Does the West Need a Religious Revival? with David Hanegraaff

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
And welcome to another edition of the handgun Plug Podcast,
a podcast absolutely irrevocably committed to bringing the most interesting,
inspirational and informative people in the world directly to your earbuds.
Now today is going to be I should have said
that now today is no different because my son is

(00:44):
in studio and he is the producer of the hand
gun Plug Podcast. He's my eldest son. He is now
one of thirteen, and I am very very proud, not
only of the work that he does at the Christian
Research Institute, but as his development continues, it is a

(01:09):
consistent source of bewilderment to me how he could know
what he knows. And I have discovered that the reason
that he has grown and matured in the Faith Once
for All delivered to the Saints is that he loves reading.
He's very much like my wife. They read all the time,

(01:29):
so he absolutely loves to read. He reads online, he
reads books, he marks them up very much like my
wife and I do. So he has developed in a
tremendous way in understanding the historic faith, the Faith Once

(01:50):
for All delivered to the Saints. In addition to that,
he is a father of two wonderful children and happily married.
And as you can see, I could go on and
on about my son, but I won't do that. I
will simply welcome Dave to the handcum Plug Podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Thanks for making me do this.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
I did not make you do this. No, You're usually
behind the scenes, yep, and you like to be behind
the scenes. And I've been wanting you to be in
front of a microphone because I think you have a
lot to say. And that was particularly manifested when you
went to a debate that was put on by the

(02:32):
Free Press. And what they said about this debate is
very interesting. In setting up a debate of two people
who are atheists and two people who are in the
Christian spectrum, they said, the West has experienced a rapid
erosion of our shared culture. Political polarization, loneliness, depression, addiction

(03:00):
have all surged, and while marriage and birth rates at
the same time have plummeted. There is a crisis of meaning.
A growing course of intellectuals are now pointing to secularism
as the cause. So the Free Press, which we love,

(03:21):
set up this debate in such a way that secularism
was really put on the spot.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yeah, I do love the free press. I think it's
one of the organizations that seems to be sprouting up
as a response to a lack of desire to really
get to the bottom of things and find out what
the truth really is, as opposed to just pushing an
ideology or a narrative no matter what.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
The cost is.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
So when I saw that this debate was taking place,
I never do anything spontaneously, and I immediately bought tickets.
It was in Austin, Texas, which meant that I had
a byplane tickets. I had to buy tickets to the event.
But I just got so excited because the fact that
they were asking the question to begin with was evidence
that there really is something going on in the culture.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Something.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
I wrote a piece about it, and I talked about
how anecdote is not evidence, but it's not nothing. And
when I look around at the world, when I read,
when I listen to podcasts, you start to notice things
if you're paying attention, and the once unthinkable is now

(04:34):
back on the table, which is you can be an
intellectually curious person and believe in God. So the fact
that they were putting the debate on to begin with
set everything to me.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
So talk about the panelists. I found the combination of
panelists intriggering. You had two atheists, one of whom I
did not know was an atheist actually conservative commentator actually,
and the other two are Christians, Christians in sort of
a different spectrum, one Roman Catholicism, one newly converted from Islam.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Well actually one newly converted from atheism. So that was
another reason that the debate caught my attention.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
One.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
I've been a huge fan of Ross Douthits for a
long time. I always think of him as living in
the lions Den, being one of the primary conservative calumnists
for the New York Times. So I wanted to see
him on stage and give a defense to the Christian faith.
But Ion Hersi A Lee was one of the leading
voices of atheism in our culture, and sometime last year

(05:48):
she wrote an essay why I'm Becoming a Christian or
Why I Became a Christian, And so I thought that
her presence on the debate stage would be extremely interesting because,
like you said, you weren't wrong. She converted from Islam
to atheism and now Christianity, so she can give a

(06:09):
really good perspective on each and she did bring that
to the debate because the question was is the West
in need of a religious revival? But it became very
clear within ten to fifteen minutes of the debate that
it's really a Christian revival that they're talking about, or
a Judeo Christian.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah. Iers is someone that I deeply admire. She seems
to be a person of her convictions. I've watched her
progress over the years and it's been very interesting because
I was born in the Netherlands with Dutch heritage, and
she was a politician in the Netherlands. She was firmly

(06:51):
committed to a secularist worldview, and then she became a Christian.
And during this debate, you actually point out an article
that you wrote, does the West need Religious Revival? Commenting
on the theme of the debate, But you wrote that
she not only gave intellectually satisfying answers, but she did

(07:11):
so with emotion, which I think surprises a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, and it answered the question of a lot of
her critics who claim that her conversion to Christianity was
one of utility more than emotion, because one of the
underlying reasons that she gave is essentially the proof is
in the pudding. When you look at cultures that have
sprung out of the Judeo Christian ethic, there are generally

(07:38):
places that you would want to live as opposed to
the alternative which she fled from. Not mistaken she fled
Somalia and Islamic persecution to the Netherlands, and I think
now she lives in the US. But she gave a
really high degree of credibility to the idea that you

(07:59):
can be a serious intellectual and a Christian at the
same time.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah. So a couple of things that I want to
talk about in this podcast come from the article that
you wrote on going to this particular debate. One of
the points you make is, for the first time in
US history, church membership among Americans has fallen to below
fifty percent, so we are at a new threshold. But

(08:27):
you also point out in the full panoply of the
article that you see a revival on the horizon, and
you don't see it just in sort of a general way,
but you see it in a specific way, particularly when
you look at a church that we both attend bursting

(08:47):
at the seams. And you mentioned one particular person who
I've also grown to love and know who was a
Muslim and then became a Yogi, and then he became
an Eastern Orthodox Christian. And so you point out that
you see people like him, you know, from all walks

(09:11):
of life looking for the mysterium tremendous at fascinans, the
mystery that causes us to tremble and yet attracts us.
And they're opening the doors of churches again, interested in
the faith once for all delivered to the saints. So
on the one hand, we could talk about Western Christianity,

(09:33):
but many people are also attracted to Eastern Christianity, which
is interesting.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, there's so many directions I could go on regarding that.
I like to think of the analogy of a wave.
You don't see a wave when it's developing below the water,
you just see the effect afterwards. So sometimes that's why
I said earlier, If you're paying attention, you start to
see things changing in the culture. But it's not something

(10:01):
that you could present somebody evidentially necessarily speaking, so you
wouldn't give a satisfying answer with numbers, and so I
could be wrong, but I don't think that.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
I am.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
I think that, And I ended the piece that I
wrote with I think the questions somewhat irrelevant because I
think that the West is in the midst of a
religious rival, and that's why the debate took place in
the first place. I think that one benefit of our
cultural derailment is that when things get so ridiculous, when

(10:39):
anything is on the table, when everything is acceptable. I
know that that happened to me personally. I grew up
in a Christian home and I never left the faith
nominally speaking, but I definitely was living a more worldly life.
And I remember riding the subway in New York thinking,

(11:01):
the logical extension of this unrooted lifestyle is I mean,
it's just ridiculous. There is no limit to it, to
the ridiculousness or the extent that it can go. And
I think that the culture at large is seeing this,
especially younger people, and it's almost the punk rock thing

(11:28):
to do is actually have beliefs or asceticism or some
sort of guardrail that you're placing upon yourself. And I
think that that's the reason that people are flocking to
the church that we go to and droves, and I'm
hearing that story across the US and the world in general.

(11:49):
I had the opportunity to speak with Ross Douthitt briefly
at the end of the debate, and I asked him
about this, about the growing numbers of people attending our
church and and he's Catholic. If it's happening there, I
think it is, And he said, yeah. You know, it
used to be the story for my entire career that
people would send their kids to college and they'd come

(12:10):
back atheists. Now I'm hearing for the first time in
my life that people are sending their kids to college
and they're coming back Catholic. That is the way that
they're rebelling is to come back with some sort of
belief structure.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Interesting. You know, one of the effects of secularization, pointed
out in both the debate and your article is the
effect that secularization has on not only marriage, which is
a chief building block of all civil society, but also
on the family in general. Talk about that from your perspective,

(12:45):
the fact that secularization has a detrimental impact on both
family and on marriage.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
I mean it doesn't encourage either. I mean family and
marriage are all about sacrifice. It's all about selflessness. It's
looking outside yourself and our atomistic culture encourages the exact opposite.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
It's all about you.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
It's all about your personal happiness, it's all about your fulfillment,
your self creation. Everything's focused around building your identity. And
that's the other thing thing that I'm noticing amongst people
who are embracing a more traditional religious lifestyle, whether it's Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical,

(13:39):
they're getting married young and they're having a lot of kids,
and like.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
I said, that's.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
Becoming the countercultural, punk rock thing to do. So I
think that there's hope.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, I want you to talk a little more about
the panelists. We talked about Ian Hershey as well as Ross,
but you haven't mentioned anything about Adam Carolla or Michael Schrmer.
What was your reaction or how do you assess their atheism.
Did they have really well grounded or well thought out

(14:16):
answers for the idea that everything can be reduced to
molecules in motion.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
No, it was a little bit disappointing because while I
came into the debate biased towards Christianity, at the very least,
if you're an intellectually curious person, you want your beliefs
to be challenged sufficiently. And I found it to be
extremely telling that the first person out at the gate

(14:48):
was ross outfit. And the best way that I could
describe it is it felt like he practiced his opening
remarks in the mirror at the hotel and had them
written out.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
And I'll say that to denigrate him.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
I say he was taking it seriously that he believes
in something, and he wanted to give the best possible
explanation for.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Why he believes what he believes.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
You fast forward to the last person who came on stage,
Adam Grola, and he's a comedian, so.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
He does this for a living.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
But he came right out and said, I think because
he felt the heat of Wow, these people really really
came prepared. I'm an atheist, I live in the moment,
and I really didn't prepare any remarks, and so he
was just going off the cuff and that won the
audience over, which I think explains the world we live

(15:48):
in pretty well.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
It won the audience over, how so.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
Because he's charming, he's funny, he's so the depth of
your answers isn't irrelevant, but it can be washed over
with humor or entertainment. I think that most people in
our age aren't forced to grapple with why they believe

(16:15):
what they believe. We live in a U do you
world where it's not really cool to challenge somebody's beliefs
or to hold their feet to the fire and say, well,
why do you believe that? Give me a good reason?
He said, Oh, that's cool. Well I don't believe that.
But unless you're a Christian, which case you have to
give every answer for it. That's the one belief where

(16:35):
people will press you on it. Everything else that's okay.
But I thought that it was really interesting that he
didn't have to show his work when it came to
his arguments, and it seemed like the audience was okay with.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
That, and it seemed like they were willing to bring
up tired old canards like slavery being a function of
the historic Christian worldview.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Yeah, there was a lot of that, and there was
a lot of it just is because it's obvious a
lot of going with their gut or you talk about
slavery or women's rights, which they would go back to
a lot of arguments that if you're really pressing them

(17:19):
to their logical extent, become self stultifiing when you look
at the origins of where they came from. So just
the conversation about rights in general didn't come from nothing.
So you have to if you're being intellectually honest, you
have to go all the way back. How did we
come to this place where we have a conversation about

(17:40):
rights to begin with? And that's where Ione hersy Aleid
did a really good job pressing them, saying, you guys
are really just non practicing Christians. You live in a
Judeo Christian society or one that was built on the
foundation of Judeo Christian principles, and you're taking the environment

(18:01):
that you live in for granted as though it's just
self evident that this is the way that things should be,
without really understanding the root of why that is.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
One of the things you note in your paper really
caught my attention. I'll read the actual statement from your paper.
You say. Famed atheist Richard Dawkins, he recently made headlines
for this very reason, claiming to be a cultural Christian
in an admission that Christianity is the optimal operating system

(18:38):
of the West, and when it recedes. When Christianity recedes,
we witness our social fabric unraveling. You know, actually I
did not know that he had said something to that effect.
That absolutely stunned me. I mean, he's one of the
four horsemen of the atheistic worldview.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Yeah, And so it's really interesting because Rostaufitt wrote a
book called Belief, Why Everyone Should Be Religious, and it's
a great book. It's really interesting, and his general thesis
is that having some belief is better than having no belief,
and he kind of narrows it down to the major

(19:20):
world religions and it's general apologetic for religious belief that's
focused on people who have no religious background whatsoever. So
he's just trying to get people's foot in the door.
And I think he's trying to disarm people while hoping
that they will eventually, you know, the cream rises at

(19:41):
the top. And in his belief as a practicing Catholic,
he thinks that, you know, if they're truly investigating everything,
that that's where they're land. But when he presented those
arguments to the panelist ion Hersi A Lee visibly cringed
because she came from an Islamic context where it was

(20:04):
extremely oppressive for her and so she wouldn't want to
live in that and she went to the Netherlands, which
is now, you know, essentially an atheistic country and it's
starting to unravel you know, Europe in general.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
So she's here and she basically.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Pushed them on all on that, whether it's the atheists
who she called nonpracticing Christians, you know, reaping the benefits
of the Christian West, or her co debater saying that well,
any religious belief, any religious rival, is better than the alternative.
She demanded a high degree of specificity when it came

(20:45):
to religious belief because not all religions have the same
outcome when it comes to society.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, you know, as you're speaking right now, I was thinking.
I just pulled up my book Muslim What you Need
to Know About the World's Fastest Growing Religion, used to have.
These are the top I had, but I haven't reviewed
them in a while. But as you were talking, they
came to mind. And you talk about any belief system
is better than no belief system, And she's cringing right

(21:12):
as that kind of tenet is being communicated. One of
the things I wrote in the introduction to Muslim What
you Need to Know about the World's Faster Growing Religion,
is that Islam is the only significant religious system in
the history of the human race with the socio political
structure of laws that mandate violence against the infidel. This

(21:33):
graphic global reality makes Islam a religious ideology espousing terrorism
as a permanent policy rather than a temporary expedient. And
that is a historical reality, from the earliest seventh century
Medina massacres to the nine to eleven twenty first century
Manhattan massacre and beyond. And I also point out that

(21:56):
I think it's fair to note that Islam is not
a religion in the sanitized Western sense. It's an all
encompassing socio political, legal matrix that has bred a worldview
antagonistic to anything but itself. So I think there may
be millions of peace loving Muslims, there may be many

(22:18):
tolerant Muslims, but Islam itself is not a peace loving
and tolerant religion. And I think we see that with
the kind of event that took place in January, where
you have the New Orleans debacle that took place. They
always seem to take the lives of people. We've seen
this in Germany recently, so Islam oftentimes is well, it's

(22:41):
one of the Abrahamic religions and belief in Islam is
better than no belief at all. But I think that
someone like Ian Hersey Elite knows that that is not true,
and so she would have a visceral response to someone
thinking such a thing, particularly in the context of a

(23:03):
culture that, as you say, people are living off the
benefits the interest of a Christian culture, even though that
culture is subsiding.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, and I think that she realizes it, and that
no matter how you feel about Richard Dawkins, he's no dummy.
And I think that even that's why he came out
and said he starts to see what's going on in Europe,
and he said, well, you know, okay, I'm not a Christian,
but this is the best operating system for a society

(23:35):
to run on.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah. I mean the consequences of an under examined you say,
or outright unexamined life. So if you under examined life
or you have an unexamined life, there are very specific consequences,
and oftentimes I think maybe the tenor of an Adam

(23:59):
Carolla is the tenor of an unexamined life. Someone not
looking very carefully or closely at how world views create
environments that can be very toxic. Socrates said that the
unexamined life is not worth living.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah, there's no such thing as a neutral worldview.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Both of the atheists kept claiming that they didn't have
a worldview that they pushed back. You atheists, we don't
believe in anything. Well, but then they would tell you
everything that they believed in. And I think that this
is a huge problem in our.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Modern era.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
There's so many different examples that you could give. Were
collectively born on third base and thinking that we hit
a triple standing on the shoulders of giants and thinking
that you're tall. I really do believe that we're one
of the first generations in humans history that hasn't been
forced to grapple with the big questions of the universe.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Why am I here? Who am I?

Speaker 3 (25:09):
Is there a God? I don't think that we're challenged
to ask those questions. I don't even think they run
through our mind half the time, because we're just constantly
distracted or constantly entertained. It's once again going back to
what I said earlier, it's all about you and your
personal happiness, and that combined with the surge and technology

(25:37):
where we're constantly inundated with information and doing one thing
and the other, that we don't really have that time
to land our bed and just wonder we're just scrolling
through our phone.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Was technology part of the debate.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Technology was the end of the debate.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
So in the piece that I wrote a kind of
somezing it, I talked about how whether the West needs
a religious revival or not, all four panelists and the
people putting on the debate agreed that something's going on,
that there's a problem that society isn't in a good
place now, whether that's the fault of a lack of

(26:20):
religion or not. Everyone agreed that, you know, the social
needle was pointing downward. And it ended in a similar
show of unanonymy when it came to the role of
technology and how it's generally making us all miserable, and

(26:40):
Adam Corolla talked about how it's it's not how we're
made to live, once again, self stultifying argument, how we're
made to live. I don't know, I'd like to hear
an evolutionary perspective on technology and the phones, but yeah,
it was unanimous that technology is problematic.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
You look sort of at the bright side of a
debate like this by saying in your article that you
were impressed that so many people came to witness this
kind of debate at this particular junk in human history.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah, that's why I wanted to go. You know, I
live in Charlotte, North Carolina. It wasn't close, it wasn't easy,
but it felt like one of those things. I'm not
saying that it was seismic in the course of human history,
but it's one of many events that are taking place

(27:47):
that show that something's changing, something's going on. Austin, I
did not know, is like one of the ten largest
cities in the US now it's rapidly growing.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
It's a cool spot.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
And this theater, it was the paramount theater in downtown Austin,
some massive theater. I've seen concerts there on TV. I've
seen comedians, packed house. The fact that it was a
packed house there to witness people talk about religion period,
even if they're rooting against it, showed that it's culturally
relevant to discuss. And although the debate also the format

(28:28):
was not my favorite, and I think that the format
not being my favorite is juxtaposed with part of the
reason why the debate was taking place to begin with,
which is you're lamiting or I'm lamenting technology. But the
rise in podcasts in long form discussion kind of forces
people to show their work. You have more of an

(28:51):
opportunity to lay out a more complex argument from start
to finish, and that people are doing that and pay attention.
I think that's why you start to see somebody like
a Joe Rogan having Christian apologetics. Speakers come on, somebody
like a Stephen Meyer come on and explain the God

(29:12):
hypothesis to millions of people. That has an impact, and
I think that that's part of the undercurrent I talked
about earlier with the wave that you're not necessarily seeing
it play out with numbers right now, but I think
that those conversations, when you multiply them over time, is

(29:33):
going to lead to a religious revival.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
One of the things you note in your article is
the false dichotomy between religion and reason. Was that part
of the debate as well.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
It's always part of the debate because any serious Christian
intellectual is going to scoff at the idea that religion
and reason are empathetical. I just brought Stephen Meyer. Everybody
in the intelligent design sphere is starting to you know,
smile somewhat gleefully as more and more discoveries are made

(30:08):
pointing to the fine tuning of the universe being so
rather than science being contrary to faith, it's pointing out, no,
this is this is right in concert with it. So
I think that it gave a lot of the panelists
and opportunity to point that out.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
You know, we hear so often, particularly from political pundits,
that we are entering a new golden age. And I've
often said that the ballot box is necessary, but it's
not sufficient. That there are other drivers that affect a
civilization in a dramatic fashion. You think about the environmental industry,

(30:48):
you think about the entertainment industry, particularly about the educational industry.
They all really dramatically impact civilation. So oftentimes people are
looking for the solution in the wrong places. Yes, the
ballot box is necessary. How a country is governed is important,

(31:13):
but there are social drivers that ought to be considered
as well. And I think that those social drivers can
be looked at from even a local standpoint. People getting
involved on their school boards, finding out whether their kids
are being taught and so forth. What's your perspective on that.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
I think localism is almost always the answer, but it's
not unilateral. I mean, I have been lamenting technology throughout
this podcast, but at the same time, this is a
podcast that's going out to however, many thousands of people
are listening, and you sit in you hope that that
has an impact.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
So it's multifaceted.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
But I think that real change occurs on a local level,
and that's where I hang I had That's why for me,
getting involved at my church is the most impactful thing
that I can do on a weekly basis, and you
don't always see the impact right away, although at our

(32:14):
church you do see it. It's self evident by the
amount of people who are coming to the church for
the first time every week. And my reaction to that is, well,
the church doesn't exist for itself to just be a
social club. We need to start a new church. And

(32:36):
I was talking about it with my wife this morning
and she goes, we would you be part of a
church plant? Would you do that? So?

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Well, yeah, I think I would have to be.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
I know that we just moved here from one part
of town to another to be closer to the church,
but if you had to drive somewhere else to be
part of a church plant. That's the whole reason for
the church existing is to expand it. And then she says, well,
what happens if that church gets too big? Or yeah,

(33:08):
great problem, just keep doing it. I mean that's it's
if anything, it's exciting the prospect because otherwise you're just
kind of spinning your wheels.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yeah, and when you talk about the church, people can
sort of sigh. But I think when you recognize what
Saint Paul says in scripture, he says the church is
the ground in the pillar of truth. So I think
it's true to say has been said by the saints
of old that you cannot have God as your father

(33:39):
without having the Church as your mother. Because it's in
the church that you receive the sacraments that transform you
from one glory to another. So the church is transcendently important.
It is the epicenter of the universe. And so when
you say that involvement on a local level in a
church is important, I resonate without one hundred percent. And
I see that all around the world. I've spent a

(34:03):
lot of time at the ten forty window from West
Africa to East Asia, especially over the last couple of years.
I'm involved with a mission that has many, many churches.
I think somewhere is around five million, just first generation Christians.
And you see the significance not just of leading someone
to faith in Jesus Christ, but making sure that they're

(34:25):
part of a healthy, well balanced church. And I think
that's part of the mission of the Christian Research Institute
to equip God's people for works of service so that
the Body of Christ might be built up in strengthened.
So talk about your passion for seeing not only transformation
on a local level, but really seeing or having an
opportunity to the mister Christian Research Institute to see that

(34:49):
kind of transformation taking place on a global level.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Yeah, this isn't an abstract exercise for me. I mentioned
before that I grew up in a Christian home, but
I lived a very worldly life and so this isn't
And that's something that on one hand I could be
disappointed by, but on the other hand, it gives me
an understanding of where people might be and also the

(35:16):
cultural malaise that people were talking about at the beginning
of the debate. I've experienced that I've experienced the emptiness,
the uncertainty that constantly turning rocks over, trying to figure
out what to do with my life, what made sense,
what's right, what's wrong? And as soon as I got

(35:37):
involved at church and really started taking I mean not coincidentally,
a huge driver of that was getting married and having kids.
As tale as old as time, people have kids and
get back in the church because they start caring about
something other than themselves and thinking, oh, I want what's
best for these people, and lo and behold they find

(35:58):
out that it's the church. But for me personally, I've
never felt more content and church used to be when
I was nominally Christian. It's something that I almost felt
like I went to stamp the time card on Sundays
and I was here. I showed up, so I was

(36:18):
keeping some sort of register. Whereas now I go to
church multiple times a week, multiple services, whether it's Wednesday night,
a Friday night, and Saturday. This past week, I think
I was at church three or four days of the
week with my kids, and they love it and we
view it as home, as a home base. I think
about it like a game of tag, where the world

(36:41):
is full of demonic forces, whether the modern world always
wants to believe it or not it's true, and so
we're constantly being attacked. And that's the one place where
it feels like home base, where you can't attack me.
And once you start to experience that piece, it's where
you want to be all the time. And I think

(37:01):
that with more and more people experiencing that, ursus bound
to grow naturally organically.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
I want you to talk a little bit more. It's
very interesting to me because a lot of you know,
having so many kids, oftentimes you don't really know what's
going on in the background. I know that you've seen
the world from the backpew of a church. In other words,
you've been all over the world with me when I've
been speaking in many, many different venues around the world,

(37:29):
and so you're kind of the son of the Bible
answer man. Tell people from your perspective what that's like.
Just your evolution, because you at one time I know
that you had a very secular and liberal worldview that's
dramatically changed. But I think that evolution would be interesting

(37:50):
for people to hear, certainly interesting for me to hear.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
Yeah, well, I think that it's probably not that different
from your own upbringing in a sense, you grew up
the son of a pastor Dutch reform. You didn't always
agree with it. I didn't always agree with you, but

(38:15):
you were always involved and I was paying attention, and
I think that you'd bring a lot in biosmosis. You
always talk about how you grew up and not emil
went by where you didn't pray and read the Bible.
For me, it felt like I didn't A day didn't

(38:36):
go by that I didn't see you memorizing scripture or something.
So it was always there, whether I wanted it to
be or not. And yeah, I guess it gave me
something to fight against. And it's not as though you
didn't develop either, so I think that there's probably a

(38:56):
There was something that I was pushing against that you
eventually also pushed against. So it wasn't as though I
wasn't undiscerning. I was seeing problems with the church, the
same problems that you eventually came to see. And it
wasn't until you became orthodox that I started to take
my faith very seriously because for the first time in

(39:17):
my life, I felt like I had truly sufficient answers
to the questions that I had that there was an
authority that I could align myself with without question, whereas
before it's kind of like, and I hope this isn't offensive,
but you know a coach where you think this coach
doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm not gonna listen

(39:39):
to him, Like you know, he's telling me about personal training.
I'm not talking about you talk about a lot of
the American churches. It's like somebody who's overweight and they're
telling you how to get in shape, and you just
you're not a healthy organization.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Why would I have faith in you?

Speaker 1 (39:59):
My story, I'm not saying it's everybody no interesting. And
one of the things I've noticed about you in your
own maturation, particularly as a Christian, is you constantly look
back at my father and then always intrigues me he
had an impact on your life.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, my second son is named after your father, Paxiohannes.
In our modern world, a lot of people have left
the faith. But every one of your father's children is
not only a Christian, but a strong Christian and firmly
involved in the church. And their children's children are involved

(40:41):
in the church. And that's always been quite the legacy
to me. There's no better legacy that you can leave
your family, no better inheritance. So yeah, I'm very interested
in your father's role and all of that.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
You even used one of his fairies is in your paper.
That's not nothing, and you mentioned it earlier on in
our conversation. My dad used to say all that and
more so often. But I remember that as well, that's
not nothing, And it's one of those phrases that sticks
in your head and is seemingly applicable in so many
different situations.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah, and he.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
Keep going back to seriousness, and he was serious about
his faith, something that he thought about with every decision
that he made in life. And it's the same thing
that I saw. And bring it back to the debate
and the two Christian panelists. It's not just well I'm
religious on Sunday mornings. It influences every single decision that

(41:42):
you make in life.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
You can't.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
That's why there's no such thing as a neutral worldview.
It's not something that you can check at the door
before you enter into the cultural sphere. It's always there.
And I think that that's also why Ion Hercy Lee
was so adamant about a not just a blanket religious revival,
but specifically a Christian revival, because eventually in a multicultural

(42:07):
world things start to butt heads. Ideas have consequences if
you draw them out to their logical extent, and then
they start butting heads. So I think that while having
freedom of belief is a nice idea, it's difficult in
reality because there is no neutrality in the public sphere.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, talk about apologetics for a moment, the importance of
always being ready to give an answer or reason for
the hope that lies within you, and being able to
do that with gentleness and with respect. How has apologetics
impacted you? For example, maybe the apologetic that there is

(42:47):
a God. You know. St. Paul says, God's eternal power,
divine nature clearly seen through what has been made, so
that men are without excuse. The Psalma says, the heavens
declare the glory of God. The sky's proclaimed the work
of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech,
night after night, they proclaim knowledge. There's no speech or

(43:08):
language where their voice is not heard. Their words go
out to the ends of the earth, so all of
us have the light of creation. And then what's really interesting,
particularly with respect to this debate in Adam Carolla. I
forget the context that you brought that up in your article,
but the fact that you are alive demonstrates that you

(43:30):
have consciousness. I think that's one of the phrases I
remember from the paper. But I was thinking when I
was reading it whatever the paper said at that point,
that yes, it is true that God has written the
knowledge of himself on the canvas of our consciousness, so
we know that there is a God. And in Romans

(43:51):
chapter two, Saint Paul makes that very argument. He says
that we are without excuse because God's knowledge is impregnated
in our dna, as it were. And then of course
if you respond to the light of creation and the
light of consciousness, you will also receive more light, and

(44:14):
that more light is the light of Christ. So there
is an apologetic that is really important, I think, to
make manifest and to steep our kids in.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah, it's interesting that you ask how I feel about
apologetics because I hated it growing up because in my experience,
and you talked about this to some degree and your
book Truth Matters, Life matters more, where it almost felt
like a blood sport where you're just constantly trying to

(44:48):
beat somebody intellectually with your systematic theology or whatever it
might be, and that from my perspective growing up, I
always felt like it was lacking.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
In life.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
I heard all these debates about love and the gospel,
but then the way that people debated wasn't very loving
and just witnessing that. I had an extreme aversion to
the apologetics community growing up because of that.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
But as I grow older and.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
More mature, I understand the importance of it when properly utilized,
and I think that that's the key distinction. That it's
not just something where you go around beating everybody over
the head with it, but that you have these apologetic
arguments that you're equipped to defend why you believe what
you believe. You know, I'm sitting here lamenting that our

(45:47):
culture in general hasn't been forced to do that.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Whether you're a.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Christian or otherwise, you just you're not forced to defend
your beliefs in the same way that I think most
people have been throughout history at least give a logical
explanity an argument for them. So I think having it
is extremely important understanding why you believe what you believe
in being able to then convincingly present those arguments to

(46:13):
people when they're ready for them. And I think once
again that's the key distinction, when they're ready for them.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
I think that's the key. I think that's so well stated,
that's the absolute key. I've often said, it's not necessarily
forced to run around frantically grabbing people lapels and saying, brother,
you saved. The real issue is to equip yourself so
that when God opens the door and gives you an opportunity,
you're ready, always ready to give an answer, and through

(46:40):
that answer to benefit someone, not to beat them up intellectual,
not to show off your intellectual prowess, but rather to reach.
And I think that the one characterization that you gave
is a function of repelling, the other is a function
of reaching. It really becomes the disposition of the person

(47:03):
that's equipped. Are they now wanting to show off or
are they wanting God to use them in the process
of transforming lives.

Speaker 3 (47:15):
Yeah, that's my prayer every single day. Every morning when
I wake up, I lay there in bed, I cross
myself and I say, God, use me however you can
today for your glory. That's the only thing that I
care about when I go to bed and some I

(47:35):
thing I care about when I wake up. And I
think that's what happens when you really truly begin to
live a Christian life. That's your sole focus is serving
the Lord. But it doesn't mean, like I said that
I'm constantly running around grabbing people. I really believe in
the long game. There are so many people in my

(47:57):
life that I've been praying for war and waiting for
the conversation because I don't want to just have a
conversation that's dead on arrival.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
I want it to be when they're ready. People in my.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
Life, and I've seen over the years that slowly people
pay attention, and I think, glory to God. I have
a very peaceful life because of God's presence in it,
and people notice that piece and they start to maybe

(48:32):
not immediately, but over times. Thaves different. I probably want that,
but he's pretty religious in and I don't want that.
So maybe it takes another year or two, but eventually
God wins out.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
I like that idea of the long game, you know,
and I think that's so strategic for people to hear.
I mean, you have to have patience. You know, God
is not slow, but you do have to have patience,
and again be ready, always ready. And then when God
gives you the opportunity, you can communicate what you believe

(49:08):
and why you believe what you believe. And as Saint
Peter puts it, you can do it with gentleness and
with respect, not with a haughty attitude, not with wanting
to put another notch on your belt, but rather, you
know where all of us missionaries dedicated to the preaching
of the Gospel. I mean, that's what it means to
be an authentic Christian. You are a missionary dedicated to

(49:30):
the preaching of the Gospel. You mentioned just a few
moments ago, crossing yourself, which is probably really interesting to
a lot of people. I have experienced, particularly in the
last few years, when I cross myself, people asking me
why are you doing that, and the first response, oftentimes
being from people that have grown up in churches in

(49:51):
Western civilization. Well, that's not in the Bible. And yet
from an orthodox Christian perspective, you say, that's what Christians
did from the very embryonic stages of the historic Christian faith.
And we know that not by osmosis. We know that
because there are documents like the d Decay discovered in

(50:12):
the nineteenth century, but can reliably be traced back even
before in terms of its origin, before the fall of
the Temple in Jerusalem eighty seventies. So it goes back
to the embryonic stages of the historic Christian faith. And
when you look at the d Decay, you find out
that this was a common practice among Christians and there

(50:32):
was a reason for that. You know, as you point out,
this is not just something that you do as a tradition.
There's an actual impact in doing that. I find. For example,
with our little daughter Priscilla, I make the Sign of
the Cross over her oftentimes when she's sleeping. Today, Kathy

(50:54):
and Priscilla, my wife, were in a car accident and
Priscilla said God saved us, and I reminded her that
I made the Sign of the Cross over her. Talk
about that just from your perspective.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
If anybody wants to, you mentioned it the outset that
I am the producer of the Handcumplug podcast. One of
my favorite things about the podcast is that we do
our best to make them relatively evergreen. There's an entire
episode on the Sign of the Cross that we did,
so you can go back and find that. I find
it to be one of the most precious parts of

(51:31):
my life period. I think it was in that episode
where it was in a situation like the concentration camps
during World War Two, where they would take the cross
from people and they we weren't able to have it.
And so you can't take this from me because I
can make the sign of the Cross. The Cross is
always with me. It's always part of me. And I

(51:53):
know that if it's not a part of your life,
you can look at it as something that people do ritualistically.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
But I can tell you that.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
While it might become something that you do out of instinct,
it's not ritualistic. And what I mean is you said
you make the sign of the Cross over So every night,
every single night, I have a habit of going in
and saying good night to my boys after they've already

(52:26):
fallen asleep.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
I just go in.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
And literally thank God for them because the greatest things
in my life, and instinctively, as a show of thanks,
I make the sign of the Cross because I'm so
overwhelmed with gratitude and I know where that gratitude is
aimed towards, and it feels like that it's multifaceted obviously

(52:52):
in good times, I make the sign of the Cross
as a show of thanks and gratitude. And when I'm
overwhelm whelmed or stressed or going through a difficult period,
I make a sign of the Cross as a plea
for God's protection, God's covering in my life. I every night,

(53:15):
when we sit down for dinner, I say, all right, boys,
what are we gonna do? Is a father, son, holy spirit?
They make the sign of the Cross before they eat,
and it's it's part of my daily life in every way.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
You mentioned your boys as being such a great joy
and blessing in your life. Your wife Emily a joy
and blessing as well. I think maybe one of the
greatest blessings that you have as a married couple is
you're shared love for the Church, You're shared love for Christ,
You're shared love for making a difference while you are alive.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
Yeah, who you marry is one of the most important
decisions you make in your life. And having the same
north star has been the most important thing in our marriage.
And it's a lot of people talk about marriage and
they talk about how hard it is, and I agree
that it probably is, but it's not for us. And

(54:18):
I think it's because we did all the heavy lifting
on the front end. What I mean by this is
really sitting down and going over the non negotiables in
our life and what.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
We want out of life. And for us personally.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
It wasn't what we want individually, but what we were
both strong Christians even at that time. Although that our
church life has changed, we both understood full well that
this is what we want. You know, we want to
live a God honoring life and what does it take?

(54:56):
Does that mean? How does that manifest itself? Wanted children,
so that was part of it as well. But yeah,
no matter what, it makes things easy because the arguments
are on our own. We're just trying to live according
to the way that we're called to.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
You mentioned the word life quite a few times just
in the last few moments. One of the things that
I try to point out about church is that it
is a life. It's not something that you do, as
you said, to sort of check the box once a
week or once a month or whatever, but it actually

(55:38):
ought to be a life. I want you to talk
about that for a moment, because for you, church is
a life. There's a flow to the calendar, your whole calendar.
Your whole life revolves around the church, and from your perspective,

(55:58):
I try to put words in your mouth, but knowing
you well, from your perspective, oh that's how it ought
to be.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Man plans God laughs. I never would have imagined that.
I mean, I thought about it as I was at
church on a Friday night just this past week, and
how I even ten years ago, if you told me
that I would have willingly went to church on a
Friday night and enjoyed.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
It, I wouldn't have believed you.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
And yet I felt such a sense of peace there
at the beginning of the Lenten season, and that of
itself is unique for a lot of people. I've explained
it to some of my non Christian friends, some of
the ascetic disciplines that you undertake during lent such as fasting,

(56:51):
and I explained it to him and he said, I
can never do that. And for me and for a
lot of the world, they see it as this kind
of self denial in a negative sense. But I've grown
to look forward to the Lenten season. I've to look
forward to the asceticism and the self denial because it's

(57:13):
really disciplining it's pruning. I don't know if you've ever
pruned a You probably haven't, I know you, But when
you're pruning a bush, it doesn't if you've never done
it before.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
It almost.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Requires some sense of faith because it just feels like
you're tearing something apart, that you're ruining something. And then
when you see the ballooms, come, oh, that was worth it.
And it's the same thing during the Lenten season, where Okay,
this is a time for growth, for renewal, so I
look forward to that denial and it's the same thing.

(57:53):
Freedom isn't found in doing whatever you want. It's found
within the boundaries. It's disciplines. And I don't know if
that answers your question.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Yeah it does, because I mean the whole point that
we're trying to get across is that it's a life,
and it's a life not just for you, but it's
also a life for your siblings. And I think this
is interesting and maybe you can sort of wander around
this subject, but it's really interesting something that you brought
up earlier. You look at my parents and their siblings,

(58:34):
by and large, those siblings grew up in a very
secular context in the Netherlands, which once was a great
land of the Reformations but now is not very, very secular.
They grew up in that secular context. In nineteen fifty three,
my parents immigrated first to Canada and then to the

(58:55):
United States of America. I was three years old at
that time. Remarked earlier on in the podcast that all
of my siblings are deeply committed Christians. I mean, I
love my siblings for a lot of reasons, but that's
certainly one of the connections that we have. But quite
the opposite happens in a secular nation. Those children are

(59:17):
brought up in a context which often not only denies God,
but doesn't have any connection to God because of the
context of their lives. And I think this, in a
larger worldview, has a lot to do with why we

(59:38):
need to be so connected in our own localities, so
that through those localities various as they are throughout the
United States of America, for example, where we live, that
that culture is not driving your children in a bad direction.
Because we've seen from the standpoint of our our own family,

(01:00:00):
as I just mentioned the siblings of my mother and father,
that secularization has a detrimental impact a devastating impact in
so many different ways in the lies of your children.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
So does bad theology.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
And I've had the opportunity to It was years ago
and probably two decades ago now, but spend some time
with some of your cousins, So some of your father's siblings,
children and their children, and I remember sitting there with

(01:00:38):
them at a dinner table, and they were just dumbfound us. Wow,
it's like looking in a mirror. You're like our long
lost cousin from America. You come here, you think the
same way. All the struggles with religion that they had,
especially me twenty years ago, I had. And I say

(01:01:02):
that bad theology also is problematic because they, I think,
grew up in the world of the sinners, in the
hands of an angry God mindset. And one of your
cousins told me how he was. He remembers laying in bed,
just terrified that he committed the unforgivable sin by just

(01:01:22):
thinking the wrong thought, and that that would the experience,
you know, eternal health fire. And yeah, I could see
wanting to leave that behind. And then when you've got
a secular context that is welcoming you with open arms,
I think it's easy to leave that behind you. So

(01:01:43):
you secularism is problematic, but so is bad theology, which,
once again bringing it back to ion hersy A Lee
saying that now it's not just religious revival that's neededs
Christian rival. But then even within Christianity, I think that
your beliefs matter there as well, and it's not monolithic
in belief There are so many different Christian denominations now

(01:02:06):
and some of them present truly problematic theology. And I
think that that's even contrary to our ability to witness
because it drives people away.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
You know. Maybe another note, just kind of people getting
to know you through this podcast. I find the people
who are always interested in finding out more about my
family and my children and so forth. In many ways
we kind of keep that private, but we're not at
all committed to keeping it private. It's just kind of
the way it works out oftentimes. But one of the

(01:02:43):
things you love is travel, and I think it's probably
interesting for people to know why you love travel, and
also for people to understand the benefits of having traveled
all over the world. Any thoughts on that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Millions I love travel, but I guess this is probably
not the answer that you were expecting.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
If you love travel, then you understand why.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
I mean, you start, you see the world with different eyes,
you experience how different people live their lives. But I
traveled to Austin. It's not you know, I've been there.
I don't know seventy five plus countries.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
In my life I was a company. I don't know.
I'd have to sit down, and I haven't done it
in a while, but a.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Lot somewhere in the vicinity of what.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
Sixty seventy eighty something, A lot of countries. I was
a real vagabond, and I lived in different countries and
worked in them. That was what I did for most
of my twenties. But while traveling to Austin, I found
it to be very interesting that while I still love

(01:03:53):
travel and I was excited to go, I had never
really spent any time in Austin. And it's a great
city for food and music and I love that, and
I definitely ate and went and saw some shows while
I was there for thirty six forty eight hours, however
long it was. But I also found myself thinking I

(01:04:17):
could give this up. I don't need this anymore. I
love it and would love to continue traveling, but I
missed my kids and wife so much, and that short
time that I was there that I thought, I've even
thought with my wife, well maybe we should only have
two kids, because once you go over to traveling becomes

(01:04:39):
very difficult. And I was even thinking about that while
I was out there, that nothing's better than kids. So
if it meant never traveling again and having a larger family,
I would do it in a heartbeat. So I still
love travel, but nothing, nothing compares to a healthy marriage

(01:05:06):
and kids. A couple years ago, Emily and I were
at a Christmas party and we were talking about how
great kids are, and this guy is a really cool guy,
and he's, oh, yeah, kids are just a drag. You
know where I'm going this weekend. I'm going to Aspen,
like I just booked the Chicken and I'm going snowboarding.

(01:05:29):
I couldn't do that if I had kids. And he
was seeing it as a positive, and it's just one
of those things if you don't know, it seemed impossible
for him to comprehend that the joy of children so
far exceeds anything that you took pleasure in prior to
having them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
One of the things you mentioned in your article is
that you're seeing not only more and more young people
come into the church, but more and more young people
coming into the church having kids.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Yeah, and I mean I think that God makes himself known.
I also talked about this. Even the atheists almost made
apologetics for the existence of a God and their love
for you know, running around and being in nature, and
it's the Book of Nature that's really speaking to them

(01:06:21):
rather than the Bible. But I feel that way that
being a father helps me understand the Trinity to a
greater extent, and even just God's love for us, because

(01:06:43):
everything is a microcosm. And the way that I love
my children, I start to understand how God could love
me perfections and imperfections, because no matter what, it doesn't mean,
you know, it doesn't mean that I will always be
happy with my sons. No matter what they do. I

(01:07:04):
get disappointed, but I don't know that there's anything that
they could do that would make me not love them.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
That is the absolute truth. Talking about your travel a
little more, and it is so insightful for me to
hear how travel at one juncture was your passion and
now that you have children and a wife at home,
being away from them is so difficult, and I certainly
can attest to that as well. I was going to

(01:07:34):
ask you about your favorite country, which I still want
to ask you about, but before I do that, we
went to Athens, Greece not long ago, I think was
in November. I spoke at a conference on AI and
transhumanism and one of the guest speakers that I had
the privilege of inviting was Jay Richards. I want you
to talk about that a little bit. Being in Athens, Greece,

(01:07:54):
being at that conference and spending time with Jay the
reason I asked that question for our audiences. We've had
Jay Richards on our podcast over the years, over forty years.
I've had him on the Bible answer Man broadcast many times,
and he's one of my favorite people. It's kind of
neat to get to know someone like that, I think
for you on a personal level as well.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
I think Jay is probably the he's on the mount
rushmore of podcast guests that we've had. He would probably
make it on Merit alone, but I think by virtue
of a number of appearances he's on there.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
It speaks to.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
The importance of getting to know people in general. I
think that we'd only ever interacted via email. Short spurts.
You know, I sit in this chair for every single podcast.
I've sat in this chair for almost every single podcast
that we've ever done, over one hundred and everybody two hundred.
Everybody sees your face, and so I feel like I

(01:08:58):
know every body intimately, but they've never met me other
than you know, a couple email exchanges. So that was
nice to get to know him a little bit more.
But I also just found I mean, you talk about
the conference in general. I found it fascinating that once
again bringing it back to the debate and the end
of the debate and everyone's unanimous sentiment that technology is

(01:09:27):
here in it it's potentially problematic. I found it fascinating
that this conference on AI and transhumanism that you're on
the scientific committee for, and it was in Athens, Greece,
but it was sponsored by and really spearheaded by a
bunch of monks on Mount Athos, which is the oldest

(01:09:49):
monastic community.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
In the world.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
And it's not like they're running around with iPhones and
they're transfixed by technology, but they care so much about
the world around them that they will see this happening
and say, we really need to have a conference to
get to the bottom of this because and it wasn't
them repelling technology. I think it really appropriate. Analogy that

(01:10:14):
they brought up is a knife can be used to
butter bread or to murder somebody. So there is utility,
it's just whether you properly harness it or not. And
so technology can be used to accomplish incredible things. It's
just about how you harness the technology. So I found
that to be fascinating that these monastics were really so

(01:10:39):
far ahead of the curve, especially in their presentation on it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Yes, so interesting that you bring up Mount Athos. You
and I, along with your brother Paul, Stephen and my
brother and a few other people went to Mount Athos,
and very interesting. I'd never been in a ministic kind
of an environment like that before. We haven't talked about

(01:11:04):
it a lot. We've talked about it some, but talk
about your experience in going to a monastery. I mean,
we saw the very things that they did the sixty
minutes special on for example, which is kind of interesting
about that artifacts that can be traced back to the
early centuries of the historic Christian faith.

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
Yeah, monasticism is interesting and a book that we had
read and promoted. I think it'll actually be the next
podcast to release after this one. There was part of
it where she talked about the modern Christian being potentially
scandalized by the presence of monastic communities, and that to
me seemed strange because I never thought that they could

(01:11:40):
be scandalous. But I think your view on monasticism and
monastic communities really could be shaped entirely by whether or
not you believe in the power of prayer. And if
you do, then I think that there's no way you
could be against a monastic community because their sole focus
twenty four hours day, seven days a week is praying,

(01:12:04):
and not for themselves, but for the world, the world
around them that they've kind of extracted themselves from.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
So they've extracted themselves from the world, but they're still
having an impact on the world.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):
Well, once again, if you believe in the power of prayer,
whether you're giving lip service to it or not. I
think that that's one of the things that I notice
all the time. Is there anything you can do just pray?
Almost a diminutive just pray, you know, but properly understood
prayer is the most powerful thing that you can do
so a community of people who are praying once again,

(01:12:37):
almost literally.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
Twenty four to seven.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
I talked about the fact that I go to church
a couple times a week now, and that pales in comparison.
You talk about the experience on Mount Athos, vigils throughout
the night, and then you wake up and after being
in church for three, four or five hours, you eat
a piece of bread and some water, and then going

(01:13:02):
to church for another couple hours, and then go do
some work, and then you got church again tonight, and
you think, wow, that's a lot of church, and you
struggle to do it for three or four days that
we're there. And I'm always thinking about how these people
do that every week after week, month after month their

(01:13:25):
entire lives. And when I went to Mount Athos, I
had no idea what it was, and I barely knew orthodoxy,
so I didn't understand what was going on most of
the time. But one thing that I have noticed is
that the longer that I'm involved in the church, the
less tedious it becomes, the more joyful it becomes, which

(01:13:49):
comes with understanding and knowing. And I going back to
the home base comment, I just love being at church
and the other night we were there and we were
supposed to take part in an interview afterwards talking about
the impact of our church for a new website that
we're making, and we had to leave because my boys

(01:14:14):
were making a lot of noise and they were trying
to record, and so I left without notice. And our
priests texted me and said, are you still here?

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Did you have to leave?

Speaker 3 (01:14:22):
And I told him we had to leave, and he
thanked us for wanting to help out whether we could
or not. And I just said, we love our home
dash the church, because that's how it really feels. I mean, it's, yes,
we have our home where we sleep and eat, but
it's almost become the church.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
You know, when you talk about being a home. It's
kind of interesting to me. I mean, just the microcosm
of our own family. Any given Sunday during church, we
have so many kids crawling on the floor, and you know,
I have my own kids, older kids, and then they
have their kids, and it's an organism. And actually that's
how the church is meant to function. It's not meant

(01:15:07):
to be a sterile environment. It's a living, breathing organism.
It is the body of Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
Nothing makes me happier.

Speaker 3 (01:15:18):
And for anyone that's unfamiliar with the Orthodox Church, there's
not childcare. There is catechism, so there's like a Sunday school,
but that happens after church, and so during the liturgy
or any other service, there is no separation between children
and adults. Everyone's in the same auditorium, and it can

(01:15:39):
get noisy and chaotic. But I think it's really important,
and I've noticed that it's not a theoretical exercise for me.
I see it in my two boys, and they notice
that something's going on, and they have a reverence for

(01:15:59):
what they presus to be God, whether they understand it
or not. I noticed the other day we had a
pre sanctified liturgy, so it was slightly different than the
normal liturgy. And yet and i had no idea what
was going on, because I'm still drinking from the fire hose,
I'm still learning constantly. And yet my son, Grace, who's five,

(01:16:23):
knew that they were proceeding with the Eucharist, and he
followed it and he prostrates himself with his forehead to
the ground out of a show of respect and reverence.
That really feels inexplicable.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
It's inexplicable to me to see for a five year
old to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
And it's not only your five year old, but packs
does it as well. Our daughter Priscilla does it at
three years old. She's facing the carpet, and it's organic.
As you say, I mean, it's something they do and
it's not I mean, they can be giggling and laughing
or doing what ever. But when the Eucharist is presented

(01:17:04):
to the Body of Christ, the grand entrance, they just
immediately are in a state of reverence. It's quite extraordinary
to see.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's breathtaking and for me as
a father, it's one of my prouder moments to watch
my kids and then just hope that like you were
talking about your experience with your father, meal times, reading

(01:17:36):
the Bible, praying for me, watching you memorize this is
kind of my opportunity to hope that this is the
osmosis that seeps into them, that they you know, I
hope that they never leave the church, but I know
that these experiences in the church will never leave.

Speaker 1 (01:17:54):
Then it's so interesting too, because you talk about the
legacy of my parents and we never had a meal
without praying, without reading the Bible. That was just part
of it. Growing up, we didn't like it a whole lot,
but in retrospect, as you've just pointed out, it had
a really big impact on my life. I mean, my

(01:18:17):
desire to meditate on the word of God, to memorize
the word of God, to mine the Word of God
for all its substantial wealth, was really born out of
those early experiences in our home at the family meals.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
And for me, I mean you asked from my perspective
earlier growing up, if you as a circuit speaker, I
think that it developed a desire to really understand the
world around me and then whether it was philosophy, religion,
to ask questions and not on a surface level. So

(01:18:56):
that's never left me. It's something that I'm extremely appreciative of.
And that's why i love this podcast so much. As
I hope that, like I said, whether it's you know,
the biggest podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
In the world like Joe Rogan or small.

Speaker 3 (01:19:13):
Up starts like us, people get a lot out of
these long form discussions, and I kind of view the
podcast as almost cliff notes, whether you're you know, I
have a lot of friends who aren't able to read
books the way that we're able to whether it's from
a lack of perceived intelligence on their part or a
time issue, but almost everybody has time to listen to

(01:19:37):
podcasts and that they can start to take the arguments
that are presented within them, and that becomes the way
that they're equipped to give an apologetic for their faith,
or change their faith, or bring them to faith. That's
also my hope on some level. There are a handful
of people that I'm always thinking of, like, oh, maybe

(01:19:57):
this is the podcast that I can send them and
that's going to be the Eureka moment where they come
to faith or at least consider it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
I am kind of interested in your perspective as having
traveled to so many countries, probably more than that I've
traveled to, and I've traveled pretty extensively as well, but
having traveled around the world, I know you love South America.
Sort of wanted to ask you, not a trivia question,
but what your favorite country in the world might be.

(01:20:27):
I know oftentimes you talk about Georgia. I don't know
if you would say that it's your favorite country, but
it's not just a glib question. I mean, there's a
reason you love countries.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
Yeah, I thought that's interesting. I guess you do know me,
the Republic of Georgia is probably my favorite country, and
it's one that I really look forward to revisiting someday.
I went there for six weeks to try and start
a travel vlog, but I met my wife a couple
weeks before I was scheduled to leave for that, and

(01:20:59):
similar to my trip to Austin, the whole time that
I was in Georgia, I was thinking, I really liked
that girl, and I can't keep traveling if I want
to have a wife and kids, not the way that
I'm intending to. So my travel vlog ended after one country.

(01:21:20):
But the Republic of Georgia is a country that I
don't think a lot of people even know exists, and
I didn't know a lot about the country prior to
going because my whole idea behind this travel vlog was
that I went to a new place without any research
and just tried to learn everything that I could about
that country. And the thing that stands out to me

(01:21:43):
now and I think Georgia is the most Christian country
on Earth statistically speaking, in terms of the amount of
people in the country that profess to be Christians.

Speaker 2 (01:21:55):
It's like in the eighties, eighty percent something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
I could be wrong, that's what I remember, but I
don't think I'm wrong, and whether or not they're nominal
or otherwise. And this gets back to what I was
talking about with my son Grace and him being in
the church and hoping that it never leaves him. Georgia
is known for this thing called aggressive hospitality, where everybody

(01:22:20):
you meet it's just so overwhelmingly hospitable and kind, to
the point where I kept asking, why do you guys
do this? What makes you guys like this? And almost
every single person said, we're Christians, this is what we do.
And I think that a lot of us have, whether

(01:22:42):
we're professing Christians or not, have lost the spirit of
hospitality and just how influential that can be. It's not
always the best arguments that you make rhetorically, but the
ones that you make with your actions, how you live
your life. So all that being said, when I went

(01:23:02):
to the Republic of Georgia, it's an Orthodox country, and
I was not Orthodox, and I didn't know anything about Orthodoxy.
So I was in all of these monasteries and churches
and holy wells, and didn't really know anything about it.
So I'd love to go back and experience it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
I have a couple more questions, and we'll bring the
podcast to a close. You've mentioned during this podcast love
of your life, your wife Emily, your two kids, Packs,
and Grace. Maybe someone would be curious why you would
name your son Grace. That word is not a throwaway
something that you thought about flippantly or quickly. It was

(01:23:46):
something very intentional.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
Why Because, as I said before, I lived a very
worldly life and there were points in it where I
did not think that I would ever have a wife
or kids. I just didn't think it was in the cards.
And if it did, a religious cohesion wasn't something that

(01:24:10):
I thought was really going to be part of it,
Mostly because I don't even know that we've talked about
this much outside of saying that to be a intellectually
respected person, it was almost assumed that you could not
be a Christian. I remember even I went to a

(01:24:31):
Catholic high school, and even the professors it was like
they tried their best to distance themselves from the Catholic
belief system, especially you know my science professors. Ah, well, no,
we don't believe that it just wasn't cool. And so

(01:24:51):
the one thing that I will say is that I
see a ton of people coming into the church, not
a lot of women, and that that is born out
statistically as well.

Speaker 2 (01:25:05):
The growth in.

Speaker 3 (01:25:08):
Converts to the church is a lot of young men
and a lot of young women are not and I
think it comes down to what our culture is presenting
to them as the way that they should live their lives.
And I think it's leaving a trail of tears. Eventually,
I allow that to say that I didn't think it

(01:25:30):
was in the cards for me, and God blessed me
with Emily.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
We're your best friends.

Speaker 3 (01:25:35):
And then I remember driving and I thought, I don't
deserve this. I don't deserve her. I don't serve kids,
and if we do have them, I was relying on
the perspective of grace being unmerited favor and that even
if it's a boy, I want to name my son
Grace because I don't deserve this.

Speaker 1 (01:25:58):
That's beautiful. Let me bring it back to the podcast
as we close out this edition of the hand Gun
Plug podcast, we were talking about as a result of
the podcast, we read so many books and I remember C. S.
Lewis once saying you have not read a book unless
you've read it numerous times. He typically said three times.

(01:26:23):
And certainly that's been my practice. I read a book
first by scanning it. Then I read a book with
a pentel, and then I go back and read it
with a highlighter, so I keep whittling down the distilled
essence of the book. And really part of it is
because I don't want to just read a book gratuitously.
I want to read good books. And reading is a

(01:26:44):
value that you have adopted as well. It's one of
the primary values I talk about in my book trith Matter,
Life matters more the significance of reading. I want you
to talk about the books that we talk about on
the Complex podcast, because again, we don't pick out these
books gratuitously. When we pick out a book, I mean, really,

(01:27:07):
it's not about merchandising. We really care about that book,
and so we don't just well, I mean, oftentimes the
reason we don't do as many podcasts as we do
is because the preparation part of it. I really want
to know that subject matter, and I really want to
be committed to our mission statement for the podcast that

(01:27:29):
we're bringing interesting, informative and inspirational people to people's earbuts
I wanted you to elaborate on that from your own perspective.

Speaker 3 (01:27:38):
Yeah, I guess behind the scenes component of all is
for every one book that I bring you, there's probably
four or five that I've read through that didn't make
the cut. And so you always say, I don't know
how my son finds these books.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
It's just incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:27:56):
Well, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of
it's a lot of books that you get three coreters
the way through you think, oh, this is fantastic, and
then there's something and this is problematic. But that also
is the byproduct of reading a lot of books, is
you start to develop discernment. You start to see things
that I and when I started with the podcast, however

(01:28:20):
many years ago, it's been a long time now, I
didn't always see the problems that would be present in
a book, and then you'd read through it and oh,
this is an issue. This is an issue, and I'd
be disappointed because I put a lot of work into
reading it. And then I started to, you know, see

(01:28:40):
the straight and the crooked stick. I started to discern
what was good and what wasn't good, whether it's ideal
ideas or theology. So there's a lot of books that
get sifted through. And so yeah, when we do a podcast,
it's never you know, the image that I have in
my mind. Does the talk show host who probably got

(01:29:03):
given the book ten minutes before the show came on,
and oh, well, this is an interesting book, tell us
about it. I mean, we never do that. Almost every
podcast ends, when the red light goes off, you talk
to the guests, and almost without fail, they say, that
was so much fun.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
You knew the book better than I did.

Speaker 3 (01:29:22):
And that's because the preparation process is so intensive.

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
Your mother is a reader, and many of the books
that you've read you've found in her library.

Speaker 3 (01:29:35):
Yeah, and I can never believe that she actually reads them.
But then I go through and there's a paper trail.
Literally almost every book is underline. I'd say front to back.
But she has a bad habit of stopping midway through.
But I understand that because there's so many books out
there that she gets excited by another book and gets

(01:29:58):
onto that and then gets onto that.

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
So yeah, she's.

Speaker 3 (01:30:03):
Definitely the library of mom is a good resource.

Speaker 1 (01:30:08):
Yes, So she's been a great resource for the podcast
as well, and.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
That's why I tell her when I steal the books.

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
Yeah, and she often reminds me that you stole your book.
But anyway, you know, this has really been fascinating for me.
I thoroughly enjoyed doing this podcast with you. I'm proud
of you as my son. You're interesting or informative, you're inspirational,
and I'm proud of the husband that you become, the
father that you are, and certainly the contributions you're making

(01:30:36):
to the Christian Research Institute. And you know, of course
we could say that I could probably do twelve more podcasts, well,
at least eleven more podcasts or maybe ten more podcasts,
but a lot of more podcasts with my kids because
they're also interesting and as we're sort of alluded to
during this podcast, they've won by one on their own.

(01:30:57):
And that's the way it has to be. I mean,
you can't have your faith because it's my faith. It's
got to be your faith, you know, so I can
influence you, just as you're influencing your kids, but you know,
ultimately you have to embrace it, and you have, and
so many of your siblings have as well, and that
I know is very, very encouraging to you.

Speaker 3 (01:31:17):
Absolutely, there's nothing that makes me happier than a family
reunion that happens at least once a week, but oftentimes,
as I all, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:31:26):
There's multiple services.

Speaker 3 (01:31:28):
So it's the life of the church and the life
of our family are interwoven and our bonds have only
gotten deeper as a result of that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:42):
And it's just beautiful to see.

Speaker 1 (01:31:44):
It is beautiful to see. And thank you for being
so committed to this podcast. For everybody listening in. If
you enjoy the podcast, subscribe rate review That helps a lot. Also,
the article that we were talking about that sort of
became the springboard for this podcast. How can people get

(01:32:04):
that article or you're going to tie that to the
podcast in some way? How does that work?

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):
Yeah, it'll be linked in the podcast notes and you
can get it on equip dot org.

Speaker 1 (01:32:13):
Well, great, and that is our website, and we have
so many resources that have been garnered over so many
years available on the web at equipped dot org. Can
also write us a post office box eighty five hundred, Charlotte,
North Carolina, zip code two eight two seven one. And
thanks to everyone for joining us on the special edition

(01:32:34):
of the handgun Plug podcast with my son David. We'll
look forward to seeing you next time with more of
the podcast

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