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Sean McDowell: Welcome to the podcast, Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, professor of apologetics at Talbot School of Theology À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ.

Scott Rae: And I'm your cohost, Scott Rae, dean of faculty and professor of Christian ethics at Talbot School of Theology, À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ.

Sean McDowell: Today, we're here with a Talbot professor of philosophy, Greg Ganssle, who's written a fascinating book that we want to talk about called Our Deepest Desires. Greg, thanks for coming on, but let me start by asking you, tell us a little bit about your story. What led you just as a person, essentially, into caring about the life of the mind in Christian philosophy?

Greg Ganssle: Well, Sean, when I came to Christ as a high school student, it igniting some thinking in my life. I began to think about, more and more of my life Christianly, and as I went to university and was involved in a campus ministry, I was challenged by the questions my fellow students were asking. And that sent me to reading any books I could find to figure out how do you answer the questions that people are asking. And that quest began in the early 70s, and it's continued to this day.

Sean McDowell: You've written a book that I really love. I've told you this. Again, called Our Deepest Desires, but it's different than a typical apologetics book. In fact, you say you're not trying to show that Christianity is true, but kind of that people would want it to be true. Tell us the thinking behind the unique approach that this book takes.

Greg Ganssle: Well, I've noticed that, to be honest, people do not care if Christianity is true. Most people have the idea that, I'm pretty sure Christianity is false, and it's really good that it's false. And I wanted to challenge the second part of that. Nietzsche in one of his works makes the comment, "What is decisive against Christianity now is our taste, not our reason." And he's making the point, it was a point he was happy about, that we get people to reject Christianity by making it seem awful or horrible or unrealistic or out of touch. And I'm trying to counter that part of the kinds of questions people are asking.

Scott Rae: Greg, I found this to be a fascinating approach to articulating Christian faith. You say throughout the book, or the point of the book is our deepest desires as human beings are most at home in the Christian story as opposed to atheism. But just so we're clear, what would you say are the main elements of the Christian story?

Greg Ganssle: Yes. The way I like to think of it is this, the Christian story is the entire story of what God has done as revealed in the scriptures. It begins with creation, which reveals who God is and what God's plans are. And he creates human beings in his image in order that we can have relationship with him, and that we can be fruitful and multiply. And this is where the purpose of human life is grounded. And then, of course, human beings rebelled against God, and so all of the good things God put into our life are, to some degree, twisted or corrupted, and this is where sin enters the world. And of course, the central movement of the Christian story is that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. So the person and work of Christ to reaffirm our value in God's eyes, and then to pay the penalty for our sins, but the story doesn't end until God comes back into the scene in a dramatic way, to bring about the new heavens and the new Earth. To bring us to our final destination.

Greg Ganssle: So, the Christian view of history is that it begins with creation and it ends in the new heavens and the new Earth, when the kingdom of God has come in its fullness. One of the themes that runs through this is what does it mean to be human? Because it begins with us being created in the image of God, and then it ends with us still in the image of God, still human, enjoying him forever. And so that's our theme throughout the Christian story.

Scott Rae: So let me tackle the first part of it. You say our deepest desires are most at home in the Christian story, but what are our deepest desires, and how do they fit better within the Christian story?

Greg Ganssle: I think if we reflect on, it doesn't take very long to reflect on what people want most deeply. If we were to ask people what do they want, the first five answers are going the be pretty superficial. I want my student loans paid off. I want a job. I want a car that runs. But it doesn't take very long for people to realize what they want is a life that is meaningful and filled with rich relationships where they are known, loved, trusted. Where they experience the world with joy, and they encounter the beauty in the world. And reflecting on these things, I think they're very common among human beings.

Greg Ganssle: In fact, from believers to outright atheists, to people in between, everybody has a longing for relationships, for love, for beauty, for freedom, and meaning in life. So these are some of the desires, and of course, they make a lot of sense in a Christian story because God does have purpose for us. God made us for his own reasons. And so we flourish as we practice those reasons. And that has to do with how we live in relation to one another, how we live in relation to God, how we live in relation to the entire created world.

Sean McDowell: Greg, you spoke to this apologetics leadership group I was a part of a few months back, and you talked about how tragedies reveal that our deepest desire as human beings is for relationship. And that was like a game changing thought for me. Can you describe that, and then kind of describe how relationship is at the heart of the Christian world view in a way that it's not in other world views, like say, naturalism or pantheism?

Greg Ganssle: Well, it's again, it just takes reflecting on what happens to us in tragedies. Or what matters most to us when we're shaken up. And it turns out that what matters most is our relationships. In the book I tell the story of some of the things that happened on 9/11. One of which is when this plane, United Flight 93 was in Pennsylvania, and they knew they had been hijacked and the plane was going to be crashed, everybody ran to their cellphones to make one last phone call. And somebody in retrospect, said, "Nobody called the office to check on work." When you know that this is my time, you want to make connections with the people who matter. So that's kind of evidence that when we peel back our superficial layers, it's our relationships that determine the quality of life. This is where we actually invest the most.

Greg Ganssle: Now, there are going to be some people who are exceptions to this, but it's pretty strongly shared among human beings, and it's part of how we were made. So the question, when we talk about a world view, is where do human beings, and where do relationships fit in the worldview?

Greg Ganssle: So, for example, in an atheistic worldview, persons emerged by accident, very late in history, and there is no reason persons came, no purpose behind human being's existence, and so we're kind of against the grain of reality, is what human life is about.

Greg Ganssle: In a Christian picture of the world, personhood is there at the very beginning because God is personal. And when he makes us persons, he's making us persons on purpose. So the fact that we're human beings and we flourish in relationships fits into the very purpose of the universe. All of our humanness fits with the grain of reality.

Greg Ganssle: Other worldviews, you mentioned pantheism, the pantheistic worldview is going to be much closer to the atheistic worldview in terms of the place of personhood. It's going to, because human beings are not made by a personal agent for that agent's reasons. Somehow, we just are here. And even if we are some kind of spark of the divine, that doesn't actually ground meaning for our humanness.

Greg Ganssle: So that's kind of an overview of some of these things. Where does the existence in nature of human beings fit in the different worldviews? We care so deeply about all of the ingredients to our humanness, and yet, in many of the worldviews people have, those things don't fit. In the Christian worldview, it fits very well because God is personal. God created us to be personal for good reason.

Scott Rae: Greg, you also mentioned that goodness is one of our deepest desires. How do you know that people want to be good?

Greg Ganssle: Well, you eavesdrop on them. That's how you know. You kind of listen in on conversations, and nobody ever says, "Oh but I don't want to be good." Everybody always interprets, every person interprets his own behavior in a way that makes it good.

Scott Rae: Whether it is or not.

Greg Ganssle: Right. So suppose you overhear a conversation, and someone said, "Hey you told a lie to your roommate." The other person will ne