The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 67 – J. Warner Wallace

Episode 67: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, host Dr. Jeff interviews J. Warner Wallace, a cold case detective who became a Christian and began examining the claims of Jesus through an investigative lens. Their wide-ranging discussion covers how cultural shifts are affecting young people’s understanding of truth, and how this impacts presenting the gospel to a generation that questions not just whether Christianity is true, but whether it’s good. Wallace discusses his book’s premise that Jesus’ impact on culture – in areas like education, science, and the arts – is so profound that history could be reconstructed from cultural “fallout” alone, even without the gospels.

Episode Transcript

Ryan Dobson (00:00):
Hi everyone. Ryan Dobson here for the Dr. Jeff Show. Summit camps are in full swing and kids are having a blast. In fact, my own son Lincoln is attending right now. There are so many kids who want to go to camp at Summit, but they just need a little help. A generous donor has agreed to match every donation to the Summit Summer programs. Will you help a child learn the foundations of a Christian worldview at Summit? Donate online at summit.org/match and every tax-free donation will be doubled. Again, you can find that at summit.org/match. God bless, and let’s join the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:40):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show, available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, and wherever you get your podcasts. If you liked the show, would you take a moment to give it a favorable review on your favorite platform? That helps draw more listeners to hear the interviews with our great guests as we talk with them about how our worldview changes everything.

My guest for today has worked for years as a cold case detective. When he became a Christian, he began examining the claims of Jesus through the lens of being a detective, writing books on his findings. You probably have heard about the cold case detective. His latest book is called Person of Interest, and it examines the evidence for what we would be able to discover about Jesus, even if we had no New Testament available to us. This is a wide ranging discussion where he turns the tables on me as often as I turn them on him. So get ready and please welcome J. Warner Wallace to the show. Detective J. Warner Wallace, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

J. Warner Wallace (01:46):
I’m just really delighted to be with a friend and doing a show. This will be a much more relaxing experience to hang out with somebody who I actually would hang out with anyway. So I’m glad to be here.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:56):
That’s exactly right. Yeah. I mean, we love hanging out when you come out to Summit and Susie’s there and Stephanie’s there and it’s really a lot of fun. And the students, of course, love having you there. They love the presentations with you, but they love trying to pin you down in the Q&A times, which I think is really fun to watch.

J. Warner Wallace (02:17):
Well, my goal whenever I’m there is to try to beat your reviews from the students because nobody could ever beat those reviews. So I’m like, “Hey, I’m sure the students love me best, right?” And Amanda will say, “No, no, no, actually, no. It’s not even close. It’s Jeff.” I’m like, “Dang it. What do I have to do to beat that review?”

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:35):
I’ll do whatever it takes.

J. Warner Wallace (02:37):
Oh, man.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:38):
That is funny. It’s fun. Well, the students just, they always tell me here at Summit Ministries, I think nothing can get better than that talk I just heard.

J. Warner Wallace (02:50):
Yeah, it’s true, isn’t it? Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:51):
The next day they say, “It got better. I don’t know how.” But their capacity to learn is growing. They’re finding a place where they can feel safe to ask all of their tough questions and get honest answers. They know that no one there is going to try to snow them.

J. Warner Wallace (03:10):
Okay. So let me ask you a tough question. You tell me if you’re seeing what I’m seeing. Maybe you’re right, it’s my experience on the porch. Every night we have a porch chat where we’ll sit with the students for an hour or more and just answer any questions we can because we’re trying to squeeze this in between dinner and the nighttime sessions, so I’ve got some limits, but everyone’s on the front porch who wants to come.

And I’ve just noticed that the question, it’s been said that if you’re teaching a third grade class, sometimes the questions are like, why does Satan do it this way? Why does Satan do that? And if you’re teaching a fifth grade class, the question is, why do you believe in Satan? So there’s a shift that it kind of fundamentally occurs between we believe these things are true, but we have questions about how they operate too.

(03:56):
I’m not even sure we believe these things are true anymore. And I just have noticed, and maybe it’s just my experience on the front porch in the last couple of years that we’ve had, of course, COVID just changed a lot of how we do our meetings anyway. So have you noticed that there’s an increase in not so much, the culture is definitely impacting the students in a way that changes the kind of tenor of their questions. I sense that there’s always some kids who come who kind of feel like their job is to shake the tree a little bit and get the other kids questioning their faith.

But there’s been a, the last couple of years, it seems to me like I’m noticing this is even more pronounced. The culture is having a deeper and deeper impact on how students think about identity, how they think about the roles of men and women, about all the issues that clearly the culture does not seem to agree with the teaching of Jesus anymore, doesn’t even want to entertain it.

(04:52):
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing questions. Are you seeing that too in your porch chats? Or you’re having more significant time over that two week period with students than anybody else. Are you seeing it?

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:02):
I love the times within the Q&As. In my talks, I try to give a lot of information, but I try to be very vulnerable personally as well. And so it’s an interesting thing when we get together and everybody’s gathered in those Q&A times. What I have noticed is that the default position of most students when they come to Summit, it’s very different when they leave, but when they come to Summit, the default position is, truth is up to the individual.

So if you have claimed a truth that others might find hurtful or offensive, you are wrong. You’re not wrong because we logically prove you wrong. You’re wrong because we know somebody whose feelings would be hurt if they heard you say that.

J. Warner Wallace (05:56):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:57):
And that is the, as we were talking about the books, the book that you’ve got out now, which is awesome, and we’re going to talk about it, but the book that I’m working on, Truth Changes Everything, well, I’m doing the final edit actually tomorrow, the final readthrough of the actual pages, and then it should be published in October. But the point of it is that there is such a thing as truth that can be discovered. Most young adults today do not believe that. No, you’re right. They believe the truth is up to the individual. There’s no longer the seeking of truth. It’s speaking your truth that they’re focused on.

J. Warner Wallace (06:36):
Well, and I think this is what changes the nature of how we, so this is going to change the way we present the gospel. I mean, we’ve made assumptions that the terms we used to use using English words had similar meanings. But for example, if I was to speak about theology with my Mormon family, I’ve got six brothers and sisters raised LDS. Well, everything from the word grace to the words we use for heaven or salvation or Jesus, all of these have entirely different meanings.

And I think sometimes we talk about Christianity being true to a generation right now that is like the Mormons in our family who we now need to define that term. When we say something is true, what do we even mean by that? And if we don’t take time to define that term, then I think the power of the gospel can be lost, right?

(07:26):
Because we’re arguing that something is true about our sin nature, something is true about a savior who died for us, something is true. But when we use the word true now, it’s got a different meaning to an entire generation. It doesn’t have the kind of objective realities attached to it that we did for me. And I tell you what’s interesting about this is that culture always follows the arts. And so I always think that, man, we need to be more involved in the arts because the arts are so far ahead.

When I was in architecture, I left architecture in 1988. When I left, the waning kind of current view in the arts was a movement, which we’d already kind of started to leave. But in 1988, that movement that was still the most popular was something we called post-modernism because it was in the arts long before it invaded the culture.

(08:20):
It was in philosophy first, then in the arts, and then in culture. And it had already been a dead move. By 1990, post-modernism in the arts and architecture was a dead movement. But here we are dealing with the outcomes of this now, 30 some odd years later.

And it strikes me that this is why for young people, this is why I do think we also need to be active in the arts, which is why at Summit, when we’re spending time with musicians and artists in Nashville and places where the Christian music industry is thriving, trying to help them understand these ideas, we are doing a huge service, I think, because again, that seems to be the neck that turns the head of culture is often the arts in music, and we need to be active in those areas.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:03):
Well, that’s true. And you and I have a lot of friends who are in the arts and one cool thing that I really appreciate about you, and I’ve tried to do the same thing is, I let people know I’m available. I give them my mobile to, not to everybody.

J. Warner Wallace (09:21):
Yeah, don’t post it on the screen right now.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:22):
That’s for sure. Yeah. But you know, if there’s a musician out there who reaches, and some of the people we’ve done workshops with in Nashville, if you take the total number of people reached, by those people. By people in that room, it’s tens of millions of people who are reached. But when they can text and say, “Hey, I have a question about this.” I remember one of the artists texted me and said, “I’ve got a question about natural law.” This is an artist who reaches tens of millions of people. It’s like, “I’ve got a question about natural law.” You can communicate in that way. So it goes back and forth. The arts lead, but the artists also have to be discipled.

J. Warner Wallace (10:03):
That’s right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:05):
And philosophers lead, but the philosophers have to be discipled. So each step along the way, there’s really a significant need to make it like an Act 17 moment where the Apostle Paul is on Mars Hill, which is on the shadow of the Acropolis. So you’re looking up at these temples that are the grandest things ever produced by Greek civilization.

And he says, “I want to tell you about the unknown God whose statue is down there in the marketplace.” And he started with their culture and then worked his way to the truth. Truth actually exists and it can be known and you know that this is so, okay? Then I’m going to tell you what it is. Not everybody went along, but he had to go in that process.

J. Warner Wallace (10:51):
In that order. Yeah. You know what’s interesting too, I think there’s an entire body of public Christians that are not necessarily discipled Christians. In other words, they have a public Christian identity, yet would have a hard time articulating a public Christian worldview. And this is where I think we can step in.

This is why a couple of years ago when we started talking about doing these kinds of events, it wasn’t just artists that I started thinking about, because I was doing a chaplain, I was working as a sit-in for a chaplain and a major NFL football team. And I noticed that these guys who come to the chapel, and I did several of these. These are all football players, public Christians who have Twitter followings that are 15, 20, 100 times larger than anything we’re ever going to have. And yet they don’t really know how to articulate their Christian faith.

(11:38):
They haven’t even really examined it very well. And so they hold a view, a version of Christianity that’s not well examined and they aren’t able to articulate as a result. And I thought, wow, we’re doing all of these two week intensives and immersive experiences for students yet there’s an entire body of culture changers, leaders within the culture, that are in the arts and in sports that are public Christians.

(12:04):
They really need our help to be able to articulate, wouldn’t it be great if I can get these folks to sit for two weeks and come. If these folks, if these public Christians, and some of them are in the public Christian music industry, knew what our students know at the end of two weeks, how much different would their leadership be in the culture?

They would have so much more to offer when a microphone is put in front of them and they’ve got a chance to speak on one of these hot topic issues in culture, or even just speak clearly about what it is to be a Christian. So that’s why I think there is a need, right? These things, unfortunately still, public Christians in the arts and public Christians in sports still have a larger impact on what young people think about Christianity than other groups because they’re public.

(12:49):
And so especially with social media the way it is. So I just think this work we’re doing is important. So I want to encourage you, a couple things. Number one, when I read the manuscript of your book, I was like, ah, dang.

(13:00):
So much of it is we’re stepping on the same issues, right? Yes. I’m looking at, right now, at your table of contents, right? How Jesus has changed science, education, arts, our notion of justice, how we work. These are issues that I wanted to explore also evidentially, right? And what I love about these two books together, I would just say if anyone ever buys a copy of person of interest, well, they better get a copy of truth changes everything because these two things together will not only show you how evidentially Jesus can be recovered from his impact on the world, but also then what will you do with it? How does this notion of truth impact you to live out?

This is the work we’re trying to do with public Christians too, right? We’re trying to help them to see that, yeah, this is more than just a, don’t you get a sense when we’re doing this work that there’s a… We love Jesus and these are people who truly love Jesus, yet they haven’t seen the notion of truth the way we’re trying to describe it yet. They’re not quite there yet. And when you put those two things together, their love of Jesus with a clear philosophical understanding of truth, it could change everything.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:09):
Oh yeah. No question. No question. Well, I can’t wait for us to talk about what we’re going to this fall when Truth Changes Everything releases. We’ll be talking about it all of the time, but people really need to see, they need to get, as you said, the new book that you have, Person of Interest, and Truth Changes Everything, and have them side by side because they get a full sense of the real impact of Jesus on the entire course of history. There’s virtually nothing good in our culture that we have today that we would have had it not been for Jesus followers who really believe that Jesus is the truth.

J. Warner Wallace (14:50):
Yeah, that’s right. You know what’s interesting about that too. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I was talking to David Wood about this who’s got a huge YouTube channel and does a lot of work on Islam. And I’ve noticed this too, and maybe you tell me if you’ve noticed this in the students and it’s subtle. I don’t think that they’ve even thought about it in the way we’re about to describe it, but I do think that students have a question about this. It’s not so much, man, we’re getting off the trail.

I know that I could talk about Person of Interest and God bless you for being interested in doing that, but I’ve got your mind to pick right now too, so just hang with me for a second. Two things I’m wondering about, and you’re the perfect person to ask. The first thing is that I don’t know that students care anymore, and maybe I’m wrong, about the evidence for whether this is true.

(15:37):
There’s a sense in which they’re not convinced it’s good. So if you said I can make a case for the value of Nazism, they would say, “Well, I don’t even want to hear that case because I know that Nazism is not good. So therefore, why would I care to hear a case?” And if they’ve been sold an idea that Christianity is a source of all evil, a source of all racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, whatever it may be, then I think that the first thing we’re going to have to do is to start to write books.

And that’s why I think both of these books are important because I want to show the world that Jesus is beautiful and has impacted the world because of his beauty, out of insane beauty. It’s not just that it’s true, it’s good. And I wonder if you’re starting to see that with students too, that there’s a sense that they’re not convinced anymore that Christianity is good.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:30):
Well, I definitely don’t see a lot of young adults today who are questioning God’s existence. I mean, you might expect that because we write about atheism a lot, but I think you’re right. It’s not God’s godness that they’re questioning. It’s God’s goodness that they’re questioning. And what I’m kind of interested in right now is a lot of the students I’m working with are asking questions about suffering. They’ve always asked, “How could God be good if evil is in the world?”

That goes back well before Jesus even came to earth that people have been asking that question, but now they’re wondering, what kind of deal have I made with God? My deal with God was that I would be a good person as long as he would make sure that I don’t suffer. But in the last couple of years, I’ve suffered. Purposelessness, 75% of young adults say they don’t believe they have a sense of purpose in life.

(17:39):
53% of young adults say they regularly struggle with anxiety and depression. And I wonder if the question, we’ll see. I mean, we’ve got a full summer coming up here. Every seat practically is filled. Even in the sessions where most kids are still in school, they’re filled. They’re coming with lists of questions. And I think at the top of that list is, what role does suffering play in God’s plan for my life? Is there a meaning to it?

(18:13):
And I want to kind of use that to turn the corner a little bit because you sent me your manuscript for Person of Interest and we probably should give a little background before we dive too much into it or why you wrote the book the way you did. But when you sent me the manuscript, I was in the middle of chemo. I was in a cancer battle and the only thing I could do, I could read and I could write. I couldn’t have calls, I couldn’t record podcasts. I just had no energy for that, but I could read and I could write.

And I remember being in the guest room of our house because I was up five or six times during the night and I didn’t want to bother Stephanie. So I stayed in the guest room sometimes and I was in the guest room late at night reading your manuscript thinking, this is incredible.

(19:01):
This is exactly what I’m passionate about communicating. I couldn’t wait. In fact, I thought by chapter two, I thought, “Okay, I am going to write a testimonial for this. I just have to figure out what a good wording is because this is one of the most amazing things that I’ve seen.” So anyway, it was in the middle of suffering, see. It was in the middle of that. And I probably even texted you late at night, said, “I got the manuscript. This is incredible.”

J. Warner Wallace (19:31):
I was thinking to myself, “What kind of a jerk sends a guy battling cancer a manuscript to review?” But I mean, I think we were all, but you had so many people praying alongside you. We could kind of see the movement of this.

And I felt like I just knew that you were going to be able to move through it and that there’d be a testimony on the backside of it, that you would be even better suited to be able to answer questions that students have about the relationship between God’s goodness and our personal journey here on planet earth and look at how God has honored that used, even when we talk about to students that there is purpose and suffering.

Well, you now have an example of purpose and suffering in your own life. So isn’t that interesting that the purpose he may have given you is so you can share about purpose?

(20:17):
That’s right. So to me, it was fascinating to watch that process. But hey, I got to ask you one more question, okay? So here’s the second question I wanted to ask you. So you tell me if you’re noticing this too. And I’ve been talking more and more about this and it’s changed the way, as I get older, I feel like, I’m 61 now next month and I feel like, hey, I probably won’t make the case publicly anywhere anymore without sharing the gospel.

Sometimes we get asked to come and do this, asked to make the case, and that’s really the limit of what we’re asked to do. I just feel like now there’s no way I’m not going to connect that to a presentation of the gospel, but how I share the gospel is starting to change a little bit, especially with young people. Now let me just offer this and you tell me if you’re saying it too.

(20:59):
I sometimes wonder if we are in the identity generation in which the reason why I make a decision for something is no longer, well, because it’s evidentially true. Or two, I’ve had a good experience. It’s three, do I want to be identified with it?

(21:18):
Do I want to claim this as part of my identity in a generation of identity politics and gender identity issues and all the things we talk about? I think that sometimes now I have to make a case for Christianity, but make sure I talk about the role it plays in your own personal identity because I feel like this is why so many people are making decisions about where they will land. They want to know. It started for me because my millennial son, who’s in his 30s, said to me that his generation will say things like, “If I have to vote that way, I can’t be part of Christianity.”

And I thought, well, the funny thing about it is they’re probably going to end up voting that way anyway. These are, most of them are cops who are conservative in their views, but what’s interesting is they have connected his Christian identity with the political identity and therefore they, so it’s for purposes of identity that they are considering whether or not they should accept or reject this claim. I thought that was interesting. Do you see this as a shift?

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:19):
Yeah, I think it makes sense. Is this the T-shirt I want to wear? Is this the tribe that I want to cheer for? And I do see that. I think the question of identity is central. You don’t have a generation where 75% say, “I have no sense of purpose in life.” Unless something about the culture they have embraced has failed them, failed to give them an enduring thing to attach their identity to. And on this show, we’ve talked a lot about gender identity with different speakers and I’m telling you, I mean, somebody said, “Oh, there are 57 different genders.” And I said, “Well, if you’re correct in what you’re saying about gender, then there are actually seven billion different.”

J. Warner Wallace (23:07):
That’s right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:08):
There’s no basis in gender or in sexuality for you to root your identity. There’s no basis in anything to root your identity. That’s why people are lost, not because they’re thinking, what am I going to do for a living and will it be fun? Is there any point in doing any job at all? Yeah. I think the lostness and the sense of fragility that so many people have actually positions them to be curious, to want to learn, because they don’t have to make any commitment to it.

When students come to Summit, in the old days, they used to say, “Well, I think you’re wrong,” or “I think you’re right based on my understanding of the evidence.” Now they’re saying, “Oh, I think truth is up to the individual, but I’m really, really curious to hear what your truth is because part of the person I want to be is a person who’s open to whatever, and then you have a chance to bring the truth.”

J. Warner Wallace (24:10):
Well, this is one of the reasons why.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:10):
I’m excited about it.

J. Warner Wallace (24:11):
We wrote our books, right? And this is one reason why I wrote Person of Interest, because I knew. Look, the idea for the book was simple as this. It was just the hey, is there enough evidence? In the impact, in the fuse that leads up to the explosion called Jesus, and in the fallout that comes out of that detonation, because this is like a no-body murder.

I work a lot of no-body murders. These are just murders where the guy kills his wife and gets rid of the body so successfully that when I open the case 30 years later, there’s not even a picture of a crime scene, not a piece of evidence booked into the property room. It’s empty. And I have to figure out what happened on that day. Well, I tell this in front of juries, it’s a template, right?

(24:44):
It’s a fuse that burns up to that explosive day and then there’s a fallout afterwards. I can make a case from the fuse and the fallout. Well, I always thought when I first was looking at Jesus at 35, I thought this is supposed to be God incarnate, wouldn’t you expect there to be as much? Look, it wasn’t that many years before that that Elvis had died. And when Elvis died, there was like a book or three every year for 40 years written about Elvis. Look, if Elvis has this kind of impact on culture, wouldn’t you expect Jesus to have some impact?

So that was my first question as a non-believer, just kind of looking at the evidence for Jesus. Well, it really comes down to, as I was writing it, because I’m trying to mine out those areas of art, literature, music, education, science, and non-Christian theistic worldviews, I’m trying to mine out the evidence for Jesus.

(25:31):
Are his fingerprints so deeply ingrained in these aspects of cultural fallout that I could reconstruct the story sufficiently enough to even get saved, even if every New Testament was destroyed, that’s the kind of impact that Jesus had. Not just that he changed everything, but that you can reconstruct his story from everything. That to me was very powerful as I was first examining it, right? And as I’m writing the book, because Honorman really wanted a book that was on the evidence for Jesus, I realized maybe a chapter into the fallout that this is not so much just about the evidence. This is about how beautiful Jesus is, why he still matters.

So I wrote back to his honor, and I said, “Hey, look, typically the subtitles of all my books, because this is the nature of being a cold case detective, has something to do with being a cold case detective.” I said, “I don’t want that for this book. I don’t want there to be anything in the subtitle about me being a detective. A detective examines this. I don’t want any of that. I just want, why Jesus still matters. Some version of why Jesus.”

(26:34):
Because it turns out, and I want to go back and rewrite the book about halfway through at the time to really capture more of that because in the end, it is what David Wood and I were talking about is, is this good? Is Jesus worthy?

Because there’s a question, I think, and this is why when I talk at Summit, one of the talks I do is on truth and I really have to stop and say, “Hey, this is one of the powerful things we talked about with artists. What’s going to be more important, your popularity or your faithfulness? Which is it going to be?” Because it turns out that, probably, there’s an inverse relationship between these two things right now for young people in our culture.

(27:14):
You can choose one or the other, but you’re probably not going to get both. By the way, this was always the case. You were never going to get both. I mean, Jesus told us this, right? Sermon on the mountain stuff, right? He talks about this. Blessed are you. When, not if, when people insult you and persecute you and falsely accuse you of all kinds of evil because of me, that’s going to happen.

And so that inverse relationship between popularity and faithfulness, I think we have to look. Maybe we just agree, you may not agree with me on this, but I feel like we lost the culture. That’s done. I’m okay with it. The cop in me says, “I’m okay with it. We’re not going to get to zero crime in our city. I could work as hard as I possibly could work. We’re not going to get to zero crime.” That’s not going to happen.

(27:57):
But my job is to be faithful in my role in this community, even though we’re not at zero crime. It’s kind of the same thing here. Look, I’m not going to panic. I’m not going. Everywhere else in the world, Christians have survived and thrived in hostile cultures. We just happen to be in the West fortunate enough to have this, what, 400 year period in which we’ve been able to thrive in Europe and in America in a way that has captured and maximized.

But look, this is over. It turns out if you were a Christian in China, you’re already used to this. If you’re a Christian almost anywhere in the world, you’re already used to thriving in a culture that’s hostile to your worldview. We have to help young people realize, “Hey, this is going to be hostile to our worldview.” How are young people coming to Christ in China? That’s the way we’re going to have to kind of talk about Jesus, I think, in our own culture.

Dr. Jeff Myers (28:47):
Wow. Wow. Man, there is a lot there.

J. Warner Wallace (28:51):
Well, I know you’re the person to ask. That’s why if anyone’s an expert in this, it’s you. But I mean, look, when we first met, if you remember, we were at Josh McDowell’s house a year ago.

Dr. Jeff Myers (28:59):
I do remember that, yes.

J. Warner Wallace (29:01):
And it was years ago and I was there with Sean because we were getting ready to take another trip to Berkeley and we wanted to bring the kids by Josh’s house for one session before we went to Berkeley with all these high schoolers. And I remember we met that night and I had, as a youth pastor, I had heard so many good things about Summit, but I had never been. And I had always hoped that someday I would get a chance to at least visit it.

And then of course we ended up being able to teach there for a bit. And so I just felt like, hey, it was like a dream come true. But I remember when we first met, I thought, okay, there’s a lot of people who get to lean into this like you, who get to see it so much that you can speak about it.

(29:38):
I’m kind of still having an observer role. I’m not enough with students at Summit to be able to see it from the inside out. I sometimes feel like I’m seeing it from the outside in. So you tell me, would you agree that I think young people are now having to navigate their Christian views and get comfortable. I think we have lost a culture. Am I wrong?

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:06):
I don’t know about the phrase lost the culture because that’s such a broad thing to say that we have lost. Yeah. I think what we have lost is maybe the preeminent position where Christianity gets to be the default voice in the culture.

J. Warner Wallace (30:20):
That’s a good way to put it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:21):
The impact of Christ followers on the culture typically, and I talk about this a lot in the forthcoming book, and you tell a lot of these stories as well, was not from people who said, “The outcome I am looking for is a changed culture.” They said, “The outcome I’m looking for is what would it look like for me to live faithfully and love Jesus so much that I could not help but be the very best scientist I can be. I love Jesus so much I cannot help but be the very best artist that I can be.”

And then that change, I like the fews and the detonation, you see that change spread throughout the culture and very often in ways that you could never have predicted. So faithfulness is at the core of it. If we say, “What all of my measurements are going to be, has the culture changed?”

(31:21):
Well, you can get some of that. You could campaign on some political issue and then watch people’s opinions change as your messaging gets out there. But whether that really changes the culture, I think is more a function of whether faithful people are using their gifts in the most powerful possible way to just do what God tells them to do and then let culture take care of itself. That’s kind of where I go with it because I don’t want my students to feel this pressure.

“Oh, you got to change the world. Everybody’s telling me, you’re a world changer, you’re a world changer. Just follow your dreams.” There’s so much pressure on a student when they’re in that position because if they think, “So if I decide I’m going to be a mom and my main role is going to be raising kids, am I forfeiting the opportunity to change the culture?”

(32:14):
Or, “If I decide to go and be a welder instead of a legislator, am I forfeiting?” You kind of end up feeling like if you do anything less than try to have as big of an impact as possible, that you’re being unfaithful somehow.

(32:32):
I think the beauty of the stories that you’re telling in the book and that I’m telling are, they’re not about people who set out to change the culture. I tell a story of an educator who influenced America’s founding fathers. Most people to this day could not tell you, they don’t recognize this guy’s name. They never heard of him before. Unless you go to Princeton University where he was an early president, you would never even have heard of him, but you have heard of James Madison, the father of the Constitution, and hundreds of others that he influenced for truth.

J. Warner Wallace (33:08):
Yeah, good point.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:08):
He just said, “I’m an educator. I’m a teacher. I’m going to teach truth to as many people as I possibly can.” It just so happened to be that he was doing that at the birth of an entire new nation.

J. Warner Wallace (33:19):
Yeah. And think about this. I think some of this is a phenomenon that’s relatively recent. So for example, it’s always, I call this a proximity principle, right where if you look at a target, the bullseye is worth 10 points. And every time you shoot outside that bullseye, it goes down. So the outside ring is worth a point. You’re off the target then. So the idea is you want to hit the bullseye. You want to get 10 points per shot.

But it turns out that if you look at the people we have impact on, if you’d gone back 50 years, the number of public Christians was dramatically smaller. Not because there were less Christians per population, there was actually more. It’s that they didn’t have the means by which to excel in a public sphere. We didn’t have social media. There were no TikTok influencers who did the entire thing from their house.

(34:06):
Now they got a million viewers on TikTok.That wasn’t the case. So there weren’t these things called public Christians. Well, I always talk about the fact that, look, the people who know you best, they’re in your bullseye. Those are 10 point people. Okay? They know everything about you. And the people who are on your Instagram or on your TikTok, they’re like in the five or the one ring. They’re out there on the edges. They don’t really know much about you except for what you will reveal.

And most of that is probably not true. So you’re revealing something to them. I think most of young, we’re getting to a place where we care more about the people in the one to five rings than we care about the people in our 10 ring. It used to be, we changed the world because we affected the people in our 10, 9, and 8 rings.

(34:47):
The people who were closest to us physically, they lived in our homes. And we changed the world one family, one unit at a time. Now we think about, well, no, to change the world, I’ve got access to the entire world in social media. So I need to be working with the ones through fives to change the world. That wasn’t available to us 50 years ago. There was no medium by which I could reach ones to fives. Now, so I think we’ve shifted.

And I just know for me, especially when we’re doing a lot of counseling, I do a lot of marriage counseling with Susie. When we’re talking about how important is this part of your life, the eight ring in, that ends up being the place where you can have the biggest change, but it is slower. I can only affect the people in my immediate family, but boy, I tell you what, I think the word regret.

(35:32):
No one’s ever going to use that word to talk about how much I wish they had a bigger Twitter profile or bigger social media profile. You reserve the word regret for those things and those people in the 8, 9, and 10 rings, the people who are closest to you. If you didn’t do what you think you could have done as a husband or a wife or you don’t think what you could have done as a parent, that’s where you have true regret.

So I always try to tell people, yeah, you’re right. I mean, we want to affect the world, but it turns out that those things that are with the people who know us best, the real you, those are the greatest areas of impact I think we can probably have. And although you’re right, it’s not going to feel like we’re doing it overnight. It’s a slower process for sure.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:13):
Yeah. Yeah. I love thinking back on some of the people I can think of in the arts and in science, but the impact was there because they did focus on what was most important.

J. Warner Wallace (36:28):
That’s right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:29):
One chapter I loved in Person of Interest was on education. You pointed out that the 15 most prominent universities in the world were all started by people who wanted to lift up Christ.

J. Warner Wallace (36:44):
That’s right. The 15 most popular, the 15 best and highest rated universities today. It wasn’t just in their time. Those are the ones that if you look at whatever rating system you have, it turns out like 75 of the top 100 universities were founded by Christians. And even though most of those probably don’t even honor Jesus the way they once did, they were founded for those purposes.

And that strikes me as really, I actually did a search of all universities ever founded in the history of the modern university. So if you could break them down by people groups, I didn’t really write much about this in the book, but it’s in the footnotes. If you look at the number of universities founded by Christians and compare them to the numbers of universities founded by Jewish organizations or Jewish people, Buddhists, Hindus, secular, atheists, put them all.

(37:34):
Okay. So it turns out you could take all the other groups, add them all together, and multiply by around 10, and you still won’t come to the number of universities. I think we’ve probably closed more universities than most of those groups have ever started. Eventually, those universities fell out of existence. And this is because, right? Jesus inaugurates a worldview that is utterly dependent on education because he makes this silly request of us.

It’s the great commission request, not just to convert the world, but to make disciples teaching them all that I have taught. Really? Well, what if they don’t have any? They can’t read a New Testament because they can’t read. Well, then guess what? You’re going to have to teach them to read. Well, yeah, but they don’t have an alphabet. Well, guess what? You’ve got to create an alphabet. Well, now suddenly you’ve dominoed a thousand other educational advances.

(38:25):
Why? Because you’re trying to create disciples. This is a worldview that was entirely educational and required us to turn those monasteries and cathedral schools into teaching facilities. Look, of all the books written in the history of Christendom, the oldest are the four gospels and the letters of Paul and all the New Testament letters. But the next generation of books, the earliest is a book called The Didache, which is a book of teaching, catechizing new believers usually prior to their baptism.

So the very first non-New Testament book that is accepted by the largest group of Christians and used is the teaching of the 12 apostleles, right? It’s this educational document. This is the high value that the Christians have had for education, that the very first non-canonical book that is put into heavy use ends up being an instructional guide. This is the nature of our worldview, and this is why it blossoms into something very, very beautiful.

(39:24):
If you think about it this way, and then we hear it all the time, well, look, it turns out that the oversized commitment of Christians to the sciences is in large part due to the fact that we were initiators in the modern university revolution. The ancients clearly had ways to educate themselves, but the modern university that most people think of, a geographic campus that’s visited by students or to a resident faculty that will eventually graduate you with a diploma for several years of instruction, that notion of the modern university is from Bologna, Paris, and Oxford, three Christian institutions.

And it’s from those three, the 24 daughter universities will eventually emerge and it’s from those 24 daughter universities that the majority of the scientists in the scientific revolution will eventually graduate. So it turns out that this is one of the reasons why we dominate and people will say, “Well, yeah, but look, Jim, everyone in the 16th and 17th century in Europe was a Christian.” Well, duh.

(40:22):
Yeah, but that’s not the point. There were far more people on planet earth who were not in Europe than were, and there were far more people on planet earth who were not Christians than were. So why is it not happening in China, in Asia? Why is it not happening in Persia, in Egypt? Why is it happening in Christendom in Europe? It’s because of a worldview that catalyzes, that ignites education and science from the very words out of Jesus’ mouth, his last commandment to us initiates an educational worldview.

Dr. Jeff Myers (40:53):
And what I love as you’re describing that, as the disciples went out, God, through the Holy Spirit, put their words of Jesus’ gospel into the language of the people who were having to hear them. They could not possibly miss the lesson. And John Wycliffe, when he translated the Bible, said, “I think the Bible should be in English. I think the Bible should be in a language that people understand.” The children of Israel got to hear Moses and a language they understood. The disciples got to hear Jesus and the language they understood. Why shouldn’t everyday people in England be able to hear Jesus in a way they understand?

J. Warner Wallace (41:34):
Well, how many times have you heard something?

Dr. Jeff Myers (41:35):
But then he didn’t even have to, there weren’t even words in English. English was not even a standardized language at that point. There are more than a thousand words. And I think you talk about this as well.

J. Warner Wallace (41:46):
Well, how many times have you heard this? If you wanted to really know something about Islam, you cannot just go to some English translation of the Quran. You’d have to learn how to speak Arabic at a certain level so you can go to that language. I hear this a lot. It turns out that the fact that every, because Jesus comes to save all of us, he is imaged differently. If you look at how Buddha is imaged, you’ll make no mistake, that’s Buddha when you see him. I don’t care what country he’s imaged in, where in history he’s imaged.

But if you look at Jesus, if you’re in China, because he’s the savior of the Chinese, he looks Chinese. Wherever you are in the world, your ethnic group, your regional style of art, Jesus morphs and changes. And this is why he has had such a tremendous impact on the arts in music because each of us, when considering Jesus as our personal savior, have a tendency to personalize him, not in terms of what he taught, but in terms of this is why people will complain.

(42:44):
“Oh, well, Jesus looks white to you, Europeans.” Well, yeah, but he looks black to people in Africa and Chinese to people in China. He changes ethnically based on who is imaging him. And that’s what you want because he is the Savior of all. And this is why I think that he’s had such an impact. I looked at all the artists and the history of art history, and I love art history.

So all of the isms, expressionism, impressionism, dadaism, popism, whatever ism you’re into. If you look at the top three artists in that, isn’t the top three that anyone would say, “Yeah, in this movement and then history of art, these are the top three sculptors, top three painters, top three, whatevers.” You look at their catalogs. They all have imaged Jesus. This cannot be said of any other religious figure. It cannot be said of any other historical figure.

(43:30):
What is it about Jesus that inspires the arts? So if you were to look at the history of art, education, science, and put Jesus on the timeline, you’ll notice that he steps in front of all of these explosions. And the reason why he does that is because he’s a catalyst for all of them.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:50):
And when it all comes back, and so I’m picturing the bullseye from your book. You’ve got the explosion, you don’t see the explosion. That happened a long time ago. And as a cold case detective, like you said, there are crimes where there’s no body. So we can’t really figure out the normal way to understand what really took place. But if you’re looking out, you’re seeing that impact of Jesus. And you’re saying in the book, this is so powerful and so pervasive that even if the gospels disappeared and we had no ability to access them, we could reconstruct everything about the life and impact of Jesus, the Savior from all of that. I think it’s fascinating.

J. Warner Wallace (44:41):
And try to do that with anybody else. Try to do that with any other figure. And this is why I think in the end, there’s an aspect of this that has, some people have said, “Well, this is a lousy way to make a case for Jesus.” Well, I get it. Everything we know about Jesus is from the New Testament gospels. We’re going to have to test and trust and actually examine what the New Testament says. I did that in a book called Cold Case Christianity, but what I’m talking about is everything else, what’s on the outside.

And here’s what I would say. There’s three options. Remember the old lunatic liar and Lord kind of trilemma? Well, that’s one way to do it. Now, Rice Brooks wrote a book called Man Myth Messiah, I think he called it.

I think in some ways for this generation we’re living in, those might be more relevant questions because the question is, can you think of a fictional character in the history of fictional characters who has so foundationally changed art, music, literature, education and science and other theistic worldviews that he can be reconstructed from these important aspects of culture? No, you can’t. And if that’s the case, then it’s reasonable inference that Jesus is something other than a fictional character because if that could happen, tell me who got close?

(45:52):
Nobody. But here’s the other thing. If you can find another living human being who’s had this kind of impact on the four or five or six most important aspects of human culture, so much so that you can reconstruct his story from those aspects, who wouldn’t that be? I don’t see anybody who’s even close. This is why it’s a reasonable inference that he’s something other than another living human being. I think there’s an aspect of this that clearly supports the case for the historicity of Jesus. He’s not fiction, so the myth part. And he’s not just a man.

The only other option is, well, look, if God was to enter back into his creation, wouldn’t you expect this kind of impact? Wouldn’t you expect that everything that we find meaningful as humans today would have his fingerprints so you could reconstruct his story from them? I think you would. So of the three options, man, myth, or Messiah, I think Messiah is the better option.

Dr. Jeff Myers (46:43):
Yeah. Well, I love it. I think this is such an important book. I loved it. I loved reading the manuscript when I was going through cancer. It just helped me gain a lot of appreciation for the history, the impact that Christians have had in history, but also I felt like I think I understand my own place better. I understand more what it means to be a teacher and to say, “I’m not going to change the world, but I have these people who I can influence and I’m going to do that.” It was really, really powerful. I don’t know of another apologetics book like Person of Interest, Jim, and I’m really glad to have a chance to talk to you. This is a really wide ranging conversation.

J. Warner Wallace (47:39):
Well, it’s because I got a chance to finally ask you some questions if I wanted to ask you for a while. Before we go though, let me just say something to you. I know you probably hear this from a lot of people, but I feel like because I’m out here in California, you’re in Colorado, we get a chance to kind of connect on summits, but that’s about it.

Just never underestimate the impact that Summit. I mean, I know you don’t do that, but I think there are a lot of people who don’t get what you just said, which is that in the end, people who are world changers who have huge impacts on events, huge impacts on the trajectory of cultures. They often are impacted earlier by somebody who, like you said, is just lost in history. But that ripple effect, if you could somehow mine it out, you would find that there’s a common denominator.

(48:22):
I think in the end, there will be an entire generation of young people that when they trace back their influence and they’re in their 60s and 70s, they will come to find out, not by accident, that they all shared an experience at Summit Worldview Ministries that was transformational. I mean, we’re already starting to see that. And to your credit, we haven’t even been able really, I think, to mine out where those people are today, even from the last 50 years, but you know, we’re having a huge impact.

And I think in the end, this will be one of those things, kind of like Libre with Francis Schaefer, I see that there are these pivotal kind of opportunities that then world changers, when they look back, they’ll say, “Oh yeah, we all happen to be there at some point in our trajectory.” That same is going to be said of students, years to come who will make huge impacts in culture. They will have shared one thing in common: their time at Summit Worldview Ministry. So that’s why I’m just glad to be a small part of it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (49:17):
Wow. We think about the power of what God’s doing in the culture right now, in our world, through people who are faithful.

J. Warner Wallace (49:24):
That’s right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (49:25):
And you let God decide the range of the impact that you have.

J. Warner Wallace (49:30):
That’s right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (49:32):
If you’re faithful in reaching a few, if you have the opportunity to reach many, ultimately that doesn’t matter. It’s the faithfulness to Jesus.This has been fantastic. Well, I can’t wait to connect with you this summer.

(49:46):
I hope we do get to go back to Nashville together to work with more musicians. Looking forward to it. I think we’ve got an opportunity coming up. For anybody who’s watching, what Jim and I are talking about is what’s called Powered by Summit. So Summit Ministries has these two week programs and not everybody can come for a variety of reasons, but we customize the Summit program for anybody anywhere of any length of time.

So we had, what was it a day, maybe even half a day, with some of the top Christian artists in Nashville. We have also had entire weekend long things with Service Academy students and all different sorts of things. So if you’re interested in that sort of thing, just check out summit.org and find out about Powered by Summit and see if maybe there’s a group that you would like to have influenced in that way. Absolutely. Because we love to go and do that, right, Jim?

J. Warner Wallace (50:44):
Yeah, I think this is. We have a chance to talk about what God’s given us to talk about.

Dr. Jeff Myers (50:47):
Yeah.

J. Warner Wallace (50:47):
And it’s incredibly important because this is one of those things, again, these are the next that change the heads, right? These are that old Greek, my big fat Greek wedding, right? That expression always sticks in my mind because it’s so true. You don’t think much of it, but it turns out these are the public Christians who have a huge impact on culture and we need to reach out. And it’s every group. I mean, it’s not just people who are in the public square, like the service academies are a great example. There are people who see that God has called them to a purpose of some sort.

And the question is, do they even know enough about God to be able to fulfill the purpose they think they’ve been called to? So that’s why I think what someone does really well is it helps to put language and teeth to the things that kids think, for example, they would identify themselves as Christ followers, but what does that really mean?

(51:32):
And if you’ve got a student, I mean, I know we’re already tapped out probably for this summer getting close, but listen, I mean, we need help as parents. We all need help as parents. So I would just suggest that you get that help everywhere you can find it. And this is why our kids also went to Summit Worldview Conference, right? Because even though you’re teaching them every day. They hear my stuff all the time.

I knew they needed to hear the truth from somebody other than their parent. Have you ever noticed that? You have a parent who says the same thing over and over again, and then they go to college and somebody says the same thing you’ve been saying forever. And they go, “Oh, guess what? I heard this weekend.” I’m like, “Really? Okay. I’ve only been saying it for 25 years, but that’s okay. I’m glad somebody else has said it to you.” Well, this is what we do at Summit is we actually hopefully will kind of echo your worldview in a much clearer, probably more programmed way so that it actually resonates with your students.

Dr. Jeff Myers (52:19):
That’s right. Yeah. The people who also say so.

J. Warner Wallace (52:22):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (52:22):
Jim, awesome. Fun conversation. Thank you. Thanks for being on the show today.

J. Warner Wallace (52:26):
Yeah, good to be with you, brother. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (52:29):
Thank you to my guest today, Detective J. Warner Wallace for coming on the program. You can find out more about Jim and his book, Person of Interest, through his website, coldcasechristianity.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JWarnerWallace.
Luke wrote in the gospel that he wrote about Jesus. He said that he carefully investigated everything from the beginning in order to write an orderly account. Our faith is based on real historical events and evidence, and that gives us confidence in Jesus, knowing that he died and rose again and lives for us today and changes how we live. Hope you have a great week.

Ryan Dobson (53:16):
Thanks for listening to the Dr. Jeff Show. And don’t forget, you can help a child attend Summit summer session by going to summit.org/match. All your donations that are tax deductible will be doubled. God bless, have a great week, and we’ll see you next time for another Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (53:34):
Listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place. For your listening enjoyment, you can download it at edifi.app. Be sure to share this show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review, if you would, on the site where you download the show, that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show, and I’ll look forward to seeing you next week.