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The culture has tried to go so far against God, removing God from everything, that there's this void and they've been trying to fill it with everything but God, and people are starting to realize, no, the only thing that answers for the purpose of life is God.
We were created to glorify God.
Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and a Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your.
Church, go to strivingforeternity .org. Well, welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community, of which this podcast is a proud member of the over 50 heavily vetted podcasts.
We only accept, I think, about 30 of the people that apply, so what that means is you know that when you're listening, son, you're listening to something that has passed a vetting process, but we have something for everyone.
You want homeschooling? We have podcasts on homeschooling. We have podcasts for just people that are gonna read the Bible and give you devotions. We have people from ones that are sermons. We have things for mothers, fathers.
We have ones even on thinking critically about movies. So whatever you like, I'm sure you'll find something at christianpodcastcommunity .org. I am excited today because we have a guest who, well, I consider him a friend.
We'll find out if he thinks the reverse, but now he's put on the spot, so he's gonna have to feel like he says yes. So we'll see what he puts on social media if he says yes. Jim Wallace. He's known as J. Warner Wallace because there's, well, another Jim Wallace, and he's not in Christian realms.
He's a liberal, so I wanted to have some distinction. It's been a long time since you've been on the show, Jim. Welcome back. Hey, thanks for having me. I can tell you a funny... Yes, of course. You and I go back to the very beginning of, I think, the first year that I was even speaking after I came out of law enforcement.
I think I was still actually employed as a detective, and I had a case in trial maybe the next year. So maybe it's well before we did a conference in Northern California. I don't know if you remember that, but that's when we first met.
And I'll tell you a funny story about Jim Wallace, the other Jim Wallace from Sojourners. I was asked several years ago to come out for a session, a justice reform session, in Washington, D .C. A lot of people there in politics, civic leaders, people that were there who are faith leaders.
So it was basically a faith-based kind of reform of social justice. So, okay, great. So I go to this meeting, and when I get there, I walk into the room. It's in downtown Washington, D .C., and I walk into the room, and there's tables set with little name tags, and I can see that at one of the tables there's Jim Wallace, but it's spelled the way he spells his name, which is W-A-L-L-I-S.
So I thought, oh, finally I'm going to get to meet the guy, because you're right. It was Greg Kokel. I was on his podcast. I used to be on his podcast all the time when I first started, and when he would have me, he'd say, hey, you need to change your name, because people think that I'm having Jim Wallace from Sojourners on when I'm having you on.
So that's when I first started using the name that I use in all my search warrants, which has my grandfather's name in it, J. Warner Wallace. That's how I ended up being J. Warner Wallace. So when I walked into this meeting in Washington, D .C., and I saw that name tag, I thought, oh, I'm finally going to get a chance to meet Jim Wallace.
So I did, and so when he comes in, I walk over, recognize him, I walk over, and I introduce myself. I'm nobody. He doesn't know me from anybody. Probably still doesn't know me from anybody, but I said to him, hey, you know, you're the reason why I'm J. Warner Wallace, and I told him the story, and he laughed, and we shook hands, and that was the last probably agreeable thing we said to each other for the rest of the day, because we come at that issue of justice reform in two very different angles, and that the room was divided.
You know, that's what they invited, a very broad spectrum of people. Yeah, and so he and I are, in terms of the kinds of ways we would approach, even though, isn't that interesting? Even though we would both say that we ground our worldview in scripture, we came at it completely different, and I think that's actually one chapter of this book that I just wrote, because I think that we were reflecting two sides of the polar nature of who we are that is in God's nature, you know, truth and grace, justice and mercy, and if you don't hold those two things in balance, you're not loving like God loves, and so you got to be careful to hold those two things in balance, and in that room that day, you had people who were holding one side or the other completely out of balance, and so they were, we were pretty polarized.
Anyway, yeah, I did get a chance to meet him. Well, see, that's different than the Andrew Rappaport. That does spell the same way as I do, because it has given me some very interesting durations, because I have had, it's actually Andrew S. Rappaport, I'm Andrew R. Rappaport, but the other Andrew Rappaport is a venture capitalist, so I've had Dennis Kamenich, when he was running for the Democrats, running for president, his office reached out to me, wanting, you know, it's like, and it was really funny, I worked at Lucent Technologies at the time, so they contacted me at my Lucent email, right?
I'm like, you really should realize that but it's the wrong guy, but they contacted me, and Dennis wanted to have dinner with me to talk about his platform, and my response was, yeah, I decided I'm voting for Bush this year.
Oh my gosh, I wonder if he ever figured out that there was a difference. Yeah, who knows? I had once where a woman in church, she invited a friend to church, and then she told me like a couple weeks later that her friend gave her a business proposal, and she was like, why, you know, can you give this to your pastor?
She's like, why? He's a big venture capitalist, and she goes, yeah, no, I know him, he doesn't have that money. I remember speaking, I had the same thing at a crisis pregnancy center banquet, and I, you know, I was speaking, and someone had, I guess, looked up who the speakers are, and looked up and found the other one, the husband and wife, and she comes up to me, and she had a business proposal for me, and I'm like, I'm the other Andrew Rappaport, the one without money, and they were like, oh, okay.
Yeah, and they're disappointed, I'm sure, right away, right? We can't offer them what they're hoping. Yeah, yeah, so you and I have both been really blessed by the same person you already mentioned, Greg Hochul, that's how we kind of knew each other.
Greg really, when I got into ministry, Greg really helped me out tremendously. I knew him back when I was still pastoring a church. I was able to just gleam a whole lot from him, and just sit and talk to him, and a lot of the ministry of striving fraternity is based upon Greg.
That's so cool. He's had a great influence. I mean, that's, and that's one of the things I think we can look at. This is kind of where my, even my writing is transitioning, is that we have an opportunity to have a kind of a legacy impact, hopefully, and when I think about when I first started in this, I came out as out of law enforcement, I think Greg was probably about maybe a year older than I am now.
So, so at the age that I am now, Greg was, you know, mentoring me, and embraced me right away, and I became part of his team, and then we, you know, off to the races we go, and so I've always felt like he and Frank Turek have been two guys that I'm indebted to just for opportunities, if nothing else, just the fact that they were so gracious with their opportunities.
So, so the only, how do you pass that forward? I remember when I first wrote the first book, Cold Case Christianity, I sent a copy of the pitch to Lee Strobel just to see if maybe he would be interested in endorsing it.
That's one of those things you do with publishers, right? Well, how many people would be willing to endorse this? And when I did, Lee Strobel wrote back and said, well, I'll write the forward for you.
He didn't know me from Adam, and I mean, I think we had met once at a conference, and I was in one of the breakout sessions, and he was the plenary, but I was nobody to him, and he so graciously has invested in me.
Well, it's kind of the same way, you see, when you feel like you take a view of grace, what's been offered you from God, that is the motivation. Not that you are, you know, are doing this as transactionally with God, but that you feel like, wow, as far as everything that's been done for me, how can I not do for others?
And I think that when you see the community that operates that way, they're continually pouring into you with nothing in it for them, really, but they just, that's just who they are. Well, then you just want, now you're looking around for, who can I help?
Who can I bless the same way I've been blessed? And so, yeah, I think that's been a great role model for both of us. Let me start with Greg, and then I'll get to how you have influenced how we train people, but one of the things Greg taught me, and I see this every event, Greg walks into an event, and he is not going to a green room, he is not going, he walks in and first thing, he's walking around and just talking to people.
He's the one said, look, if someone flies you out to an event, you are there to do whatever you can possibly do for their event. You're not there for your own time. You're there for them from the moment you land to the moment you take off, and that's been my policy.
I mean, I did an event where our ministry was organizing it, and we had someone that ran the conference, and the guy came up to me because somebody wanted to have Greg not be in the main session, but be in their session to give feedback, and that someone was me, okay?
So I'm asking Greg if he could sit in on a breakout session I'm doing, rather than be in the main session, and Greg said, let me talk to Michael, the guy that was running things, even though Michael works for me.
Yeah. And he went to get permission to do that from the guy that was organizing things. Michael came up to me, he was like, like you, I work for you, like if you're asking, like what else am I going to say?
No? He's like, but the fact that Greg went and did that made such an impression on him, and you know, it's something that Greg's always impressed upon me, but you actually have influenced our training as well.
You've never known this, so I'm going to let you in on a little secret, and this book you most recently wrote, The Truth and True Crime, really actually, it fits in well with it, because when I train up new guys, one of the things, I remember we had a guy we were training, he was a dentist by trade.
I use your talks, where you talk about training, to show how we could take something where we are an expert, and even if it's from the secular world, your background is law enforcement, you're an expert in cold case, for folks who, you and I, I took for granted the knowledge of you, right?
But for folks who don't know your background, you're an L .A. detective, you were working cold cases, in fact, I think you were, if I'm not mistaken, you were on Dateline more than any other detective, if I'm not mistaken.
That's true. Only because I'm close to you at NBC Universal, that's the only reason. It's right down the street from where we were working, so yeah. I told my pastor last night that I was going to have you on, and I always joke with you, because you've never lost a case, but that makes you have to admit that, well, yeah, because you're not going to bring a case when it's a cold case, you're not bringing a case unless, you know, it's solid.
It's kind of like when a D .A. says he prosecutes and wins 98 of his cases, because he only files 40 of what we bring him. Well, yeah, we get it, so yeah. This is all the stuff that you have to really, you're right, we start in, we have a profession, and we bring that with us, the same way we bring our upbringing with us, everything that we bring with us to this project, and we want to be able to leverage that.
You use your background, I still love the, and this is the one I use to train people, is the one where you come in with your flap jacket, and you're explaining, you know, you explain the difference of teaching and training, like, look, you're training because you put this jacket on, you train with it, so you know, and you use the visual aids, you use the backgrounds, you use what you know in law enforcement, and it's funny because this gentleman who is a dentist, he goes, he looks, and he's, so we're trying to say, I said, look, this is something you should use your background, use your expertise, bring that into your talks, because a lot of, back then when he was first starting, a lot of his talks were, because he was in the creation realm, a lot of his talks were really very similar to what Answers in Genesis is, and I said, make it different, I said, here's an example, you make it different, make it you, and it was funny because this comment goes, yeah, but law enforcement's really cool, pulling people's teeth is not.
Well, but you know what's great about the dentistry side of this is that all of us fear and dread something about going to the dentist, and so there's an aspect of fear and awe that you can leverage, right, you can leverage this, like, you know, so I talk about the things that would be appropriate for me to talk about in this realm, there's lots of stuff I'd like to talk about, but I don't talk about it because why would you care what I think about it, you know, I don't have any trusted authority in that area, so you just shut up, you know, those are things that I don't typically, you know, there's some of this stuff in sciences, I can, I wrote a book called God's Crime Scene where I looked at a lot of the scientific evidence, but I can't look at it as a scientist, I'm not a scientist, I have to look at it as an investigator, now look, in our job, here's what we do, we bring in scientists to testify all the time, and so does the defense, and so I think I've got a sense of what we can, I can put in front of a jury that's trustworthy, and so I have to leverage that sense, not, I don't have the background in it, but the great thing about, and that's what he'll have to do, like, he'll have to talk about those things that he learned uniquely, because, you know, every dentist goes to med school, I don't even think people realize that my son's a doctor, he's an anesthesia, pediatric anesthesiologist, I have two boys, one's a cop and one's a doctor, and the doctor, you know, he's in med school at USC, well, that's a med school, there's a, dentists go to the same medical school, so if you learn a certain sense of biology or some of the relationships between the sciences and biology, you're a dentist, you probably learned the same thing my son did, that gives you some, at least footing, someplace to begin, but, you know, that's one of the reasons why, Andrew, I didn't, the stuff I wanted, look, I ended up writing originally about the case for Christianity because I dumbed into it, I was working as a detective, I had three active cases in trial, I was with Sean McDowell on a trip to Berkeley, and I was a part-time youth pastor for many years when my kids were in high school, my kids are now in their 30s, but when they were in high school, I was their youth pastor, so, okay, during that time, we would take immersive trips with Brett Kunkel in the Maven group, maventruth .com, shameless plug for Brett and his ministry, it's a great ministry, so we would take these immersive trips, and we would take theological trips, we would take philosophical trips, dealing with atheism, and we would, those second trips we would take to university campuses, but we picked Berkeley because it was the most hostile campus in the UC system, and we happened to be in the UC system here, so that's where we would go, and I was with Sean McDowell one day, and we were doing it with his high school group, he was a high school teacher at the time, and I was training his kids with the stuff on reliability of the scripture, the stuff I've been training high schoolers with, basically just retracing my investigation when I first became a Christian, he saw it, and he said, you should write a book about this, I'll tell you right now, that probably would not have been the first book I would have written, but it was the book that Sean said I should write, because he had seen these visual presentations on the screen, and that became Cold Case Christianity, well that just launches your publisher into thinking, well this is the Cold Case Christianity guy, so now, then I wrote two more books in that trilogy of books for Cook, David C. Cook Publishing, and that was Cold Case Christianity, God's Crime Scene, and Forensic Faith, these are just the areas that I could empty out, but the book I wanted to write, the one I thought that really matters, is where, is not just, what is the evidence for Christian, because I had already been beyond that for years, but I wanted to talk about how Christianity describes the world the way it really is, it describes us the way we really are, and you will notice things, if you're an atheist and detective, you're going to see the same repeating human patterns over and over and over again, and you may not even ground them in anything beyond the most recent secular studies that have been done that confirm these patterns, but it turns out, there's, all these patterns are very ancient, that if you wanted to flourish as a human, you could either dig into all the studies that have been done on human flourishing, realizing that some of them have biases and some don't, or you could simply read the Old and New Testament, you'll find that all of the suggestions for how to flourish as a human are very ancient.
I wanted to write that book forever, and I could never get anybody to bite. I left David C. Cook, and I came over to Zondervan, largely because Lee Strobel said, you should come over to Zondervan. I thought, okay, so I'm at Zondervan, and I pitched this book as the first book, because this is what I wanted to write all along.
And they said, no, you know what, we'd like you to do something that's more along the line of cold case Christianity, because we don't have cold case Christianity over here. That's not our book. And I thought, okay, well, there's a couple of aspects of that initial investigation years ago that I had done that I had never really written about.
I, for example, could have written a lot about the non-canonical gospels, because I went through all of those in detail when I was first looking at Christianity. I didn't, I've never written really much about that, except on my website.
Long story short, I wrote Person of Interest for Zondervan, which I always wanted to write anyway, but I said, I'll only write Person of Interest if I can twist it toward not, here's the evidence for Christianity.
Of course, there's evidence for Christianity in there, but really, why does the Bible still matter in a world that rejects the Bible? Why does Jesus still matter? So I wanted to talk about why he matters.
So let me do that. And then they owed me one, and this is the one that I finally got to write. And this is the, to me, my favorite book by far, it's not even close, it's from a perspective of what matters to most Christians in the church.
This is the stuff that matters to them. This is the stuff that matters to all of us as Christians. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where you're suffering or your, whatever experience you're having in your marriage, whatever it is.
Because most people who call me, Andrew, do not call me to ask me about the details of the cosmological argument. They call me because they're having trouble in a relationship with a neighbor at work.
They're concerned about something going sideways and they want to know, have you ever seen this before? Do you think this is going in the wrong direction? Do you think something terrible is waiting for me?
Do you think this is the first domino in a series of dominoes that's going to lead to something tragic? Based on what you've seen in all the cases of that work are tragic. I'm working when the final domino falls, that's when I get involved.
But we have to examine every domino that fell before that. So the question is, and that's what people call me. Here's what I discovered. If you're writing Christian apologetics books, the first thing you have to convince your audience of is that they should be interested in Christian apologetics.
But if you're writing books about how to live successfully and flourish as a Christian, you don't need to convince anybody that's important in terms that we're so selfish and self-focused that all of us think that stuff matters to begin with.
But I think that the case for Christianity is embedded in there. It is there, but most people are not going to come to it out of their sudden interest in the cosmological teleological arguments. They're not going to come to it that way.
They're going to come to it because, wow, life just punched me in the face and I'm not sure what to do about it. Does Christianity have anything to say about this? That's what they're, that's usually the entry point for most people.
Especially after a thing, I don't know if you ever, if you heard about this out in California, maybe you didn't, this thing called COVID. Do you ever hear about that? I don't know. Maybe. Well, listen, you're not in a state that's that much, probably.
Well, if you're stating. I moved to Pennsylvania. So during COVID. Right. But even Pennsylvania, you got the east side, which is obviously the urban more, you know, and then you had the west. I'm on the east.
I'm north of Philly. So yeah, I still have some, it's not as bad as that communist country known as New Jersey, but it's close enough. I think the same is probably true for California. If you took LA and San Francisco out of, in the counties in which they reside, out of the state, you'd find that the state itself is very different.
That's the whole country. You take the cities. I mean, the Democrats only focus on the cities where they just complete destroy them. And then they go, Oh, it's everyone else's fault. Well, and it's interesting is if you look at the studies on this, people are far more likely to be secular to hold a secular worldview.
If the, you know, the closer they live to a major urban area, that's number one, the closer they live to a coast, that's number two. And the closer they live to a university, that's number three. So if you happen to be in a city that's close to the coast that contains major universities, well, good luck to you.
That's what's going to, and I'm in Los Angeles on the coast and we have more universities, more top level universities, medical schools, and things like that in California than I think every other state, any other state, rather, you know, that's why that's the tail wagging the dog right now.
So that's why I really was wanting to write a book because it turns out that, so look, this is a weird book. This is a book. That's 15 true crime stories, 15 rules for life, 15 pieces of evidence that Christianity describes us the way that we really are.
That's the hybrid. And so I find it trending in these self-help. I find it trending in apologetics and I find it trending in true crime. That's fine. So it's a little bit difficult to get your hands around, but here's what it is.
It basically is, you've probably experienced some of this stuff. And when you read these crime stories, I think they will help you help the reader to, they're helping me because even as I, like, here's the thing about it.
These are 15 attributes of human flourishing. If you'll simply embrace these 15 things, you will flourish according to all of the current sociological studies and I've included them. And according to the pages of the New Testament, and I've included that.
So you will flourish if you simply follow these 15 rules for life. Part of it is, I don't know that we fully understand yet. I mean, when I describe some of these, they're surprising that if I said, Hey, you know, this is one thing you could do that would change your life.
I think they're surprising. And some of these are pretty controversial, but they at least are now the things that I've always wanted. Like I was like you, I pastored right before I wrote cold case. I was a pastor for five years here at a church that I planned with the Southern Baptist convention and loved it.
And then I couldn't do everything. I couldn't spend, I couldn't be a full-time detective and write books, travel and speak and lead a church. So I had to step out of something, but this is the stuff I was talking about with my congregation constantly.
You know, I've been really talking about the other stuff. And I guarantee you, when you type a conversation about the gospel with somebody that you're more likely to enter it through one of these 15 topics than I was ever going to enter it through any of the topics and all the other books.
I mean, we're going to enter it probably through, man, I can't believe this is happening in my marriage. Oh, really what's happening in your marriage? Well, it turns out that the Christian worldview has a lot to say about this and maybe now you're open to it.
And I said, and there evidence that Christianity is actually true, even though the culture is teaching us just the opposite about marriage. And that's why we're struggling because we've embraced what the culture is teaching rather than what we see is on the pages of scripture.
You look at the, and I'm not, I don't follow sports so much, but there's a football player at a Catholic football player at a Catholic university speaking a Catholic message of family, right? And people stood because he's basically saying the highest value for his wife was to be a mother.
And people like, oh, you're degrading women by what? By lifting her up? But the fact that there's been kind of a backlash in favor of him has been interesting because what I think is happening is the culture has tried to go so far against God, removing God from everything, that there's this void and they've been trying to fill it with everything but God.
And people are starting to realize, no, the only thing that answers for the purpose of life is God. We were created to glorify God. And this guy's Butkers is the name and he's a kicker by Kansas city chiefs.
And this is a guy who really has set more records in the last year. He was 11 for 11 in the playoffs. This guy's an essential part of this team. Okay. So now the question will be, what's the team going to do with this guy?
Since he's now, I think if you were to go back and look at his, he did a speech at a Catholic university. And in that speech, he advocated for Catholic doctrinal principles, nothing controversial. If you're a card carrying Catholic, you're not going to make anything.
And he didn't, he didn't speak against LGBT or any of that. He just lifted up and praised. Well, there was a part in that it was a moment where he said that, hey, that culture is selling you a bill of goods.
So in a sense he is coming against what the culture is teaching. But here's what I think was interesting. He used the word vocation, the way that a Catholic would use the word vocation. I think if he would have said meaning that's tied into the word of vocation, this is your calling.
This is your, but I think we hear the word vocation, like your job. Yeah. So you're attacking the fact that women have jobs. No, he's not. No, he's using the word vocation in a different way. He's, you get in a very Catholic way.
Yeah. And as a calling, as a mission, as where the place where you're going to find your fulfillment as the, and I think if we had to use those words instead of the word vocation, he might have, but I don't think it, but look in the end, he is talking about a conservative view of Christian, of a marriage that is really biblical in a sense that, and I saw this chapter in this book, here's what I noticed.
I've got to include a crime story. And so many of my, sadly, if you watch Dateline, you'll see that it's probably 70 spousal murder. I'm going to kind of blend two chapters of this book. It turns out that it's our friendships.
It's our social connections, including our love connections that ended up killing us most of the time. And so when detectives get to a crime scene, we have, I call it the proximity principle. And so talk about it in one chapter of this book, what we're doing is we're looking and saying, well, who's in close proximity to this victim?
Because it turns out that most of us, when we are killed, not everyone, but most of us, when we are killed, we have either inadvertently, we've let this killer too close to us. We've embraced the killer in some aspect of our life.
We're married to him, or we are sleeping with him. We have allowed this killer into our lives. And that doesn't mean I'm victim blaming. I'm simply saying, this is how we unpack and how we unpuzzle a murder.
We come in and we say, okay, so who's in the bullseye of this person's proximity? Who is his closest? And I'm looking for relationships. So if I'm looking at first, it's going to be relational proximity.
So who are they married to? Who are they sleeping with? Who are their best friends? Who are their friends of any kind? I'm going out in concentric circles. Who are they working with? Who is in their body of friends?
Who knows them? Or maybe they tipped off something. Who knows? And if I run out of all relational proximity, I now move to geographic proximity. Well, who are their roommates? Who's living next door? If you run dry on all of those, you have no relational proximity that's pointing to a suspect, and you've got no geographic proximity pointing to a suspect.
Well, now you're in a real true whodunit. I have one of those because I had a little girl. It's the first cold case I ever reopened. And I did it years before I was even working in a homicide. I was working as an undercover detective and a case my dad had worked involved a 10-year-old girl.
And they looked, listen, we had over 400 lead cards back in those days. They used to put them on index cards, 1972. So they used to put them on an index card, over 400 index cards with leads on this little girl's death.
And it turned out not a single name that was ever investigated had anything to do with her murder, because it wasn't about relational proximity and it wasn't about geographic proximity. It was about some nut job who was just driving through town, didn't know the girl, but saw her and snatched her off the street.
That case was occurred in 72. I think I first started looking at it in the mid nineties and it didn't get solved until 2019. Wow. So why? Because there was no proximity. That proximity principle matters.
Well, and it comes to marriage. I mean, so many of the cases that I'm working are marriages where you're going, okay, that's everything we shouldn't do in a marriage. That pretty much is what happened in that marriage.
And now I'm working the case. So it teaches you something about marriage. At least it's cautionary tales. All these chapters are cautionary tales. So there's a chapter in here on marriage. I'll tell you, I think that's one of the more controversial chapters I've written in this book, because I think that the culture, even the Christian culture is delaying marriage.
And when you delay marriage, you end up probably saying it's not as important. If it was important to you, you would have done it when you were 19. But you thought there were other things that were more important that you did at 19.
And now you're 30 and you're single and you're reading a chapter on marriage. And you're probably thinking that Jim Wallace is single shaming you. No, that's not it. But I'll tell you that if you look at the trajectory of where marriage sends us in all the studies, unless you're bumping up against a study, which is now in the last 10 years, I'm starting to see studies that are making a conscious effort to subvert marriage.
Any form of life is good enough. Really? The data is pretty strong. If you are married, you're going to flourish from a health perspective, mental health and physical health at a much higher level than single people.
Your income, every way that we measure flourishing and your kids, especially, because it turns out that kids raised by two biological parents in a low conflict setting flourish. Now, I know that's controversial to say, because a lot of us don't raise our kids that way.
We've got blended families and I also have a blended family. So I was not raised by two parents in a low conflict setting. I was raised by one. My parents divorced when I was three. My mom never remarried.
So it was not, that's not how I was raised. So can you come out okay? Yes, of course. When I say that kids flourish, I'm talking about generalities. We all focus on that, not the anomalies. We focus on what's best generally.
And that's the goal we should be aiming at. Also, when I grew up and married my wife, we ended up adopting two kids out of foster care. So our family is not just all biological children raised by two parents in a low conflict setting.
We're in a low conflict setting and we love each other, but we're not their biological parents to two of these kids. The goal should be, we know that's not going to be possible for everybody, but if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.
We have to have something to aim at. And the thing we're going to aim at is the stuff we're talking about in this book. That doesn't mean that I'm shaming or blaming anyone who doesn't have that. No, of course not.
But I think that's why for many people who already read the book, they're saying this is the book they want to give their kids. And you'll see that when I wrote the book, I dedicate it to my grandchildren because I've only got one now, but I've not two, one will be born in December.
So I've got two, but I suspect I'll have a lot more before you know it. And I just wanted, this is the kind of book I hope they read first before Cold Case Christianity, before any other book I've ever written.
I want them to read this book first because this is one of those, I think, course setting books that if you simply will adopt these 15 rules for life, you will flourish according to the people who don't even believe Christianity is true.
With your background, which some people don't know, you actually went to school for graphic arts. With that background, I think now that you're a grandfather and you and I have grandchildren about the same age, I think it's time you start writing kids books, kids apologetics books.
So, you know, Andrew, okay. So we have three kids books that are out there. Yes, that is true. Makersacademy .com. So we've got The Case for Christianity, The Case for God's Existence, and The Case for a Forensic View of Faith.
Those three books are, and now that you mentioned it, this summer I'm serving with Billy Graham Association and Marriage Resiliency Retreats. So we're stuck, not stuck, we love this. We've shifted our work toward Billy Graham Association.
No one's doing a better job. We will give them all of our time. We're just volunteers, but we will go. We're spending six weeks in Alaska, but we're stuck in Alaska, which means I can't really write. I mean, this is an all in 24, seven project.
But when I get back in the fall in September, I have two more books with Zondervan and they're both kids books. So we'll be writing a book that helps you think critically and helps kids think critically.
And we're trying to get to 12, eight to 12 is important. So it's kind of like a detective manual for eight to 12 year olds. And then we've got person of interest for kids that we are also wanting to write.
And so we'll see if we, how many more of those kids, but, but I think you're right. That is the group that we have to reach. You remember that old statistic? And I remember Josh McDowell would talk about it a lot of how, if you didn't become a Christian by the age, I think of 17 or 18, you didn't become a Christian.
Like the vast majority of people who became Christians before their twenties. And as it's a small percentage afterwards, I think it was like 85, 15 was the percentage. And now the argument is it's dropped to about the age of 12.
And the reason why they think it's dropped to the age of 12 is because parents don't have as long extended impact or instead influence in this because we've given the glowing rectangles to the kids of elementary school.
So if you don't hit it, keep it the truth and make sure that he's grounded in the truth or she's grounded in the truth. By the time they go to junior high, there's a good chance they're going to wander pretty significantly because their most important influences are people that you've allowed into their life that aren't you.
So I think we have to take advantage of those upper elementary years. And that's why we're targeting age of 12. I want to dig into the book, but, you know, you were mentioning about the proximity and the fact of people who are sleeping together.
And with that, it would be a good time to mention that if people do want to at least get a good night's sleep, they should consider going to MyPillow and get themselves with the new, you know, they got those Giza sheets, very comfortable.
MyPillows, you got the mattress toppers. Right now they're running a crazy sale where like everything seems to be $25. So if there's ever been a time you said, you know, I really want to get one of their products, whether it's their slippers, their robes, their sheets, their pillows.
OK, granted, I don't think the mattress topper that is $25, but if it is definitely get that for $25 because I paid a lot more for mine. But as one previous guest said on this show, he had the choice between getting a new bed.
Instead, he just got that three inch mattress topper. And it was like getting a new bed. I have the same experience because I did a similar thing. I had a 15 year old mattress. I put that three inch mattress topper on and it was like getting a brand new bed.
So you can get all those with the discount. You need to use a promo code to get those special discounts. And the promo code is SFE. It stands for striving for eternity. That lets know you heard about them here and they keep supporting us.
So go out there, get any of the pillows. You can get their standard pillows are $25 right now. I know that they're 2 .0 pillows. They're doing a two for one sale. So go out there, check that out. And after you get yourself a good night's sleep, I want to encourage you to wake up in the morning and get yourself some good Squirrely Joe's coffee.
That'll help you start your day. Just start, open your Bible, get your nice Squirrely Joe's coffee. Great way to start the day. And I know Jim here, if he was to get Squirrely Joe's coffee, he'd probably get a brand of integrity, which isn't a Brazilian coffee.
It's a medium roast. Their integrity is a flavored cashew, honey, molasses, and milk chocolate. Maybe Jim would prefer some wisdom. Maybe he wants to wake up in the morning and have some Guatemalan coffee and have some wisdom.
I just love the fact that all the names of their coffee are great. But you can go to Squirrely Joe's coffee, excellent coffee by a fellow brother in Christ. So not only you getting a great cup of coffee in the morning, but you're supporting a fellow brother in Christ, which is he's creating a family business for his, not so much for him, but for his children.
And so you'd be able to support that family or that next generation by getting coffee there. So go to strivingforeternity slash coffee. That's strivingforeternity slash coffee. Go there whenever you reorder, that way they know you heard about them from us.
But if you're a first time buyer there, there is a promo code you can use to get 20 off. So if you're like me, my first order was one of everything because I wanted to get the 20 off on as much as I could.
If you have a church, they have five pound bags so you can order larger quantities for church. So go to strivingforeternity .org slash coffee to get yourself a great cup of Joe. Jim, as we get back, your first book you ended up writing, we talked about is Cold Case Christianity.
That was the first, obviously, the first book of yours I read. Read all of them so far, except the kids' books, I'll be honest. But Cold Case Christianity, your background, cold case detective, you used your expertise, and it was really, hey, this is what you applied when you were looking into Christianity, challenging it, and it really was good.
I've used a lot of what you said. Actually, for folks, if I haven't mentioned, go to coldcasechristianity .com to see all of Jim's blog articles. You've written several books, but you've been blogging and writing articles for years in areas that are not all apologists deal with some of the things you've dealt with, but specifically the way you've dealt with it.
Now, I will say for my audience, yes, you know that I'm a presuppositionalist. Jim is a evidentialist, and we could be friends, we can get along, we could talk about this. So for some who have like, oh, it's got to be one or the other, it doesn't have to be one or the other.
Just so you know too, Andrew, I hold that with a very open hand. So I recognize that much of what I do is presuppositional in nature, but because I work in an industry that is all about collecting data points that we then show a jury so they can make a, you know, form the best and most reasonable inference from the evidence.
And that's what we're doing in those jury. That's just my way of, that's the only way I knew to assess this. You know, I didn't really, but if you look at some of the stuff we're talking about in this book, it's going to feel much more presuppositional in the sense that, yeah, we have always said that this is the one worldview that makes sense of our experiences that offers the most resources.
It's not, now you could look at that as evidence. See, I actually think by definition, if you ask me, well, what counts as evidence? Everything does. When we say we were presuppositional, we are presupposing something.
We're presupposing that Christianity is true, but start with that presupposition. Well, how do you know it's true? Well, we know from what we read because we wouldn't know anything about it if we hadn't read it.
So what are you reading? Well, we know from reading the gospels, the life of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus, the death and resurrection of Jesus. Well, how do you know that even happened? Because we read it in the gospels.
Well, what are the gospels? Alleged eyewitness accounts. Well, hold on. That's called direct evidence. It's one of the keyest forms of evidence. So even to start from a presuppositional position, we have to begin by embracing something as true that is by its very nature, direct evidence.
And as a presupposition, we're going to test it, right? But what I'm saying is it turns out I've always seen presuppositional projects, just a different strain of evidentialism. Now, I know that's controversial.
But that's why I hold it with such an open hand. And I think I'd probably get along more. You're probably more classical, I would think. Yeah. I'm pretty well split. I'm a cumulative case guy because all of our cases are cumulative case.
That's the only approach I take is I told this huge cumulative case. And then I say, okay, this is the most reasonable inference because I don't have any, my cold cases don't really, they aren't great to begin with.
That's why they went cold. I have an eyewitness that could say I saw him do it. So I have to build them on this huge cumulative case. And that's why I do that in my books. I guess as I get older too, my focus is it's the gospel.
My case never changed anyone's heart. My case just simply opened up and knocked down a few barriers that they were holding. So they could hear the one thing that would change their heart. Because before that, if you were me, it was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You Christians, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, because I had built up these barriers that my own investigation had to knock down so that the one thing that changes everything, the gospel could be heard.
I just wasn't hearing it. So a lot of what I'm trying to do here is really lay the foundation so that the thing that does have power. And that's why this book kind of eventually lands where? On the gospel.
And the other books don't. The other books are strictly making a case for, as a matter of fact, God's crime scene. You can make a case that you could use that if you're a Muslim, because it's making the case strictly for God, not the God of the Bible necessarily.
I think it does. But at the point I could see people using the same evidence to disbelieve some form of deism, that God exists clearly from the evidence in the universe, but that's as far as they want to go.
I think these books here, especially as I get older, these all land on the gospel because that's the only thing that changes anything. And we realized that, by the way, I'm doing marriage retreats all summer with cops and their spouses.
And what I discovered, these are all case makers. They are naturally born and then they end up being developing that side of their personality as cops. So they all sit there, they want the case, but you know, the case doesn't change them at all.
It turns out the gospel is the only thing. And when they baptize these folks and they go home as baptized, surrendered Christians, everything changes. Yeah. And it wasn't the case. It was the gospel, but they just wouldn't hear it until we make the case.
I think it is that background that you're talking about of how you approach evidence that makes the way you approach. This is what I've, I always glean from you, learn from you, why I read your blogs.
And I encourage you to go to coldcasechristianity .com. The articles you have out there, you approach it differently. I mean, this is what I hear from people say about me is the way that I approach things.
You know, as being raised in a Jewish family, you're raised to debate, you're raised to look at both sides of an argument. And that's something that I bring that seems to be different than the way a lot of Christians approach things or people.
You coming from the background of law enforcement as a detective, especially cold cases, with looking in eyewitness testimony, things like that, you evaluate the evidence differently. I think it's uniquely you in this case, because your graphic arts background, you bring that in and you use illustrations to illustrate points so that it makes things so easy to understand.
Now, in this book, most recent book, The Truth of True Crime, and you have it subtitled as what investigating death teaches us about the meaning of life. Now, the interesting thing is true crime right now, we look at podcasting, the number one, overall number one category for years was religion and spirituality and specifically under that Christianity.
And the reason for that is because every church would put their sermons up into like sermon audio or whatever. And that was considered a podcast. Right. And so overwhelmingly, like nothing could come close to it.
And so Apple decided they're going to like reshift things around and reorder things and what they would consider podcasts or whatnot. But the end result is they made some shifting. And now true crime is like the top category.
There is a fascination with true crime. There's just something about, I mean, look, I'll be honest. I listened to some true crime, like a three or four true crime podcast. I learned something from them.
Unfortunately, I think bad guys learn how to be bad and not get caught. But I learned, I mean, there's things I learned to say, okay, hey, this is things to watch out for. Like you're saying, proximity, things like this.
There is a lot we can learn from true crime. There is a fascination with it. And I think this is where like with your book and with all your books and your teaching, what you do is you bring that in, you bring in your expertise.
And it is something where, hey, let me tell you about this case that I worked. And then you take that and bring that into the training that you're trying to bring to people. Well, you know what? You just said something to me that I will probably quote you now.
And going forward, we've done over this, I think this is interview number 53 for this book, but I've got another 53 I'm going to have to do. And I'm looking forward to doing those. But I'll tell you that people ask me all the time, why do you think people are so fascinated with true crime?
And I never thought about, I know that part of the reason why Christian categories, they change that so that if you eliminated just the straight sermons that can make it a podcast, well then suddenly now you've got a much smaller group of podcasts generally.
But I think that the same reason why people listen to Christian podcasts is the same reason why they're fascinated with true crime podcasts, because in both, they're trying to answer a couple of questions.
Why are we the way we are? And what can I do? Because we're selfish. We're innately selfish. We want to know how we can make our own lives better. And so there's a lot of interest in Christian teaching, I think, because it was like, well, this has got some answers.
This is going to help me live a better life. Well, I think people watch true crime. Well, there's another dimension. We want to solve the puzzle, right? So every time you do a Dateline episode, before I sit down with Keith Morrison, we all know how this turns out, okay?
Either they were with me in the trial, so they know how the trial turned out. So now we're sitting down after the trial and he's going to ask me some questions and he already knows who the suspect is, but we're not going to reveal that until the final segment, or maybe right before the final segment, because we're going to rabbit trail on somebody who I really never considered to be a suspect, but he was in the books.
So if you want to rabbit trail on this guy, great, because why? Because he wants to distract the audience from the true suspect so that they give them a chance to try to solve it on their own. And then hopefully it'll be a surprise ending.
This is what the nature of these shows are. And so you just let them do their thing. But in the end, that's part of it. We want to solve crimes, but we also want to know how not to do stupid because every one of these cases is an example of somebody who's doing stupid.
And we don't want to be the victim of somebody doing stupid either. So I think we have both of those, but that's also our interest sometimes in listening to a good pastor teach us a principle for life that will not only lead us to something beautiful, but also protect us from something stupid.
So I wonder if there's some crossover there, there may be. So that's why I wanted to take a look at, and I know we're not going to have time to go through it, but there's a couple of topics here in this that I think will protect you from stupid.
And you'll see some things about human nature that I don't think maybe you've thought of in this way before, because they're cloaked, they're in scripture, but maybe you never made me, you never made them a priority.
Maybe that's all it is. Or maybe you just never realized that if you don't make it a priority, that something as dire as this could happen. So that's the stuff that we're trying to talk. And look, I know that Jordan Peterson wrote a book.
I think it's 12 rules for life, right? I think it's whatever his book's called. And I didn't read it because I didn't want to know what Jordan's covering in that book, because I realized that this is going to be, but this is rules for life that you learn the hard way because you've investigated deaths.
That's kind of what this book really is. It pulls you in because there is a true crime case tied to it. So it's not just, which should not book just on true crime. And it's not just a book on things that we learn about life and the meaning of life.
It's really the bringing them together. And I think what, what ends up making it different is, I mean, your style as is with your other writings, more so with this one, you bring that background in to draw people in.
So people who you have people who just, I'm not going to read an apologetics book. I'm not going to read. That's just dry. But this is a book that is going to pull people in because it's not like the whole book is one case.
They're different cases. So they're shorter and it brings in the meaning of life and the theology you're trying to teach for the people who are like, I'm not really a reader. Well, then this book is for you, right?
Because this book is not only easy to read, it not only draws the conclusion so you can clearly see them, but it does so in an entertaining way with a true crime as we're investigating death. Let's look at what we learn from that.
Very different style than you did with your other books. And this is where I would have started if I had, have I been able to start this way that I certainly would. But I also think that some of this stuff, you won't write this kind of book in your fifties.
Maybe you need to get to your sixties so you can get another 10 years of watching where this stuff leads or to think about it in your own life to develop. Like I started probably too early. You know, I became a Christian at 35.
And by the time I was 38, I think I was the children's director at a, not the whole children's group. I was, I had a fifth and sixth graders. I was just directing that ministry for fifth and sixth graders, which was a lot of kids in a huge mega church.
And so I had, that was probably larger than the largest group of kids I ever had to supervise was those just fifth and sixth graders. But I was only a Christian a few years. As a matter of fact, when they first asked me to teach there, I didn't know anything.
And I said, I can't teach these kids yet. I'd only gotten to my investigation, but from a theological, there's a lot more you need to learn. And they said, look, you're going to get curriculum. Just be a week ahead of the kids.
You'll be fine. And that's what I was for a lot of years. So, so I probably started way too early. And then I was a youth pastor, maybe six, I went to seminary, probably by the fourth year, I was probably enrolled in seminary.
It took me another seven years to graduate. I think maybe this is the kind of book you're going to write when you're in your sixties, right? Where you finally have some form of wisdom that you can pass on to your own kids.
I had to sometimes look at this. And by the way, these are 15 things that I don't do well. So I can tell you that these are 15 things you ought to embrace, but don't think for a second that I've embraced them and I've mastered these.
I just know I ought to. And this is probably really describing the human condition and the Christian condition, right? We are constantly trying our best to hit the bullseye of just the way God has called us to do, knowing we're not going to, because we are a mess.
And then we're going to have to lean on grace of God. What I see happening is we are moving. Now we see you said something earlier that I thought was important. The idea that I think there's a pendulum reaction to humans.
So what happens is we move in a pendulum. And then at some point we realize that stuff that we're over here experiencing is not working. And then we swing it back. We see this in law enforcement all the time.
You can defund the police or move and be hostile toward the police because they get it. We do all kinds of stupid things you should be critical of. I get that. And so we're going to do some of that stuff because we're humans too.
But I'll tell you that as we move to defund, then at some point culture reacts in the sense that it just starts to deteriorate. And then it swings, the pendulum swings back the other way. I've been watching this for as long as my dad and myself and my son have been police officers, that's 62 years.
So I've been watching it for six, you know, I was born in my dad's academy and it does swing back and forth. I mean, my dad was deployed to the Watts summer riots. Our agency was not responsible. We just had to respond to it.
I was deployed to the Rodney King riots. That's not my agency, but we had to respond to it. My son was deployed to the George Floyd riots in Los Angeles. That's not his agency was responsible for that, but here we go.
So it, what's happening is it swings out and it swings back and it swings. It doesn't stay out there. And that's true. I think for the view that the culture has on every topic in this book, as the view of the culture moves away from traditional Judeo Christian teaching on marriage, well, they'll try that for a season.
It's not going to work. It's not in our shape. Not every form of family produces the same results. And I hope that it doesn't take an entire culture crumbling for us to get to the end of that pendulum swing.
I hope it swings back before we realize, wow, that doesn't work. And it doesn't produce if nothing else, if you're just selfishly trying to produce the next generation of citizens, that doesn't work well.
But if you wanted to produce the next generation of people who actually have submitted to a transcendent God, it for sure doesn't work well. So I think in the end that this is a pendulum swing and every one of these chapters just tries to help you swing it back with your own family.
For the record, the publisher, your publisher did send me a free copy of the book, the truth and true crime. However, I've already purchased the copy for my pastor, because I think he's going to get a lot of value out of it.
And so I encourage you guys to do that as well. Buy yourself a copy, but also maybe buy a copy for a friend. Always good to do that. Maybe, hey, we did an episode a few weeks ago on how to encourage your pastor.
There's an idea. Maybe get him a copy as well. I did it just saying. But I appreciate that. We were talking before that we started today, how that I've always been really uncomfortable as a bookseller.
The atheist in me for all those years was suspicious that it's always sex, money and power, sex, money and power that's behind. That's another chapter in this book that's behind every kind of stupid you do.
And I always suspected that they were powerful and rich. So they're writing these books and using this Christian platform to accomplish those two things. So when I became an author, I thought, okay, so how can I feel good about this?
We did 15 years of free content on our website. So that's a bunch of stuff. And I try to make sure I always tell people, hey, you should exhaust everything an author will give you for free before you've spent any money.
That's why we do free stuff. So yeah, there's an entire website there at Cold Case Christianity. But what I really wanted to do here is say, okay, look, if you're going to buy this book, let me give you a bunch of stuff that'll make it feel like the cost of this book is mitigated.
So I always try to present, you'll see on all my books, I try to present a package that increases the value of the commitment and makes the cost seem comparatively low. So for this book at truthandtruecrime .com, we're just offering all the media that goes, all the Bible inserts, all the PowerPoint, a bunch of videos that go with it.
But also we're offering a 30 hour case makers course, which is the one I designed for Gateway Seminary. And it's free. All you have to do is buy it. So you go to that website, you'll see how to submit the form for it.
But the idea here is that we ought to be so committed to this that we, but it's hard to convince people. I think if I have to say, well, yeah, you got to buy a, what is it now? 18 bucks, whatever the book costs.
I think that's a lot to ask for a lot of people. I do. I don't want it to be prohibitive. I've just tried to make the value greater. Let me let the audience on a little secret. You and I did a conference together with a fraternity was organizing it and you came out.
And so for folks to realize you don't do this for the money, because you came out there with a bunch of books. And back then, I think it was the only book you had out was Cold Case Christianity. You came out with a couple of cases of books.
I still remember setting up tables before the people got there and you just said, Hey, this is how much this book costs me. How about any of the books? This is what it costs. You could sell them for whatever you want to make up the difference.
Use it for the ministry, use it for the conference. So you came out with three cases of books that you basically made nothing on. What I'm saying that to the audience so that people realize, for folks to realize you waited till later in life, you retired from the police force before you got in really speaking.
I mean, you started doing some speaking in churches, but people know you now as a Christian speaker, as an apologist, you travel with Greg Koukl, Frank Turk, others, you've actually had the opportunity.
And some may, if they see you, they might realize they've seen you actually do it where you were an expert witness, even in a trial, although it was in a movie, God's not dead too. So you got to act as an expert witness in there, which was fun because it's what, Hey, you're used to doing that.
So what people may not know is you started later in life, you're not doing it for the money because you got your pension. And so I want people to realize that this is not Jim going, Hey, buy my book because it's benefiting me.
I know personally that he has just said here, here's some books. You make the money off it. I just break even. Andrew, I hate selling books. That's the worst part of it. I know that publishers don't give you a chance to write a book if you're not willing to sell it.
So I get it. I get how that works, but yeah, I'm just uncomfortable with that process. And I, this is one chapter of this new book is a chapter I try hardly ever talk about. So if that's the last thing I'm looking at our time here, if that's the one of the last things we talk about, that would be great.
And I'll tell you, there's a chapter in this book that talks about a guy. I'll never forget the conversation I had with this young kid who was doing robberies and I just wanted to give him some fun. I realized it's all about for him.
It's all about the money. He was supporting himself on robberies and living high on the hog, both with drugs and hotel rooms and everything he was doing. He was doing some scandalous stuff, but the point is it was all financed by his robbery spree.
And I remember telling him, dude, now you're about to spend the next five years in jail. Like, okay, but it's all of its finances. Let me just, you and I, we're the same guy. We want the same things out of life, but I realized there's a process to get to that financial level.
And I get it. It's going to take a lot of hours every week that I'm not going to have freedom. I'm going to have to trade these two things of value, time and money. And when you're young, you will exchange the one thing of value time to get the money you need.
Now, when you get old, it flips. Now, suddenly time is worth more than the money. Like I would gladly pay to get more time. I don't need the money. I want time. Okay. So it does flip as you get older.
But I told this guy, I said, we're the same guy. And you're now, look, you might think, well, yeah, he actually said it. He didn't want to spend all that time working. And I remember thinking, okay, well, now you're about to spend five years in custody where you've got no freedom at all, 24 seven.
But, you know, you don't think you're going to get caught. And maybe if you were to take a look at it, if I get away with a five-year crime spree, and then I got to spend five years in jail and I do good time back in those days and get out in three, he might be thinking you're ahead of it.
I don't know. But I just wanted to talk to him about finances. And when I realized this, I was as a guy myself is that financial independence is not the ability to buy anything. It's the ability to buy anything you want.
And I don't want anything. So I became financially independent really fast. I've been in the same house, this house, this room was a bedroom of my kid's bedroom before it was my office. I've been in it for 30 years.
It's a small, it's the cheapest neighborhood in this community. It is old. It was built in 1962. For us, that's older in this neighborhood. Most of the houses are built in the eighties. I couldn't afford one of those houses.
And nor do I want one now. I just, this is fine. I drive Hyundais. I think they're a good car. They're the cheapest car in the market. Kias are probably cheaper, but you get the idea. But you know what, if you can actually be satisfied with what you have, there's two ways to get, like, if you want satisfaction from stuff, there's two ways to do that.
Decide what you want and go out and spend the rest of your life getting it or decide that what you have right now is what you want. And then you'll be satisfied today. Now you just flipped the entire calendar on you.
So for me, that's the thing I take to heart is that, that if we can live modestly, like, I just know this, I've worked enough cases to know that people with money murder themselves and murder each other about the same pace as everybody else.
There is no guarantee that having stuff, that achieving that level of income, whatever it is you're dreaming of, is going to assure you satisfaction and it going to prevent you from doing things that are stupid.
And we see it all the time, work in these cases. There's nothing I can do to buy back a day with my granddaughter. So it turns out that the money doesn't matter at all. I don't think many of us will write things, and especially the kind of book like this, this is stuff that I wish I could have told myself 25 years ago.
So I write these books because I want people to read them. If I could give them all away for free, like, you know, from that conference, I would do it because I just put it this way. When I wrote my first book, I told the publisher, I said, Hey, and I remember I wrote the first book post Amazon.
Everything in publishing changed when Amazon came online and changed the entire selling environment, all the brick and mortars closed. So like Lee's trouble, he wrote the case for Christ before Amazon, but I caught mine after Amazon.
It changed everything. So I told my publisher, I said, Hey, I don't want any money from this book. If you can just show me that you spent every dime you would have paid me in marketing the book and getting it out in front of other people.
I've written about this. I want people to read it. I don't care about the money side of it. And they said to me, that's a really generous offer, Jim, but we don't have a marketing side of our company anymore.
That does that kind of thing. Amazon, Amazon changed this environment. Like they couldn't, they didn't have the support, the infrastructure to even spend my money. And I thought, wow, okay. So that changes everything.
But just, I want you to know, this is a principle that's in this book because it is a principle of flourishing. If you can find satisfaction in what you have right now, and people who do that regularly, who understand what the value that work brings much more meaning than it does money.
I mean, our work really who work and have purpose in their work flourish at higher levels than people who just take the fast track to getting money. They don't flourish at the same levels. So that's why this advice to this Robert is more than just, well, here's how to get money.
It's here's how to flourish because it turns out that the way that we do it traditionally is actually provides a level of meaning purpose and flourishing that cannot be matched by quick income that you get by doing robberies, you know?
So that's why it's important for us to kind of master this issue of finances pretty fast in our life, early age. Yeah. I mean, the biblical term for this is contentment. It's something really not preached very much anymore.
I mean, look, I was just in the Philippines for three weeks. People that have far less money than almost any American, and yet they're content with what they have. They get used to what they have, but they're fine with having very little.
Where Americans have so much, and you think of all people, we should be content with what we have because we have way more than most of the world. And instead, the more we have, the more we want. And you're right.
Just being content with what you have and recognizing that what you have is more than you deserve changes everything. I mean, what do we deserve? Let's see. We deserve, well, eternity in a lake of fire.
We deserve, well, nothing. I hear you are being controversial again, suggesting this eternal conscious torment. Now we're going to offend all of our friends who deny that claim. Yeah. I mean, the reality is we don't deserve anything in life.
But instead, look at what we have. Of all the places in the world we could have been born, for those who are here in America, I mean, all the times, periods, do you realize that things like indoor plumbing and electricity, these things we take for granted, do you realize that most of world history never had indoor plumbing?
Wrap your mind around that. Electricity, having lights that you could turn on. There's so much that we take for granted. I mean, I will admit one thing I take for granted is the fact that we live in a generation where I have more books on my to-read pile than I have time to read, right?
I love reading, obviously. Well, I don't have, in this new place, you don't see many of my books. But those who remember my old house where my office is, there's no wall space in here. At every house, I build custom bookcases to fit so that I can fit as many books because the agreement my wife and I have is all my books must fit in my office.
I'm not allowed anymore to take over other parts of the house. But Jim, I got to tell you, she did make an allowance for the basement. So I have two bookcases in the basement. So I have all my world religion books, and it may be an addiction.
She says it is. Yeah, it may be. It probably is, yeah. But this is the thing, you already answered kind of, but I'm going to ask it anyway in case you have a different. But one of the questions I wanted to ask you is, if you could go back to a younger self, a younger Jim Wallace, obviously more like when you were starting out in ministry, and we already discussed, you started out later.
But if you could go back to a younger Jim Wallace, what advice would you give to yourself? What things would you, and we all have this, we all have things that it's like, we realized, oh yeah, I didn't realize that.
It took me 30 years to realize I should have been doing this. No kidding. Right. Okay. I'll tell you, it's easy for me. And it's always, I probably hinted at a little bit here, but people ask me that question once in a while.
I was just asked that at Summit Worldview Ministries where I'm with high schoolers all the time. It's pretty simple. I would, number one, I would have married much earlier. I met my wife in high school.
I didn't marry her for another nine years. I kind of bought this, we didn't become Christians for the first 18 years together. So it didn't have a biblical worldview. I didn't have an understanding that my parents were a train wreck marriage.
I just knew that when I did get married, I wanted it to be forever. And we didn't live like Christians during those first 18 years, because we weren't Christians. I have to put it this way. I think we probably would have said, I would have said I adopted all of these principles, relatively conservative principles, but in terms of moral principles, you know, I wasn't a Christian.
So we were together for nine years before we got married. I would have gotten married much earlier. I would have had kids much earlier and I would have had more kids. So I think that if I could change anything on a personal level, it would be that I would have married Susie way earlier.
And we would have had as many kids as she wanted. She probably would have had, who knows how many kids we would have had, but I know that I would have been smarter to do that. And if you look at this book, there's a chapter in this book that we talked about on marriage.
It talks about not just the benefits of marriage, but the benefits of early marriage. It turns out that's something we've kind of, and this is why I am a little bit, even at this age, I'm like, I'm not a bummer.
My granddaughter is not going to know me the way I knew my grandfather because he was so much younger. You know, he was in his forties when I was born. I was in my sixties when this girl was born. And if I could go back and change one thing, I would have tried to shorten that.
And I would have taught that more principally because even as my kids were probably, my boys were probably six and four or five and three, right around that age when I became a Christian. It took me a while to realize this thing I'm telling you now.
And I think I would have been smarter to tell them from a very early age that marriage is beautiful. And I remember I would hang out with people like Brett Kunkel who had always argued, oh, as a youth pastor, he would argue, no, tell your kids to get married right away.
And I'm like, well, tell them to have a way to support themselves. What are they going to live in their parents' basement? No, you have to have a way to support yourself. And that took me, I was 27 before I was established enough financially to support Susie.
He was right though. Brett's right. I should have taken this the opposite approach and I should have told my kids, if you meet somebody at 19 and you're both committed to Christ, you'll find a way to make this work because you're not, it's not about, I mean, it's about, I think also, I think if I realized earlier, and I think I knew this in a secular way, look, if the meaning of marriage is simply that we're to be fulfilling our deepest desires and the longings of our heart, then good luck with that and see how long that lasts.
But the meaning of marriage is that you're to love somebody so deeply that you're going to help them and present them as a holier person at the end of all this to a holy God. And you're going to give them permission to work on you and tell the truth to you so that you can present yourself to that same God.
If that's the meaning of marriage, that we are in this project of holiness together, that's a very different directive. And it changes the nature of marriage. I think if, so those are the things I would, and I've talked about that a bit in this book, but I think that's the stuff that I would have told myself earlier.
Unfortunately, I didn't become a Christian until I was 35. Now, a lot of those things are available, but they're not available in the construct of the Christian worldview. It just, if you will embrace it, all the dots begin to connect.
And you're not just picking this attribute of human flourishing that I like and that, no, it turns out you'll get the entire framework and then you're going to go, okay, now I see why that mattered. And I didn't know why it mattered before.
It was just a preference. My parents were divorced. There's a chapter in this book on worship and idolatry, because it turns out if you think about the way crimes are committed from a Christian perspective, really almost every, well, every crime is just a matter of misplaced worship.
It's an idolatry issue. Okay. So once you know that it's important to you to identify your own idols. So that chapter just is about identifying your idols so you can get rid of them because those are the things that stop you from reaching God, because you're stopping one level short of God.
That to me, I know that before I became a Christian and even now the constant battle I have in idolatry is my marriage. That's the thing that always mattered to me more than anything else. And whatever it is in your life that you have, because everyone worships regardless of who they are.
Everyone's got something that matters more to them than anything else in life that they're willing to bend a knee to. They're willing to sacrifice their time and their money and their calendar and their efforts.
And they're willing to let this thing master them. Well, that's your idol. If it's not God, that's your idol. And for me, it has been, it has always been marriage. And so I take this seriously. And I always say it this way, Andrew, when it's all done, 45 years in right now, when it's all done, I don't want Susie, if I die first to be interviewed and was like being married to Jim.
And she's going to say, it was okay. I don't want her to say that. I want her to say it was spectacular. So every day is my effort. And this was before I became a Christian. My effort every day was to, so that to kind of assure the fact that when it's all said and done, she will say it was spectacular.
Now that's the idol though, that is standing between me and a holy God often because I'm okay. Am I making her more important? Am I making my relationship with Susie more important than my relationship with God?
There's a true danger in that for me because of the way I was raised and just our time together. And she is the one thing that's in front of me every day. That is, it's often the things that are in front of you each day that distract you from the God that you can't seem to see on a daily basis.
That's the stuff that becomes an idol. So for me, it's about making sure that I do what I'm supposed to do before Susie and for Susie and with Susie without letting her and my marriage become the idol that keeps me from God.
I don't know if it's a good thing. My wife, I think if you asked my wife that same question, she would end up saying, well, life with me is either, she'll say not boring, very exciting. She'll say it's never dull.
I don't know if it's always, she means that in a good way. But this is the truth of me. The reality of it is, is that so many people know us now in this weird abstracted public way. This is a different chapter in the book, but we seek this, we seek community.
We want to be known, but isn't it interesting that we often are spending more time and are more concerned about how utter strangers see us and think of us. Yet, if you're likely to let yourself be known, you're, you know, to blurt out something you shouldn't say, you're probably going to do it in front of your spouse.
You can go, she's not going anywhere. She loves me. She'll put up with my nonsense. Really? So in the end, I just don't want to present my worst self, my true self, that she sees my true self. She knows the real me and my kids know the real me.
And I just, and there's been lots of public figures who, when it's all said and done, well, their kids knew all along this was going to happen. Or if you'd have interviewed the wife or the husband, they would have told you, yeah, that was always a concern.
So I just want to be authentic in front of her before anybody else, because in the end, that's, those are the folks that are, your legacy is probably not going to be with your public. You know, this is something I was thinking about today.
We are, I'm a Christian apologist. That's what they'll label me as. I don't see myself that way, but that's how people will say it. Okay. Well, there are other impactful, famous Christian apologists. Josh McDowell is one, but I think we're getting to a point where people are like, Josh who?
He was at the forefront of Christian apologetics for how long? Norm Geisler. Who's written more books than Norm Geisler? Who pays attention anymore to, in other words, you vanish publicly really fast.
If you think your legacy is somehow going to be in the midst of strangers, you're misplacing it. The hierarchy of course, has to be God first. And then it has to be the people in whom you've established the most meaningful relationship that God has ever ordained.
And that's your marriage. I mean, there's, look, you're going to know some people at work for just so long. You're going to know your wife until you take your last breath, if she outlives you. So it turns out that the kinds of lifelong commitments we make to each other, this one matters.
And I want to get it right. I may have it different because I'm more concerned with how I'm not saying something stupid in front of my wife. I say things publicly all the time that I'm like, yeah, maybe I should.
She's always like, you shouldn't have said it. I am more concerned with that probably because that is the more lasting relationship that I'm going to have. And I kind of don't care about my public image so much.
And that goes back to how we started talking about Greg Kochel. He's the one that really impressed upon me to never have a big ministry, even though Stand to Reason does have a worldwide reach. I think it's more than Greg ever had envisioned when he and Melinda started.
But I think that he had said he wanted to have a small ministry. Like he realizes the distractions when you're a big ministry of all of a sudden you're public and you can't, the way he explained it was you can't be as authentic because now you have to be concerned about the big ministry.
When you stay small, you can be authentic. And I believe Greg, because he's at the more toward the end of, I mean, he's in his 80s, right? He's actually 75. 75. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So he's a little bit younger.
He's 13 years old. He's 13 years older than me. I think that's what it is. Yeah. I think we, each of us have like a dozen years between us, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he's at the other end where, you know, you can look and say he is proof of finishing well.
He's been in ministry for, I don't know how long standing. 30 years. 30 years. Is it 30? I was going to say 32. So, okay. So for 30 years, so at 30 years, you can start to see, okay, look at this. I mean, he's actually been doing this longer.
I mean, Stand to Reason started, but he was on the radio and things like that before, but you can look at his life and say, he finished well, right? Even though he has not finished yet, but that's what I would like to see is I'm not so worried about, and I got a lot of it from Greg is don't worry about building something.
God can do that if he wants, but he impressed upon me, keep it smaller so you can stay authentic so that you can be genuine with people. And he's done that in my life. He's done that in your life. It's a good way to come back to where we started with that because he really impacted both of us.
And I think that's a thing is we could, I think, like you said, the apologists that we would think of, Geisler, you mentioned Josh McDowell. Unfortunately, nowadays with social media and YouTube things, I mean, everyone's an apologist.
They just start a channel. It's like, bing, I declare to be an expert. I had a debate with a Filipino guy on Calvinism. He puts himself out there as this apologist and he does all these debates. And yet he actually believes in Calvinism.
It's just, he doesn't know what it is. He has a wrong definition and he's out there. I'm like, you should not be debating these issues when you don't even understand them. But he sells himself as the apologist and anyone can just start a channel, start a podcast, claim that they're an apologist.
That's in some ways a good thing, right? That anyone can do it because it doesn't mean there's just the elite. On the flip side, it's also not so good because it's just the fact that you have people who are not actually interested in furthering the glorification of God in the Christian community, but they're rather interested in promoting themselves and a platform.
And that's why I always talk about the difference between platform building and ministry. You, Greg Coco, are men who have been focused on ministry and not a platform. God has given you a big platform.
And I do appreciate that's a good place for us probably to end it because I think that I hope you're right. I mean, like there's a chapter in this book on celebrity and the dangers of celebrity and how we have no gatekeepers on celebrity and how the solution, the antidote for celebrity is the one aspect that if people would adopt, it would change every level of human flourishing faster than any other aspect, any one pivot in your life you could make that would increase everything that you value in your life from the degree to which you can learn, the deepness of your relationships, your health, your mental health, your physical health, your longevity.
It's this thing that sociologists call humility. And we've been studying it on a secular level for about 35 years. And so I've collected all that, all those studies, they're remarkable. And I think most seculars who aren't Christians would probably not come up with that as the one thing that would change everything.
And there's one worldview that leverages humility above every other worldview, whether those be secular or theistic worldviews, no worldview begins and ends and strides along the middle with humility more than Christianity.
You're either going to earn your status before God and every other system and earning status leads to pride. It just does. Or you're going to be in a meritocracy of some secular worldview in which you expect to earn an income for transactional services rendered.
Life generally is, if I do this, then I expect that. And this is the one worldview that says, no, no, it's not going to, you could never, as Luther said, you're so inwardly selfish and inwardly turned that you could never do anything for an unselfish motive.
So it turns out we're just going to give this to you as a free gift so that no one can boast. Well, that view is the remedy for celebrity. That's a remedy for pride. It's the remedy for what's killing us.
Now, not all of us who are in the Christian worldview get that, but if we chase celebrity, and this is why Andrew, to be honest with you, I'm turning down more and more opportunities to speak on a stage.
Because what I realized was that when you speak on a stage, people see you on a certain way. And that's not who I am. I am not a celebrity. There's a fine line between trusted authority and celebrity.
I mean, yes, you might be a trusted authority in something. My son now is a trusted authority in pediatric anesthesiology, but he doesn't want to be a celebrity. We're in a profession where sometimes that line is very, very fuzzy.
And I don't want to step over that line. I want to stay on the trusted authority side of that line. That's why it's often, and I've said this a couple of times publicly, I'll say it to you too. One of the hardest things to do is to say no to somebody who wants to take a picture with you because you were in a movie or you were on Dateline.
Well, that picture to me, I'll never say no. But at the same time, I'm like, oh gosh, this violates everything I know to be good. We have to spend time thinking seriously about like, I can't write a book like this and then not try harder to listen to my own advice.
And what that meant though for me was, okay, you need to change the way you're platforming. You need to change the value of that. You need to get your mind and your eyes and your heart off of that. Do you need to take a John the Baptist approach?
It's more of him, less of me. But the problem of course, is that for it to be heard in a noisy world, you have to build a platform. And then when you do that, you end up falling into the trap of believing your own stupid press clippings, which you wrote to begin with.
So at some point you have to realize God doesn't give a lick about that, about any of that. And my wife is probably the best representation of God I have near me because she doesn't give a lick about it either.
So it's important for me to take my own advice. So that's why I'm starting to write books like this because I just want to be able to say, hey, here's what I know I ought to do, even though often I don't do it.
You know, it's interesting you say that because yeah, one of the things in the Philippines, and this is just part of the Philippine culture, they take pictures of everything, everyone, but you're right.
I mean, the thing that made me so uncomfortable was hundreds of people coming up going, can I get a photo with you? And like, I was talking last night with my pastor about this, these four people and they're sitting there kind of sheepishly coming over just to ask for a photo.
And I'm like, first off, yes, I've been asked a thousand times for a photo today, but so I'm not going to say no, but it's like, they're like sheepishly like embarrassed to come over as if I'm something other than a nothing.
I'm a nobody. I'm just on stage. So it's funny that you say that because I came back, first thing I did when I got back was I started teaching an online course for someone on apologetics and debate. And that's how really, how Striving for Eternity started was with our Striving for Eternity Academy, where I was just teaching systematic theology, how to interpret the Bible.
And you know, I said to my wife, I almost want to move from being on stage to just me and a camera with a couple of people in the chat or in a small classroom at church, just teaching, like rather than being on the stage.
It's interesting you say that because that's where I've been thinking more in my own life, because I just, it's so uncomfortable. Yeah, no, I agree. And so, yeah, so folks, let me encourage you to go get The Truth in True Crime, and you can go to thetruthintruecrime .com.
Encourage you to go there, coldcasechristianity .com. You're going to find a ton of blog articles there. I cannot recommend enough the style and writing, the research that Jim does. You will be blessed by it.
You will learn things. Areas where I do study, like textual criticism, as far as I know, you don't have a background in Greek and manuscripts, right? And yet the way you approach some of these things is different than the way I see anyone else approach it, because of your background.
And that adds so much more value. So even if it's an area where I've already studied this, I've looked at it, I've read this apologist, that apologist, I'm going to say this. I don't care what apologist you've read, and you've studied, and you've learned this stuff.
When you go out and read Jim's blog articles or his books, you're going to get a new perspective you didn't think of before. Just saying this from personal experience, okay? So I encourage you guys to go out, get a copy of The Truth in True Crime.
Jim, thanks for coming on. I'll give you a last chance. Any other things you want to encourage the audience with? Well, I just want to encourage you. I mean, I think this is, you and I both get it from, you got it from Greg, I think.
I said the most important work we're going to do with any ministry is not the stuff we do on the stage, even if we get asked to go speak on a stage. It's all the stuff we're going to do before we get on the stage and after we get off the stage.
And that really goes to show you that the level of people resist, that we're drawn to celebrity, but it turns out that does not really change things. And if you're listening to this podcast, you know this in your own family, you will have far more impact.
Wouldn't you rather have the deepest impact you could in your own kids' lives and in the lives of your friends than this kind of like shotgun approach that we take on a stage where we just get to go so deep with a bunch of people we don't know?
Well, it turns out the most important work we're going to do is when we get to go deeper with the people we do know. So I just want to encourage you that this is, that's the audience that God has given us truly.
And even if you've written a book, I know that my real true audience is my granddaughter and my grandkids and my own kids. That's the true audience. So just be encouraged that this is, now look, we want to listen to these kinds of podcasts because we're training ourselves to have a deeper influence.
But in the end, that's the goal. Amen. And with that, folks, that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving.
For Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.