The Lasting Impact of Charlie Kirk’s Murder W/ Dr. Frank Turek

Most churches teach such a watered down message that if it was poison, it wouldn't hurt anyone, and if it was medicine, it wouldn't cure anyone. We see somebody that is a refugee that we want to help, and we think the solution to that is to open the borders. No, you're creating more trouble when you take that empathy too far and you don't have proper restraints on that. Charlie's number one goal is to get people saved and sanctified to become disciples. And if we were to bring Charlie back today, Ben, and we were to say, okay, your murder resulted in your listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast. What's up guys? This is Ben from Provoke and Inspire, and today's episode features doctor Frank Turek. He's the renowned apologist who has spent his career defending gospel and biblical truth on college campuses. Now, when we originally booked this podcast, of course, neither of us knew that his close friend Charlie Kirk would be assassinated. For those who don't know, Frank was standing just a few feet away from Charlie when he was shot. In fact, he rode in the SUV with Charlie to the hospital. And so this whole experience has been incredibly raw for Doctor Turek, as you can imagine. And when we did finally get to talk, we dove into some pretty difficult topics, like Charlie's death and how he's been in the months since. Also what he's learned from that experience, but also some tense conversation about politics and the church and how to actually reach people. Doctor Frank Turk provides an insight into that whole tragedy, unlike almost anyone else. And you're really going to benefit from this entire conversation, not just about Charlie Kirk, but really everything that we talked about. So stick around all the way till the end. And just quickly, before I go on, if these conversations encourage you, if they've helped you in your faith, all we really ask in return is that you would share this with other people, help grow it so we can continue to bring you amazing guests like doctor Frank Turek. All right, let's go. Thank you, doctor Frank Turek, for being on the Provoke and Inspire podcast. Thank you Ben. My pleasure. Great being with you. I'm in the South. You're in the great White North. Yeah. I, uh, I've made some interesting life choices, but, look, my wife is from Minnesota, and so I'm tethered here. Minnesota. So we had this podcast scheduled a long while ago. I think it was about a few weeks after the horrific murder of your friend Charlie Kirk. And so we had to reschedule a few times, for obvious reasons. Um, and my heart's really been reflecting on what this whole experience has been like for you and the past few months and what God has been teaching you through that. And I know you've spoken on it a lot, but for those who maybe aren't familiar just with how close you guys were, and even on that day, how close you were to the actual horrific tragedy. What's it been like for you the last few months? What has God been saying to you, speaking to you about? Well, the two aspects of reality that become a lot more relevant and clear are the existence of evil and the importance of eternity. Yeah. When you go through something like this and you see evil up close and then you realize that, well, it's not the end. Thankfully. In fact, Christianity is the answer to the problem of evil. Uh, if we had never sinned, there'd be no reason for Jesus to come to earth to take our sins upon himself. So evil became not just theoretical, but very blatant. On that day on September tenth and the importance of eternity, that look, everybody listening to us right now is certainly going to be dead within a hundred years. Yeah, even with all the technology. Okay. You think it's going to extend your life another twenty? Okay. Maybe one hundred and twenty years. Everybody's going to be dead. Maybe before then. Um, nothing matters ultimately, unless God exists and there's a resurrection. Because if there is no God and there is no resurrection, then it doesn't really matter whether you live as a murderer or a missionary, right? Ultimately, because we all wind up in the same place, there's no eternal meaning. If there is no eternity, there's no ultimate meaning. If there is no eternity, and if there is no judgment, if there is no God, if there is no afterlife, then what we're doing here is just polishing the rails of a sinking ship, and we're all going to wind up dead. So what's the point? Well, the point is, is that there is an eternity. There is a God. There is a judgment. There is an afterlife. So what you do here and what you believe actually does matter. And that's why we do what we do. That's why you do what you do. That's why our ministry does what it does. You have been, you know, obviously carrying on the work that you've been doing for so many years and going to college campuses and, you know, answering questions, have you felt a different atmosphere, a different openness, a different gravitas in the questions or the responses from students. Yeah, there's fewer skeptical questions since Charlie and more evangelistic questions like, how do I get my non-Christian friends to become Christians? You know, there's more of that now. It's shifted. Um, and we've probably done a little over a dozen college events since nine, ten. Uh, some of them. The first one was a week after the event, which all these were pre-scheduled prior to Charlie's murder, but we felt like we had to do them anyway. Um, they're all on our YouTube channel. Cross examine YouTube channel. People can see them there. And so while there is still skeptics out there, quite obviously it seems like these are populated more by people now that really want to know that Christianity is true, and they want to ensure that their loved ones are also becoming Christians. I know you said that the of course, academically or experientially, the idea of eternity. We feel it on some level. But then you have these moments, these defining moments. I think about my dad, who's going through a cancer diagnosis right now. And he's been healthy, so healthy his whole life. And as someone who, like you said, is in the business of wanting people to know that Jesus is real, that eternity matters, it doesn't hit the same way until you're in the midst of something like that. Has it altered your approach in any way? Softened your approach, just emboldened you? How is this? It's just reaffirmed what? The importance of what Christians who are trying to get other people to realize the truth. It just reaffirms the importance of that, just reaffirms the importance of what we're trying to do, what you're trying to do, what other Christian ministries are trying to do to show people what the truth is? Because the key question, and even Charlie would say this, he would say the key question that people need to answer is, who do you say that I am? Jesus always asked that question, who do you say that I am? Right. That question will determine your eternal destiny. Are you going to Realize he is the second person of the Eternal Trinity who came and died and rose again. And by trusting in him, you're not only forgiven, but given his righteousness. Or are you going to say no? He was just some teacher back two thousand years ago who, despite the fact he's the most influential human being in history, he didn't really do anything spectacular. He didn't do any miracles. He didn't rise from the dead. If you come out on that end, then God's not going to force you into heaven against your will. Mm. Yeah. You'll be separated. Hell is separation from God, as Paul says in first Thessalonians two. Or is it second Thessalonians two, one of those two passages? Separation from God. It's actually second Thessalonians one. He talks about it. I would say the thing that was most inspiring for me is his willingness to have conversations with those who were very different, who thought differently, believed differently, voted differently, acted differently. And that is something that I think is so lacking. Truly, I think that as followers of Jesus, I mean, you can't help but look at the life of Jesus and not see that modeled in his very life the way he was willing to speak to those who society deemed unfit to be spoken to. And yet, it feels like and this is very anecdotal, but it feels like in my world people would talk about the revival or the hope for revival that would come in the wake of this tragedy. And what I saw more than Charlie, what Charlie did in terms of speaking to them, going across the aisle. What I saw was just kind of more angst and anger and maybe even political fervor. And so I guess what I'm trying to ask is, what do you think Charlie would have hoped this would produce? And how do we produce more of what I think his life embodied, which is that willingness to actually speak to our neighbor who voted differently, looks differently and acts differently. Well, that was what he was all about. As you said, he would talk to anybody and invite them to the front of the line if they disagreed. Right. Which is why it's just so ridiculous that some people called him a fascist. It's so idiotic because we all know that a fascist tactic, Ben, is to hand your opponent the microphone and say, make your case. I'll listen to you. The guy that shot him is a fascist. Not not the guy that wants to have a conversation and debate ideas back and forth. Um, so Charlie was he knew the two most important things in life. Well, two of the most important things in life. The most important thing, of course, is Jesus. Um, he said politics is peanuts compared to Jesus. And he's right. And he said, politics is not our most important responsibility, but it helps us do our most important responsibility. And look, if you don't think politics are important, I always hear people say, particularly pastors, they'll say, oh, I don't get involved in politics. I just preach the gospel. To which I respond, I guess you don't think the gospel is very important then? And they go, well, what do you mean? I say, can you preach the gospel? In some of the countries I've been to, I've been to Iran. There's no First Baptist Church of Tehran. I've been to Saudi Arabia. There's no Calvary Chapel of Mecca. I just got back from Egypt. You can't start a new church in Egypt. They don't allow it because politically they've ruled it out. Right? There's no United Methodist Church of North Korea. They don't allow this stuff. Okay, politically. And we seem to forget in America we just assume we have religious freedom. Most of the world doesn't have it, and we can lose it here if we don't defend it. So if for no other reason, you ought to be involved politically is to ensure that you have the freedom to preach and live the gospel. And then, number two, another responsibility you have is to affirm a institution that God created and that is government. God created government to punish wrongdoers and protect innocent people from evil. And we as Christians, if we're going to love people by putting laws in place that protect them from evil. We have to be involved politically. If we're not involved politically, who's going to protect innocent people from evil? Who's going to protect life in the womb? Who's going to protect children from being mutilated? Who's going to protect our security so people don't come across the border and conduct terrorist attacks or sex traffic people across the border or bring fentanyl over the border. I mean, these are things that governments are supposed to do. They're supposed to protect innocent people from evil. And when our governments don't do that, they're not actually fulfilling their number one responsibility. And unfortunately, Minneapolis has been a poster child for how not to do government. You don't release criminals into your community because you don't like the politician who's heading the white House, right? But that's what those people are doing. That's what Waltz and Frey have done. They are releasing people who are criminals into society, so they don't have to hand them over to be deported. That that's not that's doing the opposite of what you're supposed to do as a government official is a government official. You're supposed to punish wrongdoers and protect innocent people from evil. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, famously said, if men were angels, no government would be necessary. He realized that people are depraved. We're all depraved, and we need a government to protect innocent people from evil. If we don't do that, then not only is the gospel at jeopardy, but people's lives are in jeopardy. And it seems like people just don't seem to understand that that is a institution. Not only that God established, but is necessary to protect innocent people from evil. But Charlie's number one goal is to get people saved and sanctified to become disciples. And if we were to bring Charlie back today, Ben, and we were to say, okay, your murder resulted in the most evangelical, widely seen funeral in history. There were seventy five thousand people in the room. There were at least thirty or forty thousand people in the arena. Next to us there were thousands of people outside. There was one hundred million people watching online. And as of last November, the last number I got for this was at least one point two billion people have watched some of that memorial service at some point up to that point. And you had everybody from the president on down talking about Jesus in some capacity. Marco Rubio gave a great gospel, as you saw. I tried to give a gospel in the gospel in my five minutes. A lot of other people did as well. And I know I've had scores of people email me or tell me, you know, I'm a Christian now, I wasn't, but because of Charlie, I am or I devoted my life to Christ because of Charlie, or I was backslidden and now I'm back or, you know, back to to Jesus. Thousands, if not millions of people have come to faith over this. If we were to ask Charlie right now, would you undo all that? He'd say, no, that's what my life was about anyway right now. Obviously, I didn't want to leave his his wife and his kids. But look, he he knew the most important thing is eternity. And so we have to be engaged in bringing people to a knowledge of Jesus. And there's always, as you know, been a ripple effect for when not only when bad things happen, when good things happen, there's always a ripple effect that affects trillions of other events and billions of people. In Charlie's case, it was a tsunami. There was a tsunami of effects that came from that awful day. And many of them have been good. Yes, of course, there's always evil out there that multiplies after an event like this. But there's been a lot of good that's come from it. I think the challenge with the political conversation is that I feel like if, like I believe in the case of Charlie, his primary commitment was to Jesus. And because of that, no political system is going to perfectly align with the heart of Jesus. And it feels that at times a lot of Christians are unable or unwilling to be the sort of political nomads that I think an authentic follower of Jesus makes us, by definition. I mean, I think, yes, we live in a political binary reality. I certainly will not vote for a party that will not be pro-life. All those things. That's a choice I just I have to make. But at the same time, I can tell you plenty of things about the Republican Party that I don't think align with Jesus. And I think where we lose some of our credibility as followers of Jesus is when it isn't obvious that our primary commitment is to Christ over and above all else. Yeah, well, I understand what you're saying, but that's just because of the social media world we live in, because the media only talks about Christianity when two things happen, how they vote and when a prominent Christian falls. Do you ever hear them talking about Christians building a new hospital, or opening a new orphanage, or feeding the hungry? No, you never hear any of it. You never hear any of that, right? You only hear how they vote. And when a prominent Christian falls, right? Our duty is to do what's right, regardless of what the world covers about us. Sure. All right. And as as Charlie said, as I just mentioned, politics is not our most important responsibility, but it helps us achieve our most important responsibility. And one of the things Charlie was good at was keeping people together for the greater good. Even though he didn't agree with everything the Republicans were putting forward. And even though people who were in the conservative movement didn't agree, he would say, look, it's better to get eighty percent of what we want than zero percent, right? And so what we have to be honest, when the Republicans or Trump or anybody else or or our favorite politician or even our least favorite politician does something that's against Christianity, we need to call it out. Yeah. Right. So we can't just say, Well, I'm for this side. And this side never does anything wrong. We have to be honest. But we also have to be honest that when you when you vote for. Let's just talk about the presidency for for a second. When you vote for president, you're not voting for one person. You're voting for five thousand people to go to Washington and implement an agenda, implement a platform. And look, I got to be honest, when you look at the two platforms, neither of them are perfect, but there certainly is a platform out there that's closer to what we would believe as Christians than the other. And that is the Republican platform. It just is on the life issue, for example, on child mutilation issue, on security, on several other issues. Now, can you can you find things you don't like? Of course you can. Um, but as you just said, there's no way I could vote for some party that's going to say we're pro-abortion and we want the government to pay for it up to the moment of birth. That's essentially what they were saying on the Democrat side. And we won't say this out loud, but when we're in power, the borders are open. That may sound like compassionate, but it's not. We have three hundred thousand women, girls who are lost in our country. We assume they've been sex trafficked. We have fentanyl coming across the border. Terrorism coming across the border, terrorists coming. We all have locks on our doors. We have passwords on our phones. We have passwords on our bank accounts. People believe in borders. Bible believes in borders. And yet people somehow think that, no, there's no borders. Everybody believes in borders. You don't leave your door open at night. You don't just invite anybody into your house or let people come in at will and and take anything they want. And it's been said this way everyone has borders. Not because you hate people on the outside of that border. It's because you love people on the inside of that border. And as Augustine put it, there's an order of loves. And Paul put this the same way. Your number one responsibility is to take care of your family. As Paul says, if you don't take care of your family, you're worse than an unbeliever. So your job is to take care of your family first, then your church community, then your wider community, then your country, then the greater world. If we invert that, then we run into all sorts of trouble. If every family did that, if every church group did that, if every community did that, if every government did that, we would have far fewer problems. So there's always a priority you have a greater responsibility to. You have three kids, man. I do. You have a greater responsibility to take care of your three kids than the neighbor kids. Yep. One hundred percent. Or your church kids or your family of, uh, in your city or your state or your country or the whole world. This is just common sense. And Augustine put it in the order of loves. And yet somehow we invert that, and we think it's been sometimes called toxic empathy. We see somebody that is a refugee that we want to help, and we think the solution to that is to open the borders. No, you're creating more trouble when you take that empathy too far and you don't have proper restraints on that. Yeah. And there is so much there's so much nuance. And I hate to use the word pragmatism, but like you said, we have two imperfect parties. We always will. Like, that is just the world that we live on in this side of eternity. And I'm completely with you. And yet I'm trying to think of it on a, on an individual level. And I think about the work that you've devoted your life to in terms of answering people's objections to the faith and reducing from the sort of the mass societal levels down to the very granular individual level. And I want to see people come to know Jesus. I know that's your passion, too. And there's all of these challenges in society and cultural hot topics and behavioral issues. And the thing I continually wrestle with is are those the places to focus my energy? Now, I'm not trying to create a false dichotomy because we need to absolutely fight abortion. I support people that do and I need to preach the gospel. Those are false dichotomies if I try to to separate them in that sense. But when it comes to my individual conversations and all of these behaviors that they might have that are counter to the design of Christ, is there an element of going after the heart rather than getting hung up on the politics or the behavior, or the cultural hot topics? Does that question make sense? How do we focus our effort to really reach people? Yeah, sure there is. It goes to the question I ask people first who are not believers. And the question is, if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian? And a lot of times the answer is no because it's not a head problem. It's a hard problem. They don't want it to be true. They don't want there to be a god because they want to be God over their own lives, right? And so if you start with that question, it clears the decks of all other objections. I mean, if they say no to it, you might as well just have pizza, right? There's nothing else you can do. It's not it's not a matter of evidence. It's not a matter of the existence of God or the existence of Jesus. It's a matter of their resistance to God or their resistance to Jesus. And so I think you always start with that question. If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian? And they could ask the question of, you know, if Buddhism were true, would you become a Buddhist? Or if Islam was true, would you become a muslim? Or if atheism true, would you be? I mean, those are fair questions, right? Are we following the truth or are we just following what we find attractive? In fact, Blaise Pascal said that, you know, for centuries ago, he said, people almost invariably based their belief not on the basis of proof, but on the basis of what they find attractive. And so too often we're led by our desires rather than the facts rather than the evidence. And we have to be sure that there's many Christians, by the way, that are just Christians because they find it attractive, not because if not because they can give you any evidence it was true. It's just what they like. So I think you should start with there. But let me also say something about this. And this is going to be very controversial. You may not agree with it, but I think that Jesus was not only not seeker friendly, he was not even disciple friendly. What do I mean by that? If you go to John chapter six after he has already fed the five thousand, he's in Capernaum. Beautiful place to go. If you ever get to go to Israel, you can stand on top of the synagogue in which Jesus taught this. There's a synagogue a couple centuries after Jesus that is there now, built over the one he was in, but where he taught his Bread of Life speech in John chapter six, and at one point after he's done preaching it, he turns to disciples who are listening to it, and he says, does this offend you? And then he said, if it does offend you, don't worry about it. I have these other convictions that I can shift to. No, he doesn't say that. Right. And and after he asks, does this offend you? They say, hey, this is a hard teaching. We can't follow this guy anymore. And then Jesus turns to Peter and he says to Peter, are you going to leave too? And in a moment of complete clarity, because a lot of times, Peter, when he when he would say something, he would stick his foot in his mouth. Right. But this time he didn't. He said to Jesus, Lord, where else are we going to go? You have the keys to eternal life, right? So notice that Jesus is not seeker friendly. He's not even disciple friendly. He's driving off people that want to follow him, but he's saying it's a high cost to follow me. You got to deny yourself to follow me. You got to carry your cross. So why do we think that we need to water down the gospel in order to attract people? We need to water down Jesus's teachings in order to attract people to Jesus's teachings. Because Jesus never did this, Jesus did the opposite in fact. A.W. Tozer said this. I'm paraphrasing his quote. He said, most churches teach such a watered down message message that if it was poison, it wouldn't hurt anyone, and if it was medicine, it wouldn't cure anyone. That's brilliant. So I understand where you're coming from, that we don't want to get involved in these political conversations that may obstruct from the gospel. However, if we're talking about moral principles that Jesus would affirm or the apostles would affirm, it's not like we can hide those things in order to get people saved and then do a bait and switch and say, oh, now you've got to believe these things, too. You see what I'm saying? What I hear and feel in Peter is that he had felt the presence and intimacy of Jesus, and so to him there was almost a sense of there's nothing else like. And even as you described Augustine's ordered loves, I feel like it has a similar there's a takeaway from that in the sense that there is only one water that satiates our soul, and that is Jesus. Yes, he invariably has to be at the top of that hierarchy. Everything else flows down from there. And so to me, it is not that we are presenting a vision that is easy. We are presenting the only vision that's real. It's the only vision that's true. It's the only vision. And so to me, I think intuitively we recognize that the best things are not easy. I think people, even outside of the church, know that to some degree, that the things that they've had to strive for and labor for and sacrifice for are the things that are meaningful. No one's at the end of their life thinking about the the beaches they visited and the cocktails that they had. They're thinking about the things that meant something to them. And so to me, it's more just how do I get someone not to be in these red herrings and these distractions all be they important on some levels. How do I get them to see and ultimately submit to the reality of who Jesus is? Because to me, that is actually the hardest thing to do to just agree to acquiesce on some political discourse, whatever. But to say I'm not Lord, I have to surrender, lose my life to find it. That I actually think is not seeker sensitive. That, like you said, is the hardest thing anyone has to do. No it is, and I think even talking about political issues can be a segue to that. Why? Because somebody says, you know, I believe someone has a right to such and such. And then you ask, where do rights come from? Totally. Right. Uh, you're saying you have a right. Where do rights rights don't come from? Government. Right. As are even our Declaration of Independence points this out. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their government. Now, it doesn't say that endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Happiness and governments are instituted among men to secure these rights. Governments simply secure the rights that you already have from God. If a government doesn't do that, then according to the founders, the people have a right to a new government. And that's what the Declaration of Independence was all about, because King George was not protecting the rights or securing the rights of the colonists. And so they have this big, long list of where King George was not legislating properly. So I think political conversations can help you actually arrive at the ultimate source of everything, which is Jesus. You can just keep asking, why do you think that's true? Why do you think that's true? Why do you think that you don't even have to take a position on it? You can say, well, you have a right. Okay. Why do you think that's a right? Where does that come from? And why do you think God would approve of that? Where's your evidence for that? You know, before you know it, you're back to the real basics of of who God is. Totally. And I think that the more you train your eyes and mind to see and sense the opportunities for spiritual conversations that lead to the gospel. They're absolutely everywhere because, as you said, they're the metaphysical bedrock of absolutely everything. And so even looking at this interesting state of our culture today where we have this, I say this all the time, we have this two things going on at the same time. We're constantly outraged, but we have completely relativized truth, which of course is a completely incongruent way to live. It's like here we have a young, a young generation that's always protesting. But then if you go and ask, you know, we'll do things on campuses too. We ask them on the streets. Does everyone get to decide what's right or wrong for themselves? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Meanwhile, I'm late for a protest and I'm like, yeah, bro, what are you doing? What are you doing? Like you can't. Yeah. You can't. How can you be protesting if there is no objective right and wrong? If everyone gets to decide if truth is all relative and morality is all relative, then you're just protesting about preferences, right? You're not saying it's really wrong what these other people are doing. They get to do what they want to do. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. You're absolutely right. It's contradictory. It's totally contradictory. And again, you know, I don't know if you've read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, but I've been rereading it and he has this illustration of The Elephant and the rider. It's a very long book that articulates a very simple point that we all kind of intuitively understand, which is we think we're rational, we're quite emotional, and then we use rationality to justify what we already feel. And so that's where a lot of the argumentation comes from, when really it's just it's a deeper, more primal sense of I just want to be in control of my life. I just want to be in charge. And so I think so much of what you're saying and what I'm hearing, is that we have to get people to confront the most foundational resistance to God, which is that I want to be in charge, that I don't want to surrender control of my life. And that that is that is a anything but seeker sensitive. That is a brutal place. Like like that verse you described says we have to lose our life in order to find it. But once you've tasted that, you feel it in the way you communicate, it's there's this infectious come and taste and see. This is so much better than anything the world has to offer. Yeah. And people do want to challenge if you, uh, if you, uh, present it to them, uh, as you mentioned earlier, which is a wise insight, Ben, that when you go through difficulty, it actually makes you better. And, uh, you find that there's more value to it. People that have zero sort of difficulty in their life turn out to be normally very shallow people. I mean, you can think of a, say, an entitled celebrity where people fall all over themselves to give the celebrity whatever they want, whenever they want it. Right. Those people become very shallow, you know, uh, they don't get their water at forty one point six degrees. They're pitching a hissy fit. You know, you're going. You can't deal with any adversity, can you? It's got to be all about you. Twenty four over seven, three hundred sixty five. No, that turns you into a me monster. You know, you need some difficulty in your life. And this is why the scriptures always talk about count it all joy when you fall into various trials. We glory in tribulation because tribulation produces pain produces character, and character produces hope. Right? Uh, Paul says that in a second second Corinthians four he says, our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us a greater weight of glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, for what is seen is temporary. We fix our eyes on what is unseen, for what is unseen is eternal. Translation the difficulty you go through here enhances your capacity to enjoy God, not only now, but in eternity. Because when you go through difficulty, then you appreciate somebody that comes and saves you from it. And that's what Jesus does, right? In fact, redemption is better than innocence. What do I mean by that? If somebody saves you from disaster, you love that person more than if you never had a problem, right? If somebody rescues you, you feel a bond with that person you never felt before. That's what Jesus does for us. He saves us from disaster. He rescues us. Yeah. And it's no wonder, in light of that, that the enemy has focused his aim on the idea of sin, on the idea of personal responsibility, of accountability. We're the victim. Culture, the therapeutic. Everything's a diagnosis. Everything requires medication. There is no. And again, of course, I'm not talking about the extremes, the reality of those conditions in a fallen, broken body and mind. Right? But man, is it any wonder that the enemy says, you know where I'm going to focus my energies, convincing everyone that they don't need help, that they don't they aren't wrong in any way or in any capacity. Because if I rob them of that, then, as you said, I robbed them of of the desperation that's required to to reach for a savior and the gratitude that is produced when you're actually saved from the reality of your condition. You really can't look for a savior if you don't think you're lost, right? There's no reason to. The further you go in this, the less you'd need it. And yet, I think you would attest to it, and I certainly would. That man. The more I go down this journey, it the deeper my sense of of need for Jesus gets. And the more I realize how broken I am and how apart from him I can do nothing. I mean, I when I get the opportunity to speak or do something like this, I'm just. God, if you take your hand off me, I'm dead. Because that's the truth. And facing tragedy so close up and close like you did. I think that's all the more, I'm sure, apparent in your mind. Just of how fragile everything is and how urgent we need to be. Yeah. Someone I know, Jonathan Hite, also wrote Anxious Generation. Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, it's the book you just mentioned previous to that or. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And and he is an atheist, actually. He is? Yeah, and teaches at NYU, but he has some really good insights on so many things. Someone else wrote a book I don't can't remember who, but wrote a book called The Denial of Death. Oh, yeah, that's a classic. Um, yeah. What is Ernest Becker? Was that it? Okay. Yeah. Ernest Becker. Yeah. I heard Tim Keller once talking about that, and and that's so true that we kind of go through life. I mean, we know we're going to die, but we don't act like it, right? We think, oh, this is going to last forever. And I can put off any thought of eternity as long as possible. Um, yeah, I could I can just live for this life as long as possible. And only when a tragedy strikes do we suddenly go, uh oh. You know, sometimes you only look up when you're on your back. Then you suddenly go, oh, I'm not going to live forever. Maybe I ought to get my affairs in order. Yeah, that book was it's an old book, and I think it became a sort of a weapon in the arsenal of a lot of secularists and atheists because they they used it as a as a explanation for the instinct to reach for a god. Right. Because we we have to deal with this sense of death that we all want to escape. And so we hypothesize the existence of a deity to help us feel better. You know, this therapeutic sky daddy or whatever. But even as you were saying earlier to to the idea of motivation that can be flipped both ways, right? We have just as much psychological motivation for not wanting God to exist as we do for wanting him to exist. And and simply pointing to the the psychology really does does nothing at all. But even to your point about being sort of awoken or awakened rather to our mortality. Uh, that's that's it's such a strange thing how that fades, at least for me. I've, you know, I've had friends, close friends die, or these tragic moments happen. What is it about our human spirit that we just kind of are lulled back into this sense that, oh, maybe I will kind of live forever? Or is it an apologetic for the fact that we were designed to live forever? So in some senses, it's like the C.S. Lewis argument that we, we resist and rail against mortality because we aren't, in fact, mortal. I suppose you could look at it both ways. Sure you can. And John Lennox has put it this way, you know, was it Marx who said that religion is opiate for the masses or something like that? Yeah. And uh, someone else said, uh, it's just, uh, a a way of consoling people who are afraid of the dark. Right. And John Lennox came along and said, well, you could also look at it in the opposite direction, that atheism is just a way that people can console themselves when they're afraid of the light. Right? They don't want to be judged. Right? So they assume there is no judge. But at the end of the day, the psychology doesn't tell you what's true outside your skull. What will tell you what's true outside your skull is the evidence. So when people ask me, how do I know that God exists? I say, I know God by his effects. If there's a creation and there is. This universe had a beginning and is design, that's the that's the effect after reason. Back to a creator, right? And if space, time and matter had a beginning, which even atheists are now admitting, whatever created space, time and matter must be outside of space time and matter. In other words, the cause must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful to create the universe out of nothing, personal, in order to choose to create and also intelligent, to have a mind, to make a choice, to create. Right? So that appears to be a being like God when there's design in the universe and design in life. I'm reasoning back to a designer. So the effect is design. The cause is the designer. There's a moral law written on the heart. That's the effect. I'm reasoning back to a moral lawgiver. Where do moral laws or where do laws come from? They come from lawgivers. Why are we obligated to love and not murder? Because there's a standard out there, a person out there whose nature is that standard. And if we deviate from that standard, that would be called evil. We don't have obligations to things. We have obligations to persons. So there is a lawgiver. A moral lawgiver out there, because I have this effect written on my heart. The same thing is true with the evidence for the resurrection. If the evidence for the resurrection is good, and I believe it is, it's in our book. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Then we have to ask ourselves, here's the effect. Someone predicted and accomplished his own resurrection from the dead. What could have caused that? Only a being who has the power to create and raise life, a being like God. So you're always reasoning from effect to cause. This is what scientists do, right? And by the way, we do this even in our own personal lives. Like if we think God has spoken to us or say answered a prayer, we're doing the same thing we're saying. The answered prayer is the effect and the cause is God. We're always reasoning from effect to cause. Here's the main problem with atheism they have no cause, Okay? There's no cause. And they claim to be scientific. What science is, is a search for causes. There has to be an uncaused first cause out there. You can't go on an infinite regress of causes. Right. So the ultimate first cause appears to be a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, moral, intelligent being who created and sustains all things. You can arrive at that being, by the way, without any reference to the Bible. You can just look at effects around you and reason back to a cause. So not it's not psychology that tells you necessarily whether God exists or doesn't. It's the it's the ability to reason from effect back to cause which to the to the title of your book is why? In light of all that, as well as the experiential evidence I have in my life, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. So, Doctor Turek, look, I think there's two things I'm excited about. This conversation was awesome, and I heard none of your Sounders about me being boring or being fired, so I checked everything right? Otherwise you would have heard this wrong. Okay. And if this if this podcast was boring, you would have heard this. You're fired. All right. But not boring. Very good, Ben. Very good. Awesome. You know what? I accomplished something good today. Hey, look, I love this. This was awesome. I really appreciate you. And I'm excited to cheer you on from afar. And to see all that God does through your life and ministry on campuses. And thank you. Thank you for being willing to do this, for jumping on this pod. And, uh, yeah, I just pray that God will use you powerfully in the future. Thanks, Frank. Thank you. Same to you, Ben. Appreciate it. You provoked us to to thought. Good. And I'm not fired, so I will continue. You're not fired. Keep doing it. My wife will be happy to hear that.

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