Where is God when tragedy hits? Is it possible that God is at work in the world in ways we often miss? By explaining God's "common grace," Dr. Tim Muehlhoff suggests that God may be revealing himself through science, communication, art, and many more ways than we often realize. This discussion will help in one important step towards making sense of why there is suffering and evil in the world.

Tim Muehlhoff is a professor of communication at Biola University in La Mirada, California, a speaker and research consultant for the Center for Marriage and Relationships, and an author of several books on communication. In addition to being an educator and author, he is the co-host of a podcast entitled The Art of Relationships, which is produced by Biola University and is currently heard in 100 countries. Tim and his wife, Noreen, are frequent speakers at FamilyLife Marriage Conferences. For more information, visit timmuehlhoff.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 Christian 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 for a very unusual recording because we're outside underneath the Bell Towers at Biola University for preview days. So if you've walked by the Bells in the heart of campus, you can envision us having a conversation right here, of course, with my co-host, Scott Rae.

Sean McDowell: But today, we have a Biola faculty joining us, Tim Muehlhoff, who's been on this program before, teaches communications. But what we're going to jump and talk about, is you have a fascinating new book called Eyes to See: Recognizing God's Common Grace in an Unsettled World. First off, thanks for joining us, Dr. Muehlhoff.

Tim Muehlhoff: Man, it is great to be here. It's a little chilly, I do not have hair and I am regretting the fact I don't have hair. I find that to be very practical.

Sean McDowell: Now, you seem to pump out a book every six months or so. And this book in particular, the title grabbed me where you said, Eyes to See. And the moment I started reading, I realized there's a story behind it as there often is with most books. What was the story that motivated you to write this book?

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, my wife went in for a routine procedure and the doctor just happened to notice something that caught his eye and he biopsied it. And then it came back that in fact it was cancerous. And then we went for the full body scan. This is the one that keeps you up at night, because we're going to find out if the cancer had metastasized or if it was just in that local play.

Tim Muehlhoff: And I remember sitting in the lobby of St. Jude Hospital holding Maureen's hand. And I said something that I realized I don't say very often. Thank God for this hospital and thank God for this machine, a multimillion dollar machine that is going to scan every inch of my wife's body and definitively tell us if the cancer had spread and thank goodness this cancer had not spread. But it made me realize I very much take for granted common grace, things that I don't often associate with God.

Scott Rae: And the people who are operating those machines, if they're followers of Christ, are in full-time industry also.

Tim Muehlhoff: Absolutely.

Scott Rae: Full time service. Because that's that's as much ministry as pastoring and mission field and things like that. So tell us a little bit more, what do you mean by the term common grace? That's a theologically more sophisticated term that different people understand differently. So how are you understanding that?

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, the keyword there is common, so it's common grace. It's not grace that is just given to believers. It's grace that's given to everybody. God understands that in a fallen world, the rain is going to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. People are going to need medical inventions, both Christians and non-Christians.

Tim Muehlhoff: So I find it remarkable that James says, every good gift bestowed comes down from the father of lights. And many theologians believe that he's looking up at the stars. He's literally saying, just as there are many stars in the sky that is as many good gifts as God's going to give to a fallen world, sinners and saints alike. So that's what common grace is, is the good things in life that we would, quite frankly, not get through a pandemic without mass researchers, medical researchers, frontline workers, both Christian and non-Christian. That's what's amazing is, God gives these good gifts and insights to everybody.

Scott Rae: So the idea that the rain falls on both the just and the unjust?

Tim Muehlhoff: Which speaks so much about God's love. He could have easily said, listen, you want a world without me. Guess what? You have it. So now you figure out war, you figure out disease, climate change, you figure out all those things on your own. I'm done with you because you're done with me. God graciously didn't say that.

Scott Rae: People often use the terms general revelation and natural law as synonyms for common graces. Are you seeing those as all under the same umbrella or are they somewhat different?

Tim Muehlhoff: I do put them under the general umbrella. One part of common grace is what C.S Lewis really highlighted in his book, The Abolition of Man, that wonderful chart in the back that I always tell my students to go to where he says, let's take a look at all the different moral inclinations that we have. And he compares Egyptians to people from the west, people from the East.

Scott Rae: From most of the history of civilization.

Tim Muehlhoff: Exactly. And so to me, that's a great example of common grace. I take that mentality of The Abolition of Man and apply it to discoveries that change the world. And what's interesting, Scott, is let's take the advent of fire. I read an academic paper on fire that was just like a hundred page paper. And God bless the person who did that. God bless the person who wrote a hundred page paper on the advent of fire.

Tim Muehlhoff: But it was discovered all over. There's no way that these different civilizations are communicating with each other, but they're all getting these inventions roughly at the same time. I think those are moments that either you can say we're serendipitous or this is God nudging us and mentoring us and saying, you're going to need fire, is going to be very helpful.

Scott Rae: Even the biblical Proverbs, I think, are like that because we have evidence that's almost verbatim from the biblical Proverbs we find an Egyptian literature that predated the biblical Proverbs by almost as much as a thousand years. So it's God's revelation that comes to people regardless of their worldview.

Tim Muehlhoff: I have a whole chapter on communication. You better believe in today's argument culture, where we're using words as weapons that God has to implant in us a virtuous idea of communication. So Scott, I take that idea of the proverb, life and death is in the power of the tongue and compare that to what the Buddha said.

Tim Muehlhoff: Buddha said, there are words that can heal and there's a words that can cause harm. That is almost a paraphrase of the ancient writers of the book of Proverbs. And most people would say the chances of the Buddha having access to the book of Proverbs was really small. So I love the idea that God has given different individuals these ideas of virtuous communication and we're all learning from the that. To me, it is a powerful sign of common grace.

Sean McDowell: One of the things you do a lot in this book and your other books are these just practical simple even pop cultural illustrations to make a point sink home. And one that you use, is just this person who's praying for God to save them from a flash flood. Explain that and how it ties to common grace.

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, it's so funny, Sean, and you know this, you're such a prolific writer. You have to sell the book to a publisher to get the idea across, so I used a joke. I said, let me just start with a joke and most of the listeners, most of the people listening right now have heard the joke. The joke is, a guy gets a warning that there's going to be a flash flood warning, but he's fine because God's going to save him. Well, the flood waters come now he's on the second floor. And a boat goes by and says, jump in the boat, we'll take you to safety. And he goes, no, I'm good, God's got me. Now, the flood waters are to the roof and he's on the roofs. And a helicopter comes by and they said, man, jump in the helicopter. He said, no, I'm good, God will save me.

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, sure enough, he drowns. Now he's standing in front of God and he is mad. And he says, God, why didn't you save me? And God goes, what do you want? I sent you a boat, a helicopter and a radio warning. And I want to note that Scott laughed, Sean did not. I just want to draw attention to that. That was very interesting diagnostic moment. But that joke is really the point of my entire book.

Tim Muehlhoff: If you take a look at the history of the helicopter, by Igor Sikorsky. When he was 13, he believed God was giving him dreams of this flying boat that would come straight down, pick people straight up and take him to safety. Well, he eventually went to the United States, Sikorsky Aircraft, I have a brother-in-law who literally works for them. He believed God gave him this idea of a helicopter. And there's actually a Sikorsky award that is given every year for people that rescue people in Sikorsky helicopters. So you could say, that's common grace. God's saying, you're going to need rescue vehicles in top terrain. And so I would say the guy in the roof, dude, the helicopter was from God, but you expected something supernatural without any human intervention.

Scott Rae: Right. And the notion that God works most of the time through human interventions, I think is sometimes lost on us in our desire to protect the supernatural. So let me push back a little bit on the ideas of general revelation.

Tim Muehlhoff: I got to go-

Scott Rae: And natural law.

Sean McDowell: Sorry, is his time up already?

Scott Rae: Come on, you got to stay here and take at least one tough question.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes, give it to me.

Scott Rae: Some people question, not whether common grace exists or natural law exists, but they question our ability as flawed sinners who sees life through very clouded lenses. Our ability to perceive it and to actually have anything useful from it. So how would you respond to that? That sin has rendered the concept basically useless because we are so flawed and so our lenses are so clouded that we just can't see it or make heads or tails of it.

Tim Muehlhoff: I would put all my theological cards on the table that all my seminary training comes from reformed theological seminary. And I have nothing but positive things to say about my professors, but I'm not reformed. So I would very much hold to what a C.S Lewis would believe, this idea, Provinient grace. See, some would say that common grace... Calvin would agree with common grace. I've read the institutes, he's very eloquent and Wayne Grudem in his systematic theology book. I actually quote Grudem in the book. He's fascinating when it comes to common grace, even arguing that non-Christian may get more common grace than Christians. But he cuts it off when it comes to ... it's a fascinating section in the book. He cuts it off when it comes to spirituality, like we're blinded by the sin that Calvin described. I would simply believe in Provinient grace, which means what Titus says the light of Christ has enlightened everyone.

Tim Muehlhoff: So Provinient grace would say, that it comes upon individuals, and you're right, Scott, in the fact that we are dead in our sin and without Provinient grace, we would not be able to respond. But Provinient grace allows people to respond, not just to the goodness in the world, but also to the salvation call of Jesus. Now, I recognize for your listeners, that's a Calvinist Armenian distinction and there's really good people on both sides. But I would lean in that camp, Scott, that I hold to Provinient grace, that people are absolutely dead in their sins. And if it weren't for a Provinient grace, we would all would be eternally separated. But it opens our eyes so that even Paul would say, the Gentiles do seem to follow this moral law that's written on their hearts and can recognize it and even respond to it.

Sean McDowell: So you pick because there's a bunch of different illustrations in the book. One to illustrate common grace is this example from The Hunger Games. Of course, the popular movie series. Or the discovery of penicillin, both of those were such interesting stories. Which one do you think would be most helpful for the audience to grasp the idea of common grace?

Tim Muehlhoff: Let's do penicillin. I only use The Hunger Games this way. If you're a fan of The Hunger Games, as these children are fighting for their very lives, people can send them gifts and those gifts come in parachutes. Like one is a healing bomb that helps Katniss and Peeta. So that was my only way of using The Hunger Games, is that, James seems to say these gifts come from above. So interesting to use The Hunger Games that they literally come from above in parachute. So I just simply use it as a way to creatively think about God's gifts coming, they don't come in parachutes.

Tim Muehlhoff: But listen, the penicillin thing is phenomenal. And we would be in the dark ages without penicillin. We would not be around having this podcast interview without penicillin. So there's a lab tech in London who is just sloppy. And he goes off on a two week vacation, comes back and he is annoyed because he didn't clean all of his Petri dishes. So half of the Petri dishes have mold on them, but the other half don't. And he's like, that's really weird, why didn't the mold grow completely on a Petri dish? Well, he writes an academic paper. He delivers it just for a handful of scientists, completely forgets about it.

Tim Muehlhoff: Now, jump forward to world war II. British soldiers are dying in the bloody battlefields of world war II and so they take a medical researcher and they say, listen, you got to find a way of keeping our soldiers alive. So he goes to the archives and finds the original paper on penicillin. He goes, my gosh, this is penicillin. So now it's being mass produced to British soldiers, United States soldiers, and literally changes the world. Now the guy who discovered it wasn't a Christian and there's a really funny quote where he goes, I didn't mean to change human medical history, I just didn't clean my Petri dishes.

Tim Muehlhoff: One guy who's a medical historian says, it is the single greatest serendipitous moment in human history. And I say, but could we go a different way on that? Could it be God leading this non-Christian lab tech to notice it and hypothesize about it and then he leads a British researcher to find an obscure paper. Again, common grace isn't meant to prove God's existence, I think it's meant to wet our appetites. And that's what the book is really meant to do, is to give you pop culture references, historical examples, to just open these conversations. So I wrote another book with J.P. Moreland called The God Conversation, which is our introduction to apologetics book. So I almost feel like this is the prequel, like this opens the door to the God conversation we can have.

Sean McDowell: Well, wait a minute-

Tim Muehlhoff: Conversation about God.

Sean McDowell: ... This is the prequel to the introduction to-

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes, Absolutely.

Sean McDowell: ... I got it now.

Tim Muehlhoff: I started slow, Sean.

Sean McDowell: All right. So on penicillin, somebody said it's the most serendipitous. And you said, but it could be.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes.

Sean McDowell: I noticed in the book you use the word possible a lot. So you're not arguing that these things are necessarily God's actions or at least arguing that we can know that from the actions itself. You're just suggesting that people look at it differently and maybe see God's hand in places they wouldn't normally see it. Is that fair?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes. I teach a class on apologetics and communication because I think communication is just bedrock for apologetics. We have to be able to articulate the reasons that we have this hope within as Peter says. Here's what my students say to me on a regular basis, I just don't know how to get in the conversation. I want to, I want to share my faith. I want to talk about what God's done in my life, my relationship with Jesus. I just really struggle for opening conversation. So that's what the book is really about is, let's use pop culture and historical great stories to be the opener. So I can't tell you how many times I've shared my faith with The Walking Dead.

Tim Muehlhoff: The Walking Dead is the most watched show in the history of cable television. So in it is Hershel, who still reads his king James Bible every single day. And one character walks by ... this is during a zombie apocalypse. So a character walks by Hershel and says, surprised you still read that in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Will translate that to a pandemic. I have non-Christian friends. I was going to preach at my church on, where was God during the pandemic? One of my non-Christian friends said, well, good luck with that. And I was like, I get why you think that. But let me tell you all the things I think God is doing during a pandemic and even during a zombie apocalypse.

Tim Muehlhoff: So for me, The Walking Dead is a great way to open the door. And John Wesley, the great traveling preacher said, I think every Christian should be able to look at the front page of a newspaper and transition from the newspaper to the gospel. I want to reclaim that skillset and say, let's use pop culture to have these great spiritual conversations that will lead to apologetic and lead to evangelistic conversation.

Scott Rae: I wonder if one of the bridges we can make, Tim, I'm interested to see what you think of this, is with the notion of penicillin being 'discovered.' That was basically by accident.

Tim Muehlhoff: I can see how somebody would say that.

Scott Rae: That's easy to conclude that. But I think the bridge to a discussion of a God conversation would be, you may look at this as a coincidence, but that is one heck of a coincidence. And it makes a lot more sense to think that God, through his common grace, had something to do with that. So that what looks like an accident is actually nothing of the sort. There just aren't that many coincidences, in that respect, in a world that's filled with god's common grace. Is that a fair representation?

Tim Muehlhoff: I love that. And I love the ambiguity of it. Tim Downs wrote ... many of us are huge fans or Tim Downs, he writes about evangelism in a book called Finding Common Ground. He loves to use the phrase, try this on for a second. I love that, almost like a shoe salesman. Try this on, tell me what you think about this idea. So you're right, Scott. Absolutely, we could go with penicillin being a serendipitous moment, I totally get that. But try this on just for a second. What Roger Laennec calls ... he studies creativity. He calls these ,aha, moments. When a person is thinking about one thing, but then they go and see something else. That's an aha moment. Remember in the book I have Laennec's discovery of the stethoscope. So he's having a really hard time during the early 1900s hearing a heartbeat.

Tim Muehlhoff: And these guys are literally putting their ear to the chest trying to hear the rhythm of a heartbeat. But he has a person who's overweight and he cannot hear the heartbeat so he's really frustrated. One day he is walking, he sees a bunch of kids in France whispering into a long metal tube and trying to guess on the other end what they're saying. And the reaction is, they're getting most of them. He literally runs home, takes a newspaper, rolls up the newspaper and puts it and he can hear it better than he played with wood and different kinds of metals. And now we can't imagine medicine without a stethoscope, but that's Laennec. So could that be an aha moment given by God and in combination with the Laennec's creativity and medical training? That's what I want to argue.

Sean McDowell: Tim, I know some people are listening to this thinking, so maybe God did allow or guide or direct the discovery of penicillin and the stethoscope. But why on earth would he wait so long to do so? My goodness, that means the vast majority of people who have ever lived didn't have something as simple as penicillin. Why didn't he just drop it down from the sky like we have in The Hunger Games? Now, maybe your answer is, well, that's the follow up area where we need to go to, but how does that match with this idea of common grace?

Tim Muehlhoff: That's another book idea. No, I'm totally kidding. No, Sean, here's what I would say. The last part of the book, I've been sharing this on diverse with non-Christians, Christians and just having a great time with Q and A. And they ask great questions, this has been a great question. God is committed, in my estimation, to human partnership. He doesn't want to just trump free will, he wants human beings to partner with him to fix the planet that is in rebellion. So when he does that, he's limited. He can only go as far as his human partners can go. I think sin short circuits our ability to think clearly about issues. I also think God wants to give us something and he gives us a good thing, we use it for bad.

Tim Muehlhoff: Another illustration. Remember the advent of dynamite? Dynamite was originally created for agricultural purposes by Alfred Nobel. But then you better believe the military took that in a heartbeat and said, dynamite, we can use dynamite. And it became one of the most effective killing instruments we've ever had. So Sean, I think sometimes God's given us the good thing and we turn it for bad or he wants to give it to us, but because of our sin, we are literally not ready to receive it. So we slow God down in many ways because we live in a rebellious environment.

Scott Rae: It does make you wonder how many of these serendipitous moments could have been missed over the centuries? And how much better human life would been had human beings been a bit more attentive to what God was doing? How we could have flourished in ways that we didn't know until way much later?

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, I'm blanking on his name, forgive me. But remember the guy who came up with germ theory? Man, I'm just blanking on his name, I'm sorry. But he was laughed out of the town and people would literally say, why do I need to wash my hands to do surgery? That's crazy. And he was like, no, there's things called germs. And they're like, show them to me. And well, you couldn't see them. So Scott, maybe God's given us certain good gifts, aha moments and we're literally laughing and being skeptical towards his good gifts and he's not going to force that on us.

Scott Rae: I would hate to think that we missed too many of the cues for things like anesthesia and other things like that down through the centuries.

Sean McDowell: So you have these pop cultural examples to communicate the idea of common grace. But then you talk about how common grace is in things like communication or it could be in things like art. So talk about how God could use art as a means of common grace for people.

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, I like teaching communication, I teach persuasion classes. And we all know this, being communicators, that audiences can have their defenses come up pretty quickly. There's a proverb that says, an offended brother is like a fortified city. And today, it sure seems like people getting offended very quickly. So art has a way of getting around the defenses. So my definition of art comes from New York Times art critic, Michael Kuskal who states that every work of art ... now this is his definition, there's many definitions. His definition is that, art is a revolt in the name of fresh perspective.

Sean McDowell: Wait, say that again. I want to make sure I got it.

Tim Muehlhoff: This is New York Times critic, Michael Kuskal. He says art is a revolt in the name of fresh perspective. So I'm locked in one perspective, I look at a piece of art that could be poetry, a song, photograph a speech and it causes me to see the world in a different way. So I think God uses art as a way to get us to see something that maybe a pastor or a preacher couldn't get us to see it, but a work of art really can. And to be honest, we know about how people have argued for certain civil rights. Let's say, the gay movement came up against much opposition and people were just shut down, these pro gay groups until they did a comedy called Soap. Remember way back when Soap was the first gay character on a comedy, and guess what? People laughed.

Tim Muehlhoff: In my persuasion class in grad school, they said, laughter is the first level of acceptance. Laugh about it, you've just opened the door to accepting it. So I think God uses that. I think God says, proclamation is for sure one way to get the gospel out there. The chosen has introduced millions to a wonderful depiction of who Jesus is and I don't think many of those people would go into a church, but they maybe would watch the chosen. And to me, that's art opening them up to a perspective of God and Jesus that they normally wouldn't have. So I think Christians, we need to be in the arts big time and introducing people to biblical themes but using the arts to do it.

Scott Rae: Doug actually told us that they've been 300 million views of the chosen to your point.

Tim Muehlhoff: I think that is just beautiful. And by the way, Jesus, we study him rhetorically in my discipline, communication theory. So when you watch Jesus in action and the parables he tells, which you could say are creative unique genre stories, you study those stories in non-Christian universities. The good Samaritan, the prodigal son, they wouldn't say it's God's word, but they're reading it because of the beauty of it. And I think that's wonderful that God is getting it through the back door.

Scott Rae: Now, Tim, you make some pretty provocative statements here in the book that is shocking that you would actually do that but to cry out for a little more explanation. One of them, is that you say that God prods us with common grace to treat each other better. What do you mean by that?

Tim Muehlhoff: That is a radical idea that God would do that. So we're the argument culture today, we're all familiar with it.

Scott Rae: The reason I ask is because I think we've largely forgotten that today.

Tim Muehlhoff: We have. I find it really interesting in a time that Americans honestly don't agree on much. 98% of us agree that instability is a threat to our country. 68% of Americans would say, we are at crisis levels of infidelity. So God knows that. God knows the power of human language, it is for good and for bad. Life is in the power of the tongue, it can impart life or death. So God floods us with two things. He floods us with images of how language can destroy each other and gives us those clear warnings. But then he also floods us with virtuous ideas of what communication can be. So listen to this interesting list that I put together. This was so fun about writing a book as you get on these tangents and you discover things.

Tim Muehlhoff: Listen to this. Hinduism, nearly 15%, 1.1 billion of the world's population follows the teachings of Hindu scriptures and teachers. Well, listen to what one Hindu mystic says, words can comfort or hurt. It is our pride that makes us use words to hurt. Buddha says this, words have the power to destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change the world. Confucius says this, without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more. Even atheist Sam Harris says, all we have to solve our problems is conversation. It's either conversation or violence.

Tim Muehlhoff: So it's like God is flooding teachers of even different religions, I want you to understand what virtuous communication is. Right now we have to be very discerning when we read the words of the Buddha or Confucius or Mohamed, of course. But even with Mohamed, he said says righteous words can have an effect on people.

Tim Muehlhoff: And I think God is simply saying to the world, in a time that you're devouring each other with words, you need to remember what virtuous communication looks like and sounds like. And I think it's gracious of God that he would give not only the ancient writers of Proverbs this message, but he would give Hindu mystics that same vision to promote healing words in a time of the argument culture.

Sean McDowell: Tim, that was one of my favorite sections of your book. I dogeared it, I wrote ... I want to write a blog about this because I had never seen all that brought together. And just this week, I had a conversation with an agnostic who's written a book on how our nature is that we are storytellers. So a campaign is a story, a commercial is a story, a song is a story, a movie is a story. You see a friend you haven't seen for a while, you tell a story. And he tries to explain it from an evolutionary perspective. And so I suggested to him almost the words, like you said, I said, maybe try this on.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes.

Sean McDowell: I said, maybe we tell stories because we're a part of a story and there's a God who has made us to communicate with one another and build relationships with stories too. What do you think about that? Now, he didn't sit there and go, God exists.

Sean McDowell: But all I was trying to do, is just reframe this for him and say, maybe something you're trying to explain entirely through an evolutionary approach could be equally or maybe even better explained by a Christian worldview. It sounds like that to sum up the conversation, that's what you're doing in Eyes to See, is you're trying to get people, hence the title, a different way of looking at the world that suggests God is more present and active. If we have eyes to see, then we might normally pay attention to. Is that a fair summary?

Tim Muehlhoff: I think that's great. And in communication, we learn this from our crew background, is you want to find a felt need. And to be honest, we're in year three of a pandemic, I think everybody's just a little bit unsettled. But we have this weird belief that there's a God who is gracious, loving, kind, powerful. And Woody Allen once said that the atheist director said, if God exists, he's an underachiever.

Tim Muehlhoff: So I want to say to people, how can I like Hershel in the walking dead, maintain my faith in year three of a pandemic. And I'd love to have that conversation with you. And it's those moments that get me to the apologetic arguments that if I started there, they might just turn me off. Like, dude, I don't want to have that conversation. But I have a conversation about Hunger Games, about The Walking Dead, about The Office that uses 1st Corinthians 13 in a very famous wedding scene between Jim and Pam. They actually read 1st Corinthians 13. So I love to have those conversations using common reference points.

Sean McDowell: Tim, I teach one of the grad classes here why God allows evil. And after I read your book, I made a little note, I was like, I've got to incorporate this into the larger class that I teach. Because it's just one key part of answering why God allows evil and suffering. Well, maybe his common grace, if we have eyes to see like your book title suggest, we'll see that God is more present than we might realize.

Sean McDowell: So again, our guest today, Dr. Tim Muehlhoff, he's written a fascinating book that I think will give Christians a different way of looking at things, but also a non-believer who might be just open to exploring a different perspective, I think would enjoy it as well. Again, the title is, Eyes to See. Dr. Tim Muehlhoff, thanks for joining us.

Tim Muehlhoff: My pleasure guys, thank you.

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. We have programs in Southern California and now fully online, including our masters in Christian apologetics, which, Tim, you and I both teach at in different ways, which is offered fully online.

Sean McDowell: Check out biola.edu/talbot to learn more. If you enjoyed today's conversation, in fact, even if you didn't enjoy today's conversation, please give us a rating on your podcast app and consider sharing it with a friend. Thanks for listening and remember, think biblically about everything.