SPEAKER_02

The Speak Life Podcast, sharing Jesus in everyday life.

SPEAKER_01

So we are with Rebecca McLaughlin, the author of Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the For the World's Largest Religion. Thanks so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for having me, Glenn.

SPEAKER_01

You are in uh Cambridge, Massachusetts, is that right?

SPEAKER_00

I'm in New Cambridge, yes.

SPEAKER_01

Ah right. And because you you studied at Old Cambridge, is that right? Back in the day?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I studied at Old Cambridge, and you know the cliche about how everyone meets their husband or wife in college? I had to stay in college for seven years before I had any such experience. So I met Brian, uh, who's from Oklahoma in my last year at Cambridge. We started going out uh right before I left to go to Oak Hill. So it was kind of that annoying thing of like there were two weeks when we were going out in Cambridge before we were then long distance, as long distance as London to Oklahoma. Um then he dragged me kicking and screaming across the pond, America's most reluctant immigrant.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, because I knew you as Rebecca Beale. You were you were Rebecca Beale to begin with.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01

Brian made you a McLaughlin. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

He did.

SPEAKER_01

Because we knew each other from uh Oak Hill Theological College. And uh and uh I think yeah, you were studying you were the year below me, and Roz Clark was the year above me.

SPEAKER_00

Does that sound like I think so? I think yeah, you're in a fierce sandwich of me and Roz.

SPEAKER_01

I know, I know. At Bloke Hill. Who honestly? How have I not heard that before? Blokhill. I'm not gonna edit that out, I'm gonna keep that in because that's that's how I roll. Because I am an ENFP, and I just discovered recently you too are an ENFP as well.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

Um, which on the Myers-Briggs scale means that we are advocates, we are campaigners, we are enthusiasts, we we uh rabbit on and on about our latest passion until the next person try hopefully um catches the infection. Um have you have you always been like that?

SPEAKER_00

I think so. And what's worse, I'm an ENFP, and then if you've ever done the Enneagram thing, yes. Enneagram two.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, which is oh that's nice. That means you're a helper.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, which is like the key to me is that I want to love and be loved, and everything else is kind of noise. So it's it's funny because I'm big on ideas, but emotionally I'm very like, oh, I just want a certain few people to love me and let me love them.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Whereas on the Enneagram, I'm a seven, which I'm just doubling down on the whole enthusiasm thing. No content, no heart, nothing, just just enthusiasm. That's all I am. And I think I think I think this book, Confronting Christianity, is quite an ENFP book. Um, I mean, obviously the the footnotes uh they are more S than N. They are they are more sensing than than the right stuff. But in terms of an obullient, enthusiastic, passionate kind of come on guys, seriously, kind of a book. Um I I I just think this uh completely communicates with enthusiasm, with passion, with with confidence. And I just wonder where this book has come from for you in in terms of what what's been the passion that's driven writing this book.

SPEAKER_00

In some ways, it represents things I've been working on for pretty much as long as I can remember. I was uh I was a sort of enthusiastic Christian, at least from when I was nine. I think it was a Christian before then, but I was sort of enthusiastic from nine. And I was um in sort of secular school settings trying to uh win friends who were quite skeptical of Christianity to the gospel. And I think I'm one of those people who who tends to be quite comfortable sticking out. So who knows what would have happened if I'd been to some sort of Christian school and Christian university in America or something. But but what I was in fact in was very, very, you know, secular environments, albeit with that British Christian traditional set, like gloss, that historic Christianity um setting filled with people who actually don't believe at all. So, you know, people are singing hymns at assembly in the morning, uh, or rather I'm the one I'm singing hymns extremely loudly while everybody else kind of looks at a hymn book mumbling through. So, in some ways, it's it's questions I've been exploring and conversations I've been having for almost as long as I can remember.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

In the the slightly shorter lens version is that I spent nine years before writing the book working at the Veritas Forum, where I was having the extreme pleasure and privilege of identifying, recruiting with my sort of ENFP enthusiasm and um helping to equip Christian professors, uh academics at some of the top universities in America and and in the UK and um and a couple of other places, uh, who were very serious Christians at the absolute top of their fields in a whole range of disciplines from physics to philosophy to psychology to history to music. And I became increasingly aware of this information gap between what these incredible people who got us sprinkled throughout the academy knew and believed, and even you know, many of them had come to faith as adults or as academics, um, and what the person on the street, be they Christian or not, thought. So there were students walking into psychology of religion classes as you know, undergrads uh across the country here and doubtless in the UK as well, who were getting the impression that psychology of religion had somehow discredited belief in God. And actually, I knew that the guy who had pretty much invented the specific field that this was coming out of was an evangelical Christian. So it's like, wait a minute, no, no, no, no. We're missing, we're missing something significant here. And I think the more that I did that, um I got to the point where any discipline that seemed like it had discredited Christianity, I knew real life Christians at the forefront, doing groundbreaking research. And I felt like it's really sad that most people have no access to this. Um and then even in the questions that are more in the personal sphere than in the academic sphere, like the sort of sexuality stuff, I feel like there was a lack of access to compelling stories and thinking from people who actually had personal experience in those areas. So I suppose the book is me trying to do that um thing that magpies are meant to do, but apparently don't, of stealing shiny things from various places and weaving them into a little nest and saying, here are some of the incredible riches of the gospel as seen through the lens of all these different questions. And, you know, come and have a little sneak around this nest.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, I've heard you say before, and I think you were quoting somebody else when you said it, that uh Jesus has bad PR.

SPEAKER_00

Um which is this is my yeah, my friend Andrea Gillespie, who is a um professor of poly uh political science, I think, yeah, political science at Emory University, which is one of the top universities over here, um, and she particularly studies black political engagement. And she says, you know, my mother always said to me Jesus had has bad PR, because so often we hear a headline and it seems to discredit Christianity, but actually, if you look more closely, you find, oh no, in this in this era, actually, Christians are the best game in town. Still a very flawed game.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Because we're miserable sinners, but actually the best game in town.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Again, that's one of the things I was trying to do with the book of saying, yeah, you know, Christians have failed here, here, here, here, and here. But let's look at all the the alternatives and realize that actually Christians have often been doing so much more than any other, you know, it's a if we're if we're making a fair comparison between Christianity and any other belief system, we get a very different picture.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, like Churchill on democracy, and you know it's it's the it's the worst form of government after all the others, you know. Um it reminded me a a lot of sort of John Dixon. He calls himself a kind of a public advocate for Christianity, um, which is a lovely way of burying the term evangelist. Because that's that's a PR disaster to call yourself evangelist.

SPEAKER_00

Well, so this is the thing though, I'm an evangelist for the concept of evangelism. Because we have got to a point in the sort of broader Western culture where the idea of trying to persuade somebody to change their minds, particularly on a religious question, feels like an act of violence at worst and sort of embarrassment at best. And in fact, it is the greatest sign of respect to another person to say, I take your beliefs seriously, I recognize that we believe very different things, and I see you not as just a product of your culture or your background, but I see you as a thinking agent with the right to change their mind. And so I would like to try and persuade you because I believe this is the truth. And conversely, I'm open to you persuading me. Like I want to have conversations with extremely clever, well thought through people who believe differently than I do because maybe there are things on which I'm wrong, and I want to know that. I don't want to just like sit around in my ignorance. And I frankly think it's patronizing to want other people to sit around in their ignorance.

SPEAKER_01

So I think evangelism. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I just like evangelism, I'm happy to defend evangelism to anyone who wants to ask. However secular they are, however progressive they are, however, whatever. I think we have actually very good grounds for evangelism.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. It does have a bad press, though. I I spoke to a couple of different church leaders in the town that I'm in, Eastbourne, and um two of them independently had decided that they would um dissolve their evangelism task group and instead rename it as a witness task group. And uh I thought that's that's so telling about what bad PR evangelism has, is that etymologically what they were doing was they wanted to stop being heralds of good news and uh begin to be martyrs, which is what the word being made.

SPEAKER_00

Which is okay if they want to be martyrs. I mean, like that's very bold of them.

SPEAKER_01

No. Um I loved the dedication um for this book. Uh you say it's for Natasha and for all my other fiercely intelligent friends who disagree with me but will do me the honor of reading this book. I know you've misspelt. I just uh there's typo number one.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, American. This is the I have this sort of grammar and spelling dysphoria from being in America where I have to spell things the American way. And I know all the English people are judging me. Yes, and the Australians.

SPEAKER_01

And the Australians, yeah. So tell me about either Natasha or tell me about a composite of all these fiercely intelligent friends that you're writing this book for.

SPEAKER_00

I think I one of the greatest privileges that I have had is being close to a lot of people who, as I say, are fiercely intelligent, aren't gonna let me get away with junk. Um and who really disagree. Um I I think it's easy, at least for for some who've maybe uh lived in more of a Christian bubble sort of environment, to think of atheists or non-believers as sort of those folk out there who, if we can just slap them down with a really simple argument, uh they'll either I you know either gonna go away or come to Christ, like one or the other mind, which it is. And I think sometimes apologetics as a as a as a manifestation of something strange in the world can veer in that direction where it's all about, oh, I just have this like one-line takedown of what you're saying because I actually I I'm going to expose how stupid you are for thinking that.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

I have enough really clever friends and really clever like good people friends, in the uh by by which I mean I'm I I I happen to think none of us are actually good people. Um so I'm simply judging by the standards of of the world, which are not the law of standards in any of them. You know, people who have genuine like ethical concerns. For instance, i an American saying to me, I can't I'm not gonna countenance Christianity because of slavery and because of the racism that's been endemic in much of the American church for for centuries. I want to say to them, I entirely agree. Like I I I fully sympathize with your ethical objection to Christianity on those grounds. I think the problem that we've that we find is that if you look back into the New Testament, you find that the New Testament is the greatest anti-racist manifesto manifesto in all of history. And what we're doing today now, as we look back over something like the horrific phenomenon of slavery, is we are uh associating Christianity with the white slaveholders and not with the black slaves who came to Christ, despite the sin of the white slaveholders. And so my question now is how many generations of faithful black Christians in America do they need to be before we start listening to them and not to the white slaveholders?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so I think often we uh and in America, you know, black Americans are at least 10 percentage points more likely to identify as Christians and and rank higher on every every test of evangelical commitment than the average white American.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

So so yes, racism is a horrific thing. In fact, racism is a horrific sin. But before we dismiss Christianity as a racist religion, like let's listen to the people of color who are trying to tell us about Jesus.

SPEAKER_01

That's a fascinating rhetorical move because it's it's saying, Will you listen to the black voices here? Um happen to be Christian, yeah, yeah. And so much, therefore, of the critique of Christianity, um, yeah, could could be seen to be coming from uh a white privileged position. Um if we're not going to listen to the majority world. Yeah. So you're you're thinking about intelligent friends like that. Um are you are you thinking about obviously you're you're thinking about people who will give you six or seven hours to sort of sit down and read through your book? Um so they're they're coming to a certain, they've got they've got a certain interest in in Christian faith. Do do you do you expect that they have a knowledge of the gospel? What what do you expect about the the average reader?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so so number one, I don't expect anyone to give me six or seven hours of their time. I expect to have to fight for their time with pretty much every line. I think you and I have discussed this this Glenn. If you're either speaking or writing, you cannot presume on your audience's attention.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

If you're not working, it I I need to motivate my reader to turn the page, every single page that I'm turning, and probably even every paragraph. And if I'm not doing that, I haven't done a good job of writing this book. So I what I'm hoping is that it a non-believer, maybe because a a friend they trust has given them this book, will open the first page and maybe be interested enough in that to turn to the second page. So I'm not asking for an upfront commitment of six or seven hours. I'm asking for like, give me two minutes and let's see what we can do.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um in terms of my hope is that I have written this book in a way that does not presume any knowledge of the gospel or of the scriptures. I'm more presuming poor assumptions uh about the gospel and the scriptures than than actual knowledge. So I try, and it's it's very possible that I have uh failed at some points in my book to do this. So uh forgive me if I have, but what I've tried to do is have look through the lens of a non-believer and write it all in a way that will be accessible to them. So I don't just say in Jesus' parallel of the Good Samaritan, I say, Jesus saw this parable, let me tell you about it. It's known as the Good Samaritan, but I'm not presuming that you know what that is, even though not all well.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah, my hope is that they they could come to this book and and feel like they were being um invited into something that doesn't feel alienating because I haven't explained terms.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And there there seems to be a deliberate um shape to the book in terms of um, you know, I I very much noticed about the footnotes. So you know, you in uh in the introduction, you know, you've you've you're heavy on the footnotes, you're you're gonna show people the stats from the Pew Research Center and other other kinds of places. Um and then very interestingly, you sort of move on in the book, and then many more of the footnotes start to be about Bible passages. And then by the time you get to the last couple of chapters, um, the footnotes kind of drop out and you're sort of addressing the heart. Is that is that a kind of a shape that was deliberate? I imagine so.

SPEAKER_00

I'll tell you what was deliberate. Uh well, I very intentionally addressed the question of hell in the last chapter for two reasons. One, I think it is by far the hardest question. By leaps and bounds and orders of magnitude, there is one hard question in the book, and that is how can a loving God send hell? And I so I wanted to come to that last. The other reason I wanted to come to it last is because I cannot talk about that without talking very strongly about the gospel.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And so I wanted to kind of build toward a place where it's very, very strongly gospel focused. Not that I mean I I hope that there's a lot of gospel sort of woven into the fabric along the way, but that's the you know, that's the the climax. I think as a reader, you know, as I say, if I if I have earned the right to the first two minutes of the reader's attention, if they're not a Christian, I want to start by saying to them, here are things that any any person, Christian or non-Christian, who is looking at the data could can agree on. And I kind of want to get them to the point of saying, yeah, I mean, even if Christianity isn't true at all, I think it is both interesting and a good thing that China looks like it may go from being a communist country to a to a Christian country. Like that actually is probably just objectively a good thing for the world. And even, honestly, I mean I one of the points I make in the the introduction and and first chapter is that the big question for the next couple of generations is not how soon or religion die out, but Christianity or Islam. And for most of my secular liberal friends, while it would be hard for them in some sense to acknowledge this, because sort of um, you know, they're appropriately sensitive to not wanting to be Islamophobic, uh at the same time, uh if you give them the choice, do you want a world that is mostly shaped by Christianity or a world that is mostly shaped by Islam in terms of your own concerns and values, they would pick Christianity. So I want to start by saying, okay, surprisingly, rather than being the the enemy of all things uh good, uh Christianity is objectively the friend of many things that you think of as good. And even Christianity has shaped your belief that these things are good. So let's kind of start start there, and I need to make a strong case for that, and it's a case that needs to be uh fully referenced and footnoted because I don't want them to just take my word for it. I want to be pointing them to the experts on these questions and to the latest studies on these questions, and wherever possible, I'm quoting non-Christian sources rather than Christian. I'd much rather say here's a New York Times article where a prominent atheist thinker says these things, isn't this interesting? Versus here's an article from XYZ Christian Alliet. Because you know, they they are rightly skeptical of of the Christian Alet. So I want to start with a with a reader and giving them like talking talking the language that they're familiar with and um giving them credible sources that that they objectively will find to be credible.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

As the book progresses and we get into more directly theological territory, it it there are fewer footnotes referencing academic works, uh, because the question, how can a loving God send people to hell, or how can a loving God allow so much suffering, those aren't questions that are going to be accessed. Most studies are not relevant to this question.

SPEAKER_01

But you put those two at the end because as you're talking about suffering and talking about final judgment, um, you you are bringing things back to the heart in quite a pointed way. Um and actually, you know, I mean the footnotes were incredibly helpful for me in a uh in a Twitter debate just the other day, and and somebody was you know coming back at me on something and and said, Um, oh well Christianity will die out in the next hundred years, so you know, never mind. And um and so just I I literally just you know photographed a you know a page of your of your book and and he was like, Well, where what are the sources for that? I was like, well, zoom in on the footnotes. And then fascinatingly, he said um he he sort of had an objection to what I said, and I said, it's interesting that Rebecca actually uh anticipates that objection on page two, so I I photographed the next page, and I'm not gonna do it for all 220 pages, but um he then said I will I will read that book then. So there you go. That was yeah, amazing. Amazing. On Twitter as well. Who would have thought a good a good gospel interaction on Twitter? Um but yeah, there does seem to be a uh a great shape to things um in terms of the questions that you address and how you address them. Let me um uh tell people what the 12 questions are. Um so number one, aren't we better off without religion? Number two, doesn't Christianity crush diversity? Number three, how can you say there's only one true faith? Number four, doesn't religion hinder morality? Number five, doesn't religion cause violence? Number six, how can you take the Bible literally? Number seven, hasn't science disproved Christianity? Number eight, doesn't Christianity denigrate women? Number nine, isn't Christianity homophobic? Number ten, doesn't the Bible condone slavery? Number eleven, how could a loving God allow so much suffering? And number twelve, how could a loving God send people to hell? Um, how did you come up with 12? Was it always going to be 12? Or what was what was the criteria?

SPEAKER_00

Gosh, I I sat down one day, having thought about a lot of things, I mean as as an ENFP, I'm not really big on planning. So I sat down one day and I thought, what are the hardest questions I can think of? What are the hard questions that I've been asked? And some of them were so obvious. I mean, in today's culture, writing a book like this and not addressing sexuality questions would be just bizarre. Um and there are things, you know, questions around science, questions around um whether it's even like morally legitimate to say that there is one true faith. I feel like those and and suffering, you know, there were there were many that very automatically just like came as I sat down. Uh and I think it's been interesting. A couple of times with audiences, I've said, hey, raise your hand, tell me what what you think are the hard questions or what questions your friends are asking you. And it it's pretty much confirmed that these are at least 12 of the most common hard questions that people are uh asked. It's seldom that somebody has said something right, oh yeah, there's that doesn't fit into any of these categories. In terms of the progression, though, in some ways that could have been hard because there are so many different orders you could have put these in. It ended up actually being kind of easy. It just sort of flowed somehow in my mind. And there were some things that I knew I needed to build to, and some often there are pairs of chapters like doesn't religion or doesn't Christianity hinder hinder morality coming before doesn't religion um cause violence? That that was an important pair. The the chapter on um isn't Christianity homophobic had to be preceded by doesn't Christianity denigrate women? Because I can't talk about sexuality until I've talked about sex and gender, what on earth male and female are, um, and what you know what the point is of marriage in the first place. So there were there were some like that that had a natural pairing. And yeah, I don't know, it just sort of I sat down one day and these are the twelve, and this is the order that they came in, for for better or for worse.

SPEAKER_01

Um to give people a sense of this book though, I thought I thought I could um I thought I could poke you on three um objections that people kind of commonly have, um, and and see if we can get kind of 90 seconds, two minutes of of infused advocacy. Okay. Um what are my three gonna be? I know. Yeah. Um so what's your response if people say Christianity is anti-intellectual? What would you say?

SPEAKER_00

Christianity is in fact the greatest intellectual movement in all of history that's it.

SPEAKER_02

It's done.

SPEAKER_00

So we think of Christianity as anti-intellectual because of relatively recent history. Well, two things. One because of relatively recent history, where we have pulled away from the academy. Christians, in fact, invented the university. The top universities in the world were founded specifically to glorify God. Uh fields like, you know, uh the modern scientific method was developed by Christians because they believed in a created God who was both rational and three. So if we look historically, there is an incredible like birth of intellectual activity coming out of Christianity and and then being spread out as the gospel spreads, literacy spreads, because we are people of the and mass education spreads, because you know, we Christians should be the most intellectually curious people in in town if we're if we're serious about loving Jesus with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. More positively, because we know the gospel is simple and we believe that it is something that somebody who is mentally impaired or a small child or you know, for whatever reason is not firing on all cylinders uh intellectually, should be able to access the gospel. We we sometimes think that that means that Christianity it must be intellectually shallow. And in fact, I I think it's more like um if you think about giving money away, if you have five dollars to your name, giving one dollar is a really big deal. Um but if you have a million dollars to your name, you shouldn't be giving money like somebody who has five five dollars or pounds. Sorry, I'm being all American here. And and and similarly, whether we are people who have spent like years and decades investing in the life of the mind, or people who naturally don't orient that way, we should still be expecting Christianity to challenge us intellectually, and we should be expecting to challenge others through our faith intellectually. Uh, and that that just scales according to how much of an investment you've you've had in your mind.

SPEAKER_01

And I think this book will really help us and help us to up our game. Um, you you wrote a great uh article for for TGC, I guess a couple of months ago, uh saying uh brothers and sisters, it's time to raise our game. Was that the next one?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's time to go on the offensive. And one of the points is we need to raise our game. We need to actually challenge, challenge and channel our brains when it comes to our faith and how we're representing our faith to our friends.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, yes. And we'll we'll we'll get back to that. But let me let me poke you on another issue. Um, so you've kind of um talked a little bit about science as well in in that question. So let me let me move on to uh diversity. Is Christianity anti-diversity?

SPEAKER_00

Christianity is the greatest movement for diversity in all of history. End of. So so again, we in the we in the West can have this idea that Christianity is at heart a white Western religion. And that was not how Christianity began. It began as a you know, a Middle Eastern religion. Um immediately, I mean, Jesus was fiercely uh cutting across racial and cultural boundaries and socioeconomic boundaries in his ministry, and then he commanded his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. We meet the first African Christian in the book of Acts. And interestingly, he is a very intellectually, like he's a very educated man, is reading his own scroll of Isaiah. So, this idea we have that Christianity was exported to Africa in the colonial era, along with you know education, is actually very much a misreading. Um, Ethiopia became one of the first Christian, I think the second Christian state in the world, um, before St. Patrick ever went to Ireland, um, and you know, a thousand years before the gospel came to America, for instance. So we have this sort of historically skewed view of Christianity as innately a white Western religion. And then the reality of the church today is completely counter to that. In fact, the secularizing demographic is white Western men, and the most Christian demographic is women of colour, and and the world is uh the the Christian world is becoming more and more a movement of diversity than it ever has been. But you know, if you take a snapshot today, Christianity is the most diverse belief system in the in the world, just objectively, hands down.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And that comes across so beautifully in in multiple chapters in your book, you know, just just one sentence uh out of many. Christianity is the most ethnically, culturally, socioeconomically, and racially diverse belief system in all of history. Um yeah, diversity is absolutely a thing.

SPEAKER_02

It's our thing. Diversity is our thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. Um so okay, third, third thorny question to to throw you away. Um surely the existence of such suffering in the world is a defeater for faith in a good God.

SPEAKER_00

Christianity stakes suffering at its very heart in the cross of Jesus. So it's easy for us to come to the Bible with the idea that if God loved us, he would not intend for us to suffer. And that idea is is exploded on pretty much every page of the Bible as we see time and again God allowing and intending the people he most loves to suffer. And the Bible, I would argue, is is written almost page by page by suffering people for suffering people. And as I say, the the suffering of an innocent man, the brutal physical and emotional and spiritual suffering of an innocent man is staked at the heart of the Christian faith. So rather than being a worldview that sort of shies away from suffering or only really works if you're in a sort of smiley, happy place where everything is good, Christianity is a belief system that that grips at the heart of the suffering person and says of that suffering, um, come come to Jesus and he will meet you in your suffering because he has been there and he will give meaning to your suffering, and he will raise your suffering one day from the dead. So I think we have not a flimsy religion that only works when the sun is shining, but we have the one true faith that can pull you out of the depths when all the lights have gone out.

SPEAKER_01

And I loved what you did in that chapter. You know, you you compared Christianity to other worldviews, which is just such an obvious thing to do, but it's so often we don't do it, and so often we feel like we're on the back foot, like only Christians have to answer the question of suffering. And you look at atheism, you look at Buddhism, uh, which are very interesting, you know, compare and contrasts. And and I often do it by saying, you know, there's there's three worldviews you could take. You could go for chaos, you could go for karma, or you could go for Christ. Um and the natural response is either chaos or karma. Um, and then what you do is is John 11, which is uh again is what I I try to do all the time, is take them to the story of Lazarus. Um, and it's just astonishing, isn't it? Immerse them in a story in which God shows up at a funeral and he's late. And then he out mourns all the first century Middle Eastern mourners.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And then he raises the guy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And and what I love about that story, as you may have deduced from reading my chapter, I don't think it's mostly about Lazarus.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So the head the headline of that story was like, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.

SPEAKER_01

He is rather passive in the chapter.

SPEAKER_00

The meat of that story for me is Jesus' conversations with Martha and subsequently with Mary, but mostly with Martha, where he, so you say he deliberately waits until Lazarus is dead, and then he shows up and Martha says to him, Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. And yet I know that whatever you ask of God, he will do for you. Like she bless her heart, she believes that Jesus can raise Lazarus from the dead, and Jesus says, you know, your brother will rise again. You can almost feel her disappointment of like, Yes, Lord, I know he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day. But like, what about now? I'm not I'm not asking for a theological answer. I am asking for you to meet me in my suffering now. And Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me, even though he dies, will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? So he he confronts her at her moment of greatest need and says, What you most need right now is not for me to raise Lazarus from the dead. What you most need is me, I am the resurrection and the life. And so his his subsequent crying with her and her sister and his subsequent raising Lazarus from the dead are confirmations that what he said is true, but in some ways they're not the main event. The main event is Martha meeting Jesus in that moment and believing, she says, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ. Believing that He is He is in fact our life. And I think for for me, in moments of my own suffering and struggle, I I kind of bring myself to that chapter and I stand where Martha stood, and I let Jesus confront me and say, Do I believe that he is my life? Because if I do, nothing else can take my life away from me.

SPEAKER_01

Right, right. And you finished the book on those lines. You know, you finished the book on John 11. So it's it's clearly at the at the at the heart of things. And I mean, I I love that Martha and Mary both ask, um, if you had been here, or say, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And it's so interesting that it's both you could both read it as a statement of faith and as an accusation. If you'd been here, my brother would not have died. Statement of faith. If you'd been here, my brother would not have died.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and the the onlookers, it's interesting, the onlookers, when Jesus starts crying at Lazarus, you know, Lazarus' death, the onlookers say, uh, oh, look how he loved him. And others say, huh. Couldn't the eyes of the blind man have also stopped this man from dying? And I think that's that's the question for all of us in our suffering. We know that God is powerful. Right. We know that Jesus could have made it not happen. Right. And yet he did, and we need to trust that he meant it.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Which is incredibly hard.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. But you don't duck that. And so because you go to John 11, I I think for a for a reformed theologian such as yourself, um you you don't go down the well, God gave us choice and blah, blah, blah, kind of route. Um, but what you do do is immerse us in a story in which that whole fall and resurrection makes sense. Um and I think ultimately that's that's more compelling, actually.

SPEAKER_00

Do you know what's really funny, Glenn? Uh I read Sam Harris's book about free will, um, which he came out with a few years ago. And Sam Harris is effectively arguing in that book that we think we have free will, but we don't, not even slightly. It is very like reading Jonathan Edwards.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00

They have different conclusions in some ways, but actually very similar starting points of saying you know, you are able to do the things that you will to do. So it's not like somebody is act actively stopping you doing what you want to do, but you have no control over what you want to do. And so, in fact, you know, Sam Harris is making a a a some I think it's not the most compelling argument, but like a scientific argument for the bondage of the will.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And so I think I'm not wildly compelled by arguments that hinge on free will personally, because God is powerful and we're not. I'm more I'm more compelled by sort of recognizing as we little weak sinful humans, you know, bow before the throne of God, what do we learn about what He has done and how we figure in it?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. I saw that.

SPEAKER_00

Sorry to kill I was in a Bible study a couple of weeks ago and um we were talking about conversion, and one of the ladies in the study said that she'd heard you know recently from somebody a helpful line, which was that um God respects our no. And I said, I didn't know that God respected Paul's no. Right. I I'm not I'm actually not sure that God does respect our no.

SPEAKER_01

No, he says no to our no.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, we say no to God, and what is the resurrection? It's it's God saying no to our no. You know. And the whole, you know, God's a gentleman, you know, he'll never burst through the through the doors. Again, in the resurrection, he can, in spite of the doors being locked, right? Jesus shows up. You know, you've got to invite him into the door of your heart. He bashes down the door. That's kind of you know that's that's what happens in a love story, actually. Yeah. Um let me let me finish with um okay, you you have written uh a fantastic book that is um effervescent and full of confidence and and not at all in a snarky way, not at all in a superior way. Um it it sounds to me like you've listened to your friends for a very long time and listened very well. And this book is you saying, I have listened, I have heard you. Um now, ready or not, here comes a thoughtful response. Um, and but it is a bullion and it is confident. Um and I I wonder for a Christian who's reading this, and they don't know the answer to all these questions, and and you know, I I don't know the answer to all these questions, um, what can we take away from this if if I feel daunted when my friend brings up the homophobia question? Um you you give a fantastic, you know, 20-page you know, response to that question. If I am a Christian who just wants to be an advocate for Jesus with their friends, I don't feel like I've got all the answers at my fingertips. How can how can I be a witness for Jesus?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So you brought up that question in particular, and I think it's incredibly important and one that we do often feel very daunted by because many of my non-Christian friends, the their first response to Christianity is like, this is a a religion of homophobic bigots. And they have a legitimate moral reaction to what uh evangelical Christians or you know Christians holding to the historic orthodoxy and sexuality are saying. I think one of the things that it's important to recognise is that particularly in today's world, though I think at other times as well, particularly in the today's world, who you are often determines what you have the right to say. If you can tell the story of a friend who is actually speaking from profound personal experience, then they they can't dismiss uh the words of those friends in the same way that they can dismiss your words. Now, I it's one of the interesting things about writing this book for me, by far the most scary, but also in some ways the most redemptive, is that I've struggled all my life with attraction to women. I'm if I were not a Christian, I think it's likely that I'd be married to a woman rather than a man. So I feel I speak with real kind of personal empathy on these questions. And what felt for a lot of my Christian life like simply a waste, you know, sort of somewhat sad waste uh of my emotion or whatever, um now feels more like an acid because I'm able to uh speak for a Christian Orthodox view of sexuality from a standpoint that I think people can't really dismiss me as a homophobic bigot. Um one of my best friends came to Christ from an atheist lesbian background when she was an undergrad at Yale and speaks very compellingly on these issues herself. So what I often do is sort of share with a friend like my my little very unglamorous sort of testimony on these questions, and I send them my friend Rachel's much more sort of uh page turney testimony, shall we say, and say, hey, you know, maybe you'd like to listen to some things that she has to say. And and I think particularly on this question, we as a church need to less often feel the straight white men on this question and more often feel the same-sex attractive people, wonderful people like Sam Albury. Um, and so that people can just like jump over that first hurdle of of being able to hear this and not just say, you know what, this is straight up homophobia, and I I don't, you know, I I have no interest in hearing what you have to say. Uh so I think there are questions where we need to understand that um our own story may not be the most helpful entry point for others. Um, and I think we, particularly around the questions of sexuality, we need to do the the work of making our own Christian culture more biblical on this question, which means stop um letting your brothers and sisters struggling the dairy kind of languish in the dark by themselves. Uh it means invite people in, uh be real about our own sins, and even raise up within our churches people who can speak for Christ on these issues from personal experience and credibility. Um but we also need to be confident that that Jesus' answers are uh genuinely the most compelling ones when when we look at them closely. And and not too, I think too often we let questions sort of hover around in our peripheral vision, afraid to look at them, because we're kind of worried that they won't hold up. And when we we turn and put them in the front of our gaze and look at them closely and see what the Bible really says, we find that they're actually much more compelling.

SPEAKER_01

Your book did remind me of of Joshua Ryan Butler's uh book, Skeletons in God's Closet, on that as well. In in that, okay, let's let's actually face the objections full on. Yeah, and let's immerse ourselves in uh in a profound biblical answer. That's not here's a proof text, and here's a proof text, and there's an analogy, and let's move on. But from within the Bible's own logic, here are here are answers to these questions that actually get you punching the air at the end, thinking, ah, this is better news than the alternative. Um I I thought your your book achieved that that beautifully. Um, Rebecca, final question. Um, you say at the start of the book that globally speaking, the church is growing and that you know by 2030 we will be no, by 2060, you say um 33% Christian, maybe 32% Muslim, and that's 32 and 31, but yeah. 32 and 31.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

And then uh I'm I'm intuitive, I'm not sensing. And then uh and then the nuns will will reduce from 16 to 13, is that right? That sort of thing. And globally speaking, that's um that seems to be the trend. Do you have hope that here in the West, uh on your side of the Atlantic, here in in the UK, do you have hope that the church can flourish and thrive in the next few decades?

SPEAKER_00

I do, absolutely. Uh, two reasons I have hope. One is that much of the trumpeted decline has come from nominal and uh liberal Christianity rather than from sort of full-blooded uh Bible-believing Christianity both in the US and in the UK. Uh, I think number two, once we realize that Jesus has bad PR and that we have been buying into the bad PR, we will have much more kind of confidence in ourselves to recognize that that we have we have the best game in town here. Um number three, I think we we are benefiting massively in the in the US, maybe in the UK as well. I'm less familiar with all the stats there. But immigration is is brilliant for the the church in America. Uh if we leave it all to the the white men, yeah, we're not in a good shape, but but we're not, um thank God. It's like a blood transfusion for the church, uh, what immigration is doing in America. And the the city next to mine here, Somerville, uh English is the third most commonly spoken language at UNDR churches. Wow. So we need to you know recognize that God is doing this beautiful thing, this beautiful diverse thing with his global church in the West. Uh, and we need to recognize that a lot of the promises that that secularism has made, it's defaulted on. So you know, one classic example is the the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which was trumpeted as you know, this wonderful liberation for women. It's not, it's giving men what they always thought that they wanted.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I've heard Russell Moore sort of say that we we need to be a place of refuge for those fleeing from from uh the the ruins of the sexual revolution. Um yeah, a place for refugees from that to a place of true intimacy, um, true security, true love. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Fantastic. Well, Rebecca McLaughlin, this is a terrific book, and uh I will be singing its praises to anyone who asks. Um, this is Confronting Christianity by Crossway, uh, well, by you, and published by Crossway. Twelve Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion, uh, a cracking read, and it will resource uh anyone who wants to be an advocate for Christianity. Buy one, read it, give it to your friend, and see what happens.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks so much, Glenn.