Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1375 ｜ Cliffe Knechtle’s Most Controversial Take—And Why He’s Doubling Down

00:00:00.000 A new poll out shows that half of Gen Z says they won't go to church because of Christian

00:00:05.560 support for Donald Trump.

00:00:06.840 But is that really true?

00:00:08.300 What holds young people back from attending church?

00:00:11.660 What is the state of faith of Gen Z and college students in America today?

00:00:16.320 We've got apologists Cliff Koneckley and his son Stuart Koneckley.

00:00:20.580 They have been on campuses for years sharing the gospel, having a dialogue about Christianity,

00:00:26.700 about faith.

00:00:28.900 And they are here today.

00:00:30.000 to answer this question as well as to talk about Cliff's new book, Demolishing Doubt.

00:00:35.120 Why is doubt actually not as bad as some people think it is?

00:00:38.900 We are talking about this and so much more on today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:52.800 Cliff and Stuart, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

00:00:55.780 For maybe the five or so people on the internet who don't know who you are and what you do,

00:01:02.060 Cliff, who are you and what do you do?

00:01:04.920 Well, I was born at an early age and I came to faith in Christ because of mom and dad's

00:01:09.720 faithfulness in communicating the gospel to their six kids.

00:01:14.320 And what I do is I have the privilege of being married to Sharon and to be the father of

00:01:19.960 Robert, Stuart, and Ian.

00:01:21.000 And for years we traveled as a family from campus to campus around the United States.

00:01:25.360 And I would stand up at a highly trafficked spot on campus and speak for four or five

00:01:29.260 minutes and then say, that's all I had to say.

00:01:30.760 I thought we'd open it up for question, answer, agreement, disagreement, wherever you all

00:01:34.280 are coming from.

00:01:35.060 And we'd hold a four to five hour dialogue.

00:01:37.880 And now I have the privilege of having Stuart and his older brother, Robert, occasionally

00:01:41.500 come with me.

00:01:42.720 Stuart comes all the time and Robert comes occasionally.

00:01:45.220 And we continue to do the same thing on university campuses around the United States.

00:01:49.060 Okay, before the campuses, you were preaching and sharing the gospel in bars.

00:01:54.220 is that correct? Well, while I was in seminary at Gordon-Conwell, yes, I would go down Friday

00:02:00.320 night, Saturday night in inner city Boston and go into the combat zone, which is an area of the

00:02:04.600 city that Boston tried to legalize prostitution in order to contain it. And I would speak to men

00:02:09.780 on vacation in these bars, blue collar type bars, rough and tumble, television in the corner. Every

00:02:15.140 time the Bruins or Celtics would lose a game, some half drunk guy would stand up and curse God at the

00:02:19.140 top of his lungs. So I figured equal time. If you get to curse God at the top of your lungs, I could

00:02:23.640 to say something positive about God at the top of my lungs. And so did a bit of bar preaching

00:02:28.980 down there in Boston. Is there any story that sticks out from that particular era of the bar

00:02:34.980 preaching in Boston of when you had a meaningful conversation with someone and it felt like, okay,

00:02:40.160 they understood the gospel in that moment? Well, the conversation that sticks out most for me is

00:02:46.280 a reporter from the Boston Globe one night came with me. He was writing an article on born-again

00:02:51.540 Christians and their desire to share their faith. And he would follow me around from bar to bar.

00:02:57.220 And at the end of the evening, he said, Cliff, I got to go, but I got one question for you.

00:03:02.660 It seems to me that nobody has given you any type of positive response. So why on earth do you

00:03:07.420 continue to do this? And I said, well, sir, let me tell you, a person coming to faith is like a chain

00:03:12.620 with a lot of different links in it. Often I'm the first link or a middle link. Occasionally,

00:03:17.600 I have the privilege of being the last link. But I'm called to be faithful, and that means I'm

00:03:22.540 going to be the first link or the middle link in a person coming to faith, because a person doesn't

00:03:26.440 come to faith just boom out of the dark. Instead, it's a process of learning about who God is,

00:03:32.300 learning about who Christ is, learning about the cross of Christ and the need to put your faith

00:03:36.620 in Christ. And he walked away with a thoughtful look on his face. And then there were other times

00:03:41.860 when, yes, I had the privilege of seeing people come to faith, but that was pretty few and far

00:03:46.480 between. Began to work on a mission there in inner city Boston and saw some homeless people.

00:03:53.360 Now, of course, I never knew exactly what a homeless person meant when they said anything

00:03:56.980 they said. I mean, they were slaves of alcohol and drug addiction. So I learned to take everything

00:04:02.280 they said with a grain of salt. And what gave you the gumption to try that kind of evangelism?

00:04:09.720 I think a lot of people might be listening and they're like, gosh, I just couldn't overcome the

00:04:13.860 awkwardness or the fear, not knowing what to say, not knowing how to deal with the negative response

00:04:18.960 in the moment. But you decided to walk into a pretty hostile place and just say what's true.

00:04:26.380 Well, I really didn't have the courage to do it. In fact, the night that I spoke in my first bar,

00:04:30.600 I parked my car and started walking towards the bar door. And when I got there, I walked right

00:04:34.420 past it. And I walked around the block for an hour. And I eventually said to myself, well,

00:04:38.540 forget this. You're so scared. Get out of here. So I went back to my car and was opening my door

00:04:43.560 to go back up to Gordon-Conwell Seminary.

00:04:45.940 And the Holy Spirit brought to my mind the words of the author of Hebrews

00:04:49.160 in Hebrews 11, 32 to 38, where we read,

00:04:52.220 And what more shall I say?

00:04:53.280 I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets,

00:04:57.640 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised,

00:05:02.300 who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword,

00:05:07.260 whose women received back their dead, raised to life again.

00:05:09.980 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were stoned and put in prison, chained and put in prison. 0.98

00:05:16.340 And all of a sudden I began to ask myself, you know, Cliff, you claim to have faith in Christ, but you really are a wimp. 0.93

00:05:22.260 You don't have the guts to go into that bar and tell those men on vacation about Jesus Christ.

00:05:28.120 So convicted of my lack of faith, I turned around and walked back into the bar, stood up and started speaking.

00:05:34.000 And I started with 1 John 4.10, where we read,

00:05:36.440 this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his son as an atoning

00:05:41.400 sacrifice for our sins. And the bartender came running down the bar saying, you want to know

00:05:46.240 what God is? God is the cash register. And all I care about these men is the money they got in

00:05:50.340 their pockets. And I started dialoguing with him. Well, yeah, but there's more to life than money.

00:05:55.620 There isn't the opportunity to know a loving God. And he came around, grabbed my arm and

00:06:00.820 gently escorted me out. But that was the first time that I preached in a bar. And I'll never

00:06:05.960 forget it because I was so petrified about going in there. I was so scared. And once again, God

00:06:11.200 used his word, the scriptures to really convict me about, come on, buddy, suck it up and trust God

00:06:17.420 and go in and do it. And then you graduated for lack of a better term. I guess it wouldn't be

00:06:23.020 graduated, but you decided to transition to college campuses. That was your new ministry

00:06:28.820 after you got married, after you had kids. And what gave you the inspiration to do that?

00:06:33.600 Well, it started in 1980. I was on staff for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and there was

00:06:39.360 the InterVarsity Beach Evangelism Project in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And so I decided, man,

00:06:45.140 I'd like to really try this. And so I went out on the beach and stood up and began to preach,

00:06:52.680 and guys hopped off their towels and started telling me what a fool I was for believing in 0.98

00:06:56.220 Christ. And so I scrapped my outline and started dialoguing with them. And after finishing that, 0.80

00:07:01.560 some staff and students of InterVarsity said, hey, would you try this on our campus?

00:07:06.360 And so I said, sure. And I'll never forget the first campus was SUNY Albany in upstate New York.

00:07:12.480 Charlie Tobelman was the InterVarsity staff worker. He grew up in the mission field in

00:07:15.960 Central America. His dad and mom were missionaries. And as we're driving to campus, he says,

00:07:21.200 okay, now, Cliff, how many campuses have you done this before on? And I said, none. This is my first

00:07:27.340 one, Charlie, it got real quiet for the rest of the drive to campus. But we started and the Holy

00:07:33.320 Spirit drew a group of students who really wanted to fire questions and work through the issues. So

00:07:38.200 haven't stopped since. Wow. And Stuart, what was it like for you? You and your brothers actually

00:07:43.940 went with your parents to these college campuses. Did you have a sense of, okay, this is really cool.

00:07:50.480 This is neat. I want to do this. Or was it just the normal day-to-day part of your life?

00:07:55.500 I always say I still struggle with PTSD over when I was 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

00:08:04.120 Oh, my gosh.

00:08:05.060 UC Berkeley was probably the wildest one.

00:08:07.680 I still have visions.

00:08:09.140 I don't have many visions from when I was three years old.

00:08:11.620 But the visions of especially this one guy.

00:08:13.840 You probably remember his name.

00:08:14.700 Mom probably remembers his name.

00:08:15.820 I do not.

00:08:16.520 Chris.

00:08:16.820 Chris would come out, hair below his backside, hadn't cut it probably in over a decade,

00:08:22.900 and would just spit in his face.

00:08:24.700 And he definitely wasn't the only one, right?

00:08:26.480 Berkeley was known for this.

00:08:27.940 Exactly.

00:08:28.500 Literally spitting right in his face.

00:08:31.300 And I never saw him swing, but just screaming.

00:08:35.780 And so I would run out and grab hold of my dad's leg thinking I was going to save him at the age of three.

00:08:39.600 Yeah.

00:08:40.620 And that was definitely not the only one.

00:08:43.120 That would happen at numerous universities.

00:08:45.060 That was kind of my go-to thing to run, grab your leg.

00:08:47.580 Yeah.

00:08:48.040 So no, I cannot say I wanted to do what my dad did when I was three or when I was a teenager and beyond that.

00:08:54.700 but he was a very kind recruiter when I got asked to be a pastor

00:08:59.940 at a few different churches down south.

00:09:02.540 No, he wasn't really a recruiter, but he definitely wanted to work together.

00:09:06.000 But he always respected, just like a lot of dads too,

00:09:08.500 probably your dad, probably your hubby's dad,

00:09:10.540 where it's the balance of would love to work together,

00:09:14.600 but I want you to do what you want to do and what God is calling you to.

00:09:18.400 But I got to the point of saying, hey, look,

00:09:20.660 the culture that I'm familiar with is this one with my dad and my brother

00:09:24.680 were there as well and beyond. And so it started off pastoring, but then naturally this became a

00:09:30.220 gigantic evangelistic program within our church. And so I got really excited about it. I, like the

00:09:37.340 majority of millennials and Gen Zers, during COVID, it was just anybody and everybody trying

00:09:43.880 out social media and just messing around. And I never wanted a personal account because I knew

00:09:47.360 that'd be a huge time suck. But I had a few guys on our board and then at our church say,

00:09:52.600 just start social media we guarantee you it would fly so i said no at first but i did say it to him

00:09:58.820 10 years before like i cannot believe the ministry you know the board has tried it on black

00:10:04.640 entertainment even and it's never really taken off from a media perspective it would grow it

00:10:10.940 would balloon on college campuses but sure enough these little clips from tiktok especially i would

00:10:16.820 just find ones on free speech i didn't hit the gospel until like after two months because i want

00:10:21.360 to do pre-evangelism stuff predominantly on him. And sure enough, these things just popped off

00:10:26.720 and then focused on the gospel interactions after about two months. And it just grew and grew and

00:10:31.580 grew. And I think the Holy Spirit timing and COVID timing, then on top of social media acting like

00:10:39.160 the Roman road, like one pastor recently said to us, the combination of it all really provided

00:10:46.080 the opportunity to reach a lot of non-believers. And some of my friends who went to Christian

00:10:51.060 college were reaching out to me saying, Stuart, we know, you know, we've been atheists for

00:10:56.400 years, even though we go to Christian college, we're believers now because we've seen these

00:11:00.740 discussions and so many atheists come into the faith.

00:11:04.400 So that did not happen before social media.

00:11:06.520 So we were tremendously blessed, even though there's a dark side of social media, that

00:11:11.060 as odd as it is, guys and women would watch what we were doing, especially his old stuff

00:11:18.740 probably on loop on day long car rides and they would come to the faith probably out of boredom

00:11:26.960 eventually in those car rides on loop. So that's the benefit I think truly of social media acting

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00:12:44.820 That's GoJavity.com slash Allie. You know, you were talking about UC Berkeley, the guy with the

00:12:54.440 long hair who was screaming at your face. I know you've had a lot of angry people. I spoke at UC

00:12:58.480 Berkeley. It's been a long time, probably 2018, because it was before we had kids. And that was

00:13:05.620 also probably the craziest campus experience and I haven't been to as many campuses as y'all

00:13:10.400 but I created what I thought was a totally neutral talk it wasn't even actually theological the free

00:13:16.880 speech professor asked me to give a talk about what was going on at the time which was Kavanaugh

00:13:21.360 and try to help them understand from a left and right perspective but also just like my personal

00:13:27.740 conservative perspective what was going on and I knew that this was a liberal campus and I was

00:13:32.900 trying to be so neutral and so moderate in my approach while still unapologetically being a

00:13:39.760 conservative the entire time I was talking there were people screaming at me from the crowd I'm

00:13:46.540 like and like laughing they would uproar like it was they would just mock me for things that I'm

00:13:52.980 like I literally feel like I'm in a different country and like they are hearing a different

00:13:57.120 language than the one I'm speaking I was so out of sorts and then we had a question and answer

00:14:02.620 and yeah there would be some were respectful but the the respectful kid it was funny they waited

00:14:09.660 until after to come up and talk to me but it was the kids who hated me and hated what i was saying

00:14:14.340 that would raise their hand just to scream at me and it would be like do you have a question no you

00:14:18.760 don't have a question so anyway uc brickley i guess hasn't changed very much it's crazy but my

00:14:24.600 question for you is is there one particular thing that you say that tends to get or that you say

00:14:30.740 that tends to get the most vitriol.

00:14:34.200 Like, you know, when you talk about this particular subject

00:14:36.360 or when you say this,

00:14:37.660 there's going to be someone who just loses it.

00:14:40.420 We have friends who are racists.

00:14:43.500 That's what they accuse you of?

00:14:46.120 That was especially yours.

00:14:47.880 You're probably most viral.

00:14:49.260 You told Tucker Carlson that, right?

00:14:50.780 You know, a big clip with Tucker on that one

00:14:52.780 where it was mainly a Texas state,

00:14:54.800 but you've said it on multiple sites.

00:14:56.860 I have friends who are racists. 1.00

00:14:59.100 Yeah, two lesbians stepped out of the crowd 1.00

00:15:00.580 and they were obviously making a point. 1.00

00:15:02.440 They were kissing and hugging

00:15:04.140 and feeling each other right in front of me.

00:15:07.360 And so we began to dialogue with them.

00:15:09.420 And at one point I said,

00:15:10.560 well, yeah, I have friends who are racist.

00:15:12.240 And they said, oh, no, you can't. 0.79

00:15:13.360 You cannot have a friend who's a racist.

00:15:16.020 And I said, that's where you and I disagree.

00:15:17.860 I'm convinced that every single human being

00:15:19.760 is created in the image of God

00:15:21.140 and we all have equal value.

00:15:22.560 And secondly, I'm convinced we all are sinners. 0.99

00:15:25.320 I'm a dirty, rotten sinner. 0.99

00:15:26.820 And guess what? 1.00

00:15:27.360 You two are sinners as well.

00:15:28.780 But God loves sinners.

00:15:29.760 and that's why Christ died on the cross, to pay the penalty for our sin, to forgive us and to give

00:15:34.000 us eternal life. And I'm going to have friends with anybody. I work in prisons, and I got

00:15:38.460 acquaintances and tried, while I was in seminary and went every Monday night to the Lawrence County

00:15:44.380 House of Correction, I tried to build a friendship with a guy who'd kidnapped little boys, sexually

00:15:48.880 molested them, and murdered them. And then when I would go into the gym to play basketball with

00:15:53.400 other inmates, they'd say, hey man, how can you talk to this guy? He's a piece of dirt. And I said, 1.00

00:15:57.780 looking, guys. I know what he's done, and it's horrendous what he's done, but he's still a human

00:16:01.700 being created in the image of God. And so that's such news for a lot of people today who love the

00:16:06.400 cancel culture and canceling people right and left. No, we don't cancel people. We offer people

00:16:12.080 the grace of God. We don't compromise. We don't compromise justice and integrity and sexual purity

00:16:18.320 and all, but we're going to try and befriend everybody the same way Jesus did. Yeah. It's

00:16:24.440 interesting that there's a lot of people who would deny the reality of objective morality and

00:16:29.600 objective truth but they are very quick to draw hard lines around what they yeah what they consider

00:16:37.520 to be immoral or moral you bet it's not really the it's not the existence of truth that they

00:16:42.860 have a problem with it's just how we actually define it and who we define as the authority

00:16:47.840 that's what i find anyway not just with people who profess to be atheists but also those who

00:16:52.540 call themselves progressive Christians. It seems to be who is the authority, which goes all the

00:16:59.120 way back to the garden. Did God really say? How about that? What has changed, you think,

00:17:05.780 on college campuses since you started in the early 80s to today?

00:17:11.280 Well, one of the reasons I'm so glad Stuart comes with me, and one of the reasons I'm so glad I've

00:17:15.640 got Sharon as my wife to talk to me about this is people are more emotionally fragile today than

00:17:21.300 they were when we began back in the 80s and 90s. To give you an example, my dad grew up in Switzerland

00:17:28.300 and when he was 18 he sat up in the Alps with a gun watching Hitler's panzer divisions

00:17:34.600 roll towards Switzerland. My grandpa, my dad's dad, was in the front lines with his gun.

00:17:42.020 Today when Donald Trump wins the election, university students go to a crying room

00:17:46.560 to get counseling. Give me a break. What emotional fragility, what incredible emotional weakness

00:17:55.800 today compared to the young 18-year-olds who fought against Adolf Hitler. So emotional fragility

00:18:03.300 is there. And I'm so grateful for Stuart and for my wife, Sharon, because they've helped me

00:18:07.640 understand that and helped me not be quite as harsh and quite as direct as I have often,

00:18:13.160 unfortunately have been. So that's one point. The second point would be sexual immorality is

00:18:19.440 embraced in a way that it's not sexual immorality. It's normal. So moral relativism and sexual

00:18:27.520 immorality has become so commonplace that if you stand against that, you are really, really weird.

00:18:34.000 Thirdly, unfortunately, what has become too infirmly entrenched is, unless you can prove

00:18:39.960 but scientifically it's not true.

00:18:41.960 I mean, it's fascinating to watch one group is totally into relativism

00:18:45.040 and the other group is into, unless you can scientifically prove it, it's not true.

00:18:48.640 And so to be able to address both of those camps is a challenge,

00:18:51.600 and they both are more and more firmly entrenched.

00:18:54.200 And I think the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is based on evidence, not scientific proof,

00:18:59.140 the gospel of Jesus Christ, which allows for moral relativism in certain areas.

00:19:04.040 You eat food offered to idols? Okay.

00:19:06.840 You don't eat food offered to idols, Paul writes? Okay.

00:19:09.540 Don't make a big issue out of it.

00:19:10.980 So there is some moral relativism in life.

00:19:13.560 And yet there is really a strong objective morality that comes from the character of

00:19:18.720 the eternal God.

00:19:19.840 And so it's a real challenge to try and communicate to students who are firmly entrenched in moral

00:19:27.060 relativism that, no, you can't live your life that way.

00:19:30.420 I don't care if you're a liberal.

00:19:32.200 You know very well that your critique of the conservatives is a moral, ethical critique. 1.00

00:19:37.020 You're not letting enough immigrants in. 0.54

00:19:39.540 you're elitist. And the conservatives are the same way. And you live a sexually twisted life,

00:19:45.060 a perverted life. So both are appealing to the moral argument, which I think is exciting because

00:19:52.140 it really shows that we do have consciences, which means there really is a God. The last point

00:19:56.700 that I have found that's been a big switch, when I started 11 years ago with him, I did not see,

00:20:02.000 for the first few years at least, any type of devaluing of human life, the relativizing of

00:20:10.280 human value like I do today. A couple years ago, we tag team, obviously, and he tagged me out,

00:20:20.160 he tags in, and this group follows me, very, very progressive group, to a corner where I was eating

00:20:29.380 a sandwich. And they corner me and they say, hey, how dare you say that you are going to try and

00:20:35.600 save the life of a suicidal 16-year-old woman? That's devaluing her freedom and autonomy. 0.93

00:20:44.160 If anything, you should aid her in her decision to kill herself. Now, they wouldn't say get a 0.98

00:20:52.460 noose or push her off a cliff. They were more so saying, though, a type of euthanization of like

00:20:59.080 the elderly get, you know, whether it's a pill or something along those lines. And so they pressed

00:21:03.980 me for a good hour in a very angry way. And it was a fairly big group. And I was shell shocked,

00:21:10.580 completely shocked. And I have a background in psychology. So you wouldn't think I'd be that

00:21:16.740 shocked if I was up on the times. But sure enough, we kind of got around to the point of, do you guys

00:21:23.420 really mean this? Do you truly mean this? I think they got to the point of starting to realize just

00:21:29.020 what they were saying. And they were relativizing morality, objective value, where do we get that

00:21:35.400 from? So we see that in countries like Switzerland and many others that are pushing that type of

00:21:41.100 thinking even more so than we are now. But that's one that I see where personal autonomy and freedom

00:21:47.560 is considered really the top idea and thing to pursue even more so than the value of human life.

00:21:55.180 Yeah. You know, my first book that we were talking about before, I talk about the cult of self-affirmation and kind of like it's almost like a religious act of believing in the God of self and like the exchange of the God of scripture for the God of self.

00:22:09.780 And I talk about the two highest values, I think, in that cult of self-affirmation being

00:22:15.540 authenticity and autonomy, which can both be good things.

00:22:19.700 We believe that we should be in control of our bodies and that the government shouldn't

00:22:23.660 tell us that we have to take a vaccine or we have to do something with our bodies that

00:22:27.620 we don't believe in.

00:22:29.000 And then authenticity, you don't want to lie.

00:22:31.120 You don't want to pretend to be something you're not.

00:22:33.240 But when those two things are untethered to objective truth, to a higher authority, then

00:22:39.460 they become excuses to sin. If autonomy is your highest value, then you can use it as an excuse

00:22:45.380 for abortion or for suicide, because this is my highest value. If authenticity is your highest

00:22:51.320 value, then you can self-identify. Why can't you become a woman? Why can't you identify how you 0.98

00:22:57.500 want to sexually? All of these things, including empathy, people get so mad when I talk about this

00:23:02.140 because they believe empathy is the highest value. But what you just described is empathy

00:23:06.800 you run amok. Empathy for someone's choice and for someone's feeling so much that you have to

00:23:12.200 affirm. But if empathy is untethered to objective truth, it leads you to make really stupid immoral 1.00

00:23:18.360 decisions. And so kind of going back again to authority, all of these things that I think a lot 0.99

00:23:24.280 of progressives and atheists value, empathy and compassion and love and tolerance and inclusion

00:23:30.160 and authority or autonomy, authenticity, they're good when in submission to absolute truth. When

00:23:39.320 they're not, they're actually very dangerous. And it sounds like you're kind of seeing that

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00:24:48.860 you know when i talk to um pregnancy center directors one thing that they will say that 0.98

00:24:58.980 has changed over the years is that the women coming in are more calloused than before they

00:25:06.540 can show them a sonogram of their baby and not every time but more likely than it used to be

00:25:11.580 those women will say i don't care i don't care about the heartbeat i don't care i know that i 1.00

00:25:15.800 want an abortion. I'm going to get an abortion now. Whereas before, women would come in more 0.93

00:25:21.620 open. It sounds like you're seeing, yes, more emotional fragility. Are you also seeing an 0.98

00:25:27.020 increased callousness to the truth or to true biblical compassion on these college campuses?

00:25:36.040 Yes, for sure. People love, students love to say, oh yeah, empathy. You can get that from evolution

00:25:42.680 or altruism you can get that from evolution that is such a crazy stretch i always like to say

00:25:51.320 fine you can get a level empathy of empathy for your tribe coming out of evolution but ultimately

00:25:57.320 it would be tremendously selfish and dangerous for you to sacrifice for somebody else in a

00:26:03.860 different tribe because you would be hurting your own tribe in doing so so the judeo-christian

00:26:09.220 understanding of empathy, altruism, sacrifice, compassion, all of that is a joke and actually is

00:26:17.380 harming your group if it's simply from an evolutionary standpoint. So for a Christian, 0.71

00:26:24.300 we try and get to the point of saying, hey, Nietzsche would say that you claim to be an

00:26:30.200 atheist, but if you are living by sacrifice, a care for human rights, compassion, love,

00:26:36.020 than you claim to be an atheist when really you're just a Christian dressed up as supposedly an

00:26:42.460 atheist. I think you are. And that's Nietzsche, who's kind of the top prophet, if you will,

00:26:47.000 of atheism in the last hundred years. So we see that callousness certainly. And yet at the same

00:26:54.380 time, people like to say, oh, no, no, I'm a very empathetic person and I'm a pursuer of human

00:27:01.760 rights. But the idea of Jesus Christ and sacrificing for your very enemies, that idea

00:27:09.960 is completely going away. And the idea of forgiveness, one philosopher was recently

00:27:15.440 talking about, is completely slipping away. The idea of forgiveness and how that used to be a

00:27:20.640 virtue, a strong virtue, even in our nation, is a foreign concept. Now, it's no, stand for the

00:27:28.100 truth we like justice we even potentially like judgment day this idea of forgiveness

00:27:33.340 no that's that's going to harm people actually i wonder if charlie's assassination had a particular

00:27:41.460 impact on y'all um because he was doing something that you have been doing for decades in that

00:27:49.040 moment that he was shot and killed he was dialoguing with people he was saying things that

00:27:54.680 are uncomfortable but true sharing the gospel sharing the truth about sexuality and gender

00:27:59.960 and i know that you all have worked i think with turning point in the past and some of these campus

00:28:04.900 tours so can you talk about what it was like to learn that he had been killed on campus and then

00:28:11.080 what your ministry has been like since then well obviously that was an incredible tragedy 0.99

00:28:18.200 an act of violence off the charts, pathetic. 0.93

00:28:22.080 Charlie was an incredible man of faith. 0.96

00:28:24.360 One of the things I respected most about him was when he had us speak with him,

00:28:29.020 we signed a form that said,

00:28:31.220 I am not going to endorse any politician or any political party. 1.00

00:28:35.300 And I respected that highly because I did not want to be involved with Christian nationalism, 0.89

00:28:40.620 meaning by that America is the greatest country and whatever we do is good. 0.90

00:28:45.380 I am far too big a skeptic to buy that

00:28:48.860 I am convinced that America is a great country when America follows Jesus Christ

00:28:53.040 And when America turns its back on Christ, we become a very ugly country 0.59

00:28:57.440 I don't care if it's slavery, child sex traffic trade, the exportation of pornography, greed, abuse of power 0.86

00:29:04.900 And I really appreciated the way Charlie

00:29:07.140 Continued to grow as a follower of Christ and continue to make the number one priority in his life Christ

00:29:13.680 And then, of course, he called people to be involved politically.

00:29:16.880 And I respected that highly and commended him for his clear priority of putting Christ number one.

00:29:24.960 I'm a real fan of Abraham Lincoln, who during the Civil War,

00:29:28.780 a minister came up to him and said,

00:29:30.120 Mr. Lincoln, let's pray that God is on our side in this horrible conflict.

00:29:34.560 And Lincoln shot back, no, I'm not going to pray that God is on our side.

00:29:38.720 let's pray that we are on God's side

00:29:41.180 for God's side is always right.

00:29:43.880 You take God out of the picture

00:29:45.080 and you're up a creek without a paddle

00:29:46.240 when it comes to explaining to me

00:29:47.620 why justice, why love, why integrity.

00:29:51.520 If it's all relative, it's all a crapshoot

00:29:53.200 and it really doesn't matter what you do.

00:29:55.240 And if you think about it,

00:29:56.060 if there is no day of judgment

00:29:57.080 and no heaven and no hell,

00:29:58.100 then we all know where Mother Teresa

00:29:59.340 and Adolf Hitler are, the same place, 0.84

00:30:01.640 the fertilizer pit, rotting.

00:30:03.680 But if there is a God

00:30:04.740 and there is a day of judgment

00:30:05.920 and there is eternal life

00:30:07.060 either in heaven or hell, 0.59

00:30:08.060 then all of a sudden it does ultimately matter what Hitler versus Teresa do and so I think

00:30:14.580 Charlie had a tremendous ability to articulate very clearly what a brilliant guy he was and what

00:30:19.320 a reader he was the difference between justice and injustice he articulated magnificently

00:30:25.900 a biblical view of abortion of sexuality he was very respectful of students as he would challenge

00:30:33.620 them to think more deeply but he did it in a highly respectful way and to be honest with you

00:30:38.000 every encounter that I've seen Charlie have with somebody I had the utmost respect for. So the

00:30:43.920 vitriol that was directed against him was pathetic, I feel. Now, was he a little bit more radical 0.99

00:30:50.620 politically, especially when he started out? And did he say some things probably that I wouldn't

00:30:54.200 agree with? Yes, I'm sure. I'm sure I say things he wouldn't have agreed with. So we all are unique

00:30:58.600 individuals. We're not carbon copies. But I have profound respect for the way he loved Christ

00:31:03.680 and insisted upon thinking carefully

00:31:06.380 through the difficult issues

00:31:07.820 that we all are confronted by in our culture.

00:31:11.360 And what about you?

00:31:12.720 I mean, I know that you all are bold

00:31:14.440 and you'll know that, you know,

00:31:16.300 I love the quote that says,

00:31:18.040 we are immortal until God calls us home.

00:31:19.740 He's totally sovereign over day of birth and day of death.

00:31:23.140 But have you all been thinking any differently

00:31:25.620 since September about visiting

00:31:27.400 these sometimes hostile campuses?

00:31:29.720 Yeah, for the first time,

00:31:30.560 we've had to certainly have security.

00:31:33.680 And we, I'm not going to say too much in terms of that, but we have some ideas moving forward that we want to honor our dedication, your dedication to free speech and how important it is and how Charlie would so frequently talk about it and how violence begins when talk ends and these discourses end.

00:31:55.300 And so for me, being around Charlie and the future things we had planned together was very exciting.

00:32:05.940 And the misunderstanding, we've had people leave our church.

00:32:10.840 We've been ostracized when I led the vigil in our town, which is a very far left town.

00:32:16.040 So definitely had a lot of backlash.

00:32:17.840 And whenever I get that backlash, I'm always surprised, shocked by what even close friends say about him and what he did.

00:32:25.300 because it's conspiratorial to that extent of what he said and what he did.

00:32:32.380 So that's tragic in my mind.

00:32:34.900 We know what it's like to really get poked by somebody who doesn't understand what you're saying,

00:32:40.520 has tremendous blinders, making tremendous presuppositions about what you're saying and your character.

00:32:46.360 Eventually, you're going to, let's just say, speak back.

00:32:50.120 And it's not always going to be gentle.

00:32:51.840 Yeah.

00:32:52.060 But if it's overly – and if it's overly gentle, that's actually not very effective in helping that person really think.

00:32:57.260 Some of the people that we debate hardest against are the ones we get the biggest hugs from after our time together.

00:33:03.900 That's the best.

00:33:04.640 It's the best, isn't it?

00:33:05.680 Yes.

00:33:05.900 And so many people don't get that who are not part of these conversations, who are not in the Coliseum.

00:33:14.180 And so for me, it's definitely made changes in my mind as a young dad.

00:33:19.220 like he was a young dad that definitely played a role and and so moving forward though we

00:33:25.780 definitely don't want to lose our boldness we martyrdom is a fantastic thing according to our

00:33:32.120 faith and the history of our faith and yet at the same time yeah we don't want to be cavalier about

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00:34:27.960 discount today when you go to legacybox.com slash Allie. Okay, about Gen Z, which before this we

00:34:39.520 were trying to calculate how old is Gen Z? Once you're millennial and you're like,

00:34:44.300 30s paying your mortgage you forget how young the young people are but y'all are around these

00:34:49.480 gen z-ers a lot and so you all have special insight into maybe what this poll says it was

00:34:55.320 just released although it was conducted back in 2024 the billy graham center research institute

00:35:00.180 fielded a survey of gen z adults um one of the statements in the survey was christians support

00:35:05.960 of trump has made me less likely to go to church half of respondents about 48 percent agreed with

00:35:12.520 that statement in one way or another. And then, of course, when it breaks down by political

00:35:17.380 leanings, it's mostly progressive Gen Zers who are saying that. But overall, about 48%

00:35:23.040 are saying that. I have my own thoughts and skepticism a little bit about that. But I wonder

00:35:28.700 if you feel like there's any truth to that. And if not, what is the thing that keeps young people

00:35:36.240 from going to church. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A grad student stepped out of the

00:35:43.060 crowd and said, why are you here, Cliff? And I said, I'm here to introduce people to my closest

00:35:46.980 friend, Jesus Christ. He said, let me ask you again, why are you really here? I said, I am here

00:35:50.960 to introduce people to Christ. He said, let me ask you a third time, why are you really here? And I

00:35:56.080 said, I am here to introduce people to Christ. He said, okay, I believe you. I said, well, why did

00:36:00.440 you have to ask me three times? He said, because I'm convinced you're really probably here for a

00:36:04.440 political motive. All right, so the challenge for us is to communicate Christ in a way that

00:36:11.700 challenges people to seriously consider Christ. We're trying to wipe away smokescreens, and one

00:36:17.160 of the smokescreens that people use to run away from Christ is by stereotyping us politically.

00:36:22.640 So I make a real attempt, as does Stuart, to not address too many political issues. Instead,

00:36:29.620 we're going to address moral issues. So we're going to address every ethical moral issue.

00:36:35.940 But I learned from Billy Graham that we've got to be very careful how closely wedded to a politician

00:36:42.180 we get. Dr. Graham got too close to Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal broke out

00:36:48.700 and he began to realize I made a big mistake. So I want to be very, very careful, but I am

00:36:56.140 insistent upon addressing every ethical issue. I don't care if it's abortion, homosexuality, 1.00

00:37:02.260 immigration, feeding the poor, what the issue is. We're going to address it from a biblical 0.96

00:37:08.180 perspective. In other words, we're teaching a biblical worldview. But we are very careful

00:37:13.480 not to wet ourselves too closely to a politician. And to be honest with you, I have strong

00:37:19.940 disagreements with my liberal friends, and I have strong disagreements with my conservative friends.

00:37:23.580 I'm convinced that the solution to America's problems is not a political solution.

00:37:27.240 Instead, it's Jesus Christ who comes to change the human heart.

00:37:31.100 Now, obviously, when the human heart is changed and when you embrace a biblical worldview,

00:37:35.880 then you probably will vote differently politically.

00:37:39.620 Yes, that is true.

00:37:41.120 That is true.

00:37:41.600 What about you?

00:37:42.860 Yeah, the studies that I've seen is still the reason why young people don't go to church

00:37:47.780 is one, hypocrisy, two, judgmentalism that they see in the church. 0.88

00:37:52.220 and then the most recent poll i saw was over 70 percent of gen zers don't go to church because

00:37:57.060 they don't receive answers to the hard questions that they have so it's a blind belief that they

00:38:02.740 think they're just being asked to accept that's why i love what you do we try and do it where it's

00:38:08.680 no there's reasons to the hope that we have we're not just being gullible when we weren't just born

00:38:13.020 into the faith although i don't judge my friends who were just born in faith and haven't really

00:38:16.440 thought through it much so but that stat is a lot tougher for me and i it makes sense in some ways

00:38:25.180 when we spoke before the president i don't know two years ago that was when he made that mistake

00:38:32.100 that went quite viral where he said i'm a christian i'm not a christian and at least it sounded like

00:38:39.960 he said, I'm not a Christian. And so that went crazy. That went everywhere. And no, I think

00:38:46.300 whether it's Melania, President Trump, I'm not going to speak for their faith positions specifically.

00:38:54.700 I've already done that before and got in trouble for it. So for me, it's more so

00:39:00.000 whether it's just a label or whether you truly believe in the historical Christ,

00:39:05.440 I think you got to get to the point of hopefully saying, hey, if I'm going to go by the label, let me be true and honest to what a real Christian is and who specifically Jesus Christ is.

00:39:20.920 And we've seen the president in worship meetings.

00:39:24.580 We've seen him in a lot of prayer with other pastors.

00:39:28.160 But at the same time, I understand the human ego can come out.

00:39:33.100 and at the same time he had, gosh, I spoke, I did a commentary on it, but I can't remember exactly

00:39:40.560 what he said. He said something that a lot of pastors took as pretty blasphemous. And so you

00:39:50.020 see the wavering for sure. But I think the idea, again, it's like the story of Zacchaeus, Luke

00:39:56.400 chapter 19. When Zacchaeus climbs that sycamore tree, he's not looking at the crowd. He's looking

00:40:01.920 directly at Jesus Christ. And so whether President Trump seems like he's living as a Christian or

00:40:07.220 not, I hope this 48% doesn't ultimately decide whether to follow Christ or go to church based

00:40:12.640 off of Donald Trump. I hope they look directly over the head of Donald Trump, even us, directly

00:40:18.960 to Christ. Because there's way too many spiritual leaders who are falling right now into whether

00:40:24.760 it's an affair or something of the sort. And people are losing their faith that we know because

00:40:31.160 their spiritual leaders are falling and i always say guys that's just such it's so misplaced

00:40:36.400 it's you got to look directly at christ and who christ is and decide on who he is and whether to 0.93

00:40:41.140 have a relationship with him or not because he didn't have a hypocritical bone in his body

00:40:44.680 yeah to follow him or not yeah you know i think if those who you know they used trump or supportive

00:40:51.440 trump as their impediment to not go to church they really got to know the people who vote for

00:40:56.820 Trump, they would realize that most people, like most voters across the board, are not idolizing

00:41:02.100 a particular politician. This is one part of their life. They feel a responsibility to engage

00:41:07.140 politically. But I think a lot of people I see this assume I've been called this myself, even

00:41:12.880 though this is so not characteristic of who I am or what I believe. Oh, you just are a Trump

00:41:17.720 apologist. You're just MAGA. You just are going to support everything he says. And I'm like,

00:41:21.800 that is not historically true at all. And you don't understand, that's not my worldview and

00:41:26.860 not my focus. But I think that is a presupposition that a lot of people have. And really, I just

00:41:33.040 don't find that to be characteristic as someone who has lived in the Bible belt my whole life.

00:41:37.160 It's an important thing. Politics matter because policy matters, because people matter.

00:41:40.740 You got two sinners on the ballot and you have to pick one of them if you're going to vote.

00:41:45.140 That's how most Christians that I know think about it. It's not like, oh, this guy is perfect

00:41:49.480 and I want him to be my pastor.

00:41:51.840 I wouldn't want Kamala Harris to be my pastor either.

00:41:55.580 And so I just, I do wonder,

00:41:58.580 you know, I heard a testimony recently of a woman

00:42:00.900 and she was talking about,

00:42:02.420 she was very progressive.

00:42:03.380 She was secular.

00:42:04.100 She was in an open marriage. 0.75

00:42:05.660 She had this idea about Christians 0.63

00:42:07.300 that Christians just can't bet

00:42:09.200 on their own self-sufficiency. 1.00

00:42:10.520 So in their intellectual weakness,

00:42:12.540 these are her words,

00:42:13.920 they had to find some answer to fill the gaps,

00:42:16.880 you know, of all of their misunderstandings.

00:42:19.240 And she read a book and she was like, it offended me on every page.

00:42:23.520 I was offended on every page because of what this person was saying about sexuality and

00:42:29.480 the gospel and our need for a savior.

00:42:31.640 And she, but she said at the end of that book, I saw my sin at the end of it.

00:42:37.020 I realized, okay.

00:42:38.300 And she was like, I honestly didn't need all of the other logical scientific stuff.

00:42:42.880 She said her husband needed that.

00:42:43.960 She was like, I didn't, I saw my sin.

00:42:45.300 And that was like enough.

00:42:46.460 And that just made me think of this, that she would have said before she saw her sin,

00:42:51.400 oh, it's all these things. 0.99

00:42:52.720 It's Christians are weak. 1.00

00:42:54.000 Christians are dumb. 1.00

00:42:55.040 Christians are hypocrites. 1.00

00:42:56.240 She might have even said they support Donald Trump. 1.00

00:42:58.900 But at the end of the day, it was really that she just didn't see her sin.

00:43:04.080 And when she saw her sin, none of those other things mattered.

00:43:07.660 And so when I see a poll like this, I'm like, I don't know.

00:43:11.440 I don't know.

00:43:12.080 I think for all of us, not just them, for all of us, it's deeper.

00:43:14.940 It's, we don't want to see our sin because it's hard.

00:43:18.120 It's hard.

00:43:20.360 You recently wrote a book about doubt, came out in May, called Demolishing Doubt.

00:43:26.780 And I want to hear more about why you wrote that.

00:43:30.320 Tim Keller, and I wonder if you agree with this, he said that a faith without doubt is

00:43:33.760 like a body without antibodies that you needed, actually, to work out your faith.

00:43:40.600 So I'm curious what you think of that and then why you decided to write this book. 0.73

00:43:44.480 There is an amazing lie in our culture, and that lie is Christians don't think, scientists think.

00:43:51.340 Christians don't think, materialists, secularists, they are the real thinkers.

00:43:56.140 I totally disagree with that.

00:43:58.560 Jesus said, beware of false prophets.

00:44:00.220 They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.

00:44:04.060 Jesus taught us to be skeptics, but not cynics.

00:44:08.860 A skeptic is someone who refuses to believe blindly.

00:44:13.360 And in John 14, 11, Jesus says,

00:44:15.300 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me,

00:44:18.060 or else believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.

00:44:21.460 Believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.

00:44:26.480 So a follower of Christ is not someone who blindly believes.

00:44:29.620 A follower of Christ is someone who wants to struggle through the issues.

00:44:33.080 Why?

00:44:33.660 Because good and evil are so intertwined that if you're not a skeptic,

00:44:37.140 you will have your lunch eaten for you.

00:44:40.100 I am shocked by the man who said to me,

00:44:42.480 quote, all I need to know about Islam is 9-11. That is narrow-minded bigotry. If I'm going to

00:44:51.860 learn about Islam, I'm not going to look at the terrorists who blew the World Trade Center apart

00:44:55.840 in New York City. Rather, I'm going to study the Quran and find out what did Muhammad say?

00:45:00.880 What did he teach? How did he treat people? Did he die? And what happened after his death?

00:45:06.540 And I better be willing to do the same with Jesus Christ. So to reject Christ because of

00:45:11.560 some hypocritical Christian. To reject Christ because some Christians are politically different 1.00

00:45:17.320 from me, I think is a tragic, very prejudiced, very closed-minded approach to reality.

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00:46:10.640 service. That's PatriotMobile.com slash Allie code Allie. So what is the right approach? You said

00:46:21.640 understanding all of these different worldviews, trying to get to what they actually believe to

00:46:27.840 be able to combat them. Someone might say, okay, look, you know, I'm a stay at home mom. I don't

00:46:32.920 have time to read the Quran and I don't have time to look into all of these different perspectives

00:46:37.940 that someone has but they want to be a good apologist they want to be able to stand for

00:46:41.760 him in their faith what should she do pray as hard as you can love people as well as you can

00:46:48.820 and study in other words no I don't think you have to take a course in comparative religion

00:46:55.720 but if you've got if you're living next to an atheist and they're your neighbor and you listen

00:47:01.640 to them and listen and listen well. You want to understand what they believe and why they believe

00:47:07.240 it. And if you've got a Muslim on the other side of your house living in the next neighborhood 0.99

00:47:11.660 and you're talking with that person, you're listening to them, then you want to understand

00:47:16.320 what they believe and why they believe it so that you can show by comparing and contrasting Jesus

00:47:21.660 Christ with atheism, Jesus Christ with Islam, or Jesus Christ with hedonism. Whatever the belief 0.78

00:47:28.560 is of the person that you love and you're trying to communicate with, listen, ask questions,

00:47:34.260 begin to understand. In other words, feel around the rim of their life, you come to the crack,

00:47:38.780 and that's where you apply the gospel. So no, you don't have to have a PhD in apologetics or a PhD

00:47:43.720 in comparative religion. No, but you better use the brain that God has given you because he gave

00:47:49.580 it to you for a reason. And that means you better listen carefully, you better diagnose, and then

00:47:55.260 you better study and find answers. The best answer that I give is, I do not know. But then I say,

00:48:02.080 but for the past 2,000 years, nobody's asked a question that's knocked the underpinnings out of

00:48:06.960 faith in Christ, so I will go and find an answer, and can we get together next week? And so I don't

00:48:11.700 like to naturally study. I'm not an intellectual. I don't like to read that much. I do it because I

00:48:17.380 want to love people by helping them see the truth of Christ. You said something that I wonder if

00:48:23.440 you could expound upon, and maybe you just did sufficiently, but I thought it was so

00:48:27.520 interesting. You said, feel around the rim of their life, find the crack, and apply the gospel.

00:48:32.020 What does that mean? That means we're all born broken, life is about healing, and the grace of

00:48:39.240 God is the glue. So, Allie, I got to find out if I want to be your friend where your break is.

00:48:45.040 Same way if you want to find out about me, you're going to find out where my break is,

00:48:48.740 where my pain is. And then we apply the gospel in a loving, relevant way to that brokenness.

00:48:56.000 And we allow the grace of God then to intervene. I mean, some people say, Cliff, I can't believe

00:49:03.460 you call yourself a dirty, rotten sinner in light of the fact that you're a pastor. No, I don't have 0.98

00:49:07.440 a porn problem. No, I'm not thinking about cheating on my wife. And no, I don't steal money from the

00:49:11.840 IRS. But I can promise you, Cliff is not patient, kind. Cliff does boast, is envious, is greedy.

00:49:20.280 I am a dirty, rotten sinner. That is why I need a savior. But if I buy into the lie in my culture 0.99

00:49:26.020 that I'm a great guy and I'm a perfect guy, I don't need a savior. Because I'm totally autonomous.

00:49:31.540 I'm this great, awesome, well put together guy. I mean, I went to Davidson College in North Carolina

00:49:35.760 and we had a statement or they had a placard that said, a Davidson man needs no introduction.

00:49:41.840 excuse me we all are broken we all need a savior we all need outside help and that's exactly what

00:49:50.540 jesus christ offers and so to feel around a person's life means to realize you know we all

00:49:56.040 are born broken now i've got to understand where your pain is where your brokenness is

00:50:01.360 and then apply the gospel at that point i think of when i think of doubt i think of

00:50:07.420 the unfortunate nickname that thomas got for all of posterity downing thomas and he wanted to see

00:50:14.340 jesus's scars and you know jesus says blessed are those who believe without seeing um and yet we

00:50:23.560 still regard thomas as someone who ultimately did believe and yet there is a higher level it seems

00:50:29.860 of blessing it is better to believe without seeing what is the difference between healthy doubt that

00:50:38.120 can lead us towards truths can sanctify us and unbelief that is really evidence of just like a

00:50:46.400 lack of trust in who god says he is well you do a good job with that why don't you answer that one

00:50:51.420 well so there is a chicken scratch of a note hanging in my dad's office i don't know why

00:50:59.640 he put it there i love it but i think he put it there probably because i was the biggest doubter

00:51:03.760 of my i was the doubting thomas of my brothers and the quote i don't i think it's anonymous i

00:51:08.960 don't know who wrote it but it's if jesus christ christ called on the cross my god my god why have

00:51:14.860 you forsaken me then surely we are allowed to doubt but to choose doubt as a philosophy for

00:51:21.840 life is akin to choosing immobility as a means for transportation and so i think that quote answers

00:51:28.420 your good question answers the question I've had for a long time, which is if literally Jesus

00:51:34.140 doubted, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Then we are allowed, even encouraged. You look at

00:51:39.340 Habakkuk, David, and Habakkuk said, I thought you were from everlasting to everlasting. David said,

00:51:45.260 get away from me, O Lord. Death is my only friend. Thomas obviously doubted, even though he had

00:51:50.820 eyewitness testimony and DNA evidence. And then Jesus said, stop doubting and believe.

00:51:56.480 So I think back to Doubting Thomas, that's where atheists love to try and pin us. 0.95

00:52:00.120 Oh, clearly, Jesus is saying never doubt. 0.97

00:52:02.960 Well, actually, in the story of Doubting Thomas, contextually, he's saying doubt is very good.

00:52:08.460 When he gets to the point of saying, stop doubting and believe, that is after the healthy doubt of his buddies telling him that Jesus rose from the dead.

00:52:18.920 And then Jesus showing up saying, put your hand in the spear wound in my side.

00:52:23.580 touch my hands where the nails were stuck through my wrists now stop doubting and believe

00:52:29.840 so god understands how we speak when we are desperate he understands how we speak when we

00:52:37.440 are in pain like eugene peterson talked about and he says you know what you can be as irreverent

00:52:44.280 even say screw you god if you like and as long as you just keep speaking to me that's what i desire

00:52:51.500 So just keep speaking to me. 0.97

00:52:53.380 So a healthy form of doubt is saying, hey, God, I have no idea why you're allowing this.

00:52:56.920 I don't even know if you exist.

00:52:58.600 But I want there to be a God, and I believe that potentially you do exist.

00:53:04.100 So I want to talk to you and say, hey, if you exist, please reveal yourself to me.

00:53:09.020 Hey, if I believe you exist, like David clearly did, then if I'm in pain when my sons are trying to kill me because I didn't discipline them,

00:53:16.800 If I'm in pain because my boss is trying to kill me and I'm eating my tears day and night, well, eventually I'm going to get to the point, though, of saying, okay, there's an unhealthy doubt, and I'm going to shift to, three times he says it in 42 and 43, why you downcast on my soul, why so disturbed within me, put your hope in God, for yet praise him, my Savior, my Lord.

00:53:37.000 And I think all of us, if we're honest in here, have doubts that spring up from emotions, spring up from overthinking, spring up from OCD, spring up from our behaviors.

00:53:47.360 And we have to get to the point after questioning that's healthy.

00:53:51.740 If it turns to cynicism or turns to serious doubt, you've got to doubt those doubts.

00:53:55.100 But then for me, you've got to get to the point of saying, hey, look, I've done this a million times.

00:53:59.600 This could be the devil, the world, the flesh, the devil really causing these doubts.

00:54:04.040 I want to be like David now and say, why are you downcast on my soul?

00:54:08.140 Why so disturbed within me?

00:54:09.780 Fix those thoughts.

00:54:11.380 Fix that pain.

00:54:12.420 Grab your heart.

00:54:13.260 Preach to your heart rather than just having your heart preached to you.

00:54:15.660 And now say, I'm going to praise you as my Lord and my God.

00:54:19.220 I'm going to thank you for things.

00:54:20.840 And that's when that unhealthy doubt starts to dissipate.

00:54:23.580 That's when you go from like, you're kind of arguing that Thomas had gone from healthy

00:54:28.180 skeptic to cynic, where he was about to go into that. And Jesus is like, look, you got to believe.

00:54:37.000 You said one thing, and I'm wondering if we could talk about it a little bit more that

00:54:42.420 I think you were quoting someone else when you said it's okay to even say something like,

00:54:46.360 screw you, God, or something like that, as long as you're continuing to talk to God.

00:54:50.880 But I do think about Job, Job, who had everything taken from him, and he starts to crack a little 0.99

00:54:58.120 bit.

00:54:58.820 He starts to kind of question God, like, okay, what the heck?

00:55:01.940 I've been faithful.

00:55:02.900 I've been trying to do these things.

00:55:04.640 And God answers him out of a whirlwind.

00:55:06.720 And he spends several chapters saying, were you there during creation?

00:55:10.740 Were you there when I called forth all of these different animals, creatures, the sun,

00:55:15.220 the stars, and all of that?

00:55:16.300 God answers with his authority, does not give Job even a single excuse in doubting in that

00:55:23.920 moment or questioning God's goodness and faithfulness.

00:55:29.040 So I wonder what the balance is there, because I do think God cares how we talk about him

00:55:34.220 and the things that we say to him.

00:55:36.380 Not that he can't handle it, like he's fragile, but he cares.

00:55:39.880 He cares in how we relate to him.

00:55:41.600 So I've heard people say things like that, like God can handle it if you shake your fist

00:55:45.560 at him like sure he can handle it don't know if he likes it don't know if he likes it so i don't

00:55:51.460 know like what's what's the balance there between us expressing our fear our doubt our emotions to

00:55:57.920 god even our feelings of betrayal as wrong as they may be but also making sure that okay i'm talking

00:56:04.300 to a holy god i'm talking to the god of the universe who actually does not fail i wonder

00:56:08.940 how we balance those two things. Stalin died on his, on his deathbed, shaking his fist literally

00:56:15.440 at God. And oddly enough, Christopher Hitchens did the same thing in a different way. And there

00:56:23.260 was a crucifix above his hospital bed that I don't think he knew about until he was dying in that

00:56:27.820 bed. So the strongest atheists who are the most militant towards God, exactly. Let's just say

00:56:33.800 they were very irreverent in shaking their fists at God. And when Paul, for example, says something

00:56:38.900 in Ephesians, let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for

00:56:43.180 building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Or when James

00:56:46.940 talks about, to your good point, you know, why do we bless God? Why do we praise God, but then curse

00:56:52.800 our brother and sister who are created in God's image? And so there's automatically endless amounts

00:56:57.980 of verses in scripture that are implying and directly commanding us to speak in a very reverent

00:57:04.180 way towards God. I mean, he is the creator of all things. So if he's our father and our king,

00:57:08.860 like Romans 8 talks about, why in the world would we not speak to him very reverently?

00:57:14.000 So you're exactly right. That has to come number one. But I just think it's so interesting that

00:57:20.220 God gives us so much space because he understands our humanity. But getting to the point, again,

00:57:28.080 of the Psalms that ends in those final five chapters, praising and thanking God,

00:57:32.100 that David, even though he speaks irreverently at times,

00:57:35.660 back in Psalm 13,

00:57:37.660 how long, O Lord?

00:57:38.780 Come on, God.

00:57:39.900 Do something about this.

00:57:41.080 You're right.

00:57:41.680 It always ends at praise

00:57:43.840 because he is the God of the universe

00:57:45.500 who loves us unconditionally.

00:57:47.160 And so we are to submit to him.

00:57:49.820 I think we have the perfect balance

00:57:52.040 of what you're asking in Genesis 18

00:57:54.020 when Abraham is standing over Sodom and Gomorrah

00:57:56.680 and he asks God, 0.76

00:57:57.820 are you going to wipe it out

00:57:58.500 if there are 50 righteous people?

00:57:59.780 Well, what about 45?

00:58:00.740 40, 35, 30. And I think Abraham is obviously struggling with doubt. Obviously, he didn't get

00:58:07.720 the memo of certain people that say, you're not allowed to doubt. No, he doubted, and he questioned.

00:58:13.620 He questioned, will the judge of all the earth do right? But in his questioning, there was a

00:58:18.300 reverence, there was a respect for God throughout the entire time. So I think that Abraham in Genesis

00:58:23.140 18 is a tremendous example of that balance that you were asking about. Yeah, we do see that,

00:58:28.380 It seems, as you're saying, I'm remembering just a lot of instances, especially in Genesis,

00:58:32.840 where you see God's chosen person definitely not be the most confident, definitely not be

00:58:39.120 the boldest, but the guy who's like, I don't really see how we're going to pull this off,

00:58:43.840 but okay, I guess.

00:58:46.160 And that is comforting.

00:58:47.440 It's comforting to all of us.

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00:59:40.980 $50 off at checkout. Goodranchers.com. Code Allie. You write something really interesting

00:59:50.680 on page 19 of your book. You say, as I've been telling students for decades, I can't say I'm

00:59:54.980 absolutely certain that God exists or that Jesus rose from the dead? Because frankly, I can't say

00:59:59.640 I'm 100% certain about anything in this world. It might shock some people to hear you say that.

01:00:06.200 I think it's a mistake for Christians to act like, I never struggle with uncertainty. I'm

01:00:12.180 always certain. I think it's erroneous communication to say, I never doubt. I am

01:00:20.860 absolutely positive that God exists. I'm absolutely positive that Jesus rose from the dead. I'm

01:00:25.700 actually positive about the Bible being the Word of God. I think that miscommunicates because I

01:00:31.500 think if we're going to be honest, if we're going to look at the evidence, we're going to have to

01:00:36.580 acknowledge that there are holes. I used to make the mistake of, in my enthusiasm, saying, well,

01:00:42.280 the Bible have no errors in it. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Then I had to debate Dr. Bart Ehrman down

01:00:47.100 over Chapel Hill. And he's correct. There are 200,000 to 400,000 manuscript variants in the

01:00:54.420 New Testament alone. But in the debate, he didn't go on to acknowledge, but wait a second, those

01:01:00.880 200,000 to 400,000 manuscript variants are found in approximately 25,000 manuscripts. So you do the

01:01:07.860 math, Dr. Ehrman, that's between 8 and 16 variants per manuscript or piece of manuscript.

01:01:13.660 But you see, when I as a Christian come on too strong with an absolute certainty,

01:01:18.620 oh no, this is the Bible, it's the Word of God, and there's no variance, there's no problems in the text,

01:01:24.580 that's a little bit untrue. 1.00

01:01:28.540 And that is the mistake I'm convinced that the Muslims make. 1.00

01:01:32.360 I'm convinced that when they treat the Quran as this spotless, errorless book, 1.00

01:01:37.740 they're making a big mistake.

01:01:39.500 I think the evidence is when the third caliph asked a young man who had written the Quran for Muhammad

01:01:49.240 to put together the correct one, and then to have all the other ones destroyed.

01:01:56.080 My goodness, what's going on here?

01:01:59.400 So I think we've got to be honest intellectually, admit that there are hard questions,

01:02:05.400 admit that I have doubts, because that is the truth.

01:02:09.500 Hmm. Why should we trust in the Word of God if there are variants that exist in some of the manuscripts?

01:02:18.400 Because skepticism is good, but hyper-skepticism is destructive. 0.90

01:02:24.660 Ali, there's no proof that when Stuart and I came in here, we didn't have knives in our back pockets and we were out to kill you. 0.93

01:02:32.720 It's possible.

01:02:33.700 but if you have that type of hyper skepticism you're going to be a very lonely isolated person

01:02:40.380 because you're never going to be able to trust anybody and if I don't trust you

01:02:44.880 for good reason I'm going to lose a tremendous privilege of getting to know Allie and that's

01:02:52.460 true for every person so the challenge is not to be naive and gullible you've got to be a skeptic

01:03:00.000 but if you're a hyper skeptic, you're going to wipe out everybody. You're going to wipe out

01:03:04.100 knowledge. How do you grow in knowledge? You grow in knowledge by looking for evidence,

01:03:10.380 not demanding proof, then making a trust step, trusting that person, trusting that information

01:03:19.080 that you've accepted, and testing it and finding out, is this really true? Is this person really

01:03:24.900 reliable or not. And that's a process. And that's the way we develop relationships and friendships.

01:03:30.640 It's through a process. And that's the way we develop knowledge. If any postdoc student in

01:03:36.080 mathematics thinks they know everything there is to know about mathematics, they are really

01:03:40.160 arrogant, out of touch with reality. If any postdoc person in biology thinks they know everything

01:03:46.520 there is to know about biology, they are really off the wall. And I can promise you, I don't know

01:03:52.200 everything there is to know about God, and there's a lot of mystery about God. And I don't know why

01:03:56.840 God allows certain things to happen. And if I look into the face of a grieving person who's just lost

01:04:01.360 their child and say, oh, I'll tell you why God allowed that, because he's sovereign and he just,

01:04:05.820 everything's just his will. That's a type of fatalism and determinism that I find to be very

01:04:11.600 scary. But what's fascinating is it's the logical conclusion of atheism, and it's also the logical

01:04:16.420 conclusion of Islam. It's the wall of Allah. Everything's the will of Allah. Everything's 0.97

01:04:20.400 determined oh no no no I understand that no no no there's a great deal of mess going on in this

01:04:27.120 world and to call the death of a young child the will of God I'd be very very careful to go down

01:04:34.120 that path a lot of mystery I don't know why God allows a lot of things to happen I do not know

01:04:41.260 yes I you know there are things I think people ask why does this happen we can talk about a

01:04:49.300 fallen world and for me i understand that in a general way okay we understand there's cancer

01:04:54.300 there's war there's conflict there's drought there's natural disaster and things like that

01:04:58.520 when you get into the specific stories of say the torment of a child or the sexual abuse of

01:05:04.320 this vulnerable person the horrible stories that we see yes it is very hard and i think like you're

01:05:09.700 so right we should be honest about that i can't look at a horrible story of the torture and the

01:05:14.440 death of a child and say, yeah, well, you know, that's just how it is. But the one thing I do

01:05:20.620 know, and that brings me comfort, is that Jesus is coming back, that he also is not apathetic

01:05:27.780 to the pain. He's not looking at that little child and say, well, that's just how things go.

01:05:32.180 It's a fallen world, that he's going to pay back all of those evil deeds that were done,

01:05:37.080 and he's going to do away with evil forever and ever. And that's kind of like, that's,

01:05:41.080 we're just personally not even from an apologetic standpoint maybe it's self-apologetics to myself

01:05:45.800 when i see things like that i'm like okay god i'm not good but if i were all powerful i would

01:05:52.200 have stopped that what do i do with that that's hard that's that's a hard that's a hard thing i

01:05:57.960 think all of us would if we were all powerful knowing that we're not as good as god is if we

01:06:02.360 had the power to stop the terrible infliction of pain on a vulnerable person we would do it

01:06:09.160 yet god is all powerful all good and sometimes he chooses not to i don't know why except that

01:06:15.480 i know that he cares about that too and he's gonna do something about it one day

01:06:20.280 and that's kind of like sometimes where you to me at least where you have to go because there are

01:06:25.960 mysteries in life um on page 166 you discussed that atheists actually have miraculous assumptions

01:06:35.880 themselves. And I just thought this section was really memorable and really interesting,

01:06:42.320 something I hadn't really thought about before. And we're about to close out the conversation.

01:06:46.040 There's so much I could ask you, but can you talk about that? People think that we make

01:06:50.980 these miraculous assumptions about God being good and holy, everything we just discussed,

01:06:55.360 as well as Jesus's miracles. But people who don't believe in Christ also have miraculous assumptions.

01:07:01.380 Every atheist friend of mine has to believe non-existence produces existence. 0.74

01:07:08.600 That's a miracle. 1.00

01:07:09.660 Non-existence producing existence, that's a miracle. 1.00

01:07:12.780 The only problem is my atheist friend doesn't have a miracle worker. 0.99

01:07:15.780 All of my atheist friends have to believe chaos produces order. 0.99

01:07:19.760 That's a miracle. 0.94

01:07:20.740 The only problem is my atheist friend doesn't have a miracle worker. 0.95

01:07:23.940 Every atheist friend of mine has to believe non-reason produces reason.

01:07:29.100 That's a miracle.

01:07:29.800 The only problem is, my atheist friend, you don't have a miracle worker.

01:07:33.000 Every one of my atheist friends has to believe non-life produces life.

01:07:37.460 That's a miracle. 1.00

01:07:38.880 Sorry, my atheist friend, you don't have a miracle worker.

01:07:41.700 Every one of my atheist friends has to believe matter and energy produce love.

01:07:47.120 That's a miracle. 0.99

01:07:48.700 Sorry, buddy, you don't have a miracle worker. 1.00

01:07:51.100 Every one of my atheist friends has to believe meaninglessness produces meaningfulness. 1.00

01:07:57.680 That's a miracle.

01:07:58.620 sorry bud you don't have a miracle worker so it's because of that type of evidence that i am

01:08:03.980 convinced that god exists what about you when you have confronted some of the these atheists when

01:08:11.580 they're met with the reality of what you just said which is just like the very basic thing of like

01:08:16.720 okay order had to come from something where did all of this come from has that ever stumped a

01:08:23.820 skeptic who realizes oh yeah i also have a lot of presuppositions myself yeah one i heard this

01:08:31.180 morning was i've had short conversations with lawrence krauss i don't know him well but you

01:08:37.900 know when he says something like you know let's let's find a way to do a way with god and a way

01:08:44.960 with a creator we could say that whether it's coming from black holes or he specifically goes

01:08:51.380 with gravity having always existed and creating all so we don't know we don't need to and we don't

01:08:59.360 know but especially we don't need to and believe in something outside of space and time needing to

01:09:04.680 create space and time probably through a big bang lawrence krauss goes this ridiculous idea

01:09:10.000 that's tremendously ambiguous with zero evidence behind it saying oh no you know you know this type

01:09:16.480 of nothingness has always existed but he doesn't know how to define nothingness and that's what

01:09:22.320 so many of these atheists do now that's such like a typical thing they like to really propose which

01:09:27.460 is well nothingness is somethingness and it's always this somethingness has always existed

01:09:32.520 yeah and they'll typically call it gravity and gravity produced something yeah but there's not

01:09:39.560 a shred of evidence for it and that's why i like so many atheist cosmologists who actually push

01:09:43.920 back against it they'll say that's actually not an answer at all right yeah there's a comedian

01:09:49.500 who said something about that argument that was like so this nothing it's always been here and

01:09:56.180 it was powerful enough to create everything i love that sounds sounds like something else that

01:10:01.660 the christians have been talking about well thank you guys so much i could just go on and on y'all

01:10:06.020 are fascinating and brilliant apologists so thank you for what you do your book is demolishing doubt

01:10:11.980 It's available wherever books are sold, I assume.

01:10:14.920 And if people want to catch you speaking,

01:10:17.060 do they have a place where they can find where you'll be going next?

01:10:19.960 Where do people find them, Stuart?

01:10:23.440 I guess the easiest will be our Instagram account,

01:10:27.500 which is Stuart underscore Connectly,

01:10:29.120 and then give me an answer with Cliff and Stuart Connectly on YouTube.

01:10:34.060 We'll try and put it up there.

01:10:35.840 We've got our Luddite internet sensation over here.

01:10:38.660 That's right, exactly.

01:10:39.600 well thank y'all so much i appreciate it thank you for all you do keep going yeah

01:10:44.340 keep going all right you too god's using you thank you

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 24, 2026

Ep 1375 ｜ Cliffe Knechtle’s Most Controversial Take—And Why He’s Doubling Down

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