What makes Jesus so different than other religious leaders? How can you prove Christianity is true? How should we evaluate the claim that “Jesus changed my life.” We’ll answer these questions and much more as Sean and I discuss the revision that he and his dad, Josh McDowell recently did to the bestselling and impactful book, .



Episode Transcript

Scott: What makes Jesus so different than other religious leaders? How can you prove that Christianity is true? How should we evaluate the claim that “Jesus changed my life?” We’ll answer these questions and much more as Sean and I discuss the revision that he and his dad, Josh McDowell, recently did to the best-selling and impactful book, More Than a Carpenter. I'm your host, Scott Rae, and Sean is technically my guest today.

Sean: All right.

Scott: And this is Think Biblically from Talbot School of Theology at 51ÂÜŔň. Sean, I wish we had all of our listeners on video today, because I'd love to take a show of hands from our listeners to see how many of them have read More Than a Carpenter. I suspect it's a pretty good number, because the book has sold more than 30 million copies around the world. And probably—as you suggested a few minutes ago before we went on camera—a little less than half of those have been international.

Sean: That's right.

Scott: So, why do you think this book has been so influential?

Sean: That's a great place to start with. I'd say a few things. I think number one is, it's short and to the point. So, even in 1977 when my dad first wrote it, there was a sense where you could hand somebody a book and say, you could read this on a flight from Southern California to Dallas, get through it quickly, although it packs a punch in that length. So I think that's a piece of it. I think another piece is, it's rooted in my dad's story, which we can get to if you want to. And it's just a dramatic, powerful story of somebody coming to Christ, having their life transformed. But also, as he works through the book, it's kind of like a journey he's taking readers on. It's not just facts, like you read an article. He's saying, “I was talking to a professor. When I was a skeptic, I thought this.” So it invites the reader to examine the evidence on kind of a journey. And then he climaxes it, like he said, with how Christ transformed his personal life. And I think the other piece is, there's just longevity. I mean, when my dad wrote this, he spoke at 1200 universities around the world—and this is before any of the Internet kind of stuff—and just put on the map popular apologetics, that so many people have a story and experience of seeing him speak that I think maybe endears them to the book a little bit.

Scott: I’d say, Sean, your dad probably had the biggest impact, maybe other than Francis Schaeffer, on popular apologetics.

Sean: And C.S. Lewis, of course.

Scott: And C.S. Lewis. Yeah. That would be three of the four that I'd put on the Mount Rushmore of popular apologetics. Now, you mentioned his story. It does come out sort of repeatedly, although I like that your dad has always been a sort of cut to the chase person anyway. But having the narrative in this is really helpful. And it brings the story to life in ways that, just, the facts would not do justice to it. So, tell us as much about his personal story as you think is relevant to the narrative that sort of frames the journey that you describe.

Sean: That's a great way to put it. So, my dad grew up in a small town in Michigan. He was born in 1939. And his dad…one of the things that's defining about him is his dad was the town drunk. You're in a small town. Everybody knows that. And, just, the shame you carry. He would tell me stories, and he shared publicly at times, that his friends would come over and he'd just go tie up his dad out in the barn, and then drive the car out and hide it away just to say, he's out on a business trip. I don't want him coming around shaming me and embarrassing me. His dad…my dad told me this not long ago. He said, you know, I was walking out to the barn with your grandpa. And [your grandpa] said, “You know, son, you weren't wanted.”

Scott: Oh my gosh.

Sean: “You were a mistake.” And my grandpa was born in 1898. I mean, put that in perspective. He was older, and he was just a surprise child. And he tells him that. My dad's older sister eventually took her own life. And one thing my dad didn't share in the original version in 1977 which we added in the 2009 update—not that he hadn't dealt with it, but he just hadn't shared it publicly—was the severe sexual abuse that he received from a man who worked on their farm from about age six to 13 years old, until he slammed the man against the wall and said, “If you touch me again, I'll kill you.” And he started sharing that publicly long before the #MeToo movement, when people would still kind of shame you for talking about such things. So obviously, there's a lot of hurt. There's a lot of pain. He's just the kind of person…he was successful in business. He was successful in sports. He was successful in school. He had a 10-year plan mapped out to be the governor of Michigan and go beyond. I have no doubt that it would have worked out for him. He's just that kind of person. But he met a group of Christians who were different at the university. And the way he describes it is, they not only had a joy and contentment about life, they had a love for each other and for others. He's like, I just wanted that. Given his broken background, it makes sense that you would yearn for that. So he befriended them and asked them one day why they were different. And they said, “The person of Jesus Christ.” He thought that was a joke. So, this is sometime in the 50s. I don't know exactly what year it was. He had enough money from his painting business, and there were no popular apologetics books. There's basically Lewis, and there was Schaeffer, and maybe John Warwick Montgomery and Geisler were starting to do apologetics content. So he traveled overseas to just visit museums, go talk with professors, go to universities, libraries in Europe, gather the evidence proving Christianity was false. Ends up being surprised by the evidence. But what a lot of people miss…he said, “The evidence got my attention.” But it's when he understood the love of God that it really drew him to the faith, so to speak. He said, “The evidence gave me confidence.” But I think maybe he said six months, within a year after becoming a believer, studying the Scriptures, his life was transformed from the inside out. So much so that he was with his dad—my grandpa, who I never met. My mom never met him. He passed away because of alcoholism shortly after this. My dad looked him in the eyes and he said, he goes, “Dad, I love you.” And he told me, he goes, it was at that point that I really knew this was real. Like, God transformed my heart, that I could tell my father I loved him. Now, he saw my grandfather come to Christ, which is a whole other story. But that's the backdrop where he’d become an evangelist, an apologist, a debater. And hence, this book kind of came out of that.

Scott: So let me press into one specific part of that. I'm struck by the fact that he went to such lengths to disprove Christian faith. What do you think motivated that?

Sean: I think probably a couple things. Number one, he's an entrepreneur, and he probably thought, well, “I can write a book disproving this,” was a piece of it…

Scott: Make some money at it.

Sean: …Maybe a smaller one. But I think he was also desperate to find out what was true. That was the bigger piece. I mean, he starts the book—and let me just read it to get it right—it says, “13th century philosopher Thomas Aquinas understood a deep truth. ‘There is within every soul a thirst for happiness and meaning.’” That's his story. And he finally found people that seemed to have it, but didn't buy it with some guy who died 2000 years ago. And so, I'm going to find out if this is true, and I don't think it's true, so I'm going to disprove it. I think that was the larger motivation for him.

Scott: That's helpful, because I can see a lot of people having an animus against Christian faith and about the idea of Jesus being a savior, but not go to quite those lengths to try and disprove it.

Sean: Agreed.

Scott: I mean, that strikes me as something sort of unique about your dad, that he would go to those lengths in order to find the truth.

Sean: That's true with everything with my dad. If he finds a sale on socks, he's like, I bought four dozen so I never have to buy socks again. We're going on vacation. We're doing the best vacation. It's just, it's in part the way he's wired. Nothing is half effort with my dad, period.

Scott: All right. So, he wrote this in 1977, and originally he wrote it, I take it, just as something he could give to non-believers, something he could give out to college students as he was going to speak around different campuses. What else motivated him to actually start writing this stuff down?

Sean: Well, he first wrote Evidence That Demands a Verdict—and he typed it out himself in 1972—which was just compiling all the evidence in a book. And, essentially, no publisher wanted it. They didn't think it would sell, which is insane and laughable. I don't know, four million plus, and it's still going. We updated that one six years ago, seven years ago. So, people just had no sense of the hunger for this. And then that book did well, and people would actually read it, but say, I wish I just had a shorter version to give to somebody, that if I was sitting down over coffee I could articulate. So, he was in Chicago, I think with my mom, and just said, you know what? I'm going to take a whole bunch of yellow legal pads, and I'm going to go write out this book, and I'm not going to finish until I'm done. I mean, it took him hour upon hour upon hour, and he just hand wrote out the first version, or at least a rough draft version, of More Than a Carpenter. But it was also so others could give away in a way to express their faith.

Scott: I think your mom was a saint. I think to—

Sean: Oh, you don't even know the beginning of that.

Scott: That's a whole other story. All right. Now, you took on the task of updating this with your dad not too long ago. What was your mindset as you set about to revise this? Because, I mean, it looks on the surface to be this incredibly successful thing. Why mess with a good thing?

Sean: That's exactly right. So, we first updated it in 2009, which was 15 years ago, which means we were working on it 16 years ago. The culture was in a very, very different spot then. And I don't think he had updated it since maybe the nineties or even the eighties. I don't recall the last update before that. And so, when that opportunity came, I think that was his idea. I wasn't working on my PhD yet, but I had been teaching high school about four or five years. I had two master’s, was kind of building my platform, writing some books with them, and felt like it was a good time for us to update this together. I had a lot of fear and trembling in taking on this project. In part, like you said, because the book has done so well. Don't mess up something that works.

Scott: No pressure there.

Sean: Like, what? Anything you add or take out, there's a sense of, like, is this messing with a proven formula? But I think more than anything, I really, in the back of my mind, I was like, I just wanted to honor my dad and the good work that he's done, and just continue to keep the ball rolling of the effectiveness of this book. So it really was tweaking things, updating things, kind of tinkering the edges more than saying, we're going to completely revise this thing and start over.

Scott: So, I take it that the one thing that's been constant throughout since 1977 is the overall impact of the book. Could you say a little bit more about…I'm sure you’ve got lots of stories about different individuals who've been impacted or groups that have been impacted, but what would you say, just, about the overall impact since 1977?

Sean: So, the publisher owns the rights in North America. So, 16 million sold. My father's ministry has kept the rights internationally. And if I'm not mistaken, that other 14 million plus they have printed into dozens and dozens of languages and just distributed all over the world.

Scott: For free.

Sean: For free. Yes. As far as I know, give it away for people. Only charge if they had to for some reason, but for the most part, give that away. We're talking everywhere around the world, from Latin America to the Middle East.

Scott: How many languages? What's your best guess?

Sean: Off the top of my head, I think it's 70. I believe I've heard that, but don't hold me to that one. I would have to go back and double check. I haven't heard that stat or looked into it in a long time, but it is one of the most commonly translated books, obviously outside of the Bible. [The Bible’s] number one, clearly. But it's up there in terms of how many it's been translated into. So the worldwide impact is incredible. And in part, because of that, I can't go anywhere and speak without somebody saying one of two things. Either, I was in a period of doubting my faith, and then someone gave me this little book More Than a Carpenter. Or, I was a skeptic, I was a doubter, and either that was the thing that God used to lead me to faith, or that was a key piece of what led me to faith. And everywhere I go, Scott, someone goes, "I'm sure you hear this a million times." Everybody says that. And I say, "You know what? Please tell me. Every time matters. I want to hear.”

Scott: That never gets old.

Sean: And so, specifically, we interviewed a friend of ours, Paul Newby, who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. When he was, I think he described being in law school, he heard my dad speak. My dad gave him a copy and he said, "Read this and see if you think it's true or not." Ends up analyzing it, going, oh my goodness. Through my own legal training, this makes sense. And now he keeps copies and just gives it out to law clerks regularly because of the influence it had upon him. So I could go on and on with the stories, but I get emails regularly that are just…the only way to describe it is, it's just humbling how much God used this little book.

Scott: So, one more question just about the process. And then I want to get into some of the substance of it. How's the new edition different from the original? And, I guess, maybe specifically, what's changed in the study of the life of Jesus, for example, that was missing in '77 that you have to include now?

Sean: Great question. So, when he wrote it in '77, I mean, he's really reacting to a lot of the critiques of the '40s and '50s and '60s, where New Testament studies were. And there was very little credence given to the reliability of the text, to archaeology and what it could show. There was a very minimalist approach. And so, my dad was very much an outsider saying, actually, there's a positive case here. There were some scholars doing that, but the weight of scholarship was very much against it, especially coming out of German higher criticism in the late 1800s, et cetera. That's still a remnant into the 1950s. So, we see this philosophical revolution that Talbot has been at the heart of, and an apologetic revolution, starting to bubble up in the middle of the 20th century. But that first '77 version is still responding to some of these other types of criticism. Well, when we go to update it in 2009—that's, what, 32 years later, if I'm doing my math correct—there's been a revolution in archaeological discoveries, a revolution in textual criticism. I think, positively, a shift largely in New Testament studies towards at least general credence of the text itself. So, it's almost like, if you go back to the time it was first written, you're trying to find evidences to include in this book. Now the question is, there's so much different evidences—what do we leave out, and what do we not include because we still want this book to be trim? So, essentially, the update, you might say, is just…I mean, some of the quotes. There was one that was like “the new”—I can't remember the title—“The New Text on Psychiatry.” I looked at the footnote. I'm like, okay, this is 1973. I think maybe I need to update this one. So, some of the quotes had to be updated. There's a few, maybe, objections that we respond to, but then there's just some new findings that we include that I think make the case even stronger.

Scott: All right, let's get into some of the details.

Sean: Sounds good.

Scott: So, what makes Jesus so different? What actually does make Jesus different from other great religious leaders, because culturally today, we seem to want to place all great religious leaders on a level playing field, when in reality they're not. So, what separates Jesus out from all of the others?

Sean: I would say two things, and there's more than this. But one is…and this was pointed out to me by Craig Hazen, our former colleague here at 51ÂÜŔň who started the Apologetics program. Wonderful apologist. And his study is in world religions. That's what his PhD was from, UCSB. He said, “Jesus is the only religious figure that every other religion wants to claim as their own.” So it's not like you have Buddha, and you have Muhammad, and Krishna and Jesus. Jesus transcends all those categories. So, I just was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's an imam, and it came up that in the Quran, Jesus is a virgin born, sinless, miracle-working prophet. Many Jews would not believe that Jesus is God, but respect some of His teachings in light of the Old Testament. Many Buddhists would say He's an enlightened guru. Many Hindus would say He's an avatar, He is a god. But nobody claims Buddha, or Krishna, or Muhammad outside of their respective traditions. So Jesus transcends, and that's of course seen in His impact in art, and music, and literature, and history, and architecture in the West and in the East. No other religious figure comes close to the impact that Jesus had, period. But, in terms of His claims, Jesus is the only major religious figure who claimed to be God. Who claimed to be God. Others would say, here's how you find truth. Jesus said He is the truth. Others would say, here's how you find some kind of spiritual life, or eternal life. Jesus said He is the life. Others would say, here's how you get to salvation. Jesus is like, I am salvation. Here's the path you have to take to find God. Jesus said He is God. Now, He didn't just claim to be a god, right? Sometimes people would say, like, the leader of North Korea claims to be divine in some sense. Okay, there's a difference between claiming to have god-like status and divine power and position, and being one with the eternal, self-existent, all-knowing, holy Creator of the universe. That's Who Jesus uniquely claimed to be. We have a whole chapter walking through this, but I think in John, Jesus makes it clear in John 8 when He says “before Abraham was born.” And, by the way, that was roughly 2000 years before Jesus was physically born. He says, “Before Abraham was born, I am.” Now, He's referring back to Exodus chapter 3, in which Yahweh appears to Moses in the burning bush. [Moses] says, “Who are you?” He says, “I am who I am.” So Jesus, speaking to these religious leaders who knew the text, puts Himself in the position of the Old Testament God, and of course they want to run Him out of town. Of course they want to stone Him. This is blasphemy. Now, that's one example. I think that some would say, well, that's later, in John, which was written into the 90s or beyond. There was time for this to evolve. Well, most scholars would say Mark was the earliest gospel. Fine. I think there's a high Christology in Mark. Not only does Jesus heal with His own miraculous powers—not God’s separately, but the powers and authority He has—He walks on water, which was God's divine stead. He has the authority to change the Sabbath, which God instituted. He’s forgiving sins by His own authority. And then it comes to full fruition in Mark chapter 14 when He's on trial. And they ask Him, you know, are you the Christ? Et cetera. And He goes, “Yes I am. You will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds in heaven.” He directly quotes Daniel chapter 7, which is a reference to a divine figure. So, what makes Jesus different is His impact, is that all religions as a whole generally want to claim Him as their own. Everybody wants to be on team Jesus, for the most part. But He also claimed to be God in human flesh. That's distinct with the person of Jesus.

Scott: Now, the other religions, they're not all in on Jesus, but they do want to claim Him in ways that I think are, you know, significant and unique. Like, no other religion does that. Buddhists don't claim Muhammad, for example, and vice versa. So, I think that's a really interesting point. One of the other parts of this that I think may have been the most persuasive part and the most useful part evangelistically was that great trilemma that's described as “Jesus: He’s Lord, liar, or lunatic.” And it involves taking His claim seriously. This is where I think Lewis has done us such a favor where he said, you know, the claim that Jesus is a great moral teacher is just not an option that He's left to us, because He claimed to be so much more than that. Does that trilemma still work today? And if so, how have you had to update and revise that?

Sean: So, you're right that Lewis had a version of this in Mere Christianity, but it didn't start with Lewis. If you actually go back in church history, centuries and centuries before, people have kind of formulated this. And so, my dad used it as a chapter three, “Lord, Liar, or Lunatic.” And of course, it has a rhythm to it, and it's memorable. Now, I think it does work.

Scott: I think there are probably dozens and dozens of readers of More Than a Carpenter that think that's original with your dad.

Sean: Fair enough. I can understand that.

Scott: Not that he's trying to make that point.

Sean: Yeah, exactly.

Scott: But I think that it was easy to associate that with him, since he did probably the most to popularize that.

Sean: Exactly right. He popularized that argument that's out there. I think that's what he's been so effective at doing in different ways. So, this argument, in a sense, rests upon us knowing that Jesus claimed to be God. So, did I interpret those passages correctly? I make the argument that I do. Can we trust the text itself? There's another chapter in which we make that case. But if Jesus really does claim to be God, then we only have so many options of those claims. Now, some would say, “Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Legend.” That's fair enough. The whole thing could be a legend. At some point though, there's only so many L's. You're trying to make the point to people—not that these are exhaustive, only possibilities—if Jesus claimed to be God, we've got to make light of whether that was true or false, whether we believe it or we don't believe it.

Scott: I think actually what that “legend” does—correct me if I'm wrong on this—is it just kicks the can down the road a little bit further to who's lying or who's the lunatic. Because whoever established that legend, either the legend is true or it's false. You can make the same…either they knew it was true, or they didn't know it was true, which puts them in either of those camps.

Sean: Yes. Now, it's different when you claim to be God, and then it rests upon you. But why would somebody be lying and inventing a story? So, either legend is that these stories grew and exaggerated over time—so Jesus existed, and He was a teacher, but walking on water, feeding 5,000, resurrection, that came in through legend over time—or, some would argue, Jesus never even existed. The entire thing is more of a myth. So there's kind of two different versions of this, depending on how we cash it out.

Scott: At least, thankfully, the scholarly consensus across the board is that Jesus actually existed as a real person.

Sean: Even Bart Ehrman has written a book on the existence of Jesus, and argues that it's a myth to say Jesus didn't exist that emerges in the 1800s.

Scott: I think even [unintelligible] believed that.

Sean: Agreed. That's outside of remotely the scholarly consensus.

Scott: All right. Back to the question. Sorry for the...

Sean: No, no, no, that's okay. I think that's helpful. So, if Jesus claims to be God, either that's true, or it's false. Either He knew it, or He didn't know it. So, if Jesus claims to be God, right, and He really believes it, but it's false, then what does that make Jesus? Right? If you take the Lord, liar, lunatic, liar would be, Jesus is not God. He knows that He's not God, and He's intentionally deceiving people. The lunatic is, He's not God, but He really thinks that He's God and proclaims it as if it's true, but it's false. So, why isn't He a liar? Well, first off, you’ve got to look at the moral teachings of Jesus. I mean, almost anybody would have to concede about loving your neighbor, caring for the poor…

Scott: Sermon on the Mount.

Sean: These are some of the greatest moral teachings. That this comes from someone who's a liar, that's a stretch. It also makes Jesus, in a sense, evil, because He's telling people what they believe about Him shapes their eternal destinies. And if that's the case, He's deceived more people in history than anybody else. It makes him evil. It also makes Him a fool.

Scott: He's actually, in places, encouraging people to give up their lives for Him.

Sean: Pick up their cross and follow after Me. Something like that. So, that's evil, but it's also foolish, because it led Him to such a brutal, horrific death. And, of course, if He's not God, people look back and now go, yeah, He's the most famous. Everybody looks at His influence. If he's not God, He would have had no remote idea that people would believe and follow this the way we do now. So, I don't know if many people would say He's a liar. The other one is that He believes that He's God, but it's false. Now, it's one thing, again, to say you believe you have some kind of divine power—maybe like a Thor or something like that, which still would raise questions about your sanity—but Jesus claimed to be the God of the Old Testament, the eternal, all good, all eternal, you know, just, self-existent being. That's the One He claimed to be. So, using the term lunatic, we had conversations about, given where culture's at, should we still refer to people who are mentally imbalanced and suffer from mental illnesses as lunatics? So we tried to…the “Lord, liar, lunatic” is just such a memorable way to frame it, so we didn't change that. But the language throughout it, we were just trying to be careful and sensitive. That's another way that culture has shifted in a way. So, that's a fair point that we kind of wrestled with—how to frame that today. But I was able to become friends with Harold Koenig, who's a medical doctor. He's a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center. He's the founding and co-director of Duke Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health. I can't remember how many hundreds of peer-reviewed journals he's written. One of the modern-day experts on the intersection of faith and on the intersection of, like, human flourishing, so like science and religion. And I got a hold of him. I said, "We're updating this book. Is this reasonable? What do you think?" So, I didn't say, "Give me a quote that I can use to make this point." He wouldn't do that if he didn't believe it. I said, "Is this reasonable? What do you think?" And he wrote back for me, and this is uniquely in the book. I think it's really well said. He said, "It's theoretically possible,” right? He's writing like a careful academic, "that someone could be suffering from a delusional disorder, believe he was God, and yet be highly functional in every other area of life. It's possible. My experience when treating psychiatric patients, however, is that a person with a delusional disorder has other symptoms that suggest that his or her thinking is not quite right. Given the profoundness of Jesus' teaching, the positive impact on mental health of Christian beliefs and practices, and the content of those teachings that emphasize the love of others, that care for others, even at cost to oneself, seem to me incompatible with the teachings of someone with a delusional disorder." I think he's right. I appreciate that he says it's “theoretically possible.” As our friend J. Warner Wallace would say, "Anything is possible. You come into a court of law and say, ‘this is possible.’ No one's going to listen. I need to know what's most probable." So, when we look at His teachings, with what we know about human flourishing and how loving others and loving God leads to that, there's no good reason to believe Jesus was self-delusional or a lunatic. Therefore, we're left with the option, if Jesus claimed to be God, He believed it. Are we going to believe that that's actually true, or that's actually false? So, the “Lord, liar, lunatic” is meant to say, if Jesus claims to be God, we only have so many options, and we can start ruling out the other possibilities. Then let's rest with the question, was Jesus actually right? And of course, this is another point, but the resurrection fulfilled prophecies. There's other signs that back up His claims to be God.

Scott: Now, there's another chapter in this on the apostles. You've done a lot of your academic work on Christian martyrs, people who gave their lives for their faith. I could see somebody responding to the claim that Jesus was a liar, “He died, and He gave his life for a lie.” That's not uncommon today. People give their lives for lies all the time. I think we would say Muslim suicide bombers give their lives for something that we would hold is a lie. It's actually not that uncommon today. So, how do you address that particular objection, that maybe it's not all that irrational for people to die for a lie, that that may not be a slam dunk part of the argument?

Sean: This is another chapter and content in the book that changed, and I will fully own this one. But in the 1977 version, my dad had a list of the typical ways that it's believed that the apostles died as martyrs. So, Thomas died in India, Bartholomew flayed to death, et cetera. Peter crucified, maybe, upside down. Well, in the 2009 version, I had not started my dissertation, my doctoral work, until 2010. I remember seeing that, and that was one of the things that got me thinking, how do we know that? Is this just tradition? Is this really knowable? And people can check for themselves—it's embarrassing to admit, but there's a footnote in the 2009 update that I did that literally says, something like the effect of, “For evidence on how the apostles died, see church history.” The most vague, unhelpful footnote probably in the history of footnotes. Why even put a footnote there? I have no idea. I hadn't done a dissertation yet, and just learned to really probe down in this. So, looking back on that, I wish it were not there, but if you do something publicly, you’ve just kind of got to own it and move on. So, in this updated version, I took out that list, but I think the heart of the argument still stands even if it's hard to know where history and tradition blend together, so to speak. So, they claim to have seen the risen Jesus. They put themselves in harm's way—read the beginning of Acts—for preaching the risen Jesus. We have Stephen early in Acts, we have James in Acts 12, we have evidence for some of the other apostles. What that shows is, they're not liars, minimally. They're not inventing a story to put themselves in harm's way. That's not why we lie and invent stuff. That's the point. Now, your challenge, which is the most common one that I hear that I had to wrestle with, is, what about others who've died for…what about the 9/11 terrorists, is a common example. Or Buddhists in…I watched that doc…

Scott: Set themselves on fire.

Sean: Yeah, I watched that documentary and, like, Vietnam—that was harrowing to watch them do that. You're like, these guys really believe it, and they sacrifice their lives. Wow. Well, here's the difference. If somebody—maybe more of an example—walks in right now, puts a gun to your head and my head and says, you guys really believe this Jesus thing? And we say yes, and they kill us. All that shows is, we believe it. But nothing about the truth of Christianity or the reliability of it rests upon what you and I believe. We are 2000 years removed. But the apostles traveled with Jesus for three years, roughly. They claim to have seen the risen Jesus, and they proclaim—read the beginning of Acts—that they are witnesses of this. Put themselves in harm's way. So, the qualitative difference is, those who saw it firsthand and are willing to suffer for that, versus 9/11 terrorists or modern day martyrs. And, by the way, 9/11 terrorists are not martyrs. You're not a martyr when you murder and you kill somebody else. But they're willing to lay down their life for this. Fair enough. They have received this, at best, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, tenth hand passed on by others. So if the apostles, if they didn't…minimally, this shows they sincerely believed it, and that Jesus had appeared to them. Now, somebody might say, well, it was a hallucination. That's why they sincerely believed and they were willing to suffer. Then we say, okay, let's examine the hallucination hypothesis, which we do elsewhere in the book. And that one's not going to account for their sincere belief that Jesus had risen and appeared to them. So, it doesn't prove Christianity is true. It doesn't prove the resurrection is true. That's where we've overstated things in the past. It's one piece in a larger argument about the first witnesses: said they saw the risen Jesus, willing to lay down their lives. I'm not sure what else they could do to convince us that they really believe this story is true.

Scott: I wonder, Sean, would you hold that there's a difference between people who give their lives for a lie believing it's the truth, and people who give their lives for a lie knowing that it's a lie? Those are two really different things. And had the apostles given their lives for a lie, they would have given their lives knowing that it was a lie, not believing that it was the truth. If that part of the trilemma is going to stick, then I think you have to conclude that what they gave their lives for was a lie, but they knew it was a lie. And that's the difference between the apostles and the suicide bombers. I guess the thing they have in common—because the suicide bombers also, they gave their lives thinking that it's the truth—is believing that it's the truth. They believe that they're in paradise now. Now, whether they…we’ll see about that. But anyway, is that a helpful distinction, or…?

Sean: I would say for the most part, yes. I would only qualify and say it's “theoretically possible” that they believed that Jesus appeared to them, and they're just mistaken about it and willing to suffer for that. That's “theoretically possible.” Now, if we ask who would have been in the best position to know if this was true or false, it would have been the apostles. And so, it's theoretically and logically possible, but just highly unlikely, is how I would frame it. But then you also have to get Paul in there. Paul wasn't one of the 12. He's persecuting the apostles. And we know, minimally, in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 what he was willing to suffer and die for. We have three accounts of his conversion in Acts, and I think incredible early historical evidence from the first and second century that Paul died as a martyr. So, that's what makes the case even stronger.

Scott: Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that every time they were being beaten, they had lots of incentive to re-examine the foundations of what they were believing. And, you know, their story held and a lot of them ended up giving their lives for that, and suffering things that you and I would say are just unspeakable kinds of things for the faith that they were convinced was true.

Sean: Agreed. The only part of me that pushes back is that there's a lot of overstatement of this argument that I hear people saying, that they refused to recant when they're being tortured to death. And I go, we don't have early evidence for that. So, I want to make the argument, because I think it works, but I find myself on Twitter and in other areas pushing back on Christians going, guys, we've overstated this, and I was the chief of sinners, so to speak, including it in the original More Than Carpenter. Let's get this one right.

Scott: All right. Final chapter of the book is titled “He Changed My Life.” How much weight should we give to that idea, because I mean, there are a lot of people who change people's lives. I mean, I've had mentors who changed my life, radically changed the direction of my life. How is that a knockdown argument in favor of the gospel? Because if we can say this about other human beings—and I know you've had mentors who've, you know, transformed the way you think and live, too—how much weight should we give that?

Sean: So, I don't think it's a knockdown argument. I think it's a piece of a cumulative case. If Jesus is really God, and we have the Holy Spirit, and we're a new creation, we should expect to see—as we do—lives transformed by the message. And so, if that's all we point to, then you have people of other faiths and products today—watch any commercial—or a mentor, "This changed my life." And so, you know, I think of in John, when the blind man is like, "All I know is, I was blind, and now I see." You have that, but you also have Jesus doing miracles. You also have Jesus reasoning and arguing with the Pharisees in the gospel of John. You also have the end of John chapter 20 when it says, "These miracles were done and recorded. This book is written so you may believe and have life in his name." So even the gospel of John, it includes testimonies, but also includes the evidence. So, I think it's a mistake to just give the evidence and not show why that matters for my life and why it transforms me. But I think it can be a mistake to just say, "I have a testimony." When others go, "Well, the Book of Mormon changed my life, and the Quran changed my life." I think we need to have both together. It not only works, but it's biblical.

Scott: Well, and I think in your dad's case, too, the change in his life was so dramatic that there's just a little more weight given to that. But I think he would also say that, you know, his life changed. There was a moment in time when it changed. But also, he had a lot to work through, too.

Sean: Exactly.

Scott: And, you know, for the gospel to get deeply rooted, he had to deal with a lot of what I would call being sinned against that he just had to work through. But in that change—I think you've said it right—I think it's cumulative, over a long period of time. So that he's…how do you account for this dramatic change that has been long lasting? Yeah, it's a piece. In my view, it's a pretty compelling piece, too.

Sean: I agree.

Scott: All right, one more thing.

Sean: Yeah.

Scott: You've responded to this objection, but it's in the book, and it's a really important part of the book, I think, that reflects some ways in which the culture has changed. Because we now have this sort of radical pluralism, where every religious claim is considered on the same level playing field. And the fact that Christianity makes exclusive claims is somehow taken to be this sort of height of arrogance and closed-mindedness. So, how does the book defend that idea, that the claim of Jesus being an exclusive way to God, an exclusive way to salvation, is one that's worth defending?

Sean: So, claiming that a faith system is true is not unique to Christianity. Hindus believe that they're right. Now, they might say the Christian path ultimately works within Hinduism, but they say the Christian path on its own terms is mistaken. Buddhists think they're right. Muslims think they're right. Atheists think they're right. The nature of truth is, if you believe something is true, you think every other answer is false. So, it's not uniquely Christians that are making this kind of claim. That's important. But I would say, you know, if the charge is it's arrogant to claim, you can be arrogant and right, you can be arrogant and wrong. You can be humble and right, you can be humble and wrong. It's an ad hominem fallacy to attack the person. I had an Ivy League scholar say that to me in a nice conversation. "Well, it’s so arrogant that you think that you know the truth." And I just, best I can remember, was like, "Hey, look, I'm a Christian. If I was arrogant, I apologize. Humility is a Christian virtue. But it's not clear to me why my alleged arrogance and attitude means this is true or means this is false.” There's nothing that follows from that. Really, the question is, why should we believe that this is true? And an example that I use—we did not put this in the book, although we responded differently—is, if I told you, hey, when we're done recording today, Scott, you know, invite all your friends, because I'm holding the clinic out on the field here at 51ÂÜŔň on how to be an NFL quarterback. Don't waste your time, and don't invite anybody. I got nothing. I have no authority to speak into that. But Tom Brady, you know, my former Chargers, Rivers, or Herbert shows up, or Mahomes, obviously go. They have the authority to speak into that. Who has the most authority in the history of the world to speak on spiritual issues? Well, if Jesus really was born of a virgin, if He really lived a sinless life, if He really fulfilled prophecy, and performed miracles and ultimately rose on the third day, that is a slam dunk. This person is somebody I should listen to. And that's what Jesus claimed. He has the authority to speak about spiritual truth. Buddha, Muhammad, Krishna—they're all still in the grave. Jesus has risen from the grave and conquered death. Thus, the authority to speak on these issues.

Scott: That's really helpful, I think, distinguishing between a substantive critique and an ad hominem argument where you attack the person, not the position. Saying that it's arrogant, I think, can be in many cases an attack on the person, not an attack on the argument itself. That's a really helpful distinction. One final thing. How do you hope—and put your dad in this, too—how do you and your dad hope that people will use this revised edition?

Sean: Great question. By the way, I'm sure some people will do response videos to this on the book. And that's fine. It's a short book. It's a—how many pages is it? I guess I should know the answer to this. 142 pages, but they're like short, small pages. Obviously, it's not exhaustive. We are making a simple, straightforward case over coffee in two hours. What I do is, I actually carry copies of this in my backpack. Just a couple weeks ago, gave it out to somebody. It's amazing how many times conversations come up. So, like, Paul Newby, who's the Supreme Court Justice, he keeps them, hands them out to clerks. I know a ton of business people who just carry copies of this and just give them out to individuals. So, I invite Christians…there's literally six packs of them. And you know, my dad jokingly is like, buy a six pack, obviously of a certain kind, and hand them out. You can do this with other Christians' books. You don't just have to do it with More Than a Carpenter. Just a great discipline with Christians. But it's light, and it's cheap, and it's accessible and it works. I carry copies with me, just looking for people going, hey, here's a short book, if you're interested. And I hand it out. That's one way. It's great for small groups also, because it's 10 short chapters just to discuss, to work through with Christians who are trying to gain confidence in their faith. It's, like, the easiest step into apologetics imaginable without overwhelming somebody. But I would also include parents—just read it with your kids. You know, I mean, my son, he's 12, and almost every morning I make him breakfast, and right now we're reading the gospel of John. And I weave in a lot of this stuff because I know it. Sometimes I just read it for five minutes, ask him a question. Like, that's before school, the only time that we have. What a great book to just say, we're going to read this together, and talk with your kids—11, 12, 13—relationally discussing it. That's a great way to do so as well.

Scott: Yeah, that's great. Those are great suggestions. So, I want to commend to our listeners and our viewers: not only read the book, but give it away. Read it with others, read it with your kids. If you have kids, those are all great suggestions. And I'm sure as you encounter more people and have these conversations about Christian faith, you'll find other good ways to use the book like this in the future. So, Sean, this has been so helpful, to get the inside story on More Than a Carpenter. And I just so appreciate the legacy that your dad started and has left with you and you're leaving with your kids. The way the book has been used so powerfully in so many years and so many lives to impact for God's kingdom. It's so encouraging to see that.

Sean: Thanks, Scott. It's fun to be on this side of the conversation.

Scott: Great stuff. So, to our viewers, we hope you enjoyed this conversation. I don't get to be on this side very much, with Sean as the guest. But, really helpful, really a fun hour that we spent together. I hope you found it helpful, and we will see you next time. Thanks so much for listening.