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May 1, 2025 - The David Knight Show
42:08
“Case Files: Murder & Meaning” — A Gritty Graphic Novel
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Joining us now is Jay Warner Wallace.
As I said, I've talked to him a couple of times before about his book, Cold Case Christianity.
And he's got a new book that is put out in a very different way.
And I really like this.
I'll just show you the cover here of it.
It is a graphic novel.
So there's the suspense broken right there.
I gave away the secret.
Thank you for joining us, Mr. Wallace.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Angle to take.
Yeah, that's right.
Tell us a little bit about this and why you did this.
And, of course, you did this in conjunction with your son.
It's really professionally done.
We've got some images of it that we can show, but it's an amazing book, and it's kind of a fun way to get the point across that you've made in some of your other books before.
Tell us a little bit about it.
Yeah, I think all my other books are non-fiction books that make a case for Christianity, either for its truthfulness or for its goodness and usefulness.
So those are books that we kind of just make a straight case.
But I think there's a lot of folks who are moved more by fiction.
And my son always thinks this too, because we know that we can make a case for something, and you may agree with that case.
But we can also take you on a journey.
And if you are part of the journey, you end up living the case.
And so this is a graphic novel that is a fictional work about a team of detectives that are trying to catch a serial killer in Los Angeles County.
You know, we applied all of our experience in the county, so this is going to feel, I think, pretty realistic.
If you're a police officer or detective, you're going to read this and think, oh yeah, that's pretty much how we do it.
But I also think what we're trying to do is to...
To tell a better story, we're going to explore an issue that most people struggle with, and that is, how do we ground human value, meaning, and purpose?
I think that most of us take our identity for granted, and then at some point we struggle because we're trying to figure out, like, who are we really?
And if you'll notice, and if you've seen, like, today in America, there'll be a number of homicides.
It's just the sad truth.
Now, most of those you're not going to know anything about because they're not even going to make the press.
But if a celebrity gets murdered, well, now that's going to make the news.
And suddenly it'll be a national or international item.
Well, why?
Do we think that celebrities somehow are more valuable than other victims?
We kind of act as though they are.
So how are we grounding human value?
What makes one person newsworthy and somebody else not?
We think from a Christian worldview that every life has value, but how do we ground it?
So what we have here is this is not a Pollyannish kind of Christian story where everyone's going to get saved in the last chapter.
This is a realistic, gritty novel.
It's a large comic book because it's a graphic novel.
It's kind of like you're watching a storyboarded movie involving people who are struggling to understand who they are as they chase a serial killer who is...
Upping the ante every time he kills somebody, this victim is of increasing cultural value.
And what we're trying to do is challenge the notion that people actually are of increasing value.
We think that we want to be able to ground our identity and our value in something that's transcendent.
And so we're going to make a case for this, but we're going to do it without kind of beating you over the head.
That's great.
You know, many times I've heard people talk about animal sacrifice, you know, and one of the first things we see after the Garden of Eden is that God gives skins to Adam and Eve to cover up their nakedness, right?
Now they're aware of what is going on, but he has to kill an animal in order to make that.
And so, you know, it's a consistent principle throughout Christianity that without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sin, right?
And so a big part of that is that people understand the seriousness of sin because they see when even – you talk about the difference in human life.
Even when we see a dead animal, we kind of stop.
For a moment.
If we see a broken branch or a tree or whatever, some plant that's been chopped up, you don't necessarily think anything about it.
But if you see an animal that's been chopped up...
You've got blood all over the place.
Even that will make an impact on you, let alone a human life.
And as you point out, all human life is valuable.
It's not just celebrities.
But again, it's like all life is valuable.
The life is in the blood.
And that is a real, I think it's a lesson that God was trying to give us to drive home just how serious rebellion to him is.
Yeah, I think, as my son likes to point out, you know, as police officers, we have certain limitations because there are rights that humans have.
So, for example, I can't just kick down your door and enter your house without a warrant, without a reason to do it.
But on the other hand, if someone is screaming in your house that they're being murdered, they're being killed, well, now I can kick down the door to save that person's life.
We actually think that the value of life, legally, is more important than even some rights that you have to privacy.
We recognize as police officers that human life is important.
Now, what I see in culture is that you're right.
What we have a tendency to do is the secular world just sees us as another evolved creature, another animal like all the other animals.
And what you see happening is that typically other animals are now being afforded the same dignities that we would have in the past only have afforded humans.
They're in our restaurants.
They're on the plane with you.
They're everywhere.
And they're there because we have minimized.
The difference between humans and other animals.
Now, here's what's interesting.
You know from Scripture, if Scripture is true, we are unique in the sense that we are image bearers.
We bear the image of God.
And the first thing that God does when he gives us the identity, he creates Adam in his image, and then he gives Adam a name, an identity.
And the first thing he asks Adam to do is to then turn and give an identity to all the other animals.
You know, the Christian story is an identity story from the Old Testament all the way through the New Testament.
And so this is something we wanted to explore.
Now, look, I could easily make that case on paper and make it the way I just made it to you.
Or I could tell you a story that we hope is so engaging that by the time you're done with it, you'll get this principle.
Even though in this story, I think if you were to read this book, you're going to get halfway through it before you even think to yourself, is this a Christian book?
Because what we want to do is we want to reach people.
With truth.
And God's truth is everyone's truth.
You're stuck with it, whether you're a Christian or not.
If it's true, it's true for everyone.
So we thought we could write a book in which we could make a case that even your unbelieving friends...
Could read and not feel like, oh, this is so preachy.
You know, this is, no, it turns out it's just describing the world the way it really is.
And this is what scripture does.
It describes the world, and it describes us the way we really are.
So you'll see that these characters, there's only one Christian character in the entire book, and he's treated, for the most part, The way that, as a non-believing cop, I treated most Christian cops I knew, which I kind of marginalized them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Here comes the Christian view.
Okay, great.
And you'll see this is probably true, and many of the people who read this book are going to say, but you know what?
This is true in my world, too.
My non-Christian friends don't really take what I say seriously about this.
So we wanted to create a narrative.
It depicts reality the way it is for a lot of the readers if we're going to read this.
You're going to recognize your own struggles trying to tell people about Jesus, trying to tell people about what's true.
And so this is a book that may not land, every plane may not land safely at the end of the runway, because life is that way.
I've got a father who's a cop, who's a detective, who is now retired, of course, and he's 85. And he is not interested in hearing about the gospel.
And as many years as I've spent trying to help him see it from the same perspective that I take as a detective, he is willfully rejecting anything that I tell him.
Well, you probably have someone in your life like that, too, if you're a reader of this book.
So we want to have a book that reflects that reality as well.
Well, you know, what I said earlier about just the specialty of what is special about life in general, and you're right.
We're created in the image of God, and there's a huge difference between us and the animals.
And one of the things that we are seeing now, when we talk about the dignity of human life, one of the things that we really have to be aware of, the push that is coming against that, And we're seeing it across the board.
It goes back to B.F. Skinner and other people talking about, you know, beyond freedom and dignity, they're just going to treat human beings like animals.
And we see it more in the more contemporary writings of people like Yuval Harari, just saying, well, you know, we're going to take away, you're not going to have any freedom or dignity.
We're just going to control you as we would an animal.
And so I think that's a really important theme to drive home.
And it's a great way to do it in a detective.
Especially because everybody loves detective novels.
They love, you know, forensic novels and all the rest of the stuff.
I mean, it's always captured the human imagination because it is about life and death and it is also about a mystery and a puzzle, isn't it?
Yeah, it is.
And this form of novel, I always wanted to write fiction.
And I realized that there's a difference between writing fiction and writing nonfiction.
There's definitely a different skill set.
My son is an avid growing up.
He's now 36. He's been on the job 13 years.
He's always an avid comic book reader.
And I think if you are an avid reader in a particular genre, well, then you have a better shot at writing something in that genre.
So what we had to contribute was basically a script.
It's like a movie script.
You know, say page one is going to have five panels.
These panels are going to be these scenes, these dialogue, this action.
Then we give it to a group of illustrators that are really gifted illustrators.
They're the same illustrators that created their chosen graphic novel.
So they're very gifted, and they basically do all the rest of the heavy lifting.
If people like this book, and I hope they do, It's largely because it was illustrated so magnificently.
I mean, we first got it back, and we're watching how you're developing the characters.
Yeah.
I mean, when you see the character development, I'm like, wow, you know, that's actually better than I had imagined, you know?
So I think that this partnership between writers and creative artists has been really helpful.
Yeah, we've got a clip up there now of a couple of these different things.
And I love the graphic novels and the comic books.
And, of course, I learned how to read with comic books.
My mom would take me in tow before I started school.
And this is back in the Silver Age of comics when they were a lot safer than they are now.
Yes, yes.
They've kind of pandered to adult or to college kids, I should say, in terms of what they got.
But they were pretty safe back in the late 1950s and stuff.
And it was...
It's great because, like you point out, it is like a storyboard to a film.
And what's interesting about that is that my son will say this because he found my brother-in-law's old comic book collection from the early 1960s.
And you're absolutely right.
There was far less objectionable material in those old comic books.
And what he told me is growing up as a young Christian, he got his, of course, his marching orders from Scripture, but he found that a lot of his character development Came from these comic books, especially Spider-Man, you know, this kid who's got to save the world, but he's getting a chance to go on this date,
and of course, as soon as he gets to the point of taking the girl out, this is when Dr. Octopus, you know, attacks and he's got to change his, you know, I've got to act sacrificially, I want to do this thing, but I need to do that thing.
Well, I thought, really, so you're telling me that some of your character was developed through comic books?
But I realized that this is probably true for a lot of our young people, that issues that are sold to them under the ruse of fiction become...
The kinds of things that develop people's character.
That's why we as Christians need to be in this space.
Because you're right, what's happening, if you're reading comics or graphic novels today, you're going to have to turn a blind eye to a lot of offensive non-Christian material.
But can we do a story that's every bit as gripping, entertaining, gritty...
But also teaches a Christian worldview so that when character development is actually going to occur naturally as you're reading fiction, it's the kind of character that's also consistent with the teaching of Scripture.
That's what we're trying to do with this kind of a book.
That's great.
Yeah, when we go back and you look at it, it's like comparing...
Contemporary movie, comic books of today, graphic novels of today versus the stuff back in the 50s.
It's like a Disney movie about Davy Crockett or something versus movies that focus on...
A psychotic Joker character, you know, for Batman.
It's now the villains have become the heroes of these things, and they've become really, really rough.
As you point out, when I was a kid, the characters would, and there was a reason for that.
When they first started out, they were pretty rough, just like films, and just like they had the Hays Code for movies.
They also came up with a comic book code.
They said, if you're going to target kids with this stuff, then you're going to follow certain rules.
And so it was kind of quasi-manual.
That they would have to follow those rules.
And the characters were really straight up.
And they were good, and they were honorable characters.
My son Travis is working on the board here.
I used to read him novels from G.A. Hinty.
And in those novels, even the villains, the villains were better than our heroes today.
And I'm not joking.
You know, they had better, higher ideals, and they treated people better than the heroes treat people today in our movies.
And so, and fiction.
So those things were there.
As a matter of fact, they'd always have to say, look like a stamp.
And I never knew what that was.
That was when I was a kid.
That was up on the cover of the thing.
And that was saying that it had been certified and was with a comic book code.
And it's one of the reasons why MAD called itself a magazine because they didn't follow that code.
They were really, sorry, I mean it wasn't anything that was sexual or violent or anything like it is in the graphic novels today, but it was sarcastic.
A lot of satire and everything.
And so they were proud of the fact that they did not adhere to the code.
And so I think the code was basically you're going to present a good moral character.
And in our society at that point in time, Christianity had a lot of influence on that.
And really, even if these people were not Christian, it was the Christian influence that was influencing the art and the culture.
And you're right.
We do need to take that back.
Well, think about this.
The Christian theology tells us that there's an enigma of man, that we are duplicit.
We have the capacity for unbelievable altruism and goodness because we have been created in the image of God.
But we also are deeply rebellious and have inherited that sinful condition from Adam.
So that's why we are these duplicit kind of beings.
Now, what's interesting is we went from a point in history where we preferred to write about what we could be.
Mm-hmm.
Than what we really are.
Now we've shifted.
Yeah, it is true that we are duplicit.
We have a capacity for both greatness and evil.
But we want to focus on the greatness.
We want to say, hey, this is the ideal we ought to aspire to.
But I think what we're seeing right now, especially in comics, is that instead we're just sketching out the characters as they really are, as dark as their nature can also be.
Well, look, I get it.
You're going to see in this book that we've been very realistic with all the detectives, and they have a dark side.
But we want to aim at something.
And you know that old saying that if you aim at nothing, you hit it every time?
That's exactly right.
So we have to write stories, I think, that aim at something that is good.
There ought to be some example in the book that is not trite and trivialized and stereotyped, but offers a solution to the problem that everyone else is experiencing.
And so hopefully if we do this in a way, That is compelling.
You're going to come away from reading this book and you're going to have, I think it could, number one, if you're not a believer, I hope it'll open up your thinking to the possibility that Christianity has something to teach you about how to live.
But if you are a believer, I hope it's going to give you much more confidence.
And also, we want to have an alternative for believers who maybe want to have some fun in this space, this true crime graphic novel space, which right now, if you were to go online, you're going to get a lot of stuff that you're going to have to ignore some percentage of it if you want to hold on to your Christian worldview.
We wanted something that you didn't have to do that.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely right.
Tell us a little bit about, you know, you also are encouraging with this some deeper probing and some discussions about Christian worldview.
Tell people what you've got in association with that conversation guide that is also… Yeah, and I do think this is a gateway book, going to be a gateway book for a lot of people.
So on the inside back cover, we have a QR code that if you just hit that QR code, it's going to open up our case closed booklet, which is a case for the resurrection.
In about 40 pages.
So it's going to take you a step further.
If you wanted to know, for example, why this particular character in our story maybe responds a little differently to the trauma, well, the answer is in his Christian worldview, even though we're just going to hint at it.
We're not going to make it like a punch in the face.
But we want to give you a chance to go.
Now, look, if you're somebody who buys a book today, in our economy today, I feel like it's a big ask anymore for someone to spend, you know, somewhere between $15 and $20, depending on where you buy it, a book like this.
So what we want to do is offer something that makes the price seem like it's reasonable.
So what we've done on our website at coldcasechristianity.com is anyone who buys the book, yes, you have access to that digital QR code, but also we want to send you a conversation guide that will help you navigate the conversations that are going to flow out of someone who reads this book.
Also, we want to give you our 10...
Our 10 and a half hour, 30 session case makers course.
It's the same course I teach at Gateway Seminary here in Southern California.
And it's a course that is fully, robustly illustrated.
It's all videos.
If you take this course, you will become a much better Christian case maker.
So when someone does have a question about the Christian worldview that maybe is prompted by a book like this or anyone else's book, you'll be able to kind of hold your ground to be able to make a case for why Here's my concern.
If you really want to know what it is you love, What it is your family loves.
Think about what it is they're capable of defending.
Because it turns out, whatever it is you're capable of defending, that is your real God.
We just came out of the football draft from college football into the NFL.
And I know people who can make a robust case for why so-and-so should have gotten drafted or didn't get drafted or should have gotten drafted in a different position.
Oh, yeah.
I see that all the time on the news.
I kind of flip through it.
I see that they're all upset because this guy didn't go earlier or whatever.
And there's talk shows that they only have, I mean, literally, I was watching on the sports channels where you might have six hours today of this discussion with people debating it.
Well, okay, if that's you, and you are better able to defend your pro football team and their selections than you are able to defend your God, you've kind of shown your hand as to what you find worth defending.
I think we need to move into a position where we're so geeked out about what we believe about God and about Jesus that this is the stuff we spend our discretionary time on.
This is the stuff we spend our disposable time, our disposable income, our disposable thoughts, the stuff that we have freedom.
Like, you know, you're not working right now.
What are you thinking about?
There's your God.
You're not engaged with your family?
What are you thinking about?
There is your God.
So I think in the end, we have to kind of align our thoughts and align our abilities.
And so what we've always wanted to do this is provide resources that will help people.
If you do want to do that, how do you learn?
Where do you get that stuff?
Yes, you can buy a book.
But what we want to do is offer those free resources through our website that will help you to take the next step.
And I love what you do because, you know, we always have people who will push back on that.
And I like to have my faith challenged from one perspective or the other.
Because I've always found that when I get that challenge and I go back and I investigate in it, I come back much stronger.
Because it is true, and it helps me to understand that it's true.
If I go back and I investigate, which is what you did in your life, you go back and you investigate it, and it's not a blind faith that we have.
And what it does is you find the answers, and as you dig deep, then it becomes a passion for your life.
The more you get into it, and we've talked We've had so many celebrities in the last year or so that I've seen they're in their 50s and 60s and say, you know, I never read the Bible before, but I started reading.
It's pretty amazing, you know?
Then they want to grab you by the lapel and tell you about how amazing this is and what they found in it.
And we don't see that in the case of a lot of nominal Christians because they're just not reading it.
You know, they may be a part of a club or a church or whatever, you know, but they're not really actively involved in it.
And so if you can get something in that pulls you in, that's what I love what you do in general with Cold Case Christianity, is that you answer a lot of these concerns that other people had, concerns that you had when you first came to it.
Yeah, there's no doubt about it.
I mean, I think what we want, I'm hoping to do, to have my own kids, and as I was raising them, and now my grandkids, is to help them develop an investigative approach.
Yes.
This is worth taking the time.
Church attendance is not the box you can check and say, okay, I'm done.
It's just one of the many things you're going to find yourself doing because you are this in love with the worldview, with Jesus of Nazareth.
So I think the reality of it is, is how do you do this?
And here's what I love.
This is a worldview you could Think about it.
If you're somebody, for example, who is a Baha 'i, and you think that the writings of Baha 'u'llah are magnificent and beautiful and spiritual, okay, great.
How could you test those?
How do you test proverbial statements, even if they're Buddha, if they're Hindu statements, whatever they may be?
How do you test that?
This is not just that Jesus said smart things.
Of course he did.
It's that this is a claim about something that happened in history.
That's very unusual if you think about it.
You don't have claims about history that can be tested in the Baha 'i faith or in Buddhist faith.
This is testable in the sense that it records an event.
If it didn't happen, it's all false.
So there's something you can point to now, which is the resurrection.
Do we have good reason to believe the resurrection occurred?
If it did...
Then this guy's in a different category, Jesus.
He's the one wise guy who, unlike all the other ancient wise guys, rose from the grave.
We need to know, have confidence that that's the case.
Because otherwise, he's just one ancient voice among many who also said wise things.
Or is he the voice?
And by the way, because we are created in the image of this God, we always have a shadow of his teaching in our lives.
We are image bearers.
We cannot avoid it.
Even when we think, do you know how many Christ figures there are in history?
Stories that are like the Jesus story that emerged?
Now, you could argue that those that come after Jesus are simply people who are copying the Jesus story.
But there are a lot of Christ figures that are pre-Jesus.
Why?
Because this is God's story.
And if you're an image bearer, which you are, you kind of innately have God's story in your head.
Whether you like it or not.
That's right.
So I think in the end, we want to be able to use our giftedness, whatever that may be, all of us, even those of us who are listening to this show, to be creative.
And we ought to own the arts.
We have, by the way, for generations.
Don't step back from the arts.
Continue to write.
Write fiction.
Do Christian movies.
Yes, I know.
People will say, well, they're not the one I wish they would be.
Well, that's on us.
We can do a better job.
So let's do that better job so we have something to point to so our young people have an alternative that actually is God-honoring.
I agree.
Oh, yeah.
And as a matter of fact, you talk about doing the best job that you can.
That's the key.
You know, when we look at the architecture, for example, in Europe, the great cathedrals and everything that were there, and there was a multi-generational effort to show their best.
You know, to show their best skills and all the rest of it.
They poured it into that, regardless of, you know, what you think.
There was still a, you know, that was their desire to do something in some way that honored God.
And everything that we do, I think, as Christians ought to be done to a standard that people would say, oh, I want to know more about this guy, what motivates him, you know, to do something of that quality.
But as you were saying, it all comes back to the resurrection of Jesus.
And we're just a week away from Resurrection Sunday.
And you've got Case Closed that is also there at your website.
And you have a link to that as part of People Get This Graphic Novel.
It's a link to that.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, case closed was really something we wanted to do a long time ago.
We've done a couple of different versions of what we would hope to be a quick case for the resurrection.
Because I do think this is the one most important piece of evidence that is in the Christian worldview.
Paul says, if the resurrection didn't occur, then number one, we have been false witnesses.
So we've been lying to you.
So that ought to discredit pretty much everything else we've said.
But also, you have no hope of your own.
Resurrection.
This is all in 1 Corinthians 15. So if you look at this, this is the key thing that I knew I had to investigate first.
Do I have good reason to believe that this resurrection thing occurred?
Because that puts him in a different category altogether.
And that category is the difference between any other ancient sage and Jesus of Nazareth.
So what this is, is like a 30 or 40 page, very small booklet.
It's the quickest version I can give you of why I think the resurrection is the most reasonable inference from the historical evidence.
Now, look, some people are going to say, well, I can't believe that because it includes something supernatural.
You know, it turns out that that supernatural thing is what's keeping most people out.
Here's what I mean.
If we had an ancient set of documents that just described Jesus of Nazareth as a simple teaching rabbi in the first century, that's all he is.
He said some wise things, but never worked a miracle, never rose from the grave, never walked on water, was not born of a virgin.
He's just a guy, just an ancient guy who was smart.
There wouldn't be a single skeptic on planet Earth who would deny the historicity of Jesus
Based on the manuscript evidence we have, It's so strong.
There is no ancient who is better attested than Jesus.
But if you insert one miracle into those same ancient manuscripts, suddenly skepticism is at a high.
None of it can be true.
Why?
That just tells you that the skepticism is not based on the strength of the manuscript evidence.
It's not.
It's based on a presuppositional bias against the supernatural.
Because trust me, take out the supernatural elements and everyone loves it.
So that is really about us having to examine.
Do we have really good reason to reject anything outside of space, time, matter, physics, and chemistry?
I actually think there's good reason to believe there is something beyond space, time, matter, physics, and chemistry, just from the science of those who study the universe.
Yes.
I think we're stuck with that.
The only question is, is that thing outside of space, time, matter, science, and chemistry, and physics, is that thing personal?
Is it a personal being?
If there is a personal being that starts the universe, well, then I suspect you can do anything you want.
Once the universe has been started.
So there's no big deal miracle in the pages of the New Testament.
The biggest miracle of all is in Genesis 1. Everything from nothing.
That's big.
If you can do that, you can probably walk on water.
So that helped me to at least navigate my...
My bias against the supernatural.
I was somebody who believed in Big Bang cosmology.
That's still the standard cosmological model of the astrophysicists who are working today as secularists.
Well, they believe that there's something outside of space, time, and matter that begins all space, time, and matter.
Well, what is that?
What kind of force?
Is it an impersonal force?
Or is it a personal force?
Why would we think, for example, it's an impersonal force and be stuck on that?
If it's a personal force, we at least have to have a hypothesis that includes God as a creator.
I'm not saying you all have to do this, you all have to jump in that direction, but can you at least allow that as a hypothesis?
Because I'll tell you what, if you do, you're going to find that it has much better explanatory power for a lot of other things in the universe.
So I think in the end, that was what had opened the door for me.
Yeah.
Yeah, if there was ever a time, as people have said, if there was ever a time where there was literally no thing, then there still would be nothing that's out there.
And, you know, we even talk about the word supernatural.
There must be something that organizes this that is above nature.
And we've seen a lot of materialistic scientists say that.
We looked at Crick and Watson, who discovered DNA.
They could no longer deny an intelligent design, but instead they created in their imagination and said, well, we'll call it panspermia.
It must have been aliens who came here and did this.
But they will not – then you take it to the next step.
I'm going to – I'm still going to deny the God of the Bible, even if I see the inevitability and the impossibility of this happening without intelligent design.
So there's always that there.
But that's the other thing I like about Christianity.
It's always about critical thinking.
It encourages – it invites critical thinking, and that's what you do with cold case Christianity.
You invite critical thinking, and you have answers for that.
And it's important.
It's a vital life skill for us to be able to have critical thinking.
And so that's something that we tried to really stress with our children when we were homeschooling them, was the critical thinking aspect.
And so we would look at creation versus evolution.
We would look at all the biology and, you know, here's your set of facts and everybody's got the same set of facts.
How do we interpret these set of facts?
And why would we interpret it this way or that way?
Well, and think about this.
This is a worldview that I hope when people, even when they read our books, whether it's this book or fiction or nonfiction, I think this is a very different worldview.
Paul tells us in Romans 12, too, that you cannot be conformed to this crazy world, but you need to be transformed.
And he had a number of ways he could have said it.
Remember, when I listen to a suspect, I'm listening to all the things and thinking to myself, he chose to say it a certain way.
Why did he choose to say it this way when there were about six or seven other ways he could have said it?
Because how you choose to say it matters.
And Paul says in Romans 12, too, that we are to be transformed not by the renewal of our will or our hearts or our emotion or our experiences.
Like, what is it that's going to make a difference?
What's going to transform your life?
Well, it turns out it's the renewal of your mind.
It's about rethinking.
This is a thinking person's worldview.
And I know that we've got a generation, we've got so many different strands of Christianity in which...
What's really emphasized is the experience.
What you've experienced.
Share your testimony.
What they're really saying is don't share the way you thought about this, the way you rethought all the facts.
What most people are about to share then is what experience they had.
From that, they interpreted that God was real.
I get it.
God is a God of experiences, for sure.
And if you've had an experience, you may be able to attest it to God.
But you need to kind of evaluate it based on...
The evidence.
It's not just your experience.
Your experience alone will get you into all kinds of trouble.
I have six brothers and sisters who were raised LDS by my stepmother, and they largely will tell you that they had an experience that confirmed for them that the Book of Mormon was true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.
Well, look, your experiences can't be trusted.
They have to be tested against the facts.
And once they're tested against the facts, you can know if that experience is, if you've properly interpreted it.
Well, I think we have a worldview that encourages us to not just enjoy the experience of God's presence, but to test it to make sure it actually is God's presence you're feeling.
I believe there's a spiritual realm, but not every spiritual experience you have will necessarily be from God.
And we have to test the spirits to see.
Yeah, exactly.
Got to see if that is from God.
And he calls us to worship him in spirit and in truth.
And we don't want to throw away either one of those because it's an ant.
It's not or, you know.
That's right.
And so then he says, come let us reason together.
You know, he says, though your sins be as scarlet, I'll make them white as snow.
So he invites us to use the minds that he gave us.
And that is a wonderful thing.
And then he does come with experiences as well.
And so all of that has to be a part of it.
So it is a complete package.
And I think a lot of people are missing it.
This is one of the reasons, too, David.
I'm thinking this is why we wanted to do fiction.
I have a sense that we can make a case that you can assent to intellectually.
But fiction takes you along as part of the experience of the chase for this killer, for example, in this book.
So it's combining both.
What is the case for this?
And two, I want you to experience something.
John always says that, yes, he learns a lot from nonfiction, but it feels like when he's reading fiction, he's drawn into the story, and it becomes an experience.
And I think that's true for a movie.
If you watch a movie for those two hours, you're kind of transported into that realm.
Well, graphic novels are basically just movies that have been put on paper because they're just storyboarded movies.
And so we hope that when you open this up, and even if you're not somebody who likes to read a novel...
Graphic novels are so visual, you're just watching a movie.
That's right.
And so you can take it anywhere you want to go.
So the idea is to draw people into that experience.
Because I think you're right.
This is not an either-or.
I would never suggest that you develop your entire Christian worldview from fiction.
That's like saying experiences are all that matter.
At the same time, though, you've got to be careful not to draw all your Christian, robust Christian life simply from reading non-fictional case books, basically, their theology or whatever they may be, because it's going to be kind of dry.
That's right.
Like, you need to have a heart and head kind of experience together.
And I think that nonfiction often affects your head.
Fiction often affects your heart.
So that combination we think we have.
It's basically what I always say is we're trying to bite the apple from both sides.
Well, it combines the spirit and the truth, in a way, you know, when you have that there.
And, you know, it reminds me of music, for example, right?
When we have music, if you've got good lyrics, that's great.
And it moves you emotionally through the music, and then you add the lyrics if they teach you something that's valuable.
That's a great thing as well.
And again, going back to the graphic novels, they are so much like movies.
That was the thing that used to always fascinate me because I can't draw anything.
I can't draw stick figures.
And the fact that somebody could, as they do in your book, you can draw things, and there's a certain kind of kinetic.
You can almost see things moving.
When you look at it, because it is like a storyboard, but a good graphic artist can make it really come alive.
You're kind of seeing the movement there.
You can see the movement from one panel to the next, or from the character, what they're doing.
Yes, my son always says that what we contributed is we contributed the movie's script or the screenwriters.
And in that screenplay, you're going to have some direction about what the movement should be, what the scene is going to look like, what the characters are going to say for sure, what the action.
You're writing all of that into the screenplay.
The artist in a graphic novel is every other person in the movie.
He's the director, because he's going to direct the action.
He is all of the actors.
He's even telling the actors what expressions to take.
He is the wardrobe guy.
He is the set designer.
I mean, he's the lighting person.
I mean, the artists basically play the role of every other important person in a movie project.
All we do is submit the screenplay.
And we've also given them liberty, the same way a screenwriter was going to give liberty to a director to direct his screenplay however he sees fit.
You hire the right person, right?
Because you know that you're going to have to give them that liberty.
Well, the same is true with this kind of a project.
We had to give the artists the liberty.
We developed the characters.
We developed the storyline.
We give them the story.
Storyline, then they bring it to life.
And we weren't even sure.
We had some ideas.
They gave us the rough sketches back on the different characters.
There's like six major characters here.
And we had some ideas about those characters and we had some input, of course.
But in the end, I was impressed with what they thought the character should look like.
And I think this is awesome, right?
Maybe they wouldn't have cast that actor for that role.
But here, they thought of something.
And by the way, they're thinking of it just from their imagination.
It's really an amazing process to go through.
But I think in the end, when you see it, I think most people don't think of comic books as being that thoughtful.
But there is so much that's happening behind the scenes.
For example, we started this project two and a half years ago.
And we were ready to go.
If we could just snap your fingers and produce 160 pages of art, we could have been ready in a day.
It took two and a half years for us to get from concept to published work.
And that's largely because it's a collective effort and it's like making a movie.
Well, it certainly does show.
And just like that last panel that you had up there, Travis, there's one at the bottom where a guy comes up behind and...
Hit somebody from the back, and you see crack, and you see the cap flying.
I mean, there's just such kinetic energy in these graphic novels.
That's what I really enjoy out of it, because you can really see it come alive.
And as you point out, they create the characters, and they're doing the direction and the action in it.
So it is a great collaboration, and it looks really interesting.
I haven't had time to go through all of it yet, but it is really well done.
Again, it is...
You can go to coldcasechristianity.com.
That's where the people can find it and buy it, right?
I guess they can also get it on Amazon.
But once they get it, then there is a code in the back that's going to give them supplemental material.
And it is a great outreach, a great conversation starter with people, I think.
Yeah, I hope it is.
I hope it's a gateway book.
I think it's the kind of thing that you can give somebody and then the conversation begins.
Now the question is, are you ready for the conversation?
And that's what we really, I think, our whole ministry is about.
If this is a tool that helps you get active and get ready for the conversation, then we've accomplished our goal.
That's right.
And you know, that's the wonderful thing about it.
We used to have a Bible study in our home back in North Carolina.
And when something is coming up like that, you have to...
And it wasn't that I was leading it or anything, but I knew what we were going to be covering.
And so I would...
You know, look at it and I would study it for a while.
And it's that preparation that is really the benefit to you.
And so if somebody goes into this and somebody looks at this and focuses on it, it just gives them a focus.
It gives them something to do.
We always ought to be engaged in some way or the other, doing something that is positive.
And so this gives you some direction.
It gives you something to contemplate, to think about critically.
And it's really going to build you.
And it might help you to pass that on to somebody else.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
If it's a catalyst, that we've done our job.
Yeah, that's great.
ColdcaseChristianity.com.
Thank you so much, Jay Warner Wallace.
Always a pleasure talking to you.
Hey, thanks so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
The common man.
They created common core to dumb down our children.
They created common paths to track and control us.
Their commons project to make sure the commoners own nothing.
And the communist future.
They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated, ordinary.
But each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God.
That is what we have in common.
That is what they want to take away.
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