The Jesus Trilemma and the TikTok Generation: Sean McDowell

I think people have always wanted answers and they always will because we're made in the image of God with minds and we want to make sense of the world that we live in. And so I found with young people in the right setting at the right time, they want to know and they want to have discussions and are open to evidence if we present it the right way. But it doesn't mean they're walking around going, does God exist? Give me proof of the resurrection.

It's not quite that simple. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. So I'm holding in my hand a book that changed my life.

And I know this, I'm not guessing, it has changed millions, millions, at least 17 million plus lives. We're talking about More Than a Carpenter. Written by Josh McDowell. And we've got Sean McDowell's son in here as well.

And now your name's on it as well, Sean. What does that mean? Let's talk about what's happening with this book today. Well, I guess what that means is my dad invited me to come along beside him and take this classic book and just update it for a new generation. And so I got to do a ton of research with some research aids, like a TA from Talbot, three different scholars to go through it as well carefully.

I hired a couple experts on individual chapters to go through it and just update it. And I honestly think, I mean, obviously when it sells 17 million copies, a book is great. Whatever it is, it just qualifies as great. I think this new update is better than it's ever been. What are the parts of the update that you like, like that will resonate that you feel like, I mean, we're in a new age.

I mean, you just said better. Yeah. That's a big deal.

What does that mean? Well, I think one of the reasons this book has done so well is it's framed by my dad's story. So his story of radically coming to faith, trying to disprove Christianity. And we talked about that yesterday. So listen to yesterday's episode. Good plug.

Thank you. So as we go into these different chapters, he frames it with stories of like, I was talking to this professor, or I had this debate, or I engaged this student, or I was traveling on a plane. So it's not just like it's dumping facts. You feel like you're going on this journey with somebody who's asking the kind of questions that if you're a believer, you're asking about your own faith, or if you're a non-believer, you're asking about the Christian faith.

So I kind of invite you to go along on this journey with him. And I mean, it's hard to say better when a book more on Carpenter's done so well, but we just, we updated, for example, some of the evidence on like manuscripts that have been discovered since the book was first written. There's some updates on that. It's a little bit shorter than it was before.

So it's just streamlined. So in that sense, I think it's even better than it's been. I mean, as you think about it, what are your hopes? Do you hope anything different than the original or? From what I've heard, this book had sold maybe around a million copies. And there was a leader who said to me, he said, you know, Josh, I think this book has only seen the beginning.

Wow. And I think it could have greater influence. So why not reach more people now?

Why be satisfied and say, let's just keep this thing going, you know, tinker along and maybe sell 5% of what it did. I think his story is more as relevant, if not more relevant today. Fatherlessness, sexual abuse he went through, a sister who committed suicide, like these are all the issues in the news.

Totally. And he's lived through it. And it just captures people right at the beginning. The first line starts off with just referring to Aquinas, who talks about there's this search for happiness in the heart of human beings.

And he's like, that was me. I wanted to be happy. Well, you can't read that line without going, yes, I resonate with that. It's just a brilliant start. So my hope is that we've similar to the 1 million to 17 million, you know, 17 million, you know, why not 50 million? And it's not just about numbers to me. It's just saying this is a, for lack of a better term, it's a resource and a formula that has worked across generations. I mean, in the Middle East, in China, in Latin America, in Eastern Europe, there's something deeply human and dare I say kind of timeless about this book.

And so my hope is that God just uses it even bigger than he ever has in the past. Well, I remember when I read it, I was probably in my 20s. And when you read it, it's your dad's story. But then it's the apologetics of it gives us like, this is the gospel.

This is proof of the resurrection, the manuscripts, the scriptures. And so when you read it, you have somebody in mind. That's what I did, because I was already a believer. And that somebody for me was my dad. Because when I gave my life to Jesus, his words to me were, hey, I know your sister has become a Christian, but you're like me. You're strong. We don't need that kind of crutch, but she's weak.

So she needs it. And so when I read this, and your dad, the strength that God gave him what he did, but also the strength in the scriptures, the strength in what we can put our anchor on with Jesus and why he's reliable and so much of that. And so the first thing I did was I give this book to my dad. I'm not sure he read it. He might have read parts of it, but maybe how many years later?

Probably 20. 20 years later. Unbelievable. Yeah, he did give his life to Jesus. And he realized we all need a crutch. It's not a crutch. It's more than a crutch.

It's a lifeline to the gospel. Yeah, one day he came home, John, and Anne and I were not married that long. And he was my high school coach as well. So I knew him when I was a teenager and his aunt's older brother was my center. I was a quarterback.

He was the center. So anyway, I knew the family really well. And I'll never forget, we're trying to reach him. And even when we were dating, just before, right after we got engaged, they didn't know this, we got on our knees in her living room at her parents' house. And we knew we were going to get married. And we said, God, we're praying that you'd use us in our marriage to reach every person in their family. And he did, eventually.

And Dick was, her dad was the last one, but he came home from work one day, worked in a factory. And I'll never forget, he walked in the kitchen. He goes, yeah, I got in this argument with this guy at work and he's all messed up and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, okay, what happened? He goes, I looked at him.

You know what I said? I go, no, what? He goes, I said, you need what Dave and Anne got. And I go, what? I told him, he needs what you got. And I go, Dick, what do we have? That's a great question. He goes, I guess it's Jesus is what you have.

Oh my goodness. And so he, you know, it was like, he's watching, he's seeing. I'm guessing he read parts of Morgan Carpenter because dots started connecting together. One, obviously, you know, seeing somebody's life lived out authentically in front of you is so key, but he also needed evidence because he had a bad background with religion and church. And so this impacted him. So, I mean, it's just one story.

There's millions of stories like that. But talk about this. So you're now editing and revising. What's the same? What's different? Kind of like I mentioned last time, when you have a book that's so successful, you don't want to change it much. So the chapter titles are the same. The organization and structure is the same. I really just went through and took out some old quotes that needed to be updated, added some new arguments that did not exist when he wrote it in 77 or when he updated it in 2000.

Can you give us an example of one of those? So the number of manuscripts that we've discovered for the New Testament has increased over the past 30, 40 years since he first wrote this book. So that just gives us more confidence that we hold in the hand the New Testament as it was originally written down. There's been some archaeological discoveries that we just highlight because it's a short book, but we will talk about archaeologists like Titus Kennedy and list out some of the archaeological discoveries that have been made over the past few years to just help confirm that the biblical writers got it correct.

So there's those kind of updates that you add in a book like this. But you surely didn't take away Lord liar lunatic. No, we didn't.

We didn't take that away. We actually softened some of the language. We still call it Lord liar lunatic because it's great alliteration. But some of the language we looked at were like, yeah, do we want to call people lunatic? That's not as politically correct as the kind of terms that people would use today. So I'm like, okay, we can we can soften that without losing the content of it. That's just a wise way to update it. So there are certain little tweaks like that just to make sure it spoke to people today, especially younger generations might get offended at certain language.

It's like fine, but we're still going to call it Lord liar lunatic because it just, you know, it rolls off the tongue, so to speak. I mean, can you articulate that that argument? Sure. Yeah. So I'm thinking one of the reasons I ask I'm thinking there's parents listening.

Is this a tool I could use with my kids? Yeah. Yep. And this might be one of the one of the conversations they could have. So this is not unique to him. There's quotes in the book from like C.S. Lewis who talked about this and it goes back long before C.S. Lewis that if Jesus claimed to be God, which we have to establish that the scriptures are reliable and didn't claim to be a God. He claimed to be the God which we can talk about.

Then we really have two, three main options. Number one, he's a liar. So Jesus claims to be God, but he's lying.

Is that a reasonable alternative? Well, number one, if he's lying, that got him crucified. So why would you tell a story and affirm it all the way up to the trial in Mark 14 to get yourself not just killed, but brutally killed in the most shameful, painful way imaginable? That makes no sense. Plus, Jesus gave us arguably some of the greatest moral teachings just on loving your neighbor and your enemies. So that comes from somebody who's a liar.

That doesn't make sense. So a liar would be he claimed to be God, but he knew he wasn't. The other one is he claimed to be God, but he wasn't, which would mean what kind of person actually says they are the eternal creator of the universe. And before Abraham was born, I am. He's not just claimed to be a God. He's claimed to be the God of the Old Testament, who's the self-existent, eternal, all-powerful creator of the universe. So that doesn't sound like somebody mentally stable to view themselves that way.

And then we walk through some, we have a couple, there's a couple of great quotes in here from psychologists that I reached out to, one of the leading psychiatrists in the world that deals with mental health, and he's at Duke University. I reached out to him and he just said, there's no way with like the teachings of Jesus and everything we know about his life that he's just, you know, I don't think he used the term mentally insane, but you get the point that he's psychiatrically imbalanced. And so he's not a liar, that's not reasonable.

He's not a lunatic, to use the L from the alliteration. Well, the other option is he's the Lord. He claimed to be God, and he actually is. Now you could logically think of other possibilities. Maybe the whole thing is a legend, so it's not, you gotta be careful to say it's not this airtight argument, but it's a way of simplifying for people. If Jesus claimed to be God, we've got to make sense of is it true or is it not true, and you only have so many options. And the big options are either he's lying, either he's a lunatic, or he's actually the God that he claimed to be.

You travel the country as a Christian apologist and talk and debate on these issues nonstop. How common is that argument still used? I mean, whether you use those words or not, but that thinking.

I don't often lay out the three the way that I just did. Sometimes if I'm given a presentation on Jesus, like to students, I'll try to get them to grasp it. So I think on a popular level you hear it a lot, because some people want to say things like, well, Jesus was just a good prophet. Well, wait a minute, he claimed to be God. So the pieces of that argument come up all the time when it comes to Jesus, whether or not people are laying it out in that systematic fashion. But given that two of the top apologetic books are mere Christianity, you find it in there.

More than a carpenter, you find it in there. An awful lot of people are talking about it and using it in some fashion. You're working with college students all the time. You have teenagers, young adults as your own children.

You're traveling constantly. Is this still an issue, apologetics? Is that still one of the primary issues that people are stumbling upon? Like, do they want to know answers or is it something different today? I think people have always wanted answers and they always will, because we're made in the image of God with minds and we want to make sense of the world that we live in.

So that's never going to go anywhere. Now, the questions people ask, how they ask them, the way they communicate shifts because of social media and artificial intelligence, et cetera. But the way I frame it is this. There's timeless questions and there's timely questions. So timely questions today might be people are debating things like climate change or critical race theory or LGBTQ.

These are larger cultural issues we've dealt with in this cultural moment. But then there's timeless issues like does God exist? Is morality objective or is it subjective? Is there a creator to the universe? Is the Bible true? Is Jesus God?

This is not a book dealing with the timely issues. It's a timeless book. And frankly, if there is a God and he's revealed himself in the scriptures and Jesus is that God, then it gets us halfway to answering a lot of the timely questions because now God has spoken and we have a word and scriptures to use as authoritative to make sense of those timely questions. So I found with young people in the right setting at the right time, they want to know and they want to have discussions and are open to evidence if we present it the right way.

But it doesn't mean they're walking around going, does God exist? Give me proof of the resurrection. It's not quite that simple. Yeah, I remember doing a series at our church when 9-11 happened. And, you know, that was on a Tuesday morning and we got together either Tuesday or Wednesday and said, okay, I think what we're preaching on Sunday needs to be different.

You know, the world has just changed. And so I don't know if it was that Sunday or the next Sunday, but I think it was that Sunday that I decided to preach on because everybody was saying what is going on with Muslims and Islam and what do they believe? I said, I'm going to teach you. We're going to do a Islam 101. So I did a sermon on the five tenets of Islam, blah, blah, blah, and did it three or four times. I remember the fourth sermon and people came up and asked questions after.

And I'm not a scholar like you, I'm not an apologist, but I did the best job I could. I remember they brought up a Muslim woman. They had called her and said, our pastor's teaching on this. You need to come and see if he's representing what you believe true. And she came up to me with her friend and said, thank you very much.

I have one disagreement with what you said. And I go, what's that? She goes, we believe in Jesus, just like you do. And I'm telling you, a crowd gathered to hear this little conversation. And it's really interesting because as I look back at her and I really gently said, tell me what you believe. It ended up being a conversation about Lord Liar Lunatic.

It really did. Because I said, do you believe like I do that Jesus is the God? She said, no. I said, well, then we do have a different belief system. She says, why do you believe that? And it's interesting. Of all the things I can think of, that's what popped in my head. Well, I think when you think about what he said and who he was, you have three options.

Here they are. And I use that. You know, that came to me in the, probably the 80s when, when I first got more than a carpenter. So I'm thinking, man, this truth is still happening. So talk about this. You've updated a little bit. You said you added something on science. Oh, yeah.

Do this. Explain that. So in 2009 when we did the last update, these new atheists were talked about everywhere. It was kind of a cultural phenomenon. Debates on does God exist?

Is religion bad? So we, I added a chapter. That was the one chapter I uniquely wrote in the 2009 version, responding to the new atheists.

And I think it was one reason that, thing people loved about that book. But afterwards I realized, oh, I wrote, this happened in 2006. This book in 2008, I just dated it to that. And now people are talking about, we have moved far beyond the new atheist.

The cultural conversation has completely changed. So it dated the book. And so I just trimmed that down and we make a key distinction between like the scientific and the legal historical method.

Because sometimes people say, all right, Jesus rose from grave. Can you prove that scientifically? And I'd say, well, no, you can't prove that scientifically, but you can't prove anything historically, scientifically. You can't prove a lot of things in psychology scientifically. Can't prove that I love my wife scientifically, depending on how you define science, but I know that's true.

You can't prove morality scientifically. And so we just try to make a distinction and say, just because you can't prove something scientifically, you can still know that it's true. How do we know things from the past? This is what's called the legal historical method. And here's how we assess things from the past. So it's a quick chapter because most of that book gets into the positive evidence.

Jesus has risen from the grave, fulfilled prophecy. The Bible is reliable, but that's still an objection in people's minds that if you can't know it scientifically, you can't know it. And it's all opinion. You want to make sure people realize, no, there's other ways we know things.

I think with greater confidence than we actually know certain scientific things. So we just trim the chapter down. And I think, in fact, made it better because of that. Yeah. I'm thinking of Legacy with your dad, with you. Do your kids know this book pretty well? And could a family read it? We have these families that will contact us and say, hey, we just read your vertical marriage book as a family. I'm like, what?

What? You made your kids do this? And she's like, yeah, and then we did a book report. But there are some families that will read books as a family if their kids are teenagers and then just dialogue.

Is that something that could happen? I'm sure you've had these conversations with your kids all through life. I would say absolutely. That's my opinion. I'm not the author.

What do you think? Well, it's funny. My dad's written a few family devotionals, but we never used family devotionals. We don't sit down and go, let's go through dad's book.

It's just for so many reasons. But that devotional is for family members who need to carve out time and have questions to ask. He wrote this book in family devotionals because he's always asking and thinking on that level. So we sit down at a meal and he's asking us questions about what's going on in the world and is sharing his recent research as we talk about what's happening in football or basketball or a recent movie. So we are having these kinds of conversations as a family pretty regularly and consistently.

You guys did that growing up with your dad. Oh, my goodness. Give us an example of here's what's going on in the world at that time.

Well, if you really want to know, I'll give you insight into the McDowell family. In the 80s, when I was growing up, he was doing what was called the Why Wait campaign. Oh, yeah. Really the first global campaign that responded to the sexual revolution. I kid you not. We'd be at the dinner table and be like, kids, new study on AIDS. Just want to share it with you and then tell me what you think.

Give me some more fries. I mean, yeah, I gave a talk yesterday on pornography and this kid came up to me and goes, that's the first non-cringy talk I've ever heard. And like, it doesn't bother me to talk about those topics because we just did that as a family. So he would do that. He also would something going on in the news. And I have to think of a specific, but he'd just be like, hey, kids, I heard this happen.

Tell me what you think about it. I love that he posed the question first. He would do questions. He didn't say, here's my view on it. He asked you guys. We did come around to his view eventually. He has opinions on these things, but he wanted to hear us out. And he'd ask questions and he'd challenge. He goes, here's how I see it.

What do you think? A specific example is when the movie, I think it was late 90s. No, it must have been earlier 90s because I think I was in high school. The movie Schindler's List came out. Took my sister, me, my wife now, who was my girlfriend at the time, and we went to see it. And then we went to Sizzler afterwards and just talked about it. And I remember he just looked at us and he said, do you think the Holocaust is wrong? I'm like, of course.

He goes, why? I was like, because they kill people. It's like, why is it wrong to kill people? Like the Bible says so. He goes, why does the Bible say this?

I'm like, I don't know the answer to that. And we just walked through that it's wrong because God is the source of morality. God is life. He's made us in his image and expresses that through the scriptures. If you say killing is wrong just because it says that in the Bible, that's actually legalism.

It's wrong because of God's character and who he is as expressed through the Bible. So these are the kind of conversations I have with my kids all the time. We go to see movies and we just kind of talk about, what did you see?

What did you think? And try to teach them to think critically, even if I haven't sat them down to read the book. They'd be like, that would be a little over the top. And it's better to do it the way you guys have. It doesn't feel like what are we doing? Because that's what our kids would have said. What are we going to do? One time we were done at dinner, my dad, my son looks at me and he gives me a thumbs up. He goes, good speech, dad. And I just left.

That's fine. But my book, Chasing Love, which we talked about at the same time in the past. When I was working the manuscript, my daughter was 12 at the time and I said, hey, if you'll just read this and tell me what you think and go to coffee with your dad for a couple of hours, I'll buy you a pair of shoes. I remember you told us this. And she's like, can I get two for the price of one?

I'm like, you can get three for the price of one. So kids are different. But this is a great book. If you have a kid who's interested, take them two or three hours to read. Just read it and I'll give you some kind of reward.

I just want to know what you think about it. My son wouldn't do that, but my daughter would. But even to pose the question at dinner, did Jesus rise from the dead? How do we know? To ask those questions. What are some of the questions you have posed at your dinner table? Because there are a lot of different topics coming up today with your teenagers.

Oh, my goodness. I am always looking for questions to ask my kids. I took my son to breakfast last year.

He was a year before when he was about 10. We were talking about some drawing and some art. And I steered it towards like, do you think the world is more like something that happens by accident? Or more the result of something an artist had done? Oh, so my son was wearing a shirt. And it had a clear, some kind of art design on it.

And he's 10. I'm like, okay, so you'll get a shirt. That clear came from an artist, right? He goes, yes. I said, I'm curious. When you look at the world, do you think it's more like your shirt that requires an artist? Or do you think it just could happen like, you know, the bottom of a mountain when rocks fall down accidentally?

Which do you think the world is more like? He's 10. He goes, oh, definitely art. I said, why? We probably talked five minutes and then he moved on to something else. You don't have to have that conversation. But I'm always looking for questions to ask my kids and have conversations.

Because this data shows if you want to pass on your faith, it's three things. Number one, live a life worth modeling. Number two, build relationships with your kids. Number three, have regular conversations with them about issues that matter. Say that again. I'm asking Shawn you to do this because I want parents to literally maybe pause, go get a pen, pull out your phone, whatever it is, take a note, and write this down. Say it again. Number one. And explain a little bit.

I'd love to hear a little elaboration on those three. Live a model of life your kids find attractive. If they don't think you're authentic and you're a fraud and there's nothing attractive about your life, it doesn't matter what you say. You don't have to be perfect, but model the Christian life. Live it out. Second, build meaningful, intimate, close relationships with your kids. Spend time with them. Listen to them.

Value them. And then third, just meaningful spiritual conversations through the rhythm of life, which helps kids learn how to think about the world. There's no perfect formula because kids have this stubborn thing called free will, but I think the research consistently shows doing those three things gives you the best statistical chance of having kids who embrace the beliefs that you have. Let me just stop for a second and say, man, if this is hitting home with you, if you're a parent and you're resonating with this, we know. And I have always felt like somebody please help me. And so we've pulled together some of our most helpful parenting pieces into one spot for you that I'd say you're going to want to get them right now. And we've got a way for you to do that.

Here's how you do it. Go to family life dot com slash parenting help family life dot com slash parenting help. And you will find some of the best stuff family life has ever done over decades to help you and help us all on parenting. So go there now. Sean, thanks for all you're doing. We really appreciate you a ton. And you're welcome back here any time.

Yes. You know, I remember reading more than a carpenter when I was in my second year of being a Christian, and it genuinely helped me to understand the truths that Christianity claims are real. I read it on the bus from my apartment to my house. And it really assuaged a lot of my initial doubts as a new believer.

I'm so grateful that God used it to set me on a trajectory of walking with him for the last 25 years or so. And you know what, this new version with Sean's input, experience and insight makes the more than a carpenter book all the more valuable and rich. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Sean McDowell on Family Life Today. You can get your copy of the all new more than a carpenter by going online right now to family life today dot com. Or you can look for the link in the show notes, or feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy.

Again, that number is 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Do you follow us on social media? Well, you could head over to Instagram and look for the handle Family Life Insta or find us on Facebook. Just search for Family Life, and that way you'll get more regular encouragement from the ministry. Now, tomorrow, Ron Deal is here as he talks with Dave and Ann Wilson and a conversation that he had with Scott Kadersha about the challenges of adapting to a new stepdad. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us on behalf of David and Wilson. I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.