Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1342 ｜ New Study： America is Biblically Illiterate. Here’s How to Change That ｜ Carlos Campo

00:00:00.520 Is the Bible actually reliable, or is it just a compilation of curated texts from fallible

00:00:06.200 men over the years who may have had their own motives?

00:00:09.640 Why does what we think about the reliability of scripture matter?

00:00:13.720 Why does biblical literacy matter, not just for the church, but for the future of our

00:00:17.680 country?

00:00:18.360 We are going to be talking about this and so much more in a fascinating discussion with

00:00:22.360 the CEO of the Museum of the Bible, Carlos Campo, today.

00:00:26.080 He's also going to take us around the museum just a little bit to look at the earliest

00:00:29.460 archaeological evidence for the existence of the early church. I learned so much from this

00:00:34.920 conversation. You're going to too. You're going to love this episode of Theology Monday. It's

00:00:39.540 brought to you by our friends at The Last Stand. It's going to be an epic pro-life conference in

00:00:45.340 Denver, Colorado, June 5th through 6th. The Last Stand, I will be there. Seth Gruber will be there.

00:00:50.980 My friend Frank Turek will also be there. So many more speakers. Go to thelaststand.com. Get

00:00:55.800 your tickets today. Use code Allie for a discount. TheLastStand.com, code Allie.

00:01:10.160 Mr. Combo, thanks so much for joining me. Can you just tell the audience where we are? This is not

00:01:14.760 my typical set, if they haven't noticed. Well, we're at the library at the Museum of the Bible

00:01:18.860 here in Washington, D.C. And what is contained in this library? You know, you wouldn't be surprised

00:01:25.620 lots of biblical books and studies. We could fill many, many museums with the books written

00:01:31.480 about the Word of God. So we have some of those here, and we use this for meetings like this,

00:01:36.980 podcasts, and other activities. Tell me about, I know this is a big question that we could talk

00:01:42.060 about for hours, but tell me about the Museum of the Bible, just starting with why it was created

00:01:47.100 and opened back in 2017. You know, it was created because we wanted a place that tried to tell the

00:01:53.340 story and convey the kaleidoscopic power of the Bible.

00:01:58.180 Kaleidoscopic power of the Bible.

00:01:59.540 Can you break that down?

00:02:00.440 I love that description.

00:02:01.800 Sure.

00:02:02.080 Well, I think so often people think the Bible is a lens that makes people myopic, but we

00:02:07.320 believe the opposite, that it begins to open up the kaleidoscopic of the non-contingent

00:02:13.040 being that it purports to talk about.

00:02:16.240 So that's one of the things we love about telling people about the Bible and saying,

00:02:21.880 come and see. We're a come and see kind of a place. So we wanted to do it with excellence,

00:02:26.140 and that's one of the things that you can see. The building itself has won many architectural

00:02:29.940 awards. But the main thing is we believe that the Bible is a durable book, that it has shaped

00:02:35.220 human lives throughout pretty much civilization, through written history. So let's tell the story.

00:02:40.740 We tell the staff every day, we attempt the impossible, because you can't do it fully.

00:02:45.600 But in the trying, it's been extraordinary. I first came to the Museum of the Bible,

00:02:50.900 I believe the month that it opened, back in 2017, this is before I had kids, and a lot has changed in my life, but a lot has changed here, too.

00:02:59.160 It was incredible when it first opened, but you guys have added a lot in the past nine years.

00:03:03.460 We have.

00:03:03.980 You know, like any place, we want to continuously improve, but we're sitting at a time where we literally have in the museum today the Dead Sea Scrolls.

00:03:13.140 I mean, that in and of itself is extraordinary, and some of the earliest documents, of course, that relate to scripture ever found.

00:03:20.100 We also have the mosaic tile floor, the first Christian worship space ever discovered.

00:03:25.840 And those two elements join, you know, so many other things, including things like immersive experiences and historical texts, because we do try to look at many different approaches to tell this story.

00:03:40.020 Tell me what we're looking at.

00:03:42.380 We're looking at the mosaic floor of what experts are calling the earliest Christian worship space ever discovered.

00:03:49.340 We've kind of entitled it the Megiddo Mosaic because that's where it was found,

00:03:52.960 but it's really an incredible artifact.

00:03:54.760 And where's Megiddo?

00:03:55.640 Megiddo's in Israel. It's in the Jezreel Valley.

00:03:58.360 A lot of your listeners might know it, kind of the Armageddon connection. 0.94

00:04:01.840 So that's where Megiddo is.

00:04:03.700 It's not generally a tourist destination, but we're so incredibly grateful that this was found there.

00:04:10.240 And when was this uncovered?

00:04:11.300 Not long ago, about 20 years ago in a prison, in an active prison.

00:04:15.700 So incredible. 0.96

00:04:16.520 But when you move dirt in Israel, you have to call the experts in. 0.60

00:04:19.840 They were called in, and this is what they found.

00:04:22.160 And they uncovered all of this.

00:04:23.680 How long did it take them?

00:04:25.000 You know, it took a while.

00:04:26.360 The entire excavation took weeks.

00:04:29.000 And the reality is, because it's a working prison, you can imagine this was the last

00:04:33.080 thing they thought they would find.

00:04:34.720 But now that prison is actually being evacuated.

00:04:38.140 They're building a new prison to make that site a heritage site.

00:04:41.280 Wow.

00:04:41.680 And what does this say?

00:04:43.420 Well, there are three Greek inscriptions, and it says so much.

00:04:46.100 I mean, do you have two hours to go?

00:04:47.500 I know.

00:04:48.080 We could talk about this for two hours.

00:04:49.880 In essence, it tells us the name of the person who paid for it.

00:04:53.120 His name was Gyanus.

00:04:54.420 He was a centurion.

00:04:55.800 He's also called our brother, which could be our brother in faith.

00:04:58.980 That's what we think.

00:04:59.840 It could also have been our brother in war.

00:05:01.480 It tells us also the name of the person who laid the tiles.

00:05:03.920 And that's really rare to have both a person of note and a tile layer in the same sentence.

00:05:08.320 It also tells us of five women, four whose names are here and all we read is the word remember.

00:05:14.440 and we think they were likely early Christian martyrs.

00:05:17.620 And then a fifth woman who paid for what is called the memorial table,

00:05:21.540 but she also makes this extraordinary declaration

00:05:24.320 because she says that she's dedicating that to God, Jesus Christ.

00:05:29.200 All of these are in Greek, but this reference to the deity of Christ

00:05:33.380 is the earliest form in archaeology ever discovered.

00:05:37.000 Well, that answers my next question, which was going to be,

00:05:39.800 how do we know that this was a Christian place of worship?

00:05:42.640 But it's because it says so.

00:05:44.000 I mean, it's funny. I hear the folks who discovered this, the archaeologists who are

00:05:49.480 Israeli found it and said, oh, and these Christians see that the word Jesus is in this

00:05:54.260 floor. They're going to be all over it. Yes. I really can't decide which exhibit is my favorite. 0.90

00:06:00.740 And I don't think I've seen all of them. You said that it takes nine, eight hour days to get through

00:06:06.100 every exhibit. And that's probably not even including reading every single description and

00:06:10.980 really interacting with every single artifact. That, I think, I don't know, that might take years.

00:06:16.660 It's true. It's one of the things that people say is, I have to come back. I just couldn't get to

00:06:21.620 it all. And so the average guest stays for four hours, and it's not enough. But it is one of

00:06:28.760 those places we hope you can come back to time and time again, like any great museum, and find

00:06:32.900 something else that inspires you. What really just blows me away is when I look at the exhibit,

00:06:39.160 it's such a large exhibit of all the different translations and some of the earliest manuscripts

00:06:43.780 that we have of, for example, 1 Peter of Jonah. We're talking early centuries after the church

00:06:50.840 was established and the congruence between those earliest translations and then the Bible that we

00:06:58.780 have today. So this is from the book of Jonah? Right. It's amazing because it's from a folio

00:07:06.200 It's called the Crosby-Skoyan Codex, which is just another word for a book, really.

00:07:10.120 But it's not just from Jonah.

00:07:11.760 What we're looking at is the earliest copy of Jonah ever found.

00:07:15.160 And so one of the things that you might know, but a lot of folks didn't know initially,

00:07:20.120 was the connection between Jonah and Easter.

00:07:23.000 You know, the three days in the belly of a fish, right?

00:07:25.120 It makes sense.

00:07:26.340 And so making that connection, this entire folio kind of is an Easter celebration

00:07:30.400 and Jonah being just a part of it.

00:07:32.560 And tell us what a folio is.

00:07:33.920 You said it's just like a book.

00:07:35.160 It is.

00:07:35.600 I mean, Codex is really the name for a book.

00:07:38.220 Remembering the earliest things you would find would be scrolls.

00:07:41.300 But when you wanted something more portable, you began working with what we would call as a codex or the plural codices.

00:07:49.940 But I think what's extraordinary about this text, I mean, here we are even in this low light.

00:07:54.340 This is a text that tells the story of an ancient culture that is already making the connection between this Nazarene,

00:08:02.080 we know as Jesus, and the Hebrew scriptures.

00:08:05.600 And how old is this?

00:08:06.620 This is 3rd century, so it's, you know, they dated at about 250, but it's the earliest Jonah yet to be found.

00:08:13.540 And we have something from 1 Peter as well, right?

00:08:15.540 1 Peter, and I love telling people that it's so early that the text doesn't say 1 Peter at all.

00:08:21.900 It's just a letter of Peter.

00:08:23.400 You know, later we define it as 1 Peter.

00:08:25.920 But again, it's found in that same grouping, the earliest text related to Peter,

00:08:32.200 this disciple that we've come to know so well and yet to think that we have this text in the museum

00:08:36.800 is just extraordinary. And this is the section of what we call 1 Peter where he encourages everyone

00:08:42.240 to act humbly, tells them to respect their elders. And so we just read this and we matched it to the

00:08:47.220 Bible and we said, oh my goodness, this is one of the first copies. It's incredibly consonant and

00:08:52.800 it's one of the things that we try to show at the museum. It's one of the myths that is often

00:08:58.280 purported about scripture and that it's not reliable right texts like this show it's not

00:09:03.160 only reliable but we can take it back to some really early days that is something that you

00:09:07.720 hear a lot that a bunch of men put this together in the i don't know 19th century to try to push

00:09:14.280 their agenda but that's just factually inaccurate it is and it's one of the things we welcome people

00:09:19.080 to do is to really dig deeper the creation of the bible wasn't a phone game it wasn't like that at

00:09:24.680 home. And so very carefully copied, first an oral translation, right, an oral tradition,

00:09:30.340 and then a written one that is quite clear and really profound. Amazing. Yep. Love it.

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00:11:06.120 I just saw an interview between Tom Holland and Peter Williams. You know, Tom Holland,

00:11:11.020 who wrote Dominion, an incredible book, right? You know the text. But he said, you know,

00:11:14.400 let's just compare Muhammad's earliest writings, right, to the text that we currently have. They're

00:11:20.200 about a 200-year separation. It's one of the extraordinary things about the New Testament.

00:11:25.460 You know, we're talking about 50 years, is what most scholars would say, maybe even a little bit

00:11:29.380 less. That distance, as it were, matters. And so that's one of the many reasons why we think this

00:11:37.160 text is so reliable, but there are many others as well. And gosh, the diligence of the human beings

00:11:43.440 that have taken pains to translate the Bible.

00:11:48.280 I even think about Martin Luther and his dedication

00:11:51.620 that according to God's sovereignty

00:11:54.500 coincided with the invention of the printing press

00:11:57.280 and skyrocketing literacy rates.

00:11:59.920 But since then, the normal average human beings

00:12:03.400 who have just said,

00:12:04.400 it is so important for me to translate God's word

00:12:06.940 into this language, into unwritten languages,

00:12:10.160 That just strikes me as something that has to be spirit-empowered because according to

00:12:16.700 our own flesh, we just want to do what we want to do and we want to take shortcuts.

00:12:21.400 That, to me, is evidence enough that the Holy Spirit is in this process.

00:12:25.760 I am with you.

00:12:26.700 I mean, what motivates a person to do anything, right?

00:12:29.740 But to translate scripture and to learn to read.

00:12:32.880 Matter of fact, you've touched upon it, but, you know, Allie Beth, if you just check literacy

00:12:37.720 rates, take that trending across time and across culture, almost always it's driven by one thing,

00:12:43.980 and that's because people wanted to read the scriptures. And yes, Luther and others,

00:12:48.720 you know, there were many who gave their lives, literally knew that simply by translating the

00:12:52.980 scriptures, they were in defiance of the church. And some of them were martyred as a result,

00:12:58.380 but they knew that their higher calling was to make the Word of God accessible to all mankind.

00:13:03.780 So how exciting.

00:13:05.820 There have been attempts throughout history for people to say, this book shouldn't be

00:13:09.520 in the canon, or this book should be in the canon, or to try to translate in accordance

00:13:14.740 with their own ideology or their own whim.

00:13:18.020 But the fact of the matter is, is that those efforts have not succeeded.

00:13:22.080 And that's one reason we can trust the trustworthiness of the biblical canon we have today.

00:13:26.840 Yes, it's one of the things that we spoke of just before we came on air, and that is

00:13:30.560 people should dig into it.

00:13:32.200 this idea that, oh, you don't want to look behind the curtain. That's not true of the Bible.

00:13:36.460 Look behind the curtain, dig into it, and you're going to find that the way the canon was formed,

00:13:41.500 the Bible that we have today, its reliability, the care that people took in both the oral

00:13:46.640 transmission and then the written was extraordinary. It's going to boost and strengthen your faith.

00:13:53.120 Just even the sheer fact that if men wanted to write a book, they wouldn't have written a book

00:14:00.300 that makes them look so bad, you know, over and over again, we see the failures and the foibles

00:14:07.080 of God's people and their rebellion. And if this were just a book written by people who wanted to

00:14:12.940 tell the history of a particular group, they wouldn't include all of this stuff that proves

00:14:18.880 that it's really God who's powerful and people who time and time again, we sin, we fail, we do

00:14:23.840 really embarrassing, humiliating, deceitful things. If someone were to conspire together to try to

00:14:29.780 build a man-made ideology just for power, it wouldn't have been the Bible.

00:14:33.980 Oh, my goodness. 0.88

00:14:34.860 You're so right.

00:14:35.780 I mean, it's true.

00:14:36.580 But it's one of the reasons I'm so proud to say I'm a person of this faith, because it

00:14:41.500 doesn't try to hide our past.

00:14:43.680 It doesn't try to say, look, we serve only perfect people. 0.92

00:14:47.660 I mean, when a heel catcher, truly a deceiver, becomes one of the patriarchs of the faith, 0.98

00:14:53.880 that tells you we're all human. 0.98

00:14:55.500 And despite our sin, God loves us, and he has a story of reconciliation to tell us. 0.98

00:15:01.720 And do you have non-Christians?

00:15:03.480 I don't know if you have this data, but do you have non-Christians who come through the

00:15:06.440 museum and are interested in the history of the Bible?

00:15:08.540 We do.

00:15:09.080 Actually, I met not long ago a woman from France whose English was better than my French,

00:15:14.800 but we spoke for just a moment, and she said, you know what?

00:15:17.060 This book in my own country is something, it's not studied in depth.

00:15:21.240 And certainly, there's no place like this in France.

00:15:23.680 So I came because I wanted to know more. 0.99

00:15:26.060 And Allie Beth, I encountered her again about three hours later, and she was just bubbling

00:15:31.480 with excitement.

00:15:32.300 She said, I need to study this book more.

00:15:34.720 I've been so impressed by the way this place lays out the Bible, and I want to know more.

00:15:40.020 So we know that many, many come with that same idea.

00:15:43.120 And there are skeptics who come, who come to say, you know what, this has got to be

00:15:47.460 wrong, so let me just take a few hours and prove that to be true.

00:15:50.940 So we love it.

00:15:52.040 We invite all people to come. 0.58

00:15:53.340 That's another beautiful thing about Christianity is that it invites the skeptics, like poke

00:15:59.100 and prod and ask and dig in and we'll dig in with you.

00:16:02.500 We might not have all the answers, but God does.

00:16:04.720 And that is one distinction between occult and Christianity is that we, I mean, we have

00:16:11.120 the God who's one of his names is Logos.

00:16:13.420 He is the source of logic.

00:16:14.520 So we're like, you can't out reason him.

00:16:16.700 Come on, let's ask some questions and figure this out.

00:16:19.360 Yes.

00:16:19.700 It's always frustrating to hear somebody talk about blind faith.

00:16:22.400 And I know what they mean when they say that, but faith isn't that.

00:16:25.560 It isn't.

00:16:26.040 It is durable.

00:16:26.920 And I think that's one of the things.

00:16:28.300 And even with answers, I think we do have all the answers.

00:16:32.280 Now, all the answers are not satisfying.

00:16:34.120 I think that is true, right?

00:16:35.260 So let me give you an answer.

00:16:36.840 You want to know, why do humans suffer?

00:16:38.800 Why did God create things that are bad?

00:16:40.880 You know, all the things that have been eternal questions, we have answers.

00:16:44.200 Of course, theologians have answers.

00:16:46.300 Are they all satisfying?

00:16:47.900 No, of course not.

00:16:48.940 Can we fully explain what the virgin birth is all about?

00:16:52.800 We can tell you what the Word says.

00:16:55.120 But we do have answers.

00:16:56.820 They may not all be satisfying, but when you put it all together, Alibeth, I think this

00:17:00.900 is the thing for me.

00:17:01.800 What is the theory of everything?

00:17:04.260 What does hold it together?

00:17:06.220 What is this idea of the universal?

00:17:08.600 I think that's one of the things about Scripture, that it begins in the beginning, and then

00:17:13.660 it talks about a potential apocalypse that really ends life as we know it and transmutes it into

00:17:19.080 something else. I don't know any other text that does it with this kind of power and truth.

00:17:24.020 Yeah. That story that you told of the woman from France, it's so beautiful, but at the same time,

00:17:29.140 it's very sad. I agree. Because whether or not someone is a Christian or whether or not they

00:17:34.720 go to a Christian school, I had the blessing of being able to go to a Christian school where we

00:17:38.980 talked about the gospel and learned scripture outright. But so many people that don't have

00:17:43.860 that education are not told about the Bible at all, even from the perspective of, hey,

00:17:49.420 this is a really important book in the shaping of Western civilization and our country. Like,

00:17:54.560 you really can't understand the history of America or even our most popular literature

00:17:59.760 in Western civilization without understanding the Bible because there are so many references

00:18:04.900 to scripture in these documents. And so I'm worried about what theological illiteracy and

00:18:11.960 biblical illiteracy means for historic, cultural illiteracy, of course, what it means for morality,

00:18:17.480 but even just being able to orient ourselves as part of Western civilization and Americans. 0.59

00:18:22.860 Oh my goodness. You open up these Pandora's boxes of topics, but you're so right. I taught

00:18:28.120 English for many, many years, and that was the same kind of thing because I'm in a class

00:18:32.600 and i'm teaching let's just say hamlet right so you teach hamlet and one of his lines is that

00:18:39.320 there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow well you're a bible reader you know what

00:18:45.040 hamlet's referencing there and shakespeare thought all of his audience members no matter what their

00:18:49.060 training or background was they knew what hamlet was referencing there now the average student that

00:18:54.520 i had in my class said what's he talking about what is what providence fall of a sparrow so now

00:18:59.560 you almost have to go back and teach biblical literacy to place that in context. But that's

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00:20:25.040 slash Allie for 60% off. And what do you think the reason is for, yes, of course, you know,

00:20:36.360 and we could relitigate all of this, the decision to remove prayer from schools and Bible reading

00:20:40.940 from schools. But again, you would think that teachers of history and teachers of American

00:20:47.320 civilization would want to give a holistic view of what led the founders and what forged

00:20:53.700 Western civilization.

00:20:55.300 But there's almost like a fear or a disdain.

00:20:59.820 And I think that is a really big disservice to students.

00:21:04.760 Agreed.

00:21:05.360 I mean, one of the things I often encourage people to do is to go back and read the transcripts

00:21:10.760 from the dissenting judges.

00:21:12.360 actually the judges that carried the day, the Supreme Court judges, who took prayer and Bible

00:21:18.480 reading. Remember, this wasn't just prayer. They read Scripture every single day. That was what

00:21:23.040 happened in public schools. But even those judges that said they felt it was unconstitutional,

00:21:29.520 they said Bible reading should take place daily. Shouldn't happen here. But they all, to a person,

00:21:36.400 were lauding the power of scripture. So how quickly we have changed in our appreciation

00:21:43.280 of scripture and its power to transform an individual life, marriage, community, nation,

00:21:50.120 it was lost so quickly. And I'm hopeful that we can regain that.

00:21:53.960 I'm curious your perspective on our founding. This is another big debate. I saw someone the

00:21:58.960 other day, this was actually a legislator who said Christianity had nothing to do with America's

00:22:03.680 founding. In fact, Thomas Jefferson referenced the Quran. I mean, not to mention that referencing

00:22:08.880 something isn't putting it in our founding documents. But is that true, what we hear,

00:22:13.520 that all of the founders were just deists, that they didn't really have any faith imbued

00:22:18.900 in our founding documents? Well, as you might imagine, here at the museum,

00:22:22.320 we've been thinking about this a lot, especially with this year. And we are doing an exhibit on

00:22:27.700 the founding of America and the role of the Bible. And can we say that every founder was

00:22:33.820 an Orthodox Christian? No, and we wouldn't say that. See, we have a mandate, unlike other places,

00:22:39.400 that we have to tell the story fully and faithfully. But if we could only exhume the

00:22:44.800 bodies of these men and talk to them again, I don't think we can even fully understand how the

00:22:50.200 Bible was truly part of the air that they breathed. And so that's one of the things we're trying to

00:22:55.140 show, and even as we look at the different versions of the Declaration, right? This was a

00:22:59.780 text they worked on together, and that they added the word Creator with a capital C. That, in and

00:23:05.540 of itself, tells us perhaps in many ways all we need to know. And one of the things we have done

00:23:11.700 is we've taken the language and bent it a bit, and we say that we hold these truths are not

00:23:17.380 self-evident. They are not. I mean, my father was born in Cuba. Go there, Alibeth, and see if they

00:23:22.980 are evident those truths evident there that all men are created equal i mean all of those truths

00:23:28.000 we think have their roots primarily in scripture was the bible the only influence for those men

00:23:34.460 no we wouldn't argue that was it the primary one we think so but we'll hold that loosely and see

00:23:40.260 what people judge for themselves yeah you're so right that we are certainly seeing that

00:23:44.940 it's not general common revelation that gives people the understanding of innate rights the

00:23:51.920 right to life and liberty that is actually more of a special revelation that you only understand

00:23:58.240 if you understand scripture and whether or not thomas jefferson really believed in the gospel i

00:24:04.240 think no one really knows or at least i don't really know but i think that's such a good point

00:24:09.120 that it was so ubiquitous in their culture that they that was one fault that they had that they

00:24:15.260 just didn't realize how special and unique it was that it was the principles not just of the imago

00:24:20.760 day, but of the gospel that said, okay, everyone's equally dead and sent apart from Christ.

00:24:25.820 Everyone can be equally made alive in Christ that filled them with this really radical and

00:24:31.900 revolutionary idea that your rights don't come from a monarch. They don't come from a dictator.

00:24:35.980 They come from you being a human being. And that's a little bit of a shame. But of course,

00:24:41.880 I think through the Holy Spirit, they did put some of those principles into our founding,

00:24:45.720 which is amazing. No question. It's to me, when you talk about,

00:24:49.100 are we an exceptional nation? Just look. Look across the globe. For our Constitution,

00:24:54.560 even 250 years doesn't sound that long, and a lot of historians talk about that we're still 0.99

00:24:59.140 in our infancy, and they're right. But that document has been durable, and I believe that

00:25:04.260 it's the biblical principles that undergird it that make it such a durable text.

00:25:08.460 Yeah. I happen to have this quote from John Adams that I read the other day,

00:25:12.720 where he said, the general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general

00:25:17.720 principles of christianity as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of god

00:25:23.980 so i don't think anyone who studies the founding of our country could say well yeah they were just

00:25:29.800 kind of agnostic they had a relativistic moral worldview that's clearly not true and i think

00:25:36.860 everyone in america loves the fruits of this worldview and they think that they kind of think

00:25:43.020 like you know that they're self-evident that yeah of course we believe in not murdering and not

00:25:48.620 stealing because that's bad because it harms people but if you dig a little bit deeper and say

00:25:53.260 why is that your property why is it wrong to harm someone why is it wrong to abuse someone why is it

00:25:59.660 wrong to murder someone where does that right come from and who gets to decide if they want to take

00:26:05.280 it away that's i think where the agnostic or atheistic worldview really falls apart when you

00:26:11.140 keep asking why well you're touching on something that i don't think we understand the gravity of

00:26:17.300 not knowing these things and what it means for a culture and i mean this very seriously you know i

00:26:22.380 i believe that what what we're talking about is not just kind of important it is the bedrock of

00:26:28.780 what makes for a great civilization and if you were to be that person in the street honestly it

00:26:33.400 depresses me people laugh about these things but when someone's got a microphone says hey you know

00:26:37.500 name a country that starts with you, and they say Yugoslavia, and they're sitting in the United

00:26:42.060 States, and you think to yourself, oh, that's a funny thing. It's not funny to me. And that's

00:26:46.800 just one example. But if you don't understand what makes for a great nation, what are the

00:26:52.260 things that you will include and disclude in your family, in your nation? What are the things you

00:26:56.640 would say this far, but no further? What is it that defines you as an American? If you think

00:27:00.900 it's just individual, oh, just up to you, it's your truth and all of these kinds of things,

00:27:04.780 we will allow our nation to slip away in what we would say is the true community of Americans.

00:27:11.780 And what are the things that we hold together and say, no, this is who we are, and we won't

00:27:16.600 relinquish them. I don't think this is a small matter, and I think it's really important that

00:27:20.800 we hold on to them with the tenacity of our founders. Yeah, it is interesting as we've

00:27:26.080 gotten theologically dumber. We've also gotten just intellectually dumber. And those two things 0.99

00:27:32.640 seem somehow to go hand in hand. Unfortunately, it's true. I know we spoke a bit about Socrates

00:27:38.280 saying he was the smartest man on earth because he knew nothing, but Socrates didn't sit in his

00:27:44.920 ignorance. He made it clear that his life's journey was to continue to ask questions and

00:27:49.660 continue to learn. And I hope that more and more young people and people of all ages will take

00:27:54.680 seriously the incredible gift of intellect that God has given us and reason, right? If we are made

00:27:59.980 in his image. It can't be the way that we look. It must be the way that we behave. It must be the

00:28:04.720 way that we think, the way we rationalize, something deeper, even beyond the matter that

00:28:09.240 we see every day. And so it's what God calls us to. So I hope people will take it seriously.

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00:29:25.040 there is some bad news according to the according to data and there's some good news too there's

00:29:34.180 some hopeful news there's a study by Ligonier Ministries every few years they ask American

00:29:40.080 professing Christians what they believe about theology or what they believe about God and it's

00:29:47.120 really stunning how many people just kind of who call themselves Christians just kind of don't know

00:29:51.220 the basics of christianity 64 according to ligonier believe that everyone is born innocent

00:29:57.480 53 agree that most people are good by nature 53 believe that the holy spirit is some kind of force

00:30:04.920 rather than a personal being um 54 christian said christians should not allow their religious

00:30:12.440 beliefs to influence their political decisions at all um and so there's a lot of confusion

00:30:19.560 I think it comes from just not reading the Bible, maybe not being plugged into a local

00:30:24.620 church, not having wiser people disciple us, that we don't even realize sometimes as Christians

00:30:30.620 how infused our worldview is with secular ways of thinking, even about the trying God

00:30:37.140 himself, which is troubling.

00:30:38.880 You are so right.

00:30:39.860 I know that it's one of the things that we've lost is sort of an awe for the things of God.

00:30:45.200 And the early church wasn't that way.

00:30:47.120 And I hope we can return to that when we think that, you know, we know that people who were novitiates of sorts, they were seekers, they would spend a year or more in study.

00:30:57.800 You know, Constantine himself was buried in his baptismal clothes.

00:31:01.740 A lot of Christians don't know that.

00:31:03.180 He had been a Christian for a long time, but you see, you didn't walk into baptism mindlessly.

00:31:08.380 Matter of fact, there was a tradition that lingered for many, many years that any sin

00:31:13.780 that you committed after baptism was far worse because you understood the gravity of what

00:31:20.040 Jesus' death and resurrection really meant.

00:31:22.440 And so when you were baptized into faith, any sin that you took on had to be graver.

00:31:28.440 And so that's just one example to think you had to study for years to have the honor to

00:31:32.100 call yourself a little Christ or a Christian.

00:31:35.160 And today we have lost that. 0.79

00:31:36.620 And I hope we can regain it.

00:31:38.500 And some of these statistics can be a little bit disheartening.

00:31:42.260 Yes, but there are some encouraging things.

00:31:45.180 According to Barna, weekly Bible reading among U.S. adults has climbed to 42%.

00:31:50.840 This is up 12 points.

00:31:53.120 12 points is a lot.

00:31:54.220 That's a lot.

00:31:54.660 After a 15-year low in 2024, so just one year, 12-point climb.

00:31:59.760 Nearly half of Gen Z and millennials now engage in Scripture weekly.

00:32:03.200 millennials that's my generation saw a 16 increase in weekly bible readers from 2024

00:32:08.900 to 2025 now gen x millennials and gen z all lag behind in their belief that the bible is totally

00:32:17.260 accurate so it's interesting if you look at baby boomers and even the silent generation

00:32:22.180 more of them will say yeah the bible is totally accurate but i don't read it every week

00:32:26.400 but then you have the skeptics and the millennials and gen z and gen x who aren't totally sure if

00:32:32.940 it's reliable, but apparently they're reading it more. What do we make of this? And I really don't

00:32:37.820 know the answer. Well, I do think this idea that we're in a post-truth society is one of the

00:32:44.460 biggest lies that's been purported to the mass audience. And here's why. It can't be true. It

00:32:50.540 can't be true. There's something deep within us that wants to know, what do you mean? Is this

00:32:55.440 true or not true? A search for truth is deep within the heart of every human being. That's

00:33:00.060 what I believe. And that's why I think people are coming back to Scripture. They've seen the other

00:33:04.960 faux gods. They've seen these things purport to be great truth. And could Scripture be telling me

00:33:10.980 something that I really need to know? And so I'm encouraged by this. I really think, look at Bible

00:33:16.740 sales. I mean, Bible sales in five years have more than doubled. I think these are print Bibles when

00:33:21.900 most people have them on their phones. So I do think that we're up to something here, that people

00:33:27.500 are up to something. I hope that it is good for the museum here of the Bible where people will

00:33:31.900 come here and also dig deeper into what this book's all about. But I am encouraged. I think

00:33:37.220 faith, if you look at it through a long lens, is cyclical. It's one of the things that scripture

00:33:43.240 tells us is people wax and wane in terms of their own belief in God. And I think that's what we're

00:33:49.820 seeing is the pendulum is swinging back and it's an exciting day, I think.

00:33:54.100 Yeah. Another reason I think that this museum is so important is actually because of the increase on the reliance of AI, artificial intelligence. I think that is also driving a hunger for what is old, what is true, what is real, what is reliable, because it's really hard to tell between what is artificial and what is organic.

00:34:18.960 I would consider myself internet savvy and still on the young side of things.

00:34:23.660 I get duped by things online.

00:34:25.900 And then also I just see the outsource of our own intelligence and our own efforts to

00:34:31.980 AI.

00:34:32.420 We don't want to research anymore.

00:34:33.480 We don't want to ask questions.

00:34:34.440 We don't want to write speeches.

00:34:35.440 We don't want to dig into things.

00:34:37.140 So we just allow chat GPT or Grok to do that.

00:34:41.140 And, you know, there's going to be a contingency of society that goes there and just wants

00:34:46.140 the convenience of that.

00:34:47.220 And then there's going to be another group, I think, who is like, okay, I don't want to

00:34:51.340 outsource part of like the Imago Dei to a robot.

00:34:54.600 What is real?

00:34:56.000 What is true?

00:34:57.340 And that is one of the things that you get here.

00:34:59.760 You get real human intelligence, human diligence, Holy Spirit empowered congruence throughout

00:35:07.680 history.

00:35:08.780 And it's like, it's very, very refreshing to walk through here and just remember that there's

00:35:13.820 something both very natural about the Bible and very supernatural.

00:35:18.280 I appreciate the way you put that.

00:35:20.040 You know, to us, we are trying to convey the hope that is part of Scripture.

00:35:25.340 You know, very often people see the Bible as a book of thou shalt not, right?

00:35:29.820 It's the thing that's trying to dictate the way life should be.

00:35:32.960 But I think you point to a passage in Scripture that to me is one of the most striking, and

00:35:37.780 it's really where John the Baptist, Jesus' own cousin, has come to this low point where

00:35:42.940 he has his people go to Jesus and ask the question, are you the one? Are you the one?

00:35:47.920 I think it's one of the questions that resounds through the ages and even in the hallways of

00:35:52.700 this place. We want people to ask that question. Is there a central figure in the Bible? And what

00:35:58.480 I love is, you know, we believe that Jesus was not just man, he's God. So he's the omniscient

00:36:04.140 God. And instead of berating his cousin or giving him all of these reasons, he just says to the

00:36:10.500 people who have come, go tell John the things that you've seen. He doesn't try to make a case

00:36:16.620 for himself. He just says, you reason it out and see for yourself. And then goes on actually to

00:36:22.600 berate a generation that wants to be amused. And I'll just say this, Allie Beth, that a great

00:36:28.200 museum, and we hope to be that, a great museum is literally the opposite of what our culture

00:36:32.600 has traded inspiration for. Museums are places of inspiration. Now we fill ourselves with

00:36:38.020 amusement we've taken that word a right so that uh that's against right so we now are filled with

00:36:43.380 amusement which is literally emptiness it's the most vacuousness i've never thought sorry to

00:36:48.880 interrupt you but i've never thought of the word amusement like that like without musing exactly

00:36:53.900 without thinking right without inspiration i mean the muses at their very root that's what they were

00:36:58.720 intended to do right provide inspiration for all humankind and now too often we conflate the word

00:37:04.840 mausoleum, I think, with museum. It's not a place where old things come to die. It's a place where

00:37:11.060 things, as you said, that are unchanging, that are evergreen, that are powerful, that have a story to

00:37:15.700 tell, that are infused with a spirit and a power that goes beyond the artifact or the thing itself

00:37:20.400 that make you literally say the word G-O-D, that I know some people would take offense to even say

00:37:26.360 the word, but it's an exclamation. It's a prayer. It's that there must be something beyond me because

00:37:32.960 I've never seen anything like this or felt anything like this, because this has inspired

00:37:38.360 me to believe there's something beyond myself.

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00:38:49.380 slash alley. Okay, this might be a tough question, but if a family is listening to this and they're

00:38:59.120 like, okay, I'm game. I'm coming to Washington, D.C., and I want to take a tour, and they only

00:39:04.040 have one day, what would you recommend they start with? I'm sure it depends on the age and all

00:39:09.820 different things, but let's just assume they've got middle school kids and they want to come see

00:39:15.300 the Museum of the Bible. What's the schedule for the day? Great. Well, here you are. Now I am

00:39:20.640 choosing between my children because we have a floor that's dedicated to the impact of the Bible,

00:39:25.160 one that's dedicated to its history, one that's dedicated to its narrative. And that's probably

00:39:29.480 where I would take the kids is to the narrative part, because not only will they walk through a

00:39:33.580 village that has living history interpreters that won't know what an iPhone is, but you'll also see

00:39:39.960 what it might have been like in Jesus' day. So that's one, because you also get to walk through

00:39:45.160 the red sea and see the burning bush and so it's very interactive and kids love that third floor

00:39:50.640 so that that might be the first place to go but we also have a children's experience for the younger

00:39:54.900 kids as well my kids love that do they love that one yeah they loved it it really is so fun so if

00:39:59.900 you do have little kids there are things for little kids i will say some of the interactive

00:40:04.680 immersive experiences they're intense because the bible is intense and so there's some discretion

00:40:09.620 there for the little little ones but especially as you get older like those immersive experiences

00:40:14.860 are really cool. It's true. We even have a ride that folks get on, you get a little wet,

00:40:18.880 very little wet, but you get a little wet and get to see what many people don't know. And that is

00:40:23.680 that scripture is truly embedded right here in Washington, D.C. So you get to take a flight

00:40:28.480 around Washington and find these places, including in the Washington Monument,

00:40:32.400 that have scriptures or references to God in them.

00:40:35.260 Okay, would this summer be an especially good time to come because it's the 250th?

00:40:39.600 Oh, my goodness. The whole town is red, white, and blue. So if you have any hint of patriotism

00:40:44.660 in you, it's the right time to come. And try not to be overwhelmed, not just with the Museum of

00:40:48.920 the Bible, but with everything. Yeah, it's so much. But this really is. They're expecting

00:40:53.340 over 30 million visitors. No, 30 million. I thought you were going to say 30,000,

00:40:58.040 but 30 million sounds right. It's just crazy. Isn't that crazy? So it's an exciting time. I

00:41:02.640 mean, there's so much planned. If you think you know, you probably don't. So go on the White

00:41:08.300 House website, go on the website for the Smithsonian's, go on our website and see all

00:41:13.380 the events that are planned because it's going to be an extraordinary summer here in D.C.

00:41:17.320 Amazing. Well, thank you so much. And I really do genuinely just encourage everyone to come here. I've

00:41:22.460 gotten to come a few times and every time I learn something new. So thank you so much for all you do

00:41:28.420 and how seriously you take this role. And most of all, seriously, how seriously you take the

00:41:33.200 Word of God. So thank you so much. Thank you, too. I appreciate you and how you are standing

00:41:39.040 strong for what you believe. But also, you know, you're a little bit provocative, which I like as

00:41:43.320 well. You're willing to, you know, push a little bit because you know that the Word is durable,

00:41:49.200 and hard conversations are ones we have to have. So thank you for your work.

00:41:52.180 The truth can be provocative. Amen. Sure can. Thank you. Thanks.

00:42:03.200 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 04, 2026

Ep 1342 ｜ New Study： America is Biblically Illiterate. Here’s How to Change That ｜ Carlos Campo

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