Evidence for the Existence of God (Best of 2024) - Pastor Lee Strobel

When a culture begins to slide in that direction, as our culture has, then people begin to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is there any hope? Is there anything I can grasp onto that can give me something beyond this world? Why, as a human being, would you not try to answer, Is God Real? Which is the title of Lee's book. It's a great title because it's the number one question when you look at searches, etc. Is God Real? I would tell you, if you've never answered that question, get on a horse and start trying to find the answer. What I mean by get on the horse is get the evidence, do the research. There's so many great resources now that can guide you in that way. It's not a brainwashing. This is factual data. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Yes or no? That kind of is the game changer. If he claimed to be the Messiah and died and was resurrected, wouldn't you want to embrace that? That's what we're talking about. Is God Real? All I could say is we're going to do the best job we can to present the material. Then it's up to you. This is one place you should not hesitate to investigate and determine for yourself, yes, I believe in Jesus or no, I don't. All right, let's get into this book, Is God Real? That's a heady title to be the author of. In that context, you really do believe if a person comes with an open mind, not predetermined to battle you, but even in that case, that's okay. With that open mind, do you think a fair-minded person will put the pieces together if they're seeking the Lord? The Old Testament and Jeremiah, the New Testament and Hebrews both say if you sincerely seek God, you're going to find him. That's exciting. That's exciting. I think the key is an open-hearted, open-minded investigation. When I started my investigation, I did a couple of things. I said, number one, I'm going to do this like an umpire in a baseball game. I'm going to call a ball a ball and a strike a strike and just let things play out the way they should. Number two, when I have gathered the evidence, I'm going to reach a verdict. I'm not going to do this forever. When the evidence is in, I'm going to reach a verdict. The third thing I did, and this will surprise you, I think, I prayed. I was an atheist and the prayer I prayed was, God, I don't believe you're there. In fact, I'm sure you're not, but if you are, I want to meet you. Wow, that's great. I figured, what have I got to lose? 15 seconds, 10 seconds of a prayer. If God is real, then it changes everything. Lee, in that regard, why do you think this question of God's existence is something humans have, A, pursued for so long? I guess when I look at it, one of the most profound statements I've ever heard on that, you look at all of humanity around the world and you find religion. You find five major religions. Most of them, I'd say all but one, are typically things you do to get to God. You pray five times a day a certain direction. You live a very rigid lifestyle and therefore you will achieve heaven. I believe Christianity is the only religion, if we use that term, that is evidence of God reaching out to us. That always convicted me and it seemed to be the right thing when God's the one doing it, not us trying to do it. Yes. Every other religion is based on the do plan. Do a bunch of things. Use a Tibetan prayer wheel, give alms to the poor, make a pilgrimage or whatever. You got to do a bunch of things to earn your way to God. Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E. It's done. Jesus said on the cross, it's finished. It is a free gift of God's grace. That makes it distinctive among all the world religions. As you say, it means that we can't brag about, look at all I've done and I've earned my way to heaven. The Bible says, so no one can boast. God offers forgiveness and eternal life is a free gift of grace. The positive construct there is that we're all looking. These are isolated areas that maybe back when these religions were started, there wasn't a lot of exposure to Christianity, but people's hearts are turned toward God. That's the fundamental truth. It's funny. The reason I wrote this book is my publisher actually came to me and said, we've discovered something interesting. Our tech people, I said, what? He said, we've discovered that 200 times a second around the clock, someone on planet earth is typing into a computer search engine. Basically the question, is God real? 200 times a second? 200 times a second. It goes with what you're saying. There's this innate desire in us to find what is our purpose? Who is our creator? Am I alone? Is there a future? Is there an afterlife? Is there more than this world that I see and touch? I thought, my goodness. Yet, as you say, the percentage of Americans who believe in God is now down to its lowest ever, 81%. Yet at the same time, we're seeing a lot of young people with curiosity about faith. I have a friend whose ministry is to travel the country and to speak to groups of high school and college students. He said, I've seen more teenagers come to faith in Jesus Christ in the last three years than in the previous 18 years of ministry combined. And why? It's because I think the emptiness that people feel when you extract the belief in God from a culture, people feel that and they say, are we without an anchor? Are we without hope? Is this all that there is? Is there no ultimate right and wrong? Is it all just preference? I mean, there's so much hanging on this issue. If God does not exist, if God is not real, we don't have free will. We have no afterlife, no hope for anything beyond this world. There's all these implications that flow out of that. And I think people, when a culture begins to slide in that direction, as our culture has, then people begin to say, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is there any hope? Is there anything I can grasp onto that can give me something beyond this world? Well, and in that context, I mean, we as Christians become very fearful when we see that slide, yet at the same time, it may be the very ingredients that God is going to use for revival. Exactly. Right. I mean, that's the irony. Exactly. We're seeing these things around the country, these little revivals breaking out. Colleges? Yeah. And we see it. I saw one ministry had 20% more young people come to faith last year than the previous year. So there are these good signs that are going on. And I think it's incumbent on us as followers of Christ to help young people recognize that we have a faith that is not based on make-believe, wishful thinking, legend, or that kind of thing, but it's built on a solid foundation of historical and scientific truth. That is what this book is about. As a journalist, I mean, you set up interviews probably over your entire lifetime, even after becoming a Christian. So you're drawing from interviews that you've done over the decades. One person that caught me, and you mentioned in the book, PhD in philosophy, Bill Craig. Yes. And something that he called the Kalam or Kalam argument. Kalam Cosmological Argument. Sounds a fancy title, but it's a simple argument. Yeah, but I love this. It's like Occam's razor. Take everything to the extreme, and is it positive or negative? And that usually indicates what is true. So in that context, Kalam's argument, what is it? It's very powerful. And I'll tell you what, Jim, if I were still an atheist, this single argument for the existence of God would convince me that God exists. This is all I need. Now I need the resurrection to teach me that Christianity is true, that of the various options. But this would convince me, it's a very simple argument. Over the last 50 years or so, scientists have come to the conclusion that the universe had a beginning. It's not eternal. It has not always existed. Well, that leads to a very simple argument for the existence of God called the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It's very simple. It says this, number one, whatever begins to exist has a cause. Number two, we now know the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause behind it. Now, you think about that. What kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence? Well, number one, it must be transcendent because it had to be separate and apart from creation. Number two, it had to be eternal or timeless because it existed before physical time came into being. It must be immaterial or spirit because it existed before physical things were created. It must be powerful given the immensity of the creation event. It must be smart given the precision of the creation event. It must be personal because he had to make the decision to create. It must be creative because, my goodness, just look at the wonders of this universe. It must be caring or loving because he fashioned a habitat for us to flourish in. And then Occam's Razor, the scientific principle that says don't manufacture things to explain an effect. Don't manufacture causes to explain an effect beyond what you need. You just need one God so there'd be just one creator. So what have we got? Transcendent, eternal, spirit, powerful, smart, personal, creative, caring, unique. That is a description of the God of the Bible. And you go, this is such an airtight argument that no skeptic has been able to shoot it down. And Bill Craig, who is popularized, has two PhDs, one of the top philosophers in the world. He's done debates with major philosophers around the world on this topic. And it is a powerful argument that, again, just became particularly potent in the last few decades because it used to be that, until now, scientists thought the universe always existed. But Christians always opposed that and said, no, no, no, wait a minute. According to the Bible, it began to exist at some point in the past. And that's exactly what science tells us. And it is both interesting and it should not be alarming that the deeper science goes, the more that we see of God's nature and God's universe, it does lean and push us toward believing that there is a creator, if you're fair-minded about it. I saw the Time magazine when the Big Bang was finally resolved. Yes, there was the Big Bang. And they said all of matter may have existed in the size of a golf ball. And what was interesting is that scripture talks about the entire universe being in the hand and we're made in the image of God. So you could put that together. A very subtle point, debatable, of course, but that in the palm of God's hand, whom we are created in the image of, everything existed. Yeah. It's remarkable. And then you look at the way the in a way that defies the explanation, oh, it's just a coincidence or it just happened by chance. No, it didn't. List some of those things because it's pretty remarkable. Well, I'll give you a couple that are my favorite. The force of gravity. We all know what that is. You drop something, it's going to hit the floor. But the force of gravity could have been set anywhere along the continuum. If you pictured a ruler across the entire universe, 20 billion light years broken down in one inch increments, that represents the plausibly, the range along which the force of gravity could have been set anywhere along that ruler. And yet it's set at the exact right place so that life can exist. What if we change it? What if we change the force of gravity one inch compared to the 20 billion light year width of the universe? Intelligent life would be impossible anywhere in the universe. That's just one parameter. It would be like you go out, you know, we're in Colorado. It'd be like on a summer night, you're up in the Rocky Mountains and you go outside and you look up at the sky and you expect to see stars in the sky. But on this night, you don't see stars. On this night, you see 50 to 100 giant dials in the universe. And each dial could be calibrated to one of trillions or trillions of possible settings. And yet every one of these dials is exactly perfectly calibrated so that life can exist. That is the picture that modern physics gives us of our universe. I'll give you one other example that is probably, this one will just blow your mind. It's the ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force. Now that's a complicated deal, but here's what you need to know. That is finely tuned to one part in 10,000 trillion, trillion, trillion. Now, how do we visualize that? Well, the astrophysicist Hugh Ross said, here's an illustration. Imagine a continent the size of North America piled with dimes all the way to the moon, 238,000 miles. Okay. You got that picture in your head. Okay. Now picture a thousand North Americas with dimes piled up to the moon. Okay. Now picture a billion continents, the size of North America with dimes piled 238,000 miles up to the moon. Now take one dime and spray paint it red and mix it among the billion continents piled up to the moon and then take one person and blindfold them and say, you can travel among this. You can reach in one time and you can pick out one dime. What are the odds it would be that dime that had been spray painted red? The odds are one chance in 10,000 trillion, trillion, trillion. I mean, some people, and I'll get your response to this, most rational people will go, okay, that's overwhelming evidence for order and intelligent design and creator. There will be someone, a skeptic that says, yeah, so we found the one dime. I mean, that's almost insane. I asked a scientist that, he's a PhD from UCLA and a professor of physics at a major university in the Midwest, secular university. And I asked him, what are the odds that this could have happened just by happenstance? That one dime. That one dime. And he looked at me and he said, well, we scientists have a term for that. I said, what? He said, ain't going to happen. It's just, when you reach numbers like, and remember, keep in mind, that's just one dial. There's 50 to a hundred of these dials. And when you get to those numbers, you could say, it is impossible. It is impossible. And so if you just take the origin of the universe that we talked about, if you look at the fine tuning of the universe, how does anyone who studies this come to the conclusion that there is not a supernatural creator behind it? I don't know. Yeah. Because it would convince me that there is. Interesting. I remember when we did the truth project, we filmed Dr. Berlinski, I think he was mathematics at Stanford University at the time. But he said, the dirty little secret, between the biology department and the math department is we don't eat lunch together. Because we don't agree with their models, like evolution, just mathematically, there was never enough time for that to occur. And I thought that was, and he said, people will say to me, oh, that you have that bias because you're a religious person. He said, I'm not, I'm agnostic. But there is no way, mathematically speaking, that that happened. Speak to that for a moment, though, in this culture where herd mentality seems to have consumed us now with technology, you had the quarantine, people just moved in a herd. And when it comes to worldview and understanding things, it seems like we've lost so many people saying, wait, wait a minute, what about, kind of the skeptic in all areas. Right. And that's true. And it is easier today to come out as an atheist than it is to come out as an evangelical Christian, for sure, in our culture. Because there's so much support for it. So much support. Pats on the back. Exactly. When I was an atheist, you never told people you were an atheist back then in the 1970s. Think of that turn. Oh, people would think you're a pedophile or something. You just didn't say that. Now, it's the in thing. And so our kids go off to college, and they hear things and are challenged in their faith by a professor. And they come home at Thanksgiving and say, yeah, I'm not so sure I believe this stuff anymore. Yeah. Lee, we had painted the picture. Let's go, you know, we talked about the universe and all of that. Let's go microscopic. Because Gene did chemistry degree, my wife. And this morning early when I was reading the prep and going through the book, one of the things you captured in there, which is stunning. And of course, my wife said, yeah, I knew that. Which is in every cell in the body, 100 trillion cells, generally. I'm not counting your cells, John, but you can do that later. 100 trillion. But within each cell, there's six feet of DNA. That's right. I was like, that blows me away as an MBA. Yeah. It's remarkable. She goes, oh, yeah. I'm like, that's unbelievable. It is unbelievable. You open any cell in your body, a cell, and unwind the DNA, it's six feet tall. And here's the thing. Embedded in that DNA is a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out the precise assembly instructions for every protein out of which you're made. So in other words, just like English uses a 26-letter alphabet to spell out words, DNA uses a four-letter chemical alphabet to explain how to create us. How to make a heart, how to make a liver, a skeletal system. There is more information, there are more words in every cell in your body than in 200 years of the Sunday New York Times in every cell in your body. And the question is, where did that come from? Because every time, without exception, when we see information, there's always an intelligence behind it. So nature can produce patterns. We know that. I live in Houston a lot of my time. And if you go down to Galveston Beach on a morning and the sand is wet, you can see ripple marks in the sand. And it is logical to say the waves made those ripple marks. Why? Because nature can produce those kinds of patterns. But if you're walking down the beach in Galveston at dawn and in the wet sand, you see John loves Mary and a heart around it and an arrow through it, you wouldn't say, oh, the waves created that. Those are smart waves. Those are smart waves. They're intelligent. That's right. There has to be an intelligence behind it. So whenever there's a computer code or a book or a painting on a cave wall, there is always, always, always an intelligence behind it. And again, this is just a discovery over the last few decades that help us understand how this points toward an intelligence beyond us. So this argument of prebiotic soup. I mean, I heard this when I was in school. I did too. And the kind of the science classes I had to take at university. So, you know, we were just a bunch of mud and then lightning hits this mud in just the right way. It creates the right temperature. And then all of a sudden all these complex proteins, boom, they're there. Now they're making livers and hearts and skeletons. It's just ridiculous. I mean, it takes a lot of faith. It takes a lot of faith. I mean, first of all, there is no evidence that there was ever a prebiotic soup. And we think there was. And they actually- Exactly. It's only soup. That's right. The camels would work it out. Some kind of mud. Yeah. But, you know, scientists to this day have no, they cannot spell out how you can take dead matter and create through evolutionary processes, living matter. There's just no explanation that any scientists have been able to come up with. They don't know how the universe originated. They don't know how life originated and they don't know how human consciousness originated. All big ones. All big ones. And guess what? There is an explanation and it's God that explains everything. So, you know, I deal with the prebiotic soup issue in the book and talk about the lack of scientific evidence that it ever really existed and the problems, the steps that would need to take place in order for non-living mud to become living cells. It's mind-blowing. Well, plus, seriously, if you're limited to those elements, you could do that in a lab. That's right. You can go get mud at the Death Valley or find some place and zap it with lightning. Here's the other thing. If we did it in a lab, that would be a sign of intelligent design because we would have intervened and made the conditions right so that- We're talking about a good new movie. Yeah, there you go. But you say Easter, that basically the resurrection of Christ is the defining moment. That Jesus could have claimed to be the son of God, but if there was no resurrection, there's nothing special other than a really good human being that lived a good life and taught many good things. The resurrection is it. You once interviewed Hugh Hefner from Playboy about this content. What did he have to say about the resurrection? I can't believe you asked him about it, but the resurrection of Christ at Hugh Hefner. I actually got the interview in the Playboy mansion about his beliefs about God. I used to have a TV show, a national show called Faith Under Fire. Here he is in his traditional silk pajamas and smoking pipe. I said, well, what do you think about the resurrection of Jesus? His eyes got wide. He said, oh, well, if the resurrection is true, my goodness, it knocks over a series of dominoes that lead to all kinds of wonderful things. It means that there's an afterlife. There's so many things. I said, well, have you ever looked into the resurrection? Have you ever looked at the evidence for the resurrection? He said, no, no, I just don't believe it's true. I don't believe that Jesus is more God anymore than you and I are. And so I go, oh, wait a minute. He was a bright guy. And he understood, even as an atheist or as a skeptic, he understood the relevance and the implications if the resurrection is true. And yet he never took the time to investigate. And that is so true of so many of us. The greatest lawyer who ever lived, Sir Lionel Buckhugh, in the Guinness Book of World Records, won more murder trials in a row as a defense attorney than anybody in history, knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth, appointed the Supreme Court of his land. And he was a skeptic about the resurrection until somebody went to him and said, Sir Lionel, you're the greatest lawyer who's ever lived. Have you ever investigated the evidence? And he said, no, I haven't, but I will. And he spent years doing it. Now recite to you one sentence he wrote that summarized his conclusion. He says, I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof, which leaves absolutely no room for doubt. Such powerful stories from Lee Strobel today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And I hope you've been encouraged by what he shared today. And hang on, there's still more to come. Yeah, Lee's done a great job presenting the evidence for the existence of God. I love the way he's shown us that science and faith do match up. And I want to take just a moment, if I can, to remind you that we are a listener and viewer-supported ministry here at Focus on the Family. And we need your partnership to continue to provide this kind of life-giving content. Consider making a generous donation to Focus on the Family today. And if you know someone who could benefit from this message from Lee Strobel, please hit the share button and send it along to them. That's a great way for you to help expand the reach of Focus. And thank you in advance for your generosity and your donations to Focus on the Family as we help so many families around the world. Let's go ahead now and get back to more from Lee Strobel. There does seem to be a slight decline in those who believe in God. Give us those numbers and your perception as to what's going on. Yeah. In 1967, according to the Gallup Poll, 98% of Americans believe in God. Think of that. 98%. Today, the number is 81%, the lowest in history. And if you ask people, are you sure that God exists? It goes down to the 60s, about 64%. So the question is, why has that happened? And what are your observations about it? I think there's a lot of reasons, but I think one that's particularly relevant to Focus on the Family is, I see this correlation between two trends in America. One is the increase in spiritual skepticism, people who question whether God exists. And the other trend is the increase in fatherless families. I think there's a connection. Paul Vitz, who is a PhD at New York University, wrote a book called Faith of the Fatherless years ago. And what he did is he researched the lives of famous atheists through history. Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, Freud, Voltaire, Wells, Feuerbach, O'Hare. Every single one of them either had a father who died when they were young, divorced their mother when they were young, or with whom they had a very difficult relationship. And the implication is, if your earthly father has abandoned you, disappointed you, hurt you, abused you in some way, then you don't really want to know about a heavenly father, because you think he's just going to be a magnified version of your earthly father. He's only going to hurt you more. And so you'll find that you don't realize this is going on, but it will cause you to kind of manufacture reasons not to believe. And if you don't want to believe, any reason is good enough. So you'll come up with these reasons why you don't believe that God exists. Now, I was an atheist for much of my life, and I had had a terrible relationship with my father. So you fit the mold. I fit the mold. I remember my dad looking at me on the eve of my high school graduation. We had a big blowout argument, and he said, I don't have enough love for you to feel my little finger. Wow. And so we had a difficult relationship. Did that influence me to walk down the road to atheism? I think so. Was I aware of it? No. Now, by the way, I'll mention this. If somebody's listening and saying, oh my goodness. Never thought about it. Maybe that's true for me. Maybe it's true for my best friend or whatever. Here's the antidote. C.S. Lewis said this. He said, imagine, say to your friend or whoever's going through this, say to your friend, can you imagine for just a moment what the perfect father would be like? Just imagine. What would he be like? Oh, well, he'd be gracious. He'd be kind. He'd be your biggest cheerleader. He'd be your biggest encourager. He'd pick you up in his lap and give you a hug. Say, wait, that is the picture of your heavenly father, right? Your heavenly father is not just a magnified version of your earthly father. He is fundamentally different. He is the perfect father. He is the father who you long to have for eternity. And I think, Lee, it's so important, and it's so obscure. Some people, especially in universities around the country, they almost now, that's become so passe, that connection between a fatherless home and your angst toward your natural earth father and your heavenly father. I mean, these things can be so subtle. You don't even know what is triggering you. What is the problem? And it is important to dig into that, especially if you had an abusive father, a distant father, a lacking father, an absent father. Absolutely. I would say if that's true in your life, ask yourself, how might that have influenced me in what I believe about God? You also had some discussion, I believe, with Evel Knievel. You are interviewing some very interesting people. I've had some fascinating, and Charles Templeton, the famous skeptic from Canada. So what did you say to him? Well, Evel Knievel was on a beat. Evel Knievel lived, he was a womanizer. He was a drunk. He was a gambler. He was a bad dude. He didn't seem to respect life very much. No. I mean, like his own. He had more broken bones than anybody in the world, according to... He had broken every bone. He had broken everything. And here he is on the beach in his later years, and God spoke to him. And he said, I felt it on the inside. And God said, Robert, I've saved you more times than you'll ever know. Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus. Wow. And it freaked him out. He said, I don't even know who Jesus is. So he called the only Christian he knew, Frank Gifford, the sportscaster. Yeah, yeah. And said, Frank, I had this experience and God spoke to me, but who is Jesus? And Frank said, get that book, Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. Oh, you got to love that. That's great. So anyway, he reads my book. He becomes a radical born again believer. How old is he at this point? Well, he's in his, golly, I think it's late 60s, early 70s, but his health was failing. And he, probably the most radically transformed person I'd ever encountered, 180 degree change, so much so that when he was baptized, he gave his story, he gave his testimony. And then he looked at people out there in the congregation. Do you know Jesus? Have you met him? Have you encountered him? Has you experienced him? And the pastor literally ripped up his sermon and said, you've heard the gospel. If you want to right now get, and this is a church that never, to my knowledge, had an altar call. He said, if you want to get up right now and come forward and receive Jesus and be baptized, come forward. 700 people came forward in two services to receive Christ and be baptized on the spot. It was like Pentecost had broken out. And when evil died about a year later, at his request on his tombstone, it says simply believe in Jesus Christ. Wow. What a powerful story and what a great story of God's redemptive power, right? And the thing that he would tell me over and over and over again, as we would talk every week on the phone, he would say to me, Lee, if I'd only come to faith as a child, as a teenager, my life could have been different. I could have lived it for God. It was his biggest lament. And he said, Lee, whenever you talk to young people, tell them, don't put it off. Don't wait. Do it now. Wow. I mean, that's a good point, right? I mean, that's what we're here doing. Let's speak to a couple of other illustrations or examples you have in that regard. We hear a lot from the Middle East about Muslims having dreams. We've had a couple of guests on that have talked about those experiences. Their ministries are in that part of the world. We don't want to talk more about that because of the dangers involved. But they are reporting that, that there seems to be this like incredible harvest, spiritual harvest taking place with Muslims. What's happening? This is in closed country where it's illegal to share the gospel. And what we're seeing is a third to a quarter of Muslims who come to faith in Christ are because they have a Jesus dream. What happens is, and this shows that the dreams are not just subjective, but there's something objective really going on, is that the dream will point them towards something else that will explain the gospel and lead them to faith. So I'll give you an example. There's a woman named Noor in Cairo, mother of several children, Muslim woman. She has a Jesus dream. Jesus appears to her. She feels the love, the grace. She's never experienced this before. She's talking to Jesus. They're walking along a lake. And she said, Jesus, tell me more, tell me more. And he says to her, my friend will tell you. And she said, who's your friend? And then she realized there was another man walking with them. And Jesus said, my friend will tell you. Well, she wakes up from the dream. Next day, she goes to the crowded marketplace in Cairo and she sees the man from her dream, the exact man who had been walking next to Jesus. She goes up to him and says, you, you, and the guy, whoa, what's going on? He said, you were in my dream. Same glasses, same face, same clothes. You were in my dream. And the guy says, did you ever dream about Jesus? And she said, yes. Well, he was a missionary. And the only reason he had come to that crowded marketplace that day is because he felt God leading him to go to that crowded marketplace on that Friday. And then, so he opens the Bible and he shares the gospel with her. So this is what generally happens. So this tells me, this is more than just something going on in somebody's head. This is something supernatural going on. And this is the pattern that we see. You know what I love about that? Last time we talked about God's intricacy and detail orientation about setting the universe in exactly the right way, that any one thing that would have been just off would not have allowed things to occur like we experience them today. That's amazing. That sounds like a job for God, right? Setting these things. But then you turn around and talk about that same God who is creating this situation for a woman or this other person to have a dream and to reveal himself. I mean, that is God. It's not just the working of the universe, but the tilt that he wants to have you come into a relationship with him. That he would care about each of us. We're all made in his image. It's hard to even believe. I think it's uncomfortable a bit to believe that God would know me and care about me like that. Don't look at me, Lord. I talk in the book about the instances where people like Evel Knievel have had these direct experiences of God, where he just literally intervenes in their life. My friend Nabeel Qureshi, who was a Muslim and very anti-Christian, and he got in all these debates with Christians trying to convince them that Christianity was false. And he had a dream. And in this dream, there was a banquet. And yet, as he looked into this banquet, he realized he was excluded from the banquet. He wasn't invited to the banquet. He didn't accept the invitation to the banquet. And it was a chilling dream to him. And he woke up and he said to his Christian friend, hey, I just had this weird dream. What does it mean? He said, look in the gospel of Luke, because you just dreamed a scene from Luke's gospel about a banquet that God invites us to, but we have to accept the invitation. And Nabeel Qureshi ended up not only coming to faith, but then becoming a great apologist and evangelist before his untimely death in 2017. Amazing. And yeah, so, and wrote a great book called Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. There you go. If the question is, is God real? The second question is, if there's a loving, kind God, why does evil occur? Why do babies die? That kind of line of reasoning and fair question. It's not an off the table question, especially if you've sat in front of people that great losses occurred in their life, like the loss of a child. It is the number one question. And it's interesting that every worldview has to respond to this question, not just Christianity, but I think we've got the best answer. Again, I'm going to ask a couple of questions that get us there. But first is your experience as a journalist, training in university, you got an assignment to go look at the underbelly of Chicago. That kind of reinforced your atheism, if I remember correctly. Describe that assignment. Why did it affirm your atheism? Yeah. I mean, when I saw the kind of poverty, I mean, I grew up in the suburbs. My dad was pretty wealthy. We lacked for nothing. Except love. Except love. Yeah, in many ways. And yet, as a journalist, Chicago Tribune, I remember one of my first assignments was to do a 30 part series on the poor of Chicago, to profile a poor family or a poor person every day for 30 days. And so I went out to the poorest sections of Chicago and found these people who lived in desperate situations. And it did dig my hole of atheism even deeper. Why? Because I thought, how could there be a loving God? If I'm in comfort in the suburbs, and yet just 30 miles away, people are living in poverty like this. It just reinforced my idea that there is no God. And this is the number one objection that's raised. I did a study a few years ago, I hired Barna's organization to do a scientific poll. And I asked Americans, if you could ask God any one question and you knew he'd give you an answer right now, what would you ask him? And by a factor of 80% or so, the question is some permutation of why does God allow suffering? And my wife has a neuromuscular condition that has her in pain every single day. She has been in pain every day for 20 years. She'll be in pain every day for the rest of her life. She has an incurable condition, unless God does a miracle, which he has not done. And so this is a personal issue. And I bet for people listening to say, yeah, it's a personal issue. And fortunately, we have a personal God who provides good answers. In that context, you interviewed Peter Kreeft, who's a PhD. You quote him in the book, and I just want to read the last line of that quote, because it's so powerful. And it maybe for the first time kind of put it in context for me, because it's okay to be upset about suffering. I mean, God is big enough to take that. I think suffering, as scripture talks about, certainly leads to good things if we allow it to do its good work. And yet at the same time, it shouldn't be the obstacle to why we believe in God. But the quote was this, the source of evil is not God's power. I would even add his existence, but rather mankind's freedom, that we create the evil upon other people. That's a powerful quote, and that probably covers a good percentage of the evil that occurs in this world. You still have death of an infant, but speak to those things. Here's what he means. God has existed from eternity past as God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit in a perfect love relationship. And so the greatest value in the universe is love. And when God decided to create humankind, He wanted us to be able to love, love Him and love each other. But the only way you can enable someone to love is if you give them free choice, freedom of the will. Why? Well, when my daughter was little, they used to have a doll called Chatty Cathy. Yeah. And it had a string on the back. I thought it was called irritating. Maybe I got the name wrong. If you pull the string in the back and let go, it would talk to you. And so my daughter would pull the string and let go and the doll would say, I love you. That's how good the technology was. But the point is, did that doll love my daughter? No, of course not. It was a mechanical device. It was programmed to say that. Real love always involves a choice. And so what has humankind done with its free will? We've turned our back on God. We hurt each other. We're selfish. I mean, I can take my hand and I can feed a hungry person. Or I can take that same hand using my freedom of will and pick up a gun and kill an innocent person. But it's a little disingenuous for me to pick up a gun and kill an innocent person and then say, God, why do you allow suffering in the world? I'm the problem. Our freedom of will has opened the door. Now, God created the potential for that to happen because it's the only way we could love. But we activated that potential by inviting evil into the world. And the Bible says that it's even corroded creation itself. The creation is groaning for redemption that will someday occur and for things to be made right. So I think this goes a long way toward us understanding how our choices can open the door to evil entering into our lives. The other contrast would be, in my mind, the fall of Adam and Eve invited sin into the world, the chaos that's in the world. They used their freedom of the will. You also talked, you mentioned this a moment ago, Charles Templeton, because I thought the example that he had comes to the core, not so much of man's evil against man, but circumstances that occur. And I think Charles Templeton, who was a pastor who claimed he had lost his faith when he saw a Life magazine photo of an African woman holding a dead child because of drought. Describe that because that maybe cuts closer to the core of why would that happen? Why wouldn't God just make it rain? Yeah, exactly. Charles Templeton was the number one skeptic in Canada. He wrote a book once called Farewell to God, My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith. So it's kind of the opposite of my book. And now I will, there's a spoiler alert, but in my book, I disclose something that most people don't know, which is that on his deathbed, it appears that he did come back to Yeah. So thank God for that. But he raises the question of what about this suffering? What do we do with this? And a lot of people see this. I see the suffering in my wife and say, how can God tolerate this? And yet the Bible says that God can cause, if we follow him, if we're committed to his ways in this world or the next, he can take our suffering and he can draw good from it. Now, sometimes that gets thrown out by Christians. It's Romans 8.28. God can cause us all things to work together for good, for those who love him, and those are called according to his purpose. And sometimes we're a little flippant with it. We're a little blithe with it. Someone is going through a tough time. Oh, Romans 8.28, God's going to draw good from it. I don't feel like we are ill-willed in doing that, but the way we say it can come across as cold. It's something to think about. It can. And yet one thing that Peter Krafft said to me that changed my life, he said to me, I'll never forget when I told my wife this, she cried. He said, God has taken the worst possible thing that could ever happen in the universe, which is the death of the son of God on a cross. And from that, he has drawn the best thing that could ever happen in the universe, which is the opening of heaven to all who follow him. And if God can take the worst thing in the universe and turn it into the best thing in the universe, he can take even our sufferings, even my wife's pain that she goes through. He can take that. He can redeem it. He can draw good from it. And you know what? I see how he draws good from it. I see how it has changed her life in a way where she is so empathetic and caring toward other people who are hurting in a way that she probably wouldn't be if she personally had not gone through this experience that she's gone through. So, you know, I remember Johnny Erickson Tata, who was paralyzed in a diving accident as a teenager, has been in a wheelchair for over 50 years. And I was talking to her once and she said, I would much rather be in this wheelchair my whole life knowing God than walking around not knowing him. God drew good from that. And think of all the people she has influenced for eternity in a way that probably would not have happened. And I think when you look at it, all of the evidence, which we talked about last time, this time, the book, far more discussion about the evidence there, the resurrection, etc. It's all critical, especially for thinking people. You need to feel it, understand it, touch it, rationalize it, believe it. But in the end, it's kind of like, you know, Revelation 12.11, which is a scripture I've often thought about where it says they have conquered him, meaning Satan, by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death. And that's what you're kind of describing. Suffering and pain. But the idea that no one can steal from you your testimony. I mean, they can tell you right is wrong and wrong is right. But they can't replace in your heart what God has done to you, the way that you've heard his still voice in your heart. They can't challenge the fact that God has changed your life. Right. Or the fact of the death and resurrection, the blood of the lamb. That's what that's referring to. The evidence of the resurrection. That combination is unassailable. Yeah, it is. And I've found, frankly, over the years that I've changed my approach in talking to people who raise questions about pain and suffering. What I used to do is, oh, if you could ask anyone a question, you knew he'd give an answer, what would you ask? Well, I'd ask, why does he allow suffering? Oh, well, let me give you a five-point sermon on why God allows suffering. And I'd give a five-point sermon. And because I think we have good reasons to understand why God would allow that. I don't do that anymore. What I do now is I ask a follow-up question. If you could ask God any one question, what would it be? I'd ask, why is he allowed suffering? Oh, let me ask you a follow-up question. Of all the potential questions in the universe, why did you ask that one? Now they get personal. Now they say, because my wife was just diagnosed with cervical cancer, and I want to know where's God in the middle of that? Or we lost a baby in childbirth five years ago. Where was God when that happened? And I've come to realize what that person probably needs from me right now as a follower of Jesus is probably not a five-point sermon. What he needs from me is to put my arm around his shoulder and to sit next to him and cry with him and to be Jesus with him in that moment. And so I found that at some point, yes, let's deal with the intellectual question. But the love of God, the grace of God, if I can be a conduit from that into a hurting person's life, God uses that in remarkable ways. I so appreciated personally what Lee had to share today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Such wisdom and insight and encouragement that should bolster all of us in our faith. Well, I love how Lee gathered all those experts to validate the existence of God. It gives us such a solid undergirding for our beliefs. And here at Focus on the Family, we want to give you the tools you need to build a solid relationship with God and live in his peace and love. And if we've helped you, please consider giving back to help others, especially as the year is coming to a close. Focus can't exist or do what we do without you. God uses your support to provide biblical resources and programs to save and strengthen families just like yours. And when you give a gift of any amount today to the ministry, we'll send you a copy of Lee's book, Is God Real? Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life, as our way of saying thank you. So please partner with us today. Give families hope. And on behalf of those you're going to help, let me say thank you. Donate today generously as you can and request your copy of the book, Is God Real? We've got all the details in the program description below. Well, thanks for watching Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.