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0:39
This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:55
Hi, guys. Dave. We've got a special guest on the podcast. His name is Oz Guinness.
0:58
So he is a prolific author, speaker, and social critic. He's also the senior fellow at the Oxford
1:03
Center for Christian Apologetics and the founder of Trinity Forum. So he has either authored
1:08
himself or edited, been a part of over three dozen books at this point. It's like 30. I can't
1:13
remember. I counted him up earlier, but he's got books like The Call, Fool's Talk, A Free People's
1:18
Suicide, Signals of Transcendence. That's actually the book, his latest book that I just read here.
1:24
The guys just written so much and done so much public speaking and so many different things.
1:28
But the interesting thing about him is I didn't even know this until I was
1:32
preparing for this interview and researching. He is the great, great, great grandson of the
1:38
renowned Irish brewer, Arthur Guinness. And so we got to talk a little bit about
1:42
Guinness beer and kind of his whole connection with the family and all that kind of stuff.
1:46
But the guys just led a really, really interesting life. He was actually born in China to Christian
1:50
missionaries during World War II. And he actually witnessed firsthand the climax of the Chinese
1:56
revolution in 1949 and the rape of name King and in different things like that, just unbelievable
2:01
brutality. But he moved to the United States in the 80s. And like I mentioned, he's a cultural
2:05
commentator and social critic. And that's the interesting thing about this talk. To be honest
2:10
with you, it's one of my favorite talks that we've done so far this year, maybe in the history of
2:14
this podcast, because as I, as I've gotten used to, when interviews kind of go differently than the
2:20
way I think that they are going to go, that's typically a good thing. But in this case, it was a
2:24
great thing. Because we talk about, you know, his time with, you know, the Guinness family and
2:29
being a part of the Guinness legacy and all that and that's great. But then we dig into what he saw
2:34
in China and where that ideology comes from with communism and Marxism. But how that also
2:40
has really infected the West and how cultural Marxism has started to really degrade and erode
2:46
the foundations of our society. And so we kind of compare and contrast the Chinese revolution in the
2:50
20th century and the current degradation of the American Western culture as it were. And then we
2:55
talked about just Christian apologetics and how intellectualism has become kind of a curse word
3:00
for certain Christians because they're like, Oh, you shouldn't have to have any intellect to have
3:04
faith. You should just have faith. We get into kind of the hard disciplines versus soft disciplines
3:09
and how that really works into the conversation about intellectualism. And then I asked him to
3:13
give me his best Christian apologetics response to the problem of evil. And his answer was just
3:17
absolutely fantastic. And then we talked about Jordan Peterson quite a bit. So if you know anything
3:22
about the Exodus seminar that was part of the Daily Wire series that Jordan Peterson headed
3:27
up, Oz Guinness was one of the guys that was on that panel with Greg Hurwitz and Dennis Prager
3:31
and Jonathan Pajoe and other folks. And so we got to talk about that and how he got involved
3:36
with that particular thing. And then we talked specifically about his view on the faith journey
3:43
that Jordan Peterson is on. Because as many people know, as many people are kind of leaning in,
3:48
Jordan Peterson has a tremendous amount of reverence for the Bible. He has a tremendous amount of
3:52
reverence for a Judeo-Christian ethic that undergirds the West and the human flourishing that has become
3:58
a downstream consequence of that and how his daughter and his wife have both come to faith in Christ
4:03
and how he's just kind of on that journey. And he's on that precipice. And so I really enjoyed his
4:08
insight there. And then we do talk a little bit about his latest books and signals of transcendence
4:12
and specifically a quote from his chapter talking about GK Chesterton and the way that he was able
4:18
to kind of weave that into our current moment. I just absolutely loved it, asking what he's
4:22
working on now, what his one book he would leave for humanity would be. It was just man, we went
4:27
everywhere in this conversation. I really, really enjoyed it. I think you guys will as well. So
4:31
without further ado, let's get into it. Oz Guinness. Welcome to Dawn to life a man's podcast.
4:36
Well, thanks for having me. I'd like to be with you.
4:40
Now, I will say that here recently, there may be just something in the air about this year. I've
4:44
interviewed a bunch of people with like a lot of leather bound, beautiful books behind them,
4:48
so I can feel the intellectual ability coming off the screen as we even get started here.
4:53
But now people that may not know who you are. Again, I talked about you a little bit in my intro.
4:58
They don't maybe realize that your last name isn't just by accident that it's, oh, is that
5:03
Guinness of like the Guinness? And what's funny about that is I've known about your work for a
5:08
long time. And I had no idea, Oz, that you were the great, great, great grandson of the one and
5:14
only Arthur Guinness, the Dublin Ireland Brewer. So tell me a little bit about that. Like,
5:18
as a member of the family, do you have to start your day by like brushing your teeth with Guinness?
5:22
Like, is this something you have to have with every meal? Tell me how this works.
5:26
Not exactly, but I'm very proud and grateful to be an heir.
5:30
You know, he founded our family brewery and did an incredible job caring for the workers,
5:37
always paying them a little higher than the average and putting in health care and education
5:43
and all sorts of good things that were very unusual in the 18th century. And in the process,
5:50
we became our family became Ireland's most generous philanthropist, but all done early on,
5:56
anonymously, because that's you don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
6:01
as our Lord said, and so on. So I'm very, I'm very grateful to be, you know, the family doesn't
6:07
own the brewery now. It's now owned sadly by a multinational corporation, Diagio, who don't have
6:14
the same commitment to ethics and so on as the family did. But I'm very grateful for the heritage
6:20
you know, I was a strong Christian, came to faith in the first great awakening in the 18th century
6:28
through the preacher John Wesley. Okay, I did not have I was not aware of that. What's what's
6:34
interesting about that is I'm piecing together as you were talking. So I, the first time and only
6:39
time I visited Ireland, I arrived in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day, 2003, and which was like insane.
6:47
And that was like my first trip on a plane was I basically flew to Chicago and then flew to Ireland
6:52
and got there at 7 a.m. And so I went to the brewery and in the floor, obviously, where you're
6:58
getting the tour, like, you know, behind a whole bunch of glass is the lease that Arthur Guinness
7:03
signed in 1759. Now, for those of you that aren't aware of this, there was a 1000 or a 100 pound,
7:10
I believe down payment on the lease. And then they were going to be charged another 45 pounds
7:16
annually for 9,000 years. He literally signed a 9,000 year lease on a piece of property in Dublin
7:26
that now, I mean, it's almost incalculable. The amount of money would cost to have that much
7:30
property in Dublin now. I mean, is that something that the family talks about quite a bit? Because
7:35
that's one of the most shrewd business moves I've ever heard of in my entire life.
7:39
Well, it's one of the most famous business deals in history. But more importantly,
7:43
having come to faith through Wesley, he followed Wesley's custom, earn all you can,
7:49
save all you can, and the third one, crucially, give all you can. And they did.
7:55
I think that that's absolutely fantastic. It's such a, it's such a cool thing. And when
8:00
you talk to, like, serious beer drinkers, like everyone's got a sweet spot for Guinness,
8:04
but the interesting things are like, well, if you're not getting it, you know, from the tap,
8:08
you're not getting it right. And anyway, everyone's got their own way of consuming that. But
8:12
it's great to have a beer of your namesake. You've got to drink the draft, I think,
8:17
and you've got to have someone who knows how to pour it, because the secret of Guinness is in the
8:22
poor. Well, okay, now you're going to force me to ask another question. What's the secret? All right,
8:26
for those that have had Guinness before, and maybe it wasn't the best thing, like,
8:30
maybe they was poured wrong. So what's the poor? Well, if you pull it down and just do a straight
8:34
thing to fill it, you don't get the same effect as if you stop halfway and leave it for 30 seconds,
8:41
and then continue again. You know, I love the fact you remember when the Bud Light thing
8:46
broke out of a Disney. You know, there was a wonderful quip by some smart Alex saying,
8:53
how perfect that a man pretending to be a woman should be promoting a watery liquid pretending
9:00
to be a beer. Hey, as a member of our family, I enjoy it immensely.
9:06
I can imagine because, you know, and it's interesting to even bring that up because you are a cultural
9:11
commentator, and we'll certainly get more into that because a lot of people that kind of do what
9:15
you and I do, they're like, Oh, don't get into the culture wars, but that's where the battle's
9:19
being fought. But I'm going to go all the way back to the beginning with you. So you have a very
9:22
interesting story in terms of your upbringing. You're born in China, actually, to missionary parents.
9:28
And the interesting thing about your story, Oz, is you witnessed firsthand the Chinese revolution.
9:35
And so that's in the late forties where, you know, 17 million Chinese were murdered by the Japanese.
9:41
There's also the rape of Nan King that happened in around that time period. So just described to me
9:46
what that was like growing up in that time period, but not just in that time period, but
9:51
in that place, because this is World War II era, people don't really know a lot when you say the
9:56
rape of Nan King, it doesn't really ring in people's memories like it should. It's something I feel
10:01
like we should learn about in school, but just take me through what it was like. Well, I've got
10:05
to say that some of the things I say I heard from others because I was too young. So in the Japanese
10:12
invasion, and you know, the US entered the war in 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor, but Europe
10:19
entered in 1939 and China in 1937, the Japanese, as you said, they killed 17 million in the invasion.
10:29
And the rape of Nan King, not the biggest, only quote, only 300,000 were massacred, but he was the
10:37
most brutal massacre of the 20th century. And even the Nazis, present, were staggered by the
10:45
brutality that I was born in 41. And we lived in an area, my family, including my two brothers,
10:53
where there was a horrendous famine. And we were surrounded by the Japanese army, the communist army,
10:59
and on the third side, the nationalist army. And there was a terrible famine in which five million
11:06
died in three months, sadly, including my brothers. But we moved to the capital city, Nan King.
11:13
And so I do remember that part. I was a seven year old at the beginning of the Chinese revolution.
11:20
And I well remember the day my dad said to me, son, we're in trouble.
11:24
Chiang Kai Shek is just abandoned the city. And we're at the mercy of the Red Army. And three months
11:31
later in they came. And there were trials in the morning executions in the afternoon. You'd meet
11:37
friends in the street. They looked by you as if they'd never seen you or heard of you,
11:42
because it was more than their lives were worth to acknowledge they knew a blue-eyed foreign devil,
11:49
as it was put in the chance that accompanied us. So I remember those first two years. It
11:54
gave me a very realistic view of human life, but also of Marxism.
12:00
Okay. So I guess taking me through the practical side of how is it that that you all survived
12:07
that time period? Because it would seem like to me as an observer that being outsiders that you
12:13
would have been targeted, though. Well, in the 1930s, when the Communists started, they captured
12:19
missionaries and Westerners and executed them on the spot. But by the late 40s, early 50s,
12:27
we were under house arrest. And I was with my parents two years under house arrest in the
12:32
reign of terror. But looking back, and then I was allowed to go, my parents were allowed to
12:38
entrust me to friends of theirs. And I went back to England and school. They were kept
12:43
another two years and there were false trials and so on. But looking back, there were about 12
12:50
Westerners left in China. And people knew exactly where they were. And the Communists were trying
12:56
to show that they were not barbarians. They could be if there's an aerial government. So in fact,
13:02
they were probably more safe than earlier periods in the 30s. Hey guys, real quick, as you may have
13:09
heard me mentioned previously, before I started this undaunted life thing full time, I worked in
13:13
insurance and financial advisement. Now, while doing that, I got to sit down with literally
13:17
hundreds of families to discuss their financial plans and goals. I got to see some families that
13:21
had all their ducks in a row, but unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the people I sat down
13:26
with had major holes in their financial plans. So whether it was not diversifying their retirement
13:31
investments, having no plan for replacement income, if the breadwinner became too sick or too hurt to
13:36
work, or even having a plan for the death of a family member, most American families have left
13:40
themselves very exposed to potential financial ruin. So that's why I want to introduce you to my
13:45
friend and my financial advisor, Mike McCall with Bluecrest Financial. Now, Mike can help you reach
13:51
your chosen financial goals by helping you develop an overall plan to ensure you and your family's
13:56
financial success. So whether it's IRAs or stocks or rollovers or life insurance or long-term care,
14:01
disability income, you name it, Mike can help. Now, just imagine the peace of mind that comes
14:06
with knowing that you're taking proactive steps towards financial security for you and your loved
14:11
ones. Think about the legacy you could leave behind, something that truly reflects your
14:16
conservative values and the hard work you put in throughout your life. So I trust Mike McCall
14:20
with my financial planning. So I think you should give him a shot as well. So to receive your free
14:24
personal and or business financial assessment, go to the link in the show notes for this episode
14:29
to book a 15 minute zoom call with Mike. Don't try to piecemeal your own financial plan. Let an
14:35
expert help you. Again, go to the link in the bio, click that link in the bio to get your free
14:40
assessment. So with that in mind, obviously you mentioned Marxism. One thing that I feel,
14:45
I feel the pressure now, Oz, because I have a three year old son and a one year old son.
14:50
And so I want to teach them the things that I had to learn as an adult. I want to teach them
14:54
that as they grow up. But one thing that I don't feel like certainly the public,
14:58
public education system in the United States does is really educating us on the atrocities
15:04
of the 20th century. So if you learn anything, you learn about the the Jews and the Holocaust.
15:09
But I didn't learn about the Soviet gulags until I was in my 20s or 30s. Right. I didn't,
15:15
I didn't know about them at all. Right. I didn't know Alexander Sol's needs and was a person.
15:20
I didn't know about the rape of Nan King until Jocko Willink, you know, retired Navy Seal talked
15:24
about it on his show in stark detail for like four or five hours. So I don't want to be a conspiracy
15:31
theorist, Oz, but obviously a lot of the educational establishment leans very much left there at
15:37
least communist sympathizers, you know, marks of sympathizers, if not full blown, you know, card
15:43
carriers. I guess what, what kind of downstream consequences come from a young person that doesn't
15:49
grow up with the understanding that the 20th century was the most, with the most atheistic
15:54
and bloodiest century in the history of humanity? Well, I think we should start as follows of Jesus
15:59
just with a biblical view of realism. You know, humans are sinners and we often go wrong. So we
16:06
should never be surprised. And as you say, the 20th century with a carnage of war on the horror
16:12
of totalitarianism, you know, a huge, maybe 250 million human beings were killed by their
16:20
fellow human beings, which is a horrendous total. And who can believe in humanity in a
16:28
Pollyannaish way after that? So we need a theological, a biblical realism. You know, a lot of American
16:34
Christians, they only see death on television in films, right? And when it hits them in real life,
16:40
you know, they're, quote, disappointed in God, or why did God allow this? No, no,
16:45
this is the world in which we're living in the Bibles, much more realistic. There's no airbrushing
16:50
reality in the Bible. But certainly we need to, I say very simply about, you know, the French
16:59
Revolution, which started so much of this only lasted 10 years in France, then came Napoleon
17:06
dictator. But he was like a volcanic explosion in Western history. And the lava flows have flowed
17:15
out ever since and they're still flowing. The first big one was the 19th century, so-called
17:21
revolutionary nationalism. That's not one that Americans know much about. The second and third,
17:26
more important, the second designed in the 19th century by Karl Marx is revolutionary socialism,
17:33
one word, communism. Now, in many ways, with the Soviet Union defeated, people think that's over,
17:40
but of course, China is still communist. But what we're facing in the West today is not
17:46
classical Marxism. It's cultural Marxism. And the inroads are very profound, often disguised by the
17:55
homeward, workism. It's actually cultural Marxism that's behind it all. Now that was designed by
18:03
people like Antonio Gramsci in the 1920s. And then picked up by the Frankfurt School, so-called in
18:10
the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. But the important thing in America was in 1967 and 68, the leader of the
18:20
Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse, and a German radical called for a long march through the
18:27
institutions. You already remember, 68, I do. My first visit to the US, 100 American cities wrong
18:36
fire. Martin Luther King assassinated, Senator Robert Kennedy assassinated, but for all the
18:44
protest, far, far worse than 2020. For all of that, the radicals knew they wouldn't win in the streets.
18:52
So they called for a long march, just as Mao escaped his encirclement in China,
19:00
did a 6,000 mile detour, then swung around and won the whole of China. Their idea was they wanted
19:06
to win the colleges and universities, the press and the media, what they called the culture industry,
19:12
Hollywood and entertainment, and then sweep around and win the culture. Nobody would ever have thought
19:19
then that they would win bastions like business or the military. They would be conservative,
19:27
die-hard, conservative, and now you have work business and work elements in the military.
19:32
So the long march, cultural Marxism, critical race theory, critical agenda theory has been
19:39
profoundly important. But I would say going back to where we started, Karl, their revolutions
19:45
never succeed. Their oppressions never end. And the promised future they talk about never arrives.
19:54
I think that that's a fantastic way of putting it and you literally hit on about a 100 things
20:00
that I wanted to talk to you about in this discussion. So I think that's a great setup for it.
20:04
But one thing that I didn't hear you mention, Oz, was the church, because the thing that I see
20:09
that is one of the most nefarious things that this cultural Marxist agenda has done has convinced,
20:15
trying to think of the nicest way to say this, well-meaning idiots inside of the church,
20:20
they've convinced them to take up the mantle of these ideologies. So for instance, let's
20:25
just use a specific example, critical race theory. And let's look at the Southern Baptist Convention,
20:29
the SBC. They voted JD Greer presided over this vote and other prominent Baptist came out to talk
20:36
about this. And they were talking about critical race theory as, you know what, this is just a lens
20:41
through which we can view the plight of the Christian of color in America. It's just a lens.
20:46
And they're ignoring the fact that it's fruit of the poisonous tree, that it's not just
20:52
critical race theory. It comes from critical theory, which comes from critical legal studies,
20:56
which comes from the Frankfurt School, which comes from Karl Marx, which comes from the pits
21:01
of hell. And they don't trace it all the way back there. And then they say things like, you know what,
21:06
we're just going to redeem this ideology. We're just going to, you know, not we're just going to ignore
21:11
the parts of it that are obvious, obviously satanic and atheistic. And we're just going to take the
21:15
good parts of it because, you know, Jesus can redeem anything. And I feel like churches have
21:21
just bought hook line and sinker into this thing. And they don't understand that they were the ones
21:25
that cracked the door open for the wolf. What do you say? Monstrously naive, I would say, you know,
21:32
when I came to faith and I've followed Jesus 60 years now, but when I was a young believer,
21:38
say the 1960s in England, the great challenge was Protestant liberalism. And most evangelicals
21:46
and almost all Catholics stood firm. It was Protestant liberals who succumbed to the spirit
21:52
of the age. But now with what you're talking about, critical race theory, and even more critical
21:58
gender theory and what I call the rainbow wave, Christians and evangelicals are caving in to
22:06
the sexual revolution in unprecedented ways. And this is tragic and stupid. Now, if you go back,
22:16
say, in the Bible, you can see, say, when the Northern Kingdom, Samaria, Israel, they were so
22:26
acculturated, so accommodating to the spirit of the age, they literally became the lost 10 tribes.
22:34
They acculturated themselves into oblivion. But while a Southern Kingdom Judah, because
22:42
they sinned, were sent into exile, they had a notion of faithfulness, who you had exile and return,
22:49
and they survived. And parts of the church that are naively giving in, they're just going to
22:56
acculturate themselves into oblivion, acculturated beyond recognition, acculturated beyond repair,
23:04
they're acculturated in themselves into oblivion, like you take the Episcopal Church here.
23:11
It's committed institutional suicide. For evangelical churches, there's a big church now in
23:19
Atlanta going through that challenge at the present moment. It is tragic and stupidly naive.
23:26
Okay, so let's talk about that church in Atlanta, North Point Community Church, Andy Stanley.
23:32
Obviously, you know, this interview is coming out a couple of weeks or a few weeks after
23:37
the conference that they held. Interestingly enough, I'm certainly going to spend more time
23:42
talking about this on my show. They didn't allow anyone to record during this conference, this pro
23:46
LGBTQ conference that they were basically saying it was for the health of the kids, which if you
23:52
want to have enough various ideologies as hide behind children, because everyone that is critical
23:56
of it seems like a demon. But they wouldn't let anyone record that to openly homosexual,
24:02
married so-called speakers. They had one guy who was fired by his elders at his church for allowing
24:09
his son who was openly attracted to children to serve in the the kids ministry and a bunch
24:17
of people that are basically LGBTQ affirming. And then you have a guy like Andy Stanley,
24:21
unbelievably smug, unbelievably self-assured, going and doing this conference, being the
24:28
headliner, allowing them to come and do this. Then he goes to a church on Sunday, does not
24:33
livestream his his sermon, mind you, but he responds to all the criticism that they got.
24:38
And then some people are like, oh, well, he upheld the biblical definition of marriage between one
24:43
man and one woman, which he most certainly did not do. And the thing about a guy like Andy Stanley
24:48
is he seems like a wolf with the head of a snake, because he is a master communicator,
24:53
which means he is in and of himself, a master manipulator. So talk to me a little bit about these,
24:59
again, mega church pastors, which that's kind of a broad brush because there are guys with
25:03
enormous ministries that are very, very dedicated to the Bible and the gospel and the truth they're
25:08
in. But then you have guys like Andy Stanley or Joel Olstein or a Stephen Furtick or any of
25:12
these types of folks where it's just like they're they're doing their best to tut tut culture.
25:18
And yet they're doing it deceptively. And I frankly, aside from getting mad, I don't know
25:23
what else to do about it. Well, you know, I've met Andy and shared a lunch with him and enjoyed
25:29
him immensely. So I don't want to attack him personally. Well, I would say his idea of unhitching
25:35
our faith from the Old Testament was a laughable terrible mistake. I mean, the glory of so much
25:43
takes a human dignity. It's in the Old Testament, high view of freedom, high view of truth,
25:49
a high view of words, a high view of justice, all of peace, you go on covenant, go on down the line.
25:55
They're all Old Testament ideas that are there in the Hebrew scriptures. And we should never
26:01
unhitch our faith from the Old Testament. Now, of course, the new fulfills and completes the old
26:07
in ways that are very important. But we should never lose the Old Testament. And I would say to dear
26:13
Andy, you do that and continue down the road slowly, you will just commit suicide posturally.
26:20
Now, that's sad. Now, it's happening on a wider scale all across the board. Now,
26:26
we should remember the old saying by Dean Ng, he who marries the spirit of the age soon becomes
26:33
a widower. In other words, you try and get on the right side of history, or be fashionable to your
26:40
age. Well, history moves on fast, and people are washed up. And a lot of the things that are the
26:47
gospel of the mega churches, I'm not going to mention names. They are simply not the gospel,
26:52
and they will be textbook examples in the future of diluted gospels, heretical gospels,
26:59
and so on. Now go back to the Bible again, take that difference between the lost 10 tribes,
27:04
and those in Judah who are faithful. Faithfulness is the key to the staying power
27:12
of the Jews, staying Jews. Faithfulness is the key to the staying power of Christian,
27:18
staying Christian. And we got to understand that and have courage and confidence in the gospel.
27:26
Hey guys, real quick, if you were anything like me, you don't like paying for stuff that you
27:30
think you're capable of doing yourself. So a lot of people end up doing that with their IT at their
27:35
businesses. And the problem is, is if you're not an expert at it, you can leave yourself open to
27:40
attacks. So I literally just heard a story about a company that DIYed their servers and data
27:45
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the show notes as well. I think you're absolutely right. And this this move to people trying to
29:11
make the gospel sweeter somehow, like they're going to present it in a way that, you know,
29:17
takes off the rough edges and makes it more palatable. And it's like, do you understand that you don't
29:21
need to do that? The gospel can stand on its own two feet. But inherent in this discussion,
29:26
Oz is a discussion about deconstruction, which is kind of this new modern term,
29:30
which the way deconstructionists will talk about it's like, no, no, no, we're just trying to get
29:35
to the foundations of our faith. The problem is, as most people don't ever build anything back
29:39
on that foundation, they deconstruct their faith and then they have no faith thereafter.
29:43
So what are your thoughts on this whole deconstruction movement? Well, as you said about the Southern
29:48
Baptist, it is folly to think we can use their tools and come out differently. You know, deconstructionism
29:56
ends in nihilism. You know, you end with what they call a hominetics of suspicion. You interrogate
30:03
everything and assault it and deconstruct it and pull it down. And you've got nothing left. You
30:08
just go on and on and on doing that. And there's nothing. Now, the point is when you destroy truth,
30:15
which they've done with their postmodern ideas, all you have left is power.
30:20
So the Romans are very clear. If you set up a contest of power against power, which is what
30:26
deconstruction does, the only possible peaceful outcome is what the Romans call the piece of
30:33
despotism. In other words, you have a power so powerful that can put down every other power.
30:40
And that's authoritarianism. So deconstructionism leads to nihilism and it leads to despotism.
30:50
And for Christians to think they can do that is really stupid. Now, by deconstruction,
30:56
people mean losing their faith or backsliding. The question is, what was wrong with their faith
31:02
in the beginning? So take one simple example. The final reason for everyone to believe should be
31:09
that we consider faith to be true. Jesus, for example, did rise from the dead in history. It's true.
31:17
But without truth, you'll always be vulnerable to doubt and to assaults and to deconstruction.
31:25
But many of the so-called religious nuns know any yes, you never had a concept of truth. No wonder
31:32
they doubted and fell away from the faith and were vulnerable to our deconstructionist people
31:37
and so on and over the great deficiency in the faith. I think you're you're absolutely right.
31:44
And it's another I'm going back to the children that we have currently in culture. They're being
31:48
marinated in postmodernism, where they're learning phraseology like, well, that's just your truth,
31:54
which it's like, no, no, no, like my experience of something is my experience, but I don't get to
32:00
change truth. This either is a microphone or it's not this either is a pen or it's not either
32:05
rights with blue ink or it doesn't. It's not my perception of it that changes it. And so
32:10
Eric Metaxas wrote a fantastic book last year called The Letter to the American Church. And it was
32:16
kind of a derivative of his work in the Bonhoeffer autobiography or biography rather. And I
32:24
thought he did a great job of kind of encapsulating the message and the warning to the American
32:29
church to not go down the supposedly primrose path towards destruction. So if you were to give
32:35
a letter to the American church and do it right now in this interview, what would you say if
32:40
you could speak to the entirety of American Christendom and give them a warning about what's
32:45
to come if they keep going this direction? Well, I tried to write that over 30 years in various
32:50
books. You know, one of the things that following Peter Berger, I've been distinctive, is you don't
32:56
just look at dangerous ideas, secularism, Marxism, whatever it is. You have to look at how culture
33:03
and analyze culture and see how it shapes us. So you look at the crisis of authority in the church.
33:09
We should be people under authority. Jesus is Lord. The scriptures are his authority. It's gone.
33:17
But not just because of bad theology, but things like consumerism in the American world are
33:23
consumed. Everything's a matter of your choice. Pick and choose the church of your choice,
33:30
the theology of your choice, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you can see that our
33:34
consumerist world has undermined authority just as powerfully as say, open attacks through philosophy
33:43
on theology. So I've tried to get people aware of the dangerous ideas, but also
33:48
of the way culture shapes us. So we've become the American church is weak because it's worldly.
33:55
Okay, I have so many other questions, but I'm also looking at the clock here. So I'm just going to,
34:02
I'm just going to throw away everything that I was going to ask and just keep flowing on this.
34:05
The churches become worldly. The churches become downstream of culture. And the problem is,
34:13
is when the church tries to be like culture, then they cannot be seen as different. So you walk into
34:18
a normal mega church, they have secular music playing in the lobby. You know, the first song,
34:23
the band sings is a secular song. And then they kind of work into their kind of boyfriend Jesus
34:28
music like God's for you. And so he's going to give you everything that you could ever want and need
34:32
in life and all that kind of music. And there's no depth to anything. And the issue with kind of
34:38
that seeker sensitive movement is at best, you're going to get an inch deep and a mile wide theology
34:45
with a lot of the people in your crowd, a lot of people will also potentially leave thinking,
34:49
I'm saved because I raised my hand at the end of the TED talk concert. And they didn't actually
34:55
have any heart change. There wasn't a call to repentance or anything. So I guess, do you have
35:00
concerns over this kind of seeker sensitive model? Because if you want to pick one and say,
35:05
this is the one that's being very cultural, it's that seeker sensitive model.
35:09
Absolutely. But there's only one, Kyle, and I wrote a book 30 years ago called Dining with
35:14
the Devil, the mega church movement flirts with modernity, that very idea. So the
35:20
apostle bosses, I'm all things to all due to the Jews, Gentiles, the Gentiles, in order to win
35:26
them to Christ. And what the seeker sensitive movement does, which Friedrich Schleimacher,
35:33
the Protestant liberal did in the 18th century, they do the first part, but not the second.
35:39
So Schleimacher says, we must reach the cultured despises of the gospel. He reached them and became
35:47
one of them. And the seeker sensitive movement reaches them and then joins them. Whereas we got
35:56
to reach them in order to win them to Jesus. And that's very, very important. You take even
36:01
something like literacy. You know, when people didn't read, yes, we've got to put the gospel in
36:07
cartoons and pictures and all sorts of ways in order to introduce them to a biblical understanding
36:14
so they can read books like Romans, which are tough argument and so on. So the first half of
36:21
a thing is right. We reach people where they are in order to bring them back to our Lord.
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So I guess, Oz, the other question that I have is there are people out there. And I've said this
37:03
before in order for things like cultural Marxism to be successful. You need two types of people.
37:09
You need conscious nefarious actors and you need useful idiots. So the conscious nefarious actors,
37:16
they know that they're wolves. They are trying to be deceptive and they're trying to gain
37:20
sex, power, money, you know, something. And then you have the useful idiots, the people that just
37:25
go along to get along. You know, I want to be known for what I'm for, not what I'm against. And
37:29
what my pastor seems real smart. And he went to Bible college and I didn't. And I, you know,
37:34
I'm just trying to, you know, keep four wheels on the ground with my family. So I'm just going to
37:38
listen to whatever this guy says, but talk to me a little bit about how we as people that are
37:44
speaking into this cultural degradation can warn these people that again, I've unfairly and maybe
37:50
rudely put into the useful idiots category to be like, no, no, no, wake up. Like you can't
37:55
just go along to get along on something that's this important. Because I feel like we live in this
38:00
culture that everything is so sanitized, so bubble wrapped and so convenient, that the thought of
38:05
even being slightly disputations towards our pastor and questioning the direction that they're
38:09
taking the church just would send people into apoplexy. So give me a little bit more thoughts
38:14
on in terms of how the sheep can be more effective and how they could potentially push back.
38:18
Well, first I'm with you and I use the word useful idiots too, but I don't specify
38:24
my name for wrong people. That of course is the Marxist idea to be able to exploit
38:30
and use and the useful idiots end up as roadkill and the juggernaut moves on and they're just naive.
38:38
Now, I would say we have to get back to the Bible. Why are the Jews such great people in terms of
38:47
argument and law and passion for justice? Because they teach their kids to raise questions
38:54
from the very beginning. And we should do that today. Unafraid we believe in truth.
39:01
We should raise our kids to ask questions and to challenge people. So even the Lord allows Abraham
39:08
to challenge him shall not the judge of the earth do, etc. And so on. So we need to create a culture
39:16
of free inquiry, passionate pursuit of truth, and freedom to challenge people with questions.
39:24
Paul tackling Peter face to face and so on. So this is incredibly important today.
39:33
And we must not be useful idiots. So one reason another thing, while I mentioned
39:39
raising another is history. If we don't have history, we don't know where these things are
39:45
coming from. So, you know, I live in Virginia. Our good friend, Glenn Youngkin, is now the governor,
39:53
right? Thanks to the explosion of critical race theory in the Loudoun County schools.
39:58
Now, many Christians had never heard of it till it blew up a couple of years ago.
40:04
But if you read cultural Marxism, for example, Wilhelm Reich, who gave us the term the sexual
40:12
revolution in the 1920s, he's quite open. We have two enemies, he says, the church and parents.
40:22
So, for example, we will sideline parents through sex education at three and four.
40:30
And you have the same thing in H.G. Wells around the 1900. Christians should have been aware of
40:38
these things. So the sexual revolution, many Christians think he goes back to Hugh Hefner and
40:43
Playboy in the 1960s in the pill. No, no, it goes back to the same place in Paris that the ideas for
40:51
the French Revolution came from, the Palerail, and the early architects of sexual revolution,
40:57
including the Marquis Desaude, were vehemently anti-Christian. So to be overtaken by the sexual
41:06
revolution today, as many Christians are, is immensely naive. And they become your candidates
41:13
to be useful idiots as the Marxist term is. Well, and to kind of keep that thread going,
41:19
you know, for you to become a useful idiot adult, it's probably because you had useful
41:24
idiot parents. And I know I'm kind of painting with a broadish brush possible here. But let's
41:28
talk a little bit about about parenting, because I've gone on a record saying before that now,
41:33
in our current culture, and the current state of what we know to be true about many of the public
41:38
school systems in this country and the teachers unions, is that the only two options for education
41:43
for a child now are vetted private Christian school emphasis on vetted, because just because
41:49
they have a cross in the lobby doesn't mean they're Christian school and homeschool. And that those
41:53
are really the only two options, because you really can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
41:58
Also, I live in Oklahoma, every single county in Oklahoma votes red and has done so for the last,
42:03
you know, handful of presidential elections, we're about as res it gets it's us in Mississippi,
42:07
we're in a running gun battle for the most conservative state, right? Well, there is a middle school
42:13
that's five minutes away from my house, where a parent said that their child came home and said,
42:18
dad, what's not binary? And dad's like, wait, what? Because what happened was is this is English class
42:25
that a substitute teacher, this person went up to the board, wrote their pronouns on the board
42:30
and introduced themselves as non binary to the class and said, what questions do you have as
42:35
opposed to what page did you get to in to kill a mockingbird yesterday? Okay, let's go to the next
42:42
page and start from there. And so do you agree with my assessment that the only two ways to
42:48
effectively educate your children now are vetted private Christian school or homeschooler? I guess
42:52
what overall would be your message to parents about, hey, this is how you should educate your
42:57
children so that they don't end up in that useful idiot category? Well, I sympathize what you're
43:02
saying. I put it a bit broader. But the principle you're saying is right. And I look, the rabbi's
43:08
put it this way. What did Moses talk about the night of the Passover? They're going free after 400
43:15
odd years going to the promised land. He never mentions freedom. He never mentions them land in
43:22
milk and honey. Three times Moses talks about children because the story we tell to our children
43:30
is the secret of continuity and transmission. And that's true for America as a republic. It's true
43:38
for the church as a church. So you're absolutely right. Transmission depends on faithfulness. But
43:46
here I'd make one slide. My son, for instance, I'm very proud of him, adore him to to have.
43:52
He is a contrarian. If he'd gone to, he went to good early Christian schools. Yes. At a certain age,
44:02
though, if he'd gone to a very Christian establishment, he might have been a contrarian there
44:07
and turned that atheist. He went to the secular public university, the top one in the country.
44:14
And as a contrarian, his faith was deepened and challenged and he came out stronger than ever.
44:20
So I follow in a way, Francis Schaeffer used to say, always keep them one step ahead of the game.
44:27
So you're going to a school, well, teach them the challenge of the non-binary and so on. So they're
44:34
aware of what it is, the craziness of what it is, and able to resist it. So I don't think everyone
44:41
should only be in Christian context or you'd breed inward-looking people. Because often Christian
44:50
schools need that wider challenge. And we've got to have that. So I'm basically with you,
44:56
but this slightly broader idea to transformation, engagement, keeping them ahead of the game,
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45:37
Okay. And so with that, there's almost a draw towards Christian apologetics,
45:45
which is something that you've done and that you've been a part of. And that's one thing
45:48
that I'm excited about for my son at his school, that from pre-K through 12th grade,
45:53
Christian apologetics is one of those moments because as my buddy Jay Warner Wall has pointed
45:57
out recently in an interview I did with him, it's like some people think like, "Oh, we need an
46:01
apologist." So let's go hire one as opposed to, "I need to be the apologist. I need to be able to
46:06
give an apologia or apologia for what I believe and for why I have this faith." But I will say,
46:14
I've noticed this trend with some pockets of Christianity that think that intellectualism
46:20
and argumentation and philosophy is bad because it's anti-faith. It's like, "No, no, no. I don't need
46:27
Titus Kennedy to talk to me about archaeology. I don't need Frank Turk to talk to me about the
46:33
Calam cosmological argument. Cosmological argument. I don't need any of that. I don't need
46:37
Oz Guinness talking to be about signals of transcendence. I don't need any of that.
46:40
I just need to have faith. But for some people, for like maybe a C.S. Lewis that you mentioned in
46:46
that book that I just mentioned, that wouldn't have been sufficient. That wouldn't have been
46:50
meaty or weighty enough for them to reckon with. So what are your thoughts around this idea that
46:55
somehow intellectualism in the pursuits of that is bad for your overall Christian apologetic?
47:00
Well, again, Kyle, constantly with these people, make it biblical and make it simple.
47:06
In the Old Testament, they're called to love the Lord with all their heart, soul, and strength.
47:11
Our Lord intriguingly adds one thing, mind. Did he know that evangelicals were going to be anti-intellectual
47:20
and they'd need mind added? I don't know. But clearly we got to love the Lord with every part of
47:26
ourselves, including minds. And so one Peter three and so on gives us that challenge. We need to
47:33
know the reason for the hope that's within us. So these people pretend to be simple and super
47:39
biblical. They're actually anti-biblical. No, not everyone's an artist. Not everyone's a great thinker.
47:47
Not everyone's a great doer. We're all different. Some are good with their hands. Some are good
47:51
leaders. Some are good thinkers. Some are good to set the other. But we've got to see that all
47:58
we are, including our minds, is devoted all out to the Lord. You know, I have on my wall about 30
48:05
autographs. One of my favorites is Rodin, not a Christian, the great sculptor. But you know his
48:12
famous sculptor of the thinker concert. In his commentary, Rodin says, you've got to look at
48:20
carefully. His toes are gripping the rock. He is thinking with everything. It's not just his head.
48:27
I don't like the word intellectual as if thinking's pure in your mind. No, it's a whole person
48:33
passionately committed in our case to Christ and committed to thinking in that way. And
48:40
clearly that runs through the whole scripture. It certainly does. And for you, you've obviously
48:45
dedicated a huge portion of your life to the study of philosophy. I believe that's what you got.
48:49
Your doctorate in was philosophy. Geology. Okay. Gotcha. But philosophy still has been a large part
48:57
of what you do. And you're a cultural philosopher if I could give you that title. But then there is
49:02
kind of that interesting dissonance between the so-called soft disciplines and the so-called
49:08
hard disciplines. So there are a lot of people like, well, if I can't prove it in a lab, or if I
49:14
can't read it from history that I approve of, or if I can't find it in the sand somewhere,
49:19
then I'm not going to believe it. So talk to me a little bit about kind of this difference
49:23
between the soft and the hard disciplines. Because now it's like, okay, let's say we accept
49:27
intellectualism. There are people that are like, well, I like this style of intellectualism and
49:30
not that one or vice versa. You know, when I was a student, one of the people I had in seminars was
49:36
Bertrand Russell. Okay. Grand Old Atheist. One of the most preposterous things he said, and almost
49:43
everyone recognizes it now, he said quite blatantly and said it many times, what science cannot discover,
49:50
humanity cannot know. Well, that is absolutely ridiculous. A lot of things science can't discover,
49:58
including love and creativity and various things like that, absolutely absurd in those we are more
50:06
than our minds, and we've got to recognize we're more than the prefrontal, you know, our rational
50:11
thinking. We have all sorts of parts of the brain, and we're not only left-brained, we are right-brained,
50:19
and so on. We not only have IQ, we should have EQ, emotional quotient, and so on. So we've got to
50:26
have a much more balanced biblical view of humanity than certainly the atheists do. Now, I don't like
50:33
the word intellectual, because often it is people who live totally in their own heads. And you know,
50:39
the famous book by the famous book on intellectuals ends with the last chapter, looking at people like
50:48
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and many others, and simply beware intellectuals. Now, as they lived in their
50:57
heads, and there was so much hypocrisy, and the way they really act in life was quite differently
51:02
from their ideals. So I'm not a fan of being an intellectual. I'm a thinker. I'm glad to be,
51:09
but I never refer to people. You know, in the first Lausanne Congress in 1974, I was given the
51:16
topic evangelism among intellectuals. And I said, I'd be privileged to have a go at the topic,
51:24
but it's got to be evangelism among thinking people.
51:28
Hmm. And I think that what most people get into is they try to look at their, what they perceive
51:34
of their own characteristics and say, well, I wasn't a good student, so I can't be an intellectual.
51:39
And I think people get into the same way with Bible study, right? Because we don't think we
51:43
can just read the Bible. We have to study it. And if you don't have time to study it, you might as
51:49
well not even read it. And so it becomes this cycle that I've frankly had been in for several
51:54
years of my life to where it's like, I'm so busy, I don't have time to study this. I'm not even going
51:58
to read it. And so it leads people to not even dig into the scriptures, because they think that
52:02
they don't have the intellect to be able to reckon with what the words say. But then whenever you
52:06
read through the Bible, I'm in the middle of Matthew right now, and this is where Jesus is doing
52:11
a lot of parables. And it's like the reality of these parables is they're not meant to be understood
52:15
by everybody, because the parables when understood properly, people that are of faith that do have
52:20
their faith in Christ, it'll deepen their understanding and relationship with Christ. But those that do
52:25
not have relationship with Jesus, it'll, it'll still be dimly, dimly seen for them. They won't be able
52:31
to really view it in the proper context. Before I get off of kind of the Christian apologetics thing,
52:36
because I have several other things I wanted to cover with you, I want to give you the number one
52:40
question that is probably the number one question that Christian apologists have to deal with,
52:44
which is the problem of evil. And so when someone says, look, I'm an atheist or I'm an agnostic because
52:50
I can't reckon with the fact that there is a loving God and all powerful God that allows bad
52:56
things to happen to good people that allows children to be raped and murdered, that allows
53:00
the Holocaust to happen, this that and in whatever. And so how would you respond in your experience
53:06
to someone that says, Hey, the problem of evil is just too much for me to get over.
53:10
Well, Kyle, you can't answer that in seconds. And I always do it specific to the person who's raising
53:17
it. Because there's usually cancer in their family or something for a reason behind it. You
53:22
got to address that. Otherwise, this is abstract and too theoretical. But for me, the heart of a
53:29
Christian response, and I would start first by looking at the alternatives and how they're
53:34
unworkable and hopeless. But the heart of a Christian response, I think has a threefold
53:40
chord. First, it should have been otherwise. Our Lord at the tomb of Lazarus, he wept, yes,
53:51
but three times he was furious. Death, premature was all wrong. It's not supposed to be this way.
53:59
That's incredibly important. When we meet evil, it should have been otherwise.
54:05
But secondly, no other God has wounds. As we see in the suffering servant in Isaiah,
54:14
the hideous disfigurement of the servant suffering on behalf of those he comes to rescue. Of course,
54:22
that's our Lord. Now, Siyevsky famously came to faith after gazing at the picture of Hans Holbein's
54:30
The Descent of Jesus and the Cross, which is his family taking down the dead body of Jesus,
54:36
God, and made battered and so on. He looked at it and he said at the end of it,
54:40
"I do not know the answer to the problem of evil and suffering, but I do know love."
54:48
And the third thing, each of these, of course, you have to expand much more fully than I'm doing.
54:54
The third part, and I got this from my philosophy, Tudor Oxford. The resistance leader knows what
55:00
he's doing. Basil Mitchell, a great philosopher, pointed out that in the World War II, if you were
55:07
a resistance fighter, the worst of all things was the fear of betrayal. You signed on,
55:13
you didn't know exactly who was giving your orders. And so he put it like this. Imagine
55:19
Kyle, I meet you in a bar in France. Kyle, I hear you want to sign on to the resistance.
55:25
Let's talk for an hour tonight. Ask me any question you like. Sign on the end, if you will.
55:31
After tonight, we'll never talk face to face, too dangerous. Now, in that circumstance,
55:38
it's the great fear of betrayal that you trusted wrongly. So the key questions we've got to ask
55:45
God, is he there? Is he good? Now, that means we won't answer all the other questions in life.
55:53
Why did he allow this? Why did he allow that? Any more than the resistance leader? Oh, he's in
56:00
Gestapo uniform, arresting one of our side. Unbeknownst to me, he's releasing them.
56:08
But I can't see the release. Only after the war are all the secrets opened. The point is,
56:15
you need to know why you trust the resistance leader. He knows best. And one day, the secrets
56:22
will be all open. And that's our faith in the Lord. The resistance leader knows what he's doing.
56:28
I don't know what he's doing. Father, I do not understand you, but I trust you.
56:34
So are we sure that coming to faith we know is there and we know is good? Then we can trust him
56:43
whatever. Now, I would expand on those three in some ways. They take longer to do it than we've had.
56:49
Well, I think if you're going to put it in a nutshell, that's a pretty darn good nutshell.
56:54
So I really appreciate you going into that. I think that there's a lot of great foundations
56:58
for people that just listened to this to be able to build off of. One thing that I found
57:02
interesting, when I was looking at your website is your tagline, if you will, is a quiet voice on
57:08
behalf of faith, freedom, truth, reason, and civility. And so I've seen, excuse me, I've seen nothing
57:15
that would counter that. I see you as all of those things. And I think that was readily apparent
57:20
in what you did during your time on the Exodus seminar or the video series you did with Jordan
57:25
Peterson and The Daily Wire. It is an absolutely fantastic series. I've suggested that just about
57:31
anybody that can, that has the time to dedicate to watching those, to go ahead and do so. Obviously,
57:37
you were there with, you know, Jonathan Pazio and Dennis Prager and Greg Hurwitz and a bunch
57:42
of other people that I can't remember off the top of my brain. But here you are with a public,
57:46
secular intellectual, like Jordan Peterson, digging super deep into the Exodus stories.
57:53
And so I guess how did you even get involved in that? Because I know a bunch of people that
57:57
I would have loved to have been at that table. But you were actually there. So how was that?
58:02
And how'd you get involved? Well, I've known Jordan for a while. He said to me,
58:07
what day do you know anything about Exodus? I just said to him, well, I wrote a book on it.
58:11
You must come, he said, I didn't know what to. And it was a curious experience. I found
58:18
often Dennis Prager, who was a good friend, he and I kept bringing the discussion back to the
58:24
text, because some of the other people went all over the place for their ideas. But we we kept on
58:30
saying, no, the text means this in a straightforward way. You know, as you know, I'm a great believer
58:36
that Exodus is the master narrative of Western freedom. So go back to that crazy idea of unhitching
58:45
our ideas from faith from the Old Testament. Exodus is the master narrative of freedom.
58:51
All that, you know, Paul says for freedom, Christ is that is free. You can't understand that without
58:57
understanding Exodus and all that it teaches the very profound way about freedom, which is the key
59:04
to where America is today. I think that that's absolutely true. And one of the interesting things
59:10
is if you if you listen, it is very apparent that you and Dennis particularly were trying to get it.
59:15
Okay, let's not go too far out in the ethereal. Let's kind of bring it back. One thing that I will
59:19
also mention is if they gave an award at the end of the Exodus seminar for the person interrupted
59:26
the most, it was you. And that's why I'm enjoying this interview so much is because I just get to
59:31
shut up and I get to just let you say all these smart things off the top of your head. And that's
59:36
kind of Jordan Peterson style a little bit is especially if you listen to his interviews. He
59:41
interrupts constantly because he just has a thought and he has to get it out. But did you notice that
59:46
because halfway through the second video that you were on, I was like, goodness gracious. Can
59:51
somebody let Oz talk, please? No, I mean, it was always a question of when to chip in and when
59:58
not to chip in because you know, it's tiresome, if you say too much. But it's equally crazy. If
1:00:04
you let things roll in directions that are a long way off the mark, I wasn't aware that I was
1:00:09
interrupting or or not. Okay, well, maybe that's just my perception. But I was I was ready to fight
1:00:15
for you, Oz. I was gonna be like, all right, everybody, we're gonna mute your mics for two
1:00:18
minutes. So Oz can get his point out. And before we leave the the Exodus seminar,
1:00:23
obviously, in the Christian world, there's a lot of people pastors included that are just
1:00:27
completely enamored with Jordan Peterson, I find his work to be deeply, deeply satisfying and enthralling
1:00:34
in 12 rules for life is just one of those books that will just stay in the test of time, in my
1:00:38
opinion. I actually got to spend a little bit of time with him earlier this year, whenever he came
1:00:43
through my state to do a talk in Tulsa, and you know, got connected with him. I brought him a verse
1:00:48
by verse reference Bible with his name on it, because you know, he'll make those comments about
1:00:53
the Bible being the most hyperlinked book in all of history. And as I've heard people point out
1:00:57
before, you can't spend that much time in the Bible without letting it shape you. It's a very,
1:01:02
very interesting thing. But for all intents and purposes, Jordan Peterson has not stuck his flag
1:01:08
in the ground and said, yes, I believe in God. And yes, I put in my faith in Christ. And I've
1:01:13
repented of my sins. And I know Christians kind of, you know, they want a cool guy on their team.
1:01:18
Everybody wants, you know, Joe Rogan to become a Christian and Kanye West to become a Republican.
1:01:21
And they want all this stuff. So they can have cool guys on their team. But Jordan Peterson is
1:01:25
that big one that people are just so hopeful that he comes to full-throated faith in Christ. And
1:01:31
you know, preaches that to the world. What is your read on being his friend and spending so much
1:01:36
time with him in terms of where he's at in his faith journey?
1:01:39
Well, there isn't a danger in the way people are putting that to you,
1:01:42
because that means that their faith is not in Jesus and the truth of faith. Their faith would be
1:01:48
more true if Jordan were to affirm it. Now, Jordan's a good friend of mine. He's a dear guy. He's
1:01:55
intensely honest. And he is on a journey. His wife has come to faith. His daughter has come to faith.
1:02:02
And I hope he will too. But I'd let him. I would pray for him, push him along, help him,
1:02:08
encourage him. But he's on a journey. So he would be like the soul become poor, you know,
1:02:16
if he did come to faith. But our faith would be no more true if Jordan affirmed it and no less
1:02:23
true if he didn't. You know, if it's true, it'd be true if no one believed it. If it was not true,
1:02:29
it'd be true if everyone, it would be false. If everyone believed in it, but pray for him is a
1:02:35
dear man. And you know, there's a wonderful conference coming up called the Alliance for
1:02:39
Republic Responsible Citizenship. He's going to lead that along with Baroness Trout in London.
1:02:47
And we hope it'll be a good counter to Davos and the whole WEA approach.
1:02:54
What's interesting about that is the, the, the speech that he did in Tulsa, that was the first
1:03:00
time by his own admission that he spoke at length about that. Because he had spoke about it briefly
1:03:06
on the Joe Rogan experience just before that. But he actually went into way more detail whenever he
1:03:11
was in front of us. And he just kind of did that as a detour of his speech. So I felt like I was,
1:03:15
you know, fly on the wall getting to hear this. And so I have high hopes for that group as well.
1:03:21
As we want to do a close, I haven't asked you a specific question about one of your books. And so
1:03:25
I feel like I need to do that because I did read your latest book from IVP and its signals of
1:03:30
transcendence. So I really appreciate the folks over there for sitting in my way. So, well,
1:03:36
actually, I'm going to ask you two questions. The first one's the easy one. So you write about
1:03:39
Malcolm Muggeridge and GK Chesterton and CS Lewis and Tolstoy and these different folks.
1:03:43
But you talk about how each one of them had a signal of transcendence hence the name of the book.
1:03:49
So briefly, what is a signal of transcendence? And then we'll get into a specific example here in a
1:03:54
sec. Well, I got the term from Peter Berger, but they are profound experiences which do two things.
1:04:02
First, they puncture whatever people believed up to that point. Many of them, for example, CS Lewis
1:04:08
were convinced, atheists, but the atheism is punctured by whatever the experience is.
1:04:14
And secondly, they point to something which, if true, would make all the difference.
1:04:22
So the signals don't convince people of faith. They don't become believers, but they constitute
1:04:29
the trigger that makes them search. They become seekers. So they puncture what they used to believe
1:04:35
and point to something else and people become seekers.
1:04:40
And I love how you ended every chapter with, you know, he who has ears, let him hear. Like, obviously,
1:04:44
we see that from the words of Jesus. There was a lot of subtlety in the book, but obviously,
1:04:49
you've been very explicit about your faith before. So people shouldn't get too wrapped around the
1:04:52
axle on that. But I want to read to you my favorite quote from the book and it's from the GK Chesterton
1:04:57
chapter. Chesterton's story again highlights the point that in the quest for meaning,
1:05:02
the important divide is not between believers and unbelievers or between people of faith and
1:05:07
nuns in ONES, as it is often put today. The real divide is between those who care enough to ask
1:05:14
questions and think seriously about life and those who are indifferent. Again, it's my favorite
1:05:20
quote from the book, Oz, because I feel like that encapsulates where we are at at this exact
1:05:26
moment in 2023. There are those that are willing to question things and think about them deeply.
1:05:32
And then there are those I just want to play video games, fantasy football and watch porn,
1:05:36
and just kind of let you let the world pass them by. So why did you make that statement? I don't even
1:05:42
know if you knew it was that. I feel like that was the worst hammer whenever I read it. I don't
1:05:46
even know if you thought about that as you were writing it. But do you feel like that does encapsulate
1:05:50
the time we're in? Absolutely. Now, on the one hand, you have a great statement like Socrates,
1:05:56
the unexamined life is not worth living. So people who don't think enough or even care enough to
1:06:03
ask questions about what life means, they're leading lives that are not worth living. And that
1:06:08
includes many people in the academic world too. And that's absolutely tragic. But another way of
1:06:14
putting it is, it is questions taken seriously that constitute the searcher. And that's step one
1:06:23
of a search, a time for questions. Something erupts in my life in some way might be bad,
1:06:31
like a suffering might be good, like C.S. Lewis is surprised by joy. But whatever it is,
1:06:37
questions spur a search. And that's the difference between the indifferent and the person who's
1:06:44
really starting and wants an examined life. But that's the big challenge to get people to think.
1:06:50
We are so much to live with. I use the phrase of the psychologist, weapons of mass distraction.
1:07:00
You think of the so-called screen ages, you know, teenagers dependent on their
1:07:06
triple screen gauging, gazing. They don't need to think about them any of life. You just live
1:07:13
from one moment to the next absorbed by technology. And that's tragic.
1:07:17
I think it's absolutely tragic. It's one thing that I try to check on myself to where it's like,
1:07:23
hey, I kind of need this technology to do what I do to get the word out in my philosophy out
1:07:27
on manhood, men's ministry, the gospel and whatnot. So that's always a good reminder.
1:07:32
Last question of the day, but it's a two-parter because I'm mushing these things in because I need
1:07:37
you to get on to the rest of your day being all smart and stuff. I want to know what you're working
1:07:40
on now. So you obviously do a lot of different things and you do a lot of writing. And with that,
1:07:46
since you've written and or edited, you know, a few dozen books at this point,
1:07:52
if you had to wipe away your entire catalog of everything you've ever written and you could leave
1:07:58
one book for everyone in humanity. And that is going to represent Oz Guinness and your life's
1:08:04
work. What would it be? So what are you working on now? Well, you know, give us a peek behind the
1:08:07
curtain and give us the one book. Let me take the second first. Okay.
1:08:12
It's not the only book that I love. But my bestseller by a long way is The Call.
1:08:20
And I think it's a book that touches the heart of faith because from Abraham through the Old
1:08:26
Testament to our Lord, follow me, follow me down through the way calling a shaped history,
1:08:32
Reformation, and so on. There's nothing like calling for getting to the depth of faith
1:08:39
and importantly the depth of purpose and meaning in life. So that's by far my bestseller. In that
1:08:46
sense, I understand why now I've got all the books that I love equally as much. But that would be
1:08:51
one. Well, I'm working on the moment, you know, I've written books on American crisis and freedom
1:08:58
and so on. I'm working on a book on the crisis of the West. We are at what's called a civilizational
1:09:05
moment. If you think all the great civilizations of history are either in history books or in ruins
1:09:12
or in museums, why? Whatever the inspiration by which they rose, a moment came when they lost
1:09:21
touch with the inspiration. And when that happens, a civilizational moment, there are only three
1:09:27
broad options. You renew the inspiration, you replace it with something equally adequate,
1:09:35
or you decline. Now, the inspiration of the Western civilizations undoubtedly,
1:09:42
the Christian faith rooted in Judaism, the Bible, the intelligency of the West has rejected that
1:09:50
almost universally today. But now the assumed replacement secularism from the Enlightenment
1:09:59
has equally failed. And we have what I call the red wave, the rainbow wave and the black wave,
1:10:08
in other words, radical Marxism, the sexual revolution and radical Islamism that are all
1:10:15
not only against the Christian faith, they're against the West itself. So Western civilization
1:10:23
is at this crucial civilizational moment. But faith is the key to the outcome. Now, many Christians
1:10:31
are just discouraged. They don't have a belief and a hope that there can be a better story and an
1:10:38
awakening and renewal. And that's what I want to get across. So when can we expect to see this
1:10:45
thing? You say you're working on it, but I'm already excited. Unfortunately, my previous publisher
1:10:51
turned it down, university turned it down. So I'm going to have to scout around for other publishers.
1:10:56
Okay, I have a sneaking suspicion that you're going to find a landing spot for that. But
1:11:01
Oz, we have weaved in and out of a bunch of different subject matters on this podcast. I
1:11:05
really appreciate your latitude and letting us go to all these different places. But is there
1:11:09
anything else you want to get off your chest before he gets you out of here? No, I don't think so,
1:11:12
Kyle, I've enjoyed it immensely. I love the cutting thrust. All right, Oz Guinness. Thank
1:11:17
you for coming on on Don't To Life, a man's podcast. I privilege. Thank you. There you go,
1:11:22
guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Oz Guinness. But before we let you go, we are going to do a
1:11:25
quick resilience boost at on Don't To Life. Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness
1:11:29
with content that forges spiritual, mental and physical resilience. So the only link I've got for
1:11:33
you today is a link to Oz's website. So if you want to get any information on his books or any
1:11:38
of his speaking engagements or stuff like that, you can check it out there. Thank you guys so much
1:11:42
for listening to this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and
1:11:45
leave us a positive five star review. If you want to come speak alive at your event or on your
1:11:49
podcast to shoot me an email to info@undonton.life. That's i-n-f-o@undonton.life. Follow us on Instagram
1:11:56
and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to
1:12:00
keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undonton.life. And also, we want to thank
1:12:05
the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast
1:12:10
is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album on Face Down Records. The links are
1:12:15
in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging
1:12:22
spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.