Jo Vitale [00:00:35] So welcome to the podcast where we invite you to Ask Away. Hi, friends, I'm Jo Vitale, and if anybody out there today is feeling any of those back to school blues, then I can absolutely relate to you. We just dropped off our youngest child, Jonathan, for his first day of pre-K this morning, and he was an absolute champion, just walked bravely into the classroom, but I'm still feeling like a quivering ball of emotion. So if anyone else is going through that today, then I do relate strongly to those feelings. But it's that time of year, isn't it, when we all start trying to get organized for the season ahead, just get geared up for a new fall, a new year. And as I've been doing some organizing myself this summer, I actually came across a talk that Vince gave way back in 2017. Hard to believe that is eight years ago now, but he was speaking on the topic of pluralism and polarization in our culture. And so I just dipped in to give it a bit of a hearing. And what stood out to me was that actually, despite being eight years old, the issues that he was talking about in that message are actually more heightened now than they were back then. I'm sure most of you guys can remember 2017, but as societally conflicted as we all felt ourselves to be at that time, the divisions have actually only deepened and rhetoric has become even more vitriolic in the years since. 

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[00:02:01] So in light of that, I actually wanted to share this message from Vince again, as we head into the fall of 2025, just in case any of you are feeling under that same pressure to succumb to those cultural ultimatums that Vince talks about here. That choice we sometimes feel pressured into making between choosing truth over love or love over truth. I really hope that you find this as helpful as I did. And I also hope it inspires some creative ideas and actions for you to take in your own relationships and communities. And if so, if you're feeling inspired in a certain direction, we'd love to hear about it. Please do write into us to share with us what you're up to, what you are sensing, what steps you want to be taking so that we can be praying for you as well. We'd love be cheering you on. But for now, here is Vince. 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:04] We'll start with some baseball. Nothing like a little sport to get us going in the morning. So we got Derek Jeter, September 15th, 2010, steps to the plate. I'm a Yankees fan, so I have to live in the past. Yankees down 2-1, top of the seventh, middle of a pennant race. If that means nothing to you because you come from a country that doesn't play baseball, my wife Jo says it's basically like cricket except you run in a circle and the players wear pajamas. Jeter's at the plate. Here comes the pitch, fast ball, runs inside, hits Jeter right on the hand. He yells in pain. He shakes it off. He hops around. The umpire calls hit by pitch. Jeter begins to jog slowly down to first base. The doctor comes out of the dugout. He checks Jeter wrist to make sure he's okay. Thankfully, he's okay. And then everyone gets a huge surprise. They show the replay on the big screen. And everyone sees that the ball passed right by. It never hit Jeter. It was all just an act. Derek Jeter, the captain, baseball's ambassador of integrity for an entire generation, one of the greatest Yankees of all time, a five-time world champion. That's infinitely more championships than the entire Cubs franchise in the last hundred years. 

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[00:04:47] Derek Jeter, and he just straight up cheated. And here's the real shocker. Everyone praised his action, not only on his team, but even the players and the coaches of the other team. The manager of the team said he applauded Jeter's action, and he wished that his players had more of that type of gamesmanship. More of that win at all costs type of attitude. That's pluralism right there. No one cared about the truth. Jeter's truth claim was just as legitimate as the truth shown by the replay. No one cared that one was based in reality and one was base in fantasy. We live in a post-truth society. That's what The Economist called it last month. We're very confused about the truths. There's the truth, and then there's the naked truth. There's truth, and then there's the gospel truth. But the gospel is obviously false. There's the honest truth and then there's the God's honest truth, but that has nothing to do with God. We stretch the truth and we bend the truth and we twist the truth. We bury the truth because the truth hurts. When we want something to be false, we knock on wood. When we something to true, we cross our fingers. Which wooden cross are we trusting in? 

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[00:06:14] Pluralism. The view that all truth claims are equally valid. Does that include the claim that all true claims are not equally valid? Philosophically, that's how quickly pluralism runs into incoherence. So why does it persist? Why is it growing? I see at least three bad assumptions and three good desires that can lead to pluralism. The first two are simpler to deal with. Number one, equal claims. Some people really think that the different ways of seeing the world are making more or less the same claims. Bernie Sanders, in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, he described his views about God in this way. He said, everyone believes in the golden rule and we call that God. That sounds nice, but it's completely unfounded. Jesus' golden rule, do to others as you would have them do to you. Who believes this? Confucius probably came closest. He said, "Do not inflict on others what you do not want them to inflict on you." But as John Dixon puts it, the difference between this and the golden rule is the difference not punching your enemy in the face and building your enemy a hospital. The secular worldview that I grew up with certainly didn't believe in the golden rule. I was taught that if someone is good to you, be 10 times as good to them. But if someone hurts you, then you hurt them 10 times worse. 

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[00:07:54] I've long wondered what the prodigal was thinking when he saw his father sprinting towards him from afar. He knew that he didn't deserve his father's love. And there will be a day when each one of us will see God running towards us. And I wonder what you picture when you picture that meeting. What emotion do you see on God's face as he sprints towards you? What type of God will you be greeted by? Pluralism cannot answer that question. The claims of the different worldviews are not the same, but maybe they're equally valid. Maybe they're equal rational. That's what some people think. And that's what I thought when I showed up at college. And then I was challenged to read the Bible. I opened the Bible for the first time, and I came across its claim that God has provided confirmation for everyone by raising Jesus from the dead. And then I encountered the evidence for the resurrection, evidence that is historical, public, early, multiply attested, evidence that has stood the test of 2,000 years of critical scholarship. No other worldview can claim anything like that. I couldn't believe it. So I arranged meetings with the two top New Testament professors at Princeton University where I was studying. I thought they were non-Christians, surely they would be able to give me plausible theories that would account for the relevant history without making an appeal to a miraculous resurrection. 

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[00:09:35] One of them glanced towards a mass hallucination theory without conviction. This is a theory that is riddled with problems, and as a result, it has earned no credibility in the scholarly literature. The other professor told me that as a historian, he wasn't interested in the question. There seemed to be some sort of presumption that as soon as we begin talking about the miraculous, we're no longer talking about history. And I've never been able to understand why he thought that. I began to wonder whether G.K. Chesterton was right, that Christianity hadn't been tried and found wanting, it had been found difficult and left untried. A third misconception that can lead to pluralism is the assumption that at the end of the day, the practical payoff of all of the major worldviews is basically the same. A while back, I debated an atheist philosopher, and at one point during the debate we were asked to speak to how our differing worldviews allowed us to deal practically with personal suffering. And my opponent said that he didn't think Christianity offered a real advantage in this respect. He said when you're at a funeral, whether it's a Christian funeral or an atheist funeral, everyone is devastated. 

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[00:11:04] The next funeral that I went to happened to be a Christian funeral. During the service, the brother of the deceased invited everyone who was there to show their appreciation for his brother's life with a round of applause. And before we knew what was happening, all across this posh English village church, people had climbed up onto the pews and they were standing on the pews with their arms in the air, pumping their arms and hooting and hollering louder and more joyfully than any sporting match I have ever been to. It was unbelievable. This carried on for minutes. It was one of the great privileges of my life just to have been there and to have be a part of that. Were there tears? Of course. Was there sadness? Absolutely. But every inch of that room was filled with hope. I can remember thinking to myself during the service if only that atheist philosopher who I debated could be here right now, he would have no choice but to retract his statement because there is only one God who can make that sort of hope possible. The major ways of seeing the world are not the same in their claims, their evidence, or their impact. But as we seek to win people and not just arguments, even more important than identifying what we need to deny in pluralism, is identifying what we to need to affirm. 

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[00:12:45] Some people lean towards pluralism because they desire for people to have equal access to the truth, or equal opportunity to come to know the truth. At its core, this is a desire for fairness. In an age with so many competing truth claims, maybe the only way to be fair to everyone is to see all truth claims as equally valid. But when you think it through, pluralism may actually be the most unfair of all the truth claims. Pluralism is a modern idea. It's a first-world idea. The pluralist is trying to be inclusive of everyone. But the reality is that the vast, vast majority of people have never been exposed to pluralism. It has never even crossed their minds to think that all views are equally valid. Ironically, so-called inclusivism may be the most exclusive of all the worldviews. It excludes most of the world who have no chance of coming to believe it. There is only one hope with respect to fairness when it comes to knowing the truth. If there is a God who is loving enough and powerful enough and creative enough to make sure that every single person is given an opportunity to respond to the truth. Jesus's life began by the truth being announced miraculously by a star in the sky to foreign astrologer magicians who would have worshiped foreign gods. 

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[00:14:23] Jesus' life ended with his plea to his followers to go and make disciples of all nations. Those are the bookends of Jesus' his life. His entire life is framed by a commitment to reach those who otherwise would not have a chance to know the truth. The best test of whether or not someone is fair is whether they make an exception for themselves. But Jesus did not. He did not exempt himself from suffering. He did not exempt himself form death. He did even exempt himself from the experience of feeling far from God. We can trust that he will be fair to everyone because he was willing to be unfair to himself. A second good desire that can lead to pluralism is a longing for unity with other people, a longing community. We long to see things the same way, to be in agreement, to be working with each other and not against each other. We're sick of tension and insecurity in the way that people think about us. We long for a community full of friends who are absolutely loyal and who you can be absolutely yourself around without judgment or controversy. That's a good longing. That's what we were created for. But pluralism just pretends that disagreement doesn't exist rather than acknowledging it and working through it. And this can only lead to a cheap imitation of the community that we actually long for. Acting as if there is a depth of relational unity when that unity has not been hard won is promiscuity. 

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[00:16:12] We jump from belief to belief to belief. We are willing to temporarily unite ourselves with many different truth claims as long as they keep relationships easy and fun. That doesn't work with sex, and it won't work with truth either. To give yourself to everyone is to give yourself to no one. To believe everything is to believe nothing. In both cases, we are left feeling empty. The desire for community is a good one. We need to encourage people that that desire is not too strong, it's too weak. And we need to build a church that can be recognized as the true fulfillment of that desire. A final desire that can motivate pluralism is the desire for every person to be equally valued and to be treated with dignity and respect. That's another good desire, and it's one I want to spend a bit more time on. Why do we have such a confused relationship with the truth? Fear. We're afraid of truth. Truth has so often been abused that experience has taught us that the trajectory of truth, the trajectory of saying that you are right and other people are wrong is from truth to disagreement, to devaluing, to intolerance, to extremism, to violence, to terrorism. 

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[00:17:47] And if that is the trajectory of truth, if truth starts you on a path that ends in intolerance, extremism, and violence, then all of a sudden pluralism is looking pretty attractive. Then all of a sudden philosophical incoherence might seem like a price worth paying. If that is trajectory, if that is the narrative, then those who are committed to truth are in fact terrorists in the making. If that is the trajectory, then truth is an act of war. And an act of war leaves you with only two options, fight or flee. Most of Western society is fleeing. Everything around us is structured to avoid disagreement. We spend most of our time on Facebook and Twitter where we can like and we can retweet, but there's no option to dislike. Sports no longer teach us to disagree. In professional sports, we replay everything, so we don't have to disagree. In youth sports everyone gets a trophy and we don't keep scores, so we do not have to disagree about some being better than others. When it comes to dating, we use online sites that match us with people who are so similar in background and personality and beliefs that we can avoid as much disagreement as possible. We don't meet people different from us at coffee shops because we go to drive through Starbucks. We don't meet people shopping because everything we could ever need or desire is designed to be delivered to our door. 

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[00:19:21] Culturally, everything is set up to avoid disagreement and increasingly so. So where will engagement with the truth survive? Not in our politics. When I began working on this talk, having 11% of America believe that you are honest and trustworthy was good enough for a 9% lead in the race to be the next president of the United States. If only 11% was good to get an A in school that would have saved me a lot of time. Where will truth survive? Not on our university campuses as freedom of speech has been replaced with freedom from speech. Where will truth survive? Will it survive in the church? That is the question at the heart of the calling of this ministry. Jo and I recently had dinner with a friend who wanted to talk with us about faith. And she shared with us that as a young child she asked her church-going mother, "Did Jesus really rise from the dead?" And her mother responded, "Nicole, don't be difficult." That was the last real question about God that Nicole ever asked. And today, Nicole was one of the most intellectually accomplished atheists that we know. 

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[00:20:49] How many youth in America have a story like that? Seventy percent of Christian children in America stopped going to church between the ages of 18 and 23. Seventy percent. We have fled from our children's questions and in turn they have fled from the church. That has to change. The alternative to fleeing is fighting. I was walking around Oxford a few months ago and just ahead of me, there were two guys who were having a spirited conversation about how crazy they find certain Christian positions with respect to ethical issues. And the one guy wondered out loud whether the only solution would be to shame them out of their position. And then his friend chimed in quickly. He said, "Yes, that's what we should do. We should ridicule them mercilessly in the most insensitive ways we can think of." That's an exact quote. Then they made a right turn and they swiped their faculty cards and they walked into the University of Oxford Theoretical Physics Building. These were probably scholars at Oxford, a place that prides itself on intellectual freedom and the exchange of ideas, and merciless, insensitive ridicule was the best they could come up with for resolving disagreement. I found myself wondering how many views they held in theoretical physics that one day will be considered ridiculous. 

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[00:22:30] How does one get to this point? How does someone get to the point where merciless ridicule seems like the best way forward? I think it's because you come to see truth as more important than love. If truth is greater than love, then you fight. Then the end goal of truth justifies whatever means necessary, whether the means of Oxford academics or the means of ISIS. The alternative is that love is greater than truth, then you flee. You flee from the dangers of truth because that's the only way, no matter how incoherent, to avoid a trajectory that leads to devaluing intolerance, extremism, and ultimately violence. Either truth is greater than love, or love is greater than truth. Fight or flee. This is the cultural ultimatum that we are living in. What's your choice? Maybe there's another way. This is Hassan, one of our students at Aka last year, an Anglican minister in Northern Nigeria. On the first day of classes, we were sitting at lunch and one of his fellow classmates said to him, "How do you approach mission in a context in which you are viewed as the enemy?" We knew that Hassan ministered in an area that was terrorized by Boko Haram. We found out only later that he had been shot at twice and that there was a bounty on his head. 

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[00:24:08] Hassan began to tell us that there came a point when he had seen so many of his Christian brothers and sisters murdered for their faith that he began a conversation with a known gun dealer to acquire an AK-47. Violence seemed like the only answer. While he was trying to figure out where to get the money to buy this gun, a young girl ran by his house during school hours. And he stopped her. And he said, "Why aren't you in school?" And she said, "My parents don't have the money to send me." And Hassan thought, that's not right. And he decided that he and his church would pay for her schooling. He asked her to take him to her parents. Then his stomach knotted up as she walked him across the clear dividing line between the Christian and the Muslim sections of town. He thought that this girl was from a Christian family. She was, in fact, from a Muslim family. But he had committed to paying her fees. And so he began him and his church to pay for her education. Then he became aware that her brothers were not in school. And then he identified another Muslim child who was not in the school, and another, and another and another. There are now 200 Muslim children who are being educated by Hassan and his church in Christian schools. Then Hassan realized, why are we only helping the children? He realized that the Christian women in his town had a way of making clothes that the Muslim women didn't have and that the Muslim women had a style of cooking that the Christian women didn't know. 

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[00:25:51] There are now 160 Christian and Muslim women who are getting together regularly, enjoying each other's company, and blessing each other by sharing their expertise. Shortly before Hassan came to Oxford, a group of militant youth showed up at his door. He was scared. He thought that his life might be in danger or worse that his family's life might in danger. They looked at him sternly and they said, "Why don't you help us? You help the children, you help the women. Why don't do anything for us?" Militant youth are asking an Anglican minister to incorporate them into his mission strategy. Absolutely amazing. Why did these young men respond so positively? After all, Hassan was disagreeing with them in a big way. For starters, he was saying that Jesus Christ should be at the center of their education. He was also clearly saying that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us and turn the other cheek, things that are not true in Islam. But here's the thing. Hassan's disagreement with them was not greater than his love for them. His loving sacrifice for them was the very content of his disagreement with him. He cut the link between disagreement and devaluing because his communication of truth was one and the same as his communication of love. And that is the gospel. 

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[00:27:37] Jesus disagreed with us. His very coming was an act of disagreement with us. It was a statement that we needed saving because our lives had disagreed so badly with what he had intended for them. But like Hassan, Jesus didn't disagree with us first and then later show us love as some sort of consolation for the offense that he had caused. No, Jesus' loving sacrifice for us was the very content of his disagreement. It was his very statement that we are sinners in need of a savior. Not truth is greater than love. Not love is greater that truth. God is love and God is truth and therefore truth is love. Only in Jesus does truth equal love, and therefore only Jesus can get us out of the cultural ultimatum that we are stuck in. Fight or flee. Jesus didn't call down armies, though he could have. He didn't flee by staying far away from our mess, though he could have. Every other worldview makes a choice between truth and love. Christianity refuses to because truth and love are one and the same. Truth that is not love is not truth. Love that is not truth is not love. This is a countercultural approach to truth that we are desperately in need of. And when people catch a glimpse of it, when people get a first sight at love and truth in unity, it reaches to the deepest desires of the human heart. 

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[00:29:13] Last year, Jo interviewed Hassan at a secular university about his life in front of mostly non-Christians. When Hassan had finished speaking, spontaneous applause erupted and it carried on endlessly. It was incredible. Hassan had spoken completely openly about the uniqueness of Christ, the reality of sin, our need for a savior. And this room of non-Christians was overflowing in affirmation and appreciation. I immediately thought to myself, they don't realize it, but they are applauding the gospel. Their hearts were leaping for love that is truth and truth that is love. On one of his last Sundays with us in Oxford, our pastor interviewed Hassan during the Sunday service. And he asked him, is it worth it? And Hassan had this confused look on his face because the answer was so obvious to him. And he said, of course. And then our pastor said to him, "Do you have any parting words for us as a church?" Hassan said that he did. And then he said, "I beg you, do not compromise here in the West on the faith that we in Africa are dying for." I beg, you do not compromise here in the West, on the faith that we in Africa are dying for. Personally, I need to keep reminding myself that this is not extraordinary Christianity. This is just the simple gospel. Love that is truth. Truth that is love. Laying down our lives in order that others might know the truth. Who are you laying down your life for? 

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[00:31:12] Every Christian needs to be able to answer that question. We prefer the word sacrifice because just about anything can be construed as a sacrifice. But who are we giving our lives for? How often is our disagreement with others, our very act of giving our life for them? What would that look like concretely? What would that look like with the atheist community? What would that look like with those who we disagree with politically? What would it look like with the family member who is against us? What would it like for us to disagree with such love and giving of ourselves that people would show up on our front doorstep asking for us to act on our disagreement with them? Why can Hassan live out the gospel with such conviction? Because he's not afraid of the truth. I recently wrote to Hassan and asked him if he would like me to keep his name anonymous when I share his story. This was how he responded. "Dear Vince, my profound gratitude and I feel very privileged for this. It's okay to use my name. Being already in a siege for the gospel, I don't think it can get worse than this. I have decided long ago not to be ruled by fear.". 

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[00:32:31] If you're afraid of truth, if truth is an act of war, then you will fight or you will flee. Hassan has chosen not to fight; he has chosen not to flee because he is not afraid of the truth. And only one thing drives out fear. Love. Love drives out fear. So when we talk about our relationship with the truth, two questions are more important than all others. Do we love the truth? Does the truth love us? I recently tweeted this tweet. Only love of the truth will stop our abuse of the truth. A young man named Mohammed replied, he said, "What's truth actually? How can someone love an abstract idea? Is the truth alive?" These are exactly the right questions. Since ancient times, people have recognized it's virtuous to be a lover of truth. But what is this thing that we are supposed to love? What are the things that are true? When philosophers write about this question, the answers that they most commonly give are propositions, sentences, beliefs, and facts. And here's the problem. When's the last time you loved one of those? They're all too abstract to love in a deep way. 

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[00:33:55] Into this challenge, Jesus speaks the words that change everything. I am the truth. Jesus makes truth personal, and Jesus' truth is alive. Only a Christian can be a lover of the truth in the deepest sense of love, because only Christianity is an invitation into a personal, loving relationship with the truth. One final question. Does the truth love us? Maybe the reason that we struggle to love the truth is because we don't really believe that the truth loves us. I want to read you a transcript of a video that I came across on Mother's Day. It's a video of two daughters who alternate holding up index cards to tell the story of their mother's love. This is the transcript: 

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[00:34:51] "I'm Chloe and I'm Annie. We want to tell you a story about our mom. Our mom and dad got married in 1991. We lived in a happy home with lots of love and laughter and a mom who loved us more than the world. But there was an accident in 1999 that changed everything. We were on vacation with our grandparents and we were going to rent a log cabin. It was beautiful and overlooked a huge cliff. We were so excited. When we pulled into the driveway of the house, my parents and grandparents got out of the car to sign paperwork in the doorway. My sister, brother, and I stayed in the car and watched from the window. Even though my mom had her keys with her, the car somehow knocked out of gear and started rolling towards the cliff. As soon as my mom saw what was happening, she did the unthinkable. She ran in front of the SUV, determined to stop it. We remember the look on her face right before she went under. And we remember feeling the bump as we ran over her body. That bump saved our lives. It slowed the car down just enough for my grandpa to run up beside it and pull the emergency brake right before we went over the cliff. The weight of the SUV on my mother's body should have killed her, but by some miracle of miracles, it didn't. But it did break her back. She is paralyzed from the waist down, and she will never walk again. But she says she wouldn't change it for the world because her three kids are alive and with her. She taught us from a young age that when people stare at us, because of her wheelchair, we should hold our heads up high and just stare back. Life gave her a tough hand of cards, but she arranged them into something beautiful. Yes, she saved our lives in the accident in 1999, but she saves them over and over again, each and every day. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. We love you more than words." 

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[00:37:00] So often we forget the rawness of the love of the cross. Chloe and Annie remember the look on their mother's face just before she went under. They remember feeling the bump as they ran over her body. Do we remember the look on Jesus's face just before he dropped down and gave his life for us? Do we the remember the feeling, the thumps of the nails as they were pounded into his body? Do we remember when the truth was stretched? When the truth was twisted and bent? When the true was naked? When the truth hurts? And when the truth was buried? Do we remember when the truth loved us? And when people stare at us because we love the truth, will we hold our heads up high? Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you that in love and in truth you gave your life for us. Right now, as we pray, call to our minds those whom you would have us give our lives for and fill us with the courage to do so. 

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