Diary Of A CEO: w/ Wesley Huff on Christianity (Transcript)

So it appears people are more unanchored than they’ve ever been. And that was to some degree glamorized. But it also appears that when we are unanchored, when we don’t have responsibilities or we’re not part of something, mental health issues are quick to follow.

And for this generation, they’re suffering the most with those types of mental health issues. And then one would assert that they would therefore be searching more for answers to some of these existential questions.

WESLEY HUFF: Expressive individualism, I think it rose. That’s the kind of the terminology in sociological literature that they refer to it. But I think you touched on a good point in that as we removed God, part of the intellectual enlightenment was that we would move away from the shackles of religiosity and the concept of a creator and that would lead us into a utopia. And I think the more and more we’ve removed that from society, that hasn’t decreased our levels of anxiety and depression and meaning. I think it’s increased it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. And especially celebrity worship, social media, building a following of your own, like sort of low key narcissism. Yeah. Has made us more and more and more and more important. And that seems to correlate with worse and worse and worse mental health when you start to become more individualistic and think more and more about yourself and self importance versus others and a bigger picture.

WESLEY HUFF: I think we are created for community. I think we are as human beings a creature that is created for community ultimately. Cards on the table, as a Christian, because I believe we are created in the image of a God who exists in a set of living, loving relationships. That’s what the Trinity is. When we talk about that idea within Christian theology, God exists in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And so being created in the image of God, part of that is you are created for relationship.

And so in a society that’s continually removing us — you need to be an influencer, you’re influencing everybody else — I think we’re not created to be lone wolves or lone rangers. We’re created to live amongst community and have that be something that likewise gives us fulfillment.

It’s not that people who are leaders, rise to the top are wrong by any stretch, but in a society where we’re alone together because we are sitting behind computer screens and we’re talking to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in some cases, but we’re secluded. I think that that does something to our souls because we were made to be in relationship with other people.

From Crisis of Meaning to Christianity: Making the Case

STEVEN BARTLETT: I agree with everything you’ve said as it relates to the sort of crisis of meaning in society. And I also agree with many of your reasons as to why that’s occurred. The part that I’ve always struggled with is then the answer being Christianity or any other religion?

Sure, I agree with so many of the things you’ve said. But then my brain has, I think, especially after the age of 18 when I started reading about all this new atheist stuff and these questions of evil and am I going to hell and all these other things, I’ve not been able to get there.

But I’m having this conversation with you today because I am open minded and although I’ve got difficult questions to ask, I’m in pursuit of the truth, not any particular ideology or answer. So how do you take someone like me who agrees that there’s clearly something missing, who believes that there’s something transcendent? It could be a crazy thing to assume that this is it, I think.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How do you take them from this position to believing that what’s written in this book in front of me, the Bible, is the thing that should guide my life. Because I, again, I say that. I’m just going to say this again that I think I require a really high standard of evidence because of the way that I am.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. You know, I think there’s a historical case for it which I’m very much invested in because my training formerly is in historiography. I study ancient biblical manuscripts and their kind of reliability and fidelity over the last couple of millennia.

So looking at some of those manuscripts that actually can trace back to the actual time frame of Jesus and answering questions like, is what we have now what the original authors wrote back then? So I think there’s a historical question to it.

And I, in my own personal investigation, genuinely think that the evidence, the publicly available evidence, gets us back to not only the timeframe of Jesus, but to early eyewitness testimony that proclaims that this first century Jewish itinerant rabbi who was walking the dusty streets of 1st century made these claims. And then there is sufficient evidence to say that he predicted his own death and resurrection and did it.

Was Jesus Real? The Historical Evidence

STEVEN BARTLETT: How do I know Jesus Christ was real and then how do I know what’s written in that book is real versus just some guys thousands of years ago made a book.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. So that is a question of historical reliability. So there are a couple different ways we could go about it. First, we have four biographical accounts of Jesus’ life, which is very unusual. So we call them the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Those aren’t actually our earliest source material for the life of Jesus. That comes in the person of Paul. Paul is actually writing before the Gospel accounts. And he is someone who was hostile originally to the Christian message and he is persecuting Christians. He comes along and he has this radical conversion experience when he’s traveling to Damascus where he says he’s literally thrown off a horse. He hears God’s voice and it’s Jesus. And he says, “Paul, why are you persecuting me?” And then he writes these things about his experience and then ultimately goes and connects with the individuals who we call the disciples, who are like this close Jesus community, and connects with them. So he’s our earliest source.

But then you have these Gospel accounts, these biographies. And the Gospels are interesting because they fit within the historical framework of ancient Greco Roman biography. So let me give you an example. The most well known person in Jesus’s day was the Emperor. His name is Tiberius. Tiberius has four biographical accounts that are written about him. Velleius Paterculus, Cassiodorus, Suetonius and Tacitus. So these are the four guys, okay.

And what’s interesting in sort of a comparative analysis of Jesus and those people is that they’re all writing around the same time period. So the biographies are coming from the first century for Jesus. They’re coming in this time period where you have an early eyewitness testimony for the Emperor, for the most well known person in the ancient world. All of the sources except for Velleius Paterculus are coming from the second century. Velleius Paterculus is coming from the first century. He’s very close to the source, but he’s a paid propagandist. So even though he’s the earliest, he’s the least reliable.

And for the Gospels that comes around in the 4th century. So there’s a comparison with the source material for someone like Jesus, even though we really shouldn’t have anything about him because he’s kind of a nobody from nowhere in terms of the Roman Empire and the grand scheme of things. But we have a phenomenal amount of source information for his life.

The Gap Between Jesus and the Written Gospels

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, this is one of the things I discovered when I went through that new atheist phase was that really everybody kind of agrees that there was a guy called Jesus from Nazareth and that he was a real historical person. I guess the part in dispute was whether things like his resurrection actually happened or whether he was just a spiritual leader back then, like we have spiritual leaders today.

And I think one of the things that I got really stuck on when I was reading about Jesus in the Bible was there appears to be quite a significant gap between his life, his death, and then the writings that go into the Bible. And for me, in my head I was like, well, if something happened in my life 50 years ago, I mean, I’m only 33, but if something happened 50 years ago, I would not be able to recount it. Frankly, I can’t recount what happened last week accurately, let alone like decades ago.

You must have heard this argument before. Yes. How do you square the circle here?

What Is the Bible? Understanding Its Structure and Origins

WESLEY HUFF: So there are a few things going on. First, we live in a hyper literate culture. We are writing everything down. The ancient world was far less of a literal culture. They were an oral culture. These stories would have been passed in large groups at time frames. Especially if we’re talking about the biographical material of Jesus, it is actually written in a closer timeframe than the majority of anyone else in the ancient world.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What was that gap?

WESLEY HUFF: It’s about 40 to 60 years.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I really want to — I imagine there’s some people listening that have probably never read the Bible. And I really want to explain to them, like, what this book is in the simplest terms. I can open your Bible.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, of course, yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So is there like chapters in here?

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. So the Bible is, though we now have it in one book, is 66 books written over a period of about 1600 years on three different continents by close to 40 different authors in three different languages.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I’ve just opened your Bible and there’s one section that says the Old Testament, there’s another section that says the New Testament. What am I looking at? Like, is this God’s words? Is this a bunch of people’s stories that have been compiled together? What is the Old Testament? What’s the New Testament? What’s the difference?

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, so the Old Testament is the Hebrew scriptures. So that’s the scriptures of the Jewish people.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

WESLEY HUFF: So that is, it starts in what’s referred to as the Torah, which are the first five books or the five books of Moses. And then that goes in a timeframe all the way up to the period of the Persians.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So that’s a certain time frame.

WESLEY HUFF: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And they’ve gone and collected books from that time frame. Writings from that time frame.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. So the ancient Jewish people had — and remember, all of these books, they would have circulated as independent writings.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

WESLEY HUFF: So we start to see things like this happen in the 4th century. Prior to that, everything’s in independent scrolls. So there’s an understanding when even you get them all sort of put in one unit that would have contained the Scriptures, the word of God, more so than like, this is the word of God.

STEVEN BARTLETT: The reason why I am unapologetic and very open about my total naivety is because often in these conversations, you end up kind of preaching to the choir.

WESLEY HUFF: Sure.

STEVEN BARTLETT: If you know what I mean. And there’s a huge amount of people, especially younger people that went through that new atheist movement, were maybe born in the 2000s, that are now 26 years old, that have never read the Bible, have never even opened one, have no idea what it is. They just think it’s this kind of, like, book of stories.

Yeah, but these — the first — you call these books. I was thinking of them, like chapters. The first one in the Old Testament is Genesis. Who wrote Genesis? Was that a guy or was that God?

WESLEY HUFF: So the idea is, in Christianity, the terminology is what’s called verbal plenary inspiration. So verbal, it’s spoken; plenary, it’s like written down; and then inspired. So there are human authors to all these books.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay. So humans wrote these chapters, but they were inspired by God.

WESLEY HUFF: Yes. So the understanding — so in the Bible itself, Peter says that men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So there’s a historical context to all of these, like the history of this period of time of the nation of Israel as they were being led by particular rulers.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And where does Jesus show up?

WESLEY HUFF: Jesus is the New Testament.

STEVEN BARTLETT: If someone’s never read the Old Testament, what is that about? It’s just describing the time?

WESLEY HUFF: It’s a bunch of different things.

STEVEN BARTLETT: A bunch of different things.

WESLEY HUFF: There’s a whole bunch of genres of literature. So some of it is history, some of it is poetry, some of it is what’s called wisdom literature.

How Was the Biblical Canon Decided?

STEVEN BARTLETT: And who decided that these — it looks like this — I don’t know, it looks like there’s about 40 books in the Old Testament.

WESLEY HUFF: 39 books that are in the Old Testament.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Who decided that those were going to be part of the Old Testament? Because I’m sure that there was lots of other writings at the time that could have been included.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. So by the time that Jesus is around, there’s approximately an agreement of what is considered scripture.

STEVEN BARTLETT: By who?

WESLEY HUFF: By the Jews themselves.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So the Jews decided which 38 books to put in?

WESLEY HUFF: Yes. So you have conversations by individuals. Like, there’s a guy named Josephus who is writing at the end of the first century. Part of what he argues is that the Jewish people don’t have kind of an innumerable number of religious texts like the Greeks do. They have a specific number. And he uses this terminology that they were laid up in the temple. So the idea is that these are the books, they’re housed in the temple, and they’re a set number.

And he gives the number of the same number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, 22. So you usually see this 22 or 23 number, but they group them differently. And he gives an argument that one of the reasons that we can find a timeline for what the Jews consider scripture is he says there’s nothing written before Moses and there’s nothing written after the time of Artaxerxes, which is the Persian Empire.

So the Book of Esther in the Bible is that time period. So though there are writings after that, there’s this agreement that the voice of God in, say, the prophets giving a “thus saith the Lord” statement — like communicating messages to the people of Israel — has ceased. But the Jewish canon, though, there’s like a closing of it. There’s a soft closing. There’s an idea that there’s going to be a new covenant, God is going to make new promises with his people, and so there are going to be more writings.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, so my understanding of that is that he made the case that God is no longer communicating with people to write these books.

WESLEY HUFF: At least that there was a stop point at Malachi. So it’s sometimes referred to as the 400 years of silence for that reason.

STEVEN BARTLETT: From the point of Jesus’ death, what book from the New Testament is written last, and how big is that gap?

WESLEY HUFF: That’s a debate.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, what’s the debate?

WESLEY HUFF: Range of the debate. So it’s a question of whether John’s Gospel is written before 70 A.D. or after 70 A.D., and if it’s written after 70 A.D., it’s written in the 90s. So it’s written pretty far afterwards.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How many years?

WESLEY HUFF: So if Jesus dies in 33 —

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, so about 60. Yeah, okay, fine. Yeah.

WESLEY HUFF: So at minimum, I think like 99% of historians, biblical scholars, classicists, would argue that the 27 books of the New Testament are written in the first century. And so in that sense, they’re in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses to a certain degree.

And there’s evidence even within some of the Gospels where you have these names thrown out kind of randomly. And part of the thinking of that is that this is like citing your sources. At one point when Jesus is carrying the cross to Golgotha, he kind of stumbles and they get another person to carry his cross for a little bit. And that person is Joseph of Arimathea. Well, one of the gospels names one of Joseph of Arimathea’s sons by name. And the thinking is that this is probably someone who’s well known within the early Jesus community. And the purpose of naming that person randomly is to say, he’s actually well known. Go ask him.

Mythological Drift, Memory, and the Reliability of the Gospels

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, logically, there’s quite a risk of Chinese whispers to some degree. As you were speaking, I was trying to think about things that I experienced when I was younger, like with my grandmother before she passed away, and I was trying to accurately recount those memories.

I was thinking of going to a house, and then I remember one day she gave me some money, but I can’t remember what she gave it to me for, and I can’t remember how much she gave me. I know she put it in a card. And this was only like 20 years ago.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And so if I was to write about that today, I would be filling in some gaps. Especially — this is the other thing that I always struggled with — especially in a world where we didn’t understand science. Now my grandmother put it in a card and it was like I opened it. And the way she did it was often as a surprise. So in a world where I didn’t understand physics or science, I might have concluded that my grandmother did something magical at a time when we didn’t understand anything about really much about the nature of the universe and planets and the solar system and physics.

So is that a risk that some of the things that have been transmuted via God into this book in front of me are prone to Chinese whispers, and/or just a lack of understanding about the nature of the world? Like the Resurrection, for example.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. So this is, in my field, referred to as mythological drift. So how do we factor in making sure that mythological drift doesn’t happen? I think there are a couple things related to what you said.

First off, I think I would be careful in trying to ascribe the ancient world as being pre-scientific and therefore largely, say, ignorant. I mean, even when the angel comes to Mary in the gospel story and says, “You’re going to be with child,” Mary’s objection to the angel is a scientific one. “I haven’t met the minimum requirements of how babies are made. Therefore I can’t be pregnant.” Right. So she’s not dumb. She’s not just at face value accepting that, well, I believe in angels, and so this kind of magic thing can happen. She’s still objecting scientifically, even though she might not have the terminology to understand the complexities of childbirth and embryology and all of that.

So I would say this is what the writer C.S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery — that he says we need to be careful not to ascribe the ancient world as being more ignorant and stupid, just because we are a product of the Enlightenment and we understand scientific things now.

The second thing is, I think the Chinese whispers or the telephone game or whatever you call it, is a good kind of case study. I think where it falls short is that if you play the telephone game, if you play Chinese whispers, there are rules in order to corrupt the message. So you have to whisper. You can only say it once. You have to do it one person to one person.

In an oral culture, you would have been hearing these stories constantly. So when some of these stories are told, they’re being told within a lifetime where there could have been individuals who say, “The story of the feeding of the 5,000 — that’s a lot of people.” So there’s a lot of witnesses to this particular event. So if you’re writing this down, there’s an aspect of there are people out there who could verify what is being said, at least orally, not necessarily literarily.

Likewise, what we have in the Gospel accounts, particularly after Jesus’s death, when the disciples proclaiming his resurrection, they go back to Jerusalem, which is the scene of the crime. So they go back to the exact place where Jesus was crucified and start telling people he was risen from the dead. If there is some aspect of, say, disingenuousness in making up a story, don’t go back to the place where everybody could have seen that thing happen, to that degree.

So in one sense, Chinese whispers is a faulty analogy in that it’s less like one person whispering into another’s ear and more like 100 people in a room, all communicating the thing verbally and then getting the other people to repeat it back to them and then corroborating with the other individuals of what’s going on.

Now, I think your point in the story of your grandmother and the letter is a good one. How do we remember things? Do you remember 9/11?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yes, I do. Yes. And I was in the UK at the time.

WESLEY HUFF: Could you tell me a little bit more vividly what you were doing on 9/11 compared to your grandmother and the letter?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yes, I could. Yeah. I remember coming home from school and watching it on the screen and my dad having it on the screen, and I was just looking at the screen.

The Resurrection: Eyewitness Accounts and Historical Evidence

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, me too. So whereas I couldn’t tell you much of what else happened during an average day in that year, I could tell you what happened on September 11, 2001. And that’s because of the nature of what was going on.

And I think when we’re talking about the Gospel stories in particular, first you have what I genuinely believe are eyewitness accounts from at least the source information coming from a group who would have heard Jesus be preaching these things multiple times in multiple different settings. Like it’s probably likely. Myself, as an itinerant, I have given the same talk on a particular subject quite a few times. And I joke with my wife that she could give my talk on the historical reliability of the Bible herself. If I’m sick, I’ll just send my wife, because she’s heard it so many times.

I think that’s the case that’s going on with the disciples. There’s an aspect of they would have heard, say, the Beatitudes, that Jesus most likely more than once, because that’s just the nature of not just itinerant speaking, but even traveling rabbis in the ancient world.

And then you have this event that is kind of earth shattering in terms of their narrative of who they are. They’ve been traveling with this rabbi for three years straight. They’ve been hearing his teaching. They’ve been seeing miracles, at least that are recorded in the Gospels, pretty phenomenal things. And then he gets taken and he’s murdered publicly. And they think it’s over.

There are other messianic movements in the ancient world, most of which you and I aren’t hearing on a regular basis, because when those individuals die, their movement dies with them. And so that’s what they think is happening. They think, okay, we’re done.

So the story is they’re hiding in this upper room and they’re scared. In fact, it’s the women who take on the responsibility of going and figuring things out, which in terms of the time period is actually an embarrassing fact because of the kind of cultural dynamics of what’s going on.

And so you have the disciples who think it’s over. What is it that has 11 scared disciples — because one of them, Judas, goes and he kills himself — 11 scared disciples hiding in an upper room, thinking that’s it, we’re done. We might as well — Peter, James and John might as well just go back to being fishermen, because that’s all she wrote. Then having the boldness to go out and actually proclaim this message ultimately to the level of persecution and hardship that they endure for the rest of their lives. Well, it’s that their rabbi then shows up alive again.

And so, at minimum, I think what we can say is that this is a pretty drastic event that takes place in their life. It’s comparable to a 9/11 event for them. And so in terms of the memory imprint that they are experiencing for the murder of their rabbi, of their teacher, and then something happening where they then go for the rest of their lives — the martyrdom stories are a little bit tricky in terms of their historical reliability. I think a few of them we can say did happen. A lot of them is kind of up in the air, but at minimum, they suffered persecution.

The Empty Tomb

STEVEN BARTLETT: So the story in the Bible is that he was killed on the cross, murdered on the cross, and then he was put into a tomb. And then who saw him come out of the tomb?

WESLEY HUFF: So nobody physically sees him come out of the tomb, but the women go to the tomb in the morning on the third day, and the tomb is empty. And so there are four accounts. And I think it’s interesting also that we have four accounts that kind of give different angles on the stories. It’s not as if they got together and they corroborated and all gave the same story. The fact is that we have four accounts that kind of capitalize on different angles. The differentiation in detail, I think, actually gives credibility to the reliability of it. Because if they were all telling the same thing, you could argue that they got together and they colluded. They don’t do that. In fact, they touch on different aspects of the story.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Are these people saying that they saw him walk out? Are they saying that they just saw it empty? What are the claims being made about his resurrection from these witnesses?

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, so the tomb is empty.

STEVEN BARTLETT: The tomb is empty.

WESLEY HUFF: And so it’s interesting, in one of the accounts, Mary’s at the tomb and she actually talks to Jesus, but she confuses him with a gardener. Now, I think it’s interesting that she doesn’t confuse the gardener with Jesus. She confuses Jesus with the gardener. She thinks that this person she’s talking to isn’t Jesus. She doesn’t recognize him at first. And she asks him what happened. Why is the tomb opened? Where did the body go?

And then there’s also an account of an angel appearing and saying, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He’s not here. He’s risen.” And then they go back to the disciples who are hiding in this upper room. Mary says, “The tomb is empty. I’ve met Jesus. Jesus is not in the tomb. He’s risen.” And some of them don’t even believe her. They think she’s crazy.

Now, we don’t have an eyewitness account of the tomb being open. And this is actually an embarrassing fact in the ancient world. So some of those other gospels that I mentioned earlier that are written later on — Gospel of Thomas, Judas, Mary, Peter — there’s one of them, the Gospel of Peter, which is actually trying to remedy this fact that women are the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb, which is an embarrassing fact in the ancient world. If that’s not true, if they made it up, it seems very unlikely that they would have done that because women are not considered good eyewitnesses in either Greco-Roman or, unfortunately, Jewish society in this time period.

So the Gospel of Peter tries to remedy the situation by having all of the right people in the right place at the right time. It has the Jewish and the Roman officials camping out in front of the tomb when it actually happens, and then recounts the story of literally the stone moving, Jesus coming out, all these things. Now, we know it’s not historically reliable. We know that because of when it was written. We also know that on the eve of Passover, the priests would not be camping out in front of a dead body. It’s just historically anachronistic. But it is an account of a literary source later on that is embarrassed by what we find in here about the biographical information of the empty tomb.

Who Were the Witnesses?

STEVEN BARTLETT: So is it just two women that said they met Jesus in some form after his death? Mary being one of them, which was his mother?

WESLEY HUFF: No.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Who’s Mary?

WESLEY HUFF: Mary. So there are a number of Marys in the New Testament. This was Mary Magdalene.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

WESLEY HUFF: Who was like a close associate.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay. Like a friend.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, so a friend. And then is it just her that says she saw him?

WESLEY HUFF: There was a group of them.

STEVEN BARTLETT: A group of them?

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. Of the women.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay. And they were separate when they saw him? They weren’t — they were on their own.

WESLEY HUFF: They were together. So one of the gospels only mentions Mary. I believe it’s the Gospel of John. But like I said before, it implies that there are more because she says, “We don’t know where they put the body.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

WESLEY HUFF: So though that account only has her recounting, it implies that there are others. And then the other gospels have more women that are going to the tomb.

Can We Trust Human Accounts of the Supernatural?

STEVEN BARTLETT: What degree of certainty do you have that he was resurrected and that he was who he said he was? Because I agree with you that this character clearly existed — Jesus clearly existed, that he was killed probably on a cross. But then you get to this point of resurrection, which you have to then believe in something supernatural.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So what’s the probability you’d assign to it? Likely? Unlikely? Very likely?

WESLEY HUFF: Very likely. Because I think that what the gospel authors are doing is communicating truth. And I don’t ultimately see an overabundance of reason why they would write what they wrote, other than actually recounting a story of what took place.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I grew up in a place called Plymouth in the UK. I was born in Africa. And in my local park there was this big poster on the wall about the White Lady. I’ll put it up on the screen. It’s like a big legend in our city. It’s this park, and everybody says that they see this white lady in the park that was killed, and actually there’s a big board explaining her life, but it’s all just accounts of people that say they’ve seen her.

You have things like the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland as well, where there’s been 1,500 sightings of this big monster in the river. Even up until 2025, there was a surge of sightings of the Loch Ness Monster called the Black Mass in the bay. And that started in 565 AD.

So one of the things that I’ve always sort of struggled with when I think about humans saying they saw something, is we still today have sightings of UFOs and Loch Ness monsters and white ladies in parks that become legend. And actually with the Loch Ness Monster, it’s pretty interesting that even today there are sightings all the time of this monster that lives in the river. Now, I think maybe me and you both agree that there’s no monster in the river, but there’s something going on. There’s something in human nature where we do have a proclivity to engage in supernatural sightings. And then once we’ve heard it once, we then reinforce that we’ve seen it too.

And even as a young man — maybe you believe this — I believed that there was a woman that would stand on the landing of my home, and it would wake me up and I would run and tell my parents that the lady stood on the landing again. There’s people watching this. I think there was actually a lady. Maybe there was. But what I’m getting at is, how can we trust human accounts of these things when clearly humans have an ability to make things up that aren’t real in some situations?

Why the Resurrection Is Different

WESLEY HUFF: Part of the answer to the question is one of the evidences for Jesus’ resurrection is the fact that you and I, Steven, are still talking about it almost 2000 years later.

STEVEN BARTLETT: My friend said this to me. I was telling you before about my Christian friend. He was like, “Why are we still talking about it?” Well, we can’t prove it, right? It didn’t happen. So we’re always going to talk about it. There’s never going to be — I mean, unless something happens, right?

WESLEY HUFF: The difference is that there are these other messianic movements that happen in the ancient world. Simon Bar Giora — the reason why we’re not talking about Simon Bar Giora as a messianic figure is because he died and his movement died with him. And his disciples didn’t go out and then proclaim his continued message to their own detriment.

So I would say a few things. I would say liars make poor martyrs, in that you will die for something you believe is true, but the chances of you dying for something you know is not true are less likely.

So if we’re talking about the disciples, and especially if what they’re getting for this particular proclamation is they’re being ostracized from their own communities — pagan gentile communities and the Jewish communities — because, remember, there was persecution on both sides. Because at a certain point in time, continuing to say that Jesus was the Messiah and on top of that, that he was God himself, was not very popular within the early Jesus communities.

There’s a complexity to the fact that people usually lie for a reason. You look at cultic figures — cult leaders usually do things for prominence or money or sex or influence. The interesting thing about the early disciples is they get none of that. In fact, they almost get the complete opposite of that, in that Jesus says, “You’re going to be persecuted, you’re going to be put in front of tribunals and you’re going to be interrogated.” And that’s exactly what happens. And they know that there’s a danger to this.

Because we have, in the Book of Acts, which is the book after the Gospels, we have a recounting of the first martyr, Stephen.

Doubt, Evil, and the Problem of Suffering

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think of someone like Martin Luther King or Gandhi as being leaders from history that appeared to be, from what I’ve understood, very selfless and actually realized that they were all going to die. I’ll never forget the speech, actually, where Martin Luther King says, “I’ve been to the mountaintop.” He was a very religious man, very Christian man, and says, “I’ve been to the mountaintop. You guys get there. But I don’t get there with you.” And then from the information I had, he died very, very shortly thereafter. And as he’s saying, “I don’t get there with you,” he’s emotional. In his face, you see him crying. The video was very persuasive of Christianity, by the way. And then he’s pulled off stage and then he’s shot thereafter. Feels like a man that knew he wasn’t going to live much longer, but was willing to put his cause ahead of his own mortality. And I guess Jesus was doing the

WESLEY HUFF: same in a certain regard. In terms of the disciples, though, I think, if they know this isn’t true, if they know that there’s this kind of mythological drift, if things have been exaggerated, why then, especially experiencing that persecution, seeing their friends die in that kind of setting, do they continue to go on and do it?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think they definitely believed it was true.

WESLEY HUFF: Yes. I think at minimum, whatever’s going on, they — you look at some of these secular historians and they look at the data and they say, whatever’s going on, the disciples believe something happened. I agree that they saw something, of course. And so I just think that the explanations of the alternatives of that actually happening are insufficient insofar as how they actually explain the data.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you have any doubt?

WESLEY HUFF: Oh, of course.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, so you have at least even 1% doubt?

WESLEY HUFF: Oh, definitely. And I think, especially when there are times of things that are far more existential than historical — times of struggle and pain and suffering. And I look at the world and I look at how messy it is, children who die, young people who are abused, all of these things. There are moments where I think, how could there be a good God? I mean, I’m not immune to doubt.

And the interesting thing that I find about the Bible is that the Bible is very open to the God of the Bible being open to us coming to him with our doubts. Now, one third of the book of Psalms, which is right in the middle of the Bible — this kind of poetic literature, if you want to call it that — are sometimes referred to as the lament or the complaint Psalms. It’s things like Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me? I cry out by day and I hear no answer.” And I think what’s interesting that I find with the Bible is its transparency in saying we’re going to struggle.

There’s this really great story in the Gospel of John — well, it’s in a couple of the instances of the Gospels — where John the Baptist, who is Jesus’ cousin and good friend, he’s been in prison because he’s been speaking out against Herod, he’s been a little bit too vocal politically and so he gets taken and he’s in prison. And though he’s the one that baptized Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” when he’s in prison, he doubts. And he sends his disciples over to Jesus to ask, “Are you the Messiah? Are you the one we’re waiting for, or should we be waiting for another?”

Now in that interaction, Jesus actually says John the Baptist is the greatest of all men born of women, which is basically everybody, right? And yet in that very same setting, John the Baptist is doubting that Jesus is who he says he is because he’s experiencing pain and suffering.

The Problem of Evil

STEVEN BARTLETT: On that point of you seeing horrific things happening in the world and then having doubts — I think for me that was one of the persuasive arguments of the new atheist movement that I became a part of when I was 18 years old. I think Richard Dawkins had said, if God is all loving, then why would he let a two year old kid in Africa have their eyeball eaten out from the inside by a parasite? If I could intervene with that — because the assertion is that God is omnipotent, all powerful and omniscient, all present — if I could intervene with that as a human, I would stop that. And so if God is omnipotent, all powerful and omnipresent, knows everything and is everywhere, then why wouldn’t he intervene with the baby having its eyeball eaten out from the inside?

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, it’s a good point. And I think if there is an objection that is truly impactful on Christianity in the atheist corner, it is the problem of evil, and always has been, because it’s far more of an emotional and existential question than it is an intellectual question.

Now, part of the problem with it is that if we’re talking about evil with a capital E, we’re implying that there’s a good with a capital G. And so I think we do run into an issue when saying that evil exists — we’re implying that good exists. And if we’re implying that good exists, we’re implying that there’s a moral law to adhere to, to call the good good and the evil evil. And if there’s a moral law, then there has to be a moral law giver. And that’s where we come into issues with — is this subjective or is this objective?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think the atheist movement would argue that that moral good is a virtue of what helps me to survive. So, watching a small child suffer in such a way — if I didn’t feel anything bad about that, then I wouldn’t have the wiring for survival, because I wouldn’t have the proclivity to defend a suffering child. If I don’t have that, then I probably don’t reproduce and I don’t pass on my genes and then I’m selected out of existence. So that pain I feel when I see a child suffering is a function of my evolutionary mechanics that make me more likely to survive. And anyone that didn’t have that wouldn’t have survived and wouldn’t be here now.

WESLEY HUFF: Sure.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So evolution, therefore, is the answer.

WESLEY HUFF: I think that might suffice in certain instances. However, it’s still sort of smuggling in moral categories into a biological explanation. You read Richard Dawkins, you read River Out of Eden, and he has that section where he talks about how we shouldn’t expect to see any rhyme or reason, good or bad. “DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.” And there’s an aspect of Dawkins himself in that volume, at least at that time when he wrote it, articulating that at the end of it all, you can’t call that parasite in that boy’s eye evil. You can say, “I don’t like it.” But to import this moral category of evil is actually to import an idea.

And this is actually what Dawkins was criticized for by individuals like John Gray, the philosopher who taught at the London School of Economics. He says, “You’re a really great biologist, but then you want to impart actual intrinsic value to people. And if you’re looking at a simple selfish DNA perspective, you can’t actually ascribe that, because your DNA, your selfish DNA, exists to carry on its selfish DNA.” And so in one sense, that child has no bearing on you. Now, it might have a protective mechanism where you want to figure out why the child got the parasite, and so you try to avoid that in order to not get the parasite yourself. But science can’t actually give you an explanation for what the moral implications are in that instance.

Evolutionary Altruism vs. Moral Objectivity

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think I understand the point there.

WESLEY HUFF: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s essentially asserting that — why does that child matter to me? Because my DNA should just be trying to take care of itself. I guess in biology, I don’t always know who my child is. But also from an evolutionary perspective, if we were raised in communities and tribes, we took care of all of the children in the surroundings. I would take care of my brother’s children and he would take care of mine, therefore.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And again, that goes back to the point of survival, which means that I’m more likely to survive if I take care of my community.

WESLEY HUFF: Sort of. You read something like The Origin of Species, though — Darwin himself, when he’s articulating the survival of the fittest, there is an aspect of you shouldn’t take care of those people because they’re actually bringing the genetic gene pool down. So we see even in the eugenics movement pulling a lot from individuals like Darwin in order to validate the fact that, in order to carry on your selfish DNA, this idea of taking care of the marginalized and those on the fringes of society and those who are the lesser thans is not evolutionarily advantageous, because survival of the fittest implies that the fittest should survive. And these are obviously not the fittest.

It’s actually a Judeo-Christian ethic — in the understanding of everybody having equal value — that we should be taking care of people because they have intrinsic value, not extrinsic value, that allows us to then even import an idea of taking care of those who are not necessarily specifically related to me and mine. And it comes back to, okay, where are we grounding this objectivity in? Because there have been societies that have attempted to do it in a “might is right” aspect. And you ground the objectivity of what we say is right in a society that says this is better for the most amount of individuals within a particular community.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think about Yuval Noah

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Harari in his book Sapiens, where he says that the real defining trait of our species versus other species was our ability to collaborate and basically scratch each other’s backs. And that meant that we had evolutionary advantages because if we could work together in a big group and we could believe in stories and we believe in money and prison and governments, et cetera, we could band together and take on the lion or band together and take on the elephant or whatever. And it’s actually that — in part there you have, “I need to take care of you, you need to take care of me.” And we’re going to reciprocate that altruism and increase our survival chances. So again, that might explain why I care about that kid, because the species that didn’t, they would never have been able to band together and take on the elephant.

The Judeo-Christian Foundation of Moral Values

WESLEY HUFF: Yes. I think it’s largely our modern perspective, living in a society where we are starting on second base already with our moral perspectives. We have inherited all of these moral categories because of our Judeo-Christian ethic. If you look at basically every society prior to this, or even societies in the east, that’s not a given. That’s not an assumption.

Especially in societies that have understandings of karmic cycles, whether that’s in Buddhism or Hinduism — the idea of altruism can actually be categorized as an evil, because in the cycle of samsara, of birth, life, death, and rebirth, your lot in this life is due to your wrongdoing in the last life. So in helping someone like that, you are actually inhibiting them from being reincarnated better on the other side. So an idea like altruism doesn’t exist within that eastern society.

And if you look in the ancient world — let’s pick on the Babylonians. The Babylonians, if they were to read Dawkins’ River Out of Eden, would basically say, “Yeah, exactly.” So they have this creation story, it’s called the Enuma Elish, and it’s this big battle of the gods. It’s an origin story, an attempt to explain why everything is here. But the conclusion of it is basically, you are a product of a big battle and a mistake. The one God loses and you — everything around you, the earth, the sky — it’s just the remains of the gods that lost. So meaning, value, purpose? Not really. Ultimately, you’re just the product of time plus matter plus chance as well. It’s just framed within a religious perspective, whereas Dawkins frames it in a natural, materialistic perspective.

So where do we get the categories to even say that we should be taking care of people in communities outside of our specific community? Because in some cultures they have the ethic of “love thy neighbor,” but in others, it’s “eat thy neighbor.” And so the question is, which society do you want to pick?

STEVEN BARTLETT: And you’re saying that that came from Judeo-Christian values?

WESLEY HUFF: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I would agree. Yeah, I would agree. I think I’m trying to understand if it’s innate in us from a God — what’s good and evil — or whether it’s that we all subscribe to a culture that was, the foundation of that was these Christian values. Which one is it? Was I born with a sense of good and evil, or was it 2000 or 3000 years ago when Jesus came to be and we had these books — did that just influence them?

Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Origins of Humanity

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. Well, I think ultimately there’s an aspect of our conscience that’s imprinted on us that we understand ethics to some degree or another, but the framework to actually find the objectivity of that ethic is found in the revelation of specific revelation in Scripture.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you believe in evolution?

WESLEY HUFF: I don’t.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You don’t believe it’s true?

WESLEY HUFF: No. I am open to the fact that I don’t think that a belief in evolution undermines Christianity in any way. However, and prefacing this by saying, I’m not a scientist, I’m an advocate for intelligent design, and I would basically punt the complex conversations of evolutionary biology to individuals who are far more studied than me, like Stephen Meyer and Jonathan McClatchy and John Tors and Douglas Axe and those individuals who have studied it at the exact same time.

Though it also depends on what you mean by evolution. So like adaptation genetically is a thing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I guess so. I’m saying, do you believe that we evolved from very simple organisms to become human that you see today?

WESLEY HUFF: No.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And the argument for that would be, I share 98% of the same DNA as a chimpanzee, and we have these fossil records which seem to show a progression over time. You don’t believe that’s true?

WESLEY HUFF: No, I don’t. But at the exact same time, I think there are individuals within the Christian faith, intelligent people who do and have no problem with understanding of a theistic evolutionary model.

However, I think in the effort of survival of the fittest, I still think that you’re starting a few miles down the road in answering the question of the arrival of the fittest. How do minds come from mindless matter? How does everything come from nothing? How do we answer those questions?

And I think that’s why you can use the evolutionary model as an explanation of how God has actually created the biology of the situation. But I think the bigger question is the cosmological questions. How did this all get going? The big bang? What was the big banger? How did that first ball get rolling? And then why can you and I, Steven, sit here and have the three pounds of gray matter in my head kind of ruminate over these very complex questions.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think it was on the Galapagos Islands. I’m probably going to butcher this, but I’ll do my very best. The sailors went to an island, they left a bird there, they came back 50 years later, the bird’s beak had grown to be very, very long because the prey on that island that it was eating were in holes, so they needed longer beaks.

So it kind of shows us that if you leave an animal in an environment, it will adapt, and it will select out the short-beaked birds for the long-beaked birds. And just in that short period of time, you can see that it’s becoming a different type of animal. And if you extrapolate that out over a long, long period of time, almost an inconceivable amount of time, maybe hundreds of millions of years, one can understand why me and the chimpanzee have similarities in how we look. And there are 98% similarities in my DNA and a chimpanzee’s DNA. So one would argue that we have a common ancestor. It’s very compelling evidence to me.

WESLEY HUFF: Sure. I mean, it’s the transitions going from the chimpanzee type thing. Because we’re obviously not arguing that we were a chimpanzee as a chimpanzee exists today.

STEVEN BARTLETT: We have a common ancestor.

WESLEY HUFF: But yeah, that hominid, whatever that hominid was, what is the transitionary fossil explanation, whatever that goes from the monkey to the human being. And I don’t really think we have an answer for that in terms of consciousness questions, like what makes our ability to reason and think and contemplate different than all of the other species in the animal kingdom?

And how do we go, if we’re arguing that everything comes from single-celled organisms, I guess you could have a, if we want to call it a “time of the gaps” explanation, just add lots of millions of years and it solves this issue. I don’t know if I am completely satisfied with that answer because obviously there’s adaptation. But if you’re looking at whether there’s the dodo bird example or Darwin’s finches, where the beaks are different, you’re still getting beaked birds and we’ve never seen one species turn into a completely different species.

STEVEN BARTLETT: The thing that I filled the gap with is that it’s just a matter of time. So with the birds example, it’s like 50 years or something, or decades.

WESLEY HUFF: Right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But when we think about Earth potentially being like 4 or 5 billion years old, I think it’s almost inconceivable what can happen over such a long period of time. Like, it’s conceivable that if me and you went to different parts of planet Earth and lived in two completely different environments, and then we came back 5 billion years later and there was no medicine and no factors helping us to survive, that we would have branched, gone in two different directions completely.

And your ancestors who were living in the jungle might be nine foot. And actually what was useful for survival where I lived in some cave was being two foot tall. And then we wouldn’t be able to reproduce, which kind of makes us different species now. I mean, that sounds conceivable to me over 4.5 billion years. Seems conceivable that we both agree on adaptation, like small adaptations, but then if you expand the time horizon, those small adaptations become massive.

WESLEY HUFF: I mean, ultimately, no matter which way you want to swing it, I think the adding millions of years as the explanation is a little bit too convenient. But I think at the end of the day, you’re still looking at the complexity in nature that points to a design of something that is amazing.

And the question of, okay, Dawkins is famous for saying that it has “the illusion of design” to it. There’s not actually a design to it, it’s just the illusion of design. But I think if we actually look at when Darwin was writing, they thought the smaller you got, the simpler it got. And now we know that the smaller you get, in fact, the more complex you get.

STEVEN BARTLETT: As in, the more you zoom into the design, the more you zoom into the brain.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. Our understanding of science has grown exponentially, even from Darwin’s day. And there’s an aspect of Darwinian evolution that has moved on into what we would now call neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. And you look at individuals, like I mentioned Stephen Meyer before, and he even has questioned some of these things about the explanations that are working as givens for evolutionary theory. I still don’t think it gets us back to, okay, then why do we have purpose?

Where Did Humans Come From?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Where do you think we came from? Like where do you think I came from or my ancestors came from? Do you think they were put on Earth as humans? Do you believe in the Adam and Eve story? Do you think there was some kind of evolution? And when do you think this happened?

WESLEY HUFF: So I know that the world is at least 35 years old —

STEVEN BARTLETT: Billions of years old.

WESLEY HUFF: I don’t see any reason not to, because I don’t think that the creation story in Genesis chapter one is necessarily an attempt to reveal the mechanisms of how God did that. Exactly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because the sort of scientific consensus says that it’s roughly 4.5 billion years old. The Earth.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And microbes and single-celled organisms are estimated to have appeared 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, almost as soon as Earth cooled enough to have liquid water.

WESLEY HUFF: Sure, yeah. And I’m fine with that.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Actually.

WESLEY HUFF: I don’t think I have to adhere to neo-Darwinian evolution in order to actually believe that the world is old. I think I would adhere to an intelligent design thesis. But —

STEVEN BARTLETT: And what does that mean?

WESLEY HUFF: So essentially, that the world around us is intelligently designed, not necessarily in that it came through processes of evolution. Once again, I’m not a scientist. I’m a historian. I genuinely do believe that there was a historical Adam and Eve and that those were the first people.

Okay, now what did they look like? I don’t know. I think they probably lived a long, long time ago. And I don’t know if the breakdown of Genesis chapter one and the seven days of creation are actually attempting to articulate seven 24-hour days. They could be. I just don’t think that’s the point.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But you do believe that humans were put here as humans and you believe that the other animals were put here in some kind of early form.

WESLEY HUFF: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And then you also believe in adaptation of those species.

WESLEY HUFF: Fine.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, fine.

The Betty the Botanist Parable: Science vs. Meaning

WESLEY HUFF: And going back to talking about trying to explain these things scientifically, I always find we can explore the answer scientifically, but that’s only going to get us so far, especially when we’re discussing meaning and purpose questions. So let me give you a little bit of a story that a friend of mine, Glenn Scribner, likes to articulate in this parable that he tells, that he calls Betty the Botanist.

So, Betty the Botanist has been looking at a plant sample in her lab. She’s been spending all weekend looking at this plant sample, investigating it and doing all of these tests on it all weekend. And Jerry, the lab assistant, comes in on Monday, and Betty looks at Jerry and says, “Jerry, thank you for the botanical specimen that you left me on the weekend. Thank you for this botanical specimen. I’ve been doing all of these tests. I’ve been looking at the components of it and the complexity of the biology, and there are pharmacological implications that I’ve extrapolated from its various biological components. And we can use these to cure diseases. There’s so many things. Thank you so much for the botanical specimen.”

And Jerry says, “Betty, it was February 14th on the weekend. That was a long stem rose. Do you know what I left for you? Do you know what the implication of the botanical specimen, as you’re calling it, was for what I was trying to communicate to you?”

Now, did Betty the Botanist understand the long stem rose? In one way, she understood it more than most, because she had done all of the tests and run through all of the different ways that she could extrapolate what that thing was. But what Jerry was trying to actually illustrate was something that went beyond that. It was a love gift. He was trying to communicate something that went beyond the simple biology. And Betty could very simply say, “Well, I couldn’t get that from the data. I couldn’t have extrapolated the implications of it being a love gift.”

And in that, so far as it being a parable, we can look at all of the scientific explanations, but there’s something that goes beyond the simple data in terms of meaning and purpose and desire, identity questions that go far beyond that.

Like, I could tell you the different chemical components that make up the page and the ink, the size of the paper and its transparency and all of that. I could say, “Stephen, what is this?” And you could go into all of this explanation about how paper is made and the pulp and how we extrapolated and eventually put it together in the binding. And I could say, “Okay, yeah, but this is a Bible. This is meant to communicate something to you. What is the explanation for this?” One explanation could be the chemical and scientific components that make up the Bible. Another explanation could be, this is a religious text that’s actually trying to communicate something to you.

And so I think the scientific data is obviously important. There’s this great quote by C.S. Lewis where he says that men were scientific because they expected laws in nature, and so they looked for the legislator. And you look, you read individuals like Francis Bacon who came up with the scientific method, and they’re inherently religious. They almost articulate what they’re doing in their scientific endeavor as an act of worship. Because if the exploration of the creative world points to a creator, then that can be an act of understanding who and why we’re here.

In terms of the scientific questions, I’m very interested in them, especially as a non-scientist. They fascinate me. But in terms of the meaning questions, I think I would err on the side of caution of attempting to be Betty the Botanist. And sometimes I read individuals like Dawkins, and I’m hearing Betty the Botanist extrapolate and define the botanical specimen.

The Limits of Atheism: What’s the Point?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think part of the reason why the new atheist movement, that I again was captured by, was not sufficient is because, as you say, it didn’t fill some kind of gap. And much of the gap, I think, for a lot of people is — okay, so if I believe in the science and that argument and the atheist argument, or I believe in the Bible, I still need an answer to, yeah, but so what? What’s the point of this? Even in the example of evolution, I get it, but why am I evolving? Why am I trying to survive? It means to what end? Okay, I’m trying to have more kids, but then why are my kids trying to have more kids? What’s the point?

And you just keep hitting this wall of, okay, yeah, but what’s the point? What’s the point? Am I meant to do something? Is there a mission for me? And I think that question is one that I think about sometimes, which is, no matter what I believe, what is the point?

WESLEY HUFF: And I think that’s why the Bible is such an amazing explanation for that. Because in a world that tells you ultimately that you’re a product of time plus matter plus chance, the Bible looks at you, Stephen, and says, “You’re created with meaning and purpose and intention. You bear the image of God.”

So there’s something that is actually screaming from your biology about who you are that goes beyond the fact that you’re not just a physical specimen sitting in front of me. You have a mind, and that mind is maybe your brain, but we’re not even sure about that. So what makes Stephen, Stephen? You’re not just your body. And that’s why there’s this inherent conversation within Christianity about the fact that our hope is not a purely spiritual one. The end result is the resurrection. The reason why Jesus rose from the dead is scripture calls him the first fruits. We’re all going to be resurrected. There’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth, and that’s the promise of Christianity.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So that’s the point.

WESLEY HUFF: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: The point of this life, according to the Bible, is that I get to go to this place called heaven.

Heaven, Earth, and the Kingdom of God

WESLEY HUFF: No, so it’s a both and. When Jesus’ disciples ask him how to pray, he gives them the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So it’s not just about, I’m going to die and my spirit’s going to go somewhere else, and that’s the whole goal. It’s to bring heaven here as well.

What we do matters because you are a human being. You’re not a human doing. And so what you do here and who you are here actually has an implication to everything. So we’re put here to be stewards of creation, of each other, to be examples of image bearers of God. Your life has intrinsic meaning — internal meaning. Yeah, internal meaning, more than just what you can contribute. That would be extrinsic — your ability to give back to society, your ability to contribute to the advancement of scientific, technological, fill in the gap. You have value that goes beyond that. This is why we fight for people everywhere. And that’s, I think, why something like injustice bothers us so much, and why evil bothers us so much.

Do Animals Have Souls?

STEVEN BARTLETT: You know the chimpanzee that has like 98% the same DNA as me.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do they have the same intrinsic meaning? Even my dog — does my dog have that same intrinsic meaning? And is my dog going to go to heaven?

WESLEY HUFF: I think scripture tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know. There have been individuals throughout church history who have articulated that. St. Francis of Assisi was big on animals going to heaven. C.S. Lewis was big on animals going to heaven. In fact, when he wrote The Last Battle, the last series in his Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe books, there are animals in heaven. I mean, if there’s a new Earth, I think there are going to be animals. I don’t know if they’re going to be the same animals that existed on this side, but I have no idea. But I think there’s something different, because I think you have a soul.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And you think my dog doesn’t have a soul?

WESLEY HUFF: I don’t know, but I don’t think he has the same kind of spiritual component that you are endowed with in the same way.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How do we know? Like, how do I know that? These chimpanzees, they’re pretty smart. I was watching one touch a touchscreen the other day and solving problems, and I was thinking, is there not an element of, I don’t know, human arrogance, to think that these other creatures — like the whales, they’re so unbelievably smart — don’t have a soul? They work together in packs, they love, they have kids, they seem to pursue things.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a testimony to the general reflection of God’s good creation. At the same time, when you’re just repeating something, we use adjectives. We understand that there’s an aspect of, like, if you train the monkey to push the button, he’s going to push the button. If you give the elephant the paintbrush and convince it to paint itself, it’s going to paint itself. But if you can train the elephant to paint the Mona Lisa, is it really going to understand what it’s painted in the same way that Da Vinci understood it? Sorry — whoever painted the Mona Lisa, Da Vinci — now I’m getting myself into trouble. There’s something about the value and what is being put in there that is different.

Purpose, Mission, and the Meaning of Life

STEVEN BARTLETT: So do you believe that me and you are born with a particular mission and meaning on this planet, or do you think we have to go and find that particular meaning or mission?

WESLEY HUFF: That’s a great question. I think the chief end of man is to know God and glorify him. Insofar as Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment in the law, Jesus uses two examples. He quotes from two different passages in the Old Testament and he says, “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.”

I mean, ultimately, I think we always want some sort of a grandiose purpose. We want the calling of Moses — we want to go out in the desert and find a burning bush and have that calling on our lives. I don’t think that’s wrong. But I think ultimately our purpose is to live a faithful life to who we were created to be, in being image bearers of God and being faithful in loving God with everything that we have.

The Jewish phraseology of loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength is kind of a stand-in for your entire being — with everything you have, love God with that, by what you do, by what you say, by how you live. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That’s the golden rule. But if you look at other religions, it’s almost always framed in the negative: don’t do unto others what you don’t want done to you. There’s a difference between not punching someone in the face and building someone a hospital.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So the meaning of our lives is to love our Creator at the most fundamental level?

WESLEY HUFF: At the basic level, and to understand how that expresses in everyday life. Martin Luther, the German Protestant reformer, said, “The faithful Christian shoemaker doesn’t glorify God by sewing little crosses into the shoes, but by making really good quality shoes.”

And so there’s an aspect of — God has endowed us, we’re created in God’s image, we create as an aspect of an outpouring of that which we are created to be. And we do that well. The proverb says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all its might.” And the idea is you have the capability to do incredible things. And the reason why you have that capability is because you bear the image of a creator who, like I said before, lives in a set of living, loving relationships.

So that God actually didn’t need to create you, me, anything. God is not better off or worse off if we love him or worship him or believe in him. He really isn’t. He has existed in love, in relationship. And yet the story of the Bible is that God chooses to create out of an outpouring of his love, knowing even that we are going to rebel against him, that we are going to sin — do wrong against how he has actually created us to be — and still desires to have that relationship.

Sin, Judgment, and Hell

STEVEN BARTLETT: And if we do sin, if I sin in my life, do I go to hell?

WESLEY HUFF: The answer to that is yes and no. But the —

STEVEN BARTLETT: Am I going to hell?

Heaven, Hell, and the Nature of Salvation

WESLEY HUFF: Are you going to hell? Steven Bartlett. Is Steven Bartlett going to hell? This is the clip that they’re going to put online, right? Wes says Steven Bartlett is going to hell. I mean, here’s the thing. Everybody is going to hell. Hell, everybody. Here’s how I’ve said it in the past, right? The Bible is very clear. All good people go to heaven. But Jesus said, no one is good but God alone. So if all good people go to heaven and no one is good but God alone, only God is in heaven.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So do you believe that there is a hell and heaven as we sort of typically understand it, a place that is great to go to after we die and a place that is very hot?

WESLEY HUFF: Place that’s very hot. I mean, there’s a lot of imagery of fire and weeping and gnashing of teeth. I think a lot of that is kind of reflective and allegorical more than a physical, tangible thing. Most of our perceptions of hell are largely shaped by depictions in the Middle Ages of Dante’s Inferno and that kind of thing. I think it’s more so that you will experience the full weight of the separation from God’s goodness. Not necessarily a separation from God, because I think God’s punishment and his wrath are going to be felt there.

But if we’re talking about a good place, bad place, in the very simplest of terms, yes. But heaven isn’t full of good people. Heaven is full of people who understand they are not good enough. And so I mentioned that justice and mercy thing. Justice is fulfilled on Jesus. So because justice is fulfilled now, mercy, which is not getting what we do deserve, is able to be given to those who put their trust in Jesus.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So if I don’t believe in Jesus and I don’t believe in the Bible, but I live a good life, I’m nice to people, charitable, try and be kind wherever I can be, and I don’t believe in God, am I going to hell or heaven as it relates to the scriptures?

WESLEY HUFF: Well, I don’t think if you’re living your life rejecting God, God is not going to force you into his presence.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I’m not going to go to heaven then?

WESLEY HUFF: No.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Where am I going to go?

WESLEY HUFF: Well, you would go to hell.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So if I don’t believe in the Bible, Jesus and God, then I’m going to go to hell?

WESLEY HUFF: Yes. Insofar as if heaven is a place for those who have submitted their lives to Jesus, who are living the identity of what they’re created to be and said, “Your will be done, God.” Hell is a place where God says, “You rejected me. Your will be done.” I’m going to give you what you want in that. I’m going to remove my grace and mercy from you, and you are going to experience truly what you desire in being separated from me and my goodness and my grace.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And what is that place like, according to the scripture? Give me a depiction in my mind of what hell might be like for me.

What Does the Bible Say About Hell?

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. I mean, it’s not a good place. It’s not a nice place. It’s a place that, no matter what’s going on, if you are a believer, if you truly understand what this book is saying, seriously, I think it should motivate you to want to desire — Steven Bartlett, I desire you to have a personal relationship with your creator because I don’t want you to experience whatever hell is. I desire for you to be in perfect relationship with your God. Not necessarily because I want you to get a get-out-of-hell-free card, but because I actually think that in living how God created you to be and accepting and living out the image that you bear, you’re going to find the meaning and purpose that you ultimately have expressed that you have this innate desire for.

STEVEN BARTLETT: According to Gallup, it’s 18% of Americans don’t believe in a God. Now, to get into heaven as it’s described in the Bible, do I just need to say I believe in God, or do I have to have some sort of active commitment and evidence in my life that I am living my life in line with God’s teachings?

WESLEY HUFF: I think ultimately salvation — salvation implies you’re being saved from something. The good news is good news because the bad news is bad, and the bad news is very bad.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was looking at what the Bible says about hell, and in Revelations it says it’s a lake of fire. In Mark it says it’s unquenchable fire. In Matthew, it says eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. In Matthew, again, it says outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Yes, they will be shut out from the presence of the Lord. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. In torment, eternal punishment. The smoke of their torment rises forever. This is not a place I want to go.

WESLEY HUFF: No, no. And I think the urgency of the Christian message is the bad news is really bad. And that’s what makes the good news so good. Jesus has taken on that hell on your behalf. And it goes beyond simply believing. It’s not just about saying the right words. It’s not just an incantation. You are not saved by what you do. You’re saved by works — it’s just Jesus’s. Jesus lived the life you couldn’t and made the sacrifice you can’t on your behalf in order to establish that right relationship with God.

So that’s where grace comes into the picture. Justice is getting what you do deserve. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. So insofar as Christ on the cross fulfills the justice of his holy law, mercy is enacted. And you don’t get that punishment by putting your faith and trust in Jesus as your Lord and your Savior, as your Creator. You don’t get that punishment. And now you get grace, which is not what you’re owed, but you are adopted as a child of the Most High.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So of the 18% of people that say they don’t believe in a God, they are almost certainly going to hell according to scripture.

Belief, Repentance, and the Path to Salvation

WESLEY HUFF: Well, so James — the book of James in the Bible, who’s actually the half brother of Jesus — he writes a book and he says, “You believe that God is one.” He says, “Great, so do the demons.” So the point is, if anybody knows and believes in God, it’s the demons, it’s Satan. So what’s the difference there?

The difference is that there’s a relational component. When I say, in sort of the Christianese, Christian terminology, “Jesus is your Lord and your Savior,” what I mean is that he has rescued you. He has saved you from the penalties of sin and death. But then the Lord component is that now you have submitted your life to him in obedience and repentance.

Now, repentance is another religious word that maybe is not always fully understood. Repentance is the changing and understanding of the way you live. You understand that the things that you used to do that are wrong are not the things that are either what you should do or going to give you fulfillment. And you stop doing those. Not because God is a cosmic killjoy and he doesn’t want you to feel the goodness of those things, but because those things are actually harmful to you. They are hurting you, and they are creating a separation in the relationship between you and God.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s going to be a very small number of people that actually live in such a way that are fully repented and have accepted the Lord as their Savior. There’s only roughly, I think it was 30% of people actually go to church somewhat frequently. And the other sort of 56% seldom or never go. They’re not really active in their belief. They probably haven’t repented. So it would appear to me that a very small percentage of people are actually qualifying for the kingdom of heaven as it’s described in the Bible.

WESLEY HUFF: The miracle of this is that your salvation is received, not achieved. And so once again, it’s not about brownie points. It’s not about checking off — I read the Bible this many times, I went to church this many times, I didn’t lie, I didn’t steal, I didn’t cheat. Because we still exist in this beautiful yet broken world, and because we live in a world that is marred by the brokenness of the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, making that decision to rebel against God, and because of that, the creation itself has been affected. It’s not about trying to earn my way into heaven.

So is it a very small percentage of people who are actually repenting? Maybe. But what of that percentage fully understands? It’s interesting — the word that we translate as repentance is the Greek word metanoia. It means “change your mind.” And so there’s an aspect of it that’s not just about the doing. It’s an understanding. It’s a component of, “I don’t want to do these things.” Even when I do them, I don’t want to lie anymore. I see the harm that causes and the brokenness that it creates.

And so even if I’m still breaking the law of God — in the book of James that I mentioned, there’s this part where James says, “If you break one rule in the law, it’s as if you’ve broken them all.” I’ve sometimes used this illustration of it’s like you’re hanging off a cliff on a linked chain. If you cut any of those links, you’re going to fall. It’s no longer holding you. That’s kind of the thinking that I think James is getting at when he writes that.

The Original Sin and God’s Plan

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you referenced the original sin, which is Adam and Eve taking the apple — or the fruit, whatever it might be. God made Adam and Eve. He’s omnipotent, omniscient. When he made them, he knew they were going to take the apple, but he made them anyway. So that sounds like a setup.

WESLEY HUFF: You could read it as a setup. I think more so, what’s going on — what strikes me as more amazing is that God did it anyway and he didn’t hit the restart button.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And then he knew that when he made them, it would result in thousands and thousands of years of people worshiping him. I think you’d think I was a bad person if I made something knowing that it was going to make a mistake, and that mistake would result in people worshiping me for the next forever. You would say I did this to get you to worship me, and to basically make you live in guilt that I created. Logically, that holds no — like, what’s wrong with that logically?

WESLEY HUFF: Well, I think you could read it like that. I think ultimately, and this might sound like a cop out to some, but maybe God knows something we don’t.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Maybe. Yeah.

WESLEY HUFF: And that he has reasons for allowing evil that maybe we don’t understand and can’t comprehend because he is the Causing God. There’s an interesting thing in both the book of Revelation and in one of the letters of Peter where it basically says, “From before the foundation of the world was laid, the Lamb was slain.” So Jesus was crucified — the cross, that whole bringing back of people in unity and relationship with God via this act of the only innocent person who ever lived being murdered on a cross. A great act of evil, accomplishing a lot of good.

Once again, not the way I would do it if I was God. There are all sorts of things that we think, “If I was God, I’d do it like this.” Thank goodness I’m not God. I would get a whole lot of things wrong. You wouldn’t want to live in that world.

But I think what’s interesting is that the cross was not a contingency plan. The cross was the plan all the way along. And so God is glorified in that act. And I think part of it is what I was saying before — if God is love, if love is the greatest ethic, and the greatest ethic is expressed in the greatest example, which is self-sacrifice, then God is actually communicating the greatest ethic in the greatest possible way in what we see in the Gospel message of how he accomplishes the unification with his people for the goodness and glory of who he is. And do I understand all the complexities and mysteries that go in conjunction with that?

STEVEN BARTLETT: No.

WESLEY HUFF: But I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the historical and the philosophical case for the existence of God, and then that God specifically being the God that is articulated in the Bible, is true. And on that basis, I am willing to submit my life because of both the evidence and because I have actually seen my own life change radically. So you’re a friend, right? You say you’ve seen an actual experiential change in that person’s life.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, yeah. So my friend — I talked about him anonymously on here, but he then clipped it, posted it on his Instagram and said, “Steven’s talking about me.”

The Geography Argument and the Nature of Prayer

WESLEY HUFF: Okay.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And he’s like doing some interviews and stuff now, so I feel more comfortable talking about him more publicly. But, yeah, my friend, who was going through a little bit of a crisis of meaning in his life, was living in Dubai in this penthouse apartment, single, kind of alone, remote, working all those kinds of very individualistic lifestyle, successful in a material sense, all of a sudden turned to Christianity, flew to America, got baptized, and is now Christian.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And would I say he is happier than before, 100%? When I say I am very glad he became Christian, 100%. Would I say that I believe his future is going to be better because he’s now Christian, 100%.

WESLEY HUFF: That’s a lot of 100%.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, but it’s true. It’s objectively true. We’ve been friends for decades and all of us feel the same way.

WESLEY HUFF: Right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: We don’t even have to agree with what he believes to think actually it’s helped him.

WESLEY HUFF: Well, and in that, I don’t think that. I think there’s an objectivity to the actual evidence that I evaluate in terms of the historical reliability of the Bible and the philosophical explanations for meaning and purpose and morality, how we ground those, the scientific data of a universe that looks like it’s fine tuned and has intelligence designed into it. But the subjectivity of how I understand my life and have seen it change radically. And what you see in your friend is not inconsequential.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, it’s not.

WESLEY HUFF: And it testifies to something. It testifies to a hope that even in scripture, in 1 Peter 3, Peter, writing to the dispersed church in the ancient world, has this, in the context of persecution, says, “But in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have. But do so with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ will be ashamed of their slander.”

And there’s this implication that “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you” — for an argument for the existence of God? No, that’s not what he says. He says to give the reason for the hope that you have. Your friend is communicating a hope that you took notice of.

And I think that is literally the word “to give an answer” that we translate as “to give an answer,” defense or reason, in many English Bible translations — is the Greek word apologia. To give an apologetic, to give a defense. And scripturally, Scripture does call us to love the Lord our God with all of our mind.

And I think there’s an aspect of — my friend Tim Barnett works for Stand to Reason, which is Greg Koukl’s organization. You had Greg in your panel discussion recently. My friend Tim says, “If you want to know the mind of God, you better start by using your own.” And so in that way, I think we can worship God through that.

There’s a component of God having endowed us with intelligence and we can use that to speak to the things that he has actually created and the evidence for that. But at the exact same time, the hope of the life changed — to use Jesus’ own language in John 3, being born again — I think also communicates something that is genuinely profound.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I agree. And I would assert that maybe if he had converted to pretty much any of the major religions, he would have experienced the same transformative upside. And when you look at people that do convert to other religions outside of Christianity, they do experience a greater sense of meaning and community and all the things that come with it that gives them that sense of belonging and maybe calms their anxieties and their worries and their nihilism to a point where they can live a bit more of a content life.

So is that evidence of Christianity? Or is that just evidence that we’re all in search of meaning in a world that’s increasingly nihilistic and individualistic and says that there’s nothing other than, as you say, time, space, matter, etc.?

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, no, that’s a great point. I don’t think it’s arbitrary. I think there’s an aspect of religiosity that is always going to be a net positive for society no matter what that religion is, because I think it’s going to give an aspect of purpose and identity to people. At the exact same time, I don’t think it’s just the subjective point of view.

This is why I think it’s very dangerous — when I used to work for a ministry organization that worked on university campuses and we would go and talk with students — I, too many times to count, would hear a student ask another student, “Why do you believe in Christianity?” And they would then proceed in articulating how they became a Christian. Well, that’s not the answer. That’s not actually the question they asked. They asked, “Why do you believe it’s true?” And you answered with how you kind of got into this group.

If they had run into a Buddhist and said, “Why do you believe Buddhism is true?” and you say, “Well, I just met these really great people on campus and they invited me over for karma discussions and pizza. And it’s radically changed my life and I follow the noble truths and the path of the Buddha and it’s changed my life.” When you give them that story — now, I don’t want people to hear me saying that giving your testimony is not a good thing to do. I just think there’s a time and a place where it could have been any situation. It sounds convenient. You could have run into a Muslim or a Mormon or a Buddhist or a Hindu and just stumbled into those conversations.

And that’s where I think answering “why I believe it’s true” is more than just that. It’s no less than that, but it’s more than that, because I believe that the multivalent argument for the truthfulness of Christianity — with a capital T — has a historical backing, a philosophical backing, a scientific backing, a psychological backing, and all of those things. And I bet your friend would say it too.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

WESLEY HUFF: And in one sense, my goal is to adhere to truth with a capital T, even above my allegiance to Jesus. Now, I believe Jesus is the truth with a capital T, so I don’t think that there’s a conflict of interest there. But I want to follow what’s true, because even if it’s a convenient lie, it’s still a lie. And I don’t want to live my life for a lie.

The Geography Argument: Does Where You’re Born Determine Your Faith?

STEVEN BARTLETT: One of the things that really convinced me when I was going through my little atheism phase was this geography argument, which I’m sure you’ve heard a million times. If I’d been born in Saudi Arabia, I’d probably be a Muslim. If I’d been born in India, I’d probably be Hindu. So it seems like the religion you believe entirely depends on where you were born, not on necessarily what is true.

And therefore, if we go back to this point about hell, I remember thinking at like 19 years old, oh my God, actually, where you’re born is determining whether you go to this fiery, eternal suffering or not. And that’s not fair. So this must all be not true.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, I mean, I was born in Pakistan, so I was born in a majority Muslim country, and I’m not a Muslim. Now, you could argue my parents weren’t Muslims, but I know tons of people who were. My colleague Steve, who is our Alberta director at Apologetics Canada, he was born in Korea and went to a school setting that was Buddhist.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But I mean, the numbers are the numbers. It’s like 95% — I don’t know what the numbers are, but I know it’s over 90% likely to be the religion of that territory if you take on a religion at all, just by where you were born. And that doesn’t fit. I remember thinking very clearly at 19 years old, this doesn’t feel fair as a way to determine who gets into hell or heaven, which is like my parents and why they conceived me or whatever.

WESLEY HUFF: Sure. I mean, in one sense, you don’t want fair, because fair is you going to hell, and the gospel message is not fair. So the actual gospel message is not about fairness, because fairness is I get the just penalty for what I do. And that’s where the whole concept of mercy and grace — they’re so central to the Christian message.

Buddhism and Hinduism are based on fairness, solely based on fairness. The cycle of samsara, of life, death, birth and rebirth, the karmic cycles — that’s fair in one sense. What God does when he intervenes in humanity, when he incarnates, becomes flesh, steps into humanity and actually experiences pain and hurt and suffering and death in a way that makes the God of the Bible unique and actually experiential to what you and I go through — when we have those struggles and doubts, he then takes on the punishment that we deserve.

And the fairness is not actually what is then given, because the fairness is Wes Huff getting what he actually deserves for the weight and the penalty of his cosmic rebellion in choosing a life that is against and away from God.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m unclear. Okay, so if I had Moroccan parents, my probability of being Muslim is like 99%.

WESLEY HUFF: Sure.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And if I was born in Morocco, that would kind of set me up to go to hell. Theoretically, yes?

WESLEY HUFF: Insofar as you’re either taking on your sin and that’s the punishment, or Christ is taking on your sin and then you are covered in his intercession.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

WESLEY HUFF: But it’s not about believing or not believing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, which you explained earlier, which was useful for me because that gave me a new understanding that I didn’t have previously.

Does Prayer Actually Work?

STEVEN BARTLETT: The other thing I think a lot about, and thought a lot about, was prayer. This was really compelling to me when I was younger — I would hear these stories of horrific things that had happened in the world. When you think about what happened in Nazi Germany, I’d hear that the people there were very religious and praying, and it didn’t seem to change the odds of their fate. And when you look at hospital stats of Christians vs. non-Christians generally, praying doesn’t seem to be impacting outcome.

So therefore I concluded, as like a 19 year old, that maybe prayer doesn’t work. And why are people doing it when it doesn’t seem to historically have worked? What is your perspective? Does praying work? If my child is sick and I start praying, is that going to help?

WESLEY HUFF: I mean, it also kind of begs the question of what we think prayer is. Is prayer incantations to placate God?

The Nature of Prayer

STEVEN BARTLETT: What does that mean?

WESLEY HUFF: Like, is God a genie? Right. So I say the right prayers and he gives me what I want. Now, there are some religious systems where that is kind of what prayer is. That’s all the agricultural deities of the ancient Near East. Like, you say the right things and you give the right sacrifices, and the hope is that the gods would accept that. And then, in the reciprocal nature of that, they give you good crops.

I think prayer in Christianity is a give and take in that it’s a relational thing. It’s God desiring to have communication with you. If you read the Psalms, a lot of which are prayers, even the lament Psalms I mentioned, it’s David or whoever, the psalmist coming to God and saying, “I don’t get it. I’m hurting, I’m broken, I’m alone, I don’t feel you.” There’s an aspect of the relational component of prayer. Now, prayer is not just that. Right. Prayer is asking, is supplications, is committing your desires to God because you believe that God can actually work in the universe and do things.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And that’s kind of what the Bible says. It says, “Pour out your hearts to him,” “Call him and come to me, and I will answer you” in Jeremiah. And it also says, “Ask and it will be given to you” in Matthew.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, “Seek and you will find, and the door will be opened unto you.” I mean, part of those is that there’s a little bit of a trickiness in quote mining because the context could mean prayer, the context could mean the salvific act of God. “Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” If you’re actually seeking God and you’re doing that with an open heart and an open mind, God is going to say, “Yes, I’m entering into your life. I’m revealing myself to you.” Now, God can answer yes, God can answer no, and God can answer, wait. Those are all answers to prayer.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think God answers prayers?

WESLEY HUFF: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And is there a certain type of prayer he might answer? Because if I lose my keys, “Please help me find my keys,” I assume he might not answer that one. But is there a certain type of prayer you think God answers?

WESLEY HUFF: I don’t think it’s a magical formula.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

WESLEY HUFF: I think the thing that we see within Christianity is that prayer is a relational aspect. When the disciples I mentioned earlier asked Jesus, “How should we pray?” he gives the Lord’s Prayer. In some ways that’s less of a prescription — you know, say these words in the right way — because even Jesus says, “Don’t babble like the pagans do.” But there’s an aspect of “Our Father who art in heaven,” like a recognition of who God is. “Holy be your Name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Right.

WESLEY HUFF: There’s a, you know, “Give us the provision that we need. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” That’s an interesting one because we’re asking God to forgive us like we forgive others, which can be dangerous sometimes, right? Maybe I don’t want to pray that all the time. “For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Amen.

WESLEY HUFF: So in some ways, is that Jesus telling us how to pray exactly? I don’t think that’s not a part of it. But I also think there’s an aspect of it — recognize who God is, recognize who you are, ask for provision, do ask for things that you need and even that you want. And recognize that we want this reality on earth as it is in heaven. There’s components of what Jesus is saying that go beyond simply a rote prayer in some kind of incantation or list of — you say the right things in the right way and then God is going to, you know — that’s what ancient Greco-Roman paganism was like.

The Neuroscience of Prayer and the Rise of Artificial Intelligence

STEVEN BARTLETT: And prayer, even if you aren’t religious, has a basis in neuroscience that says it’s really good for our well-being. Neuroscience research shows that prayer activates brain networks for attention, emotional regulation and social connection while reducing stress. And when they do brain ECG scans, they find people are more calm and focused when they’re in states of prayer and they have greater resilience over time, which is reason enough to have some form of active prayer.

Regardless of that, I’m really interested in how you think about everything that’s going on with technology at the moment. We’re living in a very interesting time. It’s kind of like we’re trying to summon the gods ourselves. We’re creating this form of intelligence that people are developing a relationship with and are speaking to every day. And we’ve made it on silicon chips and using these things called GPUs and it’s called artificial intelligence. Are you concerned by the direction of travel in this direction, that we’re now seeking guidance and comfort and all of these things from AI instead of this book in front of us?

WESLEY HUFF: I think there are aspects where I have concerns. My colleagues Andy Steiger and Steve Kim are more invested in these questions than I am. My colleague Andy did his PhD at Aberdeen on the question of philosophical anthropology — what does it mean to be human? — and he investigated a lot into the questions of things like AI. And my colleague Steve is looking into things that relate to transhumanism. So these are relevant questions to who we are.

I’m not convinced that the intelligence part of AI outweighs the artificial part. I don’t see AI thinking. I see there being an aspect of the coding that AI will regurgitate, but I’m not convinced that AI will ever become conscious. I think it will fake the Turing Test in that it will attempt to convince us that it is cognizant of its own existence. But I don’t know if that’s actually possible. And I think there’s something about the innateness of consciousness that we don’t really know. Right? We don’t really know what consciousness is. There’s all sorts of weird explanations — like, is your brain who you are? Not really. We don’t really have entirely sufficient answers to these questions.

But at the exact same time, I think it makes sense that if we are created in God’s image, there’s an aspect of we want to create in our image, and there’s going to be that outpouring of the creation of something new and amazing and advancing in our understanding and knowledge.

Simulation Theory and the Question of God

STEVEN BARTLETT: This kind of sets people up for this whole simulation theory argument where they say that if you imagine any rate of improvement on our current reality — people are already making virtual reality worlds. You can go on so many different programs now and type in, “I want to go to the top of Mount Everest,” and there’s a village there. And then you can experience that in three dimensions. You can put on a headset and go to the top of Mount Everest and there’s this rendered village there.

If you imagine any rate of improvement, even 1% a year in this technology, eventually, whether it’s in 500 years or 10,000 years, you get to a point where it’s almost indistinguishable from this experience that me and you are having today in the real world. And so the simulation theory posits that — again, you just think about how long technology’s been here. It’s like 50 years ago, we didn’t have computers like this. We didn’t even have the iPhone or phones. That’s just 50 years. Imagine billions of years and a rate of improvement. You get to something indistinguishable from this.

And it’s conceivable that me and you with computers will run simulations. We’ll make things like the Sims and video games and GTA 6, although that’s taking forever. And with an improvement of technology at any rate, those worlds will feel real, theoretically, to the characters within them. So simulation theory posits that actually this is what our lives are. There was a civilization at some point in the cosmic universe that got to that point of technological sophistication. They ran a bunch of different simulations on a computer or whatever their technology was. And this is one such world we’re living in right now. And that is actually our God. It could be some 4-year-old alien that had a laptop.

WESLEY HUFF: Right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: 10 gazillion years ago, and the big bang was the day that he started the simulation.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. Almost like it was intelligently designed, right?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. Actually, this is — I think there probably is some kind of God, I just don’t know what it is.

WESLEY HUFF: Sure.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I don’t know whether it’s the one in the book that you have in front of me here, whether it’s the one that they believe in in the Muslim religion, or whether it’s like a four-year-old kid on his laptop that was messing around in a technologically sophisticated universe 10 billion years ago.

WESLEY HUFF: Right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But I think there’s something bigger than I am.

WESLEY HUFF: Right. And I think the simulation theory doesn’t really solve the issue because it just kind of punts the can down the road in that it still avoids the question of what is that, how did we get here, and what is the ultimate explanation for everything. So probabilistically, in the world around us, in what we see with our relational characteristics and everything — is it possible that we live in a simulation? I think yes, it is. I think probabilistically though, with how the description of creation and the human condition and what we see within history, I think personally the God of the Bible is the most reasonable explanation, especially when we’re comparing it to other religious worldviews.

I think the simulation theory is an interesting one, or the string theory, multiple universes. I just think that those are almost like we’re walking around the question, we’re circling around the question and it’s not actually answering it. We still need a God.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. And then, even in the example I gave of the four-year-old messing around on his laptop 10 billion years ago in a technologically advanced civilization, my brain, a few seconds later, asked, “Well, what was the point of his life?”

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. And who created him?

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I could say the same about God, I guess, like the God of the Christian Bible. Like, who is this God? Who created this God? Did someone create this God? Or has he always been there?

WESLEY HUFF: Right. I mean, philosophically, it’s a category error, because all things that have a beginning have a creator. And philosophically, the God of the Bible is an entity that ontologically didn’t have a beginning. So if we’re talking about an unmoved mover, in the kind of Aristotelian categories of philosophy, God didn’t have a creator because God is the author of creation.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

WESLEY HUFF: It’s kind of like asking, “What does blue smell like?”

STEVEN BARTLETT: And God — I should think of him as, not in the Bible, but in depictions of God, it’s like a guy with a beard.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah. No.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Or it’s like some mystical force that’s kind of like a white light.

WESLEY HUFF: Right. No, I think those are attempts, probably inadequately, to express aspects of how we would visually communicate who God is. I think that probably misses the mark more than it actually gets at what and who God is. I don’t know if there’s a proper way that could give a physical attribution or description of God other than Jesus, who is God incarnate. Right. Could you think of a more powerful, a more amazing example of a God than one who actually enters into his creation? I don’t know.

God Is Love

STEVEN BARTLETT: My fiancée says that God is love. Yeah, she says that a lot. My fiancée tends to be right as well.

WESLEY HUFF: Nice.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I tend to — the first time she says something that I don’t believe, I tend to assume it’s not true for a while, but then it tends to be proven to be true within a year. So when she said to me that God is love, I really thought deeply about it. I thought, maybe she’s right. Maybe love is God.

The Crisis of Meaning

WESLEY HUFF: I mean, that’s from the Bible. God is love. The thing, grammatically, that’s interesting about that — when John writes that in his epistle — is grammatically in the Greek, it’s phrased in a way that God is love, but love is not God. So you can’t deify what love is. When you love your fiancée, that isn’t God. That’s an inefficient description of what we know God to be. So God is love, but love is not God.

And in that sense, going back to what I was saying a few times now, what the Bible is saying when it says God is love is that that is the ultimate character of who God is — in that love is this highest value. It is that which we hold as the example ethic of what we want. We want to be loved, right? To be loved and not known is very insufficient. And to be known but not loved is what we all fear.

But I think what we find in the Bible is a God who both loves and knows us. And I think that’s where the God who is love, who creates us and calls us to love him with all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength, that properly kind of fulfills what I think we mean when we say God is love.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There is a deep crisis of meaning in the world, especially in the Western world. Three in five American adults between 18 and 25 years old said that their life lacked meaning and purpose, with 50% of the same group saying their poor mental health was linked to not knowing what to do with my life. And a lack of purpose is significantly associated with many of the mental health illnesses like depression and anxiety.

And as of April 2025, the overall prevalence of depression in US teenagers and adults has increased by 60% over the last decade, according to the CDC. And tragically, globally, more than almost a million people die due to suicide every year, and it’s the third leading cause of death among 15 to 29 year olds, according to the World Health Organization. What are we getting wrong?

WESLEY HUFF: I think we’re looking for our purpose and our meaning in things that are ultimately not going to give the value that those things actually require. So it’s not a matter of if we worship, it’s a matter of what we worship. And worship, if worship is giving our all to something, I think there’s a lot of things within society that are going to tell us that our identity is going to be fulfilled in money, or it’s going to be fulfilled in relationships or accolades, or all of these aspects are ultimately going to fall short in giving us actual purpose and meaning.

And if they’re not grounded in actually giving us value — your friend is, as far as I understand, a good example of that, right? We can achieve all of these things. You hear athletes and actors and famous people talk about all the wealth, all the celebrity status they could possibly desire, and being completely empty, being completely fulfillment-less. And I think that’s because we’re chasing after things that aren’t going to give us what we actually need. They’re facsimiles and cheap reproductions of what actually can give us meaning and purpose.

And that’s because we are created to be in relationship with our God. And that is where we will find our true identity. That’s what’s going to give us the motivation to actually get up in the morning. Like your friend — you saying he couldn’t get up in the morning — he finds not just a motivational value in the Christian faith, he finds actually meaning and purpose in the Christian faith. That getting up in the morning has a purpose that goes beyond the here and the now, and that can affect all of the people around him. And now he can pursue his entrepreneurial activities or his relationships or even his finances for the glory of God. And then that gives it an ontological meaning that goes beyond the simple basics of what secular materialism has to offer.

Young Men and the Search for Identity

STEVEN BARTLETT: Young men in particular are struggling in their own unique ways. And is that in part, in your view, because they are worshiping the wrong role models in life?

WESLEY HUFF: I think it could be. I think men often find — we find our identity in the things that we do, right? We hear about this in that, unfortunately, we bought the lie that we are the sum of our actions. This is why people lose their jobs — when they get let go of their careers, they have identity crises. Because if we believe that we are the sum of our actions, we can put a lot of stock in something that is ultimately going to lead us empty.

Same thing with relationships. You watch any rom-com, what is it almost always about? Lonely guy, lonely girl. They meet each other, they fall in love. At the end, everything works out and now their identity is fulfilled. Well, all you have to do is get married to know that that’s not going to fulfill every desire and need you have. I love my wife. I love my marriage. It’s one of the best things that I’ve ever done. But if I put all of my eggs in that basket, it could very well and almost certainly will lead me astray, especially if that falls apart, especially when there are times of hardship and struggle.

So I think you are more than the sum of your actions because you have value that goes beyond that. And it’s actually living out that value that can give you the meaning and the purpose that you’re finding. But men in particular, we find value in what we do. I think women — although I don’t want to speak too broadly, speaking in generalities — women find a lot of identity in relational values, in the relationships that they have with their friends or their significant others. Men often find value in what they’re able to contribute to physically. And so especially in a world where economic crisis is a thing, or work complications with things like technology removing a lot of occupations, I think that can be a genuine hardship.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, I was just looking at some research on PubMed and it says exactly that. It says in a recent qualitative analysis in the United States of suicide notes — majority male sample — the authors identified themes that differed by gender, such as men more often referring to financial hardship, etc., which can imply feelings of failure and worthlessness tied to traditional roles. In contrast, women’s notes were more about lowered self-worth and interpersonal relationships.

So if that does hold, and we’re implying there that sometimes it’s to do with a feeling of worthlessness for men, are you saying that Christianity can provide something that is an antidote to that feeling?

WESLEY HUFF: I think not only can it provide an antidote, it can provide the antidote.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What would you say to anyone that’s listening right now that feels a little bit lost in their life?

WESLEY HUFF: I would say that you have purpose and you have meaning — more than what society tells you is going to give you that meaning and purpose. And that there’s a God who loves you, and he loves you so much that he stepped out of eternity and into humanity, and he lived the perfect life that you couldn’t, in order to establish and create the union of the relationship with God that you’re actually seeking.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And what would you tell them step one would be to go in that direction?

WESLEY HUFF: Well, I would say, push into something like — read the Bible. I would say open the Gospel of Matthew, open the Gospel of John and start reading, and find out who this Jesus guy is. Investigate that question — why that is significant, why that matters. Because the person and character of Jesus goes beyond simply a historical character. I think Jesus was a genuine historical character. He’s no less than that, but he’s also so much more than that. And in discovering who he is in relation to who you are, that’s going to change your life.

Is God Good? The Shift in Questions People Are Asking

STEVEN BARTLETT: Are you noticing that people are asking you certain questions about Christianity or religion or any of the adjacent subjects more now than they were 10 years ago? Like, are there certain themes or topics that are more front of mind for people these days?

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, I think we’ve gone through a shift. When I kind of started in this endeavor of what I’m doing now — this kind of crescendoed in the last year and a bit — when I started out, I think people were asking a lot more, “Is God real and is this true?” And I think now people are asking, “Is God good?” And I think it’s because it’s part and parcel of this meaning crisis thing.

I also think that there have been some major moral issues. I mean, the whole Epstein thing right now, I think, is a testament to that. We are seeing examples of true evil, and I think that bothers people. And in a world where we can rationalize subjectivizing evil, we understand that that is heinous. And if that is evil with a capital E, where’s the good with a capital G?

C.S. Lewis, who I’ve quoted a few times, he said in his The Problem of Pain — that book that he wrote — that one of his objections to God was that there was so much evil and chaos in this world. He said, “But what was I comparing that to?” “A man does not call a line crooked unless he knows what a straight line looks like.” The reason you understand that there’s rot is because you understand what something that’s healthy is. And so there’s an objective standard that needs to be weighed by these things.

And I think more than ever, we’re seeing things that really speak to the justice questions in terms of the meaning questions. And that has really interested me as someone who — I’m a historian, right. So I’m interested in the questions about — I do things like read Greek and Coptic most of the time, right. But I’ve been challenged to think more about the philosophical questions because I think we live in an age where I’m really encouraged by people looking at injustice. There’s a lump in our throat, and I think there’s a lump in our throat because Jesus put it there.

AI, Job Displacement, and the Coming Crisis of Meaning

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think AI is going to have a big impact on your work. And in ways that might not be super obvious. I think one of the ways is that if all these CEOs are true, when they say that AI is going to cause massive job displacement — and even the CEOs that are building the technology have sat here and told me that there’s going to be massive job displacement — there’s going to be a crisis of meaning. People get a huge amount of worth from the things that they do in their lives, and they’re not going to be able to do those things in the same way necessarily. And about 60% of Americans say they’re worried that AI will take away the thing that gives them their meaning. I think we’re just at the footsteps of the crisis of meaning in this regard.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And that’s going to mean that a lot of people are going to struggle a lot. And that concerns me.

WESLEY HUFF: I mean, I think that’s what I’m more worried about with AI. I’m not worried about AI taking over the world. I’m not worried about AI replacing us or something like that. If I’m worried about AI, it’s that it’s the pain and suffering that it can cause for people who have bought into the lie that the sum of their identity is in what they can contribute and do. And how the Christian worldview speaks into that — how can I think Christianly about a society where there could very well be mass identity crises because of unemployment? Because years ago we were telling truck drivers, “Learn to code.” Well, now coders are being replaced by AI systems. AI can code better than the coders.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So Spotify said yesterday that none of their engineers have written a line of code since December. And I thought, wow, f*ing hell.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And my car drives itself here in America. I sat here the other day with the CEO of Uber and he said to me, they have 9 million drivers’ careers, and within X number of years they will have none. He said the unique thing is that the speed of the change is going to cause the problems. Because we had the industrial revolution, we had time to transfer to other lines of employment, etc., but the speed in which there’s going to be a displacement is going to cause the issues.

And I wonder what’s going to happen. A lot of people are going to be in search of meaning, and I guess that will push some people towards Christianity and other religions, but not everybody. Because as you say, when our identities are pulled away from us in such a way, some people turn to the bottle, or it causes mental health situations.

WESLEY HUFF: I mean, humanity has a very unique knack to pivot and figure things out. Now, is there going to be a lull period in between when that job crisis hits? Maybe. But I think humanity will figure things out. I just don’t know if that will be before all of it hits the fan.

Wesley Huff’s Journey to Christian Apologetics

STEVEN BARTLETT: What was the first domino that fell for you that made you go on this journey of becoming? Is it the term Christian apologist? Yeah, becoming. What does that even mean? Christian apologist?

WESLEY HUFF: So I mentioned First Peter 3:15. “But in your hearts revere Christ is Lord, always be prepared to give an answer.” So that is that apologia. So we take the Greek word apologia and we stick an English suffix on the end and we have this field to study, this discipline, apologetics.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What does that mean? You’re explaining the Bible, giving reasons.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, giving answers. So apologetics is as complicated as arguments philosophically and scientifically for the existence of God and the historical reliability of the Bible. And as simple as if someone asked me, “Why Jesus?” That’s an apologetic question insofar as it’s giving an answer.

A Young Boy in a Wheelchair: Wesley’s Paralysis at Age 11

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was looking at some of these photos of you as a young man. I wondered how much the situation in these photos had an impact on who you came to be and what you came to believe. I’ll put these photos on the screen for anybody. But this is a young boy in a wheelchair and in a hospital bed that looks to be paralyzed.

WESLEY HUFF: Yep. When I was 11 years old, I was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that left me paralyzed from the waist down.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you, at 10 you were fine, you were normal.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And at 11, suddenly you were paralyzed from the waist down?

WESLEY HUFF: Yes. So I had the flu. And my body’s immune system, instead of attacking the flu, attacked the nerve endings at the base of my spinal cord, so the myelin sheath, and caused inflammation, cutting off the communication from my brain to my legs.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And a lot of people that get that disease never walk again.

WESLEY HUFF: It’s complicated. So it’s called acute transverse myelitis. Although I’ve been told recently that there’s a change in the name of the diagnosis. But essentially transverse myelitis is not all that rare, but acute — that acute in terms of the quickness of it. I had fallen asleep, a nap for probably no more than 30 minutes. And when I woke up, I was paralyzed. So it was the quickness of the actual damage that was done to my spinal cord that was the catalyst for the diagnosis saying that the chances of me walking again were very low.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But within a month you were walking again.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, one month to the day. In fact, the anniversary, 23 year anniversary was recently. It was on February 8th. I woke up on a Saturday morning, got out of bed and walked over to my wheelchair.

Faith, Investigation, and Intellectual Honesty

STEVEN BARTLETT: Did this change your perspective on God, Christianity, religion?

WESLEY HUFF: It did in some ways. I mean, I don’t know how it couldn’t. It definitely — to have medical professionals tell me, “You’re probably going to be a paraplegic for the rest of your life. This is what you need to kind of accept and get used to,” to the exact same medical professionals, the pediatric neurologists, saying, “We don’t know why you’re walking.” That had to have an impact on me, in that I truly believe I was healed. It was the doctors who used the word miracle because they said that they couldn’t medically explain why there was no more damage on my spinal cord, why I was walking with not even any atrophy or anything.

However, I still needed to figure some of the more intellectual questions out of my head when I was a teenager. So it wasn’t just that this happened and explained a lot, because I was open to the possibility of this being a fluke, of there being a complete randomness to this. So when I was a teenager I investigated a lot.

But to the best of my ability as a 17 year old, in trying to answer some of the more meaning questions about — I know what my parents raised me to believe. But if I believe it simply because they told me to, it’s not the worst reason, but it’s also not the best reason. So that is the first time that I read the Quran cover to cover. I was looking into things like the Book of Mormon and the Bhagavad Gita. I was just curious. That’s when I was reading Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett. Not in any type of faith crisis way, but I was investigating.

The Supernatural, Mediums, and Speaking to the Dead

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you believe in the supernatural? Do you believe that we can speak to the dead?

WESLEY HUFF: No.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You don’t believe that?

WESLEY HUFF: No.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So when people —

WESLEY HUFF: Well, I should preface that. It depends what you mean by speaking to the dead. I think it’s possible. We have examples of it in the Bible. Saul gets a medium to call up the spirit of Samuel.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So do you believe mediums are telling the truth when they say that they’re contacting people in the afterlife?

WESLEY HUFF: I think that there’s a possibility of engaging the supernatural world, which is dangerous. And I think there’s a very fuzzy line between mediums who are con artists and people who are actually engaged in something that is dabbling in the supernatural.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I say this in part because I’ve heard people say that their partner’s passed away and then they’ve seen signs their partner has left them. Do you believe in this kind of thing?

WESLEY HUFF: I don’t think so. Not in those ways. I think when people are dead, they’re dead. But I think there are aspects of the supernatural world and a world that’s going on behind the scenes, that’s articulated within scripture, that have an impact on this world in a way that if people can be distracted and misled to think that they are contacting dead relatives, then that is otherwise going to prevent them from pursuing what they should be as image bearers of God.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you think it’s demonic in some capacity?

WESLEY HUFF: I think it can be. I don’t think it’s always. I think in emotionally vulnerable states we are willing to adhere to all sorts of things, and there’s a sensitivity that I want to communicate around that because I think people, especially in the periods of the deaths of loved ones, often want to look for validation in their passed away loved ones leaving something or communicating.

Hell, Grandmothers, and the Hard Questions

STEVEN BARTLETT: And also that we want to believe, when we lose people we love, that they are somewhere better, that they are in a good place. And this is one of the things that I struggled with earlier when we were talking about hell, which is if such a small percentage of people are making it to hell by whatever measure of acceptance one believes, then that would mean that my grandmother, who wasn’t necessarily a devout religious person or a Christian, or she hadn’t repented, is currently in hell. And that’s a hard thought to take, that she is in such an awful place now.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And this would obviously make people not want to experience that dissonance and therefore reject religion and say, “Well, no, if I accept the Bible then I have to accept my grandmother is currently burning in hell,” and so they’re going to reject the Bible. It’s much easier than accepting that my grandmother’s suffering right now.

WESLEY HUFF: I mean, ultimately that’s a — I wouldn’t do it that way, therefore it’s not true.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Sorry, what do you mean?

WESLEY HUFF: Well, “I don’t think that God should send my grandmother to hell.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

WESLEY HUFF: Therefore I’m going to conclude that it’s not true based on that type of reasoning. Now at the end of the day, does God communicate with people in ways that go beyond my understanding? I’ve talked to enough Muslims in the Muslim world who’ve had dreams about Jesus to know that something goes on. I don’t understand sometimes what happens on the deathbed between an individual and their maker. So it’s not my place to say that they are burning in hell or whatever descriptive language you want to use, because it’s between them and God.

At the exact same time, apart from the saving work of Christ, I’m going to hell. And I genuinely believe that — that apart from the in-breaking of God into my life, in part and parcel by things like this, but also by showing me and allowing me to investigate these things and wrestle through questions, and putting people in places in my life that have formed me and shaped me and allowed me to look at the evidence and have conversations and be honest and transparent — those are the things that have led me down a road to say I’m convinced. I’m convinced that this is true, experientially, that it is intellectually robust and that it is experientially profound for me and for so many other people, your friend included.

Closing Thoughts: A Manuscript, a Bible, and Romans 12

STEVEN BARTLETT: What’s the most important thing that we haven’t talked about that we should have talked about, Wesley? For the people that are listening, I would assume they’re very curious people. Some of them are religious, some of them aren’t. What is the most important thing that we should close on in your view?

WESLEY HUFF: Part of my academic study is that I do what’s called papyrology and paleography. So I make facsimiles of manuscripts, ancient manuscripts, particularly biblical manuscripts. So this is a biblical manuscript, right? P46. It’s a late second or third century page from a collection of Paul’s epistles.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So Paul from the Bible?

WESLEY HUFF: Paul from the Bible. He wrote that, and then a scribe in the 2nd century copied it down. So this is — I made this. So this is genuine Egyptian papyrus. I’m only writing one side, so you can see kind of how the papyrus is put together. And then I got you a nice Bible. But I have put a bookmark in the page where that passage is.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why did you pick that particular passage?

WESLEY HUFF: Well, why don’t you open it up and read it? So it’s on the little inscription note that I have there, Romans 12. So you can see on the bottom there, there’s the title.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, yeah. 12. 11. 12. So it says:

“Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honourable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

WESLEY HUFF: So hopefully that’s a good passage to remember and think about. And then that’s the box for it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Thank you so much. This is so beautiful, Wesley. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they’re leaving it for. And the question left for you is, what is one risk that you should be taking in your life but aren’t?

The Risk of Embracing the Moment

WESLEY HUFF: Currently where I am in my life, I feel like so many things have happened so quickly that there’s an aspect of unpredictability, and I’m just a little bit — my wife and I were talking last night, and it was like, we need to embrace what’s happening right now, but a year from now, if it’s all gone, that’s totally okay, and we’re fine with that, whether that’s financially or with social media or opportunity.

And maybe the risk is pushing into that and saying, maybe there’s an aspect of that. Yes, I think it’s wise to keep that in calibration and understand that if this goes away tomorrow, I’m content, because this is beyond what I have. I’m in a room sitting with Steven Bartlett.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m in a room sat with you.

WESLEY HUFF: So there’s an aspect of that which is completely mind blowing to me, especially Wes Huff from a year ago. But maybe not selling myself short in thinking that these opportunities are opportunities to invest in others in ways that people have invested in me over this last year.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What do you mean by that?

WESLEY HUFF: With some of the things that I’ve been very graciously able to experience, and in giving other people opportunity to maybe push into trying to make an impact in their space.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, okay.

WESLEY HUFF: And encouraging them, pulling people up the ladder that you’ve been able to climb.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

Closing Thoughts

STEVEN BARTLETT: Paying it forward to paying it downward, I guess.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: This is so, so cool.

WESLEY HUFF: Well, I’m very thankful for you willing to have me on, so thank you.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, thank you. You’re such a great communicator and you’re so finely balanced in your ability to deeply understand everything you’re talking about from a historical perspective, to be in the pursuit of truth, as you kind of said, irrespective of where that one might lead somebody. But then you have the gift of — yeah — the gift of communication. Incredibly engaging person, good intentions, good man.

So I was very, very glad we had this conversation and very much looking forward to it for a very long time. So I’m glad. Glad you said yes. I was asking my team for maybe, I don’t know, maybe nine months to get in contact with you.

WESLEY HUFF: Well, I apologize because I said no a few times.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, it’s okay. It’s okay. But I’m really, really appreciative of it. Wesley, I hope to have this conversation again sometime soon.

WESLEY HUFF: Yeah, that’d be great.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Thank you.

Related Posts

• Transcript of Elizabeth Lane Interview on Propaganda Network: Tucker Carlson Show
• Transcript of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Interview: IMO Podcast
• Transcript: Mary Talley Bowden Interview on Tony Fauci’s Diary @ Tucker Carlson Show
• Transcript of CIA Whistleblower Jim Erdman Interview: Tucker Carlson Show
• Transcript of Shawn Ryan Interview: Trump’s Betrayal – Tucker Carlson Show