Dr. William Lane Craig | The Real Reason Atheism Failed and Gen-Z’s Meaning Crisis

Doctor William Lane Craig is one of the most renowned Christian apologist in our day, and he has directly taken on some of the most intense atheists and their objections and has been an inspiration to literally millions of people like myself. In this conversation, I got to talk to him about a bunch of different things. How you reach someone who's apathetic? What are the new objections and arguments he's hearing today? And we even got into some personal things like how do you find your calling and how do you stay focused in a world that's asking so much from you?

This was an awesome conversation and a real bucket list item for me because I have been following him for so long, and I was so blessed to have this conversation. And I really think you are going to be as well. So check that out, and then let me know what you think. We want Provoke and Inspire to be interactive, and there are many ways that you can engage with us. One of them is just simply to send an email to provokeandinspirepodcast@stagger.org.

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You are going to love my conversation with doctor William Lane Craig, brilliant man of God, soft heart, powerful voice. Let's go. You're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast. Alright. Well, here we are.

Provoke and Inspire podcast. This is a surreal moment for me. I have been so encouraged by you over the years, doctor Craig. And so to have the opportunity to speak to you is a huge blessing. Thank you for being on the Provoke and Inspire podcast.

Well, thank you for that. That's very kind, and, it's good to be here with you today. Well, I'm excited. There are so many different places we could go with this, but, you know, like I said before we started, the heart of this podcast is how to faithfully follow Jesus outside of the church. And I think one of the core ways that you do that is by having an intimate understanding of what people outside of the church are really going through.

And so what I would love your take on just to get rolling here is, you know, you you've seen a lot of different eras come and go. I think most people probably became aware of your work in the height of the new atheists and that whole movement, but that seems to have kind of changed and come and gone. We've had political upheaval. We've had a pandemic. So many things have come and gone.

To the best of your ability, where are we at now? What are the felt needs? What is the climate? Then maybe as that relates to the opportunities and the unique challenges facing followers of Jesus today. Well, let me make it clear, Ben, that as a Christian philosopher and theologian, I don't claim to have my finger on the pulse of contemporary culture.

I am much more concerned with the issues themselves. Arguments for god's existence, evidence for his self revelation in Jesus of Nazareth. And so I I'm very issue oriented, and you are probably in a better position to me, than me to speak to these, issues of contemporary culture. I would just say that as I survey the lay of the land, I'm optimistic, about the opportunities. I don't feel that we are in retreat.

I think that the new atheism, as you mentioned, is in retreat and that there are new opportunities for the church, and there are, there's a new openness, I think, among the younger generation, than we've seen before. So all of those are good signs that, we need to press ahead with enthusiasm and courage and not get discouraged about the, unbelief or the secular movements that we see. Why did the new atheist movement have such a short life? It feels like it just seemed to disappear as fast as it came. What do you make of that?

Yeah. Again, that's a sociological question. The pretensions of the new atheists were exposed by people like me and my colleagues, but I think that would probably be a little bit idealistic. I suspect that it rather simply ran out of gas and that it had nothing to offer. So many, I think, have tried to live, an atheistic or agnostic lifestyle and found it empty, devoid of meaning, without any basis for the objective moral values that we want to affirm, particularly the value of other persons.

And so the view just proved to be, I think, unlivable, and people got tired of it. I think we tried it, and that has led to a new openness, I think, to believe in God. One of the things I've been wrestling with is that I think you see a lot of content creators, a lot of people in this space maybe as more Internet apologists, maybe less on the academic side. And it feels like there is a real pull towards chasing these kinds of things, chasing the trends, chasing what other people are talking about or or kind of maybe inadvertently being pulled into a cycle of reacting to the culture as opposed to speaking these perennial truths or being issue focused as you said. Having done this for all the years that you've done this, how have you landed on such a solid sense of what you are supposed to do in the midst of a chaotic world that I'm sure has wanted to pull you in a million directions?

I think that each of us has to have a very clear realization of his own calling and then to pursue that. And so in my case, as I say, I am not called to address these sorts of cultural currents and to follow the current music or the current fads, or the current trends. Honestly, I don't care Right. About them in terms of my work. I mean, of course, I care as an American living in this culture, but Right.

My concern is with the, for example, reliability of the gospels or the fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life, or the current evidence, concerning the origin of the universe at some time in the finite past. Those are the things that occupy me and get me cranked up. Right. And we need people who do make the application to popular culture. I in no way looked down upon Right.

Or, disdain those who are effective popularizers. I need them. I need them to take my material to boil it down to attractive, culturally relevant memes and apply it in our culture. So I see us as working together. I I see my role as a resource to provide the materials, the intellectual content, and then I look to others, the the the Internet podcasters that you mentioned Yeah.

Who take and apply this material in a culturally relevant and entertaining and effective way. Now I have to say to a certain extent, my ministry, Reasonable Faith Yeah. Is engaged in that. We're putting out these animated videos on a popular level that portray this material in an engaging and entertaining way. And I'm doing podcasts with my colleague, Kevin Harris, on Yeah.

Popular trends. For example, we're going to be recording something soon on this, dialogue between Jordan Peterson and about 20 other Yeah. Which he just Yeah. So we will be doing that, but I have to say that it's not I Sure. Who are following these trends.

It's Kevin Harris, and then Kevin works with me to respond to them. So we work together as Yeah. Brothers in this, outreach, each conscious of his own role and trying to do that as effectively as he can. Yeah. Wow.

That's so brilliant. And and I can say for what it's worth that in the in the world that I have been called to, which is a lot in music and arts, a lot of doing interviews on the streets, a lot of conversations with young people outside of the church. It has been so much of how you have framed and articulated these difficult objections to God that then you hear repeated as slogans, usually unthinking slogans, you know, not to be too pejorative, but you hear that outside of the church. And to be able to have this framework and foundation that someone of your level of academic devotion has given me, to be able to borrow from that, as you say, has been vital. There's so much joy in letting go of the delusion that you are all things.

For those listening, how do they find that? How have you learned to resist the temptation? Because because in our day and age, and you know this, with the Internet, it's like you have every discipline and every skill and hobby at your fingertips, and it's so hard to not only find that path, but then stay committed to it. I know this is a little bit outside of the apologetics context, but I'd love your your input as someone who has just stayed the course so faithfully. There's two questions here, I think, that that you've asked.

The one is, how do you find niche for you to fill where Yeah. This is going to be my contribution? And I'm firmly convinced that the way you find that is not by saying, well, what's the really important thing or what does what really needs to be done? On the contrary, I think what you do is try your hand at different things, and then you ask yourself, where do I really find the joy of the Lord? And it will be that area that you are passionate about.

Yeah. It will be the area that you should go into and pursue. And that way, you will have the endurance and the drive to be able to stick with it for the the long haul, and and you won't burn out. So for any of our viewers that are exploring, trying to find that niche, I would encourage them to ask that question. What am I really passionate about?

Where do I find the joy of the lord? And and Yeah. Do that. Now the other thing that you asked is how do you stay true to that? And here, Jan and I, believe that it's so important to inculcate a personal quality that we call single mindedness.

Yeah. Single mindedness is the ability to focus upon the best and to not allow the good to become the enemy of the best. Right. There are so many things that you could do that would be good for you to do, but they would take you away from doing that which is the best thing for you to do. And so I've learned to discipline myself to simply shut off those other avenues that are interesting, that would be good to pursue, that I would even like to pursue, and to focus on that area that I believe God has called me to do.

And this single mindedness as a personality trait is, oh, it's just instrumental, I think, in being successful in whatever endeavor you're undertaking. To some degree, there is a a worldview aspect to this because I think one of the lies that a lot of young people are being told is that they can do and be whatever they wanna be. And that to say anything to the contrary is to be oppressive or restrictive in some way where there is, as you've already said, tremendous freedom in saying no. No. I I am a member of the body under one head, and that means by definition, I'm not gonna be good at everything.

And that is actually okay. Right? Like Yeah. So how much of this is, like, rejecting this Disney worldview that we all live in where, no. You can be whatever you wanna be.

Just, you know, just make it happen. That's part of this. Understanding your calling and then being single-minded about pursuing that calling will be, vital to doing it with excellence. Yeah. It ought to be our goal.

Yeah. And and and to even see it as if I'm being to the best of my ability with god's power, the best version of what I can be, I I almost the body requires that of me, that that's gonna be of the to the benefit of the body for me to focus in that way as opposed to this inch deep mile wide kind of version of myself. Yep. When I was in seminary studying for my classes, Jan gave me a little cardboard plaque, that I put on my desk lamp so that every time I studied, I would see this. And it's a verse from Colossians three, I think, where it says, whatever your task, work heartily as to the lord and not me.

That's awesome. And that was my attitude in pursuing those studies. I was doing them for Christ, not for men, not for a grade. And as a result, that gives you an incentive, a motivation, because you would never want to do rate work for the lord. You want to give him your utmost and your your highest.

And so having that proper perspective that you just mentioned, I think, is so vital. So you said that what cranks you up, what gets you excited is grappling with these philosophical objections or the reliability of scripture. So what is on the current forefront of your mind? What are what have you been thinking about as you've been going about your day? Well, I am writing a systematic philosophical theology that will be multi volume, and I'm currently working on volume five, which is on the doctrine of the church.

And a very important facet of the doctrine of the church is the doctrine of the sacraments, particularly baptism and the Lord's supper. And so I am doing a deep dive now into how to understand the Lord's supper. And as you may know, this is one of the most controversial, aspects of of the Christian faith. The Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, reformed, Armenians, they all have different views of the Lord's supper and particularly, the presence of Christ's body and blood in the Lord's supper. And so I am wrestling with these very deep issues right now concerning the nature of the Lord's supper.

There was a huge interest even among very young people on social media, in the popular culture, about the pope, about all of the circumstance around that, and, of course, the sacraments are a part of that. Oh, a huge part. What do you make of that? Is that just more pop fodder, or is this sort of an indication of a growing interest in the religious among alpha and gen z? This is indicative of this new interest among the younger generation in traditional Christianity, and they're looking for something deeper, something that is not superficial and shallow.

And so many of them, I think, are attracted to Roman Catholic, understanding of the Eucharist. Now that's not my own view, I wanna emphasize, but I understand those who feel attracted to it. And I think this has aroused a great deal of interest, in people who are starting to return to the Catholic church. Yeah. I heard someone say recently that alpha and gen z are perhaps less hung up on some of the the more classical apologetic back and forths, and and what's attracting them to the Christian faith is this crisis of meaning and this crisis of purpose and a sense that they don't belong.

They're lonely. How as an apologist do we speak into those incredibly perennial felt needs? I address this as a kind of preapologetic. Sure. Yeah.

Before presenting your arguments, what you do is you try to awaken in the unbeliever, particularly the apathetic unbeliever, a sense of the need Mhmm. For something more. And so what I argue is that if God does not exist, if atheism is true, then our lives are ultimately without meaning, value, or purpose. Mhmm. And I analyze each one of those three areas and try to show how atheism ultimately leads to, meaninglessness, valuelessness, and purposelessness Yeah.

In an objective sense. Of course, we can adopt subjective meanings or subjective purposes, but that's no different than just playing make believe. Your life doesn't really have a meaning, a a value, or purpose, but you can pretend that it does so as to get along in life. And I think that that is the very essence of inauthentic existence. That is not what it is to be an authentic person, to to live a make believe life.

And so if we can get people to face squarely and honestly the nihilism, the Yeah. Despair of a secular world view, I think that will then prompt them to say, well, maybe god does exist. Maybe I was too quick in dismissing him. Share with me some reasons why you think there is a god, and that can open the door then to conversations where we share arguments and evidence for Christian theism. Yeah.

No. That makes so much sense. I think that the felt needs are maybe what draw people into the conversation. And then as the conversation begins, invariably, the things they've heard from their family or the the hurts of their past or the pop culture slogans that they've been indoctrinated by, these kind of, well, you can't trust the Bible for this or, you know, all all of these sort of, these pop arguments against God. That is when those kinds of things come into place.

You you mentioned the idea of the apathetic person, and I think that's a really difficult one. Yes. Right? Where I think that I'm I'm sure you feel the same way, and you're far more qualified than I am. But give me the atheist that at least I got something I can kind of go against.

I got some solid ideas or arguments that we can we can grapple with. But you give me the person that's like, nah, whatever. How how do you begin with a person like that? Oh, that that whatever mentality is so difficult. I call this attitude apatheism.

You heard of atheism. That's good. I like that. I think apatheism is I just don't care. Yeah.

And that person is the hardest to reach. And so what I try to do, as I say, is to show him the logical implications of his own secular world view, and that it leads to a view of the life that is unlivable, that you you cannot live happily and consistently with this view of life. The only way that you can manage to live happily is by living inconsistently, by affirming or making believe that there is meaning, value, and purpose to your life. And you mentioned, I think rightly, the lives of your children. Yeah.

It's when these people get married and start to have kids of their own that this issue really comes home to roost because it's hard to look at your little children and say they're meaningless. They're volueless. Right. There is nothing here of value or importance. That's hard to to say.

And so if you're going to be an authentic person and live consistently, you're going to be profoundly unhappy as a secularist, and that should then, I hope, impel that secular person to go back to square one and to begin to ask these deep questions about the existence of God all over again. Yeah. How much is maybe that a naivety in the absence of suffering? How much of is that maybe the the luxury of the young or the person that just hasn't experienced the difficulty of life? Because when you say that nihilism is a lot harder to have as an abstract philosophy in the face of real hard suffering in life.

Yeah. That that's a really good point you're making. Many people will say the suffering in life is incompatible with the existence of God, that a good and loving and all powerful God wouldn't permit this sort of horrible suffering and evil in the world. But what can the atheist say Exactly. In response to the suffering of the world?

I I when I was living in Paris, I met a young minister who worked in counseling dying children. And I thought to myself Jeez. Counseling dying children. What would Bertrand Russell, an atheist, say to those children? Too bad?

Yeah. I mean, the cruelty is unimaginable. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

And I I think that the resilience that a Christian can draw on in the face of suffering is unmatched. And not just in the vision of a god who created me in his image, and I can be with him in eternity, but in the reality of Jesus coming into the midst of our suffering. There is just nothing there is nothing to compare it to in terms of the the resources one can draw on when suffering inevitably comes. You're absolutely right about that. I mean, it is so remarkable that we as Christians serve a god who took on our finitude and frailty, and what did he do?

He suffered. Yeah. He suffered, immeasurably beyond anything that we could imagine, because he bore the punishment for the sins of the whole world. None of us can contemplate what that sort of suffering was. As horrible as the crucifixion was, that physical suffering pales next to the spiritual suffering that Jesus endured for us even though he was completely innocent.

If anyone could complain of the injustice of innocent suffering, it would be Jesus' grasp. Yeah. And yet he bore this suffering because he loves us Yeah. So much. So I I I totally agree with you.

It's in Christianity that we find the spiritual resources for dealing with the suffering and injustices of life. And what I love is that despite the bizarre reversal of the accusation that Christians are the deluded ones, that we are the ones that flee from reality, the re the fact is the opposite is true. Only Christians can face suffering head on, not avoid it, look directly at it, and have hope in it and past it. And so that's the irony, right, that when you're maybe confronted with the apathetic person, you're actually calling them to face reality and not live in an illusion. That that's the irony of the way Satan will twist the perspective where the the the atheist or the secular person will think that the Christian is the one who's living in fantasy Yeah.

Or escapism. Yeah. Pie in the sky in the sweet bye and bye. Mhmm. But I think you're absolutely right that it's it's really this, the secularist who won't think about and deal with these things that is afraid to face reality.

And I I get it. It's hard enough as a follower of Jesus to wanna think about these things, knowing what we know, having what we have. I mean, I don't feel, judgmentalism. I feel empathy. I feel devastated for my friends and those outside of the church who have to try to confront and navigate this life in the absence of God.

I was on a walk the other day, and I was just I was thinking about the tremendous anchoring truths I have in Jesus that in the midst of my swirling anxious mind, my imperfect flesh and motivations, all of the things I'm thinking about and dealing with, I can go on this walk and I can go, this is what's true. And I can reorient to truth. I can find peace in all of that swirling confusion. And as I was doing that, I had this moment of thinking, what are those I what are those in my life? The the guys I hang out with that don't know Jesus.

I don't know how someone navigates life in the absence of that orienting truth. Yeah. I was I became a Christian at the age of 16, and I have to say prior to committing my life to Christ, I felt precisely this sort of despair and meaninglessness and darkness Yeah. That we've been talking about. So I understand that I've been there myself, and it it is hard for the nonbeliever to face, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Along those lines, I think probably the question I get asked the most when I'm speaking at churches or at groups is is people who are have come to a point of desperation with their own family. They feel like they've had all the conversations. They feel like they've answered all the objections.

What advice or thoughts would you give to someone who isn't confronting an atheist on a debate stage or someone like me on a in a random street interview where I'm coming and going? But for those people in our lives, how does our approach need to differ, or what have you discovered is helpful as an apologist in that sort of intimate context? Well, I think learning to ask questions is absolutely key. Greg Cokle, with Stand to Reason, it's been so good in, training people in asking questions. When the nonbeliever makes a statement, ask the person, well, what do you mean by that?

Mhmm. And very often, you'll find that they're not really sure exactly what they mean. But then if they do explain what they mean, then you follow-up by saying, well, why do you believe that? And get them talking. And this is a a a great way of showing, that you are genuinely interested in them.

Right. You're not just there to shove the gospel down their throats. You wanna hear from them. Yeah. But then secondly, it gives them a chance to talk, and this can lead them to a spiritual conversation where, they may begin to ask you questions, and you can begin to share in a very natural way about your hope in Christ.

Yeah. No. For sure. And I would imagine that for those that are closest to us, the things that we don't say take on even more importance in terms of them being able to see the love of Jesus in all of the other ways that that can be expressed beyond words. Right?

I mean, I think about Peter three fifteen, which is so commonly quoted in apologetic circles, and I I always find it so interesting that it talks about the hope to defend the hope that we have in us, not the right knowledge or the the correct answers, but but the hope. What what would you say that is supposed to look like in the fall in a follower of Jesus? How how is someone to see the hope in me? What does that how does that manifest through me in such a way that the world around me would say, what's up with what's up with that guy? I wanna I wanna hear what he has to say.

Well, I think it's multifaceted, and it would relate back to that preapologetics move Yeah. That I described earlier. The hope you hold out is a hope of, purpose, in life, that your life will have a purpose that it will accomplish, that, it has significance, that what you do really matters, really makes a difference, and it has value, eternal value. Those are wonderful things to hope for, and they're rooted in God and a relationship with God. The the purpose of life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Yeah. So this is the ultimate hope that we have to share with people. Yeah. And I would say it even connects back to what you were saying about being the kind of person who devotes their lives to something that produces that joy of the Lord in them. I think, ultimately Oh.

We live we live in a world of of people that are not they're going to work, but they're not there's there's not much of the joy of the lord in what they're doing. And so to see someone by contrast that does operate in that, how powerful is that. Right? Yes. You're right.

I mean, there's so many facets to this Christian hope. I mean, you mentioned joy, and I think another would be peace. Mhmm. In a world in which so many people suffer from terrible anxiety Yeah. And depression.

We're we're living in the midst of a mental health crisis right now in the West. The Christian message of peace with God and with yourself and and that inner turmoil that people feel. That is a wonderful hope that we have. Yeah. Yeah.

You're absolutely right. The there's a slight change of directions here, but what are some of the the newer objections you're contending with? What are what if we've kind of evolved it's a funny verb to describe it, but evolved past this sort of new atheist movement, What has it evolved into, and what would you say is the more common approach from the, you know, the agnostic or the atheist in the space of of debate or or conversation? I can't speak to the popular cultural objection. Sure.

It's not my area. I mean, I would suspect that the most common objections would be related to Christian sexual ethics, that they think that we hate homosexuals and transgender people and discriminate against them. And so biblical ethics are disdained and and rejected by many. I think that that would be one of the most important issues to address. But philosophically, I would say that the old problem of suffering and evil has changed, and it's morphed into a different objection that is called the hiddenness Mhmm.

Mhmm. Of God. Mhmm. And this is the idea that if God really did exist, then he would make his existence a lot more evident, than he has. It would be very easy for God to write his name in the stars or put on the cross and the sun's sky saying, Jesus saves, and yet he hasn't done so.

God hides from us in a way. He's withdrawn and calls upon people to seek for him in humility and and to pursue him. And so, I think a lot of secular people, would object that the hiddenness of God is best explained by saying there's just nobody there. Right. He why God is hidden because he's not there.

And so we need to have a good apologetic, I think, for, that objection. Yeah. Yeah. And I I've I've heard you among others give great responses to that, and, of course, this kind of crosses into the free will conversation, in terms of God not coercing relationship through a demonstration of his existence to a degree that we couldn't avoid. And it's it's a lot about surrender as opposed to evidence.

But there then there is the the Alex O'Connors of the world, the, you as he describes himself, the nonresistant, nonbeliever, and you feel in him a genuine, authentic pursuit of a relationship with Jesus. What do you say to someone who who says, no. No. I'm not I'm not, like, you know, waving my fist at God. I wanna know, but I just can't I I I can't just agree with this idea that I'm just gonna okay.

Now I believe. You know? What what would you say to a person that is in that apparent conundrum? I I would say to the person that you're not done yet. Keep seeking.

God is at work in your life, drawing you to himself. Don't turn him off. Continue to pray, to seek his face, to attend Christian worship services, to read the Bible, to seek God, and that the Holy Spirit will draw you to himself if you truly are a nonresistant unbeliever. It is the resistant nonbeliever who suppresses the Holy Spirit Yeah. And refuses to respond to his convicting and drawing.

But a truly nonresistant unbeliever will come to Christ because the Holy Spirit will draw him to Christ just as Jesus said he would. How much of it do you feel is a having sort of created a concept or an idea in somebody's mind, in someone's mind about what that feeling should feel like or what that experience should look like? I I liken it in some ways to, like, marriage. You know, I've been married for almost sixteen years. I got three kids.

I came into the idea of marriage thinking, I'm gonna just know. I'm gonna feel something. It's gonna be Hollywood, and it was a totally different experience. Like, it was terrifying as much as it was attractive. It was I had to be dragged, and I wanted to run.

It was it was nothing like I thought it was, and it was Wow. So much commitment on the front end and emotions on the back end, and and it was nothing like what my parents had looked like. You know, all these images and archetypes I had in my brain. How much of it is that we are waiting for something that is really a experience of our own making, a a a Hollywood projection or a a testimony that we hear repeated so we go, well, I haven't been zapped in that way. So yeah.

Yeah. That it's so hard to generalize. You know? There are people Of course. Who have Damascus Road experience like the apostle Paul.

But for most of us, it isn't that dramatic. As I look into my own life and experience, I would say that it involves, a deep conviction of sin, that if the Holy Spirit is producing to you this conviction that I am a miserable sinner, that I do wrong, I am infected with evil, and I cannot free myself from this, I think that's an indication of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. Remember Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit comes, he will convict the world, and so this is describing unbelievers. He will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. And so when we have those intuitions, I think we can be sure the Holy Spirit is at work.

And then when we yield our lives to him and open our hearts to him, I think there is a sense for personal presence there. Yeah. That there's someone there somehow. You may not hear, well, you won't probably, an audible voice or something of that sort, but I think there could be a this sense of a of a personal presence through the Holy Spirit. Yeah.

And not to overextend the marriage analogy, but I do think that it is there is a level of leaping off. There is a faith aspect to it in a sense that you've you feel it, but then you make that decision. And then that love grows. That relationship deepens. That commitment becomes more secure.

You begin to know and learn things that just continue to reinforce the faith that you have and that commitment that you made. And so as you said, it's impossible to generalize, and I I certainly don't wanna judge the motivations of someone like an an Alex O'Connor. I just I, like you said, I I hope and pray he continues to seek like the many others like him. But then also I pray that when the moment is right and when the holy spirit opens his heart that he takes that step, that those listening who are in that boat take that step and and experience the goodness that that I know that we have and and so many listening. So, look, this has been unbelievable.

I I have a couple of rapid fire questions. And to be honest, with someone who works in the world that you work in, there's no such thing as a quick answer to these kinds of questions. So I'm not entirely sure how to even do this. So out of respect for your time, you can take as little or as long with some of these as you want, but these are from our listeners. One of them, Jonathan from Denver, wanted to ask about the apathetic person.

You already answered that, so that's awesome. We're winning there. I have a question from a Ben, not me, who you know, one of the things he often hears as it relates to the old testament is, how can you trust any of the Bible because you won't do all the little details prescribed in the Old Testament? You know, you're wearing certain clothes. Like, oh, well, you're wearing mixed cotton, so, you know, you can't take it seriously.

Again, this is a long subject, but how would you respond to someone who says you can't trust the Bible because you are not following every little letter of the law that says I think that's a a very fundamental misunderstanding. That was the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant, which governed the people of Israel for the time up until the advent of Jesus. Yeah. And Jesus explicitly said that he is going to inaugurate a new covenant in his blood, and the rules and regulations of the old covenant were were done away with. So take for example these food laws about clean and unclean foods.

Jesus taught that what goes into a man is not what defiles a man, but rather it's what comes out of a man, out of his heart Yes. That defiles the man. And Mark, in which this saying is found, they in his gospel, comments, thus, he declared all foods clean. And that's the attitude then of Paul the apostle as well. So thank God we're living under a new covenant.

We're not under that old covenant, with all the rules, regulations that the, ancient Israelites lived under. Yeah. Yep. Awesome. Another listener whose name is Bob.

He's from Minneapolis, so my hometown here. He asks and and I wasn't gonna include this one, but I've actually actually heard this many times myself, which is people accusing God of being a petty narcissist. Like, as someone who just needs us to worship him, needs to control us, again, it's such a cartoon depiction of God, but how would you respond to someone who describes God in that way? This attitude is based upon a philosophically inadequate conception of God. Yeah.

In Christianity, God is the highest good. What Thomas Aquinas called the summum bonum, the highest good. He is a maximally great being, and therefore, he is perfectly good, perfectly loving, perfectly just, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and therefore, he is worthy of worship. And to fail to give god his due, is to fail to understand who God is. It's idolatry.

It's putting lesser goods in the place of the highest good. So when you understand philosophically the idea of God as a maximally great being, then this objection just evaporates because the objection is based upon thinking of God as a sort of finite being who's all full of himself Mhmm. And and not as a maximally great being who is, the good itself and and worthy of worship. Well, this last one comes, not directly to you, but it came in the car ride to school one day for my six year old daughter, and it was such an awesome question. Oh.

I was like, I'm going to ask doctor Craig. So she wanted she's my deep thinker, and she wanted to know if we fell once, why could we not fall again? When we're in heaven, what is there to prevent us from falling again if we fell in a perfect state in the garden? This is no joke what my six year old was asking me in the car. In one sense, you should tell her we fall daily.

Right. We constantly fall, and the promise of scripture is that if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So we do fall continually. But I think that what her real question may be is, can a person lose his salvation? Can a person who is genuinely born again forfeit salvation and ultimately be lost?

And if that's your question, then I think you need to tell her honestly that, Christians differ in their answer Mhmm. To that question. Some Christians believe that once a person is born again and regenerate, that however much he might struggle, that in the end, he will persevere, that God will preserve him until the end, and and he will not be lost. But there are other Christians, Arminians, Wesleyans, and Catholics, who believe that a person can forfeit salvation by renouncing Jesus Christ and casting him out of one's life. It it's not a matter of sinning or or sort of backsliding into perdition, but it would be committing what's called apostasy Mhmm.

Where a person makes a conscious, deliberate rejection of Jesus Christ out of that person's life, and that therefore a person like that could forfeit salvation and be lost. People of the former opinion will say, well, he was never safe to begin with. He just appeared to be following or going through the motions. But this is an issue on which Christians differ, and therefore, there is no pat answer. Right.

She will need, when she's old enough to explore the teachings of the New Testament herself and to come to some conclusion on her own based upon what she, thinks scripture is teaching. Yeah. And I actually I think maybe even more the heart of her question, as confusing as this was, is when we are in heaven, in in some ways in her mind that mimics a pre fall state. So could we not rebel again, and could this cycle not continue? Okay.

I understand now. That's the thing with My, yeah, my daughter's not quite ready for soteriology quite yet. She's, quite different answer. There here here's the answer I like. Okay?

And here we're speculating. Right? Of course. No. The Bible doesn't tell us.

But here's my speculation that I think is a plausible one, and that is that when we go to heaven and all the stain of sin is removed from our lives, everything that blocked our vision and relationship with God. When finally, as Paul says, we see face to face, and behold Christ in all his beauty, that this will be so attractive that it will make it impossible for us to fall away. It it would be as though there were iron filings in the presence of a giant electromagnet, and the Yeah. Iron filings are stuck. They're just attracted to the magnet.

They can't possibly Yeah. Follow me. So I think that God has created us, as I mentioned when we talked about the hiddenness of God, at a kind of arm's length, at a at an epistemic distance from him, where his existence is not so overwhelming as to be irresistible. But I suspect that in heaven, that veil will be removed. Yeah.

With it, I think our freedom to sin will be removed. Yeah. Well, if that's any, any sort of indication of my future conversations with my daughter, I'm sure they're gonna get even more complicated. So I'm gonna have to have you back on because maybe it'll just be a whole list of questions from her. No.

We can get back on. She'd be oh, she'd be great. Doctor Craig, this has been awesome. I so appreciate your time, and, I I have learned a ton just in this conversation alone. So thank you.

I know our listeners will feel the same. And, how can we be praying for you in this season? Obviously, this multivolume magnus opus that you're producing. I mean, what a crazy work. That's amazing.

So we'll be praying for that. Anything beyond that that you would like pray for from from me and from our audience? I would say just pray for perseverance. Yeah. As I work on this, I I want to finish it, and I'm on the last volume.

I'm on volume five. So pray for productivity Yes. And perseverance for me. Thank you. I'm gonna pray that right now.

So, Jesus, we thank you for perseverance. We thank you for this the the diligence and the focus that you've given your son, the race that he is running so well. But, Lord, I know that more than just completing the task, he wants it to be what you want. He wants to please you in the process. And so, Holy Spirit, I pray that he'd feel that joy that attracted him to this intense field of study from the very beginning.

Let it be as if it was that very original joy. And I pray that it would be even more, that it would overflow, that the words would overflow, and that it would be far beyond what he's humanly capable for the sake of the body that needs men and women who are gifted and dedicated to searching out and teasing out these challenges and these mysteries and these complexities, and presenting them to the rest of us in a way that we can understand. So thank you for him. Bless him and his family. And, for just the days ahead, let them be filled with your holy spirit's power.

In Jesus' name, amen. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. I really, really appreciate it.

If you could just hang out for two minutes while the file uploads. Otherwise, I really, really appreciate it. Alright. Awesome.

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