[00:00:00] Speaker A: When I finally decided to just test the truth, wherever it would take me, that's when I actually found life inside Christ and was able to get rid of all that misery and have hope and purpose back again.
And I know that's the way it is for a lot of Christians who have come out of skepticism too, is they.
They. They find a life. And it's not, it's not that. Just that they went seeking it because of life. They.
Most. The ones I know, they went seeking truth just like I did.
They wanted to.
To know the reality of the world, to know that this wasn't just that they weren't just floating off on some purposeless rock in the middle of space at the whims of random atoms beating together like the atheists like to say.
And it, like it's. Yeah, it's been life altering. It's. That's the only way I can really describe it.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Hi, this is Jana Harmon, host of Ex Skeptic, where we explore unlikely stories of belief, true stories of skeptics and atheists who came to trust that God is real and Christianity is true.
Today's conversation is with Chris Wright, and Chris is not someone who's easily talked into anything. He grew up in a deeply Christian family where faith, church, and the Bible were everywhere. But over time, he quietly stepped away from that inherited belief.
Surrounded by new ideas and confident voices in the classroom, he went on an intellectual journey to test other ways of seeing the world rather than simply accepting the narrative in front of him. Whether from church or from the university, Chris felt compelled to sort it all out for himself, to follow the evidence wherever it led, even if that meant going against the grain.
Before we jump into that story, I'd love to remind you of a few things we have going on at X Skeptic. We've curated all of our stories into playlists that trace common objections, questions and doubts about God and Christianity. You can explore those on our YouTube channel and on our website, xskeptic.org we now have a conversational AI tool that helps connect your specific questions and the questions of people you care about to stories and resources that might speak directly to them.
And while you're there, you can also help us tell more stories through giving or picking up an Ex Skeptic T shirt or sweatshirt.
And if this podcast has encouraged you, it really helps when you review and rate and share it. That simple step makes it easy for others to discover these conversations.
Welcome to X Skeptic. Chris, it's so great to have you with me today. I'd love for the listeners to know just a little bit about the kind of work that you do, the things that you love to talk about online and on substack. Give us a sense of what that is.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: I love to write and sort of like geared my ministry toward that. I write about apologetics, theology, which are my wheelhouses, biblical studies. And I kind of was pushed that way just through my walk with Christ.
Some of the trials he put me through sort of pushed me toward that.
And I just.
That's why I'm glad to be here, because I love sharing the truth of Christ with skeptics, to kind of guide them to him and his truth, help them understand it and that it's not just.
It's not just blind faith. It is intellectual. It's reasonable, it's true.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: And you do have an advanced degree in Biblical studies, don't you?
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Master of Divinity? Yes, I have it from Asbury Theological Seminary.
Graduated and it hasn't been long either. It's 2019.
It feels like forever ago, but it.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, wonderful. I'm curious to really hear your journey because it really speaks to your seriousness of your faith that you would want to study at the graduate level what, you know, the Bible and ideas and how to interpret it and how to view all this called Christianity, as well as other worldviews. So, but obviously you weren't always in a place of diligence with regard to God and Christianity and faith.
You were somewhat suspect of it. So let's. Let's get back into your story. Let's start at the beginning. Chris, tell us a little bit about the home in which you grew up and whether or not God or religion or faith or the Bible was any part of that.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: It was a huge part of it. My family is very Christian.
I grew up in the. It was born and raised in the Nazarene Church for many years. And my parents, we went to a Baptist church that also happened to be my school, went through elementary school there and eventually it became a community church.
And then when I was in college, my parents went back to the Nazarene Church. So we've been around quite a bit. And my parents have been very devoted, my grandparents, like everybody in my family that I know, almost everybody, very, very Christian. So I grew up very inundated in the church and the Bible and.
And everything to do with God in Christ.
So he was very much a part of my life from the beginning.
And you wouldn't have known that I was struggling with belief either, because I was going to church. I was Going through the motions.
And for a long time when I was in my elementary years, I did believe firmly in him. I was confident that he was true and he was the source of all reality.
And I followed him. It wasn't really until middle school that I started to really move away from that. Even though I still kept that outward Persona and made people think that I was this perfect, not struggling Christian that had no doubts whatsoever.
And my parents will probably watch this, they'll probably not realize because I didn't really even share with them either.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: So, so what, what internal struggles or doubts were you having when you were growing up?
[00:06:41] Speaker A: I think it was, it was mostly that because, you know, in school nowadays the evolutionary theory is just pounded into everybody's heads so much. In basically almost every class you, you go into, it's not just science, it's in history, philosophy, anything you take, even in English class, you're getting force fed books that just pile on evolutionary theory is fact.
And after so much of that, eventually you really start to like buy into it. And that was what happened with me as, as a kid is I just, for a long time I just, I started to buy into it.
But I think that the other side of things was in middle school I got very heavily addicted to pornography, which was a very difficult struggle for me.
And even though I was, like I said, going to church and comb through the motions, I also had this secret life on the side where I was hiding it from my parents, from my friends, from everybody. And it sort of became like this drug to me.
And I didn't realize it, of course, when it was happening, but I was trying to deal with the hopelessness that I was feeling because of the fact that I was doubting God. And it was sort of like a remedy to that.
Even though it wasn't really fixing anything, you know, it just made things worse. And I was miserable, but I refused to acknowledge how actually miserable I was just going my own way through middle school and high school.
And it's a hard part of my life. I don't like to rehash deep into the details of it because. Not that there's a whole lot of details to it because it's basically just it was me watching pornography. That's what it was all the time, just consuming it.
And I don't blame my parents for it. I mean, they couldn't have planned for me accidentally coming across it one time. All of a sudden there's this naked woman on the screen and just snowballed from there.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: And it is a very Very common tale, isn't it? So many young men fall into the unintended trap of pornography, and it can be very all consuming and disabling. And I'm sure between the. What you're hearing at school and then what you're experiencing personally, there probably was both the head, you know, wanting or not understanding what was going on, or distancing from God, and then from your own personal struggles with the evolutionary piece of it. Did you ever ask or talk with any Christians about, well, what about what I'm hearing at school? What about the evolutionary theory? Is there something to that? How can I. You know what, how should I think about that as a Christian, or was anyone even attempting to deal with that issue where you were growing up in the church, or was it just not a place you felt comfortable even asking the questions?
[00:09:53] Speaker A: It wasn't really a place I felt comfortable asking, but also, it just wasn't dealt with that much because I don't think.
I don't think the church realized how much of an issue it really was becoming.
Like the history between faith in what they're saying is science, even though it's really just another religion in a different form, has been a mixed history of reactions. And eventually, like most churches, just like the churches I was in, they came to really just accept that it was the. The dominant theory, and they didn't really push back on it.
They just kept their focus on the Bible and on preaching the Gospel.
And they really didn't have any, like, apologetics sources or anything to help encourage students and church members that the Bible is actually true, that it's the reality of our life.
And I didn't even hear really much about apologetics until I went searching for it myself in college and undergraduate.
So.
So, no, I didn't really discuss it with anybody in the church because it just. It wasn't something that I really actually knew about or even would have felt comfortable just because I. It's hard to say now. I think maybe just because I was keeping my private life so private and I had so many secrets, I just didn't want to bring anything up, really. I thought it would be.
I didn't think it would help, to be honest.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Yeah. How old were you, Would you say, when you were really seriously, at least in your mind, saying, I'm not sure God exists, not sure I can believe Christianity or what the Bible says.
When were you at a place where you were, you know, moving away from your faith in an kind of personal, obviously, but more intentional way?
[00:12:03] Speaker A: Well, I got it. I. I Didn't actually go full fledged atheist. So there's that.
There is that. I was always agnostic and I figured if God was real, he wasn't like the God that's portrayed in the Bible. He.
That really this probably was. These were just stories and we don't know anything really about.
About God. That was the way I was, I was leaning. I never told anybody obviously, but when I was, I was probably around, like I said, it was middle school that it really started so probably around the
[00:12:44] Speaker B: age of 13, it was around the early 2000s. And of course the new atheists were having their, their foray and really a dominance in terms of the rhetoric around the Internet and in their books. And what did you think the Bible was around that time? Did you. You, you said that the, the God wasn't worthy or the stories weren't true or you were presuming all of that. Where were you hearing that narrative?
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Well, that just. What. That's just it. It was really just presumptions on my part. It wasn't really a narrative. I was hearing everyone around me, like my, my parents, they were like I said, they were very biblical Christian and they, they were doing everything they could to train me and my sister up as, as biblical Christians too, following the Bible firmly. And I even kept listening to.
I kept listening to popular podcasts on. Not podcasts because they weren't really there but you. The YouTube was coming a thing. So I would watch YouTube videos and of.
And other videos out there of popular Christian ministers that were preaching biblical truths, but I wasn't fully absorbing it because of the fact that I had already had these presumptions that I was growing in my mind that this stuff wasn't real. And it was mainly because of the evolutionary theory and that I didn't.
That I encountered. And of course the pornography addiction I was going through, the hopelessness that I was feeling inside and looking back at it now really was all emotional. And like when, when I was going through that, it was like I had two different worlds competing for me because I go to church with my family and, and at my church they were, they were teaching that the Bible was real, that it was true, that this was a reality. But then when I go to high school, that's what they were teaching evolution and they were teaching Big bang cosmology and everything like that, and that you didn't need God for any of those. And I was sent there. And when you're sent there and you're told that you're supposed to trust these people that they're the educators, they're the experts, you just sort of accept it.
And I never really had a reason to not accept it until I, like I said, went to college.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: I'd like to pause for a moment and ask you a question.
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A new Fellows program begins this June and applications are open now. Visit cslewisinstitute.org to learn more. Now back to our story.
When you're accepting evolution, that's a different paradigm for reality, using this explanation of reality. And evolution has a certain number of presumptions as well, right? So when you're rejecting the, the biblical framework for reality or what, you know, the Bible says who man is, for example, who we are as special creations, that we have infinite and inherent dignity and value, you know, those kinds of things, which is a very different framework for when you, when you move away from that and then you move towards the evolutionary paradigm that nature is all there is and we're nothing but molecules in motion and, you know, whatever.
You lose a lot when you're, when you're turning away from the biblical worldview and embracing another.
Now, it seemed like the more intelligent thing to do. Perhaps you were surrounded by authorities who were telling you this is the way that it is and you need to believe it.
But there's something very different than believing the paradigms of it and understanding its implications and actually living in that worldview. And did you ever.
Are I, I presume, I wonder if you were first of all, ever exposed to where that road leads, the logical implications of that worldview. And did you ever kind of experience what that meant? Living in this nature is all there is.
You're nothing More than dot, dot, dot.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Well, fortunately, I didn't experience the full applications of that.
I, because I, with my family, I was, they, they surrounded me with. Because they surrounded me with Christianity. I, I never really.
I, I love my parents and I didn't want to disappoint them. So I, I, like I said, I went through the motions and I didn't really.
I did my best to be an obedient Christian, even though I really wasn't an actual Christian at the time.
Internally now I wish somebody had come to me with the logical implications of just molecules in motion, because then I would have understood how fallacious it really is.
I literally, now I know I was just following the bandwagon and it was a logical fallacy there that I was just going about it because it was popular. You have a worldview that you adore. You use that as your lens to interpret everything you see. And then you live your life structuring rights and rituals around that worldview that, that keep you safe, help you survive and help you thrive. That's the, the way that, that's the way that people see their, that. That's the way that people become religious as they.
Through that pattern.
And I didn't know that when I was younger. I wish I had, because then I would have tested everything that I came across. I would have realized that data is just data. Evidence is just evidence, but it has to be interpreted.
And the only way to determine which interpretation is correct is through logical reasoning and examination, understand seeing which is the best explanation for all the accumulated evidence.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: Well, it sounds like you, you obviously got to that point where you, you found your way out of the fog.
So you, it sounds like you were in this, this place of agnosticism where you were kind of pushing back from the roots, the religious roots and traditions that you had grown up maybe acknowledging or you were in, in a place of pretense, in a sense, going with your family, but internally distancing. So when you went off to college, that was, what, a time where you didn't have to pretend anymore.
You were free to, to live and explore and understand and learn and, and figure things out. So what happened?
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Although ironically, I, Although ironically, I kind of gravitated still toward, like, Christian students or at least those who were claiming to be Christian.
I think it's just because it felt comfortable, because it was familiar.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: So even though I was in college and I didn't have to hide anymore, I still sort of just fell into that routine.
And I'm kind of glad I did because It's.
I have, still have a lot of those friends from college now who are, who are very devout followers of Christ.
And it was through their support that I eventually did get it. But what really challenged me was the, was the professors I encountered because my under. My college and undergrad was a liberal arts college.
And when I went there, I didn't know what that, that meant because I'd never actually encountered liberal arts before.
I went in there actually as a, an undeclared major. I didn't have anything planned, but I came out of a pre law of a. I came out of a criminal justice magnet program in high school. So I was thinking of going pre law, but I didn't have any actual subject picked out.
But I eventually ended up going religious studies, English lit for that, for undergrad. And that's where I actually encountered some of the most intense vitriol toward God and Christ.
And that helped push me back to the faith. They also go out of their way to convince students that their parents are liars, that they're either stupid or liars.
And that's one of the things that several professors that I encountered did to me. And I think what hit me the most is because I adored my parents and I knew that they did their best they could and the last thing my parents would ever do to me is lie. So when the professors were calling my parents stupid liars, I was, I quite offended by that because of how, how much I love them. And I knew that there was nobody on this earth that cared more for me than them.
And that's, that's sort of when like the, the, the trust started to strip away for these experts when they were literally attacking my family.
And I don't know if anybody else has experienced, I would imagine there, because I had other friends too, that, that just didn't, didn't give in to these professors. And I would imagine it's because of things like that where they would just say that they were the only ones that knew everything. Our parents were dumb and we shouldn't trust them because they, they don't know anything or they're deliberately lying to us.
That's why I started pushing back in a lot of my classes.
There was this one professor who, he and his wife were sort of a tag team in the religious studies department.
And he, he taught New Testament and she taught Old Testament and they taught their liberal version of it where you had to be skeptic about everything you read and skeptic as in you had to treat it as if it was Just a book, not the word of God. You couldn't believe that. If you did, you weren't a real scholar.
And you had to embrace their paradigms like feminism, colonialism, and all these weird postmodern paradigms that they had, like deconstruction. That was probably the big one. It's the big one now where a lot of students are being taught to deconstruct their faith, which means basically pick it apart and get rid of it and just throw it out to the vultures. So you don't believe in God anymore and you just embrace naturalism or whatever you want, but just not God. But throughout my time there, yeah, it was really their hatred that I saw that pushed me back toward God. And not just their hatred of God, but their hatred of what they called the established norms in society which they associated with Christianity.
And I could tell that literally that this wasn't skepticism. It was just real, real vitriol, just emotional.
And even, even though they had a lot of other professors out there that were on their side, it was, there was very little logic and reason in it. And that, that's, that's why I eventually moved to full fledged Christian faith. Because, because of the evil I saw.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it was almost as if they overplayed their hand and they, they showed a bit too much of, of who they are, in a sense. And so you were realizing that what you might have turned away from and towards was perhaps not all it was cracked up to be. It wasn't as logical and rational as, as one might think. So then how did you then move back towards the God paradigm and investigate that?
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Unlike a lot of my fellow students, because there were a lot of them that really just, they heard these professors and they just bought into it like hook, line, sinker, everything they said.
And they were, they ra. If any question, question, did it was rare. Like they figured these were. Again, they were doing the bandwagon approach I had done in high school where they, they say, well, these guys are the experts, so if they say it, it must be true.
And I didn't do that this time. This time I, I actually started thinking, well, maybe with my Christian worldview that my parents raised me in, there was something I missed. Like maybe I didn't pay attention enough to it, didn't think about it hard enough.
Maybe it really is reasonable.
And I, I actually wrote about this on Substack when I shared my story one night after a class with one of the professors. It actually was the, the wife of the professor I mentioned earlier. I had her for a class on Old Testament. And she was just tearing the Old Testament apart. I just went home or went to my dorm after that, and I opened up my Bible and because I was just feeling miserable that night, and I happened to open to one of the.
Wherever that verse in Peter is that says that you should give a reason for the faith that you've been given, be prepared to do that.
I was reading Peter's letters and I found that I came across that verse and I realized that if Peter was saying that to a culture inundated and all these crazy philosophies from the Greek world, and he was using that to encourage the Christians that they could argue substantially against all these intellectuals of their age, then there must be substance to the Bible. There must be some substance to the worldview that's logical and reasonable.
And I started looking for resources that would help point me to that. And that's how I came across apologetics. The first book I ever got was Tim Keller's the Reason for God. And I started going through it.
I read the whole thing in like a week.
I remember that. And I just, I just, I ingested it into my soul reading that book. And then I was able to go to scripture and to the studies I've been getting at the liberal arts university, and I started to see the logical errors and the failure of reasoning in them.
And it snowballed from there. I started getting a bunch of other resources that I kept reading. And when I talked to my parents, they even provided me with some resources. They even would get me books as Christmas gifts and birthday gifts and stuff. And I just, I devoured it. And what were some. Used everything I learned.
Oh, go ahead.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Yeah. What were some of those excellent resources that, that seemed to be very impactful for you?
[00:29:35] Speaker A: Well, now the Reason for God was obviously the biggest, but my dad had Josh McDowell's evidence that demands a verdict.
So I went through a little bit of that. But I also just started getting other Josh McDowell books. And I also got, I think, most inspirational one. For me, most inspirational apologist has been Frank Durek. I've engaged with cross examine quite a bit. Read their blog articles. I've read every, every book he's written except for the, the one he wrote with his son, Hollywood Heroes. I haven't read that yet, but I've read every other book that he's written.
And I eventually got his, his mentor, Norman Geisler. I got his big book of Apologetics, which is like a giant, thick reference on apologetic topics. It's like a Theological D and I, I, I use that quite a lot. I still have it, I use it for when I'm going through some things just to get introductory introductions on topic and that I'm not familiar with or whatever.
But I also, like I said, went to seminary, Asbury Theological Seminary. And that's where I met a lot of really great professors and resources that were academic, but they also were, they were geared toward God. So they were, even though they weren't all apologetic, they were all Christian friendly and showed how the Bible was reasonable and steered me toward the truth of Christ in a way that I just was not getting in my church when I was younger.
And it was this, it was that, that self pursuit really that, that drove me into, into the arms of Christ.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: So over time and study, obviously being mentored by a different group of authorities, but, but it sounds like you weren't, you weren't willing to be duped. I think you had a fairly diligent study because you did want to know what was true, no matter who was saying it, right? So you were, you were coming across different substantive authors and in an academic space that gave you permission to pursue it and to probably to talk about these ideas in a substantive way.
So it over that.
I'm curious what drove you to study at the graduate level? I guess you wanted a differing perspective of the undergraduate teaching that you had been given in terms of this whole world of God and theology. Obviously you were driven to want to know the answers because you were still, I would imagine, a bit agnostic when you entered into seminary. Is that correct? Or had you already been pushed back far enough to turn in the direction of God and have called yourself a Christian before you entered seminary? Because that's a big step.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: No, by, by the time I entered seminary, I was quite a full fledged Christian. I, I believed wholeheartedly. And it was because of the apologetics resources I'd study that I had made, that I had made that change.
And that was the reason really I actually entered seminary because I wanted to go deeper.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: That is wonderful. Now, just again, just to circle back around this, this time or this period of when you were trying to decide whether or not Christianity was true and you were going through apologetics information which is the defense of the Christian faith.
You've mentioned often that the words logic and reason and even evidence associated with worldview and what makes it true, what was it about what you were reading in this apologetics literature that was convincing enough for you that it is a worldview that is substantive, logical, rational, evidentially based.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: Well, I could just, I could see the evidence that they were presenting, like the, the idea of intelligent design, that there is a mind behind it, that, and that these, that that complexity only comes from the complexity we see, like the immensity of it. They always try to convince you that in evolution that everything came about by simple processes and eventually those formed into complex processes and then some inanimate dead matter turned into life.
And at the time I just accepted that when I was going through high school and everything. But the more I was reading apologetics, I got to see how life from non life just doesn't make any sense at all. Like, how do you jump from something that's dead, how life comes from non life, but also what is consciousness? How do you explain that in a material world?
And it's strange.
How would you get a mind from a non mind when all you see when you observe that mental processes, they don't just pop into existence, they don't just happen.
And if they do, how can you trust them? I actually read C.S. lewis on that, his famous quote about how if they really are just random processes, then they're, they're unreliable. So why would you ever trust your own logic? Which kind of. It was one of those things that drove me into further belief as well.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: So you've come kind of from a place of skepticism, agnosticism back to a place of solid belief, it sounds like.
So how is it then in your world and your world view informing you?
How do you, how is your life affected by your faith, your Christianity, your knowledge that what you're standing on is a solid rock, a solid foundation?
I'm sure that there are probably some things you don't know yet there. We're, we're all wondering about many things, but in terms of the, the,
[00:36:06] Speaker A: the
[00:36:06] Speaker B: bulk on which you, you know, the rock on which you stand, the substance of your beliefs, I would imagine you have a fairly good confidence that what you're believing now is true.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's just. And it is confidence, obviously we're not. Nobody's certain. Like we know nobody is certain, not even the evolutionists, even though they'll try to tell you they are.
They have no certainty whatsoever. They just have confidence in their worldview, their beliefs.
Whether that's just or unjust, that's something that has to be determined.
That's why you have to weigh the evidence and find what best explains it through, like I said, logic and reasoning. And that's why I spent a lot of time, even when I was doing Apologetics. I actually was spending a lot of time not just reading apologetics, but I would do it too. I would talk to atheists and skeptics and see what they were thinking, get their, their ideas. I didn't, I did that a lot in undergrad, in person. But when it was in, when it was, once I left undergrad, it was mostly online where I had a lot of those interactions.
And I just came to see they had all the, all the doubts that really I had had, were the same doubts they had and they just weren't testing them properly like I had. I was, I had decided that I wanted to actually, like you said, go after tr. Truth, whatever form it would take, whereas they, they didn't have that same standard.
And I would say that once I followed that path and became full fledged Christian was, it was life altering because like I said before, I was in that misery that, with that porn addiction and the doubts and every day was just, it was horrible. And I was seeing a lot of the atheists, they were in that same boat. They were just miserable too. They just didn't want to admit it to themselves.
Whereas when I finally decided to just test the truth wherever it would take me, that's when I actually found life inside Christ and was able to get rid of all that misery and have hope and purpose back again.
And I know that's the way it is for a lot of Christians who have come out of skepticism too, is they find a life. And it's not just that they went seeking it because of life.
Most of the ones I know, they went seeking truth just like I did.
They wanted to know the reality of the world, to know that this wasn't just that they weren't just floating off on some purposeless rock in the middle of space at the whims of random atoms beating together, like the, the atheists like to say.
And it, it's. Yeah, it's been life altering. It's. That's the only way I can really describe it. Like trying to actually describe how much it's changed my life is, is, it's difficult. Like it literally, you see things differently. It's, it's a new world, like a new world view. It literally is a new lens of examining things.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: You.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: But it's a, it's, it's like a light instead of like a dark, smudgy filter.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: Everything in your life changes, doesn't it? When you, when you find yourself and you find life in Christ and in truth and the grace that comes with it, obviously you've been so motivated by your life change that you want to help others find it. And I think that's what's fueled your online ministry, hasn't it? All of your writing. Yeah, your, your writing, everything. Your substack and on X.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: And that guide I made to. I wrote a guide called 30 Day Evangelist. Basically I distilled everything I learned down into that and inside it provides different personalities you'll face when you're talking about Christ. It talks about the difference between worldview and, and philosophy and religion. And it also shares several of the laws, shares the laws of logic and several fallacies that encounter it.
I know other books do that, but I decided to talk about them in a fun way.
It's a 75 page guide, so it's literally just, it's made to be easily read and easily understandable. So it's practical and you can put it into place. And at the very end, I also included several tactics too that people can use to like.
One that's obvious that I'll point out that most of us forget about is listening, paying attention closely to what's being said. Because we oftentimes when we're in conversations, we have a message we want to share. We obviously want to spread the gospel message, but we do things out of order when we just preach at somebody that's not ready to listen. You know, it works better when you actually hear them out first, which is something I've learned through several hard conversations.
And if somebody's willing to talk about the struggles they're having, it's as James said, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.
Because that really is the easiest way to get somebody when they feel valued, like you're actually hearing them. That breaks down so many barriers.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: When I think of your story and I think of the role that Christians played in your life, whether it's your parents who loved you so well. I mean, you mentioned their love for you more than once, that they loved you throughout your. Of course there were obviously some periods of time that they didn't understand or know about your struggles or your doubts.
But you, you found them to be intelligent and, and not deceptive. Right? They were not the things that the professors were trying to tell you that they were because they had given you a solid life, a love for God, a love for their faith, for the Bible, and for you.
So I commend your parents for, for being just such a solid example in your life. And I'm sure that that, that's a huge part of your journeying you know, back, you know, giving it a fair chance that that wasn't, there wasn't baggage associated with your parents. And I'm sure that they, they prayed for you often.
But is there anything.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: I won't say there?
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: I won't say my parents were perfect.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: I mean, no, of course not.
Right.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: But the, they never, even though they raised me in Christianity, they never, like, they weren't forceful like a lot of Christian parents have been in the past.
They wanted my sister and me to, to grow and make our own choices and, you know, and learn. And they just wanted to be the guides. And I think they did that really well and I didn't give them enough credit for it until I was sitting in a college classroom hearing a professor call them stupid and dumb liars.
And I just wasn't having it.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it was kind of a backfire effect.
So, yeah, thank you for putting out that information from your booklet as well as, again, just being grateful really for your parents, which is sometimes hard to find in these days.
But, but you were able to see what they provided for you and not reject it along with, not reject them along with faith at the time. But, but they gave you something to come home to you that was solid and good and real.
So if somebody is listening to you, Chris, and they're thinking, well, I don't know that Christianity is logical or rational or reasonable.
I'm not sure I have been introduced to that. I don't know. Or they may even have just personal struggles, emotional reasons why they're just not interested or don't want to know about faith. You, you spoke that in your book. The different kinds of people write who some are interested, some are not.
How can skeptics, if they are curious, they're, they're like, well, I don't know. He had a major life change.
I wonder what it's all about.
What would you encourage them to do is perhaps a good first step for them?
[00:45:29] Speaker A: Well, my advice is just don't, don't just accept anything because it's popular. Don't do that.
That's the biggest thing. Because unfortunately these days groupthink is everywhere and it's not a sign of truth at all.
It oftentimes will lead you in the wrong direction, right over a cliff and to your own demise.
And don't just accept something because everybody else loves it or just because whoever's saying it claims to be a quote unquote expert.
Because you don't know. Even if they're an expert, you don't know them. Six ways from Sunday.
You don't know what their biases are. You don't know what their worldview is.
You don't know how they're seeing the world. All you know is that they are presenting what they claim to be the truth to you and giving what they think are good arguments for it. But it's your responsibility to test those arguments to see if they actually hold weight.
And the way you do that is.
Through the laws of logic. So definitely learn those, because then you can test interpretations. That's how you test anybody's interpretation to see if it's reasonable.
That's how I go about it. And, and also look at yourself, examine yourself. Try to figure out what's emotional and what's actually rational. Like what, what, what? Because a lot of times objections are emotional. You just don't want to believe something because you, you don't like it or because you've had something happen to you in your past that just doesn't make it comfortable.
But oftentimes the most uncomfortable things in the world are true, especially when it comes to God.
God's not there to make us comfortable.
He's there to save us, to give us eternal life, to bring us into the fold as his children, if we'll have Him.
And he doesn't force us or anything, but he's promised us that the road to him, the narrow road, is, is the road less traveled. And it's not easy.
So don't, don't just pick something because it's comfortable, because it's popular, or because an expert said it.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: That's wonderful. And I mean, that's just comes from a place of authenticity, I think. When I look at your, your life and your story. You were skeptical from the beginning, you know, throughout your journey until you landed on something solid. You were skeptical of the faith that you'd been brought up in for good reason. You were skeptical of the university professors and what they were feeding you. And for good reason.
And you took it upon yourself to actually be a true seeker, to go after and to really determine what was true. And you landed on it. And I think that's what stands out most to me about your story, is that you were willing to go against the flow because you wanted to know what was actually true.
Your intellectual honesty drove you, even though it, like you say, landing in Christianity is not the most comfortable thing to do.
Some people think that, that, that people pursue belief in God for comfort, but at the end, and it does provide some comfort, but there's a lot about it that makes you incredibly uncomfortable with yourself and with your decisions and the things that you want, you know, and other things are demanded of you that are much more difficult.
But it's all good.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: I didn't know I was gonna end up with comfort. That was never the goal. I just, I was tired of being lied to and I, I didn't want to go another day living a lie.
[00:49:57] Speaker B: So, yeah, that, and that's really, really wonderful. You stand as a very solid example and an ambassador of someone who has found what is true.
So thank you so much, Chris, for coming on, for telling your story and the vulnerability of it and really, again, just setting an example for someone who, if they're persistent enough in their truth seeking and they're honest enough with themselves, it's amazing what they'll find. And it brings you to a place now of again wanting others to know what you found as well. And I just applaud you for that. So thank you for coming on.
[00:50:34] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. It's been fun.
[00:50:36] Speaker B: Thank you for joining me for this conversation with Chris Wright. His journey reminds us that real truth seeking isn't passive. It's not about accepting the narrative handed to you, whether from your family, your culture, or the classroom. It's about wrestling honestly, thinking deeply, and being willing to follow the evidence, even when it leads you somewhere unexpected.
Chris's story embodies that kind of intellectual integrity, and I hope it encourages you in your own search for what is true. If you have questions, doubts, or want to talk with someone who has walked a similar road, we'd love to help many of our former guests make themselves available for thoughtful conversation.
Just email
[email protected] and we'll help get you connected.
Be sure to explore our curated playlists on the x Skeptical Skeptic YouTube channel, where stories are organized by questions skeptics often ask, like is it rational to believe in God? Or can I believe? Again, a special thanks as always to our wonderful producer Ashley Kilfer, who makes these episodes possible. And finally, Exkeptic is proud to be part of the C.S. lewis Institute podcast network where thoughtful truth seeking conversations are encouraged and celebrated. I'm Jana Harmon and this is Ex True Stories of men and women who refuse easy answers, pursue truth with integrity, and discover that belief in God is far more reasonable than they ever imagined. We'll see you next time when we'll hear another unlikely story of belief.
