Welcome to ThinkBibically, Conversations on Faith and Culture, a podcast from Taubal

Theology Biola University.

I'm your host, Sean McDowell, Professor of Christian Apologetics.

And I'm your co-host, Scott Ray, Dean of Faculty,

and Professor of Christian Ethics.

Today we're here at the guest, Gavin Ortland,

who's a scholar, pastor, and a writer,

who I would say is kind of a young up and coming or not even

up and coming really established apologist who's just written a fantastic book

that's called Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't.

He got his PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary.

Gavin, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Hey, great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Well, let's just jump right in.

I'm really curious, what motivated you to write this book?

And given that there's a lot of apologetics books that are out there and cultural books,

what do you think makes this book unique?

Yeah, yeah, there were really two things on my heart that led me to write the book. One is just having so many friends, unfortunately, who have either left the faith altogether or they're really struggling and they're working through things and maybe they were maybe that maybe they've even come through that but but they really struggled for a season with questions of faith and then I've been through two seasons myself, where I wouldn't even call it doubt, but more just times of angst,

just wrestling through questions, and I've found that apologetics is such a help in those seasons.

So really what I want to do with my YouTube channel, with this book, with other things I'm doing,

is just try to help people. I think there's a lot of people who are out there kind of asking deep questions.

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