Day One
J. Warner Wallace: What does God do with suffering? What is the place of suffering in a larger story? What chapter does it fill? And after she was able to kind of re-navigate that, she found herself thriving on the backside of it.
John Fuller: Well, that’s former cold case detective, J. Warner Wallace. And today you’ll hear about what we can learn about human nature and how to thrive in life through studying crime. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And I’m John Fuller.
Jim Daly: John, have you noticed kind of the fascination with these crime TV series now?
John: TV and podcasts. It, it just seems to be everywhere.
Jim: (laughs) Jean kind of fell in love with a couple of ’em she’d watched. Just really intrigued. I think it’s her science background that she loved these shows-
John: Got it.
Jim: … ’cause, you know, they do a lot of the forensics and all that. I think it just caught her attention. So I would get through those programs, (laughs) with her as a faithful, good husband.
John: Showing you, your love to her.
Jim: (laughs) So good. But, uh, you know, from a Christian perspective, when we think about crime, uh, we get a glimpse of the soul and the clear reminder that we’re born with sin.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I mean, you’re gonna, if you’re gonna see sin, you’re gonna see it in criminal activity. And our guest today, J. Warner Wallace, has studied crime and human behavior for several decades. And I can’t think of anyone more qualified to have a discussion on this topic. You might be thinking, “Okay, how does Christianity, the family and crime come together?” Well sit back, get a cup of coffee and let’s listen in together.
John: Yeah. This is gonna be fascinating. Uh, Jim’s cases have been featured on NBC’s Dateline, Tru TV and Fox News. He still occasionally asked, uh, to consult on cold case investigations. J. Warner Wallace is a senior fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s an adjunct professor of apologetics at Biola University, former youth pastor. And, uh, he’s the author of a number of books. Today, uh, the book we’re gonna be covering is called The Truth in True Crime: What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life. And you can find out more about our guest and his book at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.
Jim: Jim, great to have you back at Focus.
J. Warner: Well, thanks for having me. It’s true… You’re right about the fascination with true crime.
Jim: Isn’t it true?
J. Warner: And do you realize that like 80% of true-crime fans are women?
Jim: Oh, that’s interesting. Why do you think that is?
J. Warner: And which is, and your story kind of like said that, right?
Jim: Yeah. Yeah.
J. Warner: Like, you, your-
Jim: Jean’s into it.
J. Warner: Yeah, that’s… And so why is that the case? Well, one author was writing about this and thought she was, she was thinking that it, perhaps it’s because so many of the victims you see in these true-crime-
Jim: Hmm.
J. Warner: … shows are women. And so it’s almost like every one of these is a cautionary tale.
Jim: Yeah, that’s true. For those of you that maybe aren’t familiar with your story, you’ve been here a couple times, we talked about, it’s always fascinating. Um, you once described yourself as an angry atheist. So for the, you know, the non-believer who is listening in, and we do have many that do listen in. Last year we had 193,000 decisions for Christ.
J. Warner: Wow.
Jim: So I know you’re there.
J. Warner: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And this might be that opportunity. I don’t know that you’re angry, but in terms of, uh, being an agnostic or an atheist, that’s where you were at Jim. Uh, you saw the worst in mankind. H- how did that factor into your journey of embracing Christ and believing?
J. Warner: Well, I think one of the things that, that de- delayed it was that so many of the people we would take to jail would tell us that they were believers. And I thought, “Okay. Uh-”
Jim: Something’s not connected.
J. Warner: “… something’s not connecting here.” And then the few, uh, Christians I did know on the job, and it’s not probably, if you’re in a law enforcement agency and you’re a believer, you probably sense that you’re in the dramatic minority of your agency. I felt that way, uh, about the believers we had in our agency. There’s only a couple that I could really identify that were Christians in my agency. And those guys, if you ask them like, “Why is this true?” Although they were so evidential about everything else that they would talk about, you know, if we’re making a case on somebody, I can give you the 15 reasons why we can win this in, in trial.
Jim: Yeah. ‘Cause you gotta build that evidence-
J. Warner: You’re building a case.
Jim: … for the court.
J. Warner: But they couldn’t do this for Christianity. So it’s feel, it is felt to me, and I know this isn’t true, but it felt at the time, like there were two kind of groups within the church, those who, uh, really could not defend what they believed. So in my sense as that was being my thinking, it was because it wasn’t true. And the other group were the people who, who thought it was true, but didn’t behave as though it was true.
Jim: Huh.
J. Warner: And of those two groups, do you wanna be part of that group? I don’t wanna be part of that. So what made me angry about it was that I kind of saw that hypocrisy that probably a lot of non-believers see in Christians in general. Because let’s face it, we’re all, this is what one of the chapters in this book, we all are a mess. And-
Jim: We’re all sinners, saved by grace.
J. Warner: We’re all… Yes. This enigma of man, this idea that we are a mess is an important issue to cover with our kids because they’re gonna see this in others.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Uh, you know, drawing on your experiences as a detective and your knowledge of scripture, which came later. I mean, obviously-
J. Warner: Right.
Jim: … you embraced Christ, and, you know, in other discussions that we’ve had with other books, you talk about the evidence, uh, you know-
J. Warner: Yeah.
Jim: … leading up to the crime and how you applied your-
J. Warner: Yeah.
Jim: … your detective skills to proving, uh, the life of Christ is real and true. And people can look in the archives for that-
John: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jim: … or reference the other books. But today we do wanna drill into kind of the behavior of, of the dark side, if you want to call it that, the criminal mindset. And we’ll get into that. But, uh, your knowledge of scripture, combining that with your detective work, uh, you’ve observed some fascinating things about human nature and what allows us to thrive in, in the context of healthiness, just what’s the overall premise of the book then when it comes to criminal behavior?
J. Warner: Well, and I’ve written books, you know, that make a case for why Christianity is true. And I think as a boomer in my age, that was important to me. I was 35 when I first started investigating the case for Christianity. Susan and I were together already 18 years.
Jim: Wow. Yeah.
J. Warner: So there was not, you know, it was, it is like we already pretty far along on this journey and, and I needed to know, is this true, evidentially? So I spent the time to make the case, but I think that my grandkids probably won’t be as focused on that side of it. Is it true? What they really want to know is, is it good?
Jim: Huh.
J. Warner: Because they’re surrounded by a culture, which is, well, kind more of a negative perspective on Christianity now than ever before. And the argument is that every ism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, whatever the thing is that the culture has said, you ought not be that, they’re pointing to us and saying, “Well, you’re the reason why people are that way.” Christianity is where all that stuff comes from.
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: I think that my grandkids are gonna wanna know two things. Is it true? But also is it good? Does it help us to flourish? So this book kind of takes a sideways look at that. What this does is it gives us, I think, 15 rules for life. And these are 15 rules that the secular research demonstrates. So if you didn’t know anything about Christianity and you just wanted to thrive, you could find these in the secular research on human flourishing. But it turns out these are ancient principles. They’re all in scripture. And so this kind of provides evidence if Christianity is true, it ought to explain us the way we really are. And it turns out that it does. So it’s just another piece of a larger cumulative case that demonstrates that Christianity is not only, you know, true. It’s good.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: Because it turns out that if you would simply, if you know, if you don’t believe that Christianity is true, if you lived as though it was-
Jim: You’d have a good life.
J. Warner: … you’d flourish.
Jim: Yeah. You’d have a flourishing life. That’s so true. In that respect. Uh, you have examples of criminal behavior. I think greed is one of them, obviously. How, how did greed overtake the life of, I think it’s Jackson Kocher? And one of the things I so appreciate, Jim, about the book, you’ve taken these real life examples. I’m sure the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
J. Warner: Couple names, yeah.
Jim: I took that-
J. Warner: Or the guilty.
Jim: … from the movie once.
J. Warner: Or the guilty.
Jim: Or the guilty. Right.
J. Warner: Yeah.
Jim: But, uh, what was Kocher’s thing and how did greed become illustrated through his example?
J. Warner: Well, look, there’s only three reasons for any misbehavior. And I think we talked about this once when I was here before, and that’s just sex, money, and power. T- that’s it.
Jim: Hmm.
J. Warner: There’s not a fourth motive for murder. There’s not a fourth motive for any-
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: … crime. Those are the things that drive us to misbehave. And once you know that, well, you can kind of reign that in, in your own. You can say, “Look, if I’m gonna go sideways on any particular day, it’s gonna be in one of those three areas. So I now know what to guard.” But I, I, I met this kid when I was working much earlier in my career, and he was, you know, a gangster at the time. And I remember telling him, “Hey, you know, you and I want the same thing in life. You want the security of a place to live. You wanna build a car you can trust. You want to have a love interest that you, you, that you can live with all the same things every human wants. The only difference is how we get those things.” And I remember having a long conversation with about his, because, you know, he’d, he’d basically steal these things and spent five years in jail. And I thought, what’s, you know, he, he would argue though.
Jim: And you’re, you’re the detective booking this guy every time.
J. Warner: Yes. And I’m just a guy working gangs who was booking him the first time. And I remember thinking, “Hey, you know, there, there’s a better way for you.”
Jim: Hmm.
J. Warner: He was like, “Well, why would I wanna go to school and do all of that?” He, he thought, “We are both gonna spend some time doing something we don’t want to do in order to get this. I’m just doing mine in jail. You’re doing yours in college.”
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Huh.
J. Warner: That was his view.
Jim: That’s an interesting approach.
J. Warner: Yeah. So I thought, okay, well, so I had this long conversation with him. Years later, he’s doing a robbery series. Now I’m, I’m a detective and now I’m arresting him in this, this capacity. And I remember thinking, trying to remind him of this conversation we had earlier.
Jim: How many years before had-
J. Warner: Oh, it had been probably eight years or something before.
Jim: Okay.
J. Warner: And it, it, it had no, it basically had no impact (laughs) nothing I said had any impact on him. But I realized in that interim that what he’s looking for is something that he could’ve achieved. Right. I, I always say it this way. Like, financial independence is not the ability to buy anything It’s the ability to buy anything you want. In other words, if you can change your wants, you could actually become financially independent.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: So for example, if financial independence is not the ability to buy anything, but to buy anything you want, and I no longer want all those things, then I can be financially independent today. Another way of putting it is this way, if there’s something you think would make life meaningful, something you want to have, something you want to buy, well, you could spend your whole life just trying to get it. Or you could decide today that what you have makes you happy. One of these two ways makes you happy today. The other might be a pursuit that never ends for you.
Jim: Hmm.
J. Warner: And so this young man continued to kind of struggle with what does, what do I want. It turns out that he was doing this because he had a friend who was also involved in a very similar robbery series. And he was just looking over there and seeing what that guy was getting.
Jim: The other guy (laughs).
J. Warner: The other guy.
Jim: In kind of a dark context.
J. Warner: Yes. And so, so much of what, uh, how we identify ourselves is not really based on us alone. It’s us compared to somebody else.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: It’s not about whether I’m rich.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: It’s about whether I’m richer than you. It’s not about whether I’m smart, it’s about whether I’m smarter than you. And he was doing this. He was coveting something he didn’t have, and trying to figure out a way to get it. And it turns out there’s such great value in work ’cause I think that there’s an embedded difficulty.
Jim: Sure.
J. Warner: Work is hard.
John: Yeah. Yeah.
J. Warner: And it turns out it produces character because it is hard.
John: Hmm.
Jim: You, you speak about the issue of suffering and you have a story in there about Kelly Winston whose, uh, sister I think was murdered.
J. Warner: Right.
Jim: And what did you observe about Kelly and the family that gave you an insight on the issue of suffering?
J. Warner: Well, s- sad but true. Um, most of the victims I’ve worked, if you look back at the course of their life, you can see all of the dominoes that fell, that got them into the situation that night that led to their death. And so part of what we’re doing to solve the case is to retrace all of those dominoes. And sometimes it’s because you’re dating the wrong person. You moved in next door to some, you’re hanging out with the wrong people. There’s something. But this particular murder was a murder in which this young girl did nothing to even put herself in a position. She just happened to be working that night when a guy came back to her business and ended up killing her. And she did nothing to, uh, to, there’s nothing she could have done differently, let’s put it that way.
John: Hmm.
J. Warner: So the family, when they experienced this, they were so utterly shocked by this young, innocent, did nothing to precipitate this, contributed in no way, and here she is, that they were shook so deeply that they were kind of frozen in time. No one in that family moved. The parents, of course, she was in her twenties when she was killed. The parents were older. Um, the stress killed one of ’em, the other wallowed and didn’t really, didn’t celebrate holidays, didn’t really do much of anything. The sister was, the younger sister at the time, just adored her older sister was so deeply shaken by it that she wasn’t dating. She was, she was just frozen. And so when I reopened the case, I remember being very careful about making that first meeting ’cause I don’t wanna give anyone a false hope. Just ’cause the case is being reopened doesn’t mean it’s gonna go anywhere.
Jim: It’s years later.
J. Warner: It’s years later. It’s, it’s probably, uh, 20 years later.
Jim: Wow.
J. Warner: So, so now I’m reopening the case and I could see that the, she had hope. I wanted to, wanted to kind of temper it because I didn’t want her to think, “Hey, just ’cause we’re reopening it, we’re gonna solve it.” We may not, there were lots of cases where you, we reop- we reopened and we never got solved.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: They just weren’t solvable cases. So I wasn’t sure where we were headed with this, but I remember her, her description of how she felt like she, they, a family could just not move on. And, and she was a believer. So the question becomes like, the idea of suffering and how we engage trauma became really important to me.
Jim: Well, and the fact, you, you said there were three outcomes that you wrote about in the book. What, what were those three outcomes?
J. Warner: Well, okay. So let me back up for a second. So, so trauma, if you think about it, is that we have a view of the world that is entirely shattered, our expectations, what we think is gonna happen in our life are absolutely shattered. We think, “Oh, I’m gonna be a happily married, uh, person with kids,” and then you’re divorced or you lose a kid to an illness. These kinds of things shatter us because they, they defeat our expectations. This is what happened for them. They had an expectation that life would be a certain way, and then this terrible crime occurs that entirely shatters their expectations. And they, people have studied this. And we see this in also the lives of officers who have been critically injured in critical incidents that they don’t think this is ever gonna happen to them. And then it does. And now what do I do?
Jim: Hmm.
J. Warner: And if you stay in that de- depressed response where you can’t get back on your feet, if you stay down there, we call that PTSD. If you just get back to where you were functioning before the, the incident occurred, we call that resiliency. Here’s what she basically did. She said, “You know what, maybe I’ve thought about this wrong. Maybe my worldview, my worldview as a Christian, did not allow for this murder to even be possible. God should have stopped it.”
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: “Why would a good God who loves my sister allow this to happen to someone who’s d- did nothing to precipitate it?” How could that, how could I even reason that? So we had to spend some time now until she found out that I was a Christian. And we started to walk through why God would allow any suffering. What does God do with suffering? What is the place of suffering in a larger story? What chapter does it fill? And after she was able to kind of re-navigate that, she found herself thriving on the backside of it. And her family started thriving and started finding, you know, we are celebrating holidays again. And, and then she was married within a year. And I thought, “Wow, isn’t that amazing that life just took off? Because you had a script for what you thought God does in the world, but the script was wrong from the beginning.”
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: It’s kinda like Job’s, friends, I remember just studying Job at the time because, you know, if you think of Job’s friends, he suffers twice. He suffers from all the loss. Then he suffers from bad friends who have bad theology.
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: Right? Because their story isn’t correct about how God works in the world with suffering.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: And so she just needed to have a story that was actually, uh, you know, correct story of how the world really works.
Jim: Yeah. But, you know, again, again, for context, I mean, she had gone 20 years wallowing in this situation, which is, you know, reasonable emotionally when you don’t have that bigger story. So I want a little more insight, Jim, with Kelly particularly about how she climbed out of that hole because it’s so instructive to many who are living in that hole right now.
J. Warner: Well, here, here’s, sadly, sadly here’s what I would say. It’s sad that she had been active in a church for all that time, but did not find a way to get some of the answers she needed to renego- re-navigate her story.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: Which I think we need to do a better job of that, certainly for our kids. So here’s what I, basically, I said, “Okay, look, so I can think of maybe 5, 6, 7 reasons why a good God would allow something bad to happen to us. And if there’s a reason why God might allow it, that would cause you to rethink what, what just happened.” So here’s the first one I said to her. I said, “Look, if there’s a God, and if Christianity is true, you have to stop living like you’re an atheist.” As an atheist, I believe all satisfaction, all justice, all pleasure, had to be satisfied in the line segment, that was my geometry, from birth to death. As a nonbeliever, this is why I thought I had 90 years clean, hopefully you had dropped dead in your sleep after a big dinner. Right?
Jim: (laughs).
J. Warner: That’s, that was the goal.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: So you don’t, 90 clean years. Well, I’ll tell you what, something happens during your fifties and then you die early, you’re gonna be upset. That’s evil because you expected 90 clean ’cause you have an idea of life. That’s a line segment. But what if you’re wrong about your geometry? What if life doesn’t start at birth and extend to death? And it ends right there. But it actually goes through that point into eternity? That’s called a ray. That’s not a line segment. If life’s a ray, now everything changes ’cause there are people you know who had terrible surgeries in their infancy, yet by the time they were three, they don’t even remember the surgery. All evil has to be measured in the context of your lifespan. So here’s what I mean. If the ray is correct, a thousand years into the other side of the second dot into the ray, that 90 years is really small by comparison to the thousand, a million years into the other side of the second dot. Now that 90 years is a millisecond. You could have 90 terrible years. But if the Christian worldview about life is true, God’s not interested in your line segment. He’s got you for your life. And the minute that race starts for you is when you accept Christ as savior.
Jim: So in that context, you would say that even as evil, um, is expressed in this life, God will bend that for somebody’s good, somebody in that sphere, or many.
J. Warner: So let me say something controversial.
Jim: Okay.
J. Warner: Is God ever the author of suffering?
Jim: I’m gonna let you jump out and suggest what that might be.
J. Warner: Yes. Is He the author of evil? No. When, when Satan authors suffering, he authors it to destroy you. When God authors suffering, He offers it to shape you-
Jim: Hmm.
J. Warner: … to build you, to give you something even better. And so He will allow us to suffer for a bigger purpose. What Father doesn’t discipline his children?
John: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: Author of Hebrew says.
Jim: But I’ve gotta, okay. In that context, going back, you know, one of the biggest, the biggest question people will ask is, how can a God that’s loving and kind allow a child to suffer and die?
J. Warner: Because that child is not living in the line segment. That child is just like you and I. He’s part of the ray.
Jim: So there’s much more-
J. Warner: He’s alive right now.
Jim: … eternal life after this.
J. Warner: Yes. He’s alive right now. See, we think of death because we think of it as a line segment. That second dot is final for us. But as Christians, we ought to know better than that.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: So here’s what happens. We are Christians who live as though life’s a a lined segment when life’s actually a ray according to our view. One more thing, what, a good God who’s all loving, I suspect, would want to create a world in which love is possible. How could you call Him a good God if He creates a world which you can never love anybody? But here’s the dangerous problem with that. If you want love to emerge in this world, you have to create the thing that love stands on, which is dangerous. It’s free agency.
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: There is no love without free… I can’t put a gun to your head and say, “Do you love me, John?” You’ll, you’ll say, Jim, you’ll say yes, John, you’ll say yes, but you don’t mean it because you, you’re being coerced. It turns out I have to give you the dangerous thing first. The free agency thing. That means you have to have the freedom to hate me in order to truly love me. Oh, that’s a, so I, you want that dangerous thing called free agency? Well, yeah, God’s gonna throw this knife at you, but He’s called free agency. But He’s not gonna tell you, He’s gonna tell you how to catch it by the handle and not the blade. Here’s what He’s gonna do. “I’m gonna give you a rule book, a guidebook that’ll tell you how not to abuse your free agency so that you can have a world in which you can do the thing that everyone values more than anything else, atheist or believer. Everyone values love as the highest principle. You can’t have it without the free agency. I’m gonna help you not to abuse your free agency. Oh, you won’t read that? That’s not on me. I’ve given you the book. So you won’t abuse your free agency.”
Jim: Hmm.
J. Warner: And when you do it though, this is the price we pay. It is logically impossible for God to create a world in which love exists without free agency.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: So if you want one, you’re gonna have to have, there’s no way to create a world in which love exists without free agency. But that means you have to have the true freedom to do something that happens to these victims.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: But if life is a ray and not a segment, I got you. I got you. And by the way, all of you unsolved people in crimes or all your crimes have been unsolved, relax. Because it turns out I don’t have to work within the 90 years to get that crime solved, either. I don’t have to work within the 90 years to satisfy all, all justice, to satisfy every desire you have. That guy who’s stealing to get those things met, it turns out you may never, you might become a Christian and never experience all the delight you thought you were going to experience in the line segment. But it’s okay. It’s a ray (laughs). I got you covered. It’s on the other side of the second dot. So I, for her, she just needed to kind of get a sense of like, what would be the good reasons? Look, you know suffering is necessary to character building all the things that, that atheists love the most, courage, compassion, charity. You think those things are a switch you flip? No, they’re all responses. They’re responses to hardship. You can’t have courage without danger. I can’t just say, “Oh, you’re courageous now.” No, you didn’t. It’s how you respond to danger that makes you courageous. So if you wanted to develop courage and compassion and charity and forgiveness, you’d have to design a world in which there is danger and suffering and transgression and poverty. These are the things that provoke the responses that actually, even as an atheist, I would’ve said, “Yeah, I want a world that has those.” But see, what we mistakenly think is, I can get that world by just flipping a switch. No. Those are things that are absolutely responses to hardship.
Jim: Yeah. I mean, this is, it is right where we’re living. I wanna end here for that person who is suffering and can’t get through this. Going back to Kelly’s story that, you know, she hasn’t had that encounter yet to think differently. Sitting in church for 20 years, that person is still there. Um, and I, I’m kind of curious what you think the percentage of people in this life are sitting in that spot, uh, 80% that have had hardship. And they’re not-
J. Warner: That’s a hundred percent. The question is how we respond. Yeah.
Jim: … not able to move through… So what do you say to that, that person, Kelly, who hasn’t had that encounter with you to get this kind of input, who hasn’t received it at a church perhaps, or many of the Christians around her, even being a Christian, have not been able to explain this adequately? What do you say to that person?
J. Warner: Well, first of all, I think we’re living in a world right now where almost no one has an excuse to not have information. We’re in the information age. Right. So it turns out when I… Like for example, if you didn’t know how to replace the headlights on your 1990, you know, Ford-
Jim: Whatever.
J. Warner: … you could go on YouTube and there’s five, five videos of guys replacing the headlights on your 1990 Ford. I mean, anything you can, we could want is, is out there and available to you.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: And it’s available… I, we’ve written about it extensively on our website. There’s a ton of material right here on the Focus in the Family interviews, podcast of people who are trying to answer the question, how could a good God allow evil? And that’s an important question that we have to answer. That’s one of those questions we’re talking about with kids.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: Where we’re looking at and saying, “Well, look, I need to be able to make a case for why this is true and good, and why there evil.” And by the way, all of us have to explain evil. You think the explanation on the atheist side is any is, any better than ours?
Jim: Right. It should be…
J. Warner: Do you think there’s any more comforting than ours?
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: Do you think there’s any hope in the atheist explanation for the problem of evil? There isn’t. We all have to offer an, a solution. The question is, which solution actually makes comports with the evidence and is the most satisfying, makes them, it’s the best inference from evidence.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: So I, for me it’s about really if, if you are struggling right now and you’re wondering, and it’s… Look, there’s two ways we struggle with evil. One is intellectual, but the other is emotional. So if you’ve struggled with evil, my case for how, why God would allow this is meaningless to you. There’s a season in which a family just needed to be held, just needed to be, to be sat with, just needed to be, you know, we call this a ministry of presence. Just be present. You don’t need to offer answers. But for your kids who haven’t yet experienced evil, it turns out that’s the time to inoculate them with right thinking.
Jim: Hmm.
J. Warner: So there’s the intellectual case I can make, but for people who have just suffered evil, I’m not sure how satisfying that is ever gonna be. There’s gonna be a season in which you just need to be held.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: But for those who have… So if evil is in your rearview mirror, that’s a different approach. But if evil is still through your windshield, and that is probably the case for most young people, we need to start talking about these things with them right now. Because it can be very, it can inoculate you from suffering at an even deeper level.
Jim: Not only that, but it’s appealing. I mean, if you think about it in the way that you’ve described it and given a, an answer, yeah, being that ray, the extended being that we’re created to be living for eternity with Him.
J. Warner: Right.
Jim: That this is a blip and these, you know, these evils that we experience in this life are to help train us and the suffering to help train us to be better and more like Him.
J. Warner: And we talk about it all the time. Does God care more about my comfort than my character? No, not if you’re talking about comfort in this life, in this side of the second dot. If you’re in the, in the set, line segment, that’s the time in which… You remember when Tim Keller was, was dying of pancreatic cancer, they asked him, “What, how’s life changed for you, Tim, now that you got pancreatic cancer?” He said well, “Two things I need to kind of readjust my time. I don’t have the time I thought I had.” But two, he says, “I realized I’m not ready to do what God has for me next. And I need to use this time to get ready for what… So when I stand before God, I’m ready to do what God has for me.”
Jim: (laughs) Oh, wow.
J. Warner: And I thought, “Wow, there’s a guy who gets the ray.”
Jim: Yeah, totally. Well Jim, this is a great start. And, uh, we’ve scratched the surface of The Truth in True Crime and kind of discovered the attitudes and the value proposition that these people live by, and of course, you as a detective the things that you brought to those cases. A great start. So we wanna make sure that we offer you this book like we normally do. If you can make a gift of any amount, we’ll send it to you as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. Um, and you can do that monthly. That’s really helpful to us. We call it friends of Focus on the Family. That’s how Jean and I support the ministry.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I think you do too.
John: We do. Yeah.
Jim: And, uh, I’d encourage you to do that right now.
John: Yeah. Donate today. Strengthen marriages, uh, reach people who are in a crisis and they’re struggling with suffering. Uh, help families, uh, with challenges on the parenting front. There’s so much the Focus on the Family is doing. And, uh, when you donate today, your gift will be doubled, dollar for dollar because of some generous friends of the ministry. So donate today, uh, make that, uh, donation effectively doubled when you call 800 the letter A and the word FAMILY. Or you can contribute to the work here and request your copy of the book The Truth in True Crime. Uh, we’ve got all the details at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
Day Two
J. Warner Wallace: Jesus actually came and died on a cross to pay the price for your bad behavior, for all the sins you’ve committed. So the, the, the Christian response to guilt is forgiveness through the cross. The Christian response to shame is a new identity in Christ where there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus.
John Fuller: That’s former cold-case homicide detective J. Warner Wallace with some really interesting observations about the truth that we can glean from humanity by looking at crimes. He’ll inspire us with the truth of Christ in God’s love on today’s episode of with Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller.
Jim Daly: John, it was really interesting last time. We talked about the big questions of life like suffering.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I mean, who would think that a criminal detective would be thinking about those bigger things? But it’s the attributes that he saw in these criminals that really got him to thinking about what is being said here. I think if you missed last time, certainly go and, and you can do that through the app download-
John: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jim: … or go to the website and you can get a copy of it. But the core thing was, uh, just those behaviors that criminals tend to go after what they want in a illegal way. And the rest of us are trying to do it in a legal way, you know, go to school, work hard, get the cozy things that we’d like to live by, a house-
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … a nice car, whatever. And they’re trying to achieve those things through ripping you off. And what’s that mean-
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … right, at the base of it all? So I’m gonna really look forward here to talking to Jim Warner Wallace, uh, on day two, to talk about how he has gone about doing this as a detective and how he applies it to Christianity.
John: Yeah, yeah. Jim’s cases have been featured on NBC’s Dateline and on TruTV and others. Uh, he’s a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s an adjunct Professor of Apologetics at Biola University, and he’s written a number of books. He’s a… been a, a frequent guest here on Focus on the Family. Uh, the book, uh, kind of forming the foundation for this conversation, part two, as you indicated Jim, is The Truth in True Crime: What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life. Uh, and you can find out more about, uh, our guest and this great book at the website, and that’s focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.
Jim: Jim, welcome back.
J. Warner: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Jim: It was good to have you here, man.
J. Warner: Yeah.
Jim: It’s always so interesting-
J. Warner: I feel the same way.
Jim: … what God has allowed you to go through and do and, and the way you applied that. For the new listener today that didn’t hear last time, again, we wanna encourage you to go listen to it, but you were an atheist,-
J. Warner: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … uh, you got into detective work in Southern California.
J. Warner: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Um, you were part of the gang investigative unit. That had to be really interesting,-
J. Warner: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … I mean, just from a work standpoint, that’s probably where all the action’s at, right?
J. Warner: Yeah. It s- it seemed like it was. And it just teaches you a lot just about young people, because most of the gangsters you’re, you’re meeting are… were significantly younger than me, so. (laughs)
Jim: Yeah, no kidding.
J. Warner: Yeah.
Jim: In that case, uh, Javier was, uh, somebody that you-
J. Warner: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … made contact with as a, a gang member. Describe that interaction. How old was he and what did that lead to?
J. Warner: Well, you know, a lot of the times what you’re doing is you’re, you’re, you’re just m- making sure that you know everyone in your city who’s claiming any affiliation with gangs. And that means that a lot, before there’s ever a crime, you’re spending time just getting to know young people. And I had a younger partner at the time, and he wasn’t married, he didn’t have kids. I was married, I had two boys. And I was thinking, um, I watched him with these gangsters. He had such a relational approach. I mean, he, he knew what music they were listening to, (laughs) he could talk the talk and walk the walk, and he just felt like when he walked in, and we would often just drive through the city, if we see a bunch of guys standing around we’d just stop our car, get out and talk to them, make sure we knew who everyone was, right, we know them by name. And after a course of a couple of years of doing that, you will know everyone by name.
Jim: Huh.
J. Warner: But my partner could get out and really just act… he could g-
Jim: He could go with it. (laughs)
J. Warner: Yeah. It felt like… I, I just watched him and I thought, “Okay, there’s no way.” I was already, I think, in my, you know, l- late, probably 10 years older, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to do that. Uh, I felt like a fool trying to do it. Um, so for me, I realized from the get-go, if I’m gonna work with these young me, it’s gonna have to be a very paternal relationship, right? They’re gonna have to see me in a different way. I’m gonna have to be the old guy and just embrace it.
Jim: (laughs)
J. Warner: Um, and so I just tried to do that. And that opened up relationships with one of these guys named Javier who, who, uh, I could see, I could sense that he was a thinker.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: And it was helpful. Uh, he, he, he originally was involved in a pretty active gang, not in our city. His parents, or his mom sent him to live with his maternal grandmother in our city-
Jim: Uh-huh.
J. Warner: … because she felt it was a little bit safer.
Jim: Kinda get him out of the neighborhood.
J. Warner: Trying to get him out of the neighborhood.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: And to be honest, what happened was he pretty much drew that clique into our city-
Jim: Okay.
J. Warner: … because they would come and visit him there. And so then we started h- getting reports and complaints from neighbors and things like this. So long, uh, story short, we started to, to develop a relationship, which was just conversational. But I could sense that, that in the end, look, we’re all the same human being in different settings,-
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: … and what he wants outta life is also what we all want outta life, although me may think there’s a different way to get it. And I remember my partner at the time, he watched a movie that had just come out, just hit the, uh, theaters, and it was called Boyz n the Hood, and he said, “Jim, you should watch this movie.” And I’m like, “Dude, this is what we do for a living, I’m not”-
Jim: Yeah, I’m not going home and watching this. (laughs)
J. Warner: … “No. It’s great. I’m sure it’s great, but I just don’t think I’m gonna probably on my day off sit with my wife and watch this movie.” He says, “No, no, you need to watch it because it… there’s some truth in it that you need to grab.”
Jim: Hm.
J. Warner: So he was senior to me, although he was younger than me. I came on a little later in life. And so he was younger than me, but he was my senior officer, so I said, “I b- I should probably do this.” So I, I watch it so the next time (laughs) we would work together I could at least answer his questions, right?
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: So, so I watch this movie, and it struck me, it was really a great story, it’s a great movie, it’s, it’s not… it’s an R rated movie so I’m not gonna say it’s a movie everyone should watch, but for a gang officer who at the time-
Jim: It’s pretty accurate.
J. Warner: Yeah, it was… I felt like… ‘Cause here’s what I noticed, we had such diversity in our city in terms of the kinds of kids who were involved in gang activity. We had multi-generational Hispanic gangs, we had African American gangs, Korean, White, we had all kinds of different gang members living in our city. And what was interesting about it was they didn’t seem to share anything in common. Certainly wasn’t race, it wasn’t even their backgrounds, um, in terms of, like, what their family structures were so much. Like, it wasn’t about their economic status for sure. Some were driving really nice cars, living in nice parts of the city, some were not. Like, I’m trying to, like, as an investigator, I’m just trying to f… what’s the common denominator here?
Jim: Hm.
J. Warner: Well, after watching this movie, it, like, a light bulb goes on. The common denominator for all of these diverse groups is really simple, it’s lack of Dad.
Jim: Huh.
J. Warner: That’s it.
John: Hm.
J. Warner: Now, lack of Dad looks different depending on the group. Some of these kids didn’t know their dad because they… Mom never introduced them to Dad. Some of these kids didn’t know Dad because he’s been locked up almost their entire life.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: Some of these kids were living with their dads, but they were drunk or unavailable or disinterested.
Jim: Or abusive.
J. Warner: Or abusive.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: Some of them were, um, workaholics who were making great money, great income, living in great neighborhoods but were never home, had no idea what their kids were doing.
Jim: Hm.
J. Warner: So lack of Dad looks different depending on the setting, but it almost always produces the same kind of problem, at least it was in these gang groups I was working.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: And I was a guy who was working a ton of overtime, I had two young boys, they were, like, maybe two and four at the time, maybe four and maybe, you know, three and five, something like that.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: And I remember thinking, “I’m never home.”
Jim: Hm.
J. Warner: I mean, this kind of a job is, like, you know, is 24/7. If, if something occurs tomorrow, my agency’s gonna call me and say, “Yeah, it’s a gang crime, you need to come in and work it.” So, uh, we’re gonna go in, we’re… I was never home. And I thought to myself, “My version of lack of Dad is no better than any of the versions of lack of Dad that I’m seeing in, on the job.”
Jim: Wow.
J. Warner: So it was a wakeup call for me.
John: Mm-hmm. So you were able to internalize what you were seeing and-
J. Warner: Oh, absolutely.
John: … make some application home. Whatever happened to Javier?
J. Warner: Well, what happened was, you know, it turns out that you can overcome lack of Dad, we can help this situation with lack of Dad if we could just provide a certain kinda paternal mentoring. And, and I just tried to come in and, and provide that, ’cause, uh, to be honest, (laughs) I thought it was the only way I had in with this kid, because I don’t know what he… this kid knows about, uh, how he’s living. I’m, I’m not gonna be able to pretend I do.
John: Mm.
J. Warner: But I could be Dad in this setting.
Jim: Mm.
J. Warner: And what I saw was is that he then… Look, we model things that our kids want to grab. You know, I’m J. Warner Wallace because I had a grandfather named Warner who changed my life.
Jim: Hm.
J. Warner: That guy. So I know you can model, even if you’re not Dad, you can model, so.
Jim: Yeah, no, I-
John: Hm.
Jim: … I had that same experience with a football coach. And it’s amazing the appetite that we have as young men-
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … trying to find that.
J. Warner: Oh, absolutely.
Jim: It, it’s, it’s almost-
J. Warner: Absolutely.
John: Yeah.
Jim: … like somebody who’s thirsty being drawn to water.
J. Warner: But look, we, we have been sold a bill of goods that any structure, family structure, any form of family is… will suffice, as long as you love. Well, that’s true in some sense. You certainly don’t wanna be in an abusive. No one’s been to more domestic calls than I have, okay? (laughs) But, I mean, in this room at least. Uh, but we have to be honest about the roles that we play. We’re different, parents are different biochemically. And our biochemical differences produce certain kinds of responses. And if you’re raising boys, they need to see an example of what it is, what will I look like 15 years from now? What does it look like 10 years from now?
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: And I think we have to provide that modeling. So we can’t… Now, not to overestimate, of course… But most of the kids in knew, they had an active mom in their life.
Jim: Yeah.
John: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: What they didn’t have was an active dad.
Jim: Yeah, it’s such a wildcard. I wrote about that in a book called The Good Father, and I talked about that at length. And, you know, back to your comment about the data, a- all social science is proving that an engaged father is so critical to-
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … the wellbeing of a child, especially boys, but girls too for different reasons. And, uh, there’s no dispute now, uh, you have secular social scientists who are coming to that same conclusion.
J. Warner: Absolutely.
Jim: Melissa Kearney from MIT who’s written about the privileged two parent family and the benefits that it, it-
J. Warner: Well, yeah. So let’s just say the controversial thing that Focus on the Family has stood for and been saying for years.
Jim: Yeah, (laughs) it’s where we’re at.
J. Warner: And here’s where it is, the data shows this over and over and over again, if you want your kids to flourish, kids who are raised by their two biological parents-
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: … in a low-conflict setting thrive.
Jim: A loving setting, yeah.
John: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: It’s as simple as that. And that’s how they typical will, will say it. Now, are there… I didn’t raise… I wasn’t raised that way. My parents divorced when I was three,-
Jim: Yep.
J. Warner: … so I did not have my dad at home growing up, so I wasn’t raised that way. Can you, can you overcome it? Of course. But you’re probably gonna need a surrogate, and that’s what I had.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: I had a guy who I didn’t even get to see that often, but his influence was so powerful. And that’s… You might think, “Well, yeah, I can’t be the grandfather who is, like, gonna step in and be an everyday mentor to my grandkids.” That was not Warner’s role in my life, I probably saw him three, four times a year.
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: It was the power he had when I was in his presence that made me want to be him even when I wasn’t with him. So it doesn’t… you don’t have to do this every day to have that kind of impact.
Jim: The, the ribbon on this was Javier’s voicemail I think he left you, I don’t know how many years later,-
J. Warner: Right.
Jim: … but what, what was the voicemail? What did he say?
J. Warner: Well, I mean, years later he came to the chief’s office to kinda say, “Hey, he just wants you to know, I’m doing good. I’m married, I’ve got kids.” And I thought… And I could see that was in his future. He was the kinda person who was contemplative enough, he thought about things. And, uh, we have to raise our kids to be thoughtful.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: You know, it’s not, it’s not a coincidence in Romans 12:2, it says it’s the renewing of your mind that’s the beginning of all transformation.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: It’s not the renewing of your emotions, it’s not the renewing of your will, it’s we have to rethink. And so we have to help… So firstly, I’m t- I’m gonna do, typically, if I’m gonna mentor anybody, is to help them start rethinking their view of the world, that line segment and ray thing we talked about the first day we were together,-
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: … that kinda stuff is, we have to start to rethink that and we have to… I think if you raise thoughtful kids, they eventually will wanna know, “Well, why does that work?” And you’re right, all of the data now, unless they’re twisting the data intentionally, demonstrates that that structure, that family structure leads to the highest level of human flourishing.
Jim: And what did he say on the call?
J. Warner: Well, he said he’s wanted me to know that, “Yeah, I’m married now and I’ve got kids and it turns out that the things we talked about on that porch for years earlier actually ended up coming true.”
John: Hm.
Jim: Wow.
J. Warner: And I thought, “Okay.” Now, does every one of the kids I t- I, I worked with in those days turn out so well? No.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: They aren’t. But, but mentoring means you’re gonna find those places where you can make a difference-
Jim: Yeah, with not knowing the outcome.
J. Warner: … and you’re gonna lean… That’s right. And you’re gonna lean in.
Jim: Yep.
J. Warner: And that’s gonna work for some and not for others. But if you don’t identify who it is in your life that you can mentor right now, then if you aim at nothing you hit it every time, so we have to aim at mentoring somebody. So ask yourself, right now, who would you say is your mentor? Because it turns out good mentors are mentored.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: And if you don’t have a mentor who’s mentoring you, you’re probably not mentoring anybody else very well. So ask that question first, then ask yourself, okay, now that I’ve been mentored and I’ve got somebody I can lean on, who am I doing that for?
Jim: That’s good.
J. Warner: If we just did that, one up and one down, we’d change the world.
Jim: Yeah.
John: Mm. And that’s a very biblical concept. (laughs)
J. Warner: Yes, it is.
John: Paul writes about mentoring and, and lived it out. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and our guest today is J. Warner Wallace, and, uh, he is really bringing some great insights to us and practical applications. Um, a lot of this is found in his book, The Truth in True Crime: What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life. And we’ll encourage you to get a copy of this book and make a generous donation when you do, please, uh, when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY, or you can do so at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.
Jim: Jim, uh, in the book you have a story of a guy you called Randall King. It’s kind of a shocking cold case. Describe what happened and who was this guy and what was the outcome?
J. Warner: Well, what’s interesting about Randall King’s story is that he’s like a lot of these guys we’ve worked where we finally get to trial and we’re talking to the d- defense attorneys, and the defense attorneys are so sure, “This is a cold case murder, um, and there’s no way my guy did this.” I mean, I’ve, I’ve had defense attorneys tell me this, they say, “Oh, you know, I’ve worked a lot of guilty folks, I ha- you have to do that in this job, I get that, I wanna do a good job even for those who just need a good defense. But this guy, you’re wrong, Jim, about this guy. This guy’s not guilty.” Well, the same kinda thing happened here with Randall, that he had this up- unbelievable pedigree, uh, in the Marine Corps that people who knew him said, “There’s no way a guy like this could’ve done that 30 years earlier or 25 years earlier, no way he could’ve done it.” Because they had knew the mean, they thought they knew that man for all those years. And this is always the case. I don’t work serial killers, okay? Serial killers are weird, okay? You knock on the neighbor’s door after you arrest a serial killer and they’re probably gonna say something like, “Hey, I’m glad you took that guy to jail ’cause that, that dude’s weird.”
Jim: Everybody avoided him.
J. Warner: He’s up all night.
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: You know, he’s a weirdo. But cold case murders are different. You knock on the neighbor’s door after you arrest somebody for a cold case, and they’ll say, “No way, that dude watches my kids when I’m gone. He’s the best neighbor I’ve ever… He’s a deacon at our church.” That’s what you hear. ‘Cause it turns out that the people who do cold case murders are not doing serial crimes, they did one murder 30 years earlier.
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: And they spent the last 30 years covering it,-
John: Mm.
J. Warner: … living entirely differently often.
Jim: Mm.
J. Warner: Reaching, uh, heights, I’ve arrested fire captains. You know, these kinds of things are, are, are just in our nature. And it made me realize, how in the world is it that we’re capable of such altruistic goodness, the same person-
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: … yet also could be capable of a murder 30 years earlier or 30 minutes from now? Because we have a sense that, oh, he’s, he’s reformed. Not necessarily.
Jim: So what was Randall King’s deal?
J. Warner: Well, his deal was that he had done such n- great success in the Marine Corps and such a servant and such a, a hero that when we finally took him to jail, and we’re just doing closing interviews, we’re just talking to the people who know him, ’cause sometimes they’ll give you little pieces that you think, “Oh, that’s actually a tell,” you know? But no, this wasn’t the case, this guy we talked to was his commanding officer and he’s like, “No way this guy… There’s no way this guy could ever, could ever do such a thing.”
Jim: And what had he done?
J. Warner: Well, he had done a murder. He had murdered a guy for almost nothing, really, honestly, this guy kinda provoked his pride-
John: Hm.
J. Warner: … at a job 30 years earlier. Went right into the Marine Corps afterwards, and so he was kind of off the grid for that period of time, and had… Like, like everyone else I worked, Jim, all these cold cases, they’re, you’ll, they’ll all say the same. I had one cold case, for example, where the victim was this guy’s wife. His family didn’t believe he did it, of course, but her family 30 years later did not believe he did it either-
John: Wow.
J. Warner: … because he had been such an exemplary model of citizen for the last 30 years. So it made me think, you know, l- this is something that’s very biblical in the sense that we have to kind of… what is the nature of humanity? Like what does biblical anthropology say about who we are? Are we people… B- basically there’s two ways of looking at the world. One is that humans are innately good. They are born innocent. They are corrupted by their families, their environments, the governmental systems that surround them. And so we have to change the systems and families and environments because people would stay good if we wouldn’t corrupt them over time. The other view is, though, no, humans are actually deeply fallen, and because of that we will corrupt families and governments and systems and communities because of our fallen nature. Which of these two things is true? And so, uh… And by the way, our kids need to know that be i- if you’re innately good, your sense of self is different than if you know I have to guard against my innate fallenness.
John: Mm.
J. Warner: Can I… Am I capable of doing good? Yes, this is called the enigma of man. And scripture describes it, created in God’s image, capable of doing amazing Godly things, yet deeply rebellious and fallen from the fall so often don’t do those things.
John: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: This enigma of man is described in scripture, but I think it’s confusing for a culture that looks at us, because they’re taken… for the most part, humanism elevates-
Jim: Hm.
J. Warner: … humans.
Jim: Right. (laughs)
J. Warner: And it thinks very highly of humans, and it usually sees humans as innately good and corrupted by systems. And we see this language all the time right now.
Jim: So this guy Randall King, he k- he kills this guy years ago.
J. Warner: Coworker. Mm-hmm.
Jim: And because of bullying that he expressed, or something like that.
J. Warner: Right. Yep. Yep.
Jim: What did you find in Randall’s house that kinda tipped the scale-
J. Warner: Oh.
Jim: … for you and went, “Oh, this is interesting”?
J. Warner: Yeah. Well, I remember when we, we, we did the… I’ll never (laughs) forget the search warrant because we walk into this guy’s house, 30 years upstanding, no- nothing to tip i- his hat-
Jim: What a tough job you have.
J. Warner: … that he had been involved. Oh, this is always the thing that is, to me, the most, I wanna spend time, when you do a search warrant you, you can usually spend a little more time ’cause you’re, you’re, people are searching and you’re the, uh, investigating officer. I’m just kind of like recording it in my mind, you know?
Jim: Uh-huh.
J. Warner: Well, in his kitchen he had a virtual laboratory of alcohol. He had all of these canisters that were set upside down, all these bottles with canister tops, and so it looked like you could walk in and make any kind of mixed drink you can think of from any version of alcohol you could possibly. And I thought, “Wow, this is, this is interesting.” But in his living room, he had bookshelves that were so crowded, some of them were, like, like temporary, almost like a… if you were putting like a temporary bookshelf in a library that’s made out of wire, you know, or metal. And he had bible studies.
Jim: Huh.
J. Warner: So he had, like, his Jekyll and Hyde kind of two sides to his character.
Jim: And you just picked up on that?
J. Warner: Well,-
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: … of course I’m looking at, okay, so when did he become religious, I’m thinking. Because I’m always looking at it from the perspective of is there evidence in this room? And sure enough, you could see there was, uh, one passage that occurred right after the murder where he’s journaling in his bible studies and he’s giving us little tells about his behavior, about, you know, you know, kind of researching the life of David and kind of seeing himself in David’s world. I can reconcile goodness and evil within the same person, ’cause this is the enigma of man that is cr… that Christian scripture describes.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: So having a correct view… By the way, if you think, you could be very easily fooled if you don’t hold the correct view of humans. And one thing you can’t be is, when you’re doing investigations, is easily fooled. You wanna be in a position where you think, well, yeah, okay, that’s great, I understand what he’s saying, but this is still well within the range of possibility because this is who we are as humans.
Jim: You also had a story about Wesley Myers.
J. Warner: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Uh, it kinda connected to the shameless idea, which is really good,-
J. Warner: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … because again, what we’re doing here, you’ve identified characteristics of the criminal mind.
J. Warner: Yes.
Jim: And these are spiritual things.
J. Warner: Yes. Yes.
Jim: Shameless, uh, guilt,-
J. Warner: Yes.
Jim: … all these things. How did Wesley Myers fit into your analysis?
J. Warner: Well, this was a guy who did a horrific murder, and I don’t even go into all the details in the book, but I remember when we got to the point of convicting him, we were getting ready to go to trial, and it was gonna be a death penalty case. And so he w- didn’t want death penalty, so he was willing to take a plea for life in jail without the possibility of parole. We call that an LWOP, life without the possibility of parole. So he was willing to do that. Now, what that meant was, we would always say, “Okay, well, what’s in it for us? Yes, we’re gonna not have to go to trial, but we want you to record an interview with us on video in which you tell us how you did the murder.” Often we’ll do that because we are looking at the crime scene and we’ve made certain assumptions, we wanna see if we’re correct.
Jim: Kind of a learning experience.
J. Warner: Yeah, it’s a learning experience-
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: … for us. And so we do this interview with him. And I’m telling you, (laughs) it was the most… I… My partner and I, we w- walked outta there and my partner says, “Wow, that was like chilling.”
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: “This is, like, I’ve never sat in front of anybody who’s so unashamed.” And I thought, “Yeah.” So it started me thinking about the difference between… ‘Cause he had a, a, a wife. This killer had a, a girlfriend at the time, you know, kind of a live in. And, and sure enough, she was feeling deep shame. And I thought, “Okay, why is she feeling shame over what he did?” It started me thinking about the relationship between shame and guilt. And I think in culture, we’ve kind of confused those two terms. We either use them interchangeably or we mistake one for the other. There’s a difference between shame and guilt, okay? Guilt is when you feel bad about something you’ve done. Shame is when you feel bad about you. Guilt says, “I messed up.” Shame says, “I’m a mess-up.”
Jim: Hm.
J. Warner: Now it turns out that the studies on this in the secular side show that one of this is an adaptive emotion. Guilt’s adaptive. Shame is maladaptive. Guilt actually leads to good stuff, because when we know we’ve done wrong, we often want to make it right, and we know we can, and it leads us to do things that are altruistic and to do the right thing-
Jim: Yeah, it’s kinda conscience.
J. Warner: … and to change our character.
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: But shame is like a corrosive acid. It just, if you feel like, “I can never do anything right,” then you’ll stop trying. And so we have to distinguish between these two. And she had no way to distinguish between these two. And it turns out that there’s a Christian view of this, and when she started attending church after this whole thing went down, she started to learn that difference and learn that her val… So here’s what I would say to young people, if you’re struggling with guilt for things you’ve done, welcome to the family.
Jim: Yeah.
J. Warner: Because before I get out of the state today and get back to California, I’ll have done five or six things I will not feel good about. Because this is the nature of being a human. It’s back to that enigma of man thing. But if you’re feeling shame, c- this Christian worldview offers a solution to both. So what Christianity says about guilt is is that Jesus don’t… you know, Jesus actually came and died on a cross to pay the price for your bad behavior, for all the sins-
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: … you’ve committed. So the, the, the Christian response to guilt is forgiveness through the cross. The Christian response to shame is a new identity in Christ where there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. So it turns out that our worldview offers a solution to these two things.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
J. Warner: This is what we were talking about before. We have to teach our kids that you’re… we are raising you in the… within this perspective of our view of the world which happens to be true. I can make a case for that evidentially. But besides that, if you compare what our worldview does, the resources offered by Christianity compared to the resources of secularism, you’ll wanna be over here, because this isn’t just true, it’s good for us-
Jim: Mm.
J. Warner: … because it offers a way out of your guilt and shame that the other… you know, being in years of therapy and hoping to achieve the same.
Jim: Jim, right at the end here, and that, that is a great point.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: I mean, I, I often think of that, w- why would people reject this? What is in them that they’re saying no? Because it’s so beneficial.
J. Warner: Okay, so you know what it is, Jim, it’s humility.
Jim: Ah.
J. Warner: So this is the one chapter, chapter there, the one thing that would change your metric, that increases every aspect of human flourishing at the highest level, from the depth of your relationships to how much money you’re gonna make to the longevity, mental health, physical health, is this thing we’ve been studying for 35 years in secular studies called humility.
Jim: (laughs)
J. Warner: It turns out it’s an ancient principle, it’s only offered by one worldview. Why? Because any worldview that says you must do something to earn a result does not develop humility, that develops pride.
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: I had a friend Mike Adams who s- used to say all the time, used to say, “I wrote a book, Jim, it’s called How to Become Humble in 10 Easy Steps and How I Made it in Eight.”
Jim: (laughs)
John: (laughs)
J. Warner: Okay. Well, there’s the problem.
John: Right.
J. Warner: If you think you can do it by pursuing it, you’re gonna do just the opposite of it.
John: Mm.
J. Warner: But there is a worldview that says nothing you do is gonna earn your salvation, no 10 Commandments, no five pillars, no four noble truths, no karma yoga, none of that’s gonna… We’re gonna… It’s done for you. It’s not a doing worldview, it’s a done worldview.
John: Mm.
J. Warner: It actually can develop humility. We have to show our kids that the reason why the other side will never w… doesn’t wanna bend its knee is because I wanna be God. Uh, the first step of humility is there is a God and I’m not him.
Jim: Right.
J. Warner: And until you get to that point of humility, of surrender, you will never embrace this. As long as you wanna be in control, you’ll never admit that somebody else is.
Jim: Well, and the added comment is that I’ll need to bend to God.
J. Warner: That’s right.
Jim: God doesn’t bend to me. And the culture is, you know, full of examples of we’re trying to have God bend to what we want.
J. Warner: Bend to, to… That’s right.
Jim: Jim, this has been so good. Thanks for being with us. Your book The Truth in True Crime, another great read from your experiences as an investigative detective and cold case detective. Great application to faith. If you can make a gift of any amount, we’ll send it to you as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. If you could do that monthly, that’s really great. And know that Focus on the Family is here to be a lifeline to you. Um, one of the things I say to the board and to the donors I encounter is this place is bursting with content. I mean, it is a content treasure trove. And, uh, don’t hold back, if you’re struggling with your marriage, you’re struggling in your parenting, uh, you know, uh, we’re here for you. Those are the core things that we do each and every day.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And we have caring Christian counselors who can talk with you, supply resources to you, give you a recommendation for a Christian counselor in your area. There’s just so much here, there’s no excuse not to get help when you call Focus.
John: Mm. Yeah, Focus on the Family has so much to offer. And this reminder to our donor community, when you contribute today, your gift is going to be doubled dollar for dollar. There’s a matching gift campaign because of some generous friends who said, “We’d like to match everybody’s contributions.” So please, donate today and see that, uh, contribution effectively doubled when you call 800 the letter A and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Or you can donate online and request your copy of the book The Truth in True Crime by J. Warner Wallace. Uh, we’ve got all the details at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
