Evangelistic Opportunities in Our Moment

Last week Canadian apologist Wesley Huff went on the Joe Rogan Experience, the world's biggest podcast.

Huff was on the show due to a debate he had done with a kind of self-taught new age guru named Billy Carson who, amongst other things, claimed that Jesus was never crucified.

So he got on for a conversation with Huff about that and... well, it ended with Carson sending a cease-and-desist letter to Huff threatening him with legal action if the video was released.

You can see for yourself why Carson didn't want the video to be public:

Finally, Glen Scrivener made some observations about the response to the interview that I wanted to highlight for our readers:

For Glen, the conversation highlighted three main openings for conversation. Scrivener noted that these three areas coincide closely with a well-known quote from Blaise Pascal:

Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true. Venerable, because it has perfect knowledge of man; lovable because it promises the true good.

The three topics Scrivener identified are miracles, man, and morals.

Miracles

Early in the interview, Huff and Rogan talk about a serious medical incident Huff had as a child that would ordinarily be expected to have left him paralyzed for life. But on the 30th day after his diagnosis, Huff woke up and had the use of his legs back. It's not unheard of, apparently, for this to happen with people with his diagnosis, but it is also not at all common. And so they spoke at some length about the miraculous and supernatural.

The broader point Scrivener made is that most of our neighbors are not materialists. They are open to the idea of the supernatural, open to the idea that the world is more than it sometimes appears, open to the possibility of miracles. There is a quite striking portion of the interview in which Huff suggests that the emergence of life itself is quite miraculous, such that it seems rather silly to suggest that Jesus turning water to wine is somehow improbable or impossible. Rogan immediately agreed.

For those following broader cultural discourses, this point shouldn't be a surprise. Jonathan Pageau is an immensely popular YouTuber. There are a number of Substacks with large followings that are deeply anti-materialist, like School of the Unconformed and the Savage Collective. Writers like Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw have strong mystic elements to their work. The recent book from Rod Dreher would be another data point here, all indicating that materialism is a declining force in our culture. Materialism (and the scornful attitudes toward religion that went along with it) is in decline. It isn't the new atheist's world anymore, if it ever was.

So one application of this for Scrivener is that we should lean into Christianity's account of the miraculous and supernatural as part of our evangelistic witness to our neighbors. A further point that occurred to me while listening to Glen is that I think it would be very easy to adapt something like Tolkien's rather potent idea of a "true myth" (which was so instrumental in the conversion of C. S. Lewis) to our current moment. In Surprised by Joy Lewis encounters a conversation he had, not long before his fateful walk with Tolkien and Dyson, about the historicity of the Gospels and the idea that God might die:

Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. "Rum thing," he went on. "All that stuff of Frazer's about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once." To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man (who has certainly never since shown any interest in Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not-as I would still have put it — "safe," where could I turn? Was there then no escape?

In a similar way, I think there is opportunity here to use the openness to the miraculous and supernatural as a way of essentially doing what Lewis's colleague did: "Rum thing. Almost looks as if it really happened once." If, after all, we live in a world with supernatural healings and mystical encounters with the unexplainable, why would it be a problem for someone to come back from the dead?

Man

Next Scrivener flags the particular questions bound up in anthropology that are also of heightened interest in our current moment. What explains the uniques of humanity? How did that come about? Christianity offers serious answers to such questions. This is the main point Scrivener is making.

That said, I think we can push further into the anthropology angle given our technological moment. We may well be moving toward a world where some appreciable portion of the population will be married and another portion, quite possibly of similar size, will have AI girlfriends or boyfriends, perhaps augmented by advanced robotics or augmented and virtual reality devices. The question of whether one of those ways of life would be preferable to another will, then, will be quite important and existential for many people. Christianity offers us a way of explaining that—it's not just that we can talk about what makes man unique relative to other animals. We also can and should talk about what makes us unique relative to machines.

While sexuality and relationships is one arena where this question is going to be vital, it is far from the only one. Consider a question like whether or not it is licit to use AIs (or LLMs, really) to write papers for you for school (or, for professional writers, to do their work for them). Yes, we can (and should) argue that a student using an LLM to do their homework for them is cheating. That's true. But if that's as far as our answer goes, it isn't deep enough. What things inside you as a human are being challenged, expanded, or unlocked through the process of work? What, then, is lost if you find a way to short circuit that process and still get an "acceptable" (in some sense) outcome? Obviously this question is not meant as a kind of automatic defeater for any sort of technological innovation. Adopting new technologies is always about trade offs and there are times where the thing you gain from a new tool or technology outweighs what is lost. One thing that is obviously wrong and dangerous is when we skip the conversation about tradeoffs and throw ourselves with minimal thought into new technologies. 

Here, again, I think we would do well to return to Oliver O'Donovan's Begotten or Made?, which continues to be one of the best books I know on these questions and topics despite its being first published in the early 1980s. Another resource worth considering is L. M. Sacasas's list of questions to ask about any new technology. (You can also hear Sacasas discuss his list with Ezra Klein on Klein's podcast.)

Morals

Finally, Scrivener suggests that morality is a key question in our moment. But the question presses on us in two different ways.

The first, which Rogan recognizes easily, is that Christianity does seem to offer real moral guidance and direction to people. He freely grants that Christianity seems to "work" in some sense. And while that point can be taken in some very unhelpful directions, it would be a mistake to pass over it too quickly.

There is an enormous amount of repair needed in our cultural moment in elite institutions, the economy, cities and neighborhoods, and so on. And the clear moral teachings offered by Christianity are an immensely valuable aid to us as we attempt to undertake that work. That's why you can find people like Tom Holland, Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, and even Richard Dawkins all professing their admiration for Christian moral teachings.

Here is how another viewer described it:

Flash back to my late 20s (~14 years ago) and I was an ardent atheist. I met some smart, well-read, successful people whose lives looked fundamentally different than mine. And to my surprise and chagrin, they were devout Christians. I couldn't believe it.

They broke all my assumptions. They were funny and loving, kind and humble. They had courage and largely lived without the fear, anxiety, and malaise I felt and saw clearly in my friends. They lived with a freedom that I had never experienced. They were present and caring and comfortable in their own skin. They helped the helpless with no desire for recognition or expectation of reciprocity.

Their worldview was so different than mine and so shocking by comparison that it forced me to reconsider my daily operating beliefs. I was focused on me; they were focused on others. I was obsessed with accumulating money, power, and fame; they were uncomfortably generous and carefree with their resources. I was easily offended; they were unoffendable. I was fragile mentally and emotionally; they were focused and resilient.

The question I had to face was this -- Is it true because it works? Or, does it work because it's true? That's what started my exploration, which ended in concluding that Jesus was who he says he was. And, it transformed my life. I don't embody nearly all the characteristics that initially peaked my interest, but the trajectory is there, and I find comfort in knowing that I'm still early in my journey.

That being said, Scrivener flags the potential problem, which the man quoted above also recognized: There is a way of approaching Christian moral ideas as being a kind of optimal programming for the human machine. The task, then, becomes how to most completely adopt those morals in one's own life. But that's a trap, as Scrivener (and Huff) both recognize. Here is Huff:

Huff: I think I really like the way that Jordan Peterson articulates it, but I think he misses the forest for the trees.

Rogan: How so?

Huff: In that he sees Jesus as an archetype. I don't think Jesus even gives you the opportunity to see him as the archetype. I have this love hate relationship with all of Peterson's stuff because he seems to get so much right where he walks up to the line, but he doesn't want to crossover.

Rogan: And is the crossover, you think, connected to a life in academia?

Huff: No.

Rogan: What do you think it is?

Huff: I wonder, and I'd love to talk to him about this. He seems to think that the concept of Jesus as an example is more important than the actual flesh and blood, 1st century, itinerant Jewish preacher who was crucified and rose from the dead physically, which is the claim of the gospels and the rest of the New Testament. I actually think that Jesus condemns moralism. And, ultimately, what I see Peterson doing is looking at Jesus as a moral example. And if Jesus is nothing but a moral example, then you can save yourself and you don't actually need a savior. 03:11:02]   So I think, actually, Jesus would have critiqued that because Jesus was very against moralism.

Huff then goes on to offer a fairly standard articulation of how Christianity understands the uses of the law and the Gospel's relationship to it. This prompts Scrivener to say near the end of his response to the podcast that,

You need the Gospel. Without the Gospel you're left with this: "I'm the younger brother in Luke 15 and I've run out of money and I've decided to go back home and be a slave (because it is better than this)." That's what Christianity is without the Gospel. It's a bunch of people who went to the far country of materialism and recognize its a nihilistic mess. They've decided to come back to church in order to be slaves. The whole point of Luke 15 is that you're not meant to go from being a younger borther to an older brother type. The older brother is the moralist and the older brother finishes the story mad as hell at his brother and staying outside in outer darkness with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The moralist ends up in Hell. The sinner is invited into the feast by grace alone through faith alone. That's the good news we need to say to people who are showing up in church.

Many people are showing up in church because they're sick of the far country, they're sick of the pig sty. They want to become hired servants. The good news is they are reconciled as sons and daughters in Christ.... Morality is a way in to faith for people now. People are showing up to church not despite the moral certainties but because of the moral certainties. But that can breed moralism. So this caution is necessary and that caution comes with the Gospel. The mirror is not going to tidy your face up. The bath is. Jesus can refresh you in a way that 12 rules for life never can.

This is a key point to reckon with as we consider the shifting moment we are in. Yes, there seems to be signs of a revival of sorts starting to happen. But Jesus is not a political program or a morality-based self-improvement program. In fact, if you approach him in that way you will miss him altogether. So while we can be grateful for figures like Peterson or Murray who seem to recognize the moral benefits of Christianity, we must never stop reminding them and everyone else that Christianity is first and foremost about how sinful people are brought into encounter with God and are reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus Christ, the God-man.