Dr. Peter Kreeft - 10 Lies Our Culture Tells Us

What's up guys? This is Ben Pierce from Provoke and Inspire. And today I got to interview one of my intellectual heroes, Doctor Peter Kreeft. He is one of the most respected Christian philosophers and apologists of our time, a longtime professor at Boston College and author of more than eighty books, he has spent decades engaging the deepest questions of truth, meaning, reason, and faith with clarity and also wit. I mean legit, he is very, very funny. He is absolutely brilliant at speaking thoughtfully to both skeptics and believers. Doctor Kraff helps us see why Christianity is not a retreat from reason, but it's the fulfillment of reason and why the search for meaning ultimately leads us beyond ourselves. I absolutely loved this conversation. I mean, it was just one piece of wisdom after another, and I really consider it a huge honor to have had this opportunity. And I know you're going to love this conversation, too. It just speaks to a life devoted to pursuing God and the mind that he has given him, and how to use that to truly love people. So you're going to love my conversation with Doctor Peter Craft. I want to emphasize, as always, that this podcast is part of a missions organization called Steiger, and part of our mission in Steiger is to engage those outside of the church with the gospel. And what I have learned is that in order to do that effectively, we have to know what their felt needs are. We have to know how to communicate to the things they believe, to the worldview that they are consumed in. And so people like Doctor Craft are such valuable resources to help us do that more and more effectively. For more information on the mission that we're part of and how you can connect, you can go to Steiger. Org. So. Lastly, if this podcast encourages you, if it's been edifying for you or if it's helped you in your faith, the way you could bless us is by sharing it with other people. Of course we do all of this for free, and our passion is to be faithful for Jesus, to live fruitful and effective lies for him outside of the church, and we want as many people to come along this journey with us as possible. So if you're a fan of this and this has been an encouragement to you, let it encourage other people by bringing them in. Let them know about the Provoke and Inspire podcast. And if this episode specifically speaks to you, share this with them. So anyway, I really appreciate you. Thank you for supporting this podcast, and I know you're gonna love my conversation with the brilliant Doctor Peter Craft. You're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast. All right. Well, we are recording on my end. So Doctor Peter Craft, I have been looking forward to this for a long time. I've been inspired by a lot of your apologetics work, and a few years ago, someone forwarded a commencement address that you gave and it went very viral and it was shared around the world, both, I think, for its humor, but also for its sort of biting Diagnoses of culture, specifically ten lies that culture believes. So I would love to use that as a springboard to have this conversation, because obviously the lies you mentioned then are absolutely still well and alive today and have evolved and grown and metastasized. So I would love to first just find out what led you to write such a humorous, biting speech in two words common sense, which has not completely died. A speech like this would have been received with, uh, wrinkles and puzzlement. And why does he say that a hundred years ago? But today it's radically revolutionary. Uh, we've, as Chesterton says, Christianity hasn't been tried and found wanting. It has been found too difficult and not even tried. And that's true not only of Christianity, but sometimes even of common sense and rationality. Yeah. For sure. In this particular speech you talk about ten different lies. Did the material for this, was it shaped as a professor interacting with students. What led you to choose these specific lies? How did you see them coming into prominence in culture? Why did you narrow down on these? Culture seeps into us from various sources, not just one. And at some point they get so ridiculous that you have to either totally ignore them, which is irresponsible, or hit them back seriously, which usually doesn't work, or hit them back with satire and humor, which at least catches people off their guard. Yeah, I think it certainly did that. And I think that's part of maybe what made it so appealing in some ways is because it was that paradox of being both lighthearted in a sense and self-deprecating at times, but then also, I think, spoke so accurately to the zeitgeist that was present in twenty twenty two. But I think now. So, um, and you talked a lot about identity, a lot about truth, um, maybe specifically focusing on identity. How have you seen that conversation evolve? Because you speak to this lie, this Disney lie that I can be whatever I want to be. Yeah. Um, why, when that sounds on the on its face as a positive thing, even. Why in your mind is it so pernicious? What kind of led to it becoming so widespread? I don't think it would have sounded as a positive thing to any previous generation, including pagans. Sure. Take the, uh, the very popular children's show The Electric Company. I don't remember whether I referred to that in the commencement speech or not, but yeah, you did. Uh, little kiddies are taught that you are the most important person in the universe. Their theme song is the most important person in the whole wide world is you. That's exactly the philosophy of Satan. That's straight from hell. That's worse than pornography. Mm. So have you seen this conversation evolve? Do you feel like. Is that starting to expose itself for what it is, or do you think it's still very much ubiquitous lie in culture today? I specialize in rationality, which is increasingly rare nowadays. For instance, one philosopher, G.E. Moore, a rare defender of common sense, scandalized most of his colleagues at Oxford and Cambridge by saying, uh, this is a rather famous quote. Uh, you philosophers worry about how we can prove that there's a real world outside of us and that we can be certain of that. Uh, and my answer is, I'm looking at my right hand, I'm looking at my left hand, and I'm quite certain that I have two hands. Here's one. Here's the other. Now, if what you say is true that we can't be certain that the world exists, uh, then I can't be certain that I have two hands. And that's insanity. So choose between insanity or common sense, right? So in some senses, is a self-defeating proposition. It's ridiculous. Compared with that, atheism is reasonable. You don't see God as quite possible to doubt him. But you see the world. Yeah. You know, James says in his epistle, how is it possible to love God, whom you have not seen, if you don't even love your neighbor whom you have seen? Yeah, absolutely. So how do you speak to someone who has been immersed in a mindset that says, I can be whatever I want to be? How do you confront that in a way that they'll actually hear it, usually indirectly. I like teaching courses in other religions. Courses in literature. Uh, Emily Dickinson said, tell the truth, but tell it slant. Which is why probably the two best Christian novelists of the twentieth century, namely Flannery O'Connor and Percy, both wrote strange, mordant, off color novels about weird and confused people rather than edifying novels. Edifying novels don't work overtly. Religious novels almost never work. Uh, overtly religious movies very seldom work. There are a few exceptions. Uh, Mel Gibson's The Passion is a masterpiece, but, uh, it's very difficult to come straight on with insanity. You just have to show its own face. Plato has a famous passage, probably the most famous passage in the history of philosophy, about these prisoners in a cave. And they're so foolish that they mistake shadows for realities, and they think that's all there is. And there's much more. There's the real things that cast the shadows. And there's the light. Even inside the cave that casts the shadows. And then there's a whole other world outside the cave. And as he's telling the story, his student says, what poor idiots those are. Who are they? And Socrates says they are ourselves. That's the shock. That's like. That's like Nathan's technique to David after he had committed murder and adultery with Uriah and Bathsheba. And he told the story of a rich man who had a lot of sheep and a poor man, uh, and, uh, in order to feed his guests, the rich man stole the one little sheep that the poor man had. Uh. And David said a horrible thing. That's intolerable. He should be killed. And then Nathan said, you are that man. The self-recognition. Yeah. It would almost seem more logical that if you're dealing with a proposition or a rational idea that's illogical or irrational, then the best way to refute that is just with direct rationality. And what you seem to be implying is that, yeah, that the imagination and creativity and story are almost more compelling to the human psyche than just being told, you're an idiot for believing that. And the Socratic method is to reverse roles. Socrates says, in effect, you be my teacher. You defend your philosophy, I'll be your student. Why do you believe this? And the other person gives a series of reasons. And Socrates says, now wait a minute, wait a minute. You're just contradicting yourself. You can't possibly mean that. Try again. Uh, instead of directly attacking him, he gives him enough rope to hang himself. And if he sees that he's hanging himself, that's a transformation. And I think we have reasons for guarded optimism because most of the culture today is not comfortable. It's not, uh, deluded that they found the meaning of life. They're miserable. Uh, every indication of that is very clear. The suicide rate is spectacularly increased every generation. Yeah. Would you say that a little bit to what I was alluding to earlier, that we're almost beginning to reap the benefits in air quotes of this enlightenment worldview, of this secular humanism, of this, this grand notion that I can, as Nietzsche said, kill God and then have to deal with the consequences of doing so. Absolutely. That's why Nietzsche is a kind of prophet. He called himself the Antichrist, and he hated Christianity, but he knew the consequences, the loss of all meaning, the loss of all order, the loss of all metaphysical comfort. There's no meaning to anything once God is dead. There's nobody but you to, uh, to sit on that throne. And that's no fun. I think one of the most useful movies for people that believe this nonsense is Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey, where Jim Carrey gets a chance to play God for a day. It's not fun. I guess the question is, where does this go? We don't know. We're not God, sure, but we've got marching orders. I love Mother Teresa's most quoted saying, God did not put me into this world to be successful. He put me here to be faithful. I try to do his will and he picks up the pieces. So I guess in light of these, the philosophical, rational landscape that people are embedded in, what does it look like to be faithful? What does it look like for a follower of Jesus? To how much of that do they need to concern themselves with, or how much of it is having more of a simple mindset and not necessarily worrying about those things as they approach people in an attempt to be faithful? The simple mindset is the key to holiness, but not to philosophical profundity. So the Christian philosopher has to be Christian. That is simple, but also philosophical, and that is subtle. It's a difficult combination, but it has to be done. Yeah, that's fair enough. Um, one of the things you say in the speech that I thought was really interesting is you argue that creative thinking and critical thinking, two things. In theory, that would be what you're attempting to cultivate in a university setting, um, have been redefined or hijacked from supposing to be a discovery of what's true, to actually a dismantling of what's true. Can you explain or expand on that? I thought that was very fascinating. I teach a course called Philosophy and Literature, and sometimes I focus the whole course on two great novels, the Lord of the Rings and The Brothers Karamazov. Uh, and I asked the students after they've read the Lord of the rings, what is it that makes this novel so great? Uh, and they're usually confused. Uh, and have a variety of answers. And I present different answers. And I and one of them that I present is the answer that most children give. This is the way life is. It's true. Obviously it's beautiful, it's exciting, it's clever. It's a lot of other things. But above all, it's true. They don't usually think of truth in connection with fiction or beauty or the arts. But I think the greatest compliment you could give to an artist is you have opened my eyes. You have made me see the way it is. Now There are no elves and dwarves and and, uh, there's no orcs and no monsters like Sauron in the world. But to see that these mythic dimensions are truly properties of things in the world, our lives to, uh, the reason that writers like C.S. Lewis, as well as Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton, the reason they write myth, is that there's a mythic, invisible, transcendent, more than just the scientific facts dimension to almost everything in our lives. And we miss that. And we get it in fiction, and we don't realize that we're being philosophized. We think we're just being entertained. But we see that that's the way it is. Life. Life is like that. Life has tremendous sufferings and tremendous joys, tremendous opportunities taken and missed, uh, little things are big, and big things are over little. It turns you upside down. That's what it feels like, because you're usually standing on your head and you should be turned upside down. Maybe. What's so profound or eye opening about these grand myths that have been written by some of these authors that you mentioned, while they are sort of nested within these truths that you said, that are illuminated, paradoxically, through these very elaborate stories, and what that does simultaneously is connect the intuitive sense that that there is truths, that there are these core truths that we all want to connect with and resonate, but also the grandness of their myth helps us realize that at the same time, life is not this purely material thing, that there is deeper, wilder things beyond our imagination. It almost takes orcs and elves to help us connect those two dots. Yes, yes. And I think that was the method that Saint Paul used in Athens when he preached to the pagan Greek philosophers. The first thing he said upon Mars Hill there he had come up past hundreds of altars. A lot of people went to Athens. It was a great vacation spot for the rich. And a lot of the false gods had altarpieces and statues there. Uh, there were literally hundreds of gods. And the first thing he says, which was half satirical and half serious, is, uh, I notice you people are very, very religious because I'm coming here. I see all your statues to to all these many gods. And we know that these gods are idols, and Saint Paul is not defending that by any means. He's very upset that they're worshiping the wrong God, but at least they're worshiping something. And then he picks on one of them. He says, I noticed also that there was an altar with the inscription to the unknown God. There was no name there. There was no statue there. And then instead of saying, you're wrong to worship all this stuff, he says, that's the God I'm going to preach. That's the God that you're looking for. If you are, this is the one, and you know him through Jesus Christ. That's that's our twofold strategy. Affirm all in the human search that are confused. Contemporaries, uh, are worried about affirm their questions and they say the question you already asking has an answer. And here he is. I think one of the challenges that I encounter when I'm interacting with young people in the various missions work that we do, is that there seems to be an affinity with the search. There seems to be an apprehension with the arrival or the conclusion. Right. So you have this like, oh yeah, you know, spirituality. Yeah, sure. Pursue truth. But then there seems to be this sense of like, it's cool to be looking. It's it's oppressive to have found. Yeah. Do you, do you find that that's true. And what do we do with that? We don't compromise. We preach the whole gospel and we don't expect instant conversion. We expect a spiritual battle to be going on in the soul of the person we're talking to. And that's good. There wasn't that spiritual battle before. There was just one side winning all the battles, and Christianity in their mind was reduced to some silly superstition, or some bunch of platitudes or some morally repressive nonsense. And then when you present the whole picture, they're not going to say, oh, that's exactly what I was looking for. Great. They're going to be threatened and challenged because they've, in effect, climbed up onto God's throne. And now God says, that's my seat. Yeah. And to take that second position, to learn something, to say that wonderful word, I was wrong. Back in the fifties, there was a very popular TV sitcom called Happy Days. And one of the characters there, Fonzie, was very, very cool. Uh, and he gave somebody some other kids some really bad advice. And the wise, uh, kid, his friend Richie, persuaded Fonzie that he had to go to this guy. Ralph, that he gave such bad advice to and say that he was wrong because Ralph is the opposite of somebody who ought to be a marine. And finally persuaded him to join the Marines. And he's got to get out because he's going to be miserable there. And Fonzie finds it so difficult to say that he was wrong, even though he says that he has to do it. He goes to Ralph and says, you know, Ralph, that advice that I gave you to be a marine? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Fonzie, you know it all. Thanks. No, no, I was, I was, I was, I was I can't say that word. It's not cool. Before you believe you have to repent, you have to say I was wrong. That's hard. Yeah. Yeah. But there's no way around it. Yeah. Some of the great converts, like Chuck Colson, said that when they read the chapter on pride in C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity, that was the turning point of their conversion. I had to admit that I, with all my power and all my cleverness and all my success, was wrong. That's tough. And I think you're you're very abrupt answer in a good way to the question, what do we do with someone who is okay with the journey? They're just not into the conclusion. We can't essentially do anything about it. And there's a there's a even in that. There's a humility. Right? Speaking of pride, because I think in our very metric based Western, I want to be able to count numbers. I want to be able to count success. I think often in the church we have this weird view that conversions are my responsibility. Even the word conversions is a business word. Now, it might have always been, but it certainly is now. And there is an element in saying that that dividing line of saying I'm wrong, that cliff that someone has to get over is, is incredibly challenging and is not a work I can do. Exactly. No, no human being ever converted another human being. The Holy Spirit, is the one that turns our head. We just present the thing to which they can turn. Yeah. And I would say that that then, you know, back to your point about art and movies and music that some of the best among us have been the ones that have been maybe more obscure and telling these harsh and hard stories, not the overly religious. Partly is. They simply recognize that the most direct route would be logical, right? If I'm here to close the deal, I want to. I want to do whatever I can to make it very abundantly clear. Here's what you got to do. Do you want to, you know, where is with the humility that comes, that God is the one that does it? And I am but a member of the body that is part of that process, ultimately entrusting it to God. Then then I can I'm almost liberated from taking that overly in-your-face on the nose approach that, as you said, is ultimately ineffective. The place for the logic to show that Christianity is a logical option to reveal an intellectually respectable, socially respectable, but rationally respectable Possibility of it makes that conversion possible. Oh well, if that's right, then I was wrong. And to embrace this thing, this person, this this relationship is the most reasonable thing. And I'm I'm opposing this most reasonable thing that I thought I was searching for. What a fool I was. And if we didn't present the logic of it, if we just presented it as a nice option, something somebody invented once and it's going to make you happy, that won't do it. That doesn't provoke conversion. Conversion has to cost something. Yeah. Conversion is a kind of suffering. Yeah. And you said that the famous Chesterton quote about it's it's not been tried and found wanting. Uh, I think I think adding to that idea, dare I add to anything Chesterton said, is that I think we've tried to make it too easy. Yeah. Compare the seminaries in Europe and Africa. Compare the richest and the poorest. The seminaries in Africa are bursting at the seams. The seminaries in Europe are emptying the gospel of ease and success and comfort is not attracting people. The gospel of costly grace, the gospel of the God who suffers, and who calls us to suffer with him for a joyful purpose. Uh, that is winning converts. In other words, the full gospel is much harder to resist than the comfortable gospel. We've been trying to chop off those hard edges and make it smooth. Uh, and people look at it and say, yeah, that's nice. Right? I think, again, it comes back to something you said earlier, which was so good. Was that because quote unquote, converting people is not our responsibility, then it allows us to live with the fact that we present this truth, and it is ultimately up to God and to them to contend with that truth. And by contrast, if it is up to me, if I have convinced myself maybe on an unconscious level, that it is my responsibility, then naturally I'm going to want to do anything to remove the edges, as you said, to lop off the hard parts, because man, if I got to sell this product, I got to reduce any friction in that process, right? And so some some of this comes down to just understanding my role in this process. This is basically what God said to job at the end of the story. Uh, who designed this? Who wrote the play that you're in? You. I didn't notice you. Uh, were you editing my mail? No. Yeah. Well, then take the whole thing, and job does. And that's that's his salvation. Yeah. And I'm sure as as no doubt you have I've experienced many times in my life where the roles I have played in an evangelistic process have been stripped away from me, whether for a season I've had to step out or maybe something I tried was a spectacular failure, and someone still miraculously encountered Christ and gave their lives to him. And I was just left there going, well, I guess I wasn't needed here. You know, that sort of vivid reminder of my superfluous role in the whole process. And I have been repeatedly surprised by how God uses little things that we don't think are important at all, and maybe even mistakes on our part as the edge to get into somebody else's life. Yeah, all we have to do is be faithful and try, and we're going to fall flat on our face because we're idiots. And he knows that he designed. Uh, which animal to use to get into Jerusalem to do his most important work as a jackass. And he keeps using those same animals. So we offer him everything that we have, even though that's what we are. Yeah. I like to say sometimes that we inflate the value of our five loaves and two fish, right? It's like depending on how God has wired us, say we're Intellectual or artistic or were business minded, whatever it is. Those are still five loaves and two fish. And so we overvalue that in the end of the day. The illustration of that, or the reality of that story, is that my offering to Jesus to feed the masses is ridiculous. I mean, it's just ridiculous. It's not it's not kind of close. It doesn't get some of it done. It is like a like, why are you what this what are we talking about? And yet that's exactly how Jesus wants us to view our our contribution to the process. It's still. Give me what you got. I want to have what you what I've given you to give me. But, man, if I don't multiply. What are we doing here? Yeah, yeah. We can't. We can't multiply. Yeah, we can only divide. That whole idea you mentioned about the churches or the seminaries, rather in Europe compared to Africa, is obviously very indicting. And what I wanted to ask you is you mentioned all of these, these lies, right, about saying I can be whatever I want. Or I'm the most important person in the world or the world needs you. You can save the world. All the all these different things. Hearing you mention these, I can't help but wonder. And I'm trying not to be a Pharisee here. But I can't help but wonder. Man, a lot of these are in the church. A lot of these are among Christians. These are not just lies of the secular world. So much of this is within the church itself. Have you experienced that or felt that? Or how much of these lies have infiltrated the church and are are robbing us of the effectiveness, faithfulness, and fruitfulness that God desires? You've answered your own question, simply formulating it. Chesterton famously said, there's only one really strong and unanswerable argument against Christianity. Christians. Well, one, one, one throws everything at God's feet and says, I'm sorry, I'm an idiot. Use it all and you give up. Not totally, but you give up that plan of being his great right hand man? You're not his great right hand man. Jesus is his right hand man. And you're not even the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit. Is that right? So you're just the you're just a pooper scooper behind the donkey. You're not even the donkey. Yeah, that's that's humbling, because what I guess I'm getting at here is that that the accusation of hypocrisy will never leave us, obviously. And God uses this institution as a Catholic. I am, uh, embarrassed at how bad Catholics can be. Some of the popes are criminals. The church was run by basically the Mafia, uh, five hundred years ago. Some of the some of the popes were. And yet he never let them contradict Scripture, change doctrine, uh, uttered outright lies. They didn't live their faith. Some of them, and we still are very bad at living our faith. And yet the faith has remained unchanged. There's nothing else in history like that. The fact of hypocrisy means that there's still a standard that we fail to come up to. Machiavelli argued there's only one way to avoid hypocrisy. No matter what your goals are, no matter what your religion is, no matter what your morality is, you're not going to succeed in doing it. So in order to be successful, you have to lower the goals to what you are and what you can be. And that's basically what, uh, what the modern world has, has done. We're very good at some things, at conquering stuff less than ourselves, namely nature, matter by science and technology. We're better at that than anything else. But we're certainly not better at being holy, at being happy, at being wise, at relating to what's greater than ourselves. So in a sense, we reduce the. It sounds so ridiculous saying this out loud, but we just accept ourselves for what we are, which is imperfect vessels trying our best to be faithful but not pretend to be something that we're not. Jesus never said, accept yourself as what you are. Instead, he said, you must become perfect as my father in heaven is perfect. God won't let us go until we're finished. And we're not finished yet. We're never finished in this world. Now, I know Protestants don't like the idea of purgatory, but something like purgatory, some finishing process, some radical transformation into saints is not an option. It's a necessity. Every single one of us is going to become in heaven, so holy that if we saw it now, we would be strongly tempted to fall down and worship it. The distance between what we are now and what God demands we become is immense. And that's wonderful as well as terrifying. Yeah. What would you say are, you know, in all your years of following Jesus and contending with the issues and the philosophies and, and some of the rational defenses in all of that? If you could go back twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago, what would you say have been some of the things that have most richly cultivated your intimacy with Jesus. Things that you meant. Oh, if I could just go back and invest this way more, I would do. It's nothing I've done. It's what he's done. Every time God appears to anybody in the Bible, he surprises them. The Greek word for surprise or wonder or amazement, Thelma or Thelma? Zane is used to describe Jesus enemies, his friends, and the agnostics who don't know whether they should be his enemies or his friends. So God keeps surprising me, and one of the ways he keeps surprising me is, is failures and sufferings. Joshua Heschel, the great twentieth century rabbi, said, the man who has not suffered, what could he possibly know anyway? We learn more by failure than by success. We learn more by suffering than by joy. We need both. Well, that's sobering for sure. But I think, I guess the one thing that you can cling on to is, is the reality that we all will suffer like we cannot escape it. And so I guess there's something redemptive there, right? I think of someone facing this world. I guess there's something redemptive there. The man says as he looks at the crucifix. Well, I guess you know. But you know what I'm saying in the sense that obviously that sounds funny on its on its face. But I think of the world and how, you know, you think of the accusation levied against God. How could a God create a world like this or allow suffering like this? And to me, I think, how could anyone face a world like this in the absence of a god? I guess that's more. What I meant to say is that this world is hard. Undoubtedly. And if you haven't experienced it yet, you will. But the fact that we can have hope in the midst of it, and that God even uses it, and that we are refined by it. What a resilient worldview compared to capricious random suffering imposed on highly evolved animals for no particular reason. Yes, yes. And imagine, imagine that you just don't believe in an afterlife and the person you love the most has died. There's no hope. What do you do? You can't do anything. In contrast, look at a crucifix. Jesus suffers horribly. The crucifixion was probably the most horrible torture ever invented, and the Epistle to the Hebrews says, for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, making light of its shame. What joy! Just that he was going to get out of it. No, the joy of love. He knew that he was saving his beloved children from hell by that sacrifice, and that didn't take away the suffering, but it transformed its meaning to something that was the supreme thing that love wants. Love doesn't want. First of all, happiness. Love just wants to give itself away. And God is that love. That's that's agape. So suffering is the the the test of love and the the thermometer of love. If you're willing to to sacrifice everything for somebody else. That means you really love them. And God was willing to sacrifice his own son for us. Yeah. You know, you have your list of ten lies. And I think, could these not be in greater opposition to that core truth? Yeah, right. Because ultimately, they all seem to be aimed at dismantling our desire to lean into that fundamental truth. And that might be a cause for hope and even optimism. Because if if all the enemy is concentrated there at its greatest force, that's also its greatest weakness. It's not that people are vague and confused and asking many different questions. They're asking one big question does it all have meaning and nothing else? What? Christianity can answer that question totally and honestly. So it's just possible that we're at that point that the addict is at when he finally gives up. Anybody who's gone through Alcoholics Anonymous knows that you have to have to hit bottom before you can bounce back up. And we're pretty close to the bottom. Yeah. Well, and it would seem that in light of that, now would be a great time for followers of Jesus to lean into the resilience that their worldview provides and to attempt by his grace, to discard the same superficiality of the world around us. Because I would say that to a watching world, how we suffer is probably an extraordinarily powerful apologetic. Yeah, yeah, it was it was a saints and martyrs that converted the world first, and not the theologians and the philosophers, although that's necessary and honorable. That's not the most important thing. You don't get into heaven by passing a theology exam. That's probably good. Yeah. Well, so maybe just to to wrap up here, what's been on your heart lately? What what do you feel like God has been saying to you? What are you thinking about for the future? I just I'd love to know. What. What has been going on in your mind? What things you're working on and wrestling with today? I'm getting more interested in the saints than in the philosophers, and I'm understanding the meaning of suffering. My wife has advanced Parkinson's disease, and I'm watching her decline in front of my eyes. When I love the most. And that's that's from God, too. And I simply have to say over and over again, Jesus, I trust in you totally that that simplicity is wrung out of us by suffering. But it's necessary. Well, if you don't mind, I would just like to close us here in prayer. Um. For what is your wife's name? Maria. Maria. Can I pray for her? Yes, please. Jesus. I thank you for this opportunity that I've had to have this conversation. I thank you for your mercy to us. Lord, we are so slow to learn, and it takes long. And I'm grateful for the patience you have with me. Lord, as a dad of three kids, I think about how much patience it requires of me, and yet how impatient I so often am. And yet how much more insufferable must I be sometimes in the ways I think and the ways I act. And yet you're so kind and and teaching us these lessons. Thank you for Doctor Peter Kreeft. Thank you for his faithfulness, uh, the clear humility that you have placed into his life through various means, even hardship. Lord and and Lord, together we just lift up his his wife, Maria. Lord, we I cannot relate, Lord, I have not experienced something like that. And yet I can only imagine someone as close to me, like my wife going through something like that. And I ask for a peace that surpasses understanding. I, I pray for a grace and just ask that you. Yeah, that you would, um, just be be there in this, this trying process. Lord. And I ask that you would give them both comfort, that you'd give them both joy, inexplicable joy, and that you would they would learn everything that you want them to learn through this. and thank you for the extraordinary hope that we can even wrap our little two dimensional minds around that is awaiting all of us because of what you were willing to do for us on the cross. So we love you and we thank you. And I pray that for many, many fruitful years ahead for for Doctor Peter Kreeft in Jesus name, Amen, amen and amen. Really appreciate you. Thanks for, uh, thanks for having this conversation. Thank you. God bless you and your work.

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