Truth Unites - The Internet, Protestantism, and the State of Christianity (With Wes Huff)

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

Gavin Ortlund and Wes Huff sit down to discuss the internet, Protestantism, and the state of Christianity.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

We often don't realize the risks and pains that these individuals experience simply to get the Word of God into the hands of the regular person. Whether that's Wycliffe or Tyndale or even Luther in his own day trying to get that into German. It's, I think, often brushed over how controversial that was in that day. Because it's one thing for the academics to know the Greek and the Hebrew, but it's another thing for the average person to just read the Word of God and interpret that for themselves. That's something that we just assume these days.

But it hasn't been an assumption for most of church history. So we're not done because I have something for you. Oh. Because I very mysteriously had a box sent to your house. In one sentence, what is the gospel? Well, Wes, I'm so excited to be talking with you. I feel like we've built a really cool friendship, and you've been such an encouragement to me.

And I'm so grateful for how God is using you. I want to ask you about some of your experiences and what it's been like for you over the last little more than a year since I've come to know of you. But just for people watching this video, we'll give them the big layout, and they can look in the timestamps and jump around for what they want to hear. We're going to talk about the Internet and how the Internet is shaping us what it means to be a godly person on the Internet, if that is possible. I think sometimes we struggle. Is that even possible right now? Protestantism, the state of Protestantism right now, and then the state of Christendism. Christianity. I've got all kinds of questions I want to ask you about evangelism and spiritual

interest right now. And that's really where my heart is at and I'm excited for that. So just a first thing I want to ask you about is over the last year or so, as God has given you this increased visibility, we're going to talk about the challenges of that. And I think sometimes people don't realize the burden that can come with that. But what's something that you're grateful for in terms of the expanded influence God has given you and is you look back, what brings joy into your heart about how you see the Lord using that? Well, let me start up by saying that the feeling's mutual, because I've been just so incredibly encouraged and blessed by your own content online. The online world, as we're going to get into,

is a bit of a quagmire, and sometimes it feels like it's just the internet's going to the dogs, and we try to put stuff out there, but it's just such a mess. More people, if someone watches your content and they're encouraged, they're not necessarily the one that's commenting. But the people who want you to know that they think you're wrong or that they, you know, are critical, they're the ones who are commenting. So I think it's really easy to capitalize on that. But over the last year, I think what my takeaway is that the amount of people who have reached out and communicated just an appreciation or even hearing the gospel for the first time who grew up in a Christian environment and then something like my interaction with Billy Carson or my conversation with Joe Rogan

or any of the innumerable things that God has blessed me with over the last 12 months, that that has moved them into a place where now they are going to church, they're reading their Bible, they're pursuing discipleship. That, to me, far outweighs and exceeds any of the negativity. Right. Any of just the mess and noise that happens online. And in connecting with people like yourself over this last year, I mean, there are so few people who are in this who you can reach out to to get a gauge

and bounce things off of. So I've been really appreciative of that and you, even though, you know, we know. We've only met in person very recently. Right. Because. We started off sending voice texts at some point, and I can't remember how that began, but then that became such an encouragement to me. So I've found just do it.

And then now it is to this point where last night, you're in my backyard with my kids and we're kicking the soccer ball around. Yeah. This is awesome. Yeah. I mean, just to see the connections that have been made that God has opened up the opportunities for, like whether that's yourself or others, that has just been so cool. Yeah.

to have those, you know, despite distance, age, time, have that network of godly individuals who can both, you know, encourage me, but also speak into some of the stuff that I'm doing, you know, tell me when, you know, maybe they think I'm doing something that I shouldn't be or or encouraging me to continue doing what I am doing. That's just, it's made a big difference. Yeah. Well, what you said there about the positives outweighing, the negative. This resonates with me because there's this sense of when you get an email and someone says,

you know, this video helped me come back to the Lord or this video stabilized me in my faith. I mean, there is no substitute for that. And it means the world. And I know God is using you so powerfully. And that's why I felt this burden to try to pray for you and just be an encouragement any way I can. And I'm so thankful for how God's using you. But then there's this other side of the Internet.

So it's like, I feel this personally, this tension of on the one. hand, it is an opportunity and you can reach a greater number of people because of the internet. And there are just cool dynamics to it. I mean, I honestly find YouTube a lot of fun. I've shared this with you that I just like the strategizing of what kind of content will help people and so forth. And then there is this other side to it where it seems to reward a lot of ungodly behavior and it can just be depressing. You see a lot of snark, you see a lot of outrage. How do you manage that tension? Are there practices you have to set into place?

And the motive behind this question is we want to help shepherd people watching this because I think we're all struggling with this. I think we all need more wisdom than we have to figure out how do we get the goods of online interaction without it polluting our soul. Yeah. I mean, I think in being involved in the apologetic space, there's always been sort of a stigma against apologetics for just being something that involves people arguing with each other. And if I'm totally honest, the interactions that I've had with people where Christian apologists

is their job title, that actually hasn't been the case. You know, if I talk to people like Tim Barnett or Sean McDowell or, you know, you go down the list, William Lane Craig, they're not actually combative. They're incredibly gracious and slow to listen and careful people. But I get the stigma and I get why, especially online, that's kind of developed that track record. But I've always, the quintessential apologetics verse, First Peter 315, like 14 to 16, right? Where I felt very convicted early on that though I would see always be prepared to give an answer kind of cited frequently, that that wasn't the entire verse. Because it starts with, but in your heart's review.

Christ's Lord and then ends with, but do so with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ will be ashamed of their slander. And feeling like, okay, I can be prepared to give an answer all I want, but if I'm not bookending it with those two things, I'm probably not doing that middle part, either well or properly or God honoring. Like if I'm not revering Christ's Lord in my heart and everything that comes along with that, and I'm not doing this with gentleness and respect so that I can pull my head down on my pillow at night

and having a clear conscience, then, you know, I'm really not, it's about me, it's not about God. And so I really tried to take on that as a conviction and an encouragement early on in my personal apologetic work. And then leading up to like the Billy Carson thing, being you can you can if you want to find snark and and and uh criticalness and you know the dunking on your opponent the internet's full of that and that's a diamond dozen yeah so injecting a little bit of maybe calm quiet carefulness like i don't know if i've always done it perfectly but i really

have tried to take to heart that flagship apologetic verse with the gentleness, with the respect, as much as I can, because I think that's really what makes the difference. It's not just all facts. It's also that. You're doing a great job at that. And let me share my experience. And then from this, we can try to shepherd people watching this video.

Because I'm not the only one who's going to experience this. I know we all struggle with this. But I set out with that firmly in my heart. I want to honor Christ as holy, gentleness, and respect. And then over the years, I'm mindful that it's easy for that to start getting chipped away at. Because you're in an environment where there is so much outrage where anger feels like courage. It's almost like you have the beatitudes and then you have the opposite of the beatitudes. And the whole values of the internet are more toward the opposite, where not only are these things tolerated, it's actually rewarded.

So you have a lot of snark. you have a lot of reactivity where emotions are really ruling more than arguments, all this. So you're in this environment. You're saying, okay, I want to hold that at bay and set good boundaries and so forth. And then you're saying, Lord, help me to do this for not just like six months. Help me to do this for years and years and years. So that this is my goal that 20 years from now, if Truth Unites still exists, I still want to be doing 1st Peter 315.

God help me. May it stop existing if I ever should. away from, Christ is honored in my heart through every word I say. And gentleness and love for people comes through what I say. So we're all struggling with that. Let's say, what do you think are the consequences when Christians sort of give in, you know, someone, four years into their time functioning on the internet, they've kind of bought in to the dunking on, the outrage, the snarkiness. What is lost? How is the kingdom of God? affected by that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's so easy to be shaped by your environment. And when

you're in an environment where that not only is so prevalent, but like you said, it's rewarded, how much are you shaping the context are in versus the contexter in shaping you? And I've really struggled with like, okay, how can I put safeguards in place to not allow that? Because I think it's the like incremental fade where you just incorporate a couple comments and it's so easy maybe to justify it because you see you know i've talked to people where they said something like elijah with the prophets of bail and they're like well he's mocking them right and actually i'm i'm not i'm not against there being opportunities where we do need to be pretty hard and like straightforward with what we're saying jesus is pretty critical with particular

individuals and the wisdom and knowing, okay, how do we differentiate from that? I mean, my response often is if Elijah and the prophets of bail are our standard, then we better kill our opponents after we mock them because that's what we do. That's what he does, right? And obviously that kind of shows the absurdity of it. But that's a descriptive, not a prescriptive kind of laying out. But I think in terms of your question, like, I think we do need to be careful. And it's, I think, letting the Word of God shape our hearts and understanding that most people are not wolves and sheep's clothing. Most people are sheep who themselves are misguided, who are also trying to figure things out. I think of so many people in my life who they're very hard-lined and they're

very maybe even embittered, but I know it's because of other things. I was saying this speaking of it at a university in Canada, and I did a talk on the problem of evil, and then there was this one guy who like be lined up for me afterwards, and I knew it was going to be like, like you want to fight a little bit. And he started just throwing these things at me, you know, what about this, what about this? And part of me was thinking, I just talked for 45 minutes on that. Like, you should have been listening. But it was just so, I could sense the hostility. And at one point I just said,

those are great questions. Why are you asking those questions? And it turned out he had a close family member who was diagnosed with cancer and was most likely terminal. And I was like, right. You know, I could have, you know, gone in for the kill, the dunk,

you know, here's all the ways why your objections are wrong. And at that particular instance, stands out to me when I think of, you know, response videos, which I love to talk about, because I think I'm still trying to wrap my head around the response video culture. Right. But this individual, he wasn't actually struggling with like the dichotomy of the law of non-contradiction and the problem of evil, why a good God could allow so much evil and suffering,

which is what he was kind of articulating. He was personally hurting. He had an ache. And that was kind of, all of these things were a bit of a, like a styrofoam facade that looked imposing. But once we started to break that down, and I just, and I didn't really answer his questions. I just said, like, I'm so sorry to hear that. Can I pray for you? And you could see just kind of the tension evaporate.

And I try to think of that with the online world. that you encounter so much hostility. I don't know if I'm answering your question. You encounter so much hostility and trying to give the benefit of the doubt to people. And I need to remind myself of that, even just on a regular basis.

I don't know what's going on behind the scenes and what they're wrestling through and what their heart posture is right now, how they're struggling with God. and that this could legitimately be a wolf. Right. But I think my experience is that most of the time, it's a misguided sheep. Right, right.

And if you treat the misguided sheep as if they were a wolf, real collateral damage can happen. Totally. Yeah, I mean, let's do talk about like rebuttal videos. I mean, you know, this is something I actively think through. And I don't really have the answer yet. I think I've often had this experience where I'll be watching a different perspective. And for me, the genesis of it in my heart is, I'm just curious. I just want to

interact. You know, I was watching Rhett McGoughlin and Alex O'Connor last night put out a new video. I just enjoy watching it. I'm just intellectually curious. I just think, hmm, how would I respond to that? So in my naivety, sometimes I'll, you know, you're not planning on, oh, I'm going to do a rebuttal video today, but from watching the video, you know, you just start thinking. And the way I think is I write, or at least I put down on paper like an outline, and then from there, it just sort of leads into interacting with someone. But I've had to step back from that and say, wait a second. Certain things come in with revital videos in the culture where suddenly it escalates the dynamic, and it leads away from the very human encounter that you just described of this person who comes up and you're able to have a human encounter. I think what people want to feel from us from 1. Peter 315 is care as a person.

And rebuttal videos can detract from that. At the same time, I don't think we're saying, as you said so well, we're not saying that there's never a place for a firm rebuke or even strong use of rhetoric in the right context. I think we want to kind of let Christ be our example in all this. So I'm just learning, I'm a pilgrim on the way learning about this. But I mean, how do you think about with responding and giving a criticism of another perspective?

Are there things you think through that you say, okay, if I'm going to do that, especially if it's with a person, what needs to be on the table so that that is truly a godly and productive critique? And I'm not just contributing to the unsavory elements of the Internet. Yeah. I don't know if I have a good answer because I'm still trying to figure out of my own mind what is an appropriate situation, what is not an appropriate situation to do that. And the irony is not lost on me that my taking off on the internet was almost exclusively because I was making just a series of response videos to one individual in particular. And that's what got the traction and what got Joe Rogan's attention and, you know, kind of led to the avalanche that took place over the last year. But I think what started to make me think and change my mind was seeing rebuttal videos to me where people were taking.

things that I was saying and then ascribing intentions or even rebutting a position that I don't hold and feeling the almost tension and anxiety of if I was if they were you sitting where you are right now Gavin I could just say I don't believe that yeah yeah and that would be the end of the conversation and yet they're going on for five minutes you know at me with something that And I'm looking around going, I don't know who you're arguing against. It's not me because you've assumed something and just feeling the, okay, do I do that? Could I fall into the trap of doing that? And the struggle of that, and it's really made me rethink response videos in general. And so for a long time, I just stopped doing them. I just, I didn't, I didn't want to do them.

I felt a little bit, like, burned out by them because there was, you know, so many coming my direction. But there were a few people and people who I respect who started sending me particular videos and saying things like the guys in my youth group keep talking about this. And I think it would, I think it would be of value if you, given kind of where your interests and area of research are, if you would just quickly address this. and that happening on a level where I thought like, okay, maybe there are opportunities to speak into particular situations. Yeah. To do my best to not ascribe negative intentions and maybe even go out of the way of saying, you know, here's the objection. Let's address that, not the person. Right.

Even with the individual I was referring to earlier, having the perspective of, there's a questioner behind the question. And so that there's still a person there, whether they're trying to rebut you or whether they're objecting to something that you're saying in person. And so it's something that I'm still trying to figure out the interplay of when is it useful, when is it not useful, when do when, because there's almost like a cottage industry of rebuttals. Some people's entire platforms are just response to this, response to that. And I find that exhausting a little bit. I find I would really like, and I think you do this very well, and your content is like a prime example of it being educational. Like even the response is I want them to be positively educational.

I don't just want them to be scraps, like Allie fighting. That really doesn't interest me. and it kind of turns me off. But if I can use that as an opportunity to communicate, okay, here's the positive case for X, Y, and I was going to say Z. We Canadian say Z because we're wrong. X, Y, and Z. Then there's like a productivity to it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right, right, right. Yeah, I think that the big thing that I come back to, I think what we're trying to get into here is, what does Christ-likeness look like on the Internet? And I think it's fair game for us to say, in some respects, like we were talking last night, our generation is the first to really face that question because the Internet is so new. And it is daunting.

Because as we say, it has the positives of being able to reach a greater number of people, but we're trying to figure out what does godliness look like. I think it'll be a lifelong project. I try to repent. You know, at times I look back and I'm like, ah, I have a lot of you. I would do that differently now. Yeah. I wish I had, and you, and it's easy to look back at yourself three years later and say different

first 2020. Yeah. And so I try to have an open heart to just say, forgive me where I've fallen short. And I want to have, you know, Titus 3-2 says perfect courtesy toward all men. I want to have courtesy. I want to have love. I think the thing that's most on my heart is I want everyone, those who are my brothers and sisters in Christ, those outside. side looking in on religious discussions to feel love from us. I want them to have a sense

like Christ where there's, he's not subtracting the challenge of the gospel. Christ really challenges people, but there is also the sense of I wish well on your soul. And if there's one thing that I would want to encourage people, Christians do on the internet, is that that is such a great organizing focus to say, am I genuinely, not just for show, but am I genuinely love, but am I genuinely loving the people that I'm talking to. Before we move on, any last advice on this whole area? Suppose there's a young man, for example, watching this, and he's online, very online, and I don't think we're saying you can't be on the Internet. I mean, I don't think we believe that's part of the tension we're wrestling with. But what would be, if there's one thing,

if you could sit down and just make one appeal to this person to godliness on the Internet, what would what advice would you give them? That's a great question. Yeah, like you said, I don't want to discourage people from going about the avenues that you and I have decided to take on. I think that sort of positive angle, you know, not just rebutting against,

but what can you contribute towards? How can you reflect Christ in your definition? demeanor and in the, like, quality of your research. And because there's definitely a place for people to step into these arenas. Like, we need more individuals in general, but, like, young individuals to, because I really worry about, like, the next guard. Who is going to be coming up?

Because there's got to be more Westhoffson, Gavin Orleans. They're out there. And so how, I mean, this is an insufficient answer. How do we encourage them to do this properly? I mean, probably first and foremost, make sure that what you're doing is prayerful. And going into it with that, revering Christ's Lord in your heart, like the personal evaluation should be the place where the outflow of the content. comes from because it's so easy it's so easy to get wrapped up in you know the I need to correct this I need to make sure that this person or that people who are watching this stuff are not

falling into the trap of thinking that this is true or this is what we believe or you know all of those things into the misinformation and the misapprehensions the miscommunications um but it needs to start with okay I I'm imperfect. I'm a sinner. I'm not going to get things right. So let let me like seek the spirit in rightly discerning what I should be doing, what I shouldn't be doing, and how I should be doing that. I mean, in some ways that's that's not like a, here's a prescription. You know, here's, this is where you should be doing. Here's, and, and I've just constantly, I constantly think about, you know, it's not, the goal is not to stand before the father and hear well done good and successful servant,

well done good and influential servant, well done good and winsome servant. It's well done good and faithful servant. And that's far, it's far simpler than I think we often give it to. And it's also like far more of a high calling than we give it credit for. Because faithfulness is just simply waking up in the morning and saying, God, how can my day reflect your love, your truth, your unity to the beautiful yet broken world around me? I think what you just said there is really profound. We're called to what we want to hear is well done good unfaithful servant, not good and influential servant.

Now, we know that, but honestly, I'm receiving that into my heart fresh as you're saying that, and I think that's a wonderful thing to kind of leave people with on this topic is the pressures around us are, of course, going to be directing us towards wanting greater influence. I mean, one of the things we've talked about is it's not glamorous. Like, it's a burden. And I think you probably experienced this far more than I because you have such a bigger profile than me, but even to the small extent of being on YouTube in my own experience,

it's not like it's easy and glamorous. There's a sense of weightiness with it. But to direct people to, in every post on X, in every Facebook comment, in every YouTube comment, in every video, in every Instagram video or comment, is Christ, is the face of Christ looking down at you saying, well done, good, and faithful servant? And I'm not saying that right now as a law to just beat someone up, but no, as a, as a wonderful, beautiful goal, right? We want people to realize that's what captures my heart, not how many followers I have,

though it's great to desire more influence. I don't think that's wrong, but the ultimate goal is that Christ is looking down saying, well done. And that's a wonderful thing to have that in your heart. And maybe that's an encouragement for people watching this, is remember, Christ is watching. And, you know, in Revelation, he's judging the churches. and it starts off each letter saying, I know. He knows.

He knows what's in my heart when I'm speaking in a video or when I'm posting. He knows, and I want to be pleasing to him. And I want him to look down and say, well done, faithful servant. And so I guess we're just putting that out there for people and reminding them of that as a goal. Well, and even the daunting reality of describing yourself as an influencer. Like, there's a lot of danger there. I don't know if I want really to be influencing people.

I want to be very careful with that because I think that that's a, that can get very dangerous very fast. Like what am I influencing them towards? How am I mirroring an influence? You know, Paul says, you know, follow me as I follow Christ. But I sometimes I don't know if I want people to follow me. I don't want, I don't want that on my shoulders. Because I know I'm I'm broken, I'm flawed, I'm I'm just a regular person. I wasn't I wasn't

making regular YouTube videos before I went from, you know, 18,000 subscribers to 800,000 subscribers. That was a that was not, that was not in my kind of goal list or even my expectations. And I don't, I don't, I think we, we see that term. I'm an influencer. I don't, I don't used as much as it used to be. A content creator, I see more. And that's probably more, like, it's probably a better designation than influencer. But I wonder if people realize how scary that designation really is. Oh, totally. We should tremble. I mean, I think about what the scriptures teach about those of us who teach are held to a higher standard. I mean, may there be the fear of God for us in our internet interactions. May we take seriously the New Testament warnings about our

speech, every word. I mean, what Jesus says, whoever says, you fool to his neighbor, is liable to the fires of hell. This is what our Savior teaches us. And I think we are so flippant. The internet increases all of this. So we're not saying this to just take a hammer and smack people. We're saying this because I think our viewers, a lot of my Truth Unites viewers, by the way, everyone who's watching from Truth Unites, it is such an encouragement the way I sense godliness in the comments a lot. I really I'm grateful for my viewers. I think we're all, a lot of us are just trying. We're seeking to be faithful to Christ here. And so this is a helpful reminder. You, you have done a great job. My perception of you is you are not seeking the spotlight. You were not trying to get this great reach,

but God took you and put you into this place. And that's why I felt such a jealousy in my heart to say, you know, how can I support you as you're there? Because I think now you're trying to be faithful in that spot. And I think you're doing that. But it is a precarious path to walk. And so that's I wanted to kind of ask you about this. And the one thing I would leave people with is just remember Christ with each video, with each post, remember what he did for you on the cross, remember that his death is your forgiveness of sins. Go back to the gospel.

Let that joy be in your heart and then speak from that. And speak with a view to pleasing him and serving others. And when we fail, we can just come back to that and reorient ourselves to the gospel. What's that adage by Martin Luther, that we're beggars showing other beggars where to find the bread. Like I hope that's what my motivation continues to be. That I do, is it Spurgeon who said, you know, I don't fear the devil, but every time I get in the pulpit, I'm trembling.

And I think, you know, that that's a good attitude to have. I get nervous before I speak to 20 people or 20,000 people. Like, I do. I'm fine when I'm up there, but I still to this day, when I preach at my own church, which is not a big church, we have less than 200 people, I get nervous and I can feel that.

And I hope I still, 20 years down the road, 40 years down the road, still get nervous. Because I think that that's good. I should have that. I'm coming to and I'm expounding the word of God and I need to be careful with that. I need to make sure.

And same thing with my content. Like I hope that I'm cautious. in the things that I put out. Yeah. Let me ask you a little bit about Protestantism, and we'll kind of transition into this whole second area. Yeah. And even talking about that is an interesting thing because in a second I'll ask you, you know, why is there a little more focus on this conversation, maybe today, or at least it can seem like that.

Whereas five or ten years ago, it doesn't seem like there was a lot of Protestant apologetics or people really focusing on feeling a need to sort of explain and defend Protestant convictions. convictions. And for me, I never set out. Maybe this is partly why the Lord led me in this direction, is I really, in my heart, don't have any sort of reaction against anything that's outside of Protestantism from a personal angle. I think I just sort of got, to my own surprise, kind of pulled into conversations as a way to try to serve people, because I was seeing people having anxiety and uncertainty and basically just not really hearing good historic Protestant arguments. And so out of my own academic background, I just thought, you know, this is an opportunity

to try to meet some needs here. Do you see more interest in these conversations between Protestant Christians and the other Christian traditions today? Or do you just think there's more of an appearance of that now versus 10 years ago? I think it's a little bit of a both-end situation. I think people are, we're in a unique kind of snapshot in the life of the evangelical church. where I think people are genuinely looking for more. It's part and parcel to a number of things. I think it's coming out of, you know, the early 2000s church environment

in the evangelical North American Christianity that I grew up in where it was a lot of like seeker sensitivity and, you know, youth pizza nights and lock-ins. And the depth was not really there, but there was a lot of incentive to get people in. And that worked. But, you know, the whole what you win them with is what you win them to.

you reminded me last night. And that's like part and parcel to that. We did get a lot of people through the door, but then what we won them too was kind of a yay deep, shallow end Christianity. And then you do have the new atheism collapse in that I think people saw that if you tell individuals that they're product of time

plus matter plus chance, and then you try to live your life that way, really doesn't give you a whole lot to develop meaning and purpose and intention. And so we're finding ourselves in this time where people are looking for substance, which is why I think we're seeing a rise of not atheism, but spiritual but not religious,

because it's kind of emblematic of that. They realize that, okay, there's more to this life. There's a lot of weirdness to the world we live in. I'm not just matter in motion. So what do I do with that? And in that where people are looking for something that feels solid and maybe even ancient, there's a looking to traditions that really put that on display. And I grant that there's a there's an attraction to the smells and bells.

and the aura of something that looks like it has an antiquity to it. And I wonder, I think it's a both-and situation where I think we're able to see a lot more publicly the amount of people who are verbalizing that they're going from one tradition to another. Because when I was growing up, I knew a lot of people who left Catholicism for Protestant evangelicalism. But that was largely like cradle Catholics, a nominal Catholicism. And I think online you see on places like X, a lot of verbal people who are going to Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, who are now almost becoming apologists for that. And I just don't know if there's the same fervor for people who might actually, in the numbers, be going the opposite direction.

because there's just a lack of a desire, for one reason or another, I don't know whether that's good or bad, but you see the people who on those sorts of, the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic side, they do tend to be more verbal initially. So I think we are seeing a movement of people who are looking for something where,

the evangelical church in the last 30 to 50 years maybe didn't give them a proper understanding of how they fit in the grand family tree of historical Christianity. I was very privileged. My dad is a very competent historian. We did learn a lot about the church in the Middle Ages and how that fit into antiquity and the reformation. It wasn't this great apostasy and then thanks be to go. God for Martin Luther because he retrieved the true church. And up until then, it was, you know, Aquinas is part of our heritage, I think. You know, Anselm is part of our heritage. A bead is part of our heritage.

I think we can own that as Protestants, acknowledging that they don't necessarily look exactly like we do. And that's okay. But that I do think, I think there's a need to look at, well, why are, why are, people in particular, why are they gravitating towards those traditions? Yeah. Yeah, I'm fascinated by that question. It's sort of a sociological question, right? Like what is going on here? And again, it's the pastoral burden behind it. Apologetics is driven by just love and a pastoral burden to try to help people.

That's what we want to do. I will say, so I go into these conversations very eager to try to be respectful. You know, I want to recognize some of the people in these other Christian traditions. are just terrific people. I feel unworthy to wash their feet. I mean, honestly, some of these people are really amazing, just as human beings, their intellect and their, and they're gifting. And it's so easy to caricature by looking just at the street level, and then you don't look at the tradition in its best expressions. But what I will say is that same care and respectfulness is not always exhibited towards Protestantism, including by Protestants. A lot of times we just, we assume the street level expression.

Whatever we're seeing kind of in the mix right here in my anecdotal observations, well, that's just what Protestantism is. Rather than really diving in. And I've been interested, it seems as though Protestants don't defend Protestantism as much. There's a lot of general Christian apologetics. We're very much talking about politics and culture. There's denominational conversations that happen to some extent.

but we sometimes don't really defend the Reformation itself. So maybe trying to exhibit that sort of respectfulness toward this tradition, what is Protestantism at its best? What is it spiritually and pastorally as well that would make you say, yeah, I really value this about Protestantism? I mean, ultimately, I think as someone who has continually said that I'm a Protestant out of conviction, not out of convenience, Like, it's not that the Baptist church is close to my house.

It's that I genuinely believe in the tenets that sit at what being a Baptist means. I think, sorry, rephrase the question. Yeah. So what is Protestantism at its best? Right. Spiritually, what do we value about it? Yeah, I think, especially if you look at what the reformers are trying to do, they're not trying to start a new church.

They were never trying to splinter denominations. That's not the purpose. It was a retrieval of the core of the gospel message. Like I read Luther and I read Calvin and Meluncton and Zwingli, and I see this desire for the heart of what the gospel is. Like the Sola's Sola Scriptero, Sola, Ecclesia, Sola, gratia, solidaeaglia.

Just say those again because you said sola ecclesia. Oh, sorry. No, no, no, no. I say it again. Yeah. Yeah. You got them on your Bible,

which I love. So, Scola scriptura, Sola gratia, Sola Fidei, Solidaea, Solidaea Gloria. Like, though those come later, right?

And they're kind of synopsies of what's going on during the Reformation. I think they are, they're this looking back and saying, there's a beautiful tree there. The tree's grown.

and it's got so much life and nutrients and fruit. But there's all this moss on it. And we need to scrape the moss off because the moss is almost obscuring the beauty of the tree. And it's the heartbeat of the gospel. What does it mean to be saved? What is the interplay between faith and works? How do we understand that? And I mean, it's a bit of an oversimplification, but if we're Protestant,

what are we protesting? You know, I mean, that's not necessarily what protestia means in the context of that. But I think it is a relevant question. Is the Protestant Reformation over? Do we go back to Mother Rome? And why am I convictionally a Baptist? I think that those are good questions to ask ourselves if we hold that designation.

I don't think it's irrelevant that we are still within the process. within the Protestant tradition, and we're not going back, we're swimming the Tiber and going back to Rome. Yeah. And I believe, convictionally, what came out of the Protestant Reformation to be true. I do too. I do too. And the more I've studied these issues and worked through them, I feel more confidence.

I feel more respect and understanding for other people and where their convictions, where their convictions, lie, but I feel more confident in these basic convictions like Sola Scriptura. I think that one is just so so true and so life-giving to measure ourselves by what God has said. What God says is of the chief authority for the rule of the church. We'll talk about Sola Fidei justification by faith alone in a second. And I think, you know, the realistic look at church history. I think there is so much naivity as though all the early, I get these comments so much from people, and they are assuming that I'm in bad faith because I'm resisting the one true church. But what's interesting is it comes from multiple

claimants. It comes from the Roman Catholics as well as the Eastern Orthodox. And it's like, you both can't be exactly right in what you are saying. And one of the reasons I value being a Protestant is I think you can be honest with the messiness of church history. God has been at work. the church has never died, but it is also messy, just as it is today. And you can sort of just be honest and acknowledge that. But one of the values for Protestantism, you do a lot of work in the study of texts. And I, one of the, if we're trying to get at here values of Protestantism, why we care about this tradition, why we think it's worth talking about and having this conversation and even using that label, I would put onto the table.

the Protestant emphasis upon Scripture, not just as a big framework, though that's there as well, but also in the daily experience of lay Christians. And I think it's totally true to history to say the Protestant Reformation massively disseminated the knowledge of the scriptures in the vernacular language throughout the laity. And I'd just love to hear you talk about that a little bit. Do you see that? Do you think that's a fair reason for us to appreciate what God has accomplished through the Reformation and then through the subsequent, I would call them heroes of the faith, people like the Williamton Dales and the Wycliffs and others like this, Wycliffe, of course, before. Do you think that's a fair value to have as we're trying to note what

we appreciate about Protestantism? I think it's hard to deny that without those people, the Bible wouldn't, that the way we have the Bible today would be the way that we have the Bible today. like the fact that we have so many readable English translations, too many English translations, right? It's almost confusing sometimes. That's the downward stream effect of those guys, like just the passion that they had for the plow boy to be able to read the Bible and have the competency level of a priest. That's something we just take advantage of. I have it on my phone.

I have it in multiple translations. I could have it in multiple languages if I wanted to do. And the inaccessibility of that throughout time and space and history, I think we often don't realize the gravity of that and the risks and pains that these individuals experienced simply to get the Word of God into the hands of the regular person. Whether that's Wickliff or Tyndale or even Luther in his own day trying to get that into the German, it's like it's, I think, often brushed over how controversial that was in that day. Even someone like Desiderius Erasmus, who was this, you know, Dutch humanist, humanist, not in the modern sense, but like someone in this movement of trying to kind of learn all that human knowledge could, in the Renaissance Man type of way,

when he produces his Greek New Testament, which is what Luther reads as his first edition of the Greek New Testament. And then really Luther reads Romans and Matthew in Erasmus' Greek New Testament and comes to some pretty profound revelations that there are apparent, you know, different understandings within the Greek than in the Latin. Erasmus himself endures. quite a bit of tension in even producing a Greek New Testament in over and above the Latin. Because the Latin was the book, the Bible of the church.

And you see people saying, well, God has used the Latin Vulgate for a thousand years. Why bother going back to the creek? Like, we don't need to do that. And then to have that in a language that the regular person can understand being even more dangerous. Because it's one thing for the academics to know, the Greek and the Hebrew, But it's another thing for the average person to just read the word of God and interpret that for themselves. That's something that we just assume these days. Yeah.

But it hasn't been an assumption for most of church history. Oh, totally. I mean, sometimes I open the Bible and it's sobering and humbling to realize I just can take this for granted. And then, well, of course, I can read a Bible. And you're right on the money that I can forget the same. sacrifice that went into, I mean, even going back to the early church, people preserving the scripture in times of persecution when people are trying to burn Bibles, but then the efforts of some of these proto-Protestants and Protestants, and I will simply say without a desire to give jabs

at people, because we'll get our own rebuttal videos surely here. But I do think there is a minimizing of this sin of withholding the scripture from the laity in the vernacular language. And people will say things like, oh, no, there, there wasn't. in opposition to translating the Bible, it was just bad translations or, oh, there were these other earlier translations. And I think it's just a historical fact that is undeniable that the vernacular translations of the scripture were not widely disseminated among the laity. And that there was fierce persecution, burning the lullards at the stake repeatedly at a time when there's no other alternative English translation other than the one they're trying to produce

and getting burned alive for it. And then you've got Tyndale, of course, himself laying the foundation for all subsequent English translations, the King James translation takes over like 85% of his New Testament. He had it, and that's the work of like 50 or 20, I can't remember how many, but all these divines are contributing to that. And Tyndale himself, this one guy in obscurity, is producing this incredibly skillful translation

that affects the English language so much, and he's burned at the stake. Now, and people will say, oh, that wasn't why he was burned at the stake. And it's like, even if that's not part of the formal heresy charges, he's hunted his whole life, frankly, maliciously. And so I think it's fair game for us to, without a desire to poke someone in the eye, just to acknowledge plain historical facts that this was a gift of Protestants and proto-Protestants

at the expense of incredible sacrifice, this emphasis upon the scripture in the hands of every person. Yeah. So the lady can read and be edified. Yeah. And even in the like kind of going back to what we're, talking about a little bit before with, you know, when I look at manuscripts, I had a friend who was working with a particular group of manuscripts in Greece. So he was working with Greek Orthodox monks, even just to get access to some of these. And they themselves were kind of interacting

with them in daily conversations. He's a Protestant. And so having these conversations about how tradition interplays with the Word of God and him simply opening one of these Bibles that he was working through and saying like, your predecessors, the priests, the scribes who wrote these things down, have the text in gold and the commentary in black ink. What do you think that says about how they viewed this? Like, it's right there communicated by just the value that they're imparting in making sure that the letters are in gold leaf. Like, I think, I think the value that the value of that and and knowing the like profundity of what the word of God represented. Right.

And the keeping that from people who are so desperate that this is food, this is daily bread and to withhold daily bread for spiritual malnutrition. Like that's, that's, at best, it's dangerous and at most. It's sinful. Yes. And if people want to fact-check any of this, I've developed all of this with lots of documentation. And my video on Tyndale, my video on the Lawlards, I know you've done work on these things as well, so people can look into all of that more. But I guess what I'm saying is I am not embarrassed to be a Protestant.

I am proud of this heritage. Now, I can also say, as I look at the contemporary landscape, to try to move towards those who maybe have criticisms of Protestantism, or they're just kind of wrestling with these issues. that it is also the case that there is need for renewal in many contemporary Protestant churches. Totally. And so I'm looking back at history and I'm saying historically, Protestants have had a very rich view of the sacraments. And I think a right emphasis on there being two. They've had a rich practice of the sacraments.

The Reformation, people don't like to hear this, but the Reformation really did re-centralize the Eucharist for the laity in both bread and wine, regularly imbibing, not just spectating. and I've talked about all that. A rich view of preaching. There's a richness in Protestantism that we can acknowledge lots of contemporary Protestant churches

have drifted from. And we have become very pragmatic. You said earlier, this phrase, what you win them with is what you win them to. It's true. It's just a fact that many contemporary Protestant churches are not very theological in how they do ministry.

It is a pragmatism that does seem to be driving the ship. And as much as I talk about all these things, it's also with a desire to serve Protestant churches and encourage a kind of retrieval of our own roots, going back reading the Puritans, reading other great Protestant theologians. So I guess can we acknowledge some of these challenges and how do you see going back to our own roots? How do you see that playing out in your own observations, just going back retrieving historic Protestant theology and. liturgy and practice. What do you think that looks like? I think we, and I'm encouraging, I am seeing this more and more, like an understanding, a base level competency in church history, where we fit into the grand scheme of that family tree that I described earlier. Like, I think what I have seen,

and I'm not saying that this is every individual who goes from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism, is that they were not, they didn't have a grasp on what was really going on in those first few hundred years and just having a base level understanding of terms that have been used far more in Roman Catholicism than they are in Protestantism, reading sections of the early church fathers and seeing terms like bishop and Eucharist. And if you're in a non-denominational modern Protestant setting, those only have potentially a Roman Catholic lexicon in mind. And so I've seen, I've talked to people who have said, you know, but that's Roman Catholicism.

And almost having to walk through and say, you know, no, you, in a Protestant church, you do participate in the Eucharist. No, Eucharisto, Thanksgiving. That's what that means. And there's a biblical church hierarchy that, we can look at in, you know, Titus in the Paulian epistles and see, you know, this isn't not what we engage in within historical Protestantism. And so I think trying to encourage and instill, which I know both your content and my content,

endeavor to do, but bring in an excitement for church history, for understanding where we are. I often tell the story that years and years ago, my family was visiting a church. My grandparents had a cottage in an area in Ontario called Salville Beach, and there was a church that we would attend there every once in a while when we were there visiting my grandparents. And we were in this church service,

and the pastor said something about Martin Luther, and there were these two little old ladies sitting in front of us, and one leaned over to the other and said, it's really too bad they shot that man. And that being kind of like, oh, like that understanding of church history, like a lot of people probably doesn't go too much further than Billy Graham, never mind Martin Luther and where he fits in it, like forget the Middle Ages, forget the patristics.

And I think that's a stain on our teaching and practice, is not incorporating how we feel. fit into that broader picture. We're not Mormons. We don't believe there was a great apostasy where the church fell off the map and that God had to bring it back with Latter-day Saints. We can claim part of that heritage that, you know, prior to Luther existed. And I think it's just an ongoing process of reminding people, you know, why the retrieval of the gospel was so important. And seeing, even in scripture, you know, part of the reason why I am Protestant is because I think as long as the book of Galatians is still in the Bible, and Paul's saying, you have the

faith there, but you've added this one thing. You've added circumcision. And because of that, He uses the strongest words and probably all of the New Testament towards them, very, very cutting, no, no pun intended, words for the church in Galatia, right, in saying that you're an error. You're anathema. You're damned if you do this. And I look at the traditions that are in these other groups. And I say, you know, that's a lot more than one. And then there's a danger there.

And so I want to retrieve the gospel because the gospel, add anything to the gospel, it's not the gospel. Take anything away from the gospel, it's not the gospel. And that's something that I think we need to approach with fear and trepidation. Yeah. Okay, so in one sentence, before I ask you a big, more complicated question, in one sentence, what is the gospel? The gospel is the saving news of Jesus Christ, that he has saved you, that he has saved you apart from anything you can contribute to that. that you are dead in your sins and trespasses, that you don't need an example,

you need a savior, and in believing and committing your life to that, he will rescue you. That you're saved by works, it's just not yours. It's Jesus's. Because he's the only one who can't accomplish that perfectly. You can't.

And so you're saved for works, but you're not saved by works. And in putting your whole trust and faith in the saving work of the second person of the Trinity who steps out of eternity and into humanity and takes on your depravity, you will be rescued. So you use the word faith there. So let's talk about this a little more. Let's unpack this. Because to me, is what we're trying to do, the big picture here, we're trying to do is walk through and just explain why we value Protestantism and why we think

it's worth talking about, thinking about, explicating, defending. And one of those things will be what is sometimes called Solafide, meaning by faith alone. And that, let's just define that as saying, you're made right with God by simply believing the gospel. And as you put it, the good works then flow out of that, but they don't actually make you right with God. They're the fruits of that. And so I guess I'd love to talk about this

because I think I want to go back to the gospel relentlessly. I want to be predictable. I mean, I remember my dad giving. I love my dad. He's one of my great heroes. He gave me the advice one time. of you want your videos to be kind of wonderfully predictable. In that, people kind of know what your thing is and where you're going to land the plane

whenever you can and whenever is fitting. And so I want people to have that experience that the video is shepherding them toward Christ himself. And I want it to feel like walking through the wardrobe into Narnia that by the end of the video, you're like, wow, my sins are forgiven. I forgot that I needed to be reminded of that. know, I'm going to heaven. I'm a child of God. I want these basic truths of the gospel to land upon hearts through every other thing I do. And so one thing I'd love to ask you about is, do you think that that message of Sola Fide, you're made right with just, by just believing,

you're made right with God? Do you think that is relevant to modern anxieties? Because I think what was recovered in the 16th century in a time of great malaise and anxiety, is needed today in the 21st century, but sometimes it's harder to see, you know, how is that the antidote to the modern anxieties, but I believe it is. And it might be edifying for us

just to talk about this. How do you see that? Yeah, I mean, the word faith is probably more simple and more complicated than we often give it credit for. Like what we translate, Pistus in Greek, has an underlying connotation of trust to it. You know, it's not the blind faith that, you know, many atheists want to make it out to be.

Just believe because I've told you to or because you have to or whatever. You do see, you know, John in his gospel closer to the end says that he's writing these things down so that you may believe and have life. And it's almost as if, you know, he's given you the evidence. He said like, here's all, here's the story. Here's what Jesus has done. I'm telling you this so that you may believe, right? So you may have faith. And there's an aspect of here is the reason why you can have that trust.

And so you're not asked to just step out into the blind, you know, darkness. It's like the, in Indiana Jones, when he has to step on that. Yeah. And that strip. Is that the, is that the, I want to say Last Crusade. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. And like, it is that, but it's also not that.

in that, like, does Indy have the evidence to know that when he steps out, he's going to be okay? And I think that's what we find. I mean, we even have words in English, confidence, con meaning with and Fidesis meaning faith. Like, what is confidence? To have faith. Or, like, fidelity. That comes from the root of the Latin word Fides, right? I have trust that my wife back in Toronto is taking care of my kids, not arbitrarily,

but because I know who my wife is, the character of that. And so I can put my faith in that that she can actually take care of the kids, you know, my four kids better than I could if she left me alone in Toronto and she took off to Tennessee. There is, but at the exact same time, the faith that's a gift that Paul talks about in Ephusion in Chapter 2, it is a gift. It's not an intellectualizing endeavor. It's not just evidence because, and I'm sure you and I both know tons of people who know a lot about the Bible.

You go to something like the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. Incredibly intelligent individuals that have no saving faith whatsoever. So what is that? Where's that switch that needs to be toggled? Well, it's because it's a gift. It's what is imparted first and foremost by the work of the Spirit, taking your own. heart of stone and giving you a heart of flesh. And you're not going to intellectualize yourself into the kingdom of God. It's not going to happen. But that's not a component of it. Right. Like in the

prophets, God says, he talks about his judgment on Israel and he says, you're dying for a lack of knowledge. You don't know who I am anymore. And so therefore, I'm going to judge you for that. My friend Tim Barnett, who works with Standar Reason, often says that if you want to know, know the mind of God, you have to start by using your own. And I think that's true, right? Love the Lord of God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It's just not a component of it. But the faith, it is faith alone. Like that's, that's the linchpin of what God does by the outpouring of his grace to forgive you, to make you right with God, that atonement aspect. But, it's not arbitrary. It's done purposefully and with evidence that we can actually point to and look to in

scripture. Yeah. One of the things I've, I can't remember when I first came across this insight, but the idea that there are secular forms of works righteousness has really resonated with me because I think there are lots of people who, they would never think in religious categories, but it really is, I'm proving my worth. In a sense, I'm justifying myself. by what I do. And I love to think about how is the gospel going to land upon this person's heart? And it's going to be good news for them, too. It's going to be a challenge.

It's going to be you need to let go of your idols. Everything you think is justifying you and cling to Christ alone. But it will be, I think, it will be experienced as an alleviation of anxiety and burden by many modern people. I think there's all kinds of people who just, they are drowning in anxiety. They don't know if they're okay. Deep down, there's an unsettledness. And I think that's part of our conscience, part of our human nature. We realize that we need God.

We need to be right with God. And so I just love to make this a focal point of emphasis in my ministry. I know you care about this as well. And it's a great thing to remind hearts right now as we're talking is that deepest need in your life can be fully met by Christ. And you may not even be thinking in terms of the word justification, but it might just be this deep insecurity at the core of who you are. But, you know, there is such a thing as assurance. And I would just say to everybody watching this video, you can have assurance that your sins are forgiven as you trust in Christ. Protestants have thought a lot about assurance.

It's not like it's an automatic magic thing. But the testimony of the Holy Spirit in your heart is real. How do you help people who are seeking assurance? I mean, you look at something like Romans 8 and 9, and there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. I often, I wonder, when you look at the intellectual enlightenment, you know, quote-unquote, and the removal of God from the thinking of a lot of the centrality of society, have things gotten better or worse?

like since countries like yours and mine were established on largely Judeo-Christian values, and yet God was excised from those conversations, did our levels of anxiety decrease or increase? Did our levels of insecurity and like just the proliferation of the craziness of the world? Did that decrease or increase? I think I think measurably they increased, right? It didn't alleviate people's stresses when we were moved gone from the pitch. Oh, good.

Now I don't need to worry about going to church anymore. If anything, it created a situation where now all of the pressures on me. I read or I listen to someone like Richard Dawkins or, you know, Ricky Jervais or any of these kind of popular figures in the atheist community. And they talk about this, you know, now you can make your, own meaning. You can find your own purpose and your identity. And I don't know if they totally realize how much of a burden that is on the average person. It's all up to me. You know, that I don't, I don't want that on me because I don't think I have the, I can carry that weight of, and that's

why you read, you know, the existentialists or, you know, there's Nietzsche or Camus or Freibach. And they're talking about meaning and purpose. And it's like, well, I could wake up in the morning today and I could brush my teeth or I could shoot myself in the head. And you're like, that sounds crazy. But when you've really removed objective meaning and purpose, those could very well be the options they're talking about. And how much just purpose and meaning in light of the struggles. You know, I was on a podcast yesterday and I was asked a question. about this kind of, you know, how does God, how do we understand this in light of God? And I opened up to Psalm 23 and I said, you know, the God who says, the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want is the same

God who one chapter earlier inspires David to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And those are equally valid forms of worship. God's not afraid of that. And what does that do when we're in the, on the mountaintops and in the valleys. I think that that gives us assurance that God is with us and that God understands that because God has entered into the experience of the human condition and he's experienced pain and suffering and abandonment and murder and there's a uniqueness to the Christian worldview that speaks into that situation of God is not the distant god of general theism

that kind of just puts everything in place and the cogs are moving and he can step back and watch everybody. No, he, the cross wasn't a contingency plan. He knew exactly what would happen. He knew, you know, before the foundations of the world were laying, the lamb was slain. And so, and slain for you and for me.

And that there was a conscious understanding, of he knit us together in our mother's womb, but he also, he knew who Gavin Ortland would be in 2026 when he went to the cross. And man, that's really something to contemplate. And when we're going through the times of struggle and uncertainty and trial, and Jesus says, you know, take hard because I've overcome the world. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. And life's not going to be easy. In fact, it's going to be hard, but there's a hope that transcends that. And you can have faith. You can have trust that I understand that and that I have rescued. And the now but not yet reality is that that's all going to come to an end. It's going to be

made new. Yeah. As you're talking, I'm experiencing your words as just a reminder of just how wonderful it is to believe in Christ and walk through life with the hope of the gospel. I mean, just to lay my heart on the table, my heart burns with a passion for there to be a fresh discovery of the gospel in our day. And young hearts, especially, I especially think of young people, though I want to serve all people through what I do at Truth Unites. People need that hope right now. Don't you think, I mean, I see incredible anxiety, incredible loneliness. people, a lot of people, they're just kind of stumbling through their day. And the truth is there is food for that hunger.

That hunger in the human heart for meaning and for hope that you can't live without, that's real. And we want to direct people toward the food. We want to direct people toward Christ. It's exciting to think about directing people toward Christ. I really want to move into that now. However, there's two things that are still niggling in my mind that I want to ask you about before we leave kind of the Protestant topic, if that's all right.

We can do these real briefly. So one is one of the things that comes up in these conversations is people are looking for a masculine expression of worship and faith. And they feel, especially young men, and they feel that that is sometimes offered in a context outside of Protestantism in a more obvious way. What does Protestantism say to that desire? Interesting question. Do you know what I mean by masculine?

They want something rigorous? Yeah. They want something demanding. Yeah. Yeah. I think we've seen a real movement in that, you know, with the Jordan Peterson-esque, which is funny because he's not a stereotypical masculine individual. But I think it's like that stoic value of virtue and hard work. And, you know, you make your bed and you set your goals and optimization.

is like a buzzword right now. I think I totally understand kind of the rigorous contribution that some of those traditions can feel like that imparts for a more standard stereotypical masculinity. Sometimes I wonder if that's a desire, like the... The... The...

the... Our hearts wanting to feel like we can contribute because we've, we want, there's something satisfying about being Sisyphus and pushing the rock up the mountain because I might get there and that feels like I can do something. Right? I often talk to my Muslim friends and I hear their devotion, especially during times like Ramadan, where they're praying five times a day and they're reading through the entire Quran during that 30 days.

And I get it. and I get the desire to want to work. The flip side of that is that, you know, if you're doing everything right, you often become a little bit arrogant and you look down on the people who aren't doing it perfectly. And then the other side is that if you're not doing it right, that can be very disheartening. But I think we're living in a society where masculinity in the broader culture is often labeled as something like talk.

or it's downplayed or and then you see these traditional red pill like values and mindsets and it's tied to something that looks ancient and and that can I guess I'm not really answering your question in terms of like Protestantism I think it has more to offer than big beards and cigars I think it goes beyond that. If that's your schick, that's fine. Nothing gets big beers and cigars. I have neither in my life. But I think there is like the hope of the gospel is something that can give value to the desire of masculinity

that I think a lot of young men are feeling like a yearning for. and that it doesn't have to be the exhausting pursuit of the Stoics. Because the Stoics all converted to Christianity. Why was that? And what was because the freedom of being released from that endless work. And now you can work. Right. You have the freedom to work.

But it's not on your shoulders. It's on Jesus is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And I think, you know, you mentioned this. this, some people want to work. And there could be, and you're rightly saying, you know, you've got to examine that desire. What about that is good? What about that? Maybe I should interrogate and think about. But if people want to work, I want to say, read the Puritans.

Yeah. You know, if you're wanting a bracing calling, like a summons to come and die, which I think in some respects is a wonderful desire in our hearts, read John Owens the mortification of sin. Yeah. So again, my answer here is, let's go back to Protestant roots. Totally. The goods are there. If you want a bracing summons, it's there, and in the worship expression, I mean,

go check out your, there's a lot of Presbyterian churches. I love Presbyterians because I grew up Presbyterian and benefited so much from that. I'm just like to use them as a positive example to say, you're going to find some real bracing worship styles. And so that is there, but a lot of it is we've got to go back to our roots. Last thing I want to ask you about

on this before we move on to like the general state of Christianity, evangelism, people talking about revival and things like this. I have so many questions I want to ask you, is you mentioned being a Baptist, and because of people watching this, they'll, you know, I'm just aware of this. I want to say one thing about this myself as a fellow Baptist is there often can be, and I have a, for my purposes at Truth Unites, it's not really to focus on denominational distinctives. But so I posture myself as like, I am a servant of these other Protestant denominations. I want to serve you.

and I learned so much from them. But to the extent that there does come in that mentality that some people will have of, well, yeah, maybe some Protestants can be deep in history, but Baptists. You know, okay, what we hear this a lot. And one of the things, I guess what I would say to that, I would just make a simple appeal, and that is read historic Baptists. I think people, again, it's the same thing. If they think of Baptists as like, oh, yeah, what I've seen anecdotally.

And I would just encourage people that there's a little more to the, this tradition, and even if you don't find yourself a member of it, it does deserve to be treated with a little more respect than is often the case. Is there anything you want to say about being a Baptist, and especially with a view to this concern of, well, Baptists really don't have any authentic historical roots? I don't know specifically. I would echo that, totally. And we were talking earlier when we were driving over in me expressing just an appreciation for Michael Haken and his work in writing. on like the historic Baptist tradition.

And if people are interested in that, that's where I would point them to, is it works like that in saying that there is a richness to the Baptist tradition just as much as the other historical Protestant denominations that I, I convictionally feel as like I'm in the right place. And kind of adjacent to that, although it's kind of a different topic, is, yeah, I'm the vice president of a ministry of Pologetics Canada. And all of our staff members who are speakers come from different denominations. You know, none of us are the same. Troy is non-denominational, charismatic. Andy is Menonite brethren. Steve is Anglican and Ben is Methodist. And there's been a strength to that.

I think we can center around what matters for the purpose of gospel proclamation, and we don't gloss over our distinctives. And I think it's very important, especially within the life of an individual church, to understand the distinctives. Because that's where it can cause trouble, is I'm a Baptist church, which has Baptist distinctives and reformed distinctives. and I think it's important that every member of the congregation understands those. But like you said, there's a tradition in that that is rich, is vibrant, is historic, and it's not just picking and choosing or like popping out of midair. One of the things I want to talk with you about too, and this will be the final kind of section of this video is,

and this is the part I'm most excited about, I've shared with you, I don't think I have a spiritual gift at evangelism. I'm very mediocre at it, but I work hard at it. I love. I think you're selling yourself short, but keep going. I've gotten slightly better over the years, but it's not a natural thing. But I find it so exciting, and I think it's so healthy as a practice for Christians to focus on. It helps you love Jesus more and understand the gospel better when you're sharing it with others.

And it's also healthy for churches to be outward-facing and engaged in the community, both with service but also with proclamation. And so this has become such a passion in my life, is how do we, what does it look like to share the gospel right now? And the interesting thing is there's a lot of spiritual hunger. People are curious. And so there's talk about whether you're hearing the language of a vibe shift or a quiet revival and all these things. You have the privilege of interfacing with a lot of non-Christians. Do you sense a greater spiritual openness these days? as opposed to maybe say 10 years ago.

And what does that look like? I definitely noticed that. And I noticed it across the board. And it's been interesting to travel to other places, whether that's leaving Canada, going to the States or going to Europe or the UK. When I was in New Zealand and Australia, I'm hearing the same things.

I'm hearing people say, you know, there's just more openness. People are curious. People are looking into Bible sales are going up. Like what's going on here? And it seems to be outside of any of the specific endeavors that the church has attempted to insert. You know, we should be doing those things. We should be trying to get biblical literacy and understanding and, you know, competency and what the gospel is, who Christians are, what we believe.

But it seems that the spirit has been doing things from the ground up more than, like, top down. in what I'm perceiving. We're getting people walking through the doors of our church and simply saying, like, I just wanted to read the Bible. And so I started reading the Bible. And your church isn't that far from where I live. And I just thought to check it out. And then seeing genuine transformation in those people's lives.

And I think we are at a particular juncture. I think part of that is the atheist issue that I was referring to before in that the new atheism, which really wasn't all that new, but was kind of rebranded superficially. Those were seeds that were planted, and they grew into a tree that produced fruit that nobody could really stomach. And that opened up people to see that that really doesn't give me anything to plant my feet on. I'm planting my feet firmly in midair. And I want something solid. And so, and in kind of conjunction with that, you have issues of justice and meaning and identity.

Those are like inherently Judeo-Christian ideas. And so they're repackaged, but I think there's a unique opportunity that we find ourselves in to speak to a culture that's very preoccupied in the West with justice. Like, wow, what a great opportunity to say, I love that. I want you to lean into that. But let's think about why. Why is it necessary or good to look out for the marginalized, for the weaker thens? Do you think that comes from survival of the fittest?

Does that make sense logically? Is this an evolutionary process? Because realistically, you know, you look out through what individuals like, Darwin were proposing, we really should be advocating for the opposite. You know, it's not, it's not propagating your selfish DNA for the species to live on to say these people, they're the ones who are on the fringes, they're marginal, they're vulnerable, let's help them, let's advocate for them. Rodney Stark has some really good stuff in his historical evaluation of like tracking the agency of children and women throughout Europe.

and how you can, in so many instances, correlate that with missionaries moving in years prior. And then all of a sudden there's this change in understanding of, you know, now we're talking about the rights of women. And we're talking about children being given advocacy. And that's not a mistake, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love what you're saying about the opportunity that we have because the last thing I want to do is there's this great spiritual hunger. And then we fail to capitalize on that opportunity. Yeah.

And that's where I've gotten to where, you know, the last few years especially, I've said, okay, I'm just, this is it. I want to give my life to try to meet needs in our times right now. And it's kind of thrilling to just give yourself to that task, you know? And I know you, God has used to you on some of these very large podcasts, talking to non-Christian audiences to a large extent. what are the questions that you see people asking who do they're coming they're they don't have Christian faith but they are interested and open and hungry what are the questions you see them

asking that we may not that those of us who are believers may not anticipate or expect them to ask hmm it's a good question I find it's a lot of the questions that have been addressed for a long time, but that I think before we were trying to, actually, let me rephrase that, because now that I, now that I ruminate on it, I think there is a difference. When I started out doing, I did campus ministry with the Canadian equivalent of crew. It's called Power to Change in Canada. When I was on university campuses and I was doing outreach, apologetic kind of endeavors, I was getting a lot of people still then who were talking about, um, that their objections were more about, is God real?

Can I believe in God? Does it make sense, philosophically, scientifically, sociologically, psychologically. Does that make sense? And I don't know when it happened, but there was a very overt switch where all of a sudden, people are not asking, is God real? They were asking, is God good? and it was not intellectual as much as it was existential. And I don't know if that has to do with maybe some of the geopolitical stuff in the world or,

because a lot of the same questions are being asked, questions about the Bible and God and science and those are still there. But I get a lot of people asking me. me questions about typical problem evil questions, maybe rephrased in different ways. But still very much the undercurrent of that is, you know, if God is so good, why am I seeing these things happen? Why is there so much turmoil? Why do I experience pain?

Why do children die of cancer? Those types of things. And they're targeting a lot more here than they are here. But then once those start to get teased out, like the dots connecting the heart and the head are so obvious. Because it doesn't take long from going to showing and encouraging people to see that removing God from the problem of evil doesn't solve the problem. makes it more complicated, to then, okay, who are you talking about when we talk about God? Who is that God? Because it's not just any God.

It's the God of the Bible. It's the God of the Trinity who lives in a set of living, loving relationships and creates out of an outpouring of his love. And so I'm encountering a lot of that. It's been really interesting to see that a lot of these opportunities that I'm being afforded start out very intellectual and then almost always go into something about that's a little bit more you know existential in nature yeah yeah i i can relate to that and you know you think about how we want to be helpful friends to those who are sort of in that process of maybe stumbling toward

christianity but haven't crossed the threshold yet and there are people like that. I mean, I think of the words of Christ. You are not far from the kingdom of God. There are some people who are more obviously resistant, but then there are some people where it seems the Holy Spirit is at work in them. And something's already going on, and sometimes I don't even know exactly. Where are they at in this process? But I'd love to ask you about how you've seen people cross over that threshold into faith. And I'll set it up like this. I remember learning from Mois Rosen, who was the founder of Jews for Jesus and very gifted evangelist. And his observation, I've always thought about this. I'm paraphrasing him. I hope this is fair to him.

I just heard this many years ago. But he was saying, everybody has a kind of personal feeling of like a defeater belief that this couldn't work for me. Like there's something that makes it feel like, well, yeah, that's for people over there. And that as he sees people come to faith, there's something that changes where someone becomes open, as you're saying, existentially, and they start to say, wow, the gospel can actually work for me. It really, it becomes personal, it becomes hopeful, it becomes a matter of the heart. And I'm just curious to kind of ask you about this. I don't know if this question is too vague or not, but how do, how have you seen the gospel really land upon someone's heart so that they're able to turn that corner? Does that make

sense what I'm asking? I think so. I think, you know, one of the things that I think we can do when we're stepping out in trust with these kind of gospel presentations is to be transparent about how broken I, Wes Hoff, am, because I often think I encounter people who kind of verbalize what you communicated with. Like, that's for those other people. And they almost feel like, I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough for that. And the authenticity of the individuals within scripture, I think really communicate effectively to that in that the criteria of embarrassment, which is a historical criteria that's used to validate, you know, you don't make your heroes look bad. And yet you look at scripture and everybody has fallen and broken and flawed. It's like,

David is the man after God's own heart, and yet he's a serial adulterer. You know, he's murdering Bathsheba's husband by putting him on the front lines. And all of these things, and you just time and time again, right? Like it's the disciples. They're not getting it. And they just continually don't. And it's Peter, right? The guy.

And he denies Jesus. And I think there's an authenticity to that we can show people. And heaven is not full of good people. it's full of people who know they're not good enough, right? It's full of honest people, people who they don't have it all together. And that's why they're there because there's the reflectivity of the transparency of understanding,

I'm not going to be able to do it. And I think there's a, in our communicating that to people, there's a real opportunity to say, don't feel like you have to clean your life, up because you're not going to get there. You know, well, I'll go to the doctor when I'm not sick. You need to go to the doctor because you're sick. Like that's the whole point of the doctor. And the gospel message is going to heal you. That's the true doctor is going to not just identify your sickness, because you probably know what it is. He's going to heal it and he's going to

make it new and he's going to give you a desire to no longer be putting yourself in situations. where you're going to be exposed to the Germans and the toxins that are going to make you sick. And so I think there's, we can communicate that effectively to people because I think we all resonate with that. Where if we're really honest with ourselves, we know how flawed we are, we know how broken we are, we know the insecurities of that. And if you think otherwise, well, you know, get married and have a couple of things. kids and you'll realize how, how flawed you really are.

But, yeah, so all that to say. I mean, I just find time and time again the authenticity of Scripture being something that is just so attractive because it's so honest with the human condition. In a way that when I read other religious texts, when I read the Quran or I read the like a Gita or read, you know, some of these other texts from the ancient world, they're, they're not honest with that fact. In fact, some of my Muslim friends are embarrassed and point to the inauthenticity of the Bible because the prophets are not perfect.

And their thought process is they have to be perfect. In fact, in some strains of Sunni Orthodox Islam, the prophets themselves are sinless because they have to be the representation that you follow after. And for Jonah to be as flawed as he is, for, you know, the only righteous person on the entire earth, Noah, gets off the ark and he's a drug, right? Like, it's, it's just, it's, they're uncomfortable with that. And, and I think, you know, that lump in your throat is there for a reason.

Jesus put it there. And you can, you can push into that because it's not about, David. It's not about Noah. It's not about Peter. It's about Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a beauty in that. It is beautiful. I mean, it's, and I hope our non-Christian friends will experience us to be honest, to be non-superior, not like we're on some elevated plane talking down to them. But I hope they'll experience us to be honest with our struggles and honest about the fact, just like you're saying the gospels are honest about the disciples. I do, I find that so endearing, you know, that they don't make the heroes so above the rest of us, but there's an honesty to it. And what a joy it is to be able

to say to somebody, when you feel unworthy, perfect. Yeah. Like that is when you're ready for Jesus. The person who feels unlovely and unworthy of his love, I think it's true to the character of the gospel, but that's the person to whom Christ really inclines. And his heart gushes out love and compassion for that person. And so we want to convey that with our words, but also with our lives. One of the things I want to ask you about

is the role of beauty in our evangelism. So I think sometimes, and apologetics too, we put so much focus on arguments for truth. And as you pointed out, that doesn't always hit the existential things going on. And so what I've, I use these metaphors over and over. I get almost tired of hearing myself talk about them, but I just, I don't know.

know another way to do it. I talk about walking through the wardrobe from the Narnia books as this feeling of enchantment, this feeling of to try to capture the emotional implications of if Jesus rose from the dead. Because I've stared down the tunnel and looked at a nigh holistic worldview. I've felt that in my heart, times of anxiety and doubt in my own faith. I've felt how bleak that is. And in relation to that, when I consider the the empty tomb of Jesus. I feel enchanted. I feel as though I'm walking through the wardrobe into Narnia that does not take away all the hard aspects of discipleship. I'm not trying to say it's nothing but pure joy in that sense. But at the end of the tunnel, this is a tremendous message

of good news. It is unbelievably joyful to think that the suffering in our lives can be turned to glory as we trust in Jesus and surrender it to him. All sins can be forgiven. We'll have a resurrection body. We will live forever. I mean, I want those wondrous enchanting truths to land on hearts. And I'm curious, how do you think about the role of the beauty and wonder of the gospel when we're doing apologetics and evangelism? Yeah, well, like we were talking about before, I think we're in a unique circumstance where that can really be impactful. You know, Charles Taylor and James K. Smith talk a lot about what they call the dynamic of disdainting enchantment. And that being something that our society, you know, realizes it that there's this,

there's this realization of something more that we're finding is more common. And when you look at this, like the heavens declare the glory of God, right? And you look, you and I were talking about being able to see the stars last night. And there's something that just awes us. Where does that sense of awe come from. I think we need to embrace and push into the sense of awe and our smallness in this world. And that that is a powerful apologetic. That is a powerful reason for the hope that we have. And even that hope to begin with, the beauty that that speaks to in the desires of what we both want, and need. You know, it's, it's, it's, we're not, we're not human, we're not human doings or human thinking. We're human beings. And so there's something about embodying the reality of a

world that requires, and this is something that I continually need to kind of work on because I am a thinker, far more than I'm a feeler, and I can fall into the trap of studying God's word and and thinking that that's a substitution for devotionally pushing into God's word. And I need to kind of slow down and think about what is going on in scripture and reading it so that God can speak to my life more than parsing the Greek and the Hebrew. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Let me ask you this. This is right related to this. that. I mean, so in the book, I just finished writing the rough draft of it's called Why Christianity Makes Sense. And I start off the book talking about what I call the ache. And the ache is that restlessly yearning, that wistful feeling in your heart that comes in sometimes when you're listening to music, sometimes when you're walking out in nature, sometimes when you're feeling nostalgia. And in the class I taught last week, I came up with like 10 different scenarios in which we often will feel this. This long. longing for transcendence that we can't quite fully put words to.

And C.S. Lewis, of course, thinks a lot about this. And I guess my interest is, and I'm not sure how to put this into a question. So I'll just say this and then it invites any thoughts from you. But what is the role of the ache for evangelism? Because I think the gospel speaks to that part of us. And too often sometimes we speak the gospel. and we're not driving it into those deep places of human feeling and human longing. So I'm curious to keep reflecting on that.

How do we bring the gospel to bear on hearts right now? Yeah. I think this is something that has always been present in the human condition. Is that ache? I mentioned a bunch of German-named philosophers before. but when you read individuals like Freud and Freibach, they have this idea. It's kind of like the whole God-shaped hole, you know, Pithy's saying.

But so for Freud, it was like you have a desire to need a father figure, and so you create this daddy in the sky that kind of fulfills that. For Freudbach, it was this, he talks about, you have this year. journey and you have this thirst so you create the thing that supplies what you feel necessitates filling that void. And in one sense, it's like, I kind of agree with him in saying that there is, there, God is a, I'm trying to think of the wording he uses, is a wish fulfillment. I would just say there's a true fulfiller of that wish in the same way that if you told me, you know, Wes, you're thirsty, you thirst for water, you're parched, you're dehydrated. But I mean,

that's all psychological. You don't really need a drink of what. There's no real water to satisfy that. You've just created that illusion in your head because you had this yearning this desire for this thing to which the answer to that is to pick up the water and drink it, right? Right. Solved. And I think that's with, you can think about these guys like Freud and Freibach or Camus, a French philosopher. And they have a lot of, they talk a lot about these things. And they're like, there's so much truth in what they're saying.

But that ache, that yearn, it's there on purpose. because you were created with a purpose and meaning and intention. We are created for community. And that's broken. There's been a separation because of our first parents' sin and then the sin that we continue to give into in the cosmic treason that is our rebellion against a holy God. And so that relationship is broken.

but it's able to be made new through what Christ did, through that atonement, the onement of making that relationship right. And so, of course, of course there's a yearning. Of course, if we're really honest with ourselves, we want there to be something more. We want to be connected to that. We want fulfillment that is not just subjective that I create superficially with what I can do,

or what I can contribute or how I can, you know, grow my family or the accolades that I can stack up. But that actually means something to give me value. Yeah. What you're saying resonates with me. And I've often said this to people that to me, Christianity makes sense at a kind of macro level when I'm looking at things like fine-tuning. I mean, I think these arguments are pretty strong. But it also makes sense at this emotional, intuitional level. And it explains my own heart in a way where I feel as though I can sort of live within my own humanity in ways where, again, those times in my life I've looked down the tunnel at a naturalistic worldview.

Let's say there's no souls, no angels, no God, no heaven, right? It's just physical stuff. I feel as though that worldview ultimately pulls me out of my humanity. Because I have to, as you were saying earlier, but justice and how it's difficult to account for the longing for justice. within an evolutionary framework strictly. I feel that way for so many of the intuitions in our heart for justice, for hope, for meaning, for goodness, the goodness of love. I think most human beings have an intuition that love is good. I think Christianity can explain that feeling in your heart in a way that's thrilling.

So I love emphasizing those things. I want to ask you in this final wing of things about the role of arguments in all. all of this. And what's kind of behind this is, you know, I mentioned listening to Rhett and Alex earlier, and they have various criticisms about how Christian apologetics is sometimes done, and I think they're right about some things. And I want to kind of receive those criticisms and say, okay, hey, let me rethink and be open and to listen and say, if I've been drawn into apologetics, which just means defending Christianity, I want to do it well. And so I want to listen to feedback and say, how do I use arguments in a good way?

I've started using arguments in a more narrative way, trying to use them in a way that's more sensitive to beauty and these existential things. But at the end of the day, I think arguments are good, and I think it's perfectly appropriate for Christians to use arguments. I think a lot of it has to do with how we use them. What are the dangers you see in Christians using arguments for, evangelism and apologetics. I'll give an example. Overconfidence can be a big one. Arrogance can be a big one. What are the dangers you see? Yeah, I think we can run the risk of

thinking, like I said before, that Christianity is just an intellectual assent and that if I just say the right things in the right way and be as persuasive as I possibly can be, that that's all there is to the faith. I sometimes say that, like, we need to make sure that we're not stealing the Holy Spirit's job. Like, your application

to join the Trinity has been denied. You failed the minimum requirements. So, because it is, at the end of the day, it would be exhausting if it was just up to me to convince everybody around me.

And don't get me wrong. Like, I am fully convinced, based on the publicly available evidence, that it is true. And I, I am excited about communicating that to others. But there is something that's different in that I can present all the right evidence to you, and you could still brush that aside.

And if it was up to me to convert people, I think I would feel exhausted. I think I would feel like the weight of that, is too much for me to bear. And I'm encouraged by what Scripture communicates to me in that I have a due diligence to communicate effectively. I have a calling to love the Lord, my God with all my mind. And I have that always be preparedness, right? It's like somewhere in between, make disciples of all nations

and always be prepared to give an answer. That's kind of where I'm hanging out. And so I think it's incredibly important, but we should not confuse the arguments for the salvific act of the Holy Spirit, breaking into someone's life and really revealing their sin to them. Because it's not just about facts and data points and historical and scientific and philosophical analysis. It can't be because that's not what the human condition is about. It's not just about evidence. But I do believe that I'm convinced because of the evidence.

And I've often said that in one way my commitment is to truth with a capital T, even above Jesus. I just think Jesus is the truth. I think that that's where the evidence has led me. And I do need to be careful. It's the danger on one side or the other when it becomes all about my feelings, then it becomes subjective to changing. with how I'm feeling. Because my feelings are very, they're tentative,

they're unreliable, they're not inconsequential, but I can't ground my existence on my feelings. And same thing with the evidence 100% of the time, because I could be wrong. I often am. And the data can change and evidence can change. The scientific textbooks are being updated, it all the time. And so we need to make sure that we're hanging our hat on something that goes beyond

that. And I think the evidence of a life changed is a powerful apologetic. And even if you look at that First Peter three verse that we were referring to earlier, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the evidence for the Christian faith. No, for the reason for the hope that you have. It kind of implies that your life is expressing something that is communicating a hope that people are asking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And is that apologetics? Definitely. But is that apologetics in the same way that I often do it with someone whose job description is apologetics? Not really, right? Like, it's much more subtle than that. It's the life of the believer lived out faithfully or someone says, what is that?

Why do you have hope? Why can you not just give in to this world that is so broken? And the answer is Jesus. Right. What an awesome situation that is. And this is what I think a lot of the New Testament texts are envisioning. First three through 15, Colossians 4, 5, and 6, making the most be prepared, responding. It assumes a response.

to the person who comes and says, how are you doing this? How do you have this hope? How do you have this peace? And in my own thinking, I've tried to switch from thinking of arguments as like, I think you call it a shepherd's crook, like their little staff that has a curve at the end, where you're coercing someone. You're sort of pulling them where they don't want to go with an argument. I don't, I want to move away from that. Rather, I want to, especially in a responsive context, as there's a relationship and you were trying to build trust, more thinking of it as an invitation and an offer of food to hunger, to say, here's an argument.

And with that, I'll share how they've helped me because the honest rock-bottom reality of my Christian faith has been apologetics has been like food. It nourished me. Arguments have really helped me. And that's just true. I don't know how to interpret that, but I know that that has happened.

And so, you know, like to give an example, and I'm curious to ask you about one or two specific arguments here to finish off with. The old C.S. Lewis Lord Liar Lunatic argument has been helpful to me. This is the idea. It's called a trilemma. I think we have to add on the legend category to make it a, is it a quadrulemma, four options, something like this. And the idea is you have to interpret Jesus of Nazareth in some way or another. And I think what Lewis is really pushing against is people who say, well, Jesus was a great religious

figure, but he wasn't God. And the reasoning is, well, if he claimed to be God, then he wouldn't be a great religious figure unless that were true, because it's malicious to trick people into crucifixion on the basis of something that's not the case. And it seems strange to think that the founder of humanity's largest religion is so self-delusional as to say things like, I came down from heaven, I'm going to judge the world, and it's just a sheer mistake. You think, what would generate this level of error. I found that argument stronger and more durable than I expected, and it's helped me. And I have no idea. I say, I have never asked you about these things before, so I have no idea what you're going to think. How do you experience that argument? Do you see any

utility in that? Yeah. I'm going to back up for a second because I liked your Shepard Crook analogy. My friend Tim Barnett, who have already referenced, he uses a great analogy of a flashlight where he says, like, can you use a flashlight like a club? Yes. Should you use it like a club? If the context merits it. But what is the purpose of the flashlight? It's to be able to see in the dark.

And so when we have a gospel proclamation, we can use it as the guide, the light. And the lights, you're not the source of the light. The flashlight is. You're able to utilize that, but it's the way to show you out of, say, trapped in a dark room. I think those analogies are really helpful. I think Lewis's Trilemma or quadrilateral or whatever we're calling it, adding the Lord, I think is still very necessary and effective. Because I do think we have a lot of people who want to make Jesus a example.

That he's just a good, that he's like another guru or another sage. or another philosopher. I don't think he gives you that option. There's no wiggle room in looking at what the actual historical Jesus said that allows you to, and this is kind of the end clip of my Rogan interview that caught a little bit of traction. And in me saying, you know, if Jesus is an example, then you can actually just do it and you don't need a savior.

And there's a danger there because Jesus, Jesus is your savior. He's very explicit about that. But you do. You look at what he's saying and you look at his claims. He look at his life. And he's either a con man or he's crazy. Or he's the author of creation. Like I genuinely think Lewis encapsulated that in that argument.

And I do think it's persuasive because I think, The downside of it is that people don't actually know enough about Jesus to actually be able to tease that out. But if we can encourage them to read the Gospels, to find out, what did Jesus say in his own words? You find out, yeah, wow, you can't relegate him to another good teacher. Right, right. I want to ask you about this too because, you know, one of the pushbacks I get that I want to sit with and, you know, you always want to try to be fair-minded and listen, is in this legend category, you know, how do we know Jesus really did claim to be God? It's a good point against us that

that's clearest in John, arguably, and John is likely the latest gospel. Fair enough. Now, I would say also, well, John is so different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in so many ways. So it doesn't surprise me that you've got some differences here as well. I don't think it's a problem. But I have made the argument that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus does claim to be God. And I've made that from Mark 2 and Mark 14, the healing of the paralytic before Caiaphas. I want to be careful about that because I don't think it's so obvious

that it's not like you've got the Nicene Creed embedded in the Gospel of Mark, all right? It is very Jewish. It is very much in the context of ministry. I understand how people might struggle with this, and I understand people are looking at it differently. But what I have observed is Jesus' contemporaries

seem to have gotten the message. Because his enemies crucified him for blasphemy, and I think Caiaphas' explanation for what is... I think what's going on there in Mark 14. I think they understood what he was saying. And one expression of the sin of blasphemy at that time is arrogating divine prerogatives to oneself. And I think that's what's going on.

in Mark 2 as well. I would say that's a theme in the Gospel of Mark, but also his followers right out of the gate. They are worshipping him and calling him God. And I think you see that in the 50s AD in like Philippians, for example, in the hymn that Paul cites in Philippians 2, King of Kings and Lord of Lords and the quotation of Isaiah and so forth. So I'm sticking to my guns on no, I don't actually think legend is the right category. Do you see, see the Gospel of Mark as giving us a good portrait of just historical evidence that Christ claims to be divine? Yeah, I have a video where it's actually a snippet of a debate that I did years ago, but where I walk through and show an example of where Jesus is described as God in

every chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Because I think it is overt, and I think you're right in that it's not the forward way of the way that's often articulated by, and atheists or Mormons or Muslims when they'll say, where did Jesus say, I am God worship me? We didn't, right? But I think he does claim divinity in a Jewish accent. And that's why his very Jewish audience reacts to the way that they do. And it's interesting in the trial at the end of the Gospel of Mark when he's accused of blasphemy, you know, we have a law and by that law he must die. Well, there's actually no law against claiming to be the son of God. But to be not so sorry, rephrase that. There's no law against claiming to be a son of God. Right. But to be the son of God

in this unique way, which Jesus appears to be time and time again, utilizing for himself, making, you know, calling God his father, making himself equal with God, that is different. And they are very aware of why that is so offensive. And yeah, I think, I think that's exactly true. I think that the, you know, early high Christology with Mark, if it is potentially the first gospel written, you know, up for debate. But if it is, I think the divinity of Christ is right there. I think he, the high Christology of what is articulated within that gospel is present. And I think you see these examples of his Jewish audience time and time again,

reflecting on that and then culminating in this scene where Jesus involved. Vokes, Daniel 7, he's the son of man, he's coming on the clouds of heaven. And even in my own study within like manuscripts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Coomron community had an understanding of a divine Messiah figure. We have evidence of that within both some fragmentary manuscripts that come out of the Essene community and within the Inocyan literature, like First Second Third Edak, where First Enoch in particular has a lot of evidence. pointing to this coming Messiah being more than simply a man, invoking attributes and, you know,

honors and deeds that far exceed a mere creature. And so it's not that this is a category that's imposed later on by Christians back under Jesus. There is actually, there's actually a category, a messianic category of divinity that is it's not the majority by any stretch but it does exist and the complex unity of God being able to fill the heavens in the universe and yet still operate on the top of the Ark of the Covenant you know that plays well into the Trinitarian understanding so it's of course teased out with further clarity at Nicaa at Calcedon but it's in there. It's in scripture. Yeah, yeah. That is so fascinating. My mind goes to Isaiah 9-6, of course, and one of the titles of this coming figure is El Gabor, Mighty God. And it's enthralling

to think. This is the final thing to ask you is that, you know, so I love to an evangelism come right here and just talk about Jesus. I just find this helps every conversation to get to Jesus. And it's relevant whether you're speaking to a more secular person or a member of another religion. This is going to be relevant to every conversation. And in addition to talking about what Jesus claimed, I like to put that in the context of the whole of Scripture. And so I've been thinking about the argument from fulfilled prophecy. And I don't like to put this in a really overconfident way. Like there's all these prophecies and obviously Jesus fulfilled them. I like to put the emphasis more on the coherence of the biblical narrative. And I do find it pretty amazing that the

most, arguably the most influential human being who has ever existed, Jesus of Nazareth, arguably was anticipated by this particular nation through this tradition of texts. And some of those texts, to be honest, I can't decide if I think this is a really strong argument or a kind of a soft argument. But there are moments when I'm reading Isaiah 53 or even a few other passages, and I do find it pretty gripping. Do you think there's anything to this kind of appeal. I do. I do. And I'm with you on the ways that that has been maybe that the cards have been played a little bit too strongly in, you know, there's 306 prophecies and they're all fulfilled. And I think we do need to be careful with that. Because I do think that the gospel authors are

using the fulfillment of Jesus and the pointing of the expectations that he, that were ultimately pointing to him. Not all of those are necessarily prophetic. Like even, out of my son, out of Egypt I call my son. You can look back of that. You can say, well, ah, that's kind of, I don't think that's what Matthew's intention is. I think he's doing something very specific. The gospel authors are doing something very specific, and we need to be careful and cautious when we evaluate those. There's a reason why the gospel authors are showing that Jesus is a fulfillment of Moses, a fulfillment of David, all these things, right? And that's not a denial of a lesser and greater fulfillment in those passages. There could very well be a fulfillment

that makes sense in the day of Isaiah. And yet, that is not a denial of Jesus being the greater and ultimate fulfillment. I mean, in the same way that the author of Hebrews talks about the shadows. And now we know it will cast the shadow. And so it makes sense in light of that Jesus who's casting the shadow of all of these things within the Old Testament. And Jesus does fulfill those prophecies. He is the one who is prophesied all the way back in Genesis with the seed of the woman. That's the expectation. And we do see this kind of this, this air of expectation in Jesus' day.

The woman at the well, we know that the Messiah is going to come. It's like, yeah, he's going to come. We're waiting for him. and there's kind of an excitement and an expectation and a nervousness sometimes that I think is under the surface of some of the stuff that we see in the New Testament. And yet Jesus fulfills that in the ways that, especially when, you know, on the road to Amas, when he's pointing towards who he was in the law and the prophets and the Psalms. And you think like, oh yeah, so.

obvious and yet it was it was not what they were expecting to happen and he fulfils it in a greater way than they could ever have imagined we could ever have imagined but I think that the argument from predictive prophecy though I'm with you it's not one that I necessarily have have capitalized on in my own work I think it is I think it is one that has a very strong kind of forward motion to pointing to the reality of the truthfulness of the central claims of the Bible, that Jesus would come and that he would die, right? First Corinthians 15, that Paul is handing down what was first given to him that Christ would die according to the scriptures,

that he'd be buried and that he would be raised on the third day according to the scriptures. It's in there, Paul is saying. It's, you know, it's back there. You make sense of the New Testament. by the Old Testament. The whole Augustine, the old is the new revealed. Sure, the old is the new concealed. The new is the old revealed. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing with prophecy. Yeah, yeah. It's awesome to invite our friends to read the Bible as a story. Yeah. And a coherent story. All right. So last thing to ask you, and thank you for taking the time to do

this. I love you and grateful for your friendship and appreciate everything you're doing. doing, just keep doing everything you're doing. Everything you're doing, just keep going to the same direction is my heart for you. But let's suppose a young man is watching this video and they are a believer, but they're like so many. They just want to go deeper. They want to go deeper in their faith. They're feeling, they're realizing I need to get serious in my faith in Christ. What is one or two things you would leave them with to say, okay, here's how. Here's how. you take the next step in your own walk with Christ? Push into the satisfaction of your hunger for the word.

Read and drink deeply. And you need to be connected to the local body of Christ. I can't stress that enough, how important being under the authority of a local body of elders, being disciples, being within the community, the Christian faith is not a lone wolf worldview. It's not going to go well for you, especially if you're trying to get involved in something like online ministry or apologetics. You are going to burn yourself out. You're going to get bitter. It's going to be exhausting. If you're not being fed daily by the Word of God that is, you know, that you can't live on bread alone, but you will be fed. You will be fed. You will be fed. You will

be sustained by the Word of God. But that also entails submitting yourself under the preaching of the Word of God within the body of Christ. That's a necessity. And you need to be plugged in there. And that has made all the difference for me and my family and my ministry is the connectivity. You are created to be in relationship because God is a God of relationship, living in a set of living, loving relationships and has been for eternity in the Trinity and that you're going to find meaning and community and purpose in getting plugged in there and and you're going to need that more and more especially if you're going to try to you know fight the good fight online beautiful thank you west yeah so we're not done okay because i have something for you oh because i very mysteriously

had a box sent to your house. I thought that was for your other. It was very nondescript. Okay. All right. And so I'm very appreciative of you, Gavin. This is excited. This is very dramatic. I have.

So this is in collaboration with Dawson Blades. We've been making a series of swords and daggers. This is the Iranaeus Pugio. So a Roman centurion would have had two. blades. He would have had a gladius and he would have had a Pugio. And so this is an exact representation with a modern twist of a Roman Pugio dagger. And were all of the series of this, we're calling it the Apolligia series. The Ignatius came out. It was a sword. This launched this month. It's the the Ironaus Pugio dagger. And that's yours. Amazing. I love it. My son Elijah will love

I'll just have to not let him play with it too wildly because as you know from last night, he's into swords. And what an awesome, what an awesome gift. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Awesome. Well, hopefully we'll talk again soon. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.