What Are the Biggest Questions Christians Are Asking: A Conversation with Shea Houdman

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, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I am joined today by Shay Hoodman, and I'm excited to be here with him. He is the CEO and president of GotQuestions.org. So whenever I search almost anything online that's related to a biblical and theological topic, I almost always see GotQuestions.org. And so it's a fascinating ministry. I love that it's out there. Amazing answers to a number of different questions. And so I'm happy to have Shay here today. He's also the author of 100 Questions, or 100 Most Asked Questions About God and the Bible. And so we're going to be talking about both the ministry and the book today. But Shay, welcome. Thanks for being on the podcast, man. Hey, James. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, yeah. So tell everybody a little bit about, you know, Got Questions seems like such a simple concept, right? How did you dive into that ministry? How did that come about? You know, tell us a little bit about what the origin story is for this website and then this ministry you're involved in. Yeah, that's I love telling people about the journey because I can see God's hand working throughout it. I came to faith in Christ in my late teens. My uncle, who was the pastor of a church in Tennessee, came and stayed with our family. I didn't know that my mom had actually invited him to come evangelize me. But I remember I had gone to Christian school a little bit as a child, so I had a little bit of a Christian background. I definitely believed in God, but I had no personal relationship with Jesus Christ at all. I remember he just very patiently answered all the questions that I had. I can't remember how I even knew to ask some of these questions, but I remember him just even when I was trying to distract him, I remember I was asking weird questions about the end times and stuff like that. Made me willing to listen to him when he wanted to share the gospel with me. And so ultimately, he presented the saving message of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And I placed my faith and trust in Christ. Long story short, I started being discipled by a youth pastor in a local church, and he pretty quickly started telling me, Hey, James, I think the Lord is calling you into some type of full-time Christian ministry. And I was like, No, I'm going to be a computer programmer. I'm going to be something in the technology field, but I'm not going into ministry. Well, eventually, God got a hold of my heart, convinced me to go to Bible college. So I actually went to Calvary University in Kansas City, graduated with a degree in biblical studies, which is kind of the degree you take if you don't know what you want to do. But serve God somehow. Decided to go to Calvary Seminary, got a master's degree in Christian theology, which is, again, it's kind of the degree you take if you don't know what you want to do. Shortly after I got my master's at Calvary, my wife Melissa and I were just praying, like, We were serving our local church. We were serving in a ministry there in Kansas City. I was the supervisor of the shipping department, so not exactly using my biblical and theological training much. Like, Lord, what are you calling us to? What's the ministry? And this was late 2001, early 2002. The internet was just really starting to be something that most people had in their homes. High-speed internet was coming out so that you could actually do something productive online without waiting, like, 10 minutes for a picture to download, that sort of thing. I wonder if we just launched a Christian website where people could come and ask any question I have about the Bible, if there'd be a need for that. So we launched GotQuestions.org in February of 2002, thinking, Oh, this will be something fun we do until God reveals to us what the real ministry he's calling us to, the quote-unquote real ministry. Well, God had much bigger things in mind. He never intended GotQuestions.org to be a hobby. And within a few months, it just exploded. There was such a huge need for it. The word was getting out. People started asking us questions and more questions than we could possibly handle. So the last 22 years is watching God take what we thought would be a hobby and just exploding it into one of the most frequently visited Christian websites in the world. Just to give you an idea, we've personally responded to over 750,000 questions that have been submitted to us on the website. The website now has over 9,000 Frequently Asked Questions articles. Like you mentioned, most people find us just by searching for something on Google and GotQuestions content comes near the top. And in our 22-year history, the articles on GotQuestions have been viewed approximately 2.5 billion times. So praise God for what he's done, far beyond anything we can ask or imagine. That's pretty unbelievable, man. And I mean, you know, your book, The 100 Most Asked Questions About God and the Bible, is based on some of the analytics from your site. Is that correct? Exactly. So the 100 most asked questions about God and the Bible is like, let's compile both through the questions that people submit to us and the most popular articles on the site. What do we really think, what are the 100 most asked questions? And this is our best effort at producing that. It was an exciting journey. If you look through the book and it's kind of hard to categorize them because they're kind of all over the place, but a lot of them are controversial issues. There's ones you'd expect, other ones that, huh, I've never even wondered this question, but there's millions of other people out there who have. So, yeah, the book is definitely a labor of love and it's taking the content that's on the website, fine-tuning it, making it as good as it can be and publishing it in the books to get this content, which we think is important, which we know a lot of people are searching for, into every format, every venue out there, including book and ebook format. And how, you know, some of the questions in the book, I mean, what are ones that really did surprise you? Do you have some that really stand out that, you know, are kind of like, oh, I had this question too, or, you know, that really resonated with you? My favorite ones are when people ask us a question directly related to the gospel. I truly remember the first time someone asked, I think they worded it, how can I know for sure I'd go to heaven when I die? And my wife was sitting in the other room. I was like, Melissa, can someone get saved on the internet? It was a truly, we had envisioned the question being a discipleship-focused ministry. It wasn't until maybe six months in that we realized, you know, I think God wants to use this for evangelism as well. So there's, I think, three gospel presentation articles in the book as well. Obviously, questions about the end times. I mean, every time there's an explosion of violence in the Middle East around Israel, those questions become crazy popular. And probably the biggest section is the questions about sexuality. So whether it's about homosexuality or premarital sex or anything in you can imagine we've been asked and a whole bunch of things I wished I never had to imagine, we've been asked those questions. And how do you, how do you sift through, you know, I mean, you mentioned the end times, you know, I know there's a number of different views on the end times and there's a lot of different systems you could adopt and that sort of tend to square and align with various, you know, different biblical passages in the biblical story overall. How do you go about sort of answering those questions in a way that does justice to those various views or, or do you just sort of pick one and go with it? That's the biggest challenge. So, so James, it's to say the two of us were getting coffee together. Yeah. I said, Hey James, what do you think about this issue? Well, I'm not asking you, okay, give me the five different interpretations of this issue or passage and just help me make up my mind for myself. I'm asking, Hey, what do you think is actually the right answer? So we have found the vast majority of people who are asking us the question, really asking us, what do you think the right answer is? But with that said, on issues where Christians can definitely agree to disagree, we will often present, okay, here are the different views that we think are biblically plausible. These are valid interpretations of this passage or issue. And then here's the one we prefer and why. But even sometimes, especially on really crucial issues, we're not going to present multiple viewpoints. We don't want to cause any confusion, but even then we want to answer the question in a way that presents grace, presents speaking the truth in love with the right spirit, right attitude. Because we don't want to come across as like, we have all the answers or it's our way or the highway. It's like, no, but we think this is the correct answer and do that in the spirit of humility. Yeah. So there's a sense in which you're, you're providing your best interpretation of it without demanding

Final word on a subject. Is that a fair way to summarize it? Again, it depends on the topic. Like the very first question in the book is, is Jesus God? We're going to be very dogmatic. Definitive about that. Yeah. What does the Bible say about the Trinity? What does the Bible say about salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ? Those of you who know, we're not giving multiple views and we're going to be very dogmatic. What's the best view in the relationship of when the rapture is going to occur in comparison to the tribulation? We can be a little more free and not as dogmatic on an issue like that. Have you seen the questions sort of change and morph over time? I mean, I can imagine that as culture shifts, right, and as the big questions this society is asking are changing, that you guys are having to respond and adapt to new questions all the time. Is that sort of the case? I envision, I guess, maybe the question is, you know, are there standards that you all are going to answer regardless, right? Like there's always these 10 questions are kind of coming in all the time, whether it's 10 or 50 or whatever it is. And then there's these other ones that are very culturally conditioned, very much part of the moment that we're in that you all are fielding. It's a question a lot of people ask about how have questions changed over 22 years. And for example, questions about homosexuality have always been extremely common, but really the last five years, maybe, questions about transgenderism where 20 years, no one was talking about, no one's thinking about that now, it's hot on everyone's mind. So the way culture has shifted definitely impacts the type of questions we receive. And then generally, even in 20 years, you wouldn't think culture would. Let me ask you a serious question. 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So it hasn't changed that much, but I would say there's a lot more hostility towards the teaching of the Bible today than there was 20 years ago. Even amongst Christians, a lot more ignorance of what we would consider fairly basic issues. It's like someone will submit a question, hey, I've been a Christian for 40 years and then I have this question. And the question I ask is like, you've been a Christian for 40 years and you've never settled this particular issue? You would think that'd be something fairly elementary that your church or whoever was discipling you should have helped you with a long time ago. But with that said, here's the opportunity. We're going to jump into it and help them with it now. But we're detecting more ignorance of what the Bible says and more hostility towards it. Those would be the big trends I would identify. It's interesting because, you know, I usually keep up with the State of Theology report that Ligonier Ministries puts out. And, you know, some of the questions that they ask or the statements they put out and then ask people to respond to is probably the better way to put that. Something like, you know, are all people born innocent in the eyes of God? You know, is Jesus God? Is the Bible the word of God? All those kind of things. And you look at the evangelical responses and you're seeing these upticks in, you know, answers that are really counter to what, you know, I haven't gone to, you know, seminary and done theological training would have pretty strong convictions about. Like, yes, the Bible is the word of God. Yes, it's the final authority for life and faith. Yes, there's, you know, these sort of core convictions that we hold to. And what I hear you saying is that some of those are eroding even if you're seeing those things as sort of maybe they were even questionable throughout the ages, but that now, would you see that as sort of a moment in our culture where it's convenient or possible to start questioning some of those foundations if you don't have those clear convictions? Yeah, for sure. And not identifying any specific teacher of God's word, but many of the prominent pastors and teachers in our country and around the world, they're amazing public speakers. They're great at delivering a speech and a talk and they can give a sermon that is encouraging and uplifting, but there's not very much doctrine in it. And so you can leave church very, very encouraged, even excited to live out your faith, but have no idea what you actually believe and why. So I think that's a lot of it. But again, that's been true throughout church history in terms of people like you and me who love theology, love digging deep, love talking about it. We're the exception rather than the rule. But even amongst many churches that we would still consider solid evangelical biblically based, the appetite for really digging into the deep things, the doctrines of the faith, stuff that maybe not an essential as in if you deny this, you're not a Christian. But if you deny this or misunderstand this, that has implications for many other areas of the faith. People not holding strong convictions on those things is definitely something I'm observing and it's distressing to say the least. What are some of the things, you know, I poked around a little bit before our interview and just kind of looked around, not only the gotquestions.org, but just the internet more generally about the ministry. And some of the things I saw were like, you know, you'd see things like questioning the translations used by gotquestions, right? Some of the tedium that we, again, having gone through seminary and theological education, you deal with some of these issues ongoing, right? There's a difference, a fundamental difference between the translation issues of the KJV and like, let's say an NIV or an NASB or whatever, right? The minority versus majority manuscripts issue and textual criticism. You know, like there's minutiae there that like, if you've had that theological training, you really deeply understand and you're looking at those apparatus in Greek. And then there, there are these other things that are like, um, people tend to hold to as really strong theological convictions. Something that you and I might, might view as, um, let's say, um, less than central, right? To the faith is something like an eschatology, right? Which we talked about before, but, but that other people really do view as central. And, um, how do you deal with sort of the critics that are coming at you? They're saying, look, you're mistranslating this verse. You're, you know, they're, they're citing tedium, I guess is what I would say is sort of the colloquial way to phrase it. They're citing these tedium to undercut the answers that you're providing when really what you're trying to do, I think, is give that sort of, just what you said earlier, to give a sure answer, not the answer, but a sure answer. How do you, how do you navigate that? You know, anyone who's involved in any sort of ministry, criticism is a part of it. I mean, I'm thankful that we receive far more compliments from people than we do complaints. I mean, that's, that's wonderful. But on gotquestions.org, there's a testimonials page that occasionally have a rough day or someone criticizes in a particularly painful way. I can go back and read, okay, thank you, Lord, for the reminder that I guess there are the trolls out there, the people who just want to argue. Some of the more frustrating ones are like the, the soapbox Christians, hobby horse Christians who, they're so laser focused on one issue that if you disagree with this on, on this one issue, they discount or dismiss everything you say. Say as an example, not that long ago, someone came to us and their soapbox issue was the sons of God and daughters of men in Genesis chapter 6. Oh geez, yeah, okay. Who are those people? And so we have an article, I think we present the different views and say, here's the one we prefer. This is like, no, if you hold that view, you're basically denying the inspiration of the Bible and you're doing this and I can no longer trust anything you have to say on any issue. It's like, really? Of, of all the issues, that's the one you're going to make your specialty about. The weirdest one of all time was someone came to us and was convinced that the disciple whom Jesus loved in the gospel of John was not the apostle John, but was actually Lazarus. And so they presented this argument for it being Lazarus and we're like,

Okay, that's interesting, but I disagree. And they're like, well, basically, accuses us of not being Christians for not agreeing with them on this issue. I'm like, wow. So, no, that can be discouraging and those sorts of things. But that's more rare. Typically, when people want to argue, like before, you mentioned Bible translations. I mean, on gotquestions.org, we quote from the NIV, not because we think it's the best translation, but because it's the most widely used. And I think it's a good enough translation. I mean, it's a little more thought for thought than I would prefer. And personally, I prefer either the ESV or the New American Standard for my personal Bible study and reading of scripture. But I think the NIV is definitely good enough, or we wouldn't be recommending it. But yeah, the King James only thing, all those arguments. Ultimately, when people confront us on an issue, we'll say, look, we're gotquestions.org, not gotdebate.org. If you want to argue about these issues, there are plenty of places online where you can argue to your heart's content. I mean, if they are submitting a legitimate question of like, help me understand why you believe, as long as it's respectful, as long as we find the conversation to be edifying and think it can actually progress, we will engage. But once it becomes just a heated argument, it's like, no, this is not what God's called us to. We'd rather spend our time helping people with genuine questions who actually want to hear what we have to say versus people who just want to argue us to death. They really just want you to conform to their opinion. And that's an intro. I mean, the issue you brought up, I just wrote an article on Sons of God, Daughters of Men, and Christianity.com. And it's like, this is the most convoluted passage possibly in the entire Old Testament. I mean, it's just very difficult to understand what those things are. There's no scholarly consensus. Anybody you read is going to have essentially a different opinion. And there's really great arguments on all sides. Right. And so, sure, come down on a side. That's fine. But to hold that dogmatically is a really tough move because it's just not clear. And I think there's a lot of things like that in Scripture. So, I mean, I love the gotquestions.org, not gotdebate.org. I mean, I think that's the right response for you guys. Because your mission really is to just help people clarify some of the nagging sort of doubts that they have in their head. Is that a fair statement? I mean, is that... It is. At one point, our slogan was, Got Questions? The Bible has answers. We'll find them for you. And 10 plus years ago, we changed it to, Got Questions? The Bible has answers. We'll help you find them. This kind of reminded us, like, no, our... Yes, ultimately, sometimes we will just, here's the answer. But we also want to point people to God's Word for the answer. We want them to understand, it's not us that has the answers. The Bible has the answers. We're just going to point you to them. Yes, that involves a degree of interpretation. It involves wisdom, discernment, all of those sorts of things. But ultimately, we're not the ones with the answers. It's God's Word that has the answers. So our goal is to point people towards God's Word. So how do you see the, you know, you've done the book, you know, obviously, the 100 Most Asked Questions. And as you think about it, you know, who are you putting the book out for? Who's your intended audience for the book? Are these for folks who are, you know, you mentioned sort of the split. You know, you started it as a discipleship ministry and then realized that, hey, people can get saved online. Is this a book for both or is it intended for one of those two main audiences? How would you characterize it? Yeah, I mean, the vast majority of answers in the book are like for Christians or at least for seekers. And there's like at least three that are specifically for the atheism. But generally speaking, for believers. So one of our goals is like anywhere where people are searching for answers to spiritually related questions, we want to be there with content. So obviously we're on the web and on the web, we've got text-based content. We've got audio recordings. We've got videos. We've got translations. We've got apps for iPhone and Android. We experimented with AI and we haven't released anything, but if anywhere where people are searching, you want to try to be there. So are some people looking for a book that will answer their common questions to the Bible? Yes, they are. Are people looking for an ebook? So let's also go down that road as well. So it's, we're not going to become a book publishing ministries in any sense, but we think there's enough people who still read books and still like, I mean, hey, after staring at a computer screen all day, sometimes I really actually want to pick up a real book and read that rather than read more electronic texts. So again, we love the book. We think it's great. We think there's a huge audience for it, but ultimately we are an internet-based ministry. So the book is, I don't know if ancillary is the right term because we don't want to dismiss it as unimportant, but just one more way for us to hopefully get solid biblically-based answers into people's hands. And how do you think the book, you know, as I sort of flipped through it and I'm looking at these different questions and the thought that I had in my head was, you know, how is it that the church can begin answering some of these? How could this be a guidebook to the local congregation? You know, we've sort of had this trend toward expository preaching. And I think expository preaching is fantastic. I think teaching through biblical books is amazing. But then I look at your ministry and I say, wow, there's all these people with all these different questions that may or may not be addressed as you're teaching in an expository manner. How do you see these questions sort of scratching an itch that maybe the church doesn't even know it has? That's a great question. And on GotQuestions.org, we have sections like for each book of the Bible. So like questions about Genesis, questions about Exodus, where if a pastor is preaching through a particular book of the Bible, they can look through and say, oh, here are the questions that people are asking about the passage I'm preaching or even the book I'm preaching so I can be prepared to answer. OK, if we're preaching through Exodus, people are going to ask, why was God going to kill Moses in the early chapters of Genesis? Right. What does it mean that God is the I am? Those type of questions. So they can incorporate that into their sermons. But this book in particular is very topical. It's I don't know that there's really there's a few that are like, what does this particular Bible verse mean or what does this phrase in a Bible verse mean? But generally speaking, it covers topics. So I think as a tool, this would be a great thing for pastors, church leaders to give out to people in their congregation. You have questions. I can't tell you how many pastors have said GotQuestions is a godsend to me because it's flooded with questions. I can just not shirking my responsibility, but I can refer people to GotQuestions knowing they're going to get a good response that nine times out of 10, I'm going to perfectly agree with you and I can trust you. And that relieves a huge burden from everyone having to come to me for their answers. I can send them to GotQuestions.org or even in this case, give them a copy of the book or recommend the e-book to them for them to read. And all of our answers, we truly, truly strive to be very biblically based on the website. All of the scripture references are hyperlinks so you can read the verse in its full context and filled with scripture references because ultimately don't just take our word for it. I mean, take the answer that we give, compare it with scripture and then accept or reject it on that basis. So do you view sort of what you're doing as helping the church develop a biblical worldview? Right. How do you sort of view your ministry in terms of that? I think there's just so much, you know, I teach a course called Developing a Christian Mind. And part of what that course entails is how do we make sense of the world around us through a biblical and theological lens? And so we do deal with a lot of sort of non-doctrinal questions is what I would call them. You know, how do we think through making just basic decisions in our lives and how does the Bible factor into those basic decisions? But then there's this whole other side of it that's sort of a worldview, which is almost like that. I think of it as sort of a basic, fairly set structure that answers, you know, some of those underlying questions that everybody asks and allows us the opportunity to think in terms of, hey, God is present with us. God is this sort of God. This is, you know, sort of his characteristics. This is who he is. This is who we are in relation to him. And this is how we're to relate to his creation. Here's what our problems are. You know, all those kind of basic questions. Do you see yourself sort of bridging between those two or how would you think about the nature of GotQuestions.org in feeding into those kind of?

And that's a great question. I think I totally get what you're getting at. A friend of mine once described God Questions as, you're sort of like a firefighting ministry. And I said, okay, what do you mean by that? And he described it as, people are, because they're not thoroughly trained in a biblical Christian worldview, a lot of the questions you're answering is a result of that. Like if they've been trained and had a fully biblical worldview, they would already know the answer to that, or they would at least know how to find the answer for themselves. So firefighting is extremely important. Don't hear that as me dismissing your ministry. Obviously someone needs to put out the fires. But what we actually need in addition to God Questions is people to be thoroughly trained in how to understand the Bible, how to read the Bible, how to interpret the Bible, and then how to build a solid, consistent Christian worldview based on the Bible. And if that was the case, there'd be far less of these sorts of questions because people, oh, well, clearly that's not honoring to God because I know this and this, or clearly this is the right decision to make in this situation because of this and this and this. So I totally get that. I think that's fairly accurate, but we also have a lot of articles on worldview and apologetics and trying to point people towards, you know, like teaching people to fish rather than just giving them fish, those sorts of things. So we do do a lot of that, but ultimately if we're a ministry of, hey, come ask us any spiritually related question you have and we will do our best to provide you with a biblically based answer. That kind of opens this up to people asking the questions that they want to know. And like we talked about earlier, there's a epidemic, so to speak, of people not being biblically informed, not being trained, not being discipled. And that's very regrettable. We wish we could fix that, but ultimately until that gets fixed, we are going to do our best to put out the fires and point people to God's word and hope that they will begin to study it for themselves. Yeah. How do you start connecting people? Like, and I don't know, like I said, I've run across gotquestions.org whenever I type in sort of a biblical or theological question or I'm researching something, almost always pops up, which I think is amazing. I think it's great that a resource like yours is actually at the top of Google's list on most of the searches that I'm putting in there. How do you connect people to maybe ancillary questions that they, quote unquote, need to ask or may ask next as you're sort of structuring all of this content that you've got on the website? It means a massive amount of content. So when I think of it sort of from that higher ed perspective, I suppose, what I'm thinking of is how do I lead somebody from this question that they're asking to the six different questions they should be asking? Right. How do I create almost a little mini curriculum out of this? So talk a little bit about that. How have you guys seen people interact with that? Where do they go after their initial question? Is it a sort of a spider web out or do you try to direct them? What does that look like for you all? Yeah, that's a big struggle. Some people come to God Questions and they are where we described as like they're a negative 10. Like they're openly hostile to the Christian faith and other people are coming. They're a negative 1 or they're a plus 1 or they're 10. They're completely on fire for the Lord, sold out. So not knowing for sure, just a regular website get 16 to 20 million visitors a month and they're all over the spectrum. So people land on an article, they're searching Google, land on an article, they'll read that article and then at the bottom of the article, there are links to usually five other related topics. If you're asking this question, we're going to guess, I mean not just guess, we're going to make an educated guess that you're also going to wonder about this. Or if you're asking this question, that actually reveals you might need some help in this area, so we're going to list one of those articles. So there is kind of a flow to it. I mean every article on every page on God Questions has a link to at least two different gospel presentation articles where ultimately if they can read a hundred different articles and have all these questions answered, but if they have never had the ultimate question answered of how can they can spend eternity with God, then ultimately you failed. So we always include those links, but it's so difficult because you could create a flow that'd be perfect for a baby Christian, but that same flow wouldn't work for a seeker or a skeptic. So we, but it's amazing to see. Sometimes we just guess. I don't know what five articles to include. Here's these five. A month later, you get an email from someone and say, I was reading this article and then at the bottom there was this question and I'd just been talking to my pastor about that earlier. That's amazing. Maybe you get hardwired with the Holy Spirit. I'm like, hey, we're not claiming anything. I was truly, uh, how about this one? And then trust God, something like that. Yeah. So for every hit, you're probably getting some misses and vice versa, you know, kind of idea. Um, just because of the, the variation and the, the sheer amount, sheer volume of people that are coming to your website, it's, it's not targeted necessarily. Yeah. So with, um, like I said earlier, so I think we're about 9,200 articles. And so if an article can only link to five, that's pretty limiting, but the vast majority of people who land on got questions, um, they don't even go necessarily to the related topics. They'll jump straight to the search feature. And that's the best way for them to find really what they're looking for because, Oh, that's great. Um, but I also want about this or this or this. So the search feature, um, really helps people to, to take from what they landed on to go directly to the stuff that they asked, which might not be the same thing that other people would ask. So how involved are you in the content? I mean, I can imagine, you know, 9,200 articles, um, even in the amount of time you've been running. Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I think it's, it's really an interesting, you know, sort of point because, you know, somebody who creates content, um, it's difficult to keep up. And so, you know, and it's also, I would think, difficult to, uh, govern, right. To make sure that everything that's going out is, uh, reasonable and not just totally off base. So how do you handle that quality on the website to make sure that, um, when a question is being answered, it's being answered in a satisfactory manner. Yeah. Now that's, that's huge. I mean, the very early days of gotquestions.org, I was writing almost all the articles, but now here we are 20 years later, we've got 12 employees, all of whom have writing and editing abilities, some more so than others. Um, our programmer might debate whether, um, she, she should be writing articles or not, but, um, so when the answer is written today, I, I still do occasionally write answers, not as much as I would like, but I still occasionally will pick one out from the list and say, ah, I would really like to write this article or this article. Um, so then whoever writes it, whether it's one of our staff, one of our volunteers or one of our, um, independent contract writers, they'll write the answer to the question. Then it goes to Kevin, our managing editor, and he'll give it a once through. He's the, the grammar Nazi, so to speak, to get everything tight and clean and say everything the way it's supposed to be said. And then I'm actually, because I still love doing it and I'm the CEO, so I get to decide at least some of the work I get to do. I'm still the main web developer for gotquestions.org. So if a new article is published, I'm the one who's actually creating the page and uploading it. And before it gets published, I read every single article just to make sure is this answer what we think is correct. Do I think it's presented with the right attitude? And ultimately if I'm going to be held responsible, AKA like James chapter three, um, does who teach or judge more strictly, then I'm going to make sure that I can in good conscience fully endorse this article. So now it passes through multiple eyes and multiple people are editing to hopefully make the content as good as it can be. Well, bro, it's pretty impressive that you still read everything that goes out there before it goes on. How many questions do you get in any given month, year? Like there's obviously still more questions coming in. So, I mean, how does that, how does that flow work? Yeah. So the vast majority of people now visit gotquestions and they find their answer on the website rather than the early days, it was all people submitting questions to us. So in the question submissions, we still receive between a hundred and 150 a day. Okay. And those come into our database. Um, one of our employees will then review the questions that came in, see which ones do you have an answer. And the person just didn't find. So easy copy and paste, send others can be something we can answer relatively easy. So like where's the Bible verse that says this? Well, okay, I can handle that really quick. And then the others are sent out to our team of volunteers

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Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Finding the answers on the website, we're talking hundreds of thousands a day. So it's a very small percentage, but especially since that's what our heart is, I would be surprised if we ever do away with the ability for people to actually submit questions to us because let's say the personal touch can have a much bigger impact than just reading an article on site. We're not just a Christian encyclopedia. No, we want to actually minister to people and to meet them where they're at. Right, there's a nice interaction that takes place there. Even if they just didn't find the content you already have out on the website, it's nice that you can actually send them the article that you've already got written without creating any new content. That's pretty fantastic. I mean, to think that you've gotten it sort of maybe, quote unquote, whittled down to 150 a day, right? As opposed to what you surely started with, which was just loads of, I'm sure, user questions because you're building out your content that sort of builds it out and then people are now finding it. But surely the question is sort of tiered down, I'm assuming. God grew the ministry slowly but surely. I mean, if the month when we first launched and the ask a question page was basically the only page on the site, if we were getting, oh, 20 million visitors a month then, I mean, 20 million questions, I mean, we'd still be trying to get caught up with the questions submitted in 2002. So no, the ministry grew slowly but surely over time. So there's a time where we were getting over 200 questions a day, but it's never been huge because our traffic wasn't as big back then. So God had us grow the FAQs to the point where the vast majority of questions are there to help us to be able to handle the personally submitted questions easier. Because yeah, I mean, even at like a thousand questions a day, that would be overwhelming just to sift through all those and even just to copy and paste the answers would take multiple people multiple days to do. Well, I'd like to kind of give you a sideways question, maybe. So I've done a fair amount of thinking and writing about artificial intelligence and Christian thought and just even thinking through, you know, the implications of, let's say, AI developed sermons and those kinds of things, right? And so you mentioned that you guys are kind of playing around with the AI, but then, you know, as I think through, you know, what you just said about the personal touch that comes with sort of responding to people and how you wouldn't get rid of that. How are you viewing artificial intelligence as being able to actually, A, you know, sort of help you accomplish what you're, you know, core what you're trying to accomplish, but then potentially B, making sure that it doesn't eliminate the need for or replace that personal touch, that actual person-to-person ministry, even though it's happening electronically. How are you guarding against that with your artificial intelligence sort of innovations? So when ChatGPT first came out and became popular, multiple people like kind of out of the blue was like, hey, I'm a computer developer. I've been working with ChatGPT. Could I develop a AI-based chatbot using ChatGPT that answers questions from GotQuestions content? And so multiple people asked him, a few actually delivered a program as we were able to test it and use it. Like, you know, this is surprisingly good, but it wouldn't take us too long before we could get it to give a lousy answer. And so we're like, okay, we're not ready to release anything to the public. So we've continued to work behind the scenes more, have more program work, and we have a AI chatbot, so to speak, but it's not available to the public. And you hit exactly on why it's not. Like it doesn't have the personal touch. It ultimately is just a computer program answering a question. And could the Holy Spirit use something like that? Of course he could. Sure. He spoke through a donkey in the Old Testament. So, but we couldn't release something like this until we are highly confident that it's going to give good answers, not just 9 out of 10 times, but we would want it to be 99 out of 100 times. And it's not there yet. And then also, we don't want to encourage people to replace human interaction with engaging with a chatbot. Right. I'm sure. And we can envision a scenario where, yes, an AI chatbot could answer questions really fast. And there are ways to actually restrict it to only answer questions based on content from these trustworthy Christian websites and can do it and actually a pretty good job. But both the, it would be giving answers in our name that we don't actually review. Right. That's problematic. It would lack the personal touch and it would also be, this is training people to rely on computer programs rather than other people. And we don't think that's healthy. So multiple two-tier reasons why we haven't released anything yet, but there's several other ministries that have. And we don't necessarily, we're not going to argue with them or try to, you need to take this down. Right. God can use it. And I know people who have used those and actually received really good answers. So, but our convictions are that we couldn't promote AI until we were 100% confident that it's a value add to what we're doing. It's another way to give quality answers to biblically based questions. And that's not there yet in our opinion, but it's sure fun to play around with it. I'll admit occasionally if I'm struggling, how do I want, I wrote this paragraph and this sentence doesn't read right. I go to ChatGPT and say, hey, paraphrase this sentence for me. And two or three times later, I was like, boom. Yes, I like that. But it's still being reviewed by me. It's being fine-tuned by me. None of our articles are AI generated, although I mean, we will allow our writers to use it as a tool, similar to how I described, but no, not to actually write the answers because we want people to write answers from their heart, from their experience, from their study of God's word, not just to rely on a program that's just scouring the internet, compiling all this data and spitting out an answer that it thinks represents the general opinion of the internet. Well, I, for one, appreciate that. I mean, I think there is something to AI. I don't, I'm not anti-AI at all, not anti-technology at all, really. I mean, I think there, but I think that equating artificial intelligence to something like a Google search is really problematic because, you know, when we Google search and God questions come up and I'm reading your content, somebody's written that content. An actual human person has written that content. Now there is maybe a more distant human to human interaction like what we're having right now via Zoom or what you might have with somebody actually in the same room face to face, but there's still a human to human connection there through the content. And I just, I worry that if AI becomes sort of the default content creator, I think we're probably not losing the answers. I think they can probably, there's people out there who are going to perfect the way AI gives the answers, right? The accuracy is going to be, like you said, 99 out of a hundred times. It's going to be great. What I worry about is the formative aspects of the people who are actually getting to wrestle with these questions, write them themselves. As somebody who has written an awful lot, it's like, I get a lot out of that writing. And so we're, I think we're maybe sort of neglecting that side of the equation in our quest for answers. And so I just appreciate the caution, at least that you're approaching it with. And that's, again, not, you know, to your point, not to condemn people who are using it, but just to sort of, I suppose, commiserate or share a concern because I think the human element is crucial to what we're doing as Christians. And we need to make sure that when we adopt AI, we're not eliminating that human element or that that human element still has a pride of place in what you're doing. So very much appreciate that. As I'm sure you know.

If you use a straight ChatGPT or the various other BARD, the more popular ones that are out there, and sometimes even on a question related to the Bible or Christianity, it will give a pretty good answer, but it doesn't take too long once you get into hot-button or cultural issues where at best, you're going to get, well, Christians believe this, but basically they're cavemen who haven't adjusted to the times and are hating people who are different than them. It doesn't take too long before you get to that. Filtered AIs where you can train them, answer questions based on this content, it gets decidedly better, but still, it doesn't take too long before it comes out. So some people are trying to build purely Christian AIs where they're only studying Christian content, but then what Christian content? I mean, I'm sure if the two of us talk long enough, we could find issues that we disagree on. So, I mean, okay, which perspective are we giving in this? So ultimately, I think having a human component is best in this. Again, I'm, clearly I'm not anti-technology, and we're considering how we might, at some point, give like an AI chatbot as one possible way to essentially search the content in Got Questions. But we're not there yet. Yeah. It's a really interesting, and I think you're right. I mean, the way I've sort of described it to people is saying, you know, you can be the, imagine you're in a room with, you know, 10 people, and there's one person who is identified as the smartest person in the room. It doesn't mean that smartest person in the room is always going to be right. They're always going to approach things from a perspective. They're always going to issue content selectively. Like, they're going to determine what is and what is not relevant within a given moment. And no matter how smart, quote-unquote, smart AI can be, that's still the same situation you're in. There still has to be a selection of content that is now presented to you. And accuracy is one element of that, but then the other element is the AI is now deciding what is or what is not relevant to your question. And I think that that is an interesting space for technology to be occupying, as opposed to what you all are doing when you're answering a question. You're also doing that. You're synthesizing something down into, and saying, here are the aspects of the scriptures that are relevant to the question that you're asking, but it's at least a human interaction that's not sort of mediated through a coding, you know, a different sort of process so that human-to-human interaction is really distanced even further through that sort of technological creation. So, it's a fascinating question, and I appreciate you kind of entertaining it here, because I could see, you know, Got Questions lending itself, especially with all the content you have, to sort of an AI reader that's going to dig into your content and then give people more real-time answers, right? And one aspect of AI that a lot of people don't think about is that, so Got Questions has been around for 22 years. We've got tons of content. We're online in 200 different languages, so tons of content out there. The AIs are trained on internet-based content. And I can tell that when the ChatGPT has been trained on Got Questions content, sometimes some of the answers they give is like, that's worded awfully close to how we do it. Like, the answer will be structured the same way that we answer a question. And ultimately, I think that's a good thing. I'm not going to be one of those, I'm going to sue them for training. Like, no, hey, at least some of the answers these AIs are giving are based on trustworthy content. And for that, I rejoice. And so we're not blocking the AI spiders from crawling our site, because ultimately, no. I mean, hey, if we're just one voice in the mix, well, hey, we want as many quality Christian sites out there contributing, hopefully pushing these AIs to at least sometimes give good answers. I love it. Well, man, I mean, we're getting close to the end of our time here. Where do you see Got Questions going? Where do you see it going in the next 5, 10 years? I mean, obviously, AI could be a component, but I mean, I'd assume, you know, is it just, you know, sort of continually responding to the questions that people have? Or do you have bigger plans than that? Do you see it pivoting at all? Where are you guys headed? A lot of people ask me that. Like, what's the five, 10-year plan? I'm like, ultimately, until God changes our direction, tilts the steering wheel a little bit, we're going to keep doing what we're doing. But part of that is watching where technology goes and seeing, okay, here's this new platform out. Here's this new technology out. Is there a way that we can use that? Are people going to be using this to search for answers to questions? And if so, how do we get Got Questions there? For example, I mean, we pre-existed the age of smartphones. And so, like, smartphone apps were a huge step for us. I remember the first time someone said, hey, I've been using the Got Questions app for years. I didn't even know you had a website. And they're like, oh, my word. Like, I'm so backwards to the way that I think. But no, it's like that. It's like, are you a YouTube channel? YouTube is now the second most popular search engine in the world. So trying to get as many of our answers into video format so that people go to YouTube and search, they'll find Got Questions content there as well. So basically, whatever technology goes, we want to see if there's a way to leverage it for God's kingdom. But at the same time, people are always going to have questions. So you want to be there with, you can submit questions to us. You can read our articles. You can listen to audios. You can listen to podcasts. You can watch videos. You can use apps. You can read a book. Anywhere where people are searching for answers, we want to be there. So that's our vague strategic plan. But right now, that's the best we've got. No, I mean, I think it's great. I think that you're right. Everybody's going to ask questions. And like we kind of talked about earlier in the interview, it's like, you know, as culture changes, there's going to be different questions asked. And so while the total volume of questions may slow down, it doesn't make the questions that are being asked any less important, any less crucial in the moment. And so really appreciate your ministry, man. I've benefited from gotquestions.org just personally, you know, like I said, when I'm pulling up and asking, just, you know, interested in what people are even asking. Your book is, it was one of those resources I continually go back to. And so I'm glad we could connect on this and I appreciate you being on the show and just pray that your ministry will continue to bless millions and millions of people around the world, Christians and non-Christians alike. And so thanks for being here, Shane. Really appreciate it. James, thanks for having me. I truly enjoyed our conversation and I keep telling people about gotquestions.org. I mean, because as old fashioned it sounds and word of mouth is still one of the best ways to get people to actually hear about something and then actually follow through and use it. Very cool. Well, folks, if you're, if you're out there listening to this episode and you're thinking about gotquestions.org, obviously all the links will be in there, but you can just type in gotquestions.org. You type in almost any biblical and theological question and gotquestions.org will appear in your search history. I'm very confident of that, but check out the show links for more information. Check out the show links for Shay's book as well and encourage you to buy that. It's really good. It gives you a sense of, of these different questions that folks are asking. And so check out the show notes and and buy the book today. So thanks, Shay, for being here. And thanks everybody for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. 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