Please note that due to the software used, not everything in this transcript will be accurate

After Christendom                                                                                                                                 

Media – If Bible characters were influencers

John Dickson (Studio)

Artificial intelligence is barely out of the gate in the world of video production, and it’s already creating daily controversies.  That’s part of P.J. Ace’s generated video ‘If Bible Characters were Influencers’, which racked up 1.3 million views on its first day. P.J. says AI provided him the opportunity to put his, ‘years of trauma as a pastor’s kid’ to irreverent use. He freely admits his video was something “… church folk will completely love or try to crucify me for.” His comedy sparked tons of other look-alike videos … like this take on the garden of Eden by TikTok-ers Adam and Eve, from Allen Parr Ministries…

Media – If Bible characters were on TikTok

John Dickson (Studio)

Researcher Al will put links to these in the show notes—and in the interests of denominational balance, we’ll link to a Catholic AI-powered video “priest” and “apologist” (in inverted commas) Father Justin (he’s there to introduce the AI generation to the Catholic faith. Five minutes of this stuff is enough to raise the question: What does it mean for Christians to be “culturally relevant”? And is that even a good thing? There’s no doubt there’s a long tradition of Christians being flexible to engage their culture—whether in ancient Rome, Viking Scandinavia, or modern America. It’s what my guests today call ‘cultural apologetics’. Whatever we make of the word “apologetics” (and I have questions for my guests) and however successful we think Christianity has been in adapting to our rapidly post-Christian culture, our expert guides today have important insights into what it means to say that Christianity is relevant “after Christendom.” I’m John Dickson and this is Undeceptions.

Undeceptions theme

John Dickson (Studio)

Collin Hansen is the Vice President for Content and Editor-in-Chief for The Gospel Coalition, an international assembly of pastors and churches. He was an associate editor for Christianity Today, and currently hosts the Gospelbound podcast – when he’s not writing. Collin is the author of seven books, and you might recognise his name because this is not the first time we’ve had him on the pod. He wrote a spiritual biography of Tim Keller which was the core for episode 101, Keller’s Legacy. What’s captured our attention this time around is a book he’s edited called The Gospel After Christendom: An Introduction to Cultural Apologetics. Or, to put it in the form of a question, how can Christianity explain itself to a world that is no longer dominated by a Christian culture?

John Dickson:
Part of the title is, um, after Christendom, the Gospel after Christendom. So can you just briefly tell me what was Christendom and what’s the proof that we are after it now?

Collin Hansen:
Well, we could look at Christendom through a number of different definitions. We could look at it as the, not just the existence of say, state churches in particularly European context, but then also in related, especially British Commonwealth type type states. Um. Now there are some of those that are still in place, of course, but significantly weakened not only in their influence in culture, but also the participation. And you could look at that from across Scandinavia, you could look at that, um, with baptisms, uh, weddings in the church and just of course, church attendance, which in some of these countries that were among the most significant pillars of this Christendom period that lasts for. I mean, a thousand plus years across, uh, across, uh, uh, much of Europe and and beyond. I mean, we’re looking at maybe say 2% church attendance or so at that point. So that’s a little bit of, of also what are the, what are the indications, but there’s different forms of, of secularism what it looks like to be after Christendom. And it looks very different in different contexts. Like in France, France has very, been very publicly post Christendom for a long time, back to a little thing called the Revolution. America would be similar in that regard, and yet the cultural influence was very strong in a lot of places that cultural influence did not decline until the 20th century. So it’s a bit of a complicated subject, but I think John, no matter where you look, there’s not a sense that either A) Europe and its dominions are the center of the world any longer. I don’t think that’s the case. And so, thus Christendom and even the sense of what had, what, what propelled Christendom for a long period of time, that European focus is simply not the case when you look at South America, Asia, and Africa and their significant influence, uh, right now in Christianity. But then on the flip side, you just look and say, there’s just simply no doubt that Christianity does not play a central role in politics, culture, and everyday life for nearly as many people as it did, um, certainly at the beginning of the 20th century compared to the beginning of the 21st.

 John Dickson:
Some people, uh, feel like, uh, America, uh, was founded as part of Christendom, or we might say a new Christendom. Do you think that the history of America, uh, indicates that America was ever part of Christendom?

Collin Hansen:
America’s such a funny place. I say as an American. It is a place that people from Tocqueville and others have long observed to be very unusually Christian. In its outlook among the broader populace. Um, you saw that in the mid 19th century in the, the place of these, these awakenings. Yet at the same time, its government is so staggeringly secular in its origins, in ways that clearly was not the case anywhere else around the world. When you go back to 1776 and then through to this remarkably secular document, the US Constitution, that comes a little bit more than a decade later. So, um, it, it’s a, it’s a ‘both and’ in the sense that you have no established church at, at the federal, at the national level, that’s very different. You have no mention of God in the entire US Constitution. That’s very different. Yet at the same time, the assumptions of so many of the American founders, even though not many of them would’ve been professing Orthodox Christians, um. Would still … the Christian assumptions were still heavily present in how they expected life to work, and how they expected government to be able to function of the people, um, for the people by the people to borrow from a little later phrase. So it’s, it is a hard question to answer ’cause in one sense you clearly say no. In other sense, clearly yes. And both be true to history.

Media – CNN

John Dickson (Studio)

Yikes! Regardless of your intentions, who would want to be labelled a ‘Nazi apologist’? But then that gets right to the heart of my concern with the word ‘apologist’. Who would want to be called one? Long-time listeners know that I’m not a great fan of apologetics – of the word or the industry. The word has an excellent pedigree as far as Christians are concerned. The apostle Peter used the root of this word in his letter to the Christians of Asia Minor: “Always be prepared to give an apologia / an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that they have.” But there’s no way Peter was imagining a whole industry of books and courses designed to amass arguments to prove every part of the Christian faith. (We’ve got a link in the show notes back to Question Answer Eleven where I lay out my argument in detail). Also in the show notes is a little hobby of mine — collecting references from the mainstream media where the word “apologist” or “apologetics” has a wholly negative connotation. They’re not thinking of Christian apologists. They’re just using the word to mean a propagandist “Iran apologist”, Iraqi war apologists, Putin apologists, and just the other day (courtesy of my darling Buff who’s assisting my hobby), “Prince Andrew apologist.” Director Mark found one for me, too. Greenpeace accused American television presenter John Strossels of being a ‘polluter apologist’. You get the picture. Head to the show notes. Anyway, I put some of this to Collin.

John Dickson:
Apologetics. The Oxford English dictionary gives one example in my app, and that’s, um, an apologist for fascism. Okay. So, um, I just want to, I’m gonna use apologetics all the way through this interview after you give the brilliant answer that justifies the use of the word.

Collin Hansen:
Well, I think, I think John, the only word that is more contested in that title than apologetics would be cultural. I mean, what? What’s the shared definition of, of culture? And then you go back to, okay, now what’s the shared definition of gospel? That’s one of the great difficulties of anything you’re trying to do with any amount of historical continuity. And so my primary defense is simply that the term apologetics goes back to the beginning of Christianity. I mean, in the sense of its broad, broad usage of a public defense or not. That always often implies always negative, but a public proclamation as well, kind of a, a positive case for the faith that’s made in public. Now I get it. That’s not necessarily what everybody who’s listening here is thinking of. The difficulty is. I’m not exactly sure what others, what other word we could use that would be indicative of the work that we’re trying to take in a historical sense that doesn’t come with its own baggage or own requiring some explanations. But it’s interesting, John, I’ve had a lot of concerns from people about a number of things in Apologetics, but until now, I actually had not thought about how apology is only used in apologetics in that category, only used negatively. I’m not sure it’s always used negatively, but you’re right, it typically is that kind of off the tip of the tongue. It, it’s a, you’re defending something that’s indefensible, which in one sense, I guess John would be kind of like proving the point that we’re after Christendom as well. Right? I mean, that, that, that so many of these things that are associated with Christianity in the long term are simply viewed as assumed to be negative, which I think is a pretty common posture toward Christianity today.

 John Dickson:
Okay. Henceforth, I’ll use the word apologetics in this interview, Colin. Okay. So, uh, what do you mean by cultural apologetics?

Collin Hansen:
Well. You’re a good person to talk to about this because I think in the best way that I can say a lot of the work that you do is cultural apologetics, but more broadly speaking, for some people may not be familiar, um, with somebody that has done this very well or used to do this really well in the past, that would be Tim Keller, who was a pastor in New York City. So in some ways when I talk about cultural apologetics, I’ll say things like, well, if you know what Tim Keller did, and you see some of John Dickson’s work. You, you have a pretty good sense of what I’m talking about. But I think this is a, a better way to just sort of describe it. Just definitionally and I’ll borrow from a definition that I wrote when we were starting the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. And when Tim and I were working on this, we had to figure out, well, ‘What are we even gonna call it’? And then we had to explain it. And how I see this is that we often associate apologetics with discussing the truth. Is Christianity true? Is the Bible true? That’s an important part of apologetics, but a lot of the questions that I get now and I think is reflected, John, in a lot of your own historical work, are legitimate and serious questions. What is the effect of Christianity on me personally and on my world? In a sense, John, is simply, what’s the effect on my culture? Does it lead to goodness? Does it make the world a better place? And for that matter, where does our definition of goodness even come from? And then the other, the other question is, does it make the world more beautiful? Does it make my life more beautiful, or does the person who’s defending Christianity with me … is their life compelling and beautiful in a way that I would want to follow? That question once again, what is the definition of beauty? Who determines beauty? Is it a real category? That’s something that cultural apologetics also addresses. So to come back to the definition, Cultural apologetics helps Christians and other people who are skeptical and trying to learn about the faith see the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel – that’s the story, the message, the example, the redemption of Jesus Christ -and this is the, the final key … as the only hope that fulfills our deepest longings. Now when you often think about apologetics, it’s a matter about debating in the head, but the way that we actually function as human beings is that we pursue our desires. We pursue what our, you know, our heads will often, you know, rationalize what our hearts long for. So it’s, it’s a type of apologetics is the type of discussing the Christian faith in a way that helps to see that all of us, no matter whether you’re a believer in Christianity or not … you’ve been made for certain longings, and those longings are mixed. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, and apologetics is a way of helping you to sort through those, because as Christianity has always taught, we are both sinners, which means that we are … we’re fallen. We don’t do the things that we want to do, and we do things that we know that we shouldn’t do. But at the same time, we’re also, as the Christian and Jewish traditions, both point out that we’re made in the image of God. We reflect him and no matter how, you know how much we mess up, no matter how what wrong we do, we can’t ever erase that. So again, long definition, but a comeback. It’s a matter of considering the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel as the only hope that fulfills our deepest longings.

 John Dickson:
And you say, as a result of this way of thinking about commending the Christian faith, we’ve gotta know the climate, not just the weather. I like that analogy. Uh, give it to us in a nutshell.

Collin Hansen:
Not original to me. I have to borrow that from a professor at the University of Virginia, James Davidson Hunter. So often when we’re debating issues in public, this is politics, this is culture. I mean, I think we can all relate to these ultimately ephemeral questions. Regimes come and go. Prime ministers come and go. Governments come and go. Policies come and go. But there are certain things that are changing underneath at the bottom. Like, think of an ocean, you know, all these things I was telling the ephemeral or these little waves on the top. And then there’s kind of a mid-level of things that change in terms of decades and longer. Think about like fashion trends or something like that. The way that things will recycle over time. But then there’s a lower level. That’s essentially the climate, meaning these are long term things that change and they change imperceptibly. So for example, in climate change, if there’s a one degree change, that’s massive. It’s absolutely, you don’t think, well, that doesn’t seem like much because in my day to  day, well, I’ll just use Fahrenheit here. If it’s 78 degrees or 79 degrees, that doesn’t make any difference. That’s the same beautiful day here. Well … in climate change, that little twist can make all the difference. It can change everything. That’s when we’re talking about cultural climatology, where versus essentially weather forecasting.

John Dickson (Studio)

If you’re going to do the kind of cultural weather-watching Collin’s talking about, you’ll need to watch out for one particular storm front — what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. Lewis defined it as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age, and the assumption that whatever’s gone out of date is, on that count, discredited.” We talked about this a bit with the wonderful Sarah Irving-Stonebraker back in episode 134, History Wars. Hey, Sarah, if you’re listening. Hope you’re thriving!  C.S. Lewis thought we might need to do a bit of turning back the clock — of learning from the past. 

Reading

“Would you think I was joking if I said that you can put a clock back, and that if the clock is wrong it is often a very sensible thing to do? But I would rather get away from that whole idea of clocks. We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be and if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when we do arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start over again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistakes. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.” – C.S. Lewis – ‘Mere Christianity’

John Dickson:
So, um, some people, uh. Bumble along in life thinking most of our culture is good, you know, because by definition we are the most highly evolved culture in, in time. Um, and then there are others, often Christians who go the opposite way and they think the whole culture’s going to hell in every dimension.You and the authors of this book, uh, somehow weave a path. Around that bifurcation or through it or something. You don’t buy into the bifurcation. Can you talk about the sort of general vibe of your approach to culture?

Collin Hansen:
I often will say, John, that on the weather level that we just discussed, I’m more optimistic than most people are. Um, most people like to get really angry about the thing that’s happening in the news today, and they sometimes, I guess, don’t realize that that’s because that’s the job of media to make you angry so that you’ll pay attention to those things. So I’m often a lot more optimistic about those little shifts, what some people call like vibe shifts and whatnot. Like things can change pretty quickly on that level. But I do tend to be a little bit more pessimistic when it comes to some of the basic assumptions of, of life that we take for granted in the West today. So an example would be a sense that, uh, and, and this is something that you don’t even have to say out loud because everybody just knows it, that the solution to any problem is we just need more freedom to choose. It doesn’t really matter what your politics are. That’s an assumption that you tend to come to the table with. Let’s, let’s solve that problem with just more freedom to choose, okay, who’s defining what the freedom is for? What’s the purpose of that, and is this what the ancients would’ve said? Is this what other cultures would’ve thought? Well, so I’m more pessimistic when I come to think … we’re not necessarily living in line with the, what we’ve learned through wisdom over time about humanity and about what makes us happy, what makes us flourish. And the fact is, historically speaking, it’s not just more and more and more freedom from responsibilities, constraints, obligations, but actually living into those responsibilities because they give us meaning in life because we’re able to love and care for others. So I would just kind of give the overall vibe of the book as you know, don’t be worried so much about these things that are happening here. But there are some really serious matters of what’s happening in life that we need to pay more attention to. Because if you’re somebody who decides that you would like to follow that, this, this, this God who is man Jesus Christ, then he’s going to lead you to make some difficult decisions in terms of pushing, pushing back, uh, and saying, everybody says this, but this guy tells me I need to do this instead.

John Dickson (Studio)

For years, the story about religion in the West has been pretty straightforward: belief is in decline, the “nones” are rising, and secularism is marching on. But some new data from the last year or so has complicated that storyline a little. Pew Research, for instance, recently released findings from a massive survey of more than 35,000 Americans. The decline of Christianity, they say, has slowed — maybe even levelled off. The number of people ticking “no religion” has tapered, and the percentage identifying as Christian has nudged upward ever so slightly. Now, researchers are quick to say this isn’t a reversal. Young adults are still far less religious than their parents or grandparents, and there’s no sign they’ll become more devout as they age. Ryan Burge — one of the most reliable analysts of religious data — notes that Generation Z remains the least religious generation in American history. So no talk of a “revival” just yet. Still, some experts suggest we might be seeing a natural ceiling to how secular a society can get — that most of the people who were going to drift away from religion have already done so. And across the Atlantic, there’s another odd data point: Bible sales in Britain have almost doubled in the past five years, thanks largely, it seems, to a renewed spiritual curiosity among Gen Z. So, is this the start of something new? Probably too early to tell. But after decades of steady decline, the religious weather pattern is at least showing some strange and interesting clouds. By the way, the two demographers I follow for reliable information – but quite different takes – on all this are Ryan Burge  and my friend David Kinnaman. Links in the show notes. I don’t know what to make of this new data — in the US, UK, and even a bit in Australia.  For the historian in me, it’s WAY too early to tell what this all means. But I do know that there’s some wisdom in the past that can help us navigate what it means to make sense of Christianity in changing times.  Up next – some historical perspective … my happy place. 

Break 1

Media – Apologetics supercut

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s a selection of self-described apologists – Joshua Lewis, Keith Nester, Joe Heschmeyer and Wes Huff – acknowledging one of the problems in Christian apologetics: making it all about intellectual argument. The best of this breed — I’d include Wes Huff in that — know both belief and scepticism are the result of more than just rational processes. It’s a point made by psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his amazing book The Righteous Mind – where he synthesizes decades of psychological research into how people make up their minds about politics, ethics, religion, and even science. It’s NOT just evidence and argument. It involves deeper instinctive, emotional, and relational factors. It’s a point endorsed by my next guest. Joshua Chatraw holds the Billy Graham Chair of Evangelism and Cultural Apologetics in Beeson Divinity School at Samford University. He’s also a fellow at The Timothy Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Josh’s written and edited a number of books, including Apologetics at the Cross, Cultural Engagement, and The History of Apologetics. He took us straight to about AD 400 and one of the patron saints of Undeceptions …  Augustine of Hippo.

Joshua Chatraw:
Well, one of the things I think to understand about Augustine is he’s dealing, he’s, he’s actually operating in a time that is pre-Christendom. And so it’s very unique. If we say we’re post Christendom, I would say that Augustine is prec Christendom. And sometimes this is confusing for people because really in the first few hundred years of the church, uh, you have Christians who are viewed more as a nuisance rather than a threat to take over the empire. And, and so for many Romans and many people in society, it just didn’t seem plausible and it lacked the type of institutional presence it was later in history. And of course things begin to change with Constantine’s conversion and many attempted at that point to wed the Roman Empire to the Kingdom of God. So you have historians like Eusebius who’s a Christian historian who’s, who’s very much seeing, uh, the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of God merging together, and this is a great thing. Now, not everyone was so convinced the Pagan elites at the time still controlled the educational system and shaped how many people viewed the world and viewed contemporary events.  Peter Brown, the great historian calls this the fluid environment. And so Augustine finds himself in this time where Christianity, what, what’s sometimes called the Christian Roman era, Christianity has risen up, and yet you still have this kind of cultural elite paganism. And then in 410 you have the sack of Rome. And this is a catastrophic event, not only for the Pagan Romans, but for the Christians who saw the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of God merging together. So this was not just that, hey, something violent has happened, and this is bad, but they had put their hopes in the kind of Christian Roman era with this merging of the two together. And so you see figures like Jerome, who is just beside himself with the sack of Rome. But as Augustine is a bishop in North Africa, people are fleeing from Rome to his church and around, uh, around North Africa. And he gets a letter from a friend. And his friend is named Marcellus, and his friend says, Hey, these pagans are asking all these questions. Will you do something? And so he said, well, I’ll, I’ll write a little book, I’ll write a little response. And of course, that was not a little book that was a great and arduous work, as he calls it, The City of God. And what, what he, what he’s doing in there is he’s saying, ‘Okay, how do I respond? How do I respond to what’s happening in, in my immediate context where the Romans are saying that these pagan intellectuals are saying, Hey, this is all of Christianity’s fault’. When, when the pagan, when when we worship the pagan gods things were going really great. But now Christianity has become the big civic problem that’s being blamed for all the social ills. He’s responding to that very particular issue, and he, it’s, it’s very much an apologetic work or a defense and he’s commending the faith. He’s defending the faith, but he’s also, he, he goes back and forth between pedagogy and discipleship and defense. He says he is writing both to non-Christians and to pagans. He’s writing to those, he says, have, what we would say, have deconstructed from the faith, but he is also writing to those who are starting to waver. And so he has this, he’s responding to something very particular, but he uses the  occasion to write, well, really one of the great works of all of, of, of, of all Christian writing.

John Dickson (Studio)

Part of Augustine’s brilliance was that he knew his own Roman culture back to front.

John Dickson:
He’s massively informed, massively informed, isn’t he, about what Pagan religion and philosophy was all about. It’s quite striking.

Joshua Chatraw:
Yeah. And part of that is his, his own upbringing. He, he learned to read by, by reading Virgil. He’s, he’s, he’s trained, his mom was a Christian. His dad Patrick was a  Pagan. So he’s, he was trained, um. By, by the, by the best pagan teachers of the day. And he’s very much even grew up in a kind of split home. And so he, he understands both worlds in a way that he’s able to step into one and step into the other, uh, in a way that I think with later figures, you get in the history of the church, you just, and that’s why I started off by saying this is different than a kind of a theologian who was kind of grew up in Christendom, uh, Augustine can imagine not being a Christian in a way that I think that that other theologians or apologists later in the history of the church maybe couldn’t have. And in that way, I think Augustine, although he’s he’s strange for us in many ways, is analogous to us who can grow up. Imagining not being a Christian is, and, and so there’s certain ways, but by going back to Augustine, we find. Certain, certain ways that we might learn how to do apologetics that we would miss if we only studied, say Aquinas, or later, later medieval apologists.

John Dickson:
Can you put your finger on the sort of the, the heartbeat of Augustine’s argument for the faith?

Joshua Chatraw:
Yeah. Well, the way that Augustine argues in City of God, Augustine. Argues in different ways, in different places. And, uh, but the way he argues in City of God is the, the book is structured in the first, or the, the book has what we would call chapters, uh, we’ll just call ’em chapters for our purposes on this podcast. But the first 10 chapters, he actually steps into the dominant ways of life or the ways of thinking and, and. In the Roman world, and he, he uses their sources. So he’s, he’s reading their philosophers, their poets, their history, and he steps within them. And at times he can say, yeah, there’s something here. But he’s, as my friend, as a friend of mine, Chris Watkins says he, he’s holding up a mirror and he’s saying, you see this, but look really closely at this mirror. Here’s all the problems with, with, with your religions and your society and your culture. And then he gets to book 10 or chapter 10, and he says, what you’re, what you need kind of is a mediator between God and man.You need Jesus. Um, and, and then he, that’s the kind of bridge to his second part of the argument, the first argument. This imminent critique. Let me step inside and critique from the inside, using your own sources, showing you how it doesn’t work. And then he actually steps into the biblical story and he gives the biblical story and says, this is how it better explains reality. This. This is how it better offer. It offers a better happiness. A happiness and hope is what Augustine says. While you’re seeking happiness, but you can’t find it the way you’re seeking it. And he, so at that point he’s telling the biblical story, but along the way he’s very aware of the objections. He’s very aware that he needs to kind of put in supporting arguments along the way. So he’s not just, he’s not just kind of what we would call doing expositional preaching. Yes, he’s, he’s tracking that story, but then he is putting in the support of various different kinds of arguments. Objections as he goes. So it’s not, one of the reasons that Augustine isn’t sometimes picked up is it’s not … sometimes apologists are looking for the silver bullet argument and something just to plug and play, and they feel like if I can just find that plug and play universal argument, then I have it. And if that’s what you go to Augustine for, you will be disappointed. What Augustine calls us to do is we have to understand in a bigger picture what he’s trying to do, understand more of kind of his way of doing it. And then we actually learn a kind of what I would call an apologetic of, uh, you know, of wisdom. And then we’re able to, to see kind of how he’s doing this and then apply it today.

John Dickson (Studio)

Joshua’s next hero is the French philosopher and polymath Blaise Pascal. Writing in the early 17th century, Pascal was responding to a culture shaped by two dominant philosophies. First, Michel de Montaigne’s claim that religious conviction caused endless wars — better, he said, to pursue simple pleasures than deep beliefs. Second, René Descartes’s rationalism: the attempt to doubt everything except one’s own mind — “I think, therefore I am,” and all that.

Joshua Chatraw:
Throughout, you know, you know, sacred books and starting, at least starting, we don’t wanna start there. We wanna start by doubting everything. And by this kind of methodological doubt, we can have this secure bedrock, which was, I think therefore I am. I can, I can reason from the ground up, and this is known as the, the Cartesian inward turn, an attempt to isolate oneself from contingencies to pro to prove truth autonomously. And of course, if you’re paying attention to the enlightenment and kind of certain ways of thinking, so that you also see kind of streams of Cartesian thought today in this way. And Pascal’s response … so  he’s, this is his context and he needs to respond and he’s responding to both of those. The way he does so is he says, for Pascal, he says, ‘Well, we actually have to start with (what he calls) the logic of the heart’. And this isn’t just sometimes when people hear logic of their heart, they think, uh, well that’s just emotions or desires. But for, for Pascal, that, that, that meant. Um, the kind of yes, uh, space and time and motion, things that we just instinctively have to accept and then reason from, but it’s also including things like hope and love. And so he’s saying there’s basic things, basic intuitions, we might say today that humans have, and those are the places we must put all of that on the table and start reasoning from those, from those things. So he, he’s often critical of rationality, but he’s not critical of rationality per se. He’s actually critiquing a kind of Cartesian rationality and he is saying, hey, you’re, you’re, he’s critiquing a narrow rationality where Pascal says, we need to put everything on the table. We need a more capacious rationality, and part of his critique against, uh, Cartesian rationality is it’s just not rational. It’s not a, it’s not a rational way to look at humans. That’s not how humans operate. That’s not how true. So he’s trying to humble a kind of Cartesian rationality. He’s trying to humble … and I think this fits well with Augustine, Augustine and the Bible, that it’s, uh, that, that wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. Wisdom begins with actually an awareness of what you don’t know. It’s a kind of, uh, as, as Socrates would also agree with. And so he’s trying to humble a kind of Cartesian rationality in order to say, Hey, there’s another kind of rationality. And then, with Montaigne, he says, well, actually Montaigne is just dreadfully wrong about human nature. He says, on one hand he says, we’re, we are, um, great, we are wonderful creatures, but we’re we’re also wretched creatures. And he’s saying the solution that Montaigne offers, which is that you can just kind of, live a, like, you know, if you look at a cat, cat, just, cats just seem content in their catness. They’re not trying to rise up, you know, they’re not, they’re not embarrassed to beg, they’re just, they’re just living in their catness. And, and Montaigne says, well, let’s just, let’s just kind of be like that. But Pascal said, that is a, that is such a desperately wrong interpretation of human nature and we will remain restless if, if we try to live a kind of trivial life. And so he argued that by settling for a kind of skepticism and convincing others that they can just be happy by, um, you know, ultimately content by just tending to their garden. Or fishing or scrolling to, to kind of jump to today that with these kinds of trivial pursuits, that somehow we, we can be content. He says, no, that’s only gonna make you more miserable, um, because of the kind of creatures we are. And he has this great line where he says all the miseries of man, but prove his greatness.

Reading

“The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is then being miserable to know oneself to be miserable; but it is also being great to know that one is miserable. All these same miseries prove man’s greatness. They are the miseries of a great lord, of a deposed king.” Blaise Pascal – Pensées

Joshua Chatraw:
And so what he’s saying here is he’s saying there’s something about our nature that we, that we feel this, that we, that we should be more than we are, but we’re not. That actually the, again, once you go to the biblical story, it begins to make sense of this that we’re both … yes we’re miserable, but we’re also wonderful creatures. This duality in human nature creation fall explains that. And, and so he’s, he’s observing what we would call sociologically like, okay, let’s observe this about humans, and then what story best explains it? And Pascal says, of course, creation, the fall explains this.

Reading

What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel this tangle? Nature confutes the sceptics, and reason confutes the dogmatists. What, then, will you become, O men! who try to find out by your natural reason what is your true condition? You cannot avoid one of these sects, nor adhere to one of them. Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man infinitely transcends man, and learn from your Master your true condition, of which you are ignorant. Hear God.” – Blaise Pascal – Pensées

John Dickson:
But is that the context in which, um, Pascal’s famous wager comes to the fore and, and trying to sort of say, Hey, what do you really gain and what might you lose by just following your passions, your lower passions? I mean, the, the famous wager is criticized all the time. Uh, can you explain what he was really trying to get at and whether you think there’s something to it.

Joshua Chatraw: Yeah. I, he’s not, he’s not offering a proof for God as many people would think about arguments today or apologetics today, as if. Somehow this kind of wager would prove God. He’s saying, okay, if you, if God is, if God is, if you believe in God or, or you, or you try to believe in God, you start acting like there is a God … what, what do you have to, to lose, really? And he says, but if, if you don’t, and God hap is actually, is actually real, what do you have to lose? And he’s, he’s not, it’s a very practical argument because. He, he recognizes you can’t be neutral on this question, and he recognizes that because of the diversions people have accepted once you’ve accepted … so for Pascal, you can’t prove or disprove God. You can’t. That’s not how it works. He, he’s happy to give arguments. He thinks he loves prophecy. He, he gives arguments for, for Christianity, but he recognizes that. Uh, what we find plausible is often going to be impacted by the culture around us, by the habits. And so he’s seeing that these people are so kind of, they’re, the way they attend to the world is very worldly in a way that screens out God’s existence. And so what he is doing is he’s saying, okay, just practically as a way to kind of, to kind of move the needle here, consider the options. And, and then when somebody says, well, yeah, but I, I, I see what you’re saying. Like, I, I, and I could see how, uh, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna believe in God, right? I mean, just because you say there’s benefit to doing this … I’m not gonna, I can’t make myself believe in God. And Pascal’s very aware of that. But he says, well, okay. That’s when Pascal’s famous line says, well, if you, if you’re tempted, if you’re wanting to believe in God. Then actually start acting like you do, start trying to pray, start trying own Christianity. What do you really have to lose? And, and so it’s much more of a practical argument rather than the kind of other arguments that even Pascal himself would give, uh, within his larger work. I think there’s something there. I think there’s something there because we’re not simply, um. And a lot has been done more recently in, in both our conception of rationality and also in the, the kind of recognition that how we attend to the world, our habits and practices end up screening out certain things and then focusing on other things. And so there’s people who aren’t Christians, there’s psychologists, sociologists who are studying this type of thing. They’re saying, yeah, actually Pascal was owned to something here. Uh, and it doesn’t mean we necessarily will make all the moves that Pascal made in his context, but there’s been a lot of different figures who have picked up on Pascal’s arguments for today and said, there’s something here that we can adapt and use for our own context.

John Dickson (Studio)

The third thinker Joshua says we can learn from is … CS Lewis.

 John Dickson:
Let’s jump to CS Lewis. Uh, tell me about, uh, his context. What, what were the, uh, the sort of the cultural movements that he eventually, um, tried to engage as a Christian?

Joshua Chatraw:
One of them was this idea of of logical positivism, and what he saw in logical positivism, logical positivism was that reduction of what, of reality or truth. To what can be proven, uh, empirically or scientifically. And he saw, and he, with that, he saw how that kind of, again, and, and we, we, in some ways we see Pascal, who was, uh, was prescient because he, in some ways, I think Pascal saw this coming, but for Lewis that was now, um, you know, [00:24:30] the kind of world he lived in. And he was also living in a world that saw. Uh, as an Oxford Don, he’s, he was living in a world that very much viewed the past as something we needed to move beyond. He called it chronological snobbery. So it was a kind of, um, what I would call reductionistic epistemology, or it was a narrower way to view rationality that screened out a lot of things, uh, that make us human, that, that many people take for granted that the, the ancients took for granted. And, and, and, and then, um, and then they also looked at the past as something we needed to move beyond. And so much of his writings, not only as a apologist, but even in what he was doing as, as a scholar in his own field, was to, to ree chant, to he, he believed we were under a. Uh, a spell of worldliness and he [00:25:30] wanted to offer a and he wanted to awake us up from this evil enchantment. And so to do that, um, well, one of the things he does is, and this is from one of his contemporaries, Austin Ferris, is, you know, we think when we are listening to Augustine, I mean, I’m sorry to, to Lewis, that we’re listening to an argument, but in actuality he’s presenting with us a vision. Of course he has arguments in that vision, but it’s, I think one of the, one of the lasting powers with powers in Lewis is that he was offering us this grand vision of reality, um, that really incorporated the wisdom of the past without being nostalgic about the past that, hey, the ancients didn’t get everything right, but as we turn, but they’re getting some things right that we’re getting wrong. And, and by turning away from them, we’re actually missing pieces of reality and pieces of wisdom that are vital for humanity. And so he’s making that, that case. And of course, Christianity, that’s a broader case he makes in books like The Abolition of Man, but Christianity is a part of this. And then, and then the other way, he, he’s, I think that. Lewis helps us today. Is he never used that? I’m aware of John. You might know differently, but I don’t, I don’t think he necessarily used the word contextualization, but he’s, he stresses our, uh, he stresses that the role of the apologist is to, is to give timeless truth in the particular language. Of our own day and that we need to translate everything so the common person can understand this. And if we, if we can’t do that, we don’t really even understand what we’re talking about anyway. And so for Lewis, and of course Lewis has, has so much there, but to, to me, it’s, it’s clear that he’s … he’s very interested in responding to the kind of cultural environment around him. He’s very attuned to that, and in order to do so, he has to, in order to do so, he retrieves from the past and he goes, many times he uses, he goes up and under that. And, and, and I, of course, the other thing I would, I would wanna mention about Lewis is the way that he uses imagery and story and imagination. With reasoned and reasoned arguments, I think is one of the reasons he’s such a compelling figure still today.

Reading

When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams: I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner: I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world: the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else. C.S. Lewis – Is Theology Poetry?

John Dickson (Studio)

I love that quotation. In fact, it’s embedded in a beautiful piece of artwork right here in my office at Wheaton — it was made by the kids of St Andrew’s Roseville, where I was once a minister. I’ll take a photo and we’ll put it in the show notes! Lewis’s point here — and in lots of places — is that Christianity isn’t just a system that can be argued ‘objectively’ and ‘externally’, as it were; its most compelling feature is that if you look at the world through the lens of Christianity, it makes everything clearer. It’s not just that Christianity can be explained and defended; it’s that Christianity has explanatory power for everything else. 

John Dickson:
Yeah, one of the chapters, um, it’s, uh, by Gavin Orland, uh, has a subtitle along the lines of, uh, unbelief is Unlivable. Um, now that’s, uh, that’s gonna be pretty offensive to some of my listeners. Hey, you listeners who don’t believe you can’t live,

Collin Hansen:
How’s that for Gavin’s a, Gavin’s a debater on YouTube, so I guess

 John Dickson:
But he is also a very sweet man, and that’s a very strong statement.

 Collin Hansen:
he is very sweet. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, well, I think, I think John, it’s a little bit more closely connected to what I was just saying right there. It’s. Apologetics is often cast as Christians saying, I’m right, you are wrong. I’m gonna convince you that you’re wrong and we’re gonna argue this out forever and ever and ever. It’s like,  you know, it’s like in a pointless Facebook comment thread. Okay. But I actually don’t think that’s what’s happening in Gavin’s chapter. I think what Gavin is doing is he’s actually responding to the statistics, which are a lot of what I was saying there. A lot of people are saying. I am not sure I wanna live anymore. I don’t know what the purpose of life is. If anything goes wrong in my life, I think death would probably be a, a perfectly acceptable option because I don’t believe in anything that comes after that. And thus, I’m not sure what the purpose is anyway. And I definitely don’t see why I would bring any more life into this world. And also, I feel very anxious all the time. And also I feel like. I just feel unfulfilled. 

Reading

“For Albert Camus, atheism entailed that transcendent meaning (about morality and everything else) is ultimately unknowable and thus irrelevant to human existence: “I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me?” Camus argued that our inherent desire for meaning in a world that has revealed itself to be ultimately meaningless results in a sense of absurdity. The only logical question is whether suicide is the appropriate response. The point isn’t that modern people are constantly thinking about meaninglessness at a conscious level. I’m talking about the atmosphere in which we function (from which we are frequently distracted). Often it will only become fully evident to us if we slow down to consider larger questions of purpose and meaning. Yet the huge spike in anxiety and depression in recent years suggests that the concerns of … existentialist philosophers have not lost their relevance. And soberingly, to Camus’s point, suicide rates continue to rise.” Gavin Ortland – The Gospel After Christendom

Collin Hansen:
And also, I feel very anxious all the time. And also I feel like. I just feel unfulfilled. I think it’s really more responding to all these different threads out there where individuals feel like I know that I’m doing, everything I’m told is supposed to make me happy. And that’s what I’ve been told my entire life is what life is for. So why don’t I feel happy and how would I know if I did feel happy, how would I know that that, that that’s, that’s the truest expression of my feelings there. So I would hope at least that we could actually have some common ground between those who are listening as Christians and non-Christians to say, I think we have some pretty widespread agreement. That life isn’t working. Now, we probably disagree quite a bit on why it’s not, but that’s worthy of dialogue and discussion, isn’t it? In a good, healthy debate. I don’t know.

John Dickson (Studio)

I had to ask Collin about an entirely different strategy for advancing Christianity in the world, one focussed NOT on persuasion about ideas and culture but on political transformation of the structures of society.

John Dickson:
Some of my listeners may, uh, be looking at the Christian landscape, uh, from afar and noticing that there seems to be a whole lot of energy, uh, amongst, uh, particular kinds of Christians into, um, political, uh, machinations and. Force. So it’s almost like they’ve given up on the idea that you can persuade a society. We just need to go in there and legislate, uh, Christianity. Now this is, this is clearly more relevant, uh, in America, my new home. Uh, but I, I see a little hints of it here in Australia. There’s little hints of it in the uk. I, I guess I wanna respond. I want you to respond to this notion that, oh, forget persuasion. That didn’t work. Let’s go for, uh, real political change. Actually, John just had a discussion with some friends about this earlier today and what I’ve noticed from some other Christians, and sometimes it’s people that I’ve worked closely with in the past, um, is them unapologetically saying. What you just said right there, which was, Hey. So Christians in America didn’t use to worry so much about trying to convince people of the truth of their faith and, and of its desirability. And its livability. They just said, Hey, we’re the majority, we’re in charge and we’re just gonna dictate whatever we want on everybody else because one that’s better for us. Number two. We also think that it’s better for you, but we don’t really care whether you see it or not. I, I’ve seen more people just come out lately and just admit that’s exactly what they’re doing. Now, historically speaking, how does that typically work out? Well, your book is one of the places that shows how that typically works out. It typically works out with a church that has people who. Profess with their lips, but do not believe in their hearts and do not practice it.

John Dickson (Studio):

Collin is very kindly referring to my book Bullies and Saints. It’s my best shot at tracing the Christian church’s very mixed record through history. The problem with being a historian, of course, is that I know exactly where the bodies are buried in the churchyard! Back to Collin.

Collin Hansen:
So that’s one place that that tends to, tends to go. Second, politics, the only rule of politics is that that which goes up must come down. So usually you can ride that wave to the top. And right now in the United States, you have the most powerful media behind you. You have all of the federal government behind you. And this is the most powerful nation that’s ever existed in the history of the world. So that’s pretty intoxicating. That feels pretty good. But unless you have a millennial sense that it’s just up and up and up from here on out, then you’re pretty much know what’s coming. It’s gonna collapse, and when it collapses, whatever faith beliefs that you’ve attached to that political program will come into wide disrepute. And then you’ll have people like me come around and say. Well, that’s probably why you need to try to persuade people that they should believe and that this is good for humanity and good for eternity, not just good for me and good for this nation and good for this period of time. So certainly I, I do see that trend and this is what’s concerning to me.

John Dickson (Studio):

We’ll be back in a moment with a question I wanted to put to my expert guests: What do critics of Christianity get right? 

John Dickson:
Can I put you on the spot and ask what do you think our critics, critics of Christianity get mostly right? And really allied to that is the question where could Christians really lift their game?

Joshua Chatraw:
Well, I would want to say a couple things. One is, um, I mean the, you know. I can understand the kind of hard fault atheism or unbelief rooted in a kind of the evil in the world and the struggle with the kind of pain and evil in the world. And, um, I think sometimes Christian apologists have overplayed …we’ve overplayed our hand there. ‘Oh, this is easy. Let me just explain the problem of evil’. And I think that that kind of response, the kind of glib responses … I could understand if somebody even grew up in a Christian home and heard glib responses and eventually grew out of those responses because there’s a way to answer those that I don’t think are, um. Do justice to the seriousness of that critique. I do think there are good responses. I don’t think there’s an answer to the problem of evil, but I do think there’s good responses to that. Um, so I think that’s on the apologetic side or argument side. I think that’s, that’s still, you know, one of the, one of the real challenges. The other thing I would say is. Um, I think there’s one of, I think, I think a very powerful argument for Christianity is that, uh, Christianity has real resources to deal with the kind of evil in the world, the chaos of the world, the absurdity as, as canoe would say about the life we live, that the, the world we live in, and it actually gives us this deep, coherent vision and way to live in light it, it’s a way of life. That is existentially satisfying. It doesn’t make it easy, but it actually gives purpose and meaning and a and, and a way to live. And, and, um, I think people are catching onto that. I think the problem here, and I think the kind of critique is, um, if that is true, Josh, in your arguments for Christianity as a way of life are true, then why don’t I see more of Christians living that out and. If Christianity gives us a different way to look at control, or power or peace so that we can flourish even in the midst of sadness and pain, then then why do I see Christians who don’t, who don’t live that out? And I, I think that that is understandable. And I think for Christians, we need to own the fact that, um, you know, we are, we are proud of the problem. There’s a great line and the great divorce where, um, uh. Lewis through one of the, the, the spirits in that is saying, you know, the great joke is I’m gonna, I’m gonna not get this perfect. But he says, the great joke is we’re all at fault. And Christians actually say, yes, we can, we can own the fact that, um, that yeah, we’re at fault. And yet that’s when you can begin to live, is what Lewis says, when you can make that confession and, and that’s the kind of humility that says yes, um, that, that looks and, and becomes someone who receive, knows how to receive good gifts. Forgiveness and grace, and then we can begin to be the type of people who can then give forgiveness and grace to others. And, so, I think that those kind of existential not living out the gospel. And then also I think the problem of evil, the kind of moral problems are I, I can understand where our skeptical friends are coming from about those points. 

Five Minute Jesus

Let’s press pause. I’ve got a five minute Jesus for you. I’m not sure we could say that Jesus was into cultural apologetics. That would be anachronistic, but one thing I do know, Jesus was unusually socially flexible. On the one hand, he was a Galilean Jew who spent almost all his life among Jews. He even once said that he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. But that’s not the whole story. The Gospels record several moments where Jesus crosses social and cultural boundaries. Encounters that humanly speaking would be well outside his comfort zone. I know that’s a strange way to talk about Jesus if you’re thinking of him as God, but viewed historically, this Galilean Jew really did push cultural boundaries. Take the parable. Of the good Samaritan, the hero of that story. The good guy is a Samaritan. A group, many Jews regarded as enemies. I might be wrong, but I can’t think of any other Jewish text from antiquity that praises a Samaritan. At the very least, this shows Jesus unusual openness to the outsider. Of course, that’s a parable, a story, but there’s also a real encounter in John chapter four where he meets an actual Samaritan. A woman, it’s worth reading for yourself. Just go to John four. He is warm and gracious, never patronizing, and the text makes clear. This was controversial. His own disciples come and see him talking to this woman and were surprised that he was talking to a Samaritan woman. Again, I wouldn’t call this cultural apologetics, but if cultural apologetics means. Engaging people with different outlooks in order to communicate something of the faith. Well, Jesus was a master think too of all those scenes where he dines with sinners and tax collectors. It sounds charming to us all these years later, but it was scandalous back then. Religious leaders. Grumbled about it. And in one passage recorded in both Matthew and Luke, some conservatives even accused him of being, quote, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Now, that doesn’t mean Jesus was some kind of. Hip partygoer in a culture where sharing a meal with the morally impure was taboo. His table fellowship was both a theological statement and a radical act of inclusion. The scholar Ben f Meyer, put it perfectly. I love this. To his contemporaries, it was a staggering phenomenon that he did not shrink from dining with the irreligious. Indeed. He did so at his own initiative. Maya goes on to explain that the real novelty was the way Jesus reversed the expected order. Uh, Pharisees in his day were quite happy to eat with sinners, but only after they had repented from their sins and so stopped being sinners. But Jesus flipped that. Maa observes his welcome, came first. And then the repentance flowed. Let me continue with that quote from Ben Meyer, the Novum in the act of Jesus, he just means the new thing in the act of Jesus was to reverse the expected structure. Jesus advocated communion first, conversion. Second, his table fellowship with sinners implied no acquiescence in their sins. For the gratuity of the reign of God, canceled none of its demands. But in a world in which sinners stood, reluctantly condemned, Jesus’, openness to them was irresistible. Contact triggered repentance, conversion, flowered from communion. In the tense little world of ancient Palestine where religious meanings were the warp and Wolff of the social order, this was a potent phenomenon. Nothing could have dramatized the gratuity and the present realization of God’s saving act more effectively than this unheard of initiative toward sinners. If this were a five minute church history, I’d trace how the early Christians followed this same pattern of social flexibility, getting alongside others while holding their firm convictions. I will just quote one ancient text, one of my favorites. It’s not from the Bible, it’s just from the next century, the middle of the second century. It’s called the Epistle of tus, and it goes like this. Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language or custom. They live in Greek and barbarian cities. Follow local customs in dress and food, yet demonstrate the remarkable and unusual character of their own citizenship. Every foreign country is their Fatherland, and every Fatherland is foreign. That’s kind of the model On their good days, Christians enter into the cultures around them, maintaining conviction and compassion just as Jesus did. Christians can walk tenderly into Samaria or sit at a sinner’s table or adapt to local customs because. They don’t follow a tribal God tied to one society. They follow well. They claim to follow the Lord of the whole world, who loves people from every way of life. Being a citizen of Christ’s kingdom, you might say, makes Christians good guests in every culture. That’s the theory anyway. You can press play now.

John Dickson:
 A final question, Colin. Um, thinking of the book as a whole, what would you say is the most compelling dimension of Christianity? Especially for my doubters listening in,

Collin Hansen:
Yeah. Well, I’m gonna answer this great question on two levels. Uh, we as Christians believe, and the Apostle Paul himself tells us in one Corinthians 15 that. That John and I and and other apologists for the faith are to be, are pathetic and are to be pitied if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. So ultimately, everything we’re doing here rises and falls. On the simple question, did this man who claimed to be God rise from the dead on the third day? So in the one sense, nothing else matters in this book or anywhere else. If that’s not true, on the next level. If it is true, then it’s going to make a difference. It’s going to change things, and our argument would be that. We see an immediate transformative change in the very people at the very beginning of time, beginning of, you know, of that resurrection who were, who were total cowards, abandoning Jesus, all of a sudden being willing to die for that faith of something that they had seen with their very eyes, something they knew to be true. So that again, that’s, that’s ultimate. But then here’s where it comes at. Comes in the book. The church is. A very, very deeply inexperienced and in reality, flawed institution because it’s made up of flawed people, but at a time of profound loneliness, isolation, skepticism, and distrust. A church full of people who love one another across political differences, across racial, geographic, ethnic, all the differences that you can find because they share income in this universal faith that connects them throughout the ages and around the world to other people who profess to believe in Jesus and to take the name of Christian is not only a wonderfully encouraging and transformative and life changing and saving. Place to be in the church, even in, its in its imperfections, which again, your book on the history of the church and the positives and negatives is the best that I know on this, on this subject. But at the same time, it is such a balm to. Sad souls everywhere. Looking for a place to belong. Looking for people who will care for them, looking for people who will take an interest in them. Looking for people who will love them even when they mess up, even when they have messed up. Looking for just guidance, assistance, wisdom, looking that to find that they’re not alone. So we have a chapter in this book by a pastor in Nebraska named Bob Thune. It’s one of my favorite things I can even recall ever reading, and I’m so proud that we have it in the book. But it talks about the church as a place where you can see these beliefs physically represented and lived out, not perfectly. ’cause again, only Jesus perfect. But from there, experience that community. And then begin to learn and, and to consider the claims that work back to ultimately the resurrection. 

Reading

My neighbor Evan (I’ve changed his name) is a successful, extroverted fortysomething: hip, engaging, friendly, and easy to talk to. He’s always willing to lend a hand, an ear, or a tool. His kids are the most respectful and responsible middle-schoolers on the block. Evan and his wife know I’m a pastor; we’ve had them over for dinner; we do our best to initiate as much conversation and front-porch interaction as we can. Yet Evan doesn’t seem particularly curious about the deeper questions of life. He hasn’t identified any God-shaped hole in his heart. It’s not that he seems hardened or closed off to faith; he just doesn’t appear to have any persistent spiritual hunger. I sent Evan a text message to invite him to church this past Easter. He never responded. I think a lot about Evan. I think about  him when I preach: How would this message resonate with him? I think about him when I pray: How can I love him and witness to him more faithfully? And I think about him as I lead: How might I help him experience the church— and the gospel it proclaims—as interesting, compelling, and credible?  What I really want is for Evan to see the world differently. I want him to apprehend and be changed by the fact that “the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross.” It is God, of course, who must open Evan’s eyes. But the Westminster Confession reminds us that “God, in His ordinary providence, makes use of means.” And one of those means is the church. I want my church—and your church—to give our neighbors a new set of “lenses” through which to see the world. And we can. When churches take seriously our calling as countercultural communities, we start to do the work of cultural apologetics without even thinking about it! Because we love our neighbors and want them to know Christ, we start thinking more intentionally about “how we do what we do.” And without losing any of its depth and richness, what we do starts to reflect the transformative power of the gospel in ways that our neighbors often find compelling.” The Gospel After Christendom

Collin Hansen:
I hope people will give, give time in this book to doing that, and more importantly, I hope they’ll find a good church near them that does this.

John Dickson:
Colin Hansen, thank you so much.

Collin Hansen:
Thanks, John.

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CREDITS

Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dickson, produced by Kaley Payne and directed by Mark Hadley. Alasdair Belling is a writer and researcher. Siobhan McGuiness is our online librarian. Lyndie Leviston remains my wonderful assistant. Santino Dimarco is Chief Finance and Operations Consultant. Editing by Richard Hamwi. Our voice actors today were Yannick Lawry and Dakotah Love. Special thanks to our series sponsor Zondervan for making this Undeception possible.  Undeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com – letting the truth out.

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