From Exploited Child to Empowered Author - Interview with BJ Garrett

Embark on a profound exploration of spiritual enigmas with us as we grapple with the concept of free will in a world ordained by an omniscient deity. Our journey is enriched by the astute perspectives of theologian William Lane Craig, who lends his expertise on the origin of evil and divine foreknowledge. This episode promises to fortify your faith, offering substantial insights into how to engage in soul-stirring dialogues with both atheists and believers alike.

When Christianity meets the perspectives of other faiths, the conversation must be navigated with care and respect. We discuss the art of sharing faith with Muslims and students, focusing on the historical Jesus rather than theological disputes. By countering the rising tide of relativism, especially among the young, we present a balanced discussion that champions the truth of the Gospel using universally accepted academic scholarship. This ensures that the message resonates deeply, bridging the gap between skeptics and believers.

Witnessing to nonbelievers is an art form steeped in grace, understanding, and patience. This episode takes you through the nuances of compassionate dialogue, emphasizing relationship-building over immediate conversion. Explore practical ways to gently guide conversations towards deeper spiritual engagement, opening the doors to salvation without overwhelming those on their own path of discovery. Tune in and transform how you connect with the hearts and minds of those around you on this enlightening spiritual quest.

Chapters

• 0:01 Faith and Failure's Podcast
• 7:47 Existence of Evil and Engaging Unbelievers
• 14:48 Sharing Faith With Muslims, Students
• 19:38 Challenging Relativism and Defending Christianity
• 23:57 Building Bridges Through Grace

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Faith and Failure's podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:05

So have you ever heard an atheist make claims and you had nothing to say because you didn't know what to say? I know I have. Man, I have seriously so many times had people who had major, large questions. So in the next few weeks, speaking of large questions, I've been somebody in the group Faith and Failure's. If you don't know it, we have a Facebook group. There's about 750 people in there that we're live streaming to right now, also on YouTube, also on Facebook, the page and everything.

Speaker 2: 0:42

So one of the big questions I asked what was the one of the biggest questions you have from the word or in your spiritual walk? And one of the questions was if God knows we're going to do things, how do we have free will? And so I've been really studying and getting preparation for this, because I don't take this lightly, and so I wanted to be able to respond correctly. And I say this all the time. I'm a pastor. I do not know everything, but if I don't know, I will try to dig until I find something that will at least give you some sort of answer or point you in the right direction. I feel God has charged me with that and I really love to do it, which is a big part of why I even started this podcast a few years ago. So if you're joining us just now, please, please, please, if you'll do me a big favor, go over to the YouTube channel Faith and Failures and hit the like button on this video. Make sure you subscribe. There is a massive, massive portion of people who tune in every single week, who watch the videos, who watch the shorts. We get thousands of views on our shorts all the time, but you don't subscribe. So please do me a huge favor. It is free to you and it will make me happy. Go, hit that like button and subscribe to the channel as well as, if you like, listening to podcasts as you drive or go to work on every live stream, I chop it up and put it into smaller sections. If you are watching live, you can see that all of a sudden, the logo comes on and it does a little sting. That's so. In editing, it makes my job a lot faster, so I can set separate all the video clips and do that. So, anywhere that you listen to podcasts either on YouTube, if you search in podcasts, or if you have Apple podcasts or whatever the Android version of that any place you listen to podcasts. Faith and Failures is on there, so make sure you go download those so that you can listen whenever you like.

Speaker 2: 2:42

So a theologian, a study of the word, a study of kind of the landscape, of who God is diving in deep, answering and even hearing some of the hard questions. So today's kind of all the whole live stream, every video we're gonna put out in the next couple of weeks, everything's gonna be tailored to talking to and having dialogue and conversation with atheists, cause I believe, as Christians, as believers, we sometimes run from conversation with people who do not believe like us. We run from conversation with people who don't think like us. We run from conversation from somebody who doesn't believe that there's a God, and can I tell you, how else will they end up knowing who God is unless we, as believers, have dialogue and conversation with them and ask them. You know what you can do Ask questions. I know what you're thinking like. Wait a minute, I'm the Christian, I'm supposed to have all the answers. No, what I want you to do, as a believer, is ask the questions, because nine times out of 10, the questions they even have are not questions of their own. They're actually spewing out something that they have heard from somewhere else and they don't even know where it comes from. They don't even know the depths of what they're saying, but they just have had this question. Like that makes sense. So I'll follow this. We do this in Christianity all the time.

Speaker 2: 4:12

How many people in the church house actually know and study the word of God? Or do we just listen to a guy on Sunday or a woman on Sunday bring a word and say something and then we go. That was good, I felt that that was nice, and we go home. We do nothing with it and we are exactly the same week after week. We do no in-depth study. We do no theological study of our own. No, we don't understand context. We don't understand what scriptures actually mean. We just want to come to church and be spoon fed, and so atheists are exactly the same. As a matter of fact, sometimes atheists study a lot harder than Christians do, and that's why we run from questions from atheists.

Speaker 2: 4:55

So this guy, william Lane Craig he is a guy who studies the word, and so today's live stream if you're watching live is gonna be a little bit longer, but this video is worth the time. We're about 39 seconds in and what. So what it is is it's a live Q and A with William Lane Craig. He goes to you could tell you could see. Let me show you on my screen. You can see it on the right right there, the electronic drums. So that means he's in a church Cause we got the I think we may have the same drum set Cause you know, people say the drums are too loud. So we got to have electronic drums to not offend anybody, but anyway.

Speaker 2: 5:33

So we're going to walk through this and one of the first questions here launches it and he talks about evil. So you can kind of, if you want to, let me see the origin of evil. Okay, how to engage in agnostic, sharing your faith with Muslims, working with college students. Scriptures 100% valid. The epistles of the New Testament do not quote Jesus. Okay, how can Christians be, how can Christians be outraged by ISIS? That's a unique one, a post-mortem appearance of Jesus. And you got, do you consider apologetics, the dead rising to life? So there's a couple of good ones in here. We may skip around, just depends on how we feel, and then we'll top it up later. You're in the live stream, so here we go.

Speaker 3: 6:20

And go ahead and line up behind this fellas, so we don't have a time lag in between.

Speaker 4: 6:24

I think my question is about the origin of the evil. Yes, Christians, you know, believe that real live evil exists. Yes, it's true, there really is evil in the world. We don't believe God is evil Right and we believe that at some point he is all there was.

Speaker 3: 6:41

Yes.

Speaker 4: 6:42

So it becomes a conundrum to explain to people who aren't Christians how we got to this state. If God's not the author of evil, if he didn't create evil and he's not evil and evil does exist, I didn't know if you had some thoughts about the origin of that evil.

Speaker 3: 7:00

Yes, I see the origin of evil in a disorder in the free will of creatures. God has created creatures with a free will angels and humans and these wills are properly oriented toward God as the supreme good. When creatures use their free will to direct them toward other goods rather than toward God as the ultimate good, this is a disorder in the creaturely will and is the origin of evil. So moral evil is a result of creaturely freedom and is a disorder in the creaturely will. Now one might say, in addition to that, that evil doesn't have any sort of positive ontological status. That is to say, evil isn't a thing that exists and needs to be created by God. It's a privation of something. It's a privation of right order in the creaturely will.

Speaker 3: 8:10

And to illustrate, think in physics cold is a privation of heat. Cold doesn't have any positive ontological status. There isn't anything called cold. Rather, it's an absence of heat. So cold is a privation of heat. Now, that doesn't mean, obviously, that cold is illusory. If you go outside on a winter's day, you can feel how real this privation is. But it's not a positive reality that would need to be created by God. And in exactly the same way, evil doesn't have any positive ontological status. It's a privation of right order in the creaturely will that is due to freedom.

Speaker 2: 8:58

Yes, Did y'all understand that? Did you get that? So it's not really. No, that's a very unique way to look at it. Let's go on.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Yes, I teach mechanical engineering at Bradley University and I ask questions of my students of the cause of disorder, and then they'll all agree that disorder is caused by man. Even the religion professors at Bradley will agree with that. But then when I ask the next question is do we live in an isolated system? They go agnostic. And so how would you engage in agnostic when you start answering the questions of the existence of God, and how do you get them engaged in that discussion? Because they go, it's not humanly possible for us to answer that question.

Speaker 3: 9:48

I would encourage every Christian to have a list of arguments memorized that he can share with an unbeliever. The typical unbeliever, in my experience, has no good reason for his unbelief. He's simply been taught to repeat the slogan there's no good evidence for God's existence. And this is really, I think, a mask for intellectual laziness on his part, but it serves very effectively as a conversation stopper, because the average Christian doesn't have any good evidence for God's existence, and so this, in effect, gives the atheist the trump card. There's no evidence for God's existence. And that's the end of the conversation.

Speaker 3: 10:35

But if you will have a list of arguments memorized, at that point what you can do is say to the unbeliever, with a surprised look on your face well, is that what you think? Why? I can think of at least five arguments for God's existence. And at that point he's got to say, yeah, like what? And then you're off and running. So when people ask me there's no evidence for God's existence, and I say, well, sure, there is. And they said, well, like what? I typically just list about five arguments, I'll say God is the best explanation for why anything at all exists rather than nothing. God is the best explanation for the beginning of the universe. God is the best explanation of the fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life. God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties in the world. God is the best explanation of the historical facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth. And finally, god can be personally known and experienced, and I find Did you catch that?

Speaker 2: 11:42

So rewind that, watch it again and write that down, because you're gonna have these conversations where you may not have exactly the right things to say. But if you can just do a broad kind of well, this is what I think, and then leave the ball in their court, well, now you got their mind working like, okay, that makes sense. You're not passing blame, you're not pointing fingers at them, you're not saying you this, you that you can't do this and that You're not doing that. All you're doing is saying, well, I feel, or I think, that these are the, this is the best explanation that we can come up with, because nine times out of 10, they can't come up with a better one. Because if you use the very basic thing people always go back to is the big bang theory, all right, well, nothing or something can't come from nothing, even in their own logic of science. Following those steps of science, you can't just make things come out of nothing. It doesn't work that way.

Speaker 3: 12:41

I mean that many times just giving a list of the arguments is enough to satisfy the unbeliever. He doesn't even ask to hear the arguments. Just hearing a list of them is often enough. So I would encourage all of us to have and see.

Speaker 2: 12:59

That's a very good point. So, like I said, just kind of a broad list of it. Now, why would you wanna do that? Instead of getting very detailed, because you may not have the depth or knowledge to explain every little thing but just say this is what I believe, this is what I think, and then let them begin to think about it, and you're not pointing at them, you're not accusing them of anything, you're just having dialogue and say this is what I think and that's what I've come to the conclusion of.

Speaker 3: 13:28

Have such a list memorized that you can just share at the drop of a hat with an unbeliever Now, if he does wanna press you. Each one of those points in the list has an argument that has premises or steps that you can memorize and again then share with them. For example, the argument that God has the best explanation for the beginning of the universe is very easy to memorize. It has just three steps. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause, and that will show that we don't live in an isolated system, that there is a transcendent cause beyond space and time, beyond the universe, that has brought the universe into being, which has obvious theological implications. So if you have these premises memorized, then you are prepared to actually share the argument with the unbeliever. But in many cases you won't even need to do that if you just have a list. Yes, Steve.

Speaker 5: 14:35

Good morning Bill. Welcome to the Pure Indian. Good morning. I have a question for you. There's a great migration going on in the world of Muslims from closed countries into Western Europe, into the United States. I know you've worked in Muslim countries before. What do you believe is the best way to share your faith with those that are coming from a Muslim background?

Speaker 2: 14:55

Does anybody know Muslims? Okay, this is another besides just atheists. These are people that believe in God. So they have a deep theological sense about them, in their heart, they know there is a God, but they don't have the right definition of God or believe Jesus is the one true way. So you have to be able to articulate and not just pass them up because you don't want to get into an argument or you don't want to. It sometimes can become some sort of argument or well, this says this and this says this. So how can we actually make a bridge? This is the thing. When you're dealing with people, you're dealing with souls. You're dealing with people who don't know the truth. You're dealing with people. You're communicating with someone. You need to see past the disagreement and see the soul.

Speaker 3: 15:54

Okay, In sharing our faith with Muslims, which I really enjoy. I love talking with Muslims. I think that the key is to focus on Jesus of Nazareth, his identity and his claims. It's good Don't criticize Muhammad, don't get their backs up by attacking their prophet.

Speaker 2: 16:18

But I get their backs up. He's like tongue, my cat, how they like that, you start attack. Here's the. He's making a great point and I want you to hear this when you're talking to people about your faith, when you're talking to people about the Bible, about Jesus, don't come from a place of attacking. It will immediately, immediately, put them in a place of defense and you will never get past those walls immediately. Whether it's an atheist, a Muslim, somebody who maybe doesn't really know things, such as a God not really sure about the New Testament. You know all this. Whatever the case may be, whatever the situation, if you come from a place of attacking the core of their belief, you will never be able to get on the outs, through the outside of that defense line.

Speaker 3: 17:04

I wouldn't even quibble about the Quran and errors in the Quran versus the Bible. Focus on Jesus. You know, paul says that Jesus is the stumbling stone. He's the stumbling stone for both Jews and for Gentiles, and it's the same with Muslims. It is who Jesus was and what he claimed that divides Islam fundamentally from Christianity, and here the evidence is just all on the Christian side.

Speaker 3: 17:37

I mean, the one indisputable fact about Jesus of Nazareth that is recognized by every historical scholar is that Jesus died by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. And yet this is the one historical fact about Jesus that the Quran denies. The Muslim does not believe that Jesus was crucified. In the Quran it says they did not kill him, neither did they crucify him, but it was only made to appear to them so and so this just makes the Quran historically indefensible.

Speaker 3: 18:18

And in my experience, sharing your faith with a Muslim is very much like sharing your faith with a Jehovah's Witness. It will be the same verses, the same passages that you will use, because the Jehovah's Witness also denies that Jesus is the son of God, denies the deity of Christ, and so you'll share passages with the Jehovah's Witness that shows that Jesus made claims whereby he put himself in the place of God himself, and then also you've got the evidence for the crucifixion and the resurrection, and I think this presents a very, very powerful case for thinking that the Christian view of Jesus is correct, in contrast to the Muslim view, and it puts the focus where it should be. It puts the focus on Jesus.

Speaker 2: 19:06

Yeah, that's good, I like that.

Speaker 4: 19:10

Working with college students. A good bit of college students would say you know that's true for you, but that's not true for me, it's the relative help and my truth.

Speaker 2: 19:20

So you talk about this all the time and my truth is very, very sneaky and cunning of the devil and my truth, okay. So listen to this. If you know anybody in college or you have college kids that maybe they're going out doing things are not supposed to listen to this, what would you address?

Speaker 4: 19:34

that kind of. What kind of conversation would you have with a student who really believes in the way that it is?

Speaker 3: 19:38

I guess I would begin to press that student about whether he doesn't think that there are any objective truths. Because if he thinks that that statement is self-refuting, is it objectively true that there are no objective truths or is that just your opinion? If it's just your opinion, that I don't have any reason to pay any attention to it or agree with it. If it is objectively true that there are no objective truths, then that's self-refuting. It shows that his position is indefensible. So that kind of blanket relativism is simply indefensible. It refutes itself.

Speaker 3: 20:22

So he must be holding to some sort of more restricted view where he does believe certain things are objectively true, like, for example, that I have a head or that I live, say, in Peoria, or something of that sort.

Speaker 3: 20:38

And so you've got to kind of just dialogue with him as to what he does think is objectively true and then share with him these arguments for the existence of God that are based on truths of science and history that are generally accepted. And if he's going to reject those, then he's going to and I think you need to show him this he's going to isolate himself into a radical minority that flies in the face of what most scientists and historians believe. And why would anyone want to do that? Make the non-Christian feel intellectually isolated and separated from mainstream thought, for example, that the universe originated five night time ago in the Big Bang, or the Jesus of Nazareth was a first century Palestinian Jew who died by crucifixion. These are generally accepted facts that are not unique to Christians, and if he's skeptical about these, he needs to give some good reason as to why the majority of scientists and scholars are wrong about these things.

Speaker 2: 21:49

So one of the biggest fallacies that is, a part of the community that believes that the Bible is wrong, that Jesus was not, that God is not, all these things. There's a end debate is called the burden of truth, and people do this all the time those of you who are in the comments right now and if you're watching this later, there's a lot of LGV, the alphabet people, the alternative lifestyle. The people are so hateful and there has been, like on one of my videos I posted two or three weeks ago, like 70 comments of people just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and they just try to rip, rip me apart, and they go back and forth with each other and everyone always thinks because I'm saying that God is real and exists, that I'm the one that needs to prove it. Well, I say my proof and they just say that's dumb, how can you believe a daddy God in the sky? And I'm like first of all, I don't call him daddy God, that's weird. Second of all, if I give you my proof now, what? What is your proof that what I say is false? And usually they can't actually give any proof, they just give their thoughts and ideas and things which my proof bears weight there's does not. They can't stand that.

Speaker 2: 23:03

But, that being said, when you're in conversation like this, like Mr Crack here was talking about, you have to understand that it's not your obligation to argue unbelievers into heaven, and what I mean by that did you hear his phrasing on a lot of things that he said is that when you're talking to the unbeliever, when you're talking to someone who does not believe, he tells you to ask questions and to present, not not something that is in attack mode, but present something that would be a common ground that both you believe and they should believe, and give them compelling evidence and reason and logic why they believe it and what, and surrounding this conversation that will let them rest easy in that moment to then lead you into deeper conversation about more specific things. A lot of times and I've been guilty of this myself when we're witnessing to people, we want to tell them well, you're going to hell and you're doing this, and you're doing that and it's all wrong and you're going to. You better turn a burn. You need to come to the altar and give it all to Jesus. You know all these things, which, which is true, but if I'm talking to an unbeliever who doesn't believe.

Speaker 2: 24:15

Any of that is true. I have lost them before. I've actually been able to have conversation with them to lead up to the process of salvation. So, as a person who is wanting to maybe it's a loved one, maybe it's somebody that you don't know but you pass, you cross paths with them you need to understand that a lot of times you will burn that bridge by placing so much weight on it from your argument and your side that the bridge will fall in crumble and you'll never be able to cross it. I hope that makes sense.