Hey everyone, welcome in. My name is Mike Sullivan. I'm a teaching pastor here at Dwell Community Church, and today I'll be talking with Dr. Gavin Ortlin. Gavin, it's great to have you. Wonderful to be here, looking forward to the conversation. You've got a lot of pokers in the fire from what I can tell. You're a theologian in residence at Emmanuel Nashville, a fellow of the Tim Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. You've written some great books. I just finished What It Means to be a Protestant, and just, I know you're the guest here, but that was a dynamite book. I think it won an award, too. I think a Christianity Today Book of the Year Award. Yeah, I was so grateful for that. What an honor, and I just hope it serves people, meets needs. A lot of people, we were talking earlier, they're asking deep questions about where they fit into church history and into the broader church, and so I hope that could be just an encouragement and a source of hope and stabilization for people. It's such a great resource. Again, that's What It Means to be a Protestant. You know, then in the leftover time, you're doing this thing called Truth Unites, and I was thinking maybe that's where we could start. Maybe you could tell us what is Truth Unites and what your goals are and your vision is for the ministry. Sure, yeah. Yeah, I never thought I would be doing YouTube videos, but I really enjoy it. I find it fun, and I've been amazed at how many needs you can meet. The truth is that young men especially, though not just men and not just young men, but especially young men from all the way from the teenage years through their 20s go to YouTube and go to podcasts with their questions, and there's a whole culture there. People don't go to the public library anymore when they have a question. They go to YouTube, and that can be whether you need to change the oil in your car, you want to learn how to do it, you go to YouTube. All the time. Search it up, you know, and people do that with philosophy, people do that with theology, with ultimate questions, and so there's a whole conversation happening there. And in 2020, a few months into COVID, I sort of was getting a little antsy a few months in, and I was watching a lot of YouTube videos, and it became an avenue for me to just try to extend some of the things I was doing into a different context. I thought there's a lot of people who are never gonna come to my church and probably never gonna read my books, but they might watch a YouTube video, and so it's a platform to extend ideas out onto. There's dangers to social media. I'm very sensitive to that, and but I've been amazed at the way you can meet needs, and so I've just been enjoying it and trying to serve people in that way. I'm always struck, because I work with a lot of young men in our church, how powerfully they're influenced by podcasters like Joe Rogan or Sean Ryan. I mean, you can almost hear them sharing talking points as if they're being discipled, as if there's like a real transfer of knowledge. So when you think about spiritual formation and helping people kind of drive some deep pilings, how have you been trying to get at that through using YouTube? The one thing I really hope is that people will never use my YouTube videos as an alternative to local, face-to-face relationship. It cannot be a substitute. It, at best, can only ever be a supplement, and so I'll do videos where both for local churches, but also for seminaries, where I'm trying to recommend, hey, you know, go get formal study. I want my YouTube channel to be a blessing to not only local churches, but to the broader body of Christ and to other ministries, seminaries. I have a real heart for seminaries. I would love to see seminaries flourish right now, and some are struggling. And I really believe in formal education, so I want, I think it's dangerous when podcasting and social media replaces traditional ways of information transfer. I hope it complements, but when people are there, we need to step in and fill the gap. I don't think withdrawal, complete withdrawal, is the answer, because then people are going to get catechized by YouTube one way or another, and we want it to be by gospel-centered content as much as we can. Yeah, we can't surrender that real estate. So I noticed, I heard you speak last night, and everybody, Gavin was one of our speakers at our annual conference, if you're listening from outside our church, it's called the Zenos Summer Institute. Gavin spoke last night and this morning. One thing that really struck me when you spoke, like I could tell you were deeply burdened by it, is you want Christians to experience joy. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about where that comes from and what that's about. Yeah, I think in some ways it's just the simple reminder that I need every single day that being a Christian isn't just this sort of formal sign on the dotted line, and now that's taken care of, but I'm going to turn elsewhere for my daily sustenance and hope for what gets me through the day. It's not as though, well, I'm a Christian, so now I know my sins are forgiven, I'm going to heaven, but in the meantime I need to get by, right? Being a Christian is our daily hope, and we can have joy every single day because of what Jesus has done for us and who he is, and I have a pastoral heart for people. I just want people to live in that and lean into that and find strength in that. I think Jesus is the perfect Savior. I think he meets every one of our needs. One of the needs he meets is he gives us a resurrection body on the final resurrection day. Another is that he forgives our sins because of his death on the cross, but another need he meets is that he gives us strength every day to follow him, and so, yeah, that comes through. I think people need joy. I think right now the state of the world makes that especially pressing. I think a lot of people, actually, including Christians, are struggling with despair at times, certainly fear, and I get it. With five young kids at home wondering where the world is going, I don't look down at that at all. I really understand that the world is a scary place, and what we want to do is give people hope and give people strength, and the gospel does that because the gospel says whatever happens in this world, whatever politics looks like, whatever America looks like, whatever 2030 looks like, whatever 2040 looks like, ultimately we will be with Jesus. We have this anchor, and I think we're at our best in our Christian witness when we're living out of that, and our posture toward the world isn't informed by fear and panic and anger. It's standing on this bedrock you're talking about. Yes, and from a place of joy, and that's not easy, but I think we can do that. Now, the other thing I always notice when a speaker kind of reveals their hand a little bit and shares their kind of deepest passions, kind of the flip side of that is, I don't think I have the quote right, but you essentially said, if you're doubting, I'm here for you. You must be running into people that are there, maybe you've come from there, I'm sure every Christian goes through these seasons, but can you tell me more about that, like how that's kind of crystallized as like a life burden, like hey doubters, hey deep question askers, I'm here for you. Yeah, I do have a burden for that. I'm not sure when that began fully, I think it's just developed over the years. As I've studied Gen Z, I really love Gen Z, I love these young men who are watching my videos, I have a burden for them and an affection for them, and as I study the demographics and the sociology, I'm aware that anxiety is such a huge issue, epidemic, I think we can say, and Jonathan Haidt's book talks about this, others are studying this more formally, I'm just aware of it, and I do think that the gospel has something to say to that. Now, we also need wisdom at the level of, you know, very practical things like how we're relating to our screens and our phones, it's not all just theology that solves this problem, but I think there is theology that informs our practices and speaks to the heart, and one thing that's become precious to me is the testimony of the Holy Spirit. I think Christian, so Romans 8 16 says that the Spirit testifies to our spirit, so that we know we are children of God, and that's such a great verse, it's a promise, you know, I want the 21 year old man who is sorting out life and feels as though there's shifting sands beneath his feet, he doesn't really know what is the truth, he is searching, I want him to know that experience. I think that people are going to everything to look for a kind of bedrock experience, a sense of a foundation for where you can build your life from, and I think there is an experiential component of communion with Christ, knowing Jesus, allowing him to speak into the deepest places of your heart, and I want people to know about that, and so that informs everything else I do. I've been through seasons of doubt myself, nothing terribly dramatic, but just I think the garden variety experiences of just going back to the drawing board and saying, how do I know this is true? What if I'm wrong? You know, really, I'm pretty empathetic, so I try to listen to others, so I try to understand other points of view, and one of the things that happens when you do that is you see these issues are complicated, and we want to be humble to really listen and see, you know, this is not formulaic, and so I have a real heart to try to help people who are there, because I just think so many people are right now. Yeah, you know, moving beyond just truth claims and good reasons to experiencing the living God, that, I know, we've been running this conference for almost 30 years, and it has very, very much been a cerebral, let's talk about these claims and why they're true, as we've tried to roll out a defense for Christianity, but it really came through both with you and a few other out-of-town guests that we've had, that the emotional life of people we're trying to reach, not just their mental reasoning and faculties, but what they're feeling has to be considered if we're going to reach this generation. I think I'm picking that up for sure, and maybe if you could just elucidate that a little bit. Yeah, I think that it's a matter of just pastoral wisdom to listen well to the people that we're evangelizing, and that means listening not just to the content of their objections and questions, but also to the tenor with which they're expressed. And, for example, I think a lot of younger people, they have intellectual objections, but they actually aren't looking for certainty as an answer. They're really looking for just some level of relational guidance, and if you come in with this airtight, logical argument, and you do it in a way that's very triumphalist, as though anybody can see this, all you have to do is think it through, and here's the outcome, we can actually alienate people. Sometimes people do appreciate real formal arguments. I'm not saying that's always bad, but it's just this question of listening and seeing where people are at. Right, both end. Got to have the gear, but we can't miss this other piece. Yeah, oh yeah, I think so. And yeah, so I just want to help young... I think if I could say one thing to young people listening to this right now, who maybe are there, and they're doubting, and they have anxiety and angst, and they're just wondering, how do I know for sure if Christianity is true? And then another question will be, if I'm saved? Maybe they might think, yeah, okay, I see that it's true, but I don't know if God's forgiven me. Right. And if I could put one word before them, it would be the word desperation, and by that I mean that the kind of hard posture with which we come before Christ and in prayer, and we acknowledge our need for Him. I think we can find certainty through that pathway of just empty faith. Yeah, so great. The empty hands of faith reaching up saying, I can't do this, I can't get certainty on my own, I can't figure it out on my own, and there's a kind of personal collapsing before God, and just saying, I can't do this, I need you. And it comes out, and it's a very existential dynamic. No amount of study, no amount of intelligence can replace that dynamic in our posture. Yeah. And so I want to encourage people to be open to, you know, I guess I could encourage them, Christ will meet you in that place. As vulnerable and as humble you are before Him, you will experience Him like the prodigal father who comes, who runs to you, who wraps a robe around you, who cleanses you, who covers you, who honors you. He treats you with dignity. He treats you with respect. Christ is kind. He doesn't scold us when we come before Him in a humble posture. He will give you grace. He will lavish His grace upon you, and so don't be afraid to be very desperate before Christ and allow Him to speak to you in that posture. Scripture is just filled with that, that kind of language. Lamentations 3 and so many of the Psalms for people are just aching and letting God minister to them because He loves them and wants to. That's so great. I'd like to shift gears a little bit. I know a little bit about the Ortland clan. You're part of an amazing family. You really are. It's an incredible family. For our listeners here that don't know, Gavin's grandparents Ray and Anna and parents Ray Jr. and is it Johnny? Jannie. Jannie. I knew I was gonna mess that up. And your siblings have led and written and spoken and benefited the Church in so many ways. It's really incredible just thinking about just the whole Ortland crew. I just wonder if you could... I'm curious. I get to ask the questions here. How has growing up in a family like that shaped you? Well I would just take my gratitude for my family. People ask about this a lot and I never know fully what to say because at the time, you know, you're a little kid and it just feels normal. Here I am. And our family is... but I would just... I think what I feel fundamentally is just gratitude to the Lord for my parents. My parents are dear friends of mine. They're really authentic Christians. They really... I have no doubt where they stand. You know, I know... I've seen their way of life. I've watched them follow Jesus and so I know the sincerity of their commitment and that's a gift to me. Not... far more than any ministry they have done, though I learn from them and I'll call my dad when I'm doing sermon prep and say, hey help me think about this and that kind of thing. So I love their ministry but they're... that flows out of just their own Christian life and their character and that is the gift God has given me through them. And my three older siblings, Eric and Dane and Krista, I just respect them so much. Yeah, I ask this partly because we're in the middle of a baby boom in our church. We have a ton of young couples with kids, and I think every Christian young couple really would love to see multiple generations of their descendants avidly following Christ, loving God, serving Him, and having... you know, just being able to look at your experience. If you were gonna give some thoughts to somebody who wanted to have multiple generations in their family, not just their kids, but just this legacy that's building, develop any thoughts from just what you've witnessed, things that you think would help a young couple. You know, I would just want to... for parents of young children, so we have... my wife and I have five children, and they are... I miss them, you know, I'm looking forward to seeing them later tonight. I think it is easy for people to forget or to underestimate how challenging those seasons of parenthood could be, and I would just want to encourage parents that it's okay when you get exhausted. It's okay to not know what to do. It takes wisdom. It's nuanced, and it's... I think parenting is one of those great challenges of life. We never really stop learning, because each of our children are different, and they require different approaches. Yeah, there's no one textbook. Yeah, it's hard, and I just want to be an encourager to parents to say, what you're doing really matters. Don't underestimate the significance of this before God. I often tell my wife, you know, when you're taking care of our little ones, you are shaping eternity, because what you're doing is shaping who they are as a person. You know, from everything I understand, those early years are really important in our personhood. Oh yeah, so many ways. Then they will be... we share the gospel with them. Praise God, as my kids have grown, they've come to know the Lord, and so we're thinking, you know, what you're doing is really discipleship that's going to make an eternal impact. The most important discipleship you'll probably ever do. Exactly right, and I just... I know people talk about this a lot, but just to encourage people that even though it is challenging, exhausting, it's not easy to really know how significant of a ministry it is, and it's a bigger impact than probably anything else will do. I really think that's true that, you know, the first priority is I have to walk with Jesus every day. That is number one. Number two is my family. I need to love my wife. I need to love my kids, and that comes absolutely... and the outflow of number one, that is the next priority. And then, then comes ministry. Then comes other things, and I have to go back to that regularly. Sometimes we fail at that, and we need to reprioritize, and you know, just this month I've got one of my sons that I'm spending a little time with each day, sports or something like that, just trying to prioritize that. So for parents listening to this, I guess we just want to encourage them that what they're doing matters. It's important in the sight of God. It's one of the most important things you'll ever do, so don't be discouraged when it's demanding because it's sort of meant to be that way, and it's okay to really make that a priority and to say no to a lot of other things that you may not have energy for, and that's okay. It's a challenge. Five kids, man. I'll pray for you. That is a workout. It's so much fun. We have so much fun. Oh man, these are gonna be the best years, yeah. So you're a thinker. That's evident from reading and checking out some of your YouTube videos and stuff. You rub shoulders with a lot of thinkers, and one of your jobs as a thinker is to be looking ahead and thinking about what the wider church might be missing, what's sneaking up on us. And I'm sure there's something else, something that we need to be paying attention to as the Christian church in the 21st century in North America. With that in mind, is there a book or a topic or a trend that you think the church is missing that we need to be aware of or pay attention to? The first thing that comes to my mind when you ask this is something that may not apply to every church, every situation, but I am witnessing a great amount of interest in church history, a great amount of desire for depth and substance and rigor, theologically and liturgically in worship. A lot of young men who are aching for something, you know, I think you think of the seeker-sensitive movement of the 70s, 80s, 90s. Right. It feels as though we just are in a different day, and many churches that were growing through techniques that may have been drawing people 30 years ago, they're not having the same impact today. And people are really wanting something more rigorous and more substantive. You know one thing that really bears that out is guys I hang out with, they're listening to a two-hour and 30-minute long podcast, long-form interviews with guys like Rogan. Evidently there's something that they want more than, don't give me a soundbite, I want more. 100%. I mean I'll put out videos that I think nobody's gonna watch this. And you know, I'm really going deep into church history on these, some of them are fairly abstract topics, and I'm amazed. And what I have had to learn over and over again is to not underestimate the theological appetite of the sheep. I think we can be oversensitive, that we don't want to go, we don't want to be boring, we don't want to be too abstract, and so therefore we can shy away from really doing a deep dive. And I think what is needed right now, if you ask about what are we not seeing, what are the trends, I just think we will do well right now to really dig down into our roots as evangelical Christians, as Protestant Christians, as Christians throughout the rest of church history, and to serve that hunger, and to honor that hunger for rigor, and to meet that need in an authentic way. Of course the gospel is at the center of that, but also just imparting categories to people. So I'm a big believer that we don't need new techniques. We need the time-tested ancient truths of the gospel, and we need, another thing I will say that I think we often underestimate is the amount of loneliness right now. Isolation is huge. Yeah, and so another thing I would love to encourage all Christians, and especially pastors, to think about is how do we meet that need? How do we build a church culture that's really easy for people to enter into, and feel seen, and feel loved, and feel connected to, especially for young people? I mention that because I think loneliness is one of those issues that we often don't see as much. It's kind of the silent killer. You know, we're aware of the anxiety more, but loneliness is there, but we don't always think about it as much. But people are really lonely. People are aching for community, and so we need to think through as followers of Jesus, what does that mean right now? How do we meet that need? Because again, we think the gospel has something to say to that. When we call people to Christ, we're calling them into the richest tradition, the richest community, the richest family that has ever existed, the Christian Church, and we want to live that out. You know, we want people to feel that, that say, hey, you're joining this ancient cause, and that's beautiful, and that's noble, and we want to help people experience that, and think through the implications of that. Beauty is a way that people will, like following bread comes, they'll find their way to God often through beauty. They need to see beauty in the church. They need to see like just this vital, winsome, beautiful community of believers hanging out. If you could try to quantify, describe like what kind of beauty are you looking for, relational or otherwise, when Christians come together? I think one component of relational beauty, I love that category, putting relationship and beauty together. Yeah. I think one component of that is enjoying other Christians, and I like that word enjoying. Yeah. We all experience being enjoyed as a form of love. If someone enjoys being around you, then you feel cared for by that. You know, if they, you know, actually in the New Testament, affection is a category for Christian relationships. Greeting each other warmly. Yeah, greeting. 1st Thessalonians 2 talks about being affectionately, Paul says he was affectionately desirous of seeing, just like you get the sense of, I just can't wait to see you. I want to see your face. I want to give you a hug. And I think that's a category of relationship that sometimes we don't emphasize that aspect as much. And Christian love becomes more of a technical thing. And enjoying each other puts some flesh and some texture on love. It is beautiful. And we, because we, and we, yeah, that's, that's beautiful. Yeah. You, you, you walk into, if you walk into a room and you can just tell people, for example, have a healthy sense of humor. They are comfortable. They're not anxious around each other. People feel seen. They feel noticed, but it's not, it's, it's not forced. It's not awkward. I mean, you can't just manufacture that. That takes a lot of time and work. One of the reasons I love my church, Emanuel Nashville, is there's a beauty in relationships there, a beauty in the culture. I really value that. It takes years and it's so fragile. You know, we want to treat each other well to protect that kind of culture. But I think people looking in on the church need to see that. They need to see not just, oh yeah, they forgive each other. They serve each other. All of that is important, but enjoying each other and having a, having just rich friendships. I think that's a part of it. And sometimes we forget about that. I'm reading Jesus right. That kind of just authentic love is our best apologetic. I mean, that's the thing that the world can't duplicate. It's so powerful. It's, it's so humbling to remember, you know, some of these things we can overcomplicate. Apologetics is complicated. There's a lot to it. Apologetics meaning defending the faith. And, but to pick up on what you just said, referencing Jesus, there's the words of John 13, that by this all men will know you are my disciples if you love one another. There's also the prayer of John 17, which is a prayer that they may all be one so that the world may believe you have sent me. So unity and love affect how the world experiences the gospel. Right. Not just knows about, but experiences. Yeah. And, and the, you know, we could put it negatively by saying when, when a non-Christian looks in and sees Christians savagely attacking each other, you know, we can almost in a certain sort of sense, almost not blame them when they say, why would I want to do with a Jesus who results in that? And yet at the same time, when, when then you see the positive examples of this, and it's wonderful just to see, I mean, I've, I've seen people where there's a real melting of objections without an intellectual answer to them all the time, but just to see the power of people loving each other, there is absolutely no substitute. And I think we need to remember that right now. Now that's not new information for most of our listeners, but we can forget about that. And I think we need to know the algorithms of social media are pushing us away from that. They are not encouraging love. They are encouraging snark and suspicion. And we need to remember that and be fighting against it and be guarded in our speech. I was hanging out with one of the co-founders of our church. And obviously this is a polarized time. He was, I was asking him, you know, Hey, you're, you're pretty geriatric at this point, but can you remember what the sixties felt like? And he was like, same thing, just stark polarization, same thing now. And oh man, to walk into a room full of people with differing opinions who just enjoy each other. So beautiful. Something we can definitely do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's happy to think about, you know, one of the things I focus a lot on these days is praying for revival. And I don't know what that means. I don't know what it would look like, but just a new movement of God, a new movement, a new wave of people coming to know Christ, churches experiencing reconciliation and strengthening and refreshing and encouragement and abating and slackening of, of the tension that is evident. And, uh, can't remember what got me onto this. Oh yeah. Walking into a room, you know, when you've seen revivals happen, it's, it feels like this a lot where you walk in and you can just feel a spirit of reconciliation in the air, a spirit of hope in the air. That's what we want our churches to feel like to people. Yeah. And, you know, a key piece of that is transparency, study revivals, and often, uh, they're a big strand as people are coming clean about who they really are and what they've really been up to. Yeah. I just did a video on the Korean revival of... Yeah, that's a great example. ...early 1900s. And the key that led to revival in Korea at that time was public confession. And you can't force it because that's the thing is you, you, it has to be authentic. It has to be really from the Holy Spirit, really on your heart. But I believe that, um, there's power in an honest confession done in an appropriate way, in an appropriate context. Uh, strongholds are broken when we come before the Lord first, but also each other in appropriate ways. And just, just talk, you know, how many people in our culture don't have anybody that they can really unburden their heart and just say, here's how I'm really doing. Yeah. You know, here, here's what's really going on in my heart. And we as the followers of Jesus want to create context for that. Maybe that's, what's going to lead more people to Christ than brilliant apologetics is just, we have a space to say, come and come and open up your heart with us and let us just love on you and not judge you when you, uh, open up. Definitely another area of beauty for sure. Um, because you've taken such a deep dive into the dusty old books of history and thinking about, um, revival and some of these things we're talking about. If you could give us a couple of those short books you mentioned this morning, maybe a couple titles of ancient Christian writings that you think would be accessible and kind of helpful for sparking something like what we're talking about. What would you recommend? Okay. I have, I'll mention two videos I have as well that, uh, that answer this. Just in case it's helpful for folks. So I have one video called Five Books to Read from the Church Fathers, and another on Five Books to Read from the Puritans. And real quick, this is on the Truth Unites YouTube channel. That's right. Yeah. So people just search on YouTube, you know, five, Truth Unites, five books to read by the Church Fathers or the Puritans. They will find those. And those give an explanation and, and, and, uh, five to 10 minutes of, of summarizing five different books. Um, here I could mention, you know, I mentioned, uh, uh, some of these in my talk just now, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. Oh, such a great book. Wonderful book. You know, not that old, less than a hundred years old, but, um, really speaking in a different context, but still speak so powerfully about the nature of the calling of Christ and what it really means to, to be a Christian. I think we need to hear that message today. And it's a great, it's a great example of the kind of book you, you get into and you realize this is easy to read. It's not super complicated. It's like a devotional book you'd read today. Um, it's not long, it's not too complicated, but it is so rich. I love to encourage people to read John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. This is the best-selling book in the English language other than the Bible. Wonderful allegory for the Christian life. And again, it's not real complicated philosophy. Uh, it's not too hard to read except for the language differences. And there are modern abridged versions that have, uh, it's shortened and or modern language. Um, I love to encourage people to read the Puritans. So these are Christians three to 400 years ago. There's a popular series of books. I think it's called Puritan Paperbacks where you can find, I'll give an example, the book, The Bruised Read by Richard Sibbes. You could probably find it on Amazon for maybe $8. And it's all about how Christ comforts, uh, believers who have an afflicted conscience and feel unlovable. I think people who've heard of the Puritans might think of them as very stern and strict, but what you'll find is actually contrary to that stereotype, they were very pastorally sensitive. Tenderhearted. They were that there is a lot of, I mean, there's, there's some strictness as well, but there is tremendous tenderheartedness toward the, uh, the kinds of issues actually we're talking about here about anxiety, you know, they had a pastoral skill at applying the gospel to anxiety. And I, again, I love to encourage people to dive into that. Fascinating. The last one I'll mention is Augustine's Confessions. Augustine was one of the great Christians in the early church. I think every, it's not an easy read, but it is, um, such a masterpiece from every angle. And I think I've never met a Christian who gave that effort and felt it was wasted time. I got to get to that. I've never read it. I've heard that from many people that Augustine's Confessions. It's good. I'm looking ahead. What are you working on? Right now I am writing a book called Why Christianity Makes Sense. Lord willing that title could change and it's a popular level apologetics book. I'm very excited about it. Awesome. I wasn't going to write anything. And then this kind of opened up and I felt like the Lord was giving me the nudge to do it. Yeah, it is. I'm trying to write something that could be kind of like the book mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, a pretty popular level. Maybe just a little bit more rigorous than that, but hopefully very accessible and it's just going through making no assumptions. So I'm not even assuming someone has any sort of interest in spiritual questions and just making a case that here there are good reasons to become a Christian. And so the first chapters are about, you know, what is life like without God, the absurdity of life without God? What if Jesus rose from the dead? Just imagine the meaning and the joy that that brings. Just helping readers see why these issues even matter before making any arguments about whether they are true. Just trying to say, here's why we should care, you know, and how it could enrich your life if it was true. Yes. And then I'm arguing for God and then I'm arguing for Christ and then I'm arguing for the Bible and then I end up talking about faith and what do you do if you still have doubts and how do you commit your life? So I really am excited. I hope it will meet needs. I just think in a time where people are asking deep questions, it's the kind of book I would love to just give someone and encourage them to consider. Here's why being a Christian makes a lot of sense at every level, at the intellectual level, but also existentially and emotionally, it speaks to the longings in your heart, as well as just gives you a framework to understand what the world is and what's basically going on. So that's my current book project. Okay. Sounds great. I'm excited. It'll probably, hopefully come out around January, 2027. Oh, there's a timetable. So there may be a little bit of a gap before it's available, but I'm thinking that's somewhere in the ballpark of when it'll hopefully come out, Lord willing. You're on the clock. Yeah, I got to keep writing. And how about on the social media front? Yeah, I've got my queue of videos for Truth Unites that I'm chipping away at, lots that I'm excited about, trying to think of what some examples I could share. I mean, generally I do videos on church history, on theology, on pressing cultural issues, on general Christian apologetics, and on Protestant apologetics, explaining why it makes sense to be a Protestant Christian. Oh boy, what do I have coming up this fall? It's hard to remember because life is such a blur. I've got something on praying to the saints. Oh, no kidding. Should we pray to deceased Christians? Okay. I got a video on that, making a case for a Protestant perspective on that. I've got some videos on the doctrine of heaven. I find that Christians have lots of questions about heaven. I saw one of those, like, can you eat in heaven? Just a real practical question. Yeah. Right, yeah. That's a great example of the kind of questions that come up. And I'm making the case that I think we'll have food in heaven. I hope so. It's, you know, those things help you anticipate what it will be like if you have a little bit more of an appreciation for that heaven is not a platonic realm. It's a physical, resurrected realm, ultimately. With fine cuts of meat and aged wine. Yeah. I think there will be. That's the case I make. If anyone's watching this wants to hear the argument for that, they can watch that video, but it's awesome. Some more videos on heaven coming out this fall as well. Another one coming out soon will be on the Athanasian creed. So I like going back and giving an exposition of famous creeds. So I just did one on the Nicene creed, and I'm going to have one on the Athanasian creed. I hope those are helpful for people who just want to dive into church history and just learn about historic creeds. So that's one of the next ones coming out as well. I could probably think of others, but my. Well, I've skimmed, I've looked at a few and skimmed what's there. It's Truth Unites, that's the YouTube channel. And there's just, you can take a deep dive on a lot of topics at that resource. Okay. Now I'm an old math teacher and I've actually done a little work on God and math, and I'm wondering, have you got any videos yet on that topic? I meant to look and I didn't get to it. I sure do. I have gone, I've gotten interested in this topic. Um, I find math pretty fascinating. I never enjoyed math as a student. Uh, I was not, uh, it wasn't my favorite subject for some reason, but I'm interested in the philosophy of math. I'm interested in, you know, people, people really do puzzle about the nature of math. And the more you study it, the more you get a sense of it's the kind of thing we take for granted. You just take for granted, of course, you know, uh, basic arithmetic. We just, uh, we, we know it's true. It works and we take it for granted. But if you pause and think about it, it becomes, uh, more and more mysterious, maybe even somewhat mystical. Yeah. Because there's just aspects of math that are hard to make sense of. Um, why is it so permanently true? Why is it so, uh, well, historically the historic view has been, it is eternally true, so mathematical truth is eternal. It has always been, it always will be. Now that's disputed a little bit today, but that's what a lot of people, human beings have had. The intuition of that math is just always true. Two plus three equals five is just, it's never going to be absolute truth. If there is one, that's it. And that is really interesting to say why. And I didn't think you could really, uh, make an argument for God from something like that. When I first got into the literature, I realized this is a huge argument that has a history all the way back to St. Augustine. And so I do, I have one, um, longer video in particular, the title of which is The Argument for God from Eternal Truths. Um, uh, one, one area of which is math. And it's about an hour and 10 minute video, if I recall. And I hope it could serve people. It's just walking people through the argument. It's, it's pretty nerdy. You know, not everyone likes this kind of stuff, so I'm sensitive to talking about it. Some people kind of tune out. Other people do. And I, I've found it. Um, I've even found it sort of comforting, you know, when I've considered, uh, you know, look down the road and say, well, what if there is no God? What if there is nothing beyond physical nature? We're just here by accident. Math is one of those things that is tough to make sense of. And it just seems to fit better in a worldview that has an infinite mind, an infinite eternal mind, which can sort of house mathematical truths. And I never, I was surprised at the kind of case that can be made from that, but you have a background in math too. So feel free to weigh in here. I'm curious how, you know, how you think about this. I just remember as an undergrad, you can manipulate math equations and go from distance to velocity to acceleration in a super elegant way. And it's, it's, it struck me. I can manipulate these equations with a couple shifts of exponents. And all of a sudden we're talking about these natural phenomena. And I asked the teacher, I was like, doesn't that just strike you as weird that this is so effective at describing our natural world and we can just make these elegant, you know, adjustments to formulas and they work. And he just looked at me and he was like, yeah, I don't know what, yeah. I mean, he was just, didn't have anything to say, but that I I've since read like Wigner, Eugene Wigner's paper, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. And it's, you know, you take negative one and take it square root to create a complex number, and then you find out that's absolutely essential to describe electromagnetism or, you know, there are these other aspects that are like a matrix multiplication and it turns out, holy cow, that's absolutely important to describe what's happening with electrons around atoms. So things like that. I don't know if you've run into things like that. Yeah, what you're getting into there. So just for our listeners, there's a great article by Eugene Wigner and you mentioned this and it's, it's all about the applicability of math to the physical world and just how miraculous it is and how surprising. And Einstein has a famous quote where he's basically saying, you know, every great mind who's considered this finds it an enigma, a mystery. Why should it be that the abstract truths that are known apart from experience, like two plus three equals five, you don't have to, you know, have five objects in your hand to know that. You can just think it's an abstract truth. But how, why should it be that that applies so perfectly to the physical realm? Right. And it did not have to be that way. Exactly. And even to the infinitesimal degree. And it's, it's, it, it makes sense on theism. If you think of math as constituted by divine thoughts and then the world is God's creation in an atheistic world, it's just sort of a mystery and there's lots of different, in my video, I go through that and about five other aspects of math and just explore. And it is fun to think about. It is fun to nerd out a little bit and read books. You know, I, I read popular level math books, philosophy of math books and see other people asking the same, they're not Christians, but they're asking the same question, puzzled by it. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like something, math seems to connect to some sort of transcendent plane that is kind of, uh, unlike so many things in our culture, which are denied to be absolutely true. It does have this absolute bedrock feeling to it. Yeah. Well, maybe you can, uh, get another book out for us on. Yeah. God and math. It comes up. And so I, in my book, why God makes sense in a world that doesn't, chapter two has a section on math. And that was my best effort at laying this out other than that video I've written. Okay. So the people are looking for my thoughts on this to, to trace this out. They might consult one of those two resources. Yeah. Well, Hey, I gotta tell you, I, you know, just mixing and mingling with folks here at the conference. It's, it's just been delightful to have you. Any impressions coming back our way, just parachuting into, to this event. How's it been for you? Wonderfully encouraging. I'm grateful to be here. Everyone I've met has been so kind and gracious. Um, and it's encouraging for me to see where God is at work. You know, I'm located in Nashville. There's so much I don't see about what's going on. Every time I travel, uh, I go back home and I have in my mind kind of an image of, uh, real faces and real places. And it's encouraging for me to just to see God is doing so many things in the world. There are so many people that he's called to himself and that's encouraging whenever we lose sight of that or are discouraged by what's happening in the world. So I come back, uh, grateful to God, encouraged and reminded that he's doing so much more than I can see in my own limited sphere of awareness. That's great. Well, thank you very much for coming. Thanks for doing this podcast. I think we're going to wrap it up here, but, um, if you've enjoyed this episode and you want to learn more about Truth Unites, you can visit the truthunites.org website. It's all one word, Truth Unites, and on the Truth Unites YouTube channel, you can find just a ton of great content on just about everything you can think of. You can also learn about our church, Dwell Community Church at dwellcc.org, and you could help us out if you subscribe to this podcast.