Interview with Sean McDowell | Rapp Report Weekly 0010 | Striving for Eternity

I'm not really into team sports.

I, you're stalling. You're stalling.

I see what you're doing.

Introduction to the Interview and Josh McDowell’s Influence

Rap report with Andrew where we provide biblical interpretations and applications, this is the ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker from your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to the rap report weekly edition, and we are recording with a special guest. This is becoming a pattern. We're saying each week we have a special guest, but this week's special guest is someone many people would know the name.

And before I get that, I'm going to give a little bit of me, my, my background, which may help with our guests to get a little bit more knowing how me and his father have some similarities, his father had come from a background.

Um, that was not a believer and was challenging and looking at seeing what the scriptures say. It took him several months. I think even, even, even years to come to, uh, to come to faith. Uh, but through a lot of the same view for folks who know me, uh, by looking at scripture, looking at prophecies, looking at the evidence in the scriptures and coming to a conclusion, the Testament was true.

But not exactly believing right away in Christ. And then, uh, coming to realize a new Testament taught about Christ being God. Then I accept it because new Testament must be from God. The book that I'm referring to, actually the first book that I ever got in apologetics, uh, was the book more than a carpenter by Josh McDowell.

And I got that book and I ate it up and didn't know of anything else in apologetics. Now for folks who don't know my background, being raised Jewish, I really didn't have a lot of books on Christian apologetics.

So when I got to college and had gotten that book, and that was probably about five or six years after becoming a Christian, that book was so fundamental to me in, in reassuring my faith and helping me to understand a lot more about the reliability of the scriptures.

And I wanted more. I got two volumes called Evidence Demands a Verdict, Volume One and Volume Two. And I devoured those. And if you know those original ones, they were just notes. There was just like an outline.

It wasn't a book you read, but I read it and I highlighted everything in it. And, and then the most recent one, and we'll talk about this later, is it's updated. And with our, if you look, if you see in the, if those who are watching on YouTube, you see that it is written by both Josh and Sean McDowell.

And we have Sean McDowell with us here. We're going to talk about a different book later on that he was an editor on that I had an opportunity to work with, but Sean, welcome to The Wrap Report.

Oh, Andrew, thanks for having me on. And by the way, I love hearing your story of how my father's book influenced you. And to be honest, it's amazing how many people have told me that this was the first book they got.

I think Mike Lacona, the great resurrection expert, said this is the first apologetics book he ever got. William Lane Craig said it was part of what spurred him to study the resurrection. So these stories are just inspiring.

So thank you for sharing that and for having me on.

Well, I'll tell you, I was, last week we had Jim Wallace, J. Warner Wallace's main gnome. And I was telling him this really, before Evidence Demands a Verdict, there weren't a lot of books being written for apologetics to the layman.

I mean, the original Evidence Demands a Verdict was really just notes, but the book More Than a Carpenter really was an entry level for many people. And I think that that really spurred a flurry of apologetics books that we now have out today.

Well, I think you're probably right about that. I mean, my dad's often told me when he started doing this in the 50s and 60s and then really publishing Evidence early 70s, More Than a Carpenter late 70s, I mean, it was like C .S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer and almost nobody else doing it on a popular level.

And then about a decade later, you see people like William Lane Craig and J .P. Morrill and all these other scholars jumping out there. So in many ways, he was really a trendsetter when he was writing this.

And I've heard so many people, like you said, you know, evidence was notes. There's so many people that have read it through because they're just inspired and encouraged by the amount of evidence.

Academic Work on the Fate of the Apostles and the Tradition About Peter

Yeah. And, you know, you have grown up, I can't imagine what you probably always hear this because you're, oh, you're Josh McDowell's son, but you are an author in your own right. You write a little bit more, some technical stuff.

And I know you, I heard you in an interview on Greg Cockel talking about a book you had out that I'm trying to remember the price of it, but it's way out of my price range. I think it was your doctoral work.

That's right.

And I was dying to get that book because you were talking with Greg about some things about the traditions of Peter and what was accepted of with Peter and his death. And you had a different view of it.

And I was like, it got me wanting to read it, but I'm not able to afford it.

You know what?

I did not know they were going to price it that high. It's over a hundred dollars. It's a leading academic press and sometimes academic books cost that. But actually in the evidence book you're referencing, one of the new updates we did is we added a chapter on the fate of the apostles and I thumbed up all of the evidence that's there in about, I can't remember, 10 or 15 pages with the sources.

So that's a much cheaper, easier place to start.

Striving for Eternity is a Christ-centered ministry focused on equipping people for eternity, and they provide speakers and seminars that come to your church with expertise in theology, hermeneutics, world religions, creation science, evangelism, presupposition of apologetics, church history, and expertise in sexual abuse in the church.

For details on their seminars and to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org. Striving to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

Yeah, because, I mean, so maybe just mention at least the one with Peter, what you had uncovered, because that was something that was, I was the first time hearing it. I love when someone teaches me something new and I think, you know, others should be aware.

This may be a reason if people have gotten Evidence Demands a Verdict in the past, they have the older copies, that here's a reason to get the completely updated and expanded version.

Sure.

So my dissertation, which became an academic book in 2015 with Rutledge Press, is based upon an analysis of the evidence the apostles died as martyrs and what that means for the resurrection argument.

So I went through all 12 of the apostles, Matthias instead of Judas, and then added James, the brother of Jesus, and added Paul, who weren't part of the 12, but were eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus and influential in the early church.

Well, Peter is referenced more than any other apostle and in all the list of the apostles, the Gospels, he's always at the top. So I probably spent 40 or 50 pages studying the traditions around the fate of Peter.

And if you ask anybody kind of in the pews, they'll say, well, Peter was crucified upside down because he didn't want to be crucified in the manner of Jesus, didn't consider himself worthy. Well, I decided to look at the sources and see how compelling this is.

Well, I think there's 10 sources within the first and second century indicating that Peter died as a martyr. So we are on solid ground for that. But the first source that shows up about him being turned upside down is in this apocryphal work called the Acts of Peter, and it's dated about 180 to 190.

Well, that and by the way, it's full. It has a historical core to it, but it's full of all these bizarre, legendary, clearly imaginative stories that are added that we know didn't take place. And it's in this book that Peter's described as being crucified upside down.

Now, the question is why? And even in that earliest source, it had nothing to do with Peter not considering himself worthy to die in the manner of Jesus. And I always ask people, say, just think about the story.

Do you really think the Romans took suggestions from people who are going to be crucified about how they wanted to be crucified? I mean, honestly, it's crazy if you really start thinking about it. I don't think that's the way that they would do it.

So the reason he's crucified upside down in this story was because the world was turned upside down by sin and Peter being turned upside down in his death so he can see the world as it is. And his death, when he's crucified, will help turn the world upside right like the death of Jesus.

So it has a theological meaning. Now, later church historians pick up on this and add to it. So I think at best there is precedent for people being crucified upside down. Martin Hengel writes this in his book, Crucifixion.

But I don't think the sources are early and compelling enough for me to conclude that that's the most reasonable inference from the data that we have. So it's possible, but I'm not even sure I would say it's probable or likely.

And, you know, this is a thing that I always try to challenge people on is to not just accept what they hear over and over again or what tradition says, but to try to dig in. I try to always do original source research myself.

And when you end up finding when you do that, you find, as you're saying, yes, some of the stuff that everyone just accepts isn't always a reasonable approach. It's just this is the commonly accepted view.

Well, look, I think that's right. When I updated More Than a Carpenter in 2009, that was before my dissertation. So there's a little section there about the fate of the apostles. And we actually have a footnote that says, see church history for how we know that they died.

And I remember thinking that might be the biggest, broadest footnote in the history of footnotes. See church history. Like, come on. So I started to probe a little further and go, well, the argument we make in More Than a Carpenter is sound, but it has to be nuanced and it has to be cared for in ways that maybe we as a church and pastors and apologists just haven't been as careful as we could be.

Why Evidence Demands a Verdict Still Matters

Yeah.

Ding dong, Jehovah's Witnesses. Ding dong, Mormons. Christian, are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell? Do you know what your Muslim and Jewish friends believe. You will if you get Andrew Rappaport's book, What Do They Believe?

When we witness to people, we need to present the truth. But it is very wise to know what they believe. And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at WhatDoTheyBelieve .com.

Well, let's talk about evidence demands of earth. That is, we've already said this really was, I think, a pinnacle work. And you've come out with a new edition. And actually, I think in the intro, you even got you guys had laid out each of the editions and what changed in them.

But this has been, and I have a different, I don't know if you remember this book that your dad had done, Evidence for Christianity. This is just one of the others. This is probably, I mean, this is just as thick, has a lot of similar information.

And it's like, you guys keep updating, updating. And the thing I find amazing is that a lot of the material stays the same, yet you guys keep adding as we keep researching, keep discovering new stuff, you're able to expand it, be more specific in areas.

With a new generation of Christians who have now have a plethora, really, of apologetics books, why do you think, I mean, I know my reasons, but why do you think that Evidence Demands a Verdict is still the classic and the being expanded, the best volume to have on a shelf for every Christian?

Well, I think there's two answers to that question, maybe more. Number one, the format of Evidence is just unique. There's a ton of new apologetics books. I mean, he wrote it before Strobel was writing his material and J. Warner Wallace.

And I mean, so many amazing people are adding stories and examples and illustrations, but there's something about having a book that just documents long quotes so people can see it in context, have the original sources for research paper, for blogs, for conversations.

I think the format of Evidence is somewhat timeless and there's no other book that does it the way Evidence does. I think there's actually a second, even more powerful reason. We live in an age where there's endless information just one click away.

So people ask me when I first started working on this, they said, wait a minute, there's tons of extra books now. Why would anybody buy Evidence? And I said, in an age where there's endless information and endless voices, trust is one of the most important commodities that you can have.

Why should I listen to this person as opposed to somebody else? My father's been doing this for 50, I almost said 50 decades, 50 years, much older.

Than he is.

You wouldn't believe his makeup artist, five decades plus. And he's been consistent, same message. He stayed morally pure. He's just lived a life that's commendable that I think adds so much to the ministry and research that he's done.

So I think one of the reasons Evidence is so popular, and it's blown away the expectations of the publisher, by the way. In fact, you'll find this interesting, Andrew. My father wrote an article in Fox News maybe two or three weeks ago and he titled it, There's a Tsunami of Evidence for Christianity.

And he was describing how much more evidence there is now versus there was 50 years ago when he started this research. It went viral and it launched Evidence into number 16 on all books on Amazon, the number two book of all Christian books.

Now it's an 800-page document-filled book that's $20, which is actually a pretty good deal, all things considered. But that's number 16. That shows me there's a hunger for truth, but there's also recognition that says, wait a minute, I know the McDowell name, I know who Josh is, I'm familiar with this work.

There's continued value in our so-called post-truth culture.

Well, and I think you mentioned the way this book is laid out with long quotes and also that if you want to use this as a reference type research book, you can go to specific areas, read a few pages and get really everything you need to know almost on a subject.

I've actually mimicked that in my books, in both of my books, What Do They Believe?, which is on world religions. One of the things that keeps coming back that I get from people is the fact that I give these long quotes from the Koran and Book of Mormon and other.

So people that don't have those books can read in context. But I've tried to mimic the same style of being very concise, very specific. So if you just read one section, you don't have to flip back and forth to different sections, read the one section, you have what you need to know.

I've actually tried to model my books in that way after your father's, what I saw and read from his books. So he's influenced me more than I always know, but it was one of the things when I did my book, I actually had that in mind, was what I had read in his books.

And this is the thing I love about the book, is that if you need an answer, you can open the table of contents, jump in there and get the answer that you need.

I think that's right. And I think that's why people have appreciated it. But that's also what created a ton of work on this update, because the last version, which I think you held up a minute ago, was called The New Evidence as well and Hardback.

That came out in 1999. That was really when blogs were just five years in. And since that time, there's been so many responses in academic journal articles and blogs and YouTube videos. So part of what we did in this update is we went through and we had just dozens of researchers finding all of the most popular and even somewhat legitimate objections to the evidence.

And then in this update, including responses to them. So I can tell you, which is really cool, if you had the original evidence, you go online, you find responses to all this stuff. Now we have responses back to the new evidence.

And of course, they're going to respond. This goes on and on. But there are certain core objections that we included that weren't there in the past that I think really help strengthen the case for Christianity, that people know, all right, there's an answer if I want to do the research and find it.

Yeah. I should mention, folks, when you say evidence, you're referring to the book Evidence Demands a Verdict, because I'm just realizing the way you're using the word evidence, it may not pick up.

Good point.

But yeah, I mean, I think that it is, you know, we live in a world right now, culture that is attacking Christianity on every front. And this is a book that I think every Christian not should have, but must have and read.

I mean, this is a book you have to be prepared because I think that and folks who are regular listeners of The Wrap Report, you know that I bring up the Holocaust a lot because of my background, because I grew up a generation after the Holocaust.

We were trained never to forget. We had to keep having it drilled in what happened. And so much of that training, so much of that hearing it over and over again really made me realize that there's patterns that go on.

And we're in America, I think, living in a part where we're we're looking at a next Holocaust coming, but it's not going to be the Jewish people. It will be Christians in America. And I think that partially the reason is, is because too many Christians don't have the answers.

I think this is what makes this book so important, because we need to be able to have an answer. We have to be able to provide to folks, you know, and, you know, Sean, where you and I would would differ, right?

I'm going to be more of a presuppositionalist. And so I'm going to speak to presuppositionalists who there's some and I'm sure you've run into some presuppositionalists that feel like you should never use any evidence like a bad.

Word. Wrong.

And I can't be more wrong. Evidence is is extremely important. And here I'm speaking of evidence in in apologetics, not just evidence demands a verdict, but evidence is really important to strengthen the Christian faith, to help us provide answers, because there are unbelievers who have questions.

I had questions about the New Testament. I wasn't looking for salvation. And I think that, you know, we have to be ready with that. Now, we aren't going to be able to sit here and say, look, most of us don't have the mind of a Josh or Sean McDowell.

We would like to. It would be nice. But if you could let me borrow it for some time, be neat, but we can't do that. I can't borrow your brain. But having one volume where if I get stuck with something I know I can turn to and look up there first.

And this is that's the importance, I think, of this work. What other you mentioned some of the updates that you added from your your Ph .D. work, but what other chapters for folks who are familiar with evidence demands a verdict and its 2009 update, what other stuff have you expanded and included into the most recent.

Update? Yeah, I'm glad you asked this. I went through chapter by chapter, and my best estimate is that this new book is actually about 70 percent new material, 70 percent. And there's there's a few reasons for that.

Number one, there's just a lot of new evidence. There's new manuscript evidence. There's new arguments that people have made. There's new archaeological findings, but there's also new issues that we need to address.

For example, like the claim that Jesus didn't exist. That's been there, as Bart Ehrman says, since the 18th century, but it's kind of exploded in the past decade or two because the Internet. So I thought we got to have two chapters.

Number one, the single best user friendly chapter showing all the evidence for the historical existence of Jesus. So we have one chapter. I can just say this is a wonderful place to start. I think sufficient to make the evidence Jesus existed.

Second, I added a chapter and I did most of the work myself in this chapter, along with another friend of mine called Is Christianity Just a Copycat Religion? Because if Jesus didn't exist, then you had this claim that Christianity is based on these pagan mythologies and mystery religions like Osiris and Adonis and Horus, etc.

And so I thought we got to have one chapter. And I've done a lot of research and speaking on this as it is. So I came up with a single chapter that responds, I think, just honestly destroys that argument because it's a popular but such a bad argument.

So we added that chapter in. We added a chapter in the appendix responding to some of the popular claims of Bart Ehrman because I hear him so frequently from skeptics. I've heard him from Mormons, heard him from Muslims.

So we put an appendix in the back. The Old Testament section is virtually entirely new because in the 70s through 90s, so to speak, what was called the J .E .P .D. theory, the Documentary Hypothesis, was very popular.

That's almost died off. We actually went through the Old Testament. This is one of my favorite parts of the book is we started with a historical Adam. We went through the patriarchs. We went through the Exodus, went through the conquest.

The monarchy went through all the major people and events and said, what's the historical evidence we have that these people lived and that the events the Bible described really happened all the way through the Old Testament?

So I'm not aware of another book that does that in itself. So that section in the Old Testament is entirely new. And then some of the existing chapters just had to be updated. I mean, there's better arguments now for the resurrection.

There's a ton of new manuscripts that we found. We've kept the classical trilemma, Lord, liar, lunatic, but we've tweaked it and update and add new quotes. So it's just on a slander. It was a massive amount of work.

I get tired just thinking and talking about it. It was probably as much or more than my dissertation. I wish I clocked the hours. Three dozen students with leading scholars like Michael Kona, Craig Blomberg, Craig Evans, other people helping us out just to be sure that we got it right.

It's it was a ton of work. But I can tell you anyone who has the old version, a lot of the issues are just out of date, not that the evidence is wrong, but the issues have changed and there's new evidence.

You owe it to yourself to at least check out some of the new evidence and be ready with an answer.

Theistic Arguments and the Presuppositional Foundation for Miracles

Well, you I mean, I recently got this one and I've been excited to start it. But now you are really you got me really excited to start this. Actually, I had started I'm on I'm just on to the first chapter.

But even even the introduction was like 50 pages.

It is. It is. And you know what? By the way, I'll tell you, you made a statement earlier. I have a big amount of presuppositional approach within me. And that's one of the things I added to this book is the introductory chapter.

We called it a theistic universe. And instead of just jumping into the historical evidence for Christianity, I laid out some of the arguments for the existence of God, some of them being the moral argument, the argument from free will, the cosmological argument.

And we made the point that if you assume God doesn't exist and you come to the historical evidence, you're going to find a way to write it off. But if you realize there's good reason to think God exists, then miracles are not only possible.

They're actually even probable. So my philosophical training, that's why that introductory chapter is so long. We wanted people to think that we want people to realize and connect the dots that how you even approach the God question is going to shape powerfully on a presuppositional level, how you even interpret the data for miracles, the New Testament, the resurrection, et cetera.

Can you answer the following questions for your children or for the person to whom you are witnessing? Number one, is the New Testament reliable? Two, can you explain the Trinity to me? Three, how is Jesus both God and man.

And a slew of other questions you will be able to answer if you get Andrew Rappaport's new book, What Do We Believe? It will help you a ton to get your copy at what do we believe book dot com. What do we believe book dot com.

Yeah, I mean, there is like a raging debate with presuppositionalists and evidentialists, the classics that it's almost as if it's only one option.

Right, right.

I just don't see it that way. I've never seen it that way because I think there is, look, and I'm known for being an open air evangelist and you know my chapter, we'll get that a bit. But one of the things with that, though, is that people sit there and think, oh, you shouldn't use evidence.

Well, I'm using evidence all the time to address their worldview and why it's so faulty. I'm not using the evidence to prove, oh, God exists. I just take that as an axiom. But there is plenty of evidence for God's existence.

I mean, if God exists, there's things we should see in the world like morality, for example. So but I do think and this this will be a thing that we as we look at the next book I want to talk about with you is the fact that there is this notion that many people have that there's only one way to evangelize or one way to do apologetics.

And you've recently edited a book with Eric Johnson from Mormon Research Ministry and in doing so really present about 20 some different ways to share the gospel specifically with Latter-day Saints. And I know I was kind of involved with this before you had come in.

You know, basically, this was a thing where Eric had contacted me and said, hey, I want to do this self-published book and different tactics to and I think that was his originally his title was Tactics to Reaching Mormons or something like that.

That was, you know, the goal was to get these different ideas. And I suggested some people that I knew, like Jim Wallace, who it turned out Eric knew very well, too. And I said, let's get some others.

I said, this really needs to be published and get a broader, you know, audience. He was very much against it at first. And then, you know, he had contacted you and you came aboard and it really it really blew up into there's 20, I think, 24 different authors, 24 chapters.

Yeah. A couple of you have written a couple more and you have one in there as well. You took on the the difficult job with Eric of being the general editor of this. And the book here is Sharing the Good News with Mormons, edited by both Eric and yourself.

Sharing the Good News with Mormons Through Different Methods

So let's let's talk about this book. How how do you come in? So I give you my side of how how I how did you come into this and know that?

So I've been friends with Eric for probably a decade and a half. He was teaching at Christian High and I was teaching in San Juan Capistrano about an hour north in Southern California at a Christian school.

So we meet, speak, share notes and just kind of were friends for about 15 years. And we stayed in touch, moved to Biola, obviously moved to Salt Lake City. And I've endorsed his books in the past, helping with it.

And he came to me with this idea and, you know, he's trying to find a publisher. And I came back to him. I said, look, I think I can help you with a publisher. And I think I can also help maybe give this a broader feel where more people will be interested, not just those who live in Salt Lake City.

So I've got to give Eric full credit. He did much more work putting this together than I did. I mean, he he's the one who had the first idea. We both edited it, but he's just he put in a ton of work to make this happen.

Really, what I just try to do is I said, look, I published some books, maybe a little bit of name recognition outside of the Salt Lake City, you know, ministry to Mormons that will help this broader and get a publisher, maybe bring some other people on that haven't been or wouldn't have been involved and just help you make this thing as great as it can be.

So I was honored. Harvest House, we part with them, said, hey, would the two of you edit it together? And I just said, Eric, it's up to you. You had this idea. How do you feel about this? And he goes, man, if this gets the message out to more people, let's do it together.

So we jumped on and I just see it as a teamwork. And as a result, I really do think the book has broader appeal just in those who live in Salt Lake City. It's bigger than that. I think it's really for anybody who wants to reach out to Mormons.

We'll find some really practical things in here. And the endorsements we got are awesome. I mean, we got my father right the forward, pulled some strings there, you know, J .P. Moreland. I really tried to get some people know much more broadly in the Christian community to just say this is a valuable resource and you need to pay attention to it.

You know, you bring up the broader Latter-day Saints because there is a difference. When I go to to Manti with Eric and first off, I guess I should say you're saying you kept in touch with Eric. It is hard not to keep a good relationship with Eric.

Anyone who knows Eric Johnson, he is he's he's just he's a great guy, but he's just so great to be around, to get along with and very easy to stay in touch with because you want to. But but, you know, when when I went out to Manti the first time, I noticed there was a big difference.

And I've written a book on world religions. I have a chapter on Mormonism in there. And the Mormons that I run into here in New Jersey, very different than when I got to Utah. Utah, I suddenly felt like, you know what?

I said this to Eric Johnson and Bill McKeever, who work at Mormon Research Ministry. I was like, I thought I understood a lot of Mormonism at a doctrinal level because that's how I studied it was different.

Their understanding of it goes so much deeper because they're going into the general councils and all of that type of stuff. And I realize the Mormons in Utah are I mean, they're they just know a whole lot more of the Mormon history than the Mormons I run into here.

And it was like, oh, in Utah, you got to up your game. And it could seem like so much, but so many of the chapters in this book sharing the good news with Mormons. And I know you've probably read every single chapter several times.

I edited, man, multiple times. You took so many edits. No, I'm just kidding.

I saw all the edits on mine. You know, the original was edited so much. Actually, there was a pretty good amount of editing. But but, you know, it was hard. I'll be honest. It was a hard work to take as we were limited to like six pages of of material.

And it is hard to be that, you know, that articulate when you have so much on a topic. And yet in each one of these topics, I have found in each of the chapters I've read so far is that, I mean, every one of them provides practical ways of taking these different tactics that they have.

I mean, whether it be, you know, Bill McKeever, who goes out with these gold plates.

Right, right.

And I've gotten to see that live. And it's a neat thing to see it live because you see how he does it. But he explains how to do that. Or here's a survey you could do. And I got to remember who that I'm trying to remember whose chapter that was on the survey, because I forget now.

But there was a survey of here's and on the website, it's like, here's a survey you can use. I mean, each one of these had very practical tips, and yet each one of them were very different from one another.

Yeah, I think I think for any book to be successful in quality, there has to be a golden thread that ties together. So evidence like we were talking about are long quotes in context, strict evidence on the reliability of the Bible, the deity Christ and the resurrection that ties together.

And that goes through it consistently. People know what they're getting. This book also has a golden thread that goes through it. It's not a book on theology. It's not a book on apologetics. It's a book on methodology, more like Greg Kokel's book, Tactics.

But instead of one person's tactics, partly what we wanted to do is bring some people together, some who maybe have a podcast and have a blog and have a platform, but other people who are just doing ministry to Mormons.

And some people don't even know that they exist, but they could glean such insights and practical wisdom from them. So some people turned in like 10 to 12 pages. And Eric, you know, we went back and forth.

Finally, I said there has to be continuity through this. They've got to be as close as possible on tone, but also on length. So anybody can pick this up and they can find something that works in their context.