How can young people survive the challenges of religion classes in secular colleges? Dr. Michael Kruger is the author of the recent book Surviving Religion 101, which is a letter to his daughter about how to stand strong for her faith in secular college environments. With clarity and insight, Dr. Kruger addresses some of the toughest questions facing young people (and really all people today) about God, hell, evil, the Bible, and more. Sean and Scott interview Dr. Kruger about his latest book and get his advice for both students and parents.



About our Guest

Michael J. Kruger (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is the president and Samuel C. Patterson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a leading scholar on the origins and development of the New Testament canon. He blogs regularly at michaeljkruger.com.

Episode Transcript

Sean McDowell: Welcome to Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture. A podcast from Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, professor of apologetics.

Scott Rae: And I'm your co-host Scott Rae, Dean of faculty and professor of Christian ethics.

Sean McDowell: Today, we're here with Dr. Michael Kruger. He serves as the president and Samuel C. Patterson professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the Charlotte Campus of Reformed Theological Seminary. He's written a ton of academic books, many of them dealing with the Canon, how scripture is put together, but with the book we're talking about today, he is kind of waded into the waters of a popular level. And we are sure thrilled that he is because this book called Surviving Religion 101 is just fantastic. Dr. Kruger, thanks for coming on the show.

Michael Kruger: Well, thanks guys. Great to talk to both of you and I'm excited to have this conversation.

Sean McDowell: Well, good. But let's start off by asking this question. Why write this book now and tell us what makes this book unique?

Michael Kruger: Yeah. This is a book that's near and dear to my heart for a lot of reasons. It's actually one of those books that's been sort of lurking in the back of my mind for years, I know I've needed to write it, my wife's been kind of gently prompting me to write it, and finally I got around to it. And the story actually begins in my own college experience. So years ago, as I entered UNC Chapel Hill as an undergrad, I came in as a believer and committed to Christ, but soon found myself overwhelmed by the barrage of stuff I was hearing in the classroom and didn't really have answers. And I always thought at that point, someday someone needs to write a book for college students to help them survive their religion class.

So ever since then, it's kind of been in the back of my mind. And then as time ticked away, my hope had been that by the time my first child makes it to college, I hope I could have this book written, and my oldest is Emma. And I didn't make the deadline. She's now a sophomore at UNC just finishing up her sophomore year, but at least I got it to her before she finished her college experience. And so I've written it as a form of letters to her. Each chapter is a letter to her facing the issue I know she's going to have to tackle. So it's really personal, both in terms of my own experience as an undergrad, but also because my daughter's in college right now.

Scott Rae: So Mike, tell us a little bit more about your undergrad experience, particularly the class you took with Bart Ehrman, and he's still there at Chapel Hill and chances are your daughter may take a class from him at some point.

Michael Kruger: Yeah. It's a funny, full circle story because when I was a freshman, I found myself in this New Testament introduction class, and it was with Bart Ehrman, as you indicated. At the time, he was a brand new professor himself and wasn't at the time as well-known as he is now. But I quickly saw that he was a dynamic communicator and he was very well-liked and very popular with students. And he lectured with an eye towards evangelicals and then told us he once was an evangelical like us, had been to Moody Bible College and Wheaton College, and it was in his PhD work that he realized that you really couldn't trust the gospels after all and that they were sort of your irreparably corrupted.

And so it was a challenge. I mean, he was telling me things I'd never heard before I was overwhelmed like any freshmen would be. And so it was an experience that really made a lot of people around me wonder are all the things that we've been believing a lie? And so then 30 years later, almost to the day, in fact, my daughter starts at UNC Chapel Hill. And you're right, she could end up having Bart Ehrman as professor before she's finished. She hasn't had him yet, but, because COVID was a strange year, and he's not teaching, I think as many undergraduate classes anymore. So I don't know if she'll have a chance to take him, but it would be a funny, full-circle experience.

Scott Rae: Yeah. Mike, your experience at Chapel Hill reminds me of my own when I went to college at Southern Methodist University. And if you think that the Methodist in it had anything to do with Christian faith, you'd be sadly mistaken. But I took introduction to the Old Testament from the nicest, warmest, gentlest, older man that you can imagine. And he wasn't out to debunk anything. He was just this incredibly winsome person who told me all these things about the Old Testament that I'd never heard before. And essentially if what he had said had been true, my faith in the Old Testament would have been wiped out. And nobody talked to me about the kinds of questions that I would have, the kinds of issues that would be raised. I would have given anything for a book like this prior to when I went to college. So Mike, let me shift gears a bit, the issues that you dealt with when you were a student 30 years ago, in what way are the questions that your daughter's facing different than when you and I went to college?

Michael Kruger: Yeah. So, one of the things that's interesting is there is a certain amount of truth in the fact that there's nothing new really, right? Under the sun in terms of objections to the Bible. And you can see the same old objections cycle through all of church history at some level or another. And so there's no doubt that many of the things I was facing when I was an undergrad are still around today. And in Ehrman's class, it was a lot about the reliability of the transmission of the text or apocryphal gospels, or what have you, and of course those issues are still alive and well.

But there's obviously new issues. And by new, I don't mean absolutely new, but issues that have taken center stage. And one of the ones I mentioned in the book I think is noteworthy and we're all seeing this now, is that when I was growing up, people would make objections to the Bible based on historical facts, but they would rarely make moral objections to the Bible. Most of the time, they would just admit that the Bible was the good book and they would try to sort of defend their behavior and kind of move on and tell people, "Stop shoving your religion down my throat." But now it's the opposite scenario. Now, the Bible's in the cross hairs of the morality police. And now people have more than intellectual objections to the Bible. They have moral objections to the Bible, and they're actually morally outraged about a great many things that they find in the Bible.

And so it's a very different world than when I was there because you didn't really have that at UNC when I was growing up. But my daughter now faces that. And so there's a lot more objections to the Bible on moral grounds than there used to be. And so we need to be able to tackle that. And I try to do that in several chapters of the book.

Sean McDowell: Well, one of the moral questions you discuss is the problem of hell, which I hear frequently with students. And we could spend entire podcast unpacking just that issue. But you say one of the keys is just to change how we approach the topic of hell. What is it we need to change about our view of God and ourselves?

Michael Kruger: Yeah. So one of the points I make throughout the book, and I kind of make this many times, is that what someone finds believable or unbelievable, reasonable or unreasonable, something they find acceptable or unacceptable, does not depend necessarily just on that thing itself, but on their preexisting worldview, through which they analyze that thing. So in other words, when someone looks at the doctrine of hell, they're already bringing to the table, a preconceived set of beliefs about what God is like, and about what humans are like, and even more importantly, what they are like. And if you give all that background, well, of course hell makes no sense, because they immediately think that God has sort of this fuzzy teddy bear in heaven who just gives out hugs and wants you to be happy, and they view most people as inherently good, and they view themselves as a pretty good person who's just trying to do their best.

Now, if that's your view of the world before you even get to the doctrine of hell, then hell seems absolutely insane. And by the way, I would agree, hell is insane, if that's your view of God and your view of humanity. And so what I spend my chapter on hell talking about is, but what if God wasn't that way? What if God isn't like that at all? What if God is actually very holy and he's very different than us? And what if we are a lot more sinful than we thought we were? Then suddenly hell doesn't look so unreasonable anymore. And so it just simply illustrates again, that whatever beliefs you hold are dependent on an earlier and more foundational set of beliefs that you already hold. And so if you're going to analyze what to believe, you've got to start with those foundational beliefs that are already in your worldview, and I try to do that in that chapter.

Scott Rae: Mike, one of the other moral objections that is often raised is in general, the problem of evil. But again, you frame that really differently than I think we often talk about it. So how do you help equip your daughter to address the objections to, really, it's not so much to the Bible, but more to the God of the Bible and the character of the God of the Bible based on the problem of evil?

Michael Kruger: Yeah. Well, one of the things I try to point out in the problem of evil discussion is, well, first, it is a tough problem, right? I mean, it's a tough problem intellectually. It's also a tough problem existentially. But that you've got to sort of narrow down exactly what the objection is. And I try to show that the major core objection is that God can not have a justifiable reason for allowing evil in the world. And I just simply point out that the non-Christian's in no position to know such a thing. How would they know that God couldn't have a justifiable reason for evil in the world? I mean, they can say they don't see what it could be, but not seeing what it could be is not an argument and it doesn't prove that God couldn't have one.

And so what I actually point out in that chapter is that the non-Christian is actually making massive, wide sweeping and truth claims about the universe. They're making statements like, well, God could never have a good enough reason, or it could never be possible that there's a justifiable reason for evil, or God could never have a way of making it all fit together in the end. But those are very dramatic claims. You just can't make those claims. You have to back those claims up. And so, one of the things I point out is that it's hard to make the argument stick in the end because the non-Christian is not in a position to know such things.

Now, the other point I make too, is that the problem of evil is not just a problem for the Christian, it's a problem for the non-Christian. They too have to account for good and evil in the world. And this is one of the turning of the tables I think I try to do throughout the book, is it's not just Christians that have to account for their worldview, non-Christians also have to account for theirs. And as soon as we realize that, then we can start asking them hard questions rather than just simply taking hard questions. And I think that changes the nature of the discussion.

Sean McDowell: I love that approach. And you apply that to a lot of the issues in here saying Christians aren't just on the defensive, but if someone's going to ask us to explain evil, how do they explain the origin of morality itself if there is no God? I think that's such a helpful approach. One of the chapters you have on is on the resurrection and you make the point that just the underlying claim that miracles don't happen anymore is arguably the biggest objection people have the resurrection. And that's right, I heard Gary Habermas who stated the resurrection probably more than anybody say, it used to be that Jesus didn't die on the cross. They went to the wrong tomb. Now it's more this worldview rejection of the miraculous, where the resurrection is ruled out from the beginning. So, how do you respond to that claim that miracles don't happen anymore?

Michael Kruger: Yeah. So this highlights again, the role of worldviews as we've been discussing, and shows you that when you say, "Hey, Jesus rose from the dead." The degree to which a person's going to believe or not believe that is based on what they already believe when they come to the discussion. And as you noted, a lot of people already show up to the discussion with the belief that miracles are impossible. And of course, if a person is already convinced that miracles are impossible, then there's no amount of evidence that could convince them the resurrection happened. I mean, no matter what the evidence is, they will never find it convincing enough to overturn their presupposition that miracles can't happen.

Now, of course, that means that rather than just debating the resurrection, we have to back up one notch and start debating the larger worldview questions that pertain to the supernatural and that pertain to miracles. And I point out in the chapter, and of course, I'm not the first one to do this, because C.S. Lewis was famous for this as many others have addressed it before, which is that the argument against miracles being impossible is ultimately a circular argument. And this is sort of going back to David Hume and the people that refuted Hume pointed out that, well, Hume's making assumptions in his arguments against the miraculous about the uniformity of experience out there. And so when someone says they don't believe a miracle is possible, you ask them why, and they say, "Because I've never seen one." And then you say, "What about all the other people that have seen one?" Then they say, "Well, all those people are wrong." And then you say, "Well, how do you know all those people are wrong?" And then they say, "Because miracles are impossible."

So it ends up just going back on itself again in a complete circle. And so you'd be understood to know, and of course, Scott would know this in his field, that people have backed off, philosophers at least, have backed off the miracles are impossible argument these days, and are more interested in the miracles are improbable argument because they realize the miracles are impossible argument just doesn't work.

Scott Rae: And I think we can thank our colleague, Craig Keener for the wealth of documentation that he's provided in his works on miracles and others to suggest that... Yeah, I think you're right, that to say that miracles are impossible just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Michael Kruger: Yeah. And I'll add one more thing. It's funny how we're often accused as Christians of saying everybody else is wrong, but I just want to point out the fact that that argument basically says everybody else is wrong, right? Everybody who claims to have experienced a miracle all over the globe throughout all of human history, all of them are wrong. And you just need to let that sink in because that's a very grand sweeping truth claim. And it's not just Christians that make such truth claims. Obviously you can hear in that comment, non-Christians make very dramatic truth claims.

Scott Rae: So Mike, let me return just to the problem of evil back for a moment. And often I think critics of the character of God will make a distinction between humanly caused evil and natural evil, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, things like that. Well, I think we have an easier time wrapping our arms around the notion that human beings causing evil, fallen, sinful, human beings, being the cause of evil is a little easier, I think, to swallow than these random events that don't seem to have any rhyme or reason to them, and it almost looks to the casual observer like the world's just sort of gone askew. How do you help your daughter address that latter category that sort of looks like, it sort of looks to the average person, like God's sort of lost control of the creation?

Michael Kruger: Yeah. Well, I think you put it well there because I think that the average human being does recognize that when you look at the world, it looks like it's gone askew. It looks like it's broken. It looks like it doesn't work rightly. It's a very dangerous, dark world that seems to be almost at war with itself. And I would argue the Christian worldview has a very good explanation for that. That it's the fall. It's, yeah. The world is off-kilter, it's not working as it ought. And so in that sense, you can be destroyed in a tornado, equally that could happen to you as equal as it could be that your neighbor comes into your house and attacks you and hurts you. And so both kinds of evil are prevalent the world because it's not just humans that are fallen, all of creation has fallen.

And so I use this as a segue to talk to people about what the Christian hope is. The Christian hope, as we all know is not just simply that as an individual I'm saved from my sins, although of course that's at the core of it, but that God ultimately will change the created world too. And he'll set that right. And he'll redeem that and create a new heavens and a new earth where the world doesn't function that way, where people aren't just wiped out by natural disasters like they are now. And so when I point that out to people, I want to ask the non-Christian, so tell me about your hope for the world. Where is it going on your worldview? What sort of redemption will there be for the created world on your system? And you realize very quickly that people don't really have a hope. They could say, "Well, I'm working to save the environment." But everybody knows that even if you worked really hard to do that, ultimately the world is still going to implode on itself someday.

And so I think that's a grand hope for Christians we need to talk about more, is that we are hoping the world's redeemed physically, and that only God through Christ can do that.

Sean McDowell: You have a chapter on the trustworthiness of the Bible that really intrigued me because you don't take the typical approach people often take looking at number of manuscripts, internal evidence, archeology, et cetera. Rather, you start with a question of about how God revealing himself in a book and why we should expect that. And then we find that in the scriptures. So talk a little bit about what you mean by that and the case you lay out for the reliability of the Bible.

Michael Kruger: Yeah. This is another example of my strategy, where I want to talk about the way worldviews affect the way you see truth. So when we tell somebody that the Bible is the word of God, the average person hears that and thinks, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. And if you think about it, they're kind of right. It is kind of weird to think that God gave us a book. What? Really? That just seems so arbitrary. It seems so made up. It seems so, well, human. And so what I wanted to do in that chapter is back up a minute and say, "Well, hold on a second. That only sounds that way if you don't understand the way the Christian God works."

Once you understand the Christian God is a personal God, not just a force, okay? We're not talking about Star Wars here. He's not just a force. He's a personal being. And he wants to relate to his people. How would he do that? Well, the way persons relate to each other is by communicating. Okay. So we have a built-in assumption in the Christian worldview that God would want to communicate. Well, he would probably do it through language, that's how persons communicate with one another. He'd probably use a language we would know. And then how would he preserve that communication for future generations?

And I just worked through sort of a logical argument, but really a biblical argument for why God would do this, why God would communicate in a book. And I think if you see the logic of it, you realize the question isn't whether God would, the question now becomes which book. It makes sense that God would do this. Now the question is, well, which book is from God? And now that shifts the terms of the debate. Now it's not just whether God would do that, but which book is it? Is it the Quran? Is it the Bhagavad Gita? Is it the book of Mormon? Is it the Bible? And then I think we're at much firmer ground to make our case that the Bible fits that pretty well.

Scott Rae: Mike, let's think about some of the more pastoral components of the book that you all you also address. It's not just the intellectual questions, but it's some of the real life through what, I guess, what we would call more pastoral types of things that students deal with when they get to secular university campus. So, what do we do with students who experience really serious doubts about their faith? I mean, on the one hand, you can see where that might be a good thing, that resolving those doubts helps them own their faith in a way that they hadn't before, but we've also got lots of deconversion stories where people who come from a very vibrant faith, they get to college, they get their faith deconstructed, and they never recover from that. So how do, I mean, what would you say to your daughter if she comes back at the end of her sophomore year and said, "Dad, I'm really starting to ask some tough questions and I don't have good answers for these. And it's making me wonder is this everything it's cracked up to be?"

Michael Kruger: Yeah. So chapter 15, which is the last formal chapter of the book, and I have an epilogue, but chapter 15 is a course on that subject of doubt. And that was a very important chapter for me to write, because I feel like we don't talk about this enough as Christians. And I don't think we talk about this enough in the church. And I don't think we talk about this in the right way. And one of the things I point out in that chapter is there's two extremes to avoid. The first extreme is this idea that doubt is something that makes you a second-class Christian, that there's something really wrong with you, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, we ought to wag a finger at you and say, "How dare you doubt." You must be doing something wrong.

And so what I told Emma in that chapter, and of course, anyone who reads the book was that doubt is a normal part of the Christian life that affects a lot of people, and there's no sort of sense that we should just hole up into a dark room and feel shame over it because it's something that we all will face most likely at some point in our life, at some level or another. Now the other extreme that I try to avoid in this chapter is to pretend that doubt is harmless and that it's something that you ought to foster and celebrate. And there's some people out there today that talk that way, like as if the highest moral virtue is to doubt everything. And I say, no, doubt, if unchecked, can be a real problem. And you just mentioned that, which is that it can lead to deconversion if unchecked, it could be like a cancer that could eat right through what you believe.

So on the one hand, let's not make doubt this conversation that no one can have because they feel so shameful about it, and on the other hand, let's not pretend it's not a issue that needs to be addressed. We want to address it. We want to tackle it head on and we want to obviously dissipate it. We don't want more doubt. We want less doubt. And so the chapter, I think, is trying to frame the doubt question to get it back on the table. And this is something that I think just churches need to do a better job on. There needs to be room for asking hard questions. People aren't ashamed to ask them. We're not afraid to answer them. And we don't sort of make people feel like if they ask these hard questions that they're probably a B class member of the church, and ought to go find a new place to go. And I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done there.

Scott Rae: Yeah. One of the things that I think is particularly helpful that you bring out is that, students who get to this place at college, they're not the first people to have these doubts and ask these questions.

Michael Kruger: Exactly.

Scott Rae: A lot of really smart people long before us, and in fact, some way long before us, addressed and answered these questions, and we just, a part of this I think is just exposing students to so somewhat those resources are that are out there and available to them. But I think that's so helpful, I think to recognize that doubt can be very harmful if it's left unchecked, but, and we don't want to celebrate doubt, but on the other hand we need to be real enough. And I think our church leaders need to admit at times that they don't have all the answers either. And that they've got to do their homework too. I mean, some of the best times that I've had with my students are when I've had to admit that they've asked a question that I don't have the answer to off the top of my head, and it's made me go back and do my homework-

Michael Kruger: And it wakes them up too. In the sense, they appreciate the honesty. There's a sense in which I think students and church members want to hear from us that, look, Christianity does have answers to life's difficult questions. We don't want to say it doesn't, but that doesn't mean every question is as equally easy to answer as every other question. And there's some questions that are just really sticky and hard. And hearing leaders just admit that is really important for people to hear. And so there's a place where you wrestle with that and you wrestle with that in a group. And I think we just need to have that conversation more in our churches.

Sean McDowell: I love hearing you say that because a lot of the data that's come out on students is that it's not just doubt that hijacks the faith, but unexpressed doubts. Sometimes just inviting those questions helps a kid realize, okay, I can live without knowing everything and I can find answers if I'm looking. Well-

Michael Kruger: Yeah. Another way to say that Sean, is I think we've set the bar so high. It's like, it's almost like we said, "You need to be the kind of Christian that has answers for everything right off the tip of your tongue. You've got it all figured out. It's all neat and tidy, and if that's not you, then you're really in trouble." I'm like, "Well, hold on a second. You can truly believe in Jesus and follow Jesus and still say, yeah, but I'm struggling with a few things here and there, and I don't have answers to all my questions, but that's okay. I'm going to press ahead faithfully and follow Jesus." We need to make sure we're not setting this unrealistically high bar for people. And so I'm with you on that. I think that's an important thing to remember.

Scott Rae: That bar being so high sort of sounds like it's just maybe a step or two removed from omniscience.

Michael Kruger: Exactly. And so it's in a book filled with answers, which is the book I've written and I am trying to give answers because I think the Bible gives answers. That doesn't mean that everything's equally clear. And it also doesn't mean that personally, every individuals is equally clear about it. And so I always remind people that Jesus was very patient with doubters, he was. Very compassionate, very gentle, very patient with doubters. It doesn't mean Jesus wants us to doubt. Don't misunderstand. It just means that he's very patient with doubters. And so I think that means pastors need to be patient with doubters. We need to be like Jesus in that sense.

Sean McDowell: What you said about people feeling the need to have like certainty and answers to everything is something I hear frequently. And I talk with people who've deconstructed their faith, oftentimes many progressive Christians. When I first picked up your book, rather than surviving in college, I thought Surviving Religion 101, I thought this was surviving like religion when you grow up in the faith and it's difficult for you. So talk about, is that a piece of this, that kids have that baggage they bring with them? Or is it more like, no, we're assuming kids have gotten a good faith, but it's the college that's going to shatter their faith.

Michael Kruger: Well, obviously I write it to, as the subtitle implies or actually says, I'm writing it to Christian students. So I'm presuming in the audience, some level of Christian commitment in the audience I'm writing to. But I think skeptics could read this book and benefit. I think people who are really unsure what they believe could read this book and benefit. And honestly, there's a lot of people who in the deconversion world, and I've written about this in my blogs on, deconversion stories are fascinating to study on lots of levels. But in some ways, they are the product of certain tendencies within the evangelical world.

And what I mean by that is there are pockets. There are sort of, if I could say it this way, more fundamentalist tendencies in certain quarters that tend to almost create more deconversions if you can understand what I mean, and that's not to deny personal responsibility for people's deconversions, but it is to acknowledge that sometimes you create an environment where people feel trapped, and the only way out in some sense is to sort of ditch the whole thing, because they think it's such a package deal that there's no options within it. And I think, if there's that kind of person out there, I think they could still benefit from this book a lot. And I hope the tone of this book communicates the kind of patients I hope Jesus would have with these sorts of people.

Sean McDowell: Well, there's no question about that. Both the tone and content are just, are excellent. And we were pleased and thrilled when we were both reading it. But one last question for you, Michael, on the last chapter, towards the end, you talk about kind of thoughts you have for students who feel like Christianity just isn't working for them for whatever reason, what advice do you have to those young Christians?

Michael Kruger: Yeah, that's a great place to end this. So that last chapter was born out of sending a draft of the manuscript to several college pastors I know around the country. And they read it with feedback. And one of the consistent responses I got is don't forget a lot of college students reject Christianity, not because it's untrue, but because it doesn't seem to work for them. And this was fascinating. In other words, there's a pocket of people on the college campus who might even acknowledge that Christianity is true, or at least has a good plausibility to it, but they reject it because existentially it's just not satisfying. And so it points out that some people aren't really on a quest for truth, they're on a quest for existential satisfaction. And sometimes they reject Christianity because they find other things more appealing.

And so I wanted to address that problem in the last chapter. And I tried to show that heart and mind go together, and that you can't artificially split them, and we don't want to make experience the test of truth. That's for sure. But at the same time, we also don't want to pretend that truth is unrelated to our hearts. And so the final thing I say in the book is that it's not enough just to believe that Christianity is true, although I hope that people read the book and conclude that. If you're going to make it and survive Religion 101, the title, if you're going to survive, you need to also have affection for Christ.

In other words, it's not enough just to say, he's correct, because then you end up following Jesus sort of out of logical obligation. Like I guess technically he's right. Technically it's the right path. Okay. I guess I'll follow it, although everything else looks a lot better out there. I mean, if you go down that route, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. I want to show people that ultimately you have to believe that Christianity is both true and that Jesus is the best thing you can follow. He's the most satisfying thing. And also I think that's a thing I wanted to end the book on is to remind people that heart's involved, not just mind.

Sean McDowell: I think that was a perfect place to end the book and kind of wrap up the conversation because it's not just brain on a stick as people say, but you talk about how believing in Jesus changes our heart and shapes the way that we live. So we want to commend to our listeners, your fantastic book, Surviving Religion 101 again, by Dr. Michael Kruger. This is a book, skeptics will appreciate the tone and the content. If parents are looking for tools to talk with their kids about some of the big issues they'll face in college, or you have a kid or grandkid who's about to head to the university or out of the home, this would be a great book to equip them with and talk them through. So, Dr. Kruger, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Michael Kruger: Thanks guys. Enjoyed the conversation.

Sean McDowell: This has been an episode of the podcast, Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture. The Think Biblically Podcast is brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola university, offering programs in Southern California and fully online, including the new fully online bachelor's in Bible theology and apologetics, in which we explore many of the issues on the podcast today. If you enjoyed today's conversation, give us a rating on your podcast app and share it with a friend. Thanks for listening. And remember, think biblically about everything.