The Truth in True Crime, with J. Warner Wallace

Good morning, my friend. I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'm so grateful to be here

with you today for some self-brain surgery.

Today, we are going to follow some evidence and learn how to use our minds to

look at what's happening in the world and find our way to wherever the evidence leads us.

That's a principle found in homicide detectives, that they follow evidence and

try to solve the case that's in front of them to use their minds,

to use their brains that God gave them to follow the clues and put together

a case to solve the crime.

And in our lives every day, God in the world around us presents a whole bunch

of clues to what's real and what's not and what's true and what's false.

And we have a responsibility to learn how to use our minds to filter through

all the noise that the world and society brings us and follow the trails.

And I promise you, If you honestly follow the evidence, you will find your way

to build a case for faith that will lead you to resilience and a place to stand

no matter what happens in your life.

Today's guest is J. Warner Wallace. We call him Jim.

J. Warner Wallace, first heard of him because of his book Cold Case Christianity several years ago.

He's one of America's most famous cold case detectives.

He's a Dateline-featured homicide detective, popular national speaker,

and best-selling author.

He has over two decades of investigative experience, and he provides the tools

needed to investigate the claims of Christianity and make a convincing case

for the truth of the Christian worldview.

Well, Jim's got a brand new book. It's coming out very soon called The Truth

in True Crime, What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life.

And this is an incredible book. I can't recommend it highly enough.

And we do have three copies to give away. So if you love what you hear in the

interview, stick around for the end for some instructions on how you can potentially

win one of the three free copies that the incredible publicity team over at

Zondervan have given us to share this book with you.

But Jim's book is really...

Continuing to bend my brain. I'm going to come back after this conversation

and give you some wrap-up thoughts of what I learned from him,

other than what we talked about just in the episode. We had an engaging conversation.

I'm sure Jim will be back on the show another time in the future,

but listen for the evidence. Listen to how he led himself to Christ.

He was an atheist. He did not have a Christian worldview, but the evidence of

Christianity led him to apply the discipline discipline,

of his training and his profession in the same manner in which he solves crimes

to find God in the evident.

That was Jim's story as told in Cold Case Christianity, but now he's back with

what I think is his greatest work to date. It's a book about worldview.

It's a book about learning who

we are and who God says we are and how the evidence can lead us to that.

And we had an incredible conversation you're really going to enjoy.

I want to get right into it. But before we talk to Jay Warner Wallace,

I have a question for you.

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the

neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything

starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life?

Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired,

take control of our thinking, and find real hope. This is where we learn to

become healthier, feel better, and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast.

This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

My friend, we're back, and I'm so excited to be with you today.

To introduce a new friend.

I've got America's leading cold case detective, bestselling author Jay Warner

Wallace with us on the show. Jim, welcome.

Thank you for having me. I'm sure some publicist said America's leading.

Now that gets stuck to me. And I'm just guessing there's like hundreds of cold

case detectives around the country that are going, what in the world?

This, that's not true. I'm the leading cold case detective.

So, so, but whatever they say, I'll embrace it. Thank you so much for having

me. I love it. It happens all the time. You see some brain surgeon on television.

They say America's number one brain surgeon. Yeah, right. Wait,

there's not a poll for that. There's not. I know exactly.

How would you even determine such a nonsensical thing? But I guess what it sometimes

means is this, that if you're like, maybe you come to mind.

More than anybody else in this weird, obscure, little niche-y place that no one thinks of anyway.

So yeah. That's right. That's awesome. You're in Los Angeles, is that right?

Yeah, I'm in Los Angeles. Well, I was born and raised in Los Angeles County

and worked in Los Angeles County, but we live actually a little bit further out.

So like everybody else in Southern California, we are commuting on these relatively

short distances that take forever to commute. So that's what my life has been.

Well, I live in Nebraska and the biggest problem I have getting to work is if

I get stuck behind a tractor or something.

So, well, okay. So if you were out here, you'd feel like you're always stuck behind a tractor only.

It's not, it's probably a Tesla, but it feels like it's a tractor because it's

the conversation we're about to have about your incredible new book.

Can you say a prayer for us real quick? Yeah, for sure.

Father, thank you so much for opportunities with technology to just reach people.

We wouldn't ordinarily be able to reach. And we want to put you first and make

me make you the center of this conversation and everything we do here in this broadcast.

So just let your spirit humble us and keep us in a position of submission to

you as we talk about the things of God. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Well, that was a great prayer and a great way to start as we're going to get

into this conversation.

Before we do that, to talk about your new book, give us kind of a high-level

overview, just in case there's somebody

that hasn't heard of Cold Case Christianity or where you came from.

Because you have an interesting story. story, you weren't raised in the church

and you were working the job as a homicide detective and you found your way

to faith, but a very fascinating story. So give us a little,

a little highlight of that.

Yeah. So I was about 35 and I wasn't yet assigned to a robbery homicide,

but we were often working a homicide case.

I was working on a surveillance team as a detective. And I had been a detective

for probably, I don't know, five years or so.

And so here I was, I only had one skill set that I thought I could trust.

And I was by this time pretty skeptical of anyone's claims about anything.

So when I first encountered the scriptures, because I wasn't raised around anybody

who had a Bible, I bought a Bible. I bought a pew Bible that's sitting behind me on the shelf here.

And I spent six or seven dollars for it and opened it up.

And I was just provoked because I'd never been in an evangelical church,

really, with a pastor or who preached anything other than like a funeral.

And this pastor said that Jesus was the smartest man who ever lived.

And that got my attention.

And so I just thought, well, if I'm gonna steal some wisdom,

I mean, I was willing to steal wisdom from Confucius or fortune cookies or wherever,

you know, the ancient source might be.

So I bought a Bible just to see what was so smart about Jesus.

But as I read through it, it,

I saw some attributes. You know, eyewitnesses never agree, ever.

You can get five people see the same crime two hours ago, and you'll get five

versions of that story that you'll often think, how in the world am I going

to get in front of a jury with these five relatively different stories that

almost feel like they're contradicting each other, even though they clearly all saw the same thing.

So what do you do with these slightly varying stories? stories.

And that's what I saw in the Gospels.

Claims about a specific event, a series of events over a short period of time

in a specific region of the Roman Empire in a specific location.

So I thought, this is a historical claim. We should test it the same way you

would test any other set of claims.

And I'd already kind of looked at a case at that time that was my dad's old case.

And by the time I was opening it, this case was probably 25 years old at that time.

And no more than that and so i was

opening this old case and trying to evaluate claims made

by people who were no longer available to me because they're

dead and they're writing these reports about people they'd interviewed well

this is very similar what you're doing with the gospels you are you are making

there there's claims being made about something that occurred in the past and

you got to figure out if any of this stuff is true even though you have no access

anymore more to the original eyewitness who's making the claim or the investigator, say like Luke,

who's recording the claim. What do you do with this?

So that's the skill set that I use. I became a Christian because I kind of looked

at the criteria for a reliable eyewitnesses in California and applied it to the gospel authors.

And when I got done, I thought, wow, I mean, if I was going to put the same

case anonymously in front of a jury without saying it's Christian,

without saying it's the story of Jesus, I think there's enough there to convince

a jury that this, and why am I I'm not convinced. Like, what is it that's holding me back?

And that's really what opened the door for me to embrace Jesus as Savior.

Wow, that's fascinating. So a lot of people will look at the four gospel accounts,

for example, and say, oh, the Bible is contradicting itself as those stories don't line up.

But you saw it differently as a detective because nobody's story ever lines up, does it?

I think if I had encountered four accounts of varying lengths,

but every time you got to the same incident being described.

It was word for word without variation, the exact same description.

I would have been suspicious.

But when I got to the same descriptions of the same account,

it's often seemed like, wow, because this is what typically happens is that

five or six people will come together and give you a little piece of the puzzle

that you then put together with other pieces.

And the one thing that investigators will often say to dispatchers when they

assign us to a homicide scene is we'll say, hey, have the patrol officers who

are on site separate the eyewitnesses.

Because if you don't separate those eyewitnesses, they are gonna basically tell

you all the same thing because they've been talking to each other for an hour and a half.

Now we don't want that. We want those variations. We're gonna puzzle it.

Because there's something very rich.

That comes out of the questioning back and forth, like, why doesn't this match?

And you'll discover some detail. And let's face it, all of us have interests.

It's not that even that we're like seeing different things. In other words,

it's not like I was obscured, so I couldn't see it as well as he did.

That's sometimes the case.

But it's often just that my background obscures it for me.

In other words, I end up focusing on some aspect of the scene that I'm interested

in and missing some aspect that I'm not.

And that's why having five or six sets of eyes on it. So you already know this.

Look, how many times have you done a case or like you did a consultation and

you've asked, okay, I want four or five sets of eyes on this because I just

think everyone's going to come bring their own perspective and bring something

richer so I can make a better decision.

That's the same kind of thing with eyewitnesses. That's why I think it's good

that we have four accounts and I think it's important for us to puzzle.

So I'm like in my daily reading right now, I happen to be in Job.

But if I'm if I'm in the Gospels, often what I'm doing is asking myself if I'm

in Mark, does Matthew record this also?

What does Matthew say that Mark doesn't? Because because a lot of what I'm looking

for in eyewitness accounts is what could you have said, but you fail to say

that's going to tell me something about you.

What did you key on when you could have keyed on other things? things.

So it's not just what you say as an eyewitness, it's what you've failed to say

that's also important to me as an investigator.

So I'm always looking at the Gospels when I'm in them and asking the question,

like, why wouldn't Mark say that?

Why is Luke's account different? Like, who's he talking to that would leave

this thing out that John puts in?

Like, I'm asking those kinds of questions, and it makes for a richer investigation, for sure.

And I thought the only person I've ever heard talk about this,

when you talked about how the gospel of Mark had sort of built in evidence that

Peter was involved in it. Talk about that for a second. I think it's fascinating.

Well, sometimes the reason why Mark leaves out an account is because according

to Papias, a very early church father, Mark is writing this account at the feet

of Peter while he's preaching in Rome.

And Papias says that Mark's account, although accurate, it's not necessarily in the right order.

And it's true if you compare Mark's account, for example, to Luke's account,

there are some episodes that are in a slightly different order.

So he'll say, Papias says, well, yeah, he was writing it. It's accurate,

but it was not orderly. It's not in the correct chronological order.

Luke, interestingly, in his first chapter says, my stuff's in the right order.

Which, why would you have to say that if you're just writing a history of Jesus?

Don't you assume it's in the right order?

Well, because there's another early history out there that's not in the right

order. That's called Mark.

Now, what does Mark leave out? Often, what Mark is leaving out is something

embarrassing about Peter.

Yeah. Which I think is fascinating because he is sitting at Peter's feet.

And I'd expect if you're my guy and you're writing what I'm telling you,

like, you know how often Peter sounds ridiculous in the Gospels?

He sounds less ridiculous in Mark's Gospel, I can tell you that.

That's right and john outruns him and puts yeah exactly it's like yeah so so

i think in the end this is this this is the stuff that is fascinating to me

because when you do forensic statement analysis on on eyewitness accounts you're

looking for this kind of stuff you're also looking for.

Alternative options you're looking for words that are unnecessary but they're included anyway,

because that tells you something like why would you include that and the illustration

i always give is that if I tell you that, you know, this is my black mouse for

my computer and I show it to you, I've told you something. I've used an optional word.

The optional word there is the word black. It's an adjective.

I don't need to say that. I mean, you can see what color it is.

But if I'm telling you this is my black mouse, I'm probably telling you more

than just the color of my mouse. I'm probably telling you I have more than one mouse.

And the other mouse is probably a different color.

Why? Because why would I tell you this is the black mouse if you can see it's

black? Well, because it's possible I'm telling you that even without telling

you, I'm telling you that there's more than one mouse and the other one's a different color.

Well, that's the kind of thing you're looking for when people make statements.

And the same thing is true in the Gospels. I'm looking, you know,

why, for example, does, is it, I think it's Luke who includes,

yeah, it's Luke who includes the name of one of the witnesses on the road to Emmaus.

And he's the only one who does that. And why include that one name?

Why not name both of them?

Well, it's often because Luke is recording eyewitness accounts.

He tells us this. He's speaking to the eyewitnesses and servants of the word.

And that may simply be his source for that information is the one he names.

So, because it's not necessary.

So why would you give it to me? And when they do, I'm asking that question,

like, or if they leave it out when I think it should be necessary,

I'm asking that kind of question.

So a lot of those things are the stuff that we do and work in forensic statement analysis.

And that's really what was my pathway. And I was taking courses as an interviewer

in forensic statement analysis about a year or two before I became,

before I started opening the scriptures.

Wow. So I was not just that I was ready to do this and I was equipped to do it.

It's that I was still very, very eager to learn more and to stretch the envelope

and to see what this kind of approach could show me.

You know, you do it 15 years and now it's just common habit.

You're doing it, but, but sometimes you got to really press in because you've

kind of taken it for granted.

But when it's brand new to you, it's like, you're like your wife,

your poor wife is like being examined every little thing she says,

you're analyzing because you just learned this technique, you know? Okay.

So, so a lot of that was what I was trying to do early on as an investigator of the scriptures.

Wow. And I think it's fascinating. This is a total aside, but I've been thinking

about this because I had Lee Strobel on the show the other day and,

and you both have a similar sort of story where Lee came from journalism as

an atheist and kind of worked his way towards faith by following his,

the way that God made his mind to follow journalistic evidence, Right.

He brings you up as a detective and he gave you all these tools and skills to follow evidence.

And you applied that and found your way to God. And I think about that scripture, Acts 17, 26, 27.

Paul says, God appointed our times and places so that we might seek him and

perhaps find him, though he's not far from anyone.

It's like God puts us in the right place with the right skill set and for the

purpose of helping us find him. And I think that's just a beautiful example

of how your creator used the way that he made you to help you find your way to him. I love it.

Right. And so a lot of times this is true for all of us and your background,

too. You know, there's things that we see that then we focus on.

And some of those things are really helpful. My son is an anesthesiologist.

He works at Pediatric in Phoenix, and he was a biochemist as an undergrad.

And a lot of what he was doing was working in DNA labs, modifying DNA code to

either cure something or change the structure of something.

And so a lot of what his interest set was becomes how he thinks about the nature

of creation and the clear design elements that are in biology,

a lot of that just comes because he's just interested in that stuff.

This is true for all of us. No matter who you are or where you are,

there's probably some principle.

And that's really why I wrote this book, because it seems to me that of the

evidences, like I've written books on reliability of scripture,

that's cold case Christianity.

I've written books on God's existence, that's God's crime scene.

You know, I did person of interest on the person of Jesus. And these are all

books that kind of build an evidential case around the person of Jesus that makes that case strong.

But it seems to me that if scripture, if Christianity is true,

then the Bible ought to describe the world accurately.

It ought to describe not just the world we live in, but even our human nature

accurately, if it's true.

And I think a lot of people in culture right now don't think that it describes

us accurately, but it does.

And by the way, this is why I think all of us with all these weird backgrounds.

Are finding our way to God in different directions, because it turns out that

all of this world that God creates, it's God's world.

And we are created in His image. And there's some aspect of our nature and our

interest set that will intersect with the reality of Christianity.

And this is what I discover working homicides. You know, if you work homicides,

you're going to eventually encounter the same kinds of behaviors,

good or bad, over and over and over and over again until finally you can make a list.

And so I made a list and I was like, okay, if this is true,

and by the way, I think I discovered these in homicides, but you can look at

the pages of research that's been done in the last four decades,

secular research, sociologists and social researchers, psychologists,

all these folks are looking at human nature and they're discovering that,

yeah, these things that I'm seeing in homicides, they're true of all of us.

Well, would you be surprised to find out that all of them are ancient?

Like this is stuff that you You don't need to research because you just read

your Bible and see it right there on the pages of Scripture.

And I think it does act as another level of evidence, right?

It's evidence that, you know, if Christianity is true, this ought to be the case.

And by the way, we are in a culture right now that is becoming so opposed to

the principles that are in Christianity that it is trying its best to deny all

of these truisms of human nature.

That are very traditional because it rejects all traditional.

And I guess a lot of these principles now are seen as conservative,

but to be honest, they're just human principles that end up contributing to

human flourishing. So I wanted to write a book where, hey, you know what?

Here's the evidence. Here's 15 crime stories, but here are 15 rules for life.

If you wanted to avoid the kinds of things that I have to investigate,

you and I were talking before we started here about how at our age,

my age, I'm probably older than you, but if we look at our lives now,

our parents are getting older, that our friends are starting to age like we are.

And this is the decade in which we're going to see all these physical changes

in our own bodies and all of our, it's like we're aging.

And so, so this is, we're now at a place where we can either die with this information or share it.

And I felt like, Hey, this is now the time for me to write a wisdom book,

because I think we are at a place now where you you've probably stubbed your

toe enough times to know not how to stub your toe.

Yeah, I love it. The new book is called The Truth and True Crime.

What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life,

J. Warner Wallace. And we've got three copies of the book to give away.

So if you're interested in a free copy of the book, send me an email,

lee at drleewarren.com.

We're going to do a drawing in 48 hours for the three winners of that incredible book.

So make sure you send me your mailing address and your zip code and your name.

It's amazing how often we get emails that don't include the information we would

need to convict you of this crime of wanting the book.

So send us the information, Lee, at DrLeeWarren.com. We'll hopefully get you

one of those three copies of the book.

Jim, talk about identity. So the second chapter of your book,

I want to spend a few minutes and talk about identity.

And I think you laid out a great case to discuss that because it's such an important

concept in our culture right now.

And you did a beautiful job of talking about identity.

So talk about that. Before we started this conversation, we were talking about

trauma and how we are experiencing loss sometimes times in people we

know who are either suffering with cancer or have

experienced a loss and this is the nature of both

of our now my work certainly is i'm constantly encountering people

who have a question and the question is often why did this terrible thing happen

to me why why did this why did this occur this way and this homicide my 10 year

old why did my 10 year old get killed So much of this is about identity,

believe it or not, the depth to which we will suffer in the presence of trauma.

Let me share what I mean by that. If you look back at your life,

at the kind of timeline of your life and how you function, and you'll see there

are peaks and valleys, right? You have highs in your life and lows in your life.

At every low point in your life where you've suffered something,

I'll bet you if you went back and looked there closely, you discovered that

you had a dramatic shift in the way you saw yourself, your identity.

The way you saw life in general, but the way you saw your own place in life.

Identity matters that much.

Maybe you're somebody who thought, I'm a married, I'm a successfully,

happily married person. Then your spouse leaves you and you're like, well, who am I now?

I'm a parent until my kids either pass away unexpectedly or even just go off to school as young kids.

Well, now, who am I now? It's like we struggle and we feel the kind of valleys

in life largely because we're struggling with how we assess ourselves.

Who are we? And because so much of our identity formation fluctuates.

It can be taken from you. I discovered

this working murders in one of the cases I described in the book.

It's just somebody who wanted to commit suicide because he had seen himself

as a very successful high school football player from a family of football players.

So everyone kind of saw their identity in this way. And then when he suffered

a terrible knee injury and he couldn't play, he began to spiral largely because

he couldn't rebrand himself. He couldn't recreate himself.

He had seen himself in a way. So identity formation traditionally happens one

of two ways, but there's a third better way.

The two ways that I talk about in the book are not, didn't create these definitions.

These have been created by people who study identity long before I did.

And they are either outside in or inside out identity creation.

Outside in is very ancient.

It's what the ancients did. You looked outside yourself to see like,

well, where do I fit in culture?

Well, we're farmers. Okay. I'm a farmer. We're from a family of farmers.

Okay. I'm I'm an iron worker. Okay, great.

I'm of this ethnicity or I'm of this tribe or I'm of this nation.

Something that pre-existed you, you reach out of yourself and you grab it as your own identity.

And a lot of us will do this. This is what this guy had done.

He was in a family of football players.

So he took an outside in approach.

The other one is of course, just the opposite, an inside out approach.

And that's where we will look at something that's native to us specifically,

either it's our desires, our sexual preferences, even the things we feel like

we are good at or interested in or gifted at that, that we take that as our identity.

And we tell the world, you will see me this way.

And so this is an inside out, you know, this, this guy I'm talking about in

this one particular case, he was good at his football.

I mean, it wasn't just that his family had that identity. So he embraced his family identity.

It's that he happened to be very talented innately in this sport.

So it's a little bit of both inside and outside.

And we all do that. The problem, of course, with both of those are two things.

Number one, this can be taken from you.

Yeah. And your desires even change over the course of your life.

And number two, you'd never really know if the identity you've taken is truly noble or worthy of,

if you're just creating or grabbing it from the outside. So for example,

if I'm born into the Gambino family, is it a good thing to be a Gambino? I don't know.

Especially if their entire desire is to kind of rule the territory and destroy their enemies.

I mean, so it lacks a moral foundation, number one.

But two, it can be taken from you. So I experienced the exact same struggle

that this guy experienced because I ended up retiring and then struggled to figure out who am I?

And this is what guys do. I mean, we are so good at this. We will walk up to

each other, shake hands, and the first thing we'll say is, what do you do?

We don't care what you do. I'm trying to figure out who you are.

Because so much of the time, guys take their job and a little bit of outside

in, a little bit of inside out, and they identify themselves so strongly by

their work that it seems synonymous.

There's a third way. And the reason why the third way is important is because

if your identity formation is sketchy, it can be changed easily.

It can be taken from you. You could lose the ability to do it or your heart

might change. Your desires might change.

Even your sexual preferences may change. And then get ready for a period of

transition and identities, which will be a struggle.

On the other hand, if you identify yourself in something that doesn't change.

You're far less likely, even in the lows of life. You know, when I retired,

I had not identified myself so utterly, completely as a detective that I then

wondered, well, my son's an is.

He was still working in the job. I'm a was.

I used to be. I'm a retiree. Oh, my gosh. I don't think many cops like that term.

I don't want that behind my name. Neither do surgeons. Right.

Okay. So you see the problem here. here and and i was already i should have

been doing the third formation of identity which i call top side down if your

identity is in your creator if your identity is in christ,

well that's not going to change that's right and i was just as much a child

of god the day i was working as i was the day after i retired but because i

refused pridefully to put my identity.

There because I want, I'm special over here.

Oh, I'm unique over here. Oh, I'm important over here.

Well, it turns out that you're important on the other side too.

Your identity in Christ is, look, all of us have been given unique skill sets,

gifts from God to be used in the service of advancing the gospel in unique ways.

You're the only one who can leave an imprint the way that you leave, the way that I leave.

We still are unique, even though our identity really isn't in in any of these worldly things.

It's in the one source of identity that doesn't change, that stays stable.

What we see in all of the research is that people who put their identity in

something that cannot be damaged never feel as though they're damaged.

And that's, it's very common.

But the question of course is, what is the one source of identity that is unchanging

and that is objectively virtuous?

Right. Because I have known people who either formed their identity on the outside

in and became part of the Gambino family or people who formed their identity on the inside out.

They're sociopaths who enjoyed their murderous crime sprees.

Well, neither one of those guarantees a virtuous life.

That's right. But if your identity is in Christ, if your identity is in God,

you've got a far better chance of living a godly life.

And that's why I think that the three choices, that's the better way to go.

Now, it still requires some effort because here I was, the day I was examining

that case and this guy who tried to jump out the window to kill himself,

I was already a Christian, yet I was just as guilty as he was of forming my

identity inside out and outside in.

So we have to make a conscious effort to form our identity the right way and

to realize that we were created to be known, not by strangers,

not by the world around us, but by our creator. And that has to be sufficient.

It's interesting we we kind of arrived at

similar conclusions so my second book was about

people my attempt to doctor people who

i give terminal diagnosis to how do i help you if i can't cure you you're dying

of brain cancer right and over 20 years the thing i figured out that people

had the most trouble with is when something that they thought they were certain

of turns out to be either not true or that they're going to lose it i thought

i was healthy and now Now I'm not.

I thought I was going to outlive my kids and I didn't. And so it turns out that

our ability to detach our identity from our circumstances is the crucial thing

that gives us hope in the world. So I love that. Yeah. No.

Well, let's talk about something else, because I'm not even sure you wanted

to talk about this, but it's related to this. It's another chapter of this book.

So that's just one chapter. Chapter two. There's another chapter that deals with trauma.

And that chapter, to me, was the most eye opening of all.

And it was one of my very first cold cases that I ever worked where I saw it

kind of blossom out and it's right in front of me.

And it's this idea that how do we overcome.

The trauma of a bad diagnosis how do we or

maybe you're critically injured and you're not going to die but you're

going to be critically injured the rest of your life that's often the case that

we see with officers who are involved in shootings and they are no longer you

know they no longer can find they can't keep their jobs they can't you know

everything changes like what do you do and if you stay if you're if you're going

along at a certain level of functioning and then you incur this, you encounter trauma,

it often will knock us to our knees. And sometimes we don't get up.

Sometimes we stay down there. And if you do stay down there,

that's called PTSD, right? Where you just, you just are post-traumatic stress.

You just can't, you can't move. You, you're experiencing physical symptoms as

well as just the inability to kind of get your footing again.

And now as counselors, you know, as people who are, who care about your,

your, your welfare, we would love to see you get back to that same level of

functioning you were at before the trauma. And that would be called resiliency

if we could get you there.

But there's actually a better, more robust second phase of this.

What if I could get you to a place where you're not only at where you were before

the trauma, but you're functioning at an even higher level than you ever had

functioned before the trauma? That's right.

That's called post-traumatic growth. Well, what is the key?

What is the what of secular studies revealed as the key is what they would call

meaning making the idea that once

you find the place for the trauma in the overarching story of your life,

once you try to make sense of it, how can this be leveraged?

How is my life maybe better on the backside?

What can I do with this? What is the purpose of this in my life?

In other words, is this chapter the final chapter or is this chapter the climactic

chapter right before the story is resolved, like we see in every good storyteller?

So I redefined it as meaning finding because it turns out I can't really make

up my, I could, I could make up my own meaning.

Here's the meaning of life according to Jim.

But it can easily be taken from me because it's not the transcendent overarching

objective meaning of life. It's just my subjective view and people,

subjects change their views.

That's right. But if there is an objective narrative, a story of the universe

that includes your story inside that story of the universe, if it's out there,

all you have to do is find it and then ask yourself the question,

okay, so which chapter is this?

And when I see people do that.

And ask, well, what am I supposed to do with this? Those are the people who

blow up and do great things post-trauma.

They experience post-traumatic growth because they've discovered,

and if you're really trying to figure out what the story is,

well, this is where Christianity offers great resources because it turns out

the story has been written.

And not only that, the encouragement is built into the story because all the

letters of Paul will encourage you.

How do we, I'm reading through Job right now, and I'm thinking to myself,

as I'm reading through Job, it's really a book about the problem of evil, right?

I mean, Satan is testing Job in front of God and has stripped him of everything he owned.

His family is being destroyed, except for his wife.

The wife that has been left for him doesn't seem to be much encouragement.

And he has no idea why this is happening to him.

And his friends try to come and offer solutions, potential solutions.

Maybe you've done something wrong that you just didn't know you did wrong and God is judging you.

Well, it turns out, I think that they're struggling with the difference between suffering and evil.

God is not the author of evil, but could suffering be something other than evil?

Could suffering be a tool for good?

Could God achieve something in your life that cannot be achieved short of suffering?

That's right. And if there is something like that, well, then it's just our

job to figure out, well, what is the story?

And how is God using this thing for my good?

Often, how we respond on the other side of suffering is about our attitude about the suffering.

That's right. And it's about our kind of zeroing in on the overarching story.

So I'm hoping that that crime story will help people see this in the life of one victim's family.

But more importantly, I think that this is the skill set that we all need to

have if we're going to hopefully be the example to the world of people who seem

like they can endure suffering better than any other group.

That's right. I love it. It's so consistent with the neuroscience, too.

You know, there's all this neuroscience now around the way that we pay attention

to things and how the more we pay attention to a particular thing,

including how we feel, the more real that thing becomes.

And so you focus on your anxiety, you become more anxious.

Right. Which is what the Bible told us all along. And when we when we come to

trauma and suffering and hurt, what God said in Isaiah was, because I have refined

you in the furnace of suffering.

So you can come to it and you can say, I'm going to let this define me or I'm

going to let it refine me. That's right. So you can become refined.

And that's what post-traumatic growth, the kind of thing that gives us a Viktor

Frankl, right? He's a concentration camp survivor.

And he says, well, suffering stops being suffering when you give it purpose.

That's right. And think about it. We have the paramount, penultimate story of

meaning making and suffering and what it brings in terms of blessing is the story of Jesus.

And that group that saw him, I could only imagine what they were thinking on

the day he was crucified, even though he had told them, hey,

this isn't the final chapter.

That's right. But again, they're focusing, like you said, and when we focus

on that thing, it becomes a reality for us.

And so, but now we can look back at that and see that without the sacrifice

of Jesus on the cross, the justice of God could never be satisfied,

and we would still be lost in our sin.

So, I mean, this is the best example of why suffering is sometimes the only

way through. It's not that it's an option.

It's that the only way to get you from here to there.

It's through this tiny portal that I've crafted for you.

And by the way, every time that God does something like this,

Satan is working hard to get you to see it the other way.

That's right. To get you to reject this.

And so the question becomes, and I think what's so interesting about Job is

there are several places in Job where you have to really figure out how I interpret this.

It almost sounds like God is the author of suffering, but we know he's not the

author of evil. We might say he allows it, but then you have to ask yourself,

well, why are we equating these two as though they're synonyms?

Suffering is not always evil. There is sometimes, look, you know,

as a parent, you often let your kids struggle because you know there's a greater

reward on the other side of the struggle.

As a matter of fact, I think most of the time when I've made a mistake as a

parent, it's because I stepped in too soon.

It's because I did not let the natural consequence of an action be experienced

by the child who needed to experience the consequence for that stupid behavior

so they would not do it again.

And I think that God often allows us to experience this stupid behavior and

actually just say, hey, here you go.

I know where this is headed, but it's okay. You're going to be better on the

backside of this. It's just us being able to see it.

Wow. What do you hope people get from your book? You've written a lot of books.

You've written great books about big problems.

They all have this sort of crime scene theme to them. But this one is very unique.

And I think of all the books of yours that I've read, I think it might be my

favorite. It probably is my favorite.

What do you hope the reader, the listener right now gets from the book?

Well, it is my favorite, too. And I'll tell you why. I wanted to write it for

five or six years. I just couldn't get somebody to say, yeah, go ahead and do it.

I felt like, I feel like, look, all of this, all the evidence that we talk about,

it's all good. It's all important.

But in the end, it doesn't change you. The gospel is the cure for every kind

of stupid, not the evidence, the gospel.

That's the last chapter in the book. This is really hope is found in the gospel.

And without hope, we are doomed as a species. You see it in all the recorded studies.

So I think in the end, my hope for this book is that it opens the door most

robustly. And of all my books, this features the gospel repeatedly in various

ways of communicating it, right? Right.

So because I know that in the end, if I was somebody who was like I was when

I was 35, I would not have been interested, but I would have been interested

in the smart wisdom statements of Jesus.

Well, would you would you possibly be interested in the wisdom teaching of Christianity?

Because it turns out that if you want to flourish, if that was your goal to

throw the dart at that bullseye and the bullseye is human flourishing.

It turns out if you hit that bullseye, you're going to be hitting something

called Christianity, whether you know it or not.

Because it turns out that if you simply behaved as though Christianity was true,

especially on these 15 aspects of human behavior,

you will flourish at the highest possible level and you will unknowingly be

adopting the principles that are in the New Testament.

So that's my hope. My hope is that we can, in some ways, help people to flourish.

But two, introduce them to the gospel in this kind of unusual way.

Because as Tim Keller used to say all the time, that the Christian worldview

has better resources for dealing with struggles, dealing with trauma,

dealing with suffering than any other worldview. And that's true.

But we don't always feel that way, but it is true.

And so that's, I think my hope here is, as I get older too, I'll just tell you,

Lee, I'm just more and more convinced that we have to be gospel-centered.

We have to be gospel-focused. And every Every conversation in the end,

every stage presentation in the end, every argument for the case for whatever

in the end has to come back.

Because it's not just that the gospel is a case, it's that the gospel is the

power of God to change the world.

And I think we overestimate ourselves if we think that somehow I have power.

And to be honest, all you end up is debates.

I mean, YouTube is full of people who are simply, I think one strategy we can

take as Christians is to say, hey, I want to make sure I have been clear about

the gospel and then God will do what God will do.

That's right. And I don't have to then get involved in the numerous debates.

I can simply let the God, the power of God do what the power of God does.

Wow. I think it's important. I need to say this out loud because sometimes you

feel this tug from the Holy Spirit.

So the word flourishing has come up on this podcast twice now.

You've been talking about it.

And just last week we had a Stanford psychiatrist, David Carrion,

whose new book is called The Opposite of Depression.

And his premise is the opposite of depression is not feeling better.

It's flourishing in your life.

God didn't call us. John 10, 10 says he came here to give us an abundant life.

He didn't call you to suffer and just be dreary and wait to survive.

He called you to live this abundant life. So that's what you're getting at here.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, and most of this, as an atheist, I would have said,

what is that abundant life?

Well, okay, it's going to be some level. I would have said, I would have said

as a non-believer, I would have said it's going to involve physical health.

It's going to involve mental health. It's going to involve quality of relationships.

It's going to involve my impact in my work. what I see as my purpose and my

work. It's probably going to involve the rewards of income.

It's going to involve a good, solid family life. I mean, these are the things

that are important to us.

So for example, there's one chapter in this book that just talks about how could I increase all those?

Because there's a couple of attributes of human behavior that are very ancient

that most of us today have rejected and to our own peril.

And so I just wanted to go back and then you see this all the time when people

have rejected them so repeatedly that now they're involved in criminal behavior.

And they're 10 years into this criminal behavior. And I'm now arresting him repeatedly.

I'm meeting people for the second, third time. I'm like, wow,

I knew this kid when he was a kid.

And now here he is back in front of me again. Like we're not learning.

We're not learning how to change our lives, how to flourish.

And so I think you're right. We have to define what that flourishing means.

But even as a secular humanist, as somebody who was an atheist,

I would have probably been able to say, well, it's going to involve health,

both mental and It's going to involve wealth.

It's going to involve deep relationships, success.

Okay, I get that. Those are very worldly things. It turns out the flourish as

a human really means to have a relationship, maybe in the presence of God when it's all said and done.

That's right. But even if all you were interested in.

Look, this is what's so interesting about Christianity.

Christianity is not just focused on our immaterial nature. Like,

hey, let me set you up so you can be good angels in heaven with God.

No, actually, we're going to have a resurrection body.

Our material, temporal existence does matter to God.

And almost so much of the claims and encouragement in the New Testament is how

to live well on this side of the grave.

That's right. So our flourishing is not just to flourish spiritually.

It's also there's a connection between our spiritual flourishing and our material

flourishing. That's right.

And both of those, I think, are addressed in the gospel.

And both of those have been addressed in the New Testament. And that's why I

say, if you're just aiming at flourishing, you just didn't realize that all

those things that you thought were important to your flourishing are actually

ancient Christian principles.

And if you'll simply embrace those. And by the way, when you think,

well, this is not an ancient Christian principle, it's probably also not a principle

that leads to flourishing according to all the data.

That's right. So we want to look closely at these things to see,

hey, do they line up with reality?

That's right. I love it. You've done a beautiful job with this book.

Look, it's a powerful, it's not a super easy read. There's a lot to think about here.

And if you're not a believer, friend, I would encourage you to follow Jim's

path and just take a look at the evidence and follow this and look at what humans

are supposed to be about, what human nature is and how it leads us to flourishing.

If we follow God's plan for our lives, you've done a beautiful job.

And before we let you go, Jim, can we just have a pastoral moment here for a second?

There's somebody listening to this show that, I mean, they just buried their

husband. They just found out that they've got terminal cancer.

They just got home from the worst news they've ever gotten.

They're right in the thick of what's going to be the biggest challenge of their life.

What do you say to that person that you would encourage them to do now?

I think that, and I've heard lots of folks describe this in different ways.

If there is no God, then the way to survive a diagnosis in cancer is to really

spend, to think less deeply about your worldview, because if there is no God,

nothing really matters.

Really, life is your opportunity to get the most you can. And if someone,

if something robs a percentage of your life.

Then you ought to be upset because this is the only chance you really have to

experience the things that you would hope to experience.

It's all about, and by the way, none of it really matters because in the end,

you're going to die and then your descendants will die and then the whole universe

will suffer a heat death and there'll be no record of any of this and none of it will really matter.

So ultimately, life doesn't even matter.

And your cancer diagnosis doesn't really even matter.

It's like Dawkins said, that the universe is just governed by electrons,

and it doesn't care. It's indifferent to your suffering.

So you have to think less about your view as an atheist in order to have peace.

It's hard to think about the universe that way and feel good about it.

On the other hand, if Christianity is true, what you need to do instead is to

think more deeply about your worldview, because we don't often do that as Christians,

to remember that it turns out you've already been guaranteed eternal life.

If you're a a Christian, your birth just marks the first point in a long journey

that extends through the second point called death and into eternity with God.

And when you're a thousand years into eternity with God, whatever we suffered

on this side of the second dot is not going to feel like much relative to a thousand years.

A million years into eternity, it's going to feel like a nanosecond.

So if Christianity is true, you have something that you don't have under atheism,

and that's called hope. You could have a lot of things.

You could be content, but you don't have hope because hope requires something

in which to place your hope, the life beyond the second dot.

So I would say that if we are suffering a diagnosis, now is the time,

if you're a Christ follower, to think more deeply about your worldview than you ever have before.

If you're not a Christ follower, now is the time to actually examine the claims,

because it turns out that there are no resources over there under atheism.

The most I can really say that's rational, given the atheist universe, is, oh, well, sorry.

Under Christianity, we can say, well, hold on.

God can still use this suffering moment for something quite beautiful,

both in the life of your family and in eternity.

And now you have the promise that the moment you close your eyes,

you'll be in the presence of God.

And when you're in the presence of God, the suffering will suddenly make sense.

Both in terms of where it fits in the longer timeline, but also in terms of

what it is that God is trying to do with suffering.

Like, there's no way to answer those questions under atheism.

There's no question, there's no one to question.

Under theism, though, there is. So now is the time, especially in a bad diagnosis,

to really, for the first time maybe forever, either trust and examine your worldview

more deeply or begin to look seriously to see if the worldview you hold is even true.

Amen. Love it. I'm so proud of the work that you've done and so grateful for it.

I'm looking forward to seeing the impact on the kingdom and on people's lives.

And I think you're going to lead a new batch of people from the mysticism and

darkness of where they've been looking for meaning to find something that really

counts and really matters.

So thank you for the work that you're doing, Jim, and the time that you share with us today.

Thanks, Dr. Lee. I feel like we're connected on the same exact mission statement.

So I'm so glad to be connected with you on it. I do, too, my brother. God bless you.

What an incredible conversation. If you would like to be considered for one

of the three free copies of the book that we have, please send me an email,

lee at drleewarren.com, with your name, your mailing address, and your zip code.

We've got three copies to give away. Again, don't put it on Facebook.

Don't put a comment on Substack.

Send me an email, lee at drleewarren.com. Include your name,

your mailing address, and your zip code if you want to be included in the drawing

for one of the three free copies that we will choose after this conversation

has been online for 48 hours.

You have a chance to read this incredible book. Go read it though.

Even if you don't get one of the free copies, please share this book.

This book is gonna lead some people to Christ who don't know him.

This is gonna help some people follow the evidence and find their way to him.

One of my favorite parts actually is the postscript. This is an incredibly well-researched book.

There's 60 pages of references and footnotes. Jim did just a tremendous job.

This is his magnum opus, and I can't wait to see what he writes next.

This book is incredible, and you'll love it.

Follow the evidence, build a worldview, and learn what we can learn about life

from how he investigated death. It's incredible.

My favorite part, though, is the postscript, and here's what he said,

and this is one thing we talk about all the time.

The Bible describes the world the way it really is.

It doesn't sugarcoat it. It gives you the good, the bad, the beautiful,

and the ugly, but It also describes the world the way it could be.

If we adopt the ancient divine truths, Christianity.

He gives this huge list of things that secular research has proven about the

best ways that humans can flourish. And there's that word flourish again.

Came up with David Carrion. We've heard the word flourish a lot lately.

Pete Gregg talked about how to flourish. And here it is again.

I think the Holy Spirit's trying to teach us. He wants us to have abundant lives.

That's John 10, 10. He wants you to flourish.

He doesn't want you to just scrounge out a life here and wait for heaven.

And he wants you to flourish now. So how do you do that?

Secular research has given us a ton of data.

You flourish when you revere wisdom. We ground our identity in something bigger than ourselves.

When we engage in virtuous friendships, when we commit to marriage,

when we devote ourselves to something worthy, when we exercise humility,

when we find contentment and purpose in our work, when we make sense of our

trauma, when we seek and revere justice,

when we balance truth and grace, when we admit our fallen nature,

when we embrace guilt and resolve shame, when we experience the love of a father,

when we conquer our fear of death, when we find hope in difficult situations.

Jim's laid out this. Secular psychological research has shown these are the

best way for humans to live. Well, guess what?

The Bible said all of these things verbatim thousands of years ago.

That list I just gave you, there's a corresponding list of the scriptures that

point out that those are the ways that God designed humans to flourish.

It's right there in the word all along. You can follow the clues and see.

It's what I've been giving you as a principle lately. We called it Warren's

Law of Science and Scripture.

Science never invalidates something that scripture has said about the best way

for people to live. It takes science a long time to get there.

But when science releases something that says this is the best way for people to live,

It'll often be wrong until it lines up with what scripture says.

And many times they say, oh, see, we don't need to do this or that because we

figured out how it really works.

And then they try that for a long time and a generation goes by and nobody's

happy and nobody's thriving.

And then somebody comes along with a study like Jeffrey Schwartz or Andrew Newberg

or somebody with a study and says, no, wait a minute.

The data actually shows that strong families produce happy kids.

Well, guess what? The Bible said that all along. Jim did a great job putting this together.

Tremendous conversation, tremendous book, tremendous leader in the apologetics worldview space.

And I'm so grateful that we had the time with Jim Wallace today.

I hope you enjoyed the conversation. We'll be back with some more for Wildcard Wednesday tomorrow.

Something else new for you. And I hope that you have an incredible day.

Remember, friend, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And I hope you remember the good news is that you can start today.

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Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren podcast is brought to you by my

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