Mindset with Mike Schutt

Sports and games are a prominent feature of our world. From family games in the living room and youth recreational leagues, to college athletics, professional sports, and the Olympics, we are surrounded by—and captivated by—sport and play. 
 
In this episode of Mindset, Mike Schutt and his guest explore the fascinating concept of sports. Why does sport captivate so many of us, and how can Christians navigate that draw? Join Mike and Dell Cook—educator, coach, and Worldview Academy faculty member—as they discuss cultivating a faithful mindset about sports and play.

Some say that Christians are “anti-science.” Sillier yet, some claim that our faith requires us to believe things that have been proven untrue or impossible. As ridiculous as these claims are, the relationship between faith and science sometimes seems more complicated than it really is. And sometimes that’s our fault.

Apologist Roy Swart, an engineer who has worked in various scientific fields his entire career, says that Christians often misunderstand what “science” really is and are therefore intimidated in their efforts to share the gospel. Listen in as host Mike Schutt has Roy unpack this idea with an eye toward adjusting our mindset to strengthen our confidence in the gospel of Christ.

How can we chase after wisdom in today’s world? 
 
The answer may be more complicated than you think, given the built-in barriers we face today. For starters, we live in a world that prizes youth, and extended adolescence seems to be the rule for this generation. Why is that, and what how can we have a mindset that leads to change—and ultimately, to wisdom? 
 
On this episode, Mike Schutt and his guest Myron Steeves explore the complex causes and potential solutions to the decline of concern for virtue in our world. 

On this episode, Mike Schutt discusses the writings of Augustine with Professor Zach Howard. What can this fourth century “doctor of the church” possibly have to say to ordinary Christians today? Plenty, it turns out! From the role of imitation in Christian discipleship to discourses on proper and improper curiosity, the insights of Augustine have surprising power and relevance to contemporary believers. Listen in.

C.S. Lewis is the greatest modern Christian apologist, having given an answer for the hope within him across myriad genres, relationships, and cultural topics. His academic work, his fiction, his essays, his poetry, and his cultural insights have moved readers for nearly 100 years.

Mike Schutt’s guests on this episode testify to the role of reading Lewis in their own lives, and they explore the teaching, learning, and discipleship in the context of reading his essays with others. Dell Cook and Andrew Morton encountered Lewis, not for the first time, together during a summer reading group as they served students with Worldview Academy, and they draw on that experience as they seek to help us form the right mindset about learning and teaching.

This dialogue is from one of Worldview Academy’s monthly “Worldview Conversations,” edited for this format.

Worldview Academy co-founder and Provost at Worldview at the Abbey Jeff Baldwin joins the podcast to discuss how reading good books is a key tool for taking every thought captive to obedience to Christ.

Join the conversation with Jeff and Mike as they explore why reading makes you smarter—and why they believe that reading well is a crucial Christian discipline as well as a source of delight.

Public discourse about “justice” over the past decade or two has been anything but coherent. Focused on politics, lacking nuance, and devoid of any philosophical foundation, our conversations have led nowhere. Happily, a new addition to the conversation has arrived in the form of Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal, by Matthew Martens, a DC attorney and former prosecutor. Martens sees the need for a deeper discourse on criminal justice in America, and his book brings years of experience inside the system to the discussion.

In this episode of Mindset, Martens and host Mike Schutt unpack some of the themes of the book as they explore this complex and often divisive subject.

If monsters are monstrous, why do so many of us love them in our movies and fiction? It does seem as if most of us are drawn to monsters in some basic way. One need not love horror movies to recognize the draw of a good dragon, orc, or troll.

Surely, J.R.R. Tolkien was onto something when he suggested that monsters are central to the human story of struggle and glory. Join Mike Schutt and philosopher JAMES McGLOTHLIN as they muse on the meaning of monsters in art and the Christian imagination.

“Good literature may tell us the mind of one man,” G. K. Chesterton wrote, “but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”

In this episode, Mike Schutt talks to his guest J. MARK BERTRAND about why the bad stories are often best for Christians taking the temperature of contemporary culture.

The dilemma of suffering can be a real barrier to faith in an all-good, all-powerful God. It challenges our own faith— can we really trust a God who allows the death of parents and the suffering of children?— as well as our neighbor’s. Whether our concern is apologetics or our own struggles with doubt, it is helpful to consider suffering in the light of day, to try to come to grips with our questions and our neighbors’ objections. In this episode, Pastor Chad Warren brings both his expertise in apologetics and his own experiences with suffering to the conversation with Mike Schutt, as they consider how to think well about suffering.