Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Melissa Dougherty: Many Celebrate Easter, Not The Resurrection?

Transcript

Melissa Dougherty: Many Celebrate Easter, Not The Resurrection? · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
• 0:10
  defending biblical Christianity, no topic, off limits.
• 0:16
  And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
• 0:20
  Friends, family, and Christ, thank you so much for tuning in.
• 0:23
  Praise God for another episode, another great topic, and another great guest.
• 0:27
  You know, I call Easter Resurrection Season, and I purposely do that for a reason.
• 0:32
  We're going to talk about a new children's book.
• 0:34
  It's very important for Christian families to get their hands on.
• 0:37
  And my guest today is Melissa Doherty.
• 0:39
  She's been on with us before.
• 0:41
  She's got a brand new book out.
• 0:43
  The website is madetheway.com.
• 0:45
  The book is called The Day That Made The Way.
• 0:51
  I love it.
• 0:52
  Love the topic.
• 0:53
  Melissa's an author, aologist, content creator.
• 0:55
  She lives in New Mexico with her husband and two daughters.
• 0:59
  She's best known for her YouTube challenge.
• 1:01
  She's a great apologist and her testimony of leaving a new thought and new age spirituality.
• 1:07
  She's also the author of Happy Lies, and we had her on, I think it was last year to talk
• 1:11
  about that, but today, brand new book, This Is Hot Off The Presses.
• 1:15
  I mean, it's really hot because it just came out the day that made the way.
• 1:20
  Melissa, welcome back to World View Matters.
• 1:22
  So good to see you.
• 1:24
  Yeah, thanks for having me back.
• 1:25
  It's good to be here.
• 1:26
  So first, let's talk about the difference as you kind of indicated before we got on the
• 1:30
  podcast in writing a heavier book and Happy Lies and all that that covered.
• 1:37
  And now a children's book, but yet on such an important topic, go ahead and share your
• 1:42
  experience in that.
• 1:43
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:44
  Happy Lies was the hardest project I've ever done in my life.
• 1:48
  I always say that because it was.
• 1:49
  It took like two to three years from the beginning to the end, I feel like I've been writing
• 1:56
  it my whole life.
• 1:57
  You know, it's one of those, you know what I mean?
• 1:58
  It's been one of those books and it still is.
• 2:01
  It's one of those topics that surrounds what I do as an apologist and things that I study.
• 2:08
  It's about the new thought movement, which is what I was a part of.
• 2:11
  And there's a theme in Happy Lies throughout the life, throughout the book about light,
• 2:16
  right?
• 2:17
  There's a, there's a full slight, right?
• 2:18
  How Satan is described in scripture as, as he masquerades as an angel of light.
• 2:25
  It's a false dark light.
• 2:26
  And I'm like, man, that's a good theme.
• 2:28
  And so I kind of had this idea, actually, it was a, it wasn't my idea.
• 2:35
  I took it and I ran with it.
• 2:37
  But my, one of my marketing, my marketing director, he names Katie and she's amazing.
• 2:42
  And she came up with this, hey, don't be afraid of the light, you know, like, don't be
• 2:47
  afraid of the dark, but don't be afraid of the light.
• 2:49
  And I loved that.
• 2:50
  And I took it and I ran with it.
• 2:51
  And that theme carries over into the, the day that made the way.
• 2:56
  It's for more elementary, maybe early middle school.
• 3:00
  And even my 15 year old likes it though.
• 3:02
  And it's with brave books and brave books is a great, a great company for, for children.
• 3:13
  If you're looking for somebody that is going to give you solid content for your children,
• 3:18
  it's going to be brave books.
• 3:19
  They reached out to me late last year and said, hey, you know, we're thinking of a Christian
• 3:23
  allegory, or an Eastern allegory book and it's not just for Easter though, right?
• 3:28
  It's a gospel allegory.
• 3:30
  Yes.
• 3:31
  And yeah.
• 3:32
  And so we went back and forth, came up with some ideas, the artist nailed it.
• 3:36
  She did so good with the art.
• 3:39
  And yeah, it's just an allegory, an easy allegory, simple to describe what the gospel is in
• 3:47
  a way that kids can easily understand.
• 3:50
  Interesting, because I just read 1 Corinthians 15 this morning.
• 3:54
  And just the first eight, I think, eight or 10 verses, but maybe we'll get to that.
• 3:59
  But I want to just mention and have people understand why this is an important book.
• 4:03
  You said it.
• 4:05
  Because we, the American church, often have this cultural idea of what Easter is.
• 4:11
  That's why I like to call it resurrection season, the book, the day that made the way.
• 4:17
  What day?
• 4:18
  Resurrection day and that made the way.
• 4:20
  Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
• 4:23
  No one comes to the Father except through him.
• 4:25
  Now let's get back to some stats I got before we brought you on here, Melissa, nearly 80%
• 4:31
  of Americans plan to celebrate Easter, right?
• 4:33
  A 2025 life way study finds that while most Americans associate Easter with family traditions
• 4:40
  and enjoyment, far fewer can actually articulate the resurrection as its central meeting,
• 4:48
  the meaning of Easter.
• 4:51
  What happened?
• 4:52
  Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
• 4:54
  Well, you know, it's always so interesting to me because I think that it just, it got
• 4:58
  commercialized.
• 4:59
  Commerce does what commerce does.
• 5:00
  Yep.
• 5:01
  Right?
• 5:03
  We do this with other things too, like imagine for a second, if we did this with Hanukkah,
• 5:07
  right?
• 5:08
  Where nobody knew what Hanukkah was for, nobody really understood the background of it.
• 5:13
  But hey, for these seven days, you know, we're going to do this and, you know, it's like,
• 5:18
  oh, and it represents togetherness and faith and all these things that are at the end of
• 5:23
  the day kind of secular, but they represent maybe what would be considered good, right?
• 5:30
  So I kind of take that and I run with it, you know, it's like it's a good thing to spend
• 5:33
  time with your family.
• 5:35
  It's great to talk about wholesome things, you know, on Easter Sunday, but it is the best
• 5:40
  time of year to talk about really what Christianity really stands for.
• 5:45
  And I think this is where we can really shine and put forth what makes Jesus so different
• 5:54
  from every other belief system, any other spirituality, you know, and I think that
• 5:59
  that's ultimately kind of what we do.
• 6:03
  I don't think that, and it's a spiritual battle, we take things and we try to see, okay,
• 6:08
  what can, what can we throw into the free market and see what happens, right?
• 6:12
  What can we see?
• 6:14
  We see this opportunity to, you know, commercialize this and, you know, and I think the same things
• 6:19
  happen with Christmas and part of it's fun and part of it's fine, but ultimately it
• 6:23
  is a Christian, it is a Christian holiday, it's a, it's a holy day for Christians.
• 6:31
  And I, it should represent that and it's the encompassing message of what Christianity
• 6:38
  stands for.
• 6:39
  It's my favorite, personally my favorite holiday.
• 6:41
  I love resurrection day.
• 6:43
  Well, it is.
• 6:44
  I mean, yes, the birth of Christ and the word that became flesh around Christmas that
• 6:47
  we celebrate.
• 6:48
  That's important, but Christianity, I mean, I mean, the world hinges on that empty
• 6:53
  tomb, doesn't it?
• 6:55
  And whether the tomb is empty or not, and that's what we celebrate.
• 6:58
  All the other gods have burial tombs around the world, but Jesus is not in the tomb.
• 7:03
  He is alive, the only living God.
• 7:06
  That's why the spiritual warfare increases too, by the way.
• 7:09
  You said this, you said that Easter hasn't been rejected by the church necessarily, but
• 7:14
  you said that Easter can, can be celebrated without being fully understood.
• 7:20
  And that's such a sad statement, Melissa, that some will celebrate it without understanding
• 7:26
  it.
• 7:27
  But here we have bunnies and Easter eggs and chocolate sails and pastels and everything
• 7:30
  else goes up around this time of year.
• 7:32
  Talk to us a little bit more about that.
• 7:34
  Yeah.
• 7:35
  It kind of mixes together, right?
• 7:36
  You go into Walmart, you go into any store really, even like Christian bookstores, you'll
• 7:40
  find kind of both of them side by side, though arguably, of course, Christian bookstores
• 7:45
  will definitely have more of a Christian message there.
• 7:48
  But you'll find secular next to the spiritual.
• 7:54
  And I always find that really interesting.
• 7:57
  And I kind of lean into that a little bit, okay?
• 7:59
  I understand that a lot of it's been secularized and I'm like, man, that's kind of a bummer.
• 8:03
  But it's really hard to go get your Easter bunny basket without a Jesus book right next
• 8:08
  to it.
• 8:09
  It's kind of cool that you could walk into a store that normally wouldn't care about
• 8:16
  those sorts of things.
• 8:18
  But all of a sudden, you do find these pretty gospel oriented stories that aren't normally
• 8:24
  there, you know?
• 8:25
  And so I kind of like that.
• 8:26
  I do, I do like that.
• 8:27
  I do think that there is an overlap.
• 8:29
  And it is really representative of the world of what we do that we can have this truth mixed
• 8:37
  in with this other stuff that can kind of dilute it.
• 8:40
  Maybe it's not a lie, right?
• 8:42
  But it's a delusion of what it's really about.
• 8:44
  You know what it reminds me of?
• 8:45
  I think it's in second Kings.
• 8:47
  It isn't second Kings.
• 8:48
  There's this scripture where it's talking about how the Israelites had and the pagan nations,
• 8:58
  they had all their other gods, right?
• 9:00
  And they just kind of slapped Yahweh there along with their other gods.
• 9:05
  They're like, okay, well, they worship their other gods along with Yahweh.
• 9:09
  And that's kind of what I see sometimes is, okay, well, we're going to have all this.
• 9:14
  We're not going to get rid of it.
• 9:15
  We're just going to add your stuff into it.
• 9:19
  And honestly, I'd rather see that than, you know, celebration of like Islam, right?
• 9:25
  I'm glad that there's not really like this big Ramadan festival or books or, you know,
• 9:31
  things about, you know, the teachings of Muhammad, you know, I'm glad that that's not
• 9:36
  there.
• 9:37
  But yeah, I kind of see it.
• 9:39
  Maybe it's the optimist in me, but I do walk in there and I'm like, okay, girls, my
• 9:44
  kids especially.
• 9:45
  I'm like, so tell me what you see, you know, tell me what we can do to kind of bring that
• 9:50
  message for and just kind of analyze it from that regard.
• 9:54
  And something else, you mentioned the study before.
• 9:57
  You mentioned my friend Natasha Crane, 80% of people celebrate Easter.
• 10:04
  And for some Christians hearing that, they might think, wow, that's a lot of people
• 10:07
  that, you know, celebrate Easter or, you know, even resurrection date people, Christians,
• 10:11
  right?
• 10:12
  They go to church really twice a year, um, Easter Christmas, yeah, yeah, right?
• 10:17
  I was like, what's the word for that?
• 10:19
  There's a word for them.
• 10:20
  And, but according to a Barnas study, you know, Natasha talks about that she quotes this
• 10:26
  often.
• 10:27
  It's probably why I remember it.
• 10:28
  I've heard so many of her talks and read all of her books, but she said that only four
• 10:33
  per cent, four per cent have a biblical world view.
• 10:37
  Yep.
• 10:38
  And so we are in the minority when it comes to Christians who really take it seriously
• 10:43
  and believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is the, the God in the flesh, that he
• 10:50
  literally rose again from the dead.
• 10:53
  These are beautiful truths that I don't want to miss out on.
• 10:56
  And I think that there's, it's not myth, right?
• 11:00
  It's, it's something that we can historically look at and show this is the Christian message
• 11:07
  and this is what saves.
• 11:08
  Yeah.
• 11:09
  I want to remind people of the link.
• 11:11
  It's made the way dot com.
• 11:13
  That's made the way dot com.
• 11:15
  The book is called the day that made the way.
• 11:19
  So Melissa, do you think that syncretism or religious pluralism play into this, maybe
• 11:25
  confusion in the church wanting to have a little bit of all these different beliefs trying
• 11:30
  to combine together when they really conflict during that cause of some of the confusion?
• 11:35
  100%.
• 11:36
  That was me and it's holy, it's convenient, but you, you have to, you are a walking contradiction
• 11:46
  when you do that.
• 11:47
  You can't, you know, that that's the whole thing is that that's why, that's why I think
• 11:54
  false religions and false belief systems have to neglect critical thinking and reasoning
• 12:00
  because in order to, because all logic is right is getting to what's actually true.
• 12:06
  Like what is true about reality?
• 12:08
  How can you reason?
• 12:10
  Of course, you need faith, but faith is not blind.
• 12:14
  Christian faith is not blind.
• 12:16
  There's always evidence there.
• 12:18
  It's a, it's a, it's a trust.
• 12:20
  Faith is, is a trust.
• 12:22
  And so there's an element there of taking that and realizing, okay, all of these cannot
• 12:29
  be true.
• 12:30
  And so, but the only way you can get to that is to actually dissect them and see them.
• 12:35
  So syncretizing, I call it pickle juice theology.
• 12:40
  That's the word I use for it.
• 12:42
  Pickled juice.
• 12:43
  Yes.
• 12:44
  That's really how I describe syncretism is that say you have a cake recipe, actually
• 12:48
  just made a satire about, about this kind of thing.
• 12:51
  It'll be released next week.
• 12:53
  And so, but the idea is that the jerk is not the person sticking with the cake recipe.
• 13:02
  Okay.
• 13:03
  The jerk is not the person saying, oh, okay, this is what makes a good cake, right?
• 13:07
  These, these ingredients are, are what's known in, in, in this cake.
• 13:12
  And then you have the actual jerk coming over with the pickle juice saying, no, no, no,
• 13:17
  we need to add this into the cake mix.
• 13:19
  We have to, you know, and, and, and, and we've got to mix it together to be inclusive,
• 13:24
  all right, because this is what this other person's, that other person's ingredient needs
• 13:28
  to go in here.
• 13:30
  And what you end up with is just pickle juice theology.
• 13:33
  It's, it's syncretism.
• 13:35
  And it's a mess.
• 13:36
  Sure you look inclusive.
• 13:37
  You look, you know, loving and you look accepting, but the end game of what your beliefs actually
• 13:44
  are is garbage.
• 13:46
  It doesn't make sense.
• 13:48
  So if you're going to believe something, believe in it all the way, believe in it hard and
• 13:53
  defend it.
• 13:54
  But if you can't, then you have to look at the conclusion of your belief and then adjust.
• 13:59
  And that's what people don't want to do.
• 14:00
  I've, I've, I've come to the conclusion that people lean into syncretism, not because
• 14:05
  it's true, but because it ultimately makes them feel like they're not the bad guy.
• 14:13
  It's selfishness.
• 14:15
  They don't care about truth.
• 14:16
  They just want to feel better.
• 14:18
  They don't want to feel like they're hurting anybody's feelings.
• 14:21
  And that was me.
• 14:22
  I know a lot of people like that.
• 14:24
  I've had to deal with it.
• 14:26
  There's a lot of emotion that's involved in it.
• 14:29
  And so for me personally, it's been helpful to know why people lean into pluralism or syncretism
• 14:38
  because it helps me take down my defenses and it helps me know what's true.
• 14:42
  We're talking about so many different things that are important here.
• 14:46
  Use the word inclusive and that, just the misunderstanding of that or how the church
• 14:52
  maybe sees that as compassion, misplaced compassion when we've got to be very careful when
• 14:57
  you talk about other religions or doctrines or theologies when you use that word inclusive.
• 15:02
  And I think that's in part what you're explaining that there is a danger when you start wanting
• 15:07
  to maybe not offend or to include someone else, but doctrinally, we've got to take a stand
• 15:14
  on the inherent scriptures and the word of God and the Bible that we claim to believe
• 15:19
  in.
• 15:20
  And then we're going to get back to the Easter message, which is what your book is about
• 15:23
  the day that made the way.
• 15:25
  I think a lot of people don't know how to understand it because they don't study the evidence.
• 15:31
  They don't think of when you think about Easter, maybe the Easter egg, yeah, you open it
• 15:37
  up and there's no can.
• 15:38
  Okay, it's a symbol of the empty tune.
• 15:39
  I get it.
• 15:40
  But then they don't think about why and they don't think about Jesus' appearances.
• 15:44
  They don't think about why he appeared to James, his half brother, right?
• 15:50
  And James was a skeptic until the resurrection and then he became a pillar in the early church,
• 15:55
  the Jerusalem church.
• 15:56
  That's huge little things like that.
• 15:59
  Could you speak to that maybe the, whether it's eyewitness testimony or the evidence or
• 16:03
  whatever you want to share about the resurrection?
• 16:07
  Yeah, I love that.
• 16:10
  The gospel story, the eyewitness accounts are fascinating to me because I remember many
• 16:17
  years ago learning about why this was even important.
• 16:21
  I didn't get it.
• 16:22
  I was like, okay, big deal, you know, why they could have made it up, right?
• 16:26
  And that's that was kind of my posture is like, okay, I need to try to destroy this argument.
• 16:30
  I know that sounds weird, but that's ultimately what we do when we wrestle with something, we
• 16:35
  need to give it all we got and then figure out what's true about it.
• 16:39
  And then you accept that, right?
• 16:42
  And there was this element of, okay, why did the eyewitness accounts matter?
• 16:47
  And the biggest thing was that people, we die for what we think is true, right?
• 16:55
  Like the 9-11 terrorists, okay, they really believe they thought what they were doing
• 16:59
  was true and right and good and people die for what they believe all the time.
• 17:03
  But people don't die for something they know is a lie.
• 17:07
  It's a very, very big difference.
• 17:10
  And especially multiple people, that's, it's not just one person, it's the fact that Jesus
• 17:16
  said, hey, I'm going to rise again.
• 17:19
  And even in the gospel account, it says, hey, they said, protect the body, which is great.
• 17:25
  It's wonderful that they did that because it even proves that even more, protect the
• 17:29
  body because they said that Jesus is going to rise again.
• 17:31
  So make sure that they don't go steal the body.
• 17:34
  And that's the thing is that even skeptics, okay, even skeptics concede, they don't,
• 17:41
  they don't know, okay, but he didn't rise again, all right?
• 17:44
  Because that's the whole idea is that all these accounts are saying there's nobody and
• 17:50
  the Christians, the disciples are saying it's because he rose again.
• 17:54
  They, I saw him, I talked with him, I'll look at Paul over here, you know, all this evidence,
• 18:00
  because eyewitness accounts, all right, of this, this very supernatural thing that this
• 18:07
  is how they explain what happened to the body.
• 18:10
  And there's all these different theories.
• 18:13
  And it's so interesting to me that, and I had to write a paper on this in seminary because
• 18:18
  I had already a conclusion on it and the conclusion was out of all of these theories that they
• 18:24
  came up with to explain what happened to the body.
• 18:28
  The consensus is we don't know, we don't know, but he didn't rise again from the dead.
• 18:34
  And so me, I'm like, that's so weak, like that's so weak.
• 18:37
  And so you got to think if the resurrection never happened, there would be no church, there
• 18:42
  would be no Christianity.
• 18:46
  And the reason why a lot of Christians claim to the truth of Christianity is not because
• 18:51
  it's convenient, but because it is true, that the explanation for the missing body,
• 18:57
  the empty tomb, is because Jesus Christ came and claimed to be the Son of God, died for
• 19:05
  the sins of mankind, paid his sin debt that we could not pay, which is why he had to
• 19:10
  come in the first place, and rose again to prove that he was God.
• 19:17
  And it has a lot to do with the resurrection and in the end of days as well.
• 19:21
  I mean, there's a reason why Jesus rose audily from the dead.
• 19:25
  This was not a spiritual thing.
• 19:26
  This wasn't some gnostic nonsense.
• 19:28
  This was a physical bodily resurrection.
• 19:33
  And God wants Eden back, right?
• 19:36
  That's the whole point.
• 19:37
  God didn't have to create a physical world.
• 19:40
  And it's so interesting to me to see those parallels of what's being ruined and the
• 19:44
  physical resurrection is one of them.
• 19:47
  But yeah, the eyewitness accounts, the, you know, James, the disciples, Paul's conversion.
• 19:55
  It all comes together in this beautiful story that, yes, Jesus rose again from the dead.
• 20:00
  And because he did, we do what we do today.
• 20:03
  And there are so many specifics to me in the Bible names names.
• 20:06
  I mean, who he appeared to and where on the road to Emmaus and the over 500 brethren,
• 20:12
  most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote first Corinthians 15, right?
• 20:16
  I mean, these are big things.
• 20:18
  You couldn't refute that if all these believers were around that saw Jesus, the resurrected
• 20:22
  Christ.
• 20:23
  Anyway, I'm getting excited about this.
• 20:25
  Well, and all they had to do was produce a body.
• 20:27
  See, that's the thing.
• 20:28
  Yeah.
• 20:29
  That's all they had to do.
• 20:30
  I'm like, if it was, they sealed the tomb.
• 20:32
  Exactly.
• 20:33
  And so it's like, that's how you solve the problem.
• 20:36
  And even the skeptics, that's another very interesting thing is that if you're looking
• 20:41
  at the, you know, the ancient Jewish writings and all the other, what are they saying?
• 20:45
  What are the people that disagree, say?
• 20:49
  Here's what they'll say.
• 20:50
  Okay, either it was stolen, either, you know, he's still alive, right, the swoon theory.
• 20:57
  He never really died or whatever it is, okay?
• 21:01
  But all of them agree.
• 21:03
  Where did the body go?
• 21:04
  Exactly.
• 21:05
  Where's the body?
• 21:06
  Yeah.
• 21:07
  That's the thing is that there's silence of, there is no body, you know what I mean?
• 21:14
  It really proves the whole point, the disciples are like, there is nobody because he rose
• 21:19
  again.
• 21:20
  It's such an interesting study, yeah, the resurrection is fascinating.
• 21:25
  It just reminds us that it is an act of the will when it comes, when it all comes down
• 21:29
  to because some people don't want to believe despite all the evidence, truth, empty tomb.
• 21:35
  It is empty.
• 21:36
  It's still empty.
• 21:37
  It was empty at that time.
• 21:38
  There were witnesses, even extra biblical testimony.
• 21:42
  I think Josephus mentioned it, but anyway, there are other people, historians that mentioned
• 21:47
  that, yeah, they say that the tomb was empty, whatever, but people don't want to believe.
• 21:51
  I mean, I think they tried to do all these things to convince themselves.
• 21:55
  It didn't happen.
• 21:56
  But I want to get back to something about the church and the lack of preaching and how
• 22:00
  it's affected maybe our either belief in or celebration of resurrection day Easter.
• 22:07
  Why do you think a lot of churches and parents struggle to clearly explain sin, grace and salvation?
• 22:18
  I think they complicate it, and I think they kind of see it as, like I mentioned logic
• 22:25
  and critical thinking before, I think they need to be a philosopher or something to know
• 22:31
  logic and stuff.
• 22:32
  I'm like, you're using logic right now, right?
• 22:35
  The other part of it is that there's under complicating it, and then there's over complicating
• 22:39
  it where maybe they've been wrong, right, where they think, oh, I thought this was grace.
• 22:47
  Oh, I thought this was mercy.
• 22:48
  Oh, I thought this was the gospel.
• 22:51
  I think that there is something to be said about the confusion surrounding these very
• 22:59
  beautiful spiritual doctrines.
• 23:03
  The idea is that if you can understand them in a biblical sense, which a lot of people
• 23:09
  don't do, they kind of don't grasp at it.
• 23:12
  We have become so conformed in our culture to think, well, what does this mean to me?
• 23:19
  Right?
• 23:20
  Yeah, yeah.
• 23:21
  We read the Bible to know about us, not really to understand who God is, and I think that's
• 23:27
  a big problem.
• 23:29
  Because then, yeah, like we shift the narrative, and this is what we do.
• 23:35
  We go and we read the Bible, and I've personally seen this in a lot of groups, and there's
• 23:41
  frustration there where I will go, and I'm like, okay, well, let's look at, I don't
• 23:47
  know, the book of Hebrews or John or whatever, and find out what it actually says.
• 23:52
  What is this trying to tell us who wrote it?
• 23:54
  Why?
• 23:55
  Where?
• 23:56
  What's the message that we can draw and struggle with from Scripture?
• 24:00
  Yeah.
• 24:01
  They don't want to do that.
• 24:02
  The idea is, well, how does this apply to my life?
• 24:06
  There's always application, right?
• 24:08
  But this is typically what we do is, well, what does that have to do with me?
• 24:12
  Susan, it's not about you, okay?
• 24:15
  It's about understanding what this actually says, so you understand what grace is.
• 24:20
  So you understand who Jesus is, so that when your 15-year-old comes to you and has a crisis
• 24:27
  of faith, you'll be like, son, no, no, let me explain this to you.
• 24:31
  So and so said that that's what the gospel is, that ain't right, let me open up Scripture
• 24:35
  and show you what it says, okay, this is what it means, right?
• 24:39
  We're so concerned about our kids falling away, and all these other things when we don't
• 24:43
  understand the basics, and it's so easy to understand.
• 24:46
  So if we have that paradigm shift, if we shift it from, hey, what does this do for me
• 24:52
  to the Bibles about Jesus, right?
• 24:55
  And what do we draw from that about our relationship with him?
• 24:58
  I think that we will understand it so much easier, and it's not hard.
• 25:03
  That's the point.
• 25:04
  The data made the way is so easy a five, six-year-old can understand it.
• 25:09
  It's a very simple allegory, and that is the idea, is that you're dirty, okay?
• 25:16
  You're dirty, you're filled with crud and grime, and Jesus is the light.
• 25:21
  And this is why I end the whole book with John 3.
• 25:24
  It's John 3, 16 is great, but keep reading, because yeah, you know what I'm getting at?
• 25:30
  The verdict is that the light came into the world, but everybody loved their darkness.
• 25:36
  They love their sin, they love their dirtiness, but they don't think they're dirty.
• 25:40
  That's the point.
• 25:41
  They love it.
• 25:43
  It would be afraid of the light, because people don't want to go into the light,
• 25:47
  because their sins are going to be exposed.
• 25:49
  No, run into that light, because that's where truth is.
• 25:52
  Truth is light, but people love the darkness.
• 25:55
  They love their lies, their happy lies.
• 25:59
  And so that's the whole point.
• 26:00
  A child can understand it.
• 26:02
  So if we're complicating it, and we're, a lot of it has to do with understanding
• 26:08
  hermenutically and contextually, what scripture is saying, and it's most simplest sense.
• 26:13
  A child can understand it, you can understand it.
• 26:16
  Don't be afraid of the light, hate your sin, love the light.
• 26:20
  Praise God, Melissa, I'm so glad you wrote this book.
• 26:23
  The day that made the way, and again, the website, to go directly to Brave Books,
• 26:28
  madetheway.com, that's madetheway.com.
• 26:34
  Man, there's some guests that we have on that I wish we could go an hour or more,
• 26:39
  but it goes by so fast, but we got the bullet points out.
• 26:42
  We talked about some really important issues with the church and understanding the gospel,
• 26:46
  and Easter, we call resurrection day, a resurrection season.
• 26:49
  Melissa, God bless your ministry.
• 26:51
  Thanks for all you do.
• 26:52
  We appreciate your time today.
• 26:53
  Congrats on the book.
• 26:54
  Thank you.
• 26:55
  Thanks for having me back on.
• 26:56
  You're most welcome.
• 26:57
  Lord of William, we'll do it again.
• 26:59
  Friends, madetheway.com.
• 27:00
  I forgot to give you her site, it's MelissaDowardy.co, and you can get her on, you can go to YouTube
• 27:07
  as well.
• 27:08
  She got a lot of great videos.
• 27:09
  I love once she did with Katie Faust recently, 10 years after gay marriage, the consequences.
• 27:15
  But friends, also remember the worldviewmattersconference.com, worldviewmattersconference.com, May 1st and 2nd, 12 Speakers, Green Bay, Delta Hotel.
• 27:24
  We're going to see how that goes, and maybe we'll do an annual one.
• 27:27
  Anyway, God bless you, and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
• 27:31
  See you next time.