Episode 205: Surviving Religion 101: Michael Kruger

[00:00:02] When you go to college, I would say to anybody, don't go off in the dark alone and deal with your issues and challenges. Stay in the group, stay in the light, find a good church, find a Christian fellowship and work through the issues there. If you go off alone in the dark, you're gonna be making the horror movie mistake. Don't make it. Stick in the group and stick in the light. And I think you'll find that your chances of surviving, so to speak, your college years go up dramatically.

[00:00:33] Hello and welcome to Candid, where we never settle for less than the truth. I'm your host, Jonathan Youssef. Each week we'll tackle tough issues, answer your hard questions and take a candid look at the Christian faith. Would you mind leaving us a review today? By leaving a review and a rating, it helps others find us and it would be a huge help. Using your favorite podcast platform, go to our show and leave a rating along with a review.

[00:01:01] And perhaps next week we will mention you on the show. We are so close to the first day of fall. For those who equate the school year with seasons, fall is already here. For many students, it's a time for a huge step as they head off to college for the first time.

[00:01:20] College brings so many possibilities in addition to the educational aspect, including new relationships, new experiences, and a newfound freedom that can be a challenge to the spiritual lives of many students. Very few colleges are encouraging students to grow in their relationship with Christ or teaching them how to stand firm in the faith.

[00:01:44] This is the reason why I have asked today's guest, Dr. Michael Kruger, to join me on Candid Conversations to discuss the challenges of holding firm to the Christian faith in college. We unpack some general apologetics questions like, where did the Bible come from and why do we have the Bible and what makes it authentic? We also talk about why it's important to stay connected to the body of Christ in college,

[00:02:11] as well as how we can empower parents to prepare students to stand firm in an academic culture of doubt and disbelief. Dr. Michael Kruger serves as president and Samuel C. Patterson professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the Charlotte Campus of Reformed Theological Seminary. In addition to his duties as president, he is one of today's leading scholars in the study of the origins of the New Testament,

[00:02:40] particularly the development of the New Testament canon. He is the author of 11 books, most recently, Surviving Religion 101, Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College. He is married to Melissa Kruger, director of women's initiatives for the Gospel Coalition and author of numerous books. They have three children.

[00:03:04] In this episode, we hope to encourage you to consider the challenges that may await you as a college student or your child if you are the parent. Of a college student. And how you can be prepared with a gentle and respectful defense of the hope we have in Christ. Now, on to our candid conversation. Well, today my guest is a former virtual professor of mine, Dr. Michael Kruger.

[00:03:33] He's a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in North Carolina. And he's written a book called Surviving Religion 101, Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College. Dr. Kruger, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us on Candid Conversations. Yeah, great to be with you. And it's good timing for this topic. Everyone's headed to college. So that's exactly right.

[00:03:57] Well, and we talked about this as a team and we thought, what better time than as students are taking off and getting their syllabuses and preparing for whatever is ahead for them and helping parents to think through these things as well. So that they can help come alongside their kids, whether they're high school age, middle school age, and then obviously college age.

[00:04:21] And the first thing I wanted to ask you was sort of why is it that we get this sense that college is where people, quote unquote, lose their faith? Yeah, great question. I think that common thought is out there. I don't know if we have any hard statistics that prove that it's true, but I think anecdotally we can all say it does seem like it's college, ages 18 to 22, roughly, where people start asking the hard questions. I think there's several answers to that.

[00:04:51] One answer is obvious, which is that this is the first time students have left home. So generally speaking, most people are at their house. They're going to their parents' church. They're listening to what their parents have said. They maybe are at a Christian school. Even if they're not, they generally are surrounded by a very sort of controlled environment. And when they go to college, it's the first time, generally speaking, that they're exposed to a bigger, broader, newer world. And they don't have mom and dad standing there or their home church there to sort of hold their hand.

[00:05:20] So one obvious reason why this tends to happen is because it's like you're getting thrown out of the nest. And so now you've got to learn to fly on your own. And that's when it happens. The other reason I think it's obvious why college is a place for this is just the intellectual culture. I mean, unlike other circumstances, you're not getting bombarded every single day with professors and textbooks and hallway conversations about life level issues. I mean, when you go off into the business world and get a job, you're not spending the day talking about these things. You're spending your day doing your job.

[00:05:50] And maybe at the water cooler, you'll have a conversation or two. But generally speaking, there's no time like college where people are pounding you all the time with new ideas. And that's both exhilarating and wonderful, but also intimidating and overwhelming. And so I think it's obvious why this is the time. Well, and with social media and access to a plethora of ideas, viewpoints, worldviews, that trajectory has sort of moved from the university in a sense.

[00:06:20] It seems to be trending towards a much younger generation just with that proliferation of content and ideas and philosophies being made available to young and really impressionable people. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're if we think college is when it all starts, we need to rethink that. Certainly, as we just noted, it's an intense time in the unique time. But now with access to information like never before, people are dealing with these issues many years earlier.

[00:06:48] And with the trajectory of public education, they're certainly dealing with these issues in ways that never would have been happening in my generation. And so high school is the new college. And it's true. If we send off our students to college unprepared, the ironic and sad thing is they're not only unprepared for college, but they're really four or five years late already. They should have been prepared four or five years before that. And so, you know, the evangelical world is always late to the game, sadly, on a lot of these things. And we don't ever really seem to learn that lesson.

[00:07:17] And here we're in a bit of a scenario where we need to wake up because we're already late to the college game, which is why I wrote my book. But I surely could have written one about high school. And, you know, I know that high school students will read my book, too, perhaps. Yeah. And middle school. So, I mean, I think we've got a lot of work to do. Well, and that brings up a great application point, which is you've left us with, you know, hey, we're behind on some things.

[00:07:43] So the question is now, how do we actually prepare students for what's coming college? Again, that you may feel a little late in the game, but in some sense, it's never too late. You always want to start when the idea arises. And then secondly, you know, those of us who have young children, how do we start thinking and modeling and preparing? And along with that, I guess, you know, how much does questioning come in? You know, questioning what is truth? What are the things that we can trust?

[00:08:13] What has authenticity and authority to speak into my life? Yeah. So this is a question I've been getting a lot as I've been talking about my book. And it's a great question. And maybe this is volume two I need to write, because ironically, even though I've been getting that question a lot, ironically, my book is about after people already get to college. Right. And so I'm not even really writing for parents about how to prepare their kids.

[00:08:37] But it naturally brings up that question, which is, well, why haven't we done a better job preparing our students? And I actually deal with this in the introduction of my book a little bit. There's lots of answers to that question about how we got here. I think we've got some church culture problems that aren't so much theological problems, although obviously they're related to that. But there's the sense that we're best served by circling the wagons and making sure we get no contamination anywhere. And we just become more and more insular and more and more cut off.

[00:09:05] And then by the time we send our kids out of that, we're shocked and surprised they're not ready to deal with the real world. I'm like, well, you kept them from the real world. That's right. They've been over sheltered. Yeah. And so one of the things I've written about recently is there was a medical book that came out a few years ago by a very well-known, I think it was a Harvard scientist. I can't remember exactly, but the title of the book is Dirt is Good. And the point of that book is some limited exposure to germs when you're young actually boosts your immune system that you desperately need when you're older. And there's an analogy there for spiritual life.

[00:09:35] If we don't let our kids have exposure to some things, their immune system, spiritually speaking, is never going to kick in. It's going to lay dormant and then they're going to get sicker later. So ironically, parents think they're helping their kids and they're actually perhaps they're not helping them. Perhaps they're setting them up for a real crisis later on. Yeah. Well, let's sort of take it to the hard facts of our faith.

[00:09:59] You know, this is sort of stating the obvious, but, you know, we're asking what are the origins of the Christian scriptures that we hold to the Judea Christian scriptures? Where does all of this start for us in our journey? Yeah. So once you start asking questions about where the Bible came from, which is essentially what you're asking, this is going to be a big question for every believer, particularly college students. You know, why are we even having a Bible at all?

[00:10:24] In my book, I talk a bit about something we don't really talk about much is, does it make sense that God will reveal himself in written words? Some people think this sounds silly. I mean, do we really think God wrote a book? I mean, it seems dumb to people. But actually, what I argue is that when you start thinking about God bringing revelation to people, you know, several things are clear. First of all, we believe that God wants to communicate with his people because he's a personal God. He's not just a force or an idea. He wants to have relationships.

[00:10:51] Secondly, if you're going to relate to somebody, communication is top of the way you relate. You relate by communicating and verbally interacting. Third, if you're going to verbally interact with people, you've got to pick a language in a medium by which they can have access to that verbal revelation. And then fourthly, you want that verbal revelation to have some sort of permanence that's going to stick around for future generations so God doesn't have to keep saying things over and over again. Moreover, you want that verbal revelation to be public where people can see it and read it and have access to it.

[00:11:17] No, it's not just private revelation that someone says happened, but actually you can see and confirm that it did happen. All right. So when you look at all that, the medium that makes the most sense in the ancient world that can fulfill all those things is the written word. And it makes a lot of sense that God would do that. So our Bibles are born out of God wanting to relate to his people, and he has his chosen agents, prophets and apostles, through which he delivers that word. And so I think it's always helpful to just take that step back and realize conceptually it actually makes a lot more sense than we think it does.

[00:11:46] Okay, so we take all that in, and then we start asking the questions of what sets the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, what sets those apart from other texts, you know, other religious texts? You know, what is it that makes the Bible authentic? What authenticates the Bible? Yeah, well, that's a large conversation, isn't it? There's so many layers to that.

[00:12:11] But once you realize that it makes sense that God would speak and reveal himself in the written word, the next question is, well, what's the most compelling version of that out there? If we think God spoke this way, let's look at the options on the table. And ironically, you don't have that many options. Yeah. It's interesting. If you're doing a religious comparison, you really have Christianity in the Bible, and you have maybe Islam, the Koran, and you probably have some variant like Hinduism and the Bhagavad Gita and things like this, some other holy books.

[00:12:40] But none of those holy books actually seem to be doing what the Christian books claim to be doing. They may have religious wisdom and guidance and so forth, but very few religions out there, particularly monotheistic religions, are going to claim to have some sort of distinctive divine revelation. So Christianity really stands out as unique, and the closest competitor is probably Islam.

[00:13:02] Now, this isn't the time to get into the distinctives of the Koran and the Bible, but when you look at the Bible, you realize its historical credentials really are unmatched, and we can get into some of that. Secondly, the worldview contained in the Bible. The reason I think the Bible is from God is because it delivers a system of thought and thinking that I think is reflective of the divine mind.

[00:13:27] In other words, it puts together a view of the world that's coherent, internally consistent, compelling, and persuasive. And then lastly, the thing that makes the Bible unique from every other book is the person of Jesus Christ. He is the message of the Bible. Why is the Bible different? Because Jesus Christ is unique. There's nothing like him. There's no one else that can compete with him. So why do I follow the Bible as opposed to the Koran? Because of the person of Jesus Christ. Yeah.

[00:13:51] Well, these days we're seeing church leaders, Bible teachers who are sort of drawing a hard line between testaments, and then you have an outside culture who's just trying to constantly, whether it's through archaeological evidence or whatever it is, you know, these things never could have happened type mindsets, constantly sort of eating away to where you feel like you're holding on to a few strands.

[00:14:18] How do we sort of navigate some of this where there can feel like attack on both sides from inside the church as well as from the outside?

[00:14:54] Yeah. And then you're going to go to the present, right? Because that's unchanged. Yeah. And we've already hinted at the secular challenges because, as we already discussed, a university setting is a prime example of how people are going to get bombarded with all the secular challenges. What I think is particularly sad is what you hinted at, which is internal challenges coming from professed evangelicals who seem to be doing a similar job to undermining the Bible in a way that I'm like, wow, why are you helping out the cause of the other side here? Do you realize what you're doing? And there's lots of ways this is being done.

[00:15:23] One way it's being done is what you hinted at, this sort of cutting off of the Old Testament idea. That's sadly out there more than we think it is. And the impetus behind it is I'm helping the church by cutting off the Old Testament because the Old Testament is just chock full of problems anyway. If we just get rid of it, then we're better off. Okay, that sounds all good and well, except for one little fact sticks in the way of that, which is that Jesus loved the Old Testament. He believed it was true. He believed it was inspired. And beyond that, here's the bigger problem people don't think about.

[00:15:53] If Jesus is Yahweh, then he wrote the Old Testament. It's actually his words. He is the word, yeah. So you can't say, well, I want Jesus and not the Old Testament. I'm like, well, have you read Jesus? Because that's not an option. And so what I think needs to be said is can a person be a Christian and reject the Old Testament? Well, yeah. I mean, there's people that can technically be saved and be Christians and maybe think low of the Old Testament.

[00:16:20] But here's the thing they don't realize is that in order for them to be saved, the Old Testament has to be true. They may not think it's true, but it's actually critical to their salvation in a way they may not understand. So there's this weird disconnect there that is unfortunate. You may have alluded to this, but the Old Testament is prophesying the coming of the Redeemer, of the Christ. And it's all along the way.

[00:16:44] I mean, as you said, it's the only ancient text which has that common thread that, as you said, is sort of has a sense of the divine cognitive function behind it. I mean, there's a theme, there's a thread that follows through it. But, you know, today, I will say from a pastoral perspective, I find people lack that understanding.

[00:17:09] They can't find the thread that runs necessarily through, that holds everything together. I think we – it seems like these days people are very good Bible quoters and not necessarily Bible understanders. So they don't understand the entire purpose of, you know, a book of the Old Testament. They're just sort of look for little catchphrases and things that they've heard repeated perhaps in the New Testament,

[00:17:36] and then they kind of take that and lump that with whatever their philosophy is or whatever it is. But there's a lot of inconsistency. Do you feel like that's an unhelpful aspect within the church today? Well, absolutely. And I think we all know that the church today is struggling with biblical literacy, is struggling with theological awareness. We just talked about this in one area, which is how we prepare our young people, but it's bigger than that. It's not like suddenly you look at the 40-year-olds in their church and they're theologically aware.

[00:18:06] They're not theologically aware either necessarily. So you have a very surface-level awareness and training of the average person in the pew. What's the result of that? Well, when they use the Bible, they use it like you just described it. They use it in a piecemeal, isolated, plucking the passage here and there out of it, and they don't have any big-picture sense of what it's doing and how it all hangs together. Now, the drawback of that is multidimensional. One is if you're going to treat the Bible that way, you're likely to take things out of context. That's the first problem.

[00:18:33] But the other problem is if you take the Bible that way, the Bible starts looking like a very disparate, random assembly of inconsistent parts. It's like a junkyard. You just threw it all together, right? And they're like, well, this doesn't fit. A bunch of different authors with no consistency. There's no unity here because they're just looking at the micro level and not the macro level. And so that's going to affect people's trust. It's going to attract people's authority in the Bible. And if we can help our churches step back and see the big picture, then I think they're going to realize the Bible really does cohere together like no other book.

[00:19:02] And then you can ask the question, how does a book get formed over thousands of years with 40 different authors and have that kind of unity? Well, the only answer I think that's compelling is that it's written by an ultimate author, namely God himself. Well, and I do want to come back to this because I think as we've talked about college students being away from home, and I'm sure you've talked about this in your book, but the importance of finding a solid biblical community,

[00:19:28] you know, a very sort of word-centric church that's going to teach you well and teach you those threads and those themes that hold Scripture together. But I guess on an individual level, how does the common sort of believer out there, what are some helpful ways for them to begin to see those, you know, are there books that you recommend or studies that are helpful that kind of help them in their,

[00:19:57] perhaps in their quiet time or their daily walk so they're not just reading, you know, an excerpt from Isaiah and not having any, you know, proper context for it, but rather seeing it as a whole in its entirety. Because Scripture can be, is extremely intimidating if you're coming at it and just reading, you know, five, six verses and having no clue, you know, where it's, what it's from, what it's, who it's to, what it's about. Yeah, so one of the things that I'm encouraged by in recent years is there's been a resurgence in this area

[00:20:27] of what we call biblical theology. Biblical theology typically does a couple things. One is it looks at the theology of individual books, and that's fine and helpful, but it also has a macro goal in mind, which is the overall flow of redemptive history and how it all fits together. Thankfully, we have good authors out there writing on biblical theology. One way to say it in a succinct way is that books that talk about Christ in the Old Testament

[00:20:51] is one way, not the only way, but one way we could begin to realize the Bible has one overarching storyline. Because once you realize Christ is in the Old Testament more than just that it prophesies Christ, but that actually the stories there are redemptive and look to what God is doing ultimately through the person of Christ, then you realize, oh wait, the whole Bible is about Jesus, and suddenly that opens up all kinds of doors. Now, resources out there, thankfully, are abundant in this area. On the academic side, I would recommend the work of Greg Beal, who's done some great work on

[00:21:20] Old Testament, New Testament relationships, and Christ in the Old Testament, and so on. And then on sort of a more accessible side, I think Nancy Guthrie has done good work here. She's written extensive Bible studies and works on Christ in the Old Testament and biblical theology, and she has done great work here that I think anybody could benefit from. We are trying to get her on the show. So I'm glad you mentioned that. Maybe that's a small plug to get her to come around. I'm sure you hear from high school and college students frequently,

[00:21:51] and you yourself have a college student and high school students. What are some of the key objections that you hear from those students for holding to the Christian faith? Yeah, this is fascinating to sort of tour the current lines of concerns, and I would break that into two categories. Sure. One category is that lots of students are asking the questions that people always ask, and there's nothing new.

[00:22:19] I was having a conversation with some of my daughter's college friends the other day. In fact, I have a lot of conversations with these college students now through my daughter. It's great. Free research, right? Yeah, exactly. And they're asking a lot of the questions that have been asked from the beginning. You've already mentioned some of those. Why should we trust the Bible? What makes it different? Even theological questions. What do we do with things like predestination and Calvinism? What about the problem of evil? Why does God allow bad things to happen?

[00:22:45] I mean, okay, these are all important questions that can rattle someone's faith and make them confused about what they believe. And there's a whole category of these that are sort of par for the course, and we need to do a better job of answering them. But then there's a second category, what I would call sort of newer kinds of questions. These are more existential questions. Questions, honestly, that weren't as common when I was going through college. When I was going through college, it was more of sort of fact questions, data questions, history questions. Now people are thinking, well, when I read the Bible, I just don't like it. I find it offensive.

[00:23:15] I find it morally disturbing. I'm amazed at how many people I talk to who their big objection about the Bible is not historical at all. They may not even know any facts about the Bible historically. And honestly, they don't care. What they're disturbed by is I think the Bible is pro-slavery, anti-woman, pro-genocide, and has sexual standards that the world finds incompatible and offensive. So now what you have is this ironic situation where the biggest objection that current students have is moral to the Bible.

[00:23:45] And you want to talk about being behind the argument. We are way behind the argument here. We're still talking about facts and figures. Yeah, we're still talking about all the other stuff. And I'm like, we've got to catch up, and we've got to make sure that we're dealing with the questions they're asking. Well, and with that, as you talk with these students and you begin to sort of help them come to solutions that are answered in the text, do you then find that they start going, reaching towards the facts and figures?

[00:24:11] Or do they feel like, oh, okay, I feel like this issue has been resolved for me? Not that they're, you know, kneeling down and saying, I'm ready to accept Christ. But do they feel like those answers are satisfactory? Or are they just looking for ways to sort of punch holes through whatever it is? Yeah, this is tricky. In any given conversation, you have to try to decipher, and it's hard to do, whether the questions are what we might call authentic. Yes. Or whether they're kind of what I call smokescreen questions.

[00:24:41] Smokescreen questions are when someone just doesn't want to believe, doesn't want anything to do with Christianity, and is looking for quick ways to dispense of it in these little surface-level objections. And then what will happen is if that's the kind of person you're dealing with, as soon as you answer an objection, it doesn't solve anything, because he'll just go to the next objection, and it'll just keep going down the list. In other words, he's not really interested in whether there's answers. He's just interested in making sure that he can just say things that sound like objections. And so when you deal with a smokescreen objection guy, those are tricky things.

[00:25:10] And what you eventually have to do is point that out to him and say, look, it doesn't seem like you really want answers. It seems like you just are rejecting the faith for other reasons. So let's find out what those other reasons are. And here's where you might discover they had a bad experience at church when they were growing up, or maybe they had a parent who claimed to be a Christian that abused them, or maybe there could be a hundred things. It's often relational. Right. And here's an answer for you. Lots of times people put up the smokescreen arguments because they're actually living a lifestyle they don't want to give up,

[00:25:38] and they know that if they accept Christianity, they're going to have to give it up. So really, it's just a moral thing for them. Okay, so that's the smokescreen guy. Back to the real guy, if you find out someone's an authentic question asker, then I think you can more robustly be hopeful that answering the question can get them back on track. And this is particularly the case with people who are entering college as professing Christians, but then wavering. If they're already professing Christians and wavering, you probably have a pretty good chance of thinking that if I can just help them understand this objection, they probably can stay on track because they're halfway there already.

[00:26:08] And I think those are the people that I have the biggest heart to help. I want to keep the people who are already at least entering with service-level profession from falling away completely. To keep that line of thought, we're seeing this sort of deconstructionism. It's become more and more prolific in the society. We're seeing large-name Christian people who just are walking away from the faith. Authors, Bible teachers, pastors, musicians. I mean, the list just seems to be going on and on.

[00:26:37] Now, I would think a lot of young people would then point to that and say, see, here's a person who said this was true and now they've completely walked away from it. This now validates my argument. How does the young believer who's trying to help their friend who may be having good questions, who's then using that as evidence, how do we kind of help them navigate with questions like that? Yeah. No, this is a trend. I call them deconversion stories.

[00:27:06] People call them deconstruction stories, whatever the term we use. It's people who were once on the inside who are now on the outside, and they make a big fanfare about it. I've written about this in a number of different places and actually spoke at TGC last year on this, this whole idea of apostasy and deconversion stories. So first thing to say is, yes, it's troubling. I mean, it's troubling for believers to watch this happen. It shakes you up. You're thinking, whoa, that's disconcerting to see people leaving the faith like that,

[00:27:36] particularly if they're well-known names in the Christian world. My response, though, is a number of things. First of all, I don't know that we're seeing a higher number of deconversions than we normally would. I think there's an issue of access to these stories like never before due to social media. Sure. And if someone, again, looks in church history, I mean, there's plenty of examples of people who seem to be on the inside, who became on the outside, and then fought against the faith. And so, you know, I don't know that it's a greater number,

[00:28:05] but I think we are aware of it more. And by the way, awareness is a problem. I mean, that is the problem, right? So we're worried about the deconversions in their own right, but we're also concerned about how the awareness shakes other people's faith. So don't misunderstand. I'm not downplaying the problem. I think the problem is very serious because of the awareness. I'm just not sure it's numerically any more significant than it's ever been. Fair enough. Then my other response to it is I always understood that people always, when they're looking for ways to reject the faith, talk about people who leave it. But what about the people who join it? I mean, it's funny. They don't talk about conversions.

[00:28:35] There's thousands, if not millions of people every year that convert to Christianity out of other religions and other systems, yet they don't seem to think those are persuasive. Or even at the risk of their own life. Yeah. So like, well, why aren't you persuaded by those people? So you're only persuaded by the people who leave, but you're not persuaded by the people who come? Well, that seems to me that's just because you've already predetermined what you should believe. And you're already picked aside, so you're really not neutral. And so I think that's another thing to point out. I want to get on this issue of in terms of ultimate authority.

[00:29:03] It seems sort of modern evangelicalism, there's this kind of thrust on experience, emotions, feeling. You know, if I felt it or I've gone through it, that validates it. What are the dangers of putting your trust in that rather than the authenticated word of God itself? Yeah, this is complicated. I think the first thing I would say is I think we want to make sure that we realize that the

[00:29:32] Christian faith has both a factual basis and what we might call an experiential basis. So one of the things I think it's important to realize is that both components are part of the Christian life. And another way to say it is that we believe not only because we believe Christianity is true and there's facts that can back it up, but we also believe because we love the person of Jesus Christ and have affection for him. And there's a real relationship there.

[00:30:00] And you might call that, you know, relational, existential, emotional, call it what you will. But that's a legitimate part of the Christian life. And the idea that the Christianity is was only one is when you get in trouble. Now, you could argue, and I think there's a place for this, that part of the focus now on authenticity and emotion and experience is because perhaps earlier versions of the Christian faith kept saying the only thing that matters is data and facts and history. And so maybe there's a backlash to that. Okay, fair enough.

[00:30:29] But as you rightly pointed out, we also have a danger if we look at only experience and only emotions and only sort of the feeling that this is authentic because that's not an accurate basis for making decisions either. And so everything has to be ultimately going back to what God has said and what God has revealed in his word. That's the ultimate standard, of course, for truth. But we also have to realize that people embracing that is complicated. It's not just sort of like, well, let me put my little stamp of approval on this because it's factually true.

[00:30:59] But rather, they're battling against all kinds of other existential factors that make it hard to believe. So if someone grew up in a church and was abused by Christians and you give them all the evidence for textual criticism that the Bible has been reliably transmitted, they're looking at you like, okay. What does that matter to me? I get that. And I might even agree with that. But you're not dealing with the fact that I am working against this problem of why I shouldn't believe. And you've got to address that too. So there's a lot of layers to this. I'm really feeling the weight of what you're talking about in terms of,

[00:31:28] it seems we're less dealing with the individual and we're more dealing with what we think is the problem. So we're trying to address a heart issue with facts and figures. And I feel what you're saying, that we are probably a decade or so behind on that. But at the same time, I think sometimes people try to address the heart and ignore the facts and figures. Oh, yeah, exactly. The opposite mistake. Exactly. Yeah, it's the other end of the spectrum. And so...

[00:31:58] The question is, where has evangelicalism consistently been? And you're going to get different answers to that, right? But I think one interesting question to ask, and we don't really ask it this way, is when someone decides to become a Christian, what's the normal reason they've decided to do so? In other words, what is the normal path by which someone professes faith in Christ? I would suggest to you, and I'm speaking as an historian and as a textual scholar,

[00:32:24] I don't think historical matters and textual issues are the primary reason most people become Christians. Most people become Christians for a couple of reasons. One is, they probably go and they hear a message preached to them that resonates to them as true, and they realize Jesus is Lord, and they confess and believe. They may not know anything about history or facts or data. Another reason people convert is because they read the Bible, and there's a sense in which it's a living book that they recognize has got a divine voice behind it, and they believe.

[00:32:53] So there's a lot of reasons that people believe and convert that aren't directly related to facts and figures. Now, don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not saying therefore the Bible isn't founded on facts. I'm not saying therefore it doesn't matter. I'm just simply pointing out the fact that we need to be multidimensional in our approach and recognize that the person standing in front of us is not going to necessarily be persuaded by 1980s-era arguments on evidentialism. They need to get a more well-rounded and sophisticated way of hearing the truth.

[00:33:22] You know, a lot of people will probably who are listening to this might think, well, let's just take them to the church. Let's take them to the leaders in the church. And in a sense, absolutely. You know, those pastors are on staff to help with those sorts of things and questions. But I think in a sense that also takes a little bit of the power of apologetics and evangelism away from the individual.

[00:33:47] So how do we help empower, whether it's fellow college students or parents with their children, to not feel intimidated by questions, but to be willing to step in and not have this sort of just take them to the professional? But how do we as the body? I mean, this is throughout Scripture, right? It's like we're working together on this. How do we kind of shift away from that professionalism, professional evangelist mentality back to the whole body together building up?

[00:34:18] Yeah. I mean, this is a problem I think we've faced for generations now, which is this idea that we've set the bar so high for what apologetics should be and can be that the average person in the pew thinks, well, I guess if apologetics is going to happen, I need to hire some outside experts to come into my church and then they can do it and I can take my friend and they can listen to them. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with such conferences and events. That's great.

[00:34:42] But there is this sense that unless you go get a PhD in ancient Roman history or New Testament theology, that you just aren't qualified to participate in this. And I find that to be really unfortunate. Part of it is just sort of, I think, just letting go the release valve here on the pressure people feel. You don't always have to have an answer. You don't always have to know how to respond to the objection. You know, it's not going to be the end of the world. If someone asks you a question, you don't know how to answer. I mean, why would you expect to be able to answer every question? Of course you're not going to be able to answer every question.

[00:35:13] I don't think it's bad for the non-Christian to talk to a Christian and the Christians say, I don't know, because there's lots of things we don't know. And so there's a sense of just acknowledging our finiteness and our humility there and also our trust that God knows, even if I don't have it all figured out. You know, what's interesting here is that the thing that makes the Christian worldview compelling is not that I have all the answers, but that the person I'm trusting in actually has access to all the answers because God knows all the answers.

[00:35:40] What I think is rarely pointed out is the non-Christian doesn't have that. The non-Christian in his worldview only has his own finite fallen mind. And so I'm like, well, if you're going to talk about eternal matters and eternal things, which view you're going to take, I at least have a purported access to divine revelation. Even though I don't personally have all the answers, at least I have a reason to think that that the trajectory of I'm in is right, but the non-Christian has no such assurance at all. And so I think you can just sort of realize you can make a lot of headway with that, even if you don't know how to have all the answers to things. Yeah. It's like talking to Job's friends.

[00:36:11] We've kind of had this conversation at a relatively high level, but I just, you know, because there's one issue that seems to be coming up over and over and over again, especially in the news, but it's that sort of sexual ethic. And we're seeing it a lot today with SOGI laws, sexual orientation, gender identity. You know, a lot of people will say, and it's funny because you talked about this earlier,

[00:36:34] about how some people look at the Bible and say, the sexual ethic in there is just too strict. And I don't want to read it because of that. But then you have people who we would not necessarily say are in the inside, but are speaking to the Bible in a general sense. And they say, well, you know, homosexuality was within, you know, temple prostitution mindset concept.

[00:36:58] So you're trying to read sort of first century letters from Paul into a 21st century time period. How do we sort of wrestle with those people in that sort of thinking? Yeah, well, I mean, I think we all can agree that the challenges to the Bible's view of sexuality are front and center all the time. I talk about this in my book, of course, because it's so front and center. Those are complicated conversations. I mean, there's sort of two layers to it. One layer is, well, what does the Bible really say?

[00:37:26] And the second layer is, how do I interact with my non-Christian friends about that? On the first layer, there have been attempts in recent years to say, well, the Bible doesn't really condemn homosexuality. The Bible really has a lot of fluidity here. The Bible is unclear on such things. Well, we don't have time to go into all of that. But I can say that I find those types of arguments profoundly unpersuasive and extremely naive about the ubiquitous nature of the Bible's sort of view of sexual ethics.

[00:37:55] And for that matter, early Christians' view of sexual ethics, which didn't seem to, in their mind, be ambiguous at all. You know, it seems that they were very clear about what the Bible allowed and didn't allow. And I think that's a missing piece of the argument. So I just don't think there's any real doubt that the Bible has some clarity on these things. The second question is the bigger one for me, which is, now, of course, as long as someone affirms the biblical view of sexuality. But then the second question, I think, is the more problematic.

[00:38:20] How do I then communicate graciously, kindly, and in a winsome way to the very hostile world? And that, I think, is where we have a lot of work to do. And I think we think that we do all our work just by making sure that we don't compromise our view. And I think that's the first thing you do, make sure you don't compromise your view. But that's not enough. I mean, we've got to find a way to reach people with these discussions. So here's a tip I give people, just one of 50 tips I could give when you're talking to someone about sexual ethics, is change the nature of the debate.

[00:38:50] Rather than talking to your gay friend or homosexual friend about gay marriage and whether it's good or bad or right or wrong, ask them this question. How do you know anything is right or wrong? How do you know anything is good or bad? Once you frame the question like that, a couple things are going to happen. One is it takes the heat out of the conversation because no longer you're talking about gay marriage narrowly or sexual issues narrowly, and that tones everyone down a bit. So that's good. You want to just take the heat out of the conversation.

[00:39:18] But the second thing is it makes them ask bigger questions about ethics and about morality. It's not so much whether gay marriage is right or wrong, but how do you know anything is right or wrong? Now they have to account for their moral norms. And honestly, most people don't ever get asked that question. They never have to account for that. I think that's the better strategy for us, and I think that's going to produce a lot of fruit if we would take it, and it would just sort of lower the tension level in the room a bit. Well, there's so much here, a lot to think on, and I hope that this is a great blessing for people.

[00:39:46] I guess as a sort of parting word, any encouragement for students who are about to embark on their first year of college and their need? What should they be looking for? Or what are the things that will help sort of graft them in and hold them as they're away from family for many of them for the first time for a long period of time? So one of the things I mention in my book is what I'll mention now, which is what I call my horror movie advice, which is kind of a funny way of saying it.

[00:40:12] So I love scary movies, and everybody's got their movie genre preferences. So I like scary movies, not all of them, but generally speaking, I like scary movies. And one of the things that happens in scary movies is the protagonist always makes a profound mistake. They always go off alone in the dark. And the audience is like, what the heck are you doing, right? It's like, this is common sense. Why are you wandering off alone in the dark? Stay in the group and stay in the light. It's just common sense.

[00:40:40] Well, look, that horror movie advice is also true spiritually. When you go to college, I would say to anybody, don't go off in the dark alone and deal with your issues and challenges. Stay in the group. Stay in the light. Find a good church. Find a Christian fellowship and work through the issues there. If you go off alone in the dark, you're going to be making the horror movie mistake. Don't make it. Stick in the group and stick in the light. And I think you'll find that your chances of surviving, so to speak, your college years go up dramatically.

[00:41:10] That's a great, fantastic word. Well, Dr. Michael Kruger, the book is Surviving Religion 101, Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College. We're so grateful to have a conversation with you, and I'm grateful for your teaching at RTS and all the writing you're doing with Gospel Coalition and even the work of your wife is so helpful and profound. And we're just so grateful for you. Thank you for joining us on Candid Conversations. Absolutely. Great to be with you.

[00:41:40] It was a lot of fun. God bless. And we'll see you next time.