145 - True Crime with J. Warner Wallace

Summary
In this conversation, Brian and Chad interview J. Warner Wallace, a former cold case detective turned Christian apologist and author. They discuss his new book, 'The Truth and True Crime: What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life.' 

The book explores the intersection of true crime and spirituality, focusing on 15 principles that lead to human flourishing. They delve into topics such as the three motivations behind every crime (money, sex, and power), the dangers of fame and power within the church, the fascination with true crime, and the relevance of the book for both believers and non-believers. 

In this conversation, they discuss the themes of identity, suffering, and finding meaning in life. They explore how trauma can shatter our worldview and expectations, and how redefining our identity in Christ can help us flourish post-trauma. They also discuss the importance of having a narrative that includes the persisting self and the hope and reduced fear of dying that comes from a Christian worldview. Jim shares his personal struggle with redefining his identity after retiring as a police officer and offers insights on how to find true meaning and purpose in life.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Overview
03:54 Interview with J. Warner Wallace
09:06 The Dangers of Fame and Power Within the Church
11:26 Marriage and Identity
13:18 The Proximity Principle and Friendships
15:28 The Fascination with True Crime
18:05 Writing with Personal Interest and Creativity
21:53 Relevance for Believers and Non-Believers
23:23 Addressing Both Believers and Unbelievers
24:17 Redefining Identity in Christ: Finding Meaning and Purpose
26:13 Flourishing Post-Trauma: Rethinking Worldview and Expectations
29:06 The Power of a Christian Worldview: Hope and Reduced Fear of Dying
36:53 Finding True Meaning: Making Christ Known Through Our Lives
41:34 Navigating the Risk of Suffering: The Resources of the Christian Worldview

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Apologetics three fifteen podcast with
your hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross. Join us for
conversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics, evangelism, and
the Christian worldview.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
What a Crime?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
This is Brian Auten and I'm Chad Gross and we're
going to have a great little chat here with a
returning guest, Jay Werner Wallace. So we're talking about sort
of a deep dive here between true crime and spirituality.
Anyone who's familiar with Jay Warner Wallace knows that he's
a former cold case detective and he's turned Christian apologist
and author. He uses his background in there to explore

(00:45):
the reliability of the Gospels and make a case for Christianity,
which is amazing.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
And he's got a new.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Book called The Truth and True Crime, What Investigating Death
teaches Us about the Meaning of Life.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
So love the book, Chad, What do you think?

Speaker 3 (00:59):
So?

Speaker 4 (00:59):
As I was reading it, it is quite different from
Jay Warner's other books, where they're essentially around making the
case for Christianity. This one kind of transitions. It has
that element to it, but it mainly focuses on these
fifteen principles that lead to human flourishing that come from Christianity.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
And i'd say about three chapters in.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
I was telling both of my girls, who are both teenagers,
as you know, I'm going to get you a copy
of this book because a lot of this has advice
in it that I really wish somebody would have put
into my hand when I was their age. It could
have saved me a lot of headaches. And so yeah,
I really appreciated what he had to say on the
fifteen topics that he highlighted.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
What'd you think?

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Because I didn't have the book in my hand and
I was just listening to it, I didn't have this
idea of like, oh, he's going to go through fifteen things.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
I was waiting for like a physical copy or something,
and I was like, I forget it, I'll just listened
to audiobooks. So I did that, and you know, when
you don't know exactly what you're getting into, it's kind
of fun, like seeing a movie without a trailer. I
prefer that. And so I was like, wow, he's he's
just telling these really interesting stories about crimes and talking

(02:10):
about human nature and how why you know, here's what
causes this sort of bad thing. Here, these are vices
and the outcomes of those sinful paths. And then he's like,
but look, there's a scriptural principles that you know, the
Bible warns about this, and Bible talks about this. This
is how humans can flourish. And it's so like it's
sort of like this whole array of life lessons where

(02:35):
you've got I think he uses this phrase where you know,
every crime scene has a death lesson and a life lesson,
and so he shows you the pitfall and the right
way to walk, and it's really cool. It's just different,
and it's not a straight up apologetics book, but it's
one that's sort of like shows. And he says this
in the interview he's talked about it's like this is

(02:56):
the part of a cumulative case and this is the
part where it's like talking about human anthropology, like this,
what we find in human nature matches with what the
Bible describes and prescribes for our true flourishing life. So yeah,
it's really just an interesting read. So anybody who's interested
in true crime and all that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Only murders in.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
The building they might be interested in this because it's
like really fascinating. And the last thing I'll say is
that if anybody reads anything by Jay Warner Wallas, they're
going to enjoy it. But if they happen to be
this sort of person who's like, oh, well, it makes
a brain hurt when I have to think about arguments
and things, this is not that sort of a book.

(03:36):
It's more like you just get sucked into the story
and then at the end of the chapter you find
yourself finding the scriptural lessons and things like that, and
it's really a book of wisdom.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
All right. Without any more yammering by me, let's go
to the interview.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Let's get ready. Switch me on.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Jay Warner Wallace, thanks for joining us again.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
I'm really glad to be with you guys. As you know, Brian,
we go back to the first moments that I ever
thought about talking about Christianity publicly. It was your your website.
I think that first started to describe our work. And
I'm like, wow, okay, I guess we're doing this now.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
So you've been doing You've been doing such great work
for so long, and I was going to tell you
and I'm just being honest with you and the listener.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
I don't I love your.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Books, but I just use that as an excuse to say, oh,
now I can talk to Jay Warner.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Well, and I feel the same way about this community
we have, right, That's what's so. It's so hard when
you have a book and that becomes the reason why
you reach out to people. And I just I just
you know, anything about my work, I'm like, ah, I
just love the idea of just riffing. Let's just talk
about whatever's important to you guys.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
You know, well, Okay, one of the things you say,
and I've heard you say this multiple times and you
bring it out in your book, and that is there's
three reasons why everybody, you know, behind every crime, it's
one of three things. It's money, sex, or power. Right,
And you know, we're talking about selling books and things
like that. And I was talking to Chad about how

(05:04):
easy it is to sometimes as a podcast host, you
feel like you become a tool in the marketing machine.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Oh you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, Oh, well I can get a free book. I
can oh, I get to talk to a popular author.
So there's a temptation of oh I'm associated with so
and so, and then there's the temptation of, oh, how
many podcasts can I get on? So talk about I mean,
your whole book seems to be about what you've learned
about human nature and the Christian worldview. So start there.

(05:33):
Start with these three things that you've found happen in
every crime.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Okay, so that's good, you know that's it's not just
in murders. I mean, those are the three reasons why
any of us does stupid things. We're driven by either sex, money,
or power. And power is a huge category and it
is dangerous. Give you example of this. If you're going
to protect your pastor at your church from the only
three reasons why he would fall, well, there are sex, money,

(05:57):
in power, and I think most elderboards and decoards are
really good about setting up guardrails for the sex and
money stuff. But we want our pastors to be famous,
don't we. We want them to have a podcast, we
want them to have a huge social media following. Why
because we want to reach more people. And the problem
with that is it's dangerous and I've realized it, and
it took me a while to realize it, because you know,

(06:18):
when you're working as a cold case detective. That's pretty
much a closet position. Like nobody you know, most of
our job during the day is pretty boring until you
knock on that guy's door. At the end of three
or four years of getting this ready, it's pretty boring
the stuff we're doing, and nobody sees it. And then
suddenly we got on dateline and the whole thing blew up.
And then I started this, you know, writing books, and

(06:41):
I had to really come to grips with this. How
do you protect yourself because if you scratch one inch,
you're going to scratch all three. So this is what
happens within Christendom. You see pastors and apologists who become
famous and then before long they've got other temptations that
are knocking at their door simply because they're famous. So
we have to protect ourselves, right, So this is the

(07:02):
one chapter in the book, But I'm just going to
tell you that I just feel like like, if you're
going to be serious about this, you're going to have
to step back because if you're a Christian speaker, okay,
that's cancer waiting to happen, it really is. And for example,
you're going to get applause as you're announced as they
introduce you at a conference before you say a word. Okay,

(07:23):
I've gotten to the point where I'm so sensitive to
that that I'm trying to figure out how to tell
each organizer, Hey, I don't want you to introduce me
in a way that causes people to clap. And at
the end, I want to be able to find a
way to get off the stage without people clapping, because
the reality of it is is that we have to
protect Look, I get it in order to advance any cause,
even you guys on this podcast, what helps you is

(07:45):
that you were in this game, Brian, really early and
the Apologetics three fifteen website was a very early player,
and at least from my perspective, and so that gave
you a kind of if you do it for ten years,
you've got authority. Now people trust you. Trusted authority is
important for anyone who wants to communicate anything, even if
you're an atheist who has opposed what we do. They're

(08:07):
trying to develop their own trusted authority on their platforms.
But that line between trusted authority and celebrity is the
line we have to protect. So it's one thing to
say yeah and That's why I stay in my lane.
I don't write about things that I don't think I
have any business writing about now and here there are
some things I've been wanting to write about for years.

(08:27):
This is the book I wanted to write for many years,
but I got kind of tied into the Christian apologetics scene,
and then before long that's all the publishers wanted from me.
This book is kind of some Christian apologetics in it,
but it's really about how do we live this, Like
where does the rubber meet the road? And let's be
really honest about the dangers. And so there's fifteen ideas

(08:48):
here about how you can flourish, but they're really cautionary tales.
So yes, I think that this sex, money, empower thing
is important. But because power is something most people don't
see the danger in it, we're not protecting ourselves from it.
So that's why I've tried. And look, I look, it's
look what's behind me. There's a bunch of stuff on
my wall that says what a cool guy? Jay Warren

(09:10):
Wallace is right, So I'm trying to walk that line
between wall. Look, should you trust me for this limited thing?
I'm going to talk to you about and I'm not
gonna I'm not going to go outside my zone. So
if I want to talk about marriage is probably going
to be in the context of a murder investigation. Yeah right,
because why would you trust me. I'm not a counselor.
All I know is here's what I'm seeing and I'm
going to share that with you, and that's what I

(09:30):
try to do in the book.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Well, you know, it's like the book to me, there's
there's a way that I was thinking, how could I
describe the book. There's many ways to do it. One
way would be from apologetics perspective. It shows how the
Christian worldview makes sense. It's sort of an argument from
the communitive case of how you know this is a
worldview that can be practically lived out. But on the
other side, it's more of like a it's a cautionary tale.

(09:53):
It's also a book about vice and virtue and what
the logical like working out of a world you will do.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
And it's sort of like Proverbs. It's a warning.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Hey, if you every every case you describe in there's like, okay,
this is how this is where sin takes you.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
And this is the end.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
You know, there's someone murdered, someone hurts, someone without a father,
and then if you take God's path, then here's where
it takes you that you're flourishing.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
You know, I'm gonna tell you something. I haven't only
talked about it much length, but when I was developing
the all the resources that go like the curriculum.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
All of them.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
You know, you're working with teams, publishing teams, teams that
are are you involved in media? And the teams are
often much younger than I am. Well, I guess pretty
much everyone's they're younger than I am right now. So
they are younger, and there's a different generation of Christians
who have been influenced deeply by the values of the culture.

(10:51):
And as I was talking about some of these issues,
I got some pushback like are you saying that you
are you blaming people who don't do this? Like in
other words, there was a sense that can we even
anymore describe like what you ought not to do? If
you do this, something bad is gonna happen. Well, are
you victim blaming? Uh? No? Can we do you still

(11:12):
read Proverbs? Have you cut that section out of your Bible?
Because Proverbs is a series of proclamations about if you
do stupid, expect stupid results. If you hang out with stupid,
expect to be called stupid. I mean this is this
is Proverbs. So so there's a lot of those people.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Who need to watch Judge Judy once in a while.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
I know, Yeah, isn't that funny how some media like
some people get away with get away with it. But
but what I thought was interesting is are we now
at a point in the church where like, for example,
I have a chapter in here on marriage? Well, am
I single shaming by saying that marriage has great value
and that you should consider it as an important early
decision in your life? And because you know so, I

(11:51):
talk about it that way, and right away the pushback
I got was, well, then are you saying that No,
I'm not saying there's anything. Paul says that there's nothing,
but you're gonna be married something. You're either going to
be married to the mission or married to a spouse.
And what I find is is that people who don't
want to, who don't end up married to a spouse,
they're not married to the mission either. There is you know,
they're not involved in any kind of deep seated connection

(12:13):
to any either mission or spouse. But the reality is,
I just wonder we had a place where there's young
people in our midst in the church who have been
so that now they're afraid to call anything risky or
anything wrong or not virtuous. I mean, we kind of
accepted the entire world, and we're not in a position

(12:34):
anymore we feel like we can even call it out
as foolish behavior. And I think when it came up
the most for me is I wrote a chapter here
on friends. I think it's like their fourth chapter in
the book, and in it I talk about this thing
I called the proximity principle, which we use in murders.
And what we do is we say to ourselves, okay,
so no, pretty much nobody when you get murdered, that

(12:57):
dude is standing right next to you who kills you,
and so you've allowed them into your proximity. And most
of the time they're in your proximity because there's somebody
you've actually allowed in your proximity for some time. In
other words, almost every victim I've ever worked has in
some ways invited into their life the person who ends
up killing them, not always, of course, not always. I

(13:17):
got one case that took us what you know, from
nineteen seventy two to twenty nineteen to solve, because this
guy had no relationship at all to the victor. The
first thing we do is we say, okay, look who's
in her relational proximity. Let's start close in the bullseye.
Is she dating anyone? Is she married to somebody? If not,
then let's go out a little bit. Does she have

(13:38):
friends that maybe she had problems? So let's go out
a little bit further about coworkers, Like we're going to
go relational proximity first. If that dries up, then we're
going to say, okay, well what about geographic proximity? Who
are her roommates? Who are her neighbors? Who are people?
And when you run out of both of those, that
was the nineteen seventy two case where someone just drives
down the street spots a victim has nothing to do

(13:59):
with our city, nothing to do with the victim, has
no geographic or relational proximity, Well, then we're going it's
a tough solve. So this proximity principle, the idea that
you might be the person who let the killer into
your your ten ring. That's just the truth. And but
that's not victim blaming, that's that's just that and no one,

(14:19):
no one should die this way, of course. But if
you know this in advance, well then you're going to
be a little more cautious about who you lit in
your circle, right, And that's the whole point of that chapter,
is that it turns out that friendships, if formed a
certain way, can make you flourish, and if not, they
could lead to your homicide. Let's be honest, I don't

(14:39):
have many cases that where it's a complete stranger, who's
who's I work the kinds of cases where you know
the person who killed you, which I think makes them
more intriguing. These are the dateline cases. Dateline wants those
kinds of cases because they know that they are in
some ways that people who watch them can go ooh
is that happening to me right now? Like you know,
they can contextualize it. So yeah, well, I just wonder

(15:02):
if we've changed and now we can't even call evil evil. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
Well, people are fascinated with the true crime stuff, and
I wonder from you being in it, there's two sort
of strands here. I'm wondering when you were into that
did you find it fascinating trying to get into the
mind of someone, And what is it about human nature
that is fascinated like that kind of like rubber necking,
like I want to delve into something kind of psycho,

(15:27):
something kind of nasty.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
That's a good point you just make, you know, because
I typically want to answer that question. I will answer
like I'll say, okay, Well, there's definitely people have written
about this. It's not just that this is a popular genre,
is that it's widely, wildly popular amongst women. And the
question is why do women dominate the audiences for true crime.
One writer says that she thought that it is because
women are often the victims of these kinds of suspects,

(15:50):
and so there's a sense in which they're watching it
as a cautionary tale to say, hey, I want to
make sure I know what to see in advance of
seeing it. I think other people want to puzzle. We
love to puzzle. Mysteries in general are a popular genre
of which true crime is just a subset. So mystery movies.
I love mysteries where I'm trying to figure out, like
I think the shock surprise ending. This is why On

(16:12):
Dateline we already know who did it before we film
the episode, but they all draw it out and they'll
ask me, do you have anybody like a false lead
you chased for a while? Not really, but anybody close
to a false lead? Well, okay, this guy over here. Look,
we never spent any time on that guy, but they
want to spend time on that guy because they're trying
to do what mysteries do. So I get it, but

(16:33):
I think what you said is actually also I'll probably
include this in every answer from now on, this rubbernecking
idea that why do we, as a guy who's a
cop who's seen enough traffic accidents to be over it.
It drives me crazy when we're going on the freeway
and the entire side of the freeway is slowing down
to stop for an accident on the other side, and

(16:54):
it's just that people want to see it. They want
to see the wreck. They want what is that about us?
I mean, maybe it speaks to our our nature. It
does speak to our nature, clearly, But isn't it interesting
that there's this a rubber necking desire that it's also
you see it at traffic accidents, And I'm like, you know,
I just my reaction to that usually when I'm driving

(17:15):
is I'm just like, oky, hurry up, hurry up up.
And then when we get to that point, don't don't
anyone in this car look over there. That is not important.
I've seen that a thousand times. It's not even interesting.
Just keep going. You know. It's like it's like we
just we just we react that viscerally to that. But
I think it's it's it is part of our nature
that that rubber necking. That words you used made me
think I'm going to start using that as part of

(17:35):
my explanation when people ask me, because it is part
of it.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
So from the perspective of from the pologetic standpoint, do
you see it being like a book that you'd say, hey,
you know from you could give to an atheist friend,
that kind of a thing where they would read this
and say, Okay, I'm interested in this subject. Yeah, but
let me see what you have to say about that,
or well sort of goal behind that.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Well, I don't you know, So I'm in this great
luxury right like, I don't have a five oh one
C three, I don't have a ministry. I'm just a dude,
a dude, who retired from this job and thought, well,
I'm going to talk about Jesus, and so I started
writing about Jesus. And so I don't really have to
think about, like, do I have a larger strategy, well
this book sell? Is this going to fit? I typically
write about this stuff that I'm either interested in or

(18:22):
feel like I could contribute to something that maybe nobody
else has contributed quite this way. That's it. And the
first book was because of Sean McDowell. He encouraged me
to write a book. So I wrote Cold Case Christianity. Really,
if I could have written this book, I would have
written it much earlier, if not first, because by the
time I wrote Cold Case, I had been a Christian
for some time and I was no longer the thing

(18:44):
that I was wrestling with. I was wrestling with how
does the rubber meet the road on this Like, I
don't do any of these fifteen things well in this book,
I suck at all of them. So the question is
I wanted to write It's almost like I'm speaking to
I'm writing to myself still, like I've been deep diving
that second chapter on identity really all almost all this year.

(19:07):
And because identity is such a huge issue. We do
so much trauma work with police officers who have been
involved in injuries, like we do six weeks this summer.
We'll be in Alaska. We did two weeks. We're going
back this week to do another two weeks. And these
are folks who have been tragically shot and injured and
now are facing retirement, forced medical retirements, and they are

(19:30):
struggling and their marriage is We're probably struggling before because
the job does that anyway, but now they're really struggling
in their marriage, and so we're doing marriage resiliency well.
So much of what we ended up talking with, surprising me,
was around identity, like who am I? And now that
I'm injured? Who am? I thought it was a guy
who would never be injured. I thought it was a
guy who was too good at this to get injured.

(19:52):
I thought it was a cop now Noline even long
or even a cop, like who am I? Now this
struggle for identity is so big and so huge that
is has become for me. This is the stuff that
I'm fascinated with, and so I'm deep diving this stuff
and I get the luxury of saying, hey, it doesn't
really matter if anyone else was interested. You know, the

(20:13):
other thing about book sales is that it's really up
and down. I don't think maybe people are even reading anymore.
I just feel very fortunate that the one way, you know,
when I started writing books, I kind of stopped doing
other things creative. And I was trained as an artist,
so the books became a place that I could draw,
I could I could illustrate the books. But like, for example,

(20:33):
I was picked up the guitar the other day, Man,
I am so, I am so lame right now. I mean,
I've let it go for too long, and I think,
and you let it go for this long. It's like
I had almost about to relearn everything, and so my
mind says, here's where the scales are, but I can't
get there anymore. It's like, so I've abandoned all to write,

(20:53):
and that's my creative expression. So I get to do
these books, and I'll probably always do them. I don't
even care if I have a publisher. I'll just find
a way to write and get them out. And because
again it's just ya, so is an atheist going to
read a book like this? I do think that there's
a part of me that says, this is part number
one of a cumulative case. So if you made this

(21:14):
case that surrounds Jesus, part of it's going to be
is there evidence for God? Is there evidence for the
reliability of scripture? Is there evidence that the resurrection explanation
in scripture is the best explanation? Is there evidence that
Jesus is who he said he was based on his
impact of the world. That was person of interest, And
now this one. Is there evidence that Christian is true
based on biblical anthropology, the way that does it describe

(21:37):
humans accurately. So it's part of this larger cumulative case.
So I think that has value. But more importantly, Brian,
you know that if you're going to talk to somebody
that is non believing, friend, or just anyone in your
family who's not a believer, probably the conversations you're having
are not starting with somebody saying, you know, I've always

(21:57):
kind of wondered about the second leg of the cosmological argument.
I always kind of thought this this issue, this principle
of theontological No, they don't start that way. They don't
start from apologetics points. Here's where they start. I can't
believe there's a God, because let me tell you, I
had a three year old who was killed in a
car accident and I held her when she died.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, and there.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
Can So that is where every conversation's probably going to start.
It's in some level of trauma or real life experience. Well,
that's the stuff I'm running about in this book.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
I appreciated the way throughout the book, Jim, that you
would address both believer and unbeliever. I can remember specific
points where you would say something along the lines of,
even if you're not a Christian, or even if you're
not a believer, you know, inviting the person in who's
reading it that might not be a Christian that they
can still gleam from the wisdom. And then, of course
I loved how you ended it with showing, Okay, here's

(22:51):
what the research is showing, right, and then look how
that completely correlates with the things that we see in Scripture,
because it's not a explicit apologetic in the sense that
some of your other books are, but it's implicit to
kind of do what Cooco would say, right, to put
a stone in someone's shoe and be like, wow, isn't
that interesting that Scripture got it right? On all these

(23:12):
different things. So I really appreciated that aspect of.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
It well, and a lot of was just me writing
it to me. So I was the kind of guy
who was such a jerk to Christians. And I remember
when I first got saved, I was working in a
surveillance team and I had been studying the Gospels for
some time, and we have so much downtime when you're

(23:35):
on surveillance. So I'm on a perimeter waiting for this
dude to go mobile, and I'm not on the ie,
so I'm just waiting for this guy to go mobile.
And back in those days, because we're reading magazines, there
were no podcas, there was no elect This is all
flip phone age, right, so there was nothing like that.
So so we ended up. I was sitting there and
I was now really getting into reading the scripture, not

(23:55):
just to test it anymore, but just to kind of
learn doing this kind of stuff right now. I remember
I had a partner or low crawl me and sneak
up on me and go, oh, I knew it because
I was reading my Bible, right, He says, I knew it.
I knew something was changing about you. I just knew it.
He says, you're such jerk that I know how you
have been your entire life here at the police department.

(24:17):
I'll bet you you end up being a pastor. In
other words, he saw that I was such an extreme
edge against Christianity that that passion, once turned, would result
in an extreme edge on this side. And that was
I remember thinking, Yeah, that's that's entirely possible. Because that's
why I always quote that C. S. Lewis passage that
where he talks about if it's if it's not important,

(24:39):
it's of no If it's not true, it's of no importance.
If it is true, it's of infinite importance. The one
thing it cannot be as moderately important. I knew that
if I was going to be in I was going
to be over to the edge. So this is I'm
always writing though to the version of Jim that was
the extreme on the other edge. So I'm like, you
know what would have been I don't know this would
have been persuasive for me, to be honest, because I

(24:59):
was so close minded on it. That's why I tell
people all the time, I don't believe that the case
did a dang thing for me other than just help
me remove the barriers. The power is in the gospel, folks,
It's in the gospel. And when God flipped that switch
for me, it was it was when I walked in
that church and I was suddenly, for the first time

(25:20):
interested enough to buy a Bible. Okay, that was never me.
There was no way, no way, could never fathom such
a thing. That's why my wife says it was miraculous,
not that I suddenly became a Christian, that I was
suddenly willing to investigate it that she didn't think that
would ever happen. Also, she had no idea where this

(25:41):
was going because she wasn't a Christian either, Like she
wasn't sure, like what does this even mean? You know?
But so yeah, I think this is why, if anything,
you're hearing my voice speaking to the old version of me.
That's good.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Earlier you said that.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
You know, usually a conversation you're going to have is
not going to be about the cosmological argument, but someone saying, hey,
how could I believe in God?

Speaker 1 (26:04):
You know, this three year.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Old child died or something like that. And one of
your chapters is called Sense and Suffering, and you talk
about suffering in human life, and I wonder if you
might be able to talk about maybe an example or
two there about how your investigations and biblical teachings have
sort of shed light on that subject, the hard subject

(26:25):
of suffering.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, so I think that what's helpful for me was
to work with these couples also years later. But back
in the day when I was doing these cases, I
had to stop and ask myself, what is the definition
of trauma? Because even back then the word was starting
to become like a buzzword and overused. I thought, everything's
a trauma. But here's what a trauma basically is. By definition,
it's whens. You have a specific view of the world

(26:49):
that comes along with specific expectations that the world will
be a certain way, and then something happens in your
life that utterly shatters all of your expectations and the
worldview we had which established those expectations. So you might
have thought to yourself, well, no one all my family's
ever had cancer, and your view of the world was
nobody at her will. And then you're diagnosed, and now

(27:11):
you're like, because your worldview, your overarching narrative of how
life should be, has been tweaked, It's been bruised in
some way, and that's just the nature of how we
experience trauma. And what I've seen is that if you
stay in that, if you get to a point where
you experienced trauma and it knocks you to your knees,
of course, if you stay there, that we call that PTSD.

(27:33):
If you can, somehow, through counseling or whatever, get back
to a place where you're functioning at the level you
are functioning at when you suffered the trauma, we call
that resiliency. But there are people, and I've seen it
over and over again, and I saw one of the chapter,
of course, every chapter of this book as a crime story.
And this particular story is of a sister of a woman.
And now look I said it in the book and

(27:54):
Sussy when she used editing, and my wife, she's like,
can you say that? Because this victim was somebody. You know,
we talked about how most of the time you bring
someone into your life that becomes the problem you have
to deal with later. Well, this woman didn't do any
of that. This girl was just in the wrong place
at the wrong time, had no proximity to anyone, and

(28:14):
here this happens. So now her sister saw it and
her entire family froze in time from the death of
her younger sister or older sister, rather the death of
her older sister. Until we solve the case, their family
did not move. They were paralyzed by the trauma, so
they were in that PTSD mode. But on the back
side of it, they actually began to flourish at a

(28:36):
higher level than they had experienced before the trauma. How
can that be? That's called post traumatic growth and secularists
have been studying it since about the nineties, and they'll
talk about it in terms of meaning making. People who
can do meaning making now we call it. As Christians,
we would call this meaning finding. In other words, did

(28:56):
you have a view of the world to begin with
that was accurate? I get it was shattered by the trauma,
but maybe you were thinking about the world incorrectly to
begin with. It turns out this victim's family were Christians,
at least as her sister was, and she could not
reconcile the death of her older sister with a loving
God because her view, her theological view of God in

(29:18):
some ways, was not very well developed. It's kind of
like if you watch Job's Friends. I just did all
forty two chapters of Job getting ready for the season
with these police officers who are going to be injured.
And as I'm watching Job's friends, I mean theology matters,
because it turns out that most of the suffering Job's
going to experience is at the hands of his friends
spending thirty chapters with bad theology. So theology matters, and

(29:40):
her view of the story matters. Here's why meani making
works not meaning meaning finding. If there's a view of
life that's different than what she thought it was, if
you can find it adopted, it can help you to
see where the trauma fits in the overarching narrative. In
other words, she was under the impression that that chapter

(30:00):
of the murder was the final chapter in the book.
And if that's the case, life's a tragedy. But it's
because she had a wrong narrative to begin with, and
she had to go and ask herself, what's the world
really like? What is God's nature really like? What does
God say about the nature of life? And as she
re examined her Christian world view, she figured out that,

(30:21):
you know, it turns out that's not the final chapter.
That's just the climactic chapter. You know how you have
a story that starts off with the opening and then
it has rising action, climactic chapter, falling action, and resolution. Well,
she thought that the climactic chapter was the It's kind
of like if you stop job in chapter two, it's
a tragedy. If you stop the story of Jesus at

(30:41):
the Cross, it's a tragedy. But it turns out that
she just needed to figure out is this the last
chapter or is you know, everyone's going to have a Friday,
but Sunday is coming for all of us, and the
question is can I see the overarching story. People who
do that figure out what chapter this is in their life,

(31:01):
they flourish on the backside of trauma. And so there's
several principles in this book. I hope that I'll have
a small brief chapter, but trying to cover that this
is how people flourish post trauma, is that they have
to rethink the view of the world that was shattered
by what they called trauma to begin with. And once
you do that, you've got a very good chance of
flourishing post trauma.

Speaker 4 (31:23):
Was there any research that you looked into that you
talked about finding the correct narrative right to work through
that trauma. Was there any research you looked into as
to how the Christian worldview fared as a narrative versus
other worldviews?

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Oh? Absolutely, So there's a chapter in this book that's
I think it's like the fourteenth chapter, which just talks
about how there's another line of thinking amongst researchers called
terror management theory terror management theory, and this idea is
they believe this is there's some great people who have
talked about this. But the idea here is that as humans,
we are uniquely able to our own mortality. They call

(32:01):
this mortality saliens that, unlike dogs, they don't realize that
they're fourteen in their lifespan of Corgi's is twelve. They
don't get it. They don't know that. They just don't.
They're kind of achy. Today we get it at sixty three.
I feel like, hey, I can see I'm in the
back three holes and I can see the clubhouse, you know,
I can kind of see, like I get the fact
that the end is coming and that fear of death,
these theorists say, is the tale that wags every decision

(32:24):
of every dog that we have in our lives. And
it turns out that some views of the world do
a better job of allaying what is called death anxiety.
And those are views that they say include what they
would call as non believers, the persisting self. So interesting
to me. In other words, if you have a view

(32:45):
of the world that says that I'm going to end
and everything I know in love is going to end
with me, and I'm not going to have any is
this all going to I'm going to be separated forever
from everything, even from myself who I see myself as
my relationships, all of it's coming to an end. Well,
you're going to fear that in because you're going to
be sad that this thing you really cutt is going
to come to an end. On the other hand, you
believe that the self that you know today will persist

(33:08):
beyond the grave, the persisting self. So, for example, materialism
does not do this for you, because you just die
and go back in the dirt. But even like worldviews
that have like reincarnation won't do it for you because
the self may persist, but not the self that you know.
It's a self that has an entirely different set of
memories and relationships and all that those don't fare as

(33:30):
well in terms of death anxiety. So a view, a
narrative of the world, a narrative structure that includes the persistence.
They've also done other research. It turns out that if
you believe in God, and there's a God who you
can pray to and a God who is actually willing
to listen and respond favorably to your prayers. So these

(33:54):
different levels of theism provide different levels of hope, hope
for the few, and reduced fear of dying. So a
lot of for this one sister in this story was
really about saying, Okay, do you have a narrative? Because
if you say, well, I can make sense of this,
because maybe the sense of it is is that that

(34:15):
golf is the best game still and I still have
a chance to play golf like I could make, meaning
all of us could make me. I remember when Keller
said it this way, I thought it was as pretty brilliant.
Why would we believe, as non believer, as non Christians,
that your insignificant beginning which came out of the dirt,
and then your insignificant end when you're going to be

(34:35):
back in the dirt, that between these two meaningless insignificant
events called the birth of some who cares and the
death of who cares, that somehow the space in the
middle is going to have significance in meaning when there's
no significance in meaning in the beginning or the end.
So it turns out that the more we think deeply
about our worldview. If you're an atheist, and you're an

(34:57):
honest atheist who believes that the universe has bind pitiless
indifference toward you, you don't want to think too deeply
about that view because it's going to make you more hopeless.
But if you have a Christian worldview in which you
live beyond the grave, in which there will be no
injustice that isn't righted, no desire that isn't met, no

(35:17):
tear that will ever flow again, the deeper you think
about your worldview, the more hope you'll have. Isn't it
interesting that of these two worldviews, an atheist typically would
say that we're the more thoughtful. Well, you don't want
to be too thoughtful about the worldview whole, because it's
going to make you depressed. But Christians often are depressed
because they're not thoughtful enough about their worldview. So I'm like, Wow,

(35:41):
we have to do a better job of helping Christians
to be more thoughtful about a worldview that could provide
an amazing amount of hope. The resources to deal with
trauma are and this is the one thing we're all
going to experience. This is I don't care where you
are in the world right now, talking across the ocean,
but every one of us, in where you are, Brian
and where we are, we're all going to experience suffering.

(36:04):
Very few of us are going to get out of
this without some form of suffering. And the more you love,
the more people you love, the more people you bring
into your life that you love, the higher the chance
you're going to experience suffering. Right, there's a risk in loving,
and it turns out that Christianity has the resources to
help us navigate the risk.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
I want to pick your brain then on something here,
so Coavis, we're talking about human nature, talking about anthropology,
finding meaning, purpose, making meaning.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
And then one of the chapters you were talking about,
and I think you mentioned earlier there you talk about
how when you'd been a police.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
Officer for so long and then it was time to
sort of like hang up the you know, pas on
the uniform and everything. That was a really cool story.
But then at that moment, it's like, wait, this is
who I was?

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Who am I?

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Now? This sort of feeling of like, you know, what
was what I was doing seemed to be my identity. Now,
obviously we have our identity in Christ, and it's easy
to just to say that. I wonder, and you're talking
about dealing with men who have injuries in ben wounded
or injured in doing policing and things like that, and

(37:15):
how they're trying to sort of find their way again, how.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Does one do that?

Speaker 3 (37:20):
I mean, I'm thinking with myself and I think, well,
I think I'm doing the right stuff. I know I'm
chasing after this, I'm interested in that, I'm doing some
things I think is worthwhile. How do I really know
if I'm doing You know, it's that question, am I
in God's will?

Speaker 1 (37:37):
How is there a test for that? How do I know?
Am I really living out my true meaning?

Speaker 3 (37:42):
I'm asking you because you seem to have this guy
you know a good perspective on this, and I appreciate
your experience in counseling people who are going through identity.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Well, and I can tell you I have been struggling
with it too, and so that chapter is a real
struggle for me. I'd help communicated the struggle because I
was a Christian when I found myself struggling to redefine myself,
I should know him better. So that is a good question,
and I think that's probably a whole nother book I'm
about to write, because I do think this issue of

(38:13):
identity is so important. And so I started now in
the last two months, just reading through all of Scripture
anywhere you can find anything that seems to be an
identity story. And so I'm just digging through all of
my Bible is just full of notes. And so I
would say a couple of things about it. Number one,
of course, it all begins with us recognizing the Jesus

(38:35):
who he said he was. You don't put your identity
in Christ if you don't believe that's actually that actually occurred.
So that's the first, But that's not really So here's
one way to look at it. If you've ever thought
about the story of Nicodemus. I've never talked about this
publicly yet, but I'll just share it with you guys.
There's a story in John three right where Nicodemus comes
to Jesus. He and it's clear that he is a leader.
He's described in a very particular way as a leader

(38:57):
of the Jews. In other words, John takes time to
identify Nicodemus, and because as a leader of the Jews,
he was one of those people who believe that his
identity in Abraham would secure his future with God. This
is what most Jews at the first century did believe.
You'll see them confronting Jesus all the time and saying,
we are sons of Abraham. Their identity is in Abraham.

(39:21):
And he comes to Jesus. Now read the story as
an identity story, and what you'll see is he's coming
to Jesus and he's saying he says, with Jesus, we
know that you are a teacher. He's trying to identify Jesus.
Jesus is like, you know what did He starts to
talk right away about being born again, and that word

(39:42):
for again is usually from above in the Greek. If
you look at how it's translated, usually what he's basically
saying is you've identified yourself, how you were born naturally
into the family of Abraham through the descending line of
Abraham and his descendants. But that doesn't cut it here.
You have to be born again another word, but you
have to reidentify yourself that thing you thought was your identity. No,

(40:05):
and then he makes a peculiar statement. He talks about
how he has to be born water and spirit, those
born with water and spirit. I think he's referring to Ezekiel.
I think it's thirty six twenty five where the spirit
and water are both mentioned, and he tells Nicodemus, you
should know this. You're a teacher of Israel, right, you
should have known that from the Old Testament. And what
that passage in Ezekiel it says is how God will

(40:28):
redeem his people, that they will He will cleanse them
from their idolatry with water, and the spirit of God
will give them a heart of flesh instead of a
heart of stone. So one of the first ways that
we have to reidentify ourselves is number one. We all
have idols, and we largely identify ourselves through our idols.

(40:50):
But Jesus is telling Nicodemus, You're gonna have to cleanse
that out. First half of what our idolatry surrounds is
our identity. I am a dateline detective. Really, So I
went back and I'm getting ready to get rid of
all this stuff. I'm just trying to process. How do
I let go of my idolatry, the things that I
thought were so important to me? That has to cleanse

(41:10):
out first too. I have to have had to bend
my knee. Look, identity is about how we want to
be known. So if we're going to reidentify in Christ,
I will no longer be able to focus on who
am I. Everything has to be about how Christ is
known through me. So that's the identity piece, and I

(41:32):
can tell you that changes the way I'm going to
have to talk about everything going forward because people will say, well,
what you do next, Well, it's going to be what
I don't want to get this catchy churchy language. Well,
Christ is always working through you. But the truth of
it is you're just the glove. Christ is the hand
that does all of this, and we're going to have
to So then what he tells Nicodemus is he says,

(41:53):
you know, he equates those who have been born again.
He talks about how the spirit is like the wind.
You have no where it's coming to, where it's going.
What I've discovered is is that people who are identifying
themselves the way that they want to identify themselves, if
you ask them what do you think of be doing
in a year, They've got an answer for that, because
it's all through the lens of who they are. But

(42:13):
people who are in Christ, if you ask them what
do you think of be doing in a year, the
proper answer is going to be I don't know, because
the spirit of God comes and goes where it will,
and I'm in Christ. Jesus is going to take me
where he takes me. So the entire story of Nicodemus
could be read as an identity story, and I think
it gives us clues and how we have to submit
our lives to Christ to make him known has to

(42:34):
be all of it. And the reality of it is
if you want to know where your identity is right now,
look on the walls in your house, because there's probably
good evidence that you're not in Christ yet, Okay, that
you haven't submitted this stuff yet. There is for me,
And so I just know that doing what we do
guys publicly proclaiming in a setting like this anything. I

(42:55):
don't care if you're selling widgets or you're talking about Jesus,
you're going to end up focusing on you because we're
the face on the video, we're the voice in the podcast.
We have to figure out a way to transition this.
Like I am, I so sold out. Like one thing
for sure, I used to make the case for christian
I don't make the case for Christianity anymore without preaching

(43:17):
the Gospel. There's no power in the case. There isn't
The power is in the Gospel, and so I just
know that that's what we're called to do. So if
you just do a study on scripture of everywhere where
you can find and start rereading it. When you're reading
the gospels next time, ask yourself, is this an identity story?
Because you'll find identity mentioned in a couple of places.
When remember when Jesus cures the demonic possessed man on

(43:39):
the other side of the lake, Well, he seems to
know who Jesus is. Satan knows who Jesus is. So
are we known that way would Satan be able to
say I know who you are, that I know who
you are? You Son of God, you you child of God.
You Jim Wallas I know who you are? Maybe not.
I mean, is my identity so trenched in Jesus that

(44:00):
he would recognize me the way he recognized Jesus that day?
I don't know. I think the story of John the
Baptist when they come to him and they want to
know who he is, and he says, well, I am,
but there's a guy coming. So are we living a
life where we, even when we do proclaim who we are,

(44:21):
there's a butt right there attached to it, because that's
what John would do. Yeah, John would say, I'm so
and so, but this is the guy's coming, and this
dude's bigger. I can't even tie this guy's sandals. So
I think a lot of it for me is trying
to and I think that's the future for me in
this next phases. I'm looking at each chapter of this
book and I'm going, Wow, there's so much more that

(44:41):
I need to learn. So what I try to do
is just dig it all out, research it all, and
then eventually share it with somebody. And here I had
I think like forty potential things to write about for
this book, and I was only going to write about eight.
And then what happened was I couldn't figure out a
good title for the book, and so for a season
I had a title that was called Fifteen to Life.

(45:02):
I thought, well, I'll write about fifteen things, and because
you could easially write about twenty or ten, because there's
more that you could write about. And this is how
robust the Christian worldview isn't describing us accurately. There's more
you could write about, but I just thought, Okay, I'll
just write about fifteen. But the reality of it is
is that you could do a lot more. And I

(45:22):
think that for us, we are lucky we get to
talk about some of the things that we're passionate about.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
Anyone, Well, Jim, it's been an amazing conversation. I can't
wait for us to talk again, especially about this. You know,
your future work, and there's so many layers that we
could talk about. It's fascinating. But we want to encourage
our listeners to pick up the book. It's called the
Truth in True Crime, What investigating death teaches us about

(45:47):
the meaning of life. People want to find your resources
and what you're working on currently.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Where would you want to point them Jim?

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yeah, Well, we try to. Like I feel the same
way like we don't have a five oh one C three,
And I feel like you should exhaust authors free content
before you have to pay for anything. So we continue
to write you post something three times a week at
Coldcase Christianity dot com and that's just kind of like
a spiritual discipline. So there's all kinds of free content there.

(46:15):
And for those who hit the banner and want to
look at the book, well, the goal with the book
is to provide you with enough free stuff that goes
with the book so you don't feel like it's costing
that much. So you'll see there's a thirty session Casemaker's
course there for anyone who purchases the book, and the
idea is just, hey, if you're going to make that
kind of an investment, what can we do to support

(46:37):
that investment. We try to do that at the website
as well. Well.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
You've been creating great resources for ages, so if anybody
just goes to your website and starts delving into your
YouTube channel or anything, they're just going to have a
treasure trove. So we'll definitely point people to it, recommend
it always. Hey you're ready a cookbook and we'll have
you on and we'll talk about it.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
I appreciate so much both of you that we've known
each of them now for going back ten years more
than that, so just so appreciative of your work and
your partnership and all this. I really do appreciate you guys.
So well, we'll let you go.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Thanks so much for coming with us again, Thanks thanks
for listening to the podcast.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
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(47:49):
Remember you can find lots of Apologetics resources at apologeticspree.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Fifteen dot com. Along with show notes for today's episode.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
Find Chad's Apologetic stuff over at truth Bomb Apologetics that's
truthbomb dot blogspot dot com. This has been Brian Aughton
and Chad Gross for the Apologetics three fifteen podcast, and
thanks for listening.