Mindset with Mike Schutt

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.

Reality TV is here to stay. Once dismissed by many as a passing fad, it has became a true institution. How are Christians to think of this fascinating, insightful, and degrading phenomenon? Mike Tiland, Worldview Academy Faculty member and Director of Camps, sees Reality Television as an often-helpful window into the secular culture. He joins host Mike Schutt in this episode to try to sort out the mess.

Despots have manipulated the masses since the dawn of time, but in the last hundred years they discovered a powerful new tool: the manipulation of language. The world prophesied by George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World has become all too real.

If you’re going to think for yourself, first you’ll need to untwist the language of our contemporary debates. In this episode, Mike Schutt talks to his guest JAY WINSLOW about how to take back the language that defines our reality.

These days, many Christians’’ knowledge of Church history can be summarized: “Jesus, then Luther, then Billy Graham, and now me!”

Most of us have little familiarity with the history of Christ’s Church in the world. Considering that the Church, the Body of Christ, is the banner of truth for the world, we should seek to do better. Church history is our family history, and in order to understand who we are, we need to understand our victories, our failures, and our ancestors in the faith.

Worldview Academy’s Andy Frye joins Mike Schutt to discuss how we can seek the right mindset about Church history. Andy is a historian and history teacher and an engaging speaker who has addressed groups all over the country on history and its centrality to the life of the thinking Christian.

Since the invention of the printing press, journalists have been adept at both speaking truth and spinning propaganda. From either end of this spectrum, however, professional journalists have historically seen themselves as key players in limiting government power and safeguarding public liberty.

On this episode of Mindset, host Mike Schutt wonders if this is still true—it it ever was. His guest is David Nammo of the Christian Legal Society, and together they explore the past and future of journalism.