Why Did God Do That? Matthew Tingblad
Caleb Gray (00:01.418)
Well, I'm joined here with Matthew Tinglad. So welcome to the Upside Down People, Matthew. I'm so glad to be having a conversation with you today. How are you going?
Matthew (00:13.025)
I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. It's great to be here, Caleb. I'm excited to see where we'll go with this conversation.
Caleb Gray (00:19.198)
Yeah, well thanks so much for carving out the time. I believe you've just mentioned before that you're over in Texas, so quite a big time difference there. Yeah, so before we jump into the conversation, something I usually like doing with my guests just to add a bit of flesh to the voice for those who are listening. Maybe you can tell us a bit about yourself. What would someone...
finds surprising about you, Matthew.
Matthew (00:50.909)
Sure. Well, a little bit about myself is...
I grew up in a Christian home and ended up feeling a calling to my life to develop content to grow and strengthen the church and take that everywhere I can. One thing led to another and long story short, I ended up going to Talbot School of Theology, got a degree in Pastoral and General Ministries and then joined Josh McDowell Ministry, which is a ministry based here in Dallas, Texas. We do primarily Christian apologetics, which is the ministry of helping people understand why we can believe Christianity is true.
against Christianity so that people can be prepared to live in this world that is very anti-christian in some ways. But maybe something surprising about myself that not many people know is that I also do programming on the side as a kind of fun hobby. I have two games that are published on Steam which is my sort of breaking right but a fun little thing that I do and continue to tinker with on my times off. Yeah.
Caleb Gray (01:50.21)
That's awesome. Are you a self-taught programmer?
Matthew (01:53.933)
I am, yeah. Started figuring that out. I think I was in 9th grade when I first started poking around and making games. It was always something that I thought would be so fun and then when I figured out that there were programs you could do to build software and games. That was just one of those things I guess it worked with me and yeah, so that's the side of my life a lot of people don't see.
Caleb Gray (01:58.595)
Wow.
Caleb Gray (02:09.473)
Yeah.
Caleb Gray (02:13.27)
Nice.
Caleb Gray (02:16.735)
There you go.
Matthew (02:18.091)
Or they see my profile as a game maker guy and they don't realize that I do stuff like this as well, writing books and speaking.
Caleb Gray (02:23.626)
Right. Which the two can seem quite, well very different. I was going to say contrary, not contrary, but they're just very different fields.
Matthew (02:35.677)
Yeah, they're very different, but it's... I guess I've always had an analytical mind and things like logic puzzles and so forth have like, cool, like I can kind of get into that rhythm and a lot of logic thinking is involved in programming too. So I think my mind just works in both of those areas, even though they're quite different fields of work.
Caleb Gray (02:49.195)
Yeah.
Caleb Gray (02:59.274)
Yeah, cool. And would you say like with programming that it's something that you find like relaxing or a bit of like a difference to your apologetic thinking and how like you're sort of breaking apart the Bible and trying to understand it and...
Matthew (03:23.177)
Well for me, uh...
But admittedly, I wouldn't say that I am, I wouldn't say that I program to unwind or to relax. When my head is engaged in writing and speaking, delivering contents, podcasts like this, you know, I'm often kind of mentally engaged at a fairly high level. And so it's a little difficult to get off of that and immediately just start with my tinker projects and programming. Normally I save that for the weekends or something when I have time to slow down and just get into it.
Caleb Gray (03:40.098)
Awesome.
Caleb Gray (03:51.038)
Yeah, very cool. Well, thanks for sharing a bit about that. That is a fascinating piece of information. So obviously you mentioned you work with Josh McDowell in his global ministry. You recently wrote a book as well, Why Did God Do That with Josh. What drew you into apologetics?
What's the importance of it in this day and age?
Matthew (04:25.277)
Yeah, some people...
like to be able to defend the Christian faith and to debate atheists or whatever it might be, for some people like that's what they really enjoy doing. I actually don't like conflict very much. Conflict is tough for me. And so sometimes I wonder what the heck am I doing in apologetics. But I just find that there is such a tremendous need for the church to know what they believe in, why they believe it, and a need for the church to know
Caleb Gray (04:42.925)
Right.
Matthew (04:58.179)
to be strengthened to prepare the next generation to survive in a very anti-Christian culture, like I said in some ways. I also find that when God moves, there are a lot of people, maybe their hearts are ready to know the Lord, but their minds don't know what to do about it. And if I can help them realize that Christianity is not just a felt thing, but it makes sense rationally, then that can be the kind of help that they need in order to fully be ready
Caleb Gray (05:07.03)
Yeah.
Matthew (05:27.959)
Christ.
Caleb Gray (05:30.623)
Great. So yeah, your book, Why Did God Do That? Maybe you can share a bit around the background of what motivated you to write that. It's obviously like around the goodness of God and sort of diving into difficult conversations or difficult passages in the Bible and finding the character of God amidst those is part of it. So yeah, what
Matthew (05:44.853)
Thanks for watching!
Caleb Gray (05:58.898)
motivated you to write it, what's it about, and then we can go from there.
Matthew (06:05.597)
Sure. Well, for those of you who are watching this on video, here's the book, Why Did God Do That? Subtitle is Discovering God's Goodness in the Hard Passages of Scripture. So, the way that this...
kind of really started in my life was I remember having a phone call with a young woman. She called me up. I think she called up the ministry that I serve at and wanted to speak to someone. I was available so I'm on the phone with her. And she confessed that she didn't really believe in God anymore but she grew up as a Christian. She still wanted to believe and was hoping that maybe I could kind of reconvince her to believe in God. So I'm like, all right, well what is it that makes it difficult for you to believe in God? And she still...
saying, well, golly, I just can't accept that God would command Joshua to drive out the Canaanites or that God would have these regulations for slavery in the Old Testament. How can I accept a God who would send people to hell for not believing in him? She goes on for a minute and I say, hold up, you told me that you're struggling to believe in God, is that right? She goes, yeah. And I say, well, based on what you just shared with me, it sounds like belief in God is not really your problem.
she's taken aback like, what? And I'm like, yeah, sounds to me like what's really bugging you here, what's chewing away at your faith. It's not that you don't think God is real, but it's that you don't like him. And when I put it that way, from what I could tell on the other line of the phone line there, was that she hadn't really thought about it that way. But that's the issue. And that's the issue that I find for a lot of people who are struggling with their faith these days.
As Christians and in apologetics, we're always going to talk about reasons why we can believe in God and why we can trust that the Gospels are reliable and so forth. But typically when I hear people struggling with their faith, typically it's issues related to the goodness of God. Why would God do this? And this hits us in two different ways. Like on one side...
Matthew (08:02.481)
people struggle with the goodness of God because they see so much pain and suffering in their own lives in the world that they witness. So that's one thing. How can God be good when there's so much pain and suffering in this world and in my own life? Another side of this coin is how can God be good when I'm reading the Bible and I see these stories about God which seem to paint God in a very bad light?
Caleb Gray (08:09.4)
Right.
Matthew (08:25.481)
What I've found in apologetics is that so many people have great messaging around why there's pain and suffering in this world and how we can trust that God is still good. There's not so much information about Bible difficulties. And so when I was thinking about what would just be a strategic place to write into in order to have a great impact and help people see the goodness of God, I determined that the topic of Bible difficulties would be the place to go.
Caleb Gray (08:35.608)
Right.
Caleb Gray (08:54.258)
Yeah, that's awesome. And so in your research, I'm sure you would have come across a lot of different mistakes or errors that people make when they wrestle with difficult passages of the Bible. What do you find is the most commonly found mistake? Is it based on someone's perception of the goodness of God or can you go a bit deeper into that?
Matthew (09:24.413)
Yeah, so depending on the subject that we are discussing, there's some interpretive mistakes that happen along the way. I find that, for example, there's some things people don't understand when they're reading the Canaan Wars in the Book of Joshua. There's some things people don't understand when talking about the doctrine of hell or some of these other Bible difficulties. But maybe more generally.
Probably the most common mistake that I see people make is they read the Bible and I don't mean to sound like a kind of like rigid Christian, but people have this sense that they can determine for themselves what the Bible has to say about the character of God, when in fact the same Bible which tells us these difficult stories also tells us about who God is. So one of the things I often say when talking about Bible difficulties is that
The Bible tells us plainly and clearly, God is good. So if the Bible is true, God is good. And all these stories that we see in the Bible which make us think God is not good, there must be something we don't quite understand about those stories. So you know, when I'm opening up the Bible and trying to...
Caleb Gray (10:37.71)
Alright.
Matthew (10:44.593)
see these difficult passages of Scripture and show people how God really is good in these difficult passages, I'm not petting a cat the wrong way. I'm trying to go with the grain of Scripture. I'm trying to give the Bible the benefit of the doubt and to look at the culture, to look at the context, and to point out some of the things we may not realize at our first read to notice those details which help us see how God is good even in these difficult passages which seem to say otherwise.
Caleb Gray (11:15.83)
Awesome. And so I've obviously read through the Bible and looked at different passages and like find it so difficult to comprehend the reasons for everything in that like amazing, amazing book. How do you find when you're going through it, is there ever a point of like, I just will never have an answer for this?
Or is it something that you can sort of extract and reason out and over time come to a place of peace with these some sometimes contending issues.
Matthew (11:58.261)
I would say this, that we know...
You know, like in Isaiah, he says that, or God is speaking, and he says that as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. So it makes sense that it doesn't always make sense. And it makes sense that, as humans, we are not going to fully understand what God is doing or how God can be truly good in some of these really challenging passages of the Bible. So I do believe that's true.
Caleb Gray (12:10.635)
Right.
Matthew (12:32.215)
in talking about the goodness of God. What I'd like to do is I'd like to explain these difficult passages as much as we can understand. And then where the gaps in the questions still remain, we can talk about how some things about God simply cannot be understood. What I'd like to say is that we don't know everything that we can know, and our finite minds won't hit that, but we can know enough to trust God when the questions still remain.
Caleb Gray (12:49.078)
Right.
Caleb Gray (13:00.038)
Awesome. And is that a similar sort of way that you'd respond to that common Christian is saying that God works in mysterious ways?
Matthew (13:10.417)
Yeah, basically. My concern with the statement, God works in mysterious ways, is that oftentimes that's kind of the first thing Christians say when they're overwhelmed. And I'd rather that be the last thing we say. I'd rather we be able to explain the goodness of God as best as we can and then leave the mystery of God as the last part of this conversation.
Caleb Gray (13:21.087)
Right.
Caleb Gray (13:33.642)
Yeah, very cool. And then just on that, do you think it's possible for like most Christians or all Christians to be able to explain the goodness of God? Or is there some sort of resolve in there for people who aren't as logically...
driven as yourself to be able to sit in this place of contention and then also be able to share like they know God is good, but they can't come up with that logical reasoning as you have.
Matthew (14:13.369)
I don't think it's realistic to expect that everyone in the church is going to have a really strong, refined answer to every Bible difficulty that they encounter. God has given certain individuals the role in the church to help with those challenges. I've done my part writing this book and there's some other great theologians out there as well. But, I think what is expected is that
as Christians we should be prepared to help give an answer to everyone who asks us for the reason for the hope that we have, as it says in 1 Peter 3.15. And that would entail, at least to some degree, a general understanding of how God is good, even when there's Bible difficulties. And so, again, like what I said, the Bible tells us that God is good. So at the very least, Christians should be able to open up the Bible and show, hey, it says this.
Caleb Gray (15:11.32)
Right.
Matthew (15:13.712)
And beyond that, I think, honestly I do think that any Christian who is going to be reading through or understanding the doctrine of hell or the Canaan Wars or these challenging aspects in the Bible, I think we owe it to ourselves to understand those things to some degree. I mean I don't want Christians to turn off their conscience in order to make it through hard passages of the Bible.
Caleb Gray (15:39.554)
Right. Yeah, that's brilliant. I agree 100 percent. I think often I reflect on moments where there's been a difficult question that I've come across through a friend who's seeking and just trying to discover who God is and who Jesus is and they come across either if it's online or even if they're reading the Bible for themselves.
Matthew (15:41.342)
Yeah.
Caleb Gray (16:09.366)
that if it stumps me, like me being honest with them in saying like, oh I'm not 100% sure of that but I want to discover God's goodness in this so let's go on a journey together and unpack it and discover it together. I found that to be really helpful as opposed to the other response which I think Christians often have is they...
Either like you said, they'll just be like, oh, shoulder it off, God works in mysterious ways, you just have to, that's the end of the argument. So either that one or they just double down on their ignorance and the cracks begin to unfold for the person who's seeking, which again, I find from a relational point of view is really harmful and
Matthew (16:59.858)
Mm-hmm.
Caleb Gray (17:06.942)
and can be destructive to that relationship and to the person's discovery of the goodness of God. So I do love what you're saying. And another question that I had is, I'm guessing that critics would have, yeah, they'd sort of say you're trying to force a positive spin on
Matthew (17:35.861)
Thanks for watching!
Caleb Gray (17:36.35)
difficult stories and teachings in the Bible by trying to focus on the goodness of God and find His goodness in each of these difficult passages. What's your thoughts on that or how do you respond to that?
Matthew (17:52.517)
Yeah, well maybe first, I think it'd be worth pointing out that a lot of skeptics do the same thing in the opposite direction. I'll get to a better response soon, but just to kind of point out, I mean I remember reading God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens.
Caleb Gray (18:03.234)
Very good. Yeah.
Matthew (18:12.809)
who was an atheist, he passed away in I think the early 2010s, like 2011 or something. But he wrote this book and it was just a strong critique against religion and particularly the God of the Bible. He spent a lot of time on that. But he made a big, like, Hitchens in his way, I remember reading his book and just being like, my goodness.
He calls Sabbath the command from God to rest once in a while. He calls this, I'm not going to quote this perfectly, but some sort of command to work, work until the absolutist tells us to not to. Just the way he talks about it. Sabbath is a beautiful thing. It's to rest, to pull back from our work, which so many of us need to do these days as we just get burned out on all this. But to your question.
I can see how some of the stuff that I would write and do in defending the goodness of God might be seen as like a stretch. Like am I playing with words? Is this semantics? I mean that can be a common critique. I try to avoid that the best I can. Obviously none of us are perfect, but...
Again, it's also worth recognizing that the Bible says God is good. And so when I'm trying to show how the goodness of God is found in these difficult passages of the Bible, I'm trying to show that the Bible is consistent with itself. And I think that's being generous with this text that I have in front of me. I mean, we live in a different time and place and culture, and so we should expect that there's going to be some things that we might not understand.
Matthew (19:58.448)
I think what I'm doing in defending the goodness of God, it's not as much of a stretch as we may originally think, once we understand the context and what's going on in biblical times.
Caleb Gray (20:10.03)
Yeah, very good. And how much of our misconceptions about the character of God and even about the text of the Bible come down to the narrative or the lens that we put on and view that text through? How much of that comes down to our, I suppose, Western individual...
centric lens that we often put on without realizing when we approach this text.
Matthew (20:41.585)
Is Australia a Western country?
Caleb Gray (20:44.394)
Yeah, Australia would be considered a secular Western country
Matthew (20:47.05)
I mean, I guess I've never, I've actually never thought about that before, but it seems like a Western culture, but it's like one of the farthest on the east side if you just look at it on a standard global map. I don't know, I guess, sorry, that was my little distraction for the day.
Caleb Gray (20:59.254)
Yeah, exactly.
Caleb Gray (21:06.002)
I'm pretty sure it's a western country. I'm sure my listeners may correct me after this bit. I'm, yeah, pretty confident.
Matthew (21:15.997)
Yeah, I guess it depends what you mean by Western. Um, in any case, let's see, what was your question again?
Caleb Gray (21:18.368)
Yeah.
Caleb Gray (21:23.842)
How much of the misconceptions that we have, or these ideas that impede on the goodness of God through biblical stories and the passages, are a result of the lens that we put on when we approach the text?
Matthew (21:46.057)
say this, I think that... So there's two things going on in my mind. For one, the Bible was written in a different time, in a different place, in a different language, in a different culture than what we're used to. So reading the Bible, there is a real sense in which we are pretty far removed from what's really going on, and our Western eyes are often going to...
give us interpretations of the Bible that aren't quite right. So that's one thing. On the other hand, I want to be careful not to leave the impression that
We have no access to the Bible without some guru who lived in Israel for 50 years of his life telling us these secret insights about the language of the Bible. The Bible is not just written by God, it's written well by God. And so I find that
Although getting the cultural context and some of these other things are important to Scripture, we get so much from the Bible itself, and oftentimes the mistakes we make in interpreting the Bible is because of other parts of the Bible that we aren't taking into account. The Bible interprets itself in many ways. And
Oftentimes when you gain the extra information about historical context and so forth, it doesn't totally change our interpretation. Like, wow, I was completely wrong, but it often illuminates our understanding. It sets it in color. So it does marvelous things for us. But yeah, I would stress that if we're going to be good at one thing, let it be our understanding of the whole Bible rather than just like being a guru in the cultural context and these things.
Matthew (23:45.995)
Preferably both. But I really do think that the Bible does a lot on its own to tell us what it's telling us.
Caleb Gray (23:51.99)
Yeah, that's brilliant. And yeah, I like that how you hold those two intention together. And I heard it in a conversation with someone. They said this. It was like a throwaway line. But they said the gospel isn't owned by one culture or one group of people, but it's for all people.
Matthew (24:15.693)
Mm-hmm.
Caleb Gray (24:21.286)
And the point of him saying that was that there's this beautiful thing that cultures add colour to the Gospel and their understanding, but it's dangerous when we approach it thinking like we know all the answers and how they apply to our lives is how it should be applied to every
group of people, every set of cultures in the world, where that can become dangerous because you're sort of, I suppose what he is trying to say is you become the judge of who it's intended for, and you start excluding groups of people. But that's not what you're saying at all, so I really like that.
Matthew (25:12.773)
Yeah, well, maybe I can give an example of how our understanding of the whole Bible can help us with Bible difficulties. Take for example, judgment in the Bible. You can pick almost any story you want, whether it's the flood of Noah or the Canaan Wars or Sodom and Gomorrah, whatever it is, why is there judgment in the Bible? One of the things that...
I'd like to point out when talking about the harsh judgment of God is I ask my audience when I'm speaking live or in writing or whatever, I say, hey, if you were slapped $200 or if you were fined $200 just for slapping someone, it might seem a little excessive. Like, gosh, that's a pretty big fine for just slapping someone. But what if you slapped the King of England? That would deserve a different kind of punishment. The point is that our...
not just based on the offense itself, it's also based on the offended. So what if the challenge we have with God's judgment, it's not that God overestimates the offense, but that we underestimate who God is and what it means when we offend this holy God. So we see these stories of judgment going on in the Bible, but we also see like in Isaiah when it talks about the holiness of God. Isaiah cries out, he sees God, he cries out, what was me I'm ruined from a man of
Caleb Gray (26:22.126)
Very good.
Matthew (26:35.743)
of God and that's what comes out of Him.
And then we look in different places around the Bible. Like in Ezekiel 33,11, As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Lamentations, chapter 3, Though God brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love, for he does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow. We have to take these verses with us, like Lamentations and Ezekiel, when we journey to the difficult stories of the Bible.
heart is to have people receive mercy. We learn this also in the story of Jonah. We see this in the story of Rahab at the beginning of the canon wars, that God's heart is for mercy. He is holy. And so there's so many different things theologically going on that brought together start to help make sense of one particular story like Sodom and Gomorrah or the flood of Noah. The Bible helps understand itself.
Caleb Gray (27:37.258)
Yeah, brilliant. I want to sort of get into the doctrine of hell in a second, because I know you've done some thinking there and that you there's a whole part of the book where you unpack that. But before we do, was there any particular part of the book that you that you personally had to wrestle with or contend with when
figuring out like where's the goodness of God in here.
Matthew (28:09.885)
Yeah, well, I would say that I had to wrestle with all of these topics to some degree. Some of them were a little more difficult to figure out and to research than others. I probably spent the most time trying to understand what's going on with the law of God and like Leviticus and...
Caleb Gray (28:16.66)
Awesome.
Matthew (28:31.261)
Why are there so many commandments? What about slavery in the Old Testament? Some of those issues. I spent a lot of time researching and learning about what God has in mind when he gives the law of God and those difficult passages. Yeah, so I mean, I could keep going, but there's.
Caleb Gray (28:47.488)
Awesome.
Caleb Gray (28:52.26)
There's a lot, yeah.
Matthew (28:52.725)
I mean, yeah, and it was like every chapter is different. I mean, one chapter in the book is about judgment, another chapter is about hell, and other chapters about apparent misogyny, like are women second-class citizens? I mean, that was a chapter I wrestled with a lot too, and just being very careful with, because I'm not a woman and I don't have that kind of experience that would be unique to a woman reading scripture. But I'm trying to get my head in that and being like, okay, like, how does God reveal His goodness when there are passages in the Bible which seem to paint women
as if they're second-class citizens and I want to honor women well and honor scripture well in my response to all this. So anyway, I rambled but that's uh those were some of the things I was wrestling with in writing this book.
Caleb Gray (29:29.462)
Yeah.
Caleb Gray (29:34.11)
Yeah, I just thought of asking because I can imagine, yeah, I can imagine it's not an easy book to write for anyone where I feel like the question before about what do you think critics would say, I think in writing it you almost put a target on your back for a bunch of different opinions when it comes to the Word of God and that's...
that's not easy in itself in trying to discover how Scripture interprets Scripture. And I just want to thank you for that. I think it saves a lot of people time and effort as well to be able to consult the book as they're reading through the Bible to get a better grasp on these difficult passages. So yeah, great.
I'm glad someone else did it and I didn't have to go down that hard and difficult path. I'm grateful for people like you, Matthew.
Matthew (30:35.573)
Ha ha.
Matthew (30:39.549)
Yeah, sometimes I feel like I picked the hardest topic to write about. There's a reason that there aren't many books on this. There are some, but like I said, a lot of people talk about pain and suffering because everyone has experienced it. And so, as far as I'm concerned, that topic is pretty well covered by a lot of great voices out there. This one not so much, and I think it's because, yeah, it's a difficult topic to really talk about well.
Caleb Gray (30:43.802)
Definitely not the easiest
Caleb Gray (30:55.094)
Mm.
Caleb Gray (31:01.336)
Yeah.
Caleb Gray (31:07.734)
very much so. Yeah, so you talk about the doctrine of how it's one of the hardest topics in the Bible. What do you think the biggest misunderstanding or one of the biggest misunderstandings is about hell?
Matthew (31:28.253)
Well, it's kind of funny you bring that up because I think one of the biggest misunderstandings has to do with our Western culture. Often when we think of hell, what comes to mind are those medieval paintings from Europe of Satan and his demons in this fiery underground torture chamber who are poking their pitchforks at people.
Caleb Gray (31:34.376)
Awesome.
Caleb Gray (31:49.942)
Yeah. Could they pick tritons? Yeah.
Matthew (31:53.969)
Yeah, yeah. And it's like they're... And, you know, we imagine that these people are just being tortured in this chamber. And they're crying to get out, but it's too late. And we might even imagine God up there in the clouds being like, Hey, I told you to worship me, but you refused and now you will burn. So, I mean, this view of hell, this view of God even, I think is about as horrifying as it is wrong. Hell is not a pleasant place by any stretch of the imagination. Okay, so I never want to get people thinking,
I'm trying to soften hell. But when the Bible talks about hell, and again, just why it's so important to know scripture, when the Bible talks about hell, it typically doesn't... We don't see this image of demons poking at people in torture chambers. In fact...
Caleb Gray (32:39.224)
Right.
Matthew (32:42.157)
it helps to realize, one of the things I found out when researching this is that the Bible tends to talk more about where hell is rather than what it's really like. And when we think about where hell is, that helps us understand what's going on with hell. So here's what I found, Caleb, when I was researching hell. A lot of people
They say that hell is nowhere to be found in the Old Testament.
The word hell doesn't show up but the concept certainly does. It's in Daniel 12 but it's also in Ezekiel or in the end of Isaiah. When he's talking about this heavenly city coming down, this is a place where God is and then it says in Isaiah that they will go out and they will see these dead bodies burned up eaten by worms, something like that. That's hell. Later on in the New Testament, Jesus, when he's referring to hell, he uses this word Gehenna, which referred to a real place right outside the city of Jerusalem.
actual hell, but he used that as an illustration. And Gehenna was this horrible place right outside Jerusalem. It was a place where dead bodies were being burned. A lot of criminal and evil activity was happening out there. And then you go into the New Testament times when the new heaven and new earth appear right in Revelation.
Jesus returns and there's this lake of fire and those who are not written in the Lamb's Book of Life, those who are not saved, are cast out into the lake of fire. I'll talk about fire in a minute, but my point is that hell is banishment. Where is hell? Hell is outside the city. Heaven is a place where God is. Hell is outside of that city. And so when we see hell this way, we start to realize some things. First
Matthew (34:34.109)
If the agony of hell is separation from God outside of His holy city, then there must be something good and beautiful about God which is being lost. So the whole concept of hell here would make it necessary that God is good. And second, when we see hell as banishment away from God,
Well then it starts to become clear that hell is really the ultimate end of what people had chosen here on earth. They may have rejected God their whole life and so God honors that wish in the afterlife and gives them a place where they can spend the rest of eternity somewhere else. It's still a punishment, but it's a kind of punishment that gives people over to their own self-destructive desires. Like we see this talked about in several places across the Bible, most notably Romans 1, God
to their own self-destructive desires. And that was his punishment. That was a judgment. This doesn't necessarily make hell easier to think about in terms of torment. I mean, the fact that, let me say this about fire too.
Caleb Gray (35:32.59)
BRILLIANCE
Matthew (35:45.865)
Fire is not the only illustration we have of this place. Hell is also a place of darkness. It's a furnace. It's a place where the worm does not die. It's a lake. And the fact that we have all these different illustrations makes me think that hell is this space that's really difficult to describe. And so there's just a bunch of different words kind of brought into this to describe, to give us this picture of what hell is like. But the best we can really know is that it's a horrifying place. I don't think that...
Caleb Gray (36:04.81)
Mm.
Caleb Gray (36:10.146)
Right.
Matthew (36:16.181)
Christians are a little divided, evangelical Christians, like Bible-believing evangelical Christians are a little divided on this, but as far as I'm aware, I'm on the majority view where I think that the fire of hell is figurative for the kind of emotional and spiritual anguish that people experience.
Caleb Gray (36:32.196)
Very good, yeah.
Matthew (36:32.265)
Fire is still an appropriate word because of the intensity of the anguish. Again, I don't ever want to make hell less severe than it is described in Scripture. But when we see hell as a kind of spiritual and emotional anguish rather than fire, well then it's no longer God just torturing people, it's people being given over to their own self-destructive desires. You might even say that the fire of hell was lit by human hands.
Caleb Gray (37:00.048)
Very good. I like what you're saying in terms of what I'm hearing you say is that God really honours the choice of humans and it reminds me of, I don't know if you've read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, it's one of my favourite books and I feel like it helped me unpack this concept of
Matthew (37:16.213)
Mm-hmm.
Caleb Gray (37:23.39)
of heaven and hell and those contentions. But he has this beautiful quote in it saying there's two kinds of people in the world. Those who say to God, thy will be done, and then those to whom God says in the end, thy will be done. So it's like what you're saying is, it's this giving over of these are your desires, and essentially the logical end of those desires
is separation from God. Almost what you're saying as well is there's God's creating this city or living in this city and how without us being able to fully understand it, I think the best way to understand it is to look at God and be like it's with separation from who God is. It's
And then like you said, that's where all these sort of torment pictures come up with this deep sense of anguish of the soul and Yeah, I think it's
Matthew (38:34.582)
Yeah. And so this is the point where I expect we're still going to struggle with hell. I think God put it in our hearts to really hate the idea of hell. Not to say that I hate God did it, but I don't want to be there and I don't want to see anyone else there. I think God put that in our hearts.
I mean even reading Matthew, I think it's in 25, where Jesus is giving a story and he says, he talks about how hell was made for Satan and his demons. Like, depart from me you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for Satan and his demons. God never wanted to send people there. That's important to note, but at the same time, it's going to remain a challenge. And I think having talked about it like we just did.
At this point, we might be ready to say, hey, we're still going to struggle and God works in mysterious ways, but we have at the very least tried to show that a good God has good reasons for these challenging parts of scripture. And we can know enough to trust Him even when it's still hard to make sense of it all.
Caleb Gray (39:43.018)
Yeah, brilliant. And then I suppose another aspect of this doctrine of hell which is tied in is salvation and how, like I'm not too sure how it's like over in Texas but it seems like salvation at least for my generation and the generations before is about essentially escaping hell and
Caleb Gray (40:14.042)
What would you, why would you say so many Christians believe that it's solely about escaping hell and spending eternity in heaven and less about following Jesus' way in terms of we can experience his goodness here now on earth?
Matthew (40:37.916)
Gosh, there's a lot of different reasons why a Christian mentality might be more about just escaping hell and getting into heaven. Part of that might be the way that we talk about the gospel. And I think sometimes...
our presentation of the gospel is not just the best way to talk about it. So for example, maybe you've heard it said, maybe you've used this before. Sorry if this has been you. I think I've used this in the past too.
In talking about the Gospel, maybe you've heard it said where it's like, oh, imagine you're in a courtroom and you're on trial before the judge. And then Jesus comes up and he says, I'll take the penalty. And so he gets punished. He takes the penalty. You're set free. This illustration does well to talk about how Jesus came to be the sacrifice for our sins. But there's nothing in this illustration that makes me think, thank heavens. Now I can spend eternity in relationship with the judge.
Caleb Gray (41:37.846)
Right. Yeah.
Matthew (41:38.773)
And if we're talking about the gospel, the gospel is about a God who made us and loves us and designed us to be in relationship with Himself. The problem is sin that separates us from relationship with God. And the one solution is what Jesus did when He came to die on the cross to redeem us of our sin and bring us back into relationship with God. So we're not just saved from our sins, we're not just saved from hell, we are saved to God. And that is so key when thinking about what the gospel is really intended to be.
for us.
Caleb Gray (42:09.614)
Brilliant. So then what would you say is a better way of talking about it and sharing the good news, the gospel with our friends or family or work colleagues?
Matthew (42:25.437)
Yeah, well, you know, reading Jesus in the Gospels, He wasn't afraid to talk about hell. He wasn't afraid to talk about judgment. But what I'm just trying to emphasize is that that's not the whole picture. It's not just escaping judgment in hell. It's being reunited back into relationship with God. So when I share the Gospel, rather than...
making the starting point something like, hey, you're in trouble, you're going to hell, I'd rather say, hey, God made us to be in relationship with Himself, but that has, that plan has been disrupted because of sin.
And therefore, what Jesus did when he died on the cross to pay for our sins allowed us to be back into relationship with God. In talking about sin, I will talk about judgment in hell sometimes. Well, I'll always talk about judgment. I might not get specifically to the topic of hell, but I want people to know that when we have sin, we are liable to God's judgment. And His judgment is no fun. I'm always a little hesitant to bring up hell too soon because of our misunderstanding.
of Hell. And if I use that word, then I just have to go through that whole big monologue I did with you to try and explain. If there's time, great. But anyway, I'll talk about, hey, we're liable to God's judgment because of sin, and we're also separated from God, but because of Jesus, we can be free of that judgment and reunited back into relationship with God. One of the things I like about this approach is when you set up the gospel this way, that it's about relationship with God.
Caleb Gray (43:39.938)
Hehehehe
Matthew (44:05.101)
then the person hearing it, and even as Christians as we think about it, we're not so concerned, like, okay, so do I, how does good works play into this? Like, isn't Christianity supposed to be sacrifice or can I just accept the gospel and move on with my life? Like, how?
How do you become a Christian? Just say, yes, God can hear you. But realize what you're saying, yes, too. It's new life with God. That's going to mean something about how you live. It's going to mean something about spending time now with relationship with God, right? With His Church, with His people, with His Word, with His Holy Spirit. So there's a big life change that is part of the Gospel. But when it's about relationship with God, then it's easier to see that this life change
Caleb Gray (44:32.537)
Mm.
Caleb Gray (44:45.227)
Mm.
Matthew (44:54.287)
gospel and that's something we do to attain the gospel.
Caleb Gray (44:57.43)
Very good, yeah. I like that and I think it's important that it's considering, like you said, what that choice is. It's a whole lifestyle change or a whole mental shift but again, it's through the grace of God that we're able to do that, that we're able to follow Jesus and take up that daily cross and follow Him.
which is yeah a beautiful I think for me anyway I find it a beautiful thought because it seems like he's more relational and with me emits pain and suffering and journeying with me through the valley of the shadow of death as a part as opposed to I make my choice I'm going to get into heaven but I'll figure out what's happening right now in my life on earth and
Caleb Gray (45:56.258)
different issues, so it almost brings God into the situation. Do you think Christians miss something in the goodness of God when they make salvation only about eternal life or only about life after death?
Matthew (45:58.757)
Mm.
Matthew (46:18.901)
I think so. I'm not sure if that... well, let me put it this way. There's something that's definitely missed in the fullness of the Gospel when Christians make it all about escaping eternal death and reaching eternal life. Again...
eternal life is that we would know God. That's what we read in the Gospel of John. We often have these images in our head like, oh, I'll just live in this beautiful heavenly realm where I will have...
a big old library to read all the books I want and beautiful tennis courts and all the ice cream without ever getting fat. Like, these are the, you know, we have this view in our head of just this kind of paradise that is not really what heaven is all about. Heaven is a place where God is. I mean, you read Revelation.
Caleb Gray (46:59.146)
late.
Matthew (47:12.533)
And it talks about this heavenly city of God coming down as a bride beautifully prepared for her husband. It doesn't go on to talk about all the facilities and wonderful perks of this city. It talks about the presence of God is there. Behold, God has come to dwell with his people and they will be with him and God will be their God. And it talks about how he will wipe every tear from our eyes. Like, it's a very God-centric thing. And there is going to be lots of stuff going on in heaven, I'm sure.
point in Ephesians, 1 Corinthians 6, Paul is like, don't you realize you're going to be judging angels? I'm like, no, I didn't know that. There's probably a lot of stuff I don't realize about heaven. But the centerpiece in what makes heaven is because God is there. And what also makes heaven is not just that God is there, but He is good.
and he is the ultimate end and perfection of what our hearts really desire deep down. In fact, a lot of them, I'll land this plane soon, but it's one of the kind of theological discussions that used to go on for a long time but has since sort of fallen out of modern day discussion is something called...
Caleb Gray (48:09.493)
Awesome.
Caleb Gray (48:13.718)
Yeah, no, keep going. It's great.
Matthew (48:31.689)
the deutific vision, which is the idea that the ultimate end of humankind, our telos, our purpose, what this is really all about is seeing God face to face. That's the deutific vision. And that's what heaven is all about. I mean, I think of 1 John chapter 3 when he says, you know, when we see him we will be like him. I mean, imagine that. Just the sight of Christ and we're transformed.
So there's something really marvelous and just awe-inspiring as you think about what it would mean to see the face of God. Difficult to comprehend on this side of eternity, but it is something we have to look forward to and it's going to knock our socks off.
Caleb Gray (49:18.026)
Yeah, I agree 100% and it's almost, I don't know, it's almost sad in a way that can't be something that we, I mean it can definitely be something that we hold as we learn and know more about God and discover his character like what you've done in this book is unpacking his goodness.
But I think it's something sad that's in, at least where I'm around is that Christians often focus on all the added extras of what comes with a relationship with God. It's not just looking at Him face to face, but it's like real issues like helping with mental health and feeling like...
Matthew (50:11.177)
Mm-hmm.
Caleb Gray (50:14.914)
bringing relationship into isolation when you're in isolation, all these different things that God brings into our lives, good things. But I think there's something missed when we can't say, it's just beautiful and I can't wait to look at Him face to face. Without all, it's like loving the gift rather than the gift-giver, I think, is what I'm trying to say.
We love the gifts, but there's something lost, at least in the culture I'm from, where we don't appreciate the gift giver.
Matthew (50:44.114)
Yeah.
Matthew (50:57.821)
Yeah, and to your point as well, I think one of the reasons why many people are deconstructing or losing their faith is because the way they understood the gospel was that it was supposed to do something for them, in the sense like give them these desires of this world, heal them of this or that, and there are some beautiful things that the gospel has for us, but...
There's also challenges. There's trials. There's persecution. Being a Christian in this world is not easy. And if you think that becoming a Christian is going to make your life all better, you're not going to last as a Christian in this world. So we need to start with what this is really after. What we're really after here. The prize to be won. Like in Philippians chapter 3.
When Paul says, you know, I had all these wonderful things going for me. I was a Pharisee, zealous for the law, I obeyed the law without fault. I mean, he had this incredible resume of everything that a Jew would desire in life. Paul says all of this is meaningless now. It's like garbage compared to knowing Christ.
Caleb Gray (52:06.646)
I love that. And just off the back of that, what encouragement would you share with someone who is in that process of deconstructing their faith?
Matthew (52:21.625)
I would say that this journey of coming up with questions about God can be a very scary journey to be on. And I can understand how it can be hard. I could think about how in having questions and struggles with God.
we might find ourselves scared to bring that to other people, to other Christians. We might even find other Christians being mad at us or pushing us away, because we're not supposed to ever question God. But I think questioning God is a good thing. Insofar as we do this, leaning towards God rather than leaning away from Him.
There's a book by Bobby Conway called Doubting Towards God and the big point of his book is that
We can have doubts, but we can do this in a direction towards God or away from Him. My concern with deconstruction is often times it's almost like they're proud of doubting away from God. And that's where I get really nervous because God is the most beautiful thing we could possibly know and realize in this world. I would never...
Caleb Gray (53:20.942)
Mm.
Matthew (53:44.321)
I can see why it would be so hard, but ask the questions. I remember there was a study by Barna in 2017 which found that about two-thirds of all people who grow up in the Church experience doubt. But over half of them, over half of them, when they sought answers, found their answers and they said that their faith came out stronger. It was actually only a small percent, I think it was under 20 percent, who said that they lost their faith completely.
Caleb Gray (54:06.03)
Well.
Matthew (54:13.975)
And so as Christians, we have good reasons to trust in God. And if we seek after those, I believe God is faithful to help us find the answers that we need. But if we have this mentality of like, deconstruction down with my belief, then you're probably going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And you're going to lose a faith that really ought not to be lost.
Caleb Gray (54:14.221)
Well...
Caleb Gray (54:38.162)
Brilliant, thanks for that. And yeah, before we finish this conversation off, if someone was wanting to find out more about the work you do or even grab a copy of the book, where would you point them to?
Matthew (54:58.38)
Yeah, so I serve with Josh McDowell Ministry.
And if you go to josh.org slash matthew, you're going to find my page that I have as a speaker. If you go to josh.org slash wdgdt, which is the acronym for Why Did God Do That, you'll find more information on my book. You can find my book on Amazon too, but we might have a... I like to lead people to the website because that actually helps support the ministry more and we have a pretty good discount.
Caleb Gray (55:18.399)
Awesome.
Matthew (55:30.911)
book there too. So josh
Caleb Gray (55:38.196)
Awesome.
Matthew (56:01.693)
to allow people to see that God really is good and He's real and He's worth it.
Caleb Gray (56:06.262)
Awesome, yeah, thanks for that, Matthew. And I, yeah, I do think you've done a lot of heavy lifting in, in this space to be able to unpack those difficult passages and contend and wrestle with them and help journey people with their contentions and wrestling with the difficult passages to, to discover the goodness of God in, in them. And I'll, I'll throw those links up in
this episode description as well so people can find it easier as well. Yeah, so thanks so much for your time and sharing your thoughts and insights with us. I found it really helpful. It's always hard to have, I mean, the conversation isn't particularly short but the topic's so large that the conversation feels really short. There's so many different places that we could dive into and that I would love to dive into
Matthew (56:57.668)
Yeah.
Caleb Gray (57:03.874)
Just strapped for time, so thanks so much for carving out the time, Matt.
Matthew (57:08.317)
Absolutely, glad we could do this.
