Ep. 284: Reclaimed-Living or Flourishing?

Daniel Markin:

Hey, welcome to indoubt, my name’s Daniel Markin. And today I’m joined by Andy Steiger. Andy is a good friend of mine. He is a mentor of mine, and he is also the president of Apologetics Canada. So we have a lot of discussion on what it means to truly live, truly flourish and what it means to be human and how that ties up with actually being in relationship and experiencing God. So hope you find this episode enjoyable and hopefully it would be helpful to you.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, welcome to indoubt, my name’s Daniel Markin. And welcome back to the program. Today, I’m joined by the one, the only Andy Steiger. Ladies and gentlemen, round of applause for Andy Steiger.

Andy Steiger:

Thank you. Thank you for that applause, that virtual applause. Daniel, what a pleasure, what an honor to be with you today.

Daniel Markin:

Happy to have you back. Friends, if you’ve been following this program for a while, we’ve had Andy on before, but Andy and I have quite a relationship in that he is my pastoral mentor and has been for the last like four years. Not so much this year since I have graduated from my immersed degree, but we still keep in touch and he’s still a great friend. So to have them on the program is huge

Andy Steiger:

Honorary mentor, I think would be maybe appropriate, lifetime coach.

Daniel Markin:

So Andy works with Apologetics Canada. You are the what? The president of Apologetics Canada?

Andy Steiger:

I just meek up titles for myself now and again. Yeah. I think that’s the title I gave myself as a recent.

Daniel Markin:

Andy, today we want to talk a little bit about some of your research, some of your ministry, but maybe for everyone who hasn’t been involved with Apologetics Canada, or maybe is new to it, tell us what it is. What’s apologizes Canada, and how do you get to start with Apologetics Canada?

Andy Steiger:

Well, Apologetics Canada, or as we like to call it, AC is a ministry that’s been active here in Canada for over 10 years. The ministry began here in British Columbia. I actually, it’s funny I got asked recently how I started this ministry and I can confirm that I don’t think anybody wakes up one day and says, “Boy, I want to start an apologetics ministry.” At least I didn’t. That was never on the career path for me. My love has always been missions, the church. I’ve pastored for 20 years while I was doing a master’s degree, though, at Biola University. I was seeing just research and hearing stories of a number of young people leaving the church. And that was very concerning for me. And I wanted to address that. And so with this heart for missions, really feeling like God was calling me back to Canada. At that point, I was doing my master’s in Los Angeles, my wife and I coming back to Canada to start up this ministry to address this issue.

Andy Steiger:

And it ended up being just something that God blessed and continues to bless. That word, apologetics, I know various people over the years have said, “Man, I think you picked the worst name for your organization.” I always appreciate that kind of encouragement in ministry. It’s always the [crosstalk 00:03:38].

Daniel Markin:

It’s the hard words. It’s the hard words that cut deep.

Andy Steiger:

But I actually was very specific about choosing that because this is a part of the Christian tradition that’s been lost or has been dragged through the mud, because it’s been done poorly. And in many ways I wanted to redeem it. So I said, “You know what? I’m just going to go for it and call it Apologetics.” Now I didn’t have it in mind to be so grandiose when I called it Apologetics Canada. Good friends in Los Angeles that I started working with while I was doing my master’s were running an organization called apologetics.com. Encourage you to check them out, good guys and gals. But we were going to be like apologetics.com Canada, that never happened. We just dropped the .com and became Apologetics Canada.

Andy Steiger:

That word though, is a biblical word. You find it in the Bible, the Greek it’s apologia. And we translate that as apologetics. And the word just means to give an answer or a reason, and specifically within the biblical context, to give a reason for the hope that you have in Jesus. Fun fact, Daniel, you go to Greece today and you had to go to a court of law and stand up and give a reason for your beliefs or whatever it might be. It’s still today in Greek, it is an apologia, it’s a reason

Daniel Markin:

Amazing. Are there different types of apologetics? This is something I always wonder because oftentimes when I think apologetics, you think of apologetics ministries, a lot of them focusing on creation arguments or the science and evolution versus the Bible, or William Lane Craig and this philosophical ideas of “Does God exist?” I ask this because I know a lot of your ministry, it deals with that, but also deals with a lot of cultural pieces. Are there differences between the types of apologetics you’re doing or are there different types of apologetics?

Andy Steiger:

Yeah. It’s interesting. The answer to that is yes, there’s different types of apologetics, but there’s even different types or different ways of doing apologetics. And so that becomes challenging when you’re starting a ministry, because everybody wants to pigeonhole you or say, “Oh, you’re like this,” or “this is the kind of organization you are.” So for us as an example, we are what’s called the primary issues focused organization. And by that we mean that we’re an evangelistic organization, that’s primary focused, is sharing the gospel. And every time we address any issue, our desire is always to bring it back to a core foundational issue.

Andy Steiger:

And maybe we could get into that later or what that looks like, but that’s always going to be what we’re going to do. So with Apologetics Canada, for example, you’re not going to find us entering into debates on creation versus evolution. At AC, we would see that as a secondary issue, we wouldn’t see that as a primary issue. For us, the primary issue is that God created the heavens and the Earth, not how God created the heavens and the Earth. So that is already a bit of a distinction as a primary issues focused organization.

Andy Steiger:

Now that doesn’t mean that people on staff don’t have an opinion, or I don’t have an opinion or that I don’t think that those things are good things to talk about, of course. But it’s not what we’re focused on as an organization. So that’s one aspect of apologetics where you can find different flavors dependent on what is their focus. Again, our focus is on the gospel. Now within doing apologetics with regards to the gospel, there are different apologetic approaches, philosophically speaking, or theologically speaking. So for example, you can have somebody who is a pre-suppositionalist and that ultimately becomes this type of apologetics that sees this pre-supposition tends to be more in the reformed camp. This pre-supposition that wants to approach questions in a certain type of way, where they’re going to want to bring you to this idea that God’s necessary in order for this, this or that to be true.

Andy Steiger:

You can also see this play out in say evidential apologetics or classical apologetics. And if you’re wondering more about those, you can get a book on it. I think there’s a book called like Five Views on Apologetics. It shows different approaches. So for example, a good friend of mine, Jay Warner Wallace, he’s a homicide detective. He is an evidentialist through and through. So he very much sticks to that script. Whereas somebody like myself, I am quite open to all the different ways of doing apologetics and sharing your faith. I don’t think you need to stick to just one way of doing it. I’m more open to dabbling in all of them. Whereas some others for better or worse will just stick with a certain style of apologetics.

Daniel Markin:

And that’s something I’ve always appreciated about you, is your willingness to serve people where they are. Because a lot of people might not know this, but some of your ministries, a lot of the times is going and speaking at a local church and your heart behind that is to equip people. Here’s a little nugget for you to chew on as you go forward about how to understand the gospel better, but also how to know Jesus better through that. And then also you have been meeting with MPs, members of parliament and helping Christian members of parliament think through policy and think through how to be a Christian in Ottawa. And so you have quite the ministry across Canada and it’s a very robust and unique ministry,

Andy Steiger:

There’s another aspect to this too, Daniel, just to bring up and you’re right, we do, we work with all sorts of people. We have ministry contacts all over. We’re trying to equip Christians no matter what they’re doing. But one of the things I think so interesting about apologetics, because you’re talking about different types of apologetics and what that looks like. And I think this is an important point as you’re talking about me being at churches and those sorts of things, that I understand apologetics as a tool in the discipleship tool belt. So if there’s any Christians listening to me, particularly in ministry, this will make sense to you. So I see the church as God game plan A, I don’t think there is a game plan B. And I think that all Christians have been called to share the hope that they have, the reason that they place their trust in Jesus.

Andy Steiger:

And part of that is making disciples, that’s part of the great commission that we see at the end of Matthew. So I understand apologetics is just a tool in that tool belt of what does it look like to share your faith and to do discipleship. I don’t think it’s the only tool. But I do think it’s an important tool in our day. And I’ll add one other thing that I think is really key. And that is, as Peter talks about apologetics in 1 Peter 3:15, which is the most famous passage, but you can find apologetics elsewhere in the new Testament. He says, “Do so with gentleness and respect.” And so that’s where you can get a different flavor of what it looks like to do apologetics where some people can be far more aggressive and less winsome. Whereas my desire is to respect people and to enter into a healthy conversation with them as I share my hope in Jesus where you’re doing that with that concept of what Peter’s talking about with gentleness and respect.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. So often I think the mistake of a lot of people getting into apologetics or watching a lot of videos is forgetting the gentleness and respect and even the love piece. Because I think we can get so of focused on learning all these arguments, having all this head knowledge and when you then evangelize to someone, by default and part of that’s our own sinful nature, but it just turns into like, I’m going to mentally walk circles around you, philosophically walk circles around you until you concede and hold my view and believe even my view. And I don’t think that is what Peter’s talking about there when it comes to sharing your faith and sharing the gospel. One of the pieces that you’ve added to your ministry over the years is you’ve written some books. And in particular, your first book Thinking came out and you wrote that one. And then you started writing a second one, which was Reclaimed. And I remember when we were working together, going back and forth on the names and stuff like that. I can’t remember what I had originally wanted to call it, but…

Andy Steiger:

I don’t know. But you were merciless with regards to Thinking and the various questions you’ve put on that over the years. So thank you for that Daniel.

Daniel Markin:

Thinking? Yeah. And I was notorious too. You were generous with your books, but I would just like give them out to people as prizes all the time. Bring it back though, to your new book, Reclaimed. You wrote that book, give a brief synopsis of what Reclaimed is about, why you wrote it. But then I want to hear… Because that’s been out for a year now, is that book still relevant in your mind or is there anything you’d want to change or anything you’d want to add to it?

Andy Steiger:

Yeah, so the book’s called Reclaim subtitle is How Jesus Restores our Humanity in a Dehumanized World. It’s a book that I had been researching and working on about six years before the pandemic happened. So the book went into publication or went into print… Basically it’s a year long process to get ready to go to print. And then shortly into the pandemic, the book was released, which in some ways was really unfortunate because most authors who had a book released during the pandemic, it was really challenging. But the premise of the book is dealing with four major questions that I see are the questions of our time. And it’s been interesting for me as I’ve researched this and as I wrote on it, and as I’ve interacted with various people, just the overall agreement that my thesis, that what it means to be human is the question of our time.

Andy Steiger:

And the four questions that I see are spinoffs of that, that need to be addressed are what is a human being? What is the value of human life? What leads to human flourishing and how should humans live? So those are the four questions that are really just getting at this idea of what it means to be human. And with your last question, Daniel, would I change anything? Do I still think it’s relevant? Well, I think it’s even more relevant now than it was when I first wrote it. And interestingly enough, it did win second place, which I am happy to be second, for Evangelistic Resource of the Year. Definitely, people saw value in addressing the gospel from the perspective of what it means to be human.

Andy Steiger:

If I could add to it, all I would add is that this pandemic, if it’s shown you anything, listener, if it has shown you anything, it is that your need for relationship is absolutely crucial. I think we have been convinced of our need for community, which is a key thesis of the book, is what it means to be human? Is simply to live in relationship with God and people. And I think this pandemic has forced us to come to that realization in a way that hasn’t happened for a long time.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. I think the pandemic has made us think about what is the best way for humans to flourish? You talk a lot about this idea of reductionism, and by that being that in science today, we tend to just reduce everything to its integral parts or its matter. At the deepest core, this is a few atoms of iron and a few atoms of magnesium.

Andy Steiger:

To define things.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. To define things. And even with this idea of flourishing, I feel like right now, especially in Canada, we define what it means to live, to just not dying. And that to me is just like, “Hey, if you want to live, just don’t die.” The gospel says so much more about what human flourishing actually looks like. Because I think as we’re seeing, and I think the community piece is part of that, just staying alone and stuck inside with the aspect of not dying, well, I know there’s a lot of people who would rather risk going out so that they could actually feel like they’re alive and feel like they’re flourishing. And I’d love to get some of your thoughts on that.

Andy Steiger:

Well, this is, I think an issue that a lot of people are thinking through right now and is an important issue to think about. And here’s actually a pretty interesting sticker that I saw when I was in Vancouver that really got out this. There, people were posting these all over. Maybe some of you have seen these, but basically it is this picture showing a person from 1940, having to put on a backpack, a gun and head over into world war II. And then it had a picture of the person with a mask on hiding in their house. And it was really juxtaposing these two, like how do we deal with this in society that on the one hand in the forties, we had to ship off people to go fight in a war and to give their lives for our freedom and to maintain freedom.

Andy Steiger:

And why is it? What’s going on right now that we have a culture that has built so much fear that people don’t even want to step outside their doors? And I think that is a huge question that we’ve got to deal with. What is going on here that we have such a high level of fear that is really directing the way our society is approaching a lot of these issues? And I find that compelling. I don’t know. What do you think about that?

Daniel Markin:

The fear piece is huge. I think we’re living in a place now where Christianity is more or less on the back burner. Like it’s not even on the middle burner where people want to come to keep the pancakes warm. It’s sitting on the back burner. It’s like, I’ll get to it eventually or not, I really don’t care.

Andy Steiger:

Well, I guess I’m saying, Daniel, there’s maybe a lot of things on the back burner right now.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, yeah.

Andy Steiger:

Even freedom on the back burner. Listen, I don’t want to go too down this road, but you got the United States IN this kind of face off, it’s becoming more and more of this face off with Russia and what’s going to happen. And these things flare up from time to time, where one country, whether it’s China wanting to-

Daniel Markin:

They flex in front of each other.

Andy Steiger:

Yeah, yeah. Whether it be with regards to Taiwan or the Ukraine or whatever. But I couldn’t help, but wonder, if we had people who had to stand up against that, either in the United States or Canada, you can’t help, but wonder, I don’t know if they would, I don’t know if they would, because I’m not sure what’s going on. Have we taken our freedom for granted? Have we taken for granted that war is possible that people do evil things? Those are, these are all important issues. I guess what I’m trying to say, Daniel is it’s not just religious issues. It’s human issues that are at play.

Daniel Markin:

No, a hundred percent. It’s unique. And I was just even seeing a headline day. It was like, “Whoa, Russia and China are shaking hands,” it’s like, “are they now going to tag team against the United States?” There’s so much that’s out of our control. But I feel like generations ago, the most fabric of society still believed deep down that there was a God, there was a heaven and a hell. So even if they weren’t really living it, they still believe that. And I think it gave them hope and it gave them grit and this purpose to continue on, and I just wonder if a symptom of secularism, that’s a good line right there. That’s a next book title for you.

Andy Steiger:

I’ll take it under advisement.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if a symptom of secularism is this-

Andy Steiger:

Is fear?

Daniel Markin:

Is fear, is an unwillingness to fight for anything or… I don’t know, it just…

Andy Steiger:

But isn’t that kind of the irony though? People are willing to fight for things, they’re willing to advocate for their cause, but it’s a very individualistic activism.

Daniel Markin:

What do you mean by that? Go into that.

Andy Steiger:

Well, social justice at large tends to be what you think is important. And so you advocate and you rally for your cause. But what you see is this breakdown of what it means to live in a community. What does it mean to be a society, to rally behind a cause together. And also what does it look like actually to live together when we don’t always agree on things? How do we agree on some things and disagree on other things? These are all, I think important question that I would argue and really come out in the book, that these are all ultimately founded on our concept of what it means to be human, what it means to live a flourishing life, those sorts of things. And that’s where secular culture, I would say has really cast confusion on this issue.

Andy Steiger:

Because as you were talking about earlier, this reductionism, which is a lot of what my PhD work is on, is this idea that we’re as a society taught that you define a thing by its parts, not its whole. It’s like this even deeper root, I guess, to individualism that I don’t define myself within a community. I define myself more individually in a secular society as well, more so that then I define myself according to the parts that I’m made of and not the purpose I’m made for. And so we end up living these lives that become very disconnected.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. The piece of human design is something that’s super important. Because God like the designer has a specific purpose by which his designed is to operate. And so it is with God, he, God has designed us to live a certain way that actually… Well, first of all, is in relationship with him. And that relationship leads to the flourishing of relationship with others.

Andy Steiger:

Yeah, what you’re getting at is an important point, Daniel. And that is that if you want to know what it means to flourish, you have to know the purpose that a thing was made for. If you don’t know, if you don’t have a concept of the purpose, you don’t have a concept of the flourishing. In biblical language, the way this gets played out, and you see this in passages, like Colossians 1:28, where Paul will say that “in Christ we’re were made perfect.” And that word perfect in Greek is the word teleios, and the root word is telos, which is the word for purpose. And so you get this idea then that a thing is flourishing or is perfect when it’s fulfilling the purpose that it was made for. And you and I actually talk this way in everyday life, such as I’ve been working on a car with my kids.

Andy Steiger:

We have this 1992 Jeep Wrangler rusty project. It’s awesome. Well, we’ve got the seats out and we’re standing all the rust down and we’re getting ready to paint it. But a Jeep Wrangler, they take a special kind of bolt nut to take off the bolts, they look like a star. At any rate, we’re trying to find one that fits with my kids, and you find the perfect fit. We talk in those terms and what do we mean by a tool being perfect? We just mean that that was exactly what it was made for. It’s like a Ferrari that has a flat tire. You and I understand that not the true flourishing of a Ferrari, that’s not the glory of a Ferrari is to be on the side of a highway with a flat tire, it’s to be driving on a racetrack or whatever at high speed, we understand because that’s what it was designed for and when it’s doing what it was designed for, that’s what it really means to flourish.

Andy Steiger:

And that raises a challenging question in secular society to say, “Okay, then what’s the purpose of human life? What does it mean to flourish as a human being?” Well, that’s a problem in secular culture, because there is no step of what the purpose of being human is, anything more than just survival.

Daniel Markin:

And just pleasure. So I will survive and whatever, or else gives me pleasure. But I think that answer is becoming less and less satisfying for people, which is then why they go seeking for other types of pleasure.

Andy Steiger:

Well, but ultimately it does lead you seeking though, doesn’t it? Because if you’re all ultimate thing is, “Oh, okay. I’ll just go seek pleasure.” But you spend a couple years seeking pleasure and you’re not satisfied, well then you have to start to wonder “Maybe I haven’t landed on the human purpose yet.”

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. And so even with that, I think one of the greatest things that Christians have done for generations and it’s something that I think we, as Christians, as the church need to do, is faithful churches have always been a counter cultural voice to what it means to be human, what it means to live, what it means to flourish. And I think we have to make sure we’re doubling down on that and saying, “No, what it truly means…” Even if you don’t like to hear it, “what it truly means to be human, to flourish is to be in real relationship with God, to love God, to know him, to experience him.” They don’t have to like that answer, but I do think it’s important for the secular person to be hearing that alternative, at least in their own minds. So it’s not just an echo chamber.

Andy Steiger:

But isn’t that interesting what you said earlier? You said it’s counter cultural and has remained counter cultural. Like it has been and continues to be a counter cultural message. That to me, by the way, is in and of itself an interesting apologetic. Why is it that as human beings, we always fight against this. The biblical concept of what it means, what the purpose of human life is, is you’re getting at here. Jesus says it over and over again, “Love God, love people.” You are made to be in relationship with God relationship with people. But C.S. Lewis, I love the title he has for his book, The Great Divorce, because ultimately he’s just saying, “Yeah, we’re created for relationship, but we divorce ourselves.” We divorce ourselves from God. We divorce ourselves from one another. We live in broken relationship. And so it’s this interesting dichotomy where you’re like on the one hand you realize, and you understand your need for community, but in your brokenness or we would call sin or evil, people are just always fighting against that. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we all do that. We fight it.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. And as we’re coming to a close here, what is something that has been on your mind as you think about Canada, as you think about young adults and what is one thing that you’d want to share? Maybe a challenge to young adults and then maybe share something else that’s a hope for us, young adults.

Andy Steiger:

Here’s my challenge that I would challenge young adults with. And Daniel, I think you’ll appreciate this. Young adults right now are like on the hunt for the best investment. All the young adults I know, whether it’s Bitcoin, digital currency of various stripes and whatnot, no one wants to miss out. They don’t want to miss out on the next big thing. They want to make sure that they’re in on the best investment and that they’re going to make as much return as possible. They don’t want to miss out on another Tesla at explosion or Amazon stock or Shopify stock or the like. And my challenge to young adults today is Jesus would say to you that money is not the greatest wealth that you have. Your life is. Your time is. That is your greatest treasure. That’s what’s the most.

Andy Steiger:

And I think Jesus would be asking this generation, “How are you investing that? And how much thought have you given to the way in which you’re going to live your life, that is going to give you the greatest return on investment at the end of the day?” Because when we look back, listen, there’s going to come a day when you’re in your eighties, nineties or whatever, Lord willing, if you get to live that long. I think some people though these days are like, I don’t even know if I want to live that long, but if you did and you’re looking back in the rear view mirror of your life, are you going to be asking yourself or thinking to yourself, “Man, I should have bought more Bitcoin, I should have got in on that Doge Coin back when before Elon tweeted on it?”

Andy Steiger:

Are you really going to be thinking about that. Are you going to have diplomas up on your wall or surrounding yourself with pictures of your houses or those sorts of things at the end of your life? And my challenge would just be: no, you’re not. The message you see Jesus preaching from beginning to end that you see throughout the Bible is that it’s your relationship with God and your relationship with people that you will constantly surround yourself with, if you haven’t ostracized yourself from all those things at the end of your life.

Andy Steiger:

Because I think at the end of your life, you realize you have a great clarity of what really matters. There’s a clarity that comes where you start to realize what really matters. And my point in all of this is, Daniel, if we see that in other people, if we see the logic that that’s the case, then the question we have to ask ourselves is, “Am I going to live as though that’s true? Am I going to make a conscious effort to make life investments that I believe are going to pay the greatest return on investments?” And that is my relationship with God. And my relationship with people. Is that going to be the paradigm, is that going to be the commitment by which I’m going to make the decisions of my life moving forward? That would be my challenge.

Daniel Markin:

That’s the challenge and a hope right there. And you’re preaching right there, Andy, you’re completely right. Where will we invest? My dad used to always say… If I was going to spend money on a book or a Bible, he’s like “Any investment you can spend on your faith is a good investment.” And I think so it is with any investment you can spend on Christian community, maybe it is a book or anything that’s going to give you a good return in what Jesus is saying in that spiritual realm and walking with him and experiencing him, that’s going to be huge 10 fold, 100 fold, thousand fold returns.

Andy Steiger:

And we could break this down real simple. I called up my mom the other day and I wasn’t on my phone, I wasn’t watching a TV show, I wasn’t surfing the web. I just was on the couch talking with my mom. And my point is that is time well spent. That is a good investment, as I’m just simply talking with my mom, living in community. Or as I’m with my boys working on our 1992 Jeep Wrangler and we’re taking off the alternator and we’re spending time together. That is a good investment. Because sometimes we over spiritualize things, Daniel and we say, oh it’s reading the Bible or those things. And trust me, those are good things. But so are calling your mom, so is spending time with your kids. And this is a key one and maybe this is a good one just to be thinking about, because this is where God’s really even challenging me.

Andy Steiger:

So often when we think about prayer, Daniel, we think about prayer as this one way sort of thing. Prayers are just when I come to God, because I need something or whatnot. And I’m beginning to understand more and more that prayer is an opportunity for community. Prayer is an opportunity to be human. Prayer is this opportunity that I have to spend time with God. And I spend time with people where together in community, we are talking to God with each other and that is a profoundly spiritual human activity, as we do that. Particularly when we walk with people through challenging time in their lives and we’re just with them, we’re listening, praying, in community. Those activities are the greatest investment that we can make.

Daniel Markin:

So as we move forward in 2022, as we come out of the pandemic, let’s listen, let’s pray and let’s be with one another and be with the Lord in that. So Andy, thank you for your time. Hey, always a pleasure.

Andy Steiger:

Daniel, thank you. It was great being with you today.

Daniel Markin:

Well, thank you again, Andy. It’s always a pleasure. It’s always fun. If you want to find more information of Andy’s ministry, you can go to apologeticscanada.com. You can find all sorts of information on leadership summit they have coming up, their conference in 2022. They have various speakers as well. If your church wants to bring in someone from Apologetics Canada, there’s a way for you to do that as well. Thanks again for listening and we look forward to see you next time, all the best.