Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / J. Warner Wallace: ‘Case Files,’ Graphic Novel From Law Enforcement Experts

Transcript

J. Warner Wallace: ‘Case Files,’ Graphic Novel From Law Enforcement Experts · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  So we are announcing the publication of Case Files, the first in a series of graphic novels
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  that really just explore crime stories. Crime stories about Southern California and doing law
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  enforcement work in Southern California. In this story, lead investigator Michael Murphy,
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  known to his friends as Murph, and his team homicide investigators go on the hunt for a killer who's
• 0:22
  killing over and over again. Although Case Files is a graphic novel, essentially a comic book,
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  this is not geared for younger readers for children who are dealing with the grittiness,
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  the violence that surrounds murders and murder investigations. So this is looking at an older
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  audience that's ready to discuss the real deep questions that surround the meaning of human life.
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  It's uplifting in the sense that it provides an answer to one of the life's biggest questions
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  about purpose and meaning in life of why humans matter in the first place. And so we hope it'll be
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  something you'll put on your shelf that you'll enjoy yourself as you read it and you'll give to people
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  who aren't Christians. Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues,
• 1:06
  discerning current events, defending biblical Christianity, no topic off limits. And now,
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  here's your host, David Firazo. So give something to those who are not Christian. I think there's
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  a lot of books out there that we could give to people. But I love this brother, Jay Warner,
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  while it's good to have you back with us, author and former Cold Case Homicide Detective.
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  It's been great speaking with you about apologetics through the years. But now we get to talk about
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  something a little different. And that's this brand new book, Case Files. So welcome to World
• 1:41
  View Matters. Good to see you again. Well, thanks so much for having me. You know, it's been,
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  you're right. It's a different, even for us, as we try to explain it to others. You know, I think
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  that we typically will make a nonfiction evidence-based case in our books that makes a case for
• 1:56
  Christianity why we would embrace it as being evidentially true. But I think a lot of people,
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  especially young people, I want to know a couple of things about this. Number one is it just,
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  if Christianity is true, we should be able to express it in a number of different ways. And it
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  should be true about every aspect of our lives, including the creative aspects of our lives,
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  right? Like the things that we do in terms of art and music and movie and drama and all of those.
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  And so we wanted to kind of bite at the World View Apple from both sides. Yes, we can make an
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  affirmative case from the evidence because if this isn't true, it really couldn't be good by
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  definition. But we also want to bite at it from the good side. Is it good? Is it important? Is
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  it relevant? Is it meaningful? Does it describe the world the way it really is? And we just thought
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  that this fictional drama might be a better way to kind of bring people into a story that helps
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  them to see why Christianity is true? So the question I really wanted to ask you, it's always
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  interesting when you work with someone else on a book. But on this one, you got to work with
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  your son. So not only are you getting away from your hard hitting apologetics driven books,
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  but now you're doing case files and it's volume one and you're working with your son on this.
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  Could you just describe that process and what that was like?
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  Well, I do think that I've been blessed, right? Like most of the heavy, when you're a cop and you're
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  gone all the time because you're getting called out in the middle of the night for homicides,
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  then you won't see your family for four or five days. I mean, you really have to be really
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  intentional when you are home and you have to trust that you have a spouse that is, you know,
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  understands the nature of law enforcement and can put together the pieces for you. And I was
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  really blessed with Susie to kind of do that heavy lifting. So sometimes you don't even know what
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  your kids are capable of until you see them in a role like this. And I just felt like this was
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  the best time I had writing any book. Look, to be honest, it's a 70% Jimmy Wallace production.
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  I was not somebody who was, you know, raised reading comic books. He was, though, and he was
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  always a fan of comic books. And every time we get a haircut, you know, what'd give him a dollar,
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  his brother a dollar, and they would go in the comic book store across the street from the barber.
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  And they would, you know, pick out four quarter comics, you know, four, you know, 25% comics in
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  the old bin. And they would bring those home and he just would read those. He still has that
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  collection of hundreds and hundreds of comics. And I think because it's like, I remember reading
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  Stephen King's book about writing called on writing. And King would say that he would spend half
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  his day writing in the morning and then half his day reading in the genre in which he's writing,
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  not his stuff, other people's stuff in the afternoon. And if you are an avid reader of a genre,
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  you then end up being able, like, like most of us who have written apologetics books,
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  we are familiar with the genre of apologetics books. And we're writing within that style.
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  Well, this is what Jimmy's gift is, is that he's read so many comics that I, he thinks about
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  things I don't think about. For example, I would often say, well, we had a conversation here that
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  would kind of help us to move this issue forward. And he would say, well, yeah, but if you have
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  that kind of a conversation, how many panels is that going to take up? Because it turns out that
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  those kinds of conversations and comic books become very dry. You're not thinking about the setting,
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  the scene, the background, the visual aspect of this entire thing. We can't do, you know, four pages
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  of two guys sitting in an office talking about a case. We got to get them out in the car. We got
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  to get them in front of people talking. We got to get them in different. So now he's thinking
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  like a movie maker instead of like me thinking about what, what is the issue we're trying to
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  describe? And that's what I think made this book so good is that, that he understood the pacing
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  of graphic novels, right? And so this is a pretty robust story, but it's basically like a movie
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  that we've written the script for. And I'm just kind of helped him kind of move this thing in certain
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  categories, but really all the character development, it's all Jimmy. Wow. That's amazing. So I knew
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  a Michael Murphy. And I called him Murphy. He was, I worked at a radio station. Wow. When was that?
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  That was in the 80s, I think, but he was the the program director of the radio station,
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  Murph. He's still out there somewhere, but it's interesting. So did Jimmy come up with the
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  characters and everything else? Well, you know, it's interesting about that too. And I think this is
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  because he's been on the job about 13 years. He's working investigations today as we speak,
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  which is why he couldn't be in on this interview, but he's, we all meet the same guy. So my dad,
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  did the job for 30 years before I came on. His name is Jim Wallace. Then I came on in the 80s,
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  and I did the job until my son came on with the same name. We've been at the same agency for 64
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  years next month, 64 years serving at this agency with the same name. And along the way,
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  every one of us has met a Michael Murphy because it turns out that these kinds of people appear
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  again and again and again in this career. It's not because they're not generational. What happens is
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  you come in and you're 22, 23, and you've got all these ideas and everyone's very different,
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  you know, they come in with a lot of diversity in the agency. And then the job slowly begins to
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  change you into Michael Murphy. So what you'll see is it's not that this is an old guy from another
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  generation. And that's why he's this way compared to his young partners. It's that he's the guy
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  now who's had 25 years to let the job shape him. And every one of those other guys and gals
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  is going to end up like him probably if they're not careful because the job does this to you.
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  And I think we hope our novel is really realistic because it's coming from people who have
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  done the job and know what the job does to you. And we describe these characters and you'll see a
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  very wide range of personalities, but it turns out they're they're broad and diverse because
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  they're in different stages of their career. In the end, sadly, a lot of us end up like Michael Murphy.
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  Hmm. So it takes place in California. I'm sure you draw from your own experiences, you and your son.
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  It says palo's verdicts. What do you bring into this? You bring it? No, you're laughing. We need to
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  know why. Well, you know, it's fun because this area, there's lots of these little nitchy areas
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  of Los Angeles city proper where the city has jurisdiction. So LAPD is actually the the police
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  agency that is taking take care of that area, but they are all sometimes labeled differently.
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  Like so I grew up in San Pedro, which is right next to palace varies. San Pedro is a very kind
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  of multicultural kind of working class town. A lot of people who work on the docks, who work in
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  the harbor, Port of Los Angeles is right there. And now I know what we're writing about these
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  areas because these are the areas that we've either investigated crimes in or we've lived in them
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  or we've certainly got friends who lived in there. And when we wrote the book, people would write
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  to us and say, Oh, this is so great. I never thought I'd see a book that mentions San Pedro.
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  Well, I mean, I think pulp fiction, the movie is set largely in some of those areas. But for the
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  most part, it's because, you know, we wanted to be very realistic. So if you see us talking about
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  a location in this book, it's a real location with the real buildings that you'll see in the background.
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  We had, for example, the artist that we work closely with one time drew a little burger joint
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  in the background of one of the scenes. But we know what that joint looks like. So we had to get a
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  photograph of it to show them because we wanted it drawn the way it really is. You know, so we're
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  trying to make sure this feels like it really is set in Los Angeles County.
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  So friends, I didn't give the website. It's cold case Christianity.com. I didn't want to assume
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  that you knew J. Warner Wallace and his work amazing in apologetics. There's great resources on
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  that website. And by the way, I just want to mention some of his other books. And we've talked to
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  you about person of interest, cold case Christianity, God's crime scene and books for kids as well.
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  Speaking of that, what this I would imagine can be kind of graphic, meaning maybe not for young
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  children. Where would that cut off age range be? Well, I kind of let all the reviewers of the book
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  in the first month told us that 13 and up seems to be about whatever one agrees on. So if you're
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  in junior high school, that you've probably have already seen stuff in streaming video on streaming
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  platforms, which is far worse than anything we're going to describe in this book. So we wanted to be
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  realistic, but we also didn't want to be gratuitous. And what we tried to do in a book, you know, I think
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  the hit on Christian media or this one Christian fiction is that, oh, it's so polyannish and cheesy.
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  You hear this word cheesy, and I've tried to define what does that even mean? I don't want to avoid it,
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  right? But I have to know what it is before I can learn how to avoid it. So I'm thinking, what is
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  cheesy? I think what they mean is it could be overly ambitious, where you want this to feel, you
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  want it to feel good in the end. You want it to resolve itself in a way that both honors God
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  and honors the gospel. And I understand that impulse. This is a book, though, that we wrote that's
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  very realistic. None of the characters except for one is a Christian in this book, but they are
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  going to struggle with issues that we're trying to highlight in the book. This is not just meaningless
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  fiction. We are doing something with the purpose. We want to talk about how all of us ground
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  purpose, meaning and value as humans, because a lot of murders that you encounter in Los Angeles
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  County, and I've been assigned many of these, you know, if you're working on a five man team,
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  you're going to get every fifth murder. That's how this works. And so you can kind of see, oh,
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  I'm not up next. I'm okay. Probably this week, I'm not going to get a murder. But if you're the next
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  guy up, as I could happen in any moment. And when it does happen, regardless of who that victim is,
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  you get that victim, because you're next up. And you'll see that cops will think about this and say,
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  well, gosh, which case would you really want to work? The meaning that the kind of
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  no one knows about this guy, he's kind of anonymous in his city, anonymous in his community,
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  and he's killed. Or the famous movie star who's in West Hollywood, which of these two would you
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  rather work? You know that one of these is going to get far more attention than the other. Now,
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  here's my question. Why do we do that to people? Why do we think that some murders are less
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  newsworthy? Well, you use that word all the time, newsworthy. That's all about value. Like who,
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  like, if you died, if you got murdered and nobody even like reported it, I mean, really,
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  is that how we feel about human? So it turns out that all of us ground value, even our own value,
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  in some worldview. But only one worldview, I think, does a good job of grounding this properly.
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  So what we wanted to do is to have characters in this non-believing characters who are also
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  struggling with their own sense of identity, who are chasing a serial killer who is systematically
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  picking victims that he thinks are more and more and more culturally valuable. So we're challenging
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  the notion of cultural value. And since it's set in Los Angeles, we can we can eventually target
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  celebrities and people who are politicians or whatever. And but if we start off with somebody who
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  is just, you know, homeless and been separated from his family for years, why do we think that
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  that's a lesser crime? Like why does that kind of slip under the news radar yet these
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  celebrities don't? And so I think that this is one of the issues that Christianity doesn't dress.
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  And what we're trying to do in these books is just take small bites at the Christian apple
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  from the fiction side rather than huge comprehensive system, systematic bites, like you might do in
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  a systematic theology or an apologetics book from the other side of the apple because we do think
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  that young people, I forget about young people, because of the phones, the phones have leveled
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  to playing field. So so your glowing rectangle, my 84 year mother is now using social media the same
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  way that my 27 year old daughter is now why is that happening? It is if you're looking at ages
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  and generations based on their behaviors, we're starting to erase the generations because we're
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  starting to all kind of behave the same way. And the social media and both public information on
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  the information age is doing that. So the question that becomes, well, we're becoming visual.
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  You know, we're becoming consumers of fiction, consumers of streaming fiction at a high rate.
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  And I think the Christian story can be told both from a evidential perspective as a fact in
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  history that you can demonstrate evidentially. But it can also move you as part of a fictional
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  narrative. It's not an either or, I think it's a both end. So so I've lost some of our work, you
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  know, nine books we wrote that are based on the evidence. Now this is our first book that is really
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  trying to move you emotionally through fiction. And I think that's what that's that's just leaves
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  a part of the project and it's been part of the project for us. And now it becomes a little bit
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  bigger part of the project. Fascinating. Interesting to just hear the process as well, but a murder and
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  meaning is the subtitle. And what you just explained, we have to take a brief pause, but we come
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  back. I want to ask you a little bit more about that because when you said explain some,
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  you know, detectives want to go after the more high profile cases, that totally makes sense to
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  a lot of us. But if every life is equal in God's eyes, there's a lesson in that right there.
• 15:16
  We'll be right back on World View Matters with Jay Warner Wallace.
• 15:20
  Today's show is brought to you by Harbinger's Daily. World News Biblically Understood. Stay
• 15:26
  informed at Harbinger's Daily dot com.
• 15:37
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• 15:42
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  15 to say 15% on all courses at Freedom Project Academy. Back to Jay Warner Wallace, pick it up
• 16:18
  from what you were describing, which is fascinating to me and it totally makes sense because
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  unfortunately, we're all human. We tend to sometimes value one life over another when we're all
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  the ground is level at the foot of the cross we've heard, right? And again, God's eyes, everybody's
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  created equal share a little bit more about that. Is that one of the lessons that you kind of
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  communicate in case files? Yeah, and a part of that is we are all wired. And if you look at,
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  I just wrote a book called The Truth and True Crime and in one chapter of that book, we talk about
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  the issue of identity. Well, identity is huge. Some sociologists will say that identity is the core
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  human need, the need to be known to figure out how it is we see ourselves and how it is the world
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  sees us. And if you look at all the studies on identity, what you're going to see is that there's
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  like a synonym identity is kind of a synonym for purpose, value, and meaning. And so for a lot of
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  us, we ground our identity in those areas where we think we have value. And therefore that value
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  gives our life meaning. So you kind of look around the world around you say, well, what am I good at?
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  Like, what do I contribute? What am I? What's what are my gifts? You know, where is it that I'm
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  really valuable? Well, that's who I am. And so we wanted characters in this book to kind of
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  ground their value in that as well because most of us do not, if we don't know Jesus, we don't
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  ground our identity in Jesus. And even if we do know Jesus, we still struggle because it turns out
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  that most of us will put our value in the things that we do. We are human doers before we are
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  human beings. We cannot rest in Christ because we are so convinced that we are defined by our
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  achievements, our status or wealth as a result of our achievements. And you'll see that murder
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  victims are often categorized in the same way. Like what gives somebody? Let's say, for example,
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  you were a doctor who contributed to something that was really valuable in culture. You know,
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  you're an inventor of this cure. Okay. Well, your death now, you're going to, it's going to be
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  an obituary. If it's going to be a nationally published obituary, look at all he achieved.
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  If you didn't achieve these, look, it turns out, what if you just were a great husband,
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  a great father and raised a great family? And you live what scripture describes as a simple
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  quiet life. To me, that passage of scripture is such an identity passage because what it's really
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  basically saying is, hey, hey, hey, stop trying to build your identity around your achievements.
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  Live a quiet life, a simple life that then can relax your identity and put it in Christ.
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  Just live that life. And that life is pleasing God. But we don't do that. And this is why I think
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  often when we see murders, it's we still venerate those who have accomplished the most. And sometimes
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  celebrity is the very thing that we think they've accomplished. Why do we confuse celebrity with
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  trusted authority? We confuse that all the time. We even have celebrity endorsements as if they
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  know what they're talking about. Why? Because we have confused these two things. You know,
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  who are you? We've confused celebrity with trusted authority. So what are the characters in this
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  book as he's chasing the bag? I is going to start to think about it. Well, this is Murph. Murph has
• 19:28
  been on the job 25 years. He is now eligible to retire. He's hit that mark where he could leave
• 19:34
  any day. As a matter of fact, if you're at that point yourself right now and you're lost at
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  Los Angeles County and you're a detective who's now in year 30 when you could have retired at
• 19:43
  say 28 because you hit that age. But now you're in your what was keeping you here? You know,
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  to be honest, I had a partner who was on the job 35 years and and he said he one day said to me,
• 19:53
  I'm going to go to the accountant tomorrow to see what my retirement looks like. I said, don't do
• 19:57
  it. You're going to realize that you're working for just a few dollars a day because your retirement
• 20:01
  would have paid you because you've already earned this rate of retirement. And so sure enough,
• 20:06
  he finds out that he's working. He said, you know, I found out I'm going to make like just like
• 20:09
  $6 less a day to not come to work and I'm spending $15 on lunch. I'm nine dollars upside down.
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  He laughed, you know, but I thought, well, what's kept him here all this time? Why is he 35 years
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  in when he could have been out of 28? Well, because it was his identity. He knew that if he laughed,
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  and this is Murph, well, who am I going to be in that? It's not what am I going to do. It's who am I
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  going to be? So we have misplaced our value and our demeaning of life. We've done it in reverse.
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  This is how we typically do it. We say, what am I good at? And where am I valuable? That's who I am.
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  Instead of, and by the way, that's going to be taken from you. At some point, you won't be good at
• 20:52
  that anymore. At some point, you'll retire from that. Well, then who are you going to be? If you're
• 20:58
  a football player, and this is what you're doing, you're the best football player in the entire United
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  States, and then you retire. And suddenly, what are you now you're done on doing the broadcast?
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  Why you broadcast? Because you can't get away from the game. You put your entire identity in that
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  game. And now that that's over, you don't know who you are anymore. Well, this is true for a lot of
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  us, right? Because we have not done the right thing, which is to figure out who we are first identity
• 21:22
  in Christ, and then let our value and meaning follow along from our identity, rather than
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  put our identity last, after we figure out where we have value, that we've got to get it right.
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  And so part of what this book does is try to unpack. Now, look, can you do all of this in 160 page
• 21:40
  fictional novel? I think, you know, we want to move this fast, and we want this to be accessible,
• 21:46
  not just to people my age, because believe it or not, there are a lot of people who started reading
• 21:50
  comics in the 60s, and they still love graphic novels. Actually, I was surprised to find that
• 21:55
  this is the third largest genre of printed literature. I'm like, well, it's really interesting
• 22:00
  that so many people, because just because we, I think this is the perfect book that we hope people
• 22:05
  will give to people who would never read an apologetics book. Like, they're not going to read my,
• 22:09
  you know, the Col case Christianity. They're not going to read the truth in true crime, but they
• 22:13
  are interested in fast-moving kind of fictional edgy, you know, cop stories. Well, that's what this
• 22:19
  is. And our hope is when it's all done and you've read it, you're like, oh, I have a few questions
• 22:24
  now, but if that is, is that really true? So what we did is on the back cover, you'll see there's
• 22:29
  a QR code that QR code takes you to the actual case for the resurrection. So we don't, we're not
• 22:34
  going to preach at you in this book. We're not going to present the resurrection evidence to you
• 22:38
  in this book, but we want you at the end, if you're interested, the why does this character
• 22:42
  look at life differently? We'll scan this QR code, you know, see where his worldview is grounded.
• 22:47
  And then online, if you purchase the book, we've got conversation guides that go along with the
• 22:52
  book that'll help you make this case to somebody who's got questions. And even better, I hope,
• 22:57
  is that we put our 10 and a half hour 30 session video case makers course that comes with the book
• 23:03
  also because we want you to see a book like this as a gateway book that helps you to make the case
• 23:09
  to people who made me wouldn't have asked a question if it didn't have a book like this. And we know
• 23:14
  that, you know, we're not usually prepared to answer every question. So what can we do for you to
• 23:19
  help you be prepared? That's in the course. Look, in the end, we're going to run out of time,
• 23:23
  but in the end, I think if you wanted to see what it is you worship, you could actually ask the
• 23:29
  question slightly differently. What is it you're ready to defend? What is it you're able to defend?
• 23:34
  Let's go back to football for a second. We had a draft not that long ago where all the college
• 23:39
  players were drafted into the NFL. And people at that turn that week were spending hundreds of hours
• 23:43
  on different programming, making the case for why this player should have been drafted earlier
• 23:49
  or where they should have been drafted. I mean, and it's clear from people who can make an
• 23:53
  eight hour case for such a thing that this is important to them. This is their life.
• 23:59
  We're in Green Bay. Did you know that? Okay. So I used to do chapels. I don't know if you know
• 24:04
  this or not, but I used to do chapels for the Green Bay Packers back when Aaron was there with
• 24:07
  Jordy Nelson and that's up the whole other story. But you'll know if you're at a Packers game,
• 24:13
  there are no away games for Green Bay Packers because they will outsell every stadium in which they
• 24:19
  play. Why? And why do the Packers fans travel? It's part of their identity and they can make a
• 24:25
  defense over why this guy should start or that guy should start. Why? Because it turns out you can
• 24:31
  defend whatever it is you worship. It's really that simple. And if I want to know what you worship,
• 24:38
  I just need to kind of trigger a conversation that'll get you defending. And then I'll see what
• 24:44
  it is you're capable of defending. That's the thing you've spent a lot of time thinking about.
• 24:48
  And why you think you're correct. So when I see that people are calling themselves Christ scholars,
• 24:53
  but don't even have the first step they could take to defend what it is they believe.
• 24:57
  Yes. Yes. I have a sense that there's other things they might be more interested in
• 25:02
  than the Christian worldview. That's why we make these materials.
• 25:05
  Brother, that's a little convicting because the G on top of Lambo field, it doesn't mean God,
• 25:11
  but they make it a God. Listen, so friends, go to Case Files on Amazon or you can go to Cold Case
• 25:18
  Christianity. Wanted to ask you briefly about the free case makers course. I was scrolling through
• 25:24
  that reading some of that. And what you do in all the sessions, it is amazing. And that's great.
• 25:31
  Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Because that's great. Yeah, that's a course that I
• 25:36
  created during the COVID year for my I'm a graduate professor at Gateway Seminary of the
• 25:41
  Southern Baptist Seminary here in Southern California. So this is the course that I taught on
• 25:46
  apologetics. So really it is a course that is designed to be delivered remotely. You get to
• 25:52
  deliver it by way of videos, but you can download all of the videos and keep them. And then we've
• 25:57
  got a complete written literature that goes with that with all of the in questions and all the
• 26:02
  kind of fill ends and you can actually earn a certificate at the end of it. Now, what was that
• 26:06
  value to you? Well, this is not an accredited course if you're taking it this way, but here's
• 26:11
  what it does. It prepares you to defend what I hope you worship. It prepares you to defend what
• 26:16
  I think is the most important thing to defend. It all comes down to what we think the gospel is.
• 26:22
  If we think the gospel is just an idea about God, a view about God, an opinion about how we should
• 26:29
  live, then I get it. But if it's a cure for something that's killing you, if it's the objective
• 26:35
  cure, if you knew your friend had cancer and you had the cure in your pocket and you failed to be
• 26:41
  able to even articulate it for him, I think you'd be doing him a disservice. I think in the end,
• 26:46
  if the gospel is the cure for what's killing us spiritually, we should be ready to defend it.
• 26:52
  Amen, brother, and we just celebrated Resurrection Sunday and there are so many reasons to believe.
• 26:58
  First Corinthians 15, the book of Acts are so much evidence, and I know I'm preaching to the choir.
• 27:04
  Friends, you can look up Jay Warner Wallace on Facebook as well, coldcasechristianity.com,
• 27:10
  the new book, doing very well, five star ratings on Amazon, case files, volume one, so at least
• 27:16
  the last question I can't ask it. We've only got 20 seconds, but I know you're going to be working
• 27:20
  on volume two. Brother, thank you for your time. A very interesting interview on this new book and
• 27:25
  this new venture for you, blessings. Well, we do hope we get more than one volume, but we'll see
• 27:30
  about that. Thanks so much for asking. All right, you're welcome. Okay, friends, thank you for sharing
• 27:34
  this podcast, getting us out there, praise God. Thank you for your prayers as well. God bless you
• 27:40
  and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.