Episode 107 - Looking at the Tenants and Questions of Morality in Christianity with Adam L. Johnson

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In this conversation, Adam Lloyd Johnson, a Christian philosopher, discusses the complexities of faith, morality, and the nature of God. He addresses common objections to Christianity, including the problem of evil and the concept of hell. The dialogue explores the relationship between faith and reason, the origins of morality, and the significance of consciousness. Johnson emphasizes the importance of evidence in belief formation and advocates for open dialogue between differing perspectives. The conversation also touches on historical evidence for Jesus and the implications of near-death experiences.

Episode Transcript

(01:00:50):
I think the best way to describe me is a
Christian philosopher.
I wear a lot of hats and I've done a lot
of things over the years, but in terms of
my day-to-day work, I'm the founder and
president of a ministry
called Convincing Proof.
And it's a ministry that focuses on

(01:01:13):
giving reasons and evidence to believe
that Christianity is true.
I'm a Christian, an evangelical,
conservative Christian, and I'm convinced
that Christianity is true.
And so, like many people who have a
certain position on whatever topic it is,
I'm advocating for my position and trying

(01:01:35):
to convince other people
that it is, in fact, true.
And it's more than that.
You know, if Christianity is true, then
we were all made to have
a relationship with God.
And so, Christianity teaches that our
relationship with God has been broken,

(01:01:55):
and the only way back into a right
relationship with God is
through faith in Christ.
And so, I spend most of my time trying to
encourage people to be reconciled back to
God through faith in Christ.
But people have, you know, good
questions, skeptical questions
about how this could be true.

(01:02:18):
So, I really enjoy trying to answer those
questions and deal with objections and
folks who are arguing
against Christianity.
So that's my full-time job.
Perfect.
Okay, so as I mentioned in the email, I'm
not a Christian, nor am
I religious in any way.

(01:02:38):
I consider myself more...
Well, maybe I am religious in terms of
religiosity, but in terms of kind of
lifestyle and following a particular
religion, I'd say I'm certainly not.
I'm more spiritual than anything else.
I try and follow a kind of scientific way
forward in discovering things as opposed
to a faith-based thing.
But I do hold certain beliefs that do

(01:02:59):
align with many of the world's religions.
I just don't subscribe to any particular
one in terms of the doctrines of that
religion, so to speak.
I've always struggled to logically and
morally accept them, I suppose.
So for instance, one of the main issues I

(01:03:20):
find with Christianity and with other
religions, which is interesting, they all
kind of follow that same idea, at least
in the Western world, is the idea that
your pathway into either eternal comfort
and joy in heaven versus eternal
suffering in hell is based solely upon

(01:03:41):
whether you believe or not, as opposed to
how you are as a person.
Because to me, that seems very, very
difficult to reconcile with an
all-loving, all-moral
being, if you know what I mean.
I'm sure you hear that a lot.
So I'm curious as to what your thoughts
are on that objection.
Yeah.
No, I can respect that.

(01:04:03):
I've had similar
thoughts throughout the years.
So I should say that I became a Christian
when I was a teenager.
And then throughout my 20s,
I was working as an actuary.
I worked in the field of actuarial
science, just to have that sort of
mathematical,
analytical, logical thinking mind.

(01:04:23):
And so all throughout my 20s.
What is that field of actuary science?
Actuary science, yeah, it's called
science, but it's technically probably
more better considered mathematics.
Actuaries are the people
who price insurance products.
So it's based a lot on
statistics and probability.
And I had to study a lot of
mathematics to be an actuary.

(01:04:45):
And I did that for 10
years after college.
But I guess my point was, during my time
as an actuary, I was a Christian, but I
was always kind of wondering these
thoughts and pondering, how do we know
this stuff is really true?
Because I don't really see Christianity

(01:05:07):
as like a religious faith.
I mean, there's a sense in which it is,
but I guess I'm more concerned about
believing what is true,
what corresponds to reality.
So I affirm a
correspondence notion of truth.
I think something is true if it

(01:05:29):
corresponds to reality.
And so I want to know what's really true
about reality, the universe, myself.
So it's not as much of a religious faith
as it is of I became convinced that based
on the reasons and evidence, almost like
a scientific endeavor, I became convinced

(01:05:49):
based on the reasons and evidence that
Christianity is true, that it does
correspond to reality.
I know what you mean about, because it
does seem, I know to outsiders, to
non-Christians, that it's all based on
your belief or not, whether or not you

(01:06:11):
go, as you said, to heaven or to hell.
But if Christianity is true, nobody goes
to hell because of a lack of belief.
So if Christianity is true, people go to
hell because of their evil choices.

(01:06:32):
So according to Christianity, we all have
made evil choices, some
worse than others, right?
But all of our evil choices have broken
our relationship with God.
And so something needs to be done to
bring us back into a
right relationship with God.

(01:06:53):
And most people have a kind of an
intuitive sense that I need to do
something to get myself right with God.
I need to be nicer to people.
I need to do maybe more religious things.
Somehow I can work my way back to God.
And that's the foundation of a lot of

(01:07:15):
religious belief systems.
But Jesus was a little bit different.
And Jesus, when he appeared on the scene,
he threw things like the Sermon on the
Mount and a lot of his teaching.
He explained what moral
perfection looks like.
So the Sermon on the Mount is probably
Jesus's most famous sermon.

(01:07:36):
You can read that in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.
It doesn't take 10 or
15 minutes to read it.
But if you read the Sermon on the Mount,
he sets the bar so high in terms of what
moral perfection looks like.
And he says that you have to basically be
perfect in order to make
yourself right with God.
And I'm going to guess that the vast

(01:07:58):
majority of people who were there that
day that heard that sermon were
devastated because we all recognize that
we fall short of that perfection.
And so according to Christianity, the
solution is, since none of us can work
our way back to God because we're all
moral failures, God stepped into the

(01:08:18):
picture and did something
on our behalf to rescue us.
So there's a sense in which
he did all the work, right?
Sometimes I use the example of, let's say
we all had cancer, which almost seems to
be true sometimes these days.
But if every single human being in the
world had a deadly form of cancer and a

(01:08:39):
doctor invented a cure for it, and it was
just one little pill that you could take
and you'd be cured of this cancer, and he
made this cure available for free, so
then it was up to you to decide whether
to take that pill or not.
If you decide not to take that – he's
not going to force it on anybody, but if

(01:09:00):
you decide to take that
pill, then you'd be cured.
If you decide not to take the pill, then
you're going to – the
cancer is just going to play out.
So it's not as though you'll
die then based on the pill.
You die because of the cancer.
And so if Christianity is
true, it's the same thing.
We go to hell, which is just an eternal

(01:09:24):
separation from God that our broken
relationship with him
stays broken for all eternity.
That's basically what hell is.
He allows us to make that choice, or we
can take the pill, so to speak, and be
cured, i.e. brought into a right
relationship with him, forgiven, spent

(01:09:46):
eternity in heaven, however
you want to talk about it.
And that pill, according to Christianity,
is putting our faith in Christ.
And when I say faith, it's not this
religious leap of faith in the world.
I disagree with a lot of, especially
atheists, or very strong
atheists, on what faith is.
They often define it as faith just for

(01:10:08):
the sake of believing something, or out
of fear of believing.
I think faith can and
should be reasonable faith.
If you have faith in, as you say that, a
certain medication that a doctor
prescribes you, you will have faith in
that doctor's abilities to know that it
will work based on the evidence of how
good a doctor he is, how many patients

(01:10:29):
he's cared for, etc.
So I agree that faith isn't
just a belief without evidence.
I think it can be, and
should be, evidence-based.
So trust.
Trust might even be a better word,
because it wouldn't carry that sort of
connotation that's come from a lot of...
I could walk you through where that idea
of a blind leap of faith came from, but I

(01:10:53):
tend to use the word trust more often,
because it's trusting something or
someone based on good
reasons and evidence.
And I use marriage often as an example.
So I trust my wife, that she's going to
be faithful to me and love me
unconditionally and be a
good supportive spouse.
But it's not a blind trust, it's who've

(01:11:13):
been married for over 29 years.
And so I'm trusting her based on all
sorts of good reasons and evidence of
having gotten to know
her over the last 30 years.
One of the things I wonder is, God, in
the Christian idea of God, created us
with the desire for us to know and love

(01:11:36):
him and be with him.
Correct?
Yeah, I would say a lot of that roots
back into the very
nature of God being a Trinity.
And I can unpack that more, because you
were going to ask the question.
Yeah, but the main thing with that is,
God is an omnipotent, omnipresent being

(01:11:56):
who's capable of anything.
So why would he create these beings that
he wants to love and be
with him for eternity?
It's with the potential
to do just the opposite.
So in other words, using your analogy,
why would God create the cancer in the

(01:12:17):
first place and then need
a pill to save us from it?
Just don't create the cancer at all.
You see what I mean?
Yeah, no, I do.
Yeah, so I've done quite a
bit of work in this area.
Oftentimes it arises within the issue of
the problem of evil.

(01:12:38):
Why is there evil at all?
And I've developed a theodicy that I call
my divine love theodicy.
But it starts with this
idea that God is a Trinity.
So Christianity is true, then God exists
as one being of three persons, and these
three persons exist in an eternal loving
communion of three persons,

(01:12:59):
these loving relationships.
And so if Christianity is true, then God
created us basically to expand that
communion, create more persons to love
and enjoy loving relationships.
I think that's the meaning of life is
enjoying loving relationships with God
and with each other,

(01:13:20):
friends, spouses, family, God.
So if God created us for that purpose,
then it seems like he would have to
create us with free will.
Because if he just created robots, for
instance, who had to love him and to love
each other, then it doesn't seem to me

(01:13:41):
that that would be true love.
We don't want our spouse to love us
because they have to,
but because they choose to.
And so if God is going to create beings
with free will, then that opens up the
door to choose not to love.
And I think that choice is the root of
all of our evil choices.

(01:14:02):
Every time we choose to do something
equal, it's because
we're choosing not to love.
So if I'm mean or I tell lies about
somebody, I'm being unloving.
So I would say that's the root of all of
our evil is based on that free will
choice to choose to love or not to love.

(01:14:23):
And I think that's how evil
entered into the equation.
So my thought pattern there is to use it
as an analogy to something that we are
more familiar with, say, maybe a
governing body or entity or even in a
relationship even closer to home.
If one member of the relationship, more

(01:14:45):
than likely the man, if we're being
honest, was to say to his wife, you know,
you have to love me or else I'm going to
punish you for the
rest of our relationship.
That to me isn't offering
the free choice out of love.
It's emotional abuse.
Yeah, I see where you're going.

(01:15:08):
A couple of thoughts come to mind.
Initially, I think it's important to keep
in mind with Christianity.
Again, I keep saying if Christianity is
true because I want to, this is all of my
comments and thoughts are within the
framework of Christianity being true.
So God then is not only our lover, so to

(01:15:32):
speak, right, a loving, loving
relationship with him.
He's also the righteous
judge of the universe.
And so as the judge, he does have to play
a role in terms of making things right.
And I think we would expect the God of
the universe to hold people accountable.

(01:15:52):
So take a Hitler or
anybody evil in history.
I think it's very intuitive to think that
God, you know, as the creator should hold
people like that accountable.
And so it makes a lot of sense to me then
that God holds
accountable for our evil choices.
And it seems to me that a lot of folks

(01:16:13):
have a misunderstanding of the
Christian's conception of hell.
I think a lot of folks think of hell as
this place of torment and fire burning.
But if you specifically, if you look at

(01:16:34):
Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, I
think it's second Thessalonians, the way
that he, and the Bible does use that sort
of imagery, and I think that's where
these ideas have come from.
But I think the Bible uses this sort of
imagery to impress upon us how
serious a place that hell is.
I don't think that the torment there is

(01:16:55):
going to be literal physical torment.
I think it's going to be more torment in
the sense of being separated from God,
not having a relationship with him, him
being the source of all good things.
It's going to be that sort of sorrow.
When you see that, when Paul writes
second Thessalonians, where he's
explaining that the worst part about hell

(01:17:16):
is being separated from God.
And so that, in a sense then, God is
allowing people to choose not to have a
relationship with him.
So if he would force that upon people, if
he would force everybody into heaven,
that would almost be like a violation of
their free will to force everybody to be
in a relationship with him

(01:17:37):
for all eternity forward.
And that's what we would
understand heaven to be.
I struggle with the, I suppose the
logistics maybe of it, maybe that's not
the right word, but taking what the
standard Christian doctrine says, if
you've, you know, admit your sins and

(01:18:01):
repent in front of God, so your deathbed,
then you will be accepted into heaven.
So I struggled to see a man who's been
great and loving to everybody and
everything on the planet for his whole
life, but has never been able to accept
Jesus as the savior, standing at the

(01:18:22):
gates alongside someone who came to God
right at the end of his life, but did so
many immoral things throughout his life,
will get into heaven and he won't, just
because his faith in God at the end of
his life seems to make up for all the
nonsense that he did in during his life,
where he's the good man,
just for not believing.

(01:18:44):
Maybe he didn't have the capacity to
believe or for whatever reason gets
eternally, not for a long time, eternity
away from God into hell.
You know what I mean?
It seems very unbalanced.
Yeah, no, no, I sympathize with that.
In fact, there's somebody very close to

(01:19:04):
me who that's, according to him, that is
one of the primary reasons that's
preventing him to becoming a Christian
because of this very issue.
So I've wrestled with it.
I know people who wrestle with it.
So a couple of thoughts.
I would say, first of all, that there's

(01:19:28):
definitely some things about Christianity
that I don't even necessarily prefer or
like, but my beliefs aren't based on what
I prefer or what I like.
So if this particular area of
Christianity is something that I don't
like, that doesn't mean
it's necessarily false.
You know what I'm saying?

(01:19:50):
I mean, there's a lot of things we don't
want something to be true doesn't
necessarily mean that it's not.
There's a lot of things I
don't like about reality.
You know, I don't like gravity sometimes.
I'd love to fly around like a bird and
enjoy that sort of thing.
But I got to deal with
what's actually true.
So if Christianity is true, and I think
there's good reasons and evidence to
believe it is, then it includes some of

(01:20:11):
these things that on some days I might
not prefer, but they're still true.
The second thought that I have is that
there's a sense in which this is actually
a beautiful thing though.
So there's most days I really do like
this, because what it means is that
everybody has the

(01:20:31):
opportunity to be forgiven.
No matter what you've done, no matter how
horrendous you've been, you've got the
opportunity to be forgiven.
And I think that is a beautiful thing.
So and then the third thought I was going
to say is this idea of the
generally good moral person.

(01:20:51):
Again, according to Christianity, God
sees everybody's inner life.
He sees their heart, their thoughts,
their conscience, whatever.
And God's evaluation of mankind.
You know, when I look out in my
neighborhood or my friends and family, I

(01:21:12):
do see folks who seem, at least on the
outside, from the little window that I
get into their life
as pretty good people.
And they're not all Christians.
So I know a lot of non-Christians who
seem to be good, relatively moral people.
And based on what I could tell, it
doesn't seem like they
have any evil whatsoever.

(01:21:35):
I don't see everybody's thoughts, minds,
hearts, what they do behind
closed doors, their intentions.
God does.
Again, Christianity is true.
And God's evaluation of mankind is that
we are all incredibly evil.
And most of the time when we don't act
out on our evil intentions, it's because

(01:21:57):
of the negative consequences.
If we had free reign, you know, that
classic Greek parable of what if we had a
ring that made us invisible, kind of the
moral of that story is if we had a ring
that made us invisible or we could do
anything we wanted to do without any
consequences, it would really show how

(01:22:20):
evil every single one of us really is.
And that's God's evaluation.
You read Paul in Romans
3, and it's pretty damning.
God's evaluation, the one who can see
everybody's heart and mind, how evil we
are, we all were the awkward.
Although I would argue that that seems to

(01:22:41):
be a much more subjective thing to the
individual in terms of, I mean, you know,
everybody will have their own moral code
of what's right and wrong.
For instance, you know, my mum wouldn't
have a problem squashing a spider.
I couldn't do that because I couldn't
kill and I hit a hedgehog once when I was
driving my car and I thought about it for
the next three days

(01:23:02):
feeling sick, you know.
So that didn't come from a religious
belief or a fear that if I don't do the
right thing or I do bad things that I'm
going to be punished for it.
I just it just it wasn't right.
It just felt wrong to
do that sort of thing.
So for that reason, I struggled to see
that it's purely based on, you know,

(01:23:25):
faith in in Christ or whatever to
determine your morals, because I don't
follow that idea of Christianity or of
Islam or anything in terms of religion.
But I still have that sense
of what's right and wrong.
And I think it would align with most
Christians idea of
what's right and wrong.
Yeah, no, that's a great point.

(01:23:46):
And this is actually the area of
philosophy that I specialize in.
So I specialize in meta ethics and it's
the idea of what is morality.
Most people are familiar with ethics.
You know, is abortion right or wrong?
Is same sex relationships right or wrong?
Those are ethical questions, the death
penalty, classic ethical debates.

(01:24:08):
But meta ethics goes a little bit deeper
and meta ethics is trying to answer the
questions like where
does morality come from?
Is morality purely subjective or are
there objective aspects to reality?
What is morality?
Where does it come from?
And I would say something back from
Christianity for just a moment, I would
say that all of us Christians,

(01:24:31):
non-Christians, you know, Muslims,
atheists, I would say all human beings
have built into them some sort of a moral
intuition, some sort of moral compass.
So what you're describing, you know, not
wanting to harm animals in that case or
harm other humans, of course, all of
those basic moral

(01:24:51):
intuitions I think are built into us.
Now, of course, there's different
explanations as to where that built-in
moral compass comes from, right?
You could talk about it in terms of maybe
an atheist or a naturalist would talk
about it in terms of evolution.
Maybe how evolution designed us to have
that sort of moral intuition,

(01:25:13):
that's what we all experience.
Whereas I'm going to argue as a Christian
philosopher that Christianity best
explains where that
internal moral compass comes from.
Paul talks about this in Romans 2.
He talks about how God's moral law is
written on our hearts, every human being.
So I think that explains why even

(01:25:35):
non-Christians understand
correctly many moral truths.
I would not be one who would have to
argue, I would not be one that argues
that you have to have a Bible or even
know about the Bible or know of
Christianity or be a Christian to know
moral truth correctly based on Paul's
explanation there in Romans 2.

(01:25:58):
So in that case, if our moral compass is
kind of a divine aspect of us, which I
would agree with to some extent, I would
also go down the evolutionary route, but
in a less specific way.
I would say that rather than evolution
being a direct cause of our moral compass

(01:26:18):
being developed, I would say that our
evolution as humans have allowed us to be
more in tune with something that's
already there, perhaps.
I don't know.
But I am someone who thinks that there
was intelligence at the
base of life to some degree.
I don't know, but I struggle to believe

(01:26:39):
the alternative based on the sheer
probabilities and necessary fundamental
assumptions have to be made to assume
everything arrived through
coincidental interactions.
And so I think there was an
intelligence at the base of it.
I don't necessarily think it to be God in
the way that religion would view a God.

(01:27:00):
I think we're all a wave in
the ocean of God, I suppose.
I suppose maybe you could say I would
align with idealism,
perhaps, if you know of idealism.
Sounds kind of like
pantheism or panentheism.
It could be.
I'd never know how to classify myself
because I don't really stick to one thing

(01:27:21):
because something could come up and I
could change my mind on it.
Labels and categories are so difficult.
I prefer people just explain what they
believe and then people can label us.
I agree.
Because as soon as you stick a label on
something, you have many
assumptions that come along with it.
Exactly.
But my question was going to be, if this

(01:27:42):
moral compass is a divine aspect of us,
then why then do many both religious and
non-religious individuals seem to lack
any form of morality?
Or how the very, very different
antithetic, I suppose,
is that the right word?
Antithetic form of morality.

(01:28:03):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, there's always
going to be outliers, right?
There's always going to be what people
might call psychopaths or sociopaths who
don't seem to have this sort of moral
compass like the rest of us do.
I've done a bit of research.
I wrote an article for a journal about
this issue, specifically psychopaths, and

(01:28:26):
I had to do a bit of research in that
field to understand, are these folks
really lacking a moral compass completely
or are they just suppressing it?
And it's very difficult, I mean, to study
that issue because, well, one of the
things that makes it difficult is the
only information we have to go on is

(01:28:48):
information that the psychopaths tell us.
And by definition, psychopaths aren't the
most trustworthy people.
So in my article, I ended up arguing
that, no, it's not that
they lack a moral compass.
They might lack some of the moral
emotions that go along with it, but I
think it's very difficult to deny that

(01:29:09):
they have no moral compass whatsoever.
I think it's more that they're either
suppressing it and or that it doesn't
work as well, maybe, as the rest of us.
And I think that's just a part of the
normal human condition, right?
We all have different aspects of us that
don't work as well as they should.
Some people are born with

(01:29:30):
brains that don't work as well.
Some people are born with
legs that don't work as well.
And I don't think there's any reason why
somebody might be born with a moral
compass that doesn't
work as well as it should.
So that's the extreme example.
That's the outlier, right?
The psychopaths.
But just in terms of different cultures,
I've done a lot of thought and study and

(01:29:51):
writing on this issue, too, because
sometimes people will say, especially
subjectivists or people who are
relativists, when it comes to morality,
they'll say things like, well, look at
oriental cultures
compared to Western cultures.
They just have a
completely different moral compass.
Take any example you want.
Sometimes I'll use just how to greet

(01:30:11):
another human being.
In the West, what are we taught?
Look them in the eye,
shake their hand, right?
In the East, do not look them in the eye
and do not touch them, right?
Bow.
So you might say, well, that's just a
completely different moral compass.
Well, no, not necessarily.
I wouldn't say so.

(01:30:32):
I'll tell you different expressions.
But expressions of, I think, something
underlying both greeting customs or
greeting traditions, and
that is human beings have value.
And so you should greet them and give
them honor when you meet them.
And yeah, different cultures are going to
do that differently.
But I think there's some underlying
basic, absolute, objective moral

(01:30:55):
principles that we all know
about through this process.
I would like to go back to evolution,
though, if you don't mind.
I thought you said something pretty
insightful when it comes to evolution.
In terms of
intelligence being at the base.
Yeah, so I'll do this real quick.

(01:31:16):
But when it comes to evolution, you know,
this is an internal
debate among Christians.
So some Christians believe that God used
evolutionary processes to create us.
Some other Christians would say, no, God
stepped in at different times in the
history of the earth with special times

(01:31:38):
where he specially
created new life forms.
So whether you think God used evolution
or not, it doesn't really matter in terms
of our moral beliefs, because sometimes
people will want to say, we can explain
all of our moral beliefs through an
evolutionary process where nature

(01:31:58):
selected for moral beliefs that work that
help us to function better as a society
because it wouldn't select
moral beliefs that wouldn't work.
It would select moral beliefs that would
cause us to work together better so we
could compete against other groups in

(01:32:19):
terms of scarce resources.
So that's where all of
our moral beliefs come from.
We don't need God in the equation at all.
And I think that's kind of missing the
boat because that only explains how we
came to know of some
of these moral truths.
It doesn't mean…it doesn't explain how

(01:32:40):
those moral truths are true.
So if evolution did help us come to a lot
of true beliefs, you could say evolution
helped us to come to a lot of correct
beliefs about mathematics.
Well, that doesn't mean you can explain
away mathematics, right, just by saying
evolution created it.

(01:33:02):
No, it just means that it was a process
that helped us to know what
mathematical things are true.
And again, if evolution did play a part
in us developing our moral beliefs, that
wouldn't explain them away because we'd
still have to say, well, why
are those moral beliefs true?
How we came to learn something is
different than whether or not those

(01:33:25):
things are objectively true and how they
can be objectively true.
I just wanted to comment on that because
I thought what you said was insightful
about if our moral beliefs came by
evolution, that doesn't necessarily mean
that they're not correct or true.
And this is one of the main questions
with consciousness that no matter who you
ask, a lot of people will say one way or

(01:33:47):
the other, well, we
know what consciousness is.
Either it's a result of information
processing in the brain or it's a spark
of the divine within us.
And the truth is we haven't got a clue
what consciousness is.
And it's the leading question of humanity
and has been for so long for a reason
because it seems to be so different from

(01:34:08):
everything else that we observe.
And in terms of, I mean, what do you
think about evolution?
Do you believe that human beings are the
result of an evolutionary process?
No.
So I would make a distinction between
macroevolution and microevolution.
I think evolution definitely

(01:34:29):
is happening on a micro scale.
And that is in terms of just the
Mendelssohn type genetics where certain
genes are brought more to the surface
based on the environment.
So dogs in a colder environment are going
to have longer fur than dogs in a warmer

(01:34:51):
environment because of that sort of
microevolution taking
place within a species.
But I would reject the idea that
macroevolution is true, i.e. that given
enough time, an entire
new species develops.
I wrote an article about this.
I'm not a scientist, and so I'm always
hesitant to speak out of my field of
expertise, but based on my understanding

(01:35:11):
and research in the science and based on
scientific material that I've tried to
study and read and talk to other
scientists, I wrote a paper on this issue
making use of a lot of material by
William Demsky and Michael Behe.
But folks can find that on my website,
ConvincingProve.org, if they want to dive

(01:35:32):
into the details of why I personally
reject macroevolution.
But this is something
that Christians disagree on.
There's all sorts of Christians that
believe that God used evolution in some
sense to develop us.
And it's a secondary issue.
It's not something that I would, you
know, it's not a hill
that I would die on.

(01:35:53):
No, sure.
So you mentioned that, and I believe
quite rightly, your belief in
Christianity is evidence based from the
research that you've done and
the things that you've found.
So what are the key pieces of evidence
that would suggest to you that what
Jesus, A, what is in the Bible as Jesus

(01:36:17):
having said so is accurate and the events
within the texts are also accurate?
What evidence do you have or do you
believe indicates that that is a true
statement of the account of Christ?
Yeah, no, that's great.
Good question.
I will say one more comment about

(01:36:38):
consciousness because I want to avoid any
sort of God of the gaps argument.
I've been thinking a lot about this
lately because I get accused of that a
lot, right, God of the gaps argumentation
that, for instance, consciousness, well,
we don't have a great explanation of
consciousness, so it must be God, right?
And that is a type of argumentation that

(01:37:00):
I think everybody should avoid, right?
Christians, non-Christians, you know, we
don't want to take, we don't want to base
our beliefs on our lack of knowledge or
our lack of explanation and just put a
God in there, right?
We want to argue, I think, more
abductively, in other words, inference to
the best explanation where we would say,

(01:37:22):
hey, based on what we know at this point,
it seems like God is the best explanation
for whatever phenomenon we're discussing,
whether it's the beginning of the
universe or the fine-tuning of the
universe or consciousness.
We're not making a God of the gaps
argument just because we don't understand
something, it must be God.
No, based on the phenomenon that we're
looking at, it seems like God is the best

(01:37:44):
explanation, at least right now.
You know, we might learn other things
down the road that would show that it's
not necessarily that God isn't
necessarily the best explanation.
So I use the example in this topic often
of somebody who gets healed by cancer.
So let's say my mom doesn't have cancer,
just hypothetical example, but let's say
my mom had a terrible form of cancer and

(01:38:05):
she was healed tomorrow completely and
the doctors come to us and they say, we
have, we don't know how to explain this.
Yesterday she had cancer all over
throughout her body
and now it's all gone.
Sometimes, and I hate to be that guy, but
I find that Christians, you know, in that
sort of scenario, just immediately want
to attribute that to God.

(01:38:26):
And that might be true.
I'm not denying that, but there might be
some other explanation.
And so just immediately attributing it to
God, I think is making
that God of the gaps mistake.
The alternative would be, let's say we
discovered that three months ago,
somebody had prophesied that yesterday at

(01:38:49):
a specific time, my mom would be
completely healed with cancer.
And let's also say that her pastor was
praying over her yesterday, asking for
the cancer to be removed
right when it was eradicated.
Now, if you have all those other facts
involved, I think that would be not

(01:39:10):
necessarily God of the
gaps argument anymore.
That would be more of an
inference to the best explanation.
But some of these other factors would
seem that God is the best explanation as
to why that cancer is gone.
That's just kind of a difference between
a classic standard God of the gaps versus
what I think is a better way to argue,
which is an inference
to the best explanation.

(01:39:30):
It's called abductive reasoning.
I spent too much time on that, that I
forgot your original question.
A biracial question, but just before we
get to that, I'm curious about your
thoughts on the common rebuttal to
usually things like consciousness, but
other things that I've studied like near
death experiences and anomalous
experiences of
consciousness, things like that.

(01:39:51):
The argument would be, I mean, first, I
agree that God of the
gaps is not the way to go.
If we don't know
something, we simply, that's it.
We don't know it.
It doesn't necessarily mean that
something has to be the case.
But equally, I find that especially with
consciousness, we easily spot God of the
gaps in other arguments, but not in our
own, where we have our brains, which are

(01:40:13):
matter, which are ultimately subatomic
particles, which by materialistic
paradigm aren't conscious.
We say that incredibly complex
arrangements of this non-conscious
physical matter comes
together in a brain.
Something magic happens
and awareness is there.

(01:40:35):
They don't see that something magic
happens is to me a God of the gaps, to
say that it must therefore just be
something that we will answer eventually,
i.e. promissory materialism.
So what do you think to the argument that
every so-called supernatural or

(01:40:56):
paranormal phenomena that we've believed
unanswerable in the past has determined
to be physical in nature?
Therefore, we can infer that something
magical like consciousness, like a
miraculous healing, etc., will also be
physical by its best
explanation, by its best potential.
I would just – the only thing that I

(01:41:18):
would say about your
description is the word "all."
So I wouldn't say that everything or all
things in the past that we thought were
supernatural have been shown to me to
have a natural explanation.
A lot of things have.
I mean, I guess there was once upon a
time where we thought thunder and
lightning and volcanoes were all the

(01:41:39):
divine, and we've
discovered that that's not the case.
So a lot of things have.
It doesn't necessarily mean that all
things will, because in a sense, that's
kind of a natural causes of the gaps.
So to say that there must be a natural
cause and we'll figure it out eventually,
that is kind of a
natural causes of the gap.
Again, I think it's better to do more of

(01:42:00):
an abductive reasoning to say whether
it's my mom getting killed from cancer or
some sort of phenomenon that we're
seeing, consciousness, whatever, and
evaluate it carefully.
And everything should be evaluated on its
own carefully and say,
"What's the best explanation?
Is there a good natural explanation, or
would it make more sense, better scope?

(01:42:21):
It fits the evidence better, and that's
how abductive reasoning works, that there
is an intelligence behind it."
And so I'm glad that you've come to the
conclusion that there is an intelligence
behind things and including
consciousness, because I think that is
the best explanation.
I remember your question now.
It had more to do with evidence of Jesus,
so I can segue into that if you'd like.

(01:42:43):
Yep.
So it begins.
My understanding of things, or my, I
guess, case for Christianity begins with
arguments for the existence of God.
So I'm more of a traditional or classical
apologist in that sense.
So I start with the fine tuning argument,
moral argument, first cause arguments,
those sort of things to establish that

(01:43:03):
there must be or must be.
The best explanation is that there is a
creator behind the universe that's
separate from the universe.
So a supreme being, if you don't like the
term God, some sort of supreme being.
And then my second step then would be to

(01:43:25):
then evaluate whose conception of the
supreme being is most accurate, because
there's been all sorts of proposals as to
what the supreme being is like.
What I find remarkable is down through
history, independently, all around the
world, you have thinkers and people

(01:43:46):
groups coming to this conclusion that
there's some sort of supreme being.
But then there's different conceptions of
what the supreme being is like.
So you can ask the question, do the
Muslims have the correct
conception of what God is like?
Did Plato and Aristotle have the more
correct understanding of what the supreme

(01:44:07):
being is like or the Christian
understanding of the supreme being?
Is that more accurate?
And then you could
debate, well, how can we know?
How can we know of all these different
understandings of the supreme being down
through history, which one is the most
correct, the most accurate?
And you might say, well, it'd be great if
the supreme being, if he's out there, if

(01:44:27):
he would tell us what he's like, right?
If he would communicate to us what he's
like, and then we would know.
We could settle the debate.
And of course, that's what a lot of these
belief systems will claim, that they have
some sort of revelation
from God as to what he's like.
And so then I think the question becomes,
well, how do we know which of these
so-called messages from

(01:44:48):
God really are from him?
And so that's how I kind of set up the
table or set up the topic when it comes
to evaluating Jesus.
Jesus claimed to have a message from God.
And part of that message was that he
himself is God, that he's divine.
He's one of the three
persons of the Trinity.
And so why should we believe that his

(01:45:11):
message was really from God?
That's a matter of, I think, the best way
to evaluate that is to evaluate the
historical evidence.
And that is, I think, what your question
is getting at is, you know, how do I
evaluate the
historical evidence for Jesus?
The things that he said, how do we know
he really said these
things, and his activities, right?

(01:45:33):
His miracles, his resurrection.
Because if those things are correct, if
those things are historically accurate,
let's say that Jesus did say those things
and he really did perform those miracles,
then I think that gives us a much
stronger confidence or a much stronger
certainty that his message really is

(01:45:54):
true, that it really is from God.
And so to evaluate this historical
evidence, actually, this might surprise
you or your listeners, but I actually, in
the last couple years, have started
pointing people to a book by Bart Ehrman.
I don't know if you're familiar with Bart

(01:46:15):
Ehrman, but he is a...
By name.
I'm familiar.
New Testament scholar at North Carolina
University in Chapel Hill.
He's an agnostic.
Sometimes he, I think, refers to himself
as an atheist, but most of the time when
I hear him or read his stuff, he refers
to himself as an agnostic.

(01:46:36):
But he wrote a book, and the title of the
book is "Does Jesus Exist?
Question Mark."
And in that book, it's
a popular level book.
He's written a lot at
the academic level as well.
He's a world-famous
New Testament scholar.
But in this particular book, he goes
through and covers all the

(01:47:00):
historical evidence for Jesus.
And I find that skeptics and
non-Christians are much more willing to
look at the evidence if it's presented by
somebody who isn't Christian themselves.
Now I disagree with that bias.
I don't think somebody should reject
evidence or reject somebody's scholarship
just because it comes from a Christian.

(01:47:21):
So you can see this evidence or this
evidence, you can read how it's presented
from Christian scholars, but I just find
it to be a bit strategic to
use Bart Ehrman's material.
And in this book, he's addressing Jesus'
mythicists, people who say that there
never was a Jesus of Nazareth.
And so he lays out, I think, in like 300
pages all the historical evidence for

(01:47:44):
Jesus and the things that he
said and the things that he did.
And I find that to be very compelling.
Now I will say another good thing about
this book, Bart Ehrman's
book, "Did Jesus Exist?
" is he lays out the historical method.
In other words, the method that
professional historians use when it comes

(01:48:07):
to evaluating some aspect of history,
whether it happened or not.
And I think that's worth the price of the
book alone, just to better understand how
historians evaluate something that
happened or potentially happened 2000
years ago, because it's difficult, right?
It's much different than researching what
happened last week,
which can be hard as well.

(01:48:28):
In this day and age with the
internet and all this fake news.
But it makes it even more difficult when
we're talking 2000 years.
So he lays out how historians do that.
And he points out that we have over 20
independent sources for the life and the
ministry and activities and the sayings
of Jesus. 20 independent sources that we

(01:48:52):
can compare and evaluate
to see if they corroborate.
And that's a huge task that increases the
level of certainty when it comes to
historians that something
in history really did happen.
If you have that many sources all saying,
if not the same thing,
then something very similar.
So that's how I would

(01:49:12):
start the conversation.
So what would you say to the arguments
that, you know, the text of the Bible was
written 2000 years ago by individuals who
were much less, I suppose, knowledgeable,
I suppose, on the world around them than

(01:49:32):
we are now just by the years of our
technology, et cetera.
And that over time, the original texts
have been taken by rulers of empires
adjusted to fit there, to keep people in
check and to keep them under
control and then translated

(01:49:53):
again to the text that we have now, which
given those many revisions and the many
years are very unlikely to be anything
like what the man himself
would have actually said.
And of course, we got difference in time
and cultures as well, the way that people

(01:50:13):
interpret and speak.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can make communications
always going to be an issue, right?
I mean, even just us today having a
conversation, sometimes we miscommunicate
or we misinterpret each other.
My wife and I misinterpret each other.
I mean, that's just part of the human
condition to misinterpret.
So especially something that was written

(01:50:34):
2000 years ago in a different culture, a
different language, we've
got to work at interpretation.
It doesn't come easy.
You know, I'm not going to be one of
those that just says that the truths of
the Bible just fly off the page, but it
takes some work in interpreting it.
I appreciate those scholars who
concentrate on the original languages,
the Hebrew and the Greek and studying the

(01:50:55):
culture of the first
century to help us interpret.
Right.
That's a difficult process, but there are
people who specialize in this area.
What you're talking about in terms of the
text changing through the
years, it's well, it's twofold.
Right.
So there's one issue and that is, you
know, if we, if Jesus lived and did his

(01:51:16):
three years of ministry, let's say
sometime in the 30s, right, early first
century in the 30s A.D.
And then the New Testament was written
more towards the middle or
even end of the first century.
This is all according to Bart Ehrman.
Okay.
So I'm still just using his material.
So the New Testament was written decades
later, right, not centuries, but

(01:51:38):
definitely decades later.
The first issue is going to be, well, by
the time that it was written down a few
decades later, how do we know that that
is accurate to what he did in the 30s?
Right.
That's one issue.
But then the other issue, and I think the
one more that you're getting at is after
it was written down.
So if you get by, get to the end of the

(01:51:59):
first century, the New Testament is all
written, then how do we know that the New
Testament, let's say at 100 A.D. is
similar to the New
Testament that we read today.
So 1,925 years later, approximately.
And I think that second issue is the one
more that you're getting at, and that's
the field of textual criticism without

(01:52:22):
having to go into that
entire field and explain it all.
I would refer back again to Bart Ehrman
and the gentleman that Bart
Ehrman got his Ph.D. under.
So Bart Ehrman got his Ph.D. under Bruce
Medsker at Princeton.
And Bruce Medsker, you can look up his
name, your audience can look up Bruce

(01:52:43):
Medsker and read about him.
He's probably the most well-known textual
critic working in this field of textual
criticism in the 20th century.
He was a Christian himself, but again, we
shouldn't reject his
scholarship because he was a Christian.
He was a professor at Princeton for, I
think, close to 50 years.

(01:53:06):
Bruce Medsker has this famous quote where
he says, yes, there's been errors,
copying mistakes that have worked their
way into the New Testament.
Nobody says that there aren't any –
haven't been any copying mistakes.
Everybody acknowledges that.
The difference is how – can we take all

(01:53:28):
the copies of the New Testament that we
have, and they all have copying mistakes?
Can we evaluate them
and recreate the original?
What degree of certainty can we get to in
recreating the original New Testament?
And according to
Bruce Medsker, it's 99.5%.
Based on all the copies that we have and

(01:53:49):
the copying mistakes are in different
places, we can recreate the original New
Testament with a
degree of accuracy, 99.5%.
And the 0.5% that we're unsure about are
things like spelling.
Most of them are spellings.
People go by different names – Peter,
Cephas – different
names for the same person.

(01:54:11):
So in terms of textual criticism, we have
a high degree of certainty that we can
trust the text written towards the end of
the first century as pretty
much the text that we have today.
But the other issue, like I said, is more
of if the events happened in the 30s but
the New Testament wasn't written until
decades later, how do we

(01:54:31):
know that that was accurate?
And that's based more on the historical
evidence than on textual criticism.
Sure.
So what about the so-called Gnostic or
lost gospels, those of Thomas and Mary
Magdalene, etc. that seem to point more

(01:54:52):
in the direction that I believe in terms
of the metaphysics of how we are, as in
we're all connected, we all effectively
are God, but just the separations of Him,
as I say, waves in the ocean.
And also interestingly, just to add on to
that, that also seems to be the main
message of those who are alive today and

(01:55:15):
continue to have things like near-death
experiences or out-of-body experiences or
religious experiences all seem to come
back with that idea that we are all one
part of whatever God would be, as opposed
to God being a separate
judge, I suppose, entity.
Yeah.
Well, I think both can be true in a sense
at the same time in

(01:55:36):
different senses, right?
I don't believe in contradictions, but I
do think there's a sense
in which we are all one.
So there's a sense in which
we are connected with God.
I would say He's a separate being, so I'm
not a pantheist, I'm not a
panentheist, I'm a theist.
So I see God being separate from us in a
sense, but there's another sense in which

(01:55:57):
we are united with Him in terms of being
created in His image and as persons.
So especially if you read John 17, it's
called the High Priestly Prayer, and
Jesus is praying to God the Father, so
you've got the God the Son talking to God
the Father there, and they're talking
about their oneness that they have.

(01:56:18):
What's amazing there in that prayer is He
talks about the oneness that we can have.
And this goes back to what I said, I
think, is the meaning of life, that we
were created to join the communion of the
Trinity as persons, not as divine
persons, but as human persons to join
that sort of fellowship, join that
communion of loving relationships.

(01:56:38):
So I think in that sense, the relational
sense, we are all one, still being
separate persons, separate beings.
But I've talked too long again, forgot
your original question.
Your thoughts on the lost Gospels?

(01:56:59):
Yeah.
So I think one of the difficulties that
took place, you know, by the time you get
to the 300s, the Christian movement was
struggling in the 300s to know all these

(01:57:19):
different documents and letters and
Gospels that were floating around, which
ones were actually written by Jesus of
disciples and which weren't.
So I think that's the determination that
really the church, the Christian
movement, whatever you want to call it,
that's one of the things they

(01:57:41):
try to nail down in the 300s.
And so you've got several councils, you
know, that start to meet and discuss
these issues in the 300s and try to nail
down based on historical evidence, right,
which of these various Gospels and books
and letters floating around were really
written by Jesus's
disciples and which ones were fakes.

(01:58:02):
Pseudepigrapha is the
technical name for it.
And we can do that sort of research
today, right, if we don't want to trust
the councils, trust the Christian leaders
during the 300s who did that research.
Scholars can do that
sort of research today.
And I think based on that type of
research, both in the 300s and if you
want to do it today is the 27 books of

(01:58:24):
the Protestant New Testament is I think
what you'll come up with.
There's some books with some of those 27
that have not as great of evidence that
they're from the first
century apostles than others.
But for example, half of Paul's letters,
there's not a scholar in the world that's
going to dispute those.

(01:58:44):
The other half of Paul's letters are
going to be a little bit more disputed.
My point is just that some of the
evidence is stronger for some of the
books of the New Testament than others.
And there's some which are
debated even to this day.
You know, James,
Hebrews is one that's debated.
Is that really from the
first century apostles or not?
My point is, you know, even if we're

(01:59:06):
wrong about, let's say, some of those
books that are on the fringe, we really
want to change our Christian belief
system very much because worst case
scenario, let's say, not worst case
scenario, but one scenario, let's say, is
we discover via scholarship next week
that 2 Peter and Hebrews
and James are pseudepigrapha.
They're not really written by the first

(01:59:27):
– they're fake books.
So we throw them out.
We've still got 24 books that are rock
solid and teach pretty
much the same message.
So if you just want to narrow yourself
down to the books that virtually
everybody agrees are from the first
century apostles, you know, let's say the
top 10 or the top 15 of those 27, you're

(01:59:50):
still going to have the same consistent
core message or the core
doctrines of Christianity.
Some of these other books were easily
discovered to be pseudepigrapha.
So you mentioned some of them, you know,
like the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of
Mary, the Gospel of Thomas.
We've got documentation from the church

(02:00:12):
councils in the 300s that were evaluating
these various books, and the evidence was
just so powerful to them and scholars
today that these are fake books.
They were written by other folks and
given a false author to try
to get people to accept them.

(02:00:32):
And so there's just really
strong evidence for that.
Sometimes people will say, "Well, why did
the church wait that long?
Why did the Christian
movement wait until the 300s?
Why didn't they do that earlier?"
And there are several reasons for that.
First of all, Christianity was illegal
until 313, so it's kind of hard to get a
bunch of scholars together and do this
research when what
you're discussing is illegal.

(02:00:52):
Plus, prior to that, there was fairly
standard agreement as to what books
really were written by the
first century disciples of Jesus.
It wasn't until later where all these
other fake books started popping up.
And so you can imagine when Christianity
was made legal, then there was more room
for all these fake
books to be popping up.

(02:01:14):
So that's kind of the history of why the
300s becomes the century in which a lot
of this is evaluated.
So going to a more directly accessible
source of information, I don't know how
familiar you are with the near-death
experience literature.

(02:01:35):
I've read a little bit of Gary
Habermas's work in this area.
I noticed you had it on
your channel a while back.
He's very knowledgeable.
He's a Christian scholar as well.
And as he mentioned, near-death
experiences aren't any evidence for any
particular religion.
But I find it interesting that people of

(02:01:56):
all faiths have these, and they all come
back with the same message.
Many Christians come back with the same
message that the core tenets of their
religion is more of a not accurate to
what they experience.
So most common core concept is the
concept of God being a judge.

(02:02:19):
And I can't recall any experience I've
read from a Christian or from a Muslim,
et cetera, who have come back and said
that they were judged by
anyone other than themselves.
And they all seem to come back again, as
I say, with the idea that they became one
with God and that they were a part of God
and that we all are a part
of God, this sort of thing.

(02:02:41):
And never have I heard, I don't think,
any claim that I felt like, because I was
an atheist, I wasn't accepted.
I was told that it doesn't matter.
And I came back with this
feeling that I am connected.
And so it's just very interesting that
those who have these experiences, whether

(02:03:03):
they subscribe to a religion or not,
don't seem to come back with the kind of
ideas that standard Christianity preaches
in terms of the judge, God and judgment
day and heaven and hell.
I mean, one of the most common report is
that there is no hell, although there are
negative experiences.
But generally, it comes back to, you

(02:03:27):
know, we are all love and regardless.
So I'm curious as to what you think about
those as direct experiences in the modern
time and how they relate to Christianity.
Yeah, yeah, this definitely is an area
that I've spent a lot
of time looking into.
So, you know, I would have to take your
word for it that the predominant

(02:03:50):
experience coming back from
them is as you've described.
I don't know that to be the case.
I have to look into it.
But let's say I granted you that, right,
for the sake of argument that in fact
that is the vast
majority of the experience.
I wouldn't necessarily say that that

(02:04:11):
would be at odds with Christianity
because, again, you know, my
understanding of Christianity being that
we were all created for that purpose, to
be one with God, to be one in
relationship, not God, not one in being,
but one in communion.

(02:04:32):
It would make sense to me that it would
make sense or fit well with Christianity,
I should say it that way, abductively,
that those sort of feelings or
experiences would take place, even if,
you know, let's say that person, because
of their evil choices, would ultimately
be separated from God, you know, that

(02:04:53):
initial maybe meeting with God would
generate those sort of
feelings or experiences.
Hmm.
What do you make of the idea in that case
of the life reviews that are very
commonly reported in New Day experiences
where I don't know how much you know
about the panoramic life review, but it's

(02:05:14):
a very common feature of New Day
experiences where someone will, they say
life flashes before your eyes, but that's
a very simplistic idea of it, because
these people, they experience,
re-experience, not only from their own
perspective, but from the people that
they interacted with perspectives as well
of all the things that they did, how it
affected themselves, how it affected the
other people from a

(02:05:35):
first person point of view.
And then they always come back and say,
you know, I wasn't judged, I was my own
judge, my introduction was to learn from
this and to grow as a human being, not,
and you know, I didn't feel like I was
being slapped on the wrist by a parent or
by a judge, it was my own self

(02:05:56):
exploration of myself, if you know what I
mean, which seems to be at odds with the
idea of a judge, God.
Yeah, not necessarily.
I mean, if we're thinking of God as a
loving judge, right, use more, I'll
continue using the analogy in a
courtroom, let's say, of a loving judge,

(02:06:18):
who wants, even if somebody is going to
be found guilty, they want that, they
love that person, and they want that
person to understand what's going on.
And especially if these people are coming
back, right, these people
are coming back to life.
And again, I'm granting for the sake of

(02:06:38):
argument that everything they're saying
is correct, as I'm looking at this
myself, but let's say it is, I can, I can
envision, you know, a loving judge,
wanting folks to know those things and
understanding and understand those
things, maybe to see and learn various
aspects of life, especially if they're
coming back to life, so that they can

(02:07:00):
either make changes, or do things
differently, potentially.
As a way of helping their
development towards God.
Yeah, and again, I want to be careful,
because I don't want to give any of the
impression, you know, that, according to
Christianity, making yourself better,

(02:07:22):
improving yourself is not going to help
you become closer to God, because we're
just, we fall so short morally, that the
only thing that is going to fix your
relationship with God is faith in Christ.
But even even a lot of Jesus's teachings
were moral in nature, right?
And there's things that we can learn from

(02:07:43):
Jesus's teachings, how to better love
people, how to be a better person.
But a lot of his moral teaching is like I
kind of explained before with the Sermon
on the Mount is to, to show how high the
bar of morality really is.
So I'll just give you
some examples, right?
Famous examples from

(02:08:03):
the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus said things in that sermon like,
"You've heard that it said you shall not
kill or murder, but I say unto you that
everybody who is angry with his brother
has already committed
murder in his heart."
So this is just showing how high the bar
of morality really is,
because it's very easy.

(02:08:24):
I mean, the vast majority of us have
never murdered anyone.
So we could think of ourselves as pretty
good, you know, people, I've never
murdered anybody, I've
never committed adultery.
But Jesus raises the bar so high, he
says, "Well, you've heard it said that
you shouldn't commit adultery."
And everybody's like,
"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure."
"You shouldn't do that.
I've never done that.

(02:08:45):
I'm pretty good."
And then Jesus kind of
flips it upside down.
And he says, "I say to you that anybody
who's looked on a woman with lust for her
has already committed
adultery in his heart."
And it's like, oh my God, who hasn't
looked at somebody with lust?
We all have.
And so all of us are
guilty of committing adultery.
And so it's kind of raising this bar to

(02:09:06):
show us what moral perfection really
looks like, so that we
recognize that we fall short.