For a while, people have been told that there’s no such thing as truth. You “create your own truth” and “find your own meaning” within yourself. Many are finding that unsatisfying and are beginning to wonder if there really is truth somewhere. We Christians have a great opportunity to tell them yes, there is truth. I explore this and suggest ways to engage in fruitful evangelistic conversations.

Resources:

• Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner (2023)
• Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain (2023)
• The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (2023)
• Miracles by C.S. Lewis
• The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis
• Questioning Faith: Indirect Journeys of Belief through Terrains of Doubt by Randy Newman (2024)

Transcript

Welcome to Questions That Matter, a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute. I'm your host, Randy Newman, and I serve at the institute as the Senior Fellow for Apologetics and Evangelism. And so, on this podcast, it's just me talking to you about some insights about evangelism. And I want to follow up from a previous podcast, when I was talking with Kristi Mair. You may remember, if you listened to it. She spoke about a new term that philosophers and others are using, saying that we are now living in metamodern times. This is coming after postmodernism, post postmodern times. And I think this has some significant impact for us about evangelism, because what I'm zeroing in on is, in metamodern times, I think people are beginning to say, “You know, I think there is meaning somewhere. I just don't know where to find it.”

So, just to kind of put this into perspective, I would say, in premodern times, people thought that there was such a thing as truth and that you could find it in God. Then along comes the Enlightenment and what we might call the modern era, and in modern times, people thought there was such a thing as truth, but it probably wasn't found in God, if God even exists. You could more likely find truth through reason, science, discovery, study. In postmodern times, people thought there is no such thing as truth, but it doesn't matter. You create your own truth. You look within and find what's true for you. There's no absolute truth. There's relative truths. But now, many people are finding that that was very frustrating or that it didn't really bring the answers they were looking. They turned inward. They said, “Okay, there's no such thing as absolute truth,” but they couldn't even find relative truth. And so now we're in post postmodern times, or metamodern times. And people are beginning to think that, “Well, there might be truth out there or meaning or something worth looking at, but we're not quite sure where to look.”

And I wanted to share with you today a couple of places that I see this from secular writers, from people who are not religious, but they almost sound religious. It sounds like they can't help themselves from saying, “Maybe there's something more.” And again, I just want to share with you a couple of places that I've seen it, that I find this to be very encouraging, because, in our evangelism, we might be able to find people who are—I don't know—maybe tired of looking within, or saying, “I’ve found all sorts of success, but I'm still looking for something more.”

I talked to a friend the other day who said he's been in conversation with a non-Christian friend who said to him just the other day, “I want to live bigger. I want to live my life in light of there’s something bigger out there to find.” So let me give you a couple of examples: There's a very popular book called Awe. Subtitle is “The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.” It's by a professor at University of California in Berkeley, I believe. I may have that location wrong, but he's a professor of social psychology. His name is Dacher Keltner. This is a very popular book on Amazon, and there's a sad story behind it. His brother died very young of a terrible cancer, and he found the experience of watching his brother die not only to be terribly sad, but also a kind of awesomeness. It made him wonder if there's more. Being that close to death made him wonder about awe, and so he has studied this, he’s written this book, and he talks about places where people have found awe. They find it in music. They find it in beauty. They find it in religion. He himself is not religious, but he concludes, at the end of his book—its final chapter is called “Epiphany, the big idea of awe. We are part of systems larger than the self.” Doesn't that sound like someone who thinks maybe there's a God? He says, at the very end of his book. This is the last paragraph of his book: “The epiphany of awe is that its experience connects our individual selves with the vast forces of life. In awe, we understand we are part of many things that are much larger than the self. Being part of this scientific story of awe has taught me that the evolution of our species built into our brains and bodies and emotion, our species-defining passion that enables us to wonder together about the great questions of living: What is life? Why am I alive? Why do we all die? What is the purpose of it all? How might we find awe when someone we love leaves us? Our experiences of awe hint at faint answers to these potential questions and move us to wonder toward the mysteries and wonders of life.”

Do you hear how that's different than even ten years ago? Ten years ago, the postmodern thing was, “Oh, stop asking those big questions. There aren’t answers. Just find happiness, contentment, meaning within yourself.” But no. He’s saying, “No. There is something.” He’s saying that evolution created it and that these moments of awe hint at faint answers.

And we want to say, as Christians, “Well, I think they maybe do. I think they do more than hint at. I think they point to those things, and the answers are not faint. The answers have clear definition. The most clearest definition was when God Himself took on flesh and lived amongst us. The Word became flesh.” And so I'm seeing conversations we can have with people that might get better traction than they did a while ago. I mean, I don't know if you've had these conversations, but at some point you might have had conversations where they’ll go, “Well, who's to say? There is no right or wrong. There is no truth. Everybody discovers truth for themselves.” And so then you would argue for that Jesus is the truth, and people would just dismiss it. It was like Teflon, and they would say, “Well, that's true for you, but it's not true for me.” And it was very difficult to try to say, “No, no. You need to believe this.” “Well, everybody needs to believe something.”

Whereas today, I think people are saying, “No, I think there really is something.” I think we're grasping for it. And when social psychologists write books about awe, we should say, “Oh, this is really great news. This is moving in a good direction.”

Here's another example I found of it: You may be familiar with the name Susan Cain. She wrote a very popular book called Quiet. The subtitle was something about the power of introverts in a world of noise or something. I loved it. Her TED Talk is hysterically funny, but very insightful, about there's so much noise going on in our world, and we're so addicted to noise and clamor, and there's something that comes when you just close the door and open up a book and just read in silence. So her book was very, very successful, and like very successful authors, she has now written a second book, called Bittersweet. And I knew her name and when I saw that book in the new section of new books at the library, I thought, “Ooh. How interesting!” And it talks about things that point us beyond. Check out her subtitle: “How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.” Isn't that amazing? She's trying to say that there are these disappointments in life, and we shouldn't shy away from them, because if we embrace them, they make us whole. I saw this in the library, and I couldn't help but think of C.S. Lewis. I can just hear him talking about his definition of joy being an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any satisfaction. And I just thought, “Susan Cain.” She’s secular. I believe she's Jewish. I thought, “Wouldn’t this be something if she comes to faith right in the pages of this book?” but my hopes were dashed. She does quote C.S. Lewis quite a bit in her book. She says, early on in her book, that C.S. Lewis heard the call of bittersweetness all his life and became a committed Christian in his thirties. And then she says this, listen to this: She’s quoting Lewis now. “’Our commonest expedient,’ Lewis wrote, and then she says, “This is one of literature's most gorgeous passages.” And boy do I agree with her. And she's quoting from that great passage in The Weight of Glory. And she continues the C.S. Lewis quote. It’s a pretty lengthy quote for this size book. She says, “Lewis says, ‘Our commonest expedient is to call the longing beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. But the books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them. It was not in them. It only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things, the beauty, the memory of our own past, are good images of what we really desire, but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers, for they are not the thing itself. They are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune, we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.’” One of my absolute favorite passages of anything that Lewis ever wrote. That's all she quotes, and then listen to what Susan Cain says next: “As for me, I believe that the bittersweet tradition extinguishes these distinctions between atheists and believers. The longing comes through Yahweh or Allah, Christ or Krishna, no more and no less than it comes through the books and the music. They are equally the divine, or none of them are the divine, and the distinction makes no difference. They are all it.” Do you hear what she's saying? Wait. She goes on: “When you went to your favorite concert and heard your favorite musician singing the body electric, that was it. When you met your love and gazed at each other with shining eyes, that was it. When you kissed your five-year-old good night, and she turned to you solemnly and said, ‘Thank you for loving me so much,’ that was it. All of them facets of the same jewel.”

I have never read a more stark example of a contradiction in my life. Lewis says, “Don’t mistake the thing for it, because if you do, it will break your heart.” Those who worship those things who settle for it, who say, “That’s it,” it will break the hearts of their worshipers. It was not it. It was only a pointer. And she's saying, “Yes, it is it. That's it.” And I just feel terrible fear for Susan Cain. She's saying that, when her five-year-old said thank you for loving me, that was it. Well, you know, I've raised kids, and now I'm in the process of being very involved in the lives of grandchildren, and sometimes they're adorable, and the moment is it. And sometimes I'm convinced that they're demon possessed. So I fear for Susan Cain as to what's going to be coming next.

But again, I'm seeing this in so many places. So I saw it in social psychology. I'm seeing it in Susan Cain about how to live. Susan Cain, by the way, is not an academic, but she's a trained lawyer, and she's a very, very intelligent woman. But people who have been materialistic and only able to say that’s all there is to life is molecules and matter, they're finding that they just can't hang on to that for long.

Here's another example, from the world of science. Christof Koch is a neuroscientist. He wrote a book called Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist. He can't quite bring himself to be a fully reductionist, saying, “That’s all there is. That’s all that is, is just matter,” because he finds that there are these things that point elsewhere. He writes in his book, “I lost my childhood faith, yet I've never lost my abiding faith that everything is as it should be. I feel deep in my bones that the universe has meaning that we can realize.” Isn't that interesting for a scientist who says that all we are are material and matter? Says, “I feel deep in my bones this is true.” That's a very non-scientific statement to make. He goes on to say, “I continue to be amazed by the ability of highly educated and intelligent people to fool themselves. Nobody is immune from self-deception and self-delusion.” And his book is filled with statements that sure sound like unprovable, scientifically unprovable, statements that he believes just by faith, that there's more, that there are answers, there are statements about meaning in life that we can find.

I saw it in another place, in the world of art. There's a great book by a Jewish man who becomes a Buddhist, Rick Rubin. He's a very successful music producer. He's written a book called The Creative Act: A Way of Being, and it's a beautifully written book about art and artistic creativity. A friend recommended it to me, and I thought, “Oh, how much could there be?” And I took it out of the library, and I started reading, and I started thinking, “Oh, you know what? I'm going to buy this book, and I'm going to highlight it,” and boy, did I highlight it, because he says really beautiful things about where art and beauty point us. Now he says it points to this very vague universe and a force beyond. I think, “Ah, there's more precision than that, Rick.” But listen to what he says about the unseen world in this very bestselling book, The Creative Act. “By conventional definition, the purpose of art is to create physical and digital artifacts, to fill shelves with pottery, books, and records. Though artists generally aren't aware of it, that end work is a byproduct of a greater desire. We aren't creating to produce or sell material products. The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm, a longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world.” Can you hear echoes of C.S. Lewis saying, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” And Rick Rubin is saying there is another world. It's an unseen world, and art and beauty point us there.

And so we can have conversations with people and say, “Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt like there's got to be something more? What if there is something more? And what if the God Who created our world in such a way that it points to another world has revealed to us what that world is all about?”

Let me just share one more example, and then one closing quote from C.S. Lewis. This may be the most breathtaking one for me. I found this—I don't know what the right word is—shocking, alarming, powerful. A friend sent me a link of Paul Simon, Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel fame, being interviewed by Howard Stern. And if you don't know who Howard Stern is, that's probably good that you don't know about him. He’s one of the richest and most successful people on the internet. His podcast has millions of followers. He became famous by being the shock-jock and telling disgusting, lewd stories of interviewing people about their sex lives. From a Christian perspective, I don't think it's judgmental to say he's terribly immoral. And yet he's very intelligent and very thoughtful, and his interviews are very probing. And so he has Paul Simon on to talk about how Paul created great masterpieces and great songs. And in a number of interviews, Paul Simon is saying that he's searching for something. He believes that a few of his songs he didn't compose. He was given them. He was a conduit from some source. And he doesn't know whether that source is God, the universe, or whatever, but it wasn't him writing it. And he goes searching for meaning and connectedness with God in a recent album, a collection he calls Seven Psalms. And he believes all of these songs were given to him by…. he's not quite ready to say God. He calls it a creator.

So Howard Stern and Paul Simon are having this conversation, and toward the end of the podcast recording, Howard Stern says to Paul Simon, “Paul, just give me one last answer. You seem very wise. You've lived through everything. You've created great masterpieces. Is there a God? Because I need to know. I’m getting older. Is this it for me? Am I going to die, and that's it? Or am I going somewhere?” And then he pauses, and he looks into the camera, and he says, “And please answer this in a serious manner.” He's not joking around. And Paul Simon receives it, and without joking, he says, “Well, this is my feeling about God.” Then he pauses and says, “Or creator. The planet that I'm living on is so beautiful, and the universe is so awe-inspiring. If that is the work of a creator, I say, ‘Thanks so much. I really love your work on the universe. Excellent work. This is coming from me, Paul Simon, to you. Really dig what you're doing.’ And if it turns out that there's another explanation for creation, I'm still unbelievably grateful for my existence. I still think it's amazing. If it turns out, ‘Oh, I thought it was God, but it's some other explanation,’ it doesn't matter to me.”

And he's about to say something, and Howard Stern interrupts him and says, “But it's so cruel! We have this existence, and then we have to disappear. It's hard.” Do you hear the pleading and the longing, even in the heart of someone like Howard Stern? Paul Simon goes on to explain some things about a swami that he met, someone of another religion who had some explanation. But I was looking at Howard Stern's face during that, and I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think he wasn't buying it. I think he's desperately looking to find the God that he has lived rebelling against for so long. And he's gotten all the freedoms that sexual liberty will give him, and it still doesn't quite satisfy.

Study sometime Proverbs 29:18. It's an amazing verse. It says, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is the one who keeps the law.” Sometimes this verse is quoted only the first half, and it's quoted in the King James Version, which I think got the translation wrong. It's quoted as, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Well the word for vision in the Hebrew is more of revelation. It’s the word that occurs at the beginning of many of the prophets. The vision given to the prophet Hosea, the vision given to Isaiah, and so it's not our vision of how we see things, it's God's revelation of how He wants us to see things. So some people use this in their organization or their mission statement because we need a vision, because where there is no vision, the people perish. Perish is not a good translation of that Hebrew word. It’s cast off restraint. And you know that it's a better understanding, or better translation, by the second half of the proverb. So the first half is, “Where there is no revelation from God, the people cast off restraint,” and they're miserable. That casting off restraint. It’s the word that's used in Exodus where the people created the golden calf, and they had a horrible orgy, and they danced around it, and they gave themselves to sensual pleasure, and it destroyed them. But the contrast in the second half of Proverbs 29:18 is, “But blessed is the one who keeps God's law.” Blessed, that beautiful word that's at the beginning of Psalm 1, that's in the Beatitudes. It’s that wonderful sense of, “God has blessed me. He has approved me. He has adopted me. He has given me his love.”

So that's a motto of our times. People are casting off restraint, and they're miserable, and more and more of them are saying, “Maybe there's something better out there. Maybe just turning inward isn't going to find it. Maybe there is a truth, and I can find it, in awe, or in the beauty of the physical universe, whether it’s microscopic things or beautiful landscapes.”

But here's the thing: As we talk to people and we say that there is something more, when we get around to introducing them to Jesus, the One Who connects us, Who can unite us to God, our Creator, we just need to realize this isn't just pleasant good news. The reality of our sin has made a separation between us and our God, and for us to connect to this God that all these things are pointing to, we have to repent of sin. We need a Savior Who atones for sin because we can't atone for our own sin. And so we must not be naive and to think, “Well, if we just convince people that there's something more, they're going to go, ‘Oh, good. Let me become a Christian.’” There is that stumbling block of the cross. There is the bad news within the good news, of, “Oh, no. I need someone to save me because I can't save myself.”

And so let's give the last word to our friend, C.S. Lewis, who wrote this in his book Miracles about people searching and moving closer and closer to Christianity. He wrote, “An impersonal god? Well and good. A subjective god of beauty, truth, and goodness inside our own heads? Better still. A formless life force surging through us? A vast power which we can tap? Ah, best of all! But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed? The Hunter, King, Husband? Oh, that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who've been playing at burglars hush suddenly. ‘Was that a real footstep in the hall?’ There comes a moment when people who've been dabbling in religion, man’s search for God, suddenly draw back, supposing we really found Him. We never meant it to come to that. We’re still, supposing He had found us.”

I think this is a great day for us to be reaching out to people and for people who have found postmodernism and searching within for the subjective and the relativistic to be unsatisfying, for us to say, “You know what? There is truth, and it can be found in the One Who said He was the way, the truth, and the life.”

I hope this is encouraging to you. Please check out our resources on our website that I think can give you resources, things to point people to that can help them to find the Lord that we love and serve. May all of our resources here at the C.S. Lewis Institute help you as you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

Brought to you by the C.S. Lewis Institute and the Questions That Matter Podcast with Randy Newman