Cold Case Christianity | Instagram | The Thin Blue Life | Buy J Warner Wallace Books on Amazon (affiliate link)

FORENSIC FAITH // S06E03

How are you going to counteract the hostility of the world? How are you going to live out The Great Commission? And are you willing to put in the work to do it? In today’s episode, J Warner Wallace advises us on raising the next generation of Christians and the importance of living out god’s teachings.

VERSES FROM DO THE WORK:

Romans 1:20, John 10:10, Romans 5:8, and 1 Peter 3:15.

QUESTIONS FROM DO THE WORK:

• How are you living life as a Christian?
• Are you making a case that God exists to those around you?
• How are you exemplifying faith for your kids?

QUOTES FROM DO THE WORK:

“The family unit needs to take back the responsibility for bringing Christ to their kids.”

Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, Do the work.

“We have to listen. Listening is a good point. You know, listening to how they feel, listening to whatever it is and then bringing in the light of Christ.”

Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast, Do the work.

“Part of the battle for us, as we think about how we are renewed and rewired, is going to come down to how are we impacted by the media.”

J Warner Wallace, The Pantry Podcast, Do the work.

Shea: New ways of thinking aren’t always instant—sometimes you have to put in the work to understand or pass a realization onto someone else. How do we do that for our sake? For the sake of our kids? This week, we’ve brought in a professional critical thinker to help us solve the case.

Shea: Hey, I’m Shea.

Michelle: And I’m Michelle.

Shea: There’s a battle being waged. It’s not flesh, it’s not blood, it’s spiritual, and we need to be prepared. The last thing a warrior wants on the battlefield is spiritual anemia. When the enemy attacks we need to be prepared

Michelle: We don’t always realize where the attacks are coming from or that we’re being attacked at all. This is the pantry podcast, and we’re here to remind you of who we answer to what we’re capable of, and how we are called to do it in every aspect of our lives.

Shea: This is season six, rewired when you’re saved, you’re saved for good, we all experienced sanctification differently. The more we grow in our relationship with the Lord, the more he transforms and renews our minds. The more we cut the cords of this world, the more we’re charged up in him this season, we’re arming you with the sermon of some of the culture’s most toxic snares

Michelle: Support our ministry, reaching the lost and found in over 35 countries with spiritual and literal nutrition. Every one-time and recurring donation makes a lasting impact, donate through Patreon or pantrypodcast.com. And now let’s dig into the meal.

Shea: It’s exciting to be here, that’s my favorite saying of all the time

Michelle: I need to make you a shirt. I’m excited. It’s exciting to be here.

Shea: As you can hear, we’ve got a voice in the background. We’re talking about doing the work. That’s what this episode is about the season. You know, we’re talking about rewired, we’ve been talking about this and you know, I was thinking about this Romans 1:20, and we’re going to talk about God tonight. We’re going to talk about God and how, if you just unpack it, if you do the work and you start to really look at it, you know, you’ll see these things. If you really challenge God or you say, Hey, you know what, show yourself to me. You might see these things. In fact, what we’re going to hear tonight is a way of seeing something that God unlocked, but it was because of positioning. The whole time was a position. Where is our position? How is our position? How does that attribute to how we come to God? And that is what we’re going to talk about tonight. Romans 1:20, because watch this, it says for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Michelle: Yeah. That’s a good verse. So tonight we have, or right now, I don’t want to say tonight right now we have the pleasure of welcoming onto the show at J Warner Wallace, who found Christ when he was still a cold case, a homicide detective. But now he’s also a popular national speaker and bestselling author of cold case Christianity God’s crime scene and forensic faith. And he’s also writing a new book that we are super excited to have him walk us through a little bit later on. He continues to consult on cold-case investigations while he serves as,, enrolled at Colson center for Christian worldview Talbot school of theology and Southern evangelical seminary, as well as summit ministries. He holds a master’s degree in theological studies from gateway seminary, and he speaks at churches on the TV and radio at retreats explaining the role that evidence plays in the Christian definition of faith and defending the historicity of Jesus, the reliability of the Bible, and the truth of the Christian worldviews, as he seeks to help people become confident Christian case makers. So welcome J Warner Wallace. Welcome. J Warner Wallace: Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Shea: Great. Yeah. We just had a pre-game talk.

Shea: It was so good, but you know, there’s one thing that I didn’t hear it in there, but you’re also a chaplain now. And you know, I think the chaplains are probably used more in certain parts of the country than they are in others. I’m in Los Angeles county. And if I’m honest with you, chaplains that have a different role to play here, um, typically we can call it out if there’s somebody who has passed away and we need to make an identification, right. Something like that, right. Or if a victim’s family wants to have a chaplain present and will be called out. So there are, but the most important work I do is with officers because, to be honest, I’m the only chap in our agency. Who’s actually served as an officer before, you know, as a detective, if I was on, on staff, as a sworn, most of our chaplains are pastors, which is really great. But, I think a lot of us as law enforcement, especially in a culture that says we ought to be defunding this position altogether.

J Warner Wallace: There’s a sense in which you’d be nice to be able to talk to somebody else who’s already done the job who already knows it from the inside out rather than from the outside in. So as a rule, I probably can play with our, our agency, to help, young officers navigate a world in which they don’t feel like they’re in some ways appreciated. Um, like why would you, why would you put your, like your sign-on, because you feel like this is such a noble cause that you’re willing to put your life at risk in order to achieve something, um, that you feel is noble. Um, but the culture starts telling you, this is not that noble. Uh, if you’re not careful, you can start to listen to those voices. And then I think it’s harder for you to do your job, especially when a lot of days, most days are going to be unsatisfying and that no one’s gonna pat you on the back and say, what a great job you did today.

J Warner Wallace: Most of the time you’re gonna meet hostility. I give you an example of this. If you were to go into, uh, law enforcement academy, for the most part, what’s, you’re going to find our drill instructors are going to be screaming at you because they know that you’re going to be encountering opposition, um, pretty significant opposition. And they want to make sure that you’re able to handle it. Um, so it’s not like you go into an academy and we, we, we, um, in drill instructors have a compliment you because they know you’re gonna be complimented in the field. And in fact, what they do instead is they a borate you, because they know they’re going to be berated in the field. And so that’s a job that most people would say, I’m not really willing to sign up for 30 years of that. But if you felt like it was noble, like it was worth doing, like it was, um, important, you might sign up for it. But if a culture is telling you really, it’s not, no, well it’s not worth doing, and you should be defended. That’s an entirely different, um, uh, set of circumstances. And I think that, that if you’ve done the job, I maybe I can help, um, officers, young officers navigate that reality.

Shea Watson: That’s awesome. I mean, I’m a son of a police officer, and so I never patted him on the back when he came. I’m horrible. I should have, but you don’t think about it. You know what your daddy comes home and you, you respect uniform, you respect the man. And then you kind of like, you sit there and you’re like, in my mind is like, oh, he’s a cop. You know, that’s, you know, that was pretty cool for me. But you know, when, when we’re sitting here talking about this, I’m thinking like, let’s, let’s bring it to our reality. And then we’re going to get into your story. Cause I want to hear about when you crossed from atheism into Christianity, but really when I’m sitting there listening to this, I think of John 10:10, where the thief comes only, still only comes to steal, kill and destroy.

Shea Watson: I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. And, you know, when I think of that like we’re, we’re looking at something that a lot of the world doesn’t understand. We’re looking at something that a lot of the world can’t even grasp. They see they see this, this, this flesh, they see this, this vision out here, they see the world and they’re like, ah, this is just horrible, but really there’s an underlying aspect here. But I think that that is where when you crossed over and you could see these things in a perspective, um, it, it just shows us that, like you did the work, you did the work. And I want to know a little bit about that. Like doing the work. Do what’d

Michelle Watson: You? Yeah. I think what I heard was really interesting. There were several layers of rewiring, which is the whole season going on. And what you just said right there in the sense of how you’re rewired in the police force when you’re entering in it’s it reminds me of how the soldiers, like what I’ve heard from Shea, how they get rewired, and then also the rewiring of culture to no longer see this as a noble profession. And then you understanding because you are rewired by the Lord to be very uniquely placed and gifted with the ability to reach these people because you have this dual understanding.

J Warner Wallace: Well, I’ll tell you something. That’s interesting. I have been watching, so I’m writing another book and it takes forever to write book number one, but then I have to illustrate it. And we wanted this book to be very heavily illustrated a much more like a graphic novel, you know? So we, we, I committed to drawing over 400 drawings, but that takes forever. So I’m like watching things. So during football season, great. I had games I could watch, you know, I can play these old games from my college, whatever it was awesome. Right. So I was able to kind of put that on in the background, not really watching the games, I’m just drawing. And that game was on in the background. Um, well then that ran out, right? So it’s the football season ends. And so now what am I going to watch? What am I going to have on in the background?

J Warner Wallace: Cause I’m going crazy. I’m three and a half months in drawing, um, illustrations. And my background is in, uh, before I became a detective, I was basically a designer. I have a bachelor’s degree in design and a master’s degree in architecture. So I, this is what I did for a living, so I know how to draw. So I’m sitting there, I’m drawing and I’m listening to the background. So I put on Netflix and we often think that culture is moved by politics and everything has become political. Right. But it turns out that culture has moved first and foremost by the arts. Yeah. By media. And as I’m watching and listening in the background, I started, I got on Netflix and I started going to play every documentary that has anything to do with all law enforcement. They’re all for the most part negative.

J Warner Wallace: You know, if you go on the ID channel, you’re going to find a bunch of detective stories in which to take those solved cases. That’s positive. If you go on Netflix, you’re going to find a bunch of, uh, series in which a detective does something they shouldn’t do and can pick the wrong person. So I’m listening to this in the background, right. This whole, this whole narrative. And I’m thinking to myself, okay, first of all, I want my son, who’s a detective to listen to every single watch, every single one, because if they’re just one story after another of police doing stupid things they shouldn’t do. And police often do that. Right. And so what we want to do is make sure that we do the right thing, right? So there’s something noble, uh, results as a result of our efforts. But, uh, but clearly it’s, it’s clear to me as I’m listening to this in the background, that if you were just to have you as your chief source of information, Netflix, documentaries, you would want to define the bullies, right?

J Warner Wallace: So it turns out, and by the way, those are true stories that are being documented on Netflix. But of course, of the hundreds of thousands of convictions that are obtained, we’re talking about a percentage that’s in the single digits that are, are, need to be reinvestigated because I’m with you. I don’t want it ever to say it. My, my, my priority is truth. Not conviction. I don’t want to falsely convict somebody. Right? But if all you do is watch those, that 4% of convictions that are our errands, 96%, which are not, um, you will be convinced that you ought to define the beliefs. And I get it. I think, as Christians, what we needed to be able to do, and is this a, it’s a larger, uh, testimony to, to what it is that changes culture. And we often think as Christians, if we simply vote the right way, we will change the culture.

J Warner Wallace: I really, it turns out politics are pretty downfield from culture we need to do instead is to impact the arts, right? It’s the impact of media it’s that there is the impact, there’s little chance, no chance at all, that a Christian documentary of any kind will ever get on Netflix. So I think that part of the battle for us, as we think about how we’re, how we are renewed and rewired, a lot of it is going to come down to can, how are we impacted by, by media? And, and how does that change the way we see the world? What I love about Christianity is that Christianity actually describes the world the way it really is, and that ought to be worth something. But it’s our goal. If we’re going to share that truth with others, we’re going to need to do it by mastering the arts. And that’s where I think the next challenge is for us as Christians. What’s
really cool about when you’re saying that is, I remember when I first met Michelle, uh, 2014, she was the girl at prayer group that was praying for the, you know, the actresses and the actors and the singers and Hollywood and, and all of that, like exactly what you’re talking about. She’s praying for these avenues that we’re bringing, you know, this, this negative culture into our lives and into our heads. And it only took us till well last year to cancel Netflix.

Michelle Watson: I totally agree. And it’s refreshing to hear this realization come from what I would say is a very mainstream Christian figure, right? Just because people know cold case Christianity, they might not know your name, but they know that book. And a lot of people know your name as well. Um, and I think that people are starting to wake up to that. I was actually, I saw a screenshot of a conversation that someone had found on Reddit a few weeks ago. And they were talking about how concerned it was in an atheist group on Reddit. And they were so concerned because of veggie tales, their kids loved veggie tales, and they were so bothered by it because they could not understand why their kids love VeggieTales so much and what they were going to do to combat this belief that VeggieTales was giving their children.

J Warner Wallace: And they were talking about how their kids could differentiate. Despite the fact, they were just watching animated cartoons on Netflix, the VeggieTales, they were like, no, no, mommy, daddy like veggie tales are about real things. Veggie tells us about God and God’s reality. And Jesus and Jesus are real. Everything else is a cartoon, but not VeggieTales. Uh at that moment, the person who had posted the screenshot was like, the culture war goes two ways. You can just let yourself and your culture be inundated with what you know, to be wrong. And just sit there like a helpless victim, or you can stand up and say, I have a skill. What can I use this skill for to evangelize, like what we were talking about before we started recording about podcasting being an evangelism tool? It’s like, what can we use the arts, you know, to bring these thoughts and truths alive in a new way to rewire people.

J Warner Wallace: So as a cold case, detective real quick, and this is the question, did you ever like, just take one avenue of information or did you go out and look at all different kinds of evidence?

J Warner Wallace: Well, look, we had to delegate someone would call exculpatory evidence. That is evidence that might indicate that there’s somebody else who’s also maybe even a better candidate for this crime, whether there’s some, uh, evidence that would indicate the guy you’re claiming is the candidate for their crime is actually innocent in some way. So we have to look at all of that because we have to release exculpatory evidence to the defense. Right? So, I mean, look in the end. I think I haven’t canceled my Netflix because I want to, to see what everyone is saying and there’s stuff that drives me crazy. There’s no doubt about that. Okay. There’s no doubt about that, but, and I’m conflicted a little bit, like what is my role now at this point in my life? I think if I was 20 or if I was 40, I would feel differently about what my role is going forward.

J Warner Wallace: As I’m now 59, I’ve got a different role. And I think that um, that whenever I do it, I had a full career as a cold case. Detective, I’m not looking to start a new career. I’m just looking to live my life as a Christian. And what that means for me is that I’m called to make a case and defend what is true at the same time. I am not called to love my books or my ministry or my website like Christ loves the church. I’m called to love my wife that way. Right. So I’ve, I’ve shifted that priority because there are a lot of years where, you know, I think she was waiting for me, you know, I worked at to, um, support our family and to do all of that. And now that I’m not in that position, I am not going, I mean, where you spend your time as an indication of where what you love.

J Warner Wallace: Right. So I think I’ve got to do all of this in balance with the thing I’m called to do first. Amen. Um, so that’s what I’ve kind of shifted a lot of that. So the question remains for those of us who are encountering culture, like, okay, I want it, I want to say something about this. Um, at the same time, I know that all politics is downstream of is the Bible true? And should we take it seriously? Those two things, if we all agreed the Bible is true. Well, we’d be closer to agreeing on all the secondary issues. Right? The problem of course is also though it means is it, shall I take it seriously? In other words, should I just pull a verse that supports my position, which is really secular, and then use that verse to kind of support my position? Or do I want to read the Bible in all of its contexts because I take it seriously?

J Warner Wallace: So I think we needed to do things. Is the Bible true? And should we take it seriously enough to understand like from a hermeneutic perspective, how should we read it? So that’s what my work is basically as based on it these days, but at the same time, it’s all based. All of that has to be secondary to my marriage, which is the most important thing that I do. Um, so I think that that’s a lot, of where the future lies for me and for all of us who are publicly making the case for Christianity. I don’t want to, how many times have we seen in the last year that someone who’s eloquent at making the case for Christianity and even preaching it or teaching it has some moral failing, but it surfaces, right? So in the end, I need to make sure that I am who I’m supposed to be before I talk about what I’m supposed to be.

Shea Watson: Yeah. I like that. I like that. Cause I, I, yeah, just in that without mentioning names, uh, yeah, there was a big impact lately or recently. And, um, but you know, I, I, people have asked me those questions, see here, here’s where we keep our, our, our finger to the pulse. Um, yeah, we might’ve canceled Netflix, but we didn’t cancel people. Right. Um, we, we still get out there. We still talk to our friends. We still talk to people around us. We still talk to our neighbors. Um, we, we are in an area that Christ Christ is not the center. Um, and so, but we don’t reject them. We don’t deny them. We don’t walk out of our house and not say hi to them. No, we, we love them. You know, Christ found himself in some of the worst places, you know, that, that the world would say was worst to Christ.

Shea Watson: He was like, these are the people who would probably listen because they’re, they’re that shattered. Um, and if we look at society right now, if we look at culture right now, if we look at people right now, even the younger generations, there’s a shattering happening. And how is, how are we going to come out and reflect into that, into that shatter, right? How, how are we going to be people? And you know, we have to listen. I think listening is a good point. You know, listening to how they feel, listening to whatever, and then bringing in the light of Christ, Hey, Romans 5:8. It says this. No, but we can speak the word. We can be the only Bible they ever see through our actions. And so our poles is, oh, you know our fingers on that pulse and we’re listening and we’re listening to not just one side when you get caught in that one-sided narrative, then you drift off of the main narrative, which you’re talking about, which is Christ, you know, knowing the word and sharing it the right way.

J Warner Wallace: So Shea and Michelle, let me ask you, do you guys have kids? Both: Yes.

J Warner Wallace: So what do you have?
Both: girl. Girl.

J Warner Wallace: How old?

Both: She’s almost two.

J Warner Wallace: Oh, you’re in the glory years!

Michelle Watson: Oh yeah. It’s like easy peasy right now by comparison. I know. Wait till junior high that I remember my own. I’m sorry for us.

J Warner Wallace: Turns out news about it done. There’s been a bunch of surveys done and I keep up a webpage on our website. That’s called, um, up, it’s only a page that has the word updated in it. So if you just type an update in our search engine on the top of the page, you’ll see, you’ll find it. It’s about the departure of young people from the church. And I list there, the surveys and studies that have been done. One of the greatest studies has been done amongst, uh, for parents that retain their young people, stay in the church as they grow up. If you are somebody who serves in the church with your kids, your kids are far more likely to stay in the faith. If you’re somebody whose kids have seen you evangelize the lost your kids are far more likely to stay in the faith, right?

J Warner Wallace: If you have gone on a missions trip with your kids, you are far more likely to have kids who stay in the faith. So it really is about us, living this in front of our kids and, and I’m seeing this as well. Of course, you look at the other problem is that it’s not just about, and I think one of the tricks is we, this great commission, it feels like sometimes like, Hey, you need to share Jesus with people. And once they accept Jesus as Lord you’re done, but discipleship evangelism is so important because if all the equation is, is, you know, God exists. Jesus has God. I believe in Jesus, that equation one. Plus the other equals the third a is not quite sufficient because to say that, yes, God exists. Jesus has God. I believe in Jesus. Well, Mormons can say that um, Joel was, witnesses can say that lots of folks who believe in errant beliefs can say that a lot of progressive Christians can say that. And what we really have to do is to say, Hey, God exists. Jesus has God. Plus there are these rich theological truths that are usually represented in the creeds over history. Creedal traditional truth, theological truth about Jesus and the nature of Jesus. That unless you add those things unless you that’s part of it, you leave people short of the goal and you open them up to all kinds of deception. So for our kids, we have to do, I think is spend some time with the fuller equation. Right, right. Make a case for why does God exists? Why do we think that Christianity is true, that Jesus has gotten down on the cross for us? And then what does that really? What do we mean when we say that? Do we believe that Jesus is just the first of all creation, but not just another creative being, do we think he is God incarnate in some way?

J Warner Wallace: And we think that that death on the cross is just as a substitutionary atonement for our sin. In other words, these are things that were proclaimed by the earliest Christians and usually in the form of some type or creed. And I get that. We are probably as many people reject that form of free of Christianity, but unless we add that form of the, it used to be, the people will be disciplined after long, several weeks of instruction of some sort. So that when you were baptized, you actually had a set of beliefs that you embraced before you were baptized. And the most ancient Christians went through through all that. Um, but we have a tendency to kind of think, Hey, why don’t you believe that Jesus is your savior? And what does it even mean? Have we have, we kind of parse that out for our kids, and have we parsed that out for each other?

J Warner Wallace: And it turns out if you aren’t willing to do that, you’re going to end up in some form of deception more than likely. But if you are willing to kind of talk about like, what, what are they, I got several books back here that are really about systematic theology and you might think, oh gosh, systematic, no, no, no, no, no, no. Where’s ours very important for us to be able to talk about this accurately enough, to not lead somebody to the, edge of truth and then let them wander into some deception. Right? Yeah.

Michelle Watson: Last season we interviewed someone that you should connect with his name’s Brian Barcelona and he is working and evangelizing generation Z. And the interview was so full of hope because he was talking about these kids and how fervently they’re pursuing the Lord on their own coming out of unchurched homes, uh, because of social media, because they encountered people delivering the gospel where they were at, um, through media that, that you’re talking about. And, and they are coming through it also because unlike I’m a millennial. So we came out of an era of a lot of comforts, a lot of pressure, but also a lot of comforts. Um, and nine 11 was that blip, um, where it kind of brought in some reality. But aside from that, things were still very readily available and generation Z has been cut off socially. They’re uncertain in pretty much every way you can be uncertain and they’re seeking those answers. And, uh, and one of the things he said is the family unit needs to take back the responsibility for bringing Christ to their kids. If they happen to go to church, it can’t be Sunday school. It can’t be a nursery. It can’t be a youth group. Although those are all great things. You cannot make those things, the father or the head of the house, the mother that’s shepherding the kids you can’t make. There can’t be a replacement. It has to be those things are supplements, not the entire meal.

J Warner Wallace: Okay. So Michelle, so let me ask you then. So that’s great. So now tell me, how is it that you and Shea are capturing back that responsibility,

Michelle Watson: Man, let’s count the way.

J Warner Wallace: Here’s a question I’m now interviewing you

Michelle Watson: That’s an honor in itself. So she was how many months? 20 months around Christmas. 20. Yeah. So she really started to be able to grasp and re and use language to relay back to us what she understood around Christmas time, which was perfect timing because we’ve been praying with her and saying not just the same repetitive grace, but like really thanking God with her at every meal. And she had started participating with what words she had, but around Christmas time we were really focusing on, okay, who is Jesus? Who, who like, what does he do? Like, it’s not just a little baby, although she loves baby Jesus and carries him around and sings to him all the time. Um, but I started showing her actually clips of the chosen, cause it was the first thing I could think of, of seeing Jesus interact with little kids, not other adults, but there are scenes of him interacting.

Michelle Watson: And I was like, baby, Jesus grows up because we’re also teaching her what growing up means that you will get as big as us. If you keep, you know, you know, this is Jesus king, Jesus, baby, Jesus is King Jesus. And so walking her through all of that and um, praying with her every night, singing worship songs that she’s the nursing church, church nursery, she serves at church, the helps Shea pass out the microphones. We just, I mean, we’ve made it a point our whole life. There’s no area of our life. That should be a pie slice apart from Christ. Right. It has to be infused with Jesus, not even Jesus flavor

J Warner Wallace: Early, right? Because you have a tendency to think that a two-year-old can only understand. So which is fine. You just, you, you deliver truth at the level of a two-year-old and you find doing that and then you’ll find yourself. We kind of wanted to reclaim some of the things that as, as a culture, we often will discharge to somebody else. Well, you’ll say, okay, well the spiritual formation, my cases, my, my youth pastor’s responsibility. Well, of course, it’s not right. But we even said, okay, the teaching work is, is the responsibility of public school teachers when we ended up pulling back and doing some homeschooling. So, so we found ourselves, you know, and we were homeschoolers and home churches, you know, we did, uh, we, we served on big church staffs, um, huge juror staffs. And we served on a medium church staff.

J Warner Wallace: And then eventually we planted a church here in our house that was only probably 50 people ever that at the most. And, uh, we did that for six years before with the first book. And I felt like that that responsibility of pulling that back of taking that responsibility for ourselves was really, really big. Because if you think about the kind of history of our worldview, we have historically, you know, I get it. A lot of people are like, I can’t, they can’t imagine a world in which you didn’t trust somebody else to do these important things. But the reality of it is of course, as we were founding a country, there were no public school systems that we could trust. And we had communities of like-minded thinkers that raised our kids. It taught our kids the basics, of education. And so that’s really our responsibility as a parent, my responsibility as a parent.

J Warner Wallace: And it turns out that those, we know this from studies that have been done over the years, that those families that take that responsibility seriously are more likely to pass on the faith to the next generation. And gen Z is an interesting generation. We wrote a book about this called the Southern next generation will know I wrote it with John McDowell, who probably is involved with young people as anybody. I know we both are teaching at summit worldview conference where it’s all high schoolers and I’m an old guy. Um, and so I don’t expect that I can relate to young people from the perspective, of what we might share in common interests. But I think that what I can demonstrate for young people is that I have a common love of young people. And that’s really all that matters. I think if you can do that, um, you, you, for the most part, will have a voice.
So I would suggest to anybody of any age group that thinks well, yeah, but I’m not, I’m not a gen Z. I don’t know anything about their music. I don’t know anything about, I don’t know anything about what they like and don’t like what they’re eating. I mean, okay. So what I can tell you that I was really close to my grandparents growing up and they didn’t have any clue of what the culture was, um, telling my age group or what I was experiencing as a young person growing up. But the people I felt closest to were my grandmother and my grandfather, and it was because they were young at heart. They were, they would just sit and listen and we would play a lot of games. And so it turns out that if you just love young people enough, you will have a voice with them and you’ll be able to shape the next generation, for sure.

Shea Watson: You were there as love. Um, and, and, and that willingness to be around them. I think about this conversation as I sit here and listen to you guys, you know, talk about raising kids and being around the kids and we have 18 and a half year difference between us. Um, there’s a lot of things that we have both learned because it’s like we never stopped learning. I think that when we get too old and we start thinking like, you can’t teach me anything, we failed, we have failed as, as, as older raise people. And I’ve learned that through Michelle and she’s learned another perspective for me, but back to this kid thing though, and let me, let me, I’m just gonna explain something to people. When she says that we pray with our daughter, when she says that we’re, we’re, we’re getting her interactive with the church, or, you know, she’s interacting with the church.

Shea Watson: One day, she came up and got on this microphone and said, test, test, test, test. And I’m like, we didn’t teach her that here. But see, she was sitting there while I was up on stage with my microphone, you know, getting ready to see her. So we were set up a camera and I’m sitting there saying test she’s there watching us everything that we do. They’re watching when our daughter, man, I remember that day I stubbed my toe was on the right. And I’m like, oh, you know, she goes, Baba, pray, pray, Baba. I didn’t tell her, Hey, I need you to come to pray. These are things that she’s starting to instill in her own head. That like, when, when we need something, when we need, we pray or we need Jesus, you know, we pray, they learn so much and they learn so fast. They are like sponges and they absorb.

J Warner Wallace: Yeah. I think there’s a couple of, of kind of defining marks that occur in time with our raise our kids. And right now you have the best chance to inform your kids at this age, uh, and to train your kids, to teach your kids. What I see. I remember when I was at a conference of Southern Baptist church leaders in Arkansas and I was at the book table. And, um, I always remember I was approached by somebody who was teaching junior, uh, upper elementary, I think fourth and fifth graders. And one of the questions that were asked was, you know, why would Satan do it this way? Whatever the way is. And I remember the teacher came up to my book table and say, Hey, I have this question in my class. You know, I wouldn’t say it and do it this way. And then somebody came up a few minutes later, who is interest in the same day, um, zoom event.

J Warner Wallace: And she was teaching junior highers, I think seventh and eighth-graders. And the question was, why should I believe there is something such as Satan? I thought, wow, isn’t that crazy same topic, right? Within a couple of minutes of each other, right at the book table. But fourth and fifth graders believe there is a Satan and want to know why he would do it a certain way, but by the time we get to the seventh and eighth grade, not quite sure it was a Satan, to begin with. Right? It turns out the age of skepticism, which for generations, was it, the minute you interviewed a university, you were 17 or 18 and met your first skeptic is now the minute that you are in contact with a young person who has a smartphone. And that is usually seventh or eighth grade. So it turns out that that is the critical juncture, the moment that all parents should be planning for and be aware of that when we survey young people and ask them, you know, um, are you, uh, you’re, you’re now a sophomore or a freshman or sophomore in a university.

J Warner Wallace: And we’re asking, okay, are you a Christian anymore? When you were a Christian growing up, right? Yep, yep. Yep. I went to a youth group. Yep. Yep. Did all that. Are you a Christian right now? Now? No longer a Christian doesn’t stop there. Well, when did you decide? Wasn’t true. If you ask that second question, when did you decide? Wasn’t true because the assumption is that we send our kids to college and that’s where they become atheist. Now it turns out that every one of those guys you interviewed guys and gals, you interviewed back there and the sophomore year in university will tell you that they first started having their doubts somewhere between the ages of 10 and 13, 14, 15. They decided it wasn’t true while they were still with us. Yeah. It just didn’t tell us. Wow. And then we got to college. They decided, yeah, this world embraces the view.

J Warner Wallace: I’ve already embraced myself years ago. Right? So I think we have to be asking the critical questions of our young people in the upper element with to prepare our kids and upper elementary, to be able to answer these questions they’re going to get because at some point they’re going to see these on a website that if you don’t give your kids a cell phone and somebody else will have one, and that’s the age of skepticism. It’s, there’s lots of, I’ve got a survey on our website, updated page. I was telling you about that. Really talks about how the age of skepticism has come down from 17 to about 12. Wow. And that’s why we need to be engaged with our young people much earlier. And not just in terms of like, you know, we, we, we pray in front of them. We’ve modeled this in front of them. We have to help them answer questions earlier than we ever have in the past. Yeah.

Michelle Watson: You know, I had one verse. I was like, this is the verse I’m going to bring up. 1 Peter 3:15 kind of sums up everything that we’ve been talking about because the first part of it is the part people tend to forget. And it says, instead you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. That’s where doing the work comes in. Because with your kids, with your neighbors, being the Bible, the only Bible some people may ever see, you have to, he has to be Lord of your life for you to walk into life saying, I’m going to put down the flesh and I’m going to do these things that might be hard. But then the second part of the verse is the part people mostly know. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. That’s more work. Um, but it’s, it’s this idea that you have to plan and expect to be a defender of the faith the entire time. And you it’s really hard to do. I’m not gonna say you can do it because the spirit is able, but you can not sit there and think it’s going to be easier if you don’t prep for it, it’s going to be easier if you do prep for it. And so all these different levels of what doing the work actually means in both for your sake and for others.

Shea Watson: Now you’ve adapted cold case for children.

J Warner Wallace: Yeah. When we did cold case, um, it took, it took off and it was great. And the publisher came back to us at some point and said, are you interested in doing kids? But of course, we were because we knew that this age that we needed to prepare kids were all pre uh, junior high. So we wanted to write a series of books for eight to 13-year-olds. So we run all of our books chapter by chapter for young people from eight to 13. So they’re all the kids’ version. So cold case Christianity for kids, God’s crime scene for kids, and forensic faith for kids. Now what we tried to do differently, and I’ve got good friends who have written great kids’ books. For example, if you asked me aside from my own books, what other books are out there? Well, the case for books by Lee Strobel are all available in kids’ versions but what we wanted to do was something different. We wanted to write fiction in which a group of students mentored by a detective is trying to solve a mystery that has nothing to do with Jesus, but along the way, they’re going to learn the principles they can apply at the end of the day to Jesus because we knew if we could it. So one book in ministry about a skateboard, one book of mystery, about a box in an attic. One book is a mystery about a corgi little corgi puppy. Um, so we tried to create mysteries that kids can solve, but a long way, they’re going to, at the end of the day, the detective’s going to turn the corner and apply them towards the Christian worldview. Because what we’re trying to do here is to teach some simple principles of thinking of how do I evaluate evidence?

J Warner Wallace: How do I evaluate a claim? Uh, and if we can do that, we feel like we’ve moved kids in a direction. Also, we knew that if we could make these page Turners, where they really wanted to find out about the corgi, we would kind of smuggle in, uh, critical thinking that they can apply toward the Christian worldview. And what we also want to do is create an interactive academy. So if you go to casemakersacademy.com, you’ll see that we have all three books available. And there’s a video for each chapter, a worksheet for each chapter, an activity for each chapter, and a parent guide for each chapter, all available online, you can download those. And so our goal here is to that’s the most rewarding work we do. I mean, when, when I, I love that if people are reading our book and using our book great.

J Warner Wallace: But when I see that there’s a class of students who send us pictures and you’ll see on our website@casemakersacademy.com, you’ll see, there’s an honor cadet wall. So basically the stories are centered around, um, uh, police explorers, detective-like cadets that are a little bit older than the age group we’re targeting. They’re like 14 to 17, but we’re writing these books for eight to 13. So we’re trying to give them a little bit they’re kids, but they’re not kids quite as young, and they’re trying to learn how to be detectives. And so if you joined their academy with us, you’ll earn a certificate at the end that you can put on your wall. It says, you now have graduated from level one, level two, level three. I got all this junk on my walls too. Right? Because it turns out that if you do this long enough, at some point someone if you do it well, somebody would probably going to give you one of these stupid things.

J Warner Wallace: This stupid thing is so big. It’s going to go in your attic or on your wall. Those are your two choices. Right? Um, so a lot of this is I think the kids respond to that. I mean, I worked hard as an, as a recruit. I worked hard in the academy to earn a certificate. Um, and I think kids will do that too. So what we’re trying to do is to give them something to work toward, and then we will see all their pictures are on that page. The honor cadet pages, full of students, pictures they send to us after they earn their certificate. So yeah, I think this is really the age in which we need to make the case for this because by the time they’re, it’s interesting. You’ll see if you are in a Christian school, as a high school, I’ll bet you that if they’re going to teach Christian apologetics, they’re going to teach it probably in your junior or senior year.

J Warner Wallace: It turns out that’s too late. You’ve already decided to as true or untrue by that point, right. We’re going to be teaching this like in the eighth grade, uh, before you ever get to high school, because that is typically where young people are the most influenced by social media, by their friends. I was a youth pastor for years, about six years. And as a youth pastor, I was a youth pastor because my kids were going through that age group. So I wanted to be about their youth pastor. So I pastored at a church here of about 300 people. We had about 50 in our youth group. And Mike is we’re part of that. And I remember as I was pastoring and through those years, you know, I spent a lot of time kind of just trying to prepare them for the future. And that’s, that’s really what we were with these books. We’ve kind of taken that process. We used with young people and we’ve applied them in the books to see if we can help them to believe, you know, to think. Well, uh, so when they face the challenge, they’re prepared to face it right

Michelle Watson: Now. I’m excited. We have actually a cold case, Christianity for kids, but I did not know the other two were available. So yay. Homeschool material was

J Warner Wallace: Surprising. We did the same thing when we were homeschoolers, we were constantly looking for material that was out there that was inexpensive because let’s face it. Every single thing is expensive. It seems like you’re teaching, you know, a science curriculum that’s going to cost something. And so what we wanted to do is for the price of a, you know, $7 books. So as you can get it that cheap, um, and you get all these free materials, you can download. You’ve got a, but basically, it’d be like a 10-week course. You could run like a Bible study course. And so it could, all the materials are available online for free. Once you have the book, you’re good to go. Um, so that’s kind of what we were thinking, because we knew that too, as homeschoolers, that that was a challenge to be able to afford all these different kinds of curriculum. Right. And that’s why you get involved in co-ops and do other things you hope will help you to, um, do what you don’t feel like you’re prepared to do on your own.

Shea Watson: Right? I like that. And all this talk, and there’s a valid point in their critical thinking, critical thinking. Um, I know from the police force to the military, what I did in the military required critical thinking, um, it required an analyzing, something breaking down something, see, when we say do the work, right, we’re rewiring where we’re taking something like you just said, we need to start earlier. We’re starting too late. And so rewiring our minds as parents that like, we can’t just be a fixture. We have to be involved. We have to be teaching them how to digest things and think things through and really bring them to rationalization and realization. You know, what, what am I seeing? What am I hearing? And then watch this, take it back to the word of God. See that is where that’s where we fell. A lot of times it’s like we get caught up in the left, the right, the indifferent, the, I don’t know politics, or I’m no politics guy. I’ve said this a million times. I am a God-centered Christ fall in Washington. And, uh, but we get caught up in culture, society, politics, whatever. And then we, we, we lose that ability or we stop using that ability to just bring it back to the word of God.

J Warner Wallace: I’ll tell you this. Here’s our concern. I mean, this is a good place to end, probably because it turns out if you were to ask people, are you a Christian or you’re something people identify as Christians does not necessarily even hold to Christian doctrine or understand what it is that Christianity teaches. So what I would say is this is that for us as parents, there is always something that we have mastered you’re in Washington DC. Right? Okay. So there’s a football team there. I called it, you know, the Washington football team. Right. Okay, great. So I’m, there are people who know football and they know that you’ve got a coach that came over from Carolina. Who’s awesome. Um, and they know the entire history of that team. They know whether or not you should have treated that rookie quarterback, uh, away, uh, to Pittsburgh or not.

J Warner Wallace: They know whether or not Alex Smith is going to be the future of that franchise. They know the entire history of Alex Smith. There are people in your community who know the history of the Washington football team. They know everything about it. I know a lot about that team. I’m not even living there. All of this is, is, is, is great. And they can make a case. And by the way, their kids will become Washington football team bands because they know that their mom and dad are, and they always talk about it. The next thing to know a lot about it, and they’ll know the entire history, which they will inherit from their parents. Meanwhile, these same parents call themselves Christians and go to church on Sunday. If they even do, do not know how to make a case for the triune nature of God or the deity of Christ or the substitutionary atonement, they don’t do not know how to defend the moral teaching of Jesus, which by the way, is going to be widely rejected by an article it’s widely rigid. It used to be that people say, I don’t like Christianity, but I do like Jesus. Now you don’t like Jesus either because Jesus taught things that you now reject, right? About marriage, about gender, about sexuality, the hot topic things we’re talking about. Right. Well, it turns out that Jesus wasn’t on the wrong end of the spectrum on all of those issues unless you want to pervert the teaching of Jesus to make it something that it isn’t, you will have to reject Jesus because you’ve already embraced the opposite of his moral ethic. Now look, that’s where we are right now. Right? And your kids are going to catch whatever it is you are passionate about. If you weren’t passionate enough about Christianity, to understand how to make a case for the theology that Springs out of the Christian worldview, from the moral ethic, that Springs out of the Christian worldview, we have a far better chance of raising up the fans, the Washington football team fans.

J Warner Wallace: Then we do a raising of the next generation of Christians because we typically know more about the Washington football team than we do about our own Christian worldview. We have to take the time to, if we see us, let’s put it best. He said, look, if Christianity is true, it is it’s either not true. In which case you can just discard it and walk away from it, or it is true in which case it’s the most important truth you’ll ever know. It’s either unimportant or incredibly important. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important. Amen. Now, look, this is where we are. And sadly, most of us are more interested in all the other stuff we can restart the last four winners of the bachelor before we can recite the first four books of the old Testament. We have to be better at this because our kids are catching with us. What really matters based on where we are spending our Headspace. Yeah. We’ve given up way too much headspace to stuff that doesn’t matter. I think what our kids need to see from us is that we love what is lovable and what needs to be loved. And we are really, for the most part, dispassionate unconcerned about the stuff that’s trivial. And that’s the call, I think for all of us if we’re going to be,

Michelle Watson: This has been an amazing episode and we appreciate your time with us so much has given us so much to chew on and think about and pray about I’m excited. Remember you can check out thepantrypodcast.com. You’re going to get a ton of resources that you’ve heard throughout this episode that J Warner Wallace has been talking about as well as all the links on how you can connect with us.
Michelle Watson: So until next time. Bye.

KEYWORDS: Faith. Living out your faith. Practice what you preach. Talk about Jesus. Raising Christian Kids.