Questions

The Freakonomics podcast explored why the phrase “I don’t know” is so difficult for people to say. Contrary to the common belief that “I love you” is the hardest phrase, the hosts argue that “I don’t know” is even more challenging, and our reluctance to admit ignorance starts in childhood and persists into adulthood.

Psychological experiments show that when children are asked nonsensical questions, such as whether “a sweater is angrier than a tree,” most will invent answers rather than admit they don’t know. This tendency to fabricate answers instead of acknowledging uncertainty is not just a childhood trait-it carries over into adult life, especially in professional environments. In the business world, saying “I don’t know” is often seen as a sign of incompetence, so people feel pressured to respond with any answer, even if it’s made up.

The podcast hosts note that despite their reputation as “business experts,” they rarely hear anyone in corporate settings-especially in front of a boss-admit they don’t know something. The prevailing belief is that expertise means always having an answer, even if one must fake it. However, this mindset is counterproductive. Pretending to know everything may protect one’s image in the short term, but it stifles learning and personal growth.

The hosts argue that admitting “I don’t know” is essential for improvement and learning. Embracing uncertainty opens the door to genuine inquiry and self-betterment. Rather than faking expertise, the real path to growth is to acknowledge what we don’t know and use that as a starting point for discovery.

The billionaire Elon Musk has recently been invoking Christianity as he discusses core beliefs. Raised Anglican in South Africa, young Musk got an early taste of differing religious views attending a Jewish preschool. “I was just singing ‘Hava Nagila’ one day and `Jesus, I Love You’ the next,” he jokes.

As he grew older, Musk has said, he turned to the great religious books—the Bible, Quran, Torah, some Hindu texts—to deal with an existential crisis of meaning. And he looked to philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.

But not until the boy discovered science fiction, he says, did he begin to find what he was looking for. In particular, he says, it was the lesson he took away from the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” that the purpose of life wasn’t so much about finding the big answers but asking the right questions.

“The answer is the easy part,” Musk said during a public event. “The question is the hard part.”

Recent tweets have included: “Jesus taught love, kindness, and forgiveness. I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak & foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom.”

And: “While I’m not a particularly religious person, I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise.”

Describing himself as “cultural Christian,” Musk indicated his guiding belief goes back to that of seeking greater understanding. “That is my religion, for the lack of a better way to describe it, it’s really a religion of curiosity,” he said. “The religion of greater enlightenment.”

Best-selling author Arthur C. Brooks is an expert on happiness research. But he also honestly shares about his own struggle with finding true satisfaction in life:

I have fallen into the trap of believing that success would fulfill me. On my 40th birthday I made a bucket list of things I hoped to do or achieve. They were mainly accomplishments only a wonk could want: writing books and columns about serious subjects, teaching at a top school, traveling to give lectures and speeches, maybe even leading a university or think tank. Whether these were good and noble goals or not, they were my goals, and I imagined that if I hit them, I would be satisfied.

I found that list when I was 48 and realized that I had achieved every item on it. But none of that had brought me the lasting joy I’d envisioned. Each accomplishment thrilled me for a day or a week—maybe a month, never more—and then I reached for the next rung on the ladder.

I’d devoted my life to climbing those rungs. I was still devoting my life to climbing—working 60 to 80 hours a week to accomplish the next thing, all the while terrified of losing the last thing. The costs of that kind of existence are obvious, but it was only when I looked back at my list that I genuinely began to question the benefits—and to think seriously about the path I was walking.

And what about you? Your goals are probably very different from mine, and perhaps your lifestyle is too. But the trap is the same. Everyone has dreams, and they beckon with promises of sweet, lasting satisfaction if you achieve them. But dreams are liars. When they come true, it’s … fine, for a while. And then a new dream appears.

An article in The Wall Street Journal notes that “Some American soldiers returned from Afghanistan bearing scars or missing limbs. Others have wounds invisible to those around them, or even to themselves.”

The article highlights the story of Tyler Koller. Raised in a conservative Christian home, Koller joined the Army at the age of 18, and his first deployment was with Bravo Company. In his Army days, the fire in Koller’s belly was stoked by belief in his mission and faith in a just and loving God. He’d gather his squad to say a prayer before they stepped out of the wire to go on patrol, and he wouldn’t ever say a cuss word, even though his fellow troops used to offer him money to say the F-word out loud. “No way,” he’d say. It would be an affront to the Lord and to his mother, who raised him in the Pentecostal church.

Koller wasn’t physically broken in Afghanistan, but something did happen to him. Like many men and women who went to Iraq and Afghanistan in over 20 years of war, he suffered a moral injury. A soldier heads to a war zone with a carefully tuned moral compass that parents and preachers and teachers and friends have helped to calibrate.

But in a combat zone, soldiers see, hear, and do things that aren’t aligned with the true north of that moral compass. Koller saw horrible things in Afghanistan: the killing of American and Taliban soldiers but also the inadvertent maiming of children. He learned of bacha bazi, a slang term for the sexual abuse of young boys by corrupt Afghan policemen.

“The faith that I had went away,” Koller said, though “I have hope in my heart that there’s a higher being out there.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is a negative illustration, but it can raise questions around suffering or the problem of evil. What does your sermon text or biblical theme say about how to maintain your faith in the midst of suffering and evil?

In an interview with Danny Devito, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger despairs at the reality of death and wonders who’s to blame. When someone asked him what happens when we die, he said (curse words deleted):

Nothing. You’re 6 feet under. Anyone that tells you something else is a [...] liar. We don’t know what happens with the soul and all this spiritual stuff that I’m not an expert in, but I know that the body as we see each other now, we will never see each other again like that … When people talk about, 'I will see them again in heaven,' it sounds so good, but the reality is that we won’t see each other again after we’re gone. That’s the sad part. I know people feel comfortable with death, but I don’t. Because I will [...] miss [...] everything.

Schwarzenegger considers what that he’ll miss when he dies: “to have fun and to go to the gym and to pump up, to ride my bike on the beach, to travel around, to see interesting things all over the world.”

DEVITO: “Life! It’s the best!”

Schwarzenegger then wonders who’s to blame.

SCHWARZENEGGER: I tell you, there’s someone that mixed up this whole thing. Think about it. Who can we blame?

DEVITO: You mean that we don’t live forever?

SCHWARZENEGGER: Yeah. That we have to die.

DEVITO: That’s tough, man.

SCHWARZENEGGER: I don’t know what the deal is, but in any case, it’s a reality, and it truly [ticks] me off.

DEVITO: You don’t want to die.

SCHWARZENEGGER: No. What the […]? What kind of deal is that?

On a recent episode of The Howard Stern Show, the “shock-jock” host asked his guest, music legend Paul Simon, questions about music, life, art, and anything else that came to mind. Stern rose to fame with his exaltation of immorality and self-adulation. At the end of the interview, Stern said:

Paul, just give me one last answer. You seem very wise. You’ve lived through everything. You’ve created great masterpieces. Is there a God? Because I need to know. I’m getting older. Is this it for me? Am I going to die and that’s it or am I going somewhere? And please answer it in a serious manner.

Simon responded,

This is my feeling about God or Creator. The planet that I’m living on is so beautiful and the universe is so awe-inspiring. If that is the work of a creator, I say, “Thanks so much. I really love your work on the universe. Excellent work, coming from me, Paul Simon, to you, I really dig what you’re doing.” If it turns out that there’s another explanation for creation, I’m still unbelievably grateful for my existence. I still think it’s amazing. If it turns out, I thought it was God but it’s some other explanation, it doesn’t matter to me ….

Then, Stern interrupted, “But it’s so cruel. We have this existence and then we have to disappear. It’s hard.”

Senior Lead Pastor and author Anthony Delaney writes:

We are told this is the Knowledge Economy. The Information Age. But where is wisdom to be found?

Great question – where is wisdom to be found?

Google it.

I did.

You could do it too.

Guess what came up as the top answer?

In fact, as I type into Google, “Where is wisdom to be found?” I scroll down and just keep rolling - and every answer, the first 25 at least – come from the Bible.

From the Book of Job, chapter 28:12, that says, “But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?”

Google can’t tell you the answer, but it can tell you where to find it, in God’s Word.

In an issue of CT magazine, Carrie Sheffield shares how politics had become an idol to her and how she discovered a deeper source of purpose and meaning in Christ.

Carrie Sheffield was raised in extreme religious trauma in an offshoot Mormon cult. Her father believed that he was a Mormon prophet and was eventually excommunicated by the LDS church for heresy. She grew up with seven siblings in various motor homes, tents, houses, and sheds. Carrie attended 17 different public schools and when she took the ACT test, the family lived in a shed with no running water in the Ozarks.

All the children inherited trauma from their tumultuous family life. Two of her siblings have schizophrenia, including one brother who tried to rape her. Carrie has been hospitalized nine times for depression, fibromyalgia, suicidal ideation, and PTSD.

When she left home to attend Brigham Young University, her dad declared that she was satanic and therefore disowned her. As a student, she felt disillusioned by a growing list of unanswered questions about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the prospect of polygamy in the afterlife. After receiving her journalism degree, she stopped practicing Mormonism, formally renouncing it in 2010. For years she assumed she would never return to belief in God or organized religion. She writes:

To fill the void, I threw myself into work, schooling, dating, friends, and travel as ultimate sources of meaning. I worked as an analyst for major Wall Street firms, earning unthinkable sums for a girl from a motor home. I launched a career in political journalism at outlets like Politico, The Hill, and The Washington Times.

But ultimately her career goals left her unfilled. It was during the 2016 election that she felt an existential crisis. She realized that when she’d lost faith in God, she had allowed politics to become a substitute religion. She had built her career toward working on a Republican campaign or in the White House. She had appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, and other networks, even sparring on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. She says:

During this crisis of meaning, I felt distraught and adrift. So, I turned to church, first to Redeemer Presbyterian, founded by the late Tim Keller, and later to Saint Thomas Episcopal. It was during a service that I encountered Scripture’s answer to career and political idolatry in passages like Mark 8:36–37, which asks, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” Studying Christianity felt like uncovering buried treasure discarded by intellectuals who had discounted its scientific and philosophical heft.

I joined the Episcopal church, having been influenced by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, the preacher from the royal wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. My baptism day—December 3, 2017—was the happiest of my life. A group of about 30 family and friends watched me vow to “serve Christ in all persons, loving my neighbor as myself” and “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”

More than six years since my baptism, I enjoy a healthier relationship to politics. I still have strong convictions, which I don’t hesitate to share in columns, speeches, or TV appearances, but I know God is far bigger than any puny manmade system. As I returned to a walk with God, I felt enveloped with a sense of peace that surpassed understanding.

Editor’s Note: Carrie Sheffield is a policy analyst in Washington, DC. She has published in The Wall Street Journal, TIME, USA Today, CNN Opinion, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNBC, National Review, Newsweek, HuffPost, and Daily Caller . She has appeared as a live broadcast guest on media networks including Fox News, Newsmax TV, Fox Business Network, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, and BBC. Carrie provided analysis for Fox News’ first 2016 GOP presidential primary debate.

A new survey reveals that more Americans are trusting social media and health-related websites for medical advice over an actual healthcare professional. The poll of 2,000 adults finds many will turn to the web for “accurate” information regarding their health before asking their physician. In fact, significantly more people consult healthcare websites (53%) and social media (46%) than a real-life doctor (44%). 73% believe they have a better understanding of their health than their own doctor does.

Further showcasing their point, two in three Americans say they’ve looked up their symptoms on an internet search engine like Google or a website like WebMD. Respondents say they would rather consult the internet or ChatGPT instead of their doctor because they’re embarrassed by what they’re experiencing (51%) or because they want a second opinion (45%).

Of course, much of the trust people have for technology doesn’t stop with AI. Many would also trust major tech companies with their personal health data, including Google, Apple, Fitbit, and Amazon. Overall, 78% state they’re “confident” that AI and tech companies would protect their health information.

Researcher Lija Hogan said, “This means that we have to figure out the right guardrails to ensure people are getting high-quality advice in the right contexts and how to connect patients to providers.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a similar way, many congregants are fact checking their pastor during the sermon and may put trust in strangers on social media and the internet over their pastor’s teaching, relying on dubious information or incorrect theology.

I’ve noticed along the way of life that some people are much better at seeing people than others are. In any collection of humans, there are diminishers and there are illuminators.

Diminishers … make others feel insignificant. They stereotype and label. If they learn one thing about you, they proceed to make a series of assumptions about who you must be.

Illuminators, on the other hand, have a persistent curiosity about other people. They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others. They know how to ask the right questions at the right times—so that they can see things, at least a bit, from another’s point of view. They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, respected, lit up.

Illuminators are a joy to be around. A biographer of the novelist E.M. Forster wrote, “To speak with him [gave you] a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.” Imagine how good it would be to offer people that kind of hospitality.

If you’re a young parent, you’re probably used to hearing “Why?” a lot! With that in mind, a new survey finds moms and dads field an average of 11 questions from their young children each day.

A new poll of 2,000 parents of kids under six finds that between being asked “What?” (37%), “When?” (22%), and “Why?” (11%), parents are always on call when their kids get curious.

Children most commonly ask questions to better understand the world around them, such as asking about animals, nature, current events, and home experiences. When asked about the most interesting question their child has ever asked, parents mentioned “Why is the sky so high?” and “Why can fish keep their eyes open in water?”

Children’s questions may be frequent, but they aren’t always easy, as parents admit they can confidently answer an average of only 42% of their child’s questions. Poll results also reveal that 81% of parents learn just as much from their child as their child learns from them. The average parent learns something new from their child about five times per week, and four in five parents are surprised by their child’s knowledge of certain topics.

Brian Grazer, Hollywood producer of such movies as Apollo 13, Splash, and A Beautiful Mind, writes:

More than intelligence, or persistence or connections, curiosity has allowed me to live the life I wanted. And yet for all the value that curiosity has brought to my life and work, when I look around, I don’t see people talking about it, writing about it, encouraging it, and using it nearly as widely as they could.

Curiosity seems so simple. Innocent even. Labrador retrievers are charmingly curious. Porpoises are playfully, mischievously curious. A two-year-old going through the kitchen cabinets is exuberantly curious—and delighted at the noisy entertainment value of her curiosity. Every person who types a query into Google’s search engine and presses ENTER is curious about something—and that happens 6 million times a minute, every minute of every day.

Possible Preaching Angle

Brian Grazer writes about curiosity in a way that might remind us of how Jesus habitually piqued curiosity in others, whether it was the woman at the well or the disciples imagining a camel squeezing through the eye of a needle. Curiosity can be what enables the searcher to find the life they are looking for in Jesus Christ.

If there was any doubt that the national mood could need a dose of uplift, more evidence showed up in late January. On X (formerly known as Twitter), the account for Elmo, the red Muppet from Sesame Street, asked what seemed to be a simple, innocuous question.

“Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”

In thousands of responses, social media users let Elmo know that no, they were not doing too hot. Users began pouring out their hearts to Elmo:

• “I’m tired, Elmo,” said one user.
• “The world is burning around us, Elmo,” said another.
• “Elmo I’m depressed and broke,” one wrote.
• Others told Elmo that they were anxious about the 2024 election.
• “Each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror. one that was previously unfathomable in nature,” replied author Hanif Abdurraqib. “However, I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thanks for asking.”

“I don’t think anyone anticipated how deeply this particular question would resonate,” said Samantha Maltin, a marketing officer for the Sesame Workshop. Maltin believes that Elmo’s question provoked a lot of feelings because his character is rooted in the nostalgic memories of so many millennials.

After about nine thousand responses in about 24 hours, the account posted again. “Wow! Elmo is glad he asked!” it read. “Elmo learned it is important to ask a friend how they are doing.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is more important than ever to have dependable friends who will listen to us and to whom we will give a listening ear. Let’s remind ourselves and others that God is always available to hear our troubles and provide “mercy and find grace in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

French atheist Guillaume Bignon grew up in a loving family in France. He did well in school and landed a job as a computer scientist in finance. He also excelled in sports, growing to be six feet four inches, and played volleyball in a national league, traveling the country every weekend for the games. All in all, he was happy with his life. The chances of ever hearing the gospel—let alone believing it—were incredibly slim.

While vacationing in the Caribbean he met an attractive young woman. She mentioned that she believed in God and believed that sex belonged in marriage. This was a problem to him, so his new goal in life was to disabuse his girlfriend of her beliefs which were standing in the way of sex. He started thinking: “What good reason was there to think God exists? But, if I was going to refute Christianity, I first needed to know what it claimed. So, I picked up a Bible.” He also prayed, “If there is a God, then here I am. Why don’t you go ahead and reveal yourself to me? I’m open.”

A week or two after his unbelieving prayer, one of his shoulders started to fail, without any evident injury. The doctor couldn’t see anything wrong, but he was told that he needed to rest his shoulder and to stop playing volleyball for a couple of weeks.

Against my will, I was now off the courts. With my Sundays available, I decided I would go to a church to see what Christians do when they get together. I drove to an evangelical congregation in Paris, visiting it as I would a zoo: to see exotic animals that I had read about in books but had never seen in real life.

After the service he hurried to the exit door to avoid all contact with people and the pastor. But as he reached the door a chilling blast went up from his stomach to his throat. He heard himself saying: “This is ridiculous. I have to figure this out.” So, he closed the door, and went straight to the pastor. Bignon said, “So, you believe in God?” “Yes,” the pastor said, smiling. “So how does that work out?” I asked. “We can talk about it,” he said.

After most of the people left, they went to his office and spoke for hours. Bignon bombarded the pastor with questions, who patiently and intelligently explained his worldview. Bignon writes, “My unbelieving prayers shifted to, ‘God, if you are real, you need to make it clear so I can jump in and not make a fool of myself.’”

But instead of a light from heaven, God reactivated his conscience. He remembered a particularly sinister misdeed and God brought it back to his mind in full force. Bignon writes:

I was struck with an intense guilt, and disgusted at the thought of what I had done and the lies I had covered it with. All of a sudden, the quarter dropped. That is why Jesus had to die: Me. He took upon himself the penalty that I deserved, so that in God’s justice, my sins would be forgiven—by grace as a gift, rather than by my righteous deeds or religious rituals. He died so that I may live. I placed my trust in Jesus, and asked him to forgive me. This, in short, is how God takes a French atheist and makes a Christian theologian out of him.

Editor’s Note: Guillaume Bignon went on to obtain a master’s in New Testament studies. In the process, he met a wonderful woman, got married, had two children, and attained a PhD in philosophical theology.

Democritus suggested that all matter in the universe was made up of tiny, indivisible, solid objects. He called these particles "atomos” which is Greek for “uncuttable” or “indivisible.” Later scientists discovered that these atoms could be divided into smaller particles known as the electron, proton, and neutron. Now, more than a century after Ernest Rutherford discovered the proton at the heart of every atom, physicists are still struggling to fully understand it.

High school physics teachers describe protons as featureless balls each with one unit of positive electric charge. College students learn that the ball is actually a bundle of three elementary particles called quarks. But decades of research have revealed a deeper truth, one that’s too bizarre to fully capture with words or images. Most recently, a monumental analysis found that the proton contains traces of particles called charm quarks that are heavier than the proton itself.

Mike Williams, a physicist at MIT, said, “This is the most complicated thing that you could possibly imagine. In fact, you can’t even imagine how complicated it is. (The proton) has been humbling to humans. Every time you think you kind of have a handle on it, it throws you some curveballs.”

Our understanding of the atom has come a long way. While it has taken several thousand years, our knowledge of the fundamental structure of all matter has advanced considerably. And yet, there remain many mysteries that are yet to be resolved. With time and continued efforts, we may finally unlock the last remaining secrets of the atom. Then again, it could very well be that any new discoveries we make will only give rise to more questions and they could be even more confounding than the ones that came before!

Possible Preaching Angle:

Scientists continue to expand our knowledge of the universe and how it operates. Just as the universe is massively complex with uncounted galaxies, so the subatomic world is massively complex. Together they are silent witnesses of the mind of our omniscient and omnipotent Creator who designed it and “in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17).

Writing for The Atlantic, David Merritt Johns says that a most confounding story appeared in his inbox by a tipster who prefaced it by saying, “I’m sorry, it cracks me up every time I think about this.”

Harvard doctoral research student Andres Korat found a curious result from a 2018 study: Among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day was associated with a lower risk of heart problems. After consulting with his department chair, Korat set out to debunk his initial finding with more research, but it ended up being stubbornly consistent.

Korat wrote in his findings, “There are few plausible biological explanations for these results.” But he also mentioned several prior studies that found similar results. Mark Pereira is an epidemiologist who authored one of those prior studies. He said, “I still to this day don’t have an answer for it.”

In his deep dive into the story, Johns claims that several medical researchers ended up spinning their data into conclusions more readily acceptable to mainstream audiences. Instead of touting the health benefits of ice cream, they pivoted to yogurt. One research paper read: “Higher intake of yogurt is associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. Whereas other dairy foods and consumption of total dairy are not.”

“The conclusions weren’t exactly accurately written,” acknowledged Dariush Mozaffarian, who co-authored the paper. “Saying no foods were associated—ice cream was associated.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even with advances in medical knowledge and technology, the human body is complex and full of surprises. Only God understands it fully, and our best attempts are foolish compared to God's wisdom.

The actor Paul Newman was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won for The Color of Money in 1987. He also received an honorary Oscar in 1986 and the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1994.

But his life was hardly free of disappointment and tragedy. He wrestled with his drinking, a habit he knew was self-destructive but says “unlocked a lot of things I couldn’t have done without it.” And he was shattered when his son, Scott, who had led a drifting life in his father’s shadow and was receiving psychiatric treatment, died in 1978 at the age of 28.

Decades into his singularly successful career as an actor, Paul Newman offered a frank admission. “I am faced with the appalling fact that I don’t know anything,” he said.

Newman was also dogged by self-doubt, perpetually questioning his choices and plagued by past mistakes. “I’m always anxious about admitting to failure,” he said. “To not being good enough, to not being right.” Newman’s lifelong insecurity is one of the more striking themes to emerge from a posthumous memoir by the actor, titled The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man.

Best-selling Muslim author and renowned critic of Islam, Irshad Manji shook the religious world with her ground-breaking and highly acclaimed book The Trouble with Islam Today. Translated into more than 30 languages, Manji writes about the lack of inquiry and freedom of thought and speech that pervades across the entire Islamic world.

In 1972, her devout Muslim family immigrated from East Africa to a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, when she was four-years-old. She writes that she came to believe in the basic dignity of every individual not from Islam, but "It was the democratic environment to which my family and I migrated." A couple of years later, her always frugal parents enrolled her in free baby-sitting services at a Baptist church when her mom left the house to sell Avon products door-to-door.

There the lady who supervised Bible study showed me and my older sister the same patience she displayed with her own son. She made me believe my questions were worth asking. The questions I posed as a seven-year-old were simple ones: Where did Jesus come from? When did he live? Who did he marry? These queries didn't put anyone on the spot, but my point is that the act of asking always met with an inviting smile.

She cites another example at her junior high school and her evangelical Christian vice-principal.

[The majority of students] lobbied for school shorts that revealed more leg than our vice-principal thought reasonable. After a heated debate with us, he okayed the shorts, bristling but still respecting popular will. How many Muslim evangelicals do you know who tolerate the expression of viewpoints that distress their souls?

Of course, my vice-principal had to bite his tongue in the public school system, but such a system can only emerge from a consensus that people of different faiths, backgrounds, and stations ought to tussle together. How many Muslim countries tolerate such tussle? I look back now and thank God I wound up in a world where the Quran didn't have to be my first and only book.

Pastor Mark Clark was raised in a staunchly atheistic household but came to Christ once he became convinced of the power and soundness of Christianity. He writes:

I heard about Christianity for the first time at a summer camp when I was nine years old. I was fascinated by the concept of God. Not enough to get me to attend church or read a Bible but enough that I found myself going back to the camp every year and talking about God. Then I came home to a very different life: Stealing from cars, stores, and the purses of my friends’ mothers—to get money for drugs, partying, and everything else you do when you don’t have God in your life.

Mark began using drugs at eight years old and they became a regular part of his life by high school. Once he nearly died from an overdose, lying glassy-eyed in the street. His parents divorced when he was eight and he developed Tourette syndrome which later grew into obsessive-compulsive disorder.

My father was a classic deadbeat dad. He died of lung cancer when I was 15 and I never got to say goodbye to him. Sitting in that very lonely funeral home, pondering where exactly my father was, I asked myself: “What do I believe? About God, myself, heaven and hell? What do I believe about eternity and morality and my father? Where is he?”

When Mark was 17, he met Chris, a former drug dealer at his school, who had become a follower of Jesus. Mark was intrigued by his life and his passion for God. Chris challenged him to examine his doubts, read the Bible, pray, and think about what he believed about life and God.

I began to wrestle with the existence of God, with questions of suffering and evil and with the reliability of the Bible. I wrestled with the doctrine of hell and how God could allow my father to go to a place of everlasting torment. But the more I explored, the more I saw the emotional power and philosophical soundness of Christianity.

The year I met Chris, I gave my life to Christ and began a journey of total transformation. The most powerful catalyst was the Bible itself. I spent two years reading the Bible. I felt like I had been set free from all the shame, guilt, and powerlessness I had known growing up, and I was confident others would want that freedom too.

People often ask me where my passion for defending Christianity comes from. As a longtime doubter myself, I delight in showing other doubters that Christianity is real—historically verifiable, philosophically compelling, consistent with science, and full of satisfying answers to our deepest questions about life’s purpose.