Nothing Left to Prove, So Much Left to Do with Larry Johnston

The following interview is from 2017, when Hank Hanegraaff was joined by the eminently quotable Larry Johnston, a friend and colleague of over forty years, for a wide-ranging conversation certain to send you searching for a dictionary. Today, Larry is absent from the body, present with the Lord. We don’t know the date of our death, but apart from the return of the Lord, we know that day will come. Larry’s testimony will impact your life, and we hope that you will walk away with a greater perspective of eternity—“Only one life, ’twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”

**This podcast was originally recorded and released in 2017. The introduction, however, is NEW**

Topics discussed include:
Hank begins the podcast by commemorating his dear friend and colleague Larry Johnston (1:00)
Hank and Larry discuss understanding their ages and the importance of making a difference while they still can (17:30)
Their interwoven journeys in ministry over the past forty years (23:50)
The battle for the mind in an age when evidence is seemingly trumped by authority (34:45)
Apologetics as antidote to the atheistic ambush in educational institutions today (40:05)
The false conflict between science and religion (45:50)
Larry’s testimony as a “Road to Damascus” soteriological experience (50:30)
The effects of uncreated energy on our soul (57:55)
Apprehensive allowance for faithful mysteries to remain mysterious (1:10:30)
Why the Christian Research Institute changed their moniker to “because life and truth matter” (1:14:45)
Their passion for podcasts as a vehicle to think deeper and reignite the art of dialogue (1:20:05)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:23):
And welcome to another edition of the hand Unplugged podcast,
a podcast that is always committed to bringing the most interesting,
informative and inspirational people directly to your earbuds. As we
get started with this re air of a podcast, I
want to say just a couple of things about how

(00:44):
important the podcast is and how you can promote the
podcast by subscribing, rating, and reviewing. All of that helps
the reach of this podcast as it stretches across the globe.
This podcast is very special to me for quite a

(01:08):
number of reasons. The first thing I want to say
about the podcast is that it was aired originally in
twenty seventeen, so this is eight years ago. We're now
in twenty twenty five, and I'm interviewing someone who worked

(01:32):
for me and with me for a total of about
forty years or four decades. His name is doctor Larry Johnston,
and he is now absent the body present with the Lord.
I remember him saying during the podcast that we have

(01:59):
nothing less to prove, but we have so much left
to do. And as Larry was speaking those very words,
he knew when he was born, but he did not
know the day of his death. In fact, it's interesting

(02:24):
an instructive that at that very time in twenty seventeen,
I was going through a battle with stage four mental
cell lymphoma. In fact, the very day that I did
this podcast in twenty seventeen, I had had a transfusion,

(02:48):
and then I came into the studio and I did
this podcast with doctor Larry Johnston. Now think about that
just a moment. When you do, you'll recognize that I'm
still alive and speaking, but I'm interviewing someone having a
discussion with someone who is now absent the body present

(03:12):
with the Lord. So as you listen to this podcast
rich in content, I want you also to be aware
of the fact that we are to number our days.
The grass disappears, it's thrown into the fire. Know well

(03:37):
the position of your flocks. Pay attention to your herds,
for riches are not forever, nor does a crown endure
to all generations. As the grass disappears, new growth is
seen and the herbs of the mountains are gathered in
life of vapor, here today and gone tomorrow. As you

(03:58):
listen to the podcast, you'll hear doctor Larry Johnston talk
about how important it is to cross the finish line,
which he has now crossed, but to cross that finish
line with nothing left in the tank. He also said

(04:19):
that we can get almost anything in this life, but
the one thing that we cannot get is more time.
And so we talked about the significance of finishing well.
I was just with a friend of mine for a
couple of days. I had an operation on my head.

(04:39):
I'm glad this isn't visual, but I have a little
scar up on my forehead right now.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
It's healing.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
But I was with my friend and I was playing
some golf, and he wrote a book called The Little
Red Book of Wisdom. His name is Mark DeMoss, a
great little book. But he added two chapters to the book,
but I had never read. So he gave me a
new edition, the current updated edition of the book. And
in that updated edition, he talks about living with gratitude

(05:11):
as one additional chapter, and then a really important chapter
titled finishing Well. And I want to read just a
couple of words from the ending of that chapter, where
Mark DeMoss, the author says, the key to finishing well,
I'm convinced is today forever. It's too long, too much,

(05:36):
tomorrow holts no guarantees. I can't presume that I'll live
well until the end, but I can live well today.
I can't be faithful to my wife forever if I'm
not faithful to her today. I can't swear to sobriety

(05:59):
for all that days of my life, but I can
decline to drink this day. I can't assume I'll always
be the father I should be, but I'm sure I
can love my children well today. Can I master my

(06:23):
tongue or take in God's word forever? Who knows? But
I can guard my tongue today. I can read the
Bible today. All we have ever is today The Old Testament.
Prophet Micah gives straightforward directions to the finish line. And

(06:47):
what does the Lord require of you? He wrote? But
to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with your God. We can try doing that today, which
brings me back, says Mark Demos, to my father's example

(07:12):
in my early life. If finishing well means living well
until we're finished living, then may the prayer of Moses,
the Man of God, that was found on my dad's
night stand the day he died, forever be engraved on

(07:35):
my heart. Those words, so teach us to number our
days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.
When Mark Demos's father died early, he's absent from the body,
present with the Lord, along with doctor Larry Johnston, my

(07:59):
good friend and college. He's in that great cloud of
witnesses that has spoken about in Hebrews chapter twelve. Therefore,
since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off everything that hinders in the sin
that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance

(08:23):
the race marked out for us, looking unto Jesus Christ,
the Author and the.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Prefector of our faith.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
This is a passage that should be embedded in our
minds because we are running a race and there is
a finish line. Larry Johnston has crossed that finish line.
I thought I would most certainly cross it before him,
but he has crossed it before me.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
We don't know.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
The date of our death. One thing we know for
certain is that that day will come absent the prior
return to the Lord, and then in either case will
be translated from mortality to immortality. Well, talking a little
more about this podcast, which you'll be listening to in

(09:15):
just a few moments, we discuss some very critical issues.
We talk about the issue of origins, who often say
how one views their origins ultimately will determine how they
live their life. If you think you're a function of
random chance, your rose from the primordial slime, you're going
to live by a different standard than if you know

(09:37):
you're creating the image of God and accountable to him.
We talked about the state of our culture. We talked
about experiencing the uncreated energies of God, and in Larry's testimony,
which is riveting as you listen to the podcast, he'll
talk about walking into a literal pillar fire. In his conversion,

(10:03):
he experienced the presence of God and in that vein
we talk about the uncreated energies of God. There's a
difference between biological energy and zoetic energy or spiritual energy. Well,
there's so much that is discussed in this podcast that

(10:27):
I want you to listen to it from beginning to end.
It is riveting and I think even more impactful because
as you listen to it, you're listening to a voice
that can no longer speak. You're listening to a man
who has fought the good fight. He's finished the race,

(10:47):
and he's kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up
for him a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
Righteous Judge will award him on that day, and not
only to him, but also to all who have longed
for his appearing. I hope you enjoy this podcast. Honestly,

(11:09):
I listen to it today as though I was listening
to it for the first time. It's inspirational, it's informative,
it's interesting, and it's in keeping with the cause concept
of the ministry of the Christian Research Institute. Enjoy, but learn,

(11:32):
and I hope that you will walk away with a
perspective of eternity. Only one life soon twill be passed.
Only what's done for Christ will last. Now enjoy the
podcast and welcome to another episode of Hank Unplugged. This

(11:57):
is an absolutely fantasmic plastic forum. I've been doing broadcasts
for thirty years. I am so excited about doing podcasts.
I didn't even know what a podcast was not all
that long ago. Now we've got five or six of
them already out and available. You can subscribe on iTunes.

(12:20):
You can also go to our website at the Christian
Research Institute at Equipped dot org and you can subscribe there,
and when you do, make sure you.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Share what you've heard with friends.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
That's one of the ways you can stand shoulder to
shoulder with us in the battle for life and truth.
One of the promises of the podcast is that we
bring some of the brightest minds in the Christian world
right to your doorstep, as it were. I have conversations
and you are listening into conversations that well, quite frankly,

(12:59):
have been transformational. And this is no exception. Today I
talked to a friend, a friend for almost forty years.
In fact, this is a friend that introduced me through
his partner, to the whole realm of Christian ministry not

(13:21):
long after I became a Christian myself back in nineteen
seventy nine. Bill McConkie, and I'm going to be interviewing
in just a moment as a member of our staff.
But he is also a partner in McConkie Johnston. It
is a firm that has been making a difference with
Christian organizations for well maybe over forty years now. But

(13:46):
Bill McConkie was the first person to hire me into
Christian ministry. So this is going to be a lively discussion.
Larry is a He's a brainiac. He is a person
that never ceases to stimulate me. Whenever I'm with him,
I feel like I'm with a lifter as opposed to

(14:08):
a leaner. You know some people you're with and you're
not getting a whole lot out of the conversation or interaction.
Whenever I am with Larry, and that includes working with
him at the Christian Research Institute, I feel stimulated and
intellectually motivated. But most of all, there's this spiritual component

(14:29):
to Larry Johnston that I hope to get out in
this podcast. We thought about doing the podcast for a
number of reasons. One of the reasons was we wanted
to talk about Darwin's House of Cards by Tom Bethel.
This is one of those books that we want to
put into your hands as a person that supports the
ministry of the Christian Research Institute or just supports the

(14:52):
Hand Unplugged podcast, and hopefully we'll get to that and
some of the ramifications of what back the I was
talking about in Darwin's House of Cards. I'll start out
with something that has been on my mind for now decades,
and that is the sovereignty of self replacing the sovereignty

(15:13):
of God. And I suppose there was never a time
where this was more in evidence than at the Darwinian
Centennial Convention. This, of course, celebrated the one hundredth anniversary
of the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection, and on that occasion, with a

(15:38):
certain amount of pomp and circumstance, Sir Julian Huxley, the
great grandson of Thomas Huxley, it's known as Darwin's Bulldog,
boasted this, in the evolutionary system of thought, there was
no longer need or room for the supernatural. The earth

(16:00):
was not created, it evolved, so did all the animals
and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, our mind,
our soul, as well as our brain and body. So
did religion. And therefore, as Huxley went on to say,

(16:23):
evolutionary man can no longer take refuge from his loneliness
by creeping for shelter into the arms of a divinized
father figure whom he himself created as a figment of
his own imagination. The ramifications well humanity's new found autonomy

(16:45):
sacrificed truth on the altar of subjectivism, and therefore today
ethics and morals are no longer determined on the basis
of objective standards, but rather by the size and strength
of the latest lobby group. Obviously, with no enduring reference points,

(17:05):
societal norms were quickly reduced to mere matters of preference.
And so here we find ourselves in an age that
I could not envision When I first met Larry Johnston
thirty seven years ago, it was unthinkable that we would
live in what is now best described as a post

(17:29):
truth culture. Well, Larry Johnston is a member of Seris Team,
he's our chief advancement officer. But I originally met Larry,
as I said, about thirty seven years ago, as a
result of his partner introducing me into the whole realm
of Christian ministry shortly after my own conversion. And he's

(17:54):
someone that's had a great impact on my life on
a lot of different levels. And Larry, I am glad
to have you in this conversation on this podcast.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
It's great to be here. It's been more than a
few years, it's been a few decades. As we were
talking yesterday, we were reflecting on where we are in
our lives and being well into the fourth quarter of
our lives. What I walked away from that conversation with
was you said, you know, we've been at this long enough.

(18:28):
We don't have anything to prove. And my response was,
that's true, we don't have anything to prove, but we
have much to do.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, that's right. I mean sometimes I think about the
fact that you know, we are, as you say, in
our fourth quarter. You're well into the fourth quarter. I'm
not quite that far into the fourth quarter. But we
don't have a whole lot to prove. Hey. The point is, though,
I mean, sometimes I do wish, and I've said it
still a lot of my kids, I wish I was

(18:58):
a younger man, because there is so much to do,
and the more you get into ministry, the more you
mature in ministry, the more you mature in life, the
deeper the well the more you have to offer. You
responded to that by saying something like, yeah, too soon,
old and too late smart, And that's exactly the point.

(19:24):
I mean, we're into the fourth quarter of our lives,
but I think both of us still have incandescent eyeballs.
We're still very excited about the ministry. We're excited about
the mission, And I don't think the whole word retirement
is in either one of our vocabularies.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
That's an utterly alien concept to me. I have never
once in my life seriously considered retirement. First of all,
I can't find it in scripture anywhere other than perhaps
the levitical peacethood. And my orientation is our potential as

(20:04):
human beings is God's gift to us. What we do
with that potential is our gift to him. My orientation
to life is I don't want to rust out. I
want to burn out. I want to cross the finish
line in a blaze with nothing left in the tank.

(20:28):
And I'm persuaded that the older you get, when you
slow down, you go down. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
It's kind of interesting too when you take what you
have just said, and related to the scriptures, where our
Lord in the very last chapter of the Bible says, behold,
I come quickly. My reward is with me, and I'll
give to everyone according to what he has done, or
Jesus saying, do not store for yourself treasures on earth,

(20:55):
where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves breaking and steel,
but rather store it for yourself treasures in heaven, where
moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do
not break it in steel, for where your treasure, as
your heart will be. Also when you and I will
in a flash be standing before the King of Kings,

(21:16):
the Lord of lords, the one who knit us together
in our mother's womb, the one who gave us the
gifts that he has given us. And then we're going
to be called to account for what we did with
what he gave to us. And I think that very
thought is something that is foremost in our minds, at

(21:36):
least during most days.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
For me, I think when we crossed the finish line,
for most people, our regrets will not be what we did,
but what we failed to do. And for those who
are in the fourth quarter of their game of life

(22:00):
and can process some of this existentially in ways that
people in the first quarter of their lives can't relate to.
They're still in the spring of life. They can perhaps
imagine what it's like to be in the winter of life,
but it's only imagination when you're in the fourth quarter
of the game and you're looking both back on the

(22:24):
life that you've lived and what you've done, and you're
recognizing more acutely with each passing day that of all
of the commodities in life, time is the most inelastic.
We can get more of virtually everything. When I was

(22:45):
consulting with organizations for forty years. So you can get
more staff, you can get more funds as needed, you
can get more facilities. But there is one thing you
cannot get more of. You cannot get more time. And when,
like NFL games, there's three minutes left on the clock,

(23:12):
your orientation to what's done in the remaining three minutes
is much more focused than you were typically in the
more leisurely first quarters and second quarters of life. It
has an amazing ability for those who are paying attention.
Needless to say, a lot of people are sleep walking

(23:33):
through life. But for those who are paying attention and
who are serious about the stewardship of the gifts and
the potential that God has given them, the realization that
each waking day we have fewer days left has a
is a wonderful tonic for focusing the mind. I want

(23:54):
to go.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Back to the time that I met your partner, Bill mcconkeye.
It nineteen seventy nine. I had committed my life to
Christ in that year and it was a function of
looking at the evidences for origins. It was looking at
the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was

(24:16):
looking at the viability of the Bible as an authentic
authority for life and practice. And after looking at evidences,
I found myself on my knees asking Jesus Christ to
be the Lord in the savior of my life. Not
as a baptized secular humanist, but one that transcends the

(24:39):
poor to salvation and continues the journey onto union with God.
So I had a transformational experience in my life, and
not long after that I went out of secular business.
I went into ministrate d James Kennedy at that time
it was the pastor of cour In Church. He has

(25:00):
gone on to be with the Lord, but he had
founded an organization called Evangelism Explosion. It was through Evangelism
Explosion that I actually was nudged into the Kingdom because
they had teams go out and visit people that had
visit the church, and one of those teams was intending
to visit my neighbor accidentally, so to speak, knocked on

(25:24):
my door and started sharing the Gospel with me. Well,
I'd become very very good at stumping Christians with objections
the historic Christian Faith. And I tried to do that,
but one of the people, Chuck Coleclasure, who happened to
be the minister of Outreach at Coorridge Presbyterian Church, said

(25:45):
to me, you know what you seem to be very
interested in the issue of origins is that we are
having a debate at our church. You want to go
to that debate, that is, if you have an open
mind and thus well stimulated. I suppose I ended up
going to a debate on origins that was transformational started

(26:07):
the process for me, and as I said, after looking
at the evidences for the historic Christian Faith, committed my
life to Christ. Not long thereafter, I met your partner,
Bill McConkie, because d James Kennedy saw something in me.
He wanted to get me involved in ministry. Because one

(26:28):
of the things that happened very early on in my
life is I was listening to him as a mentor
as he was preaching, and I would memorize his sermons.
And he saw my ability to memorize and he told me,
you know, all Christians do that. Of course, and it
wasn't until some time later that I found out that
all Christians didn't do that. But it started me on

(26:51):
the process of memorizing the Word of God, and not
only memorizing the Word of God, but meditating upon the
Word of God and then my the Word of God
for all its worth. So that started a process within
me that again was transformational, not just transactional, but transformational
at any rate. D James Kennedy thought that I might

(27:13):
be a perfect applicant to go into ministry because I
loved the ministry of Evangelism Explosion, and so that was
my first job in ministry, and the person that he
sent to me to hire me for my position with
Evangelism Explosion was none other than your partner, Bill McConkey.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Well, it was a fascinating, fascinating event. Back in nineteen
seventy four, I had volunteered to start a development program
at a seminary in southern California and had been led
to do so in a somewhat supernatural way. I won't

(27:58):
go into all of the details two tangential, but I
went to the president of the seminary, doctor j Rodman Williams,
and parenthetically, that was also where I met Walter Martin
and worked with him for several years, even before I
got to meet you and Rod. Doctor Williams said to me, well,

(28:21):
you know, come on into my office and sit down.
And he said, I know you really well as a student,
because I'd done two years in the MDV program, But
he said, I don't know that much about your professional background.
And so I went into his office and we sat down,
and I was given him a fairly sixteenth summary, and
I was talking about the three years of work that
I did in the War on Poverty, and I said

(28:43):
something about grantsmanship, and he stopped and he leaned forward
and his eyes got kind of big. He said, grantsmanship,
you mean like foundation stuff. I said, yeah, as like
his jaw dropped. He said, you're not going to believe this.
He said, A really good friend of mine who I've
known for many years as a pastor and was one

(29:05):
of the founders with me of the Presbyterian Charismatic Communion.
I've known this guy for years as a pastor, and
I just found out several months ago he's one of
the leading foundations experts in the United States. We just
hired him to be a consultant to the school, but

(29:27):
we don't have anybody for him to work with. And
now you volunteer to start a development department with a
background and foundations like, do we see any patterns here.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
That's really interesting about that? All of that evolved into
an organization called DACY, the Development Association for Christian Institutions,
And that's where I met you.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yes, I was. I was just a faculty member at
DACY for several years, and then I became a consultant
to DACY. And then, for a unique twist of events,
the then president and founder of DACY, Reverend Bob Frehley,
said that he could no longer carry the work of
DACY on and would I consider becoming the president of DACY.

(30:15):
And after some prayer, and thought that this show must
go on because in those days, you remember, we were
training several thousand people a year, and back in those days,
the whole field of development, which now is pretty well known,
was that was virgin turf, that was new terrain back

(30:36):
in those days. And we did that for quite a
few years, and then that morphed into some other seminars
and conferences. But as you were noting earlier, we've been
at this a while.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
So It's kind of interesting because I was once your student.
I remember sitting in one of your classes, and I
was so intrigued by your teaching manner and by what
I was learning about development, particularly about foundations. I had
no concept what foundations were all about, and I learned
a lot about that at DACY. But during that time,

(31:10):
I remember sitting under your lectures and we kind of
got to know each other a little bit. And one
of the things I recall vividly was you asking me
to stand up and tell everybody what strategic planning was.
And I said, well, as I recall, you told me
that strategic planning was the managerial process of developing and

(31:34):
maintaining a strategic fit between an organization's goals and resources
and they're constantly changing ministry opportunities. And you said, just
like that, without maybe even a second pause. You said, see,
if I dropped dead right now, Hank could just finish
my lectures for me. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
That was my great comfort of all the seminars I did.
I had no expectation, probably being in my late twenties
back in those days, had no expectation of dropping dead.
But I thought, you know, should I, for some reason
be taken out. It's nice to know that there's somebody
both with a gift of memory and who has been
so attention that he could just repeat all of this verbatim.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
So we have a long history. I mean, we go
way back thirty seven years and now here we find
ourselves working at the Christian Research Institute. And there's a
whole story behind that. I mean this is based on
mutual interests, mutual passion, but ultimately trying to find a
vehicle for ministry by which we can make the biggest

(32:39):
impact while we're yet on the planet. Well, and needless
to say, we are both fully supportive of and in
step with those whose primary passion is saving souls. But
I think the slice of the action that we have
that is not you unique, but it is certainly distinctive

(33:03):
of worldview and apologetics organizations is we have realized that,
barring some powerful supernatural move of the spirit, today the
access to the soul is through the mind. I mean

(33:23):
it used to be that apologetics was considered the handmaiden
of evangelism. I think increasingly today apologetics is evangelism. Because
you were speaking earlier to the radical change that has
taken place from the time that we were young and

(33:45):
just getting started. The volume of change, the complexity of change,
the momentum of change. If my parents were alive to
read the headlines of today's newspapers, they would rightly probably

(34:06):
go into catatonic shock. We, on the other hand, have
had what has been something of a bad case of
boiled frog. It's been the progressive normalization of deviants. Each
year things have gotten a little more deviant, a little
bit weirder, and all of a sudden, forty years later,

(34:30):
you look at reality and you say, how did this happen?
If we do not win the battle for the mind
that continues to rage today, I'm reluctant to think about
what the future might hold. That's interesting. I just wrote
a book on Islam titled Muslim What You Need to

(34:50):
Know About the World's fastest growing Religion.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Today.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
The fastest growing religion in the world is not Christianity,
It is Islam. Christianity is still the largest real religion
in the world, but polygamous Muslims are growing Islam at
an alarming rate, particularly when you think about the ramifications
for Western culture. So we see an onslaught against Western

(35:15):
culture from forces like Islam. But I think, and you
and I have talked about this quite a bit, I
think that we're destroying ourselves from within, and many Christians
are helping to fund that. They're sending their children to
educational institutions that sow the seeds of demise for Western culture. Oftentimes,

(35:38):
these name brand universities are no longer places where you
have the free exchange of ideas, but rather where authority
trumps evidence. And in some ways, that's probably the major
theme that I got out of a book that you
and I both appreciate. And by the way, this book

(35:59):
is available for those who support the ministry of the
Christian Research Institute. You can get it at equipped dot org.
It's called Darwin's House of Cards. It's written by Tom Bethel.
He is an incredible journalist, but he really put together
a sense for people on this notion of evidence being

(36:21):
trump by authority. In his mind, what that means is
there's an authoritarium structure that tells you how to think.
You have to follow lockstep along that path, as opposed
to allowing the evidence to lead wherever it may. And
in this book he's dealing with something that really is

(36:45):
important to me because it's the very first thing I
looked at on my journey to Christ, and that is
the issue of origins. And I've so often said how
one views their origins will ultimately determine how they live
their life. If you think that you're a function of
random chance, that you arose from the primordial slime, you're

(37:06):
going to live your life by a far different standard
that if you know that you're created in the image
and likeness of God, and in fact being created the
image and likeness of God. Having the impromater of God
on our very beings is what gives us intrinsic value
and worth at any rate. The point I'm getting at

(37:28):
is that this issue is a transcendently a foundational issue
for every single person on the planet to grapple with
in one way or another.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Well it it's crucial enough that we've spoken in recent
weeks about the atheistic ambush that young Christian students encounter
when they go to secular universities. I was just reading
the other day rereading you did a piece in a
former newsletter called the Drunken Nihilistic Nonsense, And for people

(38:02):
who haven't been monitoring the college scene, what you basically
said was in his book The Atheist Guide to Reality,
Alex Rosenberg that you're of the philosophy department of Duke
University states, Is there a God? No? What is the
nature of reality? What physics says it is? What is

(38:25):
the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is
the meaning of life? There is none? Why am I
here just dumb? Luck? Is there free will? Not a chance?
Is there a soul? Are you kidding? This is one

(38:49):
slaves me. What is the difference between right and wrong,
good and bad? There is no moral difference between them. Well,
I've gone a granddaughter who in a little more than
a year is going to be a freshman in college.
I am grateful that this weekend she starts attending summit

(39:13):
ministries in Colorado Springs, basically an apologetics ministry to reach
Christian kids so that they're not victims of the atheistic ambush.
I told my son, and he hardily agreed. I don't
want Mackenzie walking into that ambush unprepared. And for those

(39:40):
people who have children or grandchildren going into college, understand
what it is that they're likely to encounter. They're likely
to encounter the same type of nonsense that I just
read from Rosenberg. And it is pretty scary how so

(40:00):
utterly ill equipped most Christian students are to walk into
that environment.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
You know. As you're talking about that, I couldn't help
but think about my own daughter. Obviously, I have twelve kids.
I've had many go through the university system and faith.
One of my daughters graduated from Charlotte Christian. Then she
went to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, very
prestigious university in North Carolina, and she went with a

(40:28):
number of peers now friends from Charlotte Christian. And I
suppose it was maybe nine months or so after she
had first enrolled there and started classes and got involved,
that she and I were talking and we happened to
be in the bathroom at our house. She had walked

(40:48):
into the bathroom and she was calling out my name,
and we got in a conversation. I ever got out
of the bathroom and kept talking, but she started telling
me in that conversation, and I remember vividly where I
was sitting as we can continued this conversation, she told
me precisely what you're talking about, but in graphic detail

(41:09):
that as I said, it's still vivid in my mind.
Without divulging all the details, the essence of what she
was saying is that all of her friends had walked
away from the Christian faith. Every one of them had
walked away from the Christian faith. And these are kids
that you would think would have some chance. I mean,

(41:30):
they went to church, They many cases, grew up in
a Christian family, They went to a Christian school. They
had really good mentors, because I know a lot of
the teachers there. But yet once they got into the
environment of the university, they lost their faith. And it
was not only the professors that caused them to lose

(41:53):
their faith, but it was their peers that caused them
to lose their faith. The peer pressure invoked against the
historic Christian faith is now so great that unless you
were trained, and of course my daughter Faith was very trained.
The reason was is whenever she had a question, she
could come home and ask me, and even if I
didn't have the answering, well, I'll find out what the

(42:15):
answer is. But we had long discussions, so she really
knew how to give an answer or reason for the
hope that lies within her with gentleness and with respect.
But without that kind of training, she too would have
been swept away by this idea that Rosenberg is communicating
that there really is no sense or value to life.

(42:38):
You're here just as a function of dumb luck.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Well and an echo of that in Darwin's House of
Cards is the revelation that would be old business to
a lot of really informed Christians who have gotten their
heads into this space, but somewhat shocked to others. A
lot of the problem with science is not really with science.

(43:06):
It's with the way that science has hijacked the authority
of science to prop up philosophical naturalism. There's actually a
quote from Bethel's book. It says the science of Darwinism
was pour all along and supported by very few facts.

(43:27):
I have become ever more convinced that although Darwinism has
been promoted as science, its unstated role has been to
prop up a philosophy, the philosophy of materialism and atheism
along with it. The problem, obviously, is when science ceases
to be science and becomes a religion with just fundamentalists

(43:52):
of a different sort, we've got serious problems.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Yeah, we think that so many people have to be
right about en a because everybody's walking lockstep to the
same beat and often fail to recognize that scientists do
not go into the fray with a white lab code on.
They have their own biases. But oftentimes once you get

(44:16):
into the university, you recognize their stakeholder interests and if
you do not toe the line, you have no opportunity
for tenure. In fact, it's very unlikely that you're going
to be there very long. So people they start drinking
the kool aid.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
M Well, and I think one of the roles that
CRI can play is along with other apologetics ministries, to
at least prepare a younger generation to know what the
issues are and to think about their faith critically. The

(44:54):
problem with many students walking into this atheistic ambush isn't
that they don't have good hearts. It isn't that they
don't in some implicit intuitive way grasp the truth of Scripture.
They have just never been in a position where that
was challenged. Now, if you were to go back forty

(45:15):
to fifty sixty years ago, when America was still a
predominantly Christian culture, how often, other than if you renegade atheists,
was the faith really challenged. Well, as someone has said,
we not only have new rules in this game, we've

(45:36):
got a new game, and if students are not equipped
with a rational understanding of the Christian faith, the chances
for their survival going into a secular university is pretty slim.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
You know. I think, you know, we can look at
atheistic professors, and you know, look at some of the
quote that we have been underscoring, whether it's from Darwin's
Bulldog or some contemporary writer. But I think oftentimes Christians
shoot themselves in the foot, which is to say, thinking
about Bill Maher right now, you know, he said he

(46:15):
used to believe that the earth was five thousand years old,
and then he graduated the sixth grade. But we end
up shooting ourselves in the foot because we are telling students,
oftentimes in churches and schools that we live in a
five six thousand year old universe, and then they go

(46:38):
off to university or they're just off on their own,
and they start looking at the evidences, which are fairly
self evident. It seems that the universe is much older
than that. So the idea then becomes Look, the Bible
teaches in its first few pages that we live in

(47:00):
a young universe, a universe that is measured in thousands
of years, not millions or billions of years, and science
demonstrates that we live in an old universe. Now you
have to, somehow or other choose between faith and science,
as though the tour set in opposition to one another.

(47:21):
And so it starts, am I going to cling to
my faith despite the evidence, or am I now going
to be an aerodyite student in an enlightened age of
scientistic discovery? Which is it going to be? Is it
going to be science or is it going to be scripture?

(47:42):
And people think they have to make that choice, they become,
as you like to say, dichotomaniacs. And so it starts.
One of my young kids when he was twelve years old,
because I was in Singapore with him when he was
twelve years old last year. We were walking through Singapore
and he's said to me, Dad, if you were not
my father, I would be an atheist today at twelve

(48:06):
years of age. And I asked him why it all
boiled down to this and attended.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Issues you know the problem I think, And I have
this expression I developed called the paradigmatic plank idis. The
plank idis is borrowing, obviously from Jesus' statement that is
so easy to see the speck in our brother's eye,
but we don't see the plank in our own. The

(48:33):
problem is that in this purported war between science and religion,
which is utter nonsense. I mean I am a two booker.
God has two books, two divine books, the Book of
his works natural revelation and the Book of His Words.

(48:53):
Any time that science and religion conflict, it's because somebody's
got the wrong interpretation either. Science, which good scientists recognize,
is fallible. Science is never infallible. We have increasing degrees

(49:14):
of confidence in what science has discovered. But when you
take people who have chugged a different kind of kool
aid than the scientistic kool aid that the scientific community
has chugged, when you embrace a naive, literalistic interpretation of

(49:35):
a genesis account that retrojectively imposes on an ancient narrative,
modern conceptual categories, and modern norms for historiography how history
is actually written. When you start with a flawed premise,

(49:56):
there is no way that you can reason to a
sound conclusion. My personal orientation is they're a little ditty.
When science and religion appear to class tis the appearance
must go to the trash. God is not schizophrenic. He
doesn't reveal one message through one avenue and a conflicting

(50:20):
message through another avenue. Whenever there is the appearance of conflict,
somebody's got an interpretation wrong.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
You know what's fascinating today. Over the years, and now
this is true with you too, We've met some brilliant
people in the younger camp, people that I have on
the broadcast all the time. I think doctor Paul Nelson.
So you and I don't make this an acid test
for orthodoxy, but we do want people, as you said,

(50:48):
to rightly interpret the word of God, to know the
art and science of biblical interpretation. We also want people
to do science well, and I think as Christians we
ought to be adept in both those fields, particularly in
the age in which we live. I want to turn
a corner with you, though, real quick, because I was
thinking as you were talking about the fact that I

(51:10):
had shared a bit of my testimony at the beginning
of this podcast. Your testimony is fascinating to me as well.
You had an encounter with God that completely rewired your circuits.
And I suppose we can talk a little later on
about what you've said is happening to me as you're

(51:31):
observing me going through mental sell lymphoma, But you were
a person. I'm going to let you tell the story. Obviously.
It's a fascinating story. A person that had an encounter
with God that seems analogous in some ways to Saul
of Tarsus getting knocked off his horses. It were by

(51:52):
the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Yeah, I was reflecting as you were sharing a bit
of your own journey earlier that. But your path to
faith was a very evidential, rational path. Where you were
on your journey at that time was to wrestle intellectually
with issues, and it was in wrestling with those issues

(52:18):
that you came to some rational conclusions that ultimately predisposed
you to hear Lord, you got yourself a boy. My
route was very different in the late sixties. I got
involved in all of the insanity of the late sixties,

(52:39):
started doing psychedelics, getting into the chemistry of consciousness, exploring
altered states of consciousness, and then from there moving on
into Eastern religions and studying Eastern philosophy. I was a
seeker in retrospect. As I look at my siblings, I'm

(53:03):
confident that my mom blessed her heart, prayed all of
us kids into the kingdom. And we see the other
day that prayer is the slender nerve that moves the
muscles of omnipotence. I think during all of those zany
prodigal years of mine searching and really knowing there's something

(53:26):
out there, but not knowing what it is, she had
us bathed in prayer. Well, I was one of the guys,
perhaps unique in some ways, that responded to the same
altar call with my wife in Costa Mesa under a
great big tent, big circus tent. This back in the

(53:49):
Jesus Movement days, long before there was an actual physical
facility there. Chuck Smith was preaching. I had gone. I
was working at the Institute Furban Studies Notre Dame, and
had left Notre Dame to go out to southern California
to see my mom. And because my brother had been

(54:09):
attending Calvary, we said, well, she don't have anything else
to do, you know, why don't we go down there. Well,
over a series of exposures, my wife and I just
you know, this is the right thing to do, and
we responded to this ultra call. I would be the
last person to say that it was sateriologically uneventful, I

(54:30):
believe at that moment when I at long last came
to the end of that portion of the journey and said, Lord,
I've exhausted all of the other alternatives. You got yourself
a boy. It wasn't existentially powerful to me, but I

(54:51):
think it was to get Pola Slabic, it was sateriologically efficacious.
I mean that the deal was signed. What is interesting
is about nine months later, in a church service, the
pastor was basically calling people forward who felt that they

(55:15):
were kind of stuck in their spiritual growth, and he
just had a sense that, you know, he wanted to
pray for those that weren't making the headway they wanted
to make. Well. Our son, Josh was maybe nine months old.
Rebecca had gotten up to go back to the nursery
to check on Josh, and when the pastor said, if

(55:38):
you were one of those people who's really struggling with
where you are, I'd just like to ask you to
come forward and let me pray for you. Well, I
got up out of my seat and I walked forward,
and I got about halfway down the aisle, and that
was when I had my on the Road to Damascus experience.

(55:58):
I walked into a pill of fire. I mean I
had sensed in mild, gentle, but still very real ways
before the presence of God. But this was a Road
to Damascus experience. And for some amount of time, seconds, minutes,

(56:19):
I don't know how long it was, whether I was
in the body or out of the body, I like Paul,
I know not. But when I finally regained my senses
still standing, I went back sat down in my chair
and Rebecca didn't say anything when she came back from

(56:41):
the nursery, but she told me later without saying a word.
I came back and I sat down next to you,
and I knew that you were a different person. I
felt like Moses coming down from Sinai with light streaming
out of my face. And as I retrospective, I look
back on that experience and tried to make sense out

(57:04):
of it. The best sense that I can make of
it is that God was saying, I really have some
plans to use this clown, but to do so, I'm
going to have to rewire all of his circuits. And man,
I got my circuits rewired. It was at that point

(57:27):
that I committed myself to full time Christian work, and
I've been by His grace and with His power in
the saddle for forty some years subsequently. But that was
an experiential pivotal point, whereas yours was more of a rational, evidential,
spiritual point, to which I would say, isn't it great

(57:51):
that God's spirit is not constrained to work by a
single formula.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
I just love to hear your testimony answer. It's so
fascinating to You're obviously a very right guy. I mean,
one of the reasons we're doing the podcast is my
commitment is to bring some of the brightest, most interesting
people in the world to these podcasts so that people
can enjoy the conversation but can learn a lot in
the process. And I suppose my point of interest with

(58:19):
you in particular is that you are, obviously, as I
just mentioned, a very area dyte, a very sophisticated thinker.
But your circuits were required by uncreated energy. And I
want to talk about that a little bit because a
lot of people think that this is kind of spooky stuff,

(58:42):
but if you read the Bible, this is not stuff
that's spooky or esoteric or fringy, but it's really part
and parcel of what you get an Old and New Testament.
I mean, you made the allusion to Moses coming down
Mount Sinai and his face literally had to be veiled

(59:06):
because he had had an encounter with the energies of God.
No one can know God in his essence, but we
can experience him in his energies. You think of the
New Testament about Peter, James and John. They go up
Mount Tabor and they yeah the transfiguration, they see Christ
being transfigured, and lo and behold, they themselves are enveloped

(59:31):
in a cloud of uncreated energy and their circuits were rewired.
So there's something that a lot of people are missing
in the Christian faith. And I bring this up for
a lot of reasons because you've been observing me from
the time that I was chrismated, when I converted Orthodoxy,

(59:54):
and you have told me on several occasions that you
have seen someone whose wires are being whose circuits are
being rewired. And so I want to talk about this
whole deal. This idea of uncreated energy, something that you
find in scripture in Colaussians nine.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
Yeah, I think one of the reasons why the Church
in the West today is experiencing. The exceedingly grave difficulties
that it is experiencing is in large part due to
the fact that many churches no longer have the real thing.

(01:00:42):
They've become baptized centers for entertainment. They have been some
churches so hyper rationalized that they are an intellectually arid
religion philosophy with none of the power. I'm going to

(01:01:06):
be the last one to discount the importance of loving
God with all of our minds. But I reflect back
on the pre and post Pentecost church. I mean, here
is Peter who denied Jesus three times, and then Jesus

(01:01:28):
basically says to these guys, you know I got a
plan for you, dudes, but you are so lame until
you get your unction to function. I don't even want
you guys going out of town because you're going to
get your dairy ears kicked. I want you to go
up to the upper room and sit tight and pardon

(01:01:48):
the very loose translation, wait until you get the juice
from on high. And when they got the juice, when
they got the Edison medicine, the electricis City of the
Holy Spirit, there was a whole new game in town. Peter,
the guy who had just earlier denied Jesus, now preaches

(01:02:12):
a sermon when he's got his unction to function, and
thousands of people are added to the church. A part
of the problem is we have made in evangelicalism, in
some cases the faith so cerebral that we've lost the power,
and in other cases back to kind of the scandal

(01:02:34):
of the evangelical mind. Part of the problem of the
scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn't one,
so it's not an either or thing. But in today's
battle for the mind, it cannot be simply arid rational arguments.
If the Holy Spirit is not in what we do

(01:02:58):
and working through what we do this energy to rewire us,
the outcome is not promising.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
And that word energy is actually used in the scripture
in many translations, not as prolifically as it should be.
Other words are substituted, but alluded to Clausians one, twenty
eight and twenty nine, where Paul is essentially saying, we
preach Christ, we're perfecting everyone, and we do this, and

(01:03:28):
he specifically is talking about his own industry here with
all his energies which so powerfully work in us, which
is to say that, as has been well said, you
can work with all your own energy. You can be
on the sidelines, not working at all, or you can

(01:03:49):
work with all his energy, which so powerfully works in you.
That energy is real. And I suppose as I've gone
through mental cell limphone, you've noticed, because you're here regularly
and you see me on a daily basis, I haven't
missed a single day of work except for the times

(01:04:10):
I've had to be in the hospital, and then I've
bounced right back and been here. And you've said some
interesting things about that. You've talked about the fact that
I'm not just working on biological energy right now, but
there's something else going on. There's a energy that's uncreated
which is animating my body and my spirit to give
me the motivation and the strength and the enthusiasm to

(01:04:34):
carry on. In fact, my doctor, there's a little side note.
I just saw her today because I had a transfusion
today just before we started this podcast. But my doctor,
she looked at me and she said, you know, very unusual.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
You're very very unusual.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
She said, I don't know what's going on with you,
because you should not feel the way you feel every time.
She asked me, how my I'm feeling great. Yeah, my
son wor me out last night, and you know, I
played a little golf this weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
I feel great.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
She said, you should not be feeling great, and so
we got in a conversation. She actually she started the conversation.
She says, I think it might have something to do
with your spirituality. And then she pointed out, she said.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
I have I had call call she said.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
She actually said, she actually said, I don't think. She said,
I don't have any of that. You know, I had
actually given her one of my books and then she
was really excited about it and asked me to come
autograph the book. So I gave a book on afterlife.
She said, I don't have you know, I haven't grown
up in that tradition. In fact, it was kind of interesting,
she said, you know, you had told me that when

(01:05:45):
you're asking me questions about mental cell and FOMA, you're
a layman. You don't really understand it. See, I'm in
the same category when I ask about spiritual things, I
don't know anything about it. And maybe at some point
I have time to get my head into that space.
But anyway, getting back to the original point. Interesting that
you have observed that something is going on with me,

(01:06:08):
just as my doctor has observed that there's something supernatural
at play here.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
I've observed several things. One is it has been said
that there are some Christians who drink deeply from the
fountains of knowledge, and perhaps the most just periodically gargle.

(01:06:34):
In the same way, there are people who only intentionally
plug into the power of God periodically. I think your
current circumstances, and as you explain it as centering your
life in the divine, to use an analogy, I think

(01:06:55):
you have recognized that, given your current challenges, normal battery
pack doesn't have the juice to keep you going and
dealing with all the things you have to deal with. So,
recognizing the limits of the battery pack, you have plugged
into a transformer. You have plugged into a source of

(01:07:19):
uncreated energy. And my observation was because we are psychosomatic unities.
I mean, if here's some classic contrast between the Hellenic
or the Greek and the Hebraic mind. In the Greek mind,
we are imprisoned souls. In the Herbriic mind, we are

(01:07:42):
vital dust, we are animated mud. Because we are psychosomatic unities.
Having known you for many years, I can see the
spiritual transformation, but while I can't see it literally. I've
commented that I think your neural circuitry in your brain

(01:08:06):
is literally being rewired, not figuratively, but literally, because where
you are in your journey, you are not abandoning the
left brain. You are venturing deeper and deeper into the
right brain for what I think is a more balanced

(01:08:27):
whole brain Christianity. I think the message for perhaps many
people listening is not how left brain dominant or how
right brain dominant they are, but how is it that
they are daily plugging into the juice because we cannot
sustain the battles that we have to sustain in the

(01:08:50):
power of the flesh.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
And you're not talking about juice as in kool A,
You're talking about wine.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
I'm talking about bread. I'm talking about energeia. I am
talking about the uncreated energies of God. And if we
were talking to physicists or probably electricians, we could probably
come up with a very elaborate taxonomy of different types
of energies. But fundamentally there are only two types. There's

(01:09:20):
the created energy of creation and there is the uncreated
energy of the Godhead. We need increasingly to tap into
that uncreated energy. Because we've talked some about metanoia, I
think what is most unfortunate is that for many evangelicals

(01:09:44):
in the West, metanoia has been translated as repentance, and
repentance has been viewed as a as a punctiliar act,
an act in time where we said, Okay, I've been
a bad guy, I'm going to start a good stick.
We've now got our card punched and we start a

(01:10:05):
new journey. That isn't what metanoia is about. Metanoia is
about the life long journey of being transformed by the
renewal of our minds. It's about daily drinking deeply from
the fountain of knowledge and wisdom, not gardling once a month.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
You know, it's interesting as you say that, I think
about one of my favorite quotes now. It's from the
Russian theologian of Vladimir Lawsky, who said that after the fall,
human history is a long shipwreck awaiting rescue. But the
port of salvation is not the goal. It is the
possibility for the shipwreck to resume his journey, whose sole

(01:10:52):
goal is union with God. And one of the means
for experiencing union with God. I mention the wine and
the bread is to partake of the Eucharist, or the
thanksgiving meal, by which we are able to partake of
the graces of God, so that we can go on

(01:11:15):
to union with God. And you've alluded to this in
some way. There's a snarling logicality on the part of
the Western Church that wants to explain all of this
in Aristotilian language. The Western Church is therefore constantly explaining mystery.

(01:11:39):
The Eastern Church, on the other hand, is allowing mystery
to legitimately remain mystery, such that we say we can
apprehend the Trinity, we can't comprehend it. We can apprehend
the Incarnation, we cannot comprehend it. And in the same
way we cannot comprehend what goes on when we partake

(01:12:05):
of the Lord's Table or communion. But something is happening
and there's no real mystery. Pardon the pun in the
fact that this is called the mystical Supper in the
church for so long because something mystical is happening. This

(01:12:25):
is not contra reason. But this does surpass our ability
to fully figure out. But none the less, the fact
that we cannot figure it out, that we cannot cloak
it in words. Nonetheless, it is as real as the
very flesh upon our bones.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
I could not worship a God that I could comprehend.
He is the mysterium tremendoum. I mean a part of
the difficulty. And here is why I think we have
bankrupt vast swaths of the church of the energy needed.

(01:13:08):
Is that rather than having the experience that we're talking about,
we have concepts. And what happens is we failed to
recognize what we've said so often here the map is
not the territory. The symbols that I form in my

(01:13:32):
mind of reality are never the reality. They are pointers
to the reality. But what happens to millions of people
is they take an idea or a concept and they
reify it. They take what is abstract and intangible and

(01:13:53):
they make it into something concrete. Then, having made it concrete,
they sacrilze it. Because they think it has something to
do with God. They make it holy, and now having
been made holy, they absoluteize it. They make it impenetrable.
And just as the scientism of the scientific community is

(01:14:13):
often immune to what they perceive to be ways of
knowing that don't cut the mustard, we can become paradigm
prisoners who are so caught up in our representational maps
of reality that we have drifted so far from the

(01:14:34):
real power that we have embraced a counterfeit representation, and
we've confused the counterfeit for the real.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
And so both of us work for the Ministry of
the Christian Research Institute, and I change the moniker to
this ministry. A number of years ago, I used to say,
we do what we do because truth matters. We produce
the Christian Research Journal, because truth matters. We do the
Bible lance Man Broadcast, because truth matters. We equip missionaries

(01:15:07):
around the world, because truth matters. Everything we do is
because truth matters. And then a number of years ago,
a friend of mine, a man by the name of Elijah.
I won't go through the whole story in this particular podcast,
but I was taking a walk with him, going to

(01:15:27):
a restaurant, and I gave him one of our bands
that said because truthmatters, dot dot because truth matters, and
he looked at it. Good friend of mine, someone that
I consider a prophetic voice in my life, he looked
at it and kind of held it in his hand
and sort of, I don't know what dispassionate way, kind

(01:15:48):
of looked at it and then handed it back to
me and said, I think life matters more. And I
thought at that time, you know what, if he were
not a good friend, I'd be really offended. But because
he's a good friend and someone that I trust, I
pondered what he said. It was an awkward dinner because

(01:16:11):
I was thinking about this all the time and it
was really really bothering me, and my mind kept going
back to this idea, Look, maybe life matters as much
as truth, but it can't matter more. That just can't
be And I was wrestling with that, and so whenever

(01:16:34):
he engage me in conversation, I was thinking about that again.
It was an awkward circumstance, but I kept cogitating on
that notion and it became one of the greatest breakthroughs
for me in my life. The fact I'm writing a
book right now about discovering the authentic Christian life, and
the title of that book now is truth matters, Life

(01:16:56):
matters more. I want you to talk a little bit
about that, Larry, because on the one hand, I'm not
tipping my hat to truth, as though I'm saying now
everything that I gave my life to in terms of truth,
debating truth, defining truth, defending truth, memorizing the truth, meditating
on the truth, minding that all of that, somehow we're
others out the window. That's not so important. I found

(01:17:16):
a more important thing. We're saying truth really does matter.
If you have the wrong map to go back to
the metaphor, you can't get to the right territory. So
truth really matters. You have to have a reliable authority.
But on the other hand, we're now saying life matters more,

(01:17:36):
and to use a metaphor that both of us are
now familiar with. The cradle is one thing. The occupant
of that cradle, Christ is something else. And so we're
not just knowing now, but we're knowing. We're not just understanding,
but we're understanding. And the two don't have a whole
lot in common.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
Well, you have used the term on the starling logic.
I think a part of the difficulty.

Speaker 1 (01:18:02):
Is that, by the way, I got that term from you,
So just for the record, you're the one that embedded
that in my head.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Well, I think a part of the problem with the
snarling logicality in dichotomaniacs. It's characteristic of the Western mind
in particular. But back to our discussion of kind of
hemisphericity the two hemispheres of the brain. The left brain

(01:18:29):
is inclined toward analysis, to take hooles and break them
down analytically, to see things in a linear, compartmental way
that is largely antithetical to the holistic picture that we
get from the right brain. So we're we're rightly never

(01:18:53):
talking about either, or we're talking about both and and
we're talking in about balance. To move beyond an emphasis
on truth to an emphasis on truth and life is
not to abandon truth. Truth is still foundational. But what

(01:19:15):
I'm looking forward to seeing you address in your book
is in unpacking that in which ways do life matter more?
I mean, very intuitively, to me, life matters more as
an antecedent to truth because if there was no life,

(01:19:39):
there would be no truth. To be aware of. The
recognition of truth presupposes conscious sentient rational beings capable of
discerning that truth if there was no life, even if
on some abstract realm out in the cosmo somewhere, truth existed,
if there was no conscious life to be aware of it.

(01:20:01):
It's like, well, who cares, what's the point?

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
You know what I love about these podcasts, I gotta
tell you. And we're probably gonna have to wrap this
one up, but you know, I think it's a good
time too, because sort of leaving this hanging off a cliff,
I mean, we've got to have many more discussions like this.
But what I love about these podcasts, and I'm eternally
grateful to my son David for moving me into this realm.

(01:20:28):
I love podcasts because they remind me so much of
growing up. When I grew up, I remember my father,
who was quite a bright mind in his own right,
having discussions that were really meaningful, and even though at
that time I didn't buy into the worldview, I was

(01:20:51):
sort of like a fly on the wall listening to
the discussion. I think now about my son Xander, who
is now thirteen years of age. Whenever there's a discussion
going on in our house, and there are many discussions,
because I have people like Uover or Frederica Matthews Green
or whoever it happens to be, and there's a discussion

(01:21:14):
going on, and I always notice Xander he's kind of
sneaking into the discussion. He's sitting there and he is,
as it were, like a fly on the wall, absorbing
what's going on. And I think all too often in
our culture what we have is the entertainment syndrome. So

(01:21:36):
we turn on a television and we're being entertained, we're
being lulled into well, I don't even want to finish
that sentence because I have a word in my mind
that probably wouldn't be appropriate. But we don't communicate anymore,
We don't think anymore. We don't have chances to process information.

(01:21:56):
You watch television and some of the most horrendous things
are going on. These are things that are earth shaky.
I was watching Tucker Carson the other night, and I
kind of like this program, but he's talking about things
that are earth shaking phenomenon and the discussion is pointing
out that this is one of the most critical issues

(01:22:17):
in the world, and boom, you have a commercial, and
right after the commercial, you have another train of thought
that's completely divorced from the In other words, you don't
have the opportunity to process information, to think. These podcasts,
I think, are helping people do that very thing, to
re ignite the art of.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
Dialogue well, and one of the things I hope we
can do down the road is maybe integrate with some
of the podcasts. Some question and answer is because what
I learned long ago in doing seminars and so on,
the fascinating thing is about communication, is in doing the seminar,
I can know precisely what it is that I'm going

(01:23:03):
to share with the audience, and I don't have a
clue as to what they're going to hear. It's just
the nature of communication. Every mind processes reality differently. That's
not to suggest that there aren't some fairly pronounced commonalities,
but no two pairs of eyes ever sees exactly the

(01:23:28):
same reality. And so when I'm presenting messages, I know
that those messages are being refracted through the prisms of
the minds of the people listening, and what they end
up taking out of it may be the opposite of

(01:23:48):
what the person next next to them is taking out
of it. I shared with you yesterday the you know
my belief that as human beings we are many sighted
prisms staining the white radiance of eternity. Well, the same
message as a beam of light hits one prism and
at prism and it comes out red. It hits another

(01:24:10):
prism and it comes out blue. We need to get
a handle on the fact that when we're communicating, what
we're saying is not necessarily what people are hearing and
walking away with, and so opening it up to some
questions and answers. Then well, Hank, I heard you say,
or Larry, I heard you say. Could you unpack that?

(01:24:32):
What did you mean by that?

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
Absolutely? I think as the discussions continue, hopefully people are
going to start thinking. Let my people think, not being
entertained to death, but actually thinking, and hopefully that's a
catalyst for people to read as well. Think about the
book that we mentioned a couple of times during this podcast,

(01:24:58):
Darwin's House of Cards. By the way, if you want
a copy of it, it's available for anyone supports our ministry.
Check it out on the webit equipped dot org. You're
supporting minister the Christian Research Institute, which is making a
difference around the world, Darwin's House of Cards again and
check it out on the webitequipped dot org. We'll send
it out to you just for supporting the ministry. But yeah,

(01:25:19):
let my people think, Let my people start reading again.
Where a culture that's lost the art of reading. And
I think that's a very very dangerous sign in the
culture as well, where you have people protesting things they've
never absorbed, never really interacted with, wrestled with, or maybe

(01:25:41):
never even read. But I want to thank everybody for
joining us for another episode of Hank Unplugged. My guest
today a colleague, a friend at thirty seven years, doctor
Larry Johnston. He is the chief Advancement officer for the
Christian Research Institute, and we have had many stimulating conversations

(01:26:04):
over the years dinners interactions, and they've been enriching to me.
Larry and I mutually, I thank you for your friendship
and for your input for the discussion in this episode
of handcom plug Remember if you like what you're hearing,
and make sure to give us a rating on iTunes

(01:26:25):
and then share this with your friends. The whole idea
is to not keep this in house with a small
number of people, but get this out to as many
people as possible. So again, if you like the interaction,
if you've learned something, if you've been stimulated, if your
mind has been set to thinking, make sure you rate us,

(01:26:45):
make sure you share this with your friends, go to iTunes,
or wherever you consume your favorite podcast. Remember this podcast
can also be found on the website of the Christian
Research Institute equip dot. Or to give thanks for tuning
in to another session of Hank Unplugged,