Does life really have any meaning? Are all human beings actually equal? These are some of the big questions of life, which we wrestle with in this episode. At its core, these are deep worldview questions that have powerful and practical implications for how we live our lives. Embracing a biblical perspective on these questions, as opposed to a secular worldview, helps us love our enemies and find joy in hardship.

Why You Matter: How Your Quest for Meaning is Meaningless without God



About our Guest

Mike Sherrard is senior pastor at Crosspoint Community Church and faculty member at Summit Ministries. He is the author of Relational Apologetics and a national speaker specializing in biblical worldview, ethics, and evangelism. He lives in Peachtree City, Georgia, with his wife and five kids.

Episode Transcript

Sean McDowell: Welcome to Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture, a podcast from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, Professor of Apologetics.

Today we are the friend of mine. His name is Mike Sherrard. We had him on the show about three years ago to talk about a book he's written called Relational Apologetics. But today we've got him on because Mike, you have a book called Why You Matter, and we're going to jump into this book, but I really appreciate you coming on.

Mike Sherrard: It's my pleasure Sean, thanks.

Sean McDowell: Now we're in a little bit of a unique setting. I teach full-time at Talbot at Biola, but also high school part-time at a Bible class and we're actually recording this with about, I don't know, 30 plus high school students in the background. So if you hear laughter or maybe a bell, because this is a school, we're just going to keep on going, but we're glad that you're with us.

So let me just start. You've written this book called Why You Matter, you gave me the chance to endorse it, and it's simple in the sense that you take these really profound ideas and just kind of break them down for people. I think there'll be a lot of aha moments for people where they say I get it, but tell me the story a little bit behind the book. Why write a book about why you matter?

Mike Sherrard: Yeah, the title makes it almost seem like I wrote it in response to current issues like Black Lives Matter, the Blue Lives Matter, the All Lives Matter. And though the book is certainly relevant to that, the idea for the book came probably four years ago or so. I was sitting in a Sunday school class with people my own age. And I started to notice that from one to every person in the room, they had the very difficult time of thinking outside of the box of I am that which I do, as opposed to who I am is fundamental to my nature and the fact that I am made in the image of God and so I know...

And these were people that I grew up with in a sense, they've been going to church their entire life. Yet they had abandoned a biblical understanding of what it is to be human and where our value and our significance is to be found. So that just put a... It was like a seed of an idea in my mind. And I started to test out this idea on this. How relevant is this? Where's the culture at the church and the secular world too? And so the first time I spoke on this was actually shortly thereafter at a couple of graduation ceremonies. Just a 15-minute talk on what makes life meaningful and the response that I had from Christian and non-Christian alike. It was like the light bulb moment. It was like they had never heard the idea of value rooted in what you are, as opposed to what you do.

Sean McDowell: So Henri Nouwen, the late Catholic writer, would say that our culture says we basically had our identity from what we have, what other people say about us and from what we do. So you were recognized that even Christians had a faulty idea of what it means to be human, where value comes from, but when you gave a biblical answer, people were kind of hungry for it. So that makes a lot of sense.

Let me ask you this, you start off with a story in the book that... I don't want to steal your thunder, but tell the story and why you began there and how it relates to the theme you're developing.

Mike Sherrard: Yeah, the book is not the book that I set out to write. I don't even know if it's the book I wanted to write.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Mike Sherrard: But I do think it was the book I was supposed to write. And part of it was from the very first time my fingers hit the keyboard. I started to imagine a young man or woman that's having a very hard time getting up in the morning. They're considering suicide. And so rather than just like straight up apologetics or worldview book, it took on a pastoral tone very quickly. And coinciding, I guess, with my own life, the last several years have been without doubt, the hardest couple of years of my life and my wife's life. We've known death. We've known sickness. Our son has one of the rarest genetic disorders on the planet. He's one of three people in the world-

Sean McDowell: Oh my goodness.

Mike Sherrard: To have his genetic disorder. So it's a very lonely place. And we've experienced betrayal, I mean I've got my entire life and never really experienced broken relationships in a very serious way.

And it was a great blessing because most people aren't afforded that they had experienced profound relational hardship early. It was into my forties where I experienced betrayal. And I'll tell you of all the things we've experienced, betrayal is the worst.

Sean McDowell: Really?

Mike Sherrard: It's like a living death because you grieve the loss of a friend, but they're not gone. They're still there. And the pain from what they had had done to you is just always present.

So, but in the midst of this hardship, one of the things that kept me steady was the knowledge of what makes my life valuable. So it allowed me to grieve the loss of good things, but know that what I'm grieving is not the loss of my significance, because that is rooted in what I am, a man made in the image of God.

Sean McDowell: So amidst all this craziness, is that kind of the anchor that you found in yourself coming back to? Who am I, what's my place in the world?

Mike Sherrard: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Why am I here, that made sense of some of those difficulties.

Mike Sherrard: And anchor's, a great idea, a great way to describe it. Just a firm foundation for my life also. And not even just for me, because when we think about, for example our son, and I'm very careful. Because it's his story, it's not just my story to tell. But Aaron's future's a little bit uncertain. What will his life be like in 10 years? And so you're a father and you know the aspirations you have for your children, what you hope they accomplish, the joys that they will find in life. And it's a question mark. Will he go to school? Will he enter the workforce? Will he ever find love in marriage? And it's sad, but again, why this anchors and steadies my wife and I is because we know that even if Aaron never experiences those good things, his life is not less valuable or meaningful than anyone else's because his significance is rooted, again, in what he is, which is a young little guy made in the image of God.

Sean McDowell: This idea you're talking about, the value is intrinsic. Not what we do, it flows through the entire book and even talk about finding joy and meaning in hardship. We're going to come back to that. I want to lay some of this foundation first. So people understand really where you're heading with this.

So let's ask this question. I thought, by the way, I thought you talked about it's confusing time to be alive. Frame that for me a little bit. What makes it so confusing? You brought out some tensions in the world today that just.... I was like, that's a really good way to put what makes it so confusing?

Mike Sherrard: Yeah. Well it's Steven Pinker wrote, and he's not a Christian. And he wrote a book called Enlightenment Now, which he attributes the great prosperity to the world, to the enlightenment. But he just... put that aside for a second-

Sean McDowell: Sure.

Mike Sherrard: One of the things he shows is how good the world is right now, according to every metric possible, health, education, poverty. That life is getting better. And even here in the United States or in the previous decade, we saw record unemployment for minorities. We saw the first term of our country's first Black president. And then he got reelected. There was the expansion of a number of rights related to sexual morality, sexual issues, the LGBT, same-sex marriage. And again, regardless of what you think about these issues-

Sean McDowell: Sure.

Mike Sherrard: It seems like there's... We're living in this time of history where more people than not are committed to this idea that all people are equal, progress is being made in that. And then we come to 2020 and the narrative was that America is filled with nothing but greedy, racist, oppressors that are seeking to perpetuate a patriarchal society and oppress all of mankind.

It's like, well wait, what is it? Is that what is true or is what we have been thinking true, that progress is being made in a number of these issues. And so even you take something like, how do you make sense of the idea of Black Lives Matter? Of course, Black lives matter. And then you'll have some people that respond and say, well all lives matter. And then people will take that to be an offensive statement. Well, is all lives matter, really an offensive statement? Well, yes and no. It is an offensive statement when it's used in a dismissive manner to kind of just cast aside the aspirations of our Black brothers and sisters and their cry for social justice. Of course, it's not wrong to say all lives matter. So that's, again, it's just a confusing time. How do we process all of these competing ideas and the fact that, especially in the pandemic, we're further isolated, we're locked in our silos, and we're living in these echo chambers through social media. It's just making it very hard I think, to know what is really real.

Sean McDowell: So one of the points you bring out is that we really have a choice about which narrative we're going to buy into. And how we see the world, the negative or the positive, somewhere in between, is going to shape our happiness and our joy and our relationships. That's such a simple, yet powerful idea. I want to make sure our listeners pick up with.

But let me ask it this way. You talked about how there's kind of a worldview battle beneath this issue of meaning and happiness. In clear terms, what is that worldview battle that's kind of at stake?

Mike Sherrard: Fundamentally, the worldview battle is about whether there is a God that exists and created human life on purpose for a purpose, or human life is the result of a cosmic accident. This idea has a number of implications depending on what is true. If God exists, and we are created and made in his image, we are the kinds of things that have intrinsic value. Something that has intrinsic value if it is an end in itself, meaning you don't use it to get something else or you don't... It's just valuable because of what it is. Something is functionally valuable if you use it. So like money for example, money is not intrinsically valuable, it's functionally valuable. At its core it's just paper or code or coin, and it's useful because you get something with it, but it's not intrinsically valuable.

We all view humans, most of us anyhow, as intrinsically valuable. But there's not really a good justification for that if God does not exist. So this is a fundamentally important idea. Are human beings the kind of thing that are valuable because of what they are, or are human beings valuable because of what they can do?

And the answer to that question is a worldview question that rests and whether one believes that God exists or God doesn't. And how you answer that, you begin to build a belief system that becomes radically different. Though, again, going back to the confusing time, I think we live in an age of worldview borrowing. That though the consequences of these beliefs are pretty devastating in a sense, people still reach back and forth across the aisle, if you will, and borrow from a Christian worldview or one that denies the existence of God.

Sean McDowell: I appreciate that you're trying to get the issue behind the issue. I teach a class at Biola undergrad called Gospel Kingdom Culture. And we talk about the issues that you mentioned. We talk about race, we talk about poverty, we'll talk about sexual issues. One of the things I constantly want the students to see is beneath this are deeper questions.

What does it mean to be human, is meaning built into the world? Is there a God? So when people differ on whether you should use the transgender pronoun or not, oftentimes beneath that are deep worldview commitments about what it means to be human. Now give an example to really flesh this out for people, because you've done a lot of speaking and writing on the pro-life issue. In your book, you bring up the example of a child with Down Syndrome, prenatal that's in the womb. How does that illustrate the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value?

Mike Sherrard: Yeah, that's a very good question. It's hard to know it... You like that... you can't see that at home-

Sean McDowell: Keep going [crosstalk 00:12:24].

Mike Sherrard: Sean, you did the fist pump. He's proud of himself for that question. So that was...

Sean McDowell: Thanks for calling me out.

Mike Sherrard: That was nice.

So it's hard to get exact numbers on how many children are aborted with Down Syndrome. There's claims in some countries of 90%. In the United States there's been some numbers that are in around the 60 to 70%. But what seems to be the case is the vast majority of those children that are diagnosed or have Down Syndrome prenatally, where it's found out, they are aborted. At such a high rate of abortion, it stands to reason that they are boarded on the basis of that condition. That otherwise joyful than expecting parents are choosing to end the life of that child in the womb, on the basis of their condition.

So what is it about people with Down Syndrome that would cause a number of moms and dads to consider and ultimately taking their life? Well, is it because people with Down Syndrome have moderate or mild intellectual disabilities? Is it because they have different emotional and relational skills? Is it because they will never dominate the NBA or invent the next must-have gadget? What is it about someone with Down Syndrome that would make, again, an otherwise happy and joyful expecting mom and dad decide to end that child's life. I think wrapped up in that is the idea of their life is not going to be meaningful in the same way ours is unless they can use their life to achieve X, Y, or Z. As opposed to viewing that unborn child in the womb as intrinsically valuable, meaning valuable because of what they are, a human being made in the image of God versus a human being that will be able to do, again, any number of things.

Sean McDowell: Do you think a piece of that too, is that if you bring a Down Syndrome child into the world, meaning that out-of-the-womb world, that's going to change the lives of the parents possibly forever.

And we live in such an adult-focused world that you have a right to all the things that you want. Something infringes on that, I get rid of it. Seems to me, that's a piece of the narrative while including the lack of intrinsic value for all human beings that you're talking about.

Mike Sherrard: Yeah, sure, as it relates to this issue, the hardship factor is a part of it. That they'll say it would be better to not bring this child into the world and allow this child to experience hardship. Or for themselves, this will now create hardship for us. So it buys into this lie that a meaningful life means there is no hardship, which again, that's not a biblical idea. It's right to be sad and grieve hard things in life. But that idea that a meaningful life equals the lack of hardship is kind of rooted in this idea that God's plan and purpose for humanity is simply happiness. And that's not the case.

Sean McDowell: Okay, so the root of human value, equality, and meaning is whether or not there's a God. One of the things that I do is I... when I go to church's conferences, they put on these glasses, role-playing atheist. And people always ask about meaning, routed out God. And I'll say, yeah, there's no top-down meaning, but you can have bottom-up meaning. You can have relationships, you can have freedom. We can have good food. We can travel. Like life is still good, and there's meaning without there being a God. So why do you argue that you can't have meaning as an inherent part of the universe, if it's an accidental universe?

Mike Sherrard: Yeah. This bottom-up idea only works to the degree that we're all willing to go along with it. So if you take that idea of bottom-up rather, we create meaning and morality versus God giving us kind of an objective framework within which to live out our lives.

Because it works like this. If God does not exist, life is here for no purpose. All of life is simply the result of a random process of genetic mutations. So life is inherently without any meaning. And this is a pretty readily agreed upon idea. There's there's some that would push back on this. But for the most part, those that would call themselves atheists, they would say, yes, life is inherently without meaning and human life is intrinsically without value. They say, that's not a problem though, because we can create meaning for ourselves. And we can obtain value through obtaining certain arbitrary characteristics. But this is where it doesn't work out.

Basic questions that we all take for granted are actually very difficult to answer if God does not exist and there's not objective moral values. Like just the question, what is good? How do you define what good is if God doesn't exist? It's a simple question. And I would imagine number of people listening, their intuitive response is, well, it's this and their answer is going to be rooted probably in a Christian tradition that they maybe aren't even aware of. But what is good? Is it pleasure? Is it the absence of pain? That's where a lot of these utilitarianists, they're hanging out today. You got the Peter Singers, even Sam Harris, he would be a consequentialist, same kind of thing. But is that really, what is good? Are we to define good in terms of pleasure and the absence of pain?

But even if we just, okay, let's just say we agree. Let's just say for the sake of the argument, we agree that what is good and what is bad. Good is pleasure, bad is pain. And we develop a contract to maximize the most amount of happiness or pleasure for the most amount of people. Well, that's fine if I agree to go along with this, but what if I'm Thanos? What if I don't need you? What if you're in my way? This social contract really works for the weak in a sense, but if I'm powerful enough to exploit the system that you all have created, work it to my advantage, or even like Thanos, he's morally motivated. He's not a selfishly motivated person. Which is a fun idea, really to explore it. Why is Thanos the villain? He's only a villain if there is a creator God in the MCU. If not, Thanos is probably the tragic hero of the story who sacrificially gives his life to maximize happiness for the most amount of living people.

Because then this is where outside of a God existing in human beings, having intrinsic value and there being inherent purpose to life, there's no reason for me to go along with this social contract outside of self-interest. But what happens when my self-interest directs me to go against this social contract? If I can get away with it, why shouldn't I do it? Why shouldn't I prosper at your expense? What if I even were able to do it in a way where none of you knew it? Am I doing anything wrong in a meaningful sense? It's really hard to answer that question. If God does not exist, and there are not objective moral values, and things like intrinsic value in inherent meaning.

Sean McDowell: By mentioning Thanos in the MCU, you just launched into one of my favorite guests, just for the record. So you're up there.

It is interesting. You quoted, you mentioned Sam Harris, who's an atheist. And he would say objective right and wrong is rooted in human flourishing. But of course, when you think about the word flourishing, it implies there's a way we're supposed to behave. It seems to imply there's a better way of living than another way of living, which only makes sense if there's the designer. And hey, a mind behind the universe that made us to flourish a certain way. And of course his answer is, if you concede that we flourish most, then you can get my moral system. And I'm like, I'm not willing to concede that in a universe without God.

Mike Sherrard: That's a big price to pay. That's a heavy price to pay. It's not a small thing to concede at all. Now you're exactly right.

Sean McDowell: So let's get practical. I can imagine some people listening and going, yes, you can't have meaning without God, can't have morality without God. But I believe in God and I still feel lonely. I'm still anxious. I'm still depressed. During the pandemic 25% of 16 to 24-year-olds considered or at least contemplated suicide. I would venture that many, if not most, of them believe in God. So why does that matter? These ideas for the person who's actually just trying to feel good and not hurt.

Mike Sherrard: Yeah. It's been a hard year. I mean, it's been very hard in pastoral ministry. This year alone I have spoken to more people about this very issue that they themselves have had these kinds of thoughts. People who used to cut in the past are doing it again. And right now all of these people that I'm meeting with, they believe in God.

Sean McDowell: And when you say meeting with them, I don't know if I've mentioned it again, that you're a pastor. So you are counseling and dealing with human beings, applying this stuff all the time.

Mike Sherrard: Yeah. Yeah. And life... The fight for joy, I think is largely a mental fight. It's to live in what you believe is really real. Because... and it's just a struggle. I mean, you can think of something outside of even the concept of God. I can believe that my wife loves me, but I might not feel like my wife loves me. What reality am I going to choose to live in? And it's a battle. I don't mean to make this a simple thing. Psychological hardships are true hardships. So for the person that believes in God and yet is struggling with depression, they believe they're made in the image of God, yet they feel like they're worthless. And the fact that they can't reconcile those beliefs makes them feel even worse because they must not be a real Christian.

So one of the very practical things to do in helping with this for followers of Jesus who believe in God, is to recognize that psychological hardships are true hardships that aren't just... They don't just go away because you have faith. And a lot of times in the church, there's that pressure. Just pray more, just believe harder, and your loneliness will go away, your anxiety will go away, your depression will go away. No, they don't. I mean, maybe by God's grace, they'll go away just like he might miraculously heal your cancer. But the chances are there's going to be a numb... There's going to be some hard work to be done. The developing of disciplines, which by the way as it relates to this topic, I've been very appreciative to J.P. Moreland's book.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Mike Sherrard: Quiet... What is it, A Quiet Place? No, that's a movie. What's the-

Sean McDowell: His recent book. We interviewed him on the topic or he's discussing the importance of spiritual disciplines and our beliefs about ourselves to deal with anxiety and other stresses. It's a very practical guide.

Mike Sherrard: Yeah. It's great. [crosstalk 00:23:36]I'm just drawing a blank on the title of it now. But that idea of building these disciplines. Yep, so life is that the fight for joy is to be fought for. It isn't just had. When we talk about joy, it's kind of this elusive idea that we think it's just happiness. And it's not happiness. It's different than happiness. It's kind of this abiding satisfying presence, but other things can suppress it. And there's just work to be done to uncover that joy and to be able to live in that.

Sean McDowell: So you know Gary Habermas, one of the leading experts in the resurrection in the world, working on a three to four volume set, just this Magnum Opus defense of the Resurrection. Number of years ago, when he was in his mid-forties, his wife died. And he obviously fell in the grieving, mourning state of this. And what helped him process it is when a student said to him, he goes, you know, Gary it's great that you actually believe in the resurrection. And he was like, actually I do, he hadn't had that thought because he was grieving so deeply.

And he talks about how, when you had these thoughts of despair, these thoughts of depression, one helpful step is to take and replace that thought in your mind with God does love me. God is sovereign. My life has meaning. Like you said, it doesn't magically make these things disappear, but it helps to transform our perspective and help us cope with some of the hurt. I thought that was such a practical example that he gave. Now you have some sections in here about things that help us overcome this feeling of worthlessness. And you talk about relationships. I think if we've learned anything during quarantine, it's being in flesh and blood relationships. Unpack what you go into in the book.

Mike Sherrard: Yeah. We're made for relationship. You go back to Genesis, which is such an important thing right now for the church to be spending some time in. But we are made for relationships.

One, we are made in such a way as morally free creatures that are rational. We can know God, we can comprehend His greatness. But it's just not that the account in Genesis, God makes Adam, and it was not good for Adam to be alone. So he makes for him a worthy counterpart, which is I think a fair rendering of the Hebrew there. Sometimes like the NIV will say suitable helper, which kind of conveys this idea that women are just... Oh you're suitable. No, no, no. That the full force of the language there is that woman who is equal with man in dignity, and I would argue competency. God makes for Adam a worthy counterpart to go forth and fulfill the calling God has given them to care for the earth. So we're relational. We're not made to be alone. We are made to love other people, to consider them as better than ourselves, to sacrificially serve other people.

And I would imagine most of the students in here have experienced the joy that comes from selfless acts of service. Yeah, in our culture, we have to fight against that because we are constantly being pressured to fight for ourselves. Which doesn't work, it's this tragic irony. The more you try to fight for your own happiness, the more fleeting it is.

Sean McDowell: That is ironic, isn't it? If I used ironic right, I always use that word wrong. Well, it's something you only find when you stop looking for it. Yeah. And like in the book, you talk about how the importance of work, like finding work, not necessarily paid work, but God made us to work. And there's a sense where we find meaning in work, we find meaning and identity in our calling. Let me ask you two more questions to wrap this up.

You have a chapter and it's about finding joy in loving our enemies. I got to tell you, joy is the last word that comes to my mind when I think about loving my enemy. So tell us what you mean by that idea.

Mike Sherrard: I think right now, one of the... There's like a sickness that's crept in our country and probably beyond, and it's hatred. And it's a sickness. When you are consumed with hatred for another person, it rots you on the outside and it's all like a complete suppression of joy. You can't let go of it. You go to bed plotting, and scheming, and thinking, and assigning motives. And how can I get this person, get this person back. And it takes you over. So the simple idea of loving your enemies can be a very freeing and joyful idea. It's also an idea that changed the world.

We'll talk a little bit about this in chapel. But Tom Holland, who, as far as I know right now, is not a Christian. He's an atheist, he's a historian. He wrote a pretty good book called Dominion. And one of the questions that plagued Tom, was as a historian when he would be spending some time, let's say in ancient Rome, the civilization and the time period that birthed Christianity, the first century. He would start to recognize how alien he says his values were, how foreign they were. They just didn't fit in. Rome was cruel. They hung their enemies on a cross to make a spectacle of them, to warn the rest of the world. Don't cross us. This is what happens when you cross Rome. The way they treated women, the way they treated slaves. He has this beautiful line about... Well, I'll save that. I'll save that for chapel.

But he had this question, where did my modern sensibilities come from? And his answer to the question was Christianity, the teachings of Jesus and the writings of Paul and namely this Christian ethic to love your neighbor as yourself, love even your enemies. Because this was a foreign idea in the ancient world. And so here you have this great contrast in the first century Rome who takes their enemies and puts them on a cross. And Jesus, the Son of God, willingly goes on to the cross for his enemies. And this idea spread throughout the early church. And it literally changed the world. It is what the world needs today. It needs for the followers of Jesus Christ to lead the example by loving their enemies, just as we've been loved by our God.

Sean McDowell: It's so powerful, especially coming from an atheist because there's certain things like love your neighbor, love your enemy, equality. These are Christian, or at least Judeo-Christian ideas we take for granted. Step out of our culture, go back to ancient Rome and you realize how foreign they were and how much Christianity turned the world upside down.

Last question, in the book, and at the beginning of interview, you talked about just how difficult this past two years has been for you. One of the last chapters in the book is finding joy in hardship. Tell me about it.

Mike Sherrard: Yeah. Well, it's not easy. It's certainly not easy. And I've said things of my life that I've never said, and still don't necessarily feel comfortable with saying out loud, though I wrote about them in a book. But I've just known sadness in a way I've not known it. I've known loneliness in a way that I've not known it.

And when you experience things like this, it's really easy to conclude God must not care for me. If God is good and God is loving, why would he be letting me experience this? I must not be that important to him. I must have done something to make him angry. But again, this buys into the idea that the purpose of life is simply happiness and it's not. It's the knowledge of God and the joy that comes from experiencing him. So that means that there's a reason for hardship. And that's a longer question to get into then probably the last question of an interview, but there is reason for hardship. There's a good philosophical reason why God has allowed there to be freedom. And one of the consequences of freedom is going to be evil and hardship. But even if you take outside of that, things like character and compassion, and even as it relates to contentment, God uses hardships in very meaningful ways to allow me to be compassionate to other people for my character to grow.

I've said this many times over the last couple of years, I hate what we are experiencing, and my wife would agree with what I'm saying here. We hate what we are experiencing, but we love what and who we are becoming. And so the Lord uses hardship to build and strengthen your character. And he also uses hardship to remind me that the good things in this life are not that which is ultimately good. There is nothing greater than knowing Jesus Christ. And often God will use hardships to remind me of that and to find a truer, deeper satisfaction in Him then can even be found in good things.

Sean McDowell: Mike, I appreciate when you talk about hardship, as a pastor who's dealing with a lot of people, going through this you've experienced in your own life. So there's scripture and some academic ideas in here, but the story and personal experience really shines through.

So I want to encourage our listeners to pick up a copy, Why You Matter by Michael Sherrard, Why You Matter by Michael Sherrard. Mike, thanks for coming on.

Mike Sherrard: Hey, thanks, man.

Sean McDowell: This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture. The Think Biblically podcast is brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, offering programs in Southern California and online, including our Masters in Christian Apologetics now offered fully online, visit biola.edu/talbot to learn more.

If you enjoyed today's conversation, give us a rating on your podcast app and share it with a friend. Thanks for listening. And remember, think biblically about everything.