A Better Story with Josh Chatraw

Matt, hey, my friends, welcome to the off the wire podcast. My
name is Matt Wireman, and with over 25 years of coaching
experience, I bring to you a an integrated approach to coaching
where we look at mind, body and soul. So this being my little
corner of the universe, welcome we cover everything from
spiritual formation or the interior life all the way to goal
setting and how to make your life better with life hacks, and I
cover everything in between. So whatever it fits my fancy, I'm
going to share with you, and I'm so thankful for your time, and I
hope this episode helps you. All right. Well, hey, welcome,
welcome to another episode of Off The Wire. This is Matt, still I
haven't changed, but I do have with me, my friend. Really proud
to call him a friend. And from seminary days, Dr Josh chatro, who
is the Billy Graham chair for evangelism and cultural engagement
at Beeson. That's a mouthful. Josh, well done. And then he is
also, they just launched a concentration in apologetics at
Beeson, which is really exciting. They got a conference coming up
this summer. Is that also an apologetics Josh,


its own preaching and apologetics? Okay? Awesome.


And, and largely, you're also, you're also part of the Tim Keller
Center for Cultural apologetics, and then also a, they call them
fellows at the Center for Pastor theologians as well. That's
right, yeah. And you in, you have been at Beeson for a couple
years, because prior to that, you were at a you were heading up.
And what was it largely an apologetics group, or was it, was it
more broad than that in Raleigh?


Yeah, it was. It was much more expansive than that. Evangelism
and apologetics is part of what we were doing, but it was the
Center for Public Christianity, okay? It was also very much in
the work and faith movement. And I was also resident theologian
at Holy Trinity Anglican in Raleigh. We were there for five
years,


excellent and and you don't know this because you don't keep tabs
on who bought your book, but I've got every one of your books
brother, so every every book you put out, and I'm like, I love
this guy, and I'm gonna support him and buy his book. So it
started all the way back, if you remember, with truth matters,
yeah. And I use that book for one of the classes that I built
here where I teach. And then then I want to go through the Litany
here and embarrass you a little bit. And then it goes to
apologetics, at the Cross Cultural Engagement, telling a better
story, surprised by doubt. And then one that you just released
called the Augustine way, retrieving a vision for the church's
apologetic witness. So do you write much on apologetics? Is that
kind of your thing?


Yeah, I've written a few books on that.


So why? Like, what is it about apologetics that has really
captured your heart, in your mind and like, as opposed to just
teaching theology, yeah, it's a certain it's a certain stream. If
folks are first of all, folks are curious, like, What in the
world is apologetics? Are you apologizing to folks? Like, are you
saying I'm sorry?


Well, I do have to do that. I'm sorry a lot. That's a good
practice. That's not quite what apologetics is. Okay. Okay, so
we, one of the things I would say is, and when I meet, when I
meet up with old friends like you, sometimes they say, What have
you been doing? Because we didn't see this coming. And when we
were in seminary together, it wasn't as if I was, you know,
reading a lot of apologetic works. And so one of the things is,


and you weren't picking fights on campus too much. You were
always a really kind person. And most, most time, people think of
like apologists as, like, real feisty. And you're not a feisty
friend. I'm not. I actually, unless you start talking about,
like, soccer and stuff like that, right? Yeah,


yeah, I'm not. Yeah, I don't. I don't love, I don't love,
actually, arguments I'd much rather have, which is an odd thing,
and so I need to tell how did I get into this thing? I'd much
rather have conversations and dialog and kind of a back and forth
that keeps open communication and and because, I actually think
this ties into apologetics, most people don't make decisions or
don't come to they don't come to any kind of belief simply
because they were backed into an intellectual corner. And but now
maybe I'll come back to that in a second. But I got into this
because I was doing my PhD work while I was pastoring. And when
you do your


pH was that in in Raleigh, because you did your PhD work at
Southeastern, right?


That's right, that's right. But I was actually, we were in
southern, uh. In Virginia for the first half, we were in a small
town called Surrey. It was, if you know anything about Tim
Keller, it was he served in Hopewell, Virginia for seven or nine
years before he went to Westminster and then to New York. And we
were about 45 minutes from that small town. So if you've read
Colin Hansen's book, he kind of gives you some background on what
is this, these little communities, and it does, does kind of
match up the little community I was serving for two years before
moving to another little community in South Georgia to finish
while I was writing. And so I pastored in both locations. So
these aren't particularly urban areas, and yet, people in my
church, especially the young people, were asking questions about
textual criticism, reliability of the Bible.


Those are any topics for


folks like, yeah, something happened called the Internet, yes.
All of a sudden now, things that you would, you would get to,
maybe in your, you know, thm, your your master's level courses,
or even doctoral level courses. Now 1819, year old, 20 year olds
or 50 year olds had questions about them because they were
reading about some of this stuff on the internet. And because I
was working on a PhD, I was actually working on a PhD in biblical
theology and their New Testament scholar, people would come to me
as if I'm supposed to know everything, or you know. And of
course, of course, when you're studying a PhD, you're you're in a
pretty narrow kind of world and very narrow kind of lane. And of
course, I didn't know a lot of things, but I was, I kind of threw
myself into, how do I help people with these common questions. So
it wasn't as if, it wasn't as if I was saying, oh, I want to
study apologetics. I kind of accidentally got there, just because
of really practical things going on in my church context. And and
then as I was reading and I started writing in response to Bart
Ehrman, who is a is a agnostic Bible scholar. Wrote four or five
New York Times bestsellers, uh, critical of the New Testament,
critical of the Bible, critical of conservative Christianity. I
started writing those first two books. I wrote with some senior
scholars. I wrote in response. And then people said, so your
apologist? And I said, Well, I guess I am. And so that, yeah, so
I'm coming at this I'm coming at this area, not because I just
love arguments, but really to help the church really with really
practical questions. And then as I began to teach it, I realized,
oh, I have some different assumptions coming at this as a pastor,
also as a theologian, and trained in biblical theology. So I came
with a, maybe a different set of lenses. It's not the only set of
lens. It's not the it's not the only compare of lenses that that
one might take in this discipline, but that's some of my
vocational background and some of my kind of journey that brought
me into apologetics, and in some ways, has given me a little bit
different perspective than some of the dominant approaches or
dominant kind of leaders in the area.


That's great. Well, let's go. Let's get after it. Then I'm gonna
just throw you some doozies and see how we can rapid fire just
prove all of the things that that are in doubt. So here we go.
Okay, you ready? How do we know that God exists?


Yeah, so that word no can have different connotations. So maybe
it would be better to ask the question, why do we believe God
exists? Oh,


don't you do that? You're you can't, you can't just change my
question. I was kidding. Well, I think, I think you bring up a
great point, is that one of the key tasks in apologetics is
defining of terms and understanding like, Okay, you asked that
question. But I think there's a question behind the question that
actually is an assumption that we have to tease out and make
explicit, right? Because, I mean, that's, that's part of you. So
I think sometimes people get into this back and forth with folks,
and you're like, Well, you have assumptions in your question. So
go ahead, you, you, you go ahead and change my question. So how
do we know


the issue is, is there is that when we say something like, you
know, we people begin to imagine that the way Christianity works
is that we need to prove Christianity in the way we might prove
as Augustine said this in confessions, four plus six equals 10.
And Augustine, early church father, and he's writing, and he's
writing about his own journey. He said I really had to get to the
point where I realized this is not how this works. Yeah, we're
not talking about, we do not one plus one, our way to God.


Yeah. And when is Augustine writing about When? When? So people
are, yeah, 397,


at. This point. So he's writing right at the, you know, right
right before the fifth century, okay? And, and, of course,
Augustine famously said, we have to believe to understand, for
most believers, God is intuitive, or what? Blaise Pascal, the
17th century Christian philosopher He called this the logic of
the heart. Or I can just cite a more contemporary figure, Alvin
planeta, calls this basic belief that. He says that belief in God
is a basic belief, and and for So, for for many believers, they
would say something like this. And I think there's validity in
this so is that God just makes sense, even if, even if they
haven't really worked out arguments that they they say, Well,
yeah, this God makes sense to me. Now I can kind of begin to
explore that. I will in just a second, but I just want to say
there's, for most of your listeners, it's something like, I heard
the gospel and this and the stories of Jesus, and I knew they
were true, right? And as kind of insiders here, we would say
that's the Spirit's work. The Holy Spirit is working, and God
speaks through creation and his word, and people believe. And so
that's that's why we believe now, of course, once we say that
people have these kinds of intuitions, or as theologians would
put it, this sense of God kind of built into them, I would want
to say, as an apologist, or even as a pastor, just a minister,
you don't have to be apologist to say this is that we can appeal
to those intuitions and make arguments in many different types of
ways. Well,


hold on one second. Isn't that a little too simplistic, though?
Because, I mean, you have the Greeks who believed in all the
different gods, and the Romans who adopted those gods and changed
their names and like, how do we assimilate that? You know, where,
you know Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins famously say,
Well, I don't, I don't believe in Zeus. So does that make me an
atheist? It would have made me an atheist back in, you know, you
know Roman and Latin and Greek times. So, so there's an
intuition, but, but how do we delineate that? Well, that's not
the right object of that intuition.


Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have this intuition, you
know, we could say Romans, Romans, one is pointing us to, this is
what I would argue, this sense of God, and yet we're, we're
fallen, according to the Christian story. And so even though we
have this sense of God, we suppress that, and we worship false
gods, or we worship the created, rather than the Creator. So the
Christian story as a as a Christian, helps make sense of both the
kind of why? Well, although we have this sense this, there's this
common sense of God, it goes in many different directions and and
I would argue that even if you deny kind of transcendence
altogether, you're still going to have you're going to still make
something kind of a god. You're going to you're going to want to
worship something. And I think that's that's part of the point of
Romans, one, you end up going to worship the created rather than
the Creator. So does that get out what you're asking Matt or
Yeah,


I think so. I think sometimes the arguments that are real
popular, even now is like, well, I just don't, I just don't, I
just don't believe that God exists, just like I don't believe
that Zeus exists, like, what's, what's the big deal? Why? Why are
you so adamant that I believe in that God exists? Like to because
I don't, I don't know that God exists because I don't see him. So
how would you respond to somebody who says, Well, this Intuit
intuition that that you say we all have, and that Romans one says
we have, I just don't buy it, you know, because, I mean, I'm, I
wouldn't believe that Zeus exists, because there's no empirical
evidence to show me otherwise. So how would you respond to
somebody that's equivocating or saying that, you know, Yahweh of
the Old Testament, the God of the, you know, the God of the Bible
is, this is just a tribal deity, just like Zeus is. So, how
should we? I


would, I would say so. So I think we can make kind of arguments
for some kind of for transcendence. So there's ways to make
arguments against naturalism. That's that's what's being
promoted. And there's various different kinds of, you know. So
sometimes these kinds of arguments that are in the Christian
tradition are used to say, hey, we're going to prove God's
existence using these arguments. I think I'm not. Are typically
comfortable with the language of prove and how it's used in our
context today, again, we get into the math, kind of two plus two
equals four. Kind of thinking, yep. But I think a lot of those
arguments are appealing to both intuitions and they they work
much more effectively as anti naturalistic arguments. Not so much
saying, Okay, we know a particular God through, say, the moral
argument, okay, that we're but, but it's arguing against simply a
naturalistic, materialistic. You know, even Evans, who's a
longtime professor at Baylor, makes this argument that those,
those types of arguments are really good against pushing back
against naturalism. So plan again, has a famous argument that
says, if naturalism and evolutionary theory are both true because
of how evolution theory works, it's not about right thinking, but
right action that you perform certain things to survive. Then, if
both of those are true, you have no reason to trust your kind of
cognitive faculties.


Can you tease that one out a little bit? I kind of lost on that
one. He said,


What planet is arguing? Is he saying? Look, if, if all of our
kind of cognitive faculties are just a product of evolution,
okay? And by the way, not only does it's not just a plan. Ago
makes this argument, it's actually kind of interesting figures
who were like Nietzsche and others made this argument that
basically, if, if evolution and naturalism is true that all we
are is energy and manner and this product of evolutionary
process, then we would have no reason to actually trust kind of
our rationality, and that's what rationality is actually mapping
onto reality. All of our our brains and our minds are really just
producing certain conclusions to help us survive. So it would
undercut the very foundations of that position. Now again, yeah,
being able to observe, yeah, yeah. So, so with that, again, I
think that's an example of an argument that doesn't so much. You
know, say this is the Christian God. This supports the belief in
Christian God. But what it does is it from within their own
thinking. It challenges that. It undercuts their own way of
thinking, which is what you're assuming and what you're kind of
pushing back on, is a kind of naturalistic world. And I think we
can step within that try to understand it and then challenge it
on its own terms. And I think that's the real strength of
planning this argument. What he's doing now, go ahead.


Well, that's it, yeah, in his, in his, like, the the Opus is, uh,
warranted. Christian belief is that what you're referencing the
the big burgundy book.


I can't remember where he makes this argument? Yeah, I can't


remember exactly. But like, if all your cognitive faculties are
working, somebody who believes that God exists does not mean that
they does not negate all of the other cognitive faculties that
they're like if they're in their rational mind, that they have
warrants for their belief. But, but that's what I what I think,
where I'm tracking with you, and I love this is that even like,
it still holds true, right? Like there's not one silver bullet
argument to say now we know, like, that's what you were
challenging even in the question is, how do you know that you
know that you know that God exists? Well, you have to layer these
arguments. And so this is one layer of that argument that even
the Greeks and the Romans had a sense of transcendence that they
were after, and they identified them as gods. But there's this
other worldliness that they're trying to attribute to the natural
world that they observe, that they can't have answers for, and
that we can't observe every occurrence of reality, that there has
to be something outside of our box, so to speak, out of our
naturalistic tendencies. And so even that can be helpful to say,
well, that kind of proves my point that even the Greeks and the
Romans and other tribal deities, they're after something outside
of our own experience that we can experience in this box. Yeah,
that's


right. And there's a, I mean again, this, this argument, isn't
intellectually coercive, and I don't think any of these are
intellectually coercive. What I mean by that is you can find ways
out. And so the approach I would take is actually called an
abductive approach, which says, Okay, let's put everything on the
table, and what best makes sense, what best makes sense, or what
you know, what story best explains all of this? And so that way,
there's a lot of different angles you can take depending on who
you're talking to, yep, and and so what one of the, one of the
ways to look at this and contemporary anthropology? Psycho
psychologists have done work on this, to say, the kind of
standard, what we might call natural position in all of human
history, is that there's there's transcendence. That's, it's just
the assumption that there's transcendence. Even today, studies
have been shown even people who grow kids, who grew up in a
secular society will kind of have these intuitions, like, there
is some kind of God, there is some kind of creator, designer. And
the argument is that you actually have to have a certain kinds of
culture, a particular culture that kind of habituate certain
thinking, what, what CS Lewis would call, a certain kind of
worldly spell to to so that those intuitions are saying, Oh no,
there's not a god. You know, there's not transcendence. And so
the kind of common position in all of human history across
various different cultures is there is some kind of
transcendence. It takes a very particular, what I would say,
parochial, kind of culture to say, oh, there's probably no there.
There's not. There's, of course, there's not. In fact, Charles
Taylor, this is the story he wants to tell of how did we get
here, at least in some secular quarters of the West, where it was
just assumed, of course, there's, of course, there's a God to 500
years of to now, and at least some quarters of the West, certain,
certain elite or


secular? Yeah? Yeah, people. And even then, that's a minority,
right? This is not a wholesale thing, yeah.


It seems to be. There's something, well, even Jonathan height,
uh, he's an atheist, says, has acknowledged that there seems to
be something in humans. That's something like what Pascal called
a God shaped hole in our heart, and so there's this kind of,
there's this deep intuition. And what I'm wanting to do is, I'm
wanting in my arguments to kind of say, okay, given this as a
Christian, that I believe we have this sense of God and this
intuition of God, these intuitions, I want to appeal to those
intuitions. And so there's a moral order to the universe that
people just sense that there is a right and wrong. There's
certain things that are right and certain things are wrong, even
if a culture says it is, it is, it is fine to kill this group of
people, that there's something above culture, that even there's
something above someone's personal preference, that is their
moral order to the universe. Now, given that deep seated
intuition, what you might call a first principle, what makes best
sense of that, or a deep desire, that that, that nothing in the
universe seems to satisfy that we have. This is CS Lewis's famous
argument. We have these desires, these natural desires for we get
thirsty and there's there's water, we get hungry and there's
food, and yet there's this basically universal or worldwide
phenomenon where people desire something more, that they try to
look for satisfaction in this world and they can't find it. Now,
what best explains that? And notice what I'm doing there, I'm
asking that the question, what best explains it? Doesn't mean
there's, there's not multiple explanations for this, but we're
saying, What's the best explanation, or profound sense that
something doesn't come from nothing, that intelligence doesn't
come from non intelligence, that being doesn't come from non
being. Yeah, a deep sense that there's meaning and significance
in life, that our experience with beauty is not just a leftover
from an earlier primitive stage of of evolution. And so we have
these deep experiences and intuitions and ideas about the world,
and what I'm saying is particularly the Christian story. So I'm
not, I'm not at the end, arguing for just transcendence or or
kind of a generic theism, but I'm saying particularly the
Christian story, best, best answers. Now, I'm not saying that
other stories can't incorporate and say something and offer
explanations, but it's a, it's a really a matter of, you know,
you might say out narrating or or telling the Gospel story that
maps on to the ways we're already intuiting about the world, or
experiencing or observing the world.


Yeah, so, so going along with that, so we don't have, like, a
clear cut case, so to speak. We have layers of argument, and we
appeal to what people kind of, in their heart of hearts, know,
they don't have to like, they have to be taught otherwise. Almost
like, if you talk to a child, they can't, they kind of intuit
that, oh, there's something outside, like, Who created us? Like,
who's our mom? You know, like, going back into the infinite
regress. It's like, okay, some something came from nothing. How
does that even how is that even possible? So there has to be
something outside of our. Experience that caused that to happen.
So, so say you, you go there, and then you help people. Say, help
people understand. Like, I can't prove God's existence, but I can
argue that there are ways of explaining the world that are better
than other ways. So then, how do you avoid the charge that, well,
you basically are a really proud person that you think your
religion is better than other religions. How, how could you dare
say that when you can't even prove that you're you know? So how?
How would you respond to somebody who would say, like, how do you
believe? Why do you believe that Christianity is a one true
religion? Yeah, um,


well, I would say a couple of things. One is that, in some sense,
everyone is staking out some kind of claim. So even if you say
you can't say that one religion is true or one one religion is
the one true religion, that is a truth claim that you're staking
out. And I think it's fine that this for someone to say that they
just need to realize. I mean, I think they're wrong, but I think
they're they're making a truth claim. I'm making a truth claim.
Christians are making truth so we're, we all think we're right,
and that's fine. That's fine, but, but then we but then once you
realize that, then you're not saying, Well, you think you're
right, but I just, I'm not sure, or it's arrogant to say you're
right. I think, of course, with some some things, we have more
levels of confidence than other things. And I think that's the
other thing we can say with Christian with as Christians, it's
saying, Hey, I believe, I believe in the resurrection. I believe
in the core doctrines of Christianity. It doesn't mean that
everything I might believe about everything is right. It doesn't
even mean all my arguments are are even 100% always the best
arguments, or I could be wrong about a particular argument and
and I'm also not saying that you're wrong about everything you're
saying. Okay, so, but what we are saying is that, hey, I I
believe Jesus is who he said he was, and you're saying he's not
okay. Let's have a conversation. But it's not, rather, it's not a
matter of somebody being air. You know, you can hold those
positions in an arrogant way. But simply saying, I believe this
isn't in itself arrogance, at least, I think how arrogance is
classically defined, yeah. And what is this saying? I believe
this, and I believe, I believe what Jesus said about himself. And
I can't go around and start kind of toying with with, if I
believe he's Lord, then it's really not up to me to say, okay,
but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, kind of take some of what he said, but
not all of what he said. If you actually believe he rose from the
dead and he is Lord and He is God, then then you take him at his
word.


What is it, as you think about cultural engagement, cultural
apologetics that you've written on like, what is it in our
cultural moment right now where people you say that thing, like
Jesus said, You know, he, he, he said, I'm God, you know, not
those explicit words, right? That's some of the argument. Like,
no, but you look at the narrative he did, and that's why he was
going to be stoned for blasphemy. That's why all these things.
But that's, that's another conversation for another day. But, and
then you talk to someone, you're like, Well, I don't believe he
was God. I don't believe His claims were. Like, why then do you
do we oftentimes find ourselves at a standstill, and people just
throw up their hands like, well, that's your truth, and my truth
is, I just don't, like, just don't push it on me. Like, why do we
find ourselves in this? And it's not new. I mean, this is
something that goes back to, you know, hundreds of years ago,
where people are making arguments and they're like, Well, I just
don't know. So I'm gonna be a transcendentalist, or I'm gonna be
a deist, or I'm gonna whatever. So how do we kind of push back on
that a little bit to say, No, it's not what we're talking about.
Is not just a matter of preference, and it's not just a matter
of, hey, my truth for me and your truth for you. But we're
actually making it a claim that is true for all people. Like, how
do we kind of encourage people to push into that tendency that
people have to just throw up their hands and say, whatever? Pass
the piece, you know? Well,


okay, so I think let me answer that in two ways. One's
philosophically, and then two are practically. One
philosophically. I do think it's, you know, CS Lewis was on to
this, as he often was way ahead of the curve on certain things,
but on an abolition of man. When he talked, he's talking about
the fact value distinction and how we've separated. You know, you
have your facts, and then everything you know, where,
classically, you would kind of recognize that courage, you know,
is a virtue, and that's, it's a, it's a, it's also a fact that we
should pursue courage and rather than just my preference of kind
of and so there's actually. Be this, but now we have, well,
that's a value, kind of courage, and say you should do something,
but it's, it's, that's your value and and so we have this
distinction between facts, which is, follow the science, and then
values over here. And as that has opened up. You have both a kind
of, on one hand, a very, very much, a people saying in a very
kind of hard, rationalistic way, you know, science has said,
which, that would be another podcast to kind of dive into that
more science is good and, yeah, and, but science doesn't say
anything. So I'm a fan of science, but it doesn't say anything.
We interpret certain things, but, but so you can kind of have a
hard rationalism, but you also combine with a kind of relativism,
or at least a soft relativism that says, Well, this is my truth,
because values become subjective. So that's the philosophical
take. But the kind of practical thing, I would say, is they need
people. One of the reasons people do that is because, it's
because they've seen kind of these to reference what you're
talking about earlier this hey, this person's coming in wanting
to talk about my worldview, and it just becomes this fierce,
awkward encounter, and I don't want anything to do with that type
of thing, like I don't, I don't want to go down the dark corners
of of the Internet to have these, to have these intellectual just
like Charles Taylor says, a lot of the kind of arguments are, I
have three reasons why your position is untenable. He says
something like untenable, wrong and totally immoral. Now, let's
have a conversation. It just and so it's kind of like, no thanks.
I don't think I want to have that conversation. You do you. And
so there's, there is a part that, culturally, something is going
on which needs to be confronted. And Lewis was doing that work,
and a lot of philosophers have followed him in that but there's
also a side of of maybe where our own worst enemies here, and the
way that we try to engage people, and where we start with people,
and we think, Okay, let's start in this kind of, you know,
apologetic wrestling match with people. And a lot of times,
people are just looking to cope. People are just looking to
survive. They have mental health issues going on, and they don't
want another one to pop up because of the apologist. And so
they're just looking to try to skirt that conversation and get to
feeding their kids or dealing with their angry neighbor. And so
we've got to kind of take stock on kind of where people are at,
and then how to engage them with where they're at. Now I'm going
to apologize. I think all of those arguments are helpful in a
certain context, but a lot of times, we've been our own worst
enemy, and how we try to try to engage so what I what I encourage
students and ministers to do is is start talking about people's
stories, and you know how life is going and where what's hard,
and asking really good questions, and kind of having a holy
curiosity and and often, I was in an encounter with a guy who
came up to me after a kind of a university missions thing, and he
was an atheist, and he wanted to talk about the moral argument.
And I was happy to do that for a few minutes, but then I just
asked him. I said, what you know, what do you love to do? Tell me
about yourself, and where do you really find joy in life? And he
looked at me, and he started to tear up, and he said, You know,
I'm really lonely right now, you know, go figure this moment in
our world, the kind of fragmented world we live in. And he said,
what's really meaningful to me is my is my pet, because he
provides solace. And there's this moment where, of course, I
mean, here's an atheist wanting to show up at a Christian event,
right? And because Christians were nice to him, and he's deeply
lonely, and we got to have a pretty meaningful conversation
about, you know, the benefits of following Christ in the
community, communion with not only God, but with others, yeah,
but if I would have just left it at, let's go to the more we
would have never got there. But it took me kind of asking the
question, which is, in essence, what I was trying to ask is what,
I didn't put it like this, but what are you seeking? What are you
really after here? And where are you really getting joy in life,
and what's going on? And I if we can learn to go there, I think
we'll have much more productive conversations. And then just kind
of, I heard chatro talk about the, you know, ontological
argument. Now let me throw that out there at somebody. I think
that's why apologists and apologetics have sometimes been given a
bad name. But if you. Actually look at the tradition, the the
larger tradition. There's so many resources, and there's so many
people, apologists, doing lots of different things, that I think
gives us kind of way to actually engage people where they're at.


Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. Well, I It reminds me, I believe it
was Schaefer who talked about the the greatest apologetic, at
least his time, and I think it stands true even now, is welcoming
people and being hospitable towards people, welcoming the
questions, not looking at folks as adversaries, but fellow
pilgrims. And then you welcome them into that space, into that
community. And then they're they see that, quite frankly, the
faith works. The Christian ethic actually works, albeit
imperfect, by imperfect people in imperfect ways. But you know,
as we go through pain and suffering, as we go through, you know,
elation and disappointment, like there's still a lot that that we
can demonstrate to the world through our testimony that it works.
You know, so to speak. So I'd love to hear you kind of help walk
us through how the Christian story tells a better story about
pain and suffering, because that's that's a fact of every person
listening is that there's some modicum of pain and suffering in
their life at any moment. And then you look at the grand scale of
the world and all these things, but just even we can go down to
the individual level of the why is there pain and suffering in my
life and in the world and, you know, in general. But I like, like
for you to just kind of riff on that for a little bit for us, to
help


us, yeah. And in some ways, this question, and the apologetic
question is a kind of real, a snapshot into the into what we're
talking about with, how do we respond to that? Not just as Okay,
an intellectual question, yeah, yeah, but it's also a profoundly
experiential question. And there's you


mean, you mean, and how, in the moment when you're saying, in the
moment when somebody asks you the question, not getting
defensive, but being being willing to listen to the question, Is
that what you mean by that? And yeah,


well, what I mean is, that's certainly true. Matt, what I was
really thinking, though, is how this is not just something kind
of an abstract, intellectual question. Oh, okay, but it's a
profound experiential and there's different angles that we might
take into it. But I mean, as a kind of snapshot or a test case in
our apologetic is, I think there's ways to answer that question
that are sterile, that are overly academic, and I and that also,
I would say, rushes in to give an answer. And I would want to
argue that Christianity doesn't give an answer to evil and
suffering, but it gives a response. And let me make, let me
explain that, yeah, is, is an answer. Tries in the way I'm using
it, at least tries to say, I'm going to solve this kind of
intellectual problem, and the problem of evil and suffering in
the world, of why a good God who's all powerful would allow the
kind of evil and suffering we see in the world is, is one that we
might say, Okay, now there's the problem. Now let me give the
solution. And this is often done, and we've you maybe have been
in this if you're listening into a certain context where a kind
of famous apologist says, Here is the answer, or famous Christian
celebrity says, Here is the answer to evil, and this solves all
the problems, until you start thinking about it a little bit
more, or you go home, or three or four years, and you grow out of
that answer and and so I think we need to be real careful here
when we say we have the answer, because if you keep pushing that
question back in time, or you start asking questions like, well,
that that bullet that hit Hitler in World War One and didn't kill
him? What if the God of the Bible, who seems to control the wind
and everything, would have just blown it over and killed Hitler.
It seems like maybe it could have been a better possible world if
Hitler, you know, didn't lead the Holocaust. Okay, so, so again,
I think, I think pretty quickly you begin to say, Okay, well,
maybe some of these theodicies Don't actually solve everything,
although I would say that some of the theodicies that are given
things like free will, theodicy or or the kind of theodicies that
say God uses suffering to to grow us and develop us. And I think
there's truth in all of that, and there's but what it does. What
none of them do is completely solve the problem. And so I think
that there's value in those theodicies in some extent.


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the thing, here's what I want to go back to with a question. Is
that the Odyssey as we know it, or this? And what I'm using
theodicy for is this, this responsibility that that we feel like
we have to justify the ways of God, is a particularly modern
phenomenon. I think this is where history comes and helps us.
Charles Taylor talks about this in that the kind of way we see
theodicy and understand theodicy was really developed in the
middle of the 1700s with figures like Leibniz, and then you have
particularly the Lisbon earthquakes in the middle of the 18th
century. And that was this kind of 911 for that context. And in
this 911 moment, you have philosophers being saying, Okay, how do
we justify the ways of God? And are trying to do it in a very
kind of this philosophical way to solve the problem. But from for
most of human history and history of the West, of course, evil
and suffering was a problem, but it wasn't a problem so much to
be solved, but it was a problem to to cope with and and and live
in light of, in other words, what you don't have in the Bible is
Job saying, Okay, well, maybe God doesn't exist. Or the psalmist
saying, maybe God doesn't exist because I'm experiencing this.
No, they're ticked off about it. They're not happy about it.
They're struggling to cope with it. It is, it is a problem, but
it's not, then therefore a problem. That says, well, then God
doesn't exist. Yeah. And it didn't become a widespread kind of
objection against God's very existence, until certain things have
happened in the kind of modern psyche, the kind of modern way of
imagining the world. And here is what's happened. This is what
Charles Taylor says. Is that Taylor says what happened is kind of
slowly through through different stages in history, but but in
some sorry to be gloved here, but it's, it's a very kind of, you
know, long argument. But to get to the point is, he says our view
of God became small, and our view of humans became really big.
And so God just came became kind of a bigger view of version of
ourselves. And then we said, oh, if there is a reason for
suffering and evil, we should be able to know it, because God's
just a bigger kind of version of us, and he has given us rational
capacities. And therefore if we can't solve this, then there must
not be a god. That's kind of where the logic goes. And of course,
if you step into the biblical world, or what I would say a more
profoundly Christian way of looking at it is God. God isn't
silent, and God has spoken, has given us ways to cope and live
with suffering and ways to understand it. But what he what he
doesn't give us, is that we're going to he actually promises
that, that we're not going to fully understand His ways that,
that we're going to have to trust Him, even though we can't fully
understand why he does what he does in history all the time. And
so this leads into what, what's actually called. There's, this is
a, this is a weird name if you're not in this field, but it's
called skeptical theism. I'm a skeptical theist. And what
skeptical theists Are you is that we're not skeptical about God,
but we're skeptical about being able to neatly answer or solve
the problem of evil. But we actually don't think that's as big of
a deal, because, simply because. I don't understand why God,
God's simply because I don't understand God's reasons. Doesn't
mean he doesn't have reasons. Yeah, yeah. And


so just beyond your the your finite, uh, temporo spatial
understanding of things, right? Like you don't understand how
this horrible situation plays out in a grander narrative,


right? So it's Stephen wickstra. He had this famous argument.
I'll riff off of it a little bit. I mean, just metaphor. He says,
if you have a if you have a tent, and we go camping together,
Matt and and I open the tent and say, there's a giant dog in
there. And you look in there, there's no dog, you would say,
Yeah, you're either crazy or a liar. But if I open the tent and
say there's tiny bugs in there, and they're called no see ums,
you wouldn't, you wouldn't know. You wouldn't be in a position to
know. You wouldn't be in an epistemological position to know
whether there's a bug in there or not. So you would simply have
to decide whether you're going to trust me or not. And then, you
know, the claim of the non Christian might be, well, yeah, why
would I trust the God given the kind of crap that I see in the
world? And I would say, well, a couple reasons. One is most
profoundly because God has entered into this world. He has not
sat on the sidelines. So even though we don't fully understand
it, he has in the person of Jesus Christ, he has suffered with us
and for us. So this is a God who says, I haven't given you all
the answers, but I have given you myself. And that's I think both
has some rational merit to it, and profoundly some intellectual
merit to that. I'd also say that the Christian story actually
gets at some deep intuitions, kind of underneath this challenge
or this problem. It was CS Lewis, who was an atheist in World War
One, and and he was very angry at God because of the evil and
violence and his his mom dying at an early age, and was an
atheist. But then he realized that in his anger against God, that
he was assuming a certain standard, a certain kind of moral
standard, about how the world should be, that there is evil in
the world and that it shouldn't be so, and this deep intuition
that it shouldn't be so that certain things aren't right.
Actually, you don't have if you do away with God's existence, you
just you have your preferences. But in a world of just energy and
matter, why would the world not be absurd? Why would you expect
things not to be like this. Why would you demand them not to be
like this?


So a deeply embedded sense of morality that can't be explained by
naturalism is what you're getting, yeah?


That that we have a certain problem here, or certain challenge
with not fully being able to answer the question, yeah, but they
have, I would say, a deeper challenge, that they don't have even
the kind of categories to make sense of the question. So that's
those are some of the directions I would go, and it's first
stepping inside and kind of challenging against some of the
assumptions. But then I'm as you, as you can tell, then I'm going
to say how the Christian story does make sense of these deep
intuitions, our moral intuitions, that are underneath the
problem, or the challenge of evil and suffering. And then also
going to Jesus in the Gospel. And the Gospel story,


one of the questions I had on our on the list of questions was,
how do we know the Bible is true? But I want to delve into more
of this understanding of doubt and how that plays, because you've
written a lot on this. But I'd like, could you just direct us to
some resources, or some folks, if folks are interested in, how do
we know the Bible is true? I'm thinking real popular apologist
right now is Wesley. Huff is a great place to go. But are there
other like, hey, how do I know that the Bible is true? Because
you keep appealing to Christianity, which is in for is the
foundation of that is the Bible. So could you give us a few
resources so people could chase those down.


Peter Williams has written a couple little good books on the
Gospels. And


Peter Williams Williams, he's in Cambridge, right, or


Tyndale house, over there and over the pond. And he's written a
book on the Gospels. And I can't think of the name, but if you
put it on the internet, it'll show up. And the genius of Jesus as
well. Okay, little books, and I think both of those are helpful
as far as the Gospels go. Richard, Richard balcom is really good
on this, Jesus and the eyewitnesses. As well as a little book
that most people haven't heard of. It's a, it's an introduction
to the Gospels in that off in an Oxford series, which is, you
know, kind of a brief introduction to the Gospels. And he,
especially at the very beginning, he gives us John Dixon, who's
at Wheaton now, has written a lot of good books on on on this.
And it's got this series called skeptics guide to and it does
both Old Testament and New Testament kind of stuff. So that
little series is, is really helpful. So those are some places I
would start. And in my books, I typically have, you know,
chapters on this, but I haven't, haven't written, you know, just
one book, just on this. The early books, truth matters and truth
in a culture of doubt, were, were engaging Bart airman. But
really, Bart airman not to pick on on Airmen, but just because he
was such a representative of a lot of the the views that that we
were hearing, he ended up being a good kind of interlocutor. In
those I would just say, I know you didn't. You just asked for
books. And let me just say one thing about this is I, I think if
you are trying to engage, I think if you take the approach of,
let me prove the Bible, let me take everything and just, yeah, I
don't think that's the best way. I think you often have to give
people some you know, whether it's, you know, the beginning of
Luke's Gospel, where he's saying, This is how I went about this.
And I actually did my homework to kind of say, this is at least
the claim of the gospel writers say, and then, but the real way
that you you come to see and know, is you have to step into it
and read it. And I think one of the apologetic practices I would
want to encourage, or just evangelistic practices, is is offering
to read the gospels with people and and working through it. And
then certain things come up as you read them, apologetically that
you'll, you'll want to chase down and use some of those resources
for but I think often it's, it's saying, hey, the claims are, at
least that, you know, these guys have done their homework and and
some of the work Richard welcome is doing is saying, you know,
the Gospel traditions were, were were pinned within the lifetime
of eyewitnesses and this. And so that's some of the work that
that balcom has helpfully done that kind of help us get off the
ground in some of these conversations.


Would that be your go to gospel Luke or, like, if you're walking
with players, or a go to like,


some people say more because of the shortness or John, I I'm
happy with them. All


four should be in the canon. Yeah, no, that's great. And I think
a couple other books I'm thinking of Paul Wagner's from text from
text to translation, particularly deals with Old Testament
translation issues, but then text critical pieces, but then also
FF. Bruce's canon of Scripture is a real, solid place to go, if
people are interested in those big pieces, but those, I mean,
yeah, Richard Bauckham work was really helpful for me when I was
like, How do I even know, you know the starting place is a good
starting place. So, yeah, thank you for that. So


what the challenge is, people have got to make up their mind on
Jesus. Yeah. I mean, I think that's where I want to kind of
triage conversations and say, Hey, I know the Bible is a big book
and there's a lot going on. First things you gotta make a call
on. So that's where I'm going to focus on, the Gospels. That's


great. No, that's great. Well, you know, a lot of times you, and
you've mentioned this earlier, that sometimes in our attempts to
give reasons for our faith, we can come to simplistic answers
like, Okay, this is, here you go. Here's the manuscript evidence,
for example. Or, hey, here's the evidence for the resurrection.
Oh, here. You know, this is pain and suffering, Romans, 828, you
know, having these quick answers. And I think it stems from a
desire to want to have a foundation for what we stand on. But a
lot of times, and I think what we're seeing in our culture, and
this is not anything new, this topic of deconstruction is not
really a new topic is, you know, it's what's been called in the
past, apostasy, or just not believing anymore. But now it's
gotten a more, you know, kind of sharper edges to it. And and I
would love for you to you know how you would respond to someone
who is deconstructing from their faith because it didn't allow
for doubt or because they were raised in perhaps a really strict
Christian home. So how would you respond to somebody who says, I
don't I don't like the. Had answers anymore, and I don't, you
know, it's just too simplistic, and it doesn't, it's not
satisfying. So how would you, because I encounter a lot of folks
that are in that vein, the ones who are deconstructing, it's,
it's not, you know, there's definitely intellectual arguments,
but there's something else in back of that too, I think. So I'd
love to hear you just kind of, how would you respond to someone
who is deconstructing or has deconstructed in their faith?


Yeah, yeah. And of course not. In that situation, my first
response it's going to be, tell me more. Let's, let's talk more.
I want to hear, I want to hear your story. I want to hear your
deconversion story, or where you're at and and to have some real
curiosity. Rather than here, let me tell you what your problem
is. And let me tell


you, yeah, you just don't want to believe because you got some
secret sin or something. Yeah? Oh, goodness


no. I mean, it's right faith, unbelief and doubt is complex, and
there's lots of forms of doubt. And we use that word I mean, it
has quite the semantic range, and we use in lots of different
ways. And of course, the Bible, by no means, is celebrating
doubt. The Bible, it's, you know, that we is saying we should
have faith. It calls us to faith, not to doubt, but doubt seems
to be a couple things to say. We talk about, we talk about
ourselves as Christians, as new creations in Christ, but we also
recognize that we still sin, we still we still have sinful
habits. We're still sinful, and in the same way we we we believe,
but we can struggle with doubt, and that's a reality. And it
seems to me that that doesn't mean, though, that then we
celebrate doubt, as if doubts this great thing, no, but at the
same time, we need to be realistic and honest that we do. And
there's certain things culturally that have happened, because we
now live in a pluralistic world where people seem very sane and
rational and and lovely, and they believe radically different
things than we do. And just that proximity, Peter Berger, the
late sociologist, did a lot of work on this area. This is just
it. It creates these kinds of this kind of contestability,
because, well, we could imagine even possibly not believing, or
kids not believing, in a way that, again, 500 years ago, you know
you Luther was wrestling with whether the Roman Catholic Church
had everything right, but he wasn't wrestling and doubting the
whole the whole thing, yeah, God. So that creates certain
pressures that I think we need to be honest about, and but, but
with, and part of that honesty, I think, in that kind of
conversation to say, Hey, you're not alone and you're not just
simply crazy because you're you're raising some of these things
because, I mean, that's in many ways, understandable. Yeah, okay,
yeah. I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's right, I'm
just saying it's understandable. And I hear what you're saying,
and I'm, let's talk about it now. The the kind of metaphor that
that I use is to think about Christianity as a house. Of course,
that's not my metaphor. I'm I'm borrowing from CS Lewis, who
talked about Christianity as a house and in Mere Christianity,
Lewis said he wanted to get people through non Christians into
the hallway, and so he wanted to get them into the door so that
they would and then they could pick up a particular tradition,
they could enter a room. But his approach in Mere Christianity
was to represent kind of the whole house. And what I think is
happening in many cases is that people, now, I'm riffing off of
his metaphor, people in the church. People have raised in the
church, so they've grew up their whole life in the house, but
it's actually in the what I would call the attic. And the attic
as as I talk about it is, is in the house. It's, it's a Christian
community, but it was, it was many times they're built out of a
kind of reactionary posture against culture, without a deep
connection to the rest of the house. It's kind of like, Hey,
we're scared, and understandably so, the kind of decadent
morality, certain shifts happening in the west with Can you give


us a couple examples of what you're thinking like? What would a
person living in the attic like? What would their tradition kind
of. Look like,


yeah. So a couple of things. One in response to, in some cases,
in response to the kind of intellectual movements, the kind of
sex, secular and, you know, thinking they would say, you know,
intellectualism is bad, that would be one response from the
attic, like, don't worry about, you know, thinking. Just believe
your problem is you're just thinking too much. So that would be
one response, a kind of anti intellectualism. The other response
is what I would call a kind of, depending on what kind of mood
I'm in, I would call it a kind of quasi intellectual that, and
that sounds harsh that I say what kind of mood I'm in, but a kind
of quasi intellectual response, which is like, Oh, you want
arguments. You want evidence. We'll give you two plus two equals
equals God, and we'll kind of match, you know, fire with fire,
and we can prove God's existence. And oftentimes, those kinds of
apologetic reactions, I would call them, sometimes they're kind
of quasi intellectual, because I don't think that's how the kind
of bit we come to the big decisions. I don't think it's rational
enough about a rationality about kind of what type of humans we
are, and how we come to the big decisions and the big truths and
and so I think that's one response, and that's why you have a
kind of industry of apologetics sometimes. And the way they do
it, I'm not saying in some ways it can be helpful, but in other
ways, it can cause problems down down the road, and we've seen
that at least, like, for instance, with the evil and suffering
kind of conversation we were having before. If people say,
actually, those arguments actually don't make, don't fully do
what they were. We you claim too much for your arguments. Let's
just say, like that. Okay, so that's one kind of, so there's a
there's a kinds of, well, Christianity, in that side can kind of
become this kind of intellectual, sterile work where you're just
kind of trying to prove God, rather than this, than this way of
life, where does worship come in? Where does devotion come in?
What is And so very quickly it becomes, you know, this
intellectual game, rather than communion with the living God. And
so the emphasis understandably goes a certain way, but I would
say understandably wrong goes a certain way, and that argument
should be part of this deeper life of faith that we live and so
we again, I'm wanting to say the motives aren't necessarily,
aren't wrong, but where we get off because we're too reactionary,
can go off. Let me give you one other ones. And I would say, like
the purity culture would be another kind of side of this where we
see a morally decadent culture of sexuality, and we want to
respond to that we we don't want our kids to grow up believing
those lies. Yeah, as as a friend of mine says, you know that the
sexual revolution was actually and is actually bad for women, and
we need to say that. We need to say that to people in the church,
absolutely. But in response to that, then we create what, what
has been called a purity culture, which, which has, has kind of
poured a lot of guilt and have made have over promised again, if
you just do this, you'll have a wonderful life and a wonderful
marriage if you just do this, and then if you mess up, oh,
you've, you've committed this unpardonable sin, almost. And so
there's a lot of pressure being put on, particularly young women
and then, and then over promising and so all of this,


can people see that the House of Cards is coming down because
they're like, Yeah, my marriage is horrible.


It creates this pressure, right where you have to. You have to
think a certain way. You have to behave this very kind of way.
It's reaction to want to protect them. So again, I'm saying, Yes,
I understand the reactions, yeah, and, but, but, and this is, I
think, a key part of this, because it's not connected well to the
rest of the house. It often reacts, rather than reflected deeply
on the tradition and helps fit your way, the centrality of the
Gospel, the centrality of what's always been, Christian teaching
and coming back to the main things, rather than kind of reacting
to culture because we're nervous, and doing it in such a way
that, you know, well, people will begin to say, That's what
Christianity is about. Christianity is really about, you know,
your politics, because that's all my pastor is talking about,
interesting, you know, and this is all they're talking about. So
that becomes the center,


even though the ethic is is, is, becomes the. Center, as opposed
to the the philosophy and theology guiding the ethic, is that,
would that be another way to put it, like how you live, become,
becomes preeminent to, you know, wrestling with doubt and and
trying to bring God into the space of your doubt and that kind of
stuff is, that, is that?


Yeah, I mean, so that, I think one of the things that the the
early creeds help us to do is it helps us to keep the main thing.
The main thing, it helps us to keep, rather than saying, well,
because culture is talking about this, we're going to, you know,
kind of in our churches, this becomes the main thing, is reacting
or responding, maybe, whether it's with the culture and certain
movements or against the culture, yeah. But if you're anchored to
the kind of the ancient wisdom of the past you're you do have,
you are at times, of course, going to respond to what's going on
culturally, yeah, but it's always grounded to the center, and
what's always been the center, yeah? And I think so when you're
in a community like this, like this, the pressure of, I've gotta
think rightly. I've gotta check every box here, yes, and oh, and
I've, I've been told that there is proofs, and I just need to
think harder. I just, you know, even believe more, even Yeah, if
I just, if I just think harder, then I'll eliminate my doubt, but
my doubts not being eliminated. So either I'm stupid or maybe
there's a problem with the evidence, because it's not eliminating
all my doubt, but this creates this kind of melting pot of
anxiety for a lot of people as their own Reddit threads and their
Oh, and then this, trying to figure all this out, and they're
Googling all these answers, and then the slow drip, oh, well, to
be honest, sometimes the massive outpouring of church scandal is
poured into this, yeah. And it just creates a lot of anxiety
amongst young people, and eventually they say, I'm just going to
jump out of the attic, you know, because it looks pretty freeing
and it looks like a pretty good way of life out there. And what,
what I say to people is two things. Number one, rather than
simply jumping out, first look what you're about to jump into,
because you have to live somewhere, and outside the attic, you're
not just jumping into kind of neutrality, you're jumping into
cultural spaces and assumptions and belief. And so let's, let's
just be just as critical as, yeah, the attic or house as you are
will be mean, be just as critical with those spaces as you have
been with the attic. So you need to explore those. But also, I'm
wanting to give them a framework to understand that actually a
lot of the ways that you've kind of grown up is actually been in
this attic. Why don't you come downstairs, and if you're going to
leave the house, explore the main floor first.


And what would be the main floor? What would you say? The main
floor?


Yeah. I would say the


main orthodox historic Christianity, like, yeah. Orthodox
historic Christianity, Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, just
kind of go into the Yeah. And what


I would say is, for instance, the apostle creed gives us kind of
what I would call load bearing walls in the house. So it gives us
the places where you don't mess like load bearing walls. You
don't you don't knock those down if you're going to do a remodel,
and, and, and. So you would recognize the difference between load
bearing walls, walls that are central versus actual different
rooms in the house, and how? Well, these aren't load bearing
walls, but they're, they're, they're, they're how certain people
in Christian communities, churches at particular times, have
articulated it and and some of these, you could deny certain
things, but you could, but those are more denominational battle
lines, rather than the kind of load bearing things that you if
you pull out the resurrection of Jesus, if you pull out the the
deity of Christ and the full humanity of Christ, If you pull out
the Trinity. So let's go back to the core. And if you're going to
reject, if you're going to leave, leave on the basis of those
core things, not okay. I've had these bad experiences in the
church now, yeah, what I think this to kind of wrap this up on
this is what often happens, or what can happen if someone says,
Well, yeah, I've done that, and I still don't, I don't believe
Okay, yep, that's going to happen. Yep. But one of the things I
suggest, in at least some cases, is that the addict has screwed
people up more than they realize, and that the way that they
approach. Approach the foundation and the the main floor, it's
still in attic categories, as in, to go back to our first
question, well, I can't prove this, yeah. And I was always told
that I should be able to prove it. Well, that's not how this
works, yeah. And so they they reject Christianity on certain
enlightenment terms, but they don't reject Christianity as
Christianity really is. So people are going to interact with
Christianity, I would say sometimes your people are
investigating, say the resurrection, and reflecting more on on
these central claims, but they're still doing it as if, if it
doesn't reach kind of 100% certainty that I can't believe. And
that's just not how this works.


Yeah, that's, that's food for thought, because there, there's so
many people that I interact with that I try to encourage. Like,
yeah, your experience was really bad, like I'm affirming that,
and that was messed up. That's not That's not Christianity, that
is a branch on this massive tree trunk that stinks and that needs
to be lamented and grieved and also called out as wrong. So I'm
using another metaphor of a tree instead. But I love the because
the house metaphor is something that you use in the telling a
better story. Isn't that surprised by


doubt? Surprised by doubt? Yes, that's that's what we use, and we
march through things, and we use that as, really our guiding
metaphor through all the chapters. And that's what I would
encourage if you're if you have somebody who's struggling with
this, or you're struggling with this yourself, that's That's why
a friend of mine, Jack Carson, that's why we wrote the book
together, because obviously this is a we had a lot of friends and
acquaintances and people who were coming to us and we weren't
fully satisfied with all of the kind of works, yeah, that were
responding and so this, this was our attempt to try to help


people. Well, the book right after that was, is telling a better
story. And one of the things I've really appreciated in your
emphasis over the last few years has been, I would call a more
humane apology, apologetic in that, you know, not giving into,
okay, we're gonna give you want evidence. We're gonna give you
evidence, as opposed to like, okay, let's just talk about being a
human like, even your interaction with that, that young man that
you articulate a moment ago, like, hey, what brings you joy in
life? Hey, what? What what are you afraid of? Like, what makes
you nervous like, being able to have those kind of questions and
say, Hey, we're we're pilgrims. I love that imagery, right? We're
all pilgrims, and we're all trying to pursue goodness, truth and
beauty together. And let's try to do this together. So how would
you encourage folks in telling a better story. When you say that,
like, if you were to give, like, a synopsis of your book and then
directing people to go read it, how? How would you share with
them that we are telling a better story? Yeah,


yeah. I think in a lot of times people, we have this thing with
evangelism that we don't it's like we've been given tools that
maybe were from a different, four different context, and then we
try to enter into a kind of increasingly post Christian context,
and they fall flat these kinds of, you know, it's kind of more
scripted approaches or and, you know, we just feel like, okay,
we're pulling out. I'm not wanting to pick on any particular one,
but we, we pull out these four steps, and people are just looking
at us like, Oh, this is another sales person, and I'm going to
keep my hand on my wallet, yeah, or, you know, the worst, what's
even worse than that is if we, if we do that, and then we, we
just feel like, okay, I've done my job, you know, I've done my
job. It's up to them, and we really haven't tried to, to really
engage and kind of recognize that. Well, we are living in culture
where, in late capitalism, everyone seems to be trying to sell
something, even the news is trying to sell something to us. And
so people's kind of antennas are up for that. So then how do we,
you know, one question with that is, not only have the
assumptions changed, but the kind of forms of media have changed,
which have made people a lot more skittish about even being open
to having their opinions change about anything, the way Andy
Crouch puts it, we have shrinking circles of trust. Yeah. Yeah.
And so one of the things that I talk about in the book is, in the
midst of that which can be discouraging, some good news is people
are still storytelling, telling animals. We love to tell stories.
We're not gathering around campfires as much as we used to, or as
the ancients did, to tell stories that explained the world, but
we are gathering around their screens, yeah? And we're, we're,
we're gathering around our our Apple Music accounts, and we're
hearing little stories all day long, yeah, from from Netflix to
the little stories in our songs to little kind of, I would say,
even in the commercials we we watch that are directing our hearts
to the good life and and, in some sense, giving ourselves certain
ways to understand ourselves and the world around us. So we're
storytelling beings, and we're still telling stories, and we're
still hearing stories, and we're being formed by stories. So I
think that is one point of okay, there's an opportunity. There's
something about us as storytelling beings. The other thing I
would say, as far as an opportunity about this cultural moment in
the West is that oftentimes, in the our favorite stories, buried
within those is actually echoes of the Gospel story, because we
live in this moment. That's not, I would say, not anti Christian.
You might argue that in certain ways it is, but it's post
Christian, which means we have certain sensibilities, certain,
you know, views of justice and morality and and sacrifice and
care for others, and human dignity, and even certain conceptions
of of sex that are all, what, what? What one theologian says are
crater marks of the gospel. The gospel has come into the West.
It's left certain marks, and we can't fully escape those, even
secular people. And so those


are two Christ haunt. Christ haunted, as Percy Walker would talk
about, right? Yeah,


yeah, and Flannery or Conor, yeah or not? Flannery, okay, yeah,
that were that were Christ haunted? So those are two things, both
that were storytelling beings, and we have these intuitions that
have been formed, even if they're a secular person, because
they're downstream from the gospel. They're not Christians, but
the Christian gospel has formed them, yeah, and whether they
realize it or not. So those are two things. And so what I say is
one of the from that, what we have to learn to do is step inside
these stories we have, if we understand the dominant cultural
stories, the stories of achievement, yeah, the stories of true
love and romance, the stories of identity that are being told,
the stories of freedom. All of these stories are stories that are
somehow scripting people's life, and they just seem axiomatic.
They're just kind of common sense to people and


go ahead, no, no. Go ahead and


stepping into those and both learning to to interact as people
tell those stories. If you have them kind of in your mind, you're
going to be more it's going to be easier to say, Okay, well,
what's really meaningful? It seems like your family's meaningful.
It seems like you put a lot of time and effort into work and
achieve them. Yeah? And you're not saying, of course, it's all
not all bad, yeah. But essence, what you're doing, what you learn
to do, in a very in an Augustinian key, is to say there's
something right by that what you're doing. But if you make that
ultimate, it will destroy you, yeah, so and so. So then you're
able to say, Hey, you're, you're adopting certain ways of life
based on these cultural stories, yeah, and I share those too. I
know the achievement narrative because it has at times, you know,
really damaged me. Yeah, and I can talk about that, I can show
people my own wounds of what false idols do, but I can say from
that where I have found healing and hope is to worship the living
God. Yeah, there's a kind of bearing witness, not in a
triumphalistic way, yes, but in a way that says, hey, you're
living your life a certain way and and I value some of the same
things, but I've learned that if you make that your dominant
story, it will destroy you, or it'll destroy the people in Your
Life, it'll hurt, yeah? But if you make the true story of this
story about Jesus, your dominant story, yeah, you, you actually
Louis, right? If you, if you aim for heaven, you get Earth thrown
in. And it's not saying everything's going to be hung. Door,
yeah, but there's a way to actually, if you worship Well,
Augustine, right, right, rightly ordered loves if you worship
God, then there's then you can appropriately and rightly love
your wife and love your work and love creation. But if you get
those in the wrong order, things go bad.


Love God and do as you please, as sometimes the moniker is put
attributed to him. But the other, the last book you mentioned by
Augustine, and I think it would be a great way to end our time,
is what you've really encouraged us to do, at least in these last
few moments together is to listen to the culture, listen to
people as people, and be able to have a response to where you
know Augustine himself is saying, Our hearts are restless until
they find their rest in God. And really listening and saying,
Yeah, I was I was there too. And let me tell you how that went
for me. Let me tell you my story and my testimony and how you
know God has met me in this space. I mean, would you say if you
were to, if you were to give a clarion call to someone who's a
Christian to how to engage with the culture around them, with
their their friends and family, with their neighbors or
coworkers, what have you? Would you say it would be simply that
to listen and then see how the Gospel brings an answer to that?
Or is there something else that you would kind of say, hey, if
there's one thing I would want somebody to get from this podcast
as it relates to bearing witness, what would that be?


I would say, you living our lives in light of the Gospel story
every day as a community that let that be the dominant story that
we that we are speaking to each other, that we're praying, that
we're living our lives out of and then. And then, part of doing
that, that's catechesis, but part of doing that is counter
catechesis, which is understanding the kind of idols and stories
that we're tempted to be scripted by. I think that's
sanctification. I think that's the church's job as we become as
as we're being sanctified by the gospel, by God's word. But
here's the thing, rather than apologetics, than being this, add
on this something that's actually equipping us in two ways. It's
forming us into being the right type of apologists, and then it's
also giving us the kind of conceptual tools to both, to both
diagnose the elements and the movies that we see around us and
then the people around us, and then to offer the healing balm of
Christ and the gospel. And so it another way for this. It it
makes us into the right type of spiritual doctors, so we're able
to diagnose and perform spiritual surgery under the direction of
the great physician, so that that's another and Augustine loved
the medicinal kind of metaphors. He used all of that all the
time. So that's what I would say. And so it really starts with
sanctification, but seeing sanctification and evangelism as not
actually being that far apart from each other after all that
you're going to naturally talk about what you love. 


Nobody has to convince you to talk about what you love. You just
find a way to do that. Well. I was just gonna say, You've been so
generous with your time, and I'm so grateful. And I could, we
could do part seven, if, you know, if we could keep talking about
all these, like beautiful ways of not just defending our faith,
but having our faith give that kind of ball and that kind of
medicine to folks instead of like, well, you need an answer.
Here's answer. It's four. You know, it's like, well, why does Why
is four? Why is it good that two plus two equals four, like,
like, being able to enter into a deeper space of morality and a
goodness and truth and beauty. So Josh, would you just do us a
favor and close close us in a word of prayer? Yeah? Yeah, great.
Thanks, brother.


Lord, we are humbled that you would have that you would. Have
sent Christ to die for us.


We're humbled that you called us and are to yourself and that
you've called us to be your ambassadors Lord and we we pray for a
kind of non anxious presence that we would be the right type of
ambassadors that we would bear the fruit of the Spirit and Lord,
that You would grow in us a deeper love for you and a deeper love
for your word, that we would live and breathe the Christian
story, and we would speak and we would tell about the story, and
we would defend when it needs to be defended, out of a deep love
for you and out of a love for others, and that that would give us
a freedom, not so, So we would be people who not aren't so
burdened with the task of evangelism because we feel guilty or
burdened because we aren't quite sure we'll always know what to
say, but we would have a deep sense of joy and freedom to go talk
about you who we love, because you first loved us, and we pray
all this in Christ's name. Amen. Thanks, brother, thanks. Thanks
for having me. 


Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to get a hold
of me and ask me any questions, I'm happy to field those
questions, and who knows, maybe it'll be on our next episode of
Off the Wire and you can always reach me at Matthew at Matthew
wireman.com Again, that's Matthew at Matthew wireman.com Leave us
a little review there to let people know about this podcast, and
we'd be really, really grateful. Thanks. You.


Thank you for listening! If you want to find out more about Matt
and how you can get coached toward your better self, visit
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