Podcasts about Mere Christianity

Scripture: Genesis 19 Key Takeaways: + The Spiritual Condition of Sodom Ezekiel 16:49 + The Spiritual Condition of Lot Hebrews 11:8-10 + The judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah is a dress rehearsal for a future and greater judgment Jude 1:7 Luke 17:26-35 Romans 5:8-10 Matthew 11:20-24 + Judgement begins with the household of God 1 Peter 4:14-19 1 John 2:15-17 “Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it.” – Puritan Writer “But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance to join His side freely. God will invade...When that happens it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage, the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on his side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like and dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left. For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we have really chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.” – CS Lewis, Mere Christianity.

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or else we will eventually rot.” –C.S. Lewis"Mere Christianity" is Lewis' compelling apologetic for Christianity. For Lewis, Christianity is not easy or simple; rather, it is demanding and risky. In this sermon series, Rev. Dr. Rodger Nishioka will explore Lewis' arguments for a Christian faith that is a radical reordering of our lives.Sunday service times are 9 a.m., 11 a.m., and 4 p.m. at the Mission Campus in Prairie Village, Kansas, and 10 a.m. at the Antioch Campus in Overland Park, Kansas. If you are unable to attend in person, you can worship online at villagepres.org/online. Support the showContact Village Presbyterian Churchvillagepres.orgcommunications@villagepres.org913-262-4200Have a prayer request? pastoral-care@villagepres.orgFacebook @villagepresInstagram @villagepreschurchYouTube @villagepresbyterianchurchTo join in the mission and ministry of Village Church, go to villagepres.org/giving

Ed Clancy joins us with a report on Christian Persecution and we unpack CS Lewis' Mere Christianity with Andrew Swafford.

“To have faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that he says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus, if you really handed yourself over to him, it must follow that you are trying to obey him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because he has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of heaven is already inside you.” –C.S. Lewis"Mere Christianity" is Lewis' compelling apologetic for Christianity. For Lewis, Christianity is not easy or simple; rather, it is demanding and risky. In this sermon series, Rev. Dr. Rodger Nishioka will explore Lewis' arguments for a Christian faith that is a radical reordering of our lives.Sunday service times are 9 a.m., 11 a.m., and 4 p.m. at the Mission Campus in Prairie Village, Kansas, and 10 a.m. at the Antioch Campus in Overland Park, Kansas. If you are unable to attend in person, you can worship online at villagepres.org/online. Support the showContact Village Presbyterian Churchvillagepres.orgcommunications@villagepres.org913-262-4200Have a prayer request? pastoral-care@villagepres.orgFacebook @villagepresInstagram @villagepreschurchYouTube @villagepresbyterianchurchTo join in the mission and ministry of Village Church, go to villagepres.org/giving

Mere Christianity is C.S Lewis' compelling apologetic for Christianity. For Lewis, Christianity is neither easy nor simple—rather, it is demanding and risky. In this sermon series, we will explore his arguments for Christian faith as a radical reordering of our lives.Sunday service times are 9 a.m., 11 a.m., and 4 p.m. at the Mission Campus in Prairie Village, Kansas, and 10 a.m. at the Antioch Campus in Overland Park, Kansas. If you are unable to attend in person, you can worship online at villagepres.org/online. Support the showContact Village Presbyterian Churchvillagepres.orgcommunications@villagepres.org913-262-4200Have a prayer request? pastoral-care@villagepres.orgFacebook @villagepresInstagram @villagepreschurchYouTube @villagepresbyterianchurchTo join in the mission and ministry of Village Church, go to villagepres.org/giving

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a British writer, literary scholar and theologian. He is best known for writing the Chronicles of Narnia. Baptized as an infant, Lewis became an atheist at 15 years old because he was angry at God both for not existing and for creating such a terrible world. He became a Christian “kicking, struggling, and resentful” at 33 years old, influenced by friends like J.R.R. Tolkien and various writings. Mere Christianity is Lewis' compelling apologetic for Christianity. For Lewis, Christianity is neither easy nor simple. Rather, it is demanding and risky. In this sermon series, we will explore his arguments for Christian faith as a radical reordering of our lives.Sunday service times are 9 a.m., 11 a.m., and 4 p.m. at the Mission Campus in Prairie Village, Kansas, and 10 a.m. at the Antioch Campus in Overland Park, Kansas. If you are unable to attend in person, you can worship online at https://villagepres.org/online. Support the showContact Village Presbyterian Churchvillagepres.orgcommunications@villagepres.org913-262-4200Have a prayer request? pastoral-care@villagepres.orgFacebook @villagepresInstagram @villagepreschurchYouTube @villagepresbyterianchurchTo join in the mission and ministry of Village Church, go to villagepres.org/giving

In this sermon, we learn that the Christian life is a process of becoming all that God has saved us to be, which requires grace-energized effort. Sermon Outline Paul’s Admission Of Imperfection-3:12 (Holy Dissatisfaction) Paul’s Pursuit Of Christ-3:13-14 (Devotion & Determination) Paul’s Perspective -3:15 Paul’s Pattern To Follow-3:17 Paul’s Warning False Brothers -3:18-19 Paul’s Heavenly Hope & Citizenship -3:20-21 Insightful Quotes “To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.” A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit Of God If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. ... It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.134 Application Recognize and admit where your life doesn’t display Kingdom values and pursuits. Remove distractions from your life to focus on the “one thing” that matters most. Resolve to pursue God’s plans and purposes for your life, relying on God’s grace to energize your efforts. Reflection Questions What do you need to change in your life in order to pursue the one thing that matters most? What habit is your greatest hindrance to run the race with endurance that is before you?

We're joined by Dr. Andrew Swafford, Catholic theologian, author and popular professor at Benedictine College talks about his book Lunatic, Liar, or Lord: Unveiling the Truth of Catholicism with C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. Kristen Delaune, Pediatric Intensive Care Nurse, and member of CMA NOLA Guild provides monthly update and Marianne Schmidt, director of youth ministry in the Diocese of Biloxi, talks about her canonization experience of Saints Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati.

Exploring C. S. Lewis' "What Are We to Make for Jesus Christ?" - a chapter he wrote in 1950 in a book for young people (Asking Them Questions). Here Lewis expands his famous argument from Mere Christianity, evaluating the historical Jesus and arguing that he could not have been either a Liar or a Lunatic, and, therefore, must be who he said he was: Lord. In this chapter, Lewis explores whether Jesus could have simply been a legend that grew among his followers. His answer, again, is "No, therefore, Jesus must be Lord." Find more Lesser-Known Lewis — Online: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠pintswithjack.com/lesser-known-lewis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/lesserknownlewis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@lesserknownlewis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lesser-Known Lewis Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: lesserknownlewis@gmail.comGraphic Design by Angus Crawford.Intro Music - Written by Jess Syratt, arranged & produced by Agnus Crawford and Jordan Duncan.

 A young brave truth-teller's earthly life ended this past week, however his light has not dimmed. Let us remember Charlie Kirk as a life long learner and advocate for truth and living life God's way. Read a challenging book he recommended like Mere Christianity,1984, A Brave New World… Even with his busy schedule he read 100 books a year! Reading does something nothing else can do, it stretches and exercises our minds. We can interact with authors from different centuries and backgrounds and cultures. Charlie challenged young and old to live daringly and be difference makers. Please join us as we share my grandson's free verse poem for Charlie. We are grateful for each of you! May we grow together! Blessings and as Charlie always said, “Buckle-up, here we go!”

On Wednesday, September 10th, a student at Evergreen High School shot two students before shooting himself. Within the same hour, Charlie Kirk, a young political activist and speaker, was shot and killed while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. In I Thessalonians 4, Paul exhorts the church in Thessalonika to live in light of Jesus' resurrection. He then adds, “that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” What does grieving with hope look like? Dave and Autumn discuss how to respond to tragedy, to lament, and to long for the kingdom with hope.Resources mentioned in this episode:Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

No Suck Saturday brings five uplifting stories: a 5-year-old's solo trip to Chick-fil-A in Florida, an Ohio man's 3,599-book reading list inspiring a new generation, Tim Tebow's gospel-sharing moment at a college football kickoff, a 40-year-old man rescued from a playground slide, and Ava Jones' inspiring cancer remission after a tragic accident. Aaron and Bella also dive into C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, exploring Chapter 7 on forgiveness and the concept of loving the sinner but hating the sin.   positive news, Chick-fil-A, Florida police, reading legacy, Tim Tebow, gospel, playground rescue, Ava Jones, cancer remission, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, forgiveness, Christian values

Episode 2.36Texts, Myths, and ManuscriptsIs the New Testament historically trustworthy—or just a rewritten patchwork of pagan myths? In this episode of Take 2 Theology, Zach and Michael respond to online critics who claim the Bible is unreliable and Jesus is just a recycled myth.Covered in this episode:– What do textual variants actually show?– How do the Dead Sea Scrolls impact our confidence in Scripture?– How was the New Testament canon formed—and does it hold up under scrutiny?– Are the popular “copycat messiah” claims (Horus, Mithras, Dionysus, etc.) grounded in truth or internet fiction?Drawing from respected scholars like Bart Ehrman, N.T. Wright, and Ronald Nash, this episode unpacks the facts and clears the fog—so you can know what the Bible really is and why it still stands.Lutheran Satire Video--Horace Ruins Christmas: https://youtu.be/s0-EgjUhRqA?si=dNr0t7vhazj-AfkmDavid Wood is the gentleman whose first name Michael could not remember.Jesus, Recycled Redeemer? (STR Article): https://www.str.org/w/jesus-recycled-redeemer-Person of Interest by J. Warner Wallace: https://coldcasechristianity.com/person-of-interest-by-j-warner-wallace/Books by Michael Kruger on the Canon:https://a.co/d/fqYyP8zhttps://a.co/d/gLaG99dProminent atheists and skeptics who converted to Christianity:C. S. Lewis (Oxford scholar, Mere Christianity), Francis Collins (geneticist, The Language of God), Alister McGrath (theologian, The Dawkins Delusion), Rosalind Picard (MIT professor), Allan Sandage (cosmologist), Anthony Flew (philosopher, late-life belief in God), A. N. Wilson (novelist/biographer), Guillaume Bignon (French philosopher), Malcolm Muggeridge (journalist/satirist), Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ), Andrew Klavan (novelist/screenwriter), Jennifer Fulwiler (Something Other Than God), J. Warner Wallace (cold-case detective, Cold-Case Christianity), Abdu Murray (former Muslim apologist), Nabeel Qureshi (Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus), and Jonathan Noyes (former atheist lawyer, now apologist with Stand to Reason).Find our videocast here: https://youtu.be/rPZV4u8C1zcMerch here: https://take-2-podcast.printify.me/Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):⁠https://uppbeat.io/t/reakt-music/deep-stone⁠License code: 2QZOZ2YHZ5UTE7C8Find more Take 2 Theology content at http://www.take2theology.com

The Final Chapter.

Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46 Key Takeaways: + The Identity Jesus Claims Daniel 7:13-14 Acts 17:30-31 "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God? That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. "The sane man does not believe that he is God; the sane man does not believe that he will rise from the dead. If Jesus said those things, He was either speaking the truth, or He was insane." – G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man. + The Judgment Jesus Delivers + The Criteria by which Jesus Judges John 10:14–15 Matthew 10:40–42 1 Corinthians 4:9–13  Galatians 6:10 1 John 3:14 1 John 3:16–18 3 John 5–8

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION“To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” ~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity“If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”~Saint Augustine “All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.”~Woody Allen, film director SERMON PASSAGEHebrews 13:20-25 (ESV) 20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. 22 I appeal to you, brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly. 23 You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon. 24 Greet all your leaders and all the saints. Those who come from Italy send you greetings. 25 Grace be with all of you.

Join Aaron and Bella for another uplifting edition of No Suck Saturday, featuring five stories that objectively don't suck. From the legacy of compassionate judge Frank Caprio to a Jamaican student's innovative self-cleaning door handle, NYPD officers' heroic rescue, a unique sleep apnea solution, and Riley Gaines' heartwarming pregnancy discovery. Plus, a brief study of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity on the true meaning of marriage and a highlight of the week focused on family time.   A.M. Update, Frank Caprio, self-cleaning door handle, NYPD rescue, sleep apnea, conch blowing, Riley Gaines, C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, marriage, family, positivity    

The third chapter.

Aaron and Bella McIntire celebrate episode 50 of No Sucks Saturday with five feel-good stories: Chattanooga police brave flash floods to rescue stranded drivers, a Michigan gym empowers seniors to lift heavy weights, a 30-year-old frozen embryo becomes the world's oldest newborn via Christian adoption, an AI system fights insurance denials for cancer patients, and a dad's viral Amazon-style review of his baby. Plus, a book study on C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity explores sexual morality, and the highlight of the week is their son's fourth birthday.   Chattanooga police, flash flood rescue, senior weightlifting, embryo adoption, AI insurance denials, baby product review, C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, sexual morality, family milestones

Hunter Baker, provost and professor at North Greenville University, joins Timon and Josh to talk about his new book, Postliberal Protestants: Baptists Between Obergefell and Christian Nationalism.    Hunter Baker, J.D., Ph.D. serves as provost and dean of the faculty of North Greenville University. He is the author of three books (The End of Secularism, Political Thought: A Student's Guide, and The System Has a Soul), has contributed chapters and forewords to 21 others, and has published over 40 articles and essays. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, and in the near future, Chinese. He is the winner of the 2011 Michael Novak Award conferred by the Acton Institute and has lectured widely on matters of religion and liberty. In addition to his work at North Greenville, Baker also serves as a contributing editor for Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity and as an associate editor of the Journal of Markets and Morality. He is a fellow of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy, and the Land Center for Cultural Engagement. Baker also writes for the popular website World Opinions.   Learn more about Hunter Baker's work: https://www.ngu.edu/faculty/hunter-baker/   Purchase Dr. Baker's book, "Postliberal Protestants" https://a.co/d/eQdqpPh   ––––––   Follow American Reformer across Social Media: X / Twitter – https://www.twitter.com/amreformer Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/AmericanReformer/ YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@AmericanReformer Rumble – https://rumble.com/user/AmReformer Website – https://americanreformer.org/   Promote a vigorous Christian approach to the cultural challenges of our day, by donating to The American Reformer: https://americanreformer.org/donate/   Follow Us on Twitter: Josh Abbotoy – https://twitter.com/Byzness Timon Cline – https://twitter.com/tlloydcline   The American Reformer Podcast is  hosted by Josh Abbotoy and Timon Cline, recorded remotely in the United States, and edited by Jared Cummings.   Subscribe to our Podcast, "The American Reformer" Get our RSS Feed – https://americanreformerpodcast.podbean.com/ Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-american-reformer-podcast/id1677193347 Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/1V2dH5vhfogPIv0X8ux9Gm?si=a19db9dc271c4ce5

Second session.

On Legal Docket, testing the boundaries of free speech; on Moneybeat, David Bahnsen on the new Fed nominee, jobs data, and trade alliances; and on History Book, C.S. Lewis takes to the airwaves. Plus, the Monday morning news Support The World and Everything in It today at wng.org/donateAdditional support comes from Covenant College. Rigorous academics, grounded in Reformed theology, lived out in Christ-centered community. covenant.edu/WORLDFrom Dordt University, where pre-med students gain knowledge through undergraduate research and hone skills through hands-on simulations. Dordt.eduAnd from WatersEdge Kingdom Investments — personal investments that build churches. 5.05% APY on a three-month term. WatersEdge.com/investWatersEdge Kingdom Investments - WatersEdge securities are subject to certain risk factors as described in our Offering Circular and are not FDIC or SIPC insured. This is not an offer to sell or solicit securities. WatersEdge offers and sells securities only where authorized; this offering is made solely by our Offering Circular.

True peace in our homes begins with the choice of whom we serve and what we believe. As Christine F. Perry reflects in today's prayer, our beliefs shape our behavior—whether that’s striving to earn love, chasing wealth, or living for earthly rewards. When we choose our own way over God’s, chaos, fear, and anxiety often follow. But when we surrender authority and headship to the Lord, we invite His peace to reign in our hearts and our homes. Drawing from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, Christine reminds us that God designed us to “run on Himself” — there is no true happiness or peace apart from Him. Today, we are called to make the intentional choice to serve the Lord, letting His presence shape our relationships, attitudes, and daily life. Today's Bible Verse:

An overview of the study.

Looking for some summer reading inspiration for yourself or your children? Two particular 20th century authors are most beloved around the Veritas (and, Christian in general) community: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein. This episode gives a new perspective on why these authors and their works are so enduring, influential, and simply wonderful.Listen in on a fun and insightful discussion with Mr. Paul Miller, a local pastor who also teaches upper grade Omnibus (humanities and Great Books) here at Veritas. Paul's love for Lewis and Tolkein is infectious as he has taught their works in 7th and 8th grade Secondary Omnibus, and this conversation will either ignite an excitement for these authors and thinkers in yourself, or rekindle your interest and inspire you to journey back to Narnia and Middle Earth or pore over Mere Christianity and Miracles.If you've ever wondered why we bring up these two Brits so often in our classes and discussions - or if you're already an ardent fan of their works - we're pretty sure you'll have great fun listening to Paul talk with our Head of School Ty Fischer about Lewis, Tolkein, and why they belong not only in a school's curriculum, but also on your family's bookshelf.This episode was originally released in June 2023.

C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity described hope as a theological value. The Gospel is called GOOD NEWS. America has changed- not for the better. Then when we add death, devastation and the feeling of helplessness from a Natural Disaster, what little hope people still have is diminished. Hope is what the people in the Hill Country in Texas need. On the heels of one of the most catastrophic flooding events in recent U.S. history with now more than 140 confirmed deaths, many still missing and the latest significant flooding in San Saba over the last weekend, Convoy of Hope has helped deliver more than 300,000 lbs. of essential supplies across the Texas Hill Country. On today’s hour of power there will be a live update from the Hill Country with Mr. Black’s guest. Ethan Forhetz is the National Spokesperson for Convoy of Hope. Convoy of Hope is aiding Families and First Responders in the Texas Hill Country Flooding. Hear about HOPE that is coming to such hopelessness and be reminded of the power of HOPE! Today’s Hour of power is an emotional, and hopeful journey you don’t want to miss. Plus, you can become a HOPE PEDDLER for many who are without- Like they matter, because they do!! Be sure to Like and Follow us on our facebook page!www.facebook.com/limradio Instagram @likeitmattersradioTwitter @likeitmatters Get daily inspiration from our blog www.wayofwarrior.blog Learn about our non profit work at www.givelikeitmatters.com Check out our training website www.LikeItMatters.Net Always available online at www.likeitmattersradio.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Somehow…Monday returned. Welcome back! This morning I am headed into Washington, DC to speak to a group of young professionals about communication and breaking through both the noise and polarization. These are tough times for getting your message across. Ears are closed. Eyes are covered. Impressions are set. How do we break through? I'll share a few brief thoughts. It'll be brief mainly because I want you to check out the video today, my interview about the new Superman movie on Fox Radio with Ben Domenech of The Transom. Part of it can be watched here for Free Subscribers to Geeky Stoics, and if you want more, it's posted here. I know Ben appreciates the views. To watch the whole thing here, like with other videos, you can upgrade to a Paid subscription to support the work we're doing here. The community is growing! On YouTube, we hit 15,000 subscribers yesterday and notched our one millionth view, thanks in part to this video about Friendship vs Eros (Erotic, Romantic love). Getting Your Message AcrossSo, as I was saying….how do we break through? It's all about moral foundations. Once you understand the moral framework your audience is operating under, you can make an effort to appeal to their code and move the needle. In his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt breaks down the moral universes of conservatives and liberals (a simple left-to-right framing) into six pillars. * Care/harm – concern for the suffering of others* Fairness/cheating – emphasis on justice, rights, and equality* Loyalty/betrayal – allegiance to one's group, family, or nation* Authority/subversion – respect for tradition and legitimate authority* Sanctity/degradation – valuing purity & avoiding the disgusting or profane* Liberty/oppression – a desire to resist domination and tyranny (added later in his framework)Geeky Stoics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Haidt's widely acclaimed social science research showed that liberals place an outsized value on 1 and 2, Care and Fairness. Their first principles involve displaying concern for others' suffering and caring about matters of fairness. Of course, these streams meet on matters of social justice and civil rights. Conservatives are more balanced in how they see the world. Each pillar gets pretty equal attention, with slightly more attention paid to Loyalty and Authority. They care about Fairness and the factor of equality, but in terms of proportionality to one's contributions. It's funny because conservatives think about this with the collective in mind, which is a framework usually used by liberals. Some outside thoughts on these values from familiar namesC.S. Lewis on his skepticism of Equality: “Do not misunderstand me. I am not in the least belittling the value of this egalitarian fiction, which is our only defence against one another's cruelty—the function of equality is purely protective. It is medicine, not food. By treating the human person as if they were all the same kind of thing, we avoid innumerable evils. But it is not on this that we were made to live. It is idle to say that men are of equal value. If value is taken in a worldly sense—if we mean that all men are equally useful or beautiful or good or entertaining—then it is nonsense. If it means that all are of equal value as immortal souls, then I think it conceals a dangerous error.”* In summary, Lewis believed that Equality was a social necessity, but nothing more than that. He held that hierarchies are in keeping with nature (Authority) and that people become vessels for ideas and values, and ideas and values are ranked. “Equality is medicine, not food”. It treats a kind of ailment, but it's not our reason for being. J.R.R. Tolkien on Freedom: “-the word has been so abused by propaganda that it has ceased to have any value for reason, and become a mere emotional dose for generating heat.”* A short quote and simple. Freedom is nice, but there are higher goods than freedom, such as Sanctity. You'll find liberals and conservatives switch places quickly on Freedom when it suits their competing moral pillars. Once you have this understanding of moral foundations, you can decide whether or not you want to attempt appealing to them for the purpose of making a connection. Last thing, and for this we'll return to Narnia's founder, C.S. Lewis, once more. You have to keep your heart open to the possibility that you're only being served the worst possible impression of your opponents. We know this. TV news and social media algorithms are designed not to spread truth, but to maintain the audience. If Fox News or MSNBC starts going too easy on the other side, people change the channel. They tuned in for a worldview, so subverting that is not in the business model. Know this. You can watch and enjoy the “news” but know it's a form of entertainment, first and foremost. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that with news, we become disappointed when our opponents are anything less than devils. Once we go down that road, we will start to see ourselves, the world, and God...as devils also. Turns out, believing the best in people is something that extends to how you treat yourself in the mirror. So be gracious. “Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second, then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”-C.S. Lewis in ‘Mere Christianity'Have a great week, everyone, and thank you for reading Geeky Stoics. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.geekystoics.com/subscribe

No Suck Saturday returns with five uplifting stories. A heartfelt tribute to Hulk Hogan, who passed at 71, features a man sharing how Hogan walked with his daughter, giving her hope to overcome a rare disease. In Iowa, baby Nash Keen, born at 21 weeks, earns a Guinness World Record as the youngest premature baby to survive, defying a 0% survival chance. Golfer Scottie Scheffler, fresh off a British Open win, emphasizes faith and family over fleeting victories. A humorous TikTok shows a family scattering ashes, interrupted by a Spotify ad about clearing “stuck poop,” bringing levity to a somber moment. Finally, Peyton Manning recounts a secret workout with Tom Brady, threatening high schoolers to keep their friendship under wraps. The episode closes with a discussion on C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, exploring morality versus psychoanalysis, and a bittersweet highlight of Bella weaning her daughter.   Hulk Hogan, Nash Keene, Scottie Scheffler, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, premature baby, Guinness World Record, British Open, Spotify ad, morality, psychoanalysis

James Bryan Smith's thought for this week is, “Live By The Spirit.” In this episode, James quotes several passages from C.S. Lewis's book Mere Christianity to help explain his thought. Interested in donating to the Things Above Podcast? Donate here! Learn more about the Christian Spiritual Formation degree Scholarship at Friends University! Related Episodes: 1. […] The post Live By The Spirit appeared first on Apprentice Institute.

“Your real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.”— C.S. Lewis, Mere ChristianityHow have fear and shame shaped the person you've become?What patterns have you developed to avoid exposing the parts of yourself that feel afraid, uncertain, ashamed, or weak?How do you reach for aggression or withdrawal as a way to protect yourself from the risk of being hurt or being known?And beneath all the posing and self-protection, what do we truly long for? Who are you meant to be?Join me and brave allies Nathan Jameson and Grant Leitheiser, as we explore what it means to become the kind of man or woman who has nothing to hide, nothing to fear, and nothing to prove.What might a man look like—and what could his impact become, day by day and decade by decade—if he were strong and at peace in and through the God who created and sustains him?In this episode, we take a deeper dive into a central idea of initiation: Becoming True.It has all been prologue. The best is yet to come.For the Kingdom,Morgan and Cherie

Have you ever wondered why the Bible doesn't always make sense, even after years of reading or attending church? In this episode of Seek Go Create, host Tim Winders kicks off a five-part series exploring the real story behind the pages of scripture, and why true understanding requires more than just effort or hustle. Drawing inspiration from C.S. Lewis, Bono, and his own life journey, Tim invites you to discover what it means to move from striving and performance to genuine peace and transformation. If you've ever felt stuck or confused in your faith, this conversation will give you fresh courage to explore what might be missing—hint: it's not “trying harder.”"What if the thing you're missing isn't more effort, but just having more peace?" - Tim Winders Access all show and episode resources HEREReasons to Listen: Explore Why the Bible Often Feels Confusing: Tim Winders shares his own journey of struggling to understand the Bible, even after decades in church, offering fresh insights into why scripture sometimes doesn't make sense—and what to do about it.Discover the Life-Changing Concept of the “New Man”: Drawing inspiration from C.S. Lewis and a recent interview with Bono, this episode digs into powerful ideas about identity, transformation, and finding true peace rather than endless hustle.Get a Candid Look at Faith “Unlearning”: Tim opens up about losing everything, walking away from hustle culture, and the process of unlearning religious habits to finally discover what the Bible's story is really all about—paving the way for listeners to reflect on their own spiritual journey.Key Lessons:Striving vs. Abiding - Tim shares his personal journey from living in “hustle culture”—believing success comes only through striving and effort—to discovering the power of peace and abiding. Sometimes, what we're missing in life and faith isn't more effort, but a deeper sense of peace.Identity Over Performance - A recurring theme is the difference between basing your value on performance versus identity in Christ. Tim highlights that many of us, even in spiritual pursuits, get caught up in proving ourselves, when the biblical message is really about transformation—becoming a new creation rather than simply improving the old self.Unlearning in Order to Re-Learn - Despite decades of church involvement and biblical study, Tim realized he didn't fully grasp the Bible's overarching story. Real growth began when he allowed himself to unlearn surface-level interpretations and prosperity-focused readings, creating space to rediscover the true narrative of scripture.The “New Man” Concept - Drawing inspiration from C.S. Lewis's “Mere Christianity” (specifically the concept of the “New Man”), Tim explores the idea that genuine transformation in Christ isn't about minor self-improvement, but becoming a whole new version of ourselves—calm, secure, and truly at peace.Scripture Should Lead to Peace, Not Pressure - Tim emphasizes that misunderstanding our identity leads to faith feeling like pressure and obligation. When we really understand who we are in Christ, scripture becomes a source of peace, not stress—and the Bible's story shifts from being a book of rules to an invitation to personal and spiritual transformation.Episode Highlights:00:00 Introduction to the Series00:24 The Journey of Understanding the Bible03:04 Setting the Stage: Location and Setup04:41 Personal Journey and Struggles05:24 The Turning Point: Bono and C.S. Lewis11:33 The Concept of the New Man24:25 Contrasting the Old and New...

Philippians 2:1-11 NIVQuote by CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.Quote by Dallas Willard, Spirit of the Disciplines, Secrecy rightly practiced enables us to place our public relations department entirely in the hands of God…We allow him to decide when our deeds will be known and when our light will be noticed.Humility and Other-Centeredness            Surrendered to the agenda of God            Faithful in the small things            See the dignity of others            Receive the goodness of GodPractice of Secrecy

Matt, hey, my friends, welcome to the off the wire podcast. My name is Matt Wireman, and with over 25 years of coaching experience, I bring to you a an integrated approach to coaching where we look at mind, body and soul. So this being my little corner of the universe, welcome we cover everything from spiritual formation or the interior life all the way to goal setting and how to make your life better with life hacks, and I cover everything in between. So whatever it fits my fancy, I'm going to share with you, and I'm so thankful for your time, and I hope this episode helps you. All right. Well, hey, welcome, welcome to another episode of Off The Wire. This is Matt, still I haven't changed, but I do have with me, my friend. Really proud to call him a friend. And from seminary days, Dr Josh chatro, who is the Billy Graham chair for evangelism and cultural engagement at Beeson. That's a mouthful. Josh, well done. And then he is also, they just launched a concentration in apologetics at Beeson, which is really exciting. They got a conference coming up this summer. Is that also an apologetics Josh,its own preaching and apologetics? Okay? Awesome.And, and largely, you're also, you're also part of the Tim Keller Center for Cultural apologetics, and then also a, they call them fellows at the Center for Pastor theologians as well. That's right, yeah. And you in, you have been at Beeson for a couple years, because prior to that, you were at a you were heading up. And what was it largely an apologetics group, or was it, was it more broad than that in Raleigh?Yeah, it was. It was much more expansive than that. Evangelism and apologetics is part of what we were doing, but it was the Center for Public Christianity, okay? It was also very much in the work and faith movement. And I was also resident theologian at Holy Trinity Anglican in Raleigh. We were there for five years,excellent and and you don't know this because you don't keep tabs on who bought your book, but I've got every one of your books brother, so every every book you put out, and I'm like, I love this guy, and I'm gonna support him and buy his book. So it started all the way back, if you remember, with truth matters, yeah. And I use that book for one of the classes that I built here where I teach. And then then I want to go through the Litany here and embarrass you a little bit. And then it goes to apologetics, at the Cross Cultural Engagement, telling a better story, surprised by doubt. And then one that you just released called the Augustine way, retrieving a vision for the church's apologetic witness. So do you write much on apologetics? Is that kind of your thing?Yeah, I've written a few books on that.So why? Like, what is it about apologetics that has really captured your heart, in your mind and like, as opposed to just teaching theology, yeah, it's a certain it's a certain stream. If folks are first of all, folks are curious, like, What in the world is apologetics? Are you apologizing to folks? Like, are you saying I'm sorry?Well, I do have to do that. I'm sorry a lot. That's a good practice. That's not quite what apologetics is. Okay. Okay, so we, one of the things I would say is, and when I meet, when I meet up with old friends like you, sometimes they say, What have you been doing? Because we didn't see this coming. And when we were in seminary together, it wasn't as if I was, you know, reading a lot of apologetic works. And so one of the things is,and you weren't picking fights on campus too much. You were always a really kind person. And most, most time, people think of like apologists as, like, real feisty. And you're not a feisty friend. I'm not. I actually, unless you start talking about, like, soccer and stuff like that, right? Yeah,yeah, I'm not. Yeah, I don't. I don't love, I don't love, actually, arguments I'd much rather have, which is an odd thing, and so I need to tell how did I get into this thing? I'd much rather have conversations and dialog and kind of a back and forth that keeps open communication and and because, I actually think this ties into apologetics, most people don't make decisions or don't come to they don't come to any kind of belief simply because they were backed into an intellectual corner. And but now maybe I'll come back to that in a second. But I got into this because I was doing my PhD work while I was pastoring. And when you do yourpH was that in in Raleigh, because you did your PhD work at Southeastern, right?That's right, that's right. But I was actually, we were in southern, uh. In Virginia for the first half, we were in a small town called Surrey. It was, if you know anything about Tim Keller, it was he served in Hopewell, Virginia for seven or nine years before he went to Westminster and then to New York. And we were about 45 minutes from that small town. So if you've read Colin Hansen's book, he kind of gives you some background on what is this, these little communities, and it does, does kind of match up the little community I was serving for two years before moving to another little community in South Georgia to finish while I was writing. And so I pastored in both locations. So these aren't particularly urban areas, and yet, people in my church, especially the young people, were asking questions about textual criticism, reliability of the Bible.Those are any topics forfolks like, yeah, something happened called the Internet, yes. All of a sudden now, things that you would, you would get to, maybe in your, you know, thm, your your master's level courses, or even doctoral level courses. Now 1819, year old, 20 year olds or 50 year olds had questions about them because they were reading about some of this stuff on the internet. And because I was working on a PhD, I was actually working on a PhD in biblical theology and their New Testament scholar, people would come to me as if I'm supposed to know everything, or you know. And of course, of course, when you're studying a PhD, you're you're in a pretty narrow kind of world and very narrow kind of lane. And of course, I didn't know a lot of things, but I was, I kind of threw myself into, how do I help people with these common questions. So it wasn't as if, it wasn't as if I was saying, oh, I want to study apologetics. I kind of accidentally got there, just because of really practical things going on in my church context. And and then as I was reading and I started writing in response to Bart Ehrman, who is a is a agnostic Bible scholar. Wrote four or five New York Times bestsellers, uh, critical of the New Testament, critical of the Bible, critical of conservative Christianity. I started writing those first two books. I wrote with some senior scholars. I wrote in response. And then people said, so your apologist? And I said, Well, I guess I am. And so that, yeah, so I'm coming at this I'm coming at this area, not because I just love arguments, but really to help the church really with really practical questions. And then as I began to teach it, I realized, oh, I have some different assumptions coming at this as a pastor, also as a theologian, and trained in biblical theology. So I came with a, maybe a different set of lenses. It's not the only set of lens. It's not the it's not the only compare of lenses that that one might take in this discipline, but that's some of my vocational background and some of my kind of journey that brought me into apologetics, and in some ways, has given me a little bit different perspective than some of the dominant approaches or dominant kind of leaders in the area.That's great. Well, let's go. Let's get after it. Then I'm gonna just throw you some doozies and see how we can rapid fire just prove all of the things that that are in doubt. So here we go. Okay, you ready? How do we know that God exists?Yeah, so that word no can have different connotations. So maybe it would be better to ask the question, why do we believe God exists? Oh,don't you do that? You're you can't, you can't just change my question. I was kidding. Well, I think, I think you bring up a great point, is that one of the key tasks in apologetics is defining of terms and understanding like, Okay, you asked that question. But I think there's a question behind the question that actually is an assumption that we have to tease out and make explicit, right? Because, I mean, that's, that's part of you. So I think sometimes people get into this back and forth with folks, and you're like, Well, you have assumptions in your question. So go ahead, you, you, you go ahead and change my question. So how do we knowthe issue is, is there is that when we say something like, you know, we people begin to imagine that the way Christianity works is that we need to prove Christianity in the way we might prove as Augustine said this in confessions, four plus six equals 10. And Augustine, early church father, and he's writing, and he's writing about his own journey. He said I really had to get to the point where I realized this is not how this works. Yeah, we're not talking about, we do not one plus one, our way to God.Yeah. And when is Augustine writing about When? When? So people are, yeah, 397,at. This point. So he's writing right at the, you know, right right before the fifth century, okay? And, and, of course, Augustine famously said, we have to believe to understand, for most believers, God is intuitive, or what? Blaise Pascal, the 17th century Christian philosopher He called this the logic of the heart. Or I can just cite a more contemporary figure, Alvin planeta, calls this basic belief that. He says that belief in God is a basic belief, and and for So, for for many believers, they would say something like this. And I think there's validity in this so is that God just makes sense, even if, even if they haven't really worked out arguments that they they say, Well, yeah, this God makes sense to me. Now I can kind of begin to explore that. I will in just a second, but I just want to say there's, for most of your listeners, it's something like, I heard the gospel and this and the stories of Jesus, and I knew they were true, right? And as kind of insiders here, we would say that's the Spirit's work. The Holy Spirit is working, and God speaks through creation and his word, and people believe. And so that's that's why we believe now, of course, once we say that people have these kinds of intuitions, or as theologians would put it, this sense of God kind of built into them, I would want to say, as an apologist, or even as a pastor, just a minister, you don't have to be apologist to say this is that we can appeal to those intuitions and make arguments in many different types of ways. Well,hold on one second. Isn't that a little too simplistic, though? Because, I mean, you have the Greeks who believed in all the different gods, and the Romans who adopted those gods and changed their names and like, how do we assimilate that? You know, where, you know Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins famously say, Well, I don't, I don't believe in Zeus. So does that make me an atheist? It would have made me an atheist back in, you know, you know Roman and Latin and Greek times. So, so there's an intuition, but, but how do we delineate that? Well, that's not the right object of that intuition.Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have this intuition, you know, we could say Romans, Romans, one is pointing us to, this is what I would argue, this sense of God, and yet we're, we're fallen, according to the Christian story. And so even though we have this sense of God, we suppress that, and we worship false gods, or we worship the created, rather than the Creator. So the Christian story as a as a Christian, helps make sense of both the kind of why? Well, although we have this sense this, there's this common sense of God, it goes in many different directions and and I would argue that even if you deny kind of transcendence altogether, you're still going to have you're going to still make something kind of a god. You're going to you're going to want to worship something. And I think that's that's part of the point of Romans, one, you end up going to worship the created rather than the Creator. So does that get out what you're asking Matt or Yeah,I think so. I think sometimes the arguments that are real popular, even now is like, well, I just don't, I just don't, I just don't believe that God exists, just like I don't believe that Zeus exists, like, what's, what's the big deal? Why? Why are you so adamant that I believe in that God exists? Like to because I don't, I don't know that God exists because I don't see him. So how would you respond to somebody who says, Well, this Intuit intuition that that you say we all have, and that Romans one says we have, I just don't buy it, you know, because, I mean, I'm, I wouldn't believe that Zeus exists, because there's no empirical evidence to show me otherwise. So how would you respond to somebody that's equivocating or saying that, you know, Yahweh of the Old Testament, the God of the, you know, the God of the Bible is, this is just a tribal deity, just like Zeus is. So, how should we? Iwould, I would say so. So I think we can make kind of arguments for some kind of for transcendence. So there's ways to make arguments against naturalism. That's that's what's being promoted. And there's various different kinds of, you know. So sometimes these kinds of arguments that are in the Christian tradition are used to say, hey, we're going to prove God's existence using these arguments. I think I'm not. Are typically comfortable with the language of prove and how it's used in our context today, again, we get into the math, kind of two plus two equals four. Kind of thinking, yep. But I think a lot of those arguments are appealing to both intuitions and they they work much more effectively as anti naturalistic arguments. Not so much saying, Okay, we know a particular God through, say, the moral argument, okay, that we're but, but it's arguing against simply a naturalistic, materialistic. You know, even Evans, who's a longtime professor at Baylor, makes this argument that those, those types of arguments are really good against pushing back against naturalism. So plan again, has a famous argument that says, if naturalism and evolutionary theory are both true because of how evolution theory works, it's not about right thinking, but right action that you perform certain things to survive. Then, if both of those are true, you have no reason to trust your kind of cognitive faculties.Can you tease that one out a little bit? I kind of lost on that one. He said,What planet is arguing? Is he saying? Look, if, if all of our kind of cognitive faculties are just a product of evolution, okay? And by the way, not only does it's not just a plan. Ago makes this argument, it's actually kind of interesting figures who were like Nietzsche and others made this argument that basically, if, if evolution and naturalism is true that all we are is energy and manner and this product of evolutionary process, then we would have no reason to actually trust kind of our rationality, and that's what rationality is actually mapping onto reality. All of our our brains and our minds are really just producing certain conclusions to help us survive. So it would undercut the very foundations of that position. Now again, yeah, being able to observe, yeah, yeah. So, so with that, again, I think that's an example of an argument that doesn't so much. You know, say this is the Christian God. This supports the belief in Christian God. But what it does is it from within their own thinking. It challenges that. It undercuts their own way of thinking, which is what you're assuming and what you're kind of pushing back on, is a kind of naturalistic world. And I think we can step within that try to understand it and then challenge it on its own terms. And I think that's the real strength of planning this argument. What he's doing now, go ahead.Well, that's it, yeah, in his, in his, like, the the Opus is, uh, warranted. Christian belief is that what you're referencing the the big burgundy book.I can't remember where he makes this argument? Yeah, I can'tremember exactly. But like, if all your cognitive faculties are working, somebody who believes that God exists does not mean that they does not negate all of the other cognitive faculties that they're like if they're in their rational mind, that they have warrants for their belief. But, but that's what I what I think, where I'm tracking with you, and I love this is that even like, it still holds true, right? Like there's not one silver bullet argument to say now we know, like, that's what you were challenging even in the question is, how do you know that you know that you know that God exists? Well, you have to layer these arguments. And so this is one layer of that argument that even the Greeks and the Romans had a sense of transcendence that they were after, and they identified them as gods. But there's this other worldliness that they're trying to attribute to the natural world that they observe, that they can't have answers for, and that we can't observe every occurrence of reality, that there has to be something outside of our box, so to speak, out of our naturalistic tendencies. And so even that can be helpful to say, well, that kind of proves my point that even the Greeks and the Romans and other tribal deities, they're after something outside of our own experience that we can experience in this box. Yeah, that'sright. And there's a, I mean again, this, this argument, isn't intellectually coercive, and I don't think any of these are intellectually coercive. What I mean by that is you can find ways out. And so the approach I would take is actually called an abductive approach, which says, Okay, let's put everything on the table, and what best makes sense, what best makes sense, or what you know, what story best explains all of this? And so that way, there's a lot of different angles you can take depending on who you're talking to, yep, and and so what one of the, one of the ways to look at this and contemporary anthropology? Psycho psychologists have done work on this, to say, the kind of standard, what we might call natural position in all of human history, is that there's there's transcendence. That's, it's just the assumption that there's transcendence. Even today, studies have been shown even people who grow kids, who grew up in a secular society will kind of have these intuitions, like, there is some kind of God, there is some kind of creator, designer. And the argument is that you actually have to have a certain kinds of culture, a particular culture that kind of habituate certain thinking, what, what CS Lewis would call, a certain kind of worldly spell to to so that those intuitions are saying, Oh no, there's not a god. You know, there's not transcendence. And so the kind of common position in all of human history across various different cultures is there is some kind of transcendence. It takes a very particular, what I would say, parochial, kind of culture to say, oh, there's probably no there. There's not. There's, of course, there's not. In fact, Charles Taylor, this is the story he wants to tell of how did we get here, at least in some secular quarters of the West, where it was just assumed, of course, there's, of course, there's a God to 500 years of to now, and at least some quarters of the West, certain, certain elite orsecular? Yeah? Yeah, people. And even then, that's a minority, right? This is not a wholesale thing, yeah.It seems to be. There's something, well, even Jonathan height, uh, he's an atheist, says, has acknowledged that there seems to be something in humans. That's something like what Pascal called a God shaped hole in our heart, and so there's this kind of, there's this deep intuition. And what I'm wanting to do is, I'm wanting in my arguments to kind of say, okay, given this as a Christian, that I believe we have this sense of God and this intuition of God, these intuitions, I want to appeal to those intuitions. And so there's a moral order to the universe that people just sense that there is a right and wrong. There's certain things that are right and certain things are wrong, even if a culture says it is, it is, it is fine to kill this group of people, that there's something above culture, that even there's something above someone's personal preference, that is their moral order to the universe. Now, given that deep seated intuition, what you might call a first principle, what makes best sense of that, or a deep desire, that that, that nothing in the universe seems to satisfy that we have. This is CS Lewis's famous argument. We have these desires, these natural desires for we get thirsty and there's there's water, we get hungry and there's food, and yet there's this basically universal or worldwide phenomenon where people desire something more, that they try to look for satisfaction in this world and they can't find it. Now, what best explains that? And notice what I'm doing there, I'm asking that the question, what best explains it? Doesn't mean there's, there's not multiple explanations for this, but we're saying, What's the best explanation, or profound sense that something doesn't come from nothing, that intelligence doesn't come from non intelligence, that being doesn't come from non being. Yeah, a deep sense that there's meaning and significance in life, that our experience with beauty is not just a leftover from an earlier primitive stage of of evolution. And so we have these deep experiences and intuitions and ideas about the world, and what I'm saying is particularly the Christian story. So I'm not, I'm not at the end, arguing for just transcendence or or kind of a generic theism, but I'm saying particularly the Christian story, best, best answers. Now, I'm not saying that other stories can't incorporate and say something and offer explanations, but it's a, it's a really a matter of, you know, you might say out narrating or or telling the Gospel story that maps on to the ways we're already intuiting about the world, or experiencing or observing the world.Yeah, so, so going along with that, so we don't have, like, a clear cut case, so to speak. We have layers of argument, and we appeal to what people kind of, in their heart of hearts, know, they don't have to like, they have to be taught otherwise. Almost like, if you talk to a child, they can't, they kind of intuit that, oh, there's something outside, like, Who created us? Like, who's our mom? You know, like, going back into the infinite regress. It's like, okay, some something came from nothing. How does that even how is that even possible? So there has to be something outside of our. Experience that caused that to happen. So, so say you, you go there, and then you help people. Say, help people understand. Like, I can't prove God's existence, but I can argue that there are ways of explaining the world that are better than other ways. So then, how do you avoid the charge that, well, you basically are a really proud person that you think your religion is better than other religions. How, how could you dare say that when you can't even prove that you're you know? So how? How would you respond to somebody who would say, like, how do you believe? Why do you believe that Christianity is a one true religion? Yeah, um,well, I would say a couple of things. One is that, in some sense, everyone is staking out some kind of claim. So even if you say you can't say that one religion is true or one one religion is the one true religion, that is a truth claim that you're staking out. And I think it's fine that this for someone to say that they just need to realize. I mean, I think they're wrong, but I think they're they're making a truth claim. I'm making a truth claim. Christians are making truth so we're, we all think we're right, and that's fine. That's fine, but, but then we but then once you realize that, then you're not saying, Well, you think you're right, but I just, I'm not sure, or it's arrogant to say you're right. I think, of course, with some some things, we have more levels of confidence than other things. And I think that's the other thing we can say with Christian with as Christians, it's saying, Hey, I believe, I believe in the resurrection. I believe in the core doctrines of Christianity. It doesn't mean that everything I might believe about everything is right. It doesn't even mean all my arguments are are even 100% always the best arguments, or I could be wrong about a particular argument and and I'm also not saying that you're wrong about everything you're saying. Okay, so, but what we are saying is that, hey, I I believe Jesus is who he said he was, and you're saying he's not okay. Let's have a conversation. But it's not, rather, it's not a matter of somebody being air. You know, you can hold those positions in an arrogant way. But simply saying, I believe this isn't in itself arrogance, at least, I think how arrogance is classically defined, yeah. And what is this saying? I believe this, and I believe, I believe what Jesus said about himself. And I can't go around and start kind of toying with with, if I believe he's Lord, then it's really not up to me to say, okay, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, kind of take some of what he said, but not all of what he said. If you actually believe he rose from the dead and he is Lord and He is God, then then you take him at his word.What is it, as you think about cultural engagement, cultural apologetics that you've written on like, what is it in our cultural moment right now where people you say that thing, like Jesus said, You know, he, he, he said, I'm God, you know, not those explicit words, right? That's some of the argument. Like, no, but you look at the narrative he did, and that's why he was going to be stoned for blasphemy. That's why all these things. But that's, that's another conversation for another day. But, and then you talk to someone, you're like, Well, I don't believe he was God. I don't believe His claims were. Like, why then do you do we oftentimes find ourselves at a standstill, and people just throw up their hands like, well, that's your truth, and my truth is, I just don't, like, just don't push it on me. Like, why do we find ourselves in this? And it's not new. I mean, this is something that goes back to, you know, hundreds of years ago, where people are making arguments and they're like, Well, I just don't know. So I'm gonna be a transcendentalist, or I'm gonna be a deist, or I'm gonna whatever. So how do we kind of push back on that a little bit to say, No, it's not what we're talking about. Is not just a matter of preference, and it's not just a matter of, hey, my truth for me and your truth for you. But we're actually making it a claim that is true for all people. Like, how do we kind of encourage people to push into that tendency that people have to just throw up their hands and say, whatever? Pass the piece, you know? Well,okay, so I think let me answer that in two ways. One's philosophically, and then two are practically. One philosophically. I do think it's, you know, CS Lewis was on to this, as he often was way ahead of the curve on certain things, but on an abolition of man. When he talked, he's talking about the fact value distinction and how we've separated. You know, you have your facts, and then everything you know, where, classically, you would kind of recognize that courage, you know, is a virtue, and that's, it's a, it's a, it's also a fact that we should pursue courage and rather than just my preference of kind of and so there's actually. Be this, but now we have, well, that's a value, kind of courage, and say you should do something, but it's, it's, that's your value and and so we have this distinction between facts, which is, follow the science, and then values over here. And as that has opened up. You have both a kind of, on one hand, a very, very much, a people saying in a very kind of hard, rationalistic way, you know, science has said, which, that would be another podcast to kind of dive into that more science is good and, yeah, and, but science doesn't say anything. So I'm a fan of science, but it doesn't say anything. We interpret certain things, but, but so you can kind of have a hard rationalism, but you also combine with a kind of relativism, or at least a soft relativism that says, Well, this is my truth, because values become subjective. So that's the philosophical take. But the kind of practical thing, I would say, is they need people. One of the reasons people do that is because, it's because they've seen kind of these to reference what you're talking about earlier this hey, this person's coming in wanting to talk about my worldview, and it just becomes this fierce, awkward encounter, and I don't want anything to do with that type of thing, like I don't, I don't want to go down the dark corners of of the Internet to have these, to have these intellectual just like Charles Taylor says, a lot of the kind of arguments are, I have three reasons why your position is untenable. He says something like untenable, wrong and totally immoral. Now, let's have a conversation. It just and so it's kind of like, no thanks. I don't think I want to have that conversation. You do you. And so there's, there is a part that, culturally, something is going on which needs to be confronted. And Lewis was doing that work, and a lot of philosophers have followed him in that but there's also a side of of maybe where our own worst enemies here, and the way that we try to engage people, and where we start with people, and we think, Okay, let's start in this kind of, you know, apologetic wrestling match with people. And a lot of times, people are just looking to cope. People are just looking to survive. They have mental health issues going on, and they don't want another one to pop up because of the apologist. And so they're just looking to try to skirt that conversation and get to feeding their kids or dealing with their angry neighbor. And so we've got to kind of take stock on kind of where people are at, and then how to engage them with where they're at. Now I'm going to apologize. I think all of those arguments are helpful in a certain context, but a lot of times, we've been our own worst enemy, and how we try to try to engage so what I what I encourage students and ministers to do is is start talking about people's stories, and you know how life is going and where what's hard, and asking really good questions, and kind of having a holy curiosity and and often, I was in an encounter with a guy who came up to me after a kind of a university missions thing, and he was an atheist, and he wanted to talk about the moral argument. And I was happy to do that for a few minutes, but then I just asked him. I said, what you know, what do you love to do? Tell me about yourself, and where do you really find joy in life? And he looked at me, and he started to tear up, and he said, You know, I'm really lonely right now, you know, go figure this moment in our world, the kind of fragmented world we live in. And he said, what's really meaningful to me is my is my pet, because he provides solace. And there's this moment where, of course, I mean, here's an atheist wanting to show up at a Christian event, right? And because Christians were nice to him, and he's deeply lonely, and we got to have a pretty meaningful conversation about, you know, the benefits of following Christ in the community, communion with not only God, but with others, yeah, but if I would have just left it at, let's go to the more we would have never got there. But it took me kind of asking the question, which is, in essence, what I was trying to ask is what, I didn't put it like this, but what are you seeking? What are you really after here? And where are you really getting joy in life, and what's going on? And I if we can learn to go there, I think we'll have much more productive conversations. And then just kind of, I heard chatro talk about the, you know, ontological argument. Now let me throw that out there at somebody. I think that's why apologists and apologetics have sometimes been given a bad name. But if you. Actually look at the tradition, the the larger tradition. There's so many resources, and there's so many people, apologists, doing lots of different things, that I think gives us kind of way to actually engage people where they're at.Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. Well, I It reminds me, I believe it was Schaefer who talked about the the greatest apologetic, at least his time, and I think it stands true even now, is welcoming people and being hospitable towards people, welcoming the questions, not looking at folks as adversaries, but fellow pilgrims. And then you welcome them into that space, into that community. And then they're they see that, quite frankly, the faith works. The Christian ethic actually works, albeit imperfect, by imperfect people in imperfect ways. But you know, as we go through pain and suffering, as we go through, you know, elation and disappointment, like there's still a lot that that we can demonstrate to the world through our testimony that it works. You know, so to speak. So I'd love to hear you kind of help walk us through how the Christian story tells a better story about pain and suffering, because that's that's a fact of every person listening is that there's some modicum of pain and suffering in their life at any moment. And then you look at the grand scale of the world and all these things, but just even we can go down to the individual level of the why is there pain and suffering in my life and in the world and, you know, in general. But I like, like for you to just kind of riff on that for a little bit for us, to helpus, yeah. And in some ways, this question, and the apologetic question is a kind of real, a snapshot into the into what we're talking about with, how do we respond to that? Not just as Okay, an intellectual question, yeah, yeah, but it's also a profoundly experiential question. And there's youmean, you mean, and how, in the moment when you're saying, in the moment when somebody asks you the question, not getting defensive, but being being willing to listen to the question, Is that what you mean by that? And yeah,well, what I mean is, that's certainly true. Matt, what I was really thinking, though, is how this is not just something kind of an abstract, intellectual question. Oh, okay, but it's a profound experiential and there's different angles that we might take into it. But I mean, as a kind of snapshot or a test case in our apologetic is, I think there's ways to answer that question that are sterile, that are overly academic, and I and that also, I would say, rushes in to give an answer. And I would want to argue that Christianity doesn't give an answer to evil and suffering, but it gives a response. And let me make, let me explain that, yeah, is, is an answer. Tries in the way I'm using it, at least tries to say, I'm going to solve this kind of intellectual problem, and the problem of evil and suffering in the world, of why a good God who's all powerful would allow the kind of evil and suffering we see in the world is, is one that we might say, Okay, now there's the problem. Now let me give the solution. And this is often done, and we've you maybe have been in this if you're listening into a certain context where a kind of famous apologist says, Here is the answer, or famous Christian celebrity says, Here is the answer to evil, and this solves all the problems, until you start thinking about it a little bit more, or you go home, or three or four years, and you grow out of that answer and and so I think we need to be real careful here when we say we have the answer, because if you keep pushing that question back in time, or you start asking questions like, well, that that bullet that hit Hitler in World War One and didn't kill him? What if the God of the Bible, who seems to control the wind and everything, would have just blown it over and killed Hitler. It seems like maybe it could have been a better possible world if Hitler, you know, didn't lead the Holocaust. Okay, so, so again, I think, I think pretty quickly you begin to say, Okay, well, maybe some of these theodicies Don't actually solve everything, although I would say that some of the theodicies that are given things like free will, theodicy or or the kind of theodicies that say God uses suffering to to grow us and develop us. And I think there's truth in all of that, and there's but what it does. What none of them do is completely solve the problem. And so I think that there's value in those theodicies in some extent.Hey, did you know that you were created to enjoy abundance? I'm not talking about getting the latest pair of Air Jordans or a jet plane or whatever that this world says that you have to have in order to be happy. Instead, I'm talking about an abundant life where you are rich in relationships, you're rich in your finances, but you are rich in life in general, that you are operating in the calling that God has for you, that He created you for amazing things. Did you know that? And so many times we get caught up in paying our mortgage and running hither and yon, that we forget that in this world of distractions that God has created you for glorious and amazing things and abundant life. If you would like to get a free workbook, I put one together for you, and it's called the my new rich life workbook. If you go to my new rich life.com my new rich life.com. I would be glad to send you that workbook with no strings attached, just my gift to you to help you. But here'sthe thing, here's what I want to go back to with a question. Is that the Odyssey as we know it, or this? And what I'm using theodicy for is this, this responsibility that that we feel like we have to justify the ways of God, is a particularly modern phenomenon. I think this is where history comes and helps us. Charles Taylor talks about this in that the kind of way we see theodicy and understand theodicy was really developed in the middle of the 1700s with figures like Leibniz, and then you have particularly the Lisbon earthquakes in the middle of the 18th century. And that was this kind of 911 for that context. And in this 911 moment, you have philosophers being saying, Okay, how do we justify the ways of God? And are trying to do it in a very kind of this philosophical way to solve the problem. But from for most of human history and history of the West, of course, evil and suffering was a problem, but it wasn't a problem so much to be solved, but it was a problem to to cope with and and and live in light of, in other words, what you don't have in the Bible is Job saying, Okay, well, maybe God doesn't exist. Or the psalmist saying, maybe God doesn't exist because I'm experiencing this. No, they're ticked off about it. They're not happy about it. They're struggling to cope with it. It is, it is a problem, but it's not, then therefore a problem. That says, well, then God doesn't exist. Yeah. And it didn't become a widespread kind of objection against God's very existence, until certain things have happened in the kind of modern psyche, the kind of modern way of imagining the world. And here is what's happened. This is what Charles Taylor says. Is that Taylor says what happened is kind of slowly through through different stages in history, but but in some sorry to be gloved here, but it's, it's a very kind of, you know, long argument. But to get to the point is, he says our view of God became small, and our view of humans became really big. And so God just came became kind of a bigger view of version of ourselves. And then we said, oh, if there is a reason for suffering and evil, we should be able to know it, because God's just a bigger kind of version of us, and he has given us rational capacities. And therefore if we can't solve this, then there must not be a god. That's kind of where the logic goes. And of course, if you step into the biblical world, or what I would say a more profoundly Christian way of looking at it is God. God isn't silent, and God has spoken, has given us ways to cope and live with suffering and ways to understand it. But what he what he doesn't give us, is that we're going to he actually promises that, that we're not going to fully understand His ways that, that we're going to have to trust Him, even though we can't fully understand why he does what he does in history all the time. And so this leads into what, what's actually called. There's, this is a, this is a weird name if you're not in this field, but it's called skeptical theism. I'm a skeptical theist. And what skeptical theists Are you is that we're not skeptical about God, but we're skeptical about being able to neatly answer or solve the problem of evil. But we actually don't think that's as big of a deal, because, simply because. I don't understand why God, God's simply because I don't understand God's reasons. Doesn't mean he doesn't have reasons. Yeah, yeah. Andso just beyond your the your finite, uh, temporo spatial understanding of things, right? Like you don't understand how this horrible situation plays out in a grander narrative,right? So it's Stephen wickstra. He had this famous argument. I'll riff off of it a little bit. I mean, just metaphor. He says, if you have a if you have a tent, and we go camping together, Matt and and I open the tent and say, there's a giant dog in there. And you look in there, there's no dog, you would say, Yeah, you're either crazy or a liar. But if I open the tent and say there's tiny bugs in there, and they're called no see ums, you wouldn't, you wouldn't know. You wouldn't be in a position to know. You wouldn't be in an epistemological position to know whether there's a bug in there or not. So you would simply have to decide whether you're going to trust me or not. And then, you know, the claim of the non Christian might be, well, yeah, why would I trust the God given the kind of crap that I see in the world? And I would say, well, a couple reasons. One is most profoundly because God has entered into this world. He has not sat on the sidelines. So even though we don't fully understand it, he has in the person of Jesus Christ, he has suffered with us and for us. So this is a God who says, I haven't given you all the answers, but I have given you myself. And that's I think both has some rational merit to it, and profoundly some intellectual merit to that. I'd also say that the Christian story actually gets at some deep intuitions, kind of underneath this challenge or this problem. It was CS Lewis, who was an atheist in World War One, and and he was very angry at God because of the evil and violence and his his mom dying at an early age, and was an atheist. But then he realized that in his anger against God, that he was assuming a certain standard, a certain kind of moral standard, about how the world should be, that there is evil in the world and that it shouldn't be so, and this deep intuition that it shouldn't be so that certain things aren't right. Actually, you don't have if you do away with God's existence, you just you have your preferences. But in a world of just energy and matter, why would the world not be absurd? Why would you expect things not to be like this. Why would you demand them not to be like this?So a deeply embedded sense of morality that can't be explained by naturalism is what you're getting, yeah?That that we have a certain problem here, or certain challenge with not fully being able to answer the question, yeah, but they have, I would say, a deeper challenge, that they don't have even the kind of categories to make sense of the question. So that's those are some of the directions I would go, and it's first stepping inside and kind of challenging against some of the assumptions. But then I'm as you, as you can tell, then I'm going to say how the Christian story does make sense of these deep intuitions, our moral intuitions, that are underneath the problem, or the challenge of evil and suffering. And then also going to Jesus in the Gospel. And the Gospel story,one of the questions I had on our on the list of questions was, how do we know the Bible is true? But I want to delve into more of this understanding of doubt and how that plays, because you've written a lot on this. But I'd like, could you just direct us to some resources, or some folks, if folks are interested in, how do we know the Bible is true? I'm thinking real popular apologist right now is Wesley. Huff is a great place to go. But are there other like, hey, how do I know that the Bible is true? Because you keep appealing to Christianity, which is in for is the foundation of that is the Bible. So could you give us a few resources so people could chase those down.Peter Williams has written a couple little good books on the Gospels. AndPeter Williams Williams, he's in Cambridge, right, orTyndale house, over there and over the pond. And he's written a book on the Gospels. And I can't think of the name, but if you put it on the internet, it'll show up. And the genius of Jesus as well. Okay, little books, and I think both of those are helpful as far as the Gospels go. Richard, Richard balcom is really good on this, Jesus and the eyewitnesses. As well as a little book that most people haven't heard of. It's a, it's an introduction to the Gospels in that off in an Oxford series, which is, you know, kind of a brief introduction to the Gospels. And he, especially at the very beginning, he gives us John Dixon, who's at Wheaton now, has written a lot of good books on on on this. And it's got this series called skeptics guide to and it does both Old Testament and New Testament kind of stuff. So that little series is, is really helpful. So those are some places I would start. And in my books, I typically have, you know, chapters on this, but I haven't, haven't written, you know, just one book, just on this. The early books, truth matters and truth in a culture of doubt, were, were engaging Bart airman. But really, Bart airman not to pick on on Airmen, but just because he was such a representative of a lot of the the views that that we were hearing, he ended up being a good kind of interlocutor. In those I would just say, I know you didn't. You just asked for books. And let me just say one thing about this is I, I think if you are trying to engage, I think if you take the approach of, let me prove the Bible, let me take everything and just, yeah, I don't think that's the best way. I think you often have to give people some you know, whether it's, you know, the beginning of Luke's Gospel, where he's saying, This is how I went about this. And I actually did my homework to kind of say, this is at least the claim of the gospel writers say, and then, but the real way that you you come to see and know, is you have to step into it and read it. And I think one of the apologetic practices I would want to encourage, or just evangelistic practices, is is offering to read the gospels with people and and working through it. And then certain things come up as you read them, apologetically that you'll, you'll want to chase down and use some of those resources for but I think often it's, it's saying, hey, the claims are, at least that, you know, these guys have done their homework and and some of the work Richard welcome is doing is saying, you know, the Gospel traditions were, were were pinned within the lifetime of eyewitnesses and this. And so that's some of the work that that balcom has helpfully done that kind of help us get off the ground in some of these conversations.Would that be your go to gospel Luke or, like, if you're walking with players, or a go to like,some people say more because of the shortness or John, I I'm happy with them. Allfour should be in the canon. Yeah, no, that's great. And I think a couple other books I'm thinking of Paul Wagner's from text from text to translation, particularly deals with Old Testament translation issues, but then text critical pieces, but then also FF. Bruce's canon of Scripture is a real, solid place to go, if people are interested in those big pieces, but those, I mean, yeah, Richard Bauckham work was really helpful for me when I was like, How do I even know, you know the starting place is a good starting place. So, yeah, thank you for that. Sowhat the challenge is, people have got to make up their mind on Jesus. Yeah. I mean, I think that's where I want to kind of triage conversations and say, Hey, I know the Bible is a big book and there's a lot going on. First things you gotta make a call on. So that's where I'm going to focus on, the Gospels. That'sgreat. No, that's great. Well, you know, a lot of times you, and you've mentioned this earlier, that sometimes in our attempts to give reasons for our faith, we can come to simplistic answers like, Okay, this is, here you go. Here's the manuscript evidence, for example. Or, hey, here's the evidence for the resurrection. Oh, here. You know, this is pain and suffering, Romans, 828, you know, having these quick answers. And I think it stems from a desire to want to have a foundation for what we stand on. But a lot of times, and I think what we're seeing in our culture, and this is not anything new, this topic of deconstruction is not really a new topic is, you know, it's what's been called in the past, apostasy, or just not believing anymore. But now it's gotten a more, you know, kind of sharper edges to it. And and I would love for you to you know how you would respond to someone who is deconstructing from their faith because it didn't allow for doubt or because they were raised in perhaps a really strict Christian home. So how would you respond to somebody who says, I don't I don't like the. Had answers anymore, and I don't, you know, it's just too simplistic, and it doesn't, it's not satisfying. So how would you, because I encounter a lot of folks that are in that vein, the ones who are deconstructing, it's, it's not, you know, there's definitely intellectual arguments, but there's something else in back of that too, I think. So I'd love to hear you just kind of, how would you respond to someone who is deconstructing or has deconstructed in their faith?Yeah, yeah. And of course not. In that situation, my first response it's going to be, tell me more. Let's, let's talk more. I want to hear, I want to hear your story. I want to hear your deconversion story, or where you're at and and to have some real curiosity. Rather than here, let me tell you what your problem is. And let me tellyou, yeah, you just don't want to believe because you got some secret sin or something. Yeah? Oh, goodnessno. I mean, it's right faith, unbelief and doubt is complex, and there's lots of forms of doubt. And we use that word I mean, it has quite the semantic range, and we use in lots of different ways. And of course, the Bible, by no means, is celebrating doubt. The Bible, it's, you know, that we is saying we should have faith. It calls us to faith, not to doubt, but doubt seems to be a couple things to say. We talk about, we talk about ourselves as Christians, as new creations in Christ, but we also recognize that we still sin, we still we still have sinful habits. We're still sinful, and in the same way we we we believe, but we can struggle with doubt, and that's a reality. And it seems to me that that doesn't mean, though, that then we celebrate doubt, as if doubts this great thing, no, but at the same time, we need to be realistic and honest that we do. And there's certain things culturally that have happened, because we now live in a pluralistic world where people seem very sane and rational and and lovely, and they believe radically different things than we do. And just that proximity, Peter Berger, the late sociologist, did a lot of work on this area. This is just it. It creates these kinds of this kind of contestability, because, well, we could imagine even possibly not believing, or kids not believing, in a way that, again, 500 years ago, you know you Luther was wrestling with whether the Roman Catholic Church had everything right, but he wasn't wrestling and doubting the whole the whole thing, yeah, God. So that creates certain pressures that I think we need to be honest about, and but, but with, and part of that honesty, I think, in that kind of conversation to say, Hey, you're not alone and you're not just simply crazy because you're you're raising some of these things because, I mean, that's in many ways, understandable. Yeah, okay, yeah. I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it's understandable. And I hear what you're saying, and I'm, let's talk about it now. The the kind of metaphor that that I use is to think about Christianity as a house. Of course, that's not my metaphor. I'm I'm borrowing from CS Lewis, who talked about Christianity as a house and in Mere Christianity, Lewis said he wanted to get people through non Christians into the hallway, and so he wanted to get them into the door so that they would and then they could pick up a particular tradition, they could enter a room. But his approach in Mere Christianity was to represent kind of the whole house. And what I think is happening in many cases is that people, now, I'm riffing off of his metaphor, people in the church. People have raised in the church, so they've grew up their whole life in the house, but it's actually in the what I would call the attic. And the attic as as I talk about it is, is in the house. It's, it's a Christian community, but it was, it was many times they're built out of a kind of reactionary posture against culture, without a deep connection to the rest of the house. It's kind of like, Hey, we're scared, and understandably so, the kind of decadent morality, certain shifts happening in the west with Can you giveus a couple examples of what you're thinking like? What would a person living in the attic like? What would their tradition kind of. Look like,yeah. So a couple of things. One in response to, in some cases, in response to the kind of intellectual movements, the kind of sex, secular and, you know, thinking they would say, you know, intellectualism is bad, that would be one response from the attic, like, don't worry about, you know, thinking. Just believe your problem is you're just thinking too much. So that would be one response, a kind of anti intellectualism. The other response is what I would call a kind of, depending on what kind of mood I'm in, I would call it a kind of quasi intellectual that, and that sounds harsh that I say what kind of mood I'm in, but a kind of quasi intellectual response, which is like, Oh, you want arguments. You want evidence. We'll give you two plus two equals equals God, and we'll kind of match, you know, fire with fire, and we can prove God's existence. And oftentimes, those kinds of apologetic reactions, I would call them, sometimes they're kind of quasi intellectual, because I don't think that's how the kind of bit we come to the big decisions. I don't think it's rational enough about a rationality about kind of what type of humans we are, and how we come to the big decisions and the big truths and and so I think that's one response, and that's why you have a kind of industry of apologetics sometimes. And the way they do it, I'm not saying in some ways it can be helpful, but in other ways, it can cause problems down down the road, and we've seen that at least, like, for instance, with the evil and suffering kind of conversation we were having before. If people say, actually, those arguments actually don't make, don't fully do what they were. We you claim too much for your arguments. Let's just say, like that. Okay, so that's one kind of, so there's a there's a kinds of, well, Christianity, in that side can kind of become this kind of intellectual, sterile work where you're just kind of trying to prove God, rather than this, than this way of life, where does worship come in? Where does devotion come in? What is And so very quickly it becomes, you know, this intellectual game, rather than communion with the living God. And so the emphasis understandably goes a certain way, but I would say understandably wrong goes a certain way, and that argument should be part of this deeper life of faith that we live and so we again, I'm wanting to say the motives aren't necessarily, aren't wrong, but where we get off because we're too reactionary, can go off. Let me give you one other ones. And I would say, like the purity culture would be another kind of side of this where we see a morally decadent culture of sexuality, and we want to respond to that we we don't want our kids to grow up believing those lies. Yeah, as as a friend of mine says, you know that the sexual revolution was actually and is actually bad for women, and we need to say that. We need to say that to people in the church, absolutely. But in response to that, then we create what, what has been called a purity culture, which, which has, has kind of poured a lot of guilt and have made have over promised again, if you just do this, you'll have a wonderful life and a wonderful marriage if you just do this, and then if you mess up, oh, you've, you've committed this unpardonable sin, almost. And so there's a lot of pressure being put on, particularly young women and then, and then over promising and so all of this,can people see that the House of Cards is coming down because they're like, Yeah, my marriage is horrible.It creates this pressure, right where you have to. You have to think a certain way. You have to behave this very kind of way. It's reaction to want to protect them. So again, I'm saying, Yes, I understand the reactions, yeah, and, but, but, and this is, I think, a key part of this, because it's not connected well to the rest of the house. It often reacts, rather than reflected deeply on the tradition and helps fit your way, the centrality of the Gospel, the centrality of what's always been, Christian teaching and coming back to the main things, rather than kind of reacting to culture because we're nervous, and doing it in such a way that, you know, well, people will begin to say, That's what Christianity is about. Christianity is really about, you know, your politics, because that's all my pastor is talking about, interesting, you know, and this is all they're talking about. So that becomes the center,even though the ethic is is, is, becomes the. Center, as opposed to the the philosophy and theology guiding the ethic, is that, would that be another way to put it, like how you live, become, becomes preeminent to, you know, wrestling with doubt and and trying to bring God into the space of your doubt and that kind of stuff is, that, is that?Yeah, I mean, so that, I think one of the things that the the early creeds help us to do is it helps us to keep the main thing. The main thing, it helps us to keep, rather than saying, well, because culture is talking about this, we're going to, you know, kind of in our churches, this becomes the main thing, is reacting or responding, maybe, whether it's with the culture and certain movements or against the culture, yeah. But if you're anchored to the kind of the ancient wisdom of the past you're you do have, you are at times, of course, going to respond to what's going on culturally, yeah, but it's always grounded to the center, and what's always been the center, yeah? And I think so when you're in a community like this, like this, the pressure of, I've gotta think rightly. I've gotta check every box here, yes, and oh, and I've, I've been told that there is proofs, and I just need to think harder. I just, you know, even believe more, even Yeah, if I just, if I just think harder, then I'll eliminate my doubt, but my doubts not being eliminated. So either I'm stupid or maybe there's a problem with the evidence, because it's not eliminating all my doubt, but this creates this kind of melting pot of anxiety for a lot of people as their own Reddit threads and their Oh, and then this, trying to figure all this out, and they're Googling all these answers, and then the slow drip, oh, well, to be honest, sometimes the massive outpouring of church scandal is poured into this, yeah. And it just creates a lot of anxiety amongst young people, and eventually they say, I'm just going to jump out of the attic, you know, because it looks pretty freeing and it looks like a pretty good way of life out there. And what, what I say to people is two things. Number one, rather than simply jumping out, first look what you're about to jump into, because you have to live somewhere, and outside the attic, you're not just jumping into kind of neutrality, you're jumping into cultural spaces and assumptions and belief. And so let's, let's just be just as critical as, yeah, the attic or house as you are will be mean, be just as critical with those spaces as you have been with the attic. So you need to explore those. But also, I'm wanting to give them a framework to understand that actually a lot of the ways that you've kind of grown up is actually been in this attic. Why don't you come downstairs, and if you're going to leave the house, explore the main floor first.And what would be the main floor? What would you say? The main floor?Yeah. I would say themain orthodox historic Christianity, like, yeah. Orthodox historic Christianity, Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, just kind of go into the Yeah. And whatI would say is, for instance, the apostle creed gives us kind of what I would call load bearing walls in the house. So it gives us the places where you don't mess like load bearing walls. You don't you don't knock those down if you're going to do a remodel, and, and, and. So you would recognize the difference between load bearing walls, walls that are central versus actual different rooms in the house, and how? Well, these aren't load bearing walls, but they're, they're, they're, they're how certain people in Christian communities, churches at particular times, have articulated it and and some of these, you could deny certain things, but you could, but those are more denominational battle lines, rather than the kind of load bearing things that you if you pull out the resurrection of Jesus, if you pull out the the deity of Christ and the full humanity of Christ, If you pull out the Trinity. So let's go back to the core. And if you're going to reject, if you're going to leave, leave on the basis of those core things, not okay. I've had these bad experiences in the church now, yeah, what I think this to kind of wrap this up on this is what often happens, or what can happen if someone says, Well, yeah, I've done that, and I still don't, I don't believe Okay, yep, that's going to happen. Yep. But one of the things I suggest, in at least some cases, is that the addict has screwed people up more than they realize, and that the way that they approach. Approach the foundation and the the main floor, it's still in attic categories, as in, to go back to our first question, well, I can't prove this, yeah. And I was always told that I should be able to prove it. Well, that's not how this works, yeah. And so they they reject Christianity on certain enlightenment terms, but they don't reject Christianity as Christianity really is. So people are going to interact with Christianity, I would say sometimes your people are investigating, say the resurrection, and reflecting more on on these central claims, but they're still doing it as if, if it doesn't reach kind of 100% certainty that I can't believe. And that's just not how this works.Yeah, that's, that's food for thought, because there, there's so many people that I interact with that I try to encourage. Like, yeah, your experience was really bad, like I'm affirming that, and that was messed up. That's not That's not Christianity, that is a branch on this massive tree trunk that stinks and that needs to be lamented and grieved and also called out as wrong. So I'm using another metaphor of a tree instead. But I love the because the house metaphor is something that you use in the telling a better story. Isn't that surprised bydoubt? Surprised by doubt? Yes, that's that's what we use, and we march through things, and we use that as, really our guiding metaphor through all the chapters. And that's what I would encourage if you're if you have somebody who's struggling with this, or you're struggling with this yourself, that's That's why a friend of mine, Jack Carson, that's why we wrote the book together, because obviously this is a we had a lot of friends and acquaintances and people who were coming to us and we weren't fully satisfied with all of the kind of works, yeah, that were responding and so this, this was our attempt to try to helppeople. Well, the book right after that was, is telling a better story. And one of the things I've really appreciated in your emphasis over the last few years has been, I would call a more humane apology, apologetic in that, you know, not giving into, okay, we're gonna give you want evidence. We're gonna give you evidence, as opposed to like, okay, let's just talk about being a huma

In this episode, Jeremy W. Johnston introduces our audience to C.S. Lewis and discusses some of his most important writings. Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), a British writer and scholar, is best known as C.S. Lewis, the author of the beloved children's series The Chronicles of Narnia, as well as influential works of Christian apologetics like Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. Born in Belfast and holding academic positions at Oxford and Cambridge, Lewis was a prominent member of the "Inklings" literary group with J.R.R. Tolkien. His conversion from atheism to Christianity profoundly shaped his writing, imbuing his diverse works, ranging from literary criticism to science fiction, with theological and allegorical depth, ensuring his enduring popularity and impact on literature and Christian thought. For more information visit: https://cbtseminary.org

In this episode, Jeremy W. Johnston introduces our audience to C.S. Lewis and discusses some of his most important writings. Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), a British writer and scholar, is best known as C.S. Lewis, the author of the beloved children's series The Chronicles of Narnia, as well as influential works of Christian apologetics like Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. Born in Belfast and holding academic positions at Oxford and Cambridge, Lewis was a prominent member of the "Inklings" literary group with J.R.R. Tolkien. His conversion from atheism to Christianity profoundly shaped his writing, imbuing his diverse works, ranging from literary criticism to science fiction, with theological and allegorical depth, ensuring his enduring popularity and impact on literature and Christian thought. For more information visit: https://cbtseminary.org

Let me share with you a passage from CS Lewis's seminal work Mere Christianity “I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the centre of Christian morality is not [sexual behavior]. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and back-biting, the pleasures of power, of hatred.” Read that again. Let it sink in for a minute and then reflect on what you may have been taught about the dangers of sexual sin and the paramount importance of sexual purity. As I read this and considered how this book, Mere Christianity, was held in such high regard, I had to wonder if the same people who idolized Lewis ever really read what he wrote. You can find out more about us at our website www.gracechurchnwa.org It is a priority for us at Vine & Branch to make LGBTQIA+, all ethnicities and races, those with disabilities, and other marginalized people groups feel accepted, included, and valuable to the life of our community!

By Andrew Lazo

This episode is all about my summer of less. Resources from this episode: We Make Space by Melissa Helser John 3:30  Visit Nancy's Cornerstore!  Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis Glass Food Storage Containers  Leave Nancy a Voice Message!  Nancy Ray Website Nancy Ray on Instagram Affiliate links have been used in this post! I do receive a commission when you choose to purchase through these links, and that helps me keep this podcast up and running—I truly appreciate when you choose to use them!  

Trinitarians sometimes argue that 1 John 4:8 ("God is love") demands that God be triune in nature. In his popular book Mere Christianity, Christian apologist C. S. Lewis wrote, “The words ‘God is love' have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.” Dr. David K. Bernard counters this philosophical argument with an examination of what Scripture says about God's character and nature.Visit PentecostalPublishing.com to shop Dr. Bernard's full catalog of published works. Enter promo code DKB10 at checkout to save 10 percent on your order.If you enjoy this podcast, leave a five-star rating and a review on iTunes or your preferred podcast platform. We also appreciate it when you share Apostolic Life in the 21st Century with family and friends.

Five heartwarming stories kick off the weekend. A California father, Bryce Weiner, channels Taken to rescue his kidnapped 14-year-old daughter from human traffickers in Mexico after a three-year, 5,000-mile quest, reuniting at the U.S. embassy. Amy, a former pediatric oncology social worker, founds A Doll Like Me, crafting custom dolls for children with disabilities, funded by donations to affirm their uniqueness. A neighbor surprises another with smoked sausages, sharing 100 pounds of meat in a wholesome gesture. Dirty Paws Agape Haven in Michigan, run by cardiologist Tom Pappas, provides a sanctuary for over 20 senior dogs, ensuring their final years are filled with love. A woman's viral TikTok reveals her eclectic accent, shaped by Indian, Arabic, Lebanese, Nigerian, and American influences, learned via YouTube and Eminem. The duo dives into C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, Book 3, discussing social morality and the church's role in applying Christian principles through laypeople, not clergy. Highlights include Ben's McDonald's adventure and Bella's love for Sicario. The question of the week explores impactful books: Bella cites Perks of Being a Wallflower, while Aaron picks Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology.

In this lively episode of Considering Catholicism, Greg and Ed the Protestant tackle a listener's critique that the show is too harsh on Protestants, sparking a candid discussion over tacos. They reflect on their tone, owning occasional snark while defending the need to draw distinctions between Catholic and Protestant beliefs, as truth claims—like sacraments or authority—demand clarity. Drawing from C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, they explore why you can't linger in the “hallway” of generic Christianity forever; at some point, you must choose a room. Greg apologizes for any uncharitable jabs but reaffirms the podcast's mission: to invite listeners to consider crossing the Tiber into the Catholic Church. Ed shares his journey, stuck in the hallway due to personal circumstances, yet driven to seek truth. Join them for a mix of humor, humility, and honest reflection on navigating Christian differences. Support this ministry so more people can consider Catholicism! Website: https://www.consideringcatholicism.com/ Email: consideringcatholicism@gmail.com  

What does a Shire full of hobbits in Middle-Earth, a county full of farmers in Kentucky, and a wardrobe full of a lion have in common? For Russell Moore and singer/songwriter/author Andrew Peterson, they were all a way to find home.    In this episode—recorded inside Peterson's book-lined Chapter House in Nashville, right down the road from Moore—the two talk about the authors who, by God's grace, helped hold their faith together when it could have come apart. From the wisdom of Wendell Berry to the imagination of C.S. Lewis to the honesty of Frederick Buechner, these authors gave a clarity that helped these two keep the faith.    This isn't just a literary conversation. It's about how God uses stories, sentences, and sometimes even sword-wielding mice to reach people in moments of doubt, disillusionment, or despair. Along the way, they talk about what it means to read widely, to hold onto wonder, and to be the kind of Christian who can still be surprised by joy.   They also somehow end up talking about Moby Dick, Dungeons & Dragons, and how ChatGPT was wrong and right about what books each of them would take to a desert island.    Books and authors mentioned in this episode include: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry A Room Called Remember and Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner The Chronicles of Narnia, Till We Have Faces, Mere Christianity, and more by C.S. Lewis Godric by Frederick Buechner David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson Moby Dick by Herman Melville Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs And selections from Andrew's own works: Adorning the Dark, The God of the Garden, and The Wingfeather Saga Whether you're deep in faith, on the brink of losing it, or just looking for something beautiful to read, this conversation will remind you why the right book at the right moment can do more than explain—it can point to new life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On No Suck Saturday for May 31, 2025, Aaron and Bella McIntire share five uplifting stories, from Doug Wilson's bold church plant in Washington, D.C., to a Tennessee girl inviting her bus driver to her graduation party. An Oregon man sails to Hawaii with his cat, a Welsh mom wins a 100K ultramarathon while breastfeeding, and Jennifer Lawrence gushes about motherhood's transformative power. The duo dives into C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, exploring cardinal virtues, and shares family highlights, like Abby's dog obsession.

Join Aaron and Bella McIntire on No Suck Saturday for five heartwarming stories that objectively don't suck, from a North Carolina man fighting off a coyote with his bare hands to a touching video time capsule for graduating seniors at a Tennessee boarding school. A viral graduation name flub, a Pitbull concert surprise for a grieving mom, and a pilot's clever in-flight proposal add joy to the mix. Plus, dive into C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity Book 3, exploring the three parts of morality, and enjoy personal highlights like Ben's Michael Bublé obsession.

In this episode of No Suck Saturday, Aaron and Bella discuss a variety of uplifting stories, including the NFL's creative schedule release, inspiring tales of resilience from a 100-year-old woman and a boy receiving life-changing surgery, and the imaginative fears of a child. They also delve into C.S. Lewis's insights from Mere Christianity, exploring themes of faith and personal growth, while sharing personal family highlights and reflections on childhood literature.

In this episode of No Suck Saturday, Aaron McIntire shares heartwarming stories that highlight kindness and resilience, including a touching tale of a girl with Williams syndrome and a heroic dog rescue. The conversation transitions into a discussion of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, focusing on the concept of atonement and the nature of repentance. The episode concludes with personal highlights from the week, including family moments and reflections on children's literature.  

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comFrancis is a physician and geneticist whose work has led to the discovery of the cause of cystic fibrosis, among other diseases. In 1993 he was appointed director of the Human Genome Project, which successfully sequenced all three billion letters of our DNA. He went on to serve three presidents as the director of the National Institutes of Health. The author of many books, including The Language of God, his latest is The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust.Our conversation was entirely agreeable until we talked about trust, and his own handling of the Covid epidemic. I asked him in depth about the lab-leak theory and why he and Tony Fauci passionately dismissed it from the get-go, even as it now appears to be the likeliest source of the terrible virus. Things got intense.For two clips of our convo — intense debate on the “Proximal Origin” paper outright denying a lab leak as the source of Covid-19, and Francis finding God after decades of atheism — pop over to our YouTube page.Other topics: growing up on a rustic farm in Shenandoah; his parents creating a community theater; homeschooled until 6th grade; his amazing scientific accomplishments as a young adult; his scientism; his terminally ill Christian patients; the AIDS crisis; C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity; the First Mover question; Ross Douthat and “fine-tuning”; the multiverse; the limits to the materialist view; deism; cradle believers vs converts; evolution and sacrificial altruism; Socrates; Jesus dying for our sins; the doubting Thomas; how angels manifest; Francis Bacon; Richard Dawkins; being the NIH director during Covid; trust and mistrust in science; the early confusion in pandemics; tribalism; dismal safety standards at the Wuhan lab; gain-of-function; EcoHealth and Peter Daszak; intel agencies on lab leak; furin cleavage sites; Kristian Andersen; geopolitical fears over Trump and China; the opacity of the CCP; the Great Barrington Declaration; Trump threatening science funding at the Ivies; In Covid's Wake; and if Francis has any regrets after Covid.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Claire Lehmann on the woke right, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee on Covid's political fallout, Byron York on Trump 2.0, Robert Merry on President McKinley, Sam Tanenhaus on Bill Buckley, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on the Biden years, and Paul Elie on his book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

In this episode of No Suck Saturday, Aaron and Bella share uplifting stories ranging from heartwarming sports moments to health research findings. They discuss the importance of faith and forgiveness, highlighting personal stories of redemption and transformation. The conversation also delves into C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, exploring themes of good and evil, and concludes with personal reflections and highlights from their week.    

In this episode of No Sucks Saturday, Aaron and Bella discuss uplifting stories, including astronauts' reflections on their time in space, the return of Big Brothers Big Sisters to New Orleans, and the excitement of March Madness. The conversation also delves into a heroic act by a grocery delivery driver and explores themes from C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity regarding the nature of God and morality. The episode concludes with personal highlights and reflections on movies that the hosts never want to watch again.

Today, Jeanine reacts to Emma Chamberlain's episode on “Do We Need Religion” and she breaks down Emma's pros and cons from a Christian perspective!  This was such a fun and different type of video to do, but it hopefully helps you understand many of the misconceptions about God and Christianity. Let me know what you think!  Other resources:  1. Case for Christ book  by Lee Strobel - https://amzn.to/43ctpOW  2. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis - https://amzn.to/43gN8wV  3. Wesley Huff on Joe Rogan - https://youtu.be/HwyAX69xG1Q?si=v6mw25O9sfJsgRy6  Grab our latest show merch before we run out! ORDER JEANINE'S BOOK HAPPY & HEALTHY or get it free through our partner at Cru. Sponsors: Glorify App - Start your 14-day free trial when you visit glorify-app.com/HEALTHY right now to download the Glorify app and start digging deeper into the Word. Cru - Get my book Happy & Healthy for free when you gift $24 a month to provide 3 people bibles each month by texting HAPPY to 71326 or visit give.cru.org/happy. AirDoctor - Visit airdoctorpro.com and get up to $300 off an air purifier when you using the code HAPPYHEALTHY and a FREE 3 year warranty! Fatty15 - Take charge of your health by visiting fatty15.com/HEALTHY and using the code HEALTHY to get an extra 15% off your 90-day subscription Starter Kit. OurPlace - Upgrade to Our Place today by visiting fromourplace.com and using the code HEALTHY to receive 10% off sitewide and say goodbye to forever chemicals in your kitchen. Function - Try Function and skip the waitlist using our link functionhealth.com/HAPPY. If you'd like to partner with Jeanine as a sponsor for the Happy & Healthy podcast, fill out our Advertise With Us form! Follow us on Instagram! @happyandhealthypodcast @jeanineamapola @jeanineandkaleb Follow us on TikTok! @happyandhealthypodcast @jeanineamapola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices