One80: Testimonies of Transformation
Be inspired by stories of Christian transformation from around the world--and next door! Hear miraculous coming-to-Jesus stories from all walks of life and be amazed at how God writes a story in all of us. One80 is a production of OneWay Ministries.
One80: Testimonies of Transformation
106: Another Way to Fix Hearts, David Suarez (Narcolepsy)
What happens when a lifelong dream collides with an unexpected diagnosis? For David Suarez, the path seemed clear from the age of six: become a cardiovascular surgeon and heal broken hearts. But when David was fast-tracked into Brown University’s prestigious medical school, a sidelining diagnosis and an aha from God showed him that there was more than one way to fix a broken heart.
A shower of surrender showed David an entirely new way to see God and deal with his narcolepsy diagnosis. And he found a natural antidote in sharing Jesus with others that led David down an entirely new career path.
David is now a high school Bible teacher as well as published apologist. See how God guides David from one passionate career choice to another, and how he is now fixing broken hearts.
Some of David’s Books:
David’s Book, Worldview Review: A Guide to Worldview Formation, Christian Apologetics, Comparative Religion, and Evaluating Competing Belief Systems
David’s Book, The Death of Allah, 10 paradoxes that dismantle Islamist theism
What Should a Muslim Believe? a field guide for Christians
The Sleepy Seminarian, apologetics questions and answers by David
Helpful Links:
Reformed University Fellowship
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David Suarez:Since I was six years old, I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon. I wanted to see people's hearts get better. That's what I wanted. Ever since I was six years old, I worked so hard straight days through elementary, middle, and high school, going to every single nerd group I could, trying to get to a good college so I can work and finally help people's hearts get better. I wanted to work on hearts. And now the thing that I need to do that, a functioning awake brain, God has taken away from me.
Margaret Ereneta:David Suarez had dreams of becoming a cardiovascular surgeon, which were soon becoming a reality as he was a student at Brown University, fast-tracked into their prestigious medical school. But a God-given dream and a sidelining diagnosis made David wonder if there was more than one way to fix a broken heart. This is your host, Margaret Ereneta. Welcome to David's One80.
David Suarez:And I am so excited to be on this podcast to talk about the wonderful work of God in someone who once did not know him very well, despite being surrounded by him my whole life. I was completely surrounded. I was born in a place that was called the city of churches, actually, and there was churches at every corner, and I was raised in the church since I was a very young kid in a more Pentecostal background, uh, assemblies of God type environment with all the flags and the twirling and the tambourine and everything. And, you know, I was surrounded by believers. I was surrounded by Christians, and I was a believer as a very young kid. One of the most important early memories that I had after my parents had divorced when I was four was around the age that I was six. And I was in kids' ministry at my church, and it was so wonderful. Pastor Gary was speaking. I loved each moment. And then he tells us this story about a man named Solomon. And I was so shocked by this story as a little kid because God offers all these different options to Solomon, and Solomon instead chooses wisdom, wisdom to follow God. And as a little kid, I remember the moment I heard that story, I just started weeping. And I couldn't really explain why I was weeping, but I just started crying and weeping. And I, you know, there is a little altar call for all of us little kids, you know. So a little six-year-old me walks over and is still crying a ton, it's not running down my face. And I say, Pastor Gary, please pray that I have wisdom. I want to have wisdom. And then he starts crying too, and he doesn't know why. And then he prays for me and he says, God will give you wisdom. And that was a prayer and perhaps even a promise, because as the years went on, I learned a lot about the scripture.
Margaret Ereneta:This is a little confusing. You might think here that David becomes a Christian, but it's actually much later. This is head knowledge, and he's going to clarify the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge later on in the story. Listen in.
David Suarez:I memorized uh a lot of the scripture for this uh interesting competition called Junior Bible quiz, JVQ. So I did that for a couple of years, and I was part of the leadership teams at my church, and I was part of all these different ministries. And yet, it wasn't really until high school that I started to understand a little bit more about God. And even then, as I'm going through high school, it's just because I'm surrounded by non-believers. And now that I see there's a lot more non-believers, I start to say, oh, I see that not everybody agrees with uh me about the faith.
David Suarez:Well, that's new, but uh I wasn't really too keen on trying to explain my faith to anybody. So I went through my high school years pretty quietly, uh, not too loud and proud to be a Christian. And then it wasn't until college that I started to realize that I knew very little about God. So much so that my first year of college, I didn't even choose to join any ministry in the university at all. I went to Brown University, uh, Ivy League school, very secular, very, very secular. And I chose to just stay away from a lot of the Christian communities for the first, you know, year and a half. And I was not doing that well. I was embroiled in my own sin, my own uh addictions and struggles.
David Suarez:And instead of actually struggling against those sins, I kind of just let them overtake me in this new environment. And I started to occasionally watch the Sunday service from back home every Sunday by myself, but still no ministry community, no evangelistic community, nothing that's pushing me to really study the scripture, study God, ask questions about God, pursue God. And as people asked me questions about my faith, surrounded by so many disbelievers, I didn't know what to say.
Margaret Ereneta:So David's so frustrated, he's not able to explain Christianity, and he's about to endure a big trial.
David Suarez:And this all came to a head when around my first attempt at my junior year at Brown University, and that phrase there, first attempt, is key to the story. I was working and trying to get through all of my uh medical biology classes and physiology and all that, only to find that I couldn't stay awake. No matter what. I could not stay awake. I would take multiple energy drinks and take multiple espresso shots. And after taking three or four espresso shots and a full energy drink, can I could not stay awake in class.
David Suarez:No matter how much sleep I got, I couldn't stay awake. As a matter of fact, it was sometimes so bad that I actually couldn't tell if I was dreaming or awake because my dreams and my awake state sort of fuse together. So there was actually uh one very strange, extremely strange story where a guest speaker came to one of our medical disability classes, and as the guest speaker was talking, I'm looking at them, and this is after like a month and a half of these, you know, really strange symptoms of me constantly being tired happen. And I'm looking at them, then all of a sudden, everything changes while my eyes are still open, everything changes.
David Suarez:And it's almost like this person is part of a Pokemon Go game, and I'm trying to catch them with a Pokeball. But I have my notebook in front of me. This person is on the stage, and apparently, this whole time that I'm imagining all this happening, on the notebook, I'm actually doing this because that's what you do on the Pokemon Go game. You throw a ball and toss it at the person. And I was just imagining myself doing that. And then eventually, someone bumped me on the shoulder and I like woke up from this little hallucination dream thing, and they said, Are you okay? And I'm like, No, I don't know what just happened.
David Suarez:I think I'm going crazy. So I was completely exhausted. Dream and reality were starting to fuse together, and I thought, what is going on? I I why is God letting this happen? And then it gets worse because now I have to take a medical leave year. I thought it would be a few months, but it became a whole gav year as I came back home and had to wait for doctors to find an answer to what was happening to me.
David Suarez:And ironically enough, when I came back home, I was reaching out to every doctor I could, and they all just so happened to be on vacation or sick at the exact same time. So I'm like, okay, this is strange. Maybe God is calling me to pray for healing as a way to, you know, show his glory. So I pray every single day for what, at that point, like three months, every single day, every morning and night, praying in the shower, crying out to God, praying every single day for God to heal me, just heal me. I know I have faith more than a mustard seed, surely. So just heal me. Why won't you do that?
Margaret Ereneta:So David is praying incessantly for healing and it's not coming. Listen in.
David Suarez:And then after about three months of crying out every single day, I'm I'm just crying on the shower floor and thinking, I just don't get it. Like, what's the point of God giving me this desire to go to medical school since I was six years old? Since I was six years old, I remember specifically stating I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon. I wanted to see people's hearts get better. That's what I wanted.
David Suarez:Ever since I was six years old, I worked so hard straight days through elementary, middle, and high school, going to every single nerd group I could, trying to get to a good college so I can work and finally help people's hearts get better. I wanted to work on hearts. And now the thing that I need to do that, a functioning awake brain, God has taken away from me, it seems. God, why would you give me a desire that I can't fulfill? And as I'm crying out to God, literally crying in the shower, that's where I would go so family wouldn't hear me crying.
David Suarez:I heard this sermon from a speaker, a preacher, who to this day I don't know who it was, um, but it was playing on my phone. I guess I had my YouTube feed open and it skipped to the very next video on my random feed. And there was this pastor talking. And this pastor was speaking about the Garden of Gethsemane, and he said that our Lord himself, the perfect innocent one, Jesus Christ, when in the garden, is crying out according to the Gospel of Luke.
David Suarez:He has drops of sweat like blood falling from his skin in agony for the true agony that's that's awaiting him. And he says," let this cup pass from me this free hour, and yet, not my will, but yours be done, Father". And I realized something. I had never actually prayed like that. My whole life, my entire life, I have never prayed that. I've always prayed for what I want, all the things I want, but I never prayed that God's will would be done. And so, in that moment, I said, I'm gonna pray like that. Because clearly, my will is not that good. So I'm going to pray like that. God, not my will, but yours be done. And I kid you not, since that day, I felt peace. I felt peace in pursuing what God had for me.
Margaret Ereneta:So David has this powerful prayer in the shower. He comes out transformed, he's pouring through the Bible, and he finds apologetics.
David Suarez:See what happens when he starts using apologetics himself after I had finally given my illness and this condition to God, and mind you, this is before I even knew what it was, uh, because there were no doctors around to tell me what it was. I got out of the shower and I said, God, I don't think I understand you. But I love you.
David Suarez:So I started from that day reading the scripture every day. And then I started to be realize that I was quite confused about various verses. So then I would look online to try to find how people would explain these various verses. And then I would find YouTube videos in which people explained these verses, and these people were called apologists, and I did not know what on earth that was. I'm like, what is an apologist? What are they sorry for? I thought the word apologist meant someone who apologized, so I didn't know any better. And so I see that there's this one guy, and his name was like Ravi, and I'm like, what an interesting name. I don't know who this guy is. So I click on it and he's talking about Jesus and he's explaining the Trinity so simply to this atheist that on this stage, and I'm like, oh, this guy's pretty cool.
David Suarez:And then I started to realize, wait, Christians can do that? Like, we can just give answers to people's questions. And then in that feed, I see another video recommended to me by a guy called Dr. Frank Turek. And I'm like, who's this guy? He's talking to all these college students too. And it wasn't just one question, there was like 20 or 30 college students going up to this microphone, and I'm thinking, oh man, this is so terrifying. I would never put myself in that situation.
David Suarez:And then he's just answering all their questions so simply by showing how Christianity gives a more consistent answer to the question than their eight own atheistic worldview does. And I'm watching these guys every day. I kid you not, I wake up, I put one of them on, and I'm listening to them, and I'm and I start to, you know, I start to just sit back and be like, wow, I feel so much peace just knowing that there's these people who know so much about the Bible and about God and they can answer these questions. And then it hits me. Why can't I do that? Like, I can't just rely on these people my whole life, right? I actually have to learn how how how do they think that way?
David Suarez:Like, what what is it in their brain that allows them to think in this deep, rational way? So then I start to look up online how does you know someone become an apologist? What do they read? What are some resources? And then I am just reading one thing after another, and I have a science background, so this stuff kind of starts to fit with me. I'm like, oh, it's just answers to questions. But I just I feel this burning in my heart to start telling people about God. I start going to coffee shops, I start going to libraries when it's the part that they let you speak louder. And I would just be studying my Bible and all these theology textbooks, and then go to an atheist and just start talking.
David Suarez:And I just couldn't help but say, hey, you know what? God loves you. And I don't just believe in a God who's some sort of guy with a beard and a cloud, I believe in a God who's who's got all these attributes and who's a real personal being and we see his fingerprint in creation. And the atheist was like, All right, well, tell me about him. I'm like, okay. And then I and after that first time, which my heart was racing, my hands were so shaky. Uh, but after that first time, I realized how awake I felt. And I was like, I forgot what this felt like. I haven't even taken a sip of my coffee yet. Why am I so awake? Not that coffee worked on me because uh I didn't have the medicine at the time. So I'm like, why do I feel so awake? And then I realized when I talked about God, I just feel awake.
David Suarez:This is the craziest thing. I'm gonna start telling everybody about Jesus. And so, perhaps for slightly uh selfish reasons, I was telling people about Jesus because it helped me stay awake. Um, yeah, it was so fun. I loved it. I felt this insatiable need to study the Bible, to study apologetics, to study what Christianity is, how to defend my faith, how to present it to people in a logical, reasonable way. And it was shocking to me that someone like me could be raised in the church, surrounded by God my whole life, totally God-honoring mother who uh served God with all her heart, and and brothers in the church as well, uh, despite our struggles here and there. And I was surrounded by this wonderful Christian community. Yet, despite all the verses I memorized for those Bible competitions, I couldn't understand any of them until I was like 19 or 20.
David Suarez:It wasn't until I was thrown into the pool, right? Thrown into a life of difficulty and medical challenge and a lot of people who disagreed with me. That was the time that I finally learned how to explain my faith and how to live it out. And after all those months, finally a doctor who wasn't on vacation or and who wasn't sick came around and they were able to discover during my medical leave year that I had a type of sleep disorder, a narcolepsy. Type two narcolepsy.
David Suarez:So there's narcolepsy type one, where someone is pretty good throughout the day, but then they, if you excite them too much or if you make them laugh or anything like that, then their muscle tone just gets dropped and they just fall to the ground, they fall asleep. People who are like very awake or you know, somewhat awake and then fall asleep randomly. I had type two narcolepsy, some people call it hypersomnia, so just super sleepy. And so I was just always exhausted. You know, there's no like high and then a drop.
David Suarez:I'm just always at the bare minimum level of awake. And yet, while I am coming to realize about this diagnosis, before they even give me any medical treatment, I noticed that I was okay and awake if I talked to people about God. Whenever I was going to these coffee shops, it wasn't the coffee that helped me, I know, because I tested it out. Uh I come from a science background, right? at Brown University, I would slice mouse brains to analyze their cells to see if there was also a way to convert kidney cells to neuron cells, right? Uh I was I was very into scientific methodologies and uh academic rigor. So I was testing all this out and I realized the only consistent thing that allows me to stay awake without any medication was speaking to people about God and teaching people about God.
David Suarez:So then I'm so confused, right? Because I'm like, thank you, God. The I know I didn't want to have this medical leave year off, but now I had a chance to study apologetics every day, read the Bible every day, pray and fast and everything. This was really good for me. But now it's time to, you know, go back to college and uh get ready for the life that I had planned. And the life that I had planned was, again, to go to medical school. But then I started to think as medical school loomed, because I was part of a program at Brown University where they had automatically accepted me to medical school.
David Suarez:If I just made it through Brown, I wouldn't have to take the MCAT at all. They would just accept me immediately to the medical school. So I'm I'm still pursuing this field of cardiology. I want to study cardiology and fix people's hearts. But then as I uh go back to Brown and I'm going through my last, my second attempt at junior year, which went way better, I was still wondering in my head, God, this doesn't make sense. I mean, I have medical treatment now, I've got medicine that allows me to kind of stay awake, but it's never the same as when I'm just talking about God.
David Suarez:When I talk about God, I stay awake for a long time and very alert. How is it that I am gonna make it through medical school when now I have this desire to tell people about Jesus all the time? And then during my senior year at Brown, because I had a decision to make about if I would go to medical school right after Brown University or withhold for a year. And so I was fasting, doing a Daniel fast, and then I had a very strange dream.
David Suarez:And in the dream, it became very clear to me that the thing which seems like it has my name right in front of me would actually be the death of me. But it became extremely clear that what was before me was not for me, because it would it would be the death of me. So I decided to let the school know I won't go to medical school at least for a year. I need a year to think about it.
David Suarez:And so I graduated from Brown University, still trying to figure out why God would give me a desire to see hearts fixed, and then also give me the only way out of my narcolepsy, which is to talk to people about Jesus. I'm like, I can't do this in a medical setting. It's just it's a no-go. I'm not allowed to. And so I take a year uh after I graduate just to work at a clinic to see if I want to go to ministry. I start to think, well, maybe that ministry is something to do, you know, seminary, you can do apologetics.
David Suarez:But I go to the clinic because a dream that I've had since I was six years old is really hard to let die, you know. So I'm really trying super hard to hold on to this little dream. And after about, you know, six months of 70 hour weeks every week, I decided, no, I I'm I'm going to ministry, I'm gonna go to seminary. And I felt so much peace because the day I left that clinic and I went back home, I left Brown.
David Suarez:I had graduated from Brown with my bachelor's in premedical health and human biology, and I was signed up for seminary at Southern Evangelical Seminary, and I finally felt this peace from God. And then I realized in that moment, oh my goodness, there's more than one way to fix a heart. And that thought blew my mind. There is more than one way to fix a heart. You don't always need a scalpel and a suture to fix up a heart. Sometimes it's just the scripture and a good word. And I went to seminary. I uh just this year, earlier this year, graduated with my master's in Christian apologetics.
Margaret Ereneta:Isn't it cool how David's illness pointed him to a whole new career and was able to put away his dream from six years old to doing something for the Lord and it's actually healing his illness too.
David Suarez:I think apologetics made me realize how little I had thought of God before. Uh it's not until you're confronted with questions and as I often say, thrown into the pool without floaties that you start to realize just how little you do or don't know. And the moment I started to submit to Christ as my king, and even letting my mind, my mind itself, be transformed by Christ instead of being conformed to the likeness of this world, but instead being renewed through the reading of his word, I started to realize that Christ is just true.
David Suarez:He is good, and all the little experiences I had of Christ as a kid, and all those wonderful worship songs and everything, Christ is good, but he's also true. And that was really shocking. Uh, in in studying apologetics, pursuing my masters, I realized that I saw Christ for so much of my life as a savior to give me comfort in times of struggle, which is a blessing about two and a half years ago. I said, God, I'm going through my seminary, but I need a job where I can teach people about God or talk about God. If there's a pastoral job out there, please send it my way. I'm praying and I'm praying, and suddenly I get a text about this opening at a local Christian high school. And who would think?
David Suarez:It's for a Bible teacher. Someone who gets to teach Old Testament and New Testament's survey, uh, apologetics, worldview ethics, the works of C.S. Lewis, uh, chapel ministry. And I taught them about apologetics theology, uh, philosophy, how to argue for your beliefs in a logical way, how to learn how to change your mind, because you do have to learn how to change your mind. It's not exactly an easy thing.
David Suarez:As a matter of fact, a lot of times when you're incorrect about something you hold too strongly, and you start to realize that you're incorrect about it, you kind of feel like you're dying. I did 152 debates with students at the previous school. Uh, we we I taught through debate. I realize that a lot of them in their debates would just the moment you could see they're about to consider it, then they're like, no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't matter what you're saying because I know I'm right, even though they just prove that they're they're not. I realize you have to teach people that it's okay. You like you don't have to resist that dying, right? You can actually accept that little process of the little deaths that we die every day, where you realize that the thing you thought you knew was wrong.
David Suarez:And that's cool because the death we choose at the end, we actually don't get a chance to choose, right? The many deaths we die is a little thing to those who live forever, right? Christ will uh and has given us eternal life. And so I always rest on that knowledge after all the ways I've had to change my mind about Christ in my life, you know, from just a cosmic vending machine who gave me what I wanted, if I prayed hard enough, to now seeing him as my Lord and Savior, King of all, you know, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
David Suarez:I realize, you know what? It's okay to be wrong if you're in pursuit of the truth. You know, I get to tell my students about Islam, which they deal with all the time, uh, the number of times they it'll be late at night and they'll send me TikToks, random TikToks, saying, Oh, Mr. David, Mr. David, I I don't know what to do. There's this Muslim TikTok I just saw, and it sounds like they're making a really good point. Is Christianity false? And I'm like, calm down, calm down. Uh no, they're actually making a serious fallacy here, and so I'll explain uh whatever the issue is. My students are like, oh, that's nice.
David Suarez:So I taught them how to evangelize to Muslims, how to speak better, and evangelize to atheists. And some of them have actually, you know, some were atheists and now they're Christian. And other ones uh who have Muslim friends, they've been evangelizing. And I got a message earlier this summer, about a month and a half ago, and one of my students said, Hey, I evangelized to a Muslim and he became a Christian. It's awesome. I was like, Wow, you see, our lessons matter. You can learn a ton if you pay attention in class.
Margaret Ereneta:David Suarez is an author and he has some books out, and one is called Worldview Review, and he's gonna take us through how that book unfolded, and it's a cool story.
David Suarez:Yeah, I I still do go to coffee shops, but now with my wife who is pregnant. Um and as a result of being with my pregnant wife, I don't do all the things I used to do at coffee shops. Uh I used to go to coffee shops and I would spend hours and hours and hours at these coffee shops talking with atheists, trying to explain Christian theology and the Christian world view to them. I started to realize something that happens a lot.
David Suarez:And it's not just talking to the atheists at the coffee shops that I would go to, but also, you know, the Muslims I would talk to as well, is that it's almost as if we were talking past each other, right? I was trying to explain truth and morality and beauty and all this evidence for God. And a lot of times it's it's as if they just either are unwilling to understand what I'm trying to argue for, or they really just don't have the ability quite yet to understand it. I was wondering why it is it that we're talking past each other? And I was sitting there and I was praying, God, please give me wisdom.
David Suarez:Just like when I was a little kid, I guess. God, please give me wisdom. I I I can't get it. I I feel like there's got to be an easier way to describe your truth to people, and also for me to better understand them so that I'm not so shocked when they have different opinions. And I and I'm praying and and praying to God, and then out of nowhere, all of a sudden, I have this little chart in my head. And it's it's a really simple chart. It's it's three columns and it's just one row, right? So it's a really simple chart, and and the uh the chart title, you know, it's just each of the column titles is uh truth, morality, and free will or free reasoning. And underneath each one, for the objective truth one, that column, it has knowable or unknowable. Objective morality has knowable or unknowable, and the free reasoning one, it's by itself.
David Suarez:And I realize I can just ask people how they feel about truth, morality, and free will. Because based on the way that they answer their questions, these questions about truth, morality, and free will, I can understand what their worldview is. It made everything so much more clear because every single worldview, without exception, every worldview tries to answer these three questions, which break down into other questions. They try to answer does objective truth exist? And if so, is it knowable? Does objective morality exist, right? Is there true good and true evil? And if it does exist, is it knowable to us?
David Suarez:And are we able to freely reason and freely choose between better and worse true and false options? Like, do we have the kind of brains that were designed to freely reason about the truth? Do we have brains that were designed to find the truth? Or are brains just chaotic and who knows what they were designed for? Right? For the Buddhists, they would say that, you know, in some forms of Buddhism, that the truth is not accessible to us. In many forms of Hinduism, uh, there's Maya, right?
David Suarez:Depending on which version of Hinduism, there's maya, which means illusion. Like the true reality is not accessible to our minds until we become enlightened to realize that we're Brahmin, right? We're we're God too. But the issue is if I can't know truth, then I can't know at what point I start to know truth, which means I can never know truth. But if I can never know truth, I have an untrue or an inconsistent worldview, right? Because I reject objective truth. And then I realized my chart isn't just helpful, it actually shows what worldviews are impossible.
David Suarez:Any worldview that denies truth as being accessible to us is a worldview that makes knowledge impossible, which means it's an unin or unknowable, unknowledgeable worldview. And nobody wants to hold to an unknowable or unknowledgeable worldview, right? And if your worldview stops you from being able to reason, you have an unreasonable worldview. And that's something I taught my students. And my book is actually written so that even middle schoolers could understand it, and my high schoolers love it to bits at the new school I'm teaching at. Because all you have to do is realize some worldviews aren't even really worth arguing about because they defeat themselves on step one.
David Suarez:That's why I call it pre-apologetics. Some things are just so self-destructive, self-contradictory, that they're not even worth giving these long, expansive arguments for. Just tell them, well, here's the issue with your worldview. And here's how it, you know, you're sitting on a tree, you're cutting the branch you're sitting on with your worldview. Jump to Christianity. This is actually a good branch on a good tree with deep roots, you know? This is this is a better way to approach reasoning in the first place.
David Suarez:Because our worldview, at the very least, is reasonable. As in, it makes us able to reason. And so that's that's where I got that idea just from, again, a coffee shop and a prayer. And I've been using that little table, that little chart, for like what, now two and a half years, because that little table led me for the last two and a half years to work on a book and to test it out with people from different faiths and even, you know, Christian foundations, but from atheism and agnostics.
David Suarez:And I started to realize this was a really good and simple approach for people, you know. So it it made evangelism a lot easier because I could understand people better, but also they were able to understand their own worldview better and see that Christianity is not just true, but it's also beautiful and reasonable and awesome and cool, which is great. Uh, and so that's why, you know, this this all of it started with just a coffee shop, a barista who had to get back to work, and a prayer and a napkin, which I scribbled very quickly.
Margaret Ereneta:For my last question, I asked a difficult one to David. What would you say to somebody who is realizing they have a lot of head knowledge and not a lot of heart knowledge?
David Suarez:It's really, really difficult having a lot of head knowledge when you're younger and immature. Because head knowledge does not equate to wisdom, number one. I'll tell you that very clearly. And I think parents know that very well if they have very smart children. Well, smartness and head knowledge doesn't equate to wisdom, you know, the right application of knowledge. But for somebody who has a lot of head knowledge but not much heart knowledge, I would press them to start thinking about the beauty of God or the beauty of the beliefs they're holding to.
David Suarez:Because beauty is very deep intellectually, but also profound emotionally, right? Uh God isn't just true, although that's good, but God is also beautiful. Think about the vast expanse of the one perfect eternal being, God, coexistent as these three persons who one of these persons chose to take on a human nature and dwell amongst his creation, so that, as the early church fathers said, he can redeem the fullness of the human life for us. Now, yes, that is intellectually true, but it's also
David Suarez:beautiful. At the very foundation of these things, I would just want to live for a God like that. A God who was willing to die for me, of course I would want to live for him. Hey, started to realize that beauty isn't just some sort of emotional reaction to, you know, something that's wonderful, but it's also just a description of the nature of God. But number two, realizing that this isn't just an intellectual pursuit or an academic game. We're talking about a God who died for you, right? And rose again, so that he could justify freely forever those who would come onto him and abide in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
David Suarez:Head knowledge will often give you a lot of what's. Here's what I believe, here's what the Bible says about this topic, here's what this says. But how often are we pushed to answer why? Often our churches don't prepare us for a lot of whys. I was raised in the church and I was not ready for a single why. And when uh one of my best friends sent me a text in college saying, Wow, the God of the Old Testament is a really brutal god, I said like five heresies trying to respond to him. I said five heresies just trying to respond to my friend.
David Suarez:And I was raised in the church and I couldn't answer or give a response to this single statement he made. I started to realize head knowledge doesn't actually mean head understanding. And when you start to understand something and see it as good and beautiful, that's when it starts to move to the heart. So I started to see God as good and beautiful, and I started to pursue understanding rather than just knowledge.
Margaret Ereneta:Thanks for listening to the show today. I really do want to have you check out the show notes for this one. There's so much that David's provided for us. Not only his books, there's more than the one he mentioned, but he also has some cool ministries. An apologetics ministry on YouTube. He has a young adults ministry on Instagram, and a lot of helpful tools for you. So check out our show notes on this show and share it with a friend. It may be the best news they hear today.
