Is Christianity True?

Jim Crookes is a Christian apologist. He explains Christianity and Christian thinking to those who are curious, sympathetic, or antagonistic.  And he teaches other Christians how to do the same.  His very successful podcast The Equip Project is popular, much-followed, and has helped change lives. Yet Jim started out in adult life as a software engineer and corporate mover and shaker. Through personal loss and pain he came to wrestle with the fundamental question: Is Christianity true?

Produced by Commission Christian Radio

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Hello, I'm Will Leach, and you're very welcome to the Commission Files from Commission Christian Radio. Thanks so much for clicking play. Now, how often have you wished that you had the answer to a question that stumped you? A question from a person who might not believe what you believe, a person who's interested or inquiring about Christianity, a person who maybe wants to reassure themselves that they're completely right not to believe all this God and Jesus and Bible stuff. It can be scary, can't it? Because it isn't about winning arguments or proving someone wrong. It's just, I sincerely hope, about explaining well who you are, what you believe, and why. Well, I want to welcome to the Commission Files Jim Crooks, former software engineer, corporate mover and shaker, Christian elder apologist, no mean podcaster himself. Boy do I feel a bit self-conscious, Jim, having you in the studio. But you're very welcome. It's lovely to have you. It's lovely to be here, William. Uh a real pleasure and an honor. You've said yourself in the past, Jim, that you see the need to equip Christians so they can defend their faith. Why?

SPEAKER_03 1:41

Well, uh Peter in his epistle says we should give a reason for the living hope within us. Um I think it's important for Christians to know that their faith is coherent and rational. Um because if something's not coherent, then it cannot be true. It's not to say that we rest our faith on a set of intellectual arguments, but it is important that we can show that Christianity is plausible and rational.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Are we really bad at that?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

I think uh in Northern Ireland um because it is such a sheltered evangelical culture, we tend to believe a faith that has been inherited. And we don't really have a lot of exposure to other worldviews. Um, so that is uh an important uh skill to develop, to treat other worldviews with respect and to be able to interact with them.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Let's look at one of the ways you do that, a very prominent way you do that. So listen to this. It's the Equip Project podcast, which Jim presents with Ollie Neal. Here's a very short bit from, quite randomly, series 11, episode 7, so released in 2026. Here it is. It's called Men of the West, and it's going to be a rallying cry.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Fantastic. Well, we look forward to that. Just a reminder of what we looked at in our last episode. We we define Christian nationalism by summarizing it as six principles. And in this episode, we're going to critique those principles. And it seems like it's taken a long time to get to this point, Jim.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Aaron Powell Yes, I think I may have told the story before, but when I started my first job, um a few of us were asked to write a report. It took us ages, and we delivered it late to the client, and he was very unimpressed. And he said it had taken the gestation period of an elephant to produce a rabbit. I think he might have said the same thing about this season. I mean the past six episodes have wound a long and winding road to get us to the point where we can ask the simple question what do we think of Christian nationalism as an idea?

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Aaron Ross Powell Jim, I'm deliberately not getting into a deep discussion today on Christian nationalism, but I am interested in the Equip project and what the two of you are doing with it. Series eleven?

SPEAKER_03 3:44

You've been going at this a while today. We we started just before the pandemic in 2019. And uh you know the idea was to bring clarity and understanding on some of these cultural issues that Christians have to deal with. Um yeah, but it has it's we've we've done over a hundred episodes and uh probably about two hundred thousand downloads over the over the years.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Aaron Ross Powell This is episode thirty-five of the commission file. So as I said, I'm very aware of who I have in the studio with me. For whom just to teach, to help people understand things, or to preach, or what? How would you summarize it?

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Well, I tend to do a mix. It's it's it's not all intellectual. Sometimes it's pastoral. Um I would say it's the uh the the answer to your question is in the title of the podcast. It is to equip. So the primary audience would be young Christians uh who need to be equipped to stand for Christ in a uh a world which uh very often treats their belief systems with contempt. But it has also proven to be very useful for thoughtful non-Christians uh who who maybe have questions that they want to have answered but don't really feel able to go to a church at this stage in their journey.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Do you know people who've listened to that podcast as well as going to Bible studies, meeting Christians who have come to faith?

SPEAKER_03 5:04

Yes. Uh and I can think of one or two who have come to faith just by ploughing through you know various seasons of the podcast. But nearly all was it is uh taken the form of a partnership uh between the podcast and what I would call friendship evangelism. So you could imagine a non-Christian who has a Christian friend and they're brought to church. But as they start to integrate into church, they have intellectual questions, maybe questions about suffering or why should I believe the Bible or what about other religions? And so the Christian friend will then point them to various episodes in the podcast, and uh that helps them on their journey. I think an awful lot of apologetics is designed to show that Christianity is plausible, to remove prejudice uh in the minds of unbelievers.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

To get them started on the road. Because the issue is going to come down to can you talk people into the kingdom of God? Can you persuade them by being really slick, really professional, having great guests on great issues, great production, whatever. And I would always say, of course you can't.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

No, of course you can't. The Christian faith does not rest on a set of intellectual arguments. It rests on a person. Uh Christian faith is trust in a person, the person of Jesus Christ. But that is not to say that Christianity is unreasonable. So we contend for the faith by showing its its rationality. It links to this fundamental idea in Christianity. Christianity is not a philosophy, right? Christianity is truth revealed in history. So God has given us evidence, and he expects us to use our moral sense and our rational senses to uh grapple with that evidence and then to form a conclusion ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

That little clip we played did talk about a subject that I think all of us are terrified of getting in the wrong side of, and that was Christian nationalism. You had that Men of the West series. Did you have your hearts in your mouths when you were tackling that? Because these days you're gonna get responses and they're not all going to be nice.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

Yes. I I I should pay tribute to my co-host here, to Ollie Neal, um, who who, in addition to doing all the post-production and the marketing uh uh work, I just turn up and talk, you see. But he he he he persuaded me to do this episode on Christian nationalism. Uh Ollie's half my age, and so he has a a much better sense of what's going on amongst young men, young Christian men. And so he persuaded me to do it. And I didn't really want to, because uh uh my instinct is always to avoid politics. But there's definitely something going on in culture at the moment uh that has affected young Christian men deeply. It's uh an intertwined crisis. There's a crisis of masculinity and there's a crisis in Western culture. And uh so that's that's why we decided to tackle it.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Coming out the other end of it, did you learn something? Did you find it a positive experience? Were you alarmed? Did you get a sense of the size of the task for whatever it is that's going on in the minds of young Christian men?

SPEAKER_03 7:57

I I was shocked, is this is the short answer of William. I I uh I I came across in my research some evangelical churches in the United States, and if a young Christian man wants to join their church, the the the elders ask them two questions. Firstly, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? And secondly, do you believe the Holocaust happened?

SPEAKER_07 8:19

What?

SPEAKER_03 8:20

Yes. Because uh behind a lot of the on the extreme end of this Christian nationalism, you get anti-Semitism. Uh all the conspiratorial thinking which comes out of guys, if you've heard of people like Nick Fuentes. Um and unfortunately, uh a lot of young Christian men have got sucked into what's called the manosphere, okay? It's it's this sort of digital tribe. Um and I uh the the root psychology is uh encapsulated in the phrase father hunger. Uh young men, in and including young Christian men, do not have father figures in culture. And I can prove that to you very simply. Just think of every sitcom for the past thirty years. In every case, the father figure is a bumbling fool. He is manipulated easily by his children and his his parents. Now you compare that with, say, anymythological view of a father, you know, this luminous Arthurian figure who brings the light of the sun into the family, you know. So we we have none of that because we now have a culture which uh regards men as the problem. You know, think of the phrase toxic masculinity. That means the best that a father can say to his son is, um, Well, I hope you don't become poisonous. So that's there there's this crisis of masculinity. And unfortunately um that has drawn young men into a very dark world full of misogyny and full of anti-Semitism. Doesn't sound like it um it cheered you up doing that. It didn't. Uh and I I have to say when I finished the series, I spent a very enjoyable twenty minutes unfollowing uh hundreds of people on Twitter that I never want to hear. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, i it is what it is, but uh if the two of you have helped people to think and think through issues, which we're not going to get into today, then that's good. Folks, it's the Equip Project Podcast. Go and look it up. I've been fascinated by what little I've heard so far already. Jim and Ollie are doing interesting things. It is a major thing to do these days, to go and see what other people are saying. And a lot of people listen to a lot of stuff. I listen to podcasts about history and about space, because I'm fascinated by that. So earlier this year Artemis II went round the moon. I was listening every day because I remember being tiny and fascinated by the Apollo missions and so on. We get things we're interested in too. So it's hard to stand out among the noise, and in general terms, you explaining why Christians aren't mad or evil in our context. How do you stand out above the noise?

SPEAKER_03 10:59

Well, you you're absolutely right. Um about the change in culture, the the the the biggest difference for growing up now, um when you compare it with when I was growing up, is the number of authority figures in our lives, you know, the number of pe voices going that that are entering into people's heads. Um I had my father and my family and my church, and that was about it. But now, through uh social media, people have hundreds of voices. I mean I I leave it to the Lord uh how how uh uh my voice is heard amongst all that. It's up to him. Um and uh I would say that probably I should probably explain the background to the podcast and how it came about.

SPEAKER_07 11:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

I I used to run uh I uh uh when I I I I entered Christian ministry, it was round about the time of Richard Dawkins and The God Delusion. And I remember vividly uh reading an article which said that MPs, Westminster MPs, were taking the God Delusion as their book for their summer holidays. And something clicked in me and I realized there's a serious problem here. And so that's what got me into apologetics. And I entered into student ministry, I was one of the chaplains at Queen's, we'll maybe explain why in a moment. And uh so I ran an apologetics class late on a Monday night, and uh so Christian students, about a hundred, would turn up, they would bring their non-Christian friends, and I would maybe do a 20-minute talk, and then they would skewer me with questions afterwards. I mean it was a cruel sport, but they they they liked it. I get the feeling you enjoyed it. Well, uh I did actually. And so um then when the pandemic hit, in a sense the podcast was an obvious um uh move um away from the live event. Um, but it came out of um listening to the questions that real students were asking. So that's what drove it.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

And probably, as you point out, not the questions you and I might have been asking when we were students in the eighties. Let's get that story then of how you got to that place. So you talked about the authority figures, your dad, your church, your minister. You grew up in a Christian family. Tell me about growing up.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

I I probably had a slightly eccentric upbringing. I grew up in North Belfast um during the Troubles, and uh I'm the youngest of five children. My mum and dad were two intelligent people who never were given the opportunity to have a college education. My father served in the RAF during the Second World War and then became a civil servant. My mum was a homemaker. So they were determined to uh have a home where their children would learn. So the house was packed full of classical music and and books. And so i it was a very um eccentric upbringing. We didn't have a television. And uh I remember when I was my first year in secondary school, the English class teacher asked us to name our favorite pop group, and they were saying, you know, Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or something, and I said the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Now, fortunately, William, everybody thought I was making this tremendous ironic joke. You weren't worried. Otherwise, I would have been bullied relentlessly for the next seven years. So I um uh so but that just gives you an example of you know, the house was was very different. But it was a loving, stable family, and I'm very grateful. I have a huge admiration for my parents and my siblings. Um so that's that's the environment I grew up in. I mean, I I went to Belfast Royal Academy, and my my elder siblings were all very academic, and uh but I wasn't. I was incorrigibly lazy. I I I loved playing football, I made lots of friends, friends which I have to this day, uh, but I had really very interest in uh no interest in learning. And uh then I went to Queens um in 1982, did a physics degree. I studied physics in the loosest sense of the term. Uh but again I enjoyed it hugely, I enjoyed university.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Did you ever end up at that Wii observatory up at the dub? Lots of physics students used to pretend to go and look at the stars, but they didn't didn't really.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Yeah, yeah, no, I remember yeah, we had to do that and um take photographs of crystals and things, yes.

SPEAKER_07 15:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

Um so that was that was good fun, but uh I I didn't really I didn't really get fired up until I got into business life. And so this was around about eighty-five. The troubles were still going on at this point, um and there weren't very many jobs around. But BT had started a software engineering center in the center of Belfast, and so I became a a software programmer. I I I I wrote code. And something clicked when I got into business life and it fired my ambition. Uh I think I quite liked being in a hierarchy. And uh so I moved quickly into design and then into management and and I ended up as director of software engineering. Oh, Jim, you became a suit. Yes, I suppose I did. So I was flying all over the world and and uh you know I I I f um I I I treated the Belfasta Heathrow flight like a getting a bus for many years. And uh again enjoyed that. But it was it was a strange time because I had from from not having any clear sense of direction at all and not being interested really in anything other than you know what was happening tomorrow, I suddenly became fired with ambition.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

But you had a you had a faith. You'd grown up in this Christian home, you'd um gone through school like a lot of people and not talked much about your faith, but there was an awakening, I suppose, uh Queens. What's the faith story there?

SPEAKER_03 16:50

Yes, I I I'm very grateful that my my although my home background was very conservative, it was not legalistic and we were allowed to ask questions. And um But you're right, when I was at school I had a a school head and I had a family head and a church head, and I just put on whichever one I needed to put on. It wasn't until I got to university and got involved in the Christian Union that my faith blossomed into some form of public witness. And it was at that point that I started to think in a grown-up way about Christianity. I I remember vividly um asking myself, how does the cross of Christ work? How does the death of a man two thousand years ago achieve anything? And so I started to read some C. S. Lewis, you know, Miracles, um Mere Christianity, uh John Stott's The Cross of Christ, and um I started to develop a more grown-up faith at that point. And um I mean I was still I was then I began to get more involved in my church. Uh I joined the Crescent Church uh in way back when I was eleven years old. It's been my spiritual family for fifty years. But it wasn't really until I was uh in my early twenties that I began to engage and serve in that church. So that that's sort of the journey of of faith.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Um and doing that service at a time when you're starting to go up the career corporate ladder, flying around the world, there's not that many weeknight meetings, you can be I'm away that week, I'm here, I'm on the plane, I'm stuck at Heathrow. Well, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

It's very hard to do both. It w it was hard, but I mean I was coming flying back and then running straight to a youth club, you know, uh on a on a Friday night, um and maybe sometimes preaching on a Sunday and then flying first thing on on a Monday morning. Um Yeah. And then romance. Yes, I I met uh uh a young uh Christian called Ruth McMullen, she was five years younger than me in church. Uh she was uh a young doctor, and we fell in love and got married in 1993 and uh moved to a home in East Belfast and uh she served as a a partner in a GP practice in in on the Upper Newton North Road. And uh you know, two completely different lives. You know, she was helping elderly pensioners with their their um illnesses. And you were a capitalist. I was a I was a ruthless capitalist. Um so yeah, it was very different. But um no, we had a very happy and a faithful marriage um and uh until my life changed forever in 2004. What happened? Well, it was ten past five on the 17th of May, and Ruth phoned me and uh told me to come home. Fortunately I was in Belfast and she told me she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. And uh the next day we went into um the city hospital. And uh she was there for seven weeks and then she died on this the uh in July 2004. And I sometimes reflect on the emotional intensity of that period, you know. I mean even now, William, when I uh on pastoral work when I have to go into the city hospital, I have to summon up courage before I can get into the lifts, you know, those big lifts that go up the city hospital. And uh Yeah, but I mean Ruth had a triumphant Christian witness. She was entirely at peace, she trusted in the Lord, she wasn't afraid of death, and um we talk quite openly about it. But I I I uh I I will never forget the emotional intensity of it. And you build these relationships with people who are also looking after their loved ones. You know, you're in the little kitchen area, and you can talk to them in a way. I couldn't talk to my own family about it, you know. And uh so that that was obviously the defining moment of my life.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

It was a very short time. You didn't live long.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

No, it was a very aggressive form of leukemia. But I I'm grateful for the seven weeks we had. You know, we had some of the most precious times we ever had together, um talking about um our relationship together. I I I I feel terribly sorry for people who lose a partner, say, through a car accident, you know, where there's just no chance to at least face our own mortality. And but there it's very interesting there. There there are two the journey which someone who's dying goes through is very different from the journey of someone who's watching a loved one approach death. They're two very different paths. Um and uh in the immediate aftermath, I think if somebody had watched me, they would have said that I behaved, you know, well as a Christian, you know what I mean. There was a thousand people in the church. Um all my my my about thirty friends came over from from London to the funeral, all of them English atheists. They could not get over this. They said, Jim, that was a spiritual moment, you know, a thousand people singing it as well with my soul. And I gave the tribute at her funeral. So and it wasn't that I was being hypocritical in any way, but I I was as if you like acting out of reflex is the only way I can describe it. And uh it then It took after uh about three years, that's when I really had to address what had happened.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

You're listening to the commission files. Time for a quick break.

SPEAKER_05 22:13

He heard God's command.

SPEAKER_06 22:15

Our Lord God is grieved that his people have broken their covenant with him. He has pronounced that there will be no further rain. So you think your God can hold the rain from falling? How dare you speak to me, your king, in this manner!

SPEAKER_05 22:31

He confronted the priests of the false god.

SPEAKER_06 22:34

Our nation has long awaited this moment. You cannot waver between two options. If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, follow him.

SPEAKER_05 22:47

And when his work was done, God provided him with a successor.

SPEAKER_06 22:52

It is not my decision, but the Lord God's. But Elisha, remember this. The Lord God instructed me to anoint you as my assistant and successor.

SPEAKER_05 23:02

Commission presents Elijah by Noel Spears. You can hear this series and many others. Just search for Commission Radio Drama wherever you get your podcasts.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Hello, this is Drew Gibson. Here to remind you about Commission's sister podcast: Faith, Hope, and Sport. Great interviews, great sporting stories, and plenty of reflections on how lives of Christian faith and competitive sport can be lived together. Find us wherever you look for podcasts. Just search for Faith, Hope, and Sport.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

This is the Commission Files with Will Leach, and I'm chatting with Christian preacher, teacher, apologist, and podcaster Jim Crooks. You understand Christian apologetics, and the most commonly raised thing I'm willing to bet is probably the problem of pain, suffering. And you therefore weren't through that suffering. Now you weren't uh hugely into apologetics then and weren't teaching that came later. But you must look back and think, what did I cry out to God? What did I say? You must have gone through the why this isn't fair, why does it have to be us? Why is Ruth suffering? All that stuff. Are you real? Are you really there was all this for nothing? Because it's inevitable that questions will come.

SPEAKER_03 24:26

For me, William, the the big questions came later, actually. It wasn't during the crisis. In one sense, crises are quite easy to handle. You just do the next thing. You say, what is the most urgent thing to do? and then you do that. So after Ruth died, I worked on for three years. And then it was in 2007 when I I decided to leave corporate life and and go into Christian ministry. It was at that point that I I crashed, I guess you can describe it, and I the big questions came. The questions were not that I was ever bitter or angry towards God, I I never experienced those emotions, I'm grateful. But I was overcome with this sense that life is futile. Would it matter if I had never existed? That those were the big haunting existential questions that hit me. And that was a real I wouldn't describe it as a crisis of faith, but it was a real moment, you know, where I had to um think through deeply. Is Christianity true?

SPEAKER_02 25:26

When you have a crisis like that, you have a choice in the way you go. Which way did you go?

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Um Well, at a practical level, I had a choice to make. Should I move permanently to London and and just dedicate my life to corporate life and and but be on my own? A lot of people would have understood that choice if you'd made it. Yes. And and I'm s I it might have been the right decision to make. I I don't know. Because certainly the decision I did take, which was to return home, leave corporate life and go into Christian ministry was was not easy. But I'm enormously grateful to my siblings, my sister and my older brothers. They were a rock uh for me. And um to have family and friendship and church was was really important to me at that time. So I decided to leave corporate life and embrace my Christian faith, but uh the sense of choosing to think about it as a real adult, now that I had seen that life is dark and hard as well as joyful. So what does a real adult do first? Well, one of the most common misconceptions people have about Christianity is really Freud's analysis, which is that Christianity is a psychological crutch. That people become Christians and hold on to their faith because it Christianity is inspiring or it's a source of hope. I I I never find that. I sometimes think Christianity is as tough as old boots. That's way harder. Yeah. So the big question for me is for me was is Christianity true? That is much more important than is it inspiring or is it hopeful? And also pretty darn fundamental. Yes, exactly. And you you you know, this was the question you had to ask. Um, not you know, and otherwise I had to ask, was I simply being loyal to my dad and loyal to my family and my inheritance by by being holding on to my Christian faith, or was I really believing something which was correct and which was coherent and rational, and which had supported by evidence. And I guess uh you could almost say that I I went through that although I was I was a Christian for many years by that stage, I went through that whole process again. I I would describe it not that I I I flirted with atheism, I think that wouldn't be fair. The emotional state that I felt at that time was one of coldness. And I stepped down into atheism, I read, started to read a lot of philosophy. I read Nietzsche and all these guys, and I mean it was just splashing around the shallow end of philosophy. Um but I did think carefully and coldly about atheism, and I came out of that. I described it as walking back up into the light, and I thought that cannot be true because it's so bleak, it's so nihilistic that it cannot be true. And I then addressed Christianity again from that perspective, and I became convinced that Christianity is true.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

That is a very brave thing to do that I think a lot of people who consider themselves to be Christians would shy away from because they're scared of where they might end up.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

Yes, it took courage. Um because I would say when I was doing apologetics before then, one of the big risks when you do apologetics is that fundamentally you just want to be the smartest guy in the room. Or you want to play to the gallery. You want to um preach to the choir. But this experience I went through was intellectually honest.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

Yeah, very, very important. Gonna change tack for a split second, although it's on the same theme. And then I'm gonna play something that you play often when you start one of your talks, Jim. Because some time ago now the actor, writer, comedian Stephen Fry took part in a series for RTA with Gay Byrne, and it was about faith and belief. And he gave this assessment of what he would say to God if he ever encountered him, which he doesn't believe he ever will do. He's an atheist. But here's what he said.

SPEAKER_04 29:27

And so bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? That's what I would say.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Very famous clip there, Jim, made available online by RTE, and you can watch much more of that interview online on YouTube or wherever, thanks to them. That interview by Stephen Fry unsettled a lot of churchy folk when it came out. Did it unsettle you?

SPEAKER_03 30:08

No, it didn't. Um I I I actually thought it was ridiculous because um he accuses God of being unjust. But if there is no God, then there's no such thing as justice. Um, you know, what he calls justice for Stephen Fry is is is the same as the offside rule in football. It's just a social construct. I mean, the thing which strikes me about people like Fry is this you have to believe something about suffering. It's not enough to throw rocks at Christianity. We live in a world where children die of bone cancer, and we have to each to decide what we believe about that. And I remember thinking at the time, if Stephen Fry had walked into a hospital room and you imagine Mr. and Mrs. Jones sitting by the bedside of their little girl and she's dying of bone cancer, what would he say? He would say, Well, I'm afraid you're unlucky your little girl has a genetic defect that other little girls do not have. But what sort of an answer is that? This was my big problem with atheism. In the end, suffering doesn't matter because nothing matters. Everything reduces to chemicals swirling around a piece of squishy tissue called the brain. Um, all our loves and our joys and our sorrows reduce to chemicals. So suffering doesn't matter for the atheist because nothing matters. Now, of course, most atheists don't live like that. They live inconsistently. They're they're decent good people, but not because of their philosophy, but despite their philosophy. So I was not unnerved by Stephen Fry's um statement at all. I think it was um uh intellectually incoherent.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

The reason I ask that is because I heard you give one of your talks. It was brilliant, it was fascinating you started with that clip. And at the end of it was in a church context. A lot of people came up to me and said that was fascinating, that was brilliant, that was exciting. And then immediately it was their situation. I have a guy who talks to me at work and he raises issues and I never know what to say. I have a woman who sits beside me and she's very negative about the church and about God and about Christianity, I never know what to say. And people weren't saying I wish I was equipped, they were saying, I wish I had gym with me every day to answer. You must hear that all the time. You are very good at this.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

People are frightened of it. I understand that. I mean I I I want to say maybe just issue one little warning about to Christians when talking about suffering, if I may. Because there are two ways you can approach it. One is to address the intellectual problem of evil, and the other way is pastoral. And nearly always you should approach it pastorally. So when feelings run deep, words should be few. And I have seen I've made mistakes myself where you launch straight into some intellectual argument when in actual fact what somebody wants is empathy. So that would be the the the first thing I would say. But I again I think this partnership model between real friendship evangelism and a podcast is is a good model where you can do the pastoral stuff, you can listen respectfully and allow uh the sufferer's anger to come out and and absorb that. But then when the right moment comes, you could say, Well, look, you know, why don't you have a listen to this episode? This guy who who lost his wife and he thought about it and and tell me what you think. And so I think that that's maybe a good way to to handle it.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Trevor Burrus, Jr. I'm really pleased to hear you say that, because apologetics is about advancing thoughts, arguments, ways of thinking. It's not about winning. It's not about proving people wrong, it's not about destroying them in a debating context, um, you know, crushing them. Uh it's not the same as evangelism either. It's it's it's hard for people to get their heads around.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Yes. There's a form of apologetics which I do not like. I call it the the the cage fighter. Um there is something in people where they love to see two intellectual heavyweights go head to head in some debate. And uh they say, well, our guy won.

SPEAKER_07 34:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

And I I I don't I mean it's good entertainment. And it can perhaps um provide you know, it can remove the climate of contempt. But in gener in real life, that that's not how you any people interact. Um you have to begin by listening to people and understanding why are they why are they angry or why are they saying this? And that's nearly always psychological, not intellectual.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Mm-hmm. What persuades people to become Christians? And you can be as theological as you like here, but it's where people get mixed up. They say, if I could just win the argument, they'll become a Christian, they'll be like me. And that's not where we need to be, in my view, because quite often when lots of people come to faith, you realise your fellowship has changed, and we've all changed and grown together and learned, and people mercifully don't become like me. What what brings people into the kingdom?

SPEAKER_03 34:56

Well, let me preface what I'm going to say by saying what does not bring people into the kingdom, and that is an infantile formulaic three-step process. In all in my experience, non-Christians are thoughtful grown-ups. And so repeating some formula doesn't work. But having said that, the thing which brings people to the kingdom is the person of Jesus Christ. When I consider why am I a Christian myself, I think of Christ's moral grandeur, that he is the source of all that is good and noble and true. He is the truth incarnate in the sense that he embodies all that is ultimately real. What we have to do is to reveal the person of Jesus Christ, but in a grown-up way, in an adult way, not some sentimental infantile way. So we have to explain what the phrase Jesus died for your sins means. Because that is gobbledygook to most people today. And uh so we can explain the work of the cross in a in an intellectually satisfying way, in a coherent way, but which still has heart in it. You know, it's not just uh a cold intellectual argument. I think it is possible to explain the beauty of Christianity in a way which is intellectually rigorous, but which has heart, which which speaks to the soul. And I think that's what uh that's how we draw people to Christ. And of course it's in partnership with God the Holy Spirit, it is is he who who draws people. Um you know, and uh this is the work of the Father, uh as John 6.44 says. Um but God uses means to draw us, right? He uses people like you and me and friends, and uh as well as the inward work of the Spirit.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

You left the corporate world and you went into Christian ministry and you taught apologetics to students and you preached and you taught, you still do. Big change in life, habits and daily routines, and you're a busy man, and I'm delighted you've taken an hour to be with us here. Have you had in your apologetics career your comfort zones challenged? Have you been pushed out of attitudes or positions that you thought were fairly comfortable, and then you thought, ah, right, wait a minute, I need to think about this.

SPEAKER_03 37:32

Yes, I can think of a couple. One is relatively straightforward. I was raised as a young earth creationist. I no longer believe that uh model. I don't think the Bible tells us how old the the earth or the universe is. But that is wasn't a really big issue. I think a much more, a much deeper issue which unsettled me is a thing called the hiddenness of God. If God is real, why does he not make himself more obvious? You know, why did he not write the Ten Commandments on the moon? Uh why does the he why do the heavens not part and this booming voice say, for the avoidance of doubt, ladies and gentlemen, I do exist. Now, when you're raised in a Christian home as I was, that question doesn't really surface in one's mind. But for a non-Christian, of course it does. So when I started to think about that from a non-Christian's perspective, I realized that is a really big problem, divine hiddenness. Why has God not made himself more obvious? And I had to think about that quite deeply.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

But in society we talk about all sorts of things. You and I have touched on Christian nationalism, and you you did the talked about the the Men of the West series that you and Ollie have done. We live in a society where individualism is everything. Me, me, me, now, now, now. There's increasing despair at global uncertainties. Society got one heck of a knock during COVID because we learnt about relationships and about interactions. We have wars, we have unpredictable war leaders. What are the people who ask you questions and who listen to your podcasting asking about? Have I I'm sure I've missed lots out.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

Fundamentally, William, I think that the West is suffering from a crisis of meaning. My favorite question to ask students is this why do you matter? What makes you valuable? Because uh you mentioned individualism there, and the philosophy behind that is a thing called expressive individualism. We now live in a culture which says that truth is not something which is out there, which I then encounter. Truth is really my deepest, most innermost convictions. And I reach down inside myself through a process of introspection, and I decide who I am, and I then project that identity to the world. I put in an Oscar-winning performance, and if if the audience applauds, then that gives me meaning. So the idea behind that is that meaning is invented. I invent the meaning of my own life, but I have seen this cripple students because it leads to the chronic anxiety of a performance-driven life. Christianity says, no, meaning is encountered. It's not invented. Meaning is encountered uh through Jesus Christ, who is the source of all that's ultimately real. And so I think the West is suffering for a crisis, a crisis of meaning. Uh if I could put that slightly differently, but it's the same point. I would say if you ask yourself what is the biggest characteristic of all the cultural war issues in the West at the moment? You know, think of euthanasia, abortion, human sexuality, gender, all these issues behind them is one central question. What is a human being? Is a human being just a clever computer, uh a biological machine, or is a human being uh a magnificent moral, spiritual, rational creature of gender made in the image of God? Do we bear the imagodai or not? That is the big question. And I think the West has, by jettisoning the idea that human beings are creatures made in the image of God, they have now created this crisis of meaning that they don't even know what a human being is.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

These are not things, obviously, that we haven't discussed in this studio and the commission files, because of the things that people talk about and things that people ask about. I'm struck by that word meaning because you had to grapple with it. You lost Ruth. You changed your career, you went into a completely different world. Yes, there was a lot more meaning. But twenty years on you're living a life doing this. This might seem a very strange question. Are you happy?

SPEAKER_03 41:45

No, it's a very good question. I sometimes joke with Ollie that on my headstone I would like a question, and the question is, what was that all about? Mine would be he meant well. I I have a very strange life in many ways. Um, if you looked at it from the surface, I'm a sixty two-year-old childless widower. I live on my own. Um But the strange thing is that I'm not alone. I I I the thing which really gets to the heart of my relationship with God is that I know the companionship of Christ. He is my friend. And so I would answer your question by saying, Yes, I am happy. I I have a fundamental optimism about my future. I I I I'm talking about my long-term future, um the future that transcends death. Uh I do sometimes wonder um you know why God has uh sent me down this eccentric path. Um and I probably won't get answers to that un until I I I meet him. Uh but I am not I I know in myself that if I didn't have my faith I would I would yield to nihilism. I really would. Uh I have an Eeyore-like personality. Um So the verse which means a great deal to me is 1 Corinthians 15. Um, Paul takes us to a very dark place. He says, if Christ be not raised, you know, we would um we we would our faith would be futile, uh we would still be in our sins. And then he says, But Christ is indeed raised from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep. And that is a bulwark for the soul. You know, all the the uh nihilism, the fears that life is futile, um the sadness, that can all come crashing down in that verse, and it will not yield. But Christ is indeed raised from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Do you ever think what Ruth would think of who you are now, what you're doing now?

SPEAKER_03 44:04

She always worried about me, you know, uh how how I would survive without her. Um but uh I would say that she was an intensely spiritual woman and it has taken me many, many years um to develop some form of spirituality which is akin to hers. So I'm just very slow.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

When you come back to the people who listen to what you podcast, listen to what you preach, people who've listened to this, and I guarantee will have been fascinated by the last forty minutes or so. If they're struggling against that issue you've raised about is life futile? What was that all about? What's the point? Nihilistic instincts on a dark, wet morning in February or whatever, what would you say to those people who struggle, who worry, who wonder, who have faith, who've encountered Christ, and yet and yet, what would you say?

SPEAKER_03 45:04

Meaning is a product of three things purpose, value, and significance. And so the first thing I would say is to someone who's standing in the dark, who feels that life is weary, remember that God intended you. Darwinism is described as the death of intentionality. You're just a a leaf blown off the evolutionary tree. But the scriptures say that God intended you. And I I take tremendous comfort in that. You were intended. And then there's value. But you know, again, why do you matter? You matter because God finds you valuable and that gives you worth. And so even if you walk into a room and no one else notices you, you know, and you feel invisible. Well God notices. Um you're how valuable to him. You are his child. And then there's significance. Um H. G. Wells wrote that that book um which ends he he goes to the very end of time and there's nothing but the lapping of of of waves um just utter silence. But so in if that is true, then life has no significance. We're just a blip between nothingness and nothingness. But in Christian thought, um life ends with the redeemed around the throne of God. And uh it it reaches its climax in in the world to come, and it will be a real life, a real embodied life in a new earth. So it is Christianity which gives us um um purpose, value, and significance. And I I I'm a real believer in thinking deeply about that theology and letting it uh filter into your brain. I mean, one of the men who had the most impact on my life was a man called Professor David Gooding. He was Professor of Old Testament Greek at Queen's University, and he taught me how to appreciate the Bible and how to teach the Bible, uh, to see its organic unity and its moral grandeur. But I remember about two weeks after Ruth had died, uh I was down in Newcastle in County Down, and I was in in in somebody's house, and he was there, and he sat beside me for two hours and he talked theology. He talked about heaven, he talked about um w what God is doing in the world. And that was like building uh an iron framework into my heart. So I'm a real believer that um theology, when it's correctly understood and absorbed into the heart, gives you strength, it gives you understanding. And um that is really what is needed uh um for people who suffer.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Jim, thank you so much for joining me on the Commission Files. It's been a pleasure. I know I've asked you the odd question you haven't been asked in a while, so that's a little bit of pleasure for me. And for the record, you're a great broadcaster. It's been a real pleasure to be with you, William. It's a pleasure to sit opposite one. Thanks to everyone who's been listening. If you find this interesting or thought-provoking, and how could you not? I know I find the people I meet a real blessing too. So keep listening episode by episode. Do please tell other people you might like to listen to, point people towards it. If you'd like to learn about making radio programs or podcasts or video drama or how to support Commission in our work so we can keep going, try commissionradio.org. There you'll find links to the YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages. And I'll be back soon. Until then, bye bye.