Show Notes
In this week’s episode of Mind + Heart, Phillip Holmes interviews Dr. Michael Kruger. Dr. Kruger is the president of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina where he serves as the Samuel C. Patterson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity. He is also the author of numerous books, including Surviving Religion 101.
Holmes asks Dr. Kruger for his personal history and conversion story. Dr. Kruger talks about growing up in a Christian home, his time in college at USC Chapel Hill, meeting his wife, and their ministry serving at RTS for 20 years.
Holmes plays Dr. Kruger’s previous Wisdom Wednesday episode, which answered the question, “Why does it seem like the smartest people are the ones who reject Christianity?” Holmes asks Dr. Kruger his definition of a worldview. Dr. Kruger explains worldview as a series of components that constitute the lens through which the holder views reality. He also explains the subtle nature of worldview and its ability to affect a person’s perceptions without their awareness of its presence.
Holmes, referencing a previous episode with Dr. John Fesko, talks about the noetic effects of sin on the human mind, and asks Dr. Kruger how worldviews shape what we believe. Dr. Kruger explains the concept of bias and the necessity of an overwhelming amount of evidence in order to overcome bias.
Holmes asks if it is possible for a person’s worldview to change. Dr. Kruger explains that it’s possible for a worldview to change via conversion. He and Holmes discuss the nature and effects of conversion, the enormous differences between Christianity and human systems of religion, and the necessity of conversion in order for the Christian worldview to be grasped by the human mind.
Holmes asks Dr. Kruger about the contrast between the Christian worldview and non-Christian worldviews. Dr. Kruger compares Christianity to a new operating system for the human heart and mind, as opposed to a mere cosmetic or programmatic change. Holmes refers to the latter as “easy-believism.”
Holmes and Dr. Kruger dialogue over whether a person must desire God in order to become a Christian. Dr. Kruger explains the necessity of a change to the affections, will, and mind. Dr. Kruger and Holmes dialogue about the miracle of conversion and the necessity of clear communication about the demands of the gospel, as opposed to a merely proclamational approach to evangelism. They also discuss the importance of listening well, and talk through Christianity’s reputation for stridency in the current cultural moment.
Holmes asks Dr. Kruger for any final thoughts. Dr. Kruger directs listeners again to the original question, and offers a reminder that God keeps a remnant for himself.
Mind + Heart Season 2 Episode 6: Biases
Keith Pinckney: Hi, this is Keith Pinckney. As a current student at Reformed Theological Seminary, I’ve been incredibly thankful for how RTS supports my fellow students and me as we prepare for a life of ministry. One of the ways that I’ve felt supported is by the seminary’s commitment to helping students graduate from seminary without additional student debt. As part of that commitment, RTS will participate in Giving Tuesday on November 30th, seeking 100 donations for need-based student aid. To partner with us, visit rts.edu/giving-tuesday. And if you’re listening to this episode after Giving Tuesday, it’s not too late to join us. Visit rts.edu/give to learn more.
Phillip Holmes: Welcome to the Mind + Heart podcast, which features interviews and more from the family and friends of Reformed Theological Seminary. We created this podcast to assist you in your daily quest to love God and love your neighbor. I’m your host, Phillip Holmes, and this week I’m joined by my guest, Dr. Mike Kruger. Dr. Mike Kruger is the president, and Samuel C. Patterson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Dr. Kruger is one of the leading scholars today in the study of the origins of the New Testament, particularly the development of the New Testament canon and the transmission of the Testament texts. He is the author of numerous books, including his most recent book Surviving Religion 101. He is married to Melissa, and they have three children. Dr. Kruger, welcome to the show!
Dr. Michael Kruger: Thanks, Phillip. Always great to be on the show, man. Good to be back.
Holmes: Yeah. Glad to have you back. You’ve already done this before, but briefly give the people your origin story. Some people may be new to the podcast and didn’t get a chance to catch you last season, but talk about — where did you grow up? How did you meet Melissa, and how did you come to faith in Jesus?
Dr. Kruger: So, I grew up in a Christian home and had Christian parents introduce me to the gospel at a young age, and I was thankful to be converted very young, and also have a brother who’s a believer. And so I’ve just been blessed to grow up in a Christian home, and a lot of those years were spent in North Carolina, where I ended up at USC Chapel Hill. I met my wife, Melissa, who — we are both alums of that school. Coming up on our 25th wedding anniversary, which is hard to believe. And, a good chunk of that time, we’ve been here in Charlotte, of course.
I’ve been at RTS [for] 20 years as professor of New Testament and then, coming up on almost — it’ll be nine years in just a month, so, nearing a decade as president also of the Charlotte campus. So it’s been a crazy whirlwind, but there is your one-minute life overview for those who want to get to know me a little bit better.
Holmes: Awesome. Thanks for that. So recently, you answered a question for us on Wisdom Wednesday. We asked you, “Why does it seem like the smartest people are the ones who reject Christianity?” So, before we even dive into our questions, let’s take a moment and listen to your response to “Why does it seem like the smartest people are the ones who reject Christianity?”
Dr. Kruger: When it comes to intellectual challenges to the Christian faith, one of the most common questions I get from people — and this is true for college students and just about anybody who’s a Christian in our modern world — they say, “Why does it seem like the smartest people are precisely the ones who don’t believe Christianity?” And that’s a very common question I get. This is particularly acute on the college campus because the average Christian student on a college campus will be taking their classes over time and realize, wait a second. My professors are really smart. They know a lot more than I do. In fact, they know much more than the average person in the world does. These are some of the brightest people on the planet, with multiple degrees and all these credentials, and they seem to be precisely the ones who don’t think that Christianity is true. They are exactly the ones who seem that Christianity doesn’t make any sense to them.
So why does it always seem, one might wonder, that the intellectual elites are the very ones that end up rejecting the faith? And that can haunt you after a while. It’s like a little sliver in your mind. If you don’t eventually have an answer to that question, it can begin to make you think, “Well, hold on. Maybe Christianity is just for people who don’t think very much. Or that Christianity is for people who aren’t or very smart,” or whatever. And I know that becomes a problem in our mind. So what is the answer to that problem? Why does it seem like the smartest people often are the ones that don’t believe?
What you have to realize [is] the way knowledge works. We tend to think that people form their beliefs in a way that’s sort of purely scientific. That what a person ends up believing is just because they put on the white lab coat and they analyze the data, and the data led them some way, and they reach a conclusion, and it’s all very mathematical and scientific and so on. And if people really operated that way, then you could probably count the number of people [who] believe a certain thing and conclude that, “Well, I guess the majority of belief of what people believe should be right, because most people just act scientifically and they collect data and they reach conclusions in a very straightforward way. And therefore, if I’m in the minority, something must be wrong with me.”
Worldviews are sort of a macro-paradigm [in] which we understand reality.But what if knowledge doesn’t work like that? What if people don’t make decisions about what they believe in that fashion? Well, the Bible makes it very clear that in fact, people don’t think that way, that people are not neutral, that they’re not a blank slate, that they do not reach conclusions just based on the data, but actually make conclusions also based on their hearts, based on what they want to accept, based on the way they view the world.
Paul is very clear in the book of 1st Corinthians that the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God because they don’t make sense to him. And so there’s already a built-in sense in which, when a non-Christian is faced with the evidence for the Christian faith, they don’t see it. They won’t get it, because it’s spiritually discerned, as. Paul says, so there’s already a sense that the Bible makes it clear that people aren’t neutral when they investigate the world.
But it’s not just that Christians have said that. Even non-Christians have said that. Many years ago, a very famous scholar by the name of Thomas Kuhn wrote a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And he made the case, basically, that science doesn’t work the way you think it does it. Science doesn’t work just by collecting data and reaching conclusions. Rather, he says that science works in light of what he called paradigms. Scientists collect data, interpret data, and reach conclusions from data within a system, within a paradigm, within a grid. And so it’s not neutral. It’s conditioned by the paradigm they start with. It’s only after the data becomes so overwhelmingly against the paradigm that paradigms are flipped and scientific revolutions take place. And Kuhn’s point was simple; it’s that people don’t collect knowledge and reach conclusions [in] some sort of purely scientific, unbiased way, but they do it based on their worldview.
And that’s really one of the major lessons here that we need to take away as believers. And that is, it’s not as simple to say that someone believes the evidence or doesn’t believe the evidence. People operate in the world based on worldviews, and worldviews condition what they’re willing to accept, what they want to believe, what they’re willing to affirm. And that should remind us that even if most people reject the faith around us, it really has nothing to do with whether what we believe is true, because people reject things or accept things for all sorts of reasons.
Really, the best example of this, by way of illustration, is really C. S. Lewis’s wonderful book The Magician’s Nephew. In that book, there’s a famous scene where Uncle Andrew is in Narnia, and yet Uncle Andrew doesn’t believe in any magical things, and he starts hearing Aslan singing, and he thinks to himself, “Well, lions don’t sing, lions can’t sing.” And so instead of hearing Aslan singing, [he] reinterprets the evidence as just noise and gibberish. And Lewis in the book makes the point that what you’re willing to accept, what you’re willing to believe, actually tends to have more to do with where you already stand and what you already have in your heart, than what’s really going on in the world. That’s a great illustration for us. So be encouraged today: just because most people around, you may not believe, [that] doesn’t mean that what you believe isn’t true.
Holmes: So, Dr. Kruger, how would you define a worldview?
Dr. Kruger: Yeah, I mean, that’s at the heart of this whole conversation, right? Which is, people don’t believe things just because the facts point in one direction. People don’t believe things because there’s just a bunch of data out there. They believe things because they interpret the data in a certain way. And so, worldviews have to do with the grid through which we interpret the world around us. So worldviews are sort of a macro-paradigm to which we understand reality. So they include lots of things. They include our views of how you know things. So they include epistemology. They include, sort of, ultimate reality. So they have an ontology about them. And they include morality, how you know what’s right and wrong, and what is right and wrong. And so, it’s sort of this web of ultimate beliefs that a person has, through which they interpret the events and encounters they have in life.
Worldviews are actually one of those things that people often don’t realize they have. They are somewhat imperceptible.Here’s the trick, though, about a worldview, is that you don’t just sort of construct a worldview from scratch when you’re twenty-five. Worldviews are actually one of those things that people often don’t realize they have. They are somewhat imperceptible. What I mean by that is, they haven’t really reflected upon them. They just have these assumptions and haven’t thought about it. And then they go around interpreting the world without even realizing they’re doing it through a worldview. And so, one of the ways I think about a worldview, that is, it’s not something that you look at, it’s something you look through onto other things. And that really explains why certain people end up in some places and some people end up in others.
Holmes: That’s super helpful. Recently, we did a podcast with Dr. Fesko out of RTS Jackson, and we started talking about the noetic effects of sin — at least, he brought that up, and the way that he explained it was, we know that there is a God, but we don’t know who he is. And oftentimes, as we’re thinking about the effects of sin, the heart is usually prioritized over thinking through the effects of sin on the mind. And I think that kind of plays a role into our topic today, you know, “Why are the smartest people, the ones who reject Christianity?”
So we oftentimes think of the way that people decide whether or not they believe in a particular faith — we often think of it as, this is some type of scientific process. And I used to think like this when I was a kid, right? So I was like, “All right, you give somebody all the facts. And surely once they see all the facts, they’ll be able to make an objective decision about what is true, what is not true, what is right, and what is wrong.” But as I’ve gotten older, I realized that the world is not nearly as simple as that. And I’m realizing even more that a lot of it has to do with the effects of sin. How do you think our worldviews shape what we are willing to believe, or not believe? Dive a little bit deeper into that.
Dr. Kruger: Yeah. So I mean, I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, you know, we do have this impression that you just have to put on the white lab coat and go out and collect data, and do your little investigative work. And then the truth will just be obvious. And this is the way we often think science works. And even science doesn’t work that way. And you know, I’ve referenced before the very famous book by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, where he points out that science doesn’t work in a linear fashion where you collect data, data, data, and reach a conclusion. But rather, he says, science works through paradigms, and works through grids, preexisting systems, and theories that interpret the data in a certain way. And no matter if the data fits or doesn’t fit the theory, it can be absorbed within it. And the only reason you ever actually change your view is if there is just an overwhelming amount of data that contradicts the theory. You end up having to chuck it and start over. And that’s what a revolution is. A scientific revolution is, you end up you having a whole new worldview.
So it’s true in the sciences, and it’s true in our lives. If I give someone a bunch of evidence for the resurrection, you know, five hundred witnesses, the empty tomb, the beginnings of Christianity, I might think, “Golly, that makes a lot of sense.” And the person may hear that and think, “No way. That’s not convincing.” And the reason it’s not convincing is because of earlier and more foundational beliefs that person already has. That person already believes there’s no God, that person already believes there’s no supernatural activity in the world. The person already believes there’s no miracles. And it really, if you think about it, it doesn’t matter how much evidence there is for the resurrection. You can have piles and piles and piles of it — it will never overcome those frameworks he already possesses.
And so this is what I mean by bias, or what we mean by a worldview, or what we mean by preconceived notions is that [we] just can’t get out of that. And this is something that we have to take into account if we’re going to have discussions with people about truth.
Holmes: So is it possible — and we sort of know the answer to this, but I want you to expound on it — is it possible to form a worldview that is fundamentally different from the one that was formed as we were being raised, the one that was formed during childhood?
Dr. Kruger: Yes. So yes, you can have change in a worldview. You can have new beliefs and a new structure and a new system. But going back to Thomas Kuhn, often it requires a revolution. It requires a big macro overturning of a worldview. And most people in life never get to a point where they have that kind of “ah ha!” light bulb moment, where they can flip over a worldview.
Ultimately, to get an entirely new worldview, you almost need to be changed from the inside out. We call that conversion or regeneration, and ultimately, what it requires is God, by his Spirit, helping you to see what you couldn’t see before.Now, in the Christian system, we have a name for this. In the Christian system, we don’t use the term revolution. That’s Kuhn’s word. In the Christian system, we’re using the term conversion, right? So ultimately, to get an entirely new worldview, you almost need to be changed from the inside out. We call that conversion or regeneration, and ultimately, what it requires is God, by his Spirit, helping you to see what you couldn’t see before, [to] help you to recognize something you didn’t recognize before, and have a whole new way of looking at the world. And so, yeah, it could happen. I think it even happened, in some ways, apart from divine intervention. But ultimately, one does not gain and embrace a Christian worldview without the help of the Spirit.
Holmes: That’s good. And the reality is, too, it’s clear that it’s not as if the person is looking at a particular idea that comes from Christianity and they are like, “Oh yeah, maybe this can happen. Oh yeah, it makes sense. But you know, I don’t believe that.” I guess what I’m trying to get at is, Christianity — when you look at the essence of what Christianity is, and what it teaches — is contradictory to most of what the world believes is good and right. So the kingdom of heaven, right, “the first shall be last shall be first?” Those types of things — Jesus will point this out when he was talking about how the Gentile rules, like, you see that they lord it over them. We don’t do that. Like, the fact that he teaches Christians, “Leaders serve. We don’t come to be served. We serve.”
All these things are completely contradictory to what many in the world believe is the way one should lead their lives. So that’s probably the most fascinating thing about Jesus to me, because during the time where states and countries and nations were ruled by monarchies and dictatorships, and power was something that many were looking to gain and grab, Jesus came in with something that was completely different than anything any type of leader was trying to lead on earth. The kingdom of heaven that he was trying to establish was totally otherworldly. It’s not just really “be a good person and come to Jesus,” because [what] the world oftentimes thinks is a good thing or a right thing is oftentimes inconsistent with what the kingdom of heaven says. Or oftentimes, maybe the kingdom of heaven says, “No, you need to go farther than that,” right? You’re just thinking just because you don’t commit adultery, or commit the act of adultery, you’re a righteous person. But the kingdom of heaven, if you look upon a woman lustfully, you’ve committed adultery.
Every time I read through the gospels, I walk away with, “You can’t make this up. A human can’t write this.” How do you think that plays into what we’re talking about here when it comes to worldviews that are a part of our upbringing that was outside of the faith, and even accepting or embracing a Christian worldview?
Dr. Kruger: Yeah, I mean, I think another way to say what you’re getting at there is that the differences between the Christian view of reality and the non-Christian view of reality are massive. They’re not just slight. They’re a totality, they’re a meta-narrative, they’re a macro different.
So if you think about what Van Til taught on this, he uses the term antithesis, ok? So it’s not like the Christian worldview and non-Christian worldview are mostly the same, but the non-Christian is just missing some key facts, [and] that if he added those facts, it would be suddenly Christian. Rather, he says, these are two diametrically opposed, different ways of looking at reality. They’re just almost sheer opposites at every turn.
And so, this is why Paul says very plainly that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit because they’re spiritually discerned. And so, it’s not just to the non-Christian doesn’t get Christianity. He doesn’t even like Christianity. It goes against every instinct, every inclination, every value he has. It’s not the smell of life, it’s the smell of death. And the only way you overcome that is, of course, like I said, through the conversion.
It’s not just [that] the non-Christian doesn’t get Christianity. He doesn’t even like Christianity. It goes against every instinct, every inclination, every value he has.So another way I say to my students is, if man were to make up a religion, it would look nothing like Christianity. If man were to make up a religion, it would be a religion where he doesn’t really need much of anything and certainly probably doesn’t need saving. If man were to make up a religion, it’d be an innately good person who’s just trying to do his best. If man ever made up a religion, there would be no hell, no judgment, no sin. If man were to make up a religion, it wouldn’t look even anything like Christianity.
And so, once you realize that, once you have that in your mind — and by the way, people are born that way because of the fall, because of sin — once you have that on your mind, then suddenly you realize, “Oh, when I disagree with my non-Christian friend at the university campus, it’s not as simple as just saying, ‘Well, here’s some facts you don’t know.'” Boy, golly, if only that were true. We’d have a lot more conversions. But you realize that you’re swimming against a tidal wave of difference.
Holmes: 100 percent. So, in other words, not just, “here’s another way to say [it], here’s a better way to say it.” But that’s exactly what I was communicating. And I think your response, at least, was spot on, and your summary was spot on. That’s super helpful. I like the phrase that you use: “a completely different reality,” a reality that’s “diametrically opposed.” Is that how you put it?
Dr. Kruger: Yeah. And one illustration I’ve used — which is a little out of date, but I think it still works — is it’s the difference between saying — think about operating systems on a computer. We’re not going to the non-Christian and saying, “Hey, your operating system works pretty well, but here’s a program you haven’t loaded yet called Christianity. Why don’t you upload this program, and everything’s going to be a lot better for you.”
That’s not the argument. The argument is you need a whole new operating system, right? Your operating system — if you’re an Apple fan, you’re going to be like, your operating system is Windows and you need an Apple, you need a Mac system. So you need a complete revolution. So we tend to think of the gospel as, “add a program to your already existing operating system.” Just upload this app, and your life goes better.
Holmes: And that’s sort of the easy-believism, right?
Dr. Kruger: Just like, add this to your system. And hey, you’re good. No, they’re not good, because first of all, they don’t want to add it. Secondly, if they try to add it, the two would be incompatible. They need an absolutely new operating system from front to back.
Holmes: Would you say that for a non-Christian to become a Christian, they must want to believe in God on some level?
Dr. Kruger: Yeah. So conversion is going to be a combination of affections, the heart, the will — which is what you want — and also, your mind, how you’re thinking. So it’s conversions, a totality. You can’t just convert in one thing and not the other. So it’s not just that the non-Christian can say, “I now think Christianity is technically true and therefore I’m converted.” No, they have to think it’s true, but they also have to want it and love it, because it’s about a person. So they have to now desire and want to be with Jesus, love Jesus, serve Jesus, follow Jesus.
What you really need is a new heart. You can’t give it to yourself.And so how does that shift take place? Well, that requires a change in affections, which of course, is not something one can manufacture. There has to be something given by God. It’s a movement of the Spirit. But I would say, to answer your question, that has to be there. You have to in one sense, want to be a Christian, to be a Christian. And you also have to recognize that the want is not something you conjure up artificially. It’s not something you manufacture. It’s something that’s given to you.
And so, this is why we tell people, what you really need is a new heart. You can’t give it to yourself. And this puts us in a very odd position because you’re actually telling them to do something that they need God’s help to do. Which is why we don’t just talk to non-Christians and tell them the gospel. We actually pray to God and ask God to convert people, because he’s the one that ultimately does it.
Holmes: You know, I wonder, in our approach to talking [about] these things [to] non-Christians, if there needs to be more — because, we often talk about new heart, new mind, oftentimes, I wonder — I won’t say “often times” — I wonder if what we’re pushing is a more sophisticated version of easy-believeism. And we’re not really getting people to grasp that they’re not just, as you put it, uploading the new program, but this is, you know, we say stuff like, “This is a lifestyle change.” Well, I think sometimes even that just translates into “be a better person.” Right?
Dr. Kruger: It’s like going on a diet. Lifestyle change, it’s like, you know, I should eat better. And so I need a lifestyle change, so I eat better. It’s like going on a diet. Some people think that, well, I need to get religion if I can improve my life. Yeah, I think that’s right. I think there’s a sense in which we sort of minimalize it. And I think, on one level, I wonder if that’s motivated out of thinking that if we sell it as requiring very little of you, that maybe more people will convert or more people will be willing to embrace it.
Holmes: From a communication standpoint, I think that to some extent, we’ve lost our desire or our ability to some extent. And maybe it’s not completely lost, but we don’t work as hard to make what is complex plain. And we don’t anticipate how what we’re saying might be interpreted by the listener. One basic philosophy, or one basic approach to this, rather, would be asking the person to repeat back to you what they heard, right?
This is something that you know, you see in counseling. Oftentimes, the counselors end up doing it, though. The person will tell what’s [the] problem. So they’ll say, “What I hear you saying is X, Y, and Z,” right? And they’re trying to make sure, essentially, that they understand you before they start talking and giving advice. And that’s a sign of a good counselor. I mean, even the Proverbs talks about [how] “the person who does not seek counsel only seeks their own desires.”
And so sometimes, I think we have these prepackaged messages. We don’t really allow people to feel the weight of what it is that they’re signing up for. And sometimes I wonder, is it because some of us — not all of us, not all Christians — but I think some Christians don’t realize the weight of what it is that they’ve been called to.
Dr. Kruger: Yeah, I mean, it stems from different things. I mean, some Christians don’t really understand it themselves, so they have a hard time communicating it. I think part of the problem, too, is that I think lots of times we think of evangelism as merely proclamation, as if my only goal is to just get out a statement, get out a word, get out a concept, and then I can kind of wipe my hands and say, “Well, I’ve done my duty here.” Whereas, I think we want to look at evangelism as more comprehensive than that. It is partly proclamation. It’s also partly persuasion. It’s also partly dialog and interaction, and it requires some sort of relationship to do that.
Lots of times we think of evangelism as merely proclamation, as if my only goal is to just get out a statement, get out a word, get out a concept, and then I can kind of wipe my hands and say, “Well, I’ve done my duty here.”So when we want to know if someone gets what we’re saying, you’ve got to actually have an interaction with them. You’ve got to actually let them talk. You can’t just do all the talking. And so, I think that’s part of it, too. I think we’re, sort of, this one-directional, proclamation-oriented vision of evangelism, as if just saying it over and over again is all we have to do. And that’s unfortunate, because I think that’s only part of the equation.
Holmes: I think that’s 100 percent right. Paul on Mars Hill, he’s very familiar with who these individuals are listening to. He’s familiar with their poets, and he uses that to essentially build a bridge, because again, ultimately all truth is God’s truth. And so, he uses that as an illustration to build a bridge to essentially communicate, “Hey, like, even your poets know this,” right? And I think that’s very important from a — the art of communication is not simply just eloquence. But our communication absolutely depends on [our ability] to do it well. You have to be able to listen and be ready to respond to various objections and roadblocks that a person might have.
Dr. Kruger: Yeah. And I think we all would agree that in our cultural moment, Christians do not have a good reputation for being good listeners. We probably have a reputation for speaking our mind on everything, and sort of being really loud about a lot of things. And I’m not saying those things are all bad. But I doubt our culture would say, “You know what? I talked to a Christian. I really feel listened to. I really feel heard. I really feel like they are trying to understand me.” And that’s unfortunate, because I think that’s a bit of an indictment.
And by the way, there’s a whole church culture issue there, you know? Do we allow people to ask hard questions? Do we allow people to push back? Do we allow people to express their doubts? Or is it sort of like, our goal is to shut everything down and again, go back to what I said earlier, we’re just going to tell you, just all proclamation. Here it is. Take it or leave it. And that dialog really is snuffed out.
Why do we feel like we’re such a minority and so many smart people disagree? Well, God sometimes has a remnant, and that remnant is part of his plan, and we can just take comfort in the fact that he’s shown grace to us, and we need to continue to do our job to spread the truth wherever we can.So yeah, I mean, I think we’ve got a long way to go there. And I don’t know how our culture got that way. Maybe it’s just the polarization of our world that is — maybe we’ll think that we just got to harden down and say things without letting people respond. But I don’t think it’s working very well for us.
Holmes: No, I completely agree. Dr. Kruger, any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Dr. Kruger: No, I would just encourage the listeners back to the original point which we started with, which is the fact that [just because] we’re in the minority in our world in terms of what we believe, [that] is not itself proof that what we believe isn’t true. Because again, people don’t believe things necessarily because they’re true, or disbelieve things because they’re untrue, but they believe things for many other reasons.
And so, I think this is always a point of discouragement for people. Why do we feel like we’re such a minority and so many smart people disagree? Well, God sometimes has a remnant, and that remnant is part of his plan, and we can just take comfort in the fact that he’s shown grace to us, and we need to continue to do our job to spread the truth wherever we can.
Holmes: Thank you, Dr. Kruger, and thank you so much for taking time out to sit down and share your thoughts and your wisdom. Thank you for tuning in, and we hope you enjoyed this week’s episode featuring Dr. Mike Kruger. I would also like to thank the RTS family, church partners, students, alumni, and donors for the many ways you make the work of Reformed Theological Seminary possible. The clip we listened to earlier is from our weekly video series, Wisdom Wednesday, where relevant matters of the Christian faith are addressed by RTS faculty and friends with truth, candor, and grace. Access our entire archive, or submit a question at rts.edu/wisdom-wednesday. Mind + Heart is powered by Reformed Theological Seminary, where we desire to raise up pastors and other church leaders with a mind for truth and a heart for God.
