Jason: 0:01

Hey guys, jason here, before we get started today, I wanted to let you know that we were talking to our friend, dr Jenna Harmon in this episode. We were doing it on Zoom and we had a little bit of technical problems this week, but it does get better after a few minutes. But hang in with us, guys, because we are changing platforms and things will be sounding awesome soon with some really exciting new guests. Hope you enjoy the episode. Awesome soon with some really exciting new guests.

David: 0:26

Hope you enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Boundless Bible. My name is David Shapiro. Hey, I'm Javi Marquez.

Jason: 0:34

And I'm Jason.

David: 0:35

Holloway. Welcome to the Boundless Bible. Everybody, How's it going?

Jason: 0:43

Awesome today, thank you.

David: 0:44

Good. Today, on the Boundless Bible, we are honored to welcome someone who speaks deeply to both the heart and mind. Dr Jenna Harmon is a teacher, author and host of the Ex-Skeptic podcast, where she explores the powerful journeys of former atheists who found faith in Christ. With a PhD in religion and theology and a heart for apologetics and discipleship, dr Harmon brings a unique blend of scholarly depth and compassion and insight. Her passion is clear helping others encounter the truth of God's love through reason, story and relationship. She also happens to be one of the most welcoming and loving people which I've personally felt, who lives out Christ's desire to love others. Janna, thank you so much for joining us. It's a real joy to have you on today.

Jana: 1:26

Oh, it's a privilege to be with you all today, thanks, thanks for having me.

David: 1:31

Oh, you're very, very welcome. We're going to kind of throw a softball pitch at you real quick just to ask you an easy question, which is what is one story of the Bible that you really relate to?

Jana: 1:44

A story of the Bible that you really relate to. A story of the Bible, wow. Actually, this morning I was reading the book of Ruth and I find some relationship with that in terms of. I would say that my life journey has been one of taking you out of your comfort zone. Taking you out of your comfort zone, putting you in places that you have no idea what the Lord has in mind for you. But I love the journey of Ruth with Noemi, that she was willing to follow Noemi, follow her God, and to put herself in places that were completely foreign to her, in a field of Boas where she knew no one was putting herself actually a little bit at risk, but the lord knew everything in advance and and so at the end of the day, you know, the lord provided for her. All along. They led, he led them and led her.

Jana: 2:42

And I will say just in relation, just as a quirky relationship, to my own life, I was sitting in a classroom at Biola and a master's degree in apologetics that I had no idea really why I was there and the professor turned to me during lecture midstream and said you're going to direct the show. I had no idea what he meant by that. Podcasts weren't even a thing at the time. There's no way I could have known the steps that the Lord had planned for me and the work that he had for me to do. But it's just one of those things where you just step into obedience and trust and then you find yourself in the most unusual places.

Jason: 3:28

That is incredible. I mean, I found that journey for myself, not nearly as deeply as you have, but that when you trust and when you obey, you find yourself in places you just didn't expect and you couldn't have gotten to on your own accord.

Jana: 3:44

That's exactly right.

David: 3:46

So the second question I have is you've interviewed hundreds of former atheists. What kind of drew to that mission? What surprised you the most about you being drawn that way?

Jana: 3:56

I mentioned that I was in a program in apologetics and I was. I was driven there because I felt myself flat-footed in answering questions to atheists.

Jana: 4:06

I didn't understand that world. I didn't understand the world outside of Christianity. I knew the Bible. I was engaging with seekers and skeptics and I couldn't answer their questions and I found myself afraid and fearful. So I went through this program in apologetics at viola and got out of that. I you know when you, when you look into the, the worldview of christianity, you find that there's a lot there, there's a lot of, there's a lot of history and philosophy and archaeology and just so much that supports that worldview as really the one that seems to be the best fit for reality. It seems to be true and I was convinced of that. But when I came out of that program it was really in the rising heyday of the new atheists. So there was a lot of disdain for Christianityity. There are a lot of dismissal, even though we had this incredible evidence. They would just dismiss christians and christianity out of the hand, and not only just dismissed, it were right contemptuous of it, and I watched that over the years, thinking, well, what would it take?

Jana: 5:22

what would it take if, if they're dismissing this worldview that seems to to really be the best, uh, logical, evidential, evidentially grounded worldview. What would it take? And so I started thinking about that. I was reading lewis cs lewis, of course, I was part of the CS Lewis Institute and and Blaise Pascal and Francis Schaeffer, and really thinking that you know, there's a lot more to us in our humanity than our, than rationality.

Jana: 5:54

There's got to be some other reasons involved in in all of us in terms of how we form our own beliefs and how we become resistant to others and what it would take for someone to change. And and looking at this juxtaposition between christians and christianity and atheists and those who strongly oppose it, what would it take for an atheist to become a christian? Because we both at least those were two worldviews that contended that they believed in objective reality, so there was a common playing ground there. So I wanted to really look and see what it would take on a practical perspective, what it would take for someone like that, someone so resistant or skeptical, to really turn in the direction of God, someone so resistant or skeptical to really turn in the direction of God, and so that's why I went on that journey to investigate 50 former atheists in the story so far right.

Jason: 6:55

Yeah that was in my doctoral work. Oh, that was just in your doctoral work. I thought that wow really.

Jana: 7:00

Yeah, that was my doctoral work. So yeah, I did a mixed method study where they did survey and interview and just looked at all the data associated with that. That's amazing.

David: 7:11

So our other co-host, Javi. We're having some technical difficulties today, which is why you're only talking to Jason, and I want to ask for him In your work with atheists, did you find that there was an emotional or an intellectual issue with believing in embracing the faith?

Jana: 7:37

In terms of, well, like I mentioned before, we are whole people and so all of us embrace our beliefs or resistance or rejection to others, for many reasons intellectual being part of it, emotional being part of it, our experience in life, the people we know, the relationships we have, the things that we presume, the things that are fed to us from social.

Jana: 8:03

You know our social relationships and culture. So when you, when you ask that kind of a question, we'll say, well, it depends on who you're talking to, and it's usually a combination of a lot of things. And and sometimes, if they're I would say if they're they're more in the intellectual framework, they're more science-related philosophers, a STEM, really thinkers who are interested in the world of ideas so that they can't believe in the Bible and science or those kinds of things they think, science or or those kinds of things they think. But there are also a lot of intellectual presumptions against god that are made by people who aren't particularly intellectual too. Um, yeah, so there there's there. Sometimes there's an emotional component. Someone can have really bad circumstances in life they can have a negative experience with someone who's religious.

Jana: 9:03

A religious person. They cannot think that Christianity is good because they think it just holds moral positions that they find disdainful. Again, it doesn't match with what they want and what they desire. Again, there's just a combination. I would say you just tap into any one person and you'll find elements of a lot of those things.

Jason: 9:26

Yeah, I agree, I have a question for you, which is that after you know you said you got into it because you couldn't understand why people could be atheists, right, and you found yourself getting in conversations where you didn't have you know, you weren't able to, you know, maybe answer them in the way that you wanted to. Do you feel, after doing all of these interviews, that you now, when somebody comes to you with one of those questions, obviously you're more prepared. But do you feel more prepared? I find myself, even though I feel prepared, I never feel prepared enough. I'm just curious how it would be for somebody who spent a lot of time picking it apart and putting it back together.

Jana: 10:06

That is a really good question. I think preparation for me never ends and I first of all, let me just say that I depend heavily on the spirit of God to help me in discernment when I'm sitting across the table from someone In fact I was sitting across the table from someone this past week whose daughter college student is rejecting God. And so, despite all of the theoretical things that I know, the grounding of belief, the questions I have in my head, the reasons why I think she's wrong or whatever, there's still, there's still a dance. I would say there's a dance, there's a sense in which you're never really quite sure what someone is truly thinking.

Jana: 11:00

There's a gentleman named Tom Scott and he says and he's an evangelist, he goes on campuses, he's been doing it for probably 20 years or more, and he said there are reasons why people give that they don't, why they don't believe. And then there are the real reasons. So I was sitting across from this college student in my lab. I've known her since she was a baby and she was expressing to me her disbelief in god and of course I. She was coming up with all of these very kind of intellectual reasons and we were wrestling with that and, like mary jo sharp says, you can play intellectual ping pong, but I got the sense in which you can go on, yes, for days with that that it wasn't really breaching her real issues. I think her real issues are much, much deeper than that.

Jana: 11:55

Uh, a lot of hurt I think, in her life a lot of isolation, um, she has a different lifestyle, I believe, and so there are a lot of these other issues that are brewing underneath the surface. So when you're, when you're talking with somebody, like I say, it's a bit of a dance, but it's always, first of all, not presuming that you know what they they believe or they don't believe that you the first thing that you want to do is try to try to pull that out. What is your story? You know, why do you believe that and how did you come to believe that and why do you think that? You know, you're trying first of all, to understand what are those objections, the real reasons for disbelief, and I think, oftentimes, until you can't get there, then other things are this superficial again, the dance that may not get you anywhere except around the dance floor in a circle, and you keep going around in circles. So.

Jana: 13:06

So preparation, though, I will say, is key, because she was bringing up some points, um, that I was able to wrestle with, you know, with her intellectually asking questions. You know she feels like she has meaning in life, she feels like she has purpose in life, and but yet she has. You know, I was asking her about well, how do you ground that? Where does that come from from your perspective? You know so. So there there's a real, real sense of, as christians, understanding our own worldview and what it brings, and understanding the others and maybe what it doesn't bring. I think a lot of people they will reject Christianity and they're good about destroying it, dismissing it, but they haven't really thought very clearly about their own worldview and what they're, what they have embraced if they have rejected.

Jason: 14:07

Yeah, I think it's really important. What you just said about making sure that you listen and don't presume before you go tell somebody else why they do or not believe, which reminds me of first James or James one, where he says you know, be slow to be quick to listen and slow to speak. And I think that's one of those important things to remember when talking to somebody who doesn't believe is you have to, you have to ground yourself in their disbelief before you can even approach their disbelief. That being said, I also I don't know if you know this but I was a person who grew up in church. I left the faith at 18 for a lot of the reasons that you've said previously, for philosophical reasons, for, you know, it didn't suit me or it didn't fit with what my experience had been, and I left the church for 25, 26, 27 years, a very long time. I'm very old and I left for a very long time.

Jason: 15:00

And, you know, I was the person who had those arguments and I was the person who had those fights and I was the person who could debate it to, you know, the nth degree, and it wasn't until, I mean, first of all, I had, you know what could only be called a holy experience. And you know God pulling me back in and saying you need to listen. Now it's time for you to pay attention, need to listen. Now it's time for you to pay attention. And so I've spent the last two years kind of I don't know untangling the life that I've woven for myself over the last 25 or so years. And one of the things that I realized and I'm curious how common this is, just because I haven't met anybody who has this experience but what I had, what I realized, was that I was very confident in what I knew and yet I didn't actually know. And so, you know, the thing about being atheist is you're so busy saying no, that's not true, no, that's not true, no, that's not true. But when you dig into my own arguments, I also tell you you know, actually I don't know that's true either. So I had to take this step into agnosticism before getting a new.

Jason: 16:00

So I went atheist to agnostic and then I realized that agnostic means I don't know. That's what it means. There's no sense of certainty in anything. So I can't put certainty in my atheism, but I also can't put certainty in. You know, if you're truly agnostic, you can't put certainty in either one, and so that makes the whole world open back up. All your presuppositions have to fall apart, all of your paradigms have to shift or be destroyed for what it's worth, and you have to build them up from the beginning again. And this may be kind of controversial, but I consider myself still to be agnostic, in that sense that every time I go into a conversation, I go in with no presuppositions.

Jason: 16:41

Yes, I am a Christian, yes, I believe in these things, but I don't hold them so tightly that I'm willing to that. I'm willing to fight everybody else about them. I'm here for the truth, I'm here for the openness. It just so happens that when you seek truth, you keep finding God. But I'm curious, from your experience, how often that seems like a path back to God, or if that's not the case. I don't know. I'm just curious.

Jana: 17:04

No, I think in fact, you're spot on, and with those who are really truly intellectually honest with themselves, they find themselves in a kind of a precarious situation like that, the story that we have released right now. His name is jeff geibel, math teacher, and I don't know if you've heard that story or not, but it's it's. He fell into that same situation where he had a really challenging upbringing, let's just say, decided he wanted. He found church as a place of an oasis, apart from the chaos of his own person, of his own home experience, and ended up embracing christ and and all of those things and became an evangelist, learned apologetics and then, based upon an experience, he had an amazing experience with god and was confirming for him that god is real. And he had this other, really strange experience and I'll let you listen to that.

Jana: 18:11

That can be. That made him wonder if experience alone was not sufficient, because we can be fooled, right. So he became an extreme skeptic and started a chat room, basically for about five years, of how do you know so anyone who would come in. He would say well, how do you know that? Okay, that's amazing.

Jana: 18:35

Express proposition. Well, how do you know that? You know it was like a child going. Why, why, why, why? And he said he lived in this place of extreme agnosticism, which is a really hard place to be, which is a really hard place to be, and.

Jana: 18:48

But ended up and this seems to be an interesting and recent theme that I'm hearing and that is that for him, he was a math teacher and the aha moment for him was when he was in graduate school and he learned 29 basic axioms from which you have to, you know, express your all of math, math and and. But those basic math, math axioms have to require some kind of degree of right, faith, right to order, accept that, to accept those propositions or presuppositions in order to move forward. And then he said I realized that I have a choice here. There are different sets of presuppositions. There are there, you know math, but in terms of metaphysics, you know, there are those that presume god doesn't exist. There, there are those that presume god exists. Which one? Which brute facts about reality am I going to accept? And he looked at his own life and the experiences of his, his love for his wife, his love for his nine children. You know that there were experiences in life that seemed better to cohere with the christian worldview and the grounding of it rather than not. So he moves forward and in fact I've heard this complaint a lot that someone will come on, a skeptic, and say I'm still skeptical.

Jana: 20:18

I mean, I live my life as a skeptic. I'm always seeking towards truth. I don't think that your point is very well taken. I don't think we should ever be in a place where we're so close minded. You know, I think that the Lord gives us confidence and you know there's, there's language in the, in the scripture about. You know, so that you can know. But in our own human limited capacities, you know, there, we are limited in our capacity. We're never certain. There's never proof in this world in terms of 100% certainty. Certainly the Holy Spirit confirms for us and the scripture confirms for us and certain objective realities confirm for us that this is the truth and you know, it is the story of reality that makes the most sense, the most correspondent to reality, is the most coherent it's the most comprehensive, you know, in terms of the things that we can know.

Jana: 21:17

But, yes, um, skeptic there it's kind of like the word deconstruction. Right, there's the word skepticism. It can be good in the sense that we are seeking after that, which is true, and I think a lot, of, a lot of people again like you, jason, are like thinkers. You know they're constantly wrestling with yes, I'm, I'm. You know I forget what his percentage was. You know it's in the majority percentage. You know that I really think I'm in the right place here. I can't be for certain, but I want to be open to wherever the evidence leads, and that's where some people just find themselves, in this place of cognitive dissonance. But yet the evidence seems to be leading towards God. Like you say, the more that you look, the more you're going in the direction of God.

Jason: 22:11

You did an episode with Michael Guillaume I think I have to tell you his name, Michael Guillaume. He read, he wrote Believing is Seeing and you know, when I read his story I felt a kindred spirit there because, you know, he found his agnosticism, or his belief, even through science. And he found, you know, the crazy thing about science is people think that science is written in stone and yet everything that's written in stone is actually in sand, and why any of it actually works is a huge mystery. Like even the scientists who know the most about the most what they find out is they know nothing. And the deeper you go into what you know, the less you find out you know, and I have had that experience too.

Jason: 22:55

I mean, I'm just one of those tinkerers. I like science and quantum physics and psychology and philosophy, and the more you learn, the more you realize that you do not know. And that's where the birth of my agnosticism was. And so I felt a real kindred spirit with him and I just I like to say it out loud because I feel like there's other people in this world who are coming up against the wall of oh my goodness, I thought I knew so much and now I know and I don't know, you know, and, but to do what? What to do with that not knowing? And so this is the opportunity to just open it up.

David: 23:31

So, David, you know it's fine. I you know what's interesting. I'm not going to take full credit for it, but one of the things that happened a couple of years ago was across the table for me, was this gentleman next to me and he was the one who I was given by the church to go hey, have coffee with this guy. He's a thinker and he's had some questions, and why don't you just have this conversation with him? And again, nothing that I said do I take credit for it. It was fully God that worked on him. But I have a deeply moved moment with him where I look at him now. I look at him from where we were in that conversation I had. I'm just curious about you Is there a conversion story that just deeply moved you, that changed you from somebody that you had talked to and just that sticks to you?

Jana: 24:22

Wow, I've heard so many, and I will tell you, though, that there are some that just kind of they do stick with you, because I think it's a reminder for me that no one is too far from the love and the hand of the father. But there's a story from a guy named Chris Adam, and I met him at a conference. He was standing next to me in line as we were waiting to register, and I thought this guy has a story. I just knew it and I would encourage anybody to go listen on my podcast with it, but he grew up also in a very difficult environment, where love for him meant abuse, so he knew he didn't want any part of that. Uh, it came from his, his family, his mother particularly. He was also perceived as stupid, when in fact he's probably a genius, and so he was misunderstood and abused. But he was very bright, so you can imagine, you know the reasons why he dismissed, god, there's um.

Jana: 25:38

He was rejected and abused, but he said he knew that he had, because of his intelligence and his ability to articulate things, he had the ability to lead. And so he, he found this sense of power. And the power and that he found was in dark spirituality, in the occult and um, and he lived in that world and he moved in that world as a leader, at least among his peers, you know, as someone, as someone who was influential and understood, and even understood how to engage with dark spirits. His mother was concerned about him, as should be Asked that. There was a pastor across the street and said would you talk to my child? There was a pastor across the street and said would you talk to my child?

Jana: 26:31

And so he chris with his, his friend, I also engaged in the same spiritual darkness as as he was went into this man's office at church and they actually started using the computer keyboard as a Ouija board, channeling dark powers or spirits to type things on the computer about the pastor that could not have been known otherwise. You know, there's just no way. And when the pastor saw that he said oh, you're seeking power. I can tell you where and who the source of real power is, and his name is jesus christ. And the girl was completely undone and gave you, fell face down. I mean, this is a dramatic story no, they're not all like this, um but she fell face down and gave her life to christ. And then, of course, they their relationship became contentious.

Jana: 27:30

But she fell face down and gave her life to Christ and then of, course their relationship became contentious but she kept pushing the Bible on him and he's like I don't want to have anything to do with it. But he eventually reached a point where he was actually interested in some kind of you know, interested in some kind of you know end world things and, you know, started reading revelation and just getting these ideas in his head.

Jana: 27:54

and I won't, I really don't want to give away the rest of the story it's a great cliffhanger because it's pretty dramatic is, yeah, it's pretty dramatic, but he ended up because he's a, he's a, a genius, and with AI, he ended up developing a Bible app that's driven by AI that can amplify the Bible in so many different ways.

Jana: 28:18

And we're still working together, actually doing some projects. So, but just again, that is. You know that's drama, but we but, but the reality is we live in a spiritual world and I think a lot of people don't understand the spiritual warfare and the vow that goes on for the lives and the souls of men and women. And, you know, these might be intellectual issues and people might have emotional issues, but at the end of the day, it's a spiritual issue because there is a spirituality over which Jesus is King of Kings and he, you know, fighting for our souls and so but yeah, I think, I think, as Christians, we need to be reminded that just because we see someone who may be distant or, you know, really far, and you think there's no way, it's not worth it, it's not an investment, not worth praying for him or her, it's so worth praying.

Jana: 29:11

It's so worth praying and engaging where the Lord provides opportunity, because you just never know. Now he's just a soldier for the kingdom.

Jason: 29:20

Again, I think it's so interesting the thing that I've learned over the past year and I'm still trying to come to terms with it or fully understand it which is that there are two very different sides to Christianity. There is the academic, cognitive, scholastic side. It's the knowledge, it's the apologetics, it's all those, but there is definitely a spiritual, more so even, a spiritual and human and emotional side to the faith, and it is where you feel God and and those who have felt God can't deny that feeling of God, even those who want to deny, when they've had that experience of seeing God face to face or side by side or, you know, in in the presence of. Eventually it's, it's, it's inevitable to talk about. And so you know, one of the things that I, that I'm again, I'm trying to come to terms with it, because, on one hand, we are, we are bred to discuss things with people in cognitive ways and we are not bred to, we have to pray for people, but praying for people doesn't feel when you're face to face with them, like like the action that they're looking for, and you can't force the Holy Spirit on them and you can't force the presence on them. And so you know, you do have to pray for them and you have to do that, and you have to do that with great faith and you have to do that with a belief that it's going to help them. But there's this interesting thing I've been playing with, with the with on the cognitive side, which is that, um, you know, and I and I, I did a Stanford class with, uh, robert Sapolsky, who's like this, leading geneticist, behavior, behavioral genetics is really cool. But I learned this idea of phase thinking.

Jason: 30:56

So, phase one thinking, phase two, fate thinking. Phase three, where phase one is basically you're learning it wrong, but at least you're learning the framework, um, it's the reason you learn I before E, except after C, even though that's not really a rule, um, but it gets you, it gets you in the door right. And then phase two is where you start to like ease into some of the exceptions and the exclusions and the, and so forth and so on. And then third is to really get into the nuts and bolts, where there's just as many exceptions as there are truths, there's just as many rules as there are, you know, falsehoods and so forth and so on.

Jason: 31:27

And I say all of that to say that I think one of the problems and I'm curious what your thoughts on this of Christianity right now is. Most people only have a phase one understanding of Christianity. They know what they learned as children, they know what they learned at the basis of, you know, societal understanding of Christianity, but they don't go and figure out what the phase two and the phase three are. So they're still hampered by this very minuscule understanding of the faith, very small understanding of what any of it means or where it came from, or how it came to be or any of that.

Jana: 32:27

No-transcript are you saying a christian to christian? Yeah?

Jason: 32:32

even even christian to christian. I mean, I think both are true.

Jana: 32:34

I think most christians have a phase one, maybe phase two, but well, I would say that what I've, the intellectual component of our faith, is completely grounding, important. You know, it is foundational, right. All of those things I will say in my experience of it, whether um christian, non-christian, unless there's a felt need to know, they're not interested and that's a shame. I think it's a real indictment on the church. That is not a just a basic component of how we, you know, the framework for reality, christian worldview, how the scripture fits in, you know, amplifies all of reality. We've created a very reductionistic view of, you know, I just know my Bible and my verses and it's good for me. When, when you're, if you're evangelizing, you're, you're bumping up against other worldviews and you're trying to understand things and either you retreat because you don't know it. But I'm finding that more people, especially as people they know and love, are leaving faith. They're wanting to know you know, so they're. It creates this felt need. But I will, I will say, and this is very important, in fact, this is one of the most fascinating things in my research, when I looked at those 50 stories uh, okay, you know, people resist god. Okay, what is, what is the catalyst? Was the million dollar question? What is the catalyst that will produce openness where it's reconsidering the possibility of god. For you, jason, it sounds like you were having some intellectual wrestling going on, and that is a part of it.

Jana: 34:35

But for the majority of those, at least in that group of 50, and I'm looking at a group of scientists right now but for that group of 50, what opened them was not an intellectual or rational argument or reason or evidence. They weren't necessarily curious about it from an intellectual or rational argument or reason or evidence. You know, they weren't necessarily curious about it from an intellectual perspective. It was a very human reason. Um, you know, there was something about christianity that became attractive or good or reason. Um, let's just say there was someone they met that broke down their preconceived negative sensibilities about Christianity, or they had this either sense of intellectual longing you know, because, gee, you know, a scientist in my worldview is not making sense of increasing data or it could be that my, you know, we have a huge meaning crisis out there.

Jana: 35:38

They, you know, somebody's like okay, I've lived in expressive individualism for long enough. This is exhaustive. I'm not finding myself, my identity, I'm lost, I'm empty, I'm lonely. You know, in this technological era where we're having increased loneliness, isolation, meaninglessness, you know, searching all these things that you know. People are moving from this sense of liquid modernity, you know, and I'm my own god, and that sounds really good too. Okay, let's find something stable here where is, or something I can hold on to, that's real and true, that actually does provide all the things that I'm humanly right raving value, love, belonging, sense of purpose.

Jana: 36:30

You, what's life all about? Who am I? Those big questions, those seem to be the bigger driver as a door opener. They're just door openers and then, over time, though, they didn't want to embrace Christianity if it wasn't true. I think that there is a certain, and I seem to be a little bit of a lone voice, but I think that there's something that I consider to be existential oddness, like there's a moral oddness about reality. I think that there's an existential oddness, an existential truth, that the only worldview that matches with our desires, the argument from desire, the only worldview that matches that or provides for that or satisfies that, is the Christian worldview. And I think that a reductionistic view of apologetics to merely the intellectual is missing out on this larger story that everyone wants to be a part of. Everybody wants to feel loved, valued, purposed, have a sense of belonging. You know, those are very deep, human.

Jason: 37:40

Intrinsic needs.

Jana: 37:41

Intrinsic needs. Yes, that they are a huge apologetic. You know we need to be here saying only the Christian worldview provides those things that your heart is craving for. Yes, the intellectual part grounds that, it sustains, that it helps to sustain, that is true. But you're right, Jason, I think we need to have a much more fully or holistic kind of human. I don't mean that in a humanistic way, but in a human way that connects with people and the things that they're actually looking for in life. But you know we provide that. And hey, by the way, I've told David that David David is.

Jason: 38:30

you know, has already mentioned that he was one of the kind of leading factors that led me, led me back into it. And it wasn't the conversations, although those were fascinating, and it wasn't the logic, although that was fascinating, but it was watching who he was as a person, it was seeing who he had been transformed into and Javi, who very sadly isn't on this call with us, but the two of them seeing who they are and seeing who they were, and who they were because of Christ, that was the motivating factor.

Jason: 38:55

If I could take a quick question what's the age? Was there a median age that you found that people tended to realize, oh, none of this is making sense and I need to get somewhere quickly.

Jana: 39:05

Yeah, at least in that particular study, the average age of leaving faith was 15, and I would say it's a little bit younger, but the average age of a catalyst was 26. They lived in atheism for about 10 years on average. Of course, some lived decades, some lived short periods, but yeah, I guess it was the quarter life crisis.

David: 39:36

What's interesting is there's actually some research now that young men older teens are actually coming back to the church at a larger rate, which is incredible based on what you've seen.

Jason: 39:49

Yes, Well, we just finished talking to some we just finished talking to some youth and they made a really good point.

Jason: 39:55

He's he's 18, I think, and he said you know, you should, you guys should be aware that we are in our age group. There are many people who don't have hobbies. Their entire hobby is scrolling through their phone and they don't do other things. And I and I think that has something to do with it I, you know, when you don't have anything and you don't have any purpose, there goes what you said before. It's just opening up earlier in life. It's the realization that you need something and that you're lonely and that there's a big world out there and you're not a part of it, and it's just coming a little earlier now and I think that has a lot to do with it as well. It was a really spot-on, insightful comment, yep um we're yeah, no, I oh, yeah, go ahead.

Jana: 40:40

I was going to say, yeah, I think it. Actually. It is interesting to see this trend that's happened over the past, I would say five years or so, uh, with jordan peterson right, giving young men something like okay, get up, make your bed, do something that's purposeful. You know, do something. You know the full atheist movement, christianity wasn't true and it was not good. Now, you know, people are saying, well, no, actually it helped stabilize society.

Jana: 41:26

There's really good moral structure in the Bible, you know. There's something good and meaningful and and something worth hanging on to a solid foundation, a rock rather than sand. You know, all these things that are allowing these young men who are craving in this society where femininity is masculinized and you know the masculine is feminized um, you know, and they're, they're searching for their identity going. No, we're not like that, we want to be more, we need more, you know, and they're actually going to very demanding forms of christianity, even orthodoxy and catholicism, and even charismatic movement. There, um, things that seem real or true or even weird, you know, like something to hang on to that's different than the world.

Jason: 42:18

And it's exciting, yeah, it's ironic because, stoicism had a big you know, had a big rise over the past 10 years or so, and the problem with anybody who ever tried stoicism is that it's a long game with no end and not a very fruitful one at that. And yet when you look at the discipline that is required to be stoic and then you look at the discipline that is required to be faithful in the Old Testament, new Testament version, you actually see something very similar, except you have an end in sight and you're not alone and there are others who care for you, and there is a God who is on your side. And it's like and I was looking at that the other day I was like that's really an interesting byproduct of no meaning is that you could find the thing that's very, very similar yet has meaning, and pull it all together. And now, now here we are and thank God we are.

Jana: 43:17

Yeah, yeah, I think there's a movement, I think there's a movement.

David: 43:21

So one of the things that, uh, I just want to leave with is, uh, even people like me, who've you know, seem like I have it all together. I have all the information. I love to defend the faith. Uh, I love to read through the Bible. There are moments we have where I started going through imposter syndrome.

David: 43:38

the other day, oh for sure, and one of the people that I reached out to was Jana, and actually was the only person who was able to give me some advice to pull me out, which I truly appreciate. But, jana, where can listeners follow your work, your podcast, where can they hear from you? Because I think what you say is really valuable to a lot of people.

Jana: 44:00

Most of the work that I do is with ExSkeptic. So we have a website, exskepticorg. We have a YouTube channel. One of the greatest things or greatest is that terrible to say about your own? One of the greatest things or greatest is that terrible to say about your own website? But when people here's the thing these stories.

Jana: 44:22

we have over 120 stories now of former atheists and skeptics, but they don't only just give their story so you can kind of see how someone moves from resistance to openness to faith but they also give advice to Christians who are trying to engage with non-believers or skeptics, and they also, as former skeptics, give advice to curious skeptics as to how to take steps forward towards God and what we've done, because if somebody comes to our site, they're like well, gee, there's so many stories. You know where do I go. We've developed playlists of certain types of stories you know and certain certain hard questions like can I believe in science and God? It was, so we've created a playlist of stories that particularly deal with that issue.

Jana: 45:07

Or is it rational to believe in God? Or you know, I don't. You know what. What about you know? Does it really matter that I believe in God? Or you know what? If life hurts? Is God good? Or you know? There's just a lot of different playlists that that we're still in the process of developing. We we have developed nine of those. So if you're looking for something particular, certain kind of story that you think that might be helpful, take a look on our YouTube channel again. That's outstanding.

David: 45:37

Amazing and not to self-promote, but I do believe I make an appearance on one of those episodes coming up.

Jana: 45:43

You do, on August 15th, your episode David's episodes. There you go, we're going to have a premiere, we're going to have a red carpet.

David: 45:51

We're going to do the whole thing for him. We're going to have a premiere, we're going to have a red carpet. We're going to do the whole thing for them.

Jana: 45:53

We're going to do the whole thing. Yes, top hat and all yes. Top hat and all yes. Yeah, jason, it sounds like you need to come over to the premiere as well. I would appreciate that.

Jason: 46:04

I would be very enjoyable as well. But, Janet, this has been so wonderful. I have appreciated this. I have taken way too much of the talking part of this and I apologize for that to David and.

David: 46:14

Daniel, it's good to see you so excited, and hopefully Jan will allow me to keep poking in emails at her, so I'll spend a little time with her.

Jason: 46:22

Well, we really appreciate your time. We appreciate your insights. They are outstanding. We would love to do this again with slightly less technical problems, maybe next time, but we appreciate you. We are thankful for you and to all of our listeners we are also thankful to you. We appreciate you, we appreciate your time. We know you could be doing lots of other things, but you are here with us learning about God, learning about why it's important to continue this journey of faith and even how to help those around you become closer in that faith or come to that faith. Also appreciate your likes, comments, reviews and we look forward to talking to you next week. Thanks a lot, thank you.