Let's be honest, most men drift. We wake up, we scroll, we work, and then we just rinse and repeat. And we know we're softer than we should be. That's why I built the 31-day resilience reset. This is not a devotional. It is a field manual for men ready to stop drifting and start fighting back. So, for 31 days, you'll train your spirit, mind, and body with scripture, prayer, and daily challenges that forge real resilience. Go to www.undaunted.life/31. life/31day to download this resource for free. That's undaunted.life/31day. Start your reset today. This is Undaunted Life a man's podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. All right, guys. We got a special guest on the podcast today. His name is Matt Whitman. He is a pastor, author, and also the creator and host of the 10-minute Bible hour show. And he's the author of this book right here, The Lightning Fast Field Guide to the Bible, your compact companion for exploring the best book ever. And so, we don't get into this book until probably the last quarter of the podcast, but we do get into the book, why he wrote it, why he's kind of giving us an overview of all 66 books of the Bible, the importance of every book of the Bible, even the ones that aren't that popular. why, you know, if if someone were to say, "Well, we can't even trust the Bible because we don't know the author of this one or when this one was written down, why that's pretty ignorant." But really, for the entire first bit of the show, we were talking about, you know, his seminary experience. We get into the state of current American seminaries, and I make the the case that current American seminaries, a lot of them are teaching people to teach other people how to deconstruct their faith, and how that's that's really, you know, leaving us in a bad place. And then we switch into a discussion about Islam and how modern seminaries and and contemporaries of some of the people that were holding faithfully to the book are not preparing Christianom and Christians overall to deal with the spread the violent spread of Islam. We also got into a discussion about contemporary Christian music. He shares a lot of my same views on that about how the way we approach worship and the way we approach the Sunday morning service is not doing people a lot of favors and especially not doing favors to men. And guys, we bounced in and out of a lot of different subject matters. It was a lot of fun. So, I'm not going to keep it from you any longer. So, without further ado, let's get into it. Matt Whitman, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast. >> Yeah. Thanks, Kyle. >> I'm so excited to have you on here because you know what? We talked to all kinds of people on this show and we've talked to a lot of professional Christians and that's exactly what you are. Uh, and you became a a pastor at some point along the road. Yeah, you you should wear the moniker proudly, okay? Don't don't shrink away from it. But let's, you know, I'm assuming when you were a little kid, you weren't like, you know, thinking, hey, I want to do this whenever I grow up. I want to be a pastor. Maybe you wanted to be a G.I. Joe or professional ball player or something like that. So, kind of take us down the road of how you became a pastor. >> Yeah, actually, I kind of did want to do this when I was a kid, which is weird. In eighth grade, they did a little uh you know, what do you want to do when you grow up exercise and I had seen some shows on TV where people went to cool places and talked to cool people and then it was on TV and I was like I want to do that. I want to do like the adventure travel host thing. I didn't really understand how that could be a job or how that would ever work. But then again in college they asked about that in orientation and I was like yeah that'd be pretty cool. I would enjoy that because it seems like they have a lot of fun and they meet cool people and they learn stuff like they actually learn where they're going. And then, you know, somewhere in the first month of my freshman year, I was like, "Well, that's a silly thing. That isn't a real job. I'll never do anything like that." And I just got on with studying history and theology and stuff that I think is interesting. And somehow I accidentally I got to my senior year and I accidentally I grabbed a little degree in Bible at my college. Just kept taking Bible classes because I they were cool. I mean the professors were great and they did a really good job of talking about historical context and how this fits into the great grand interesting scheme of history. And that that really clicked because the Bible and faith had been, how can I put this? It had been like it lived in its own little kind of fantasy world separate from real history and the real world. It's like there were two categories of reality and Bible and faith lived over here and then the rest of reality over here. And it was cool when they'd overlap a little bit, but I kept taking classes with these professors in college and well, they didn't have two worlds. It was all integrated. They did a great job of just history and Bible are the same thing. And so that really stuck with me. I kept taking their classes on accident. But I had no intention of being a pastor or anything. I wanted to go to law school and maybe do political stuff, write books or something. So I did that. I got accepted to law school. I got started on a big internship and all of this. And then of all the things, man, my my kid brother died in a car accident. Just healthy, awesome, wonderful kid right at the beginning of adulthood. There's just a a horrible freak accident. He and all three of his friends in the vehicle were killed. And I mean, dude, it's crazy. the uh my brother took his buddy to get his driver's license and within 10 minutes his buddy had ran a stop sign into six lanes of traffic and uh just changed the trajectory forever of four families. Just crazy. So, I didn't want to be a lawyer after that anymore. I was just very sad because I loved my brother. And so, I came home and I could tell my dad, who's a pastor, wasn't going to be able to keep that up for any amount of time. He was a wreck. I was his baby. And I was like, "Well, I accidentally got this degree in Bible, so I could help. I'm 22. I don't know how to pastor or do anything, but maybe it's better than nothing." And so, I kind of filled in and helped support my dad to get him through that time. You know, grief of a brother is older than a grief of a the grief of a dad. And kind of liked it. Like my dad, I liked working with him. I liked working at church. I like getting to be there on people's worst days and best days and just to have that front row seat to people's lives and to be trusted to try to help. And so I got done with that after a couple years of helping dad out. I was like, "All right, well back to law and politics." But then couple churches heard that I was tapping out and they were like, "Why don't you work for us?" I was like, "Well, I'll humor you. I'll come look." And I thought, "Man, this looks awesome." So, I took another church and I did youth ministry there and kind of got into it and I was like, "All right, I probably better learn about this more." So, I quit. I went to seminary and tried real hard at seminary and did pretty well at some stuff, did pretty crappy at other stuff, but, you know, enough to enough to really get into church history, the history of theology, to get better at the Bible. Um, and so then just right back to church after that. and I just kept accidentally pastoring. It was never my ambition. Uh it was never a role that as a young person I held in particularly high esteem or low esteem. It was just kind of that's what my dad does I guess. And so then um eventually I end up in Landrew, Wyoming, which is maybe the wildest quality town in the continental United States. The bears wilderness high country. was out by the Tetons in Yellowstone and I I was a pastor, senior pastor of a church here for a long time. It was phenomenal, but this town is remote. And so at some point, you know, I want to teach through books of the Bible. So it's a serial sermon series. It's like, how do I make this work when a Home Depot run is six hours for everybody here? Like people who aren't here every week, they're not unfaithful. you just can't live here without being gone at least one week a month, two weeks a month. So, I started making this thing on the internet and jokingly called it the 10-minute Bible hour, kind of riffing on oldtimey radio Bible hour stuff. And I just did condensed funny, you know, kind of daily show monologue style rapidfire treatments of whatever text we'd covered the week before in church. That was the idea. And just that way people could still come to our church and stay current. But then pretty quickly, you know, the numbers flipped from this is my church watching this to this is somebody else watching this. And then it just really really snowballed and um eventually added a couple of podcasts, a two dudes talking podcast with a friend of mine and uh a daily Bible podcast and those quickly equipped eclipsed the YouTube channel and kind of became the the big things that I do. And then I guess one day I wrote a book and now we're here talking. So there you go. That's the quickest version I got. >> No, I appreciate the overview. I want to kind of go back to, you know, your seminary Bible school experience because seemingly trying to find a conservative evangelical, you know, thinks the Bible is actually real. There's not atheists on staff, like that seems to be rarer and rarer. And whenever you hear about pastors talking about the state of seminaries and Bible colleges in this country, man, it's not exactly uh inspiring, right, in terms of what the next generation is being turned out. It's almost like they're training people to help other people deconstruct is what it kind of feels like. And so I want I'm wondering what your read is on that because I've talked to a myriad of different pastors on and off of this show about that same exact thing. And they're like honestly it's one of it's one of the least talked about things that's a threat to evangelicalism in this country and there's seemingly no one really doing anything about it. >> It's a huge problem. That's an incredibly insightful question and observation. Uh yeah, I applaud you for noticing. Um yeah. Well, here's part of the irony of that. I went to I went to a flagship academic life of the mind evangelical seminary. When I was in seminary, probably the four big ones in that regard would have been Dallas, Gordon Conwell, Denver Seminary, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, affectionately nicknamed Teds. in Chicago. I went to Ted's and as of this recording, they closed the campus two months ago. Like that's not a thing anymore. Now I want to be a team player and everything. That's it's the seminary of the Evangelical Free Church of America. That's kind of my group. Um but I'm also kind of frustrated with my group because they couldn't keep their seminary. And I know I'm I'm sure there's, you know, da da da logistical reasons and it's it's perfectly understandable, but just big picture, it's incredibly frustrating to people like me and other graduates of the institution to look at this and say, you know, like there's a band called 500 Frenzy back in the day and they had printed up >> uh SCA band. Yeah, check that out. >> Yeah, absolutely. [laughter] They had shirts printed up in the 2000s that said Five Iron Frenzy. We were the future of rock in 1995. That's funny. That's self-aware. Nice job. And I feel the same way about about Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and and Teds and Thinking Man's Evangelicalism. That was the future of Christianity. In 1995, the Evangelical Free Church of America was the fastest growing denomination in the country. The seminary was firing on all cylinders. And what people found appealing about it was that one, this tradition, it's a Scandinavian tradition, had baked into it a lot of the answers for the stuff that now plagues us in terms of Christianity on the internet just being a bunch of stupid denominational fighting from people who recently discovered the denomination they're a part of and now we're willing to burn down all of the faith to defend. The EFCA is wellb built. It has developed historic language to to transcend that and get back to like thoughtful historic church rhythms of the church, gospel oriented, kingdom oriented action. So, I love this group and I I it frustrates the heck out of me that we had this this amazing institution and this great plan and this great faith build, tradition build, and and now it's gone. Now in fairness they moved a few faculty to Trinity Western in Canada but you know the the seminary that serves as the Evangelical Free Church of America is in Canada and has a different name. It's not exciting. So yeah, it's a problem and it's a problem that affects me personally that affects my tradition personally and I mean you're a market guy. you think in terms of supply and demand and what provides actual value. I guess they just couldn't find the value proposition. They just couldn't figure out how to say and show to the world this is unbelievably valuable and you should send your young men and women to be a part of this thing. And so eventually it just thinned out and it went away. And so I I want to speak to the rest of your question, but I've kind of hogged it a little bit. I mean, what's your read on why? I mean, it's not just Trinity, right? Lots of seminaries and schools are hollowing out and going away. What's your read on why that's happening? >> Well, so, um, to use another five iron frenzy reference, it's kind of like there's a handbook for a the sellout that's happening right now. Uh, because ultimately, yeah, you like that all the SCA people from the late 90s and early 2000s are freaking out right now. What a weird genre of music. But hey, Five Iron Frenzy was fun. But what I what I feel like is happening is you have way too many weak need, weak willed, yellow-bellied pastors that are allowing culture to push them further and further downstream. And so if we take the Bible and we just say, "Hey, we're just going to read this, exedge it, and do what it says," people are like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." That doesn't jive with what I like and what makes me feel good because this thing sounds a little pnicity. It sounds pretty judgmental. there's rules in here and I don't like rules because I'm high and trained openness and you know that my personality doesn't really like rules and you can't really tell me who to love. You can't really tell me how to act, especially from some ancient book written down by a bunch of white men because apparently people don't know what Middle Eastern Jews look like. And so the the thing that that I get is it's ultimately the church accepting the position of being downstream from culture if I had to put it into one package. Hm. Hm. >> Because if you're a seminary and and you purport to believe the things that were written thousands of years ago that have now been kind of put together because the Bible's not a book as much as it's a library, right? So if you believe in this library of documents, right, that you elucidate really well in the book that we're going to talk about here just shortly. If you actually believe those words, it's not going to matter what's happening culturally because we are called to be salt and light. And if our lights are turned off, we obviously can't light anything. And if we've lost our saltiness, we're only good to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. And I think a lot of people want to be patted on the head by our secular, atheist, progressive culture as opposed to standing up and being like, "Hey, I'm sorry. You may not like this, but you know, Jesus basically warned us that we're not going to be well-liked if we stand up for the things that he says are moral and good and righteous. And I'm just I'm sorry. I'm not sorry." >> Yeah. I I do think it's interesting the way HR best practices somewhere in the 90s or 2000s >> overtook without any vote or any discussion biblical ethics or or I guess what I would call the historic values of the kingdom that at its best informed the best of what makes the west work. Now, I would like it's as simple as this. Like when when Camila, my wife, and I do something together, um you know, and I know she was well prepared and I wasn't as well prepared. Sometimes when it's true, sometimes it's not true. Sometimes I'm the one who's well prepared. But when it's true, sometimes I'll be like, "Hey, all right. You know, we worked on this thing. Most of the best stuff here was her. Most of the stuff that uh you know, isn't quite as sharp, that was me. And if it's the other way around, I just don't say anything. You know, it's my wife. Take care of her, right?" But I feel that way about the West. The stuff that's awesome in the West, it's all from what you were just referencing. It's all from men and women of conviction who understand the values of the kingdom and the character of Christ and figure out how to implement that into the world in a complex way and kind of fight for it. When we're at our worst, it's when we don't do the things that are in there. like everything that critics of Christianity in the West bring up overwhelmingly I'm like we're all on the same team there. I mean, yeah, that's evil and but I learned that from the Bible. So that would be not a result of the Bible. That is a departure from the Bible, the things that you're rightly complaining about. So yeah, I I I strongly agree and I think that you you know the the cowardice is a weird thing. I use the term weakness. I despise it in myself when I see it. But the funniest thing is for me that the the weakest thing that I do is when my brain subconsciously just defaults to HR don't get sued morality, which is the point of HR morality, right? It's not offensive. It's not about taking ground. It's not about building something. It is about >> keeping everybody in a mixed workplace, getting along, and not being able to sue the company. That's no morality at all. That's a terrible foundation for ethical thought. It's a terrible foundation for strategic thought. Whereas the Bible, I mean, just in the book of Matthew alone, you got two gigantic commissionings. And then you flip it around to what happens right after Matthew at the beginning of Acts, that's three commissionings. Matthew 10:16, behold, I send you out like sheep among wolves to be shrewd as serpent and innocent as doves. That is not HR morality. That is take ground. That's go get stuff done. >> If you weren't clear on what that commissioning is, it gets augmented around the ET discourse in Matthew 25 and that neck of the woods when Jesus is like here's what it's look looks like to be shrewd. You're given resources. Get a return. Figure it out. Do not go HR on me, paraphrase mine, and bury that stuff and try to avoid getting sued. Go invest it and get a return. That is the expectation of the master with this commissioning. Commissioning number two, go and make disciples of all nations and convince them to go through this ritual of obedience and humility before God that simulates death and resurrection in the exact name, not of some vague God, but this exact only true triune God, Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Then right after that, Luke tells us a little bit of the rest of the story. And in Acts 18, there's a third commissioning where Jesus, you know, they they're like, "Let's be done. That is now the time for the restoration of Israel." They're like, "Just wrap it up. You're resurrected. Let's do it." And Jesus is like, "This is not the time. I'll tell you what time it is. It's time for you to go and be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth." three very clear aggressive, assertive, forwardthinking, not cautious, don't play defense commissionings to change the world in the name of this thing that is true. And that to me is just one of the most incompatible things about biblical Christian faith and thought, following Christ, and HR morality, which is weak and no morality at all. But somewhere along the line, without a vote or a discussion, this just became assumed that HR is right and and it's that simple. Don't get sued. >> Well, and Matt, it's interesting you bring up the HR language because HR, and I'm going to paint with a broad brush here, so allow me a little bit of latitude, but HR and kind of the structures therein is is more of a feminine temperament thing. And I mean that capital F feminine temperament. So, it has a whole lot more to do with feelings than it does about facts. And it really likes rules where it gives weaker people more power. And those are [clears throat] both things that are in the capital F feminine camp to where you are weaker powered, but you're given more power. Go back to 2020. Go back to COVID. You had all these these people, right, that just could not believe they were given this golden goose of being the ultimate hall monitor, right? So, this is like the the HOA lady with the ch the the key the you know clipboard walking around Whole Foods telling you to put your mask on. This was, you know, the person on the plane that maybe wasn't wellliked in school, but now she is in control of that airplane even though she can't fly it. And she's going to tell you you had your mask down a little bit too long while you were taking that bite and drinking your water. And so, it's kind of that that same idea, but if we and I wasn't really wanting to go there, but hey, send it. Um, if we use kind of the HR structures in terms of how we approach Christianom, not just how we approach the scriptures, not just how we approach ministry and evangelicalism and all those types of things, we will not stand ready to push back the great dragon of evil which is Islam because the more you learn about Islam and [clears throat] the Quran and the Hadith and the more you realize that surah 9, which is the least abregated of all the suras written by Muhammad as influenced by a demon that was helping him write it via automatic writing. You realize those are the bloodiest most calling out for war passages in the entirety of that religion. And then you understand the concept of tea which is this ancient Muslim way of operating which is go into the Christian areas take you know take advantage of their their neness and their politeness and their ability to just oh yeah come on in no big deal pretend to be their friend wait for them to turn their back and then slit their throat. figuratively and literally. And so I I worry for the next generation of Christians. And I mean, who knows what it's going to look like? We've never had a more liberal leftist progressive cohort of women in the history of of all the times that we've studied in the West. And we've also never had a more conservative right-leaning uh males kind of coming up. I don't know how those groups are going to get married, but we'll kind of see how that goes. But where does evangelicalism, where does Christendom go if we continue to allow Islam to take up residence, not only in our communities, but in our thoughts and minds where we allow them to continue pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing. And then it's, hey, don't just tolerate us. We need obscinity laws based on Sharia law. And, you know, I'm I'm getting kind of all out into a lot of different areas, but that's one thing that I am I am worried about and trying to push back on. It's like, look, this is not some sort of morally neutral thing. Oh, they just do it kind of differently. Oh, and we'll talk about this a little bit later. Oh, you know, God accepts the worship of Judaism and Islam and all that. It's all going to the same place anyway. I just think we are not ready for the fight that's coming. >> So, right back to the question about seminaries. Strategically, there's probably a few fronts that Islam is not the West. Uh, >> I know lovely Muslims, >> but Islam is not the West. You can't. Do you remember when Disney bought Star Wars and that clip came out of Darth Vader and Jar Jar Banks dancing to the YMCA by the Village People on a stage at Disneyland and you just looked at this and you thought that just doesn't work to you can't put those components together. They're they're incompatible. That that wrecks the whole it doesn't work. And historically, this is coming from somebody teaches history and stacked up a few degrees in the subject. Historically, they're different animals. They're different societal builds. Even even if you're not willing to take a side, it is willfully, intentionally obtuse to pretend that they're the same thing and that with just a couple blasphemy laws, they would just be the same thing together. That's that's nonsense. It's why religion should be taught. so that people can understand there's more to this than just oh well you have your opinions and you have your opinions. So one way to address that is to make sophisticated people who understand the difference and that's one of the places where seminary and very well-trained Protestant evangelical clergy are so important. Evangelicals historically have been great at talking to the people, great at using the Bible to deal with crisis in individual's lives, great at uh communicating the the front door of salvation and faith in a way that is often more clear than the high church. And I think I think that's a big part of what evangelicalism brings to the table. What is discouraging to me about where evangelicalism is headed is what I already talked about sort of the default assumption that HR morality kind of trumps the Bible and anywhere HR HR morality and the Bible come into conflict you kind of clumsily apologize for the Bible there you try to explain why you know maybe you're misreading it um instead of just it's the Bible I'm not I'm not obligated to solve it it this is God speaking timelessly It is what it is. But if you want to combat Islam, and I I do not think that Islam and Christianity are the same thing, two peas in the same pod, two sides of the same coin. I think they are fundamentally different things and it's a fool's errand to pretend they're the same thing or that they've produced the same historic results. If you want to combat that in the age of the internet, you're going to have to do it here. especially if you don't want a real mess on your hands. So these seminaries go away and now you don't have clergy who can do this and overwhelmingly people are turning to podcasters >> who have varying degrees of sophistication and catechizing and you simply just people just simply don't know the faith well enough. They don't know the Bible well enough. They don't know historic Christianity well enough. They don't know the way they don't have a sophisticated understanding of how that history integrates with the West. There's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of people who talk about kind of, you know, like American Patriot Bible kind of thinking like here's how some 10 quotes from founding fathers that sort of sound like modern evangelicalism there. Now our people understand our Christian heritage. No, they do not. They don't get it at all. America is not a new thing that started in 1776. It is one of the primary baton holders of a tradition that is born out of Rome, Greece, Persia, and maybe a few things before that that have been heavily integrated with the people of God, the message of God, even the prophets of God in ancient times. and and to kind of start looking and thinking about it during colonial times or the revolutionary war is a shortsighted view of the most robust intellectual ethical religious tradition in the history of the world. Even if you don't think there's a God behind it, then if you operate from the assumption you and I do, the right assumption, which is the God of all things, the maker and sustainer of all things, the triune God named in the creeds, that's the God who's orchestrating this whole story, the God who's behind this whole thing. Well, then you start to get into a place where you read history differently. you you start to develop the skill set to instead of thinking of every Christian contributor to history as good or bad. Did that guy say things in 800 AD that sounds like my denomination or did he not good or bad? You start to develop people who can think biblically and think Christianly and think historically about all of these characters and see them the way we see themselves and we can give them the grace that we give ourselves. I'm complicated. My ideas change. I'm working on it. And we can glean from all these Christians who threw entire lifetimes, entire lifetimes at trying to solve the same tickets we're trying to close, trying to solve the same stuff. Martell and the pre- Carolian dynasty spent a lot of time trying to solve exactly what you just brought up in the early 700s AD. They threw a lot of time at it. There are things to be learned from the weak Maravvenians at the end of the Maravvenian dynasty in central Europe, Western Europe. And and you why did Charles Martell take over? Why was the mayor of the palace and not the king in 732 AD the one who led troops into battle at the battle of Turs and checked the advance of Islam? I think stronger character and a more robust understanding of the moment would be my guess. So, it's just an example, but what I'm saying is you've you've posited a problem that I think is a problem, is a threat, >> and you posited another problem, which is what's going on with the seminaries. And I think the two things you've brought up absolutely interlock. It's difficult to know what time it is when you do not have a whole bunch of Christian men and leaders who understand the history of where they came from, the complexity of the ideas were born out of, the simplicity of the ideas were born out of, and we don't bother taking lessons from people who already dedicated their whole lives to solving for the exact same problems. I would like to see that improve within evangelicalism. >> Hey guys, real quick. 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He can obviously read English. uh he's you know his parents I think are Coptic Christians from Egypt but he wrote three amazing books sword and scimitar defenders of the west and the two swords of Christ and when you when you look at the crusaders or the hospitalers or or you know king Richard the Lionheart any of these types of folks there was no such thing as a private faith like this idea that okay you know when we're in the public square we're going to ignore the shama and we're just going to operate as if you know uh yeah hey don't bring your Christianity here there was no there weren't like pockets of of time that you would be about Christianity, not be about Christianity. That wasn't exactly a thing. And then when you talk about, you know, the founding of our country and in different things, you have all this these people losing their minds because the the Texas state approved uh Bible reading in in the classroom as required reading and all that. Do you understand the the number one thing that the founders referred to in founding documents was the book of Deuteronomy? Not just the Bible, not just the Torah, it was Deuteronomy, right? Which I know is on everybody's reading plan, right? But like that's what they referred to. Yeah. But that's what they referred to the most. And look, if you don't read the Bible, Shakespeare can't make sense. If you don't read the Bible, the Federalist Papers don't make sense. And so this idea that we don't need to read this ancient document is full hearty. Now, I I promise we're going to get to the new book, but I want to take one slight detour again because you brought up, we've been talking about theology and all these different things, but I want to put a finer point on what Legionire Ministries, uh, the late RC Sprouls ministry and Lifeway did in 2025, the state of theology. They they did this survey of self-described evangelicals. And in order to be even considered to do this survey, there were four or five questions that that you had to answer in the affirmative. Like, I believe the Bible is the inherent word of God. I believe that we should share our faith and seek people's conversion all these things. So these are evangelicals. These are people that are super duper on the team right about half of the evangelicals believe that ah you know people sin from time to time but we're generally good. Only about half of people think that marriage is between one man and one woman and ordained by God. And then about half of those respondents said that God accepts the worship of all religions to include Judaism and Islam. And there's a bunch of others. Those are just the three that were the most egregious in my brain. >> Half of them half of [clears throat] them said uh Jesus is a created being. >> Right. I I mean just And so the only conclusion, Matt, that I can Well, I can draw a lot of conclusions and I did. The only conclusion that I can really draw, the main conclusion is that we own Bibles in the West. We just don't read them, right? So, we've got Bibles that we have to blow the dust off the top whenever we show up to the Easter service or the Christmas Eve service or something like that. We carry them under our arm or we have a bunch of them downloaded on our iPhones, right? Because, you know, real people don't use Androids. Matt, we'll pray for you. But like ultimately, like we've got all these versions of the Bible, but we don't read them. We don't read them at all. And then I just think about a Christian [clears throat] in Iran right now, a Christian in North Korea, a Christian in China. How much would they value a copy of the Gospel of John? Right? That's more valuable to them than a golden brick. You know what I mean? But us in the West, especially in the South, I call country music theology, right? You know, we grew up, went to church every now and then, got baptized when we were a kid. Our grandparents were good uh Christians, you know, we wrap everything in the American flag and we listen to '90s country music. God's pro all that stuff. So, we get to go to heaven when we die. So, we don't actually have to read the Bible because we kind of already know what it says. But the state of theology survey clearly shows that we don't read it and we don't know what it says. And so the book that we're going to talk about here in a minute, your your book certainly is going to help with that. But this is one of the the drums that I'm going to continue beating until my microphone is turned off for me or until I'm no longer a part of this world to where it's like if you purport to take the Bible seriously, but you don't engage [clears throat] with it, you've missed the point entirely. >> Yeah. It's like looking in a mirror and walking away and forgetting what you look like. >> The Okay, a few things there. Um, beautifully said. I think maybe more danger I think that for some people that applies. We just don't read it. I think more dangerously we do and we read it crappily. I think that's more problematic because then you have that false sense of assurance like, oh, I tugged on the bungee before I jumped, but you didn't check the knot and it's not tight. That's that's risky. I am I am disappointed frustrated troubled and a little bit injured by the dopey expressions of our branch of the Christian family tree. I went through a period where that was heavily disruptive to my faith. Just to see willfully, intentionally stupid Christianity celebrating its own stupidity like that academic stuff is for that's for eggheheads. That's for people who don't really love the Lord. And then I watch the people who just, you know, said stuff like that go and sing songs that are packed from beginning to end with every single ancient heresy that our brothers and sisters who came before us in the first six centuries of Christianity gave everything to try to defeat so we wouldn't fall for it again. >> And we write songs and we sing the same stupid crap. So every every single person who tells me how proud they are not to study the Bible hard and not to think hard about faith then immediately turns around and demonstrates the consequences of that by saying singing and celebrating stuff that it just isn't historic Christianity. >> Matt, can I actually I I want to I want to go in there because I want to make sure we're efficient with our time because you're hitting on another thing that is a major sticking point for me. again, largely male audience. Look, I didn't grow up in church. Like, that's that's why your newest book was so helpful to me because I didn't have all the the Sunday school and the Aana and then church camp and all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, getting to know your way around the Bible as an adult, it's kind of like learning a new language. It's much easier the the earlier you start. But for me as a metal head growing up, I would go to these worship services and I'm like, [clears throat] I don't it's just it would hit my ears. But then it was like I'm being force-fed this music I don't like. But then, you know, some people are like, "Well, hey, it doesn't matter. You got to worship anyway." And so, and there's plenty of different worship genres. There's there's worship country, there's worship metal, there's worship hiphop, all the different things. But specifically speaking, I've talked about over and over and over, I forget who said the quote first, but you will sing your heresies before you believe them. So, when you listen to Christian Top 40, and it's it's all me theology, right? How how much God is into me and how God God's just my buddy. And then for the man, when you take out the name Jesus of the song and you insert the name Larry and you sing it, you feel like you're singing to your boyfriend, it seems homoerotic. You're like, "Ah, yuck. What? What's happening here?" >> That doesn't work. And you know what? Watch how dudes sing, dude. Watch their body language. When you go to a church that does this, every man in the room is going to have these two hands right here covering [clears throat] their crotches like they're protecting themselves subconsciously from radiation. I'm not kidding. Like I go to churches for a living, man. It is a thing. You can tell that the music is absolutely crippling to the men of the church by their body language and the way they have this glazed over dead look and they and and here's why it doesn't work, man. the historically the sacraments of the church even in Protestantism even in lowurch Protestantism that moved away from you know the the sacramentalism of high church Lutheranism even in lowurch Protestantism there are still sacraments or what some would call ordinances those are the Lord's supper and baptism and then additional ordinances would include things like ordination um funeral child dedication for, you know, for groups that don't do infant baptism, there's still grace conveyed or at least articulated, if not efficaciously conveyed through the rights of the church that we've done since the dawn of Christianity. My gripe with low rent evangelicalism, and this is like me criticizing myself because this is my family and I help build it. This is me criticizing songs I sang and performed when I was a kid, even wrote when I was a kid. But my gripe with low rent evangelicalism is that despite what we might say, our sacrament is feeling things while singing pop songs. That is it. >> Amen. >> And go look at the way worship services are built. Go look at the way a 3se secondond idea is unboxed out into a 15minute extended Pink Floyd style mega version of a song that just simply does not have the gravity to deserve that. Look at what it does to the men and look at what it does to young men watching their dad go through torturous hell every week to sing these stupid songs. These young men watch their dads who are the boss at work, who built a business with their bare hands from nothing, who scrap and fight to protect their wife and support their family. They watch them go to church and have being the opposite of what they are be idealized. And this poor man has to play along with it for 50 minutes of dopey singing. And just watch what happens when young man who's watching his dad go through that. Watch what happens when he becomes an adult. It's not going to be good. That's what catechizes. A young man watching what his dad does with faith and with church. That's what catechizes. We have got to clean this crap up. We We need to sing things that are biblically, historically true. But back to your point, in order to do that, we have to know what is biblically and historically Christianity and true so that we can make art that conveys that. and probably completely reimagine our worship services as a movement. Like I'd be fine with burning it all the way to the ground and rebuilding how we do worship across the board. And maybe that's what my next book will actually be about. I've been working on that quite a bit. I I will co-sign that and I will help you write it and get no credit for it because ultimately one of the one of the most beautiful things, Matt, that I've ever seen. I don't know who it was. Uh but there was this kind of old oldtimey church and there was a man leading a room like the entire floor and the entire balcony. A room full of men. I'm getting chills just thinking about it right now. We're singing the doxology. No organ, no piano, no no drums, no none of that stuff. Singing the doxology. That's that's one of the oldest Christian songs that we have in modernity, right? And there were parts to it. Your voice was represented. It so whatever pitch it was in, there was something that you could do to participate. So it wasn't a show. >> It was participatory. And look, the lights the the the lights were up. The lights weren't down and only spotlights on the stage. The lights were up so everyone could be seen. And here's the reason why there's just and look, I like Phil Wickham and Shane and Shane and Brandon Lake. I think those guys are incredibly talented, but there's something about whenever they make an album or make a song, we're going to forget the song by next year. You're not going to forget Amazing Grace. You're not going to forget Come Thou Found. You're not going to forget any of these songs because what's in the song, there's so much going on. There's not only biblical truth. There's not only parts to be sung, but it's meant to be sung congregationally. Because when you go to a rock concert or a pop song concert and all that, >> isn't there singing going on in the crowd? Yes. But you can't hear them because the everything's turned up so loud. But I would even defy you. What are some of the most powerful parts of the last country music uh you know, concert you went to or rock concert? It's when the entire band stops playing their instruments and then the singer will just kick off part of the chorus or part of the bridge or whatever and it's just the voices being heard. That is a slice of heaven, ladies and gentlemen. And so why in the world do we constantly drown that out and then we we keep telling men, hey, if you don't raise your hands in worship, there's something wrong with you. Like the guy a pastor years ago told me, I'm not saved because I don't like Hill Song or Bethl or any of those types of things. He's like, "If you don't like that worship, brother, I don't know that you're saved." It's like, "What are you talking about?" >> Yeah. I earn it. If you're mad that I'm not into your singing enough, maybe ask some questions about what on earth you're doing with this worship service. I I do uh analyses on worship services when churches ask me to help out. And I don't know. I don't know everything. I've got my opinions. I got my read on things. But one of the things I do is just a simple bloat analysis. All right, you did an 87 minute service. I'm going to give you a pie chart that shows you what actually that's made of. Not your order of service fed back to you. I mean a second by second breakdown of what you did. Churches, evangelical churches that are killing it have a reason for everything they do through the entire service. Everything teaches. Every transition is thoughtful. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't have the kids leave. We haven't read the scriptures yet. You want to send kids to children's church, do it in a second. Don't do it now. What are you doing? We're teaching them that this is for adults and not for What are we doing? There's an intentionality that I see in the churches that are nailing it. And there's a connectedness with the historic church and scriptures intentionally woven throughout and the prayers are written. No more get up and just freestyle stupid whatever you thought of with the lights on in that moment. And the songs are there for a reason. The songs follow the rhythms of the church. They follow the text we're dealing with very intentionally. These churches don't have they have a low bloat rating. That is there just isn't much bloat. It's all intentional. And I find these churches these services are also often much shorter. They're 50 minutes and you kind of need a bulletin to say to keep up with them and to do your part because you have to do things through the whole service. This is you're the church. You have to do things. Pay attention. You can't kick back for a 50inute sermon about nothing. You have to think. You can't just look at your phone for 45 minutes of singing the same silly lyrics. You have to engage. You're going to need the words you're singing later. You're confessing these words. Do you want to confess something you're not even paying attention to? There's such a high the ones that are nailing it. There is such a high level of expectation on the participant without being dopey or controlling or legalistic. It's just this is excellent. We put unbelievable work into this. And by we, I don't just mean the pastors this week. I mean the historic church put so much work into being able to deliver this historic faith to you this Sunday. Wake up. Pay attention. Be present. It's 50 minutes and there's going to be 49 minutes and 38 seconds of content. In those 50 minutes, we have, you know, one guy that walks up a little slow. That's all the bloat. Then I go to other churches and it's all bloat and they're offended when I tell them like, "Okay, well, let's just look at what was communicated with the 45 minutes of singing." These two theological propositions covered in these four rhymes. That's it. I can read it to you and get it in 15 seconds. You took 40 minutes. That's going to run off every competent person. Competent people cannot abide that. They will quit. They will leave. where they'll check out if they're socially obligated to, but they no longer take you seriously. This sermon, it was not 40 minutes of Bible. It was six minutes of Bible crammed into 40 minutes of not particularly great preparation. >> Yeah. And personal anecdotes, which are not supremely helpful. >> Uh, and unless you're real good at stitching it together, like, >> you know, I >> that that can work. But >> the intentionality has been lacking. The intentionality [clears throat] has been flagging and I think a supreme antidote to every problem and every gripe. This has been fun by the way. Like being kind of annoyed about it with you is enjoyable. I'm trying to do something to make it better. Somebody just fired up their Harley. It might be loud for a second. >> Trying to do everything. I'm trying to do things. I like I like to gripe about things that are dumb because it's funny and I enjoy kind of jabbing at it and workshopping the problem. But I sense that you and I are similar in this regard. Um, we are men of action. Lies and just sitting around impotently complaining to not become us. This is what what are we going to do? What's a counter proposal? What's a better way to do it? Well, if you want to go down that road, knowing the text of scripture is exactly where you need to start. And you got to read it the right way. You can't pick the thing up and be like, "All right, what are the 25 most important life lessons for how to get along better and how to slightly curtail my bad habits a little bit more?" That isn't what the document is primarily trying to do. If you go and read it like that, you're going to miss the point of the whole thing and you will have spent a lot of time reading, but it's not going to in any way inform or position you to deal with the kind of stuff we're talking about here. Hey guys, real quick. I just wanted to remind you that we have an official Undaunted Life store. You can go to shop.undaunted.life or check it out in the show notes. Guys, we're always going to have hats and shirts and a bunch of other awesome stuff. Go there, support us, wear the mission. Again, it's shop.undaunted.life. Check out the link in the show notes. shop.undaunted.life. When you're a good shepherd, that's actually trying to disciple people. Part of the problem with the Bible is since we don't read it for ourselves, we we just assume our pastor reads it and he's just going to tell us what we need to know. And the the problem is when you get the five minutes of Bible and then the 45 minutes of TED talk, it's just like, oh shoot. And part of the thing is is like when a baby when when you rip the te or the bottle out of its mouth, it starts crying looking around. And that's the emails and DMs I get from guys that are talking about my church doesn't fit my needs and it's not da da and all these different things. I was like, "Bro, you sound like a baby. You sound like a baby. Like, what are you doing to feed yourself? Like, what are you doing to feed yourself? You're not going to the Bible at all. You're not listening to any podcasts where the Bible is talked about or taught. And you're not sitting down with it at all. And yet, you you want me, a podcaster, not a shepherd. I'm not going to have to give an account to God someday for how I shepherded you. I'm just a dude with a microphone. And then you're looking to me to solve the problem that you yourself have aided in. And so, again, all this is kind of coming to the same place, which is your new book. So, I want to go ahead and get into it here. You know, it's a lot later than I thought it would, but it's been a great discussion so far. But here's the book, The Lightning Fast Field Guide to the Bible, your compact companion for exploring the best book ever. I want to read a quote from the preface, and then uh we'll go from there. It's an anthology of books written by very different people under very different circumstances over a very long period of time, but the whole thing hangs together with amazing cohesion. It's just short enough that with effort, you can make a mental map of it all and hold the whole thing in your mind at once. But it's just long enough that you're going to discover tons of new connections every time you walk through it again. And you're obviously talking about this book and the Bible itself. So Matt, why this book? Why now? Why you? >> Uh just what we were talking about. Um I see things that are frustrating. I see how they could be fixed. And so then, you know, if you're a problem solver, you try to distill it all the way down. Okay. Well, I had these problems. How did I fix it? or how am I fixing it? Yeah, the Bible is what put back together my broken faith. What about the Bible? Not just magically holding it a lot and hoping that spiritually it would osmos into me. It was listening more carefully to the good teachers in my life who were trying to explain to me what the Bible is, what it does, how it works, how to read it, and then implementing that myself. I'd been a pastor for a long time when my faith broke. I was at a church that did silly things. And God bless everybody there. There's a lot of people I still care about, but it was a silly time in the history of evangelicalism. And we did silly things. And I did silly things. I'm I'm not blameless in my own fate in this period of struggle in my faith. But I came away from that feeling like am I the only person who actually was led to believe this is real and and bought it? like, "Oh, this is all like a scam. What am I doing?" I was embarrassed. My faith wavered would be an understatement. This is after seminary, man. It was brutal. And so then, you know, I kind of quietly went through this period. I didn't make a big, you know, announcement or anything like I'm deconstructing. I just quietly I was really having a hard time because I felt like I'd reached the endgame of the kind of evangelicalism you and I have been rightly criticizing in this conversation. But I seen glimpses of the good stuff. So, I just sat quietly and thought, what are the people who did it well, who I admire, what do they have in common? Well, they're all really good at the Bible and not just memory and not just the, you know, life lessons and behavioral hacks. They're they it's like they're still a part of the Bible. It's like they are still living the exact same story and they have this deep well of wisdom. It's not quaint. It's it's like they they see the rhythms of God in all of these stories and and they've got some some bigger understanding of who he is and where we fit than I do. And I want that. So I just revisited in my mind what what did I get taught about how to read the Bible well by these great men. And I went back and I tried it again quietly for myself by just flushing all of the silly things that you and I again have rightly criticized in this conversation and just trying to imitate what I'd seen better men, better readers do with the text. And it man, it was like uh when Mr. Incredibles fighting the lava monster and his back pops back into shape and now the lava monster is just doomed. It it was like just this crystallizing alignment on that trip through the Bible during my dark time. And I thought, well, this wasn't hard at all. People were even telling me this is what the document is. Not like here's one trick to read. No, this is what the document is. It is this cohesive story that demonstrates the character of God in a bajillion different situations, relationally, historically. We see how he acts when this comes up, when that comes up. We see how he communicates, what different means he uses to do it. We see his superintendence over all the things that seem like the biggest thing in the world to us, this political movement, this empire, this battle, whatever. He flies right over the top of all of it while still being very interested in what's going on and makes a story of history that looks not cohesive into something that looks very cohesive for revealing the need of humanity, the redemptive plan of God and then beautifully the role of the redeemed in participating in that redemptive plan in a way that really freaking matters. That's got teeth. This book is preparing you to participate in the most important like the singular story of all of time. It's there, but it doesn't patronize us and pat us on the head like idiots who need to be told 15 steps to do this thing or that thing. It assumes we're competent enough to read Phileiman, understand the social dynamics of slavery in the ancient world and how that's different than slavery in other parts of the world in different times and the tension of where Paul was writing from under house arrest under Nero, a guy who would eventually take his head and the shrewdness and strategy of saying, "I could make you, but I'm not making you manit this slave, receive him as a it's so complex and it's only 25 verses. If that were written today by the people who all too often have large microphones in Christianity, it would be so patronizing and so dumbed down and so stupid and so tisk tisk for thinking the wrong thing life lesson. And instead we get 25 verses in Phileiman. And it's incumbent on me to read that in the larger context of the entire Bible and think hard about difficult seemingly no- win circumstances and how the gospel and the character of God and the example of God could put me in a position to kingdom win to have wisdom to know what to do. Not just so I'm a good person. That isn't the point. So that rather so that I am an agent of the kingdom playing my role in this thing that has been ordained by God that I've been trusted with. You got to saturate yourself in this story and see the cohesiveness of it to understand what you do as an agent and an heir, an inheritor of this kingdom that we God could build it himself, but instead he lets us help build it and gives us meaningful important roles in the thing. And dude, when that flipped like that that epiphany, which shouldn't have been an epiphany at all. Good people have been telling me this for my whole life. But when I finally got it, that's what the Bible is doing. That's how I need to be reading this thing. Well, then faith became not hard anymore. All of a sudden, faith was, "All right, I know my role. I understand. I know the things I can know. I know the things I can't know. I know where the open tickets are of Christianity that I could still be working on and I know what I need to do. At least I know the general direction. And so I wanted to write a book that would help people largely from kind of our tradition and our background get way better at the Bible in a hurry and help them fast forward the process that took me a long time to get through. >> Well, so what you do is you you go through every book of the Bible and I really like how you start each one. And you have vital stats. So you give it, you know, position, the number of chapters, number of verses, word count, the most used words, what group it's in, like major prophets, minor prophets, you know, gospels, uh who it's prophesying to if it is prophecy, the date it was written, popularity rank. Quick question on the popularity rank. So you rank them in terms of popularity 1 through 66. Where did you get those rankings? And then let's look at something like Oadai, which is, you know, in your book it was 66 out of 66 in terms of popularity. How in the world people should treat something like Obadiah because guess what? Obadiah somehow someway may be difficult for people to surmise points to the person and work of Jesus, right? It points to the reality of the trinity. And so how how did you kind of do the whole popularity thing? >> Great question. I asked Harper Collins. So this book is published by Zanderan, which is a subsidiary of Harper Collins, which is, you know, they're good at this stuff. They're good at data. They also own some Bible websites and resources that are very, very popular. They have Bible Gateway. And so I just asked them to pull back the curtain and give me all their data. Give me all your search data on who looks up what books, how long do people spend reading each book. And I combined that with a couple of other bits of evidence that I got from them and other sources and triangulated it. I should I I really regret that I didn't explain this in the book. I meant to I don't know. I just kind of forgot. [laughter] I got got I don't know where would it go in this book. Right. So, that is exactly the right question. Are these rankings perfect? No. But I haven't had anybody who's read the book look at any of the rankings and be like, "No way. That's not where Ephesians goes. No way. You're dead. That's not where Psalms is." Everybody looks at it and they're like, "Yeah, I kind of see it." And I did adjust for size of the book as well. So obviously Oadiah will get looked at less often because there are just fewer reasons for it to come up than Psalms which is huge. So you know that it's weighted a little bit as well. But your to your question about Oadiah the 66th ranked book in terms of popularity uh it's awesome. Pastors should preach it. They should teach the context of it because Oadia is a unique book. It it stands alone as an oracle that doesn't really criticize the northern or southern kingdom at all. It just gloats over the defeat of a cousin people group who oppressed them and stood in their lofty high places where they lived up in the cliffs and looked down and made fun of the suffering of God's people and and finally they got what was coming to them. And it's a reminder God doesn't forget like it might look like you know the mockers will win. It might look like the plans of God can be thwarted by governments or powerful people or interest groups. They can't. They will fall from their lofty heights and that will be claimed by God and ordained by God. The only thing that will stand and persist is his kingdom. The mighty [ __ ] got theirs. Everything that is not the kingdom of God is going to get theirs. He he remembers. So, Obadiah is actually it's one of the most important books in the Bible in terms of especially reassuring a man where we see injustice all the time and I just have one body in one lifetime. I can't solve it all. Cool. Well, make right what you can make right. Demonstrate courage where you are, but also know that the stuff you can't get to because it's out there on like lofty cliffs far away and you just can't solve that one right now. Okay. God sees it. God sees it. He'll he'll deal rightly. >> Well, and you're very open in the book, Matt, as well about with some of these books of the Bible, there are questions about what year or around what year it was written in, but even like who even authored it. And so, I know for a lot of people, they just try to h kind of glaze over that like we don't know for sure who wrote the book of Hebrews. We got a pretty good idea. We don't know who for sure who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. Pretty sure it's Solomon. And so how like I saw how you dealt with it in the book, but how do you deal with it, you know, in the book, but even specifically when you're talking to somebody because a lot of people use that as an example for why we can't trust the Bible. It's like why would we trust a book that we don't know when and whom it was written down by. Yeah. And that's God bless those people. That's naive. That just demon that betrays a lack of understanding of how we read ancient documents. uh it it betrays just a lack of careful thought or training about how you read anything or how you know anything. It it would be interpretively fun to find out who wrote Hebrews. So right now um Julius Caesar's father-in-law's library from Herculanium is coming back to life. The whole library got baked in a volcano. Same one that destroyed Pompei. And all of his scrolls look like little burritos. Just black bricks. Imposs. If you touch them, they turn to dust. Okay. Well, University of Kentucky and some other groups have figured out how to use AR and LAR to virtually unroll these scrolls. And they've also figured out how to use AI to decode the pattern. So the the Greek and Latin characters burn a certain way. Doesn't look like the characters very much anymore, but it's like code deciphering and they're figuring it out. So we're about to get a whole new ancient library of thousands of scrolls that dates to the 70s AD. Okay. Um will Hebrews be in there? Probably not. But maybe. I mean, what if we do figure out who wrote Hebrews at some point? What if we find out that it was uh Clement or Apollos or Paul? Will it change the meaning of Hebrews? Well, no, of course not. Because we have the entirety of the corpus of scripture to interpret Hebrews through the lenses of. But would it be fun for me as a podcaster? Would there be new insights? Would there be new levels of richness to draw from it? Well, yeah, obviously. Like, if I knew that Hebrews was being written by Paul while he was briefly being held after he got put into protective custody after the riot in Jerusalem at the end of the third missionary journey, and that's when he wrote it. Well, yeah, that'd be great. That'd be like having the little line at the beginning of the Psalms and it's like, David, after you screwed up and killed Uriah the Hittite, oh well, I know better how to read this psalm then. but also the psalm works great without it. So I don't think that the uh the argument you are quoting is a good faith argument from people who say you can't know or trust the Bible because we don't know the authors. Also overwhelmingly we dang well do know the authors that the entire corpus of Pauline letters is overwhelmingly undisputed. There's a couple that people have tried to push back on but scholarship has vindicated the authorship of Paul. the Johannian letters. At at worst, maybe somebody could make a case that there was another John named John the Apostle who isn't that John the Apostle. If that is the case, well, he was trained by the John the Apostle who hung out with Jesus and he's from the exact same school of thought and is writing the exact same stuff. So, it's John. Which John? Almost surely John the beloved disciple. You can go through and we could do this with every single book of the Bible. I'm confident in the authorship of the named authorship of the Gospels for reasons we don't have time to get into. But if it turns out that Matthew didn't write Matthew, well, it doesn't make the Bible wrong. The Bible never said Matthew wrote Matthew. It It's not like gotcha. Well, okay. Well, then I guess for whatever reason the church ascribed to that someone named Matthew. Maybe it's not even the same Matthew if that's the case. But it changes nothing about the meaning. There's no lie in the Bible as a result of that. That said, I think the original gospel authorship tradition is very strong. So this is what I find, man. There are genuines and there are disingenuous arguments. And if you really want to get to the heart of it, just push back and be like, "Well, what would it change?" Okay. Um, let's say, you know, okay, we don't know who wrote Hebrews. What would it change if we did? What would that do? So, I don't think there's a lot of teeth to that. My [clears throat] attitude with the book on everything in the Bible is just face value. What is it trying to do within the context of the Bible? I assume both in real life and in my authorship of this work that it's from God, it's reliable, it's accurate, and that it is doing exactly what it's trying to do with perfection and excellence as ordained by God. So if it uses metaphor, it is using that metaphor perfectly. If it is telling us a literal account of details, it is doing so perfectly. And it nails what God means to communicate theologically at every turn. where I get into the stuff in the Bible that we don't know, like your authorship question. >> I wouldn't say I handwave it, but I pretty quickly just get through the >> Yeah, it's like what is the actual objection? Like what's the objection? And it goes back to something Wes Huff said on my show, which is hey I because I asked him like what's that one thing that if you know some archaeologist somewhere found this one thing to where your entire faith would come falling down. And he's like, "That's the thing about belief in Christianity is it's not it doesn't hinge on one piece of information." Now, if Jesus didn't raise from the dead, I got some questions, right? And so, but like, >> so does the Bible. The Bible has questions about that, too. >> The Bible would have questions. So would the Quran, interestingly enough, but we're not going to go back there. But like, if you go to something like that, uh, it's very interesting because it's like, okay, it's going to lead to more questions that have answers. Because I I'm kind of over these people that are like, "Well, I'm just asking questions. All these pseudojournalists on the internet because it's like, well, you know what? When you ask questions, they have answers." And so, if you can't give an answer for the question you're even posing, then why did you pose it to begin with? Cuz you're not even searching for the truth at the end of the day. But a couple more shout outs uh from the book. I really like some of the sections. Uh you have one section on each of the different chapters or different books of the Bible, which is, hey, if you don't have time to read the whole thing, at least read this. It's it's certain passages or certain chapters. But also you have a section where it was like what would happen if insert book name was not in the Bible? So what would happen if Nehemiah was not in the Bible? Hey, what would happen if Oadiah was not in the Bible? And so those are great things that kind of help you. Again, guys, it is a field guide, right? This is not like some magnum opus. This is a field guide to kind of help you uh get through and categorize the Bible correctly. But we're kind of running out of time here, so we'll make this the last question. I know everybody that comes on the show, they've got the thing that they just got done doing. But hey, I'm going to give you the question that everybody gets. It's like, "Hey, when's season 2 coming out?" Right. I just watched season 1. It took you 5 years to make it, but I want to see season two. So, what are you working on now? What's coming up next for you? Yeah. Well, I've got another book in the works. Um, I can talk more about the topic on that later on. I hinted at something I'd like to do with it. Uh, earlier in the conversation, that'll be coming down the pike with the same publisher, Zanderban, Harper Collins. I right now I'm doing a massive daily series on the Gospel of John. Started a few months ago. The 10-minute Bible Hour podcast is my podcast. I've done seven season or I'm in my seventh season right now. We pick a book of the Bible and then we chip away at it like normal people. But it's fun. It's funny. It's fast. It's 10 to 12 minutes a day. And so just every day it's part of the wake up routine for people to make the Bible a part of their daily rhythm and not get patronized. It's not like uh it's not like a disciplehip thing where I pretend to be people's pastors and give them life lessons. It is deep dive history. Uh you know obviously right now we're talking a lot about the Roman Empire, the emperors of the first century. We're talking about the culture of the first century. I'm I'm a history guy, so I love bringing that to bear. I'm also a literature guy and a theology guy. So, I'm trying to do the most robust treatment of the Gospel of John in the history of podcasting. And it's in bite-sized chunks so you don't get overwhelmed by it, but you do get done and you feel like you've been treated like a competent adult, treated like a peer and a friend. So, I'm working on that in John right now. We're just into John, too. So, it'd be easy to catch up if anybody wanted to give that a try. It's called the 10-minute Bible hour. And then I'm still making stuff on on YouTube as well and I do another show called No Dumb Questions with Dustin Sandlin from Smarter Every Day. And so yeah, I'm around always working on stuff. >> All right, very good. Well, hey, we've gone everywhere in this conversation, but that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? >> No, this was a blast. I mean, is there anything else? Yeah. Do you have 10 hours? Like, dude, yeah, [laughter] we could we could talk forever. >> You keep writing books. You keep making content. I'm sure you'll find your way back on the show. Thanks again for coming on, Matt. >> Fun. Thanks, Kyle. Appreciate you. >> There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Matt. But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at Undaunted Life. Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. I've got a link to where you can buy your copy of the Lightning Fast Field Guide to the Bible and also a link to Matt's website so you can keep up with everything he's working on. Thank you everyone for listening to this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive fivestar review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info@undaunted.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook. And check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming. www.undaunted.life. The music on this podcast is the song Conqueror by the Christian metal band Void Awaken. Be sure to stream their music on Spotify, Apple Music, and wherever else you get your music. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness. Keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah. [music]