The Joys & Struggles of Answering Bible Questions w Gino Geraci - Podcast Episode 36

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast, your questions, Biblical answers. On today's episode,

I have one of my favorite people on the planet with me today, Gino Geraci. He is a long -time

Calvary pastor and also has been the host of the Crosswalk radio show for over 20 years.

So he's been answering questions on the radio longer than Got Questions has been in existence. On today's episode,

I thought we'd just talk about questions, the joys, the struggles, the trials of answering people's

Bible questions and what two better people have on the show. I think between the two of us, Gino, I think we've answered probably over a million questions in our lifetimes.

That's a lot of questions. So Gino, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Shea. And plus, you've had me on your radio show probably 20 or 30 times, so I thought maybe it'd be good for me to return the favor.

Love it. So Gino, answering people's Bible questions, start out with what is your favorite type of question to answer?

Well, oddly enough, one of my favorite questions to answer is the one I've never been asked.

Shea, you can imagine that even at Got Questions, when we talk about, we might say a million responses, but we may have been asked something 50 times or 100 times or even a thousand times.

So one of my favorite things is to get a question that I've never been asked, even if I don't know the answer, so that I can think about it and reflect upon it and then do the research and then get a response.

So sometimes I can answer the question that I've never been asked, but sometimes it gives me the opportunity to say, thank you so much.

I've never been asked that question. Give me some time to think and evaluate what the

Bible says about your question, at least in principle. My second favorite question are the questions that deal with salvation.

In other words, when a person says, how do I get right with God? How do I repent of my sin? How do

I enter into this relationship? Or a question about this seems to be preventing me from having a relationship with God, or how can

I get help with my marriage? Or I'm stuck in a repentance and salvation, what you and I might call the low hanging fruit, but it's always exciting to me to point people to Jesus or share

Christ or lead them to the Lord. Absolutely. I entirely agree with that. I remember the very first time someone asked us a question, and I think it was worded essentially, how can

I know for sure I'd go to heaven when I die? And I call over to Melissa, who was in the other room. I was like, hey,

Melissa, can someone get saved on the internet? And what's funny looking back is we did, we had envisioned, got questions as being primarily a discipleship ministry.

Evangelism really wasn't our primary goal. But since then, since we recognized the importance of publishing numerous articles that answer the gospel question, how can

I be saved question different ways? We've had thousands of people express new faith in Christ as a result of an internet website.

So who knew? But yes, no, those are definitely my favorite type of questions. And similar to you,

I mean, occasionally getting a new question, it's super exciting because, I mean, we're hundreds of thousands of questions have been submitted.

So just when we think we've answered every possible question, new ones seem to pop up almost every day.

So that's fun. And also for me, it's almost the attitude of the person asking the question is sometimes more important than what the question actually is.

It doesn't matter to me what the question is. If someone has an open heart and they're genuinely seeking an answer in God's word, well, that thrills me to no end.

That excites me. I want to answer that question. Sometimes even some of the topics I'm really interested in, if the other person is more looking for an argument or not really interested in what we have to say, well,

I'll answer it, but it's hard to be passionate about it. Yeah. And this is one of the advantages, at least for a podcast or a live radio broadcaster, if I'm interacting with someone, sometimes

I can hopefully in a respectful way, ask about the motive. Someone might ask me a question about suicide and rather than just simply dive into the answer,

I want to know their motive. Could you please give me some understanding of why you're asking this question?

Has someone close to you committed suicide? Are you yourself struggling with self -destructive thoughts?

And so we can reach out and gauge a person's motive.

And on the radio, sometimes the motive comes through on the radio. The person's not interested in the answer to their question.

They're interested in an argument or it becomes combative. And this is one of the, to me, the most powerful points of Got Questions, which

I love so much. And that is, we don't always see a person's motive, so we take it on face value.

Shay, I know you do, that when a person asks a question, it isn't helpful to, at that point, judge their motive, but just take it on face value that they're asking the question in good faith.

So yeah, exactly. And we try not to judge people's motives, like you said, for asking questions.

When you can hear the tone of voice, like on your radio show, it's often easier to gauge, but when it's just a question, all we're seeing is the text.

We don't have body language. We don't have tone of voice or anything. We try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but often, even in that, we can tell, especially after hundreds of thousands of questions, this person is looking for a fight, not for an answer.

But let's kind of jump to the flip side of the first question. So Gina, what would you say, what is your least favorite type of question to answer?

You know, it used to be, because they were so repetitious, I would be asked questions about tongues and tithing and baptism.

Now, all of those are important questions, and we thank God that there are biblical answers to these questions.

But sometimes, just because of the sheer volume and repetition of the questions, it became wearisome.

And now, and I know it goes to the heart of something else that we're going to talk about, is this change, this change in the questions that people are asking.

People used to ask me about tongues, tithing, and baptism all the time. But now, we're talking about gender dysphoria, transsexualism.

Because of the culture in which we live, there's this growing preoccupation with social justice.

And again, I thank God for got questions, because, you know, we're posting on critical race theory and intersectionality, and I know that you had

Vodibachum on. These are important questions that need to be addressed. So to me, my least favorite ones are the ones that are almost like wearing me down, because they've been asked so often.

But again, what I have to do is remind myself that for many people,

Shay, this is the first time they've ever asked the question. Even though you've answered the question 1 ,000 times, I've answered the question 1 ,000 times, for them, this is the first time they've asked the question.

So it's taking that deep breath and reminding myself that for many people, they've never heard the answer to this question.

I'm totally with you there. I mean, if you look at the top 20 page on got questions, each of those top 20 questions have literally probably been asked,

I'm guessing, over 1 ,000 times in our

I'd really like how you explained it. It's not like this person has asked the question 1 ,000 times.

This may be the very first time they were studying God's word, this question popped into their mind. So we need to treat each person as unique rather than, oh, here's the baptism question again, or here's the, can women be pastors question again?

So that's an important attitude to maintain. So with me, I find a question that someone's hobby horse can be really frustrating in the sense of, for example, we'll have someone say, hey,

I've read a whole bunch of articles on your site and love your site.

But on your article on who are the sons of God and daughters of men in Genesis six, you take a different view than me.

Therefore I feel like I can't trust your ministry anymore. And so for this person, a total side issue, a non -core issue is the biggest deal ever.

And therefore disagree with them on that. They want nothing to do with you and they won't come back to the site anymore.

And that's just frustrating because that's the wrong attitude to have. I mean, that's an interesting issue to discuss and several different views on that.

But to make that the end all be all of your Christian faith, that's really frustrating and discouraging because it's so difficult when someone is focused on their hobby horse, their soapbox to get them off of that and focus on what's more important.

Well, one of the things that I again, love about GotQuestions that when we're dealing with some of these peripheral issues,

GotQuestions will usually discuss the strengths and weaknesses of what has been put forth as a possible explanation.

Even using Genesis six as an example, there's only a few possibilities to interpret who these, the

B 'nai Elohim, the sons of God are. Either these are angelic beings or these are human beings or these are human beings possessed by angelic beings.

So we go also to some of the eschatological, the questions about the future.

And of course we talk about historical premillennialism or dispensational premillennialism or amillennialism.

And again, GotQuestions, I think wonderfully begins to address the strengths and weaknesses of these and allows the reader to enter into the arguments of the strengths and weaknesses.

Now, obviously you and I, we have our own views about the assurance of faith and Arminianism versus Calvinism.

But again, we look for the strengths and the weaknesses of the arguments to support our position.

And I think that this is one of the reasons why GotQuestions is so powerful and so wonderful.

And so many people across the theological spectrum go there because they're looking for brief but biblical answers.

And the other thing I love, love, of course, which you pay close attention to, which we pay close attention to, is the recommended resources.

So again, part of the challenge which we've always had is how can we make this an interesting opportunity, ministry opportunity to grow?

Yeah. So here's a question from me to you, Gene, because I'd really like your advice on this.

So you mentioned it briefly. So when someone's asking a question on an issue where it's debatable, where there are multiple views a

Christian can have on an issue, so someone asks you the question, how do you know when to hear the different views and to allow the person to kind of make up their own mind versus here's the one view

I think is correct and why? So how do you approach that? Yeah. In the broadest category possible, what

I try to do is put it into a category. And the category for me is the category of essential

Christianity versus non -essential Christianity. And so on my list of what constitutes essential

Christianity, it isn't hundreds of things. There's probably 15 things on my essential

Christian category where what I will do is I will say, these are certain things that are non -negotiable.

Well, what are the things that are negotiable? Where Paul talks about this in Romans chapter 14 and 15 about disputable things or things where Christians differ and that the old maxim in essentials, unity and non -essentials, how does the maxim go?

Charity and then in all things, unity. Yeah. Well, unity and the last one is charity.

But the whole point becomes that we can have a civil discussion about the non -essential issues.

So again, part of the challenge that we have is what you and I might think of as essential, somebody else might think of as non -essential.

What somebody else might think of as non -essential, they may think essential. So part of the challenge that we have is to get our categories correct or at least correct enough so that we can have a conversation about it.

Agreed. And that's excellent. Excellent advice. Knowing which battles are worth fighting.

It's one thing to disagree over the deity of Christ or the Trinity or salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone versus the charismatic gifts or Calvinism versus Arminianism, things where Christians can in good faith disagree and still call each other brothers and sisters in Christ and still have deep and meaningful fellowship with one another.

Right. So you touched on this a little earlier. I'm just curious as other than the actual content of the questions in the past 20 years, what have you noticed?

How have questions changed? And do you think questions are more hostile towards Christianity now than they were 20 years ago?

Well, I think that there's always been a hostility towards Christianity. I go back to my own faith journey, if you will.

Before I became a Christian, I was particularly hostile to the exclusivist claims of Christianity.

How is it even possible that when Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth and the life, how could that possibly be true?

And so there have always been things where there's a kind of animosity or hostility. But what

I see is a growing cultural hostility, a growing cultural animosity.

And again, the way that I would put it is a differentiation between what is politicized and what is moral, where people start to confuse categories, where you think of something like abortion as a political issue.

And it is, of course, a political issue, but it's primarily a moral issue. So in the last 20 years, we've seen a shift between what constitutes a biblical issue, a theological issue, a moral issue, and a political issue, and a cultural issue.

So we now get more and more questions. I mean, who would have guessed 10 years ago that we would be asked about moral therapeutic deism, or should

I get a vaccine or not get a vaccine? Is going to church online the same as going to church?

So we see the cultural and the political divisions getting deeper and wider.

And all the while, I know, for me, and for you forgot questions. Again, it isn't our desire in any way to further the divide, but rather to once again, differentiate those categories and say, well, if this is a political issue, it's a political issue, but there are certain issues that aren't simply political.

They're immoral and biblical and we have to address them. Yeah. It's one of the interesting things when we translate

GotQuestions content into a new language for the first time, there's certain articles that we're translating no matter what, but then there's others where we give the translator some freedoms like, okay, here's the top 20 in English.

Do you think any of these are completely irrelevant to people in your culture?

And almost always they're like, no, all 20 of them are questions that people ask here as well.

Occasionally they're like, well, I wouldn't bother with this one or this one, but most of them. And then they will sometimes pick a few others, but there's the verse in Corinthians that say, no temptation has taken you except what is common to man.

I like to say that no question has taken you that's not common to man. And there's so many questions.

So over the almost two decades now we've been doing GotQuestions, in some senses, the questions have stayed the same.

And since we're getting the same ones that we got when we first launched the site, but then also, like you mentioned, some of the content changes, stuff that we never would have imagined even five years ago, we'd be dealing with now with some of the transgender issues, the

COVID vaccine or just COVID itself or church closings or some of the things you mentioned.

Two years ago, I wouldn't have been anticipating getting these types of questions. And then some of the strength at which people will argue with you over the questions, it's surprising to see how divisive some issues have become when ultimately these are not things that Christians should be dividing over.

Right. And we think about the growing Christians since the

New Testament was written, since the origin of the church, have questions about their relationship to the government.

Well, 20 years ago, I think Christians had questions about the relationship to the government.

But now it seems that there's a greater sense of urgency that people are asking these questions.

Just yesterday on the way to work, I drove by a massive, maybe not massive, but a significant protest against Biden's recent vaccine mandate for all government employees and employees of large companies and people with bullhorns.

And there may have been a counter protest across the road. I was like, people, I'm just trying to get to work. Okay. Who would have thought?

So maybe one final question for us to discuss briefly.

Someone once described, got questions to me, he was like, you guys are essentially firefighters.

And then he clarified saying, so people are asking all these different questions.

An issue pops up here and there and there, or this issue or this confusion or this debate, and you are trying to put out the fires with biblical truth.

And so in no sense was he disparaging what we do at GotQuestions, but there's also the issue of how do we train people to study

God's word for themselves, to search the scriptures, to know God's word well enough. So they're not constantly coming up with all these questions that have answers in God's word.

So how do you balance? Yes, we want to answer people's questions. At the same time, we want to teach them to study

God's word for themselves. It's the whole story. If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. You teach a man to fish, you feed him for his lifetime.

So how do you approach this, Gino? Well, again, we look for opportunities to do exactly that, where we give great resources, like how to study your

Bible for all it's worth. Or, you know, hermeneutics is a great big word, but really what it is, is the science and art of biblical interpretation.

And where we do exactly that, where we say, hey, these are some of the principles that have proven helpful to me as people ask and answer the question.

So it's exactly what you just said. You know, on my radio program, what I try to do isn't just simply to give the answer, but to model how to give the answer.

And maybe even go through sort of an explanation.

You know, I'm also the founder and director of a 501c3 called

Scripture Says. And Scripture Says is, you know, my teaching and preaching and writing ministry.

But it goes to the heart of what it says in Romans chapter four, verse three, where Paul writes, what does the scripture say?

Abraham believed God, and it was counted for him righteousness. You know, we think of the New Testament examples, where Jesus is dealing with a lawyer, or he's dealing with a person who's asking a question about divorce, for instance.

And Jesus points them back to the scripture and says, what does the scripture say?

What's your reading of it? So sometimes, you know, at least on the radio, we have less of an interactive kind of platform, but perhaps in the blog site and this site,

Shay, that's a growing thing for GotQuestions, where we go, you know, maybe people are tuning in or logging on, and they're saying, what are some of the tools that you find most helpful?

So that as I'm asking Bible questions, I can find biblical answers.

And Shay, I know, even after doing this for so many, many years, I still have questions.

I still have questions, or I'm asked questions. And so we're back to what you originally asked me, what are the most exciting questions, the ones

I've never been asked, and that I don't necessarily know the answer to, but it gives me the opportunity to engage and try and find the answer.

So that's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about those fundamental principles that become helpful.

Well, what are those? Knowledge of the Bible, maybe a good Bible dictionary, something as simple as a single volume commentary, where I can go and get answers to my questions.

So you're exactly right. Is it possible that GotQuestions can make us lazy where we can go,

I don't have to look up the answer. I can just go to GotQuestions and get the answer. And so I'm not suggesting for a minute that we abandon our mission, but what

I am suggesting is just what you're saying, that we incorporate some of these elements, even in our

Bible answers. Yeah. So I like what you said earlier that you still have questions. I mean, you've been in ministry longer than I have, and it's nice to hear that you still have questions.

I definitely still have questions. Someone submitted a question the other day, and what they submitted was, should

I avoid texting God? Well, what they meant was should I avoid testing God?

And I jokingly responded, I was like, hey, if you've got God's phone number, I would really like that number because I got some questions

I would like to text God. So no, between Geno and I, our entire volunteer team at GotQuestions, we know

Scripture, but we don't have all the answers. Even God's word has the answer to every question we need to know about God, about his relationship to us, how to be saved, how to live the

Christian life, but it does not answer every question that can pop into our mind. Yeah, like quantum physics or quantum biology.

We don't necessarily know everything, but to your texting thing, someone actually asked me on my radio program, well, can

God text us? And again, that's one of those questions, well, nobody really ever asked me the question before, can

God text us? And we know from the Bible, the Bible says, all things are possible. I suspect that it is theologically, ontologically possible that if for whatever reason

God wanted to text you, he could, but apparently God has chosen other ways to communicate with us.

And according to the Scripture, it says he spoke in times past through the prophets, but he has in these last days spoken to us by his own dear son.

So the way I would answer the question is I would say, I think it's legitimately possible that God could do that, but I highly suspect that he wouldn't do it because God has chosen certain methods to communicate and that those methods are authentic and reliable.

Yeah. So Gino, thank you for a great conversation.

Love having you on, hope to do this again sometime. And we'll include links to Scripture Says and also to where you can listen to Gino's radio show,

Crosswalk. In my opinion, by far the best Bible question, answer radio show that there is.

So check out the description on YouTube and also podcast .gotquestions .org,

where you can find out more about Gino and his ministry. So this has been the Got Questions podcast.