The Alex McFarland Show-24-God Is with guest Garland Grimes

The spiritual condition of America, politics, culture, and current events, analyzed through the lens of Scripture.

Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program. You know, we often talk about apologetics. 1 Peter 3.15 says, Be ready always to give an answer to everything you do.

We give an answer to everyone who asks a reason for the hope within you. And we get so many books. Publishers will send us half a dozen, a dozen books a month, and they'll ask me to endorse. And a lot of these books I'll read, and some I'll endorse, and some I choose not to. But I recently got a book that really made an impact on my life.

And it's called God Is. And it's by an author named Garland Grimes. And prior to the book God Is, we weren't familiar with each other. But I was so impressed with this book, I wrote an endorsement for it. Meditations on the Existence, Nature, and Character of God. This is a book I want you to read, because it deals with apologetics, defending the faith. But in a way that a lot of books really don't quite achieve, this book deals with God as the foundation of truth, and why truth matters. And I wanted to have the author on and converse with him about this and many other things as well. Garland Grimes, author of God Is. So I want to welcome you to the program, and I want to commend you on creating an excellent resource. Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Yes. So give us a little bit of your background and how you were led to write a book on apologetics and defending the theistic Christian worldview. Well, I think it begins when I was in college and took some religion classes. And I was at a school where they didn't have a theology department.

It was a religion department. And I took some classes on the fundamentals of Christianity, and I was already a believer at the time. But I was taught things like Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier.

A lot of German, modernist German theology, historical critical theology. You know that it was anti supernatural, anti supernaturalistic. The miracles of Christ were discounted.

The parting of the Red Sea was just they went across mud puddles. So it was a crisis of my own faith. And I ran across one of the professors gave me a book, C.S. Lewis's book, Mere Christianity. And then my wife, who I was debating, who I was dating at the time, sent me a book by Francis Schaeffer. So this takes me back a number of years.

But it was called He Is There, He Is Not Silent. And he looked at the metaphysical, epistemological, and the ethical reasons why we should believe in what scripture teaches us. One other thing, I noticed that a lot of individuals that I knew who were going on to seminary were coming out agnostic. In other words, the things that they were being taught in some of our seminaries today. But later in my Christian walk, I guess I was just a lot of the separation in Christian among believers.

You know, just the lack of unity. And I made a kind of an intensive study of the church fathers, of church history. And my interests were not only in science, but very much in history and philosophy and apologetics. And I remember my dad, when I was younger, he used to call me a doubting Thomas. So I guess there were always a lot of things in my own life that caused me to have doubts.

And so I needed some substance, you know, some real solid intellectual substance. I came to Christ in just a miraculous encounter with a hitchhiker. And it was definitely the movement of the Spirit of God. So I came to Christ, I knew that Jesus Christ was who he claimed to be. But then after that, a lot of the intellectual questions began to come, you know. So the Spirit was working in my life. And it was like Augustine said, it was faith seeking, you know, understanding.

So I think it was really the Holy Spirit that was leading me in that direction. Now, forgive me for jumping in here, but your career was in computers, right? My career was in computers, right. But my avocation was really theology and philosophy.

And, you know, I never lost interest in that, you know, even through my whole career. And after I retired, I just saw such a falling away in our culture, you know, against an understanding of who God is and so much divergence from what Scripture teaches. And I said, what are really the essentials that we need to understand about the character of God? And that's why I came up with the idea, not only for others, but for myself, because I was wrestling with these things. And I came to the point where I said, what is it that I know is true about the gospel and about Scripture?

And so I just began writing down things, just even to help myself. Well, you know, I really do appreciate your book. And by the way, your book, and like I said, I get asked to review a lot of books, but your book represents a broad study. You quote a lot of people in history. And I can tell by reading your book that you have thought deeply about these things and the reality of God, the reality of Christianity.

I want to throw something out here. We're living in a time, Garland, where so many people say, you know, there's faith and there's science, as if, you know, there's the stuff you believe, you know, these fairy tales, and then there's real truth, which is science and science alone. I mean, that's a very destructive dichotomy, but it is so pervasive these days, isn't it? Very much so. Yeah.

Yeah. And God is the author of both what we understand through the natural world and through the movement of the Spirit. You know, there's no dichotomy there.

There's no difference there. And sometimes we're comparing what we believe from scripture with bad science. And we, you know, we just automatically assume that these scientists are, know what they're talking about. And there's a lot of untruth coming out of the scientific community today. Do you know what, speaking of untruths that are very often assumed to be just gospel, in one of my books, I talk about the fact that there's a library in France of antiquated science books, books that at the time of publication were just known to be, you know, without argument, and yet they were later falsified. And this museum of antiquated science books has like 13 miles of shelving.

How about that? So the ideas of man are very much fluid, but the revealed truth of God is absolute. I want to talk about a chapter in your book. And by the way, give your website where people can find, folks, this excellent book by Garland Grimes, God is, what's the website Garland? It's God is dot website.

God, G-O-D-I-S, God is dot website. And then you can find it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. You've got a chapter on truth. And you mentioned the Greek philosopher Protagoras that I have studied who says, man is the measure of all things.

What does that philosophy mean? Well, it's that each person and each culture determines their own truth. In other words, truth becomes subjective. And my truths may not be your truth.

It's all relative according to his understanding. And this is, this of course is invading our culture today. You know, very much a part of our culture. And you know, with that idea that you have your truth, I have my truth, and everybody's got their own truth. I mean, it really results in the idea that we each can create our own reality, but that's just not livable besides the fact it's not true.

It's just not livable. And I think this idea of relativism has contributed to the cultural chaos that we find ourselves in. Yeah, absolutely. So what is, if you would define relativism? Well, again, it's the idea that there's no absolute right or wrong. There's no absolute truth that we can understand.

I think a lot of it comes from the idea that we as individuals are finite, you know, that we can understand things from an absolute perspective. So there's an admission that we're not God. But it's also the idea that God has not spoken, you know, that God has not revealed himself. If we had to reach truth on our own, I think people understand that that's impossible.

So we understand as believers that God has spoken into our world, that he has revealed himself through scripture. So it's just the idea that your truths are not my truths. But of course that discounts the whole notion of truth, you know. And let me throw this out there, that relativism taken to the extreme really means nothing is knowable. I mean, if we live in a truly relativistic world, knowledge isn't actually possible, is it?

No, not at all. Yeah, not true knowledge. Maybe it's something that we imagine for ourselves, and a lot of it is becoming our own God. In other words, we're deciding what's right and wrong. We determine what is true for us. It's all subjective. In other words, there's nothing objective in terms of, there's nothing that transcends your perspective or my perspective.

In other words, I can't tell you what is right for you, and you can't tell me what is right for me. We in a sense define our own truths. And you're right, this has led to just cultural chaos and to an identity crisis as well.

In other words, we don't know who we are. Yeah, part of the reason that I really was drawn to your book, Garland, and I felt led to write an endorsement for it, I mean, you talk about science and evolution, and you give some great defenses of God and creation, some good refutations of even theistic evolution. I was glad that you called out theistic evolution. But I want to, with the time we have left, I want to talk about God and truth. What is the relationship between the eternal God and truth that we can know?

What's the connection, Garland? Well, the connection is, of course, through Scripture, that he's revealed himself through Scripture. And of course, he's revealed himself through the prophets and the apostles. He spoke to Abraham. He spoke to Noah. Of course, we have the word of God. And of course, he spoke most definitively in his son, Jesus Christ. And he's spoken in history. In other words, that's what's unique actually about Christianity, that we can go back and we can see the principles and the truths that are revealed in the word of God lived out in the lives of people, but also through the evidence of history. It's not like science.

It's not something you can repeat in a laboratory. But we can go back and we can examine history, particularly the resurrection is one of the most fundamental things, I think, where God has revealed himself. And it's interesting that, you know, in John, where it says, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

You know, he has revealed himself. And of course, Romans 1, where it talks about that God has made himself known through the things that are visible through his creation. In other words, we may not see him because God is spirit.

We must worship him in spirit and truth. But at the same time, he hasn't left us without evidence of himself. This is where a lot of modern philosophers or a lot of scientists have discounted the whole idea of metaphysics. In other words, there's physics, but there's not something beyond physics. There's a supernatural realm beyond the natural realm. Yeah, and it's like the phenomenal and the nominal, as Kant talked about. You know, we can understand what we experience, but we have no understanding of those things beyond what we have direct experience of.

So go ahead. Well, and, you know, and I've heard this on literally 200 university campuses that it's almost like anything that speaks of spiritual realities, there's the assumption that it's all opinion and that we have 10,000 opinions, but we can't have anything more than that. Two problems with that. For one thing, two contradictory incompatible propositions can't both be true at the same time. I've told people, I've said, you know, if Jesus is the son of God, then conversely, he can't not be the son of God.

And so either he is or he isn't. The beautiful thing is that in Christianity, we have a way to rise above the fray. We can be elevated above the den of opinions, and we can actually know what truth is because God has revealed it. And we've got a man that rose from the dead, and his word is trustworthy. Yeah, he made some very exclusive claims on the way the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father but by me.

I think that's interesting, you know, what C.S. Lewis used to say, he's either a lunatic, a liar, or he was who he said he was because he made some outrageous claims. And, you know, if we don't believe what he said, then he was really, as C.S. Lewis said, a lunatic or a liar. There's no evidence of that, that he was out of his mind as we read the gospels. We see this incredible human figure. You know, we know that he was fully God and fully man, and we see this amazing individual that nobody could have possibly have made up.

Right, right. Well, you know, I want to visit again and say I want to cultivate the friendship. But again, folks, the book God is Meditations on the Existence, Nature, and Character of God.

Wespo Press, a division of Thomas Nelson, the author Garland Grimes. And thanks for being on. One more time, we're almost out of time, but your website, Garland.

God is not website. Well, thanks for your time today. Thanks for an excellent book. I commend you, and I look forward to when you and I can visit again. Alex McFarland Ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you. For over 20 years, this ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at alexmcfarland.com. You may also reach us at Alex McFarland, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404, or by calling 1-877-YES-GOD and the number 1.

That's 1-877-Y-E-S-G-O-D 1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of the Alex McFarland Show. What are you doing next summer?

Hey, how about this? I want to invite you to join me in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, August 6th through 11th, 2023, for the Faith and Family Retreat. It's going to be awesome. We'll talk about foundational things. What does it mean to be a disciple?

How can you defend your faith? Family time, concerts, renewal of wedding vows. It's going to be great. Then fun, a trip to Dollywood.

Who wouldn't like that? And then faith in action. There will be a mission outreach, talking to people about Christ. So again, August 6th through 11th, 2023, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Go to faithandfamilyretreat.com. I hope to see you there.