Point of View July 8, 2024 – Hour 2 : The Truth in True Crime

[00:00:00] Jay Warner Wallace, an individual that I find myself quoting so often, recommending his books to so many, including his website coldcasechristianity.com. This new book that came out in May, The Truth in True Crime, What Investigating Death Teaches

[00:00:40] Us About the Meaning of Life, really looks at 15 different elements that we can learn about in the secular world, even from his investigation of murders and crimes, which correlate all 15 of those claims actually correlate with biblical principles as well.

[00:00:59] You may know him as, of course, an individual who was on Dateline and was featured as the cold case detective. He is an author speaker and also now serves as senior fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

[00:01:12] He's an adjunct professor of apologetics at Talbot School of Theology, Gateway Seminary and Southern Evangelical Seminary and joins us now by phone. So Jay Warner Wallace, always great to have you on the program. Well, thanks so much for having me. I love being on your program. Thanks again.

[00:01:28] I appreciate it. Well, let's see if we can get into this because we're going to talk about wisdom and identity and marriage and humility and grace as well as shame and guilt and even hope and all sorts of other topics.

[00:01:44] And you found a way to take each one of your examples from your own experience and to begin to examine those in more detail. But I thought I'd start with a fun story that you tell on yourself about standing in a pool

[00:01:59] of blood because you decided that you would actually investigate a crime scene and go on the other side of the crime scene tape. And you were ridiculed for that, weren't you? Well, sure.

[00:02:12] I mean, this is a book that I hope is a little bit different than my other books. I usually have known for making a case for Christianity. I, of course, still want to do that.

[00:02:20] But this is a book that looks at 15 things that you could learn about human nature from studying murder scenes, murder cases like the ones I've worked. And I thought I might as well begin with the idea of what is wisdom?

[00:02:33] Like why do we use the word wisdom if it's just knowledge? Well, then we just use that word, knowledge. But wisdom seems to be something more. So every chapter starts off with a crime story.

[00:02:44] And in this particular chapter, I'm talking about one of my very first, well, my very first murder scene. And, you know, it's tempting when you see officers on the inside of a yellow tape scene and you often will see that right on TV.

[00:02:59] You'll watch somebody walk up to the crime scene and lift the tape and go inside the crime scene. Well, I arrived at that scene a little bit earlier than my team did because I was eager. I wanted to make a good impression.

[00:03:10] And sure enough, there was an officer inside that. I didn't talk about that in this chapter, but there was a uniformed officer inside that scene. So I just walked up into the scene as though no big deal.

[00:03:19] Of course, when my team got there, the senior members of my team were like, what's this idiot doing inside the yellow tape? We hadn't photographed anything. We hadn't really I'm just contaminating the scene up one side and down the other.

[00:03:30] And here's the whole point is that you are going to make mistakes and mistakes are an important part of the wisdom process. In other words, if you look at anyone who might be considered wise in their field, they're

[00:03:43] probably going to have stories to tell about the number of times they messed up. And we have to be bold enough and courageous enough to make mistakes. But these mistakes have to be what I call age appropriate mistakes.

[00:03:56] So, like, for example, if I make that mistake in my first day as a detective, as a homicide detective, OK, I get it. If I make that same mistake 10 years in, I'm an idiot. OK, you need to replace me. So it's about making age appropriate mistakes.

[00:04:10] That's just one component of wisdom. And this book, I hope, will help people look at 15 attributes of human flourishing that you will learn from 15 different crime stories. But they've also been investigated by researchers and sociologists and psychologists.

[00:04:27] The secular world will say, yes, if you adopt these 15 things, you will flourish. Well, it turns out those 15 things are ancient and they are on the pages of the New Testament and the Old Testament.

[00:04:40] If you were just a Bible believing and somebody took your Bible seriously, you'd already know these 15 principles. I think for some people they're going to be surprised by some of these. But if you have been reading your scripture, you'll say, oh, yeah, that makes sense because

[00:04:53] that's all over the pages of the New Testament. So that's my whole point is there is some evidence just in the truth that we find in true crime that confirms a biblical worldview. Because if Christianity is true, it ought to describe the world the way it really is.

[00:05:09] It ought to describe us the way we really are. I think it does. Well, near the end of your book, you talk about these 15 secular studies that find that humans thrive when they revere wisdom and they exercise humility and they find hope.

[00:05:24] And then, of course, you correlate those to the Bible for this one. Of course, Proverbs 4, verses 5 to 9, get wisdom. Do not forsake wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is this. And one of the things I appreciate about your books is you always usually have an example.

[00:05:39] You also have maybe some application. You also have some diagrams and explanation. I love the diagrams. Matter of fact, I love the ones in person of interest, why Jesus still matters in a world that rejects the Bible because those diagrams stay with you.

[00:05:53] In this case, you're talking about an owl and you recognize, embrace your age, appropriate mistakes, admit when you're a fool, but to learn from those. And so in some respects, you've put this together, have you not, in which an individual could

[00:06:08] go through each one of these 15 and learn a very important spiritual principle. But I also think the way you've put it together, as I know you certainly intend, it could be a group study where each week or you could pick a different chapter, watch a video, whatever

[00:06:25] it might be to learn a very important aspect of human nature. Yeah, that is the goal. I mean, you know how this works too. We create these kinds of curriculum or these kinds of materials. We want people to benefit from them in as many different settings as possible.

[00:06:40] So what we did for this one is we did record 16 videos that go along with the book. They are not used by them separately. You can actually, if you've got Right Now Media subscription, you get them for free because they're on Right Now Media.

[00:06:53] And the idea here is, hey, how can we get resources into the hands of people? Look, as somebody who writes books, I'm always uncomfortable that people have to spend money on books. So we try to provide so much free content at coldcasechristianity.com.

[00:07:08] And I tell people all the time, exhaust what authors will provide for free before you buy something, because we're trying to make sure that we earn the right to have you. Money's tight.

[00:07:20] So what we did with this book is we provided a huge package of bonuses, including a 30 session casemakers course, which is about 10 and a half hours of content, because we're just saying, hey, if we could provide this and we could actually maybe change the direction

[00:07:35] a little bit of how we're thinking as Christians in culture. I think most atheists don't believe that Christianity is good. They don't care if it's true. They don't think it's good. And it turns out it actually is.

[00:07:48] If you were aiming at human flourishing, you wanted to have the best, most robust, healthiest mental health, physical health life you could live, you would be aiming at a dark board. If you hit that bullseye on that dark board, you're going to find yourself right at the

[00:08:01] center of the Christian worldview. Even if you never looked at Christianity, I always tell people to look, if you don't believe Christianity is true, you'd still be wise to live as though it is. This is what Dawkins is seeing right now in Europe. That's right.

[00:08:14] He's saying, hey, you know, this is not, I don't believe it's true, but I sure love the culture it creates and I don't want to lose that culture it creates. So you're kind of defeating, you're kind of fighting a cause against yourself because

[00:08:27] it's true that Christianity is not just true, it's good. And it produces an amazing, robust life according to all the secular studies. Yes. As you say, cultures that aim at human flourishing hit the bullseye called Christianity every time.

[00:08:42] We'll come back and talk about some of those 15 right after these important messages. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Last July, I wrote a brief commentary about what has been called Chevron deference. This is the idea that the court should always give deference to an administrative agency

[00:09:13] when it interprets an ambiguous statute. The 6-3 Supreme Court ruling dealt a significant blow to the administrative state and the power wielded by federal bureaucrats. One of the legal guests on my radio program concluded that it may have been the most

[00:09:26] significant case in this session of the Supreme Court. If you think the deep state has too much power and has become unaccountable, you will probably agree. The concept goes back to the Supreme Court's 1984 opinion in Chevron v. National Resource Defense Council.

[00:09:41] They argued that the courts must defer to the federal agency's interpretation. In the case before the high court was the argument from the commercial fishermen that a government agency that charged them, even though Congress did not give the agency authority to do so.

[00:09:56] Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion and explained that most fundamentally, Chevron's presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do. The counter argument is that courts, or even Congress, lack the technical expertise to evaluate statutes and policies.

[00:10:17] In some cases, that may be true, but it does not follow that those decisions should be made by unelected bureaucrats currently working in the bowels of the Biden administration. If they make a flawed interpretation, as I mentioned in my previous commentary, there

[00:10:30] is nothing Americans can do to fire that bureaucrat. This was an important Supreme Court decision, even if most Americans don't yet understand its importance. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my Point of View. Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net.

[00:10:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. A privilege to have with us once again, J. Warner Wallace, The Truth in True Crime, what investigating death teaches us about the meaning of life. Also I have a link, of course, to coldcasechristianity.com.

[00:11:16] Also a link to X, where again he introduces in the Truth in True Crime video series and some of the information that is there. So again, we give you some of those links so that as you read the book, you want to maybe

[00:11:30] teach that, teach it to your children, teach it to people in your sphere of influence. It's all available on our website at pointofview.net or can be found at coldcasechristianity.com. Let's take another one of these. I know there's 15.

[00:11:43] We may not get to all of them, but number three, a target, a bullseye and a circle of concern. There you're really talking about the importance of community, the importance of virtuous friendships and things of that nature.

[00:11:57] That's really important as we raise our young people, because I know you have children and grandchildren. So do I. Sometimes the key was to make sure you had good kids around your kids, because then good kids would lead them to do good things.

[00:12:12] All it took was somebody that maybe didn't have the best interest of your kids, maybe was not virtuous enough. That's where the problems usually surface. Absolutely. Sadly, a lot of the cases we work are, almost all of them, the person who gets killed knows

[00:12:32] the person who killed him. Sometimes that's a friend, that's a loved one. It could also be a spouse. That's not unusual. If you watch Dateline, you'll probably feel like every happy marriage ends in a murder, because it feels like that when you're watching Dateline.

[00:12:44] But the reality of it is that we have to pick our friends carefully. We're magnetic contagious creatures. It's just by our very nature. The studies show this, that you are far more likely to...you could write a story of your

[00:12:56] life in which you just talk about the impact your friends have had on you. If you stopped and looked at it, you'd realize a lot of the decisions you made, you might have thought they were relatively autonomous, were probably under the influence of somebody

[00:13:09] you thought was special at the time. That's how deeply we are impacted by friends. One of the largest studies done over a 60-year period that was looking at the issue of human contentedness and happiness and flourishing, and what was at the top of the list, it's

[00:13:24] relationships, it's friendships. It turns out they're not just any kind of friendship. Three attributes of friendships make the difference. I've got a story in this particular book where I talk about a woman who was killed by somebody who she would have called her best friend.

[00:13:38] Well, okay, so it turns out not every kind of person you might call a friend is going to contribute to your flourishing. What does it take? Here are the attributes that the studies show. All of this is confirmed in scripture as well.

[00:13:51] Number one, it needs to be a small number. You're not going to have 50 meaningful friends. It's just not the way that these relationships work. When we talk about friends, we're talking about people who you have given permission

[00:14:04] to shape you, to call you out when you're wrong, and you're close enough to them that when they do that, you're not going to abandon them. Well, you're not going to have 50 of those.

[00:14:13] If you think your social media list is actually a collection of people who are your friends, well, they're acquaintances. They may know you in some way, but the kinds of friendships that help us thrive and flourish are usually small in number. Two, they're deep divers.

[00:14:28] They are people who have permission, like family members who can call you out. Look at our marriage, they're the same way. I have given my wife permission to describe to me exactly the way I really am.

[00:14:40] So I want her to help me become the kind of person who ultimately is going to stand before a holy God. I want to help her become the best version of her she can be. Good friends do this for one another.

[00:14:54] So it's a collection of small number of deep diving friends. There's the third attribute. They have to be virtuous because this woman I describe in the chapter in this book, that person who killed her would have been in one of those first two categories, but not the

[00:15:10] third. Virtue is something that is of primary importance. But here's the trick. Who gets to decide what's virtuous? Because the problem I have in my case is, is I'm often working within communities, either when I was working gangs or I'm working like people who are doing narcotics.

[00:15:26] This is the particular case in this particular chapter where they have a code of ethics. It's just not the code of ethics you and I would embrace. It's there's a code amongst thieves. So the question is, who gets to decide what the moral code is that describes something

[00:15:41] as virtuous? If those kinds of moral truths are determined by persons or groups of persons, if they're entirely subjective, then they don't provide necessarily a guarantee of good friendships. But if there is an objective, transcendent code of virtue, in other words, a standard of

[00:16:00] righteousness that transcends all people groups, you want people who are virtuous by that standard. And that's the problem, right? Because it moves us automatically towards some version of theism in which we can ground virtue objectively.

[00:16:16] Because I tell you, every one of these cases I work, if you were to confront these people, they'll tell you they're virtuous. Everyone thinks they're virtuous, right? Everyone can find some way. I'm sure Hitler could find photos of him giving Christmas gifts so everyone can find some

[00:16:29] way to describe themselves as virtuous if there's not an objective standard. And that's part of the problem, is that if you really want to flourish, not just any code of ethics is going to work for you. Not just any version of virtue is going to work.

[00:16:43] You're going to have to ground this in something that transcends us. Very good. Well, one of your chapters deals with what you call legends, liars and liabilities, gets into humility. And just the other day we were talking with a book author that made a very strong point

[00:16:58] about humility. And you again take us there by not only talking about that need for humility that we see in the public sphere, but of course, the Bible talks about it as well. In Proverbs 22, even in Colossians, it talks about the need for us to clothe ourselves in

[00:17:17] humility. So what about this? Because again, you recognize that that is something that is affecting especially some of these prominent celebrities right now in this whole celebrity culture. Well, it even affects us. You and I have to battle with this because here's the problem. The problem is celebrity.

[00:17:34] And in this chapter, I'm really dealing with that. We had a street legend, a gangster who was known in the community. This guy's legendary status is what ultimately caused his death. And the question becomes like, what is the everyone's got access to celebrity now?

[00:17:49] You and I, you have a radio show. I have books and a website. All of this brings attention on us. And then the question becomes, and by the way, if we're going to protect pastors, for example, there's only three reasons why anyone commits a murder.

[00:18:03] The same three reasons why pastors mess up. It's sex, money and power. Well, celebrities in that power category, it's in the authority respect category. Most of us see the need to protect our pastors from the sex and the money. But we want our pastors to be famous.

[00:18:17] Here's the problem. If you scratched one of those three edges, you will eventually scratch the other two. And we have seen this over and over it within the Christian community. Apologists, pastors, people who fall because they become so famous that all the temptations are now available to them.

[00:18:35] What is the solution? What is the remedy for celebrity? It's humility. Now, I'll tell you that if I was to ask secular people, what is the one attribute of human nature you could adopt?

[00:18:49] What's the one change in your human nature you could adopt that would lead to the highest level of flourishing in every possible category? Because that's the impact this has. When I ask that of people who are not Christians, they typically will say, I don't know, meditation, exercise.

[00:19:02] I mean, I'm talking about mental flourishing, physical health, longevity, the depth of your relationships, how high you'll score on SATs, your grades, your income, your success as a leader, success as somebody being led. All of these are dependent upon one thing. It's humility.

[00:19:19] And we've been studying it secularly for about four, three and a half decades. So it's the relatively recent discovery of humans, the power of humility. But it turns out it's an ancient principle. As a matter of fact, there's only one worldview of all worldviews that

[00:19:35] leverages humility, because remember, if I have to earn it, I will eventually become prideful about earning it. So a secular worldview, which is a meritocracy, it's going to eventually lead to pride. You're going to say, why is that guy getting promoted? He got, I got skipped over.

[00:19:49] I got jumped. I deserve that more than him. It's a pride issue. Well, every theistic worldview says you can earn your way to God. Only one worldview says, you know what? There's nothing you could do to earn this. We're going to give this to you.

[00:20:03] It has to be given to you freely so that no one can boast. We're going to take the pride out. That's the Christian worldview. Now it might just be a coincidence, but it might be that the one worldview

[00:20:15] that provides as its foundation, the condition that would cause you to thrive at the highest level, more than any other thing you could adopt, humility. That is coming from the Christian worldview. It might just be that it's an indicator that this is the hallmark of your

[00:20:30] designer who has included this as a primary feature of coming to him because he knows it's also good for you. So good. Good. Take a break. And when we come back, of course, we oftentimes talk about justice.

[00:20:41] So we'll talk about this idea of injustice and the need to seek and revere justice and what that might mean. And we'll pick out just a couple of others, but if you're not familiar with

[00:20:50] this book, it's been out about two months and it is fascinating because even though, of course he takes you into the stories of some of the crime investigation. He really is talking about what leads to human flourishing and the 15 key points are the 15 chapters in the book.

[00:21:08] And again, some great material. But as we mentioned just a minute ago, when other cultures try to understand what leads to human flourishing, it turns out that they end up finding a bullseye right there at Christianity.

[00:21:23] That's kind of the theme of the book, the truth and true crime. We'll continue our conversation right after this. In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas.

[00:21:39] London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism and legendary Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon. London was in many ways the center of the world economically, militarily and intellectually. Marx sought to destroy religion, the family and everything the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him warning of socialism's dangers.

[00:22:04] Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth. It is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today? Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox

[00:22:21] when you sign up for the Viewpoints commentary at pointofview.net slash signup every weekday in less than two minutes, you'll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time. It's free. So visit pointofview.net slash signup right now. Pointofview.net slash signup.

[00:22:48] Point of view will continue after that. You are listening to point of view. The opinions expressed on point of view do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now here again is Kirby Anderson.

[00:23:13] Back once again as we continue our conversation today with Jay Warner Wallace, let me just mention this book is published by Zondervan, 270 pages as we're going through some of the 15 chapters in the book.

[00:23:24] You can also find out a lot more at the links that we have provided on our website today, because after all, I think it'd be very good for you to spend some time at coldcasechristianity.com and find some of the videos, the resources.

[00:23:39] Again, he's done such a great job of helping us even pass these principles on to our children. And he writes in a very interesting and engaging way. But don't think that it's superficial. I think we ended up with 60 pages of end notes.

[00:23:55] So obviously lots of great material, also great visuals that I think help us understand that. And so Jay Warner Wallace, since if we can talk about, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about justice for the man that works in the area and worked in the area

[00:24:09] of criminal justice. But you use this to deal with a bigger issue, prejudice, injustice and the father of all isms. Because what you're pointing out is, is that we tend to be attracted to people

[00:24:21] that are very much like us in terms of appearance, age, maybe our background or politics or religion, whatever it might be, which then causes us to be separate from others. The tribalism that we are dealing with today in the modern culture is another aspect of this.

[00:24:42] So what about how to maybe identify the identity that actually is separating us one from another? Well, that's exactly right. I think most of us would say that we are attracted to opposites attract. How many times do you hear that opposites attract?

[00:24:57] And I think that for the most part, especially amongst couples, has been proven to be false according to the research. I started thinking about this years ago as I was looking at our casework.

[00:25:09] But I really came to a head for me as you saw the violence that we saw related to police and race, especially in the Dallas shootings. In the last few years, it's become more and more amplified. Like what is this? Where's the rub? Why are we like this?

[00:25:26] Why does this be happening over and over and over again? So I started looking at studies to talk about what do we find attractive? What are we drawn toward? Well, it turns out there's a number of studies now that demonstrate that we are

[00:25:41] attracted to people who are more like us than not like us. So when you say opposites attract, well, if you add two sides to a penny, yes, they're opposite sides, but they're the same penny. And that's the way that opposites really attract.

[00:25:54] We we look for other people who are pennies, basically who are like us in most ways. As a matter of fact, we're even drawn and we are attracted to people who whose facial expressions and the way they express emotions.

[00:26:05] We recognize it because our family members express emotions that way. We are far more likely to be attracted to people who are similar educational background, similar IQ levels. As a matter of fact, they've done studies on married couples and they share more

[00:26:19] genetic material than two randomly selected strangers. Why? Because it turns out a lot of our behaviors are driven by genetics and because we are attracted to people who have similar behaviors. Why would you be surprised then to find that you're attracted to people who have similar genetic code?

[00:26:35] Well, this is very, very telling, it seems to me, because what it means is I'm attracted to people who are like me. I am really less attracted then to people who aren't, who are otherly.

[00:26:47] So it turns out that the ism of all isms, that the ism behind racism and ageism and whatever ism you can think of is really just otherism that we are by our very the secular studies demonstrate this, that we are attracted to people who are like us and

[00:27:03] we resist people who are otherly. And racism, for example, is just the the laziest form of otherism because I can spot what's different about us from across the room if I'm going to divide over

[00:27:15] race. But even if we were all the exact same color, the exact same physical appearance, the exact same sex, we would still look for ways to separate from one another. And the studies show this, that we find things that are similar in each

[00:27:29] other and we are attracted to those and we reject people who are different, even if their hobbies, their political interests, whatever they are that are different. And boy, don't you see this now in the kind of polarization we're seeing

[00:27:41] online? But if you know this in advance, well, then you know a social justice issue is really it resides in your heart, your innate fallen nature to divide from people who are otherly.

[00:27:56] If we know that the base problem is otherism, well, then we know that of the two choices, do I replace the system? Well, not if the system won't change your heart, because the problem we have is a heart condition. It's otherism.

[00:28:10] And whatever we might apply to this on the surface to force people, if we can't change them from the inside out, then you're not going to ever. And this is why scripture is so important, right? Because scripture describes us as descendants of the exact same couple, all of

[00:28:26] us, regardless of how we look and how different we might behave and how we were raised and what our genetic backgrounds are on the globe. Wherever we may be, we come from the same, we descend from the same couple.

[00:28:37] And once we return to that family, to that family of God, the otherism issues begin to vanish. And that's why you'll see that the people in the church, for example, who call each of their brothers and sisters really have an opportunity to become true

[00:28:53] brothers and sisters because they've removed the dividing lines, because God sees no difference in us. He doesn't he doesn't see us based on our outward appearances or even our outward behaviors. He sees us from the inside out. And that's why we have to do the same.

[00:29:08] Yeah, let's talk about what's inside, because one of the sections there is the killer inside again as an individual that has actually worked as a cold case detective. Sometimes you're trying to figure out how did this person come to that

[00:29:22] action? And this, of course, leads us to the fact that all sin and fall short of the glory of God. But even the non-Christians are recognized. And yes, you do have a paradox. Sometimes individuals will do something that is altruistic or giving.

[00:29:37] They can be very good kinds of people. But we tend to be innately selfish and vengeful and prideful. And that really, again, is something that even though they may reject the Bible, they've

[00:29:51] got to admit that you've got to explain the fact that we have so many people acting against their own best interests and against the interest even of the society in which they live. Yeah, there's no doubt about this is a good follow up to the last chapter.

[00:30:05] This chapter really involves a case where we had a suspect in view. This is often the case for us where once you arrest somebody after they've done a cold case murder 30 years ago and for the last 30 years, you would never know. These are not serial killers.

[00:30:19] They did one murder. And then for the next 30 years, they are like everybody else. They're your pastor. They're your doctor. They're your fire chief. I mean, I've arrested some people in different categories that you think there's no way

[00:30:31] that this guy and when you meet them and talk to them, they're generally really likable. I mean, you think, you know, I wouldn't mind living next door to this guy, but he did kill his wife 30 years ago. Well, that raises an issue.

[00:30:44] And the world's been asking this issue for a long time. Are we innately pure and innocent and we're just corrupted by bad families, bad environments, bad systems, bad governments? Or are we so deeply fallen and broken that we're the corruptors of families and environments and systems and governments?

[00:31:02] We got to figure this out. Which is it? And I think the studies are clear. Like you said, we can find examples of this enigma of man where we are quickly devolved into impatience and hostility. See studies that demonstrate that.

[00:31:16] You also see studies that show that we're very altruistic at times. But what you also see is that if resources become tight, we start to lose our altruism. So, for example, in a pandemic, we're hoarding toilet paper.

[00:31:27] Why? Well, we do that because we're only usually altruistic when we are serving ourselves first and there's extra. We are not typically altruistic until there's extra. That demonstrates something about us. And once you know the difference, you will start treating people differently. Here's how it worked for me.

[00:31:44] Once I knew that the table between me and the guy I'm interviewing for this murder, I used to think that table divided good from bad. And a lot of cops feel that way. Where the good guys take bad guys to jail.

[00:31:56] But the reality of it is that table just divides people probably who are just a little more prideful and a little less prideful. It's a humility issue. And once you know that that person on the other side of the table is you, but for the

[00:32:08] grace of God, then you start to treat that person differently. You start to realize that I'm not in a position to really judge him this way because at least I can't think to myself, well, I would never do that.

[00:32:21] Because the reality of it is that, yeah, a certain number of circumstances could be drawn into place in which you might find yourself doing something similar. And to think that you're incapable of this type of violence or incapable of this type

[00:32:35] of evil is to misinterpret who you really are. And humility, as Spurgeon used to say, is simply the proper assessment of who you are before a holy God, which is why when Isaiah stands in front of that God, he realizes he's not all that much.

[00:32:49] And anyone who stands in front of that holy God will immediately assess who they are and bend their knee. So a lot of this for me was just helping to determine which is it? Is there a killer inside of all of us?

[00:33:00] And the data is pretty clear on this. And the scripture has been describing us this way for thousands of years. Well, let's take a break. And when we come back, I thought we'd just pick out one other

[00:33:09] chapter. What gangsters have in common is something we've talked about before. But it's again, just a great illustration of a book that I would encourage you to get a copy of. Of course, we have a link to Cold Case Christianity. Of course, you can also find the link.

[00:33:24] He just posted something on X recently in which he talks about the truth and true crime video study. And so you have that link and we have all the kinds of links that you need. And it's a great resource.

[00:33:36] I would encourage you to get it, apply it to yourself, maybe put together a small group and we'll be back right after this. You're listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth.

[00:34:01] And for a few more minutes with Jay Warner Wallace as we talk about his book, The Truth in True Crime. What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life, a forward by Elisa Childers, who's been on the program with us.

[00:34:12] Kirk Cameron says, Fascinating, eye opening and invigorating. Learn from felons, fugitives and frauds through these true crime stories. Our good friend Greg Coco calls it a storehouse of wisdom and so much more that you can gain from this book, both individually and as a small group study.

[00:34:31] But I thought we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about what gangsters have in common, how to know your father, even if you don't know your father. Because as we have talked on this program before, the problem with fatherless America

[00:34:45] and the problem even in the prisons of very few individuals that are actually incarcerated that had a positive relationship, if any relationship at all with their fathers, once again, underscores what you talk about in this chapter, the importance of fathers and all that they bring to the table.

[00:35:04] Yeah, I don't know. This is I know this is a controversial topic for a lot of people, but I don't think it's probably very controversial for people who are working in law enforcement. I think that we've been looking at this and seeing this for years.

[00:35:15] I noticed it years ago when I was assigned a gang detail because our city was so diverse economically, so diverse racially, so diverse from just a status position of different communities. And it didn't matter who I was working, if it was Hispanic, black, white or Korean.

[00:35:32] Those are the major cliques we had in our city at the time. And if you met those kids and I was older at the time I was assigned to this detail, so I didn't feel like I could relate to them as a kid.

[00:35:43] I was relating more as a father. And what I noticed is the common denominator for all of these, even though they were very different in terms of their income levels and all of that was lack of dad.

[00:35:56] Now, what's interesting is the lack of dad takes all different shapes. For some, it was I never knew dad. Mom never never maybe never introduced me to dad or whatever. Or maybe dad's incarcerated. But also for those of you who think, well, that's not my issue.

[00:36:11] Well, many of these kids were gangsters and their dads were they were living at home with them, but they were such deadbeat dads or they were alcoholics or they were workaholics and they never even bothered to come home much. They provided unbelievably well for their families.

[00:36:27] These matter of fact, these kids were driving Acuras when they were doing their drive bys and Lexus vehicles were doing their drive bys. We're thinking, my goodness, how does this happen? It's lack of dad. Lack of dad doesn't matter what shape it takes. It has the same impact.

[00:36:40] And for me, that was an alter call of sorts. You know, I mean, it was an eye opener. I was working gangs. And if you were gangs and you're in charge all the way from the beginning of an investigation, all the way to

[00:36:50] filing in court, which we were, I was never home. I mean, it was constant. It was I was the overtime was unbelievable. And I never thought much of it until I realized that, you know, being gone all the time at work is just

[00:37:03] another version of lack of dad. And we have to address that as men. We have to ask ourselves. It's not just that we are still married to the same spouse that we had a kid with. It's that are we engaged in any way?

[00:37:15] I remember recently looking at some of our old videos that we digitized and I was watching. My kids were very young. I was probably about the time I was working in gangs and I would come home exhausted.

[00:37:28] And I'm watching myself in these videos and thinking, man, at some point it dawned on me. I have to make sure that I'm not contributing to lack of dad in my own family. And the statistics are really clear. I mean, so I've collected all of them.

[00:37:41] You would have to really distort and twist and turn to create a study that would deny the impact of fathers on families. We do matter. And so we have to be engaged. And I think this is so I try to this is a very robust chapter.

[00:37:57] It's got a lot of research in it. And I hope it helps wake up people who otherwise thought that, you know, providing was enough. It turns out, yeah, it's not just quality time. It's quantity time. We have a tendency to think if we're busy.

[00:38:11] Well, yeah, but I'll take him on a good vacation or I really had a great day with him this one day this month as if somehow quality is going to make up for the quantity. It really isn't going to it's a both and it's not an either or.

[00:38:21] So good. Your last chapter talks about every kind of stupid and it gets into this negative impact of hopelessness. But in the interest of time, I thought I'd turn the hopelessness down to the other part.

[00:38:33] And that is in the very end, you talk about human flourishing and whether you look at some of the topics we've addressed, like wisdom and virtuous friendships, of course, marriage and even the idea of contentment and humility and justice and fatherhood and all the rest.

[00:38:51] It is, I think, again, very typical of many of your books, even though this isn't necessarily an apologetics book in the sense of making the case for the reliability of the Bible, the deity of Jesus Christ. The truthfulness of the resurrection, you make a different kind of case.

[00:39:06] And that is the authors of the Bible accurately predict what we today in the 21st century know. And that is there's not a divergence between what we have learned in secular socialism, social science, psychology, medicine, whatever it might be.

[00:39:24] And the Bible, in some respects, we're seeing the wisdom of the Bible played out because of the research that actually has unfolded. And at the end, then you provide a set of verses that actually document each one of those 15 secular studies with biblical claims.

[00:39:44] And in a sense, this is why this is such a very helpful book, not only for Christians to read, but a non-Christian reading to that. And that will, from time to time, say, well, yeah, I agree with that.

[00:39:55] I agree with that. And at the end, you spring on them the fact that if you really want to have human flourishing, the bullseye is Christianity, isn't it? Yeah, I think this is a 15 rules for life kind of a book, but they're coming out of death investigations.

[00:40:10] And if you made a list of 15 rules for life from secular studies, well, that's what's in this last chapter. And then I just show you how those are all Christian claims.

[00:40:19] So if I was to show this list to Dawkins, what, two months to three months ago now when he had the talk about himself as a cultural Christian, I think he would look at this list and say, yes, I want whatever culture affirms these principles.

[00:40:35] Now you can reveal then that these are all biblical principles. But I think the people are going to get that. They're going to see this list and say, yeah, it turns out that even if I didn't believe Christianity was true,

[00:40:45] I ought to adopt those 15 ways to live because they will provide you with a greater human flourishing on every level that we measure human flourishing. So that's why I think, yes, this is a sense of backhanded piece of evidence for Christianity because it happens.

[00:41:01] The biblical anthropology is an accurate description of human anthropology of anthropology. So it's important for us to see, yeah, if if if your foundational documents actually describe the world the way it really is and describe you the way it really is,

[00:41:15] you at least ought to take a look at it and consider them seriously. Well, again, I think this is a book not only intended for Christians, but also I think could be handed to non-Christians. It is one that people can study individually and collectively.

[00:41:27] So, again, let's send them to cold case Christianity dot com and all the other links because you can go through this book individually.

[00:41:35] But if you're a small group leader and want to maybe start a conversation and begin a discussion and watch some videos, you've provided that as well. And Jay Warner Wallace, I just want to say thank you because I love the visuals that you have.

[00:41:48] I love the videos you have. I love the books that you have. And you've done such a great job of making so many of these concepts understandable and communicate them at a level that not only can adults understand, but you have so many great programs for children.

[00:42:03] So it is always a delight to have you on the program here on Point of View. Hey, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate your work and having me on the show. Well, let's again encourage you to go to the website real quickly.

[00:42:13] It is cold case Christianity. And again, these are 15 different, if you will, studies that illustrate what would be required for human flourishing. Then he goes back and then provides biblical verses, biblical principles that actually align with each one of those 15.

[00:42:37] And I think it is just a very powerful book, not only so that you can live the Christian life the way you're supposed to live it,

[00:42:44] but it is a way in which you could maybe attract the interest of a person that isn't interested in apologetics, isn't interested in going to church, certainly doesn't want to read theology,

[00:42:55] but might be kind of interested in the whole issue of criminal investigation and in the process finds out a little bit more about the truthfulness of the gospel. One last time, the truth and true crime. And you've been listening to Point of View. Who can you trust?

[00:43:15] Years ago, many of us could probably have provided a fairly long list. But today, well, today it seems we almost can't trust anyone. Educators don't even know what a woman is anymore. Many so-called public servants have shown all they care about is themselves.

[00:43:33] The FBI has been accused of bias, lawbreaking, betrayal and journalism. It's largely corrupt with no Clark Kent standing up for truth, justice in the American way. All of this is why Point of View radio is more important than ever.

[00:43:50] And your part in supporting us is more needed than ever. Do your part today in supporting trustworthy truth. Stand with us and help push back the lies and the darkness. Visit Point of View dot net.

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