J. WARNER WALLACE | A Cold Case Approach to Christianity (Ep. 275)

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0:29 This is Undaunted Life of Man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.

0:52 Our guys today have got a special guest on the show and his name is Jim Warner Wallace. So

0:56 Jim is a cold case homicide detected by trade. Also, he's a popular national speaker and a best-selling

1:01 author. He is also the senior fellow at the Colson Center for Christian worldview. He is also,

1:06 this is going to be the also intro guys because he's an adjunct professor of apologetics at the

1:10 Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in Southern Evangelical Seminary and he's faculty

1:15 member at Summit Ministry. So this guy is very, very interesting and I really enjoyed my time

1:19 with him because he became a Christ follower at the age of 35. And he did so after investigating

1:24 the claims of the New Testament Gospels using his skillset as a detective. I mean, how many guys

1:29 do you know that have done that and became a Christian on the back? And it's not really a,

1:33 it's not really a story that you're going to hear very often. And he eventually was,

1:36 he earned his master's degree in theological studies from Gateway Seminary. Here's the thing

1:41 with this guy is you've likely heard the name and you've likely seen some of his stories because

1:44 you would have caught him on television at some point because his cases have been featured on

1:48 Dateline NBC. I think he has the most cases ever featured on Dateline NBC. He's also had stuff on

1:52 court TV in Fox News. He's written a lot of books that I think some of you guys have come across.

1:57 I think I mentioned some on this podcast, cold case Christianity, God's crime scene and forensic

2:01 faith in addition to a new book, which we talk a lot about today, which is called Person of Interest,

2:05 why Jesus still matters in a world that rejects the Bible. So part of the reason why I like this

2:10 interview so much today is because he has a very unique perspective on how he came to faith,

2:14 but also a unique perspective in how he applies what he's learned in his job as a cold case detective

2:19 into how he can undergird and provide scaffolding for a Christian worldview because a lot of Christians

2:24 today, they don't really have a reason why they believe the way that they believe. There's like,

2:28 I was born in Oklahoma, so I guess I'll be a Christian or I've just gone to church since I

2:32 was a little kid. So I guess I'll be a Christian or oh, some Christians seem nice. So I guess I'll

2:36 do that. He rejects that almost entirely because he wants Christians because as an atheist growing

2:41 up as an atheist, he saw Christians as these people with these squishy intellects, right?

2:44 They just believe these silly things and didn't really know why. But also we didn't just spend

2:48 time talking about that. We also talked a lot about manhood and masculinity within the church,

2:52 because that's something that he and I talked about off air before we even got going. I'm like,

2:55 man, I need to go ahead and start recording this so we can start to get some of this laid down.

2:59 And then we kept the conversation going well after the recording ended. But guys, I really,

3:02 really enjoyed my time with Jim. I think you will as well. So I'm not going to keep him from you

3:05 any longer. So without further ado, let's get into it.

3:09 Jim Warner, Wallace, welcome done Daunted Life of Man's podcast.

3:12 Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

3:14 Hey, I just got to tell you all to all my listeners, you and I just had a really great

3:17 conversation off air that hopefully I can bring on air, which is kind of my job here. So we'll

3:22 see. That was all wasted. We shouldn't even had that conversation. We're not going to have any of

3:26 it now. Hey, we're going to see what we can do to make sure it's not wasted. But I want to get

3:30 started in, I guess the most Broadway possible because you've done a lot of great things in your

3:34 career that have kind of been in the same vein. But you were a detective before you became a Christian

3:39 apologist. And just the fact that you were both is fairly unique. So I guess a two part question

3:43 to start us off here. What drew you to the line of work in terms of being a detective law enforcement

3:48 becoming an officer? And how did you end up doing cold case work? Because that's not a common thing

3:53 even in the law enforcement world. Yeah, so my dad was a cop. And I think I just watched him.

3:59 He divorced my mom when we were very young. So I was not raised by my dad. He was more like the

4:04 kind of guy that you like, you know, I can uncle that you're like, you know, and I had that kind of

4:08 relationship, really more of a friend relationship or a mentor relationship than a father relationship

4:14 with him. And by the time I was I was in grad school, I was at UCLA. And I didn't know about it. I

4:19 had tinkered with the idea of going into law enforcement. But as I kind of got older, I realized

4:24 that it would be a great, it's an honorable job. My dad raised a second family with, you know, they

4:30 were struggled financially, but it was stable. It was honorable. He had six kids with a second

4:36 wife. And I looked at my wife at the time. I thought we were just dating. And I said, this,

4:41 this job would be better for us as a married couple than that really that selfish reason is

4:46 why I ended up in law enforcement. Now, God uses, you know, your skills. I was not a Christian for

4:51 another almost 10 years. But I, you know, had a chance to kind of learn some things as an officer.

4:58 And I right away kind of advanced up and did a lot of, I was in SWAT for three years. I worked

5:03 gangs for two years. I worked a lot of street dope. I worked undercover. And eventually I ended

5:09 up being assigned to robbery homicide. And when you're assigned to homicide, we have a bunch of

5:14 unsolved homicides that go back 30 years. And they would assign these as collateral duties.

5:20 Well, you know, I got fresh homicides. I'm not inclined to work at another case if I don't have

5:25 to. Nobody is. So these, these, these old unsolved murders would really basically go nowhere.

5:29 Two years into having these assigned to us, nobody had advanced their case. And, and we were

5:34 kind of feeling like, Hey, you know, we're kind of busy. But I got injured. And after getting

5:39 injured, I was just, I was light duty. So I wasn't getting assigned anything new. So I said, well,

5:45 give me this, this other case, this whole unsolved murder. And I solved it. And that's what launched

5:50 us because that case right away, we know we're not that far from NBC Universal. So that case

5:56 ended up on Dateline. And then we had a string of cases on Dateline. And as long as those cases

6:00 run Dateline, I discovered my agency was keen on the idea of keeping a cold case team together.

6:06 And so I had a partner, a couple partners, as they retired out, I would get a new one,

6:10 and did that for a number of years. And that's really kind of what people think of me now as

6:15 the cold case guy. But that's how I started working cold cases. It was really just because

6:19 I was injured and solved the first one. And that started a series.

6:23 Well, it's funny you mentioned Dateline, because to be honest with you, I would say the majority

6:27 of the American population, their only connection to cold case police work is Dateline or some sort

6:32 of similar show or something like that. But with that being the case, I'm sure that leads to a lot

6:36 of misconceptions. So what are some of the biggest misconceptions that you've heard or

6:40 experienced about what cold case detectives do or what that work even is?

6:44 Well, I think one of the, I mean, a lot of cold cases are being made now by advances in

6:48 technology. And the other reason why the case is getting reopened is because we have something

6:52 we can do today that we couldn't do that 30 years ago, we didn't have DNA 30 years ago,

6:55 we have DNA now, we didn't have heck, we didn't even have ancestry connections in DNA 10 years

7:00 ago, we have that now. So as this progresses technologically, we can go back and solve old cases.

7:07 Now, I just didn't have any luck with that. That's the misconception that most people have.

7:11 Oh, you solved this with DNA. I've got one case we cleared two years ago with DNA. I opened that

7:16 case in 2003. I think I've got the DNA. I found the DNA that had been stored for years that have

7:23 been lost. And I submitted it, I think in 2006, we didn't submit that DNA. There's no hit. Our

7:30 databases, nobody hit. So we still had an unknown killer. And it was a 10 year old girl that he

7:34 had killed. So we knew this was probably a sexual predator. We probably could make this case,

7:38 eventually, when no one does one of these, a guy like that's probably done 100 of these.

7:43 So at some point, he's going to get locked up. Well, it turns out with ancestry DNA in 2017,

7:49 we were able to submit and find his daughter. We ultimately then found out who he was and he had

7:53 been dead for 15 years. But we cleared the case in 2019. But almost every other case I've ever worked

8:01 was not solved with technology. Wasn't solved with DNA. It's just solved the old fashioned way,

8:07 which is, hey, we got to figure out like, where should we look for the stuff that was overlooked

8:13 earlier? And that's a lot of what we're doing is we're trying to look in those places where maybe

8:17 you weren't looking before. And that's how we solve now kind of bring it down to really my level

8:23 having not been in any type of law enforcement before, you know, you watch too much television

8:28 or movies and you're like, Oh, detectives are constantly doing this. You're constantly getting

8:31 in gunfights. I'm sure it's not nearly as sexy as that. But like, what does the day to day look like

8:37 for somebody? Because again, you know, if you watch first 48 or any of those types of things,

8:40 you know, the further you get away from bang or from, you know, fields or whatever, it's going to

8:44 become a big issue in trying to solve a case. What are the types of things that you're actually

8:48 looking for? And I promise we'll get to your books, his books in a second, guys, don't worry. I'm not

8:52 going to ask him about his detective work the whole time. But I am just curious. Well, you're

8:56 actually you mentioned the best show on TV. When it comes to showing what detectives do, it's the

8:59 first 48 every other show is just flat stupid. Now, Dayland does a good job of kind of re chronicling

9:06 this investigation. But it doesn't give you any insight into what the day looks like. And the first

9:10 48 does give you a sense, at least, of when you're in that chase mode. Now, cold cases are different

9:16 because the guy who's guilty of this doesn't even know you reopened the case until you knock on his

9:21 door. So I can time when I want this to jump off, right? Because once I knock on his door,

9:27 it's like you're in the first 48 again, because that's done. He's going to start scrambling around

9:30 destroying evidence, calling people, changing testimony, doing all the stuff that people do in

9:34 the first 48. Well, he's kind of let this go for 20 years. He's thinking he got away with it until

9:40 so that's why I don't interview anyone is going to get back to him. I'm very careful. When I knock

9:45 on his door, I want to make sure that this is the first he's heard of a reopened investigation.

9:50 He didn't see this coming because two years ago, someone called him who I interviewed.

9:55 So I always picked the periphery first and I worked down toward the center. Then I knock on his door.

9:59 Now we're into that first 48 again. A lot of it is kind of the stuff you see where you're just

10:05 you're chasing down leads. You're talking to people. You're trying to collect this evidence

10:08 before somebody else does. A lot of that is what it is. But look, all of us who work as detectives,

10:12 we started off as patrol officers. You know, people will say, well, how can I be a detective?

10:17 And I, well, do you want to work patrol? Do you want to handle drunk bar fights? Do you want to

10:21 handle domestic violence calls? Do you want to write tickets and do all the other stupid stuff

10:25 you have to do as a patrol officer? Well, no, I just want to work murders. Well, that's the problem

10:30 is that to get here, you have to do 10 years of that. And then eventually you get a chance to

10:35 move up and do other things. So a lot of what we do in terms of the dangerous side of having to,

10:40 you know, defend yourself and, and, you know, be shot at all that. That's going to happen in the

10:47 years. Now, does it happen also at the point of search warrants for detect? Yes. Anytime you put

10:53 yourself in the proximity of somebody who is ultimately going to have to go to jail,

10:57 you put yourself at higher risk. So yeah, while you're off at the periphery, you know, interviewing

11:02 witnesses, there's less risk. But once you get to the point where you're going to put handcuffs on

11:06 somebody, that's where the risk is. And there's there have we've had officers in our agency killed

11:12 at that point, at the point of serving the search warrant, or at the point of we're knocking on the

11:16 door of the suspect now, that's where the risk is. Yeah, tons of risks there. And I'm sure whenever

11:22 you do end up cuffing one of these guys, the level of satisfaction has to be incredibly high,

11:27 especially if they've been not even on the run, just living their own life for maybe decades at

11:31 that point. And this is a little bit of a non fair question because we don't have all data on packet.

11:35 But is there one case or one person that you got way after the fact that was especially

11:41 satisfying? Is there one that maybe sticks out that's not in a book that we're about to talk about?

11:44 Well, they're all satisfied. Well, there's a weird thing that happens that I noticed in one of these

11:51 cases that didn't forever afterwards affected the way I thought about the cases. And that was we had

11:58 a guy who had killed done a murder of his wife years earlier and didn't know we were coming after

12:03 him. Our knock on his door was the very first time he had ever and we were not there to do an

12:07 interview. We had enough information to make an arrest. So we're knocking on this guy's door

12:12 as a team, you know, five detectives and a sergeant. And it was not in our city. So we had the local

12:19 police with us also. But we had we had an arrest warrant. And so we're knocking on his door for the

12:24 first time at the point of arrest. And he was watching a Lakers game. And he was an older guy.

12:33 And he had a very nice condominium. And he had a very nice den. And they had a huge big screen TV.

12:42 And for the back of those days, that was pretty on you. This is maybe like 12, 13 years ago. So

12:48 that was actually relatively rare. Anyone had a TV this nice because he had money. And he had a

12:54 beer that he had just opened. And it was standing on the little round table that was next to his

13:01 recliner. So he's just settling down to watch the Lakers game. And that beer had just been opened.

13:08 And he gets a knock on his door and he gets up and he opens the door and we come in.

13:13 And we have to kind of lock the place up. So we're turning off, you know, eventually we turn off

13:18 the lights and lock the doors and I turn off the TV. And I look over at the beer. And we've been

13:24 there long enough that there is now moisture that condensation on the outside of the bottle that

13:29 was dripping down and around the bottom of the bottle. And I thought to myself,

13:38 he is never going to enter this room again. Somebody's going to get called to clean this place up,

13:45 to lock up his stuff, to pack his stuff. But he's never going to touch that bottle.

13:49 He's never going to touch another bottle. He's never going to drink a beer again.

13:54 And as we're driving in, it was in a different county, we're driving back into our station

13:59 to do the processing. I realized that he is looking out the window right now and seeing a

14:06 part of California that he's probably seen every, you know, all the time for most of his life,

14:10 but he'll never see it again. And the finality of what we do. And people, by the way, when you take

14:20 him to jail, they're thinking, Oh, I'll bail. I want to beat this. Why? Because he's gotten away

14:26 with it for 30 years. And so he's thinking, but I know how good the case is and I know he's not

14:32 coming out. And you can't even convince him that that's the case. You can't even convince

14:38 them that, Hey, I know it seems like you're going to be out probably tomorrow, bail out, but I'm

14:42 going to tell you, you're about to spend the rest of your life in clothes that you don't pick,

14:48 doing things that you don't control in a place that you don't want to be. Now, I don't ever feel

14:54 bad about that because it turns out that this guy's been out for 30 years. If it had been flipped

14:59 and he had done 10 years and had been paroled for, he got to do his parole first. He's been out for

15:04 30 years. And on a wall, you can say, well, yeah, he's about to spend the rest of his life in jail.

15:09 Well, his wife has been dead this entire time. She got there was no rest of her life. So I never

15:14 feel all that bad about people who go to jail for these kinds of things. But it does strike you as

15:19 it's happening in real time that, wow, you're about to take this guy's freedoms from him and how

15:24 precious that freedom really is. Now, what I thought you were going to say, Jim, is that you took that

15:29 beer, you walked over to the cruiser and looked at him in the back knocked on and said, Hey,

15:33 hey, I've got your beer right here. And just yeah, that's what I thought you were going to say.

15:38 That would have probably been a little bit more satisfying, but wouldn't have been as great for

15:41 your reputation. Or maybe it would have made you a legend. Who knows? Yeah, it probably may be

15:45 a legend, but you can be you can be legendary has you want to be famous and not infamous. So I'm

15:51 very happy to I was a Christian, you know, by the time I was working this case. And I also just feel

15:56 like there's I know I I never treat my arrestees. That's why in a way that is mocking, because I

16:03 don't know what they're going to say to me two hours from now. I don't know what we're going to

16:06 as a matter of fact, what I want to do with all these guys is develop a relationship as quickly as

16:10 I can. Because in the end, I got a lot of these guys who stay in touch with me for years afterwards.

16:16 And really, what is the goal here? It's justice. We just want some form of justice. You're never

16:24 going to get closure for anybody. They always think, Oh, I want closure. I want to go to finally go

16:29 to jail after all this time. Well, you might get a sense of closure if someone's repentant. That's

16:35 what I do think is available for a lot of victims. Like I think what they really like is not just

16:39 that we take the guy to jail, but that he would admit it that he did it. And he would say he's sorry.

16:43 Right? It's when people don't admit it and never say they're sorry that the family kind of feels

16:48 that there's more that needs to happen here. And that's why I think they have a sense that there's

16:52 not it's not close. In other words, it's you'd be surprised. People are so angry at the guy who did

16:59 this to their family member. And then if at some point this guy says, I know what I did it. I'm sorry.

17:04 I've been tortured. I know I had to put you through a lot. And they're totally repentant.

17:08 You'll see that angry family member will turn on a dime and go, Okay, I can't be mad at him. I mean,

17:15 he's he's it's hard to be mad at people who are truly repentant. Yeah, I think that's a great

17:21 lesson that a lot of us don't really get to see because we don't really get to see that in our line

17:24 of work. But as you mentioned, just a second ago, Jim, at this point of the case that you just

17:27 described, you were a Christian, but you didn't become a Christian for a large portion of your

17:31 life. So as I understand it, you were in your mid 30s when you became a Christian. Yeah, I was 35.

17:36 Okay. And so and you did so after spending a great deal of really your investigation skills,

17:41 testing the reliability and historicity of the New Testament gospels and all the things they're in.

17:46 And so we could spend the rest of our time just talking about that. But I do want to dig into the

17:50 books. Take us through that process, because I think there are a lot of people that kind of had

17:54 that coming of age story that happened a little bit later. Like not everybody has that. Yeah, I was

17:59 saved in youth group when I was seven years old or a church camp when I was 10. You were an adult,

18:03 you'd already gone through university. You'd already been out in the real world as it were.

18:07 And then you started using your skills that you developed along your life to test the Bible. So

18:12 you can take this question wherever you want to go to give our audience and ideas as to kind of

18:15 what was happening around that time. Yeah. And I and I've written about this now. I've got a book

18:19 called person of interest where the first time I've started to tell a little bit more of my, I don't,

18:24 I'm not impressed by personal stories. I hate to say that. Experiences don't mean anything to me.

18:28 And I don't trust experiences. I really trust the data. What's the facts? Okay, I don't care how

18:32 you feel about things. I need to know what do the facts demonstrate. So, so for me, I was not really

18:37 interested in Christian. I didn't know anybody in Los Angeles County didn't know anybody here

18:41 who was growing up. Nobody ever invited me to church or to a youth. I didn't know Christians.

18:46 And this doesn't never felt to me like a, it felt very secular. It felt like this is normal.

18:52 Like the Christians are the weird ones or they're just, okay, but there's something going on over

18:55 there, I guess. And I would drive by churches, but I never thought about what was happening there

18:59 until I got to be an adult. And then I realized that a lot of the Christians that I was meeting

19:03 were pretty lame in terms of their ability to either describe what they believe and why they

19:08 believe it or to consistently live as though it mattered, as though it was actually true.

19:13 And I would see both groups there. I'd saw a lot of officers who are very evidential about lots of

19:18 things until it comes to their faith. And then they're all kind of touchy-peally about that.

19:22 And then I'd see a lot of people I was taken to jail who would tell me they were Christians.

19:26 You know, you go into these houses to do search warrants and there's big, you know, pictures

19:29 either Roman Catholic kind of imagery or crosses or nice Bible verses. I'm thinking, really,

19:35 yeah, this is just what a farce. And so I held that view for a long time, but I did go to church

19:42 with my wife because she was thinking, well, should this be part, even though it wasn't that

19:48 way for me growing up, should this be part of how we raise our kids? Like, should we expose them to

19:52 this stuff? I don't know if it was because maybe she had met somebody that she thought or, but it

19:58 started becoming, we never, we were together 18 years before we became Christians. And we never

20:04 talked about the things of God, quote unquote, ever. It was not on our radar, but then we had kids.

20:11 And it was like, well, should we take our kids to like to church? And I'm like, no,

20:16 if you want to go, I'll go because I want to be a good husband. So if you want, if you think it's

20:20 important, I don't think you have to believe it in order for it to have value to our kids.

20:25 So I'm happy to go. And but the first church we walked into that was, you know, a church that we

20:30 ended up at for about three or four years, that that pastor described Jesus as in a very

20:38 self, not self, but I mean, in a way that someone like me who was selfish could hold on to, could be

20:44 interested. He said that Jesus was smart. And so I was just looking to clean the wisdom of Jesus,

20:49 like what can I learn about, learn about life, learn about, you know, wisdom from an ancient

20:53 sage. So I bought a Bible for that, that only that purpose, thinking it would be a collection of

20:58 proverbial statements. But when I read through the gospels, I realized, Hey, this looks like the

21:03 kind of account that like a supplemental report from an event in the past, this is the kind of

21:08 account I could test. So I looked at everything, you know, we talk about what's evidence. That's the

21:14 real thing. Like I'm not churched in that way. I always use this analogy, if you're an alien who's

21:21 flying into the from the universe and you're flying toward earth and you've got an assistant

21:24 who says, Hey, you're gonna are about to meet a bunch of people on this planet called earth.

21:28 A lot of more Christians, you want to read their their manual so you can see what they're going to

21:31 be like. And so he gives you a Bible and the new Testament, you read the gospels, you read the book

21:35 of acts. Do you think you'd be surprised when you finally land on planet earth and you get out of

21:39 your ship and you see how Christians are organized and how they worship in the world today, given the

21:46 fact you were expecting to see something in the new Testament. I think you would be surprised.

21:51 Absolutely. Yeah. I think you would say, well, this is noble. This Jesus guy was a noble guy. And

21:55 what they how they behaved in the book of acts seems also quite noble. But but I don't know why

22:03 this is happening here in 2021. Well, that was me. I was that alien who has not had no idea what

22:10 it was to even go to church, what was happening in those buildings, what Christianity was anything

22:15 about, but I did get a new Testament and I died in. I mean, I really studied it. And then I

22:22 wondered, why are we doing it this way? We're like, I had a hard time to just be honest. I had a hard

22:28 time as a as somebody who was absolutely an utterly unchurched figuring out, like, what is this life

22:35 look like now? And so that's that was a struggle early for me. So here's what I would say that the

22:42 book I just wrote is takes an approach. I've taken a lot of no body murders, where I simply, you know,

22:47 if you don't have a body, if someone kills somebody, and they get rid of the body, and then there's no

22:52 evidence a crime even occurred, she's just missing. It's a missing persons report. No one takes a

22:57 report for no one does an investigation. No one takes any photographs. No one collects any evidence.

23:02 Now 30 years later, how do you solve the crime? Well, you demonstrate that that bomb that went off on

23:07 the day she went missing that had a fuse and that burned for a long time. The hostility between her

23:12 and her husband, his plans to get rid of her, all the things he needed to do to get in place before

23:16 he could kill her. That's part of the fuse. Then afterwards, there's all kinds of fallout. All the

23:21 behaviors he did to cover this thing up. Fuse and fallout will tell you what happened on the day

23:27 that she disappeared. So if you said, okay, can I make a case for Jesus from scripture? Of course,

23:33 you can. And I've done that. That's in a book called Colocase Christianity. But in this book,

23:38 Person of Interest, I'm suggesting that even if you destroyed the New Testament, the fuse and fallout

23:44 of history would be enough for you to conclude that Jesus is who he said he was. So that's what

23:50 we're doing here. We're taking a worst case scenario. Imagine there's no New Testament.

23:53 You're still stuck with Jesus. Absolutely. And we're going to get way more

23:57 into person interests here in just a second. But I have a few follow ups in terms of some of the

24:00 things that you just said. So a lot of your work that you've done up to this point, because you've

24:04 written books, Colocase Christianity, God's crime scene, forensic faith. One thing that kind of

24:09 undergirds all that, and you mentioned it a little bit a second ago, Jim, is that you're trying to

24:12 give Christians a framework, you know, that gives them the confidence when they're describing or

24:17 defending their faith, because you're 100% right. Most Christians are Christians kind of in name

24:22 only. They're nominally Christian. They're culturally Christian. Look, I was born in Oklahoma,

24:26 so I'm a Christian by dent of birth, right? But why do so many Christians, in your opinion,

24:31 because you've done this for a long time now, as a Christian apologist, why do so many Christians

24:35 seemingly lack the will, desire, and I guess capability to defend their faith with any type

24:40 of cogency? Okay, let me ask you this. Why is it that as men, we know we ought to work out,

24:46 but few of us actually do? It's so hard. I don't want to get sweaty. And then I'm going to get sore

24:52 and blah, blah, blah. And why is it we have a duty to know what's happening in our country? But for

24:56 the most part, I don't read as much news. We don't be in other words, it's all comes down to the base

25:01 human nature, which is I'm probably going to do the least I need to do in order to achieve the most

25:08 I can having done the least. That's just our nature, right? If I can, if I had to work five days to do

25:14 this, or I can actually get this tomorrow, what do you think Amazon Prime is taking off, right?

25:19 I could get in a car and drive down and pay a little less, right? Or let's show up here tomorrow.

25:24 I can't wait till tomorrow. It's easier, right? Okay, that is our view of everything.

25:29 That's our view when it comes to educating our kids. I could homeschool my kids, but you know,

25:35 that's the, do you see what I'm saying? It's to absolutely spiritual maturity as well. Oh, I could

25:40 catechize my own kids and bring them up in the faith or I could let my youth pastor do it.

25:44 I think a lot of this just comes down to which is, and look, if I'm already in,

25:49 if I'm already saved, whether I know whether or not this is true or not, whether I have any good

25:53 reason to believe it's true or not, if I just saying I give my, if I can just say these words

25:59 and I'm in, then why would I want to like, well, look, for me, it's that I'm geeked out on the issue.

26:05 I mean, I love the evidence period for almost anything. And, and this is the evidence for Jesus

26:10 of Nazareth. It was to me, the most important anything. So, so I'm just geeked out on it. So

26:14 I'm more inclined to do this anyway, right? But I'm also geeked out about football. And we're in

26:18 the middle of football season. So I can tell you pretty much where I think every team in the NFL

26:23 is going to land in the next five weeks, because I'm paying attention. And I have a view and I'm

26:28 pretty well, I'm geeked out enough to know who the coaches are, who the best players are, and what

26:32 the backs up, who the backups are, and what that liabilities of each team are. Why do I know all that?

26:37 That's a bunch of stuff that's going to do me absolutely no good. But I've spent, and I suspect,

26:43 I always say this, a lot of us as guys, we are not beyond the ability to learn deeply about

26:50 topics we're geeked out on. We just don't find this to be one of those topics. So there's something

26:55 that you know, you know, the HR manual at your business, or you know, whatever the, the text is

27:01 that you became an entrepreneur with you. There's stuff that you are willing to invest your time

27:06 and your mind in. You just don't think the Bible is one of them. Yeah. And I think yeah, it's not

27:12 just the Bible, it's faith overall, because I've had this conversation with so many different

27:15 peoples. It's like, look, we don't need to understand everything there is to know we don't need to

27:18 be able to explain dinosaurs, Jonah and the whale, like how they got all those animals on that one

27:23 ship. We don't need to discuss any of those things. But can you tell me whether or not you

27:27 believe the resurrection happened? Because that's, that's the center point for basically our entire

27:31 faith. The, the Old Testament under Kurds that, you know, are you really going to try to, are you

27:34 sounding like Andy Stanley now? Is that where you're headed with this? No, no, no, I'm not saying

27:38 we should, we should take things away. I'm not going to go. I don't even think I don't think the

27:43 Stanley thinks that either. I mean, he's been very well catechized by Norm Geisler at DTS when he

27:47 grew up in his go through seminary. I just think it's about, you know, precision and how we get

27:51 clipped out and how sermons are clipped and how exposed to the world. I'm just teasing you about

27:55 that. But I, but I think you're, for me, that was, that was the key issue. The key issue is,

28:00 but at the same time, my kids growing up wanted to know how we fit all those animals on the art.

28:06 My kids want to know how reasonable it is to assume it's our single birth pair from which

28:09 all humans descend. My kids want to know if it's a global flood. My kids want to know these things.

28:14 And so I have a duty, if I can answer why I think that, that this weekend, that Heineke might beat

28:23 Dak Prescott in a game between the, the Redskins, the Washington football team and Dallas Cowboys.

28:30 And by the way, I can probably make that case. If my kids ask me about football,

28:33 I can answer the question. But if my kids ask me about the, the, the claims of the old testament

28:39 or the new testament, I'm flat footed. Yeah. Really shame on me. So, so yeah, do I need,

28:45 look, I don't even need to know, have those, those answers have been asked and answered for me.

28:49 I've already settled those issues in my mind. There's no more reason for me to think about it,

28:54 yet I often think about it because I know someone's going to probably ask me that question at some

28:58 point. Right. And it's, it's things that have to be reckoned with and people are reckoning with

29:02 whether or not they should go with this receiver or that receiver in their fantasy draft and they're

29:05 not. That's right. Any of the important things in history, which is why I really appreciate it.

29:09 And again, thank you so much for sending me a copy of this book, person of interest,

29:12 why Jesus still matters in a world that rejects the Bible. That's your newest book that you released

29:16 in 2021. You've described it, you know, kind of gave us a 30,000 foot overview. But one thing about

29:21 this book, Jim, that I felt like was fairly unique is, I guess number one, how easy it was to follow,

29:27 because technically there were like three different storylines of this book. You were talking about,

29:31 you know, a nobody homicide, a specific one, which I won't ruin for the reader. You're going to have

29:35 to get the book. It's in the show notes and check it out for yourself. So that was number one. Number

29:39 two was your personal investigation of the claims of Christianity. And number three was Jesus being

29:43 the person of interest, right? Jesus kind of being the center point for all these other things that

29:47 have kind of played out in society. So, so for you, just kind of take me into the, the nexus of

29:53 this book a little bit deeper. Why write it that way in a way where you kind of have these three

29:57 different storylines? Because I just got to tell you, I'm not much for nonfiction. This is obviously,

30:01 or I'm sorry, I'm not much for fiction. I'm mainly a nonfiction reader. But a lot of this red light

30:05 fiction in a good way, because I was like, what's going to happen? Are they going to fire? Are they

30:09 going to find the guy? Are they going to figure it out? So why write it in that way?

30:12 Okay. So for personal reasons, I think I'm probably not not like good theological reasons or

30:17 philosophical reasons, just a couple of things. Number one, growing up, before I became, I was

30:23 involved in the arts. My background was in architecture. I was working as an architect

30:27 when I decided to become a police officer. So I've always had this creative itch that needs to be

30:32 scratched. And when I was in law enforcement, the first thing I did five years into the job was

30:37 start a band. Okay. Because I just needed, I didn't need a creative outlet. So we had a bunch of cops

30:41 who could barely play instruments, but we figured out how to cobble together a band. And we would

30:45 do this, these, these citywide kind of shows. You know, if it was an event in the city, they would

30:51 invite the cop band and we would come and we would play. So it gave us an instant audience, right?

30:56 We never got paid anything, of course, but we gave us an instant audience. And so I was scratching

31:00 that itch. I grew up wanting to be a novelist. And I just didn't know how to turn that corner.

31:05 So I ended up in art. I ended up in architecture. I ended up in law enforcement. I expressed my

31:10 creativity by creating visual presentations for jurors. And that's how we solved and prosecuted

31:16 all of our cases. What it really comes down to is that fuse and fallout is pretty visual.

31:22 And now I can make the entire thing visual because I've given you a word picture that you can now,

31:27 I can now illustrate. And it turns out that approach ended up providing us with tough cases

31:33 that are hard to express became easier to express. The connectivity between certain lines of evidence

31:39 became easier to express. If I can find a visual analogy, it's different for every case. But nobody

31:45 missed things. Nobody murders. I would take this fuse and fallout approach. So a lot was trying

31:51 to be creative. Like create a scenario. That's why I think you won't hear of that fuse and fallout

31:56 anywhere else in law enforcement. Because, you know, I'm trying to create things that will make

32:01 difficult cases easier. So when I came to this book, I had already written three kids books,

32:07 cold case Christianity for kids, forensic faith for kids, God's crime scene for kids,

32:11 either the adult books and the kids books. And the kids books, I knew that if I just start talking

32:16 about the facts for Jesus, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's going to be like the Charlie Brown

32:22 cartoon. So I wasn't going to do that. Instead, I involved the kids in little mysteries. Oh, how

32:27 don't where did the shoe box come from? Where did the skateboard come from? Where did this puppy come

32:32 from? Each book has a mystery. And then at the second half of the chapter, I take a skill I just

32:39 taught you to solve the mystery. And we use it to solve the mystery of Jesus. But kids love to find

32:45 out what where that shoe box came from. And they would turn those pages to figure out where the

32:49 shoe box came from. So I had to figure out how to integrate the story in such a way that they

32:53 would be learning about Jesus or about God as they are solving the case of the shoe box.

32:58 So when I came to the time to write, this is book number eight for us. I said, you know,

33:03 I'm going to write a kids book for adults. We're going to take the same approach. Now that

33:08 murder is 80% of a murder that I really worked. But I tell you up front, I'm going to change

33:13 some of the details. So I took three nobody murders that I've investigated. I kind of blended

33:19 them so that I changed all the names. So I'm hoping that no one is going to later on think,

33:24 I have, you know, I've exposed my life to people. I get that. So I try to be respectful for victims

33:29 families too. So anyway, the point is that was the approach I took. But I'm moving more and more

33:34 toward I've got another book I'm writing next, it'll have another real case in it. But I think after

33:39 that, I'm done chronicling real cases. I want to start writing fiction. Because I've always,

33:47 this is the selfish part of me. This is how I see it. Non-fictions like a cover band.

33:54 Fictions like a singer-songwriter. You know, it's, it's, I was just listening to an interview with

34:00 Steve Perry from, from, from talking about, don't stop believing that song that they wrote together,

34:04 which is now still one of the biggest songs used in all kinds of movies and everything.

34:08 And he was talking about writing that song. I thought, you know, I've, I've played that song

34:13 because I'm a big Neil Sean fan of that guitarist for Journey. And, and so we've played those,

34:18 we've covered those songs. That's not, I mean, we just, we listen, you listen, you listen, you, you

34:23 learn how to cover it. But I could never write the thing. I mean, that's, that's a whole other level

34:29 of creative. It's one thing to cover somebody else's hit. It's another thing to write hits.

34:34 So the challenge of fiction to me is like, Oh, I want to, and I think I'll probably be a miserable

34:42 failure. But what I'm trying to do with these books is kind of exercise some of the skill set

34:48 I'll need later. Like, how do I turn corners to get you to turn to the next chapter? Like, how do

34:53 I do that? Pace a book? Those are the kinds of things I'm trying to learn now. So, and I think

34:58 this book does that, I hope, and tells the story. Jim, I'll just tell you, like, I'm not gonna blow

35:03 smoke. Like, I think you did a masterful job masterful job of that because you could really get lost

35:07 in the detail of the book in a good way. But like, for some guys, it might be kind of hard

35:11 to really kind of go through and make sure how do we understand all these things. So having that

35:15 narrative was a little bit of a reprieve. So if you're not used to reading things that are that

35:19 heady or difficult, the stories, the thing that kind of keeps you going through is your three

35:24 points. So in my personal opinion, which I'm just one guy, I think you nailed it. So good job on

35:27 you. But you've mentioned this several times, so I want to get into a little bit deeper. If I had

35:31 to really summarize this entire book, it would be the concept that you introduced to me, which is

35:35 fuse and fallout fuse and fallout. Now you talk about several different fuses with Jesus. You

35:40 talk about cultural fuses, spiritual fuses, prophetic fuses. And then there's all the fallout

35:45 therein that we've seen. Again, it is impossible in the time we have left to really go into the

35:49 detail guys, you have to get the book so that you can get into it. But can you give us maybe a 30,000

35:54 foot overview of fuse and fallout specifically how it applies to the historicity of Jesus?

35:58 Yeah. And I just love talking about the stuff Kyle that you want to talk about. So I don't want

36:02 to spend much more time talking about this. But I'll tell you that the idea here is that Jesus

36:07 comes according to Paul, he says in Galatians, the God sends his son and the fullness of time.

36:12 There's something about the timing of Jesus. And this is true of all crimes too, by the way,

36:16 that it's not just where does it occur that tips me off as to who did it. It often does. If it happens

36:22 in this house and you're the only two people living here, I'm probably a good chance you're

36:25 one of the two people involved. But it's also when it occurs, because the preconditions and the

36:32 deadlines that any suspect is up against will tell you who your suspect is. If the dude is going to

36:37 leave and fly out of the country tomorrow and then the murderer happens today and he flies away

36:41 tomorrow, you can see how the timing of the murder might give you an indication of who's involved.

36:46 Same is true for Jesus. Something happens in the first century. We're calling it the first century

36:51 when it's not the first century. Why are we calling it that? Because something happens that

36:55 resets the calendar. And then the question becomes, well, what is it that's burning that might give

37:00 you an indication? And it's prophecies of the Old Testament. It's the expectations of ancient

37:05 people groups who have imagined God, like Paul says in Acts 17. You guys are imagining a lot about

37:11 God. You're very religious, but I'm here to tell you what you have imagined has already arrived.

37:15 Here it is. And so this is the idea that all of these people are now present. They're worshiping

37:20 their myths. The prophecies are timing down. Daniel says he's going to show up before

37:26 the destruction of the temple. That's in 70 AD. So you've got a deadline you're trying to meet.

37:31 And then the Roman Empire is providing open window opportunities. You now have language.

37:36 You now have an Etruscan alphabet. You now have the technology called something simple with papyrus.

37:41 You have roads now that are in place. You have a 200 year period of peace called the Pax Romana.

37:46 Whatever happens now in this small window of opportunity called the first century is going to

37:51 take over the world because of all the preconditions that have been met. And that's what we're trying

37:56 to show. Now, I'll just tell you, the art side of me, I want to illustrate everything for juries.

38:01 I want them to see it visually. So this book has over 400 illustrations. And it's hard to explain

38:08 timeline things unless you can see the timeline. Exactly. It's like, okay, it's hard to but if

38:15 you just see the timeline, you will know why Jesus arrives when he arrives. It was inevitable.

38:21 Given the fuse that was burning. And then in terms of fallout, look, as an atheist,

38:26 all the stuff that mattered to me before I became a Christian, let me tell you what it was. Pretty

38:30 simple, art, music, literature, education, science, that's it. Those five things mattered more than

38:35 anything else culturally to me. Well, it turns out those five things are so utterly dependent

38:40 on Jesus in the world view he inaugurated and that was lived out in his followers lives.

38:46 That you cannot have art, literature, music, education, and science the way you know it today,

38:51 if not for the arrival of Jesus, his impact in those five areas is greater than any other historical

38:59 figure. And from those five areas, you can completely reconstruct the story of Jesus so that if the

39:06 New Testament had been destroyed, you can recreate that from the writings of of ancients in the first

39:11 300 years of the common era. You can reconstruct that from the songs sung in the first 300 years

39:16 of the common era. You can reconstruct that scene and scene episode episode in classic art painted

39:22 in the first 800 years. You can reconstruct that from the campuses of the top universities in the

39:29 world that bear the image and the scriptures of the New Testament because the top 15 universities

39:36 in the world were all founded by Christians. And in the sciences, no one has had a bigger impact

39:41 on science. The entire scientific revolution, the vast, vast, vast majority of scientists who made

39:47 an impact and founded all of the modern scientific disciplines were, let's see, Christians. And that

39:54 happened in Europe, in Christendom, it didn't have to. There were more people outside of Europe and

39:59 more non-Christians on planet earth at the time. Yet science leaps off, not in the east, not in

40:06 the North African continent, not in Persia. It leaps off in Europe under what we call Christendom.

40:12 So that's why I think we, and you can reconstruct the story of Jesus just from the journals of the

40:17 science fathers. As a matter of fact, you can learn more about Jesus from the science fathers,

40:22 these are the founders of all the scientific disciplines, than you can from the church fathers.

40:27 And when you realize that, you realize, yeah, you have to destroy an awful lot to get rid of Jesus.

40:32 And here's the last thing I'll say about it. There used to be a thing called a trilemma

40:37 that C.S. Lewis first posited. It was the idea that Jesus is either, I need to write about this,

40:42 because I didn't put this in the book, I should have. It's either that Jesus is liar, lunatic, or

40:46 lord, which is it, which is most reasonable. Well, there's a newer way to looking at this.

40:51 Jesus is either a fictional character, and that's the claim of a lot of Jesus' mythicists who believe

40:57 that Jesus is just another myth in a series of myths, or he's just another ancient sage, or he

41:03 is the god of the universe. Now, if he's a myth, tell me if he's just fiction, what other fictional

41:09 character has ever had even remotely any kind of impact on human culture that Jesus of Nazareth has?

41:14 It doesn't exist. You're not going to find it. You could say, oh, look, people know Peter Pan.

41:19 Okay, is Peter Pan the foundation of a natural philosophy that later became the scientific

41:23 revolution? Do we count time based on Peter Pan? Yeah, so no, so if you cannot find another

41:28 example, and you can't even imagine an example of fiction doing this, there's good reason to

41:33 believe that Jesus is not fiction, but you will also not find another mortal human on the history

41:38 of mortal humans who has had this kind of impact, whose story can be completely reconstructed.

41:44 There is no other example of a mortal who has looked at all the people who lived in the first century.

41:49 None of them combined had the impact that Jesus had on culture. These were world leaders.

41:55 These were empire leaders. These were poets and authors. None of them had the kind of impact

41:59 that Jesus did. If you cannot find another example of a mortal human who has had this impact,

42:05 you've now got a good reason to believe that Jesus is something more than a mortal human.

42:09 It turns out that this kind of impact makes the most sense with the third option.

42:14 If God enters into his creation, wouldn't you expect there to be a huge set of ripples?

42:19 And that's what we see in the fallout of the common era. So I think in the end, this is now,

42:26 again, I'm suggesting a thought experiment in which every New Testament has been destroyed.

42:31 You'd still be stuck with the Jesus of Nazareth. We know from the New Testament,

42:37 because his story permeates every important aspect of culture.

42:41 I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool.

42:44 No, you don't understand. It went perfectly real offer down to the penny.

42:48 They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.

42:50 So what's the problem?

42:52 That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.

42:55 Maybe there's no catch.

42:56 That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

42:59 Wow, you need to relax.

43:00 I need to knock on wood. Do we have what is this tablewood?

43:03 I think it's limited.

43:04 Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

43:06 Car selling without a catch. So your car today on Carvana.

43:10 Pick up these may apply.

43:11 Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I'm so glad that you wrote a book that was

43:14 so accessible. Again, guys, the name of the book is Person of Interest.

43:17 It is in the show notes. You can go there and you can buy it yourself.

43:20 But being accessible makes it important for a lot of guys,

43:23 because as we know, and as your publisher knows, a lot of men don't read.

43:27 And so as dumb as it sounds, the fact that there are pictures in here

43:31 that helps the fact that there are other narratives in here, it helps guys.

43:34 So this is a very, very important book because of how accessible it is

43:37 to these large ideas. And you introduced me to a lot of things that I thought I knew about,

43:41 like all the extra biblical evidence surrounding why Jesus was who he was.

43:45 Even the writings of people that knew about Jesus believed in him but hated him.

43:48 Like those are important things to look at because it's like you would be encouraged to not

43:53 write something glowing about somebody that you hated, but you wrote about him,

43:56 which does prove more that he existed than he's just some more sort of mythical character.

44:00 So guys, we'll move on from the book, but it's a fantastic book.

44:03 But I do want to get into something that you and I were talking about off air.

44:05 Now we're going to get into guy issues. This is the best stuff.

44:09 This is why I was hoping we would get past that book stuff fast so we can talk about

44:12 the stuff that really matters. Let's do it.

44:14 Good stuff is good stuff. My friend book stuff is good stuff.

44:16 But let's talk about manhood a little bit because I was giving you a little bit of a rundown as to

44:21 who your audience is today and kind of who the guys are that listen to on Don't To Life A Man's

44:25 Podcast. And I mean, you didn't even miss a beat. Some people are like, oh, that's interesting.

44:29 And let me ask you some follow up questions. You're like, nope, I get it. Those are my people too.

44:32 So for you, I just want to kind of set it up even broadly. And I do want to get into

44:36 Mark Driscoll here in a second. But I want to set it up more broadly about the state of manhood

44:41 in the church. I talk about this all the time. I write about it. I think we're at a paltry level

44:46 because again, that poem of, you know, hard times make strong men, strong men make good times.

44:51 Good times make weak men, weak men make hard times. I feel like especially in the church,

44:54 we have a bunch of weak, effeminate men making it hard on us and making it harder for us to

44:59 have an impact in culture, especially in the West. But what is your opinion of the state of manhood

45:05 within Christendom right now? Well, it's not just within Christendom. I think it's at least in the

45:10 West and our nation particularly. But yeah, it's exacerbated within Christianity because I think

45:16 we've got good reasoning, good examples, biblical reasons to be more than we are right now.

45:20 There's my audience. And if I look at the kind of social media analytics is like either sometimes

45:27 between about 75 and 80% men and the rest are, I'm always lamenting that. Like I wish as an author

45:34 that you want to be 50/50. You're trying to reach the world with the gospel.

45:40 But I think we have been shaped by God for a specific purpose. And it doesn't surprise me then

45:46 that the kinds of paramilitary life that police officers have to live would probably be attractive

45:51 to men or at least be read by men more than anybody else. So I get that. What I see though is that

45:58 now I'm going to say some things are probably going to be unpopular. But maybe you already

46:00 agree with me on these. So my biggest influence was Warner Wallace. I'm Jay Warner Wallace because

46:07 my grandfather's name is Warner. And World War II guy in that generation of men. And that was a

46:14 generation of men. And my grandfather was like this where if you're like working on a table saw

46:19 and you cut off your thumb, you just stick a bandaid on and keep working. And if I was working

46:24 with him as a kid and I would like drive a nail through my hand, he would just pull it out and

46:28 say, okay, we're good. Let's go. There's no tears. There's no time for tears. Like rub some dirt in

46:34 it. We're going to go. And this is his view. But that sense of toughness serve me really well.

46:43 Give an example of this. I could go to work and I could still do this. And if it's a horrific

46:54 crime involving a three year old, I have a short memory and I put things in boxes.

47:01 And I know that my job is to solve this and not get caught up in the fact that I also have a

47:06 three year old. And I'm going to go home tonight and hold my three year old and I can't be torn

47:11 up about what happened today because I'll be on another nightmare tomorrow. That's just an

47:15 age where we're going homicides. I can imagine if you're a coroner, if you've ever been to an autopsy,

47:19 I go to a lot of autopsies because in California, if you are assigned as the IO, the investigating

47:24 officer of a murder, you'll have to be present for the autopsy of the victim because I'm going

47:29 to have to testify for the coroner. The coroner's not going to testify at the prelim. I'm going to

47:33 testify for him to save some money. But I go to a lot of autopsies. And they're horrific. I can

47:40 only imagine what you must be. And I'll be honest, there's times when I met some corners that seem

47:45 to be a little bit odd, right? But it's probably because they're cutting up weird things all the

47:51 time and it must wear on you. But I've learned to disrupt some dirt in it and keep going.

47:57 And that's my job. My job is to make sure that when I come home, my wife has no idea what I just

48:04 experienced. Now, I see that as a response a bit. Now, my just an archaic old knucklehead

48:10 who sees this as my responsibility. And so my first reaction is, okay, this is part of what it

48:18 means. Now, I could be wrong about this. But but my sense of it is, is that the people who are on

48:23 scripture pages of scripture probably suffered a lot more and had to see a lot more and had to

48:28 man up a lot more than we are in this generation. There's a sense of biblical manhood in which I

48:33 I see that I have a role to play that is different than they're all my wife plays. And I felt this

48:39 way as an atheist, because I knew that the biochemistry that I was experiencing was different than her

48:44 evolved by I would have said, this is a matter of evolution. This is a matter of evolutionary

48:48 processes. We are at a point right now in our evolutionary development in which my biochemistry

48:52 is different than hers. It's going to allow me to do some things that she can't do. And it's

48:57 going to allow her to do some things that I clearly can't do. And together, we're going to take that

49:01 mix of biochemistry and create something even better in a family context. That was my view as an

49:06 atheist. It's not that much different now as a believer. But I know that I have a role to play.

49:13 And that is a very protective role, because for the most part, I'm a foot taller than my wife.

49:19 I'm probably 60 pounds heavier than my wife. And that is my role to play. I always saw it as a

49:26 biochemistry issue. But I do think we're at a place right now in the church. This is one of the

49:32 reasons why I love meant the whole issue with the Driscoll. And I have not talked publicly about it.

49:38 But look, everyone's listening to the rise and fall of Mars Hill. Everyone's been listening to it

49:43 for ages. And so it was the number one podcast at one point in the summer. And not just in a

49:50 Christian category and any category. So it's clearly being listened to by everyone in the country.

49:56 And I'm bummed about it, because there were some things that Driscoll talked about that were

50:05 became popular and became viral, because nobody else was talking about it. Now you can argue that

50:12 yeah, I don't agree with Mark on every view he holds about biblical manhood. Don't get me wrong.

50:18 I actually disagree on a lot. But what I loved about it was he was at least talking about it.

50:23 You know, I actually give him credit for talking about it and getting a lot of it wrong,

50:27 then just not talking about it at all. Of course. Yeah. Right. And that's not what my fear is,

50:31 is that we have gotten to a point where we're afraid to even acknowledge that there are differences

50:38 between men and women, because the culture is trying to convince us there are none.

50:41 Right. Well, it was it just it was it was the Ivy League school that the swimmer just this week.

50:47 University pin. Yeah, the swimmer is a just beat all of the records. Now, look, if I'm a swimmer who's

50:54 a biological female on a team in which there's a biological male who identifies as a female,

51:00 who's on the team and basically comes in blowing out every single record I set here.

51:05 I don't know how this is even fair to women. I mean, the protective nature of me as a man says,

51:12 that's not fair. If that was my daughter, if that was my wife, if that was my sister, that wouldn't be

51:17 fair to her. Am I crazy for thinking that? Now, look, I think when we say these kinds of things,

51:22 we run the risk of being entirely canceled by, but you know what, to be honest, you can't

51:28 fire me if you didn't hire me. And I'll be honest, that's why I waited until I had a pension

51:33 to do any of this stuff. Because I now realize I'm in a place where I don't do any of this because

51:38 I'm worried about who I am anymore. Right? I mean, that's already been settled. I'm an old man now.

51:42 This is just really about what do we think Bible teaches about these issues. And I think that

51:47 you to think that the Bible does not teach that there's a difference between men and women

51:52 is to be ignorant about the Bible teaches. Well, it's ignorant about the Bible teaches

51:56 and it's ignorant of basic mammalian biology as well. But I think one thing that's to kind of go

52:00 back to the Driscoll thing, kind of how manhood is treated inside the church. And this happened

52:04 because you and I are both alums of Justin Briarley's podcast over in the UK. Unbelievable. And the

52:10 thing about that interview is they tried to really attach me to Mark Driscoll. And I kept being fairly

52:15 dismissive of it. I was like, I don't know Mark Driscoll. I don't know him personally. And my

52:18 guess is that neither do you guys, you know, you listen to the podcast and a bunch of other people

52:22 listen to analysis of the guy's life story. That's all of us. That's right. But the guy I was debating

52:26 on the other side, he wrote a book and I read it beforehand. And you know, it's not really great

52:30 for my audience type of a thing. But there was a demonization of stoicism in his book. And I don't

52:36 mean like philosophy, stoic philosophy. I mean, of stoicism in a man, kind of what you said earlier,

52:42 not bringing your day home and taking it out on your wife, right? You know, not bringing all that

52:46 burden home. Because this guy, this author, and we couldn't talk about on the show in for a lot of

52:52 reasons, but you know, it just we didn't get to it. But he tried to make the direct line between men

52:58 withholding their emotions and suicide. Now, are there men out there that have killed themselves

53:03 because they've suppressed their emotions for decades and decades? I'm sure something like that

53:07 has happened. And in your line of work, you probably saw men that suppress their emotions,

53:10 went out and killed somebody and then killed themselves. I'm sure those things have happened.

53:14 But this idea that when a man is in control of his emotions, as Jordan Pearson talks about,

53:19 you know, how the meek will inherit the earth, that doesn't mean weakness. It means knowing how

53:23 to use the sword, but you can achieve, right? Like not just taking it out to show under control.

53:29 Yeah. Power under control. That's the thing that might be one of the most nefarious through points

53:34 of the attack on masculinity is this fact that unless you're a bloveating, crying idiot at all

53:40 times, just constantly, you know, wringing out your emotions on the rest of the public that you're

53:45 you're somehow not a modern man. Am I crazy? Or does that does that make sense to you?

53:50 Yeah, it does. I'll just say this to you. My kids have seen me lament and cry about issues

53:56 related to my family, right? Issues related maybe to my dad, issues, you know, because there are

54:01 things about which I'm going to cry. Okay. Because they emotionally impact me. But I've chosen

54:06 not to get emotionally involved or not to be allowed my emotions to control what I do professionally.

54:11 So yes, is it tragic what I have to see every day? Absolutely. Sometimes it's even more tragic

54:17 than you care to speak about. At the same time, I know that that my job is to to manage that.

54:23 Now it's harder to feel with my kids and we're talking about my dad or talking about, you know,

54:28 something like the family or my own kids from talking about my kids. Yeah, I'm going to cry

54:32 for my kids. There's an appropriate expression of emotion. I don't think that men are emotionless.

54:38 We just have to we are able to control when and how we express those emotions. But by the way,

54:44 my wife's also very good at this. It's not as though we are somehow the superior in this area.

54:49 We are just different. We're wired differently. At the same time, I'll just I just know that my

54:54 wiring is not like my wife's caregiving wiring. She's a much better caregiver. I'm just so glad I

55:00 have her because she complements what I am not. But to think that we are somehow exactly the same,

55:08 it's to be treated fairly. And I'm not talking about equity here. I'm talking about equality. To be

55:14 treated fairly is different than ignoring any differences. To say we have no differences.

55:19 I think there are clear differences between moms and dads and the roles we play with our kids.

55:27 I have a role as a dad. I play with my daughters in addition to my sons. It's very different than

55:33 Susie's role. We get different kinds of phone calls. I noticed that the kids will call Susie for

55:39 the kind of things they want. They don't call me for, but they will call me for the kinds of

55:43 things they don't need from Susie because they understand the innate difference in the kinds of

55:48 support. Both of them are looking for support from us, a word of encouragement. But when they

55:54 want that kind of word of encouragement, they expect to get from mom, they call mom. When they

55:58 want the kind of dad, they call dad because they recognize that we respond differently. And it's

56:04 not a cultural issue. It's not that we were raised in the church and so we have this baggage. It's

56:08 not that we weren't raised in the church. Neither one of us was raised in the church. It's just about

56:13 we recognize these. I mean, even if we don't recognize them, we cannot resist but respond to

56:18 our genes on occasion. So I think this is part of it, right? I'm just not willing to jettison

56:24 these differences. And I don't see those differences as a liability. I've never thought that one

56:31 sex is essential and the other is just contingent. One is necessary. The other is contingent. No,

56:37 I never saw it that way. I see them both as necessary. But neither one is I don't see one. I just never

56:44 have seen it that way. But they're so they're so needed that I am worried that we are moving

56:49 toward a world in which I was just reading something yesterday about how many men and women are being

56:54 raised in intact families in which their biological parents are still together. It's very small

57:00 percentage right now. They've dropped like 40% I think in the last 50 years. It's scary what's

57:04 happening. We've been people are trying to convince us that any form of household is the same kind

57:12 of family. Now, you can have households could be great in a number of ways, but family, that's

57:19 going to be a much harder term to redefine because there is a biological you realize not

57:25 going to say the most controversial thing right that you realize that young people do best in

57:30 every measurable category of its economics, if it's health, if it's mental health, if it's

57:37 just physical health, if it's if it's incarceration rates, if it's rate of teenage pregnancy, whatever

57:42 the category you want to pick pick it to biological parents in a low conflict setting will always

57:48 produce the best results to biological parents in a low conflict setting. That does not mean

57:54 we're all going to achieve that. I was not raised that way. One biological parent in a low conflict

58:00 setting. My kids were not raised that way. Two of them are our biological children. Two are adopted.

58:05 Those two are not being raised by their biological parents in a low conflict setting. We're doing

58:09 the best we can't. It's better than what they would have been raised, but it isn't ideal. The

58:13 ideal would have been if they had their biological parents with this relationship. Well, you mentioned

58:18 the word ideal. That's also what's being attacked as well because this idea of one man, one woman

58:24 having children and having masculine and feminine roles inside the household and also the secular

58:30 sociological data points to an intact family with low drama that also attends church. It's

58:37 almost as if we were built for it. It's almost like this was part of the plan.

58:42 I would say it's an atheist, too. It's an atheist. I would have said, no, I think holding to transcendent

58:48 values that unify our daily desires is healthier. For me, the transcendent God,

58:56 before I thought there was a transcendent God, was marriage because my parents did not hold theirs

59:02 together. For me, that was always the thing. I love marriage more than I love Susie because

59:10 to me, that was the thing that was missing. I knew that if I met someone like Susie,

59:15 that I would hold on tight. I think we have a great marriage because that was the transcendent

59:23 ideal before there was a transcendent ideal known as God to us. That was bigger than us. We

59:30 would bend our knee to that thing, marriage, and whatever. Now, I want the best kind of marriage,

59:35 so I want to take good... In other words, I want a passionate, crazy, all that stuff that's in marriage,

59:40 I want that with her and so that becomes the ideal that transcends us, that unifies us. We're

59:46 both chasing that ideal. Now, that thing we're chasing is Jesus and the closer we come to Jesus,

59:52 the closer we come to each other. It's that trajectory kind of way of living that even if you look at

59:59 the values held by non-believers, you will find that they do usually find some replacement of

1:00:06 transcendence that guides their marriage, that guides their lives together. We just know that

1:00:11 that's why, for example, 12-step programs encourage people to seek something transcendent. Any higher

1:00:19 power will do, but it turns out that when you see the 12-step programs are entirely Christian or

1:00:26 biblical, they actually do better because now you've put a name and identity on that transcendent

1:00:31 thing that guides you. So, I think in the end, a lot of this is going to come back to a biblical

1:00:36 worldview because Shocker, the Bible describes the world the way it really is. And so, in the end,

1:00:44 you're going to find wisdom on those pages. If nothing else, I would have said as an atheist,

1:00:49 well, yeah, because if you if you bang things out for 2,000 years as humans, you will work out and

1:00:54 start to notice what's true about humans, you'll probably end up writing a document that seems

1:00:58 ancient because it is, and it reflects the accurate view of humans because we haven't changed.

1:01:02 And if that's all it is, it's still worth your time, okay? So, but it turns out if it's from a

1:01:09 divine source, well, now it even has the added benefit that it can guide you. It's not just

1:01:14 coincidentally true. It's actually from the mind of your creator who's designed you for a purpose.

1:01:19 Absolutely. I appreciate you going into all that detail. And I know we're running short on time,

1:01:23 but I do want to wrap up with this question because I found it interesting because

1:01:27 you became a Christian at such a later age. And maybe even a lot of people that are in my friend

1:01:31 group is how do you now currently deal with doubts? Because for a lot of people, they deal

1:01:38 with doubts differently. Like I mentioned, the seven year old saved when they're a little kid,

1:01:41 they deal with doubts differently because they kind of are carrying the scaffolding with them

1:01:45 as they age. Whereas your brain was fully developed in your mid 20s, and you didn't really start

1:01:49 dealing with these questions of God until your mid 30s. So now as an adult who's kind of, I guess,

1:01:55 you know, had done your career and you've got your family and all those different things,

1:01:58 how to doubts? How do you deal with those now?

1:02:00 Okay. So, so this is probably part of my, my, my work life that we just talked about. And what

1:02:07 it is, I think to take an approach that is probably what we might say is more masculine or more

1:02:11 compartmentalizing. There used to be an old book that talks about how men are like waffles and

1:02:15 women are like spaghetti in a good way that man can compartmentalize things into those little

1:02:20 lawful squares and we leave it that way. But women see the interconnectedness of everything. So if

1:02:24 something over here gets tickled, it ends up having a result over here. I wish I was more like that,

1:02:28 because I find I'm almost like scare myself sometimes in my ability to compartmentalize.

1:02:34 So if I'm doing a case and I've got to go over the crime scene now and that kid's going to be there

1:02:38 with the wound and it's going to be a mess and I'm going to have to deal with that. But I just

1:02:42 deal with that, collect the evidence, I'm going to guide that process. Next day, well, it turns out,

1:02:47 I now have already hurtled that day. I'm not lingering in, in, in wallowing in yesterday.

1:02:52 I'm working on the thing that's in front of me today. It's in a different square of the waffle.

1:02:57 And I've already compartmentalized that from yesterday. So I'm already, I'm already over it.

1:03:01 Even if it shook me up, I'm not shook up today because I know I have to have this skill set in

1:03:07 place. It's in the next square of the waffle. So now I do today's stuff. Now that this is a pain

1:03:12 in the rear like I go to the autopsy. I got to do this. I got to interview these five people.

1:03:16 But that's another square. And then the next day, that's in yesterday's square. I'm not

1:03:20 thinking about that. I'm really good at turning corners and leaving things in the past, in the past.

1:03:27 Well, doubts for me where all the stuff that I came in with, I didn't think any of this was true.

1:03:31 And so I don't want to know, well, what about this? Well, what about that? Each one is a hurdle

1:03:35 that I had to jump for myself before I could ever look at scripture seriously.

1:03:41 But like the waffle squares, once I jumped the hurdle, it's over there now.

1:03:46 I'm already over here now. I'm not going to have that doubt again.

1:03:52 That was over there. I already had that doubt. I have enough of a memory to recognize. I've

1:03:57 already covered that. I've already asked and answered that question. Now, the question is,

1:04:02 what is this square of the waffle present me with? What is it that God has for me in all the days

1:04:08 that are still coming? I'm not going to. This is one of those attributes that I want to see in my

1:04:13 own boys is that, look, rub some dirt in it. Now you will, I'm not saying you don't examine your

1:04:18 doubts. Of course I did. But for me, and it might just be the detective thing, it might just be

1:04:23 that I've had 30 years of having to do this. And so now I'm like, okay, I'm stuck with this approach.

1:04:28 That could be what it is. I will tell you this, my dad showed me the first murder scene I ever saw

1:04:33 was in I was 13 years old. It was in 1974. He showed me the murder scene from a set of

1:04:40 a triple murder. It was horrific. It was actually four people were killed or throats were cut.

1:04:46 So deeply, they almost decapitated these people. And he had the film. He was showing me the film.

1:04:51 I was 13. It was in black and white. We got about maybe 10 minutes into it when they started moving

1:04:58 the bodies around. And I said, turn it off. I wasn't ready to put it in compartment yet.

1:05:04 And maybe it's because I from that point on, I got better and better and better and better and

1:05:10 just putting it in the compartment. I'm still able to cry for the things that matter. But I

1:05:16 refuse to cry for the things that I need to be mature about. I need to, otherwise, I would do

1:05:22 how many cases I do one case and fold. I do one day on the job and fold up. No, I have to do

1:05:28 the all the career I had. I have to do. So the same is true for me with any hesitation.

1:05:34 Once I've conquered it, once I've answered it for myself, I don't need to reask it. I've already

1:05:41 answered it. Also, I have really low expectations. Maybe that's bad. What I mean is God is good.

1:05:51 But I never expected him to give me a good day. We're in a fallen world. We're not in the garden.

1:05:58 We're in the world after the fall. This is the world that's so deeply broken that it needs a

1:06:02 Savior. Why would you think you're going to have good days in this kind of a world? If you do good

1:06:06 for you, but my expectations are so low that I can still call God good on a criminally crummy day.

1:06:12 Because my expectation was not, okay, I believe in God, therefore, he's going to take care of

1:06:16 every prayer. Every prayer is going to get answered. Every day is going to be like, you know, like

1:06:19 dancing in the field of flowers. No, that's not what it's going to be. It's going to be the same

1:06:24 broken life. People are still going to get murdered. Children are still going to be tortured and

1:06:29 abused. This is still going to happen even though there is a good God who knows that our lives are

1:06:35 not limited to the 90 years here on planet Earth. That when you're a million years into eternity,

1:06:41 I don't care how bad your life was here. This 90 years will seem like a millisecond compared

1:06:46 to eternity. You're not today fretting what happened to you in the first six weeks of your life. You

1:06:51 don't even remember what happened to you in the first six weeks of your life. Eternity will make

1:06:55 this 90 years feel like the first six seconds. And so in the end, I want to have an internal

1:07:01 perspective. And that means my expectations for this 90 years is pretty low. And that's why I'm

1:07:07 never disappointed. I love it. Well, hey, Jim, we've gone everywhere in this conversation,

1:07:11 you're giving us a lot of time today and we appreciate it. But that's all for me. Is there

1:07:14 anything else you want to get off your chest? No, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Now,

1:07:17 you're going to have to go back and edit out all the stuff that was offensive. No, I'm going to make

1:07:21 sure the volume is put on the yeah, I feel it as much. Yeah, I don't want to miss it. All right,

1:07:27 Jim Warner walls. Thank you for coming on on Daunton life of man's podcast. Thanks for having me.

1:07:31 Appreciate it. There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Jim Warner walls. But before

1:07:35 we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost and undaunted life. Our mission is equipping

1:07:39 men to push back darkness. And specifically, we do that by providing content like this podcast

1:07:43 that helps you forge spiritual mental and physical resilience. So the links I've got for you today,

1:07:46 one, I've got a link to the book that we spent the most of the time talking about. And that was

1:07:49 person of interest. So you got the link there. So you can go pick it up for yourself. Also,

1:07:53 I got a link to Jim's website. So he's got blogs on there. He's got videos on there. He's got links

1:07:56 to his social channels on there. All that's there. Check that out. And also, I've got a link to Jim's

1:08:00 YouTube channel. All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to this podcast. We do appreciate it.

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1:08:25 think the band August Prince read for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music

1:08:29 on this podcast is our song, cutting the ties, which is off their 10th anniversary re recording

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1:08:39 keep pushing back darkness. Keep forging spiritual mental and physical resilience.

1:08:44 Keep seeking the lion of Judah.

1:09:09 [Music]