Faith for the Curious (with Mark Matlock)

Are there non-Christians who are genuinely open to hearing about the Christian faith? According to Mark Matlock, author of Faith for the Curious, there is a large segment of people who are genuinely spiritually curious. But, the key is to understand them accurately and to engage them in the right way. In this episode, Sean and Scott talk with Mark about how to understand and engage those today who are spiritually open and curious.

Mark Matlock is Senior Fellow at Barna and a facilitator of innovation and impact. He has been working with, and researching, young people for three decades. Mark is the Executive Director of the Urbana Student Missions Conferences. He attended Biola in the late 1980s. 

==========

Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture is a podcast from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, which offers degrees both online and on campus in Southern California.

Find all episodes of Think Biblically at: https://www.biola.edu/think-biblically.
Watch video episodes at: https://bit.ly/think-biblically-video.

To submit comments, ask questions, or make suggestions on issues you'd like us to cover or guests you'd like us to have on the podcast, email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu.

Transcript

Sean: Are non-Christians genuinely curious about faith issues? If so, how can we practically engage the spiritually curious today in our families, workplace, and neighborhoods? Our guest today is back on the Think Biblically podcast, Mark Matlock. Not only is he a Biola alum, but he has a fascinating new book out that is research-based through his work at Barna called Faith for the Curious. I'm your host, Sean McDowell. 

Scott: I'm your co-host, Scott Rae. 

Sean: And this is the Think Biblically podcast from Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. Mark, thanks for coming back on, man. 

Mark: It is great to be with you guys. Thanks for having me on today. 

Sean: Now, your book is focused on engaging the spiritually curious. So, who is this group, and how is this group different from people who are not spiritually curious? 

Mark: It's a great first opening question. I started noticing in research that we were doing at Barna that there was this really large percentage of Americans that didn't fit real neatly into some of the categories that we all typically have when we think about non-Christians. And as I was doing some work with pastors, with the Seed Company and the American Bible Society, I realized that these frames were kind of rigid, and that we believe that most of the unbelieving world was kind of hostile toward Christianity. Wasn’t really open to supernatural things, tended to believe more in evolution than they did anything else. And the research was just showing this really weird group of about 100 million Americans that didn't really fit that category. And I was like, I wonder if we could, you know, tease that group out. So, what we did was, we asked people a series of questions to try to understand how their worldview was toward the supernatural versus the natural. And then we used some measures that had been used in some psychological studies to measure curiosity. And we kind of combined those to be able to tease out who is spiritually curious, and who is not. And what we found is that there are only about 10 percent of the population in the United States that were like what we'd call naturalists, that believe, pretty much, that what I can experience with my five senses is all there is. There's nothing more. There's no supernatural, psychic dimension to life. So, a very small group of people actually hold, with confidence, that view. But then there's…and then you've got 20 percent of the population that make up what we consider practicing Christians. And then there's everybody else in between, that have different levels of confidence in the supernatural and different levels of spirituality. And as we really teased those out, we found that there are 54 percent of nonbelievers that, in our population today, are what we would call spiritually curious, or the curious. And when we teased them out even more, we found that there were some that were very curious and open. And then there was another group called the curious skeptics. And so, those that are spiritually open are searching, they're seeking, they believe that there is the possibility of a God they don't know. And when we engage them, it gives us a real opportunity just to think about where we're starting with somebody who maybe doesn't go to church, doesn't have Christianity as a part of their life. It just gives us a different place to start than to think, oh, maybe they don't believe any of this stuff is true. Maybe they're actually looking and actually do believe it does exist. So those are some of the differences between the different categories. 

Scott: So, Mark, that's a lot of folks in the culture at large. 

Mark: It’s a lot of people. 

Scott: And I think sometimes the notion that we have adopted as being exiles in a basically non-Christian or secular culture is part of what gives us that notion that maybe there's more hostility to Christianity than actually is out there. I suspect there's actually more indifference, I would say, than hostility. And that it's just, for a lot of people, it’s not an issue at all. So that's why the spiritually curious category I think is so important. So what are some of the maybe top two or three distinguishing marks of somebody who would fall into that spiritually curious category? 

Mark: Yeah, and I love the fact that you're bringing up this idea of exileship, right? Because when we look at, like, living in exile, it doesn't necessarily mean that people believe in the supernatural or they don't. What it means is they believe in a lot of things, right? When we think about Babylon and David…and I wrote Faith for Exiles, which is kind of a precursor to this book, with David Kinnaman, President of Barna. And we looked at this idea that Babylon is theologically and religiously plural. And so, we're one of many in this concept, but that's a different orientation than people that are, like, all opposed to you. And so that's a real interesting position or posture, to take the posture of the exile. But the first is that the spiritually curious, for instance, do not have strong opinions about the supernatural, but they believe it exists. So they're not really dogmatic, necessarily, about what they believe, but they do believe that it exists. And just that as a starting point for a conversation with a person is really interesting. Just to say, hey, you know, I'm somebody who believes in the supernatural. You don't have to say you're Christian even at that point, but just, I’m somebody who believes this, and I'm just curious what you believe. You know, do you think there's more out there? It's amazing how many people love to talk about this, and they never get to, because the party fouls, right, are talking about religion or politics. And people really want to talk about these things. And so, starting from that idea that they may not have really strong opinions, but they believe it exists, find out what they believe. The spiritually curious also are really open to experiences and experiments related to the spiritual. And so, I found that when I had a small group of teenagers meeting in my home, when we would do, like, a Bible study, they wouldn't really invite their friends. But when we said, hey, we want to explore different ways to pray and talk to God, they all brought their friends. And I'm like, this is actually more spiritually risky than a Bible study. But their friends were actually more interested in participating in something like that. The spiritually curious are less inclined to be open to institutional religious experiences. So we have to be mindful that having a conversation in a home, and over at a restaurant, and in an airplane—they're probably more interested there to talk about these things than they are inside of a church and that type of formal setting. 

Scott: So Mark, would this be the person who would call themselves spiritual but not religious? 

Mark: Yes, a lot of people that are spiritually curious would say that they're spiritual but not religious. Now, there's another flavor of spiritually curious people that we call curious skeptics. And I think when I watch Sean do a lot of his interactions with people, he's engaging a lot of people like this that are skeptical. They haven't landed the plane, but they're skeptical, and they made up a really large chunk of these spiritually curious. That was one of the surprising findings, actually, is that the spiritually curious were not necessarily monolithic. There were these two supercategories we found. In the midst of them, one was the skeptic, this, like, curious, not dogmatic, but skeptical. And the spiritually curious that are like, no, I believe there's more. I just don't know what it is. And so, I'll go all into these different practices, follow a lot of different threads to find out more. So it's kind of interesting the way those two groups engage. But they're both high curiosity, have a high sense that there is a supernatural world. 

Sean: You described the spiritually curious as those who want to talk about faith issues. My experience is, the vast majority of people want to talk about, say, politics or faith issues if it's in the right way and at the right time. Now, for this group, there's a couple of times in your book where you say, what they don't just need is an apologetic. But what you don't say is we don't need apologetics anymore. This is a group that's curious. We need to, quote, talk with them and engage them in a different fashion because of where they're at spiritually. So let me ask you the question that you ask in your book, which is this. Does the church know how to engage spiritually curious people? 

Mark: Yeah. Well, if you think that the book, like, you know, for your job security, Sean…

Sean: [laughs]

Mark: You're safe. The world's still going to need some apologetics. But does the church know how to engage spiritually curious people? I hate to paint the church in broad brushstrokes. 

Sean: That’s fair.

Mark: But I would say in general—and the research shows this—when we measured the curiosity of practicing Christians, it was significantly lower than those that are spiritually curious. And that is one of the big themes of the book is, are we creating a spiritual experience that engages people that are curious? Or are we creating a spiritual experience that is actually repellent to curiosity? So, like, one of the scales that we used was a need-for-closure scale. And we found that Christians, practicing Christians, have a higher need for closure, which means that they're seeking information. It is to land a plane. It is to find certainty because they have a lower tolerance for ambiguity. Spiritually curious people have a higher tolerance for ambiguity, and aren't necessarily seeking information to land in a place of certainty, but maybe openness and wonder. And so you can see how the church might design content and experience that's around certitude, especially in the complex times that we're living in, right? As we go into this exileship into digital Babylon, there's more uncertainty. And that's, kind of, what I sense happening in the United States, is the church has lost some of its footing, its foundation. And it probably did a long time ago and is just realizing it now. And there's kind of a disorientation that comes with that. And so what we're doing is, now we're trying to dial in, to land a plane to certainty, when the curious people want to expand that. So they see the church as maybe not a real exciting place to go, if that makes sense. 

Scott: So, Mark, this helps, I think, transition to one of the things I wanted to get at in particular. You give a lot of helpful ways to engage spiritually curious people. We'll get to some of those in just a minute. But what would you say are some of the things that we ought not to do to engage the spiritually curious? 

Mark: Yeah, one of the things I think we have to be really careful about when we engage people about spiritual things is not to go in with an agenda. And it's really hard as evangelicals, right, because we want everybody to know Jesus Christ. We want them all to experience the joy of salvation. And so, we're like a walking agenda. And this is very hard, to step back and just trust, hey, the Holy Spirit's at work here, trust the word of God is powerful. I don't need to try to land the plane. I can allow, maybe, some space for wonder, doubt, some mystery, to play itself out. And so the first step is, you know, the curious really don't want people to have an agenda. They want to have a real conversation. So there needs to be relational integrity in that. And the other thing is that they don't want to feel like they're being forced to draw a conclusion. And that is really hard for us, because we feel a personal responsibility to others to share with them the good news, the gospel. And so, being OK with that…what I've learned to do is to trust that God is at work and not necessarily feel like it's all up to me, but to realize, hey, with the spiritually curious, it might take a few more steps than it did in the past for people to come to a decision. And that's OK. 

Sean: Obviously, there's times where we want to just have the agenda of sharing Jesus with somebody and confronting them in their sin. So when, you're saying, it comes to spiritually curious, we want to come in without an agenda. So how do you know when somebody fits into this category, is spiritually curious, so you can approach them in the way that you're suggesting? 

Mark: Well, the odds are, most people that you connect with are going to be spiritually curious. We're talking one in ten that are not, right? And so, we’re talking, the majority of people are going to have some level of curiosity about spiritual things. And I especially find this to be even truer the younger a person is. So the question is to just find out what they believe about the world and to sit there without judgment. I think that's the hard part, when they're telling you about tarot cards, or what they believe about God being a spirit in all things or whatever. As Christians, we just want to go back and give them the truth because we just hate to see them, you know, drowning in a bog of falsehood. But we have to kind of allow that and then really go, how did you come to that conclusion? Just keep asking questions and be really curious about how they arrived at those decisions and conclusions. And at some point, you get to a place where you feel the Lord give you this opportunity, right? Where it makes sense. But a lot of times, I found that if I listen to other people, they reciprocate and say, tell me about your experience. And rather than just sharing maybe, you know, in a very structured way, truth, I try to make it personal about my own life and what I experienced in my journey. And that connects much more deeply. And I found that a lot of people want to know more. 

Scott: Mark, let me go back to a statement you made a minute or so ago about practicing Christians scoring lower on the curiosity scale because of a high need for closure and for certainty. Explain a little bit more about why that's the case, especially because we worship a God who is sovereign and providential, and who encourages us to walk by faith and not by sight. You know, the Scripture is full of admonitions to help us deal with our high need for closure. Help me understand why the practicing Christian scores significantly lower on the curiosity scale, because the Scriptures talk about the awe and wonder of knowing God. And yet, you know, this high need for closure honestly sounds a little bit pharisaical to me. 

Mark: And I think that's what tends to happen in these times of uncertainty. I made a really interesting statement yesterday to somebody. I said, I've lived long enough to see people come to faith and develop a way of being a Christian that is incapable of reaching the lost version of themselves. Does that make sense? 

[laughter]

Scott: Yes, it does. 

Mark: And it's like they forget what it was like to be in that state and to find Christ. And I think that when the culture…our culture is changing so fast. I think that's why Islam is attractive to a lot of people, because it's a closed system. And there are certain theological systems within Christianity that are kind of closed sets, so to speak, that don't welcome mystery and wonder and experience in some of the same ways. And so those things kind of get shut out. And I think that the evangelical mind in particular, we are so focused on truth—and we should be—sometimes we forget the experiential element of that truth and how important that relationship aspect is as well. And I think what we have, perhaps—and the research doesn't completely give me a lot of pointers to this, so I'm speculating—but I do think that we have a discipleship crisis. I think the pandemic exposed this, that people…the roots [of their faith] were fairly shallow in terms of their relationship with God. And so we're kind of, I think, in a moment of having to say, "Hey, are we really developing and forming people that really have a relationship with God?" Because when the belief system cracks and falls apart, then that's the only thing that holds it together and ties it down, is that aspect, if that makes sense.

Scott: I love the way you put that question, "Would you be able to reach the unsaved version of yourself?"

Sean: That's thoughtful. 

Scott: About coming to faith. Because a study I read not long ago indicated that the average person, after they come to faith, within two years is fully divested of any meaningful relationships with non-believers. 

Mark: Yeah. And I think that's what compelled me to write this book. I dedicated it to my children and their friends, because my kids are artists and they have lived lives that have been kind of outside of the church experience. And yet my kids are very much, like, inviting me into their world with their friends. And so many of them were just really fascinated with, like, "I don't know anything about God. And I don't know anything about Christians.” And yet, they had a lot already that they were thinking about. They just didn't know Him or know specifically about Christianity. And that was what made me go, "Boy, are we spending enough time?" And the pandemic kind of did that for me. I started spending more time with my neighbors and talking to them about spiritual things, and going, "Wow, I think that spending a little less time at church might actually be good for us if we're going to make a difference in the world." Because some of those evangelism techniques that we talk about, where we go out intentionally to share our faith—and there's nothing wrong with these things. They obviously have borne fruit. But there is only so much relational capacity that we can have with people to really help form them into disciples. And so, what we need—and Jesus said this when He was talking about the, look out in the harvest. And the field is ripe for the harvest, but the laborers are few. If you pray to the Lord of the harvest, He’ll send more laborers into the field. We all have only so much relational capacity in our lives. And to really do the work that this takes to reach people in a world like we live in today, it takes time. And we need more people doing that and really investing in others. 

Scott: I can appreciate where you're coming from on that. All three of my kids are artists too. And their spiritual journeys are kind of all over the map. And I think some of the people that they've brought into our lives have been these, just, incredibly fascinating people that I think fit that spiritually curious category. I just didn't have a label for it. This has been really helpful, I think, to help me, sort of, wrap my arms around a lot of the people that our kids have been bringing into our lives now for a long time. 

Sean: Mark, we first met…I think you did a chapel at Biola when I was a sophomore or junior, so probably '95 or '96. And we've been friends, writing projects, speaking together, for a long time. And this book really captures so much of how you and I, commonly, want to engage nonbelievers. There's one story in your book I want you to clarify for me, because you responded to a spiritually skeptical friend in a way that gave me pause. I'm like, I don't know if I agree with that. So I wanted you to flesh it out for me. So, this is about a spiritually skeptical friend who struggled with the miraculous. And he says to you, you know, I wonder if supernatural stories in the Bible might have natural explanations. Like, feeding the 5,000, you know, maybe the apostles brought lunch or something like that that was enough. Now your suggestion was to read a Bible commentary by a Bible scholar who rejects the miracles of Jesus because, quote, "It wasn't the miracle that truly mattered as much as what changed in people's hearts." Now, you want your skeptical friends to begin trusting that Jesus can change lives today, but some might critique and say, you're encouraging a moralistic reading of the Bible and/or giving him permission to embrace a liberal view of Jesus void of the heart of his message of salvation and the supernatural. How would you respond to that, and tell me your thinking of what went into that kind of engagement? 

Mark: Yeah. Somehow, Sean, I had a feeling you were going to bring this up. 

Sean: [laughs]

Mark: It's been a point of contention for several people.

Sean: Really?

Mark: Like, some that endorse the book would even say, like, it was a little hard for me to endorse because of this story. 

Sean: Wow. 

Mark: And so, you know, this particular Bible commentator was somebody who, when I was a kid, this series of books was in our library. And I read these books, and it helped me understand who God was. And then when I went to Biola and got more of a formal theological training, I found out that this theologian, this commentator, didn't believe in the miraculous, didn't believe in the virgin birth. And I was shocked, because he had opened my eyes to so many things about who Jesus was in his teaching. And, you know, I think that's where I maybe have a little bit of a generous orthodoxy around some of these things. But I think this person held a lot of tensions in their mind. Anyway, I kind of stopped reading any of this stuff, but I went back and looked at it because I actually didn't believe that could possibly be true that I missed this, that he didn't believe in miracles. And when I was talking to this young man and he was saying, you know, I just have a hard time with the miracles. And what I didn't say in the book was, I didn't suggest that you read this commentator. What I said was, hey, there was a commentator who didn't believe in the miracles, that Jesus had miracles. He read them this way. And basically, all I was trying to do was continue to have him read the Bible, because I believe in the power of God's Word, that it truly is a living and active book, that it will help someone come to faith. And I have friends that have been in alternative lifestyles that found Christ through a liberal kind of onboarding. And then as they started really studying the Bible for themselves, realized, whoa, I don't think what I'm doing is what the Lord intended. And so I just realized, if I can get this guy reading the Bible more and helping him think about, maybe, these miraculous things in a different way of what might have been happening, I'm at least getting him to read the Bible. And sure enough, we've continued this conversation since the book was written, and he's been reading the Bible, I mean, like, devouring it. And he's a very intelligent person. And I think what I did was, I gave him a way to read that has helped him to fall more in love with the Bible and the Scriptures and really exploring the person of Jesus. And I'm hopeful that he'll come to faith in Christ. 

Sean: Would you do it again if you wound back to that moment with him? 

Mark: Yeah, because I think what I was doing was…I've never been afraid of sharing with teenagers, like, multiple ways of understanding a passage, even if I don't agree with some of those ways. One, because it's authentic and it gives them some confidence that I can be trusted. And, like, the first thing this person did after we had lunch, he ordered these books on Amazon. At the end of the day they'd arrived, including a New Testament, and he took a picture of them and sent them to me because he wanted me to know, I'm actually following through with this. But like I said, I would never say, hey, you should read these sources. And that's not what I encouraged him to do. I just said, you know, I learned about this scholar who studied the Bible his whole life, and he didn't believe that the miracles were real either. And here's how he would have read one of them. And that was kind of the situation. And it just kind of made him go, huh, maybe I need to read with a different lens. And he and I continue to talk about it. He knows. And I told him, I believe that Jesus did miracles. I believe that he was the son of God. I believe in the virgin birth. You know, so I haven't presented a false theology. I just was helping him understand different ways to look at things. 

Sean: Sure. And, for the record, this is a relationship with him. You're not saying, here's a commentary that everybody should suggest nonbelievers read. 

Mark: Right. In fact, I didn't even give him the commentary. I just told him the story of the commentary. 

Sean: Yeah. And, for the second record, I did endorse your book nonetheless, even if I had slight misgivings on that example. 

[laughter]

Sean: Let me ask you a last one. I'm with you. Like, when I taught high school full time—this is actually the first fall that I'm not teaching high school alongside Biola—I would do the same with my students. I would probe them more to think than tell them what to think. I wanted to develop a level of curiosity within them. But some of the criticism to that…and we also, would, like, take students on trips to engage atheists and Mormons and bring them in to speak. And some people would say, well, that's kind of dangerous to give them that platform. The same applies to your approach here. Potentially, the criticism could be that curiosity can lead people down hazardous paths by encouraging them to cross moral boundaries or question God. So can curiosity steer people away from God? And what might we do to kind of mitigate some of that potential downfall? 

Mark: That's a really good point. And obviously, think about all the stories and children's tales and sayings like, curiosity killed the cat. 

Sean: [laughs]

Mark: I mean, this stuff, you know, Pandora's box, right? There's so many things in our culture that tell us to be careful of curiosity. And, in fact, when I was working on the book, I go, yeah, I wonder where we got our ideas about curiosity. I wonder if any of the early theologians thought or wrote much about this. And so I started doing research. Boy, there's all this stuff written on the history of curiosity in the church. And I list some of these sources in the book and also found out, you know, for Augustine, his kind of dark triad, so to speak…curiosity was one of the things that he warned the church of, as a dark side of our humanity. At the same time, he was also one of the most curious people. So, there are dangers to it and we have to be careful of it. But one of the things is, I think we are so afraid of crossing some line that we don't find ourselves in the same places that Jesus did. And, you know, my daughter, when she moved to New York from Dallas, Texas, I thought, oh, she's leaving the Bible Belt. She's going to New York City. Is this going to be the end of her faith? And it actually strengthened it, because she actually saw the light of Christ in her, and others recognized it. And it was surprising to her. And she saw the fact that Christ actually is a powerful part of the way that we live. And so, there's a little saying I have that I got from a senior in Rift Valley Academy in Kenya. He said, “It's hard to be a candle in a well lit room.” And I think that we need to not be so afraid of curiosity that we don't put ourselves in positions where we can be around the curious. But I think there are reasons to be careful and to be cautious. 

Sean: Mark, it's always good to have you on. I could not recommend your book, Faith for the Curious, more highly. It's research based. You know, David Kinnaman, obviously, at Barna, he's on our board here at Biola, he helped with a lot of the research behind it. But it's practical, it's story based, and it's a pretty quick read. So I hope everybody who listens to the Think Biblically podcast will pick up a copy of Faith for the Curious by our guest today, Mark Matlock. Thanks for coming on. We'll have you back on soon to talk about the remarkable work you're doing at Urbana and what you're learning about missions worldwide. So let's do that soon. 

Mark: Would love to. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. 

Sean: 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 where both Scott and I teach. We have programs online and in person, undergrad degrees and master’s in issues like apologetics and theology, Old Testament, spiritual formation, and marriage and family. All the information is online. We would love to hear from you with your comments or questions that Scott and I tackle every Friday in our weekly Cultural Update. You can reach us through thinkbiblically@biola.edu. Please consider giving us a rating on your podcast app. Every single one helps, and share this with a friend who you also want to help become more capable of reaching, say, the spiritually curious. We will see you Friday for our weekly Cultural Update. And in the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything.