Welcome back and joining us now is Jay Warner Wallace. I said at the
beginning of the program, everybody loves a great detective story. Well, this
is the greatest detective story ever told. And he is a cold case homicide
detective and he is still doing consultations, but he is also a senior Fellow
now at the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview. His cases have been featured more
than any other detective on NBC's Dateline. His work has also appeared on Fox
News, on True Crime, many others. He's been awarded the Police and
Fire Medal of Valor for Sustained Superiority Award for his continuing work on cold case
homicides, and the Cops West Award after solving a nineteen seventy nine murder.
He also has a weekly podcast. You can find him on YouTube as well.
Mister Wallace r all those listed under cold case Christianities where they'll find that,
right, Yeah, if I'm under Jay Warner Wallace and all the social
media stuff. But yeah, for sure, that's that's helpful. Thanks good
yes, and I have I listened to his book years ago, really enjoyed
the approach and as I also said, anybody who wants to have critical thinking,
who wants to look at the information that has presented to us. Most
of us are doing some kind of a cold case investigation because we're not right
there on the scene evaluating it. So we have to look at the credibility
of the witnesses or the journalists to reporting this to us. So this is
something that applies to everybody. But I've said many times, you know,
when we talk about whether or not there is a God, you know,
the arguments for intelligent design, DNA, things like Michael Bahey's book, Darwin's
Black Box, all those are very convincing. Even before we had things like
DNA creation spoke to us, we knew there was a designer. You know,
you look at a building, you know that somebody built that building,
that type of thing. I wanted to get you on though, because you
looked at this from the standpoint of are the witnesses and the text? Is
it credible in the Bible? A little bit about it? How you evaluate
that? Yeah, and a lot let's face it, we could make a
case for God's existence, and I would sometimes have asked to do that.
And but that case you would make, you can make actually without even opening
your scriptures. You could make that just from science, you can make it
from the features of the universe. But even if you did that, you
wouldn't necessarily be making a case for the God of the Bible, because if
you're a theist and some you know you're a Muslim, or if you're any
strand of theism, that this case you would make for God's existence might also
apply to your case for your belief system. But Christianity is different, and
that, unlike other worldviews that don't talk about God, Christianity makes a claim.
It's not just a claim about the nature of God. It's a claim
about a series of events that occurred in the first century. In other words,
it's not that our scripture is a set of proverbial claims like the Wise
Wisdom's statements of how law and the behigh faith. It's not like that.
But how a lot doesn't make any claims about what happens in history. The
New Testament Gospels do. And because they're making claims about an event as the
Resurrection of Jesus that's set in a specific time in history on a specific location
on planet Earth. Well, now we've got a claim that we could actually
investigate. And that's the beauty of Christianity is that it is confirmable, or
it is verifiable or falsifiable based on our investigation of the claims made, the
historic claims made in the Gospels. Now, it's much like when a crime
occurs forty fifty years ago, and if I decided to reopen that case,
how do I know? I've got cases that are go back as far as
nineteen seventy two. How do you know in a case like that where you
don't have access anymore to the eyewitnesses because they're dead, or you don't even
even have access to the detectives who wrote the first reports when they talk to
the eyewitnesses because often they're dead now too, Well, what do you do
with that? If you have no access to the witnesses and no access to
the report writers. Well, this is the problem we have with the Gospels.
And I think you could apply the same approach. How do I you
know? What are the what are the areas of eyewitness reliability? And do
the Gospel authors pass the test when measured that way? Now, I'll tell
you this is the only way I knew to examine the Christian worldview because I
happened to be a detective. When I first got saved, I was thirty
five night working is a I was already a senior detective on my in my
agency, and I was, you know, you know, using these applying
these techniques to cases. And so it wasn't like I was thinking, well,
let me do something kind of unique or novel here. I thought that
everybody who was going to examine these claims about history would want to examine them
this way. I didn't know any other way to examine them. So so
that's really the system I took when I first encountered Christianity. That's what I
think is so interesting about it, and especially because it is an exercise and
critical thought. As you said, the Bible is very rooted in a particular
time and place and historical aspects. When you look at Luke, it's very
clear, you know, this happened when this person was ruling in that type
of thing. And so these are things that we can investigate. And when
somebody makes a claim, you know, we're seeing this happening all the time.
You know, somebody makes a claim about climate change or about man's contribution
to climate change, how do we evaluate that? Is the burden of proof
is on the person who's making the claim, right, Yeah, it is,
and I tell you that everyone's making a claim. So here's what I
would say. This is often leveraged against us. Right, They'll say,
look, you claim there's a God. We don't see God. We have
no evidence for God. They would argue that if you're claiming that there's something
that exists when it's not obvious to the rest of us, well that that
burden then is on you. But that's not exactly how this works. In
criminal cases, you have an effect a dead body, Okay, that's what
I work over dead bodies, and then you have to figure out what is
the most reasonable cause for that stuff you have in the crime scene. That's
how this works. Now, if I'm going to suggest that there is there's
a crime scene here, it's called the universe, and we are in that
universe, and the question is how did different thing in the universe come to
be the way it is today. Now I'm going to pause it a cause
I'm going to pause it that that causes God, a supernatural being outside of
space, time and matter. If you think that you can get all the
stuff in the universe without God, then you have to pause it a cause.
Also, you're going to say everything here is a cause of space time,
matter of physics, and chemistry. Okay, great, but we both
have a burden. Now. I have a burden to show you why God
is the best and most reasonable explanation. You have a burden to show me
why space time, matter of physics, and chemistry are the most reasonable explanation.
We both share a burden because we're trying to explain the cause for what
we see in the scene. So I don't like when people try to you
know, this is why it's so important to be like you said, this
enterprise of critical thinking is so important because we have to kind of think,
well, how do I think about things critically and including my own faith?
And if you don't think that that's important, now, you probably haven't given
and your kids yet. The Glowing Rectangle called them smartphone because it turns out
that once your kids have that, and sadly, I see parents giving these
things to their kids when they're you know, their kids are like ten years
old. Well, you've just introduced your child to a world that is demanding
evidence and thinks it has evidence for their beliefs, and so they're adopting views
that they think are based on science, based on this kind of research,
based on a kind of thinking that they don't see in us as believers,
if we aren't applying the same approach to our faith. They think that on
our side we have people who just wishful thinking, and on the other side
it's based on data and facts. Well, that's not necessarily the case,
and I want us on this side to be able to say, no,
my faith is grounded in facts. So a matter of fact, this whole
word hope that's used in the New Testament is not the kind of word that
we use out like in our English language. Hope kind of means like wishful
thinking. I'm in Los Angeles County close to Los Angeles, Ken, just
one county away, and I worked in Los Angeles kN in my entire career,
and we've got like all kinds of sporting teams. So when I say,
you know, the Ram's gonna win on Sunday, well, I hope,
So that that word kind of means why, I don't know, but
maybe well, okay, Well, that's different than the kind of hope that's
used in scripture. In scripture, the word hope is really a level of
certainty, which is much higher at level of confidence, which is much higher
because it's based in something that can be known. So when we say we
have hope in God, it's because we know enough to know that our hope,
that our trust is confidently placed. So I think that that's the difference
in We need a Christians to realize that difference and to help communicate that to
the next generation or get ready. The tide is going to swing, and
it already has started to swing against us, and it's because we don't take
the same approach the world takes. We kind of like the ones who are
hoping this is true, and they're the ones who know what's true according to
kids, Well, we have to kind of help our kids to see that
we know what's true as well. That's right. The Saul falls into what
Christians call apologetics, And I think a lot of people look at this and
the apologetics, what are we apologizing for? Because that's another word that's changed
meanings. Just like you talk about hope, right, apologetics used to mean
that it was a defense, and it was that way, you know,
from ancient times up until about the middle of the eighteen hundreds, and then
it became well, an acknowledgement that I've done something wrong, I'm at fault.
And that really is kind of the way that most Christians approach when they
talk about apologetics. Usually they apologize now for being a Christian instead of having
a rigorous defense of it. You know, so we need to move back
to the definition of apologetics that preceded the apology that's out there. I think,
yeah, and tell you, I think every one of us who claims
to be a Christian believer, and I say this to juries all the time.
We tell jurors that we are going to tell them everything they need to
know, but we cannot communicate everything that could be known because we don't even
know everything that could be known. In other words, you're going to have
to render a verdict even though you're probably gonna have a few open questions.
This is true for every juror who's ever sat on a jury render they've had
to render a verdict, but they probably would have if you asked him,
they probably would have said, you know, I wish i'd had the answer
to this question, though, And often we know that someone did it because
they haven't confessed to it. We don't know exactly how they did it.
That's an open question. Yet you can still render a verdict and determine truth
even though you have open questions. The same thing is happening for us as
Christian believers. There's an evidence trail, and like in a suspect in a
case in a jury trial, that evidence trail seems to be pointing directly.
It's leading right to that defendant at the end of the table. Now it
turns out it's not leading to his right two feet or to his left two
feet. It's pointing right at him, but it stops just short of him.
So the question is am I reasonable in taking the step across what I
call the open questions? You're gonna have to take a step from the end
of the evidence trail across your unanswered questions to render a verdict. The same
thing is true with Christianity. There's more than an evidence that points to the
reliability of scripture, to the existence of God, to the resurrection of Jesus.
But I can't answer every question you want, and so you're gonna have
to take a step from the end of that evidence trail. But by the
way, that evidence trail does not just it points right to this conclusion.
It doesn't point a foot to the right or a foot to the left.
You're going to have to step across the end of the evidence trail to make
a reasonable inference. Now we call that a step of faith, but it's
not blind. Now here's the sad thing about it. Most of us can
make a better case for why we think the rams are going to succeed in
the NFC West than we can for why Christianity is true. And this is
in other words, there's something already that you are. I never call myself
a Christian apologist. I'm a Christian case maker. I make a case for
Christianity. But I think every Christian ought to be a Christian case maker.
It's about turning us in that direction. But you're already able to make a
case for something really well. I don't know what it is. It's probably
some hobby. If you're a woodworker, you know which tools you make a
case for, which tools you ought to use, what kinds of cut you
ought to do. If you're somebody who's got other hobbies of collection, you
know what to collect, what's not of value, what is of value?
You're geeked out on something already. The question is are we that prepared to
share our faith? Do we know enough about what's true? And this is
something we don't have to, like, you know, teach our kids.
They'll catch it. They'll catch it if we just or somebody who is I
mean, I talked about this all the time with my boys growing up,
and my boys already know what I'm going to say on any number of topics.
They already know how I'm going to think about it, and I didn't
teach them. Really, Hey, guys, when this comes up, I
want you to think this way. They just watch me do it, and
because they watch they caught it. And so I think this is something we
can do for our children, even if not having to be all that intentional.
Let's just live our faith differently. Let's just think about our faith differently
and verbalize that. And it turns out our kids are going to catch that
anyway. That's right, That's exactly what we say. You talked about really
in Deuteronomy six. When you're going about your life, you're walking, you
know, in life, going down the road, you talk to your kids
about it, and that's exactly true. Things are coming up all the time,
you know, whenever you look at what is happening in the culture,
what is happening in the news, every bit of it really reflects back to
the ultimate question about God and his existence and his interaction with us. I
think one of the big things that we have, though, that is a
real obstacle, is not whether or not in terms of critical thinking. So
we have a generation that doesn't even want to do any critical thinking. They
don't even believe that there is such a thing as truth. And we call
that postmodernism because during modernism you had a lot of people who would make arguments
using evolution or initially it was archaeology against Christianity. Now they don't bother to
do that. They just say that there is no truth, or I've got
a truth, You've got a truth. Everything is subjective. How do you
handle something like that, Well, I always tell people that everyone believes there
is a truth. It's if you think there's no truth, you believe that
that is true. So you believe the least one truth that there is no
truth. That's kind of self defeating. But the reality of it is is
it's how do we ground truth? So you're right, if all truth is
just a matter of my personal opinion. In other words, if I'm trying
to determine something as true, all I have to do is look inwardly.
Well, that's really fast. It's the lazy way to find truth. Doesn't
require any research. I just make a decision, and how I feel determines
what the truth is on this matter. But that doesn't require any effort at
all, because you can you have mediate access to your feelings. We have
to help people to realize that there are two forms of truth. There are
subjective truth claims and there are objective truth claims, and there's a difference between
those two. And we all agree that there are differences. We just haven't
thought about it carefully. This is why I write a book like Cold Case
Christianity. I'm trying to figure out how do I help people to see this
is not a matter of my personal opinion. I'm not a Christian because I
like it better than other things. I don't even like it. Sometimes this
is a hard world view to live right. I mean, it makes demands
on me that are against my fallen nature. It prompts me, it encourages
me, It kicks me in their rear to do things that I wouldn't otherwise
do to hopefully be a better person. And that's not an easy project because
we aren't good by nature. We are pretty desperately fallen by nature. So
this is a hard worldview to maintain because you have to surrender constantly, get
to surrender your will to the will of God living in you. Think about
this. Of all the theistic worldviews out there, ours is the one in
which God does not just fight alongside you if you join the team. God
does not just fight your battles. God resides in you. Very different,
very different claim. And so that just means we have to get out of
the way and let God. Is God alive in us? Is Jesus alive
in us? And that's a very different kind of claim. So so for
me, I'm helping young people to say, okay, look, if you
are the determiner of the truth, like you say, for example, chocolate
chip cookies are the best dessert, Okay, well that's a subjective claim because
you, as the subject, are making it true. Now a different kind
of claim I snia is it is the cure for tuberculosis. Okay, that's
a claim that I don't determine it, I don't make it true by believing
it, because if that was the case, I could say I'd rather take
Nike Weill. Niquill is now the cure for a TV. Now it turns
out Nike Weill isn't the cure for t because the subject doesn't get to determine
it. That's determined by the object known as is andia is it is at
the cure. So that's an objective claim about reality. It's not subjective,
like chocolate chip cookies are the best dessert. It's objective that I andia is
it is the cure for tuberculosis. And we have to make the determination which
claims in the world around us are just a matter of opinion, subjective determined
by subjects, even groups of subjects, or are the objective. So the
claim God exists it might be a false claim, but it's not a subjective
claim. I cannot make God exists by changing my mind. I cannot keep
God from existing by changing my mind. He either exists or he doesn't.
It's grounded in the object known as God. Now there are false objective claims
as a matter of fact. Once you determined that a claim is objective rather
than subjective, the only thing left to do is determine if it's true or
false. And by the way, it's stupid for us to get online and
battle with people over subjective opinions. Who cares, But we ought to be
getting online and arguing with people about or at least encouraging people to look at
the truth when it's an objective. If someone's taking your family is taking a
night will to cure their tuberculosis, I would hope you would stop them and
say, well, whoa, whoa, that's not a matter of opinion.
That's actually not going to work because there's an objective truth about ice and I
is it. Well, that's true for all of us going forward. The
kinds of conversations we ought to be having with our young people are about those
objective claims about reality. God exists. That's an objective claim. Might be
true, but it's objective. What's left to do determine if it's true or
false. Jesus is the way, the only way to God. That's an
objective that's not an opinion. I can't make it so by changing my mind.
I can't keep it from being so by changing my mind. It's an
objective claim about reality. It might be false, but we ought to be
talking about those things with our students to make sure they know the difference between
subjective and objective claims and how to determine what. Yeah, we want to
investigate this to see does God exist? Is the Bible? Why would I
write a book like Cold Case Christianity. I'm writing it because I think that
Christianity is demonstrably true. It's an objective claim. Christianity is true is something
that our kids need to know. It is a matter of opinion, because
yeah, you're right, we are. We are getting lazier and lazier,
and because of that, we are no longer looking outward. If I said,
you know, I could either earn a doctorate and become an anesthesiologist by
simply wanting it and trusting my own opinions about the medications, or do I
need to go to school to learn what is objectively true about those medications?
Well? Which of those two kinds of doctors do you want? Yes?
I think in the end it's much easier. I can become a doctor tomorrow
if I can just will it. But I'm going to take you ten years
to do it. If it's there's a subjective truths that I need to learn,
can you, so you can see kind of why young people are more
inclined to just look for those truths that are grounded internally because they're immediately accessible,
they're easy to grab and I'm just a matter of opinion. So that's
why I think we're at in the culture, and we just need to help
our students to see the difference between those two kinds of truths. Yes,
that is exactly right, and that is a key thing that it affects all
aspects of our life. As you point out, it's the easy path to
take to say, well, you know, we're not going to even debate
the truth anymore. We're just going to go with what I feel like.
And that's an important thing because when we talk about the difference with Christianity is
that God is, you know, not there finding necessarily even finding your battles
for you, but he's there in you, working in you. And so
there is a spiritual aspect of it. And how do we balance that that
feeling that we have the directions that we are trying to go. We have
to balance that against some objective standard. I think that's you know, we
don't want to have simply a rational knowledge of odd I know, about God
and that type of thing. We're not looking at the Bible from that standpoint,
but we are looking at it from the standpoint as you mentioned before,
we need to question as to whether or not what we believe is actually true,
and we shouldn't be afraid to question that because the Bible can stand on
its own if we examine it. Yeah, so that's that's one of the
things we see. Many religions will say, well, you know, just
pray about this, is this uh that that you know this is uh this
book is true or whatever, and then you get kind of a subjective feeling
about that. But again, that's one of the things that I like about
what you do with cold case Christianity. You look at it and you say,
well, because this is rooted in factual, historical claims, we can
evaluate this and that actually builds our faith. It doesn't. It doesn't become
just an intellectual exercise. But you have to have the two things go together.
You can fall off on one side or the other that horse, can't
you. You said it perfectly because when I was growing up, I was
not out by believers. I'm in Los Angeles County. I don't know if
that's just the way it was back in those days. I didn't know a
lot of Christians. I was never asked by our friend to go to church
that kind of thing. But my dad, who was a very communed atheist
just like me. He was a cop, just like I was. First
I reopened as a goal case detective a couple of his cases, so I
definitely knew what he was going through and I had his appeal. For the
most part. I would go to church with my wife if she wanted to
go to church for Christmas or Easter. But I was completely disconnected and thought
it was all just you know, rubbish. Okay, so that's fine.
That's my dad. Now, when he remarried, he remarried a woman who
quickly became a Mormon, and they had six children together. So all my
brothers and sisters are raised lds. And you're absolutely right. I think all
of us, as humans, we do have a high appreciation for evidence.
We do. The question is what are we accepting as evidence? And for
a lot of us, you know, talk about this in the book.
There's two forms of evidence, direct evidence and indirect evidence. Direct evidence is
simply eyewitness testimony. Indirect evidence is everything else. DNA is indirect evidence.
By the way, indirect evidence is also known as that ugly word circumstantial evidence.
But indirect evidence is everything you think is really hard evidence. Those category
is hard evidence. There's just eyewitness statements and everything else. Everything else includes
DNA fingerprints, a blood spatter, a gunshot residue, whatever material evidence you
want to compare. That's all indirect evidence. Now, most people when they're
thinking about their theistic worldview, they are evidentialists. But what they're accepting as
evidence is an experience, a personal it's a direct evidence. I directly saw
this happen in my life, and I can't imagine that being a coincidence.
So therefore that served as me as evidence that my theistic worldview is true.
And everyone, if you're a Hindu, of Buddhist, a Muslim, Behi,
a Mormon, everyone does this. Okay. Now, I hope that
we're not doing that too, because if you were encountering somebody who's a Mormon
who says, yeah, this is true because I had this experience, would
consider that evidence. Look, we've had experiences too, I get that,
but we had to measure our experiences against the evidence and the claims of the
book I'm not saldy that my Mormon family has had experiences. My question is
do they really indicate that Mormonism is true? You can attest experiences can come
from any number. Sometimes I've seen even Christians say what seems to me like
a coincidence as an evidence that God exists, that Christianity is true. We
can do better than that. If you find yourself sharing your faith in pretty
much the same way a Mormon would share theirs, you're probably not doing it
right, because it turns out you don't believe that Mormonism is true. Yet
here you are sharing your faith in the exact same way. I had an
experience that demonstrated or I was raised in the faith. These are the most
popular ways that people express their belief. We can do better. We could
say, you know what, I had this experience, and then I started
to investigate to see if Christianity might be the best ecumentation for it. And
here's why I discovered about Christianity, all of these details about the objective life
of Jesus of Nazareth in the first century and how he rose from the dead.
That look, you can do the same thing with the Book of Mormon.
You will find no corroboration for the Book of Mormon. Remember, the
Book of Mormon actually describes a thousand years of history on the North American continent,
of which there is not a single bit of verifiable confirmation on any of
it. Now, you've got to think about that for a second. I
don't expect, you know, I know, I have a realistic view of
corroborative evidence as a detective. A corroborative evidence just gives you a small percentage
of what the eyewitness says occurred. You cannot it's not a video. You
don't have videos from the first century. So the question then becomes, you
know, I don't expect to get a huge percentage of the testimony corroborated,
but I expect to get something corroborated. And when I see that there's nothing
corroborated in a Holy Book, I'm suspicious. You ought to be also,
So I think we have to help our students to realize that, hey,
we are we believe this is true, but not because we want it to
be true. Because here's what happening. And you know this, David.
The times are changing and it's not going to be easy to live as a
young Christian and a culture that now not only rejects Christians, but rejects the
teaching of the Master. And and trust me, when they reject the teaching
of your Jesus, they are rejecting your Jesus. And the teaching of Jesus
is no longer acceptable in a culture that has changed their views on gender identity,
on marriage, on the sanctity of life, and those things that Jesus
taught clearly about. And and you're going if you're going to say, well,
you know, Paul didn't understand what we understand today. What do you
think that book is? Do you think that book is the word of God?
Do you think that God doesn't there's going to be a new revelation about
how we ought to live where let's look for the new revelation, But it's
not it's going to be from God, and I don't see it. The
last spokespeople for God are still recorded in scripture, and until God, I
don't think God has changed his mind about any of that stuff. So I
think it's important for us to teach our kids that this is true. And
I'll tell you one last story about that. My son David is an ansthusiologist
and he's a pediatric as thesiologist, and when he was in his biochemistry undergrad
work, he will tell you that he, you know, wasn't probably living
like a Christian, but he said, because he knew from all the stuff
we had studied. As a young man, I was a youth pastor.
I was his youth pastor, and we always talked about the science behind our
beliefs, and he knew in a DNA lab he was working. He said,
you know, I knew even if I wasn't living it, I knew
it was true because I knew there was no way to explain this stuff I
was working, unless, of course, there was a mind behind the code,
and he knew that there was. He was stuck with God, right,
And that's that's that's all we do for our kids is to make them
really uncomfortable in the season of their running, because that's coming probably for a
lot of our kids. And I'm fine if my kids run. I want
them to be really uncomfortable while they're doing it. And it doesn't need be
from my nagging. It just needs to be from what they know is true.
That's right. I remember, and I don't remember the guy's name,
his country, and Western Star. He said, Yeah, I grew up
in a Christian family, he said, didn't keep me from sending kept me
from enjoying it. Yeah, exactly. You know what I think in some
ways, well, and he might be doing more sarcastically, right, but
the reality of it is is that we ought not get comfortable with our misbehavior,
right, And so that's all you can do for your kids is make
them uncomfortable with their misbehavior. You're probably doing a good good job for your
kids, right. So well, you know, you mentioned the archaeology stuff,
and I think that was one of the key things. And you know,
you look at the Book of Mormon. It came out at a time
when one of the major criticisms of the Bible was that this stuff is all
made up. There's no such thing as the Hittite tribe and you know,
and all the rest of this stuff. Right, And then they started looking
and doing archaeology and they started finding all this stuff. I remember taking my
kids to the British Museum and we saw the big relief up there about sannak
Rib and the story that about how he attacked Jerusalem and other things like that.
They had a big they had a large chip. Actually it was a
small part of the one. The columns, they are the Temple of Diana
and Ephesus. And yet you know, they found these things by following the
biblical record. You know, they would say, well, it says we
know where this thing is, and it says that it's over here, so
we would follow it that way. And so they were able to find these
things and corroberate that. But but let's talk a little bit about the reliability
of the witnesses. You know, what is it that makes these witnesses reliable?
Yeah, so I think that when we look at eyewitness testimony, it's
an important part of our case. It is our case. People will say,
what evidence do you have for the for the for the resurrection? And
when I hear that, it exposes for me at least, they clearly don't
trust that what the gospel record is true. They want some other source.
But could you imagine to have four ancient sources that describe the same event.
That's not bad, of course, if you don't if you don't trust any
of them, well the question then becomes, well why don't you trust them?
So I think the biggest work for me, and I was one of
those guys. Okay, yeah, you have some ancient records, but they're
all Christian records. Well, hold on, think about this for a second.
It's not as though these are. That's not a fair argument to leverage
against the Gospel's gonna be give an example that let's say, and I use
this in the book Calecase Christianity. Let's say I'm working at bank robbery,
and in this particular robbery, a guy walks into the bank and he walks
up to the teller and he's got a quiet demand note robbery, right,
And as he walked up, he wasn't making a big scene, he was
just getting in line. And as he was in line, there's a woman
behind the other side of the of the of the office, who's behind a
desk, who's the assistant manager, and she happens to recognize this guy right
away from high school. And she's like, you know, oh, I
want to talk to this guy when he gets done with the teller, because
he was a great guy, you know, all star athlete, on top
grade, you know, just I want to see what he made of himself,
what happened in his life. Well, now, this dude isn't doing
a bank robbery, and she looks at her co workers face and it's clear
this guy's doing a robbery in real time. And she is shocked because she
knew this guy's was called him Robert Smith. She knew Robert Smith in high
school. And now when the whole thing is done and I come to the
bank to do the interviews, should I interview her about Robert Smith? Well,
no, she's she's biased. She thinks Robert Smith is a bank robber.
You can't trust anything, she says, she's a Robert Smithian. She
thinks, oh, look, that's not that's a stupid approach, right,
because you're gonna say, well, we'll hang on. She didn't start off
thinking that Robert Smith was a bank robber. She arrived at that decision because
she saw it. It was after it happened that she's like, now I'm
in he's a bank robber. The same thing happens with the Gospels. It's
not as Zold these people, especially Matthew, this guy named Levi, who
is not even liked by anybody. He is a he is a tax collector.
This dude is not looking for the Messiah. He's not a disciple of
John. The Baptist. He's not part of the original group, but got
jumped into with Jesus. He's a guy who was on the outside looking in,
but after watching that stuff for three years, he's like, dude,
I'm in now, I'm a Christian. Now can I interview Matthew? Well,
he didn't start off believing that Jesus was the Christ, but he ended
up there. And it's why on the basis of observation, just like the
lady in the bank. So we have to at least ask the question now.
So that's first of all, don't throw out the gospels as though they
can't be trusted. Let's test the gospels. I don't trust eyewitnesses. I
test them now. If they pass the test, I trust them. And
there's a four part test. Right. This is what we do in our
jury instructions in California. It's thirteen questions that we allow jurors to ask when
they are considering eyewitness reliability on the stand. When those thirteen questions fall into
four categories, you know, were they really there to see what they said
they saw the person who's testifying. Two? Can they be corroborated in some
way? And I have a like I said before, I have a reasonable
expectation about corroborative evidence. Three have they changed their story over time or they've
been honest and accurate? And four do they possess a bias? Those four
categories are really what we look at to see if an eyewitness is reliable.
Now, as I did that, it took the better part of a year
when I was first examining Christianity. I have a Bible here in my shelf
that I bought, a Pew Bible. I walked into a church, this
pastor. I had been avoiding it for many years. I hadn't been to
this church for anything any other reason, and I really had never stepped foot
in an Evangelical church for anything other than like a wedding or maybe a funeral.
I don't remember if I had attended a funeral, So I never really
had no idea what was going to expect. My family growing up were kind
of like cultural Catholics, like holiday Catholics, so I knew what a mass
looked like, and I thought it was nonsense. To be honest with you,
I just as an atheist, you know, I was never comfortable.
But I walked into this church, this pastor seemed decidedly regular, you know,
just like a regular guy. And he said that Jesus was the smartest
man who ever lived. And that provoked me. It provoked me to buy
a Pew Bible, you know, when those ones they self refused, just
a cheap six dollars seven dollars bible. And I started to read the Gospels,
and I'd applied those four aspects of eyewitness reliability to the Gospel authors.
Do they pass the test? I think they are written early enough in history
to have been written by people who were present and in front of people who
were present to fact check them. I don't think that they're written in the
second century. I think they are very early in history, and in the
book I try to make a case for why they are early in trust me.
That's one of the objections your kids are going to hear if they're in
a Bible class in a secondary university. They're going to come out thinking these
things were written in the third century and that is not true. Two,
that they can be corroborated in any number of internal and external evidences, of
which archaeology is just one. There are many other ways you could corroborate the
claims of the scriptures, and I go through those in the book. Three,
I don't think they've changed over time. I don't think the story,
the miraculous story of Jesus is a is a like an exaggeration, a collection
of additions over time, where they added all the supernatural stuff. Don't believe
that. I can show why that's the case in the book. Well,
and finally, I don't think they possessed an ulterior motive because there are only
three motives for any misbehavior. I talk about those in the book, and
they don't possess those motives. So again, if I'm looking, can you
find a way? This is what's so beautiful about our faith system, David.
You know that there is enough reason to reject the scriptures if you so
choose to do it, because God is gracious and he's not going to bully
you into your faith. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't be genuine
unless you had the freedom to reject it. And God has given us that
dangerous free agency. Why Because God is love? Not God can love,
God creates love. No, It says that God is love because he's tryune
in nature, has been in an eternal love relationship from the beginning of time
and the tryune nature of God, and he is love. If he's going
to create a world, he's going to create a world where love is possible,
because that's what a loving God would do. But the problem with a
world where love is possible is that it has to be a love what they
dangerous prerequisite called free agency. You cannot love if you're not free to hate.
That's the problem. Now, what gracious God does is he creates a
world in which there is free agency and then provides you with a book with
all of the guidelines so you will not abuse your free agency. Now you
can choose not to read the book, but then when you abuse your free
agency and do something despicable, that's not on God. It is logically impossible
to create a world in which love can emerge without first creating a world in
which we have free agency or not just robots. You know, when your
doll says I love you, it doesn't really love you. It's just programmed
to say that. So it turns out if you want beings who can really
truly freely love, you have to create the dangerous world we live in.
And that's what God does. But he's given us the guidelines so we don't
abuse our free agency. So He's done everything you would expect a loving God
to do. Parents do the same thing. And so I think in the
end, I have to look at that world on living in and say,
yeah, I mean I've got a Bible that I can choose to reject because
I have free agency, that dangerous prerequisite. But when I do that,
that's not on God. That's on me and my rebellious nature. And what
I like that you do. You know, a lot of times people look
at external sources. And again there's external sources that do help to corroborate this
when we look at archaeology or other things like that, but you you really
look at the Bible itself and you know, corroborating itself, and and uh,
you know, because we can fall on the trap if we're so reliant
on external things of what they used to call higher criticism. You know,
we're going to take something and we're going to from an elevated position of science
or whatever, we're going to take a look at the Bible. And of
course, you know, many prominent scientists were very active Christians. They had
no problem with the critical thinking of it, and they would look at it,
you know, as God says and Isaiah, come let us reason together,
right and yeah and so, and that that is the key thing.
We don't check our reason at the door, and we don't. But there
still is an aspect of faith, as you pointed out, it's not a
blind faith. It is a confident expectation going back to hope, as you
talked about before. And so I think that is the key thing. And
I think it's very important what you do in cold case Christianity in terms of
looking at, you know, the evidence that we have that is within the
Bible, within the New Testament specifically, and how that corroborates from a rational
point of view, from the types of things that you would do as a
detective who, as you said, in a cold case, you can't all
the evidence that you're going to have has already been collected by people who are
no longer around. The witnesses are no longer around. And that really is
what we all have to do in terms of investigating this. We all have
to do a cold case Christianity. I think I think you're I think you're
right. I think if we can help our kids to do it, like
I don't want to suggest in any way that my superior intellectual ability it leads
me to this conclusion. Look, it's all God, top down, and
what part of it is is am I going. That's why the first chapter
of our book talks about the first skill that any detective has to have,
and that is to enter the room with your hands empty. Do not make
up your mind before you get there, surrender your prideful nature to because we
all think I already know and if we don't. If we do that,
we're going to end up with the case where you already arrive at the conclusion
you started with, and you ignored everything in between because you came in thinking
you or don't be a know at all. It's what I call it,
don't be a know at all? You have to at least suggest you know.
That's why that's the hardest part, I think, David, about our
worldview is that it begins with the thing that it is. Let's put it
this way. I just wrote a book called The Truth and True Crime.
It comes out next year, and I've examined in it the nature of human
humans, biblical anthropology, and I also look at it in terms of what
new studies show. I'm impressed by the fact that, by the last thirty
five years, sociological studies and researchers have discovered that there's one human attribute above
all human attributes that will change your life for the better and contribute to human
flourishing. It'll make you a better employer, a better employee. It'll make
you a far better student. You'll be able to determine truth from error far
better. You'll have deeper, more connected relationships. You'll have better better mental
health, better well being, and better physical health. You'll live longer if
you adopt this attitude. What is that weird attitude? It's this thing that
researchers, secular researchers, not Christians, call humility. Oh what a surprise.
Well, it turns out that's an ancient attribute which is all over the
pages of scripture. Is that every problem isn't us being prideful and thinking we
know when if we could just now, here's the problem with our worldview.
It begins with an act of humility, that first act that says, you
know what I am exactly what scripture describes. I'm not all that great,
and there is a God and I'm not him. That's that first act of
bending your knee leads to a life predicated on humility, and every thing you
adopt from scripture will be an act of humility. So I think in the
end, that's the problem we have, and it's hard in a culture which
is all about me, me, me, me me. Everyone's social media
profile, who's got more likes, who's got more views? What is your
bios say about you? Are you important? Do you have a little check
by your name? This is a world we're living in right now where just
the opposite of humility is advanced. We have to help our kids to see
that the humility is still important. Yeah, that's true. You know,
when we look at politics that we talk about a lot here on this program,
people get really scared when they see politicians who the cecular press, and
they get really scared when they see a politician talking about God. And I
said, well, you need to understand this person really is a Christian,
that they understand they're going to be accountable to God and that they are not
God. You ought to be concerned about the politicians who think they'll never answer
to God and are proud enough to think that they are they need to rule
the world. You know, that's that's what really should should put fear into
people's heart. Pride is a very dangerous thing. It's something that seems to
drive most of people in public life, and most of us if we're if
we're honest about it as well. It's a constant fight against pride, regardless
of who we are, but especially for the politicians that are constantly promoting themselves.
Such an excellent book. Thank you so much for coming on, Jay
Warner Wallace, and tell us where people can find your podcast, your website,
the books that you've got as well. Yeah, we're at Coldcase Christianity
dot com and if you want, we are offering a great package with this
new book. We have just a tenth anniverse we were publishing right now and
we want people to get better trained as casemakers. We've got an entirely free
ten and a half hour training course that's available with the book and you can
find that at Cold Case Christianity book dot com. Okay, great, Cold
Case Christianity book dot com. Thank you so much for what you do.
It's been a fascinating talk with you, view with you, and I really
enjoyed the book when I read it years ago. Thank you so much.
Great to have. Thank you, David. I appreciate it. You having
me. I appreciate you so much. Thank you, have a good day.
We'll be right back. Folks. In a world of deceit, telling
the truth is a revolutionary act. You are listening to The David Night Show.