Truth Rising Project: Hope, Truth, Identity, and Calling for Christians Today (John Stonestreet)

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian on doctor James Spencer, and today I'm joined by John stone Street, who is the president of the Coulson Center, and we're going to be discussing the Truth Rising project that's a collaboration between Focus on the Family and Coulson Center. So John, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Hey, it's great to be on with you. Thanks so much.

00:00:22
Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about maybe how this project came about initially, you know what prompted Coulson Center and Folks on the Family to join forces on this one.

00:00:30
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the Coulson Center is one of the namesake organizations of the late Chuck Coulson, who was in the tradition of Francis Schaeffer and some others who really thought it was essential for Christians that sought paying attention to what's happening in culture and take on an understanding of their own calling to the culture around them. In other words, that Christianity and salvation was personal but not private, that it also had to do with more than just our personal salvation and getting to Heaven when we die. Of course, Chuck spent a lot of time talking about worldview, helping Christians think about their faith not just kind of experience it, but also apply it to the big cultural issues of the day. And he also looked for those kind of meta trends. And Focus on the Family, of course, is noticed not known for well the family, but years ago they did something called The Truth Project with doctor Dell Tackett, which was an attempt to show kind of Christianity as a worldview and it was a whole wonderful.

00:01:29
Speaker 2: Series that was shared in a lot of churches.

00:01:31
Speaker 3: So you know, Jim Daily, the president of Focus on the Family, and myself, we were together not that long, but before this project started, and he had a vision for wanting to do something more. I had this sense too that a lot of the things that Schaefer and Chuck Colson had prophesied and predicted, you know, had come true.

00:01:50
Speaker 2: I'll just give you an example. I know I look.

00:01:52
Speaker 3: Super, super young, and it's because I am. I don't have your guns, by the way, those are those you know. I wear a sweater and not a T shirt. But listen, when I first started teaching on worldview, like twenty five years ago, it was a lot of really important theory, right, like if you know, we would compare Christianity with atheism or naturalism or postmodernism. We would say things like, look, if there is no God, then there's no source of morality. There's no source for me. It's a true hypothetical. If postmodernism is right, and everyone could determine their own view of what's real and what's true, then up can mean down and left can mean right, and boy can mean girl. That was our hypotheticals. That last one was debated last week in the Supreme Court.

00:02:42
Speaker 2: Right.

00:02:43
Speaker 3: So, in other words, a lot of these things that people were thinking about and talking about twenty thirty, forty fifty years ago have certainly come to pass, and we needed a new framework. What moment are we in? What does it mean to be a Christian in this moment? And takes seriously the fact that God wanted us here and what does it mean for us to be faithful?

00:03:04
Speaker 2: So that's really what the project's all about.

00:03:07
Speaker 1: And the project has You've got a movie, Yeah, you know, there's video resources a movie, but there's also a study guide correct.

00:03:14
Speaker 3: And well there's actually a movie and a study so there's two different kind of sets of videos that the documentary features somebody who I think is a Gandolf for our age, and that's Ozyennis.

00:03:28
Speaker 2: There's one and only Oz yet.

00:03:29
Speaker 3: Plus he's got the greatest accent ever, right, so he's brilliant.

00:03:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, so much from Oz.

00:03:36
Speaker 3: And Oz is calling this moment a civilizational moment. In other words, there are moments throughout history that you can see where civilizations take this turn where they get kind of clipped off from their roots, the things that animated them. And what happens then is typically revolution or decline. Once in a while you have an example of renewal, not.

00:04:02
Speaker 2: Very many, but he believes we're at.

00:04:06
Speaker 3: That that that that that that time for for the Western world, that some of the ideas, which of course came from Christianity, the idea that humans have been distinct value, that there are eternal right and wrong to which everyone even the king and the emperor and the government, is accountable to. You know, that sort of thing, that there's more than to reality than just this world. These are these are kind of uh life giving roots. They animated the Western world and one of the reasons it made it so profound, so, you know, bringing more freedom to more people. I'm not saying that everyone was a Christian or we got it right. That's certainly not the case. But we've certainly reached a tipping point, you know, we've certainly hit a time where we're in a new moment, and so now we've got to ask the question, well, what does it mean for us to be faithful to the Lord at this time and place in history? So that's the documentary. It starts with that kind of framing, and then it ends with stories of courage people who I think demonstrate the answer to that question.

00:05:14
Speaker 2: I'd love to get in to talk about some of those things.

00:05:17
Speaker 3: And then the study follows up on it, because the study is really saying, well, what does it mean for us to step into our calling in this time and play? So basically the math goes, you know, we're in a civilizational moment. God has called us here, this is what faithfulness can look like, and here's how we can take our place as God has called us to do.

00:05:38
Speaker 4: I'd like to talk about the stories as well.

00:05:40
Speaker 1: I think one of the questions that I was sort of thinking about after watching the documentary was you have these stories of faithfulness in there, and I think what I struggled with what I was thinking about was what happens when faithfulness isn't effective. In other words, how hopeful are you that this decline, the civilizational decline, that the civilizational moment could be reversed through Christian faithfulness? And then maybe after you answer that question, let's hop in and talk about one or two of the stories they're featured in the documentary.

00:06:14
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, look, first, my hope is not that the civilizational decline is going to be reversed. The hope is that the civilizational moment we're in is part of itself a bigger story, the story of the Kingdom of God, the story that Scripture tells from creation to new creation, from the heavens and Earth to the new heavens and new Earth. And you know, in the study we talk about the Christian story as being true, and we describe it in four chapters, Creation Fall, Redemption, Restoration. Now, anybody that's been in a seminary or you know, or read a worldview book knows that framework.

00:06:50
Speaker 2: But and I think many people.

00:06:52
Speaker 3: Would say, yeah, that's a good way of summarizing the story that the Bible tells, but that's not really what we're after. I think Creation Fall, Redemption Restoration is the Biblical way of describing reality. In other words, it's not the story the Bible tells, it's the story of the world, and the Bible tells that story, and that's what we have to believe that if we're in this moment of civilization or decline, I don't know if it's a Bonhaffer moment where everything we try is going to fail, or if it's a will perforce moment in which God grants, you know, grace and rewards the efforts of his people.

00:07:28
Speaker 2: I don't know what it'll be.

00:07:30
Speaker 3: So I think one of the things we have to get straight, and I think the stories highlight this, and certainly we spend a lot of time on this in the study is that the hope of the world. And this is what First Peter was all about. Peter wrote, you know, to a group of Christians that are being persecuted, and he called them people of hope, which is fascinating because what we know from history is the persecution that they were facing was about to get worse. In other words, their hope was in the fact that their persecution subsided. Their hope was something that had happened prior to their persecution. What Peter says is the resurrection of Christ. And going back to the brilliance of Chuck Holsen, not just because it's my job and I have to, but because I actually think it's right.

00:08:18
Speaker 2: You've got used to say this. Despair is a sin.

00:08:23
Speaker 3: Despair's a sin, not because we know things are going to turn around, but despair is a sin because Christ has risen from the dead, and we believe that's the central event in the history of the world. We believe that's the thing that defines human history, and so that's where our hope is. You know, what's going to happen to Western culture? Man, that's a great question. I mean, let's be honest. I was just in South Korea just a couple weeks ago and went to the National Museum there in Seoul, and it tells of the kingdoms that existed, you know, in the past, mostly Buddhist or Confucian. And when we think about civilizations, we almost are always in a museum with.

00:09:04
Speaker 2: A bunch of artifacts.

00:09:05
Speaker 3: Right, We're not talking about the present, we're talking about history.

00:09:08
Speaker 2: These things are dusty.

00:09:10
Speaker 3: So there's no reason for us really to place our hope in our what now, look, should we try to save it?

00:09:17
Speaker 2: Should we try to steward it.

00:09:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, because Western Siev is better than all the others that ever came before it, that's for sure. But our hope is in Jesus Christ, and we got to make that tangible. That's kind of what I mean when I say the faith is personal, but it's not private.

00:09:32
Speaker 2: This is public.

00:09:33
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ is the hope of the world, and his kingdom will never end. That's the story of the universe. This moment we're in is serious, but it's understood in light of that story, not the other way around.

00:09:45
Speaker 4: No, I think that makes good sense.

00:09:46
Speaker 1: It draws Christians underneath the truth in a way that I think you're trying to get across in the documentary and in the study is to say.

00:09:54
Speaker 4: We are subject to the truth.

00:09:56
Speaker 1: It has a claim on our lives, right, and so we can really live no other way other than according to the truth. This is what we're aiming for. Whether or not living in that manner is effective at saving Western civilization or you know, doing anything else is really just secondary. This is the strategy we have to choose because the Truth has a claim on us, The Gospel has a claim on us. Christ has a claim on us, And I really appreciate that angle of the documentary, end of your explanation of it. I think that's theologically really sound good.

00:10:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, otherwise Colson would come back and haunt us from the grave.

00:10:39
Speaker 2: We want to keep those things right.

00:10:41
Speaker 4: No, I think it's really difficult though. I mean the line you all are the needle you're trying to thread.

00:10:46
Speaker 1: It's easy to come in and say, hey, Christians, we need to live for the truth because the truth is going to fix the world around us.

00:10:53
Speaker 4: And I think that's an exaggeration.

00:10:56
Speaker 1: We may hope it fixes, you know, some of the things around us, but we don't know that, and so we live for the truth simply because it's the truth.

00:11:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: Look, Chuck's been a lot of the last twenty years of his life. He died in twenty twelve. I know that name is probably familiar for a lot of your listeners, and maybe not for many others. I mean it's been a while, but and you know, the last twenty years of his ministry, Chuck wanted to go around and help Christians think about the full ramifications of the truth of the Christian worldview.

00:11:29
Speaker 2: You know that this stuff was personal.

00:11:31
Speaker 3: I mean, that's one of the great things that Christ is the personal revelation of God. He became flesh and because of the spirit, like we have this personal relationship with God, because of.

00:11:41
Speaker 2: The work of Christ.

00:11:43
Speaker 3: But that doesn't mean it's private and privatized Christianity, that it's just me and Jesus, and that it doesn't have anything to do with the world around us.

00:11:51
Speaker 2: I mean, that's not the story the Bible tells.

00:11:54
Speaker 3: The Bible tells the story of the creation of all things, and the fall of all things, and the flood of all things, and eventually the renewal and restoration of all things. And so you know, there's a reason that you know you think about Romans or Ephesians, that you have the first half of both of those books telling us about the brilliance of the work of God in Christ Jesus, and then the second is all about and here's how you relate to the authorities, And here's how you relate to your spouse, and here's how you relate to your children, and here's how you relate to your enemies, and here's how you relate. And you see it in James, and you see it in Peter, and Peter's like even here's how you relate to your persecutors. Philippians like, here's how you here's how you're supposed to react to prison.

00:12:35
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, the Bible is.

00:12:38
Speaker 3: Is very this worldly to borrow a phrase from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Christians I think have have misunderstood that.

00:12:47
Speaker 2: And that's It's one thing.

00:12:48
Speaker 3: You know, when you're in a cultural moment where you know pretty much everyone largely agrees with you.

00:12:54
Speaker 2: But we're in a different moment.

00:12:55
Speaker 3: We know that it's pretty hostile and and and I think many people feel more hostile. I don't have to go around like Chuck did trying to convince people to think about the culture all of us, especially if we're parents.

00:13:08
Speaker 2: I got four kids. I don't know about you.

00:13:09
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about culture stuff all the time because of putting such pressure on my children and for many on their grandchildren and so on.

00:13:18
Speaker 2: So we still call.

00:13:20
Speaker 3: To be people of hope in the darkest of times, because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and yet these truths in this hope has really practical and real life application to be lived out.

00:13:33
Speaker 1: You know, as I've done work on the intersection of faith and technology, a lot of times I run into people who are kind of skeptical about some of the things that I say. Maybe they have a right to, but you know, sometimes people can feel like, hey, this whole anti technology bias and I'm not a luddite or something like that, but there is a way to be overly cautious about technology, and so some people take that to be alarmist. Right now, I'm not really I'm not really thinking that, you know, AI is going to take over the planet, or that the Internet should be you know, thrown into the ocean and forgotten about forever. But at the end of the day, there are some people out there who just don't like to critique anything.

00:14:17
Speaker 4: They don't like to see.

00:14:18
Speaker 1: A negative word spoken about any of these cultural trends that we see before us. And i'd imagine you're having some of that come at you, you know, sort of this isn't this a little alarmist? Like you're talking about the decline of civilization, the the ending you know, of the Western world to some degree, all because we're departing from some you know, Judeo Christian framework for truth or what have you.

00:14:45
Speaker 4: I can imagine you getting those pushbacks.

00:14:49
Speaker 1: Am I imagining that correctly, and yeah, am I imagining that correctly?

00:14:53
Speaker 4: And then if so, what are you doing about it?

00:14:56
Speaker 2: Wow? Do you respond? Absolutely?

00:14:58
Speaker 3: It's interesting though, I I think there's less than you know, maybe there used to be, because I do think there is a sense for a lot of people that the theoretical has become much more palpable. I you know, I'm a nerd, so I keep going back to philosophers who have talked about this in the past. Frederick Nietzsche back in eighteen eighty two, I think wrote the Parable of the mad Man. It's one of the two places where he talked about God is dead, you know, But this one's interesting because the other one and the other parable. Thus spakes Zarathrustra, which is a heck of a heck of a title. He's basically articulating the promise of the death of God for the future and the uber match the superman and how human humanity can move forward, and the Parable of the mad Man. He's warning of chaos. He's saying, Look, killing God is like unchaining the earth from its son. So we're not going to have a source of light or he We're going to lose our sense of up and down, and then at the end of this epic rant that this crazy man gives in his parable, he looks around and says, oh, come too soon. You know, deeds, though done, are going to take time to be seen and heard and felt. And of course he's writing that one hundred years ago, and I think a lot of what he prophesied was coming, you know, was really true, that there is an unsettling of up and down.

00:16:17
Speaker 2: You know.

00:16:18
Speaker 3: Fifteen years ago a British newspaper surveyed a group of young people and asked does life have meaning? And didn't specify what meaning, just does life have meaning? And in that survey fifteen years ago, nine out of ten said yes. They disagreed on what it was, but they agreed that life has meaning. Ten years after that, they did the same survey and one out of ten said yes.

00:16:39
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:16:41
Speaker 3: You know, when you think about that kind of palpable divide, think about just even the US, when was the last time we were on the brink of such kind of chaos as a nation, where we were divided state by state over issues of such incredible moral significance.

00:16:59
Speaker 2: Right, It's one thing to live in.

00:17:01
Speaker 3: A world where we kind of all agree on where we're going disagree on how to get there. But when you're talking about disagreeing on what up and down is and where we're trying to go, it becomes much more you know, serious, and we're not even talking about kind of the sexual chaos. And you know, Paul says that when you send sexually, you sin against your own body. I mean, we've just let an entire generation to sin against themselves at a level really that you know, it's hard to parallel other than if you go way back to super pagan societies. So I think that sense maybe is a little more palpable than it used to be. And so yeah, we get accused of that. But the other thing is, I think the question for me is less how bad is it out there, although we have to think about that, it's what kind of.

00:17:53
Speaker 2: People are we?

00:17:55
Speaker 3: So Peter Kraft, the Catholic apologist and philosopher, has a line in one of his books, probably wrote a long time ago, but he's talking about ethics, and he said, he said, you know, just about the time that we went from a society where our weapons were bows and arrows to now their thermonuclear bombs, we became moral infants. It's a great line, because it's kind of like just you know, as we went from you know, smartphones and social media to artificial intelligence, we forgot who we were, you know.

00:18:28
Speaker 2: In other words, we're.

00:18:29
Speaker 3: Profoundly One of the themes that comes up in all the stories in the Truth Rising series and certainly in the documentary. This is one of the things that the interviews that Oz does with these experts, many of whom aren't Christian there but are just kind of recognized as generational experts. They point to the dehumanization and the loss of our understanding of what it means to be human as a central feature of this decay, of this decline of the Western world and of the fragility of the Western world. And so now our technologies are getting way more invasive and way more quote unquote promising. But we don't know human exceptionalism. We don't know what makes us who we are. And I think that's the math.

00:19:14
Speaker 2: That is worthy of.

00:19:16
Speaker 3: Even if people are skeptical of your concerns about technology, dude, keep speaking up, because you know, I think it's real.

00:19:25
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's a really good articulation of it.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: I just wrote a piece and was arguing that our character has to keep up with our capacity, yes, and so as way things ramp up, we've got to have sufficient character to execute on these Because technology, if you go back all the way at Marshall, mccluan and these kind of things, right, it amplifies our capacities.

00:19:47
Speaker 4: And that's for good and bad.

00:19:48
Speaker 1: And so what we end up with is sort of the ability to magnify falsehood alongside magnifying truth. And there has to be a serious account taken for which one we're leaning into more, you know, Yeah, And I think that's part of what I got out of this documentary. I was able to watch the whole thing, and that's when I heard some of those experts kind of saying, look, it's this dehumanization.

00:20:16
Speaker 4: It's we've lost a sense of who we are.

00:20:19
Speaker 1: Part of it is that we've just sort of slowly decoupled ourselves from the glimpses of the good, the true, and the beautiful that were shining through all over the place. But it wasn't that, you know, to your point, we weren't all Christians, we didn't all profess Jesus Lord. But the good, the true, and the beautiful are available to us, and we can recognize them and live underneath them. But as we slowly detach ourselves from those things, you're going to see society begin to fray at the edges because we're denying something fundamental about reality.

00:20:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:20:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're running against the grain of reality, right, I mean, and you know, I sometimes talk about the difference between gravity and a speed limit. You know, gravity is stuff that's built into the fabric of the universe. No, you know, culture we do stuff with the world and that's what our culture is. But a speed limit is a social construct, like we get together and we make stuff up. There's very few things in the world that are really social constructs, you know, like speed limits. But we have just become the kind of a culture that is treating everything as if it's a speed limit, as if everything can be renegotiated. I mean, you think about the Obergefeld decision that redefined marriage across the United States. Anthony Kennedy literally made that argument. He didn't say that we had gotten this wrong. What he said was is now we're better people, and now we know more, and now we you know, it was a fascinating argument that now marriage needs to evolve to keep up. Now and we've done the same thing with what it means to be male and female. We've done the same thing with our understanding of law and power. And so you know, the thing is is you can treat gravity like a speed limit. But I love that line from Dallas Willard, and I think it's true for both individuals and civilizations. And that's really the point of Truth Rising. Willard says, you can't step off the roof and then choose not to hit the ground. You know, this is what we mean when we say ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims, you know. And and that's true for individuals, and it's also true, you know, for cultures and communities and and and societies and and but here's the other part of this too. I want to make sure we get to this. One of the things that has really informed the Truth Rising project. And I owe this to Oz Gennis and his wonderful book The Call years Ago, which I read about, you know, embracing what God wants you to do and and kind of perceiving that. He says, one of the things that has kept us from really taking seriously our sense of calling is we haven't taken seriously, or we haven't really understood the seriousness of the hour, or as he puts it, the ahwah. You know, he kind of sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he says it. The point is is he's saying, he's saying, we have to understand our calling not just in terms of what I like to do when I'm gifted to do the gifts of the spirit, but also in the time and place where God has put us in. If you remember, in Act seventeen, Paul says something remarkable when he's talking to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens. He says that God determines the exact times in which we live in the boundaries of our dwelling place. Yes, so we are called if this is such a crazy, pivotal, untethered moment in human history or in the history of the Western world. God wanted us in this moment and not in another. So how do we step into the fact that we have been called here? And so that idea of being faithful and obedient leaving the results.

00:24:02
Speaker 2: Up to him.

00:24:03
Speaker 3: And I think that's what emerges out of the stories in the documentary agree, is what that faithfulness can look like. And how God can use it unexpectedly.

00:24:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think they also underscore that this that faithfulness is not going to be without consequences. Oh and so you know, I think we just have to sort of put that out there, is that living according to the truth doesn't necessarily mean prosperity and abundance. It comes along with negative social consequences all over the place. And I really thought the stories in the documentary illustrate that beautifully.

00:24:40
Speaker 3: Well, you look, it begins with Jack Phillips, and I'm partial to Jack. I've known Jack for a long time. Jack is a baker in outside of Denver, Colorado, who thirteen or fourteen years ago before the Obergefeld decision, a couple in Colorado, by the way, had a marriage amendment that defined marriage between a man and woman at the time, and a couple came in they had gotten married in another state, two men, and asked them to bake the same sex wedding cake. And he said no. I remember being on my front porch and reading the newspaper and first hearing Jack's name. You remember newspapers, those paper things.

00:25:16
Speaker 2: That had worked on while. Yeah, but this kind of illustrates my point.

00:25:22
Speaker 3: It was a while ago, and I saw that story and I thought two things. I'm like, how can he be in trouble for not making a same sex wedding cake because we don't have same sex weddings in Colorado.

00:25:32
Speaker 2: And then the second thing I thought is, oh, man, that dude's in trouble.

00:25:36
Speaker 3: And because you remember the you remember the cultural vibe at the time, you remember how the pressure and you know, and that and that started what became three lawsuits and a thirteen year assault from the state of Colorado, who either did it themselves or in the second in the case of the trial in particular, you know, allowed a transgender man who appears as a woman, and Denver a lawyer to go after him ruthlessly. And I've gotten to know Jack, I know him as a friend, I consider him a friend. And you think about what's happened. God has secured God used his faithfulness to secure free speech rights for millions of Americans. He's given courage to a lot of people. I know of stories of people who have heard his story, skeptics and got really mad at him and picked up his book just to be madder at him, and became Christians. I am hersty Ali Who's another one of the stories we tell in the Truth Rising documentary. She and One Venue pointed to that story as being one of the things that made her really frustrated with her secularism. And I think about that, and the other thing I think about is and you might remember this if you track this story thirteen years ago. Do you know how many people said he should have just baked the cake?

00:27:11
Speaker 4: Oh, I don't know. I couldn't give you a number, but I know there were a lot.

00:27:15
Speaker 3: And there were a lot of Christians saying that Jesus would have baked the cake. Now, if Jack had just baked the cake, we would have never known his name, we would have never heard his story. Things would have just proceeded, and who knows what would have proceeded in terms of, you know, Supreme Court decisions or trials or whatever else.

00:27:37
Speaker 2: But Jack didn't bake.

00:27:38
Speaker 3: The cake, and he went through thirteen years of persecution of basically state actors coming after him. I don't use persecution lightly because I also keep track of what's happening like in Nigeria, But for Jack, it has to be on that spectrum, and I just think he had no idea.

00:28:00
Speaker 2: He just did the next right thing.

00:28:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, when that moment of decision came, he had already thought it through and he was willing.

00:28:10
Speaker 2: To take to take the cost. And God used that.

00:28:14
Speaker 3: In a remarkable, remarkable way. That one inspires me a lot about what it means to be a person of courage. And if you know Jack, he's also the nicest guy on the planet. You know, when people were calling him a bigot, I'm like, who are you talking about? Like, you know, he served those two men, he offered to serve them further. He just said, I can't communicate this message, you know, and by making you, you know, custom designing you a kay. It's just a remarkable story. But that's an, in my mind, a crystal clear example of what you were just saying.

00:28:49
Speaker 2: That you have no idea what the outcome is going to be.

00:28:53
Speaker 3: That's the whole point of First Peter, Like this, if God raised Christ from the dead, you can trust him.

00:28:59
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:29:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we see it all over scripture. We see in First Peter, we see it in Revelation. You know, the church is of Revelation encouraged not to live with a compromised faith, but to be unyielding and following Christ and then the reward always comes after. You may experience some good things as you go along, but the reward is always after. And so but that doesn't deny that we need to be in that state of no compromise. I think one of my favorite quotes is from Jurgen Maltman. He's a theologian. He wrote a book called Theology of Hope, and he basically talks about sin in terms of our passivity, our unwillingness. He kind of ends the quote with our unwillingness to be what God requires. And as I watch truth rising and as we've talked a little bit, that quote comes to mind because I think that where we're at right now is Christians just need to be what God requires, regardless of consequence, and keep pursuing this truth. Not for the sin of Western civilization, although that may very well be part of what gets affected, but simply because God requires us to be a particular way.

00:30:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and He's trustworthy.

00:30:14
Speaker 3: Another of those stories that we tell in the film is of Chloe Cole, And by the way, I think each of the five stories tell us something a little bit different, you know, in terms of what it means, you know, to live under the truth and to submit ourselves to it and to be that kind of person. You know, Chloe was herself a victim of the decline of our belief in truth. She was deceived by one of the worst ideas that our world has had in a long time, which is that kids, especially young girls, can be born in the wrong body and should therefore go through these life altering chemicals, hormones, even surgeries. And at age fifteen, Chloe had a double mastectomy. I mean, can you think about how how deceived you have to be to get all the way down there. And I'll tell you what's fascinating about her story is that she came to believe and realize the mistake that she had made, and she came to accept her body and that in and of itself. Coming to the truth and submitting herself to the truth about who she was actually eventually led her.

00:31:33
Speaker 2: To the truth of the one who made her.

00:31:36
Speaker 3: A lot of times, you know, we've been told, you know, don't stand up for truth on these controversial issues because it'll get in the way of the Gospel. It was the truth about this controversial thing, that.

00:31:48
Speaker 2: Letter to the Gospel.

00:31:51
Speaker 3: She's what we now call a detransitioner. You know, three years ago we were told those people didn't exist, that they you know, there were no and Chloe's example is incredible. What's also example incredible at Chloe is not just the humility of what it means to submit to the truth and what that can mean. Now she is a rock star. I mean, she is a force of nature helping young people, especially young women like herself, come back to the truth about who she is.

00:32:22
Speaker 2: I'm excited.

00:32:23
Speaker 3: We have an annual conference that the Colson Center host and she's going to join us, you know, for that conference because of that. But you know that old kind of cliche that we throw around some that you know, because of what Christ can do and redeem and restore us, that our mess becomes our message.

00:32:41
Speaker 2: And you know, sometimes.

00:32:42
Speaker 3: Cliches are cliches for good reasons, because they need to be repeated, you know.

00:32:45
Speaker 2: And hers is a story of that.

00:32:49
Speaker 3: And and how truth encourage go together, right, because you can be really courageous about something that's not true, and that's usually hubris or that's usually just deception. But man, when truth and courage come together, it becomes powerful, it really does. And of course both of those things are sourced in God. We don't do it in and of ourselves. God reveals truth to us and he gives us the courage you know that that we need.

00:33:16
Speaker 2: And Chloe's a wonderful example of that.

00:33:19
Speaker 1: Well as where I know, we both have hard stops here, so I want to make sure we have enough time to direct people to Truth Rising. So where what's the best way for people to really access Truth Rising? And then talk a little bit about what may be coming down the road for Truth Rising?

00:33:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, look, it's absolutely free and there's no catches, right. This is something that Focused and the Bold and Center and Oz we all agreed upon.

00:33:43
Speaker 2: You know.

00:33:43
Speaker 3: So the documentary has been out on YouTube for a while. We pretty I think it's reached probably about a million people given the watch parties and everything else. We have churches that have watched it together in small groups and Christian schools and families that have wont it together. And then following that is the study. The documentary is ninety minutes, it is beautifully filmed. Our partners at Coldwater Media did a terrific job. And then you can follow that up with an eight part study that walks through what we think are the four fundamental ingredients of being the kind of people that we need to be. Hope, Truth, identity and calling hope is what's true about our moment right, no matter how crazy it looks, Christ has risen from the dead. By truth, we mean the true story of the world, really being able to see the world around us in the way that the Bible describes it, you know, on this storyline between creation and new creation. Identity, of course, is the idea of the image of God. If we live in a dehumanizing moment, we need to grasp who we are and then calling as to how now shall we live really, and we put some practical framing around the idea of calling all of this. All of this is that truth rising dot com. Truth Rising dot com. It's it's all there. You can you know, from that, you can find it on you know, the video on YouTube to show it in front of a congregation, or watch it on your phone. We've that's been seeing hundreds of thousands of times on x as well, so we've distributed this far and wide. And then from there you can also sign up to get the study and the study comes with those four lessons, eight videos, and then also a study guide that goes along with that, uh, with the questions to ask.

00:35:34
Speaker 2: And really the whole goal is just to mobilize more people.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: You know, we'll we'll never know a lot of the names, like we know about the five more famous people that we talk about in the in the book, but you know or in the in the film. But what's interesting is is you know, Jack Phillips is famous now, but and he's he's really gifted as a cake artist. You've ever go to Denver, go to a shot because it's really good stuff. But you know, he's not like a superhero. You know, God put him in a particular time in place and called him to an active obedience.

00:36:11
Speaker 2: He obeyed and then God did the rest.

00:36:13
Speaker 3: And that's really what we're hoping to see, by God's grace, is more of us willing to do that.

00:36:19
Speaker 4: Well, I'll be.

00:36:21
Speaker 1: I'll put the address or the web address for all of this stuff on the YouTube video of the documentary, the website, all that stuff will be in the show notes, folks, So.

00:36:30
Speaker 4: I would even really encourage you to check it out.

00:36:32
Speaker 1: Just as we close here, John, what's your prayer for the Truth Rising Project? I mean, what do you really you know if you had your your big dream of what this does and how it impacts the church.

00:36:45
Speaker 4: What would that be?

00:36:47
Speaker 2: You know?

00:36:48
Speaker 3: I worked for years prior to becoming the president of the Coulson Center at a ministry called Summit Ministries, which is out in Colorado Springs. It trains young people in worldview and apologetics for the go to college. I still do some teaching over there. The founder of Summit led that for fifty years, you know, model of faithfulness.

00:37:09
Speaker 2: Just an incredible man.

00:37:11
Speaker 3: And he used to he used to joke about this, and now I think about it a lot. He talked about his favorite verse. I think it's somewhere an acts. I need to find that the address for it. But he says, you know it's it's it's where they talk. It talks about David, and it's like David was faithful to his generation and then he died. That's what I watched, be faithful and then die because you know, you're part of something bigger. And I think about that a lot, and I guess that's the goal. You know, God's writing the story of history.

00:37:42
Speaker 2: I'm not.

00:37:43
Speaker 3: God sent Jesus in the flesh and uh and he's been you know, he's risen from the dead. You know, everything's everything's in place, So I've been and God's the one who put me in this time and place. So you know, that's what we want to see. And if Truth Rising can encourage more people, and I mean encourage exactly the way the word means, which means to give courage, we want to give courage. And God has used these stories to give courage to me. And God has used Ozgennis to give knowledge and understanding and from that courage to me. And man, if that can equip Christians for this crazy moment. Man, what a gift, what a privilege to be a part of.

00:38:35
Speaker 2: Something like this.

00:38:36
Speaker 3: And so it's been a lot of fun to work with those guys, and it's been a lot of fun to learn more about you know, Jack and Chloe, and Iann herci Ali and Katie Fast another friend whose story is told. Even Seth Dylan, you know, the Babylon b guy. What a what a funny guy. You know, I appreciate having the spiritual gift of sarcasm as well. I just that's the goal, faithfulness. That faithfulness is really what the goal is.

00:39:08
Speaker 4: Very good. I love that. Well, John, thanks for being on the show.

00:39:12
Speaker 1: Really appreciate having you here, and I pray the Truth Rising Project.

00:39:17
Speaker 4: Does really, really well.

00:39:18
Speaker 1: Again, we're going to have all the links in the show notes, so if you're interested in the Truth Project, i'd encourage you go check it out. I think I got to see the documentary, really enjoyed it. Definitely worth your time to watch it and just engage with this project. Think about what it means to live for the truth courageously in a time where really the world needs to see the witness of the Church and the faithful witness of the Church in order to see Christ.

00:39:44
Speaker 4: So again, John, thanks for being here.

00:39:46
Speaker 2: Hey, it's been an honor. Thanks so much.

00:39:48
Speaker 1: All Right, everybody, take care and we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian