WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.151 --> 00:00:01.811
Jesus knows what it's like to be a refugee.

2
00:00:02.612 --> 00:00:04.672
He knows what poverty feels like.

3
00:00:05.292 --> 00:00:07.193
He knows what hunger feels like.

4
00:00:07.453 --> 00:00:09.153
He knows what thirst feels like.

5
00:00:09.553 --> 00:00:11.854
He knows what it's like to encounter evil.

6
00:00:12.554 --> 00:00:14.494
He knows what trauma feels like.

7
00:00:15.314 --> 00:00:21.436
Physical, psychological, as he's abandoned by his closest friends when he needs them the most.

8
00:00:21.736 --> 00:00:25.877
And I would argue sexual trauma as they force him.

9
00:00:26.697 --> 00:00:32.823
to remove his clothes, and he stands naked in front of the creation he himself clothed.

10
00:00:34.384 --> 00:00:42.591
And the climax of it all, of course, bearing the infinite weight of the sin of the world on the cross.

11
00:00:43.192 --> 00:00:43.932
The beauty...

12
00:00:44.613 --> 00:00:56.718
And the goodness and the power of the Christian worldview in light of the reality of evil is that at the center of it, we don't have an unscathed God, but a scarred one.

13
00:00:57.078 --> 00:00:57.719
Whoa.

14
00:00:57.979 --> 00:00:58.279
Yeah.

15
00:00:58.679 --> 00:01:01.240
Hey guys, welcome back to the Way UK podcast.

16
00:01:01.320 --> 00:01:03.901
I'm your host Zoe and I'm joined by my wonderful co-host.

17
00:01:04.101 --> 00:01:04.702
Jasper.

18
00:01:04.762 --> 00:01:05.122
Jasper.

19
00:01:05.162 --> 00:01:11.565
And today we have a very special episode because not only are we not in the studio, we are in this wonderful world.

20
00:01:12.305 --> 00:01:13.926
I don't know how to describe it, to be honest.

21
00:01:14.106 --> 00:01:16.668
They're a very stylish studio.

22
00:01:16.688 --> 00:01:20.590
And we're joined by a very special guest, Alonzo Paul.

23
00:01:20.750 --> 00:01:21.870
Thanks for having me, you guys.

24
00:01:21.890 --> 00:01:23.251
Thank you so much for coming on.

25
00:01:23.271 --> 00:01:24.232
It's an honor to be here.

26
00:01:24.252 --> 00:01:28.994
I'm so excited to dive into your story and to glean from the wisdom that you have to share today.

27
00:01:29.435 --> 00:01:33.197
So guys, if you don't know, Alonzo is a theologian and an apologist.

28
00:01:33.537 --> 00:01:36.519
He's got a few degrees and you're currently doing a doctorate.

29
00:01:37.039 --> 00:01:37.679
Is that correct?

30
00:01:37.759 --> 00:01:38.880
Yeah, yeah, that's right.

31
00:01:39.180 --> 00:01:40.381
And what is your doctorate in?

32
00:01:41.266 --> 00:01:45.130
And I would just say aspiring theologian, philosopher.

33
00:01:45.170 --> 00:01:46.492
Not quite there yet.

34
00:01:46.692 --> 00:01:49.655
But, bro, I'm loving the energy, bro.

35
00:01:49.996 --> 00:01:53.480
So I'm studying here at the university in Oxford.

36
00:01:54.121 --> 00:01:57.104
And I'm studying something called philosophical theology.

37
00:01:57.685 --> 00:02:00.568
And so it's doing theology with the tools of philosophy.

38
00:02:01.269 --> 00:02:03.530
And I look at two bodies of literature.

39
00:02:04.051 --> 00:02:05.632
One is called horrendous evil.

40
00:02:05.652 --> 00:02:07.733
It's a specific class of evil.

41
00:02:08.534 --> 00:02:10.975
And then I'm looking at meaning in life.

42
00:02:11.255 --> 00:02:12.516
What makes life meaningful?

43
00:02:13.036 --> 00:02:28.306
And I'm trying to bring these two bodies of literature that have developed independently into scholarly conversation to see what can God do for life that seems to really be negatively affected by this thing, horrendous evil.

44
00:02:28.426 --> 00:02:28.666
Wow.

45
00:02:28.746 --> 00:02:29.126
Wow.

46
00:02:29.146 --> 00:02:30.127
So nothing too heavy then.

47
00:02:31.549 --> 00:02:32.810
I went for something easy.

48
00:02:32.870 --> 00:02:33.651
Yeah.

49
00:02:33.691 --> 00:02:34.952
Low hanging fruit.

50
00:02:34.972 --> 00:02:35.132
Wow.

51
00:02:35.152 --> 00:02:36.093
Just want to get it done.

52
00:02:36.133 --> 00:02:36.453
Yeah.

53
00:02:36.593 --> 00:02:36.873
Yeah.

54
00:02:37.054 --> 00:02:37.894
That is amazing.

55
00:02:37.954 --> 00:02:42.559
And I'm really excited to get into the wisdom that you've been learning because that is incredible.

56
00:02:42.579 --> 00:02:45.421
I've never heard a doctorate like that before.

57
00:02:45.441 --> 00:02:48.384
I think it's the first time it's been brought together this way.

58
00:02:48.484 --> 00:02:48.784
Wow.

59
00:02:49.005 --> 00:02:49.205
Yeah.

60
00:02:49.225 --> 00:02:49.545
So I'm excited.

61
00:02:49.565 --> 00:02:49.925
So I'm excited.

62
00:02:49.945 --> 00:02:50.466
So I'm excited.

63
00:02:54.632 --> 00:02:57.013
Okay, before we get into it, guys, you know the drill.

64
00:02:57.053 --> 00:03:01.115
Our mission here at The Way is to reach every single young person online with the good news of Jesus.

65
00:03:01.175 --> 00:03:04.757
And something that really helps us with that is you liking, subscribing.

66
00:03:05.177 --> 00:03:09.320
Something that really helps us with that is if you're watching on YouTube, smash that like button.

67
00:03:10.140 --> 00:03:12.741
Leave a comment, turn on push notifications, all of that jazz.

68
00:03:13.081 --> 00:03:19.125
And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a rating, a positive one preferably.

69
00:03:19.425 --> 00:03:23.587
And also follow us because that's really helped us out with that mission.

70
00:03:23.987 --> 00:03:42.458
Alonzo I mean you've already kind of given us a taste of where you're at now and what you're doing but I'd love to hear about your backdrop like where did you grow up um what did your uh environment look like growing up were you in a Christian home non-Christian home yeah just tell us a little bit about where you're from

71
00:03:42.698 --> 00:03:43.079
Yeah.

72
00:03:43.139 --> 00:03:44.340
So grew up in Canada.

73
00:03:45.161 --> 00:03:48.045
And was it a Christian home?

74
00:03:48.125 --> 00:03:50.107
It was a nominally Catholic home.

75
00:03:50.408 --> 00:03:50.768
Okay.

76
00:03:50.808 --> 00:04:01.021
So basically what that meant was we would go to Mass on Sundays, but it didn't have any sort of spiritual significance, at least for me.

77
00:04:01.241 --> 00:04:01.582
Okay.

78
00:04:01.982 --> 00:04:08.647
It seemed more like fire insurance, you know, just in case there was a big guy up there and there was a judgment day.

79
00:04:08.948 --> 00:04:11.610
It'd go over a lot better because we've like done some time.

80
00:04:11.790 --> 00:04:12.811
You know what I mean?

81
00:04:13.131 --> 00:04:21.397
And so I had no real sense of the significance of the person of Christ, who he was and is.

82
00:04:22.158 --> 00:04:29.224
No sense of the significance of what he was doing on the cross and no sense of the significance of what the resurrection meant.

83
00:04:29.964 --> 00:04:32.266
So we're kind of going through the motions.

84
00:04:32.607 --> 00:04:34.989
And that was sort of the environment that I grew up in.

85
00:04:35.029 --> 00:04:35.229
Yeah.

86
00:04:35.469 --> 00:04:35.889
Okay.

87
00:04:36.110 --> 00:04:36.390
Wow.

88
00:04:36.910 --> 00:04:42.075
Those, I guess those are the big three things that you need to know in the Christian faith.

89
00:04:42.115 --> 00:04:42.215
Yeah.

90
00:04:42.375 --> 00:04:51.263
So how did you transition then from growing up in this household of the fire insurance to then having a faith that is on fire for Jesus?

91
00:04:51.623 --> 00:04:52.944
A very scenic route.

92
00:04:53.385 --> 00:04:53.925
Okay.

93
00:04:54.085 --> 00:04:56.568
So my parents got divorced when I was 12.

94
00:04:57.488 --> 00:04:58.729
That was a rough time, eh?

95
00:04:58.769 --> 00:04:59.810
Yeah, it was good.

96
00:04:59.870 --> 00:05:00.310
Thank you.

97
00:05:01.130 --> 00:05:02.671
So it shattered our whole family.

98
00:05:03.071 --> 00:05:11.136
And I think I did what most people do when they go through a season of trauma, which is you try to find equilibrium.

99
00:05:11.916 --> 00:05:23.123
And a lot of people, what they'll do as a strategy for that is they'll throw themselves into sports or studies or some sort of healthy sort of rebalancing, recalibrating activity.

100
00:05:23.143 --> 00:05:23.863
Yeah, so they take the time up.

101
00:05:24.063 --> 00:05:25.044
Yeah, some community.

102
00:05:25.784 --> 00:05:28.987
Unfortunately, a lot of those things weren't available to me at the time.

103
00:05:29.728 --> 00:05:36.393
And I sort of got caught up into a group that made me feel like I belonged and was valuable.

104
00:05:36.893 --> 00:05:39.515
I don't think they actually valued me.

105
00:05:39.895 --> 00:05:45.580
But it was a sort of a crew that was like partying on the weekends, smoking, drinking.

106
00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:53.006
So I was about 12 years old at the time that I like first started smoking weed, drinking, going to parties, that sort of thing.

107
00:05:53.526 --> 00:05:56.887
And then that just got worse throughout high school.

108
00:05:57.067 --> 00:05:58.327
So I was a wild kid.

109
00:05:58.987 --> 00:06:08.069
And by the time I had passed high school, barely, I had been kicked out of my mom's house and got kicked out of my dad's house.

110
00:06:08.569 --> 00:06:13.350
And then I moved to a rough neighborhood in my hometown where I got addicted to hard drugs.

111
00:06:14.250 --> 00:06:16.611
And so I was an opiates addict.

112
00:06:16.631 --> 00:06:18.711
So that's Percocet, Oxycontin,

113
00:06:19.471 --> 00:06:34.186
uh morphine cocaine on the weekends if we had money this is before fentanyl really comes out onto the scene and you know it's quite ubiquitous it's everywhere and so that that was really the sort of well just before things really changed

114
00:06:34.527 --> 00:06:34.968
Wow.

115
00:06:35.528 --> 00:06:35.889
Wow.

116
00:06:36.469 --> 00:06:39.173
That is a lot to go through as a, as a young boy.

117
00:06:39.193 --> 00:06:39.933
Just a young buck.

118
00:06:39.953 --> 00:06:41.115
Yeah, you're just a young buck.

119
00:06:41.155 --> 00:06:41.515
Yeah.

120
00:06:41.535 --> 00:06:42.176
12 years old.

121
00:06:42.416 --> 00:06:42.617
Yeah.

122
00:06:42.777 --> 00:06:45.140
And, well, thank you for sharing that.

123
00:06:45.880 --> 00:06:47.643
Where did Jesus meet you in that place?

124
00:06:48.063 --> 00:06:51.387
Was it whilst you were like,

125
00:06:52.685 --> 00:06:55.306
I don't know, like at what place did he meet you?

126
00:06:55.526 --> 00:07:05.208
So oftentimes I get asked to share my story and I like to reframe it because I really do feel like it's Jesus's story.

127
00:07:05.768 --> 00:07:07.308
And he sort of invites me into it.

128
00:07:08.068 --> 00:07:10.609
And so the way he invites me into it is like this.

129
00:07:11.189 --> 00:07:13.269
So at this time, I'm a hard drugs addict.

130
00:07:13.910 --> 00:07:14.730
And I also...

131
00:07:16.971 --> 00:07:20.313
come into contact with a group of guys that open up a hip-hop clothing store.

132
00:07:21.073 --> 00:07:22.494
That sounds cool.

133
00:07:22.514 --> 00:07:23.395
Yeah, it sounds hype still.

134
00:07:23.415 --> 00:07:23.715
Yeah.

135
00:07:24.616 --> 00:07:25.316
Just hold on, though.

136
00:07:25.496 --> 00:07:25.956
Oh, no.

137
00:07:25.977 --> 00:07:27.497
It was a front for selling crack cocaine.

138
00:07:27.558 --> 00:07:29.139
Okay, I jumped the gun.

139
00:07:29.199 --> 00:07:30.740
You really jumped the gun.

140
00:07:30.780 --> 00:07:31.380
Yeah, bro.

141
00:07:31.440 --> 00:07:33.201
Like, oh, that sounds so wholesome.

142
00:07:33.221 --> 00:07:34.322
I would have fallen for that.

143
00:07:34.342 --> 00:07:36.063
Yeah, yeah, facts.

144
00:07:36.603 --> 00:07:38.204
And so it's a front for selling crack cocaine.

145
00:07:38.225 --> 00:07:40.626
So it was, you know, mutually beneficial.

146
00:07:41.186 --> 00:07:44.869
So I'm brought in to run the store, and I'm a drug addict.

147
00:07:45.429 --> 00:07:47.871
They need someone to run the store and they're drug dealers.

148
00:07:48.171 --> 00:07:48.491
Okay.

149
00:07:48.511 --> 00:07:49.952
So it's, you know, it's helpful.

150
00:07:50.052 --> 00:07:50.292
Yeah.

151
00:07:50.492 --> 00:07:52.954
And so, you know, it's typical Saturday night.

152
00:07:53.254 --> 00:07:55.995
We have a queue of drug dealers that would come in.

153
00:07:56.716 --> 00:07:58.597
The guys I was working with break them all off.

154
00:07:58.977 --> 00:08:03.700
I'm like helping out with the money and restocking the clothes and that kind of thing.

155
00:08:04.580 --> 00:08:27.491
these are not your bible studying kind of guys you know all had served time all had guns with them all that sort of thing and i'm so addicted to this do these drugs at this point zoe and jasper that i'm like snorting rails off the cash register in the morning from the time i wake up in the morning to the time i go to bed i'm like just constantly not sober you know

156
00:08:27.831 --> 00:08:28.091
Yeah.

157
00:08:28.332 --> 00:08:28.572
Wow.

158
00:08:28.772 --> 00:08:32.075
And then that's, I think, the darkest part of my life.

159
00:08:32.315 --> 00:08:35.298
But here's here's where things take a change.

160
00:08:35.518 --> 00:08:38.201
OK, so my my dad, he's Caribbean.

161
00:08:38.321 --> 00:08:39.061
He's from Guyana.

162
00:08:39.682 --> 00:08:44.686
OK. And he so in my blood is is reggae music.

163
00:08:45.187 --> 00:08:48.370
And one of my homies invites me out to go to a reggae nightclub.

164
00:08:48.930 --> 00:09:13.573
so we're doing the whole thing i used to say the whole meal deal back in the day but then i came to england and i'm like that has a different sort of definition not quite yeah yeah we're not talking prawn salad and so and so we're doing all these drugs we're going to this reggae nightclub we're having a good time we go back to his house i pass out on the couch like 4 a.m you guys say couch eh

165
00:09:14.593 --> 00:09:15.134
So far.

166
00:09:15.174 --> 00:09:15.914
That sort of thing.

167
00:09:16.034 --> 00:09:16.715
It translates.

168
00:09:16.735 --> 00:09:17.315
Yeah, it translates.

169
00:09:17.335 --> 00:09:17.735
Thank you.

170
00:09:17.755 --> 00:09:19.396
I appreciate that.

171
00:09:19.596 --> 00:09:23.539
So I'm passed out on the couch and he has a drug-induced schizophrenic episode.

172
00:09:24.139 --> 00:09:28.822
So he starts hearing these voices and these voices say to him that he needs to chop my head off.

173
00:09:29.762 --> 00:09:32.785
So he takes this knife and swings.

174
00:09:33.245 --> 00:09:41.873
And by God's grace, you guys, he swings and he catches me at the back of the skull right here, just at the base, about an inch or two away from a major artery.

175
00:09:42.874 --> 00:09:44.236
So I wake up from that.

176
00:09:45.176 --> 00:09:46.858
Y'all might wake up from something like that, too.

177
00:09:47.539 --> 00:09:48.740
And I'm just kidding.

178
00:09:48.800 --> 00:09:49.120
Yeah.

179
00:09:49.640 --> 00:09:52.782
I hope you never are in that situation in your entire life.

180
00:09:53.122 --> 00:09:53.902
And so I wake up.

181
00:09:54.442 --> 00:09:57.064
He's just babbling incoherent nonsense.

182
00:09:57.484 --> 00:10:00.465
I was able to escape the house, got myself to a hospital.

183
00:10:00.685 --> 00:10:04.287
This poor girl at a 24-hour Walmart was the person I encountered.

184
00:10:04.687 --> 00:10:08.909
I'm like chained, you know, undershirt, tattoos.

185
00:10:09.149 --> 00:10:10.070
I'm like bleeding.

186
00:10:10.150 --> 00:10:12.191
My white shirt is just like all red.

187
00:10:12.231 --> 00:10:17.173
This poor girl's like at this 24-hour Walmart, like just doesn't know what's going on.

188
00:10:17.633 --> 00:10:25.735
So they get me to a hospital and they sew me up and I was like, cool, like I'm out of here because I need to get back to my drugs, you know what I mean?

189
00:10:26.035 --> 00:10:28.656
And so they're like, no, you can't leave.

190
00:10:28.976 --> 00:10:29.656
I'm like, why?

191
00:10:30.316 --> 00:10:36.518
And they said, well, this guy hit you so hard with this knife that you're bleeding in your brain.

192
00:10:37.298 --> 00:10:44.120
And so we need to monitor you and scan you every few hours to make sure that if it gets worse, then we're going to have to go in and operate.

193
00:10:44.940 --> 00:10:46.221
So it's like, all right, say less, bro.

194
00:10:46.261 --> 00:10:46.862
I'm going to stay.

195
00:10:47.562 --> 00:10:48.863
Yeah.

196
00:10:49.064 --> 00:10:51.125
You know what I mean?

197
00:10:51.225 --> 00:10:51.906
All right.

198
00:10:52.446 --> 00:10:56.510
You know, and so so that gives me a moment.

199
00:10:56.970 --> 00:10:58.932
You remember I started using drugs at like 12.

200
00:10:59.092 --> 00:10:59.412
Yeah.

201
00:10:59.472 --> 00:11:00.933
I'm like 21 at this point.

202
00:11:01.054 --> 00:11:01.754
Oh, wow.

203
00:11:01.774 --> 00:11:06.218
So this gives me like three consecutive days of sobriety.

204
00:11:06.958 --> 00:11:27.829
that i haven't had it in years in like a decade yeah and so i get to soberly reflect on my life and i start thinking to myself gosh like this is probably not the best most constructive path to be walking down you know and uh and it was after that that my sister invited me to church and then things started to change oh wow

205
00:11:29.523 --> 00:11:30.704
Oh my goodness me.

206
00:11:30.784 --> 00:11:31.044
Yeah.

207
00:11:31.925 --> 00:11:32.666
That is crazy.

208
00:11:33.346 --> 00:11:33.666
Yeah.

209
00:11:33.786 --> 00:11:38.690
That is, I literally, I feel like I'm speechless.

210
00:11:39.110 --> 00:11:40.651
That is honestly amazing.

211
00:11:41.111 --> 00:11:51.278
I, I'm, I'm so moved, honestly, by the fact of like the first moment of your sobriety, you chose to be like, okay, wait, actually, what am I doing with my life?

212
00:11:51.859 --> 00:11:56.402
And that in that, then your sister invited you in this moment of reflection and,

213
00:11:57.002 --> 00:11:59.903
So was your sister already going to church at this point?

214
00:11:59.923 --> 00:12:01.084
She just started going.

215
00:12:01.484 --> 00:12:02.324
Wow.

216
00:12:02.344 --> 00:12:03.144
She just started going.

217
00:12:03.164 --> 00:12:04.225
She got super saved.

218
00:12:04.645 --> 00:12:06.065
You know what I mean?

219
00:12:06.145 --> 00:12:09.086
She's telling God and all his people that they need to come to church.

220
00:12:09.126 --> 00:12:09.846
You know what I mean?

221
00:12:09.966 --> 00:12:10.487
That's great.

222
00:12:10.547 --> 00:12:12.827
And she was the greatest evangelist.

223
00:12:13.088 --> 00:12:14.828
You know, those people that invite people to church.

224
00:12:14.888 --> 00:12:15.408
Yeah.

225
00:12:15.828 --> 00:12:18.189
And she's like, yo, you should come through.

226
00:12:18.889 --> 00:12:20.390
And I was like, no, bun, you're a church.

227
00:12:20.730 --> 00:12:21.570
Why would I go there?

228
00:12:21.610 --> 00:12:22.090
You know?

229
00:12:22.691 --> 00:12:23.411
And yeah.

230
00:12:23.651 --> 00:12:25.052
Because I'm miserable.

231
00:12:25.452 --> 00:12:26.032
You know what I mean?

232
00:12:26.072 --> 00:12:36.336
Like, sometimes on social media, movies, et cetera, they sort of portray that life of, yeah, I'm going out and partying and having a great time with my friends.

233
00:12:36.356 --> 00:12:37.516
And I'm doing whatever I want.

234
00:12:37.556 --> 00:12:46.779
And I've sort of, you know, thrown off the shackles of, you know, what my parents wanted and spirituality and so forth.

235
00:12:47.060 --> 00:12:47.840
I was miserable.

236
00:12:48.520 --> 00:13:16.288
miserable i mean you don't throw that much stuff up your nose if you're like really experiencing fulfillment and contentment and happiness so i'm miserable my fear is that they're gonna make me just they're gonna whatever is left of my identity they're just gonna shame it out of existence you know what i mean and so she's like she's like zo man because she calls me zo uh she's like zo man

237
00:13:18.409 --> 00:13:21.571
You leave feeling better than when you came in.

238
00:13:22.591 --> 00:13:23.632
And I'll get you some Nandos.

239
00:13:24.152 --> 00:13:26.133
I was like, say less.

240
00:13:26.193 --> 00:13:27.374
There you go.

241
00:13:27.534 --> 00:13:28.774
We have Nandos in Canada.

242
00:13:28.834 --> 00:13:29.875
Yeah, facts, man.

243
00:13:30.555 --> 00:13:32.416
And so I was like, cool.

244
00:13:32.596 --> 00:13:35.738
You know, because I'm like starving and all these things.

245
00:13:35.778 --> 00:13:38.279
The other things, kind of things.

246
00:13:38.299 --> 00:13:39.380
That little thing.

247
00:13:39.400 --> 00:13:41.181
And I'm like, cool, yeah, I'll come through.

248
00:13:41.461 --> 00:13:45.503
And I did notice, like she was noticeably happier.

249
00:13:45.943 --> 00:13:46.323
Okay.

250
00:13:46.383 --> 00:13:47.244
Noticeably happier.

251
00:13:47.404 --> 00:13:50.565
And you can go and do a quick Google search or check it out on AI.

252
00:13:50.605 --> 00:14:01.589
Like there's this empirical evidence to support people that go to church are happier and more content and abuse substances less and less depression and suicide and all that sort of thing.

253
00:14:02.309 --> 00:14:04.730
So I was like, okay, yeah, I'll come.

254
00:14:05.750 --> 00:14:19.734
And then I'm sitting there on a Sunday, and I hear this really wholesome pastor opening up the scriptures and explaining stories about Jesus.

255
00:14:20.734 --> 00:14:23.195
And I am floored you guys.

256
00:14:23.475 --> 00:14:29.217
I felt like I had been lied to my entire life about who Jesus was and is.

257
00:14:31.067 --> 00:14:36.329
It was story, it happened to be stories of just broken people.

258
00:14:37.090 --> 00:14:39.731
People that had made a mess of their lives.

259
00:14:40.151 --> 00:14:48.714
And I deeply resonated with those individuals that were ostracized, marginalized by society.

260
00:14:49.375 --> 00:14:54.017
And you almost had this sense of everyone else had given up on them.

261
00:14:55.515 --> 00:15:00.891
And I observed and listened to how Jesus would go after them.

262
00:15:01.728 --> 00:15:06.431
It was almost like he specifically sought out those individuals.

263
00:15:07.912 --> 00:15:18.337
Jesus has this great saying that he borrows from Isaiah, that a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, and a bruised reed he will not break.

264
00:15:18.838 --> 00:15:25.982
And I was seeing that through the narratives, through the stories of Jesus, and I just felt like that smoldering wick.

265
00:15:26.342 --> 00:15:27.923
I felt like that bruised reed.

266
00:15:28.603 --> 00:15:33.207
And so when I was seeing him, I became convinced slowly.

267
00:15:33.567 --> 00:15:35.509
This is months of going on a Sunday.

268
00:15:35.529 --> 00:15:38.151
I had this real faithful dude that came and picked me up.

269
00:15:38.171 --> 00:15:41.193
I stunk like weed, you know, and he'd pick me up.

270
00:15:41.253 --> 00:15:46.697
He never asked me those sorts of questions and just loved on me and picked me up faithfully every Sunday.

271
00:15:47.478 --> 00:15:52.902
And I thought to myself eventually, hey, if Jesus could love, who is God,

272
00:15:53.826 --> 00:15:59.627
who really out of everyone's opinion in the universe, his opinion matters most.

273
00:16:00.047 --> 00:16:05.369
If he could love these broken people, then maybe he could love me.

274
00:16:05.849 --> 00:16:06.229
Wow.

275
00:16:06.649 --> 00:16:07.569
And that's what I needed.

276
00:16:08.389 --> 00:16:13.651
And so I didn't come through an intellectual approach to Christianity.

277
00:16:13.711 --> 00:16:14.411
Lots of people do.

278
00:16:14.451 --> 00:16:14.951
That's great.

279
00:16:15.951 --> 00:16:22.493
But for me, I needed to know that somebody loved me that was willing to seek me out and wanted me.

280
00:16:24.613 --> 00:16:46.678
it's different to be tolerated or even liked but desired by god is something that was able to grasp me and uh and i've i that was 17 years ago believe it or not your boy is a proper og now 17 years ago i gave my life to jesus praise the lord yeah praise the lord

281
00:16:47.018 --> 00:16:52.900
So that's really interesting how you shared that it wasn't necessarily through that intellectual means that you came to faith.

282
00:16:53.040 --> 00:16:56.581
But obviously what you're doing now is very intellectual.

283
00:16:56.621 --> 00:16:59.301
So just help us bridge the gap.

284
00:16:59.701 --> 00:17:01.222
So you've given your life to the Lord.

285
00:17:01.382 --> 00:17:01.602
Yeah.

286
00:17:01.962 --> 00:17:11.164
How do you get to kind of what you're doing now or begin to into this kind of into studying and theology and particularly around this topic of suffering?

287
00:17:11.665 --> 00:17:11.925
Yeah.

288
00:17:12.205 --> 00:17:13.345
Where does how does this come about?

289
00:17:13.425 --> 00:17:15.886
Well, first I had to get out of that space I was in.

290
00:17:16.086 --> 00:17:16.366
Yes.

291
00:17:16.646 --> 00:17:18.407
So those guys were quite upset with me.

292
00:17:18.627 --> 00:17:20.328
I sort of did some things.

293
00:17:20.368 --> 00:17:26.010
So they basically were trying to withhold some money that was rightfully owned by other people.

294
00:17:26.070 --> 00:17:27.831
And they didn't want to give the money.

295
00:17:27.911 --> 00:17:30.052
And I gave the money because it was the right thing to do.

296
00:17:30.112 --> 00:17:31.033
Because now I'm a Christian.

297
00:17:31.073 --> 00:17:34.874
And they're like, you know, you got to do, you know, what Jesus wants you to do, you know.

298
00:17:34.934 --> 00:17:36.115
And sometimes that's costly.

299
00:17:36.695 --> 00:17:38.276
And so they're like not happy.

300
00:17:38.336 --> 00:17:41.999
So I had to leave that part of town and moved in with my brother and sister, actually.

301
00:17:42.279 --> 00:17:45.021
And so my brother got invited to church at the same time.

302
00:17:45.781 --> 00:17:48.563
And when I say my brother, I mean my brother-in-law.

303
00:17:48.964 --> 00:17:52.326
So he was in my life since I was about 16.

304
00:17:52.386 --> 00:17:54.548
We went to the club together.

305
00:17:54.608 --> 00:17:55.768
He's dating my sister.

306
00:17:56.229 --> 00:17:57.810
They eventually get married and so on.

307
00:17:58.490 --> 00:18:00.912
And so he's like a father figure sort of thing.

308
00:18:01.553 --> 00:18:10.020
And so he gets saved, I get saved, and my sister's, you know, fresh out the baptismal water, you know what I mean?

309
00:18:10.220 --> 00:18:14.663
And so we all move in together on the different side of town and we all figure out how to...

310
00:18:15.524 --> 00:18:19.046
follow Jesus together, you know, and I'm learning how to be sober.

311
00:18:19.106 --> 00:18:23.069
Because if you're not sober for an extended period of time, like I was, it's really hard.

312
00:18:23.089 --> 00:18:24.670
It's a lot harder than you think.

313
00:18:25.371 --> 00:18:28.393
And so, so that's, that's where I was.

314
00:18:28.733 --> 00:18:32.896
And the intellectual side came a few years later.

315
00:18:33.556 --> 00:18:36.960
So I would just be sort of like listening to sermons and different things.

316
00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:40.243
And then I eventually came across this thing called apologetics.

317
00:18:40.824 --> 00:18:42.365
It's like, what on earth is apologetics?

318
00:18:42.766 --> 00:18:48.572
I reckon the Canadians are going to like really, you know, own this because we're known for being a very apologetic people.

319
00:18:48.672 --> 00:18:50.253
You know, like, come on, gang.

320
00:18:50.293 --> 00:18:51.334
Yeah, I can do that.

321
00:18:51.354 --> 00:18:51.815
Like, let's go.

322
00:18:52.456 --> 00:18:54.658
And I found out that...

323
00:18:55.438 --> 00:19:15.693
there's this rich 2,000-year history of Christians thinking about who God is, how do we make sense of our place in the world, what about these deep and profound questions that we have, like evil and suffering and science and faith and all of these different, what's the meaning of life, all this sort of thing.

324
00:19:16.434 --> 00:19:18.816
And I was just hooked, you guys.

325
00:19:18.976 --> 00:19:21.858
I just never even knew that I had that experience.

326
00:19:21.958 --> 00:19:27.460
that room on the inside of me that I had previously not visited.

327
00:19:28.220 --> 00:19:29.720
And so I was hooked.

328
00:19:30.481 --> 00:19:35.842
And that's what sort of prompted me to start going down that path, just exploring out of curiosity.

329
00:19:35.862 --> 00:19:36.522
Yeah, yeah.

330
00:19:36.643 --> 00:19:37.983
Wow, that's amazing.

331
00:19:38.443 --> 00:19:46.348
And then what, like, how did you land on this specific doctorate of the meeting between meaning of life and horrendous evil?

332
00:19:47.028 --> 00:19:47.368
Oh, yeah.

333
00:19:47.388 --> 00:19:48.409
Because that is very niche.

334
00:19:48.769 --> 00:19:49.129
Yes.

335
00:19:49.169 --> 00:19:49.709
I'd say.

336
00:19:50.270 --> 00:19:52.671
So I came to Oxford in 2016.

337
00:19:53.272 --> 00:19:55.773
So I love your country a lot.

338
00:19:55.793 --> 00:19:56.373
Wow.

339
00:19:56.433 --> 00:19:57.194
Ten years ago.

340
00:19:57.254 --> 00:19:58.334
It's been a minute.

341
00:19:58.374 --> 00:19:59.135
My wife and I.

342
00:19:59.675 --> 00:20:08.220
And so I came over to not only study where I work now, which is ACCA, the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

343
00:20:08.240 --> 00:20:09.020
Which is where we are.

344
00:20:09.140 --> 00:20:09.961
Which is where we are.

345
00:20:10.001 --> 00:20:10.581
Let's go.

346
00:20:10.601 --> 00:20:11.762
Very cool student.

347
00:20:11.782 --> 00:20:17.425
And so I studied with him and then did my undergrad in theology here at the University of Oxford.

348
00:20:18.646 --> 00:20:24.649
I went back to Canada after a few years of working here and worked with another organization that was related to ACCA.

349
00:20:25.449 --> 00:20:31.671
and did my master's over there and then came back over here to continue working with Akka.

350
00:20:32.951 --> 00:20:43.234
It was at that time, I guess I've always been really moved affectively, so like on an emotional level, about God and the existence of evil.

351
00:20:43.514 --> 00:20:46.115
In philosophy, we would call this the compulsibility process.

352
00:20:46.435 --> 00:20:48.456
of God and evil.

353
00:20:48.476 --> 00:20:50.356
So how are they compatible?

354
00:20:51.496 --> 00:20:57.798
How can both God exist and these things that really move us, how can they be compatible in one sort of world?

355
00:20:58.638 --> 00:21:00.059
And I've always been moved by that.

356
00:21:00.359 --> 00:21:09.421
And then also something just deeply personal is that my brother, who I got saved with, he got cancer in 2017.

357
00:21:09.481 --> 00:21:13.142
So this is during my undergrad.

358
00:21:13.602 --> 00:21:14.743
So it started off as...

359
00:21:17.644 --> 00:21:40.590
liver cancer and then it had metastasized and it spread to his colon and ultimately to his lungs and then in 2019 february 3rd 12 43 p.m i was holding his hand in hospice as he went home to glory and that would that really moved like moved me

360
00:21:41.910 --> 00:21:43.270
I was in a different universe.

361
00:21:43.531 --> 00:21:46.591
I've been in a different universe ever since that experience.

362
00:21:46.731 --> 00:21:47.352
Wow.

363
00:21:47.652 --> 00:22:05.157
And so it's not only something where I'm intellectually curious about how do we solve this puzzle, but has been something that's just driven, I've been driven by my own experience, having, you know, really felt suffering.

364
00:22:05.837 --> 00:22:10.743
And also you look out into the world, you know, and you're just, I know God is good.

365
00:22:11.423 --> 00:22:16.909
What can God do for those folks that have suffered like I have or even worse, you know?

366
00:22:17.670 --> 00:22:19.172
So that's the reason why.

367
00:22:19.797 --> 00:22:20.097
Wow.

368
00:22:20.337 --> 00:22:20.617
Yeah.

369
00:22:20.677 --> 00:22:21.737
Thank you for sharing that.

370
00:22:22.158 --> 00:22:22.358
Yeah.

371
00:22:22.678 --> 00:22:23.818
Gosh, holding back tears.

372
00:22:23.838 --> 00:22:24.358
Oh, bless you, Zoe.

373
00:22:24.378 --> 00:22:25.698
Really sorry for your loss.

374
00:22:25.938 --> 00:22:30.440
One of the ways I keep his memory alive is I talk about him all the time.

375
00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:35.121
And it helps me process it.

376
00:22:35.681 --> 00:22:36.481
I'm in counseling.

377
00:22:36.881 --> 00:22:37.901
I love counseling.

378
00:22:38.221 --> 00:22:39.982
I highly recommend counseling to everybody.

379
00:22:40.982 --> 00:22:42.943
But it, so it helps me to process it.

380
00:22:43.023 --> 00:22:49.886
But I think it's a way that the Lord is a thing in my life that the Lord's using to really minister to people.

381
00:22:50.146 --> 00:22:51.767
Because you know what's interesting, eh?

382
00:22:52.067 --> 00:22:53.307
I don't know if we're still filming or not.

383
00:22:53.367 --> 00:23:06.093
But what's interesting to me is that it's in the light of evil and suffering where Christianity radically outclasses all other worldviews.

384
00:23:06.533 --> 00:23:06.773
Wow.

385
00:23:07.253 --> 00:23:11.274
I think, you know, no one else has.

386
00:23:11.634 --> 00:23:12.894
Well, we can get into that.

387
00:23:12.954 --> 00:23:13.294
Yeah.

388
00:23:13.555 --> 00:23:14.895
I mean, what do you mean by that?

389
00:23:15.395 --> 00:23:16.035
I'd love to hear.

390
00:23:16.795 --> 00:23:23.477
I mean, I'm thinking of John 1, 5, where it says the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

391
00:23:23.997 --> 00:23:26.137
That's what what you've just said makes me think of.

392
00:23:26.458 --> 00:23:26.898
Yeah.

393
00:23:26.918 --> 00:23:29.758
But could you give a little bit more language to that?

394
00:23:37.440 --> 00:24:02.860
uh the the what's it called composability yeah 64 pound scholarly terms okay um but how how do we reconcile the two of um and i don't know if this is a different question to what i just asked but reconciling the two of how can suffering and evil and just horrible things exist if

395
00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:27.010
when a good God a loving God exists how can they yeah exist in the same space or the same world I don't know yeah so there's a couple of things here let's start so philosophers and theologians sort of break down the problem of evil into a couple of different categories one pair of categories is the emotional and

396
00:24:28.170 --> 00:24:52.437
uh side of the problem and then the other is going to be the intellectual side of the problem so let's start with the intellectual side first yeah the intellectual so over the centuries philosophers theologians going back to augustine that great african theologian to aquinas to irenaeus and so on they've developed these things called theodicy and defense and

397
00:24:52.857 --> 00:25:02.404
These are ways of intellectually making sense of, yes, God can exist whilst there's also evil and suffering out there.

398
00:25:02.964 --> 00:25:04.646
And you might be familiar with some of them, eh?

399
00:25:05.526 --> 00:25:09.669
The free will defense or the free will theodicy is one example.

400
00:25:10.310 --> 00:25:13.172
God gives human beings who bear his image.

401
00:25:13.712 --> 00:25:34.197
the the free will such that yes you can have love which is the ultimate telos the ultimate aim or purpose of god creating human beings in his image so that they can genuinely experience and receive and reciprocate and give uh genuine love

402
00:25:34.457 --> 00:25:37.558
And you can't have that, it seems, without something like free will.

403
00:25:38.018 --> 00:25:42.340
So yes, it's heartbreaking when human beings abuse their free will.

404
00:25:42.800 --> 00:25:50.822
But it might be the case that this is the only way that God could structure the world such that love can arise organically and in a genuine way.

405
00:25:51.222 --> 00:25:58.585
So that would be like one example of how theodicists, is what they're called, would try to make sense of it.

406
00:25:58.605 --> 00:26:01.165
And there's other ways, you know, that they're trying to make sense of it as well.

407
00:26:01.185 --> 00:26:02.166
But that's just one example.

408
00:26:03.718 --> 00:26:18.472
That is cold comfort when you're looking at somebody that's passed away or you've gone through something or maybe you've been bullied online or maybe your parents are divorced and something like that.

409
00:26:20.154 --> 00:26:22.195
So that really brings us to the emotional side.

410
00:26:22.655 --> 00:26:27.257
And I think that this is where Christianity especially shines brightly.

411
00:26:28.338 --> 00:26:35.341
Because only in the Christian worldview do you have God incarnate.

412
00:26:36.022 --> 00:26:38.183
He comes in, he becomes and mattered.

413
00:26:39.143 --> 00:26:42.925
He comes into the world and dwells among us.

414
00:26:44.646 --> 00:26:45.626
I'll give you an example.

415
00:26:46.547 --> 00:26:46.867
So,

416
00:26:47.607 --> 00:26:48.968
This one day, I'm in Toronto.

417
00:26:49.849 --> 00:26:50.689
Shout out the six.

418
00:26:52.971 --> 00:26:58.375
And I'm working there in ministry, and we have this display going on.

419
00:26:59.035 --> 00:27:00.356
And it's by Agni Raksha.

420
00:27:01.137 --> 00:27:02.878
I think that's how you pronounce it in Hindi.

421
00:27:03.018 --> 00:27:04.580
Forgive me if I mispronounce that.

422
00:27:05.220 --> 00:27:07.522
And it's entitled Beautiful.

423
00:27:08.262 --> 00:27:15.368
Basically, the women that are painted in these pictures are victims of bride burning.

424
00:27:15.388 --> 00:27:15.788
Right.

425
00:27:16.428 --> 00:27:36.219
horrible horrible reality in some parts of the world so they can't their families can't you know pay the dowry or there's some sort of domestic violence that's occurred and they're doused in kerosene and lit on fire just my goodness horrible horrible horrible evil yeah yeah

426
00:27:37.399 --> 00:27:47.269
And what this organization was doing by painting these brave women was trying to raise awareness of this practice in some parts of the world.

427
00:27:48.290 --> 00:27:51.193
And, oh, man, it was beautiful what this artist did, too.

428
00:27:51.633 --> 00:27:52.534
So he would paint them.

429
00:27:53.215 --> 00:28:01.403
And really, not only was it to raise awareness, but also to raise money for cosmetic reconstruction surgery.

430
00:28:02.684 --> 00:28:09.827
And as he's painting them, before he paints their image, he puts gold, a layer of gold underneath.

431
00:28:10.387 --> 00:28:17.611
So as the painting becomes more and more worn by its traveling, more and more gold shines through.

432
00:28:17.671 --> 00:28:18.491
That's beautiful.

433
00:28:20.012 --> 00:28:27.115
And, uh, so, uh, so we have this art exhibit on display in our office and this guy comes in, his name is Nauid.

434
00:28:27.935 --> 00:28:30.216
He comes in and he's like, Hey, I'm here for the exhibit.

435
00:28:30.236 --> 00:28:30.957
Can you show me around?

436
00:28:30.977 --> 00:28:38.360
So I'm showing him around and, uh, we get to my favorite piece, which is these women who all posed for these portraits.

437
00:28:39.080 --> 00:28:42.882
Uh, they're all, it's a photograph and it's all of them laughing and together.

438
00:28:44.162 --> 00:28:45.483
And he says, uh, yeah.

439
00:28:46.263 --> 00:28:47.544
oh, I have a question about this one.

440
00:28:47.564 --> 00:28:48.225
I was like, yeah.

441
00:28:48.825 --> 00:28:51.988
And he says, hey, do these women, do they live in community together?

442
00:28:52.968 --> 00:28:54.570
And I was like, oh, that's, I don't know.

443
00:28:54.730 --> 00:28:55.410
That's really interesting.

444
00:28:55.430 --> 00:28:56.591
Why do you ask, Nauid?

445
00:28:57.131 --> 00:29:00.354
And he's like, I suspect, I'll never forget what he says, you guy.

446
00:29:01.615 --> 00:29:07.719
I suspect that they do because it is only those with scars that can understand the

447
00:29:10.353 --> 00:29:13.035
It's only those with scars that can understand the scars of others.

448
00:29:13.415 --> 00:29:17.219
I said to him, Nauid, we come from completely different worldviews.

449
00:29:17.879 --> 00:29:30.691
The beauty and the goodness and the power of the Christian worldview in light of the reality of evil is that at the center of it, we don't have an unscathed God, but a scarred one.

450
00:29:31.751 --> 00:29:48.517
whoa yeah wow you know what now we mean what does it mean so as i was walking him out i was like i've never heard that name before and apologies if i'm mispronouncing that uh and he's like oh it's arabic i was like bro that sounds sick what does it mean and it says good news

451
00:29:49.350 --> 00:29:49.790
Wow.

452
00:29:49.930 --> 00:29:50.751
Hallelujah.

453
00:29:50.931 --> 00:29:51.531
Come on, eh?

454
00:29:51.591 --> 00:29:52.012
Come on.

455
00:29:52.232 --> 00:29:53.933
Absolute gospel.

456
00:29:54.073 --> 00:29:54.373
Yeah.

457
00:29:54.693 --> 00:29:54.894
Wow.

458
00:29:54.954 --> 00:30:17.888
And I guess you kind of touched on such a powerful point there, which I think in the sort of topic, in this sort of topic of evil and suffering, I think it's important to name that obviously, you know, it is an emotional thing in the sense of often, you know, when I've had conversations with people before and this sort of topic has come up, it's coming from an emotional point of being like, they've gone through something.

459
00:30:18.208 --> 00:30:29.056
And I think that's actually probably something it's important to name, you know, just at this point in the podcast, like, you know, I would love to dive into a bit of the philosophical and intellectual stuff later on and ask you some questions on that.

460
00:30:29.096 --> 00:30:38.063
But I think also it is it is good to sit in this sort of, as you described, the emotional sort of side of the argument, I guess.

461
00:30:38.843 --> 00:30:42.827
And I loved what you said there about the scars and what was it?

462
00:30:42.847 --> 00:30:43.868
The scarred people.

463
00:30:44.368 --> 00:30:45.389
Only those with scars.

464
00:30:45.449 --> 00:30:46.410
Only those with scars.

465
00:30:46.750 --> 00:30:49.192
Can understand the scars of others.

466
00:30:49.312 --> 00:30:49.632
Wow.

467
00:30:50.173 --> 00:30:51.234
And I guess that's the thing, isn't it?

468
00:30:51.294 --> 00:30:55.197
Like Christianity doesn't avoid the issue of suffering.

469
00:30:55.217 --> 00:30:56.678
Like it's literally centered around it.

470
00:30:56.998 --> 00:31:00.661
You know, with what Jesus did on the cross by his wounds, we are healed.

471
00:31:02.143 --> 00:31:05.425
And so just off the back of all of this, Alonzo, I'm going to say,

472
00:31:06.966 --> 00:31:14.030
If there's someone who's watching this who is kind of in the midst of suffering at the moment, where's God in that?

473
00:31:14.090 --> 00:31:14.950
What would you say to them?

474
00:31:15.850 --> 00:31:18.532
So there's a couple of things I would want to say to them.

475
00:31:19.312 --> 00:31:23.174
The thing is that there's not a blanket, I don't think.

476
00:31:23.654 --> 00:31:32.159
I don't think there's a blanket sort of response that we give because each person's experience of suffering seems to be so bespoke.

477
00:31:32.479 --> 00:31:33.640
It's so unique to their...

478
00:31:33.940 --> 00:31:37.162
There's so many... Like I say this at the beginning of my talks on it.

479
00:31:38.623 --> 00:31:42.205
I'll say, you know, some of you guys will be suffering right now.

480
00:31:42.825 --> 00:31:46.888
And I don't want to insult you by pretending like I understand.

481
00:31:47.428 --> 00:31:48.849
I don't understand.

482
00:31:49.269 --> 00:31:53.933
It's complicated, it's complex, and it is profoundly personal.

483
00:31:54.854 --> 00:32:07.525
And what I encourage them to do is to interpret some of these as a step, maybe even a first step in their healing journey as they're questing towards making sense of their experience of suffering.

484
00:32:09.028 --> 00:32:19.808
suppose we did some of that work with somebody that was sitting down we're having a coke zero and we're talking about these things um there's a couple of things that come to mind number one is this

485
00:32:21.135 --> 00:32:25.217
The person of Christ in the Christian worldview is God incarnate.

486
00:32:25.777 --> 00:32:29.059
So when you read the gospel, this is a trip, you guys.

487
00:32:29.179 --> 00:32:33.321
I still feel like I'm a brand new Christian when I'm reading the gospels.

488
00:32:34.502 --> 00:32:38.324
Because when you're reading about Jesus, you're reading about God.

489
00:32:38.984 --> 00:32:58.471
like just think about that eh like reading about how god like loves to go to meals was it john mark homer that says like jesus is either at a meal going to a meal or coming from a meal you're just like oh i can get down with that you know what i mean and he's like taking naps all the time i was like this is a

490
00:32:58.631 --> 00:33:27.007
bro man you know I can follow this guy come on and so what's what's interesting is you can see how he responds when he encounters evils and suffering because there's a lot of really toxic theology out there for example I was talking in London a few years ago this young guy comes up to me and he's like yeah I got a question for you I was like yeah bro and he said four years ago my mom died of cancer and

491
00:33:28.002 --> 00:33:33.669
And I went to the church and I asked them, like, why did God do this?

492
00:33:34.830 --> 00:33:37.132
And I'll never forget what this church said to him.

493
00:33:37.953 --> 00:33:44.661
They said, the reason your mom died of cancer was because you had more faith in your mom than in God.

494
00:33:46.318 --> 00:33:46.658
No.

495
00:33:46.858 --> 00:33:48.880
Let me not mince any words.

496
00:33:49.280 --> 00:33:53.143
That is not only radically unbiblical.

497
00:33:53.243 --> 00:33:53.963
Oh my goodness.

498
00:33:54.203 --> 00:33:56.164
But that is toxic theology.

499
00:33:57.185 --> 00:33:59.907
That is spiritual and emotional abuse and it's wrong.

500
00:33:59.947 --> 00:34:06.131
And if anyone's listening to this and they've heard something like that, I'm profoundly sorry that you've heard that.

501
00:34:06.751 --> 00:34:07.332
It's not right.

502
00:34:07.372 --> 00:34:08.232
It's not what Jesus said.

503
00:34:08.533 --> 00:34:14.436
So when Jesus does encounter and you get to read how God would encounter evil, what's his response?

504
00:34:14.676 --> 00:34:15.297
He hates it.

505
00:34:16.138 --> 00:34:21.182
He's never like, I'm really glad, Zoe, that you're experiencing X, Y, and Z.

506
00:34:21.802 --> 00:34:26.646
No, he assaults it, as one theologian says, Michael Lloyd.

507
00:34:27.387 --> 00:34:30.209
He assaults it with his healing, with his grace.

508
00:34:30.249 --> 00:34:34.773
And you get to see this with a pair of sisters who lost their brother.

509
00:34:35.660 --> 00:34:56.073
you know when he says to him he says show me where you've laid your brother as somebody that's lost a brother you don't know how intimate that language is to a mom who's lost her son to people that have been rejected by religion and society to people possessed with radical evil like demonic possession

510
00:34:57.253 --> 00:35:12.684
all sorts of the violent the poor everyone that is suffering in various ways you get to see what he is like and what he thinks about it when you read the gospels but it's not enough a when you just read about god observing

511
00:35:14.053 --> 00:35:18.416
We need to know that he knows what it's like personally.

512
00:35:19.456 --> 00:35:21.157
And so you've got to think about this.

513
00:35:21.958 --> 00:35:23.639
Jesus knows what it's like to be a refugee.

514
00:35:24.659 --> 00:35:24.880
Yeah.

515
00:35:25.260 --> 00:35:25.500
Right?

516
00:35:25.740 --> 00:35:26.040
Yeah.

517
00:35:26.220 --> 00:35:28.282
He knows what poverty feels like.

518
00:35:28.882 --> 00:35:30.783
He knows what hunger feels like.

519
00:35:31.063 --> 00:35:32.764
He knows what thirst feels like.

520
00:35:33.165 --> 00:35:35.466
He knows what it's like to encounter evil.

521
00:35:36.166 --> 00:35:38.088
He knows what trauma feels like.

522
00:35:38.908 --> 00:35:56.375
physical psychological as he's abandoned by his closest friends when he needs them the most and i would argue sexual trauma as they force him to remove his clothes and he stands naked in front of the creation he himself clothed

523
00:35:57.957 --> 00:36:14.260
and the the climax of it all of course bearing the infinite weight of the sin of the world on the cross but i would say this last thing to them because it's one thing to know that he knows what suffering is like

524
00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:44.102
but that could if you only had that then his story would only be comfort you know what i mean like if i'm drowning eh and then he god just like jumps into the water and drowns with me i just don't know how helpful that is yeah you know what i mean yeah like please help me let's drown together yeah pull me out the water yeah exactly so the reason why christ is hope for the women that were burned for people like myself who have lost somebody i've loved

525
00:36:45.351 --> 00:36:46.392
is because of the resurrection.

526
00:36:48.072 --> 00:36:49.253
That death isn't the end.

527
00:36:49.993 --> 00:36:51.834
That evil won't have the final word.

528
00:36:52.074 --> 00:36:54.014
That suffering won't have the final word.

529
00:36:54.395 --> 00:36:57.616
And that God exists and he's awaiting on the other side.

530
00:36:58.196 --> 00:37:00.417
That justice will be perfect and served.

531
00:37:01.457 --> 00:37:05.979
All rights will be, sorry, all wrongs will be righted and every tear wiped away.

532
00:37:06.839 --> 00:37:10.960
And that's, so I'd start with that if someone was sitting across the table.

533
00:37:11.301 --> 00:37:12.461
That's beautiful.

534
00:37:14.221 --> 00:37:33.867
Well, sorry, there's so many directions we could go in, but I think I'd love to hear a bit more in the personal question of when people are encountering suffering, when I've gone through something myself where I've lost a loved one too.

535
00:37:33.887 --> 00:37:35.527
Oh, sorry.

536
00:37:35.647 --> 00:37:36.128
Thank you.

537
00:37:36.708 --> 00:37:37.488
But in that,

538
00:37:38.847 --> 00:37:41.448
it was a really hard time to, I guess, trust God.

539
00:37:41.908 --> 00:37:42.328
Yeah.

540
00:37:42.648 --> 00:37:48.890
Because it's like, it feels so polarizing in a way, because it's like, I know you God to be love.

541
00:37:49.410 --> 00:37:51.530
You've literally saved my life.

542
00:37:51.550 --> 00:37:53.391
You saved me, you transformed me.

543
00:37:54.171 --> 00:37:55.912
You've pulled me out of the darkness into the light.

544
00:37:55.972 --> 00:37:57.732
I know this to be true personally.

545
00:37:58.212 --> 00:38:04.794
And now I'm encountering like a really deep and like tragic, I guess, loss.

546
00:38:06.054 --> 00:38:07.935
How can I still trust you?

547
00:38:08.735 --> 00:38:14.639
But it was in that that I knew that I couldn't let go of who God was because I'd encountered him.

548
00:38:14.659 --> 00:38:20.042
But I was still feeling the grief and like the pain of the loss.

549
00:38:20.683 --> 00:38:26.146
And so it took me some time to get back to being like, OK, God, I know that you're love.

550
00:38:26.186 --> 00:38:27.507
I know that this is who you are.

551
00:38:29.148 --> 00:38:34.492
But what would you say to maybe somebody that is like in the rawest moments of life?

552
00:38:34.932 --> 00:38:42.074
How can I trust you right now even when I know you, but I don't feel like you're with me maybe in a way?

553
00:38:42.774 --> 00:38:45.194
You know, it's so interesting that you ask that, Zoe.

554
00:38:45.755 --> 00:38:55.657
I would probably, you know, if I was on my A game, I'd try my best to respond like Jesus responds to Mary and Martha.

555
00:38:56.417 --> 00:39:00.358
You see, some people need the intellectual conversation.

556
00:39:01.631 --> 00:39:04.793
How on earth do I make sense of what's happening?

557
00:39:05.093 --> 00:39:07.615
Because it feels isolating.

558
00:39:07.975 --> 00:39:09.296
It feels confusing.

559
00:39:09.556 --> 00:39:10.857
It feels overwhelming.

560
00:39:10.977 --> 00:39:11.198
Yeah.

561
00:39:11.558 --> 00:39:16.821
And especially grief, as you likely know, it can hit you like a wave.

562
00:39:17.202 --> 00:39:20.904
And sometimes very spontaneously, it can come upon you.

563
00:39:21.325 --> 00:39:23.706
And it feels like I'm going to drown in it.

564
00:39:24.027 --> 00:39:24.247
Yeah.

565
00:39:25.127 --> 00:39:35.450
So there's some people that need what Martha received, which was that intellectual reminding of who Christ is and what he's come to do and what's the ultimate hope.

566
00:39:35.770 --> 00:39:37.490
And that's the conversation she receives.

567
00:39:38.291 --> 00:39:39.991
But Jesus, he's the wonderful counselor.

568
00:39:40.751 --> 00:39:45.392
You know, he knows how to discern between what people need.

569
00:39:45.692 --> 00:39:47.613
So Martha needs that, but Mary doesn't.

570
00:39:48.914 --> 00:40:14.712
mary needs somebody to collapse in the dust with her and just weep wow you know yeah and so i think that if if someone was in that i would try to meet them where they're at let's suppose we had a good cry together you know yeah and uh and we're like okay well i still have some questions where do we go from there yeah

571
00:40:15.292 --> 00:40:35.989
The first thing I would say to you is something that I was told in counseling, which I found quite helpful, is that what's happening to you phenomenologically, let's say, what's happening in your being is a normal response to an abnormal situation.

572
00:40:37.070 --> 00:40:39.592
You weren't created to experience death.

573
00:40:40.312 --> 00:40:41.073
It should move you.

574
00:40:41.273 --> 00:40:41.773
And it does.

575
00:40:42.454 --> 00:40:43.455
And that's really hard.

576
00:40:44.075 --> 00:40:46.797
And it's something that's not alien to the Bible.

577
00:40:47.337 --> 00:40:48.158
Look at Job.

578
00:40:48.558 --> 00:40:49.619
Look at the Psalms.

579
00:40:49.979 --> 00:40:59.946
Look at all of these characters who encounter almost, I would say, I'd virtually say every book in the Bible deals with some facet of suffering and evil.

580
00:41:00.807 --> 00:41:05.670
So this isn't something that is catching the Bible off guard.

581
00:41:06.010 --> 00:41:06.291
Yeah.

582
00:41:06.751 --> 00:41:07.952
But you can find...

583
00:41:09.264 --> 00:41:26.010
companions yeah to travel with as you travel through and traverse grief but how do you trust so we could go you know we could glean some wisdom from these different characters found throughout the bible but how do we trust god

584
00:41:27.210 --> 00:41:45.467
Now, I would say if Christ never came and you were, I don't know, convinced that God exists because of some philosophical argument, it'd be really difficult to trust him because it's really difficult to trust something like that, like something that's quite abstract.

585
00:41:45.547 --> 00:41:45.807
Yeah.

586
00:41:47.008 --> 00:42:07.426
But because Christ, who is God, came in the flesh, I might not be able to understand the specific reason for why you suffered or why I suffered beyond the sort of, you know, macro level perspectives of, you know, free will and we live in a fallen world and all of those sorts of things.

587
00:42:07.646 --> 00:42:07.846
Yeah.

588
00:42:09.144 --> 00:42:16.449
But I can trust that God isn't going to remain aloof in it because he came in the person of Christ.

589
00:42:16.769 --> 00:42:17.510
It can't be.

590
00:42:17.550 --> 00:42:22.953
This is Tim Keller has often remarked that the late Tim Keller, he was a pastor in New York.

591
00:42:23.454 --> 00:42:24.675
His sermons are fantastic.

592
00:42:24.695 --> 00:42:25.835
His books are fantastic.

593
00:42:26.096 --> 00:42:28.918
He has a great book on suffering that's worth reading.

594
00:42:29.538 --> 00:42:33.381
But he'll say, you know, because of the person of Christ, we know what the answer can't be.

595
00:42:34.121 --> 00:42:36.905
If you're struggling to trust him, you know what it can't be, right?

596
00:42:37.406 --> 00:42:37.666
Yeah.

597
00:42:37.846 --> 00:42:39.689
Because it can't be that he doesn't care.

598
00:42:40.009 --> 00:42:40.210
Yeah.

599
00:42:40.410 --> 00:42:42.353
If he didn't care, he wouldn't have come.

600
00:42:42.913 --> 00:42:45.056
But he did come because he cares.

601
00:42:46.438 --> 00:42:46.879
And so...

602
00:42:48.831 --> 00:42:58.304
I think it's Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon, that great British, I think he was British, preacher of the 19th century.

603
00:42:59.025 --> 00:43:04.473
He says, you know, when you can't trace God's hand, you can trust his heart.

604
00:43:05.374 --> 00:43:05.634
Wow.

605
00:43:05.975 --> 00:43:14.426
And I think in those seasons of suffering, we might not be able to really grasp what's going on and why the root cause of these sorts of things.

606
00:43:14.766 --> 00:43:18.551
But we can trust God's heart that he's not going to abandon us in it.

607
00:43:19.132 --> 00:43:20.113
And that he's trustworthy.

608
00:43:20.334 --> 00:43:20.554
I mean,

609
00:43:22.520 --> 00:43:32.367
God who goes all the way to the cross to demonstrate his love seems to be somebody that I can, in the light of mystery of evil, I can trust him.

610
00:43:32.647 --> 00:43:33.608
Does that make sense?

611
00:43:33.748 --> 00:43:34.889
That does make sense.

612
00:43:35.249 --> 00:43:35.449
Yeah.

613
00:43:35.469 --> 00:43:35.670
Thank you.

614
00:43:36.370 --> 00:43:40.413
Alonzo, I just want to say I really do appreciate your wisdom and your insight in this.

615
00:43:40.433 --> 00:43:44.036
This is, I'm learning a lot.

616
00:43:44.176 --> 00:43:45.737
I'm sitting here, I'm just taking it in.

617
00:43:45.877 --> 00:43:48.939
So I just want to say a massive thank you, first of all, just for all that you're sharing.

618
00:43:48.959 --> 00:43:49.420
You're very welcome.

619
00:43:49.440 --> 00:43:49.880
You're very welcome.

620
00:43:50.180 --> 00:43:56.484
Um, if I'm to maybe kind of, as we continue on this topic, maybe shift the perspective slightly.

621
00:43:56.504 --> 00:44:12.835
So if I'm to almost play the atheist in this conversation, please, I've spoken to lots of people, um, who say they wouldn't believe in God and they would say, okay, Jasper, I can understand to say your, um, sort of argument we spoke earlier about like the free will, the odyssey and stuff like that.

622
00:44:13.396 --> 00:44:18.139
I can understand how God could still exist logically, despite there being suffering and

623
00:44:18.579 --> 00:44:23.705
But often what I get kind of what people argue about to me is, OK, but why is there so much?

624
00:44:24.466 --> 00:44:27.049
It's like I think it's often called the evidential problem of evil.

625
00:44:27.149 --> 00:44:27.349
Yeah.

626
00:44:27.389 --> 00:44:33.156
Like there is so much evil and often it just seems pointless.

627
00:44:33.496 --> 00:44:38.542
So I think of William Rowe, who gave the example of the fawn in the forest, of the forest fire.

628
00:44:38.922 --> 00:44:42.824
You know, what was the purpose in that evil for us?

629
00:44:43.044 --> 00:44:44.184
Yeah, that's the word.

630
00:44:45.805 --> 00:44:47.146
What would you begin to say to that?

631
00:44:47.226 --> 00:44:55.149
Again, I know that's a big topic, but just as we kind of, again, begin to kind of think from this kind of intellectual standpoint now, where do you go from there?

632
00:44:55.169 --> 00:44:56.410
Well, there's a couple of things.

633
00:44:59.115 --> 00:45:18.310
gratuitous evil or evil that seems to be devoid of any sort of reason behind it you know we can't obviously find any greater good that would have come about because it has instantiated it's it's occurred in our world like the fawn there's a couple of things number one is

634
00:45:21.475 --> 00:45:28.201
Just because you can't see it doesn't mean that God doesn't have a greater purpose behind these things.

635
00:45:28.601 --> 00:45:31.583
This is Alvin Plantinga in his no-see-ums.

636
00:45:31.623 --> 00:45:33.285
I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with this.

637
00:45:33.745 --> 00:45:38.689
But a very basic way of understanding this response is as follows.

638
00:45:39.250 --> 00:45:45.915
So we're sitting here in a studio here at ACA in Oxford, and we're...

639
00:45:46.555 --> 00:45:53.976
At least based on my observation, I can't see any insects or any spiders in this room, let's say.

640
00:45:53.996 --> 00:45:54.376
I hope not.

641
00:45:54.777 --> 00:45:55.537
I hope not.

642
00:45:55.637 --> 00:45:58.817
This is going to be one of my first questions.

643
00:45:58.857 --> 00:46:03.678
Jesus, I love you, but I don't understand spiders.

644
00:46:04.558 --> 00:46:09.879
And so just because I can't see one doesn't mean that there isn't one in here.

645
00:46:11.039 --> 00:46:13.420
It can be the case that...

646
00:46:14.660 --> 00:46:30.084
Well, it strikes me as the case that just because there is some sort of instance like William Rose Vaughan that seems pointless doesn't mean that there isn't something that's just escaped me or might not be accessible.

647
00:46:30.564 --> 00:46:33.385
So oftentimes philosophers and theologians, they talk about Ken.

648
00:46:34.165 --> 00:46:40.110
So it's our, we're finite human beings with finite cognitive capacities.

649
00:46:40.551 --> 00:46:44.154
God is an infinite being with infinite cognitive capacities.

650
00:46:44.755 --> 00:46:51.841
And so there's going to be this massive bridge between what God is going to reason and how we reason.

651
00:46:52.462 --> 00:47:03.277
And so it seems to me that, okay, well, if there really is a God, then I would expect to find at least some instances of that sort of, you know, insurmountable gap occurring.

652
00:47:03.598 --> 00:47:06.362
And this would be one of them, at least from my perspective.

653
00:47:08.565 --> 00:47:11.588
oftentimes that's called skeptical theism.

654
00:47:11.889 --> 00:47:13.110
It's a type of response.

655
00:47:13.130 --> 00:47:17.936
So it doesn't mean skeptical like, oh, I'm a skeptic like Alex O'Connor or anything like that.

656
00:47:18.396 --> 00:47:24.363
It means that it's trying to approach the problem of evil, especially gratuitous evil, and,

657
00:47:24.603 --> 00:47:37.513
with an air of humility that I'm not going to fathom everything that occurs, just given that relation between finite human beings and an infinite God, finite, you know, rationale and an infinite rationale.

658
00:47:38.233 --> 00:47:39.214
So that's one response.

659
00:47:40.775 --> 00:47:47.077
The second response is going to be an appeal to the Christian worldview as a whole.

660
00:47:47.558 --> 00:47:48.518
And what do I mean by that?

661
00:47:49.358 --> 00:47:54.580
When you're starting to do these sorts of worldview analysis, so here's a problem.

662
00:47:55.180 --> 00:47:57.041
How is Christianity going to make sense of it?

663
00:47:57.601 --> 00:48:01.363
Because the problem is really trying to say, so William Rowe, J.L.

664
00:48:01.403 --> 00:48:10.106
Mackey, all of these non-theist philosophers that really were pioneers of more modern forms of the problem of evil.

665
00:48:11.006 --> 00:48:18.170
what they're trying to do is to demonstrate the incoherence of the Christian worldview or like a monotheistic worldview.

666
00:48:18.250 --> 00:48:22.773
So a worldview with one God, like Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

667
00:48:23.073 --> 00:48:27.975
So they're saying, oh, okay, like given this problem here, your worldview is incoherent.

668
00:48:28.336 --> 00:48:30.537
If your worldview is incoherent, then it's false.

669
00:48:31.217 --> 00:48:32.217
And that's what they're trying to do.

670
00:48:32.457 --> 00:48:32.818
Right.

671
00:48:32.978 --> 00:48:44.462
But in these kinds of conversations, it is perfectly permissible to appeal to the resources found within the worldview that demonstrates that it is, in fact, coherent.

672
00:48:45.062 --> 00:48:47.783
So now we can pull on all sorts of resources.

673
00:48:48.003 --> 00:48:48.283
Yeah.

674
00:48:48.504 --> 00:48:49.684
We can have things like.

675
00:48:52.290 --> 00:49:18.016
fallen angel theodicy so things like there were angels that have fallen they've rebelled against god in some way we get little glimpses of it in scripture we don't know the whole picture it's mysterious but we know that it's a reality and they are forces that are malicious they are cause they long to cause harm to god and to what god loves and god's good world and they're behind

676
00:49:23.057 --> 00:49:48.167
there's also things like the doctrine of the fall that one could appeal to where we know that adam and eve bearers of god image they rebel against god and that disrupts and warps and corrupts the entire created order and sometimes that's going to be cashed out in the way human beings interact with each other and sometimes that's going to do some accounting for the natural

677
00:49:52.008 --> 00:50:02.212
And so theologians and philosophers will look at both of these things and others to try to make sense and to try to show, oh, the Christian worldview is still coherent.

678
00:50:02.432 --> 00:50:04.653
This isn't anything that we weren't expecting.

679
00:50:04.915 --> 00:50:24.661
defined does that help yeah no that's that is really interesting i guess one way i've also um heard it sort of described to me before is if you kind of like imagine a mechanical system again going back to like the idea of the doctrine of the fool like a mechanical system and if one gear you know is slightly wrong

680
00:50:25.701 --> 00:50:27.222
Or it slightly falls out of place, something like that.

681
00:50:27.262 --> 00:50:28.503
It can affect the whole system.

682
00:50:28.803 --> 00:50:29.003
Yeah.

683
00:50:29.043 --> 00:50:32.565
And kind of, I've heard it described, tried to be described as that in terms of.

684
00:50:32.585 --> 00:50:35.966
Yeah, Peter von Inwagen in his Guilford lectures.

685
00:50:36.647 --> 00:50:41.189
You can buy the book, which brings all together those lectures.

686
00:50:41.229 --> 00:50:42.790
Will say something very similar.

687
00:50:43.930 --> 00:50:45.131
Depends what God is after.

688
00:50:45.711 --> 00:51:02.839
You know, if God is after human beings and he's employed this evolutionary process, it might be the case that if God was to fine tune anything outside of what we've experienced in our world, that you might not get the end product that God was after in the first place.

689
00:51:03.619 --> 00:51:07.261
So that's one way that some philosophers have tried to make sense of it.

690
00:51:09.082 --> 00:51:12.843
You get different problems with that sort of thing and it solves other problems.

691
00:51:13.544 --> 00:51:13.684
Mm-hmm.

692
00:51:14.767 --> 00:51:15.807
Wow, that's really interesting.

693
00:51:16.208 --> 00:51:18.949
And a question I've got, sorry, I don't know if you want to jump in.

694
00:51:18.969 --> 00:51:20.069
No, you go ahead, Jessica.

695
00:51:20.089 --> 00:51:23.491
It's just something I've always wondered, and I'm just curious to know what you think.

696
00:51:23.731 --> 00:51:29.133
We've spoken already about how Jesus obviously suffered for us on the cross.

697
00:51:29.473 --> 00:51:33.095
Something I've, again, questions I've had before is, okay, but why to that extent?

698
00:51:33.796 --> 00:51:48.258
of suffering for for jesus why why did he have to go through like i mean you know i'm always shocked by how um the word excruciating literally was a word that was made to describe the pain of the cross like they had to make a whole new word for it because it was so painful

699
00:51:48.899 --> 00:51:53.003
Like, why did Jesus have to go through that level of suffering?

700
00:51:53.563 --> 00:51:56.325
And kind of, I guess, what does that tell us about God?

701
00:51:56.706 --> 00:51:57.747
You know, again, I've heard arguments.

702
00:51:57.767 --> 00:52:00.589
People say, okay, if God's so loving, why would he do that to his own son?

703
00:52:01.330 --> 00:52:03.752
You know, again, I'm just curious.

704
00:52:03.812 --> 00:52:05.133
I'd love to hear what your thoughts are.

705
00:52:05.153 --> 00:52:06.314
Start with the second one first.

706
00:52:06.494 --> 00:52:06.834
Okay, yeah.

707
00:52:06.874 --> 00:52:08.996
Why, you know, cosmic child abuse.

708
00:52:09.276 --> 00:52:11.578
Why would God the Father do this to God the Son?

709
00:52:11.738 --> 00:52:12.619
Yeah.

710
00:52:13.059 --> 00:52:14.681
And I get what you're saying.

711
00:52:14.801 --> 00:52:17.143
And if that was the actual relation...

712
00:52:18.084 --> 00:52:19.465
I would say you have something there.

713
00:52:19.926 --> 00:52:25.291
But I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the Christian conception of who God is.

714
00:52:25.752 --> 00:52:32.579
God the Son isn't some younger chap, you know, and God the Father is an older chap and he's subjecting him to this.

715
00:52:33.080 --> 00:52:34.902
No, Jesus Christ is huge.

716
00:52:35.362 --> 00:52:57.383
truly man and truly god he is a member of the trinity however we make sense of the doctrine of the trinity and so this isn't you know a younger person being subjected to something outside his power or outside his volition outside of his choice to do you know this is god himself that's choosing to do it that's co-equal with god the father

717
00:52:57.663 --> 00:53:05.926
So sometimes I think it's just sort of clarifying the theology that's behind the Christian approach to this.

718
00:53:06.466 --> 00:53:12.648
The first part of your question was perhaps that proportionality concern with Jesus.

719
00:53:13.128 --> 00:53:14.629
And that's a really good question, man.

720
00:53:15.169 --> 00:53:26.813
I think that one of the reasons why it is to the extent that it is, is because of the heinousness of what he's atoning for.

721
00:53:28.079 --> 00:53:28.540
That's good.

722
00:53:28.980 --> 00:53:48.082
So I think sometimes in our culture, we try, I think oftentimes with good intentions, I want to be charitable, sometimes with really good intentions to, you know, to try to explain away in sort of reductionistic ways, the reality of evil and suffering.

723
00:53:48.942 --> 00:53:56.525
And sometimes that's really helpful and it's corrected some really harmful religious perspectives and approaches to evil and suffering.

724
00:53:56.685 --> 00:53:59.587
So I'm not trying to say throw out the baby with the bathwater.

725
00:54:00.965 --> 00:54:15.129
But I think there is a reality to evil and suffering that sometimes is lost to us in the West, of how truly heinous, truly horrible many instances of suffering and evil are.

726
00:54:15.429 --> 00:54:20.891
And really what we're talking about here is sin and how awful sin has been.

727
00:54:21.651 --> 00:54:28.293
And so I think that that's the reason why it costs God what it costs him.

728
00:54:29.273 --> 00:54:52.209
And there's a part of me that really, for me, it sort of draws up worship because it seems like God spared no expense to lavish his payment for sin, which would reconcile us who are alienated from God, and lavish his love out to all of us.

729
00:54:52.849 --> 00:54:57.232
I mean, if he paid an eighth of what he could have or what he did—

730
00:54:58.153 --> 00:55:03.234
perhaps you would be tempted to think I've sinned such that I've gone beyond the payment.

731
00:55:04.075 --> 00:55:12.917
But because we know he paid as much as he possibly could, then there's no reason to think that I, there's no sin.

732
00:55:13.437 --> 00:55:14.737
Now you don't have to worry about this.

733
00:55:14.958 --> 00:55:21.439
There's no sin that's going to be greater than what the paid for, that which was paid for by Christ.

734
00:55:22.299 --> 00:55:24.060
And so I think there's, there's a,

735
00:55:25.920 --> 00:55:28.221
It draws out of me worship and gratitude.

736
00:55:28.721 --> 00:55:32.043
I mean, think about this, eh?

737
00:55:32.423 --> 00:55:35.885
If God exists, what would something like gold be to him?

738
00:55:37.125 --> 00:55:37.425
You know?

739
00:55:37.846 --> 00:55:41.948
Even a whole planet of gold or diamond or something else.

740
00:55:42.708 --> 00:55:43.148
What would that be?

741
00:55:43.168 --> 00:55:44.729
It would be nothing.

742
00:55:45.189 --> 00:55:46.430
Nothing to him.

743
00:55:46.810 --> 00:55:49.691
If the whole universe was a big diamond, it would be nothing to him.

744
00:55:50.592 --> 00:55:51.212
But what does he pay?

745
00:55:51.232 --> 00:55:51.352
Right.

746
00:55:52.759 --> 00:55:53.740
Your blood bought.

747
00:55:55.101 --> 00:55:55.681
His blood.

748
00:55:56.101 --> 00:55:56.562
His blood.

749
00:55:56.582 --> 00:55:58.002
What greater price could he have paid?

750
00:55:59.023 --> 00:56:12.232
And so for all those who suffer with low self-esteem, like me, who suffer with scrupulosity, you know, this sort of nagging feeling like you're not enough, like I do, you look to how...

751
00:56:15.777 --> 00:56:20.441
how much he loves the volume of his love for you, you know?

752
00:56:21.241 --> 00:56:23.343
Wow, that's amazing.

753
00:56:23.623 --> 00:56:31.870
I'd love to touch on some of the language you're using there about Jesus paying a price or God taking on the cost of atonement for us.

754
00:56:33.031 --> 00:56:37.274
I've heard some people argue and be like, why does God need to pay anyone anything?

755
00:56:37.334 --> 00:56:37.794
He's God.

756
00:56:38.155 --> 00:56:39.176
Like who is he owing?

757
00:56:40.196 --> 00:56:41.637
What is he owing, the darkness?

758
00:56:42.438 --> 00:57:07.866
this money like I thought God is higher than all of that what would you say into that question of why did God need to pay the price and who was he owing so some theologians have talked about things like ransom theory with atonement so atonement um there's going to be a number of different theories out there so basically what they're trying to do is

759
00:57:09.448 --> 00:57:15.214
try to figure out what is God doing when God dies on the cross.

760
00:57:16.695 --> 00:57:20.799
Atonement means at-one-ment, right?

761
00:57:20.999 --> 00:57:25.143
So it's how is God and humanity being reconciled?

762
00:57:25.463 --> 00:57:26.384
How are they coming together?

763
00:57:27.345 --> 00:57:30.667
So some have said, yes, ransom theory.

764
00:57:31.288 --> 00:57:48.119
So when we gave into temptation from Satan in Genesis chapter 3, somehow there's been an exchange of, yes, we're now outside of God being our federal head.

765
00:57:48.500 --> 00:57:52.202
And now Satan has somehow captured us and were his hostages.

766
00:57:52.622 --> 00:57:56.185
And God has to do something in order to get us back out of that.

767
00:57:56.505 --> 00:58:00.909
So some people have thought, I just don't want to straw man and be like, oh, that's ridiculous.

768
00:58:01.009 --> 00:58:01.570
That sort of thing.

769
00:58:02.491 --> 00:58:09.317
I'm not 100% sold on that because my intuition is, yes, God doesn't owe anybody anything and that sort of thing.

770
00:58:11.719 --> 00:58:13.900
So who is God paying?

771
00:58:14.801 --> 00:58:15.782
That's a really good question.

772
00:58:16.142 --> 00:58:23.066
I think it's more of a repair or redemption of what has been broken.

773
00:58:23.426 --> 00:58:28.950
And somebody, to balance these scales of justice, somebody does need to pay.

774
00:58:29.270 --> 00:58:33.112
And God takes that, appropriates that cost upon his own shoulders.

775
00:58:33.552 --> 00:58:35.013
So you may have heard this before.

776
00:58:35.053 --> 00:58:37.355
So forgive me if this is an old hat for some people.

777
00:58:37.895 --> 00:58:59.925
um suppose you know zoe you're driving and i'm driving behind you and you know all of a sudden you slam on your brakes because you know some kid you know put their soccer ball football uh yeah out into the street you slam in the brakes because you don't want to you know add more suffering to the world you want to stop it and so you slam on your brakes and i'm following too closely because i'm sort of like texting or something and i i rear-end you

778
00:59:00.205 --> 00:59:00.505
Okay.

779
00:59:00.946 --> 00:59:07.431
And let's say, you know, you're a really good person and you love the Lord and you don't want anyone to, you know, feel bad for what they did.

780
00:59:07.471 --> 00:59:09.953
And I apologize profusely and I really own it.

781
00:59:10.353 --> 00:59:12.274
And you say, okay, that's fine.

782
00:59:12.675 --> 00:59:20.881
I'm not going to make you, Alonzo, pay for my rear end that you've collided with, even though, I don't know, it's a thousand pounds to fix.

783
00:59:22.362 --> 00:59:41.896
just because you forgive me doesn't mean that the cost is gone the cost is still there eventually you'll have to bear that cost to go you know as you go to an auto body shop and get your rear end fixed so it seems to me something more like that's going on that there is a a a bill that

784
00:59:43.597 --> 00:59:54.229
for the brokenness of the world, how we've hurt each other, how we've hurt the world, and someone needs to pay for that to rebalance the scales of justice.

785
00:59:54.670 --> 00:59:58.995
Now, I don't think that that can do all of the heavy lifting when it comes to atonement.

786
00:59:59.355 --> 01:00:03.236
So a lot of people are multifaceted atonement theorists.

787
01:00:03.976 --> 01:00:06.296
And so they'll look at a couple of different things.

788
01:00:06.596 --> 01:00:20.479
Christus Victor is another example, that Christ on the cross is defeating the powers of the dark powers and principalities and stuff that are manipulating the world and warping the world.

789
01:00:20.839 --> 01:00:26.100
And he's nailing that on the cross and making a spectacle out of them.

790
01:00:26.520 --> 01:00:28.220
So that's going to do some of the heavy lifting.

791
01:00:28.300 --> 01:00:41.022
And I probably, I think that drawing on a number of these atonement theories will give you a better picture of showing you something that's really mysterious and really complex of what's going on.

792
01:00:41.062 --> 01:00:47.064
And I think when we get to new creation, he'll be like, oh, this was right or this was wrong.

793
01:00:47.124 --> 01:00:48.404
You know, that sort of thing.

794
01:00:48.464 --> 01:00:49.784
We'll be certain of it then.

795
01:00:50.124 --> 01:00:50.784
Yes, we can ask him.

796
01:00:50.804 --> 01:00:52.204
The infinite, what is it?

797
01:00:53.185 --> 01:00:55.265
The infinite cos...

798
01:00:55.945 --> 01:01:15.748
cognitive cognitive faculties yes we can we can ask him when we're there yes until then we speculate wildly love to speculate oh wow well alonso thank you so much for coming on to our podcast i've loved this episode i've learned so much like so much i'm just like gosh

799
01:01:16.328 --> 01:01:36.679
thank you thank you so much for having me oh my gosh it's been a joy and a pleasure but all these wonderful people watching where can they find you online or in person yeah come and holler at me in oxford bro um so you can find me on instagram tick tock just alonzo paul a-l-a

800
01:01:38.180 --> 01:01:46.022
But I work for a lovely charity here in the UK called OCHA, which is the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

801
01:01:46.102 --> 01:01:48.083
Professor John Lennox is our president.

802
01:01:48.743 --> 01:01:52.524
And we have a spectacular team that does university missions.

803
01:01:52.584 --> 01:01:55.185
It speaks to youth and all sorts of things.

804
01:01:55.425 --> 01:01:55.545
Wow.

805
01:01:55.885 --> 01:01:59.667
On our website, theaka.org, you can find free resources.

806
01:01:59.708 --> 01:02:01.269
You can find courses that we have.

807
01:02:01.589 --> 01:02:08.453
That's where you can invite us to your church or wherever you want to invite us, where we help people think about these big questions that we all have.

808
01:02:08.993 --> 01:02:15.738
Lastly, I'm also the director of something called Reboot, which is a youth apologetics initiative that ACA has taken.

809
01:02:16.518 --> 01:02:23.962
And we go all over the place, going to youth groups, helping young people respond to these and think about these really big questions.

810
01:02:24.703 --> 01:02:34.168
And if you're in London on November 21st in the Ilford area, we have a massive youth apologetics conference at City Gates Church.

811
01:02:34.188 --> 01:02:34.869
It's all day.

812
01:02:35.229 --> 01:02:37.050
We got DJ prizes.

813
01:02:37.210 --> 01:02:37.670
Let's go.

814
01:02:37.810 --> 01:02:40.832
Big talks, you know, all sorts of, yeah, it is epic.

815
01:02:40.852 --> 01:02:44.034
There'll be hundreds of young people there come for free food, food,

816
01:02:44.734 --> 01:03:00.531
uh and i would love to say hello okay amazing well thank you so much alonzo we'll definitely be following you following up following up with oka and everything um guys thank you so much for tuning into this podcast it's been such a blessing to hear from alonzo and we hope it's been a

817
01:03:05.454 --> 01:03:07.075
Gosh, what should they comment?

818
01:03:07.495 --> 01:03:13.176
What is one thing that you are sort of taken away from this episode?

819
01:03:13.277 --> 01:03:13.777
That's really good.

820
01:03:13.817 --> 01:03:16.057
In this whole topic of evil and suffering?

821
01:03:16.157 --> 01:03:17.418
Yeah, there's a lot to pull from.

822
01:03:17.678 --> 01:03:23.360
And actually, Alonso, before we go, could you just share just one encouragement to our audience?

823
01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:25.520
What's something that they can take away as well?

824
01:03:25.741 --> 01:03:27.161
There's one final message you'd like to say.

825
01:03:28.381 --> 01:03:32.663
I think there's hope to be found in the person of Jesus, as we've talked about.

826
01:03:33.723 --> 01:03:35.243
But let me tell you one quick story.

827
01:03:36.584 --> 01:03:39.645
In California, they have these giant trees.

828
01:03:39.805 --> 01:03:41.345
They're redwood trees.

829
01:03:42.025 --> 01:03:42.766
They're massive.

830
01:03:42.866 --> 01:03:43.626
Biggest trees in the world.

831
01:03:44.186 --> 01:03:51.268
Now, you would think that they have deep roots, and that's how they endure storms, by these deep roots.

832
01:03:51.828 --> 01:04:01.890
But in actuality, when scientists went in and dug up some of these root systems to confirm their hypothesis, what they found was not deep roots, but very shallow roots.

833
01:04:02.390 --> 01:04:05.951
But the roots were intertwined with other trees.

834
01:04:06.991 --> 01:04:19.315
The way to endure the storm in suffering is first look at Christ, but also lean on the people around you that love you, that you can trust and also follow Jesus.

835
01:04:20.355 --> 01:04:20.776
Wow.

836
01:04:21.136 --> 01:04:21.676
Amen.

837
01:04:21.976 --> 01:04:22.636
Amen to that.

838
01:04:23.296 --> 01:04:24.717
Well, guys, be blessed.

839
01:04:24.797 --> 01:04:26.037
We'll see you in the next video.

840
01:04:26.257 --> 01:04:26.618
Bye.

841
01:04:26.638 --> 01:04:27.478
See you later.

842
01:04:27.678 --> 01:04:27.958
Peace.