our Christian view,

and I'll put it personally, I as a Christian, need to remember what you're saying, Josh, just as much as we would encourage a non-Christian to consider that posture. And that's something that for my Christian viewers, I always want us to try to model a humility and a love and a carefulness and to use Newbigin's term, a proper confidence in the way we conduct ourselves and so forth. So this is not, we're not just lobbying this at others. We're saying we aspire to this as well, and that's good for us to remember. But let's unpack it a little more.

Maybe, Jack, you want to come in on this idea of wagering. One of the things you guys talk about in the book is that everybody has to wager. That's not an option. Maybe you could you unpack that just a little bit. Yeah. So the idea of a wager, of course, comes from Blaise Pascal. And the real runt of what he's bringing about, the part that I really love about the wager, is this move he makes where he explains that all of us, every time we make decisions,

every time we live life, every time we do anything involving significance, purpose, human meaning, we are wagering, we're making that decision based upon all of these assumptions we have about life, either consciously or unconsciously that we've built. And I think using Josh's sort of analogy here of zooming in or zooming out, when it comes to wagering, we basically have two approaches we could take. first we could identify all those parts of our lives that involve unprovable beliefs and sequester them into a space where we don't mentally commit to anything we divide our lives sort of in half where we have on one side these things that I want to say are very important science math logic rationality and then on the other side we have the things that many of us would say make life worth living the idea of relationships love justice, courage, significance. But we divide the two and we don't let them touch. We act as if these provable beliefs that we can engage with math and scientific examination are those

beliefs that are worth disagreeing over. They're worth engaging. They're worth discussing with people. But those beliefs that involve the unprovables, we sequester into this private space where maybe there's not even the ability to reason about this. And so rather than de-emphasizing rationality, I think part of what the wager does is makes us more rational about the way we approach rationality. This first approach would sort of be, Gavin, like how you explain the elephant metaphor. When you have people feeling at these unprovable, sort of big life question assertions, they might be describing them in different ways, the trunk, the leg, the snake of the tail.

And as they're talking through these various areas, someone might just say, hey, we can't, we can't know. There's all these various ways. We have to divide this question out into the kind of question, the kind of claim that is unprovable and just not worth committing to. So you're not going to put your life on the line for these issues. You're going to put your life on the line, as it were, put commitment on those you can prove, but not on those that involve the logic of the heart, as we might say, as the place Pascal might say. This, though, this first approach is pretty unlivable when applied consistently across all the kinds of beliefs that are unprovable.

It's hard to consistently live as if the most important questions of life are on some lower tier of significance that we can't discuss and reflect on where we don't actually commit to them with our whole lives. Most of the things that make life important relationships are of this unprovable variety. Values for humans, for example, I believe humans are all worthy of equal dignity and respect, but no scientific or mathematical evaluation could get me there. I can't force others, using this term we've been bringing up coercively. I can't force others coercively to agree with me on this point, but I have committed to that belief and I still want to try to convince others that that belief in universal human equality is worth committing to, even when I can't prove it.

I'm going to wager my life on it. And so that leads to this question. How can we believe in something and treat it as an important aspect of our lives that we'll commit to? We'll spend our life on if we can't prove it. And the answer here would be the wager. We wager on these major life questions. And this is how we make decisions about who we're going to marry. It's how we make decisions about where we'll go to college, what kind of career we're going to pursue. We're all wagering all the time,

and we can't get away from it. And part of our argument in the book is that we should just be very conscious about the wagers we're making, particularly when it comes to something like the God question, because so many of our wagers are predicated on these beliefs on what decision we come to on the God question and where human value rests. But of course, we would say that you should always wager on the best option, the option that's

most rationality comes into play here. We're just not sequestering these areas of the heart away from rationalities if we can't come to any sort of commitment on these beliefs. And the way you wager is, of course, by attending to all of life, the rationality. the historical, the scientific, the emotional, and the moral, and you figure out which story makes sense of all of these various aspects of the human experience. What story gives us meaning and significance, and what story even makes sense of the fact that we care about meaning and significance? What story gets us there?

And this is where arguments surrounding religious beliefs, things that you do on your channel Gavin, come into play. It's not to coercively prove the religious belief beyond any sort of shadow of a doubt, but it is to help us think through how to wager well. I love what you guys are saying, and I love the emphasis on humility, and that one of the things you say in the book, even Christians can struggle with doubt. It's not as though once you make existential commitment and you have wagered,

you have absolutely no turbulence at all. So I'm trying to summarize just for my own clarity and for everyone's understanding who's watching. it sounds like we're saying there's a place for arguments in furthering the plausibility of Christianity, but they're not getting you all the way to certainty. Am I summarizing that, right? How would you, could you comment on that? That's right. But I would say it kind of goes back to how we, when we talk about, what are you going to,

are you going to bracket out something? That's one of our concerns. Are you bracketing out the kind of existential, arguments that we think are very important and what it means to be human and it and there's a kind of almost universality about that we humans if we we live as a moral code we we want things to be fair and yet we have this sense that things aren't right that this world is broken and that's deep in our bones as humans i think that's something we share with ret and link um by the way and i appreciate that and we we have this you know we're taken by beauty and

There's something about beauty that grabs us as human. And we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we're, we're, we're going to seek out meaning. We see him as Pascal would argue that, uh, we're both these kind of wretched creatures, but we're also wonderful creatures. And we sense that. It's like we're, um, it's like we're seek to rise above and be better in a, and, than what we are naturally, like, in a way that my dog doesn't. And so there's all these existential features of what it means we would say to be human and what makes life meaningful.

And all of that needs to be taken in account as well as what was going on in the first century when the Christians made this claim that there was resurrection. And what about this fine-tuning argument? And what about the Kalam-Klasmal? How do we? And so what we're saying is all that needs to be on the table. And then we need to ask the question, what makes best sense of all of this and what we would call in a kind of abductive approach, which we're saying, let's have a wide angle view and then and say what makes best sense. And of course, that kind of approach isn't going to leave you with 100% certainty.

But it's not going to, but we think it's a better rationality, a better way to approach this question than narrowly just kind of looking at. only a select pieces of the data and then and then and then and then requiring a kind of absolute certainty and then it doesn't reach that and then sliding into kind of either kind of mass skepticism or just kind of a vague open spirituality. I think when you put all those on the table and you then you're asking what story best explains all of this or what account best explains all of this. What would you guys say are some of the major options in our culture that people are considering in terms of what you might wager on? Yeah, that's a really good question.

We, in the book, talk about four spaces, that if someone leaves Attic Christianity, if they deconstruct, if they walk away from the faith, we picked four representative spaces. There's tons more we could have picked, but we thought these four are pretty culturally significant, either because they're really popular spaces for someone to land or in the case of our first posture, new atheism, because it has this sort of oversized influence on the discourse. And so lots of the sort of discussion surrounding faith and religion are driven by this first space, an option someone could take is new atheism, where they think religion is damaging. maybe something that really deforms people even. We sort of trace that position out in the book where it's not just that you don't want to be religious yourself, but you're actually really quite anti-religious.

That would be one space you could go. And then here you would be wagering against the idea that religion can even be a source of meaning or significance for you. But not a lot of people actually end up landing there. The other three spaces, I think, are more popular that we lay out in the book. You have an optimistic skepticism, a space where, and I think after watching Link's most recent video, this would be a space maybe he would find that he rests in, a place where you're not going,

you're sort of skeptical of these questions, the God question, the ability to find meaning and significance in answering these questions. And you don't really think that because you've divided out, as we talked about earlier, the parts of your life that do meaning and significance from those which you can prove. And over here you have these unprovable aspects of life that you can pick and choose as you want. I'm very privatized, not worth sort of disagreeing over. It's worth in this optimistic skepticism space that people can land at. then they can pose themselves as just skeptical of all claims to religious truth positions. They can be skeptical of all truth claims in some sense.

They're standing in a position where they're skeptical of anyone trying to purport a truth claim here. And they're attempting to be optimistic in the midst of that. They're finding happiness or trying to find happiness in the moments of their day. They're enjoying a good steak. They're tending to their garden. They're finding ways to be happy in the midst of ignoring as much as they can some of these questions. That's a little different than the open spirituality that we say, Rhett finds himself in, where he actually does want to pick and choose over here parts of spirituality that he can pull close to himself, find meaning and significant.

within and as it work build a position that he can find rest in and he can find comfort in and he is wanting to be able to have this space. So we have new atheism very against religion, optimistic skepticism, just trying to avoid the questions and open spirituality where you are pulling parts of this towards yourself, but you're not allowing really yourself to commit. you're very, you're very open. You're trying to be as uncommitted as possible to these questions, to be open to surprise and mystery and to other people's belief structures.

But then the fourth option, which I think is really interesting for this discussion, is the mythic truth option. Now, the mythic truth option is interesting because it has no commitment, to the facts, the historical reality of Christianity. But it does consciously recognize that it's inhabiting the ethical space of Christianity. It's inhabiting the story of Christianity. It's bringing for itself the commitment to Christian morals. And it's saying this is like we use Jordan Peterson as an example of this.

We use Tom Holland and Dominion, some of his earlier positions, I think, in particular. where they're both saying that they want to live as if they are Christian, as if Christianity is true, because there's something here that they've recognized they need. John Gray, the philosopher and atheist, says something like this that I think is really helpful. He says humanists are also ruled by myths, stories that they use to make sense of their lives.

though the ones by which they are possessed have none of the beauty or the wisdom of those that they scorn. He says that they're shallower than traditional religious myths and repeatedly falsified and are short-lived. He doesn't think people can live actually in light of the myths that they're inhabiting. And he offers some advice. He says if you want a myth beyond just a personal myth, you're better off with the traditional religious myths. And this is part of why, as we talk about the wager and that everyone is having to wager on every decision they make in life, they can't avoid the pressure of these wagers. We're not so sure that wagering on the current cultural norms is the wisest path forward. And there's a lot of reasons for this that we probably don't even have time to get into.

But something like our culture's moral articulacy problem is Charles Taylor sort of charts out in his work that we don't have, really good sources to actually make sense of our morality. But we feel deeply, like we really feel, I brought up the universal human benevolence earlier, and people outside of Christianity hold to that, and they hold very deeply to it at times, and I want to affirm that. But to be able to talk about why we hold to universal human benevolence without the resources of a myth, of a story of a religion that gives us explanations of human value, it makes it impossible to talk

about why. And so we can't put pressure on people who reject that. It's hard to explain why it's wrong to reject universal human benevolence if you don't have some resources, some moral sources to say, hey, look, this is why it's wrong. And we should agree on this. The biggest reason maybe people might not want to rest in the norms that they're inhabiting and inheriting from culture is that culture is really bad, especially today,

our culture is really bad at giving us resources to walk through the inevitable pain and suffering that comes with life. We don't even have a lot of the traditional resources of deep family ties and deep community ties and are atomized or broken apart world.

We're all spread out. But, Even more so, I think Christianity does something special for us and the way it helps us interact with suffering. It doesn't promise us an easier life where we won't suffer. It doesn't give us some sort of panacea that fixes all of our problems, but it does tell us that in the end, God is making all things right. And that we're actually moving towards a world. we can recognize the suffering we have right now as evil, and we're moving towards a world where that evil will be gone,

and that impacts the way we inhabit the suffering right now, because we understand that it doesn't win. We understand that the suffering isn't the end of our lives, isn't the end of our meaning, and the end of our significance. We have, in the love of God, in the belief that God is drawing us towards himself and fixing these things, resources that allow us to walk through pain and suffering, in a way that our culture is unable to help people get to.

Yeah, and just a quick follow-up on that is that one of the moves that happens in the book is there's this move from open spirituality to basically people saying, and this is what Grace getting at, and the quote Jack just gave, is that those aren't enough just kind of open spirituality, a kind of vague sense that there's a God when suffering his, just kind of a vague spirituality offers actually very shallow resources to deal with with death, to deal with the inevitability of death, of loss, of hard times when things don't go your way. And then also even as a culture to kind of deal with disagreements, to deal with differences, just a kind of vague spirituality doesn't actually provide the resources culturally.

And so that's why Peterson is kind of wanting to do some of the moves he's making is because it kind of it gives something more concrete. Now I don't actually think you wouldn't go the direction Peterson goes.

I think Tom Holland makes it a better here by saying, hey, it needs to in some sense be true and he makes the Lewis so it's the true myth. It's the myth that became fact and the resurrection. And then it's it's that that Holland steps into the church to kind of look again because Tom Holland grew up, you know, kind of in an Anglican church.

And now he's he's been more recently stepping in to see, well, maybe this is true to give it another shot. But I think I would suggest, again, with a different posture than maybe we were looking at this or with people who didn't have maybe the same narrow views that they once had when they were initially looking at the foundational truth claims, looking at the claim of resurrection. And I think Holland ends his book Dominion so well by pushing on the fact that in the Western world today, the way he says that is a little provocative, we're kind of all Christian now. We live downstream of Christianity's moral impact on the world. And so many people who are inhabiting open spirituality will be unknowingly pulling on the resources of Christianity to say that they want to live in light of faith, hope, love, the gifts of the spirit, the fruits of the spirit, they're wanting to operate in a way that aligns with universal human benevolence that Christianity has said is so significant because of us being made in the image of God. And so Tom Holland is actually

saying part of this, like if you're just going to be open to cultural norms, you might at times be wagering in part on on Christian morals without actually wagering on the moral sources that undergird those Christian morals you're going to act as if Christianity is true but you're sequestering that part of your life away from the wager you're going to act this way at times just at times but you're going to act that way and then not actually reflect on what acting that way feeling that way, these existential questions mean for what you actually believe. As we're nearing the end, let's come back to the house metaphor and talk about this a little bit. If I understand the metaphor, the attic represents a kind of cramped section of Christianity,

maybe a more fundamentalist kind of leaning mindset or something pushing in that direction. And the concern is people jumping out the window, leaving Christianity as a whole. And we're trying to say Christianity is a lot bigger. maybe could you unpack this a little more and just talk about what do you see what are you trying to get at with these lower floors beneath the attic and ultimately with the foundation yeah i mean one of the things we're saying is when you come down you can come down with a kind of you can you can bend your back and you can adjust the posture and all of a sudden you're not in this kind of cramped room and all of a sudden you meet some interesting figures down there in the book we meet augustin we

meet pascal and and and we meet cus lewis who himself is kind of self-described as a dinosaur living as he's as he's writing even in the middle of the 20th century that he's really a medieval medievalist in many ways and has that medieval imagination and so you meet some interesting figures there and there's this kind of ancient wisdom that they carry and christianity's not simple a kind of, you know, believe these things or follow these rules, but it's more robust. This is a way of life. This is a way to inhabit the world. But it does absolutely rest on a foundation that needs to be explored.

And the foundation is Jesus. And so really, one of the things that happens is, you know, when somebody's dealing with doubt, a lot of times they chase these rabbit trails about evolution. we see that as part of Brett's story. We think all of those things are relevant, questions that need to be explored. Sometimes we can miss the foundation, which is Jesus Christ and the resurrection. And we really have to come back down to those core questions. And whether you're a Christian or you're somebody exploring this, to come back to that.

You know, did Jesus rise from the dead, the person of Jesus? And once you say, okay, I know I'm not going to get, you know, I can't prove this like a math equation. or this doesn't work like basic logic, but that's not really the question. The question is, is Jesus worth betting on? Is it Jesus that you encounter in the scriptures worth betting on? Is the resurrection a good bet? Because we're all wagering our lives on something. And I'm reminded, even as I was reflecting on this and just reflecting on this conversation,

is recently the conversion of the historian Molly Worthen, he's a professor, at UNC and she was always kind of around Christians fascinated by Christianity, had tried to kind of get there, but hadn't really gotten there, but hadn't also paid close attention to the historical arguments. And so she's, she's, she comes back and she looks again, certain things were going on in her life. And she, she's recently described this in an interview with Colin Hanson on his podcast. And she comes back as a historian to the historical evidence.

And she's just amazed. It was always right there in front of her. And she hadn't really paid attention to it. Or we might say in our term, she didn't have the right posture. She wasn't as open to it. And now all of a sudden, she's open to it and she's reading and she's reading. And she gets to a point where she says just pragmatically she had to admit that it was at least 51% that this happened. you know, that's where she was.

And so when she said that, I thought, yeah, she kind of had to step into this more and admit that to herself and make a wager. And in some sense, I get up every day and I'm making a wager. I mean, every day I'm getting up and I'm wagering on the resurrection. I don't think this kind of ever stops. But as I do that, and as I learn a different way to attend to the world, and I learn from the kind of the ancient wisdom of those who inhabit the. the main floor of Christianity, what comes, as you mentioned before, is a greater and greater confidence.

Not just for evidential reasons, but yes, that's included, not just for logical reasons, but yes, that's included, but profoundly existential reasons. And so this is, I think, again, what Pascal is getting at is that you have to wager by putting your life on the line through certain practices to gain the kind of confidence and strong belief that many are out to get. But if you just try to get that through logic chopping, it doesn't work. That's not how Christianity works. And so we think there's good reasons to wager to come back and look at the foundation. But you get to a point and then you've got to actually put your life on the line.

And so that's really what we're encouraging folks to do. To come back down, come down from the attic, don't jump out the window so quick. And by the way, that's not a comment to Red. I'm not saying he did it quickly. This was a long stretch for him, so that wasn't aimed at Red in any way. But come to the main floor with a different posture, look around again, keep digging, keep watching Gavin's podcast. You're digging around down there and stay in church.

Stay with people who are humbly seeking. Talk to people who are humbly sinking from the outside. Yes, everything's on the table here. Great words. And maybe just a couple kind of rapid-fire questions here to finish off with. I love what you said, trying to be fair to read. We're not saying he did jump straight out the window or something like that. He seems like he really thought things through. And so, you know, and one of the things in his initial video, he did talk about working through the historical evidence about Jesus and that kind of thing. So on those points, we just have come to different conclusions. And maybe, is there any resources you guys would give? Let's say somebody's wrestling with that. They're looking at the foundation.

Are there any resources just, I'm throwing this out there off the cuff you're putting you on the spot? There are any resources you'd recommend if someone is saying, okay, I want to look at the foundation. I want to look at historical testimonies about the life of Christ, about the resurrection. You mentioned Molly Worthen's testimony, but what kind of resources would you recommend about that for viewers? Yeah, I mean, a lot of times people at this point, I mean, I think would go to Richard Balkom, some of Richard Balkans, and the eyewitnesses. I like to start people off with his little short introduction to the Gospels. Because, I mean, that's a bigger book. And if you're not kind of, it's an academic book, Jesus and the eyewitnesses.

Yeah, witnesses. The short introduction gives a great kind of intro to taking the gospel seriously as eyewitness testimony. And then a picture of Jesus from a really world-renowned scholar who is also a Christian, believes this stuff. So that's one resource on that front. Peter Williams has a couple of really good books on this. Why trust the Gospels? Thanks, yeah. Why trust the Gospels? And then a new one on the genius of Jesus. So I would I would recommend both of those. And those are very approachable books. And then on the resurrection, I mean, somebody, I mean, the classic work that's often kind of mentioned at this point. And Molly Worthen talked a lot about reading

into Wright on the resurrection in his book. And again, that's a dense one. And so that's a place to start. But people who have who have kind of summarize these, I mean, Tim Keller's work, Reason for God has a great chapter on that. There's summarizing rights argument and surprised by doubt we summarize and have a short chapter that tries to put this in a shorter format. So those are kind of different level books that I would recommend as starting places. Awesome. And I love Josh your comments about how we can grow in confidence with time. You know, if someone's watching this and they're thinking, okay, I got the 51%, I'm going to make a wager, I'm going to make an existential commitment. Am I going to be stuck at 51% forever? And the answer is no. There's a role of the Holy

Spirit in speaking to our heart. And there are various ways that we grow in confidence as we as we walk forward. So that's encouraging to remember. But let me just say thanks to both of you for your work and give you any chance to any final kind of summative thoughts about this whole conversation you'd like to leave us with. Yeah, I guess I have something I'd want to end with. I think we're sort of spending a lot of time talking about the wager here because we're wanting to emphasize that we all do wager. There's no way around answering this question and making decisions based off of our either explicit or implicit answer. But a lot of people are going to to wager differently than we do, that'll happen. And someone might look honestly at the questions

and arguments, and they might walk away from Christianity, choosing to wager on another way of life. And we think there are a lot of smart and kind people who have meaningful lives and might do that. And we, of course, disagree with them, and we'll continue to tell them why we think this way of life that's modeled after the person of Jesus Christ is the way to find happiness and peace and life. But we don't want to ever assume anything negative about their motives or why they went about walking away. We will, of course, continue to tell them about the love of Jesus because we believe that the message of Jesus is not one that steals our freedom, but it's actually this message that provides a real path to true freedom.

And so when we talk about Jesus, that's what we're trying to offer people is freedom in a way of life that's full of happiness, a way of life that has this deep meaning and significance. We're not attempting to sort of trap them into something either using coercive rationality or some other sort of argument. We're offering them a reason to wager on something, a reason to wager their lives on Jesus Christ. And I guess as we approach that wager, I just think we should be trying to be equally skeptical

of every option that's on the table and attend to the totality of what it means to be human and what it says about our lives and our relationships, morality and the way we will find happiness and a good life. Beautiful. Well, thank you both for your work. Thanks for your book. Thanks for what you're articulating here, which I think will be really helpful for people. So I'm grateful for both of you. And for viewers of this video and of my channel, I'll put a link to not only this book that we're talking about, surprised by doubt. It's a great book. It's short. And it wouldn't bog

you down too much to get through it. It'll flesh all this out more. But also I'll put a link to some of these other resources we recommend it in case they're of interest. And I'll put more information about both Josh and Jack in there as well. So thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see you next time.