Does Christianity Make Sense? On God, Evil, And The Ache (with Gavin Ortlund)
Not long ago, my son asked me about all the people King David killed in 2 Samuel 8. We’ve been reading through that book during family devotions before bed. He’s right to be disturbed. So we had a conversation about why he’s unnerved, how we develop moral instincts, and how we’d respond to someone who rejects God because of these and similar accounts in the Old Testament.
We did apologetics together.
As he gets a little older, I’ll point him toward the YouTube channel of my friend Gavin Ortlund, who does an excellent job of answering many hard questions about Christianity and the Bible. Then, a few years later, I’ll point him to Gavin’s books, including his latest, Why Christianity Makes Sense: A Book About Jesus, the Mysteries of the World, and the Longings in Your Heart (Zondervan Reflective).
He’s back on Gospelbound to discuss all things apologetics, from the multiverse, to slavery, to morality as merely a taste for sugar, to winning the lottery 10 billion times in a row.
In This Episode
00:00 – Why people may be more open to spiritual answers today
03:36 – “The ache” and the longing for transcendence
09:29 – What about Christianity makes the least sense to Gavin?
11:39 – The problem of evil and the limits of tidy answers
19:09 – The growing challenge of divine hiddenness
24:34 – Fine-tuning and the odds of a life-permitting universe
32:07 – Is morality without God just a matter of taste?
37:25 – Slavery, the Bible, and the Christian roots of human equality
42:23 – Why fulfilled prophecy surprised Gavin
48:00 – What apologetic questions should Christians prepare for next?
Resources Mentioned:
- Why Christianity Makes Sense by Gavin Ortlund
- Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
- Making Sense of God by Timothy Keller
- The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Bullies and Saints by John Dickson
- Dominion by Tom Holland
- Gavin Ortlund’s YouTube channel, “Truth Unites“
- The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics
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