Ep 1414 | A Child’s Tragic Death Forces This Difficult Question About God

0:00I am Unashamed. What about you? Welcome to the Unashamed podcast. This is our Hillsdale episode Friday with Hillsdale. So don't forget, by the way, we are doing another giveaway for this course, the LG 101. We're going to pick one listener to come down to Westman Road to watch a live recording of Unashamed. In fact, we have someone in studio today, I believe, that won the last one. Miranda. The mysterious, the mysterious Miranda. The reason we call our mysterious act is because we just got our first name initially. And so then we thought, well, what if all the Miranda's that listen, think they're the winners? So the mysterious Miranda's here with their husband's got a wonderful couple from Texas. Okay. What part of Texas are they from? They're from Cleaverton, Texas. Okay. Nothing wrong with that. We love Texas people. So we're going to pick one winner to come down. We're going to pay for travel and lodging for you and a guest up to a thousand dollars each. All you have to do is take the theology 101 course with us, finish off the quizzes and send us your certificate of completion.

1:01You can sign up for the course. It's absolutely free at unashamedforhills.com. And then you can upload your certificate at watchunashamed.com and you'll be entered to win. You'll be entered into the drawing. So yeah. So let's get moving here. So Zach, we found a little bite with Miranda. She said that you were really funny to... Yeah. Oh, well, that's awesome. I always liked her. Yeah. Really did. So rare. It's rare, Conveille. Oh, it's much more rare than I said. We don't use a hear by his humor. Yeah. Now I read the comments. I love the comments. And... You don't. I really do. I love most of them. You don't? Conveille. I enjoy people questioning you. They're calling Martin Luther Gay. We got to come. You were trying to stir something up. You were trying to get me canceled. So John Luke's been watching the comments. I was looking at the comments last night. I was going to send this to you. But I just thought this is the funniest comment that Frank has ever said.

2:04Which is why I think this is why Frank keeps commenting because he keeps shouting out on the podcast. I want Frank to come down. I want Frank to win. Frank may win. Yeah. So this was on our Hillsdale episode. So there's a few episodes to go for y'all. And Zach had said something apparently very meaningful. And everyone is really hyping them up. Like, calming. So there's tons of comments like Zach, you're so refreshing. Thank you Zach for sharing your faith. There's just like all kinds of stuff. You're just reading them on them. Zach's like, wait, we want to get 48 minutes to hold. But please continue. I don't know what you got to do all those good ones. Then we get to break most of your comments really stroke your egos. I wonder if you can take the all capital truth. Thank you, Frank. Thank you. You are the humbler. We cannot stroke Zach's ego. We need more of, we need more comments.

3:06That doesn't get enough beatings from Jay. So we're making our base. I'll trust my ego has been destroyed. I'm probably the most insecure person on the planet. I mean, I see it every once in a while. I feel sorry for it and take it for it. I got an ego. I do have an ego. But here's what you get no Frank. Like actually, I like flattered actually makes me nervous. Like, so if someone flatters me, I actually makes me nervous. But I do have an ego. I think we all, we all probably struggle with a little ego, egotism. I can be egotistical. What did the two go hand in hand though? Like ego and flattery? Probably so, but you know, there's like a, it's more of a pragmatic thing. Because I've been burned by people before who have like, they make you feel like you're awesome. And then, but it's only to lay their hammer down like this. It doesn't really work for Zach because he has a very healthy dose of cynicism. And his demeanor.

4:06I don't know if it's healthy. I don't like the way I'm feeling. You're right. Maybe it's unhealthy. And we discovered after we had, we had the skillet gown that's, that he and Zach are like BFFs, John Cooper, because they both had this grip on the 90s. And I didn't really know about all the cynicism of the 90s. I guess I missed it. I haven't already been an adult. But so apparently that birthed a lot more of that during that, that era, which I thought I found my fast 90s. I've very much looked forward to people here in that episode. Well, it's funny. You know, it's hilarious to think about the connection even with these last two episodes that we're going to be doing with the all G 101. Because this was, look, I mean, that last episode. Did you laugh at my meme? I sent you. Yeah, I did laugh at that. You know that. I'm not calling Dr. Josie Wale. But what I didn't think I thought this is, okay, this is pretty heavy. Like I, what's our, how is our audience going to, you know, go through this 55 minute lecture?

5:09Because it was not, that was not easy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I've read a lot of, I actually have read a lot of the people mentioned in it. You know, like Tillick and, I don't know if he mentioned Nietzsche, but I know he mentioned the many times. Yeah, he mentioned Nietzsche, Edgar Garde. I mean, he kind of goes through the history of Western philosophy. Yeah, it was a lot there. But what's interesting is what, what John Cooper was talking about on the podcast was how they got the name of their band and the name of their man is skillet. And he's just like, yeah, it was like back in the 90s, it was just whatever. You just take something random. It was the nihilism of the 90s, the 90s nihilism. Nothing matters. You know, just however random and just there is no meaning to the world. And he says, somebody said, hey, you know, you always bands like us. Somebody put a bunch of people in a skillet and cooked up a band. I like that. And that's what they named the band. And so we were talking about the 90s, the niles of the 90s. But you know, Nietzsche was a nihilist. And he was one of the philosophers that's credited kind of with the philosophy.

6:11So I think these two things, I do want to say this before we get into it, that these were, these were heads of the 90s. These were, these were heavy episodes. I mean, they were, I think they were more academic than probably any of the rest that we've taken so far. But nobody arrived at the world view in a vacuum. And so for me, understanding the history of how we arrived in our current cultural moment, this is important. And I think that like when you hear people talk about faith being a privatized thing, which we hear this all the time in our culture, right? You have your truth. Have you ever heard, here's what I'm going to say, here's my truth. Oh yeah. And then they give, it's like their, like is there on personalized version? And to Frank's point, I mean, you know, you know, what the Bible teaches is truth with a capital T. It's not a privatized truth. It's a universal truth. And so a lot of how we got there to this eroding of truth and making it privatized and subjective came out of these philosophies and these philosophers.

7:15So, yeah, hopefully over the next two episodes, we'll be able to unpack this. And I hope that what we can do is maybe bring the lofty conversation kind of down. But I don't know, what did y'all think? Did you all think we could maybe we can bring some enlightenment to the conversation? Yeah, there you go. There you go. Perfect segue. Thank you. I did. I want everybody to know I printed it off my seventh certificate. I thought I brought it, but I didn't. So I print mine off. The wallpaper continues. We've completed seven courses now after these two. And it was a challenge. It was a challenge for me with Christian summed it up by sending a picture of Patrick, a slaubering Patrick from SpongeBob. And I think I felt I was right there with him. And Zach was, Zach was Kevin Bacon dancing. Yeah. Well, they knew I would like the content. So they were like, first this is Zach's. But just to get us into it, I thought in the in the next the last lesson, Dr. Westblade, I thought really captured some great stuff.

8:16And you talked about enlightenment. I loved the way I never heard anybody do this, but he was like, it's a challenge. Now watching the episode, let me just start it while we are doing it. That it was a little bit arrogant, you know, just to make it seem like up until this point, nobody had any enlightenment like all of a sudden, it's like, hey, we're enlightened. And so I think the age of reason was kind of the way he framed it was much better. And I loved the scriptural reference. I didn't take him alone to get to it because he framed it in the higher picture of how we come to reason ourselves. And can we even reason to God? Is it possible because he's got it or not? But then I thought the scriptural references were so powerful. The first one being Psalm 139. And you know, typically we go to that, we kind of go just to that one little text in there because it's such a great pro-life text. You know, I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made your work.

9:18So wonderful. I know I'll fool you well. But when you read the entire Psalm, which I did a couple of times this morning, it really is so rich, David's perspective on God, but not just the God's beyond in this transcendent idea of God, but that he is reachable. He is findable. He doesn't know us in such a way that he wants us to look for him and find him and connect with him. And so I just thought that was a beautiful sort of theme that ran through this whole lesson about in the Enlightenment period. A lot of people moved away or moved into a camp that God is unreachable, but when you look at it from a biblical lens, you see that it's very attainable. And that's why he made us in his image to begin with. So I just thought that was a powerful sort of arch narrative over the whole thing, which is really good. And I love that song. What does that 17 say? I mean, kind of to your point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's determined the exact time to place with the all men should live so that they would seek him out.

10:24And perhaps find him though he's not far from each one of us. So I think I think that you know, Paul's introduction to the Greco Roman philosophers, who by the way, I mean Aristotle, obviously wasn't in that room at the area of the 17th, but all of the platonic play those Socrates, if he was a real person, Aristotle. This is where these ideas were incubated. And this was the hotspot Paul's moving into that space. And he's bringing the gospel of Christ to the Greco Roman world. And I think that that act 17, I just popped up when you were reading the talking about that song. Yeah. It's actually a great, another great text if you really want to know, Biblically, how we, how we wrestle with these things. But it is. I mean, it's hard. Is it faith? Is it reason? How do they work together? I mean, this is this is the have been the Lama van, you know, forever. Have y'all ever thought about that though? Like, I mean, have you guys ever had like doubts in your faith or seasons of doubts or kind of what?

11:24What if you did? What was that like? Like, how do you know this is true? That's good. I feel like for me, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely plenty of times where you, you know, doubt certain things. And I think for me, I think the thing that I doubt is, you know, not necessarily the existence of God, it kind of things like we've talked about on the podcast. But even like there's a, there's a young girl in town locally who like contracted this super rare disease. I don't know if you've seen it or not, but she was swimming in a lake. And she, she seven, she just turned eight, three days ago, she passed away yesterday. But it's just like rare brain eating, um, I mean, yeah, Aniba, like she was swimming in a lake 30 miles from here. And yeah, contracted it last week and then passed away two days ago. It has like a 97% fatality rate. I think there's only like a cut. I think only three cases, maybe ever in Louisiana, like something crazy.

12:24So I think for me, the part that I, and if we want to get super theological, and I think for me, the part I struggle with at times is, especially being a parent and having my kid go through something. And it's almost like the, it's like the perspective, if, if like I zoom out, and I'm, I'm thinking about it from the standpoint of like, because you know, symptoms start, this girl had, you know, she has fever, and they kind of things progress to where she kind of loses vision. And then they take her to the hospital. That's kind of these things happen. But I think for me, the part that I wrestle with is, at the beginning of things like this, right, she runs a fever, and then her parents are thinking, oh, let's give her Tylenol, right, she's sick, she has a fever, she might have a cold. But while they're having these limited perspective of she's sick with a fever, it's like, no, she has a brain eating, you know, microscopic thing. So I think, I think that's the part that I can sometimes struggle with with, with, with God and things of, you know, it's almost like that withholding element of things towards like, like,

13:26like, what would you allow that to happen? Like looking back, it's like, how awkward is it that I was like, you know, let's get a cold rag, I can give her Tylenol. But it's like, she has a brain eating thing going on. So I think I can wrestle with, with those kind of parts of, you know, God's, you know, not even lack of healing, but I think even like a revelation early on of things like that towards, it's just, I don't know if that makes any sense, but those are things that I've, I mean, I've even, you know, thought this thought this week of just kind of wrestling through those, those things of, you know, this poor girl who was swimming with her family in a lake and contracted this thing. And yeah, it's just brutal. We all wish that she would have been healed. But I think even symptoms early on that's just, you know, because obviously my kid, last night, my daughter had a 103 fever because she's sick. And I was thinking about that last night of, man, this is what this family felt like early on. And let's just give her some, some motrin or Tylenol. And then it's obviously thinks progress way worse. But, um, well, that really does speak to what he was talking about.

14:27Yeah. In the lecture and the idea that there's this supernatural force that, that we believe can intervene into time and space. But, you know, what prompts that and why in one case does, you know, your child get out of their fever because it's just a bacteria or something. Yeah. And the other, the other one doesn't. So those are our huge questions in terms of if it's you and your family, your daughter. Yeah. And, and how you deal with that and wonder. And of course, his bigger point was, is, is he even capable of, I mean, would even do it? You know, is it just a wind up clock? I think it was later in this lecture. Yeah, it was the idea that got deism and all that. You made a watch, put it on the shelf and then just kind of, so those are, those are huge questions. And you asked about us personally, I think in my case, I've never really questioned it from the level that Christian, I mean, I always think, man, this is terrible and I hate it for this family.

15:27Mine was more just the sort of the pull of lifestyle was, was my doubt. Because I grew up in a non-Christian home, but blessed with Christian people that kind of took me under their wing. And so I got, I got the stories, I got the teaching, I got really the faith in planning to me very early and then walked away from it. Like just totally abandon it and abandon God for like four years. And so, but I don't remember having doubts about it, I just desired something else, more than I desired him. But in my case, it was out of just complete desperation of realizing that the lifestyle was going to kill me and then it led me back to God. From that point forward, I've never questioned it. I've tried to have the same faith. I just, this last Sunday talked about Shadrach, Meeshaq and Betigo and the fiery furnace. And the statement they made to Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3, 17 was incredible because they were like, and concerning this matter, your majesty,

16:32we're not really going to address it because we know that our God will deliver us. And then they said, but even if he doesn't, we're not going to listen to you. And so, when you think about that, when you think about we're going into fire, I'd like to be burned alive. And you're saying, we know God's going to deliver us in the macro sense, but even if he doesn't, we're still this committed and bound to the idea. And when I read things like that, I'm thinking, wow, I've still got to, I'm still working on that sort of faith. And you hope you do, right? Yeah, I don't ever doubt like existential creation and that, obviously I believe that God created everything. So I don't ever have doubts of God's, God's real who created everything who made me. It's more so this does, yeah, when does he choose intervening, how accessible is he on a daily kind of thing? And it's even like Jeremiah, I think it's Jeremiah 3 when Jeremiah is like, it's one of my favorite prayers. And she's like, you deceived me and I was deceived.

17:34And Matt Chandler talks about this idea of like being in a church group, like a house church thing. And some random person shows up and he's like, you just, like that's this opening prayer. Like, you deceived me and I was deceived. Everyone would be like, what's wrong with this guy? But that idea of like, you let him live. Yeah, sometimes you do things and then looking back, it's like, someone's that feeling of awkwardness. It's like God allowed me to go do this thing knowing that that would never happen, right? I mean, I've been felt like that with all the kit stuff in the summer. We had this big trip plan and we met with the elders at our church and did this whole prayer group and prayed for protection for the event and everything. Then the next week after that kid had a choking thing, then we never ended up going on the trip. Then it was one of those things looking back. It was like, it's awkward, not even awkward. But it's like God knew that trip was never going to happen. But then yet we still had this whole prayer thing for that, but it never ended up happening. So I think maybe that perspective for me has changed after becoming a parent and viewing God as the father.

18:38And it's like doing these things while at the same time he knows they're not going to happen. So I don't know if that makes any sense, but I've, I've really stood that part of stuff. But never like bigger existential like is God real kind of. Yeah, I've had some of the more part of the bigger questions. John, like you have to, right? That's what I was going to say. Mine was all existential. Yeah. Like is God real? Is everything real? You know, like going down the whole line. I did the whole deconstruct, reconstruct. Well, I did the whole deconstruct, think how reconstructed. Well, she doesn't happen off it apparently. Yeah, it's like, right. It's hard to read much harder to read. I was worried about John, like for a little bit, I'd say he's wedding. We got in a pretty deep conversation out. You were kind of a face. You were at. I think why I'm right here. That was my wedding too. But you're not my, you're, you're very in. So you can understand. I'm in our conversation. But for me, say he's always going to be primary because that's not on the clock.

19:41We should have the same block. Okay. Okay. Christian makes sense. If I wasn't here, my only point is that I'm sitting right here. But I continue. That happens to me all the time. But continue. Okay. Well, let me rephrase that. Christian Sadie's wedding. He was at Sadie Robertson's wedding. Yeah. I honestly didn't know you that well back then. So my reference point, I just trans, trans, what are myself back to the moment? And we were standing outside. I get your point. So when we said, where are you going? We didn't say we're going to Christians wedding. We said we're going to Sadie's wedding. I get seven years ago, you thought that, but time is passed. I don't know where you were at them. I do remember we got in a really incredible conversation. But I, because I, I don't always resonate with you John. Because I knew you were like asking the same questions that I, I, I asked as well. And I did have it. I mean, I had a major, I've shared it on this podcast before. Like a major crisis of faith. And honestly, this, these, these two lectures is like, this was the,

20:43this was my dilemma. There's a word introduced into this lecture that, Jil gets mad every time I say it. But it is such an important word. It's called epistemology. And epistemology is just like a branch, kind of a branch of philosophy. I guess you could say that it's just a word that means how do we know? How do we know? How do we know? Like, how do we know? How can we actually know these things to be true? And that was my big dilemma. Because I was working, you know, when me and Jil, first got married, I went to work for a company called Wyatt Pharmaceuticals. I was selling pharmaceutical products and then, with drug dealer. Yeah. I was a drug dealer. I was. And ended up with a company called Genintech, out of San Francisco. I mean, this company, like when I tell you, like what they were doing, and Genetic Medicine, it's incredible. And, you know, I'd go to these meetings and be around all these brilliant scientists. And everybody kind of was coming at this from a atheistic worldview.

21:43Most people I was interacting with. I was a Christian. And, yeah, I didn't really have a lot of reasons to believe what I believed to be true. I was always taught this. And so then when you're interacting with people on that level, and they're kind of challenging you, it can be super disruptive. And then, this is what happened. My dad debated a guy on the campus of ULM. I may have told this story, I can't remember. But he debated that the guy, the guy I think was Joseph, I can't remember his last name. But he was a student. And they were having a debate on some of some, the guy was an atheist. Obviously, my dad was a believer. I was going to have a debate. And it just shook me to the core. And mainly because I just didn't have a reason to believe what I hoped to be true. The way that I understood faith was that it was the opposite of reason. I miss my group thinking, faith was what you believe when you have no reason to believe it's true.

22:46Then you take the leap of faith. It's a blind faith. It's blind. It's a leap into the unknown. And that nearly destroyed me. And I will tell you, it's not biblical. It's actually not what the Bible teaches. But a lot of that mentality, which we would now, but a term that got brought up in the 10th lecture was called postmodernism, or like relativism or existentialism, whatever you want to call it. But it's this idea that the faith is unknowable and that reason alone is what can take you there. So the philosophers, that's what they're kind of getting at. And you know, and you've got to keep this in mind too, that the enlightenment, the age of reason did not happen in a vacuum either. And I think this is what's so important to have this discussion now because the reason why the enlightenment even happened in the first place was because you had major advancements in technology that the world had never seen. For the first time, you had the invention of the

23:46printing press. So you could actually print materials now. And the common man could get like, like, I could actually read for themselves. And you had things like the microscope, the telescope, you had instruments for testing things. All this advancement and technology happened that's coincided with the age of reason. And so in the past, people, they had to just rely on the clergy. They had to rely on the monarchy. They had to rely on the people that were in authority to tell them what how the world really was. Well, now all of a sudden, information is being, you know, from their perspective, is being exchanged at a rapid pace. And the reason why I think that's important is because I actually think we're in the beginning phases of a new revolution, of a new way. We're in the equivalent of the printing press with AI. Information is being traded so rapidly. That we need to ask these questions. And I think we're going to probably go through another

24:47enlightenment of some sort. And the church needs to have a response for this. We will, because the Holy Spirit runs the church. But that's what's going on here. So that, I don't know, that was, that epistemology thing. That's honestly said at the core of a lot of what I've studied over the last probably 20 years. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be an either war. I wouldn't just sign up and take the course with us for free at unashamedforhillsdale.com. I like that. He went to Isaiah 55, which I thought was really good because he described that it sort of became an either war camp to what Zach was just describing. And was it martyr and somebody else? Were it? Turlian? Yeah, Turlian. So it was, I read you the text. The first two verses are one camp that's a Tulian camp. For my thoughts or not, your thoughts neither, or your ways my ways is the heavens are higher than earth. So are my ways higher than yours. And my thoughts, then your thoughts, talking this is God to man. And so if you just stop right there, the idea is he's unreachable. He's

25:48too far. He's too trans, transcendent. But then you read the next two verses as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and make it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater. So is my word that goes out from my mouth? It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it, which is the ideas all this from God was made. We were made for him so that he can connect. He can flourish. He can have purpose in our lives. And so then that was the idea of the other end of it, which was martyr, which was the idea of just reason and freedom are available for all, which is true. But then somewhere the idea is that they're both true because he is above. He is beyond our way of trying to explain him, you know, only he can explain himself. And yet we do receive and we do have a relationship and we do have a capacity to reason.

26:51I love the there were a couple of texts. Well, he mentioned a Isaiah 118. Let us reason together though your sins are like scarlet. They should be white. It's no think about that. Even way back in Isaiah, he's saying that we can reason the idea of forgiveness of sins that Isaiah said that. And then you look at the story in Genesis 22's that where Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac, the Hebrew writer says in Hebrews 11, he reasoned to the resurrection that God could raise today. So we do have the divine capacity to connect to things that are way beyond our ability to understand. How would we understand? Well, you're created you're created with rational faculties. Right. So when you think about which is the ability to reason, you think, well, okay, if I look at my DNA and I just draw my blood, look at my DNA, you go to an ape and you draw their DNA and you look at it on your microscope, then we're like 98% the same. But yet we're very different. Like like humans, human beings are doing

27:54like we're doing things very differently than the ape community. In fact, the ape community is doing the exact same thing that they were doing since the creation of apes. You know, like they're they have an advanced at all. I mean, they're not but look at humanity. Like we've actually advanced in our ability to create things. And so and the reason why what separates us from one of the things that separates us from the animal community is that we have rational faculties. This is part of what I think it means to be made in the image of God is that we have the ability to reason. We have creative capabilities. We have the ability to communicate, which all is all this is kind of centered in our rational faculties. I think where where the enlightenment gets off with guys like David Hume and some of the ones that were mentioned in here is the rationalism, which is essentially the man beginning with himself tries to make meaning of the world. That's the problem. If you take rational

28:56rational irrational faculties to the extreme and you say, well, we can actually begin with ourselves and now we can make meaning of the world. Well, you're actually not going to make meaning of the world and you're going to end up in a circular reasoning. You're going to end up in absurdity. And so I think the idea and Kant was trying to get at this, although I'm not a Kantian guy, but like what Kant was trying to get to is a push back against that. He was saying, there's a realm up here that has to descend to you before you can make sense of the world. And I think he was probably, I mean, he was right on that part of his philosophy, but they're trying to figure that out, right? Do I make meaning of the world by beginning with myself or kind of what Christian was talking about earlier? The word they used was deism that God just winds up the clock and he's not really involved. He just winds it up and just lets it go. Like he just kind of lets it go and he's about watching the whole thing or has God involved in the world? And if God's involved in the world, how much has God involved in the world? Why does he not answer all the prayers? Why does he answer some? Why does he seem like he's silent? And they're trying to hold all this up in tandem. And they typically

30:02we're going to do is we're going to go to one side of the other and the way that plays out is we're going to be hyper spiritual. Everything that exists is just a spiritual world or we're going to have a hyper materialist. All that exists is the material world. And I love the answer that he gives. I do think it is the answer of that John one passage that in the beginning was the word. The word was without the word was God and the word became flesh. Christian entity alone is an incarnated faith. It stands alone because it's both spirit and body and you don't have to choose between the two. It's faith and reason. You have to choose between the two. Someone said in the lecture that Jesus was the embodiment of reason, which I thought was a great way to look at that. Because it is, I mean, the incarnation did change everything because the God of the cosmos becomes flesh and all of a sudden we can see and hear. And it reminded me, the word reason is he's five times in the book of Job and he goes back to what you were talking about earlier with the little girl, the idea of suffering and trying to figure that out because that's the whole book

31:04of Job, right? I mean, the whole thing is that it's interesting because the first time it's used is in Job two, three by God to Satan. Remember the little conversation going on in the other realm. And he yeah, and he says he says you incited me to afflict Job for no reason. God said that. You know, so he said it first and then you read it four more times later Job says it in some of his speeches with his friends because he's like, I don't know the reason. I don't know the reason. I don't know the reason. He just keeps saying it over and over and over again. He can't reason to it because they were under the assumption that of the God, that's what the friends were, that it was only appeasement. So you did something to, you know, displease God and therefore you're suffering as a result. And they even said awful things. They said what one of them said, one of the dopey friends said, your kids were killed for the penalty of their sin. It was like they deserved to have that roof fall on their hands. I mean, think about that. That's your frame. Just there to encourage you.

32:08And he's like piling on the whole situation. And then you have God show up in this like tornado at the end. And he like gives all these like, I'm God and you're not speech. And Job had such an interesting response. And Job 42, he said, I realize I've spoken beyond what I know after listening to you. I don't know what I thought I knew. And then he said something really awesome that really speaks to that. He said, I had heard about you. But now I see you. And I've always thought that was a powerful thing because when it comes to suffering and what you describe, you can only understand something once you go through it. And all of us go through different things. We don't know. And there's a time when you can see something that you couldn't have seen at the beginning. And that's what happens in Job. And that's really kind of to me the whole point of the story. Some things are beyond reason. But even through those we wind up seeing God. It's like that question that John nine when they asked Jesus, who sinned the parents or the son that he was born blind. He

33:09said neither the man was born blind so that we might see the glory of God. So that's how that's the only way you can get through things like that is realizing that the alternative is it's all random. I lost my kid. I have no hope now. And I'll live the rest of my life in despair. Or I see something eventually beyond that. But you can't just push somebody across. But you can't begin with yourself. Exactly. If you begin with yourself to make meaning of the world, the you have the now you all the sudden you're bearing the weight of reality on you. And so I don't think it's all I we are we do have got the international faculties, but you're not discovering God. I mean, he has to reveal himself first. That's good. And so I think that's the false teaching in Romans. You know, the the the things about God, the Bible says that they've been like his invisible attributes have been clearly perceived by what has been made. So God actually reveals himself through creation.

34:14And even the gospel itself, you know, the more specific things about God also come through a type of revelation because when you get to Romans 10, he says the only way that somebody is going to hear about the good news of Jesus is if it is somebody tells them, you know, faith comes from hearing the word and it goes through this progression of like, well, how are they going to hear if nobody tells them and how they how so many not going to how so many going to tell them if nobody sends them and it's like blessed are those who kind of who bring the gospel. So the idea of the how that works is faith is actually a response to revelation. And it's not anti rational. I would say it's more than rationality. It's not anti-reason. It is more than reason, but it's not and it's not irrational. And what I think what happened coming out of the enlightenment, you have like a progression of philosophers can't be in one of them because you know that they had that those two terms, the the nominal and the phenomenal world. And so Khan actually takes the field of knowledge and he splits

35:17it in half and basically that's where you get that's where we get a modern language like well, my faith is this. It's a private belief. You know, my truth is this or values, you know, values are in the they're in a subjective realm. That's true for I have my own personal views on that. Well, my personal view, well, the the scripture doesn't say that Jesus Christ is Lord for you personally. No, he's either Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. And so like the claim is there is an objective truth that is true for all of us and binding to all of us irrespective and independent of any of our perceptions. There is a reality and God reveals that reality. So faith then comes in as I I receive revelation and I say God, I believe you. That I mean that is the but but that's the war, right? Yeah, my during my you know, crisis of faith, I call it, it really had less to do with

36:21my own personal doubt in the reasons for God. But more so my doubt in the authority of the people who are teaching me. So I went in my favorite parts of this lecture. I was when we were talking about the Middle Ages, I was saying people in the Middle Ages came to know really could only know God or Jesus or the Bible through, you know, the authority of the church, to the couldn't read. And then there was this expansion of material for you know, people to read with the printing press with you know, just greater writing, greater access to knowledge. And they started kind of doing their own independent reasoning and some left and some you know came closer to God. For me, it was kind of like that of I through high school or I grew up in church was always in church building. But then through high school, I started with the dynasty. I started speaking a lot and traveling a lot and going to a bunch of different churches. And there's several years where I was in a church

37:27building that was not my own that was listening to a sermon or a pastor and doing worship. Sometimes like three nights a week where I was, I mean, all kinds of faith. I mean, I was a Baptist event, non-denominational events, pinnacle events, Catholic events, church of Christ. Like it was all, I was hearing from all kinds of people and all kinds of circumstances. And what I started to hear were the contradictions between them. And I would hear things, people take strong circumstances on their own biblical take that thought just like wasn't a good reason for it. And that started kind of develop cracks in like, oh, what is real? Like I was thinking about, if you're listening with kids in the car, I'm about to say something about Christmas. So mute, mute it for like a minute. And if you're an adult, that still lives with your parents. Yeah.

38:29Sorry, those men. Okay. So I was thinking about cousin when she was eight and her parents told her that Santa wasn't real. She like her immediate thought was like, say, as I were like, what about the Easter Bunny? What about the tooth fairy? What about, you know, what about God? And for me, it was kind of that same like thinking of like, okay, I've heard, I took a whole class in high school and in college about the earth being 6,000 years old. And then I start reading science textbooks and doing my research. I'm like, okay, it's clearly not like the earth isn't flat, the earth isn't 6,000 years old. Like, there's not the center of the universe. The earth isn't the center of the universe. So the galaxy, yeah, there's clearly other things going on here. Okay, well, if that's not true, then what about, you know, then is the resurrection true? You know, and even more things like that, like hearing things like, you know, the Bible, you know,

39:34is, you know, the like truth. We need to like follow the Bible, but then people using, or even historically people using, you know, passages from the Old Testament to like, justify slavery or passage the New Testament to justify misogyny or sexism or whatever. And I started thinking like, okay, people are who I'm seeing as authority are using the Bible to believe whatever they want to believe and not giving good reasons for their belief. Like, is this like all true? And so that was more of the deconstruction of like, what do I actually believe? And kind of what I came to was it wasn't that I didn't believe in God. It was that my view of God and who he was supposed to be as a all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing being wasn't the actual, wasn't actually who he was. Like, I had a poor perception of him. And when I felt like, I felt like

40:37the Holy Spirit actually led me in that crisis to study more and actually come to know, have a personal worship with Jesus instead of like a relationship with this like philosophical omnipotent, omnipresent God. And then when I started seeing God as someone who is interacting in my life and in the life and in everyone's life, author history, so I was like, okay, this makes sense. Like, I see the reasoning. And even in my own experience, like, I've being in prayer every day and reading scripture and being in community, like, I see that working in my life and I see how my life would be different without God. And I'm saying like, okay, bottom line it works. Like, I think that really is God. And hearing about miracles I've heard of or experiencing being prayed for and experiencing like change in my life, it's like, I could say at atheists would say or a materials would say like, oh, that's all natural. Like,

41:38there's some kind of all miracles are, you know, there's a natural explanation for them and some sense or religion is good for people and it changes their life. That doesn't mean that God is real. It just means that religion works. Like, you can come up with natural explanations for, you know, anything. But to me, it actually just makes more sense that there is a spiritual being working in life and that there's a there's an unseen forces happening in the world to me makes more sense than that there's a natural explanation for them. Don't you just sign up and take the course with us for free at unashamed for Hillsdale.com. Yeah, your experience is interesting because it's it's kind of mirrors what I would I would I would always argue that part of the reason why we even had the kind of the naturalistic worldview emerged during the enlightenment primarily I think in the German universities, but they they became overwhelmingly naturalistic and by naturalistic I just mean that up until that point this point in history, the way the

42:41predominant worldview was that the the universe was an open system and that just means that God could get in and out he could make miracles happen whatever I mean it wasn't everything didn't have to be explained through like the natural sciences and the way that you could articulate that would be like you know you've seen when people take the dominoes and they like make a whole like thing out of them and they hit one and they all like fall down like that's kind of the the method that I would say came in with naturalism is the way we would indulge ourselves in the sciences is that we would we would look at a domino that had fallen and we would examine it we said wonder why this thing's on the ground oh there's another one on top of it and through the scientific method you would determine that the reason why this one fell was because another one hit it and made it fall what made that one fall and so you're you're just looking for what's called a uniformity of natural causes and everything and so the world eventually became predominantly naturalistic in the universities and what they kind of got rid of God they said

43:46oh our system's closed nothing God doesn't get in nothing gets in and nothing gets out everything that happens happens as a result of a prior state of physical events this is just it's it's science everything of science I think the reason why the universities went that way and it you could argue that it started in the in the departments of science and then it moved into philosophy later but I think the and then it moved into theology after that I think the reason why it happened was because of the church's response to scientific discovery you think about Galileo and Copernicus as you mentioned now like the church persecuted them as heretics because they discovered that oh wait the earth's not the center of the universe actually and so then the church comes after them for true a true scientific discovery and so I think that's what had been there's that separation and then what happened is when you have the printing press you have all this that now people can get access

44:47to information in real time they don't need to go to the Catholic church for information anymore they can I mean they got a pamphlet right in front of them that somebody print a bit Benjamin Franklin printed a pamphlet you know I talked about his printing press but I think that's the that so your your story is kind of similar of how you got there the problem with naturalist oh so what happened though is and I think this was where kind of where we got to over at today is when the philosophers started looking at that and they said wait a second if the world is naturalistic naturalism is how we should interpret reality we like where you're going with this scientist but there is two problems that you have and the two problems that you have is one we don't matter that's nihilism that's that's the niche you know we don't matter because if all that exists is the material world and all I am is a collection of atoms all you are is a collection of atoms I'm no more valuable than this coffee mug it's we're just atoms colliding it's all it is everything that happens is physical there

45:48is no there is no value in human life nihilism and then the other problem is in the epistemology problem you can't know anything to be true because your own thought processes are just chemical reactions there is no freedom of will there is no none of that and what the what the philosophers did a lot of the ones that were mentioned in this in this lecture a manual con hegel was not mentioned kirk garb was mentioned the cart was mentioned what the philosophers did is they collectively over time develop a system where they said you know we're just going to get rid of reason altogether we're just going to we're going to divide the field of knowledge into two categories an objective and the subjective realm and we're going to put the things like faith values meaning all that those will be subjective categories true for you not true for me categories and then we'll put scientific facts and mathematical equations that'll be our objective reality and that worked for a while but as we've seen in the last you know five years even that's gone I mean gender for example you're

46:54you're gender is not real that's biology but no it's you determined for yourself mathematics are now a byproduct of the patriarchy and yeah everything now is subjective and you can't hold a world together like that I think I think it was highlighted Zach by a little thank oh COVID-19 that shows you about something that supposedly is objective that became very subjective depending on who's in charge so we're out of time but we'll pick it up because man there's a lot more to be said that we didn't get to so we'll pick it up in our last lecture for the out of D101 next time on Unashamed for Hillsdale take the course with us onashamedforhillsdale.com join us every Friday for Unashamed Academy powered by Hillsdale College make sure to go to unashamedforhillsdale.com and sign up it's no cost to you that's unashamedforhillsdale.com and don't miss an episode of the Unashamed podcast by subscribing on YouTube and be sure to click the little bell and choose all notifications to watch every episode