David Richardson

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I am joined today by David Richardson. He is the founder and chief executive officer of the Assumptions Institute. And he's also the author of a book called Transparent, How to See Through the Powerful Assumptions That Control You. And so we're going to have a great conversation today. David, this is the first time we're meeting. We had a little bit of time in the pre-interview, but it's great to have you here. And I'm excited about this conversation. James, I'm looking forward to it too. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, so tell me a little bit. You gave me a little bit about your background, but just give us a little bit of your pedigree so people kind of know where you're coming from. Maybe a little bit of your faith journey and then where you've worked prior to coming to the Assumptions Institute. Sure. Well, I grew up on the West Coast. I grew up mostly in the Pacific Northwest, nominally Christian family, but by the time I got to college, I didn't really have much use for it. And I was going to be a fighter pilot and an astronaut. That was my goal since I was probably four or five years old. I was in Air Force ROTC and I was the star guy in our program. I had the pilot training slot. I learned to fly when I was 17 and was off to live the adventure. But in the middle of my college years, through a series of circumstances, I ended up committing my life to Christ my sophomore year. And shortly after that, the Lord called me to start a campus ministry at my university, the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon. And I started that as a student, as a student-led ministry. And that ministry still exists today, 42 years later, still run by students. That which is amazing. And through some summer projects, other things like that. I spent a summer in the Soviet Union in 1983 on an underground summer project with Campus Crusade for Christ. I ended up resigning from the Air Force and joining Campus Crusade staff. I started off, you know, being in a place like the Northwest, you're going to be challenged in your faith from the very beginning, as I was, especially the first time I tried to share my faith with my best friend who was an atheist, and I got shot down in a smoking crater. And I thought, well, wow, that was painful. I didn't even know what the questions were, much less how to answer them. But I vowed that was not going to happen twice. So I started reading, you know, I started reading a lot of books by Josh McDowell and Norman Geisler and other people like that. Eventually when I joined Campus Crusade staff, my first assignment was as a staff researcher for Josh McDowell. I actually used to help do his background research and, you know, homework for his talks and books and other things like that. And when I got married, did a few other things. But about 1992, started getting involved in Campus Crusade's faculty ministry. I started working with college and university professors, not with students, but with their teachers, and trying to reach professors for Christ and help encourage those who are Christians in the university to reach the campus for Christ and bring Christian truth back into the education system. And I did that for almost 20 years. Along the way, got a couple of postgraduate degrees, one in apologetics and another one in applied theology. My master of theology is from the University of Oxford in England. And my dissertation was studying atheist and agnostic professors and how to reach them for Christ. I did original field research with a bunch of professors here in Atlanta where I live now. I started the ministry at Georgia Tech with the college professors there and then eventually Georgia State, Emory and other places. And I've I've traveled around the world and spoken in a lot of different universities helping reach professors for Christ. And along the way, I developed a system for critical thinking that was originally designed to help integrate the Christian faith with what professors are doing in the classroom and in the research so that it actually changes what goes on in the education system, because for most professors, they're not going to go get a postgraduate degree in the philosophy of religion. They're not going to become professional apologists. So they really don't have the equipping to be able to do that in a reasonable way in a major university like Georgia Tech. But this system that I developed actually is very simple and has all the hooks necessary to help a professor teach students how to think without telling them what to think so that they can come to their own conclusions. But it also gives them the hooks to be able to bring truth from God and the Bible into a state university classroom in a way that's relevant to a course, appropriate to a public education system, and it's perfectly legal, which is also a great plus, and actually tested it and it works. I've got professors at a number of universities that have used it now. But as I developed this system, I ended up writing a book about it. It's called Transparent, how to see through the powerful assumptions that control you. I ended up leaving campus crusade staff after 30 years in ministry and starting assumptions Institute. And I did that in 2015. Along the way, as the ministry began growing, we developed training resources and now we can not only help professors and professionals, but we can also help students. We can help parents teach them the basics of how to discern for yourself what's true and what's not in the media, in the classroom and in the culture and be able to do it, believe it or not, in 30 seconds using this unique technique that I've developed. And it's so simple. It's actually a phone app that you can use to practice. That's fantastic. Yeah. You know, I, just to understand, underscore the importance of this. I mean, I guess from personal experience, I can remember my son coming home from, uh, we were in living in Chicago at the time. He came home from public school and they had been talking about politics. Sure. And, uh, you know, he came home and it was just talking about you sort of regurgitating everything his teacher had said. And I said, you know, son, I don't, I'm not as concerned about what you believe in these realms. Right. I'm, I don't mind whether you think, you know, uh, about what you think about these social programs or that social program or what have you, but I would really love them to be your own ideas. And so I said, you, you don't really understand all of this stuff. Why don't we walk through it together and figure out what you really think as opposed to just telling me what your teacher told you and pretending it's your own. Sure. He took to that like a fish out of water. I mean, he was, I think he sort of built maybe, maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I was always a little bit of a, of a intellectual rebel. Let's say, um, I only believed it whenever I figured it out, not when somebody told me. And so, um, he took that like a fish out of water. He's, um, he, and he really did develop a critical thinking posture to the world. Really, you know, deeply thinking through the things that he cared about. Um, you know, obviously not deeply thinking through everything. That's kind of impossible for everybody to do, but deeply thinking through the things that he cared about. So I would say what you're doing is a really crucial thing, because not only for students, but again, for faculty, I think a lot of times having worked with faculty over the years, there is a perception that once you have PhD behind your name, um, you can do all of this stuff without even thinking about it. Sure. But the reality is PhD is sort of piled high and deep, right? It's a very deep and specialized discipline that you're very, very good at. But it doesn't necessarily give you breadth. It doesn't give you that other stretch. And so you are almost trained in a set of assumptions if, you know, and so does that sort of ring true with the way that you've constructed your system, that you're, you're sort of addressing some of those disciplinary assumptions that maybe PhDs or, or experts in their field, whether they have a PhD or not, experts in their field are bringing with them that they're saying, well, within this narrow scope, this works and so it should work everywhere. You know, has that been your experience or, or what has your experience been with faculty? Yeah, it's, uh, it's been some of that, uh, you know, most professors, they, they are 20 miles deep and about three inches wide, uh, you know, in terms of what they really know about and the way that academic culture works, you know, you're, you are a smart guy. That's why you're in academia, but you're also certified smart with the PhD. So you're a card member carrying a member of the club. And also, you know, when you're talking to a colleague, you're on a first name basis. You know, that's Dave and it's James and that kind of thing. But a member of the staff, who's not a card member, a card carrying member of the club. No, it's, it's Dr. Spencer. It's, it's not James.

to ferret out all the mysteries of life and the world, and you really don't. So the occupational hazard is hubris. It's pride that most professors actually are rather insecure, personally, because of that. You know, I have to be able to demonstrate my knowledge in everything. No, it's okay that you're not knowledgeable in some of these other areas. And they don't tend to understand the limits of their discipline or of their own knowledge, but instead end up pontificating as if they know when they really don't. So is that basic assumption that because I'm smart in one area, I should be, or if I'm smart in one domain, I should be smart in all domains? Yeah. You know, my wife and I often joke, when we were dating, I told her I was going to be a doctor, and she just thought a different sort of doctor. You know, our running joke in the marriage is like the kind of doctor that made money. You know, as opposed to the theologians. Theology doctors, yes, they make no money. Yeah, you know, like I told my son he wants to go into history, and he's thinking about doing, he's just starting his undergraduate, but he has sort of designs to go for a PhD. And I said, you know, I think this joke carries. What's different between a historian and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family of five. You know, I mean, you just, but I do think there's a sense in which, you know, that kind of humor reflects a sense in which when my wife thought I was going to be a doctor, right, like even now when I'm a PhD, it's like if somebody's asking for medical advice, they know not to come to me. Right. Well, hey, do that. I should never give advice on anything medical, on anything drug related, on anything, you know, but there is an air of, there is a sense in which I think people expect PhDs, people who have earned that level of education, almost to be smarter than the rest of us. Yes. Right. And that there's a level of intelligence that's expected that almost seems to transfer to almost any domain. Sure. Right. And I think that's really a fallacious sort of assumption that all of society makes. And so even outside of academia, I think I've experienced that where it's like, well, I don't know everything, you know, or just because someone, you know, speaks from a platform doesn't make them an expert. There's always limits and there's contributions and there's limits. So how do you deal with that in your system of sort of ferreting out some of those assumptions? Well, that's the very nature of an assumption. Yeah. You know, all of us are limited humans. There are no all knowing people in the room. There's only one who's all knowing. And so there's a limit to what we know and what we don't know. And all you have to do is spend a little time with a five year old. You'll figure that out where that limit is. Why, dad? Why, grandma? It's about five minutes. Yeah. Well, it's because of this. Well, why is that? Well, it's because of that. And then, you know, but eventually you reach a place of saying, I don't know. It just is. Right. And when you reach that place of I don't know, it just is, what are you doing? You're assuming something to be real and therefore true that you don't know because if you knew it, you wouldn't have to assume it. But we all eventually reach that limit. And so once you start making that crossing that boundary, you're entering into assumptions territory. And we all do it. We just do it differently. That basic core assumption about reality itself and what reality is like, the nature of the real world, that assumption is the thing that you do not question because if you question that, you can't make sense of anything. So you can't question that. And in fact, when you get into conversations with people and you start getting resistance and pushback, it's because you're starting to question the unquestionable for them. That core assumption that they don't know, but they can't question. It's likewise the thing that you cannot prove because it probably isn't provable at all. Like, for instance, the person who assumes that the nature of all reality is that it's just physical only stuff. It's just matter and energy. There's no minds. There's no spirits. There's no gods, angels, demons. That's all, you know, superstitions, myths, flying spaghetti monsters, Santa clauses, and Easter bunnies. So the only thing that's really real is the natural material world. But they don't know that. They're assuming that because is it possible that something nonphysical exists beyond the scope of your knowledge unless you're all knowing, which you're not. So it's possible that something nonphysical exists beyond the scope of your knowledge. Well, the only way you could eliminate that possibility is if you had access to all places at all times, which you don't. So it's not provable. Yeah. You can't actually rule it out and prove that there is only physical stuff. And so that core assumption is the thing you don't question, the thing you can't prove. And how do you make an assumption? You don't know it. You trust it. What is that? That's faith. Yeah. And so what that means is that every person you meet is a person of faith. We all start our rational process actually on a faith commitment about the nature of reality because we're limited humans. And oftentimes what happens in academia is they don't want to admit their limitation. Yeah. They're all knowing. That's God. But no, none of us are. And that's okay. That's the nature of being a human and understanding that at the limit of what you know and don't know, you start assuming things. And the question is not if you assume, it's how you assume and whether your assumptions are true. And how are they true? Do they match the real world that actually exists? That's how we know that our basic assumptions about reality are true. And so I spend a lot of time just pondering the nature of these assumptions and cataloging them and figuring out the logic matrix and then developing a tool to detect them so that as you're watching things like TV shows, movies, news broadcasts, whatever, social media posts, reading articles, web pages, that kind of thing, or listening to a lecture, a podcast, or just a conversation with a friend. How do I know what I'm being told is true? If you can get at the underlying assumption that makes that position possible, you immediately know whether it's true or not and why. So it's a very out of the box, very powerful approach. Yeah. Do you find, so just thinking through that, again, as I've worked with faculty members, a lot of times I think there's a sense in which, and you mentioned the physical world, and I know this isn't where it's limited. So the question really is, am I wrong to assume that there is a difference between the way you would approach this system with somebody who's, let's say, a biologist or a physicist or a chemist versus someone who is a professor of literature or a professor of art? You know, those are very different disciplines. They do tend to run on different methodologies. And I could see the dynamics, you know, in some way being the same, but obviously the assumptions being wildly different, right? Again, to your point, it's not that they don't assume, it's how they assume that is different. And so how do you, how do you deal with that across those different varied disciplines? Yeah. Well, the way that I deal with it is really exactly the same. There is, there is no difference because all of us start with a basic core assumption that we don't know, don't question, can't prove and accept on faith about the nature of the real world. Now, because that our discipline that you're practicing is about the real world in some fashion, whether it's the physical world, the artistic world, the economic world, you know, whatever it happens to be, the mathematical world, all of those things are still part of the real world, but we don't know fully what the real world is because

Limited humans, so we only experience reality in part, and we can't get out of it to see what it is completely. So ultimately, we have to assume certain things about its nature. And so regardless of the discipline, we all start with a core assumption. The question is not, do we have one? It's which one do we have? And I figured out that there's actually three basic core assumptions that a person will tend to start with. Everything's just physical stuff, or everything is just non-physical stuff, either mental or spiritual in nature, or there's in fact two realities, the physical and non-physical things, are equally real, but the thing that they have in common is that they're all created. They're not self-existent. And that created reality that contains both physical and non-physical things was created by a creator who's distinctly different from the creation. That's the first truth taught in the Bible in Genesis 1-1. In the beginning, God created. There's the creator and the creation, two distinct realities that exist in relationship with each other, but they're not the same thing. God is not the universe. The universe is not God. And since God is the source, everything within the creation comes from him and is designed to reflect him and his character. And so depending on which one of those core assumptions you start with, you'll explain where everything comes from, how everything works, where everything's going, what a human being is, how we acquire knowledge, what's good, and what's the problem with the world. You'll explain those things in fundamentally different ways based off of that core assumption. And that core assumption is the foundation of every person's rational process. It's the self-evidently true thing that you don't question. And so when you ferret out what that core assumption is, you can immediately understand why they're explaining things the way that they are, but also because the core assumptions are mutually exclusive. If it's all physical, then non-physical things are off the table. The other two core assumptions are not allowable. If you start with the second one that everything is just non-physical stuff, either mental or spiritual, then the first one and the third one are off the table because they think physical things are really real. Or if there's two realities, there can't be just one. So if you start with the third one, you're excluding one and two. What that means is only one of them can be true. The question is which one because they're equally assumable. You can start with anyone you want, but the one as you unpack it with successive questions, only one of them describes the actual world that we live in. Sure, the other two have logical consistency, but they don't describe anything real. And if it's not real, it can't be true. And that's how I not only can get at how a person's theoretical model is working because of the underlying assumption, because no model is any better than the assumptions that drive it. I'm just simply surfacing what they are. And then I can compare and contrast them to see which one describes reality. And then I know, okay, yeah, you're on the right track or, yeah, you think this is going to lead you to something useful when, in fact, it's fantasy land. It's not reality. So, yeah, it might be an interesting mental model, but it doesn't describe anything real in your discipline. And you're going to be not making the kind of contribution you can by actually aligning it with reality. So it's an alignment tool for the professional academic. And as you answer those successive questions, it allows you to then say, oh, I'm answering it this way. It's based off of that core assumption. That core assumption is wrong. Okay, that's great. So all you do is you just go across to the other one that is true and substitute that answer to that question. And that's how you align the course with truth from God in the Bible is at the level of the assumptions behind the course. And then also you can teach it as a critical thinking exercise. You can compare and contrast the answers as a part of the lecture. It's interesting. I mean, I've had some success in doing this with students, you know, as part of an academic exercise and even thinking through it from a disciplinary perspective. You know, when you and I talked about this biblical integration project that I'm doing with the Association of Biblical Higher Ed, and I think this is largely what we're trying to cultivate within faculty members, even at biblical higher education institutions who don't have biblical and theological or philosophical training, that it's going to be natural for them to start thinking in this direction. Now, I'd say two things, you know, number one, there's also the problem of assumptions that people who are trained in biblical and theological studies have embedded within them. Right. I'm one of those guys and I have struggled with, well, if the theology is the queen of the sciences, then doesn't that speak to the hierarchy of our knowledge versus someone else's knowledge, which is sort of ridiculous. Right. And a lot of that needs to be parsed out. But I think my bigger question is this. In a formal setting, all of this seems, and I don't want to trivialize it and say easy, that's not what I mean. But it does seem to have a, there's a sense in which this type of conversation within a formal setting makes sense. Right. But I was just listening to something on the radio this morning. It's sort of odd that we're having this conversation after I heard this on the radio. But there was a song that was on and it said, the lyric was, when my body won't hold me anymore. And you just think about what you just said, these dichotomies, right, between the physical and the spiritual. And that lyric, if I really analyze it, what it's doing is it's reinforcing a distinction between the physical and the spiritual. Yes. That there's a me beyond this shell that is going to exist outside of that. Yes. Now, you know, we're having this conversation. I'm thinking back on that lyric. I have 12 years of theological training. Like, it's not a huge leap that I'd notice that. Right. But at the same time, there are all of these different influences of philosophies that are built into our popular culture that are reinforcing some of these messages. So how do you think about that challenge? What does that look like for you in this work that you're involved in? How do you deal with some of those popular culture kind of things? It's actually very simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. Yeah. Because, you know, it takes time and practice. That's why we developed the phone app. It's training wheels for your brain. It trains you to think in this way. But after a while, it just becomes a reflex, which then you don't need the training wheels anymore. But like, for instance, how I would analyze, you know, how I would deconstruct that lyric is I walk through the process of the critical assumptions test, which is what's automated in my phone app. It's page 36 in my book. It's a postgraduate degree on a piece of paper. It took me 40 years to distill this thing. But what I would do is I would start off, does this, the subject that I'm trying to figure out, does it have to do with people? Yes or no. Yes, it does. Okay. So which of these four questions about people does the lyric have to do with? Does it have to do with what a human being is? Does it have to do with how we acquire knowledge? Does it have to do with what is good? Or does it have to do with what a human being, or I mean, what humanity's basic problem is? Well, it's actually describing what a human being is. So it's that first question. How do they answer the question? There's three different ways you can answer that question based off of your core assumption. A human being is nothing more than a highly evolved animal. It's basically a physical only kind of creature. Or a human being is an evolving expression of some kind of spiritual or mental ideal. Or a human being is a physical and nonphysical creation made to reflect who God is. Well, obviously what they're saying is the only thing that's important, the only thing that is real, is the mental or spiritual portion of me. That the physical doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is just the spiritual or the mental image of myself. So I am an expression, an evolving expression of my body will no longer hold me. I'm growing or I'm evolving until my body can no longer hold me. So I'm an evolving expression of a mental or spiritual ideal. That's what I call a type two assumption. That assumption assumes the only thing that's important, the only thing that's real, is physical, I mean, mental or spiritual things. That the physical doesn't matter. If it's important, it's certainly not important and it could likely not even be real at all. But it certainly does not reflect the understanding that we are custom creations, both physical and non-physical creations together, as a single unit, as a single entity. And it reflects what I call a type two assumption. It's an idealistic assumption. The thing that's important is a spiritual ideal or a socio-political ideal, a human ideal. That's humanism. So, but because it's communicated under the surface, nobody even recognizes, oh, you're being programmed with humanism.

Right, right, but that's that process of, does this have to do with people, yes or no? Which of these four questions is the lyric in that song about? It's about this one. How do they answer the question? This way. That whole process takes 30 seconds, and it reveals that the underlying assumption is actually an idealistic assumption, and that's not, that does not describe reality. You know, so you understand where the artist is coming from, but also you understand how to realign them to what reality actually is. Yeah. No, I am not going to become my better self. Humans are not improvable. Right. We're not perfectible. We're flawed humans, but we're made in the image of God, and he's the one who made us. He's the one that gives us our identity. He's the one that gives us our value. Yeah. Not ourselves. So when you, when you, I understand that process. I like the process a lot. I mean, I think it's extremely valuable. You know, if I think about my own thought process this morning when I was processing that lyric, I was actually thinking along those lines. I'm like, there's something wrong here. There's an assumption that the body decays, but the spirit doesn't. Yes. That these two are somehow separate. You know what I mean? Like that, that it's the process that I went through when I heard the lyric. My question is when you counsel people on these matters, you know, it's impossible to avoid all of this. Sure. What's your stance on, you know, how do you, how do you think through the issue of, okay, like that's on my, that's on my playlist. That song's on my playlist. Yeah. Right. I'll hear it multiple times over the next whatever weeks. Yeah. What's your counsel to me to say? Yeah, maybe that should be on your playlist or that shouldn't be on your playlist, or you just need to think about it. You know what I'm saying? Like, do you counsel people to sort of stay away from some of this stuff and sort of take that my quasi abstinence approach? Or is it really about critically thinking through a lot of these things and making sure you're understanding them from a theological perspective? Yeah. Well, again, that is something that is on an individual basis. It's yeah. You know, some people can walk into bars and have a ministry. Other people, if they walked into a bar, it would be a disaster. Yeah. Some people can take it. Some people can't. You know, some people can't eat food sacrificed to idols. Other people can, you know, it's, it's one of those things. And there's also the admonition, like, for instance, in Philippians four about the things that we program our mind with the things that we dwell on and the effect that those things that, you know, we're to think on the things that are lovely and pure and of good report so that, you know, those things affect not just what we think, but then eventually what we do say in our lives. So it would be, it wouldn't be a blanket. Oh, don't, don't listen to that now. Yeah. I mean, if it's, if it's glorifying Satan and I'm on the highway to hell and all that kind of stuff, there are certain things that are out of bounds understood probably shouldn't be something you should be singing at the top of your lungs. Yeah. But, but at the same time, for some people that that's too much and for others, no, but the important thing is that we've developed a tool that allows people to think critically about those issues and to be able to surface those things and determine for themselves between them and the Lord, is this something I should be listening to or is this something I should not? Right. Regardless of that other decision, you're, you're walking through that process regardless. Yes. And the important thing is instead of being programmed by the media or being told by your parents or by your professors or by that expert that you're seeing on the news broadcast, you have the basic tools to figure it out for yourself. Right. And, and that's the, that's the important thing. Identify those assumptions and, and sort of navigate what's being told to you and those kinds of things. Because the basic assumption reveals what a person thinks is real. And what's the correspondence theory of truth? True things match real things. Yeah. And real things are true. So it's not so much a question of what's true. The real question is what's real, because true is a measurement of reality. Sure. And so, and so we haven't spent much time in the apologetics world in particular on the question of reality because we're all about truth. That's great. But true is a measurement of correspondence to reality. And, and people don't understand that reality is largely assumed. Gotcha. Well, let me, let me pivot the conversation because I know before, again, before the interview, we were talking a little bit about some of the ASU research that's come out on Christian worldview and some of the trends there. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that because I think it's really important. And so give us a sense of what that research is and how you see it connecting into your ministry. Yeah, this is, this is a critical message for me. It's the crisis of truth that we're experiencing in our culture, but particularly in the church, you know, because, you know, we see the phenomenon of 65% of young people walking away from the church every year, saying, well, it's true for mom and dad, but it's not true for me. And we're seeing a hashtag, my truth. I got to speak my truth. It's true for you, not for me, all, you know, all those kinds of things, this relativistic way of thinking that plagues our culture. And according to the research out of Arizona Christian university's Cultural Research Center, their documentations says that it is 67% of the culture that thinks that way in this relativistic sort of framework. So two thirds of all Americans don't believe in absolute truth. And, you know, when we look at the culture, that seems a fairly accurate estimate of the state of things. But you would think that born again, Christians who believe in the authority and inspiration of the scripture would be a little bit better in that department than the culture at large. But in fact, Barna's research shows that's not the case at all. In fact, according to last year's report, 70% of every of people who identify themselves as born again, Christians do not believe in absolute truth. That's of all American born again, Christians. And if they're of a younger generation, raising preteens of the millennial generation, if they're a millennial parent, it's 76% of those do not believe in absolute truth. So they're actually the church is worse than the culture, which is absolutely appalling. It's shocking. And we scratch our heads. Where in the world did this come from? How did this happen? You know, don't the pastors just got a need to hunker down and preach it more? Well, the problem with that is that 63% of all pastors don't believe in absolute truth. That's just unbelievable. And so, you know, being a student of ideas and, and working in, trying to influence the culture as I have for the last 40 years, wondering how in the world did this happen? How do we get like this? And, you know, traced it back to this, this relativistic way of thinking. It began developing about 300 years ago with one of those dead German philosophers that ruled the world from the grave, Emmanuel Kant, that that way of thinking started with him where he would say that the way that we understand and experience the world is largely a sensory experience. And so my senses are a little bit different than yours. And so my understanding of the world is a little different than yours because of my, my perspective and my senses. And those are attenuated also by my life experiences, my culture, my language, all those kinds of things. So I have my own unique perception of the world and yours may be different, but yours is equally valid and true for you because you're the one doing the perceiving just like I'm the one doing the perceiving. And so I can't argue with your perception because it is your perception. And that's where this relativistic way of thinking got started. Well, the interesting thing is, is that Kant gave that way of thinking a name. He called it Weltanschauung worldview. That actually is worldview thinking. And, and, and when you think about it from that perspective, how is it that we explain, advance, and defend the Christian message? It's using a framework called worldview. We have a Christian worldview, a biblical worldview, but the thing is within our circles, we say our view is true and others are not, but the framework of worldview itself disallows that entirely. It says every worldview is true for the viewer. So that means every worldview is true. Well, if that is indeed the case, if every world is view is true for the viewer, then no worldview is true. So then when we're trying to advance a message, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the claims to be true for everybody, regardless of what you've done, regardless of where you grew up, regardless of what you know or don't know, it's true for everybody. How do you advance that message using a framework that says nothing is true? You can't. And so we actually hamstring ourselves. In fact, my practical experience has been when I try and advance the message that way, what happens with a non-believer? They say, well, that's just your worldview. I'm glad that works for you. This is what's true for me. And we're done dancing because we're using that relativistic framework to advance a message that is not relativistic. It's actually

from the faith every year saying it's true for mom and dad, but not for me. And our pulpits and our pews are full of moral and truth relativists. It's because the way that we communicate the Christian faith is using a framework that's inherently relativistic. And then we're scratching our heads at the product that it produces. So, in fact, worldview is it doesn't matter whether you have a Christian worldview, a biblical worldview, a Buddhist worldview, a secular worldview, a Hindu worldview. It's a worldview, and all worldviews are considered to be true. And that is actually not the solution to the problem. It's the source of the problem. And the system that we've developed using assumptions demolishes it. It's the thing that's the way I describe it is the culture's moved on. We haven't. The battle is moved on. We haven't. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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That's what we've developed. We've developed the particle beam weapons to engage the culture in a way that demolishes that relativism and establishes the truth of the gospel and the truth that's communicated in the Word of God in a way that's compelling, relevant, and it works. It's interesting. I've done a fair amount of research in cognitive psych and John Verveke. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he does four ways of knowing. You can see some of the relativism sort of pulling in there. I think it's in a very interesting and sort of compelling way. You've got four different ways of knowing. Propositional, which is I know that. Procedural, I know how. Participatory, I know because I've experienced. Right. And then perspectival, which is I know in the sense that I understand how to participate in this environment and to cue on what is foregrounded versus what is backgrounded. Sure. It's kind of the idea. And it's the relevance category that I find most compelling. You know, even as we're having this podcast, you know, it is true that each of us have something on underneath the level of our profiles that we're showing on screen. Right. Like there's something going on that neither of us can see. Right. That doesn't make it not real. It means that we can't perceive it. Yeah. And so what's relevant is on screen for both of us. And even if those who are listening just on audio can kind of conceptualize, we're both looking at each other with basically just our torsos showing. Right. And so but it doesn't matter what your feet, whether you have shoes on or not. Right. I don't care about that. It doesn't matter to me. Right. Because I'm, I should be queuing on your face. You're talking. We're engaging. Like this is where we should be having the conversation. This is what's relevant. But it doesn't mean that you don't have shoes on. It just means that I can't perceive it. And honestly, I don't really care about it. And so there's, there's the like, I think the, the difficulty of Kant to kind of get around to the point is that he, he actually, I think was making it what is a, a realistic point about the limitations of our knowledge. Yeah. What he was not making a realistic point about was the nature of reality. Yes. And so it's so enticing because we can understand it. Like, oh yeah, the limitations of our knowledge. I can only see a certain amount. And so that's what's true for me. No. I can only see a certain amount. So that's all I can perceive. Sure. But there's a reality out there that I can't perceive. It's not like, you know, my kids aren't upstairs doing something. I have no idea what they're doing right now. I guarantee they're not just, you know, inanimate objects up there doing nothing. Like they have a life of their own that I'm not privy to at this very moment. And so I think there, that's what's so enticing about Kant's model is that it gives the impression that we can have our own truth based solely on our perception. Yeah. But the reality is that no, There's a reality beyond our perception. Yes. And this is where we have to understand our limitations. And I think that's where you're kind of getting at with some of your assumptions work. Is that, yes. Is that a fair? Yeah. Yeah. It's the thing we don't know. It's the thing we trust. And we all eventually get there. It's not a matter of if you do it, it's how you do it. And so all I did is spent the time to figure out what that is and then catalog it, categorize it and turn it into a sort of logic matrix that makes it really quick and easy for people that don't have advanced degrees, don't care about getting advanced degrees to be able to discern what those underlying assumptions are so that they know, because they're always underneath the surface. And, you know, that's why on the cover of my book is an iceberg because because when we talk about an issue, that's the part above the water that you see. And I have this position for it or against it, you know, all that kind of thing. But underneath it is a whole mass of ice that generates and supports that position. And at the very bottom of that mass of ice are your assumptions about reality. And when you think about that, which part of the iceberg sinks the Titanic? It's not the part above the water. It's the part below the water. But we don't even see it. We don't even know what it is. Why is it that a person buys that position on an issue? It's because they've bought some deeper issues that makes it possible. Well, even if you don't understand the sophisticated ideology or the complex argument, you can understand the simple assumptions that make those arguments possible. You may want to learn them, but at least you know not to buy them. Yeah. And so that gives people, even, even 13 year olds, a basic discernment skill that they can think for themselves. So let me ask you this, because I think, um, you know, just again, as I, as I'm thinking through this, one of the things that come into my mind is I, I'm wondering how often you deal with the issue of coping with instability. You know, when you're starting to take people's assumptions away, assumptions, one of their, what I would assume maybe articulate one of the functions of an assumption is that it provides you with at least a false stability. Yes. Or a true stability if it's a true one. Or true. Yeah, sure. Some level of stability, whether false or true, that allows you to navigate the world. Yes. Right. And so it allows you to make sense of what's going on around you. And so as you're peeling back some of these assumptions, I'm sure you've had conversations where you get to a point where people are just sort of left with like, well, if I give this up, I have no grounded, like I have no more foundation. I don't even understand where to turn, you know, is that the point where you find it most conducive to show the gospel that you introduce Jesus, or is that something you just let them sort of sit in kind of how does that work? Well, not, not quite. What that does is it would, it would cause them to start realigning their, their understanding of the world, realigning their, their basic assumptions, because the, the type three set of assumptions. Yeah. That is the foundation of Christianity is fundamentally different than the others. And usually what happens is, is, you know, people are inconsistent in their assumptions. You know, like for instance, I had a conversation with a guy that's been coming to our church for quite a long while, who is not a believer, but has been involved in small groups and other things like that, and asking some good questions. Uh, but he does, he doesn't believe that the Bible is the word of God. He doesn't believe, uh, that Jesus was God in the flesh and he doesn't believe that he rose from the dead. Uh, he just can't seem to make sense of that. Uh, but he's a real moral person. He's a good person, you know, the, the way, uh, he described himself. Uh, and, and so going back and forth, trying to sort that out with him, uh, where he starts off is he thinks that there's a creator who made everything. But then at the level of the third question on my critical assumptions test, which is how does everything work? He doesn't think God is involved in the universe. God may be the creator, but he's not the sustainer of the universe. And so if he's not the sustainer of the universe, it's basically the universe is sitting up on a shelf doing its own thing. God's watching from a distance. He doesn't have anything to do with it. Well then of course the

God's not involved in the universe, or he certainly can't rise from the dead or any other kind of miracle, because God's not involved in the universe. It's at that level of how he answers the third question. So what I did with him, I said, okay, you're saying this is not the right answer, so if that's not the right answer, the type 3 answer, that God operates the universe with natural laws that reflect his unchanging character, then one of the other two must be true. And so let's look at the other two. And when you look at the other two, those can't possibly be true. Can you see the disconnect with reality? Because if it's just physical only stuff, the natural laws made everything, the natural laws run anything, runs everything. Well, if that's true, then wouldn't the laws have to exist prior to the universe in order to make a universe, if that's all there is, just physical only stuff? But the problem with that is, if there's no mass, there's no gravity. If there's no energy, there's no conservation of energy. So which comes first, the chicken or the egg? People have been trying to solve that problem for centuries and never have succeeded to do it. Why? Because it doesn't describe reality. So that one doesn't work. The other one doesn't work either. So what are you left with? The third one. There are no other possibilities. And you know these other two aren't true, so then you have to give them up and adopt the one that is true. Well, then if God made everything and runs everything, then where's everything going? It's going towards eternal life with or without God, depending on your choice during this life in a new creation. Human beings are custom creations made by him. All knowledge comes from him. He himself is the description and definition of goodness. And the problem with the world is God is good and we're not. And it's not that we're all just doing bad stuff, but we're just not all doing good stuff all the time. And it's our collective doing of the bad that causes the crazy in the world. And when you get to that answer, that the problem with the world is that God's good and we're not, then you're ready to hear the gospel. Because then the gospel makes sense. Yeah, man is sinful and separated from God, and there's nothing we can do about it, but he provided a way. And that's Jesus' death and resurrection on the cross. Then the gospel makes perfect sense. But you use it to realign people, and when you get them to the bottom, I agree, I agree, I agree, now you're ready to hear the gospel. And the reason you get the cognitive pushback is because, yeah, I have to give up this thing, and it causes anxiety. It causes instability, like you're describing. And that's why you get the, whoa, the defensiveness. So, just circling back around to some of the worldview questions, do you, I'm having trouble trying to even think about how to frame this question, because, you know, I think the language of worldview has become so embedded in the way that we think about these matters, right? And so you're not asking people to shift from one worldview to another. No. What are you, how would you conceptualize what you're asking them to do? What I'm asking them to do is acknowledge what's real and therefore what's true, because true things match real things. You know, so like, for instance, I don't even use the adjective Christian in relationship to the word truth, like Christian truth, biblical truth. There's truth. True things match real things. And if it's reality that there is a creator who made everything, then that is truth. I don't have to qualify it with an adjective. Doesn't need the adjective. Doesn't need the adjective. And the fact that when we use those adjectives, we are immediately acknowledging the relativistic framework of worldview that's causing our inability to communicate the gospel in the first place. But what I'm looking to do is realign people's understanding of reality. And when you do that by asking successive questions, that gets them to the place of, I did this with an atheist once, that you either have to abandon your core assumption or you have to admit that what I believe is not true. A guy that's a very vocal public atheist, he's the president of the local free thought society, a progressive humanist kind of guy, you know, in one of these epic Facebook conversations, which everybody has had and knows accomplishes nothing. We'd been going at it for a day and a half off and on and he knew where I was working on my book because, you know, he'd seen me over at the local Starbucks working away. He walked in the room after a couple of hours of the Facebook exchange. He sat down in the chair next to me because he hated the fact that I said that he assumed anything, because he's a very rational guy. I don't assume anything. You know, that something's wrong with you if you're assuming something. You know, you're just not smart enough to understand, so you're assuming stuff. And likewise, that I would say he's a person of faith, just like me. Oh, he hated that, because that's the nature of an assumption. It's the thing you trust, not the thing you know. And so we're going back and forth side-by-side in two chairs for a few minutes. And finally I just thought, I'm gonna cut to the chase with this one. And he had his MacBook there sitting on the table. I said, Is your laptop physical or not? And you could see the wheels spinning in his head. Let's see. If I say it's physical, he would say, Prove it. And I wouldn't be able to because it's not provable. And yet if I said it's not physical, he'd say, Prove it. And I wouldn't be able to. And so he said, I don't know. I said, You're right. You don't know. And when you reach the edge of what you know and what you don't know, you have to assume something to be real and therefore true that you don't know, because if you knew it, you wouldn't have to assume it, but you do. And that is the thing that you don't know. It's the thing you assume, therefore the thing you trust at your basic faith commitment. You're a person of faith, just like me. You just start with a different assumption than I do about the nature of reality. One of them is true. The other ones are not. We've got a little bit of time left, and I usually save this question toward, you know, way toward the end of the interview, but I'm kind of interested in your having a little bit of a discussion about it. So given your take on the worldview, the ASU information, and just your approach on assumptions, here's the question I ask all my guests. What do you think that the church should be thinking about to help believers be and make disciples for Jesus Christ more effectively in the contemporary age? Well, it starts with this crisis of truth that I was mentioning before, but we're making a strategic error in churches and ministries, because I talk with parents and I ask them about what they're doing and their aspirations for their child not only becoming a Christ follower, but remaining a Christ follower into their young adult life when they leave home. And so when I ask them about that, they're actually not very confident that it'll happen. And when I ask them, What are you doing to prepare them for this increasingly hostile anti-Christian culture that they're gonna have to live in and lead in? What are you doing? And they rattle off the usual list. Well, we send them to Christian school or we homeschool them. They're involved in the youth ministry or other ministries of the church. We do Bible studies at home. They go to retreats and conferences. We've got Christian media. We have informal conversations about contemporary issues in the Christian faith, you know, all those great things that you hear. And I said, The strategic error is what you're doing and what we all tend to do is we expose students regularly and often to truth from God and the Bible with no equipping on how to recognize anything as true, regardless of whether it comes from God and the Bible or not. And so if you don't equip students to how to recognize truth, they'll recognize nothing as true. It's because the Scripture is very clear in Hebrews 5.14 that solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Discernment is not an innate skill, but what we're doing is we are assuming it is. All we have to do is expose students to truth and they'll get it. You just give them more. Give them more. Give them more truth and they'll get it. But if you don't teach them how to recognize what truth is in the first place, well, how do you know that the stuff in this book is true? If you haven't answered that basic question, you've completely lost the battle. If you can't help them to recognize anything is true, they'll recognize nothing is true. It's like me walking into your yard with a tiger, but you don't know what a tiger is. And you say, Oh, isn't that a beautiful, interesting animal? That thing could eat you. Because you don't know what it is. And so we have to intentionally train and practice, because that's what the Scripture tells us. Discernment requires training and practice. But even to tell parents and pastors that you've got to train and practice discernment, okay, how do I do that? Well, you've got to ask good questions. Well, what are the questions? I've done all of that. I've got the questions. It's the critical assumptions test. We've got the methodology for how to.

All you have to do is learn it and practice it. And it'll give you the basic skills to be able to understand this is true, this is not, this is why. In our courses, I take on issues like wealth inequality, race, gender, and various moral issues, and the assumptions that drive those issues. And when you understand the assumptions, oh, it gives you an entirely different understanding of the issue because then you understand why it's true or why it's not true and how you can speak to it from the scriptures in a way that's relevant and meaningful. And the whole process, 30 seconds. With a little practice, you can do it in 20 to 30 seconds. It's really cool. And that's why I'm so passionate about what we do. And, you know, we developed these courses at our website, LearnToDiscern.com slash Thinking Christian. If they go to LearnToDiscern.com slash Thinking Christian, they'll have a special price for getting a hold of these resources because we want to encourage your listeners to get in the game. You know, it's one thing to have, you know, the all-star, the guy on the news, the guy in the classroom that really knows his stuff. Why not have a whole army of people that all can think for themselves, who all can communicate the truth of the gospel for themselves? Now how would that impact the culture? Yeah, that's fantastic. That's what we want to do. Yeah, I love it. And I think I actually really appreciate, I think just in listening to everything you've said, one of the things that hit me the hardest was pointing people to reality. You know, I think that's an important point that we don't want to move past, that there is a real world out there, that the real world is not just what we can see, but it's also what we can't see, and that we constantly want to be pointing people to that reality and that reality aligns with the truth. And it's truth of all sorts. And so, David, I can't tell you, I appreciate your ministry here. I appreciate everything you've shared today. And I just, thanks for being on the podcast, man. This has been fantastic. It's been a great conversation, and I so appreciate what it is that you're doing. So I'd encourage everybody to go assumptionsinstitute.org is the website. And we will put the link to learn to discern backslash thinkingChristian. I believe that was it, right? learn to discern.com backslash thinkingChristian. Put that in the show notes. And I just encourage everybody to go check out assumptions ministry, check out the courses, check out David's work and his book. Totally worth it. And David, again, thanks for being on. James, thanks for having me on. I loved it. It was a great time. Yeah. All right, everybody. Well, we'll catch you on the next episode of thinking Christian and be sure to check out the show notes for all the different links and resources that we have from our guest today, David. And we'll see you on the next episode. Take care, everybody. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. I'm bestselling author, John Seidel, and I'm the Christian who became an alcoholic, not the other way around. Through the power of Jesus, I got sober. And now I'm sharing both my story and the stories of others just like me, along with helpful interviews from trauma, faith, and addiction recovery experts. If you're a fan of messy sanctification and powerful stories, join me on the confessions of a Christian alcoholic podcast on life audio or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Let's get radically vulnerable.