When Doubt Leads to Deeper Faith: Seeking God in a Distracted World | Ep. 32

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Hello, and welcome to Ask an Apologist. My name is Matthew Middleberg.
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I'm joined here by Mark Middleberg, my father, Mike Sherrard,
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the president of Apologetics, Inc., and our special guest, Travis Dickinson.
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Travis is a professor at Dallas Baptist University, and he is a philosopher
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and an apologist, and we are honored to have him on today.
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Amen. Yeah. So this is a, for anyone who's joining us for the first time,
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this is a once a month live stream that we do called Ask an Apologist.
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So you can actually, wherever you're watching us on YouTube,
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on Facebook, on X, you can ask your own questions and we will do our best to
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answer those, to present those to Travis or to each other and to,
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yeah, answer those questions because we want people to have spiritual answers.
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We actually think that asking difficult questions is important,
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that it's good, that it's valuable.
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And actually, Travis has written on these topics a little bit,
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and not just a little bit, a lot, actually. And so, Travis, why don't you just
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tell us a little bit about your work, a little bit how you got interested in
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philosophy and what it is that you do?
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Yeah, well, it's a joy to be with you guys. So for me, my story with this material
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really started, I guess, for me, it was really doubting my own faith.
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So I kind of landed at seminary, you know, training for ministry.
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And just really realized that I didn't have good reasons to believe.
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And so for me, I really had to lean in and find those answers because it's the
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kind of thing where I didn't know that Christianity was true in that moment,
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but I also didn't know that it was false.
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So I was just kind of in that middle spot. And I had to find out.
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It wasn't something I could just put on the shelf.
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And so I just really leaned in and I found a lot of answers.
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In Christianity. It really, it was pretty cool.
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Like I just, I, I, a lot of the questions that I had actually had some good answers.
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And so I think that started this journey for me of just really,
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seeing the value, I guess, in a way of like, not just doubting,
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but, but really the, the curiosity and the questioning and coming to that place
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where my faith and the faith of others as a result of this,
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journey is on a more firm foundation.
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And so, but yeah, that got me into philosophy.
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I did an apologetics degree at Biola University, kind of got done with it and
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knew I just wasn't done with that work.
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And I was really gripped by the philosophical questions and kind of just haven't
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stopped pursuing those and.
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Have had the privilege to be able to do that in seminary in a university setting
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as a faculty member now for, this is my sixth, started about to start my 16th year of that.
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Did you have a, excuse me, a biggest question, one that was the hardest to overcome for you?
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I don't, so I think I've subsequent to that time,
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have much better questions, which I think is the way it should go in a way.
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The question at the time was really just a, we were sitting in a seminary classroom
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and it was a kind of world religions class.
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And it felt to me all of a sudden that like we were kind of making fun of the
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other religious views or not making fun as much as kind of acting like they're so ridiculous. Yeah.
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Easily just dismissing as if there's nothing to it. And I could just imagine,
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adherence of those views being in classrooms and their, you know,
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contacts, thinking how ridiculous Christians, you know, sounded and what we believed.
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And so it was all of a sudden this moment of like, well, why,
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why you're like, we're so confident, but hold on.
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Like, why am I, why am I confident in Christianity? I mean, I just realized.
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I had never asked why I should think it's true.
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I was always a curious kid and I asked tons of questions, but it was never the
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kind of asking why I think it's true where I was really genuinely open to it being false.
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And that's what that moment was for me.
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It was like, for the first time, it's like, I need to ask this question to really
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just see if it's true at all.
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Not just, you know, what are some arguments for God's existence or whatever?
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Like, it was like genuinely not sure.
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I kind of make the distinction between questioning your faith,
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which is the difficult, scary kind of thing, or just merely asking some questions along the way.
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I think a lot of people ask questions along the way, but I don't think enough
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Christians have that moment where they really question it to kind of know why they believe.
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So that's what the question was in the moment. but I, yeah, like,
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I think there's some big questions about divine hiddenness.
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I think those are the ones that I really grapple with and probably some. Yeah.
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I'm curious what those big questions are for you now and how much doubt you
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can put in the mind of people that are listening.
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Yeah. That that's the goal here today. Yeah.
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I think divine hiddenness is something that But I wouldn't say it's a doubt.
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I want to think of doubt as a very specific thing. I think of it as the struggle
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because there's a lot of emotions connected with it. I don't think it's just
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merely having unanswered questions.
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Because how much time do we got because i i've got about a thousand unanswered
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questions that we could if not more but,
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that moment of doubt is where you're really struggling with it where i think
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the way i put it in the book or my latest book is to say it's when a a belief
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that you care about seems like it might be false,
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that seeming state like that that's important to me so but i think the ones
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that I just wrestle with is, would be something like the problem of divine hiddenness.
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Where, right?
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The question there is, is why isn't God more obvious?
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Because clearly it seems that if he were more obvious, more people would believe,
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in those sorts of things.
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And I, and I think there's like, I find that question in that,
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that issue really fascinating in some ways, because I think it's so very indiscriminate
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of who can struggle with that.
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You can sort of see it in a way where like the atheist, it might be the thing
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that keeps them from faith and so on.
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But you can imagine a pastor or just, you know, anyone really just wondering
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like, why doesn't God show up in my particular situation in this more obvious
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and sort of tangible way?
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And so kind of the struggle with that, I think, is kind of where I've landed.
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But I also see it as such a, the best answers that I come to are so instructive
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for us in our faith and our theology and so on.
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I think that's one of the big ones, too, right now.
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It seems like there's a number of particularly young adults that are pretty
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open to the idea that God exists.
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Things like if you want to say like the cosmological argument and the design
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of the there's a lot of good reasons to think there is a god yeah and,
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a lot of young people think that so their question is okay but why then is he
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not more active why is he so yeah i think that why is god hiding or is god hiding
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or is he not acting or is he or is he just not acting in my world and why,
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right i think it's one of the biggest questions of our time right now yeah i'd agree Yeah.
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And I've been seeing that as well as I've talked with young adults and it seems
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like a lot of their questions right now are revolving around why did the,
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why did God arrange the universe this way and not this way?
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Why, why isn't he, you know, just making it super very clear.
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Like if this is his goal, why not just make it super easy?
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Yeah. So what, what are some, maybe I'd love to just take a minute here and
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just kind of camp out on this.
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What are some of the ways that you would answer that that question or maybe
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some of those yeah how much time do we have no I think that yeah I've really come to see that.
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Right. What makes a really big difference for me is that I don't think that
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God is after more believers.
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And by that, I mean like intellectual believers. If he is, he's really not doing
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a good job because there's a lot of people that don't intellectually believe in him.
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But I don't think that that's God's ultimate goal. Now, intellectual belief
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is super important. Obviously, that's a lot of what apologetics aims at,
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I think, at least addressing objections and giving reasons to believe.
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But I don't think that's the goal. In fact, I think that you have lots of examples
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in Scripture as well as just in, you know, probably today in some ways where you have people who,
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intellectually believe, like the Pharisees probably intellectually believed.
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They probably had pretty good theology, but their hearts were far from God.
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So what God is interested in is the, I would describe it as the free surrender of faith.
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And that's not something that necessarily comes by him being more obvious, right?
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Maybe more intellectual belief, sure. But if God showed up,
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I just imagine the Bertrand Russells of the world who have just said like,
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you know, not enough evidence, God or whatever, or the Richard Dawkins or whoever
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kind of shaking their fist at God for saying like, why did you take so long?
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Or why did you show up in this way? Or why didn't, you know,
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you give me this or that or whatever.
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So it's definitely the case that God could accomplish more intellectual believers. In fact.
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I'm not a big fan of using AI in the classroom, but I did use AI to ask it to
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create an image of God in his scariest form, an image of God that would be terrifying.
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And it's okay. It was all right. But it was kind of like this beast with like
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a head, you know, it was in fire all around and so on.
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And God could show up in his full glory. And I think like we would all be intellectual
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believers, but would we, and we might bow the knee, but I think we would do
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it out of a being forced to do so.
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That free surrender of faith, I think, is just something that has to be kind of wooed or cultivated.
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Right. so that I kind of come to the place where I think that,
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maybe the way to put it is something like the degree to which God is obvious
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is calibrated in a way with that goal of a free surrender of faith,
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where it's going to take some.
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It's going to take us stepping into the journey to kind of get to that goal,
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whereas if he just showed up in blazing glory, we wouldn't.
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We find ourselves somewhere else. Let me just say, I think that's so good,
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Travis. And I think that's really helpful. And there's a verse that actually,
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I think, embodies that so well, which is, I think it's Hebrews 11, too, which says...
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That to please God, we must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
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And that's exactly, so intellectual belief is a prerequisite,
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but believing that he rewards those who seek him is a part of the process.
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And you can't believe that he rewards those who seek him if you don't seek him.
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Let me just piggyback on that because I find often in Q&A sessions that some
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of the same people that want to indict God for not being more obvious or more
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clear, are not seeking him diligently.
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In fact, often they like to raise their issues, but have they read a book on
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it? Have they spent some time researching? Have they watched some videos? Often they haven't.
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And so, you know, I think of the verse in the Old Testament about,
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you know, you will find me when you seek me, if you seek me with all your heart.
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And of course, Jesus in Matthew 7 talks about, if you seek, you'll find,
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if you knock, the door will be open and so forth. So.
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Where does the responsibility of the seeker to seek come in,
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in your thinking, Travis?
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Yeah, I do. I think that it's huge, right?
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Because it's like, and this is where I think evangelism plays a huge role because,
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right, the invitation in many ways is to seek God. I mean, that's what I want for my kids.
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I want them, yes, I want them to be full-fledged believers, have placed faith
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in Christ, part of a church and all that kind of thing.
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But what I can do right now, because I can't just sort of transport them to
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that place, what I can do right now is invite them to seek. Yeah.
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With, I mean, the unblushing promise that Jesus himself gives.
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It shows up a few times in scripture.
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That if you seek, you will find. And that's one of the hardest questions I get,
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you know, when I give a talk on doubt and so on, and I'd say,
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you know, you gotta lean in and, you know, people say, well,
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I've done that, but I haven't found.
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And I think that's, but, you know, I didn't say it.
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God said it. So, you know, take it up, no, take it up with him.
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But no, like, I think that seeking and how you're seeking,
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because, my goodness, I think when we say, well, I mean, because I would imagine
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somebody like Richard Dawkins or Bertrand Russell or someone would say, well, I'm seeking.
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It's like, yeah, but are you? I mean, it's like you might have all these conditions
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laid out for this is the exact way in which God needs to show up.
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And if he doesn't do this, then...
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So I think that the thing that we should all do if, you know,
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whoever's listening or watching, if they are...
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Atheist, agnostic, or a Christian, like I think, or some other religious tradition
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of a different religious tradition is to seek,
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and really focus on what it looks like to seek with a humble heart without the
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kind of preconceived, all these conditions that have to be satisfied in order to.
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Count, but just to genuinely and honestly seek.
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I mean, you could say it as like, seek the truth.
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Everybody should be on board with that. But I just think that we so often kind
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of have this paradigm or this preconceived idea or this bias of what it needs to look like.
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And I just think, look, seek with as honest heart as you can.
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And I really do, in fact, think you will find.
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Well, and the Bible really describes it as a passionate seeking.
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You know, I think of it as a deer pants for water in the desert.
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You know, it's like a front burner, high priority, passion.
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Jesus gives the parables of the Pearl of Great Price. Yep, I was thinking of that, yep.
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Where, you know, someone discovers a treasure in a field and they hide it and they go by the field.
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Right. That's pretty radical when you think about it.
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But he said that, you know, the value of that treasure is worth everything. Everything.
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And yet, I think we get people that are skeptical but also apathetic.
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And so I think the more we can challenge people to make it a front-burner priority
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in their life, that nothing matters more than knowing not just truth generically,
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but the one who says, I am the truth. Yes.
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I think that changes everything, but we've got to kind of put a fire under people sometimes.
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Yeah. Christians as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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And if the problem, and you put it really well, Travis, if the problem was just
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intellectual belief, perhaps the Lord could solve that by just making himself
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more present. But if the Bible is true, and I think it is.
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It records the story of israel who had,
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had a intellectual belief that god exists and,
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jesus you know when he was talking to the pharisees he was telling using a parable
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and long and the short of this parable is the lord kept sending prophets to
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these people that believed in him,
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and they killed the prophets right so in the parable,
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jesus says the i'll send my son to these people and they did the exact same
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thing and so when it comes to this it could couldn't god be more obvious,
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you know i like to think well in what way like if he came in flesh,
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and performed the kind of works that only god could do right predicted his death
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and resurrection and then fulfilled that and even in that time there were a
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group of people that had all of the advantages.
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The Jewish people, the Pharisees, they had all the advantages.
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They had all of the knowledge of who God was, and they hated him when he came.
00:17:41.411 --> 00:17:46.432
And so when I have these same kind of doubts, like, God, why aren't you just more obvious,
00:17:47.276 --> 00:17:50.421
One, I just, I recognize that I'm not really different than anybody else here,
00:17:50.421 --> 00:17:52.645
that it's not just intellectual problem.
00:17:52.970 --> 00:17:55.734
There's a heart problem. There's a will problem here.
00:17:56.140 --> 00:18:00.721
And I have to challenge my doubts there and go, is it really the case that the
00:18:00.721 --> 00:18:05.141
Lord hasn't given me enough to be confident in who he is, that he loves me,
00:18:05.141 --> 00:18:09.056
that I have forgiveness of sins in him, and that following his ways are good?
00:18:09.636 --> 00:18:15.641
I get the struggle. It's real. But I think the way you guys have answered it is a really good answer.
00:18:15.641 --> 00:18:20.041
It's not satisfying fully, right? Because not every answer is satisfying the way that we want.
00:18:20.041 --> 00:18:23.097
But I think it is a good answer how you guys have answered it.
00:18:23.097 --> 00:18:28.897
But that's what's unique about this issue, too, is that in a way it calls us,
00:18:29.547 --> 00:18:30.681
into the problem. Like it.
00:18:34.011 --> 00:18:38.334
Wouldn't be good if we could just totally solve the issue in a way.
00:18:38.490 --> 00:18:43.441
It calls us to keep pursuing. It calls us to keep seeking, as we said.
00:18:43.441 --> 00:18:48.589
But I actually think of the folks that were hanging out with Jesus, right?
00:18:48.734 --> 00:18:51.531
Especially when he was doing his miracles. Because we just think like,
00:18:51.531 --> 00:18:54.916
man, if we could just see a miracle, we'd be good.
00:18:55.571 --> 00:18:59.519
But these folks followed him around.
00:19:00.065 --> 00:19:03.827
And why wouldn't they? They got a little show.
00:19:04.239 --> 00:19:07.221
They got a free meal with the fishes and the loaves, right? I mean,
00:19:07.221 --> 00:19:09.527
like, what's better than that? Happy meal.
00:19:10.125 --> 00:19:13.421
But I think it's really interesting. If you read, I think it's John chapter
00:19:13.421 --> 00:19:17.991
six, I want to say, where he crosses the sea.
00:19:18.591 --> 00:19:21.811
He's fed the 5,000. I might be messing these details up a little bit.
00:19:22.263 --> 00:19:28.403
This massive miracle crosses the sea. They follow him there. I think it's John six.
00:19:29.169 --> 00:19:34.867
And they say, right. Or so Jesus starts like talking to about discipleship and
00:19:34.867 --> 00:19:38.687
granted, he starts talking about like eating his flesh and drinking his blood
00:19:38.687 --> 00:19:42.910
and things. And so they didn't get it. The disciples didn't get it either.
00:19:43.252 --> 00:19:47.391
But what I always find so intriguing about the story is that the people just start to leave.
00:19:47.745 --> 00:19:49.504
It's kind of like the show's over.
00:19:50.003 --> 00:19:54.317
They're ready to crown him king at the beginning of it. He starts talking about
00:19:54.317 --> 00:19:56.670
discipleship and they leave.
00:19:58.197 --> 00:20:02.951
But Peter, classic Peter, when Jesus asks him if he's going to leave,
00:20:03.554 --> 00:20:06.160
he's essentially, where are we going to go?
00:20:06.874 --> 00:20:10.183
And here's the line, you have the words of eternal life.
00:20:10.833 --> 00:20:15.297
And there's something that grips Peter in a way that the people just didn't
00:20:15.297 --> 00:20:18.931
have, right? They just didn't see that. They didn't understand that.
00:20:19.280 --> 00:20:24.131
They were just there for the miracle. So I actually think like we overvalue
00:20:24.515 --> 00:20:29.875
miracles or like over desire miracles in the supernatural.
00:20:30.229 --> 00:20:34.804
I don't think they're as effective as we think that they would be, even in our own lives.
00:20:35.311 --> 00:20:38.207
If we were just to see something crazy, then we'd be good. Like,
00:20:38.207 --> 00:20:43.167
I just don't think that's, that is, is sort of, you know, born out just in,
00:20:43.167 --> 00:20:46.007
in the way in which people, because I know a lot of people that have seen crazy
00:20:46.007 --> 00:20:48.783
things and have maybe even left the faith.
00:20:50.699 --> 00:20:53.740
So I think we can sort of overvalue the.
00:20:54.744 --> 00:21:01.241
Obviousness of god because i think again what god wants is us to lean in and
00:21:01.241 --> 00:21:03.581
to to seek him and pursue him,
00:21:04.266 --> 00:21:08.281
in a life of faith yeah i think that's really right travis and i i've you know
00:21:08.281 --> 00:21:10.294
i pray for richard dawkins but he
00:21:10.723 --> 00:21:14.351
he has that he had a moment in an interview where he essentially said yeah nothing
00:21:14.351 --> 00:21:18.951
could convince me that god exists right like even if there was a booming voice
00:21:18.951 --> 00:21:22.281
from heaven I would think it's a David Copperfield trick or something.
00:21:23.238 --> 00:21:28.662
So he's got that rare intellectual honesty to say, I just, I don't want there to be a God, you know?
00:21:29.401 --> 00:21:33.881
And so what I, what I want to do sometimes with people or what I do is I ask
00:21:33.881 --> 00:21:38.112
them, you know, if, if Christianity were true, would you believe it?
00:21:38.907 --> 00:21:42.931
And sometimes they say no. And I'm like, wow. Okay. So then you really don't
00:21:42.931 --> 00:21:46.981
want to know the truth. You don't, you know, again, we're saying Christianity is true here.
00:21:47.101 --> 00:21:49.591
You're not just saying, you know, will you believe what I want to believe?
00:21:49.591 --> 00:21:51.243
No, I'm saying if it were true.
00:21:51.817 --> 00:21:55.479
And if they say no, well, then they don't want the truth for some reason.
00:21:55.944 --> 00:21:59.111
And what I want to ask them then is, all right, what about Christianity do you
00:21:59.111 --> 00:22:04.140
think is so bad or so hard that makes you want it not to be true?
00:22:04.495 --> 00:22:09.381
And so then we're kind of getting down to some of the heart barriers and things
00:22:09.381 --> 00:22:13.727
that are kind of preventing them from even wanting it to be true. Okay.
00:22:14.621 --> 00:22:19.746
I was just going to say, and I teach this a lot when I teach evangelism, is just that.
00:22:20.796 --> 00:22:25.723
We're often dealing with smoke screens where people are raising what sound like
00:22:25.723 --> 00:22:33.754
legit apologetics issues, but they're more to keep us at arm's length and keep God at arm's length.
00:22:34.424 --> 00:22:40.066
And I think sometimes to diagnose with them to say, it seems like you're working harder,
00:22:40.647 --> 00:22:47.073
at proving this isn't true or coming from problems, rather than really doing
00:22:47.073 --> 00:22:51.943
what Jesus said, seeking truth, It's really wanting to know what's real and
00:22:52.245 --> 00:22:55.090
what's right about God and how would I know him.
00:22:55.693 --> 00:22:58.773
And when I see that in people, and this is what I say to them,
00:22:58.773 --> 00:23:03.863
when I see that in people, I usually suspect that there's something deep down
00:23:04.223 --> 00:23:09.363
that either causes you to dislike or be angry at God or.
00:23:10.523 --> 00:23:15.467
More often probably something in your lifestyle that you know you'd have to change or give up.
00:23:16.186 --> 00:23:20.790
And I remember in London once talking to a guy, and he'd been firing about eight
00:23:21.121 --> 00:23:25.173
major questions in a row. I felt like I was giving him good answers,
00:23:25.173 --> 00:23:27.019
but I finally just said this to him.
00:23:28.443 --> 00:23:32.563
I just said, I sense this is kind of a smokescreen. What are you afraid you'd
00:23:32.563 --> 00:23:36.707
have to give up or change if this were true and you gave your life to Christ?
00:23:37.573 --> 00:23:40.723
And he just looked, he didn't even hesitate. And he goes, well,
00:23:40.723 --> 00:23:45.523
I'm living with my girlfriend, and I'm pretty sure that God is not supportive of that.
00:23:46.582 --> 00:23:50.753
And I go, okay, bingo. Now we're talking about your real issue.
00:23:50.753 --> 00:23:54.663
It's not the manuscript evidence for the New Testament.
00:23:55.446 --> 00:23:59.643
Those are not your real issues. It's are you willing to trust God enough to
00:23:59.643 --> 00:24:04.843
let him be Lord over your life and tell you what's right and what's wrong and
00:24:04.843 --> 00:24:07.230
lead you into righteousness?
00:24:07.828 --> 00:24:11.243
And that I felt like we got down to the real thing.
00:24:11.563 --> 00:24:16.133
Yeah. Sometimes apologetics issues are the real thing, but I find often they,
00:24:16.133 --> 00:24:22.241
they're kind of peripheral compared to the real moral issue at the heart of the matter. Yeah.
00:24:22.694 --> 00:24:25.405
Yeah. I definitely agree with that. And I think, I mean.
00:24:26.495 --> 00:24:31.824
With the hiddenness issue if the if the primary and the way i should have said
00:24:31.824 --> 00:24:34.816
it too i think matthew you said it better a minute ago that,
00:24:35.480 --> 00:24:39.514
you know intellectual belief it's it's like mere intellectual belief is not
00:24:39.514 --> 00:24:42.818
what god is after ultimately ultimately what he's after is
00:24:43.224 --> 00:24:48.154
but it is still necessary i think for coming to a place of genuine faith but
00:24:48.154 --> 00:24:54.671
i think in a way the pressure off then for us to answer every question that we possibly have,
00:24:55.301 --> 00:25:00.520
because, and this is a big part of the book too, is just to say, it's okay.
00:25:00.688 --> 00:25:04.884
It's okay to have some unanswered questions. It's okay to not sort of have every
00:25:04.884 --> 00:25:09.794
one of your intellectual beliefs worked out because the reality is you won't
00:25:09.794 --> 00:25:15.084
ever, and you don't have them all worked out for any relationship in your life.
00:25:15.084 --> 00:25:20.264
I think I know my, I think I understand my wife better today after 22 years,
00:25:20.264 --> 00:25:24.834
but I probably have more questions in a way today than I did 22 years ago too.
00:25:24.834 --> 00:25:28.897
So it's like, that's like, why is she like, why are our wives still with us?
00:25:30.494 --> 00:25:31.178
Right.
00:25:33.084 --> 00:25:39.804
But I think in that relate, but that relationship is not based on having a hundred
00:25:39.804 --> 00:25:45.096
percent certainty or something like that, or every possible objection addressed.
00:25:46.164 --> 00:25:51.694
That's why I say the hiddenness issue to me really is clarifying in a pastoral
00:25:51.694 --> 00:25:55.854
way because it helps us clarify that that's what we're after.
00:25:55.854 --> 00:26:00.072
We're after that point where we can say, okay, I trust. I place faith.
00:26:00.864 --> 00:26:04.140
I still got a lot of questions. I still got a long ways to go,
00:26:04.547 --> 00:26:09.458
but I'm there. I'm there in that place where I can place faith.
00:26:09.638 --> 00:26:15.354
Yeah it's really good did you guys see the Stephen Bartlett Diary of a CEO and
00:26:15.354 --> 00:26:21.582
John Lennox episode I've seen clips this theme just keeps coming up towards the end of it,
00:26:22.603 --> 00:26:29.644
John Lennox was basically taking this, the same posture or giving the same kind
00:26:29.644 --> 00:26:33.915
of answers you're giving here, Travis, where he's saying to Stephen, like.
00:26:35.213 --> 00:26:39.183
You're just not going to get all of your questions answered.
00:26:39.752 --> 00:26:43.554
It's more like a relationship. At some point, you're only going to know by entering
00:26:43.554 --> 00:26:45.324
into it, which is interesting.
00:26:45.324 --> 00:26:47.654
It's i'm seeing this pop up a lot
00:26:47.654 --> 00:26:53.864
more in quote-unquote apologetic circles which is really good it is and,
00:26:54.664 --> 00:26:58.754
it seems to be a positive i don't know movement's probably too strong of a word
00:26:58.754 --> 00:27:05.024
but the acknowledging that intellect is a big part of it but trust is equally
00:27:05.024 --> 00:27:08.927
a big part of it your heart and your will and being willing to risk,
00:27:09.795 --> 00:27:14.735
like in any relationship there's there's risk and yeah the risk of being wrong
00:27:14.735 --> 00:27:17.388
even but you don't know until which
00:27:17.829 --> 00:27:21.405
i mean how do you guys to the if i'm being the skeptic i'm like oh well that's
00:27:21.405 --> 00:27:27.332
just so convenient you're just saying i won't know till i become one of you i mean yeah what what.
00:27:28.625 --> 00:27:33.135
What what's what how you respond to that person or that that position i was
00:27:33.135 --> 00:27:36.605
just going to say something about you know we we talk about doubting thomas
00:27:36.605 --> 00:27:39.209
and he's the quintessential doubter and,
00:27:39.813 --> 00:27:44.114
But what always strikes me about Thomas is he is very open about his doubts,
00:27:44.643 --> 00:27:50.055
but he didn't then sit in isolation and say, Jesus has to come appear at my
00:27:50.055 --> 00:27:53.042
house or meet me where I'm going to hang out.
00:27:53.548 --> 00:27:59.745
He went to where the appearances had been happening and hung out in an environment
00:27:59.745 --> 00:28:05.075
with the other disciples where he put himself into the environment.
00:28:05.075 --> 00:28:12.325
He was willing to go the direction, back to the theme of seeking with all your heart.
00:28:12.325 --> 00:28:20.625
I think he was willing to move himself and go to where the likelihood was of,
00:28:21.185 --> 00:28:25.887
meeting Jesus. A lot of young people today, I won't go to church until I know for sure it's true.
00:28:26.114 --> 00:28:31.205
Well, you may know it's true and actually experience God and be touched by the
00:28:31.205 --> 00:28:36.999
Spirit or you really sense the presence of Jesus, if you go hang out in those environments,
00:28:37.515 --> 00:28:41.320
at church or in a fellowship or in some kind of a group or a worship time,
00:28:41.760 --> 00:28:43.293
where you're more likely to.
00:28:44.465 --> 00:28:48.065
At least touch the cloak of Jesus and experience Him.
00:28:48.065 --> 00:28:52.315
So I think that's, again, I think a lot of it comes back to the responsibility
00:28:52.315 --> 00:28:54.033
of the seeker to actually seek.
00:28:54.926 --> 00:28:59.535
And to want to know and to pray the seeker's prayer, you know,
00:28:59.825 --> 00:29:01.874
I doubt but help my unbelief, you know.
00:29:03.135 --> 00:29:10.274
So I want to keep challenging people to make those moves. And not that it guarantees
00:29:10.274 --> 00:29:12.887
an outcome, but it certainly raises the likelihood.
00:29:13.537 --> 00:29:20.046
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think of doubting Thomas. I mean, we've given him the title of doubting Thomas.
00:29:21.118 --> 00:29:24.214
I think there's some commendable things about what he did. I mean,
00:29:24.214 --> 00:29:28.864
it's a lot, you know, like he's showing personality and sort of like the fact
00:29:28.864 --> 00:29:31.364
that he's willing to just say, I'm not believing.
00:29:31.364 --> 00:29:34.284
He didn't just go along with the crowd. So I think there's some things that
00:29:34.284 --> 00:29:37.878
I think are good there, but I don't think he gives us a good model.
00:29:38.476 --> 00:29:45.607
And I think I'm a little psychologizing here, but the text, but I think when you read that passage,
00:29:46.159 --> 00:29:52.514
it seems pretty clear that Thomas is hurt by the fact that he wasn't with the
00:29:52.514 --> 00:29:57.314
other disciples when they saw the risen Christ and so on, right?
00:29:57.314 --> 00:30:01.052
Because there is a kind of refusal to believe.
00:30:02.154 --> 00:30:05.432
Unless he gets this really high level of evidence.
00:30:05.432 --> 00:30:09.572
And so I usually talk about the negatives of Thomas there as well,
00:30:09.572 --> 00:30:13.082
because I think it's important that we don't say, because again,
00:30:13.862 --> 00:30:16.172
is he seeking in some ways?
00:30:16.172 --> 00:30:22.192
Yes. But in some ways, I think he's sort of setting the conditions that in an
00:30:22.192 --> 00:30:25.342
extraordinary way, Christ satisfies those conditions.
00:30:26.002 --> 00:30:28.380
He allows him to touch his wounds and so on.
00:30:29.240 --> 00:30:32.782
But I think of Thomas as someone who had good reasons to believe.
00:30:32.782 --> 00:30:38.481
He had expert testimony from his closest friends saying that they've seen the risen Christ.
00:30:38.998 --> 00:30:43.509
But I think it reads as if he felt hurt by the fact that he didn't get that,
00:30:44.008 --> 00:30:46.242
and so therefore refuses to believe.
00:30:46.242 --> 00:30:50.442
And I think that's really dangerous. That's probably part of why Jesus then
00:30:50.442 --> 00:30:54.926
said, you know, blessed are those that don't have this level of evidence and still believe.
00:30:55.367 --> 00:31:00.649
But again, even with what you just said, he still didn't cut himself off from the fellowship.
00:31:01.322 --> 00:31:05.212
He still took those steps to go to church, you know? And gets there.
00:31:05.212 --> 00:31:09.049
And I think that's the reality that's often very messy.
00:31:10.582 --> 00:31:15.197
I mean, look, thinking back to my journey, it's definitely been messy along the way.
00:31:16.213 --> 00:31:22.130
And circuitous and so on. But the important thing is just to keep wandering,
00:31:22.618 --> 00:31:25.794
to keep going, to keep pursuing the journey.
00:31:26.593 --> 00:31:31.694
And I definitely think he did do that. So we've got some questions here in the
00:31:31.694 --> 00:31:35.724
chat. And just a reminder to everybody watching, this is a live stream.
00:31:35.724 --> 00:31:38.824
So if you want to ask your questions, we'll do our best to answer them.
00:31:39.237 --> 00:31:45.474
But we've got two questions here. One about how do we, so if this pursuit of
00:31:45.909 --> 00:31:49.616
God has to be wholehearted, if it has to be kind of a front burner issue,
00:31:50.110 --> 00:31:52.470
how do we do that in a highly distracted world?
00:31:52.806 --> 00:31:57.634
And then we've also got a question from Will Greck Jr. He's asking about marijuana
00:31:57.634 --> 00:32:03.934
and for people who are kind of using marijuana or alcohol as kind of distractions.
00:32:03.934 --> 00:32:06.943
I think a lot of people do that to kind of numb the pain.
00:32:07.484 --> 00:32:12.074
And if you're doing that, if you're numbing the pain, you're not answering the
00:32:12.074 --> 00:32:13.310
questions that you have.
00:32:13.728 --> 00:32:20.844
And so how do we help people who have kind of made spiritual issues so far in
00:32:20.844 --> 00:32:23.670
the back burner that they're kind of just apathetic about it? Yeah.
00:32:24.576 --> 00:32:32.546
Yeah. I think of it as if we think about what is the greatest value, right?
00:32:33.865 --> 00:32:43.087
Now, there's lots of things that have value, just having a nice lunch or a nap, whatever it may be.
00:32:43.087 --> 00:32:45.347
Those things are of value, but
00:32:45.347 --> 00:32:51.107
they just seem, when you kind of think big scale, big scheme of things.
00:32:53.167 --> 00:32:58.847
They're very small relative to that. And so then it's like, I guess the question
00:32:58.847 --> 00:33:01.259
is, where do we put God on that scale?
00:33:01.880 --> 00:33:09.597
And to me, it's like just by definition, for me, even the mere possibility of
00:33:09.597 --> 00:33:12.699
God is of such great value.
00:33:14.059 --> 00:33:20.422
Because by definition, for me at least, God is the greatest conceivable being.
00:33:20.828 --> 00:33:25.747
And I think greatest in a very wide sense of things, right?
00:33:25.747 --> 00:33:32.209
So it's like greatest in a moral sense, greatest in a kind of beauty sense,
00:33:32.619 --> 00:33:35.807
greatest in terms of power, greatest in knowledge and so on.
00:33:35.807 --> 00:33:41.535
And we can just keep on going and kind of think of God in all of his attributes,
00:33:42.058 --> 00:33:45.039
all these sort of so-called great making properties.
00:33:45.765 --> 00:33:51.627
And so now we put those together and it has this cumulative effect to just say
00:33:51.627 --> 00:33:56.287
like God by definition is the greatest value, the greatest thing,
00:33:56.747 --> 00:34:00.022
again, even in the mere possibility of his existence. And so...
00:34:01.265 --> 00:34:05.342
Put that way, I think we, I think who, you know, the person asked this is asking
00:34:05.342 --> 00:34:10.872
a really important question because the reality is that we all get distracted
00:34:10.872 --> 00:34:14.401
from this. Like I can say this and I, I just felt inspired by what I said.
00:34:14.779 --> 00:34:21.240
Uh, and so, but I can get distracted so easily, like in five minutes now.
00:34:21.890 --> 00:34:29.402
And, and so I do think that is a real battle that we face, but I don't know.
00:34:29.402 --> 00:34:34.852
I think, I think when I think of my life, I want my, I want the trajectory of
00:34:34.852 --> 00:34:36.976
my life to be aimed that way.
00:34:37.306 --> 00:34:42.792
And like I said, it's still going to be this, you know, circuitous journey of
00:34:42.792 --> 00:34:47.072
sorts with twists and turns and stumbles and falls, right?
00:34:47.072 --> 00:34:53.100
It's going to be messy, but I want to just keep getting back up and aiming at
00:34:53.200 --> 00:34:59.052
that, that greatest conceivable value, aiming at, aiming at God in that.
00:34:59.052 --> 00:35:03.392
So I think it's a real struggle, but we can fight that.
00:35:03.832 --> 00:35:06.632
I really think we can fight that. I think we're seeing, you know,
00:35:07.092 --> 00:35:13.104
entertainment and AI and everything has become so ubiquitous and everywhere.
00:35:13.778 --> 00:35:20.870
I think there is going to be this backlash, this sort of like reaction to that to go more minimalist.
00:35:21.166 --> 00:35:22.872
And I really hope that that's the case.
00:35:23.312 --> 00:35:26.602
That's happening a lot in education right now. We're talking about this right
00:35:26.602 --> 00:35:32.482
now at Dallas Baptist University, where we're talking about just kind of removing
00:35:32.482 --> 00:35:34.504
technology from classrooms,
00:35:35.073 --> 00:35:39.142
having assignments that are embodied assignments.
00:35:39.142 --> 00:35:42.607
So like I do an oral defense with all my papers now,
00:35:43.134 --> 00:35:48.082
because I can't keep them, you know, I can't know if somebody's used AI to produce
00:35:48.082 --> 00:35:53.152
their paper, but I can sit them, it's right at this table, sit them across this table,
00:35:53.672 --> 00:35:57.962
and pepper them with questions and it becomes really clear if they wrote the
00:35:57.962 --> 00:36:00.316
paper or not. And so, and what I found.
00:36:01.206 --> 00:36:05.005
I've had one student four years of doing this that, that did,
00:36:05.485 --> 00:36:11.235
you know, cheated, but almost, and they, they report how much better the experience was in a way.
00:36:11.235 --> 00:36:15.885
So how do you, how do you, sorry, Mark, go ahead. What are you saying?
00:36:15.885 --> 00:36:17.505
I just said back to Socrates.
00:36:18.005 --> 00:36:21.745
It is. It's like the old school ways of doing things.
00:36:21.745 --> 00:36:24.965
In fact, I have a colleague that's that was considering having them handwrite
00:36:24.965 --> 00:36:28.987
their papers, which doesn't necessarily prevent AI use, but it's like,
00:36:29.387 --> 00:36:34.045
at least you're going to have to, How do you cheat on an oral defense?
00:36:35.445 --> 00:36:38.535
I have them write a paper. This is the most important question of the day.
00:36:38.645 --> 00:36:39.385
They bring their paper in. Sorry.
00:36:40.765 --> 00:36:43.726
They bring their paper in, and then I ask them questions about it.
00:36:44.149 --> 00:36:48.465
And it was clear that he had used various things to write the paper.
00:36:49.009 --> 00:36:52.325
I got it. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I don't know why I'm talking about all that,
00:36:52.325 --> 00:36:54.071
but at least just this kind of like,
00:36:54.634 --> 00:36:58.025
I think the distractions are a very real thing, but I think we're all going
00:36:58.025 --> 00:37:03.615
to have to make efforts in life to kind of keep the the the important things
00:37:03.615 --> 00:37:05.594
getting the priority in our life,
00:37:06.046 --> 00:37:10.493
and again it's just it's like definitional that god should take that priority
00:37:10.865 --> 00:37:12.628
or should take the place of priority,
00:37:13.215 --> 00:37:17.313
for us given who he is even the mere possibility,
00:37:18.325 --> 00:37:23.655
matthew was the was the question like how do you help someone that's not prioritizing
00:37:23.655 --> 00:37:27.750
this and and because they're distracted yeah yeah,
00:37:28.343 --> 00:37:33.003
i think one of the challenges to the church is just the quality of our lives,
00:37:33.543 --> 00:37:36.747
yeah i've been reading in matthew this week and,
00:37:37.299 --> 00:37:43.545
in chapters 18 through 20 i believe maybe it goes to 21 he he's talking about
00:37:43.545 --> 00:37:47.417
the community of the kingdom of heaven and.
00:37:48.979 --> 00:37:50.250
I mean, contrasting it with bad
00:37:50.250 --> 00:37:56.218
examples, right? And the nature of this community is they are selfless.
00:37:57.112 --> 00:38:01.588
They protect the vulnerable. They welcome children. They're not annoyed by children.
00:38:02.250 --> 00:38:08.350
They aren't annoyed by the disabled. There's the story of Jesus going to Jerusalem
00:38:08.350 --> 00:38:14.630
and a man, was it two crippled, were screaming for Jesus's attention and the
00:38:14.630 --> 00:38:16.612
crowd was trying to shut them up,
00:38:17.455 --> 00:38:22.546
And again, this is the crowd that's coming to see Jesus. And this is the crowd that's saying, shut up.
00:38:23.772 --> 00:38:28.812
And Jesus stops and goes to them. But it's like, you know, and it goes through,
00:38:29.292 --> 00:38:35.332
there's ungratefulness, you know, being concerned about what other people are getting and not you.
00:38:35.332 --> 00:38:38.942
Jesus goes through that. He goes through a story, a parable of someone being
00:38:38.942 --> 00:38:44.258
forgiven of an unimaginable debt and then not forgiving his brother who owes him like a couple bucks.
00:38:45.152 --> 00:38:48.232
And it's like these extreme examples of just terrible people but it's like you
00:38:48.232 --> 00:38:52.002
read that you're like yeah no i know that i'm i've been guilty of that myself
00:38:52.002 --> 00:38:55.368
and i'm probably surrounded by a bunch of people like that too at my church that we're,
00:38:55.833 --> 00:39:00.702
ungrateful we're annoyed at kids we're annoyed at the disabled yeah we're looking
00:39:00.702 --> 00:39:03.272
out for ourselves we don't recognize the gender,
00:39:03.732 --> 00:39:08.072
that god has been generous with me and then we're stingy with other people i
00:39:08.072 --> 00:39:10.902
don't care that i've been forgiven of something i can never pay back but i'm
00:39:10.902 --> 00:39:12.323
not going to forgive that you know it's Like, well,
00:39:12.840 --> 00:39:14.852
what if that were just changed, right?
00:39:15.232 --> 00:39:20.892
What if we were not annoyed with those that can't give us anything in return?
00:39:21.917 --> 00:39:25.092
What if we saw the people the world wants to just ignore?
00:39:25.592 --> 00:39:30.810
What if we were forgiving people? What if we were selfless and grateful?
00:39:31.552 --> 00:39:36.192
I mean, it's like, I know that those stories don't go viral.
00:39:36.192 --> 00:39:39.238
They don't from a media standpoint.
00:39:39.668 --> 00:39:42.838
But once you've actually experienced that in real life,
00:39:43.470 --> 00:39:47.672
that can wake you up big time yeah and so you know i don't want you know you
00:39:47.672 --> 00:39:51.372
hold all things intention and balance this doesn't mean you don't proclaim truth
00:39:51.372 --> 00:39:56.047
doesn't mean you resist evil doesn't mean you speak against evil doesn't mean you don't call out sin,
00:39:56.798 --> 00:40:00.462
but in some ways that stuff is easier especially today when you don't have to
00:40:00.462 --> 00:40:03.108
be super brave you can just do it behind your keyboard or your phone,
00:40:03.919 --> 00:40:10.702
It's a lot harder to live like Jesus lived than just proclaim things through social media.
00:40:10.702 --> 00:40:13.582
So again, one of the challenges, I think, for the church right now,
00:40:13.582 --> 00:40:17.162
and there's such a great opportunity because the Lord is stirring people.
00:40:17.162 --> 00:40:19.972
There's kind of a spiritual awakening. They're looking at the church.
00:40:19.972 --> 00:40:24.154
Gen Z is going back to church more than anybody else right now. Bible sales are up.
00:40:24.515 --> 00:40:28.613
So I'm just, my concern is what are they going to find when they come back to the church?
00:40:29.910 --> 00:40:34.434
And so regardless of whether they're coming back or just kind of like peripherally
00:40:34.794 --> 00:40:38.183
noticing the quality of the lives of these people.
00:40:40.714 --> 00:40:46.824
I think that can help our neighbor wake up to the urgency here that there is
00:40:46.824 --> 00:40:48.533
an abundant life to be had.
00:40:48.933 --> 00:40:55.638
Yeah. I mean, that kind of connects to it, the marijuana piece to the question, because it's,
00:40:56.764 --> 00:40:58.104
yeah, I mean, you can take a
00:40:58.104 --> 00:41:05.434
substance and like experience all kinds of things, but it's such a hollow,
00:41:06.562 --> 00:41:11.634
it's such a hollow kind of, you know, experience at the end of the day and leads
00:41:11.634 --> 00:41:15.582
to all kinds of problems, all kinds of sort of negative consequences.
00:41:16.236 --> 00:41:19.806
I mean, I'm not just saying marijuana, but I just think like the kind of like,
00:41:20.345 --> 00:41:25.239
artificial creation of whatever it would be, pleasure, I guess,
00:41:25.820 --> 00:41:31.164
to me is that kind of like hollow lack of meaning in a way.
00:41:31.164 --> 00:41:34.664
I mean, this is kind of the meaning crisis I think that we're facing today is
00:41:34.664 --> 00:41:38.356
that people have tried it and it's not that great.
00:41:38.704 --> 00:41:41.757
Tried life without God and it's not that great.
00:41:42.337 --> 00:41:48.759
And I'm really, really convinced that you can't have meaning in your life.
00:41:49.734 --> 00:41:54.034
You can value some things. You can sort of declare some things to be meaningful,
00:41:54.034 --> 00:41:58.314
but I don't think you find ultimate meaning without God.
00:41:58.634 --> 00:42:02.388
Because I think that's the only thing that provides that sort of objective,
00:42:02.975 --> 00:42:06.692
purposeful life, right?
00:42:07.061 --> 00:42:11.444
Where, you know, the, again, like, especially in the backdrop of something like
00:42:11.444 --> 00:42:16.203
a drug-induced, you know, euphoria or something like that is just,
00:42:16.854 --> 00:42:22.113
just so hollow compared to, so I think that's part of what you're saying there, Mike, is like,
00:42:22.968 --> 00:42:27.635
living that rich life. And I think for me in my own journey too,
00:42:27.635 --> 00:42:31.405
again, that's, you know, just thinking of things that made a really big difference.
00:42:31.405 --> 00:42:36.235
It's just, there's some families, they had no idea, they have no idea to this
00:42:36.235 --> 00:42:38.206
day, they had the impact on me that they did.
00:42:38.857 --> 00:42:42.935
But that was like the best apologetic in the moment I could have possibly had
00:42:42.935 --> 00:42:47.905
is just to seen a well-functioning, loving family that's just having a blast
00:42:47.905 --> 00:42:51.551
together and seeing how joyful they are.
00:42:52.136 --> 00:42:53.315
You know what I mean? Like that.
00:42:54.175 --> 00:42:57.815
Was so much more powerful than a syllogism could have ever been. Yeah.
00:42:58.455 --> 00:43:03.165
I would just also add that it's interesting. Paul in Ephesians 5 says,
00:43:03.443 --> 00:43:07.634
be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Yeah.
00:43:08.052 --> 00:43:12.965
And it's sort of what you were just saying. It's don't accept substitutes or
00:43:12.965 --> 00:43:18.235
artificial means to feel better, numb problems or, Or,
00:43:18.795 --> 00:43:23.975
be filled with the Holy Spirit and let God bring to you what you need and guide you in ways.
00:43:25.035 --> 00:43:26.743
You need to go, and so on.
00:43:27.238 --> 00:43:32.886
And I think it just kind of nails that issue, I think. Yeah, that's really good.
00:43:34.106 --> 00:43:36.502
I want to bring us back. We've got some more questions coming in,
00:43:36.502 --> 00:43:37.552
so we're going to come back to those.
00:43:37.552 --> 00:43:39.832
But I do want to bring us back to what we were talking about earlier,
00:43:39.832 --> 00:43:43.662
a little bit of just the nature of faith. And I know you said,
00:43:43.662 --> 00:43:48.272
even in your opening answer, you said when you had questions about your faith,
00:43:48.272 --> 00:43:50.905
you didn't know whether your faith was true or false.
00:43:51.294 --> 00:43:52.845
And you had these doubts.
00:43:53.285 --> 00:43:58.042
When I speak, I speak on doubt and deconstruction. One of the most helpful things
00:43:58.042 --> 00:44:01.302
that I say is, I quote you in your book.
00:44:01.682 --> 00:44:04.982
Is it your book Wandering Towards God? Is that the book you talk about that?
00:44:04.982 --> 00:44:07.571
Yeah. Great resource on this question.
00:44:08.054 --> 00:44:15.076
And it says, you say in there that actually we think of doubt and faith as opposites.
00:44:15.686 --> 00:44:20.765
But they're not necessarily opposites. Actually, doubt requires some measure of faith.
00:44:21.172 --> 00:44:24.462
And so if you have doubts, if you're doubting something, it actually means you
00:44:24.462 --> 00:44:28.585
still believe something and you have these questions which bother you or which
00:44:28.824 --> 00:44:32.842
you're afraid of or which get in the way of you continuing to believe,
00:44:32.842 --> 00:44:34.836
but you do continue to believe.
00:44:35.143 --> 00:44:37.320
Otherwise, you wouldn't doubt, you would just disbelieve.
00:44:37.819 --> 00:44:40.888
And I think that's just such a helpful concept for people to think of,
00:44:41.241 --> 00:44:44.462
okay, just because I have these doubts, just because I have these questions
00:44:44.462 --> 00:44:49.622
doesn't mean I've given up my faith, doesn't mean I'm just completely disbelieving
00:44:49.622 --> 00:44:51.948
here. Actually, I'm still believing.
00:44:52.482 --> 00:44:55.358
Do you find that to be a helpful concept when you talk to people about faith?
00:44:55.874 --> 00:45:01.092
Yeah, like huge. So for me, because again, I think we've had this idea that
00:45:01.092 --> 00:45:04.640
we need 100% certainty. Mm-hmm.
00:45:05.835 --> 00:45:11.065
Or there's something wrong with us or we're sinning or something like that.
00:45:11.065 --> 00:45:18.002
But it's like the idea that we could even have a hundred percent certainty, right?
00:45:18.735 --> 00:45:22.075
I just, I mean, it depends what we mean by that. Of course, like sometimes people
00:45:22.075 --> 00:45:25.264
hear me say that it's probably the most controversial thing that I get most,
00:45:25.757 --> 00:45:29.298
people get the most upset when I say these things. So buckle up.
00:45:31.158 --> 00:45:34.445
Right. It depends what we mean by certainty, because I think sometimes we just
00:45:34.445 --> 00:45:37.124
mean like, I've got my mind made up, I'm certain.
00:45:37.624 --> 00:45:43.445
I don't mean that definition of certainty. I mean something like a kind of Cartesian
00:45:43.445 --> 00:45:49.535
certainty, if you like, where it's a kind of like, there's no possible way in
00:45:49.535 --> 00:45:51.190
which your belief could be false.
00:45:52.229 --> 00:46:00.410
And the reality is none of us have that level of certainty as it relates to our Christian faith.
00:46:02.315 --> 00:46:06.175
Because that's to say we've literally got the entire thing figured out and none of us do.
00:46:07.195 --> 00:46:12.799
And if somebody says they do, I don't believe you. Right. We all have our questions and so on. So,
00:46:14.490 --> 00:46:21.080
What I love to do, what I find very needed is to tell, especially,
00:46:21.672 --> 00:46:25.186
you know, younger, younger, I'm sounding really old here when I say this,
00:46:25.186 --> 00:46:27.466
but I was going to say young folks, right?
00:46:27.786 --> 00:46:31.491
They need to hear that it's okay to have questions.
00:46:32.042 --> 00:46:36.016
They even need to hear that it's okay to have some doubts about their Christian
00:46:36.016 --> 00:46:37.377
faith. Like that's okay.
00:46:38.966 --> 00:46:46.927
And one big reason why it's okay is because you can have 100% faith and doubt all at the same time.
00:46:47.602 --> 00:46:49.426
And I love to give this illustration.
00:46:51.087 --> 00:46:56.546
I get on airplanes pretty regularly, but I got to confess, I don't understand
00:46:56.546 --> 00:46:59.036
the science of an airplane very well.
00:46:59.036 --> 00:47:02.256
I mean, I got a few things. I understand lift a little bit and some of that.
00:47:02.256 --> 00:47:11.305
But so I get, I place faith in an airplane pretty regularly with a lot of unanswered questions.
00:47:11.955 --> 00:47:17.040
And I can imagine going, you know, being on my way to someplace really awesome,
00:47:18.366 --> 00:47:23.026
where I really want to go and be sitting in the airport having these doubts.
00:47:23.026 --> 00:47:29.717
Like, how is this even possible that a 747 weighs in at about a million pounds?
00:47:30.234 --> 00:47:31.586
It's mostly metal.
00:47:32.288 --> 00:47:38.011
And it's, and it like cruises through the sky. Like that just doesn't seem like that should work.
00:47:39.546 --> 00:47:44.153
It's absurd in some ways. I, I, and we get on the airplane, plug in our little
00:47:44.316 --> 00:47:47.137
seatbelt as if that's going to do anything. And, and, you know.
00:47:48.195 --> 00:47:52.280
So I could be in this deep place of doubt, but if I'm going someplace really
00:47:52.280 --> 00:47:58.889
awesome, when our flight's called, I'm getting on that airplane, I can place faith.
00:47:59.460 --> 00:48:03.562
And I love this picture of it. I can be sitting on the airplane,
00:48:04.211 --> 00:48:10.660
literally placing faith in it, having a discussion with people around me of why this even works.
00:48:10.846 --> 00:48:14.543
If that's not a beautiful picture of the Christian journey, I don't know what is.
00:48:15.060 --> 00:48:21.765
Because a lot of us place faith at a certain early point in our lives or just in our journeys.
00:48:22.009 --> 00:48:24.504
And we got almost nothing figured out.
00:48:25.305 --> 00:48:29.641
And then that process of growing where of course we're going to have questions.
00:48:30.169 --> 00:48:34.864
If you think you're not going to have questions, I think you're setting yourself up to fall.
00:48:35.543 --> 00:48:40.200
In the book, I call this having, I think of certainty, the need for certainty
00:48:40.200 --> 00:48:41.910
as a kind of house of cards.
00:48:42.682 --> 00:48:46.420
Because if you think you need a hundred percent certainty, all it takes is one
00:48:46.420 --> 00:48:50.200
question that you can't answer. And the whole thing comes crashing down.
00:48:51.100 --> 00:48:56.382
So you're setting it. So we need to expect to have lots of questions all along the way.
00:48:56.643 --> 00:49:01.339
And I'm, you know, I'm sitting here having been working on these issues professionally
00:49:01.641 --> 00:49:07.580
for 15 years and with PhD and three master's degrees and so on, not just touting,
00:49:08.270 --> 00:49:12.440
my credentials, but just saying like, I've been focused on this at the highest
00:49:12.440 --> 00:49:16.980
academic level that I could possibly be, I think, and I've still got a thousand
00:49:16.980 --> 00:49:20.504
questions that I'm still pursuing and wondering about. And so-
00:49:21.935 --> 00:49:25.220
And some of those I've, I've struggled with some of those I've,
00:49:25.520 --> 00:49:30.227
where that I would say rose to the level of doubt, but I had faith,
00:49:30.733 --> 00:49:32.010
you know, the whole time.
00:49:32.010 --> 00:49:35.840
Like you could be placing faith in the airplane while you're having those doubts
00:49:35.840 --> 00:49:37.699
and questions as you go. Yeah.
00:49:38.210 --> 00:49:40.521
That's really good. And hey, Travis. You hit turbulence.
00:49:42.640 --> 00:49:45.220
Well, that's why you want your seatbelt on it. So you don't fly up and hit the,
00:49:45.800 --> 00:49:48.352
which I've seen someone literally fly up and hit the top.
00:49:48.648 --> 00:49:52.950
Oh my God. There's a great college humor skit where they're telling the plane
00:49:52.950 --> 00:49:55.184
passengers to turn off their cell phones.
00:49:55.666 --> 00:49:59.571
And some guy keeps arguing, why does, you know, cell phones doesn't affect anything.
00:49:59.954 --> 00:50:03.310
And eventually the flight attendant just starts screaming at him.
00:50:03.310 --> 00:50:08.041
She's like, we don't actually know how planes worked. Lift, we just made that up.
00:50:08.250 --> 00:50:12.280
It's magic. And we just know that if you don't turn your cell phone off,
00:50:13.040 --> 00:50:14.540
the magic stops working.
00:50:15.200 --> 00:50:19.590
And it's amazing. That's a good one. And real quick, Travis,
00:50:19.590 --> 00:50:23.347
I've heard Matthew quote you so many times on this.
00:50:23.841 --> 00:50:26.140
I'm sure he owes you some kind of royalty at this point.
00:50:27.100 --> 00:50:31.490
Except for the fact that that would put me probably in debt to all the people
00:50:31.490 --> 00:50:36.110
I quote. So I'm glad we don't operate like that. Oh, and I should say,
00:50:36.110 --> 00:50:38.667
too, I totally stole that from Oz Guinness.
00:50:39.980 --> 00:50:44.080
Oh. Yeah. Well, we'll have him on next month. We'll pass it on.
00:50:44.080 --> 00:50:46.840
He probably got it from C.S. Lewis. That's true.
00:50:47.600 --> 00:50:51.450
One of his first books was on doubt, actually. And he, yeah,
00:50:51.450 --> 00:50:54.860
I, I, and I do quote him in the, in the book, but yeah, that's,
00:50:54.860 --> 00:50:56.037
that's an Oz Guinness thing.
00:50:57.826 --> 00:51:03.233
A couple more questions coming in here. One is kind of on cults and Jehovah's
00:51:03.233 --> 00:51:08.780
Witnesses, Mormons, and they say that, look, they live a good moral life,
00:51:09.024 --> 00:51:12.223
and so how do we know that they're not true?
00:51:12.223 --> 00:51:16.122
Also, they said most converts to the cults are former evangelicals,
00:51:16.696 --> 00:51:20.956
and they're kind of wandering a bit from the Logos mind to some spiritual experience.
00:51:21.455 --> 00:51:26.673
So I think maybe just to say, we're not trying to say if you live a good life
00:51:26.673 --> 00:51:30.674
or if you are nice or kind to each other. Therefore, your religion's true.
00:51:32.753 --> 00:51:36.643
That could be a sign that your religion is true, but it also could be a sign
00:51:36.643 --> 00:51:38.493
that you're trying really nice to be a nice person.
00:51:40.493 --> 00:51:45.563
I think we don't have to say that, as C.S. Lewis said, that all the religions
00:51:45.563 --> 00:51:49.637
of the world are completely false all the way through. All truth is God's truth.
00:51:50.206 --> 00:51:55.332
And so Mormons, Jehovah's witnesses, they have pieces of Christian morality
00:51:55.674 --> 00:51:58.853
that I think are guiding them to live good lives.
00:51:58.853 --> 00:52:03.603
Maybe part of the difference is in those religions, you have to earn your way to God.
00:52:03.603 --> 00:52:09.263
And so there's kind of this anxiety about being a good person because if you
00:52:09.263 --> 00:52:11.033
aren't, so then you're not going to be saved.
00:52:11.033 --> 00:52:14.813
And so, which I think is a false, it's a false teaching, you know,
00:52:14.813 --> 00:52:20.293
this idea that we have to earn our relationship with God, earn our standing, right?
00:52:20.293 --> 00:52:24.283
Standing before him. So we're not saying, you know, you're, you're good.
00:52:24.283 --> 00:52:26.100
Therefore your religion is true.
00:52:26.454 --> 00:52:29.419
It's almost what we were saying earlier. It's like a necessary ingredient.
00:52:29.755 --> 00:52:33.173
It should, it should kind of transform you towards, towards faith,
00:52:33.173 --> 00:52:36.553
but we've got another question here, but, oh, go ahead.
00:52:36.553 --> 00:52:39.613
Did you have something? I was just going to say, I wonder if part of the question
00:52:39.810 --> 00:52:44.332
is coming from what we were saying earlier about kind of stepping into it,
00:52:44.899 --> 00:52:48.986
and, and getting the feel of it or whatever, you know, like almost,
00:52:49.323 --> 00:52:50.503
we didn't use this phrase, but
00:52:50.503 --> 00:52:54.802
I think, I think of it as the faith seeking understanding kind of idea.
00:52:55.267 --> 00:52:57.493
You just have a YouTube video on this, on your channel on this,
00:52:57.493 --> 00:52:59.853
right? Did, did indeed. Yeah.
00:53:01.681 --> 00:53:02.093
Yeah.
00:53:03.437 --> 00:53:05.461
Are you a groupie or what's a dick?
00:53:08.421 --> 00:53:09.861
Please stop, please stop, please stop.
00:53:13.563 --> 00:53:18.126
But I think that's where, yeah, like you said, it's not just the feel,
00:53:18.498 --> 00:53:22.161
right? It's almost like that's where the evidence really does matter.
00:53:22.161 --> 00:53:25.072
And I think of it as different stories.
00:53:25.566 --> 00:53:30.593
So if you think of the Christian story, the Muslim story or the Mormon story,
00:53:31.911 --> 00:53:39.309
If we really just kind of put those stories up for comparison and evaluation,
00:53:41.061 --> 00:53:45.322
it's kind of what you were saying, too, about the works, gospel, and so on.
00:53:46.350 --> 00:53:51.941
I'm really unafraid to do that. I really think that the Christian story just
00:53:52.261 --> 00:53:57.221
shines in terms of its historicity and truth and evidence that way,
00:53:57.221 --> 00:54:01.201
but also its beauty, its goodness, right?
00:54:01.201 --> 00:54:06.071
Just the kind of transformative aspect to it, where you can get bits and pieces
00:54:06.071 --> 00:54:08.186
of that in these other stories probably.
00:54:08.616 --> 00:54:13.330
But I just think when you kind of put them up side by side for comparison,
00:54:13.910 --> 00:54:17.941
I mean, I'm obviously biased and so on, but I think, I think there's such a
00:54:17.941 --> 00:54:22.251
richness and depth to the Christian story that I'm just really honestly and
00:54:22.251 --> 00:54:23.457
genuinely blown away by it.
00:54:25.350 --> 00:54:30.301
Well said. We've got a kind of an objection here from someone saying that faith
00:54:30.498 --> 00:54:34.070
is a religious word, but you have trust in technology.
00:54:34.279 --> 00:54:38.851
Like airplanes. Like airplanes. Yeah. So what would you say to that?
00:54:38.851 --> 00:54:42.501
Is there, is there kind of a, you know, we only have faith in religious things
00:54:42.501 --> 00:54:44.853
and we only have trust in non-religious things?
00:54:45.254 --> 00:54:51.297
Yeah, I don't know what a religious word amounts to, like to call it a.
00:54:52.338 --> 00:54:56.105
I think of it i think the better way to approach something like that is just
00:54:56.105 --> 00:54:59.762
to think of the concept like what do we mean when we say faith.
00:55:00.627 --> 00:55:06.049
Now of course we're using it in religious context and so on but i think we often,
00:55:06.508 --> 00:55:10.989
use it outside of religious context too we might talk about play you know,
00:55:11.634 --> 00:55:16.495
losing faith in a politician or you know something like that i think we use
00:55:16.495 --> 00:55:21.395
them as synonyms yeah yeah john lennox scripture says you know do you have faith
00:55:21.395 --> 00:55:23.195
in your wife? And he said, yeah. Yeah.
00:55:24.039 --> 00:55:29.565
I love that. I think they're very interchangeable. They have a certain nuance to them, I think.
00:55:29.919 --> 00:55:35.057
Yeah. Whereas the word trust maybe has the slight nuance of like reliability,
00:55:35.544 --> 00:55:38.934
whereas faith may have a nuance of like hope also.
00:55:39.410 --> 00:55:43.795
But even without splitting that in scripture, it seems like it's used interchangeably.
00:55:43.795 --> 00:55:47.865
So I don't think that objection. Yeah, it's definitely translated,
00:55:47.865 --> 00:55:53.995
and this isn't work that I do, but I think the word that's often translated
00:55:53.995 --> 00:55:58.078
for faith, well, it's at least the same as belief,
00:55:58.722 --> 00:56:00.671
especially when you say believe in.
00:56:00.966 --> 00:56:05.645
And that might be something that's worth saying here, is that I think that Christians
00:56:05.645 --> 00:56:08.171
use the word faith in a way that I don't think,
00:56:08.858 --> 00:56:13.919
always tracks scripture or is the concept that I think is most helpful.
00:56:14.366 --> 00:56:19.105
Because I do think of faith as a kind of trust. I mean, as you said,
00:56:19.105 --> 00:56:21.182
Mike, it's a little more nuanced.
00:56:21.798 --> 00:56:28.370
Because I think of it as something like where we've risked ourselves on something or someone.
00:56:28.480 --> 00:56:30.655
I like to call it ventured trust.
00:56:31.990 --> 00:56:36.345
It's like where we've gotten on the airplane. So it's not just that I trust
00:56:36.345 --> 00:56:39.275
it, but it's, I've, I've depended on it. Yeah.
00:56:39.426 --> 00:56:42.872
It's an action with risk. I kind of put my life at risk. And I think,
00:56:43.446 --> 00:56:48.095
you know, in a marriage relationship, obviously like we risk a lot.
00:56:48.095 --> 00:56:51.855
We depend upon some, that, that other person in big, big ways.
00:56:51.855 --> 00:56:57.065
And so while there are religious contexts where we would use the word faith,
00:56:57.065 --> 00:57:00.749
I think it, I think it's the concept that we want to get clear on.
00:57:00.982 --> 00:57:04.355
And like I said, I think a lot of Christians will just use it to mean intellectual
00:57:04.355 --> 00:57:10.895
belief, but I, I just don't I think that's how scripture uses the word, at least typically.
00:57:10.895 --> 00:57:17.105
Sometimes when it says like, you know, defending the faith, that's probably propositional.
00:57:17.689 --> 00:57:21.755
But when it talks about placing faith or whatever, I think the word trust is
00:57:21.755 --> 00:57:26.435
probably the best synonym you can use in a sort of simple way.
00:57:26.665 --> 00:57:28.414
That's good.
00:57:28.936 --> 00:57:33.365
There's a follow-up here saying faith is the substance of things hoped for and
00:57:33.365 --> 00:57:34.997
the evidence of things not seen.
00:57:35.316 --> 00:57:39.524
And they're thanking us for talking with this. Thank you for your questions, Headwork.
00:57:40.146 --> 00:57:43.697
I think that that definition, sometimes people use that as saying,
00:57:43.697 --> 00:57:46.597
look, faith is, you know, it's the substance of things, so forth,
00:57:46.597 --> 00:57:50.390
it's the evidence. So it, you know, faith is this kind of bad definition of
00:57:50.686 --> 00:57:53.873
you're just having faith. That's faith is the reason that you believe.
00:57:54.262 --> 00:57:57.627
And there is no evidence. And there is no evidence. And I just don't think that's
00:57:57.627 --> 00:57:59.337
a good way of reading that passage.
00:57:59.337 --> 00:58:04.737
I think what that passage is talking about is all of these people who have had
00:58:04.737 --> 00:58:06.757
faith and their relationship with God.
00:58:06.757 --> 00:58:10.195
It's almost the second definition of faith that C.S. Lewis says,
00:58:10.653 --> 00:58:15.397
it's continuing to believe what your reason has once accepted despite your changing moods.
00:58:15.997 --> 00:58:21.497
And when you have faith, when you put your faith in God, it's faithfulness,
00:58:21.817 --> 00:58:23.877
I think, is what this passage is talking about.
00:58:23.877 --> 00:58:29.967
It's continuing to believe, and you will see God's faithfulness coming to you
00:58:29.967 --> 00:58:32.756
in your life and in your relationship with him.
00:58:33.028 --> 00:58:36.157
And it just goes through the passage. If you read the passage,
00:58:36.157 --> 00:58:40.467
and I encourage you to read this passage, it gives all of these examples of
00:58:40.467 --> 00:58:44.607
people who followed God and they were rewarded for it.
00:58:44.607 --> 00:58:50.037
And by faith, Abraham trusted God and it was credited to him as righteousness
00:58:50.037 --> 00:58:53.036
and went out of the land not knowing where he was going.
00:58:53.440 --> 00:59:00.367
And then God was with him. So there's a tight you know, knit between faith and
00:59:00.367 --> 00:59:03.013
action and choosing to place your trust in God.
00:59:03.520 --> 00:59:06.517
But yeah, we don't, we don't have to take this. I don't think this is meant
00:59:06.517 --> 00:59:08.961
to be a dictionary definition of the word faith.
00:59:09.291 --> 00:59:15.167
We can go beyond this and look at the larger context of scripture to kind of the definition.
00:59:16.377 --> 00:59:20.747
Go ahead. I was just going to say it's, you've heard me teach this many times,
00:59:20.747 --> 00:59:25.986
but John 1, 12, as many as received him to those who believed on his name,
00:59:26.577 --> 00:59:31.657
they're the ones who are, become sons of God or children of God.
00:59:32.156 --> 00:59:35.977
So you see those two elements, and Travis has been talking about getting on
00:59:35.977 --> 00:59:39.439
an airplane. I often use the illustration in a similar way.
00:59:40.048 --> 00:59:44.024
That, you know, believe plus receive in order to become.
00:59:44.506 --> 00:59:47.728
You have to believe airplanes fly or you're not getting on one,
00:59:47.728 --> 00:59:51.398
but that's still just an intellectual trust in the science of aviation.
00:59:52.758 --> 00:59:57.318
You need to believe that, but then you need to receive the opportunity to climb
00:59:57.318 --> 01:00:02.414
on board. You have to move. You have to take steps of faith.
01:00:02.908 --> 01:00:06.778
And similarly with the Christian faith, you need to believe Jesus is who he
01:00:06.778 --> 01:00:09.804
claimed to be. There's an intellectual side to that.
01:00:10.332 --> 01:00:16.618
But then you need to receive him as your forgiver and leader and the one you're going to now follow.
01:00:17.310 --> 01:00:21.465
And so it's belief plus action, putting your trust in Christ.
01:00:22.458 --> 01:00:25.808
I think a lot of America stops with the intellectual belief,
01:00:25.808 --> 01:00:29.578
sits in pews and nods their head to the right ideas.
01:00:30.282 --> 01:00:36.207
They have not received him as their Lord and leader of their life, the God of their life.
01:00:36.764 --> 01:00:41.315
And that's where the life really is. I mean, it's when we become his,
01:00:42.054 --> 01:00:47.136
his sons and daughters and follow him and trust him and let him put us on divine
01:00:47.136 --> 01:00:51.006
missions. And I mean, that's where the life is. And that's ultimately where
01:00:51.006 --> 01:00:52.946
I think salvation is found.
01:00:53.326 --> 01:00:56.894
Yeah. So we need both elements. Yeah. Absolutely.
01:00:57.514 --> 01:01:01.816
Amen. We're running out of time here, but there were two more questions I think
01:01:01.816 --> 01:01:03.750
we just really got to answer here.
01:01:04.280 --> 01:01:08.836
One was Randy Bales asks about, we brought up the whole, or somebody brought
01:01:08.836 --> 01:01:14.386
up Mormonism, any good books or resources for answering people's questions with apologetics.
01:01:15.474 --> 01:01:21.422
I'll mention a couple. Bill McKeever is powerful. He has a book called Mormonism 101.
01:01:21.840 --> 01:01:28.466
And his teaching partner friend, Eric Johnson, has some really good materials
01:01:28.466 --> 01:01:33.607
on that. I actually did a chapter for one on how to share a faith with Mormons.
01:01:34.089 --> 01:01:39.327
And that one was edited by Eric Johnson and Sean McDowell.
01:01:39.989 --> 01:01:47.605
And they also have an online ministry, mrm.org, mormonismresearchministry.org.
01:01:47.936 --> 01:01:51.066
So lots of good information in their materials.
01:01:52.569 --> 01:01:58.253
Yeah. I don't have a good current recommendation. I know there's a good academic
01:01:58.253 --> 01:02:03.582
one that's definitely a few years old called the new Mormon challenge that I found helpful.
01:02:04.970 --> 01:02:07.383
Yeah. Okay. And I can't think of the name of the book. It's on my shelf.
01:02:07.783 --> 01:02:10.153
Corey Miller, the president of Ratio Christi. Oh, right.
01:02:10.676 --> 01:02:13.443
He's a former Mormon. That's right.
01:02:14.463 --> 01:02:19.087
He's a seventh generation Mormon. Yeah. And I think his descendant was like
01:02:19.285 --> 01:02:22.638
Joseph Smith's bodyguard. I think that's right. Right. Yeah.
01:02:23.141 --> 01:02:26.103
Wow. He's got, he's got a book we can put in the show notes,
01:02:26.103 --> 01:02:29.415
but if you just, you know, search Google, search up as my kids say,
01:02:29.753 --> 01:02:32.725
Corey Miller, ratio, Christy Mormonism, you'll, you'll find that book.
01:02:33.596 --> 01:02:38.310
Yeah. It's good. It's interesting just to point out too, that a lot of these,
01:02:38.885 --> 01:02:42.823
cults will discourage the kind of questioning that we are talking about here
01:02:43.263 --> 01:02:46.533
that they say, you know, no, don't ask those questions. You're confusing others.
01:02:46.533 --> 01:02:48.015
You just got to trust the authority.
01:02:48.566 --> 01:02:52.343
That's kind of a hallmark of cults is discouraging questioning.
01:02:52.343 --> 01:02:57.453
And I think it's a sign of a signpost of true faith, true religion that we are
01:02:57.453 --> 01:03:00.943
saying, no, actually we believe in this so much. You can ask hard questions.
01:03:00.943 --> 01:03:02.233
You can bring it out into the light.
01:03:02.575 --> 01:03:05.820
If it's, if it's solid, it'll stand up to. Yeah.
01:03:06.174 --> 01:03:09.437
And I think that, you know, and again, I would say, you know,
01:03:09.582 --> 01:03:14.777
churches and lots of Christians, unfortunately, discourage questions too. But,
01:03:15.438 --> 01:03:19.658
My advice would be for anyone that's maybe that they're intrigued by Mormonism
01:03:19.658 --> 01:03:24.538
or they've found some degree of like meaning or purpose in the Mormon church.
01:03:24.538 --> 01:03:27.898
Again, like I'd probably say the same thing to them as I'd say to everybody
01:03:27.898 --> 01:03:32.438
else is just keep seeking, keep pursuing, keep asking the questions,
01:03:32.438 --> 01:03:33.667
because that's where I think like,
01:03:34.323 --> 01:03:37.628
again, like the evidence, it can't just be like, well, I get a good,
01:03:37.968 --> 01:03:41.097
you know, warm, fuzzy when I'm in a Mormon situation.
01:03:41.948 --> 01:03:44.696
That's not truth. I mean, they call it the burning of the bosom.
01:03:45.805 --> 01:03:49.118
Right? That's not necessarily an indicator of truth.
01:03:49.118 --> 01:03:53.368
And so, like, even if you have found some degree of your questions answered
01:03:53.368 --> 01:03:57.348
in the Mormon church, I would say this to someone who's found some questions
01:03:57.348 --> 01:04:02.805
answered in a more traditional Christian church, is keep pursuing, keep seeking.
01:04:03.263 --> 01:04:08.756
That's the journey we're all meant to be on because, again, God is that greatest conceivable being.
01:04:09.221 --> 01:04:13.248
But I would also bring them to the core issue of the identity of Christ.
01:04:13.628 --> 01:04:18.478
Jesus said in John 8, 24, unless you believe I am who I claim to be.
01:04:18.989 --> 01:04:24.128
And that might even be a divine, unless you believe I am, in other words,
01:04:24.128 --> 01:04:27.178
I'm God, you will die in your sins.
01:04:27.427 --> 01:04:32.068
And so for me, on both Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses, I try to drive them
01:04:32.068 --> 01:04:37.685
back to that core issue because Mormonism makes Jesus one of many gods.
01:04:38.155 --> 01:04:44.148
And so you've got a polytheistic view, which is totally condemned by Scripture
01:04:44.528 --> 01:04:46.797
and certainly denied by Jesus.
01:04:47.215 --> 01:04:51.278
And in the case of Jehovah's Witnesses, you have a lesser created being.
01:04:51.702 --> 01:04:55.288
Certainly it doesn't live up to what Scripture, including the book of John and
01:04:55.288 --> 01:05:02.213
many other places, teach that Jesus is a member of the Godhead eternally so,
01:05:02.613 --> 01:05:04.599
and the creator of the universe.
01:05:05.092 --> 01:05:09.080
So unless you believe I am who I claim to be, you will die in your sins.
01:05:09.203 --> 01:05:16.445
Jesus said that. And so we've got to get clear on the core issue of the identity of Christ. Yeah.
01:05:16.828 --> 01:05:19.742
It's huge. And the cults failed that. Yeah. It's good.
01:05:20.451 --> 01:05:23.202
We've got one more submitted question here. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to
01:05:23.202 --> 01:05:25.572
get to all of the questions.
01:05:25.892 --> 01:05:29.642
Thank you for everybody who's been submitting them. But Rev Kev says,
01:05:29.642 --> 01:05:32.634
agree with the faith point. It's not having all the answers.
01:05:33.110 --> 01:05:36.672
But isn't this what makes it so difficult for Christians to share and defend
01:05:36.672 --> 01:05:40.663
their faith? Because we have faith, even though we don't have all the answers.
01:05:41.185 --> 01:05:44.992
And maybe I'll just take the first stab at this to say, yeah, that is hard.
01:05:44.992 --> 01:05:47.532
It would be really nice to have all the answers and just go,
01:05:47.532 --> 01:05:51.742
look, here's boom, boom, boom. you know, and, but we don't have that,
01:05:51.742 --> 01:05:55.272
you know, we can have epistemic humility and say, I don't have all the answers,
01:05:55.272 --> 01:05:57.583
but I do know this. I do know this much.
01:05:58.082 --> 01:06:01.462
And, and I think we can grow. I think that's part of why this show exists.
01:06:01.462 --> 01:06:05.582
Part of why we have Travis on today is that you can grow more confident in your
01:06:05.582 --> 01:06:09.917
knowledge. You can grow more capable of explaining why you believe what you believe.
01:06:10.370 --> 01:06:13.592
And I think all of us would agree that as we've grown in our faith,
01:06:13.592 --> 01:06:19.322
as we've read, as we've studied, we're more able now to share and defend our faith than we were.
01:06:19.322 --> 01:06:25.452
Well, and the preponderance of the evidence overwhelmingly points to the truth of the Christian faith.
01:06:25.452 --> 01:06:29.072
I mean, so you don't have to know everything to know a lot of things.
01:06:29.072 --> 01:06:34.752
And the more you know, I believe, after four decades of studying it,
01:06:34.752 --> 01:06:36.443
the more confident I've become.
01:06:36.779 --> 01:06:40.662
That's why I wrote the book Confident Faith. I give 20 reasons,
01:06:40.662 --> 01:06:44.965
and I draw it as converging arrows pointing to truth in the middle.
01:06:45.792 --> 01:06:49.191
Which ultimately points to the gospel message of Christ.
01:06:49.683 --> 01:06:54.172
And I think we can know that with confidence without knowing the answer to every question.
01:06:54.948 --> 01:06:59.662
And there is a struggle in it, for sure, and a challenge. But as finite beings
01:06:59.662 --> 01:07:00.719
who aren't all-knowing.
01:07:01.921 --> 01:07:06.267
We also get the joy of, oh, I get it.
01:07:06.731 --> 01:07:10.497
And imagine a world where there was no joy of discovery. So it is,
01:07:10.497 --> 01:07:13.717
I mean, it's, I don't know if it's right to put it this way,
01:07:13.717 --> 01:07:18.037
but it seems almost like a common grace the Lord has given us that we're finite.
01:07:18.037 --> 01:07:18.847
So we're not going to have all
01:07:18.847 --> 01:07:23.426
the answers, but we find great joy and satisfaction in finding answers.
01:07:23.997 --> 01:07:28.257
And so we had all the answers, how insufferable we would be.
01:07:31.693 --> 01:07:37.259
Yeah i i guess what i would add to it too is like i think that makes it hard
01:07:37.480 --> 01:07:43.957
to be the kind of soapbox apologist that's you know the the debater,
01:07:44.859 --> 01:07:50.417
you know i think we have this sort of image of what an apologist should be and
01:07:50.417 --> 01:07:56.307
it's that answer man you know anything you throw at me, I can give you the airtight
01:07:56.307 --> 01:07:59.192
sort of syllogistic argument for.
01:07:59.830 --> 01:08:03.666
And I just don't think that's our situation. I think, as you guys have said,
01:08:04.242 --> 01:08:08.717
one of my favorite verses, in fact, is 1 Corinthians 13, 12,
01:08:08.717 --> 01:08:13.153
talking about seeing through the glass dimly or darkly.
01:08:14.396 --> 01:08:19.700
I just think that's our situation. And so while it does make it hard to be that
01:08:19.903 --> 01:08:25.181
know-it-all professor type that can answer everybody's questions,
01:08:25.750 --> 01:08:27.375
I don't think that's what we're called to.
01:08:27.939 --> 01:08:31.865
I think we're called to be in community with people that are like-minded and
01:08:31.865 --> 01:08:35.776
some that are not, and that we just sort of pursue truth together.
01:08:36.153 --> 01:08:40.925
And that's where it's wonderful. That's where that discovery is so fun and so
01:08:40.925 --> 01:08:45.702
cool. And when you can kind of help somebody see something a little more clearly,
01:08:46.034 --> 01:08:47.596
that's such a wonderful thing.
01:08:47.862 --> 01:08:51.505
And then when somebody helps you see it, like that's this beautiful picture
01:08:51.505 --> 01:08:55.529
of community seeing through that glass darkly and coming to it,
01:08:55.872 --> 01:09:02.512
inching our way forward in a way to a clearer view of these things together in community.
01:09:02.842 --> 01:09:04.715
That's great. Well said.
01:09:05.521 --> 01:09:08.625
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Travis. Travis, how can people follow
01:09:08.625 --> 01:09:11.515
along with your work and what you do?
01:09:11.515 --> 01:09:14.975
And do you have any exciting projects that you've got coming up that you want
01:09:14.975 --> 01:09:19.335
to tell us about? Yeah. So my website's kind of the home base.
01:09:19.335 --> 01:09:22.680
So that's just my name, travisdickinson.com.
01:09:23.271 --> 01:09:27.548
And I've got, you know, connections to YouTube and other places there.
01:09:28.895 --> 01:09:32.295
Yeah, I've got a book project that I'm just starting that'll be a kind of,
01:09:32.675 --> 01:09:34.879
I've got a more advanced book on logic.
01:09:35.332 --> 01:09:38.335
This'll be kind of the sales pitch to that. And it's really more than that.
01:09:38.335 --> 01:09:43.477
It's just trying to sort of entice people to the life of the mind and just,
01:09:43.593 --> 01:09:46.536
again, asking the questions, being curious.
01:09:46.942 --> 01:09:50.885
And so we talk about, I'll be talking about things like distraction and the
01:09:50.885 --> 01:09:56.589
value of reading books and some of that stuff in the book. That's very in its early stages.
01:09:57.065 --> 01:10:00.361
So that'll be sometime before it's out, but that's what I'm focused on right now.
01:10:00.825 --> 01:10:04.436
So a popular version of his logic and the way of Jesus, right?
01:10:04.796 --> 01:10:06.890
Yep. Awesome. Very cool.
01:10:07.542 --> 01:10:10.665
Well, thank you for joining us and thank you everyone who's been submitting
01:10:10.665 --> 01:10:15.095
questions and who has watched live stream. Please like and subscribe on our
01:10:15.095 --> 01:10:18.189
YouTube channel, Follow us on Facebook and on X.
01:10:18.716 --> 01:10:23.395
And we'll be back next month with another live stream. I believe next month
01:10:23.395 --> 01:10:26.515
we have Oz Guinness coming and joining us. Yeah, that'll be fun.
01:10:27.015 --> 01:10:29.545
It'll be a bit of a challenge. Alicia will be back for that.
01:10:29.545 --> 01:10:33.315
She's off speaking at Summit today, where Matthew and I and Mark have spent
01:10:33.315 --> 01:10:34.524
a good bit of time this summer, too.
01:10:35.163 --> 01:10:39.655
But in September, we're doing three consecutive worldview weeks,
01:10:40.115 --> 01:10:45.805
different places, where our team goes into a big Christian school and talk on
01:10:45.805 --> 01:10:47.614
this, do Q&As just like this.
01:10:48.067 --> 01:10:52.645
Well, because of the travel, Matthew's going to have to be doing the Ask and Apologize.
01:10:52.645 --> 01:10:55.415
Well, he's doing it remote today, but you're going to be doing it remote from
01:10:55.415 --> 01:10:59.395
the school while we have Ask and Hassan. So that'll be kind of fun.
01:10:59.395 --> 01:11:03.675
And yeah, we'll see how that all works out. The road show. Yeah, exactly.
01:11:03.971 --> 01:11:07.155
Apologetics road show, if you will. Yes. Yeah, that's good.
01:11:08.295 --> 01:11:10.785
All right. Well, God bless everybody. Thanks again for joining.
01:11:10.785 --> 01:11:12.646
Us and we'll see you next time. Thanks.