Editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle talk to Dr. Jeff Myers, President of Summit Ministries, and author of the new book Unquestioned Answers. They discuss cheesy church sign and bumper sticker theology, canned Christian clichés, easy answers, and the need to think deeply about the reasons for why we believe what we believe. Kyle and Ethan own Jeff with the ironclad "rabbit poop" proof for atheism and talk about the need for a more thoughtful faith. Pre-order the new Babylon Bee Best-Of Coffee Table Book coming in 2020! Get a Sneak Peak! Topics Discussed What does Summit Ministries do To what extent Is it okay to have doubts and questions in Christianity Bumper sticker clichés in Christian culture Church signs are mostly 'dad jokes' Unquestioned Answers "Simplicism" - the desire to reduce deep truths into sound bytes? Being in dialogue while not shutting down conversation The ironclad 'rabbit poop' argument for atheism previously mentioned on our Greg Koukl interview Subscriber Portion (Begins at 00:43:45) Songs mentioned on the podcast: Heritage Singers / "God Said It, I Believe It" Bobby Bare / "Drop Kick Me Jesus" Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Brian Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
I'm Kyle Mann.
I'm Ethan Nicole.
You did a very good job being prompted that time.
Thanks.
I looked at you.
Oh, it's Trader.
Yeah, well, we're making eye contact, so it helps.
We are sitting across.
And I never know because you generally start shows, but I never know what's going to happen the moment you start talking.
So I just try to stand here at the ready.
And sometimes I do weird stuff and you just stare at me.
Yeah.
It's just bad.
You're a wild card.
But we're looking at each other in the eyes, but there's someone who's here only in spirit.
We can't see his eyes, but we assume that they're normal human eyes and not strange reptilian eyes or anything weird like that.
But who knows?
We never know.
We will never know.
But we are talking to Dr. Jeff Myers, who's president of Summit Ministries, and he wrote a book called Unquestioned Answers.
Is that a democratically elected president, or is that just?
I don't know how that works.
Yeah, it's an electoral college system.
Does he have the power to end people's lives?
Sorry.
He runs drone warfare on other ministries.
He takes him out.
Fire.
It's a sovereign nation.
So what is tell us a little bit about Summit Ministries?
Well, students are coming here when they're on their way to college because the climate that we're a part of right now is so crazy for young adults, but we want to help them gain a biblical worldview.
So they're coming in with big questions that they want to have answers to, but they're also coming in having to test a lot of the assumptions they grew up with.
So yeah, they have unquestioned answers and unanswered questions.
So like apologetics, like they're learning like college is going to tell you that the devil's not real, but then you guys are like, oh, yeah, he's real.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's exactly like that, I'm sure.
Exactly.
Sorry, this is off the top of my head.
I wasn't ready.
Yeah, so they're coming here for two weeks at a time.
We're in a little hippie town called Manitou Springs.
It's right at the foot of Pikes Peak.
Very new age sort of community.
So everything we tell them about what their professors will be saying and all of that, they could just go downtown and test it all out, see if it's really true.
So it's sort of like a dehippification business that you're running.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I had never, that needs to be part of our mission statement.
I hadn't quite ever thought about that before.
Thank you.
This was worth the price of admission right there.
We're here to help.
So yeah, your book, you have a new book out.
And it's on this piece of paper that I'm looking at, but it is called Unquestioned Answers.
And from my understanding, your book is about, well, it'd be better if you just said, because you wrote it.
What your book's about.
The whole point of the book is to call into question a lot of the clichés that Christians believe that keep their thinking at a shallow level.
One thing we noticed with our students, and I spent a lot of time on college campuses, is that unquestioned answers make us vulnerable.
If you believe something growing up, but you never really test it out when you go into college, you'll look stupid really, really fast.
And the second thing is it disillusions us because there are a lot of people out there who've gone through really tough times, and just giving a bumper sticker kind of answer to their questions actually turns them off.
I tell our students here, look, we're called to be fishers of men, and you don't catch fish by skimming the surface.
You have to be able to go deep.
But then the third thing is, and this is where it comes back to why I love what you guys do at Babylon B so much, satire.
It actually removes shame from the equation of how we think through things.
I mean, my students are going to campus and everything they hear is shame on you for believing what you believe.
Shame, shame, shame.
And their professors have no idea that shame doesn't really produce actual change.
It just causes people to not want to talk to you anymore.
So for all those reasons, I think Christians should get rid of the clichés and be able to go a little bit deeper.
And so anyway, we'll see if anybody agrees.
One of the early Babylon B articles that Ethan wrote was, Congregation prays graduating senior be protected from basic secular arguments they never bothered to prepare her for.
And it's like this whole church sending them off like, well, we just pray that their hands on her.
You know, we never bothered to instruct her on any of these arguments, but we're sending you out into the world, dear.
Thoughts and prayers, you know.
That's right.
Yeah.
Here's your little, here's your little Hallmark greeting card to keep this on your desk.
That's it.
Yeah.
Slap a Lee's Strobel in her hand and shove her out the door.
Yeah.
Elise Strobel.
Very copy of More Than a Carpenter.
And you're good.
Off they go.
Oh, man.
Yeah, it's sad how little preparation these students are getting on there.
And they want it.
They want to know answers.
I mean, I was one of those kids.
I came to Summit Ministries as a student, which is how I ended up ultimately.
I was the only guy left.
So I got to be president.
But I became as a student and walked into the lobby of this antique hotel where we operate the program.
And I asked David Noble, the founder, just guy standing there, big thick glasses.
I said, hey, I hope you have a lot of answers because I have a lot of questions.
You know, I was 17.
I thought I knew it all.
And he said, we're not afraid of questions at Summit.
And it was so simple, but that's exactly what I needed to hear.
I just wanted to, I didn't, I knew that anybody who said, we have all of the answers, just, you know, just trust us.
It was full of it.
But I didn't, I'd never met someone who said, as a Christian, it's okay to ask questions.
I thought questions were a form of doubt and doubt was a kind of sin.
So, you know, if you had questions, you just don't bring them up in church.
And Summit flipped that whole thing around for me.
Yeah, that was one thing that early on, or not even early on, I mean, a few years into my faith, it actually, when I read Ecclesiastes for the first time, I went, wow, it's part of the faith to struggle with and to question and to, and there's just a there's a realism to the language in that book.
And then I realized there's other places in the Bible where, you know, struggling with God is, you know, it's a part of the faith.
And I do believe that, you know, in true Christianity, there are more questions you're allowed to ask than in any other faith, including secularism, even though they would claim to be open to all questions.
There really are questions that aren't okay to ask in a secular worldview.
But in Christianity, I feel you have, unless you're really scared of questions, which I think is a bad thing.
Well, right.
Yeah.
I mean, it'd be terrifying to grow up in a world where it'd be like Eastern Europe, where you can't, everybody knows that they can't talk about what's really true.
And so they pretend that this fake world is the real world.
And all of a sudden, everyone's confused about what to believe.
And the end result isn't that people become convinced of a new worldview.
The end result is they just become cynical about everything and just quit trying.
So how many atheist professors have your students converted by singing God's Not Dead in the class?
They don't sing it.
They play it on a boom.
Oh, on the boombox.
So he'll hold it over their head and stare into their eyes.
No, all they do is send him a text and it happens.
It's that easy.
God's Not Dead.
I remember when that movie came out, I was getting texts from friends.
Well, have you seen God's Not Dead?
At the end of the movie, I think, if I remember right, it says like a message on the screen: pull out your phone and text all your contacts.
God's Not Dead.
So I was getting like people that were going to the theater and texting.
God's Not Dead.
Wow.
And it converted me.
That's how I became a Christian.
I'm just kidding.
You were an atheist professor?
I was an atheist professor.
Did you get in a car wreck?
And I got in a car wreck and I died outside of the news voice concert.
And then that text revived you.
Yeah.
So you're an expert in doctor.
You're an expert in Christian phrases and clichés that people use.
And these we have a list here of some that we'd like to get you to dispel these or own you with them.
However it goes.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm stretching right now.
However the tide may turn.
Yeah.
So, you know, there's basic atheist arguments like if we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?
That kind of stuff.
But we kind of want to dig more into like bad Christian cliches.
And I think your book covers a lot of these.
Or awesome Christian clichés.
Or awesome ones.
Yeah.
Thank you for correcting me there, sir.
So, for instance, let go and let God.
Especially a good for mountain climbing.
That's right.
That's where you find out whether you really have faith, right?
Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of, it's almost as if we think our bumper stickers are the things that fulfill the gospel, right?
You know, Jesus said, go out into all the world and put on a bumper sticker.
And that's how we're going to do it.
I know people in my town believe that.
You know, most of my neighbors are really far left.
Somebody said, oh, yeah.
Somebody said, well, I bet they all vote for Bernie Sanders.
I said, oh, no.
Bernie Sanders is way too conservative for my neighbors.
Way too conservative.
They'll pick the farthest left person on the ballot.
But they really honestly believe that if they can just put a bumper sticker on their car, that'll settle the argument.
It'll make people shut up.
And if people are quiet, then that means you win.
Well, you know, you sound really judgmental.
And we're not to judge.
As Christians, ever.
Of course.
Nothing.
Nope.
Nope.
Nothing in this conversation should be interpreted as the distance between yourself and the edge of a cliff when you're standing there and stepping forward.
No judging.
No judging.
How about Jesus take the wheel?
That's involved.
You know, you can do a bumper sticker, which is great.
I think that's a huge ministry.
But then also, if you let Jesus take the wheel, then that's double.
While you're driving around, you are a double ministry.
I never thought of that before.
It's sort of like a spiritual Tesla computer program.
Yeah.
It's the Elon Musk car of spirituality.
Wow.
You got any Kyle?
Well, you know that God helps those who help themselves.
I saw that at a cartoon about Noah's Ark.
Really?
I remember I once quoted that to my dad.
Told him it was in the Bible.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That's one that everybody always thinks is in the Bible.
Yeah.
I saw a little survey that said half the students, half the young adults in America, did not know that Sodom and Gomorrah were not married.
They literally.
Yeah.
So.
That'd be a huge marriage.
A lot of, yeah.
It'd be wild.
Tumultuous, yes.
Yeah, tumultuous.
Yeah.
Let's see.
How about this one?
Dropkick me Jesus through the goalposts of life.
Does Jesus dropkick us?
I have never even heard that one before.
I got to get my, I got to get my.
It's a Bobby Bear song.
It's an old country song.
Dropkick me, Jesus through the goalposts of life.
What does that even mean?
That's real.
What does it mean?
It means, you know, I can't do this alone.
I need to be kicked into the air.
You're not judging us when you say that that is real.
It's a real song.
I'll have Dan play a clip of it real quick.
Maybe I have to be in the subscriber portion so we don't get it.
But in this metaphor, you're not on Jesus' team.
You're the ball.
You're the ball.
He crumples you up into this little sphere.
Yeah, he crunches you into a pointy ball shape, drops you, and then his foot comes at full force and launches you into the air.
And you go through the goalpost, and then he probably does some kind of a dance at the end and slams you into the ground again.
I think a whole new religion is being formed right here on the show.
People love their football.
Just wait.
Just wait for it.
Wait for the foot.
So when there's only one set of footprints, it was then that Jesus carried you.
Was kicking you.
Was kicking you through the goalposts.
So in my English class in my senior year of high school, this girl did this presentation and it was on some old poem and there was the word footprints in it.
And she had a whole section in this presentation about how this is a reference to the biblical poem, The Footprints in the Sand.
That was in the Bible?
It's an illusion.
You know, this poem was written in the 1500s or whatever.
She's like, this is a biblical illusion.
Wow.
And I raised my hand and I was like, that's not in the Bible.
Actually.
I had to be the jerk.
She was on such a roll until then.
I need more of my spiritual walk to be in sand because that's the problem is I never see Jesus' feet because I'm always walking around on like linoleum and carpet and stuff.
You got to get outside.
When you saw the smudges and the linoleum.
Yeah.
When you only saw one smudge.
That was genius.
When you saw the footprints in the Cheeto dust in your living room.
That's when Jesus dropkicked you through the window.
We just sit here and crack each other up.
Jeff, I'm sorry.
No, you're good.
But we're not stopping.
I do have a question.
How reckless should a Christian's love be for Christ?
Since his love is so reckless for us, according to that song, on a scale from shoving my way through a crowd to causing a 50-car pileup on the freeway.
Oh, wow.
I have to go toward the 50-car pileup.
Okay, yeah, extreme.
I think that's a lot more.
Yeah, that's a lot more impressive.
Just massive carnage.
Fire.
You should be so reckless.
You should be willing to drop kick Jesus back through the other set of goalposts.
Just a constant dropkick.
Just back and forth.
Just hanging out with Jesus.
Dropkicking each other.
What is even happening?
All right.
How about one that's actually in your book?
Okay.
Was there in this book?
Well, actually, the judgment one was.
How about this?
God said it.
I believe it.
That settles it.
What do you think about this, Jeff?
That's the one I heard when I was a little kid listening to a pastor.
And he said something that he thought was really obvious, but I could tell by looking around that the people in the congregation did not like it.
So it was a small enough church.
You could actually hear some of the rumblings.
And he just held up his Bible and he said, well, if you've got a problem with this, don't take it up with me.
Take it up with God.
And the way he said it, even as a little kid, I was sitting there thinking, is there something really wrong with this?
I don't see what he sees.
Anyway, but it's just, but then I don't know if you've ever seen this video.
This is worth YouTube all by itself.
It's worth YouTube's existence.
Oh, worth YouTube's entire existence is the video.
Just Google this.
God said it.
I believe it.
That settles it for me.
And the video comes up and it is a pure 1970s, including probably, you know, the Vaseline on the lens and some girls and dresses singing, God said it, I believe it.
That settles it for me.
And then a bunch of guys come out in powder blue suits.
I'm not making any of this up from behind a tree like elves.
And then they join into the song.
And I just, it just scarred me, I think, actually was the problem.
God said I believe.
And let's settle it for me.
And that settles it for me.
I'm lingering on a thing you said.
Are you saying they put Vaseline on lenses in the 70s?
Oh, isn't that the way they make it look so they take away all your wrinkles?
Like they smudge Vaseline on it.
In the days before, before GCI, the CGI, yeah, they just soften the person, make them look angelic.
So it's not that the camera has to cram through any tight spaces or that got wrong.
I'm sorry.
Okay, continue.
Don't worry.
That part gets edited out.
Yeah, we have an editor.
But, you know, it was crazy.
When I thought about it, I thought everything in that saying brings it down to me, what I think and what I feel.
And that's where it started to really bug me.
If this is about me, then why do I need the Bible at all?
So I've been doing a lot of rethinking about it.
Well, let's think.
I mean, what bugs me a little bit about that one, not bugs me, but something that's interesting to think about is that there is some truth to the fact that God said something in the Bible.
And we have to deal with that.
And we have to accept it for what it is, and we have to think through those things.
But I guess to me, the issue with a saying like that is.
You're right.
It puts my belief as the thing that settles it.
And it's something where we're not even wrestling with it.
It's just.
How do you know?
Even like, how do you know the Bible is legit or something like that?
Sure.
Right.
Yeah.
Don't even question it.
So why don't we write out the questions that we've got and see if there are answers?
I mean, tons of people, we have speakers come to summit ministries every summer whose whole goal in life is helping people answer questions about the Bible, looking at the internal evidence, the external evidence, you know, what does it mean to say the Bible's inspired or an errant and really digging into it, but just to say, you know, because my pastor said this is true, I'm just going to accept it and move on.
Stop thinking about it.
All of a sudden, your faith is on the margins of your life, right?
Rather than at the center.
It's something that, oh, well, that's taken care of.
I can set that one on the shelf.
Now I can go on with everything else.
Well, you know what they say?
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
Oh, God.
That's right.
They say that in Jeff's book.
That's the one I think probably is going to be the most upsetting.
I did a workshop on this the other day, and I could just, I brought that one up.
I could see people glaring at me.
I said, well, look, does God love sinners?
Yes.
Does God hate sin?
Yes.
Does that put us in a position where we should say that to somebody else?
Because if I'm saying to somebody, well, you know, I love you, but I hate your sin.
What I'm essentially saying is that your sin is worse for you than mine is for me.
And again, I'm bringing it right back to me.
I'm making myself rather than the Bible the standard.
Wrong.
I don't know why that made me.
Well, you said to me, you said like you were going to start responding and then you didn't.
I was waiting for affirmation and I didn't get it.
That's all right.
How about another one?
Three nails.
This is a math problem.
Three nails plus one cross equals four given.
That's math.
Three, one, four.
Have you turned that into a t-shirt yet?
I think it already existed.
It probably are.
Yeah.
We Googled church signs.
Our extensive research to interview you consisted mostly of Googling church signs.
No, that's great.
No, that's serious.
I mean, taking that one minute made all the difference.
If you want to contact God, try knee mail.
That's just a dad joke.
Maybe all church signs are just a dad.
Yeah, a dad having fun.
I mean, most pastors are dads, I guess.
They have a pastor's kid who's standing there looking at that sign going, why?
my god um okay so while you talk in your book about simplicism Sounds like different from simplicity.
And like it's a religion of simplicity.
Like I am a simplicist.
Yeah, I think it is.
Have you ever had that experience where you're hearing somebody speak on a topic and then they just summarize the whole thing in one clever little phrase and everybody goes, ooh, that's good.
And they help write it down.
You know, that's what I'm talking about.
Simplicity, I'm not really all that into it, but it's, I mean, I think it's probably a virtue, wanting to live a less complicated life.
But simplicism, and again, I thought I coined it, but then I googled it.
And you don't coin anything in the day of Google.
It's just already there.
It already exists.
It's a full religion with leadership and everything already.
Oh, it's already, yeah, it's right.
Fundraising mechanism, everything.
Hope.
Yeah.
So, is it true that something isn't true unless it's easy to understand and summarize?
I mean, that'd make it nice, that'd make for a nice life.
That's, you know, that's a that's a tricky, that's a tricky aspect of faith.
And, you know, the people that I hang out with in my town, they want a lot of answers.
I was talking to a guy the other day.
He was an atheist.
And he, and I said, hey, I'm writing this book.
He said, what's it on?
I said, well, I'm trying to grapple with questions like, you know, how could God be good if there's evil in the world?
You know, what about hell?
Is that fair of God?
Isn't the Old Testament anti-woman, anti-gay, pro-slavery, all of that?
And he just sat there very quietly.
And all of a sudden, he said, I have all of those questions.
And I thought, wow, this is amazing because I had always been led to believe that non-believers are people who have thought all this through and intentionally rejected it.
And Christians are the ones who just don't really think it through it, but just automatically accept it.
And it was a lot of fun to realize, wow, this is different.
This is a different world than I thought.
I could actually talk to my atheist and agnostic neighbor and say, hey, here's something that I'm thinking.
This is what I'm thinking about what the Bible means.
Can you give me some feedback on it?
And it's legit.
So I'm having these kinds of conversations all of the time.
And it's a lot more fun.
It's a lot more fun than just, you know, God said it.
I believe it.
That settles it for me.
Would you say it's a moral thing?
I mean, I struggle with this because this is the kind of mind I have.
I mean, when I was around 19, I've told this story on this podcast before, but I wrote every question I had out in a notebook and kind of set out to answer all these questions.
A lot of more ones you just listed.
And I went through a struggle of faith.
I talked to atheists and argued with atheists and found things in the Bible I didn't realize were there or that I didn't have an argument for.
But I also realized that like there's a lot of Christians that just don't think that way.
And I almost have an envy for some of the ones that they can be very simple and they're okay with it.
But then there's also people that are atheists that are like that too.
They think go to so far as to usually if you're an atheist, you've thought some about what you believe, but then there's people that just kind of have a few platitudes and they just go along with those.
And I wonder, is it more a personality trait or a way that some people need that and some people just don't need it?
Or is it a moral thing?
Like, if you're being simple with your faith, are you sinning?
Do you think you think it's happening more?
Or I mean, I'm wondering if it's a function of time.
The more complex the world is, the more I need certain things to be settled so I don't have to worry about them anymore.
In other words, I'm not trying.
Oh, yeah.
I'm just saying, like, yeah, I mean, people came from not long ago.
We were all living in smaller groups and it was easier to, this is what everybody says, this is what everybody believes, and you never really think outside of that.
Now it's different.
We're all being rapid fire pelted with different ideas and challenges all day long and information.
So it probably does have another effect.
We just kind of pick and choose the things that feel best and just kind of believe those.
I don't know.
Are you asking us questions?
Yeah.
We'll ask the question.
Wait, wait, who's being interviewed here?
This is such a, this is a, this is a big deal for the students that we work with when they find that atheists or non-believers or whatever, people who are, you know, believe things that Are not part of the Christian worldview probably haven't given it a lot more thought than Christians have.
So I think you're right.
I mean, there's something about everybody just wants it to be simpler.
Everybody just thinks that, man, if I could just get it down to a quick phrase that I could give somebody if they ask a question, then I can deflect the argument rather than absorb it.
And I don't know.
We're teaching our students at Summit that most of your conversations are going to start with something like, I'm curious.
Why do you say that?
I'm curious.
Do you think that's the whole story?
I'm curious.
What do you mean by when you say there is no God?
What do you mean by God?
And when students are learning to ask those kinds of questions, you can see a lot of that anxiety melt away.
Oh, wait a second.
I don't even have to have an answer for that.
I just need to engage with the person in a dialogue and just see where it goes.
Because it does say in scripture to be ready with an answer.
And I'm curious how far we take that.
Like, is it because there are people like, you know, guys like you, we had Greg Kochal on.
We just had Jeff Durbin on, guys that are like full-on apologists who debate atheists.
Are we all called to be that vigorous in our research?
And I'm not trying to pin you down.
It's just something I'm curious.
Like, I get curious about that.
Like, is there, what is our calling in that area to have those answers?
Well, you know, when Greg teaches on tactics at Summit Ministries, you know, his approach is brilliant, that you're always starting with questions, that you have to show that you're present in the conversation and that you're willing to listen before anything that you say will really keep, will really matter.
So our point is find ways to keep the conversation going rather than to shut it down.
And I think that's pretty consistent with the way Greg teaches it.
But at some point in the conversation, you're going to have to say, gosh, there is something that you just brought up that I am curious about.
Or here's an answer that I learned.
You know, let me run this by you and see what you think.
But it's all done in the context of the conversation.
So, you know, our students are, their library is growing.
They're getting books by, you know, Evidence of Manced, A Verdict by Josh and Sean McDowell, Tactics by Greg Kochl.
The Handbook to Christian Apologetics by Douglas Groteis.
You know, those kinds of things are being a part of their library, but they're not, they're not, they're using it in a totally different way.
They're not using it to win.
They're using it to invite conversation and dialogue to reestablish community rather than to prove that they're right.
It seems to me that when you do it that way, the defensiveness goes away.
And when the defensiveness goes away, the fear goes away.
I don't even have to have an answer at this moment because that's not the, you know, this is not a contest.
This is a conversation.
But if God is real, then how come rabbits eat their own poop?
You stole my atheist argument that I used on Greg Kochl.
I know.
So we owned Greg Kochl.
He had no response to that.
And now we're owning.
Dr. Jeff Myers.
My rabbit came.
We have a rabbit, and I was looking at its poop yesterday.
Wait, what?
You were just...
And I realized there are some poops that look kind of like they're made of little hay balls, and there's ones that look like little black ones.
So I'm like, oh, he must eat these ones.
And then these, those are the second phase poop and the first phase poops.
I'm sorry.
I am so sorry, Jeff.
You really studied this.
I once heard an atheist debate that the way his proof of that there's no God is because rabbits digest poop by, or not, they digest their food by first.
They poop it once, then they eat it, and then they digest it again because their digestive systems can't handle one pass-through.
So they're imperfect, which means God would have messed up on rabbits.
And I just thought it was kind of a hilarious, fascinating argument.
Maybe God just thinks it's hilarious if rabbits eat their own poop or something.
I don't know.
He's funny.
He's got a sense of humor, I assume.
So, yeah, so Kyle brought it back.
Dr. Jeff Myers is currently frantically Googling.
He went through eight years of school.
He's a doctor.
He's got a PhD.
And here he is talking about poop with a couple of the guys who have been dubbed the Christian Beavers and Butthead.
It all comes down to the rabbit poop.
This is awesome.
No, no.
Tell me more about that.
That's all I got.
I'm glad I was able to share that update the other day, seeing my rabbit.
How about choose the bread of life or you are toast?
Oh, was that on a sign?
That was actually these metaphors are very confused because they're not the bread.
Plus, I like toast bread.
Yeah.
Choose the bread of life or you are toast.
I know, but it's you're the toast of death.
It's just word association jokes.
It's not even a good punch.
Choose the bread of life or you are the toast of death.
That's what I'd change that to.
I'm still mulling over that I am the football and not on God's team.
That's just that you're getting kicked through the goalposts.
I have just never had a day like that.
It's a good song.
Yeah, I don't know.
I've met people who are very like, you know, and I grew up with people, good Christian people, that were very like, just have faith.
And they were okay with that, you know, and they didn't feel like they needed to have an answer to everything.
I'm still kind of wrestling with this because it's to me, I had to go out into kind of the world of having these answers when I was like in high school.
I had to go out and read apologetics and it was like this whole world.
But I think for me, it even got to a place of being unhealthy where it's like, I need to dissect and debunk everybody else's worldview.
Yeah, I got that too, like being the atheist destroyer online.
You know, and then it was like my faith would go from like a very strong if I want an argument to like, oh, you know, I don't have an answer for this.
You know, and my faith was very much based on how good the argument or how, you know, whatever my last argument was, how good it was.
Yeah, and you stretcherize there's like word Olympics.
People can like twist their words around and almost win any debate.
They could even win a debate they don't actually believe if you're good enough with words.
Yeah, so for me, I had to kind of arrive at a place where there are things I look at in the Bible and I'm like, I don't really understand how it works.
And I'm like, but I know it does.
And I know there are very smart people out there.
And I know that there are answers out there if I go and search.
But I don't necessarily need to wrestle with every single one of those all the time or argue with people all the time.
So what I like about what Greg does and what it sounds like Summit Ministries does is that you equip people not necessarily to go out and find every single answer and debate every single person and win every argument, but to simply like have a plan in place and not give the stupid, easy answer.
Because I kind of hate those little platitudes more than I hate like an atheist argument.
Like, I hate when someone does a really bad argument for Christianity or says something really dumb and you're just like, I agree with what I agree with you, but that's a really dumb way to get there.
It bugs me.
I don't know if there was a question there, but just I just sort of picture all of the future arguments that a person's going to have, you know, when a student tells me a cliche that they're pretty sure of.
I just kind of imagine, all right, for example, a student said to me, hey, it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in creation, which I knew he had heard at a workshop someplace.
But I just kind of imagined him saying that in class to the biology professor.
He's dropping Frank Turret.
Oh, Frank Turret.
I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.
Yeah, this is the drop kick, the evolution through the goalpost kind of thing.
But, you know, every biology professor in America is ready for that.
They know exactly what to say.
They know how to respond.
They know how to get the class laughing at the student and all of that stuff.
So I sometimes wonder if I'm just trying to help them not use cliches just as a self-protective measure.
But what if instead, you were talking earlier about how you've kind of felt like you had to have every argument and that makes it about you then, right?
So it does the same thing, ironically, that having some of these clichés does to us.
It makes it all about me and whether I can respond and whether I sound smart and whether I can convince myself.
But if it really is about God and about his world, I mean, if Jesus really is not only our Savior, but gives us a framework for understanding all of reality, then I can relax from having to obsess about that.
I don't have to be the center of my world.
I don't have to think that I'm the center of my world.
I can just stop.
Hey, tell me more about that.
How did you get to that place?
How did you arrive at that answer?
You know, what happened in your life that kind of shaped your thinking in that way?
And I don't know.
I had kind of a funny conversation here with a mom who was, she was sitting on the sidelines watching soccer.
My son was playing in the game as well.
So we sat down and started chatting.
And she's really into meditation.
She said, hey, I got to tell you about these new meditation techniques I'm learning.
And so she just went on and on about it for quite a while.
And I just kept saying, hey, tell me more about that.
Tell me more about that.
But after about 10 minutes, she stopped and said, how do you see all of this?
And it was just, it was one of those moments where I thought, okay, this is exactly why I'm in this conversation.
Because now I'm not just saying, here's what I believe.
Hope you listen to me.
I've been asked the question.
And so I said, hey, I really, I really am convinced that God is a person and not a force.
And she just looked at me so stunned.
She said, really?
Why would you say that?
And so I said, well, you know.
Star Wars is dumb.
Sorry.
How did you get that in there?
Look, Jesus is, you know, Jesus is God in the flesh.
And here's how I understand this and how I understand God's nature.
But she just could not, at that point, stop asking questions.
So if God is like that, how do you do you talk to him?
You know, how do you talk to God?
And it was the most innocent, natural kind of conversation that took place just because it started out with questions rather than with, hey, you know, this was something I saw on a church sign someplace.
So I'm going to give it to you.
And did you drop kick her through the goalposts?
Absolutely.
Yeah, that was right.
That's one thing you do in soccer all the time.
Go ahead.
Oh, you got something?
No, go for it.
This is purely my speculation.
It's nowhere in scripture.
But I have this curious, I mean, I know that God makes us each unique.
And I wonder, what do you think about the idea that God gives us each?
I don't know if he gives us doubt, but it seems like we each have different capacities for how far our doubt goes or how much we question.
Because I have found myself having to, to keep myself from being too judgmental of other Christians, sometimes I have to go, you know, maybe God just made me differently.
This is the way my mind works.
Like, I, you know, I can't, I have a much harder time accepting axioms and things like that.
And I don't even want to say that in an insulting way.
Like, I think that for some people, maybe they're just their energy, it saves their energy to go other, you know, just, you know, the nice little old lady at church who completely lives on a few axioms, Christian axioms or whatever.
She's a complete servant and she's, you know, a complete minister and a prayer warrior.
I mean, she has an amazing prayer life because she's not spending all her time doubting and questioning.
So I don't know.
Like, do you, do you think there's anything to that?
I mean, and that's just purely a thought as we talk.
It's not from your notes or anything.
No, no, I think it's fair to say that your mind does work differently than anybody else's.
Yeah, especially with Ethan.
It's fair to say.
Do you think God's involved in that?
I mean, that's just purely circumstances.
I think it's a fair point.
I mean, there are a lot of reasons why somebody would accept a simple answer rather than try to dig into it.
And it could just be the complexity of life.
It could just be that's what's worked for them.
Could be they haven't ever really run up against any challenges that would require them to think differently about that.
But, man, I'm telling you, when I ask questions like, hey, how did you arrive at that belief?
Or, you know, what happened in your life?
What's your story?
I have never found that person to actually exist that you're describing.
Everybody can say, hey, look, if I'm going to be really honest with you, this is what I wrestle with.
And these people, young people, I found there's people that, I mean, everybody, nobody's going to be like, no, I don't need an answer to that.
I'm good.
But I do find, even when I was in tea ministry in young life, there was times where I would, you know, kids would want the answers to those things.
A lot of them are, it's getting into weeds to try to really talk about why would God allow evil or, you know, why did God create Satan or those kinds of, it's not a simple platitude answer.
And they've been living on platitudes and they do want an answer.
But if it's not one of those platitudes, a lot of them kind of zone out and don't want to, or they may not be that interested once.
Yeah.
Right.
Unless their parents have gone through a divorce or they had a sibling commit suicide.
I mean, life has a way of confronting all of those clichés.
You got to be in that spot where you need to hear it.
That's how I approach it with our students.
Say, you may, if you, if these bad things have not happened to you, glad.
I'm so glad for you.
But I just want you to understand that anybody who has ever said, I could never believe in God, who would, a God who would allow evil in the world, is saying it because they've gone through something horrible and they've tried to settle it in their minds that this is probably the only thing you've got in life is that God just doesn't really care.
So if you're ready to talk to that person and ask those questions and say, hey, it sounds like there's a big story behind that and I've got the time.
Would you be willing to talk to me about it?
It's a pretty amazing.
But yeah, you're right.
But think of, isn't that true in every area of life?
If I've just stuffed myself full of some kind of food, it doesn't matter whether what you're bringing me on the tray is exquisite or not.
I'm just going to want it.
Take it.
Sure, that looks great, but I just filled up with six Big Macs.
I'm not hungry anymore.
No, I'm going to eat that Chick-fil-A sandwich.
Is it full of Big Macs?
I would analogy.
No, that's a good Christian analogy, right there.
Yeah.
Very important.
Do we still like Chick-fil-A?
We're mad at them.
Yeah, I don't know.
I can't.
It's just.
Are we still mad at them?
I don't know.
I can't keep it.
They're still closed on Sundays, so there's points there.
They get some points.
A few points.
Yeah, so yeah, absolutely.
Send us questions, people.
And yeah, Jeff's book is on Amazon.
Other places books are sold.
It's called Unquestioned Answers: Rethinking 10 Christian Cliches to Rediscover Biblical Truths.
Good job.
I said that very well.
Yeah.
You sure did.
Thanks.
I appreciate it.
We needed it with it.
We had to end with affirmation.
Yeah, we affirm you.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
We accept these platitudes is because we believe that atheists are this like devil character out there who doesn't have the answers and doesn't have any deep thinking and is going to be shut down with you know fifth grade level arguments for Christianity.
Banishing all doubt isn't the point.
Learning to think better and relate better is the point.
Like some wolves showed up and you're holding everyone's getting eaten and you're trying to collect it up there to save them.
See, all you need was a good question to buy some time.
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