Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Wes Huff's BEST MOMENT on Andrew Schulz (and 15 other KILLER Lines) || SLP585

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Wes Huff's BEST MOMENT on Andrew Schulz (and 15 other KILLER Lines) || SLP585 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:03
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0:12
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1:15
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1:23
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1:26
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1:31
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1:47
SPEAKER_01: So that's the 321 podcast, which is our brand new podcast, and as Glenn mentioned, you can check it out wherever you get your podcasts.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: But now over to what you're here for in this episode of the Speak Life Podcast.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: My name's Thomas Tharragut, Media Producer at Speak Life, and it is my great pleasure to bring you this episode about Wes Huff's recent appearance on the Andrew Schultz podcast.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: Andrew Schultz is a comedian and actor, and he has a huge podcast called Flagrant.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: And he had Wes Huff, Christian, on the podcast, along with lots of other co-hosts, and they had a three-hour-long conversation about the Bible and Jesus and faith.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: It covers so many areas.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: And Glenn is going to kind of take you through what happened in that conversation and also what we can learn from it as Christians.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: So I hope you enjoy this episode, and I will hand straight over to Glenn Scriven.
2:49
SPEAKER_05: I'll see you in hell, buddy.
2:52
SPEAKER_06: When Wesha debated Billy Carson, everything changed for him.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: When you refer to the Sinai Bible, would you be referring to Codex Sinaticus?
3:00
SPEAKER_06: His social media blew up, people started to find Christ, and Joe Rogan found Wes.
3:05
SPEAKER_06: What do you think of the historical person of Jesus?
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, it certainly seems like there's a lot of people that believe that there was this very exceptional human being that existed.
3:16
SPEAKER_06: Since then, there have been some amazing doors of opportunity opened for Wes, and one of them was to appear on Andrew Schultz's podcast, Flagrant, and Wes Huff went on to talk about everything.
3:27
SPEAKER_06: I really pity whoever came up with the title because they had to kind of summarize three hours of conversation.
3:32
SPEAKER_06: They go with Bible expert on which Christianity is true, the book of Enoch, and if Christmas is pagan.
3:37
SPEAKER_06: And then in the description box it says he breaks down misquoted verses, the myths about Jesus and his travels, why Christianity split so many times, and why Christmas is not a pagan holiday, and that just scratches the surface of all the topics they look at.
3:49
SPEAKER_06: I mean, they genuinely ask him about everything from John the Baptist.
3:53
SPEAKER_04: I'm really interested in this John the Baptist guy, and I don't feel like he gets enough shine.
3:56
SPEAKER_04: Doesn't get the press he deserves.
3:58
SPEAKER_04: To did Jesus visit India?
3:59
SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, did Jesus make it out to India?
4:01
SPEAKER_06: To is homosexuality a mistranslation of the Bible?
4:04
SPEAKER_05: I've heard a lot of people say that gay marriage and gay relations are just mistranslations to a question about Martin Luther and the canon of Scripture.
4:12
SPEAKER_02: What do you think about Martin Luther's removal of the Apocrypha from that original canon?
4:17
SPEAKER_06: Then let's throw in some murder of the Canaanites.
4:19
SPEAKER_02: The murder of the Canaanites.
4:21
SPEAKER_02: Why doesn't God do anything about the evil in the world?
4:24
SPEAKER_02: I would actually argue this is an example of God doing something about the evil in the world.
4:27
SPEAKER_02: To lighten the tone, someone asks for some jokes from the Bible.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: I mean the bears killing those killing the kids is always like.
4:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, Elijah, go up bald head.
4:36
SPEAKER_02: Um and he sends the she bears after them to kill them.
4:40
SPEAKER_06: Then why does Jesus curse a fig tree?
4:42
SPEAKER_02: That's allegorical to the leaders of Jerusalem.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: What does scripture say hell is?
4:47
SPEAKER_02: What does the scripture say hell is?
4:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's it's separation.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: It's separation from God.
4:53
SPEAKER_02: And what about the hardening of Pharaoh's heart?
4:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, why doesn't he get the same forgiveness?
4:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, to accomplish God's will.
4:58
SPEAKER_06: And genuinely, that is only a fraction of the questions that were asked to Wes from all sides.
5:03
SPEAKER_06: And when I say from all sides, he really was surrounded.
5:06
SPEAKER_06: On the far left of your screen is Alex Media, he is an agnostic.
5:10
SPEAKER_06: Next to him is Mark Gagnan, and he is a Christian.
5:13
SPEAKER_06: Directly to Wes's left, to our right, is Andrew Schultz, he's the host of the Flagrant Podcast.
5:19
SPEAKER_06: He seems to be on a spiritual journey and seems to be warming up to the gospel.
5:22
SPEAKER_06: He asks some excellent questions and makes some excellent comments as well.
5:25
SPEAKER_06: And then on the right of our screens is Arkash Singh.
5:28
SPEAKER_06: He grew up Hindu but is very much a pluralist in the way that he uh sees different religions.
5:32
SPEAKER_06: Uh Arkash was not picking up what Wes Huff was laying down, and we'll see that as we go on.
5:38
SPEAKER_06: So Wes Huff is surrounded by different people with very different religious views.
5:42
SPEAKER_06: Um even some of the producers and editors in the studio start asking him questions, and I think he did a phenomenal job.
5:50
SPEAKER_06: And in this video, if you're not convinced by the claims of Christianity, I want to show you some of the most convincing parts that I found of what Wes said on the podcast.
5:59
SPEAKER_06: I I thought he did a fantastic job, especially around the two-hour mark.
6:03
SPEAKER_06: And if you do happen to be a Christian and you enjoy sharing your faith with others, I want to give you three things that you can learn from Wes from this video.
6:12
SPEAKER_06: There are things Wes did in this video that you can't do and I can't do.
6:17
SPEAKER_06: There are things that Wes did in this video that you and I can do.
6:21
SPEAKER_06: Uh, and then thirdly, I want to think about there are things that you and I can do when we're talking to our friends about the faith that Wes couldn't do in this video.
6:29
SPEAKER_06: Okay?
6:29
SPEAKER_06: But if you want to see Wes at his most persuasive, let's uh have a look at around about the two-hour 19-minute mark, and we'll see Wes in full flow as he describes the difference between Christianity and other world religions.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: When I study world religions, I I come up with this conclusion that all world religion or all worldview perspectives are some form of survival of the fittest, in that it's a do this, feel this, or think this.
6:57
SPEAKER_02: Right?
6:57
SPEAKER_02: It's do this pragmatism, it's feel this emotionalism, or it's think this intellectualism, right?
7:02
SPEAKER_02: You need to be the best at the knowledge, you need to, you know, be the most spiritual, you need to do the most things.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: And it's one or a combination of those things, right?
7:16
SPEAKER_02: Christianity is the opposite of that in that it says you can't feel, think, or do good enough.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: Right?
7:26
SPEAKER_02: So it's not about that.
7:27
SPEAKER_02: It's not do and you'll be accepted, feel and you'll be accepted, think and you'll be accepted.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: It's God has stepped out of eternity and into humanity in the second person of the Trinity in Jesus, and now you're accepted.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: Now you can think, now you can feel, now you can do, but it's not on your shoulders.
7:46
SPEAKER_04: I get that it's supposed to alleviate it, but in order for it to alleviate it, you first have to accept that you're a piece of sh.
7:53
SPEAKER_04: And what if you don't feel like you're a piece of sh?
7:56
SPEAKER_04: Right.
7:56
SPEAKER_04: So now I have to stop feeling good about myself and I have to convince myself that I am a piece of sh just as much as a murderer, children.
8:04
SPEAKER_04: Right.
8:04
SPEAKER_04: Just just so somebody else can get me back to not somebody else, God can get me back to feeling good about myself.
8:11
SPEAKER_04: And uh, I think that that really works for people who feel like they're a piece of sh all the time.
8:16
SPEAKER_04: But if you don't feel like a piece of sh to convince yourself that you are, and the only way out of your piece of sh is to believe in this one person who will then through that belief convince you to do the good and kind acts that you were already doing prior.
8:31
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I can see how that's like a heavy weight for people to take on.
8:36
SPEAKER_04: I I would say there's this dichotomy.
8:38
SPEAKER_04: And keep in mind, I'm framing this as someone who was not raised religiously and does feel like a good person.
8:45
SPEAKER_04: And I think there's been this part of me.
8:47
SPEAKER_04: Um, I think there's probably this part of me that's that's quite naive, definitely based on your description, which is that you know what, because I do believe in something, I'm like, yeah, God knows my heart, and you know, I I I try to live.
9:00
SPEAKER_04: What is Pascal's wager?
9:02
SPEAKER_04: Would have like, and I try to live as if there is a God, and I try to do the things that uh are good in the world, and those are probably prescribed to me through religion in some way, shape, or form.
9:13
SPEAKER_04: But it it would be tough for me to accept this.
9:15
SPEAKER_04: And I don't think that I'm perfect in any way.
9:18
SPEAKER_04: I do actually accept the fact that there is like sin in me, and there are these, and I'm fighting those natural instincts.
9:24
SPEAKER_04: So I think the only way I can be good is if I'm just like right that guy, like so.
9:28
SPEAKER_02: It's not that that's the only way you can be good.
9:30
SPEAKER_02: And it's not simply that you're a piece of sh.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: I think if it was that, then then I think we would have a problem.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: Right.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: I think what the Bible says, particularly in that creation story, right, is that you are created with purpose and meaning and intention, and it is good.
9:46
SPEAKER_02: You actually bear the image of God, and there's something about that that is special.
9:50
SPEAKER_02: So, in one sense, you're more of a piece of sh than you can imagine, but also you're more loved and more capable of amazing things than you can imagine.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: And that's the dichotomy of Christianity, is that God does not need to create, right?
10:05
SPEAKER_02: So God lives in a set of living, loving relationships in the Trinity.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: He has existed eternally in relationship and in love.
10:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:13
SPEAKER_02: But that's what John says in 1 John.
10:15
SPEAKER_02: God is love.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: And so God does not need to create in order to experience anything.
10:20
SPEAKER_02: Creation is an outpouring of his love.
10:22
SPEAKER_02: Now, this is different than, say, a unitarian monotheistic faith like Islam.
10:26
SPEAKER_02: In Islam, in one sense, philosophically, God does need to create to experience love.
10:32
SPEAKER_02: Because love requires an object and a subject.
10:35
SPEAKER_02: And so, in order to feel love, the unitarian God of something like Islam needs the subject, right?
10:44
SPEAKER_02: And the object in order to feel that.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: That's not true for Christianity.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: Because the Spirit and the Father, the Father has been loving the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit forever.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: Yet he chooses to create as an outpouring of his love, knowing full well that they the creation will rebel against him because God loves us so much.
11:10
SPEAKER_02: So if it's only your piece of shit, that's a problem.
11:12
SPEAKER_02: That's a problem theology for I think what the Bible actually says.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: And the piece of shitness, this is a theological term.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: Of course.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: I went to seminary, um, is that we brought that into the world, right?
11:25
SPEAKER_02: So when when the garden and the fruit, if you want to take that literally, or like uh we want to do the Jordan Peterson thing, whatever, what we get though, is that God knows what's best for our flourishing.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: And when it says that you will know the difference between good and evil, it's less of like an intellectual understanding of what good and evil are, and more of a choosing the shots on our own terms.
11:52
SPEAKER_02: I, even though God created me and knows all things, I actually think I know better.
11:57
SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna eat the fruit because I I will I think that that's better for me.
12:01
SPEAKER_02: And that's what sin is.
12:02
SPEAKER_02: You see, people do this all the time.
12:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they decide what God cares about the most.
12:06
SPEAKER_06: So West here begins setting up his view of different faiths uh as that they're all kind of survival of the fittest, apart from one, and we'll get to uh the the way in which Christianity is not the survival of the fittest, but in in fact the inverse of that.
12:20
SPEAKER_06: But as he's sort of beginning to lay that out, uh Andrew kind of brings his objection, and his objection is you gotta feel like a piece of S in order to be a Christian.
12:31
SPEAKER_06: Uh and and Wes is going to step back a little bit from here, and he's going to lay out the Christian vision for the gospel, which I think will put Andrew's question in um in some much better context.
12:45
SPEAKER_06: One thing that occurred to me to say to Andrew when he said, you know, I I think of myself as a good person, I don't want to have to start thinking of myself as a as a piece of S, um, is just just to ask the sociological question, as we have de-Christianized, has it made people feel more like pieces of S or less like pieces of S?
13:03
SPEAKER_06: And I think the answer to that question is it's made us actually, our mental health has gone down as de-Christianization has continued apace.
13:12
SPEAKER_06: Lower church attendance does seem to be correlating with lower mental health outcomes as well.
13:17
SPEAKER_06: So whatever Christianity is saying, it doesn't actually do what Andrew fears it will do, which is to give us a terrible sense of self.
13:26
SPEAKER_06: Actually, to be told that you are merely a beautiful and unique snowflake in the world hasn't made people more robust in their mental health, has not made them more positive in their outlook on themselves or on life.
13:38
SPEAKER_06: Whatever Christianity is saying, it seems actually to be better for your mental health than whatever the secular story is.
13:44
SPEAKER_06: That's one kind of side issue that I would want to bring up with Andrew at some point.
13:48
SPEAKER_06: But I think Wes quite rightly wants to think in theological terms about the kind of story that actually grounds our sense of self.
13:56
SPEAKER_06: And theologically, Wes is going to go right back to before the beginning of the universe, to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to say that we have been made in the image of this loving God.
14:05
SPEAKER_06: And before we get to Genesis 3, there's Genesis 1.
14:08
SPEAKER_06: Before we get to the fall, there's creation, before we get to our sin, there is the sense of our dignity, there is the sense of our belovedness, actually.
14:16
SPEAKER_06: So Wes does a great job of reframing this idea.
14:19
SPEAKER_06: If you thought that Christianity just tells people they're a piece of S, actually Christianity gives the greatest dignity to the human person you could possibly imagine.
14:27
SPEAKER_06: We're made in the image of a triune God of love.
14:30
SPEAKER_06: We have fallen from that, but to be fallen implies that there is a height from which we've fallen, and it's a height that is higher than any other conception of the human person.
14:40
SPEAKER_06: Now, of course, to talk about our fallenness is to leave on the table this question of our sin and therefore of God's judgment and therefore of this question of hell.
14:50
SPEAKER_06: So Alex then asks the question, how should we think about hell if we've thought about this God of love?
14:56
SPEAKER_06: Wes gives a great answer, and he's able through this answer to bring people back to that original thought that he began with that Christianity is not about survival of the fittest, but the inversion of survival of the fittest.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: Watch how he does that.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: I think it's beautiful.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: What does the scripture say hell is?
15:11
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's it's separation.
15:13
SPEAKER_02: It's separation from God.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: Like God is not going to force you into his presence into that.
15:19
SPEAKER_02: And if if you are not choosing that, like if you are not in Adam, you're in sorry, if you're not in Christ, you're in Adam.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: So Jesus is called the second Adam, right?
15:28
SPEAKER_02: Adam brings sin into the world and taints everything.
15:31
SPEAKER_02: Christ comes into the world and renews everything.
15:34
SPEAKER_02: And so the gospel message is that you're either going to be found in Adam or in Christ.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: And God is not going to force you into being under Christ's righteousness.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, I still don't deserve that.
15:52
SPEAKER_02: So this is where, like, when I was talking about before all these religious concepts, it's about to do the field of think.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: It's also about mercy or justice.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: Right?
16:03
SPEAKER_02: So I would argue that something like the Eastern philosophies, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, anything that has a reincarnation, that's that's just, right?
16:12
SPEAKER_02: You get what you deserve.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: The good you do in this life, you get in the next life, the bad you do in this life.
16:16
SPEAKER_02: Sort of.
16:17
SPEAKER_02: There's a difference between reincarnation and Hinduism and Buddhism.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: But that aside, it's like just, right?
16:23
SPEAKER_02: But we wouldn't necessarily say that it's merciful.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: You you do get what you deserve.
16:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
16:29
SPEAKER_02: Then there are other religious systems, and to a certain degree, I would pin Islam in that group because every chapter of the Quran, bar one chapter, starts with the Bismalah, God the most merciful, the most benevolent.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: And so in that sense, the God of Islam forgives, but somewhat arbitrarily.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: And it's at the expense of his justice.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: So if you if God will forgive you, but the wrong you've done hasn't actually been paid for.
16:56
SPEAKER_02: His law is kind of just winked at.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: Where Christianity is different is that the punishment that we deserve is taken on God Himself in the person of Jesus.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: And so in that sense, justice is fulfilled.
17:08
SPEAKER_02: And because justice is fulfilled, his law is accomplished.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: And now mercy, so justice is getting what you deserve, mercy is not getting what you deserve, and grace is getting what you don't deserve.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: So because you don't get what you do deserve, which is the punishment, mercy happens, God forgives you, but he doesn't actually, and you don't deserve that either.
17:33
SPEAKER_02: But then he adopts you as his child.
17:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:38
SPEAKER_02: That's grace.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: That's getting what you don't deserve.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: Right.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: And so when I look at something like comparative religious studies, what I see is all of these systems of the survival of the fittest that I talked about before, Christianity is the fittest stepping down and sacrificing himself for the survival of the weakest.
17:55
SPEAKER_02: And that changes things in that mercy and justice are not pitted against each other.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: It's not justice at the expense of mercy, it's not mercy at the expense of justice.
18:04
SPEAKER_02: They're actually accomplished together in the act of the cross, where the self-volunteering of Jesus going to the cross, right?
18:14
SPEAKER_02: He says, No one takes my life from from me, I give it of my own accord.
18:17
SPEAKER_04: This is why forgiveness is uh is an accomplishable goal, even for the most heinous act, because God has already taken on the punishment for that heinous act that that person committed.
18:28
SPEAKER_06: I think Wes laid that out so well.
18:29
SPEAKER_06: And Andrew does seem to be picking up what Wes is laying down.
18:33
SPEAKER_06: Other religions might only be justice or might only be mercy, but how can God be just and merciful at once in Christ, who takes the wrath of God on the cross for us and rises up to give us his righteousness?
18:44
SPEAKER_06: And Andrew gets it that that ensures a just forgiveness.
18:48
SPEAKER_06: And it's all through the triune work of God, the Father who sent the Son in the power of the Spirit to take on our sin, to take on our judgment, to take on our hell, to rise up again and to offer us his righteousness, to offer us adoption into his family, to offer us a filling with his spirit.
19:03
SPEAKER_06: That is the good news.
19:04
SPEAKER_06: And it's kind of the good news of 321.
19:06
SPEAKER_06: Have you come across 321 before?
19:08
SPEAKER_06: It's our evangelistic course, it's our introduction to Jesus.
19:11
SPEAKER_06: You can go to 321course.com right now and check out these truths that Wes is talking about.
19:16
SPEAKER_06: There is a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
19:18
SPEAKER_06: That's the three.
19:18
SPEAKER_06: And then Wes has talked about there are the two Adams.
19:22
SPEAKER_06: There's the first Adam who brings us down into death and curse, and there's the second Adam, Christ, who raises us up into righteousness and life.
19:29
SPEAKER_06: And though we are born one with Adam, we can be one with Jesus.
19:33
SPEAKER_06: That's the three, the two, and the one.
19:34
SPEAKER_06: We take eight videos.
19:35
SPEAKER_06: You can binge it in a couple of hours, or you can do it in eight sessions.
19:38
SPEAKER_06: But why don't you go to 321course.com and you can see what Wes is talking about.
19:42
SPEAKER_06: But that's the heart of what Wes is bringing.
19:44
SPEAKER_06: And I think Andrew here is um really receptive uh to so much of what Wes is saying.
19:51
SPEAKER_06: I think he really impressed me.
19:53
SPEAKER_06: For instance, when Wes was talking about different gospels and how there are different accounts and that might look like there are discrepancies between the different gospels.
20:01
SPEAKER_06: Actually, Andrew is able to see that discrepancies make it more believable.
20:05
SPEAKER_04: Could you argue that there is credibility in the authenticity of the gospel of the gospels because they're the gospitals, those are my favorite because me too.
20:16
SPEAKER_04: It's a serial because they're differing accounts.
20:20
SPEAKER_04: Like if every account was identical, you don't need four accounts.
20:23
SPEAKER_04: The fact that they differ slightly and they don't make the changes to make them match up offers more authenticity to me.
20:30
SPEAKER_02: Well, I I would say if if no, like if you're gonna change it, change it.
20:35
SPEAKER_06: Right?
20:35
SPEAKER_06: They didn't try to collude after the fact, they didn't sort of burn the other three Gospels and just stick with Matthew or whatever it is.
20:42
SPEAKER_06: Apparent discrepancies can make it more believable from one point of view, and that that's one thing that that Andrew said that I was uh really impressed by.
20:50
SPEAKER_06: Also, when the issue of gay marriage came up, Wes makes the point that 21st century Western culture is very different from the culture in which the Bible was written, and he asks us to imagine what Moses would think about our idea of gay marriage, and here's what Andrew Schulz says.
21:07
SPEAKER_02: But like if you went back to Moses and you had two dudes and said, We want to get married, Moses is like for what?
21:13
SPEAKER_02: What?
21:14
SPEAKER_02: He would say, for what?
21:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: Well, that wouldn't be he wouldn't he'd be like, That's not what marriage is.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
21:20
SPEAKER_06: I think that's very insightful.
21:22
SPEAKER_06: Like, what is marriage for?
21:24
SPEAKER_06: And an ancient person is not going to have the same answer to that question as a 21st century Westerner.
21:30
SPEAKER_06: We might think it's obvious what marriage is for, and it's just two people sharing companionship like forever, and at that point, well, of course a man and a man can marry just as a man and a woman can marry.
21:40
SPEAKER_06: But Moses would ask the question, what do you think marriage is for?
21:44
SPEAKER_06: And if marriage is for something else, other than just fulfillment and companionship, then maybe marriage does need to be male-female.
21:51
SPEAKER_06: May maybe marriage can't be gender neutral.
21:54
SPEAKER_06: It's a question worth considering, but the way you'll consider that question is by asking for what?
22:00
SPEAKER_06: Does marriage exist?
22:01
SPEAKER_06: And Andrew Schultz kind of gets that.
22:02
SPEAKER_06: I was very impressed by that.
22:04
SPEAKER_06: I was very impressed also by the way he kind of preached the empty tomb.
22:08
SPEAKER_06: He seems to be very taken by some of the preachers that he's seen online who are preaching the empty tomb.
22:14
SPEAKER_06: And it's stirring stuff when Andrew says it.
22:16
SPEAKER_04: That's a small that I've seen a bunch of pastors on TikTok use.
22:19
SPEAKER_04: It's fire.
22:20
SPEAKER_04: It's like the tomb is empty.
22:21
SPEAKER_03: No, no.
22:22
SPEAKER_03: It's uh uh if you look in Muhammad's tomb, he's in there.
22:26
SPEAKER_03: If you look at Moses' tomb, he's in there.
22:29
SPEAKER_03: If you look at my God's tomb, it's empty.
22:33
SPEAKER_06: It's fire.
22:34
SPEAKER_06: Andrew seems to be a very sincere seeker to me, and and I think this conversation will have done him much good.
22:39
SPEAKER_06: But let's now think about the three things that we can learn if you happen to want to share your faith with other people.
22:45
SPEAKER_06: And the the first thing I think that all of us can learn if we're budding evangelists is that you can't do what Wes did.
22:52
SPEAKER_06: You can't, okay?
22:52
SPEAKER_06: I can't.
22:53
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
22:54
SPEAKER_06: I mean, for a start, you can't bench press what Wes half bench presses, right?
22:58
SPEAKER_04: Like, I've got a bench press here.
22:59
SPEAKER_04: Well, no.
23:00
SPEAKER_04: Oh, okay.
23:00
SPEAKER_04: What why were you about to throw some out?
23:02
SPEAKER_04: Oh, because we could test it.
23:03
SPEAKER_04: 315.
23:04
SPEAKER_06: 315?
23:04
SPEAKER_06: I've done 404 for one.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: What?
23:08
SPEAKER_06: I don't even know what those numbers mean.
23:10
SPEAKER_06: Um I but I'm very certain that I can't do what Wes does.
23:14
SPEAKER_06: I mean, here's a picture of me next to Wes.
23:17
SPEAKER_06: Uh it was taken just one month before he stood next to Joe Rogan.
23:21
SPEAKER_06: Look at those two fine specimens.
23:23
SPEAKER_06: I mean, in terms of physical health, the only similarity between me and Wes is that you can't tell the difference when we're flexing or not.
23:30
SPEAKER_06: Um but but for him, that's much more impressive than for me.
23:35
SPEAKER_06: Okay, you can't bench press what Wes bench pressed.
23:38
SPEAKER_06: But the there are other ways in which Wes is very different from you or I, and and I'm an evangelist and and I try and speak up for the faith.
23:46
SPEAKER_06: But the breadth of knowledge that Wes displays in this three-hour conversation across so many different fields and the specificity and the fact that he just nails it again and again and again.
23:56
SPEAKER_06: I can't do what Wes does, and probably you can't do it either.
24:01
SPEAKER_06: I mean, Wes is just talking about scripts from Old Testament, from New Testament, from intertestamental periods, the Apocrypha, Gnostic Gospels, and then on a dime he'll turn and start talking about church history, church politics, the birth of different denominations, but then out of nowhere, he just gets asked about the pagan roots of Easter and that sort of thing, and just boom, here he is.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: The assimilation of pagan practices, that's a myth.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: How do we get the eggs in Easter?
24:26
SPEAKER_02: Um, that's a middle-aged thing, because eggs were associated with both New Life and uh Spring in Europe.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: It's a European thing.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: Christmas.
24:36
SPEAKER_03: How do we get Santa?
24:38
SPEAKER_02: Uh Santa is like a combination of Saint Nicholas, who is a fourth century bishop, and uh Sinterklaas in Germany.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: I think it's a New York thing.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: I think eventually the Dutch in New York.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: They uh you're gonna take credit for that one?
24:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, yeah, he should.
24:57
SPEAKER_02: He should.
24:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:58
SPEAKER_02: Him and him.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: And and so he like all comes together.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: Um so this doesn't exist prior.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: What?
25:06
SPEAKER_02: The celebration of Christmas.
25:07
SPEAKER_02: Oh no, Christmas goes really old.
25:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: So there's a guy named uh Julius Africanus in the second century who's preoccupied with figuring out how old everything is, and you know, how he gives us the date for the creation of the world, and then he like adds up.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: So part of what he's doing is he's a Christian and he's like, when was Jesus born?
25:30
SPEAKER_06: And on he goes about Julius Africanus.
25:32
SPEAKER_06: Um Wes really knows his stuff.
25:34
SPEAKER_06: And and even the sort of things that I kind of know, um Wes just says with a clarity and with an authority that um I can't do what Wes does, and probably you can't do it either.
25:46
SPEAKER_06: The man is a machine, you can't do what Wes did, I can't do it, you can't do it.
25:50
SPEAKER_06: But here are some things that we can do that Wes did.
25:53
SPEAKER_06: We can use stories, analogies, and pithy sayings that actually convey truth in bite-sized chunks that really deliver.
26:00
SPEAKER_06: Here are 15 different one-sentence answers that Wes gives in the course of the three hours that I'm going to steal when I uh talk to my non-Christian friends, and uh I urge you to steal them too.
26:12
SPEAKER_06: After all, he stole one of these from me, and so I'm sure he wouldn't mind uh if we all stole them from him.
26:16
SPEAKER_06: Number one, if the subject of context within the Bible comes up, and if you're aware that the verse you're discussing actually has a context around it, then why don't you say that context matters in this way?
26:28
SPEAKER_02: You could just translate the text directly, but it's context that's going to tell you the difference between a butt dial and a booty call.
26:36
SPEAKER_02: Even though they might be the same words in Greek or Hebrew, right?
26:39
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: But you could read that and you could be completely misled.
26:42
SPEAKER_04: A butt dial and a booty call.
26:44
SPEAKER_04: Completely different things.
26:47
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so there's versions of that in the it's it's a literature.
26:51
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, totally.
26:52
SPEAKER_06: I mean, that analogy is calibrated for a podcast full of comedians.
26:56
SPEAKER_06: Might not be your cup of tea, but it certainly made its points with Andrew Schultz and the other comedians there.
27:01
SPEAKER_06: There's a difference between a butt dial and a booty call, and the same words can convey two different things depending on context.
27:08
SPEAKER_06: So that's the first little analogy that Wes drops in.
27:11
SPEAKER_06: Number two, Wes is asked which translation of the Bible is the best one to read, and he gives a great one-line answer.
27:17
SPEAKER_02: Because people always ask me, like, what's what's the best translation?
27:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:20
SPEAKER_02: And I I don't know the answer to that.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: Like, the best Bible is the one you're gonna read.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: So just figure out the one that you're gonna read and then read it.
27:25
SPEAKER_02: New international version, baby.
27:27
SPEAKER_06: Isn't that good?
27:28
SPEAKER_06: The best Bible is the one you're actually going to read.
27:30
SPEAKER_06: I think we all know that's a rule of thumb, and Wes uh would draw the line at certain translations, absolutely, but it communicates a great truth.
27:37
SPEAKER_06: The best Bible is the one that you're going to read.
27:39
SPEAKER_06: Number three, when somebody raises pagan myths that have some similarities to Christianity, what can you say?
27:44
SPEAKER_02: Well, why don't you say what Wes says?
27:46
SPEAKER_02: Um, John F.
27:47
SPEAKER_02: Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln were both the presidencies were exactly 100 years apart.
27:53
SPEAKER_02: And Abraham Lincoln had a uh he had an assistant by the name of Kennedy, and Kennedy had an assistant by the name of Lincoln.
28:04
SPEAKER_02: Um both were assassinated by a man who who went by three names, right?
28:08
SPEAKER_02: John Milk's booth and Lee Harvey Oswald.
28:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: Kennedy was assassinated in a Lincoln, yeah, and Lincoln was assassinated in the Ford Theater.
28:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: So, like, if you want to go down the rabbit trail of trying to find all these things, you could argue that John F.
28:23
SPEAKER_02: Kennedy never existed.
28:24
SPEAKER_02: He was just a copy of Lincoln.
28:25
SPEAKER_06: It's a fascinating story, and there are all sorts of parallels to make between those different similarities in story and the similarity of some pagan myths to Christianity.
28:34
SPEAKER_06: Brilliant.
28:35
SPEAKER_06: Number four, if somebody says, Do we take the Bible literally or is it poetic?
28:40
SPEAKER_06: Um, he gives a great analogy here.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: In Flanders Fields, the poppies grow between the crosses row by row.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: And it's this like very passionate story about the graves.
28:49
SPEAKER_02: They're burying their compatriots in the uh between the crosses in Flanders Fields, uh, that there are these poppies that are growing.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: So everybody wears the poppy.
28:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: So is that history or is that poetry?
29:01
SPEAKER_02: Well, the answer is yes.
29:02
SPEAKER_02: Like it's both, right?
29:03
SPEAKER_02: Like it's not, it's not just because it's poetic, it's talking about like these dead people saw sunsets glow days ago, kind of thing.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: So there are there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be interpreted as metaphor.
29:13
SPEAKER_06: The poppies growing row on row.
29:15
SPEAKER_06: Well, are they literally there?
29:16
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
29:16
SPEAKER_06: Is it poetry?
29:18
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
29:18
SPEAKER_06: Can it be all these things at once?
29:20
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
29:21
SPEAKER_06: A great way of communicating how the Bible also can be both literal and poetic.
29:25
SPEAKER_06: What about number five?
29:27
SPEAKER_06: If somebody says that the Bible is violent, Wes has got a great story about that that I think really crystallizes the issue.
29:33
SPEAKER_02: I know a guy who he put little uh like sticky notes in his Bible every time someone was like raped or killed or murdered.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: He's like, the Bible is so violent.
29:44
SPEAKER_02: It's like, no, it's just telling you things that happened.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: So it's not telling you to do it.
29:47
SPEAKER_02: Life is violent.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: Um, so it just depends.
29:51
SPEAKER_02: And then there are some passages that are trickier than others.
29:53
SPEAKER_06: Yes, the Bible contains violence, not because it commands violence, but because it describes this world, and this world is full of violence.
30:01
SPEAKER_06: Notice how Wes could have said that truth without telling the story about the guy with the sticky notes, but as soon as he makes it a story about a guy with sticky notes, you saw the sticky notes in your mind, didn't you?
30:12
SPEAKER_06: It became sticky in your imagination.
30:15
SPEAKER_06: Because it was a story.
30:17
SPEAKER_06: And even though it was a story that lasted only a sentence, it actually drew you into a different world and helped you to see things differently.
30:23
SPEAKER_06: Sixth, what if somebody brings up the Canaanites and warfare against the Canaanites?
30:28
SPEAKER_06: I think Wes actually brings up an issue that you can pose back to your friend as a question.
30:33
SPEAKER_02: In the same vein, a lot of people who accuse, who say to me like, look, there's genocide in the Old Testament, also say things to me like, Well, why doesn't God do anything about the evil in the world?
30:46
SPEAKER_02: I would actually argue this is an example of God doing something about the evil in the world, and that he's using his nation Israel to accomplish the wiping out of this people.
30:55
SPEAKER_06: I think if Wes had more time and if this was a different kind of a conversation, I could I think he could have posed that back as a question.
31:02
SPEAKER_06: Like, if you have a problem with God showing up and judging in the world, isn't that precisely what we sometimes think God should do, i.e., show up and judge in the world?
31:13
SPEAKER_06: And putting that back on the questioner as a question that they can answer, I think, can be very, very fruitful.
31:19
SPEAKER_06: Seventhly, and and I think this was really where the real heat in the conversation came, um, but it was really where people were leaning in in the conversation as well.
31:28
SPEAKER_06: The issue of can non-Christians go to heaven?
31:31
SPEAKER_06: And what happens for the next half an hour, really, is that Wes ends up unpacking two truths that he gets right out of the gate.
31:37
SPEAKER_06: If you're a non-Christian, can you get into heaven?
31:41
SPEAKER_02: Oh, important what I mean by non-Christian.
31:43
SPEAKER_02: I mean if you just don't, yeah, him.
31:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm agnostic.
31:47
SPEAKER_02: So I would say God is not going to force anyone into heaven.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: In that heaven, once again, remember, heaven is not the final destination.
31:59
SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, so essentially, no one comes to the Father but through me, Jesus says.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: Right?
32:05
SPEAKER_02: But C.S.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: Lewis, once again, he says that hell is locked from the inside.
32:10
SPEAKER_02: So I would say that if you have spent your life not living out a life that is what Jesus has called you to do, to be, then Jesus is not going to force you into his presence.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: You're going to go.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: So Lewis also says, Heaven is God's or hell is God saying, Thy will be done.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: So what you want in your life by rejecting Christ is what you're gonna get in the afterlife.
32:43
SPEAKER_06: Do you notice the two truths that Wes gets on the table there?
32:46
SPEAKER_06: One one truth is the exclusivity of Jesus.
32:48
SPEAKER_06: He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.
32:52
SPEAKER_06: The the second truth is that all in hell choose it, and that the doors are locked from the inside.
32:57
SPEAKER_06: And really the next half an hour is Wes kind of unpacking those two truths and and and showing her how they cohere.
33:03
SPEAKER_06: And I guess the way in which they cohere most fundamentally is that Jesus himself is eternal life.
33:09
SPEAKER_06: So to want Jesus is to want eternal life, to not want Jesus is to not want eternal life.
33:13
SPEAKER_06: And in a sense, the next half an hour is the unpacking of that.
33:17
SPEAKER_06: But but Wes gets those two truths out there and he lets them play with one another and he lets the conversation kind of run with those as the guardrails.
33:27
SPEAKER_06: Then the next little analogy that Wes uses is so helpful.
33:30
SPEAKER_06: Um, if somebody says to you, You've got your truth, I've got my truth, what do you say?
33:35
SPEAKER_02: Well, why don't you say what Wes says?
33:38
SPEAKER_02: I think all world religions have these like superficial agreements, but they disagree on the fundamentals, right?
33:45
SPEAKER_02: Who God is, who we are, why we're here, what sin is, what the afterlife is like, how we solve the problem of human flourishing.
33:53
SPEAKER_02: Like all these things are important topics, but Advil and arsenic both come in pill form.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: But it's not the similarities that make you choose one over the other when you have a headache, it's the differences.
34:04
SPEAKER_06: See, not all truth is the same.
34:06
SPEAKER_06: Some is like Advil, or you might say like paracetamol, that kind of stuff.
34:10
SPEAKER_06: And some is like arsenic, like poison.
34:13
SPEAKER_06: And if somebody says you've got your truth and I've got mine, well, maybe those truths are inconsistent, and maybe some truths are more medicinal and some truths are more toxic.
34:21
SPEAKER_06: We need to be more discerning.
34:23
SPEAKER_06: But instead of just saying we need to be more discerning, why don't you tell a story?
34:26
SPEAKER_06: Why don't you paint a picture?
34:27
SPEAKER_06: Why don't you give an analogy, which is what Wes does so often throughout this conversation.
34:31
SPEAKER_06: Number 10, if you want to explain the difference between the law and the gospel, Wes has got you covered.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: The law, the doing good things, is the mirror.
34:39
SPEAKER_02: Don't try to clean yourself with a mirror.
34:41
SPEAKER_02: The mirror shows you how dirty you are, right?
34:43
SPEAKER_06: The law is like a mirror.
34:44
SPEAKER_06: A mirror doesn't clean you up, a mirror just shows you you need to wash.
34:48
SPEAKER_06: But you can't cleanse yourself with a mirror any more than the law can save you.
34:52
SPEAKER_06: It's a profound, soul-saving truth, but it's delivered in the form of a story and an analogy, and this analogy really cuts through.
35:01
SPEAKER_06: These are all things that you can do.
35:03
SPEAKER_06: Wes did it, and you can do it too.
35:05
SPEAKER_06: Uh, that's number 10.
35:06
SPEAKER_06: Number 11, what about those who haven't heard?
35:09
SPEAKER_06: Um, that's a massive question that will come up in your evangelism.
35:13
SPEAKER_06: Um, Wes here just has a line that lands with a certain weight because it's put in a pithy form.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: That's where God, like what I said before, is not going to judge us on what we don't don't know.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: He's gonna judge us on what we do know.
35:27
SPEAKER_06: Did you hear that land in the room?
35:28
SPEAKER_06: People were like, oh yeah, yeah, God will not judge you for what you don't know.
35:31
SPEAKER_06: Okay?
35:32
SPEAKER_06: That's something that Wes said, that's something that you can say.
35:35
SPEAKER_06: Number twelve.
35:36
SPEAKER_06: What is the difference between faith and works?
35:38
SPEAKER_06: And this is a massive question.
35:39
SPEAKER_06: Again, at the at the heart of uh our our theology.
35:42
SPEAKER_06: How do we relate faith in Jesus and loving works out there in the world?
35:47
SPEAKER_06: Well, you can put it in a pithy saying like this.
35:49
SPEAKER_06: You're not saved by your works, but you're saved for your works.
35:52
SPEAKER_06: You're not saved by your works, but you are saved for your works.
35:55
SPEAKER_06: You're not saved by good works, you are saved for good works.
35:59
SPEAKER_06: And again, it's a pithy saying that kind of lands, that's memorable, and that clarifies things just by switching out the prepositions.
36:07
SPEAKER_06: Wes said it.
36:08
SPEAKER_06: You can say it too.
36:09
SPEAKER_06: Um, how about this one?
36:10
SPEAKER_06: Um, what about Christians who don't act like Christians?
36:13
SPEAKER_06: That comes up in evangelism all the time.
36:15
SPEAKER_06: What does Wes do?
36:16
SPEAKER_06: Wes actually physically looks for an analogy.
36:19
SPEAKER_06: He physically looks for uh an object as this illustration of a truth.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: Here's how he does it.
36:25
SPEAKER_02: Here, let me give you an illustration.
36:26
SPEAKER_02: So the uh methodology of form and substance.
36:30
SPEAKER_02: I said it's slow, so you didn't think of it.
36:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thank you very much.
36:32
SPEAKER_02: Methodology of form and substance has this idea that this is black rifle.
36:36
SPEAKER_02: Oh, sweet.
36:37
SPEAKER_02: We don't have this in Canada.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: You know, we don't have this Canada.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: Of course not.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: Every time I come, this is a good thing.
36:40
SPEAKER_02: It's American, baby.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: It's freedom.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: Man, we don't have we don't have that up normally.
36:44
SPEAKER_02: Oh, we know.
36:44
SPEAKER_02: Um so black rifle energy.
36:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
36:48
SPEAKER_02: Um, I come in the room, I say, Andrew, can I drink this?
36:51
SPEAKER_02: And you say, Yeah.
36:51
SPEAKER_02: I say, what is it?
36:52
SPEAKER_02: You say black rifle energy.
36:53
SPEAKER_02: I crack it open, I take a sip, it's gasoline.
36:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
36:56
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
36:56
SPEAKER_02: It is black rifle energy drink in form in that it claims to be, but not in substance, and that the actual contents are not what the can is describing.
37:06
SPEAKER_02: So when we look at the contents, when we look at the what Christianity actually dictates, and we see things like Jesus saying, love those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other cheek, and then you look at something like conversion by the sword, we can say, based on the actual contents of what Christianity and the Bible claims to be, that that is it in form but not in substance.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: And that person either is in a lot of trouble and that they're claiming to be something they aren't, or they really need to figure out what's what, and that they're they're going down a dangerous road.
37:41
SPEAKER_06: Yep.
37:42
SPEAKER_06: If somebody says they're a Christian, but everything in their life seems to deny Christ in the way that they live, well, they're like a coke can, but you open it up and it's just gasoline on the inside.
37:51
SPEAKER_06: That's a memorable analogy.
37:53
SPEAKER_06: What about the question, can you be moral without Christ?
37:55
SPEAKER_06: That comes up in evangelism all the time.
37:58
SPEAKER_06: And Wes wants to say, of course you could be moral without Christ.
38:01
SPEAKER_06: It's just that Christians want to know where you get your morality from.
38:05
SPEAKER_06: And so Wes reaches for an analogy and he uses an impeccable source.
38:10
SPEAKER_02: The survival of the fittest doesn't actually give you a grounding standard for being moral, in the sense that so my friend Glenn Scrivener, who wrote a great book called The Air We Breathe, uh, he describes it in this way.
38:26
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's British, so he talks about trousers.
38:28
SPEAKER_06: But I know I only say trousers because when the British hear pants, they think of underwear.
38:33
SPEAKER_06: Australians don't understand that, North Americans don't understand that.
38:36
SPEAKER_06: But I'm I'm afraid, as an Australian in Britain, I went with trousers.
38:39
SPEAKER_06: I should have just said shirt, shouldn't I?
38:41
SPEAKER_06: Um where did you get your shirt from?
38:43
SPEAKER_06: That would that would translate to many, many more people.
38:46
SPEAKER_06: Anyway, you get the idea.
38:47
SPEAKER_06: Wes says this.
38:48
SPEAKER_02: When we say the atheists, when we ask them, where do you get your morality from?
38:53
SPEAKER_02: Often the response I get is the people think I'm accusing them of not being moral.
38:59
SPEAKER_02: I'm not doing that.
39:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:00
SPEAKER_02: Right?
39:01
SPEAKER_02: I think atheists can be moral because I think they're created in the image of God, and that's like outpouring from them.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: But when I say where do you get your morality from, Glenn says it's like asking, Mark, where do you get your trousers from?
39:12
SPEAKER_02: And Mark going, I'm wearing trousers.
39:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: You're like, no, no, where do you get it from?
39:16
SPEAKER_02: Like, how dare you tell me I'm not wearing trousers?
39:18
SPEAKER_02: It's like, no, that's not the question I'm asking.
39:20
SPEAKER_02: I'm asking the origin of the morality to actually ground doing something that is good.
39:26
SPEAKER_02: I fully believe that you can do good things.
39:28
SPEAKER_02: I'm just asking, where is the objective idea that that actually stems from?
39:34
SPEAKER_02: Because evolution doesn't get you there.
39:37
SPEAKER_06: When Christians wonder where the atheist gets their morality from, they're not denying that the atheist has a morality, they're just questioning the source of that morality.
39:46
SPEAKER_06: Has it come from Christianity?
39:47
SPEAKER_06: Has it come from some other source?
39:49
SPEAKER_06: Probably.
39:50
SPEAKER_06: Usually in the West, I look at humanists and I'm like, that shirt is very, very familiar.
39:55
SPEAKER_06: I th I think I think I've got that shirt in my wardrobe.
39:59
SPEAKER_06: Where did you get your shirt from?
40:00
SPEAKER_06: Is not to say to the humanist you don't have a morality.
40:04
SPEAKER_06: It's to ask where the source is from.
40:06
SPEAKER_06: So that's another thing that you can say.
40:08
SPEAKER_06: Wes says that kind of stuff, I say that kind of stuff.
40:11
SPEAKER_06: You too can say that kind of stuff.
40:12
SPEAKER_06: Number 14, if your friend ever says to you all religions are the same, what's a good analogy that you can use?
40:18
SPEAKER_06: Wes has got a great one.
40:20
SPEAKER_02: All religions at their core are saying counter things.
40:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:25
SPEAKER_02: Like I said before, like they can't be all true.
40:28
SPEAKER_02: It's the equivalent of if we say like they're all true, it's the equivalent of me saying, I went to the library and I read all the books, and I came to the conclusion that all the books, despite their differences, are really saying the same thing.
40:39
SPEAKER_02: They all have words, grammar syntax, letters, numbers, you know, so everything from one fish, two fish, redfish, bluefish to mind conf is the same thing.
40:48
SPEAKER_02: Whoa.
40:48
SPEAKER_02: Right?
40:49
SPEAKER_02: You could conclude one of two things.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:51
SPEAKER_02: I didn't read all the books, or I read the books so poorly that I'm not giving justice to what the content of the books is.
40:58
SPEAKER_02: I didn't read all the books, or I read them so poorly that I'm like, yeah, yeah.
41:01
SPEAKER_02: And I would say the same goes for worldview perspectives.
41:05
SPEAKER_02: If we say that all of them are saying the same thing or getting to the same result, we either are not studying the religions uh themselves and what they actually say, or we're not doing justice to the fact that they say mutually exclusive things.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: I think that's 100% true right now with us.
41:23
SPEAKER_06: If you read everything in the library and you said that every single book was actually pretty much saying the same thing as every other book, you really haven't read those books, have you?
41:33
SPEAKER_06: Or you're a very poor reader.
41:34
SPEAKER_06: And if by the same token you look at every religion and you think they're basically the same, you're probably not reading those religions very well.
41:42
SPEAKER_06: It's a good analogy, isn't it?
41:43
SPEAKER_06: You should use it.
41:44
SPEAKER_06: Wes used it, you can use it.
41:46
SPEAKER_06: And then the fifteenth one that I want to point to, he's asked right at the end about Trinity, about three in one, and Wes says this.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: Being describes what you are, person describes who you are.
41:57
SPEAKER_02: This chair has being, right?
41:59
SPEAKER_02: It's what philosophers called ontological status, right?
42:02
SPEAKER_02: But it doesn't have personhood.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: I didn't ask its permission to sit on it.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: Right.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: But it does exist.
42:07
SPEAKER_02: And so being is what you are.
42:10
SPEAKER_02: One being in three persons.
42:13
SPEAKER_02: Being describes what you are, persons describe who you are.
42:17
SPEAKER_06: Persons are like whose, being is like what.
42:21
SPEAKER_06: Person answers the question who, being answers the question what.
42:26
SPEAKER_06: God is three persons, one being, three whose, one what.
42:31
SPEAKER_06: Now that won't clear away every single question somebody has about the Trinity, but it's not a silly thing to say, and it has real substance, and it's also quite memorable.
42:39
SPEAKER_06: So look, there are 15 things that Wes said in this three-hour conversation that you can say.
42:44
SPEAKER_06: You can use these analogies.
42:46
SPEAKER_06: If he stole one from me, I'm sure you can steal the rest from Wes.
42:49
SPEAKER_06: He won't mind.
42:50
SPEAKER_06: So we've thought about the things that Wes did that you can't do.
42:54
SPEAKER_06: We've thought about the things that Wes did that you can do.
42:58
SPEAKER_06: I want to finish by thinking about uh there are things that we can do that Wes couldn't do.
43:05
SPEAKER_06: He couldn't do in that environment.
43:07
SPEAKER_06: In that environment, Wes was on a couch surrounded by people with all sorts of different religious views, and he was being fired at with question after question after question that spanned thousands of years, and he was brought on as the Bible expert.
43:23
SPEAKER_06: He was the answer guy.
43:25
SPEAKER_06: And so when he was asked a question, he had to come up with an answer.
43:29
SPEAKER_06: He wasn't really there to kind of throw the basketball back to the ask of the question.
43:34
SPEAKER_06: He wasn't really there to do that.
43:36
SPEAKER_06: Maybe at times he could have.
43:37
SPEAKER_06: Maybe at times he could have gotten into where someone's coming from in their question and let and let's bat it around as uh as a conversation.
43:45
SPEAKER_06: But that's not really what the setup was.
43:47
SPEAKER_06: The setup was Wes is here to answer our questions.
43:51
SPEAKER_06: And that serves a really good purpose.
43:53
SPEAKER_06: And half a million people have already tuned in to hear the answers that Wes gives to these questions.
43:59
SPEAKER_06: But Wes Wes can't do something here that you can do and that at times you should do.
44:05
SPEAKER_06: Wes can't really say, I don't know.
44:07
SPEAKER_06: Right?
44:08
SPEAKER_06: Like everybody's expecting an answer from Wes.
44:12
SPEAKER_06: And and when it is a question that is far beyond his realm of expertise, um, he does say, I don't know.
44:18
SPEAKER_06: But largely these these questions did fall within his domain, and and Wes had a go at answering them, and he was expected to answer them, and it was right that he answered the questions in the way that he did.
44:28
SPEAKER_06: I don't think it's right for you to be Bible expert among your friends in the pub on a Friday night.
44:33
SPEAKER_06: You are not called to do what Wes did.
44:35
SPEAKER_06: And actually Wes couldn't do what you can do, which is you can say I don't know to some of these questions, and to probe what the questioner really means by the question, and to resonate with the reasons why they might have asked that question.
44:48
SPEAKER_06: Wes can't do that, and Wes can't say, you know what, let me do some research.
44:53
SPEAKER_06: I'm I'm gonna let's let's have a coffee next week and we'll talk about it again.
44:56
SPEAKER_06: I mean, actually, Wes is going to have ongoing conversations with these guys, but that will be off camera, and there'll be a different kind of fruitfulness to the conversations that Wes has off-camera to the conversations that he has on camera.
45:08
SPEAKER_06: And let's not think that we ought to have the same kinds of conversations that Wes had on camera as when we are off camera, because not even Wes has these kinds of conversations when he's off camera.
45:19
SPEAKER_06: Wes can't say, I don't know, you can.
45:21
SPEAKER_06: Wes can't play the long game in this conversation, you can.
45:25
SPEAKER_06: Wes doesn't know these guys the way you know your friends.
45:28
SPEAKER_06: Nevertheless, he did bring them gifts, and I love that.
45:31
SPEAKER_06: This is something that you can do.
45:32
SPEAKER_06: He brought a gift to Rogan, and it was a gift that Rogan absolutely loved, and he did the same thing to these guys.
45:38
SPEAKER_06: He made a gift for these guys.
45:41
SPEAKER_06: And interestingly, he said to me afterwards, actually, if I had known these guys a little bit better, I could have tailored the gift to them a little bit more.
45:50
SPEAKER_06: He's getting to know these guys.
45:51
SPEAKER_06: He doesn't know them the way you know your friends.
45:54
SPEAKER_06: So you can do things that Wes can't do because you can give gifts to your friends that really show them that you know them and care for them.
46:02
SPEAKER_06: Wes did what he could in a three-hour filmed conversation.
46:05
SPEAKER_06: You can do some things that Wes wishes he could have done with those four guys and do it better than Wes did it in that filmed conversation because of those limitations.
46:15
SPEAKER_06: You can love your friends.
46:16
SPEAKER_06: You can take them to church this Sunday.
46:19
SPEAKER_06: Wes can't do that.
46:20
SPEAKER_06: He doesn't live in New York.
46:21
SPEAKER_06: But if you live where your friends live, then you can actually take them into a community of faith in which they will start to see other believers who are living out the wisdom of Jesus in life.
46:32
SPEAKER_06: They can see the praises of God sung, they can they can hear the prayers of God's people, independence, that they can encounter the word of God read and proclaimed, they can be drawn into the fellowship of God's people.
46:45
SPEAKER_06: There are some things that Wes did that you can't do.
46:48
SPEAKER_06: There are some things that Wes did that you can do, and there are some things that you can do that Wes wasn't able to do in this conversation.
46:56
SPEAKER_06: So be encouraged by the opportunities that you have with your friend.
46:59
SPEAKER_06: And be encouraged, here's my final word, be encouraged that this conversation is emblematic of a lot of conversations that are happening right now.
47:07
SPEAKER_06: Andrew Schultz is open to having Wes explain Christianity to him, and it seems to me like Andrew wants to be convinced.
47:16
SPEAKER_06: Arkash did not really want to be convinced, and he was not convinced.
47:20
SPEAKER_06: In fact, he seemed to be getting less and less convinced as the conversation went on.
47:24
SPEAKER_06: First it was this, but the alternative is hell.
47:27
SPEAKER_05: That's the issue I have.
47:28
SPEAKER_05: If there was a first class, a business class, and a coach, I'm with it.
47:32
SPEAKER_05: I don't gotta be first class.
47:33
SPEAKER_05: That's fine.
47:34
SPEAKER_05: But the idea that it is a like God doesn't know you heaven.
47:38
SPEAKER_05: He don't need to give you hell.
47:39
SPEAKER_06: Then it was this.
47:41
SPEAKER_05: I'm hitting Christianity anymore.
47:44
SPEAKER_06: Then it was this.
47:47
SPEAKER_05: An hour and a half.
47:52
SPEAKER_06: And then the final word of the podcast was I'll see you in hell, buddy.
47:59
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
47:59
SPEAKER_06: Now they did hug at the end, which does go to show that uh you can have robust disagreement with people and still end up friends.
48:06
SPEAKER_06: It's also reminiscent of Paul going to Athens in Acts chapter 17.
48:10
SPEAKER_06: And Paul preaches, and some believe, and some say we'll hear you again, others sneer.
48:16
SPEAKER_06: And actually, that's a pretty good description of the different reactions that Wes was getting from the four other hosts.
48:23
SPEAKER_06: There will be some people who sneer, but there are also some people who believe, and there will also be some people who say, we will hear you again on this.
48:31
SPEAKER_06: And I'm noticing more conversations like this that are happening at the moment.
48:35
SPEAKER_06: There is a vibe shift, there is a surprising rebirth of belief in God, there is a quiet revival, as the Bible Society have called it, certainly on this side of the pond.
48:44
SPEAKER_06: And what I notice in this conversation that resonates with this cultural moment is three things.
48:50
SPEAKER_06: People don't think Christianity is stupid anymore.
48:53
SPEAKER_06: That's not the objection to Christianity, as it was when the new atheists were hurling stones at the church.
48:58
SPEAKER_06: They they said that Christianity is stupid.
49:00
SPEAKER_06: People aren't really saying that.
49:01
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I mean people are still saying that, but culture wide, and the sorts of conversations that people are having, people don't think Christianity is stupid.
49:09
SPEAKER_06: And secondly, they don't care that it's weird.
49:12
SPEAKER_06: These guys asked about a lot of weird stuff.
49:15
SPEAKER_06: A lot of weird stuff.
49:16
SPEAKER_06: And and none of it seemed to phase them.
49:18
SPEAKER_06: These guys just assume that the transcendence, the miraculous, it's all priced into Christianity.
49:24
SPEAKER_06: Sure, it's gonna be weird.
49:26
SPEAKER_06: I wouldn't expect anything else.
49:28
SPEAKER_06: Nowadays, by and large, people don't think Christianity is stupid and they don't think it's weird, but they do expect it to make sense, to make emotional sense.
49:39
SPEAKER_06: I think this is true of all of them, but of Andrew in particular, he seems to be wrestling with make it make sense, make the exclusivity of Christ and the God of judgment make sense together with the God of love that you've just spoken about, Wes, because I do kind of resonate with that God of love.
49:54
SPEAKER_06: Just make it make it make emotional sense.
49:58
SPEAKER_06: Like here.
49:58
SPEAKER_04: I feel like God is so powerful, so intelligent that he's aware of our little intellectualizing of who he is and how we behave.
50:07
SPEAKER_04: I agree.
50:08
SPEAKER_04: And he's like, it's like when your kid first le starts learning stuff in school and they're like 11, they start trying to tell you what the stars are, and you're like, Yeah, yeah, sure.
50:16
SPEAKER_04: It's exactly what they are, and that's exactly how history is.
50:18
SPEAKER_04: And he just kids adorable.
50:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
50:21
SPEAKER_04: You know what I mean?
50:21
SPEAKER_04: Like, so that's what I assume God is doing.
50:25
SPEAKER_04: And that's how I I guess that's how I solve the problem for the person on the island or the good person that was never given Christianity, or the person that was given like this horrible, bastardized version of it.
50:36
SPEAKER_04: They were molested by some priests, and like they're they're gonna feel that disconnect to this beautiful source because of that horrible individual.
50:44
SPEAKER_04: And now they don't get eternal salvation because of what this horrible person did.
50:48
SPEAKER_04: Like, I yet the rest of their life, they're being good and they're they're being pure and they're being true, you know, like despite them saying they don't.
50:55
SPEAKER_04: I think God is looking at that like, listen, I know you, I know your heart, and you're doing the right thing.
50:58
SPEAKER_04: And I think God is looking at those people who say they believe in God, but they're doing these horrible acts, and they're like, You're not gonna trick me.
51:04
SPEAKER_04: I'm not because you're acting like I'm stupid.
51:06
SPEAKER_06: Do you see?
51:06
SPEAKER_06: He doesn't think Christianity is stupid, he doesn't think it's weird, he wants it to make emotional sense.
51:11
SPEAKER_06: And that that is where you'll persuade the Andrew Schultzes of this world.
51:15
SPEAKER_06: And that's why I'm pointing to the the 15 little mini stories and and truths that sort of Wes drops into the conversation, and it's why I started with um those two little segments that that Wes gave, in which I think he he laid out the rationale for the gospel as a love story.
51:34
SPEAKER_06: And I think that's where you will win the Andrew Schultzes of the world.
51:37
SPEAKER_06: You might not win the Arkashes of this world, or it might be a lot longer of a process with Arkash, but the real question of how to engage the Andrew Schultzes of the world is make it make emotional sense.
51:50
SPEAKER_06: And you do that by preaching the God of Love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the two atoms, and union with Christ.
51:56
SPEAKER_06: And if you want to find out more about those three wonderful truths, you can go to 321course.com, check it out.
52:02
SPEAKER_06: We try to do over eight sessions what West tried to do in these three hours, which is to make it make emotional sense for you, and we trust that it will do.
52:11
SPEAKER_06: That'll do us for now.
52:12
SPEAKER_06: What do you think about this podcast?
52:13
SPEAKER_06: Let us know in the comments.
52:14
SPEAKER_06: God bless.