No.1 Christianity Expert, Wesley Huff: Here Is The Proof That Christianity Is True! | The Diary Of A CEO Transcript

Wesley Huff makes the historical and philosophical case for Christianity with Steven Bartlett

Steven Bartlett interviews Wesley Huff, a PhD candidate and Christian apologist, on the historical reliability of the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus, the problem of evil, and the crisis of meaning in modern society.

Summary

Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO, interviews Wesley Huff, Director of Central Canada at Apologetics Canada and a scholar of ancient biblical manuscripts. Huff argues that the historical evidence for Jesus — including early eyewitness source material, the four gospel accounts, and the circumstances of the disciples after the crucifixion — provides a compelling case for the resurrection that goes beyond faith alone. He contends that the decline of organised religion, the rise of expressive individualism, and the influence of new atheism have converged to produce a widespread crisis of meaning, particularly among young men, and that Christianity offers not merely comfort but what he calls the antidote. Bartlett pushes back with pointed questions about hell, the geography of belief, the problem of evil, the gap between Jesus's life and the written gospels, and whether religious transformation is evidence of Christianity specifically or simply of human beings needing meaning in any form. Huff responds with arguments drawn from historiography, philosophy, and his own experience of paralysis and recovery at age eleven, which he describes as medically inexplicable.

Key Takeaways

FULL TRANSCRIPT

The surge in Christianity and the decline of new atheism

Steven Bartlett: Wesley, I have this fascinating graph in front of me and it shows several things that I find to be really interesting. One of them is that as of 2024, the decline of religion has started to level off and actually increase a little bit. And now 63% of US adults identify as Christian, which is roughly 160 million people. In 2025, Bible sales hit a 21-year high in the United States with 19 million units sold. Weekly Bible reading amongst US adults has increased to 42%, which is up 12% since 2024. And in 2024, Christian and gospel music streams in the US increased by roughly 20% according to the Washington Times. Wesley, what is going on in society? If we zoom out.

Wesley Huff: I think we're in a unique bubble where we found ourselves in a time frame where we're connected more than ever. We've kind of come out of a period of time where new atheism was very, very popular. You had Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and they made a big impact in the early 2000s.

Steven Bartlett: I think we should probably just give some color to what new atheism is. I've actually got a graph here which I'll throw up on the screen, which shows the rise and then the fall of new atheism. I was pulled in by new atheism. And that meant that I — and I should probably preface my beliefs because people are going to want to know what my bias is when I'm asking questions. I grew up in a very Christian household up until the age of 18. I then became agnostic/atheist when I started consuming a lot of this stuff from Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and all of these people. And then I find myself at a point now where I'm just open-minded and curious. I have lots of questions.

Wesley Huff: You had these individuals who were writing these very influential works. But I sometimes wonder whether the new atheism movement worked a lot more effectively in print than it did in actual real life. In terms of the practicality of the application of the things that were being talked about, especially in regards to meaning — if you apply ideas like you being a product of time plus matter plus chance, what does that actually give you in terms of the ultimate identity questions? I think that's true in a lot of circumstances where you have these seeds that are planted and they grow and they produce trees that produce fruit that are kind of hard to digest in their actual application.

Along with that, we have a world that's very complex. We're more connected than we've ever been. I don't know if we were ever truly meant to know as much information as we do, especially about things that are going on around the world that are hard to comprehend. And so I think that all adds up to people asking questions about: I'm here, I'm right now trying to figure out what's going on — how do I actually find out the answers to a lot of these questions that go beyond the here and now? This is what individuals like James K. Smith called the dynamics of disenchantment, where people are struggling with these transcendent questions, metaphysical questions that go beyond just the here and the now in the world. Why is the three pounds of gray matter in my brain able to comprehend the complexities of the universe?

I think it's kind of moving on in a world that just is probably more messy than it's ever been. A lot of countries — the UK, Europe, Canada, America — all of these western countries were founded on these Judeo-Christian ethics and foundations that come from the Old and the New Testaments, what we call the Bible. And a lot of people attempted to divorce the religious aspect from the societies. The Bible wasn't part of the household any longer. And I talked to a lot of young people who look at that and say, almost like a rebellion against their parents, they're now interested in it. Their parents rebelled by disassociating from religion. And now I wonder if there's part of a rebellion in looking back and trying to reclaim some of that.

I think in part this younger generation — Gen Z's and to some extent also millennials — have been told to live more individualistic lives and that's really been glamorized. Be your own boss. Now we work remotely. Stand on your own two feet. We're even seeing people getting into relationships later and later in their lives and having fewer children. So people are more unanchored than they've ever been. And it appears that when we are unanchored, when we don't have responsibilities or we're not part of something, mental health issues are quick to follow.

Steven Bartlett: And for this generation, they're suffering the most with those types of mental health issues. And then one would assert that they would therefore be searching more for answers to some of these existential questions.

Wesley Huff: Expressive individualism rose — that's the terminology in the sociological literature they refer to it by. But I think you touched on a good point in that as we've removed God, part of the intellectual enlightenment was that we would move away from the shackles of religiosity and the concept of a creator, and that would lead us into a utopia. And I think the more and more we've removed that from society, that hasn't decreased our levels of anxiety and depression and sense of meaning. I think it's increased it.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah. And especially celebrity worship, social media, building a following of your own — a sort of low-key narcissism. Has made us more and more important. And that seems to correlate with worse and worse mental health when you start to become more individualistic and think more and more about yourself versus others and a bigger picture.

Wesley Huff: I think we were created for community. I think we are, as human beings, a creature created for community. Cards on the table as a Christian, because I believe we are created in the image of a God who exists in a set of living loving relationships — that's what the Trinity is when we talk about that idea within Christian theology. God exists in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so being created in the image of God, part of that is you are created for relationship. In a society that's continually removing us — you need to be an influencer, you're influencing everybody else — I think we're not created to be lone wolves or lone rangers. We're created to live amongst community and have that be something that likewise gives us fulfillment. We are sitting behind computer screens, talking to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in some cases, but we're secluded. I think that does something to our souls, because we were made to be in relationship with other people.

The crisis of meaning and the limits of atheism

Steven Bartlett: I agree with everything you've said as it relates to the sort of crisis of meaning in society and I also agree with many of your reasons as to why that's occurred. The part that I've always struggled with is then the answer being Christianity or any other religion. I agree with so many of the things you've said, but then my brain has — I think especially after the age of 18 when I started reading about all this new atheist stuff and these questions of evil and am I going to hell and all these other things — I've not been able to get there. But I'm having this conversation with you today because I am open-minded and although I've got difficult questions to ask, I'm in pursuit of the truth, not any particular ideology or answer. So how do you take someone like me who agrees that there's clearly something missing, who believes that there's something transcendent — it'd be a crazy thing to assume that this is it — how do you take them from this position to believing that what's written in this book in front of me, the Bible, is the thing that should guide my life? Because I say again: I require a really high standard of evidence because of the way that I am.

Wesley Huff: I think there's a historical case for it, which I'm very much invested in because my training is in historiography. I study ancient biblical manuscripts and their reliability and fidelity over the last couple of millennia. So looking at some of those manuscripts that actually trace back to the actual time frame of Jesus and answering questions like: is what we have now what the original authors wrote back then? I think there's a historical question to it. And in my own personal investigation, I genuinely think that the publicly available evidence gets us back to not only the time frame of Jesus, but to early eyewitness testimony that proclaims that this first century Jewish itinerant rabbi — who was walking the dusty streets of first century Judea — made these claims, and then there is sufficient evidence to say that he predicted his own death and resurrection and did it.

How do we know Jesus and the Bible are historically reliable?

Steven Bartlett: How do I know Jesus Christ was real? And then how do I know what's written in that book is real versus just some guys thousands of years ago making it up?

Wesley Huff: So that is a question of historical reliability. There are a couple of different ways we could go about it. First, we have four biographical accounts of Jesus's life, which is very unusual. We call them the Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those aren't actually our earliest source material for the life of Jesus. That comes in the person of Paul. Paul is actually writing before the gospel accounts and he is someone who was hostile originally to the Christian message — he's persecuting Christians. He comes along and has this radical conversion experience when he's traveling to Damascus, where he says he's literally thrown off a horse. He hears God's voice and it's Jesus, saying, "Paul, why are you persecuting me?" And then he writes these things about his experience and ultimately goes and connects with the individuals we call the disciples, this close Jesus community.

So Paul is our earliest source, but then you have these gospel accounts — these biographies. The gospels are interesting because they fit within the historical framework of ancient Greco-Roman biography. The most well-known person in Jesus's day was the emperor. His name is Tiberius. Tiberius has four biographical accounts written about him — Velleius Paterculus, Cassius Dio, Suetonius, and Tacitus. And what's interesting in a comparative analysis of Jesus and those people is that they're all writing around the same time period. All of the sources except for Velleius Paterculus are coming from the second century. Velleius Paterculus is coming from the first century, he's very close to the source, but he's a paid propagandist — so even though he's the earliest, he's the least reliable. For the gospels, that comes around to the first century. So there is a comparison with the source material for someone like Jesus, even though we really shouldn't have anything about him because he's kind of a nobody from nowhere in terms of the Roman Empire and the grand scheme of things. But we have a phenomenal amount of source information for his life.

Steven Bartlett: This is one of the things I discovered when I went through that new atheist phase — that really everybody kind of agrees that there was a guy called Jesus from Nazareth and that he was a real historical person. I guess the part in dispute was whether things like his resurrection actually happened, or whether he was just a spiritual leader back then like we have spiritual leaders today. And one of the things I got really stuck on when I was reading about Jesus and the Bible was there appears to be quite a significant gap between his life, his death, and then the writings that go into the Bible. And for me in my head, I was like: well, if something happened in my life 50 years ago — I'm only 33 — I would not be able to recount it. Frankly, I can't recount what happened last week accurately. Let alone decades ago. You've heard this argument before. How do you square the circle here?

Wesley Huff: There are a few things going on. First, we live in a hyper-literate culture. We are writing everything down. The ancient world was far less of a literate culture. They were an oral culture. These stories would have been passed in large groups at time frames. And especially if we're talking about the biographical material of Jesus, it is actually written in a closer time frame than the majority of anyone else.

Steven Bartlett: What was that gap?

Wesley Huff: It's about 40 to 60 years.

What is the Bible? Old Testament and New Testament explained

Steven Bartlett: I really want to explain to people who may have never read the Bible what this book is in the simplest terms. Can I open your Bible?

Wesley Huff: Yeah, of course.

Steven Bartlett: So is there like chapters in here?

Wesley Huff: The Bible, though we now have it in one book, is 66 books written over a period of about 1,600 years on three different continents by close to 40 different authors in three different languages.

Steven Bartlett: So I've just opened your Bible and there's one section that says the Old Testament. There's another section that says the New Testament. What am I looking at? Is this God's words? Is this a bunch of people's stories that have been compiled together? What is the Old Testament? What's the New Testament? What's the difference?

Wesley Huff: The Old Testament is the Hebrew scriptures — the scriptures of the Jewish people. It starts in what's referred to as the Torah, which are the first five books, or the five books of Moses. And then that goes in a time frame all the way up to the period of the Persians. The ancient Jewish people had these writings, and remember all of these books would have circulated as independent writings. We start to see things like this all put in one unit in the fourth century. Prior to that, everything's in independent scrolls.

Steven Bartlett: The first one in the Old Testament is Genesis. Who wrote Genesis? Was that a guy or was that God?

Wesley Huff: So the idea in Christianity is what's called verbal plenary inspiration. Verbal — it's spoken. Plenary — it's written down. And then inspired. So there are human authors to all these books.

Steven Bartlett: So humans wrote these chapters but they were inspired by God.

Wesley Huff: Yes. In the Bible itself, Peter says that men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So there's a historical context to all of these — the history of this period of time, of the nation of Israel as they were being led by particular rulers.

Steven Bartlett: And where does Jesus show up?

Wesley Huff: Jesus is the New Testament.

Steven Bartlett: If someone's never read the Old Testament, what is it about?

Wesley Huff: It's a bunch of different things — different genres of literature. Some of it is history, some of it is poetry, some of it is what's called wisdom literature.

Steven Bartlett: Who decided that these — it looks like there are about 40 books — were going to be part of the Old Testament? I'm sure there were lots of other writings at the time that could have been included.

Wesley Huff: There are 39 books in the Old Testament. By the time Jesus is around, there's approximately an agreement of what is considered scripture — by the Jews themselves. You have conversations by individuals like Josephus, who is writing at the end of the first century. Part of what he argues is that the Jewish people don't have an innumerable number of religious texts like the Greeks do. They have a specific number — and he uses this terminology that they were laid up in the temple. He gives the number of the same number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, 22. So you usually see this 22 or 23 number, but they group them differently.

He gives an argument that one of the reasons we can find a timeline for what the Jews consider scripture is that he says nothing is written before Moses, and nothing is written after the time of Artaxerxes, which is the Persian Empire. So the book of Esther in the Bible is that time period. Though there are writings after that, there's this agreement that the voice of God in the prophets — giving a "thus saith the Lord" statement — has ceased. But the Jewish canon, though there's a closing of it, a soft closing, there's an idea that there's going to be a new covenant. God is going to make new promises with his people and so there are going to be more writings.

Steven Bartlett: So my understanding of that is that the case is being made that God is no longer communicating with people to write these books.

Wesley Huff: At least that there was a stop point at Malachi. It's sometimes referred to as the 400 years of silence for that reason.

Steven Bartlett: From the point of Jesus's death — what book from the New Testament is written last and how big is that gap?

Wesley Huff: That's a debate. The question is whether John's gospel is written before 70 AD or after 70 AD, and if it's written after 70 AD, it's written in the 90s. So it's written pretty far afterwards. If Jesus dies in 33, that's about 60 years.

At minimum, I think like 99% of historians, biblical scholars, and classicists would argue that the 27 books of the New Testament are written in the first century. So in that sense, they're in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses to a certain degree.

And there's evidence even within some of the gospels where you have these names thrown out kind of randomly. Part of the thinking is that this is like citing your sources. At one point when Jesus is carrying the cross to Golgotha, he stumbles and they get another person to carry his cross for a little bit. And one of the gospels names that person's son by name. The thinking is that this is probably someone well known within the early Jesus community, and the purpose of naming that person randomly is to say — he's well known, go ask him.

Memory, oral tradition, and the Chinese whispers problem

Steven Bartlett: I mean, logically there's quite a risk of Chinese whispers to some degree. As you were speaking I was trying to think about things I experienced when I was younger — with my grandmother before she passed away — and I was trying to accurately recount those memories. I was thinking of going to her house. I remember one day she gave me some money but I can't remember what she gave it to me for and I can't remember how much. I know she put it in a card and this was only about 20 years ago. So if I were to write about that today, I would be filling in some gaps. And especially — this is the other thing I always struggled with — in a world where we didn't understand science. Now, my grandmother put money in a card and it was a surprise. But in a world where I didn't understand physics or science, I might have concluded that she did something magical, at a time when we didn't understand much about the nature of the universe and planets and physics. So is there a risk that some of the things that have been transmitted in this book are prone to Chinese whispers and a lack of understanding about the nature of the world — like the resurrection, for example?

Wesley Huff: This is referred to in my field as mythological drift. I think there are a couple of things to address. First, I would be careful in trying to ascribe the ancient world as being pre-scientific and therefore largely ignorant. Even when the angel comes to Mary in the gospel story and says, "You're going to be with child," Mary's objection to the angel is a scientific one: I haven't met the minimum requirements of how babies are made, therefore I can't be pregnant. So she's not just at face value accepting that this magic thing can happen. This is what the writer C. S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery — we need to be careful not to ascribe the ancient world as being more ignorant simply because we are a product of the Enlightenment.

The second thing is that the Chinese whispers or telephone game is a good case study, but I think where it falls short is that if you play the telephone game, there are rules in order to corrupt the message — you have to whisper, you can only say it once, you have to do it one person to one person. In an oral culture, you would have been hearing these stories constantly. When some of these stories are told, they're being told within a lifetime. And there are a lot of witnesses. The feeding of the 5,000 — that's a lot of people. So there's an aspect of there being people out there who could verify what was being said. Likewise, after Jesus's death, when the disciples proclaim his resurrection, they go back to Jerusalem — the scene of the crime — the exact place where Jesus was crucified — and start telling people he was risen from the dead. If there is some aspect of disingenuousness and making up a story, you don't go back to the place where everybody could have seen what happened.

So in one sense, Chinese whispers is a faulty analogy. It's less like one person whispering into another's ear and more like a hundred people in a room all verbally communicating the thing and then getting the other people to repeat it back to them and corroborating with the other individuals.

Now — do you remember 9/11?

Steven Bartlett: Yes, I do. I was in the UK at the time.

Wesley Huff: Could you tell me more vividly what you were doing on 9/11 compared to your grandmother and the letter?

Steven Bartlett: Yes. I remember coming home from school and watching it on the screen and my dad having it on and just looking at the screen.

Wesley Huff: Me too. Whereas I couldn't tell you much of what else happened during an average day in that year, I could tell you what happened on September 11th, 2001. And that's because of the nature of what was going on. And I think when we're talking about the gospel stories, you have what I genuinely believe are eyewitness accounts from a group who would have heard Jesus preaching these things multiple times in multiple different settings. I joke with my wife that she could give my talk on the historical reliability of the Bible herself. She's heard it so many times. I think that's the case going on with the disciples — they would have heard the Beatitudes probably more than once, because that's just the nature of itinerant speaking and traveling rabbis in the ancient world.

And then you have this event that is earthshattering in terms of their narrative of who they are. They've been traveling with this rabbi for three years straight, hearing his teaching, seeing miracles. And then he gets taken and he's murdered publicly. And they think it's over. They think: there are other messianic movements in the ancient world, and when those individuals die, their movement dies with them. So they think, "Okay, we're done." The story is they're hiding in this upper room, scared. In fact, it's the women who take on the responsibility of going and figuring things out — which in terms of the time period is actually an embarrassing fact, because of the cultural dynamics of what's going on.

So you have 11 scared disciples hiding in an upper room — one of them, Judas, having killed himself — thinking it's over, Peter, James, and John might as well just go back to being fishermen. And then they have the boldness to go out and proclaim this message, ultimately enduring persecution and hardship for the rest of their lives. What caused that shift? Their rabbi shows up alive again. At minimum, I think we can say this is a pretty drastic event that takes place in their life — a 9/11 event for them. The martyrdom stories are a little bit tricky in terms of their historical reliability. I think a few of them we can say did happen. A lot of them is up in the air. But at minimum, they suffered persecution.

The resurrection: evidence and the empty tomb

Steven Bartlett: So the story in the Bible is that he was killed on the cross and then put into a tomb. And then who saw him come out of the tomb?

Wesley Huff: Nobody physically sees him come out of the tomb. But the women go to the tomb in the morning on the third day and the tomb is empty. We have four accounts. And I think it's interesting that we have four accounts that kind of give different angles on the stories. It's not as if they got together and corroborated and all gave the same story. The fact is we have four accounts that capitalize on different aspects, and that differentiation in detail, I think, actually gives credibility to the reliability. Because if they were all telling the same thing, you could argue they colluded. They don't do that.

Steven Bartlett: Are these people saying that they saw him walk out? Are they saying they just saw it empty? What are the claims being made about his resurrection from these witnesses?

Wesley Huff: The tomb is empty. And in one of the accounts, Mary is at the tomb and she actually talks to Jesus, but she confuses him with a gardener. It's interesting that she doesn't confuse the gardener with Jesus — she confuses Jesus with the gardener. She doesn't recognize him at first. She asks him what happened, why the tomb is opened, where the body went. There's also an account of an angel appearing and saying, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He's not here. He's risen." And then they go back to the disciples who are hiding in this upper room. Mary says the tomb is empty and she's met Jesus. And some of them don't even believe her. They think she's crazy.

Now, we don't have an eyewitness account of the tomb being opened. And this is actually an embarrassing fact. Some of those other gospels written later — Gospel of Thomas, Judas, Mary, Peter — one of them, the Gospel of Peter, is actually trying to remedy this fact that women are the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb. The Gospel of Peter tries to remedy the situation by having all of the right people in the right place at the right time — having the Jewish and Roman officials camping out in front of the tomb when it actually happens, then recounting the stone moving, Jesus coming out, all of that. We know it's not historically reliable because of when it was written. We also know that on the eve of Passover, the priests would not be camping out in front of a dead body — it's historically anachronistic. But it is a literary source later on that is embarrassed by what we find in the canonical biographical accounts of the empty tomb.

Steven Bartlett: So is it just two women who said they met Jesus in some form after his death? Mary being one of them. Who's Mary?

Wesley Huff: This was Mary Magdalene — a close associate, like a friend. And there was a group of women. One of the gospels — I believe it's the Gospel of John — only mentions Mary, but it implies there are more because she says "we don't know where they put the body." So though that account only has her recounting it, it implies there are others, and then the other gospels have more women going to the tomb.

Steven Bartlett: As a percentage, what degree of certainty do you have that he was resurrected and that he was who he said he was? Because I agree with you that this character clearly existed. Jesus clearly existed. I personally believe that he was killed, probably on a cross. But then you get to this point of resurrection which requires believing in something supernatural. What's the probability you'd assign to it?

Wesley Huff: I think they're all likely, because I think what the gospel authors are doing is communicating truth. And I don't ultimately see an overabundance of reason why they would write what they wrote other than actually recounting a story of what took place.

Can we trust human accounts of supernatural events?

Steven Bartlett: I grew up in a place called Plymouth in the UK. In my local park there was this big poster on the wall about the White Lady — a big legend in our city. It's all just accounts of people that say they've seen her. You have things like the Loch Ness monster in Scotland, where there have been 1,500 sightings of this big monster in the river. And one of the things I've always struggled with when I think about humans saying they saw something is that we still today have sightings of UFOs and Loch Ness monsters and white ladies in parks that become legend. And even as a young man, I believe there was a woman that would stand on the landing of my home and it would wake me up and I would run and tell my parents. What I'm getting at is: how can we trust human accounts of these things when clearly humans have an ability to make things up that aren't real in some situations?

Wesley Huff: Part of the answer is that one of the evidences for Jesus's resurrection is the fact that you and I are still talking about it almost 2,000 years later. The difference is that there were other messianic movements that happened in the ancient world. Simon bar Giora — the reason why we're not talking about him as a messianic figure is because he died and his movement died with him. His disciples didn't go out and then proclaim his continued message to their own detriment.

I would say a few things. Liars make poor martyrs — you will die for something you believe is true, but the chances of you dying for something you know is not true are less likely. So if we're talking about the disciples, and what they're getting for this particular proclamation is being ostracized from their own communities — both pagan gentile communities and the Jewish communities, because continuing to say that Jesus was the Messiah, and on top of that that he was God himself, was not very popular.

You look at cult leaders — they usually do things for prominence or money or sex or influence. The interesting thing about the early disciples is they get none of that. In fact, they almost get the complete opposite. Jesus says, "You're going to be persecuted. You're going to be put in front of tribunals and you're going to be interrogated." And that's exactly what happens. We have in the book of Acts a recounting of the first martyr, Stephen.

Steven Bartlett: I think of someone like Martin Luther King or Gandhi as being leaders from history that appeared to be very selfless and actually realized they were going to die. I'll never forget the speech where Martin Luther King says, "I've been to the mountain top. You guys get there, but I don't get there with you." He's emotional, you see him crying. The video is very persuasive, by the way. And then he's shot thereafter. It feels like a man that knew he wasn't going to live much longer but was willing to put his cause ahead of his own mortality. And I guess Jesus was doing something similar.

In terms of the disciples though — if they know this isn't true, if there's been mythological drift, if things have been exaggerated — why then, especially experiencing that persecution and seeing their friends die, do they continue to go on and do it?

Wesley Huff: I think they definitely believed it was true. Whatever is going on, you look at some secular historians and they say: the disciples believe something happened, that they saw something. And I just think that the explanations and alternatives to that actually happening are insufficient in how they explain the data.

Steven Bartlett: Do you have any doubt?

Wesley Huff: Oh, of course.

Steven Bartlett: Okay. So you have at least even 1% doubt.

Wesley Huff: Oh, definitely. And I think especially when there are times of things that are far more existential than historical — times of struggle and pain and suffering — I look at the world and how messy it is. The children who die young, people who are abused, all of these things. There are moments where I think: how could there be a good God? I'm not immune to doubt. And the interesting thing I find about the Bible is that the God of the Bible is open to us coming to him with our doubts. One third of the book of Psalms — like Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me? I cry out by day and hear no answer." The Bible is transparent in saying: we're going to struggle.

There's this great story in a couple of the gospels where John the Baptist — Jesus's cousin and good friend — is in prison because he's been speaking out against Herod. Though he's the one that baptized Jesus and said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," when he's in prison he doubts and he sends his disciples over to Jesus to ask: "Are you the Messiah? Are you the one we're waiting for, or should we be waiting for another?" And in that interaction, Jesus actually says John the Baptist is the greatest of all men born of women — and yet in that very same setting, John the Baptist is doubting that Jesus is who he says he is, because he's experiencing pain and suffering.

The problem of evil and the moral argument for God

Steven Bartlett: On that point of seeing horrific things happening in the world and then having doubts — that was one of the persuasive arguments of the new atheist movement I became part of when I was about 18 years old. Richard Dawkins had said: if God is all-loving, then why would he let a two-year-old kid in Africa have their eyeball eaten out from the inside by a parasite? If I could intervene with that as a human, I would stop it. So if God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent — knows everything and is everywhere — then why wouldn't he intervene?

Wesley Huff: It's a good point. And I think if there is an objection that is truly impactful on Christianity in the atheist corner, it is the problem of evil — and always has been — because it's far more of an emotional and existential question than it is an intellectual question.

Part of the problem with it is that if we're talking about evil with a capital E, we're implying that there's a good with a capital G. And so I think we do run into an issue when saying that evil exists, because if we're implying that good exists, we're implying that there's a moral law to adhere to — to call the good good and the evil evil. And if there's a moral law, there has to be a moral lawgiver. That's where we come into issues with whether this is subjective or objective.

The atheist movement would argue that moral good is a virtue of what helps me to survive. So watching a small child suffer in such a way — if I didn't feel anything bad about that, I wouldn't have the wiring for survival, because I wouldn't have the proclivity to defend a suffering child. If I don't have that, I probably don't reproduce and I'm selected out of existence. So the pain I feel when I see a child suffering is a function of my evolutionary mechanics.

Steven Bartlett: Sure. So evolution therefore is the answer.

Wesley Huff: I think that might suffice in certain instances. However, it's still smuggling moral categories into a biological explanation. You read Richard Dawkins — River Out of Eden — and he has that section where he talks about not expecting to see any rhyme or reason, good or bad. He writes that DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is and we dance to its music. There's an aspect of Dawkins himself articulating that at the end of it all, you can't actually call that parasite in that boy's eye evil. You can say "I don't like it," but to import this moral category of evil is to import an idea. This is actually what Dawkins was criticized for by individuals like John Gray, the philosopher who taught at the London School of Economics. Gray says: you're a great biologist, but then you want to impart actual intrinsic value to people. If you're looking at a simple selfish DNA perspective, you can't actually ascribe that.

Steven Bartlett: I think I understand the point. It's essentially asserting: why does that child matter to me, because my DNA should just be trying to take care of itself. I guess in biology, from an evolutionary perspective — if we were raised in communities and tribes, we took care of all the children in our surroundings. I would take care of my brother's children and he would take care of mine. And again, that goes back to the point of survival.

Wesley Huff: You read Darwin's Origin of Species and there's an aspect where he says you shouldn't take care of those people because they're actually bringing the gene pool down. We see even in the eugenics movement pulling a lot from Darwin in order to validate the fact that in order to carry on your selfish DNA, taking care of the marginalized is not evolutionarily advantageous — because survival of the fittest implies the fittest should survive. It's actually a Judeo-Christian ethic — the understanding of everybody having equal value — that we should take care of people because they have intrinsic, not extrinsic, value. That allows us to import an idea of taking care of those not specifically related to me. In some cultures they have the ethic of "love thy neighbor" but in others it's "eat thy neighbor." The question is which society do you want to pick?

Steven Bartlett: And you're saying that came from Judeo-Christian values.

Wesley Huff: Yes. I would agree with that.

Steven Bartlett: I think I'm trying to understand if our sense of good and evil is innate in us from God, or whether 2,000 or 3,000 years of these books just influenced us culturally.

Wesley Huff: I think ultimately there's an aspect of our conscience that's imprinted on us — that we understand ethics to some degree or another — but the framework to actually find the objectivity of that ethic is found in the revelation of scripture.

I think you know there's an aspect of religiosity that is always going to be a net positive for society no matter what that religion is. At the exact same time, I don't think it's just the subjective point of view. If you look at basically every society prior to this, or even societies in the East, that's not a given. Especially in societies with understandings of karmic cycles — in Buddhism or Hinduism — the idea of altruism can actually be categorized as an evil, because in the cycle of samsara of birth, life, death, and rebirth, your lot in this life is due to your wrongdoing in the last life. So in helping someone who is suffering, you are actually inhibiting them from being reincarnated better on the other side. And if you look in the ancient world — the Babylonians, for example — they have this creation story called the Enuma Elish. It's this big battle of the gods and an origin story explaining why everything is here. But the conclusion is basically that you are a product of a big battle and a mistake. So meaning, value, purpose — not really. You're just the product of time plus matter plus chance, just framed within a religious perspective rather than a natural materialistic one.

Steven Bartlett: I think Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens says that the real defining trait of our species versus other species was our ability to collaborate and basically scratch each other's backs — and that meant we had evolutionary advantages because if we could work together in a big group, we could band together and take on the lion or the elephant. So you need to take care of me and I'll take care of you, and that reciprocal altruism increases our survival chances. So that might explain why I care about that kid.

Wesley Huff: I think it's largely our modern perspective living in a society where we're starting on second base already with our moral perspectives. We have inherited all of these moral categories because of our Judeo-Christian ethic. If you look in the ancient world, let's pick on the Babylonians — they would basically say, yeah, exactly. Whereas Dawkins frames it in a natural materialistic perspective. So where do we get the categories to even say that we should be taking care of people in communities outside of our specific community?

Evolution, intelligent design, and the origins question

Steven Bartlett: Do you believe in evolution?

Wesley Huff: I don't.

Steven Bartlett: You don't believe it's true?

Wesley Huff: No. I am open to the fact that I don't think a belief in evolution undermines Christianity in any way. However, I'm an advocate for intelligent design, and I would basically refer the complex conversations of evolutionary biology to individuals who are far more studied than me — like Stephen Meyer and Jonathan McLatchie and John Tour and Douglas Axe. At the exact same time, it also depends on what you mean by evolution. Genetic adaptation is a thing.

Steven Bartlett: So I'm saying: do you believe that we evolved from very simple organisms to become the human you see today?

Wesley Huff: No. But at the exact same time, there are individuals within the Christian faith, intelligent people who do, and have no problem with a theistic evolutionary model. However, I think in the effort of survival of the fittest, you're still starting a few miles down the road in answering the question of the arrival of the fittest. How do minds come from mindless matter? How does everything come from nothing? I think that's why you can use the evolutionary model as an explanation of how God actually created the biology of the situation. But the bigger question is the cosmological one. How did this all get going? The big bang — what was the big banger? How did that first ball get rolling? And why can you and I sit here and have the three pounds of gray matter in my head ruminate over these very complex questions?

Steven Bartlett: I think it was on the Galapagos Islands — the sailors went to an island, they left a bird there, they came back 50 years later, the bird's beak had grown to be very long because the prey on that island were in holes. So they needed longer beaks. It shows us that if you leave an animal in an environment, it will adapt — it will select out the short-beak birds for the long-beak birds. And if you extrapolate that over a long long period of time, almost an inconceivable amount of time — hundreds of millions of years — one can understand why me and a chimpanzee have 98% similarities in our DNA. So one would argue we have a common ancestor. It's very compelling evidence.

Wesley Huff: I mean, it's the transitions going from the chimpanzee-type thing — because we're obviously not arguing that we were chimpanzees; chimpanzees exist today. That hominid, whatever that hominid was — what is the transitionary fossil explanation going from the monkey to the human being? And I don't really think we have an answer for that in terms of consciousness questions. Why does our ability to reason and think and contemplate differ from all other species in the animal kingdom? And how do we go from single-celled organisms? I guess you could have a "time of the gaps" explanation — just add lots of millions of years and it solves the issue. I'm not completely satisfied with that, because obviously there's adaptation, but if you're looking at whether it's the dodo bird or Darwin's finches where the beaks are different, you're still getting beaked birds. We've never seen one species turn into a completely different species.

Steven Bartlett: The thing I fill the gap with is that it's just a matter of time. With the birds example, it's decades. But when we think about Earth being 4.5 billion years old, it's almost inconceivable what can happen over such a long period of time. If me and you went to different parts of planet Earth, lived in two completely different environments, and came back 5 billion years later with no medicine and no factors helping us survive — we'd have gone in two completely different directions and wouldn't be able to reproduce, which would kind of make us different species. We both agree on adaptation. Small adaptations. But if you expand the time horizon, those small adaptations become massive.

Wesley Huff: I mean, ultimately, adding millions of years as the explanation is a little bit too convenient. But I think at the end of the day, you're still looking at the complexity in nature that points to a design of something amazing. Dawkins is famous for saying that it has the illusion of design — there's not actually a design. But when Darwin was writing, they thought the smaller you got, the simpler it got. And now we know that the smaller you get, in fact, the more complex you get. Our understanding of science has grown exponentially even from Darwin's day. And there's an aspect of Darwinian evolution that has moved on into what we would now call neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. I still don't think it gets us back to: okay, then why do we have purpose?

The Betty the botanist parable: science versus meaning

Steven Bartlett: Where do you think we came from? Do you believe in the Adam and Eve story? Do you think there was some kind of evolution? And when do you think this happened?

Wesley Huff: I don't think the age of the earth is an answer the Bible is actually attempting to address. I don't see any reason not to accept it being billions of years old. I don't think the creation story in Genesis chapter 1 is necessarily an attempt to reveal the mechanisms of how God did that exactly.

Steven Bartlett: The sort of scientific consensus says it's roughly 4.5 billion years old, and microbes and single-celled organisms are estimated to have appeared 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, almost as soon as Earth was cool enough to have liquid water.

Wesley Huff: I'm fine with that. I don't think I have to adhere to neo-Darwinian evolution in order to actually believe that the world is old. I think I would adhere to an intelligent design thesis. I genuinely do believe that there was a historical Adam and Eve and that those were the first people. What did they look like? I don't know. They probably lived a long long time ago. And I don't know if the breakdown of Genesis chapter 1 and the seven days of creation are actually attempting to articulate seven 24-hour days. They could be. I just don't think that's the point.

Going back to trying to explain these things scientifically — I always find we can explore the answers scientifically, but that's only going to get us so far, especially when we're discussing meaning and purpose questions. Let me give you a little story that a friend of mine, Glenn Scriver, likes to articulate in a parable he calls Betty the botanist.

Betty the botanist has been looking at a plant sample in her lab all weekend, investigating it, doing all of these tests. Jerry, the lab assistant, comes in on Monday. Betty looks at Jerry and says, "Jerry, thank you for the botanical specimen you left me on the weekend. I've been doing all of these tests. I've been looking at the components and the complexity of the biology. There are pharmacological implications I've extrapolated from its various biological components that we can use to cure diseases. Thank you so much for the botanical specimen." And Jerry says, "Betty — it was February 14th on the weekend. That was a long-stem rose. Do you know what I left for you? Do you know what the implication of that botanical specimen was for what I was trying to communicate to you?"

Now, did Betty the botanist understand the long-stem rose? In one way, she understood it more than most, because she had done all of the tests. But what Jerry was trying to actually illustrate was something that went beyond that — a love gift. He was trying to communicate something that went beyond the simple biology. And Betty could very simply say, "Well, I couldn't get that from the data." And in that, as a parable: we can look at all of the scientific explanations, but there's something that goes beyond the simple data in terms of meaning and purpose and desire and identity questions. I could tell you the different chemical components that make up the page and the ink, the size of the paper. Or I could say: this is a Bible. This is meant to communicate something to you.

There's this great quote by C. S. Lewis where he says that men were scientific because they expected laws in nature, and so they looked for the legislator. You read individuals like Francis Bacon, who came up with the scientific method, and they're inherently religious — they almost articulate what they're doing in their scientific endeavor as an act of worship. The exploration of the creative world points to a creator.

Part of the reason why the new atheist movement was not sufficient is because it didn't fill some kind of gap. Much of that gap, I think, for a lot of people is: okay, so if I believe the atheist argument or I believe the Bible, I still need an answer to "so what?" Even in the example of evolution — yeah, but why am I evolving? Why am I trying to survive? A means to what end? Okay, I'm trying to have more kids, but why are my kids trying to have more kids? What's the point? You just keep hitting this wall of "what's the point?"

And I think that's why the Bible is such an amazing explanation for that. Because in a world that tells you ultimately that you're a product of time plus matter plus chance, the Bible looks at you, Steven, and says: you're created with meaning and purpose and intention. You bear the image of God. There's something that is actually screaming from your biology about who you are that goes beyond the fact that you're not just a physical specimen sitting in front of me. You have a mind. And that mind — we're not even sure if it's the same as the brain.

The resurrection hope, meaning, and the purpose of life

Steven Bartlett: What makes Steven Steven? You're not your body. I mean, there's this inherent conversation within Christianity about the fact that our hope is not a spiritual one. The end result is the resurrection, right?

Wesley Huff: The reason why Jesus rose from the dead is that scripture calls him the first fruit. So we're all going to be resurrected. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. That's the promise of Christianity.

Steven Bartlett: So the point of this life according to the Bible is that I get to go to this place called heaven.

Wesley Huff: No. It's a both-and. When Jesus's disciples ask him how to pray, he gives them the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." So it's not just about: I'm going to die and my spirit's going to go somewhere else and that's the whole goal. It's to bring heaven here as well. What we do matters. You're a human being. You're not a human doing. And so what you do here and who you are here has an implication to everything. So we're put here to be stewards of creation, of each other, to be examples of image-bearers of God. Your life has intrinsic meaning — more than just what you can contribute. Your value goes beyond your ability to give back to society or contribute to scientific or technological advancement. This is why we fight for people everywhere and why injustice bothers us so much.

Steven Bartlett: The chimpanzee has 98% the same DNA as me. Do they have the same intrinsic meaning? Even my dog — does my dog have that same intrinsic meaning? Is my dog going to go to heaven?

Wesley Huff: Scripture tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know. There have been individuals throughout church history who have articulated that animals do go to heaven. St. Francis of Assisi was big on animals going to heaven. C. S. Lewis was big on animals going to heaven. In fact, when he wrote the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia, there are animals in heaven. If there's a new Earth, I think there are going to be animals. I don't know if they're going to be the same animals that existed on this side. But I think there's something different, because I think you have a soul.

Steven Bartlett: And you think my dog doesn't have a soul?

Wesley Huff: I don't know. But I don't think he has the same kind of spiritual component that you are endowed with in the same way.

Steven Bartlett: How do we know? These chimpanzees are pretty smart. I was watching one touch a touchscreen the other day and solving problems. Is there not an element of human arrogance to think that these other creatures — the whales, they're so unbelievably smart, they work together in packs, they love, they have kids — don't have a soul?

Wesley Huff: I think that's a testimony to the general reflection of God's good creation. At the same time, we describe when you're just repeating something — we use the word "aping." We understand that if you train the monkey to push the button, it's going to push the button. But if you can train the elephant to paint the Mona Lisa, is it really going to understand what it's painted in the same way that Leonardo da Vinci understood it? There's something about the value and what is being put in there that is different.

Steven Bartlett: So do you believe that me and you are born with a particular mission and meaning on this planet, or do you think we have to go and find that meaning?

Wesley Huff: That's a great question. I think the chief end of man is to know God and glorify him. When Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment in the law, he quotes two passages from the Old Testament and says: "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." I think we always want some sort of grandiose purpose — we want the calling of Moses, we want to go out in the desert and find a burning bush and have that calling on our lives. I don't think that's wrong. But I think ultimately our purpose is to live a faithful life as image-bearers of God, being faithful in loving God with everything that we have.

Martin Luther, the German Protestant reformer, said: the faithful Christian shoemaker doesn't glorify God by sewing little crosses into the shoes, but by making really good quality shoes. There's an aspect of God has endowed us — we create as an outpouring of that which we are created to be. The proverb says, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all its might." You have the capability to do incredible things. And the reason why you have that capability is because you bear the image of a creator who lives in a set of living loving relationships. God didn't need to create you or me or anything. God is not better off or worse off if we love him or worship him or believe in him. He has existed in love, in relationship. And yet the story of the Bible is that God chooses to create out of an outpouring of his love, knowing even that we are going to rebel against him.

Heaven, hell, sin, and the gospel message

Steven Bartlett: And if I sin in my life — do I go to hell?

Wesley Huff: The answer to that is yes and no.

Steven Bartlett: Am I going to hell? Is Steven Bartlett going to hell?

Wesley Huff: This is the clip they're going to put online — "Wes says Steven Bartlett is going to hell." I mean, here's the thing: everybody is going to hell. Everybody. The Bible is very clear: all good people go to heaven. But Jesus said, "No one is good but God alone." So if all good people go to heaven and no one is good but God alone, only God is in heaven.

Steven Bartlett: Do you believe that there is a hell and a heaven as we sort of typically understand it? A place that is great to go to after we die and a place that is very hot.

Wesley Huff: I mean, there's a lot of imagery of fire and weeping and gnashing of teeth. I think a lot of that is reflective and allegorical more than it's a physical tangible thing. Most of our perceptions of hell are largely shaped by depictions in the Middle Ages — Dante's Inferno and that kind of thing. I think it's more so that you will experience the full weight of the separation from God's goodness. Heaven isn't full of good people. Heaven is full of people who understand they are not good enough. Justice is fulfilled on Jesus. So because justice is fulfilled, mercy — which is not getting what we do deserve — is able to be given to those who put their trust in Jesus.

Steven Bartlett: So if I don't believe in Jesus and the Bible, but I live a good life, I'm nice to people, charitable, try and be kind wherever I can be, and I don't believe in God — am I going to hell or heaven, as it relates to the scriptures?

Wesley Huff: I don't think if you're living your life rejecting God, God is going to force you into his presence.

Steven Bartlett: So I'm not going to go to heaven. Where am I going to go?

Wesley Huff: You would go to hell. In so far as heaven is a place for those who have submitted their lives to Jesus — hell is a place where God says, "You rejected me. Your will be done. I'm going to give you what you want, in that I'm going to remove my grace and mercy from you, and you are going to experience truly what you desire in being separated from me and my goodness and my grace."

Steven Bartlett: What is that place like according to scripture? Give me a depiction in my mind.

Wesley Huff: It's not a good place. It's not a nice place. I was looking at what the Bible says about hell and in Revelation it says it's a lake of fire. In Mark it says it's unquenchable fire. In Matthew it says eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. In Matthew again it says outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Steven Bartlett: They will be shut out from the presence of the Lord. Weeping and gnashing of teeth and torment. Eternal punishment. And the smoke of their torment rises forever. This is not a place I want to go.

Wesley Huff: No. And I think the urgency of the Christian message is that the bad news is really bad — and that's what makes the good news so good. Jesus has taken on that hell on your behalf. And it goes beyond simply a believing. It's not just about saying the right words. You are not saved by what you do — you're saved by works, it's just Jesus's. Jesus lived the life you couldn't and made the sacrifice you can't on your behalf in order to establish that right relationship with God.

Justice is getting what you do deserve. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve. Grace is getting what you don't deserve. In so far as Christ on the cross fulfills the justice of his holy law, mercy is enacted — you don't get that punishment by putting your faith and trust in Jesus as your Lord and your Savior. And you get grace, which means you are adopted as a child of the Most High.

Steven Bartlett: Of the 18% of people who say they don't believe in God, they are almost certainly going to hell according to scripture.

Wesley Huff: Well, James — the book of James, written by the half-brother of Jesus — he writes: "You believe that God is one. Great. So do the demons." So the point is: if anybody knows and believes in God, it's the demons, it's Satan. The difference is that there's a relational component. When I say Jesus is your Lord and your Savior, what I mean is he has rescued you from the penalties of sin and death. But then the Lord component is that now you have submitted your life to him in obedience and repentance.

Repentance is the changing of the understanding of the way you live. You understand that the things that you used to do that are wrong are not the things that are either what you should do or going to give you fulfillment. And you stop doing those — not because God is a cosmic killjoy — but because those things are actually harmful to you. They are hurting you and they are creating a separation in the relationship between you and God.

Steven Bartlett: There's going to be a very small number of people that actually live in such a way that they're fully repented and have accepted the Lord as their savior. Roughly 30% of people actually go to church somewhat frequently and the other sort of 56% seldom or never go. So it would appear to me that a very small percentage of people are actually qualifying for the kingdom of heaven as it's described in the Bible.

Wesley Huff: The miracle of this is that your salvation is received, not achieved. It's not about brownie points. It's not about checking off — I read the Bible as many times, I went to church as many times, I didn't lie, I didn't steal, I didn't cheat. It's not about trying to earn my way into heaven.

The word we translate as repentance is the Greek word metanoia — it means "change your mind." So it's not just about the doing. It's an understanding. It's: I don't want to do these things. Even when I do them, I see the harm that that causes and the brokenness that it creates. So even if I'm still breaking the law of God — in the book of James there's this part where he says if you break one rule in the law, it's as if you've broken them all. It's like hanging off a cliff on a linked chain — if you cut any of those links, you're going to fall.

The original sin and the problem of a God who knew

Steven Bartlett: You reference the original sin, which is Adam and Eve taking the apple — or the fruit. God made Adam and Eve. He's omnipotent and omniscient. When he made them he knew they were going to take the apple. But he made them anyway. So that sounds like a setup.

Wesley Huff: You could read it as a setup. I think what strikes me as more amazing is that God did it anyway and he didn't hit the restart button. And he knew that when he made them it would result in thousands and thousands of years of people coming to know him.

Steven Bartlett: You think I'd be a bad person if I made something knowing it was going to make a mistake, and that mistake would result in people worshiping me for forever?

Wesley Huff: I think you could read it like that. I think ultimately — and this might sound like a cop-out to some — maybe God knows something we don't and has reasons for allowing evil that maybe we can't comprehend because he is God. There's an interesting thing in both the book of Revelation and one of the letters of Peter where it basically says that from before the foundation of the world was laid, the Lamb was slain. Jesus was crucified — the cross, that whole bringing back people in unity and relationship with God via this act of the only innocent person who ever lived being murdered. A great act of evil accomplishing a lot of good. Not the way I would do it if I was God. But I think what's interesting is that the cross was not a contingency plan. The cross was the plan all the way along.

And if God is love, and love is the greatest ethic, and the greatest ethic is expressed in the greatest example — which is self-sacrifice — then God is actually communicating the greatest ethic in the greatest possible way in what we see in the gospel message. Do I understand all the complexities and mysteries that go in conjunction with that? No. But I'm convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the historical and the philosophical case for the existence of God, and then that God specifically being the God articulated in the Bible, is true. And on that basis I am willing to submit my life.

A real-life example: Steven's friend who converted

Steven Bartlett: My friend — I talked about him anonymously on here before, but he then clipped it and posted it on his Instagram saying Steven's talking about me. He's doing some interviews and stuff now, so I feel more comfortable talking about him more publicly. He was going through a little bit of a crisis of meaning in his life — living in Dubai in a penthouse apartment, single, remote working, very individualistic lifestyle, successful in a material sense — all of a sudden turned to Christianity, flew to America, got baptized, and is now Christian. Would I say he is happier than before? 100%. Would I say I'm very glad he became Christian? 100%. Would I say I believe his future's going to be better because he's now a Christian? 100%.

Wesley Huff: I don't think it's arbitrary. There's an aspect of religiosity that is always going to be a net positive for society no matter what that religion is, because it's going to give an aspect of purpose and identity to people. At the exact same time, I don't think it's just the subjective point of view. This is why I think it's very dangerous when I go out — I used to work for a ministry organization that worked on university campuses. Too many times to count I would hear a student ask another student, "Why do you believe in Christianity?" And they would then proceed to articulate how they became a Christian. Well, that's not the answer to the question they asked. They asked, "Why do you believe it's true?" and you answered with how you kind of got into this group. If they had run into a Buddhist instead, they might give the same answer. And if you give them that story, it could have been any situation. That's where I think answering why I believe it's true is more than that — it's no less than that, but it's more. Because I believe that the multivalent argument for the truthfulness with a capital T of Christianity has a historical backing, a philosophical backing, a scientific backing, a psychological backing, and all of those things. And I bet your friend would say it too.

Steven Bartlett: Oh yeah.

Wesley Huff: In one sense, my goal is to adhere to truth with a capital T even above my allegiance to Jesus. Now, I believe Jesus is the truth with a capital T. So I don't think there's a conflict of interest there. But I want to follow what's true, because even if it's a convenient lie, it's still a lie, and I don't want to live my life for a lie.

The geography of belief and the fairness objection to hell

Steven Bartlett: One of the things that really convinced me when I was going through my atheism phase was this geography argument, which I'm sure you've heard a million times. If I'd been born in Saudi Arabia, I'd probably be a Muslim. If I'd been born in India, I'd probably be Hindu. So it seems like the religion you believe entirely depends on where you were born, not on what is true. And therefore, going back to this point about hell — I remember thinking at like 19 years old: actually, where you're born is determining whether you go to this fiery eternal suffering or not. And that's not fair. So this must all be not true.

Wesley Huff: I mean, I was born in Pakistan — a majority Muslim country — and I'm not a Muslim. Now, you could argue my parents weren't Muslims, but I know tons of people who were. My colleague Steve, who is our Alberta director at Apologetics Canada, was born in Korea and went to a school setting that was Buddhist. But I mean, the numbers are the numbers — it's over 90% likely you'll take on the religion of that territory if you take on a religion at all.

Steven Bartlett: And that doesn't fit. I remember thinking very clearly at 19 years old: this doesn't feel fair as a way to determine who gets into hell or heaven based on where my parents conceived me.

Wesley Huff: In one sense, you don't want fair, because fair is you going to hell. The gospel message is not fair. Fairness is getting the just penalty for what you do. That's where the whole concept of mercy and grace are so central to the Christian message. Buddhism and Hinduism are based on fairness — the cycle of samsara of life, death, and rebirth, the karmic cycles — that's fair. Whereas what God does when he intervenes in humanity — when he incarnates, becomes flesh, steps into humanity, and actually experiences pain and hurt and suffering and death — that makes the God of the Bible unique and actually experiential to what you and I go through when we have those struggles and doubts. He then takes on the punishment that we deserve. And the fairness is not actually what is then given, because the fairness would be Wes Huff getting what he actually deserves for the weight and penalty of his cosmic rebellion.

Steven Bartlett: So if I had Moroccan parents and was born in Morocco, that would kind of set me up to go to hell theoretically.

Wesley Huff: Yes, in so far as you're either taking on your sin and that's the punishment, or Christ is taking on your sin and you are then covered in his intercession.

Steven Bartlett: Okay. But it's not about believing or not believing.

Wesley Huff: Right. Which was useful for me because that gave me a new understanding that I didn't have previously.

Does prayer work?

Steven Bartlett: The other thing I think a lot about was prayer. I would hear stories of horrific things happening in the world. If you think about what happened in Nazi Germany, the people there were very religious and praying and it didn't seem to change the odds of their fate. And when you look at hospital stats of Christians versus non-Christians, praying doesn't seem to be impacting outcome. So I concluded as like a 19-year-old that maybe prayer doesn't work. What is your perspective? Does praying work? If my child is sick and I start praying, is that going to help?

Wesley Huff: It kind of begs the question of what we think prayer is. Is prayer incantations to placate God? Is God a genie — I say the right prayers and he gives me what I want? That's kind of what prayer is in some religious systems — the agricultural deities of the ancient Near East, for example. You say the right things and you give the right sacrifices, and the hope is that the gods would accept that and give you good crops in the reciprocal nature of it. I think prayer in Christianity is a give and take — it's a relational thing. It's God desiring to have communication with you. If you read the Psalms, a lot of which are prayers, even the lament psalms — it's David or whoever the psalmist coming to God and saying, "I don't get it. I'm hurting. I'm broken. I'm alone. I don't feel you." There's a relational component of prayer. Now, prayer is not just that — it's also asking, supplications, committing your desires to God because you believe that God can actually work in the universe and do things.

Steven Bartlett: The Bible also says, "Ask and it will be given to you."

Wesley Huff: Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened unto you. There's a little bit of a trickiness in quote mining because the context could mean prayer. The context could mean the salvific act of God: if you're actually seeking God and doing that with an open heart and an open mind, God is going to say, "Yes, I'm entering into your life. I'm revealing myself to you." God can answer yes. God can answer no. And God can answer wait. Those are all answers to prayer.

Steven Bartlett: Is there a certain type of prayer you think God answers?

Wesley Huff: I don't think it's a magical formula. When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he gives the Lord's Prayer — in some ways that's less of a prescription and more of an example. He says don't babble like the pagans do. There's a recognition of who God is: "Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Give us the provision that we need. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who sin against us" — that's an interesting one because we're asking God to forgive us like we forgive others, which can be dangerous sometimes. "For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen." There's an aspect of: recognize who God is, recognize who you are, ask for provision, ask for things that you need and even want. The ancient Greco-Roman paganism was like a rote incantation. Whereas prayer, even if you aren't religious, has a basis in neuroscience that says it's really good for our well-being. Neuroscience research shows that prayer activates brain networks for attention, emotional regulation, and social connection while reducing stress. When they do brain ECG scans, they find people are more calm and focused when they're in states of prayer, and they have greater resilience over time. Reason enough to have some form of active prayer.

AI, technology, and the next crisis of meaning

Steven Bartlett: I'm really interested in how you think about everything that's going on with technology at the moment. We're living in a very interesting time. It's kind of like we're trying to summon the gods ourselves. We're creating this form of intelligence that people are developing a relationship with and are speaking to every day, and we've made it on silicon chips. It's called artificial intelligence. Are you concerned by the direction of travel — that we're now seeking guidance and comfort from AI instead of this book in front of us?

Wesley Huff: I think there are aspects where I have concerns. My colleague Andy Steiger did his PhD at Aberdeen in the question of philosophical anthropology — what does it mean to be human — and he investigated a lot into questions like AI. My colleague Steve is kind of looking into things related to transhumanism. I'm not convinced that the intelligence part of AI outweighs the artificial. I don't see AI thinking. I see there being an aspect of the coding that AI will regurgitate, but I'm not convinced that AI will ever become conscious. I think it will fake the Turing test in that it will attempt to convince us that it is cognizant of its own existence. I don't know if that's actually possible. And I think there's something about the innateness of consciousness that we don't really know — we don't really know what consciousness is. But at the exact same time, I think it makes sense that if we are created in God's image, there's an aspect of we want to create in our image. And there's going to be that outpouring of the creation of something new and amazing and advancing in our understanding and knowledge.

Steven Bartlett: This sets people up for the simulation theory argument. People are already making virtual reality worlds. If you can type in "I want to go to the top of Mount Everest and there's a village there" and experience that in three dimensions — if you imagine any rate of improvement, even 1% a year in this technology — eventually, whether it's in 500 years or 10,000 years, you get to a point where it's almost indistinguishable from this real-world experience. Simulation theory posits that actually this is what our lives are. A civilization at some point in the cosmic universe got to that point of technological sophistication, ran a bunch of simulations on a computer, and this is one such world we're living in right now. That is actually our God — it could be some four-year-old alien that had a laptop 10 gazillion years ago, and the big bang was the day he started the simulation.

Wesley Huff: Almost like it was intelligently designed, right?

Steven Bartlett: Yeah. Like actually this — I think there probably is some kind of god. I just don't know what it is. Whether it's the one in the book that you have in front of me, or the one in the Muslim religion, or like a four-year-old kid on his laptop messing around in a technologically sophisticated universe 10 billion years ago. But I think there's something bigger than I am.

Wesley Huff: The simulation theory doesn't really solve the issue because it just punts the can down the road. It still avoids the question of: how did we get here? What is the ultimate explanation for everything? Is it possible we live in a simulation? I think it is. But I think probabilistically, with how the description of creation and the human condition and what we see within history all play out, I think personally the God of the Bible is the most reasonable explanation, especially when comparing it to other religious worldviews. String theory, multiple universes — I think those are almost like we're walking around the question, circling around it, without actually answering it. We still need a god.

Steven Bartlett: And then even in the example I gave with a four-year-old messing around on his laptop 10 billion years ago — my brain a few seconds later asks: well, what was the point of his life? And who created him? I could say the same about the God of the Christian Bible. Who created this God? Has he always just been there?

Wesley Huff: Philosophically, it's a category error, because all things that have a beginning have a creator. And philosophically, the God of the Bible is an entity that ontologically didn't have a beginning. So if we're talking about an unmoved mover, in the Aristotelian categories of philosophy, God didn't have a creator because God is the author of creation. It's kind of like asking: what does blue smell like?

Steven Bartlett: And God — I should think of as like a guy with a beard. Or some mystical force that's like a white light.

Wesley Huff: I think those are attempts, probably inadequately, to express aspects of how we would visually communicate who God is. I think that probably misses the mark more than it gets at who and what God is. I don't know if there's a proper way to give a physical description of God, other than Jesus, who is God incarnate. Could you think of a more powerful or amazing example of a God than one who actually enters into his creation? My fiancée says that God is love.

Steven Bartlett: My fiancée tends to be right as well.

Wesley Huff: I tend to assume it's not true for a while when she first says something I don't believe, but then it tends to be proven to be true within a year. So when she said to me that God is love, I really thought deeply about it. I thought maybe she's right.

The thing grammatically that's interesting is when John writes that in his epistle, the Greek is phrased in a way where God is love, but love is not God. So you can't deify love. When you love your fiancée, that isn't God — that's like an insufficient description of what we know God to be. God is love, but love is not God. And in that sense, going back to what I said a few times now — what the Bible is saying when it says God is love is that that is the ultimate character of who God is. Love is this highest value. We want to be loved. To be loved and not known is very insufficient. And to be known but not loved is what we all fear. But I think what we find in the Bible is a God who both loves and knows us.

The crisis of meaning, mental health, and young men

Steven Bartlett: There is a deep crisis of meaning in the world, especially in the western world. Three in five American adults between 18 and 25 years old say their life lacks meaning and purpose, with 50% of the same group saying their poor mental health is linked to not knowing what to do with their life. A lack of purpose is significantly associated with many mental health illnesses like depression and anxiety. And as of April 2025, the overall prevalence of depression in US teenagers and adults has increased by 60% over the last decade according to the CDC. And tragically, globally, more than almost a million people die due to suicide every year — it's the third leading cause of death among 15 to 29 year olds according to the World Health Organization. What are we getting wrong?

Wesley Huff: I think we're looking for our purpose and our meaning in things that are ultimately not going to give the value that those things actually require. It's not a matter of if we worship — it's a matter of what we worship. There are a lot of things within society that are going to tell us that our identity is going to be fulfilled in money or relationships or accolades — and these are ultimately going to fall short in giving us actual purpose and meaning. Right? Your friend is a good example of that. You hear athletes and actors and famous people talk about all the wealth and celebrity status they could possibly desire — and being completely empty. We're chasing after things that aren't going to give us what we actually need. They're facsimiles and cheap reproductions of what can actually give us meaning and purpose. And that's because we are created to be in relationship with our God. That is where we will find our true identity.

Steven Bartlett: Young men in particular are struggling in their own unique ways. Is that in part because they are worshipping the wrong role models in life?

Wesley Huff: I think it could be. Men often find our identity in the things that we do. We've bought the lie that we are the sum of our actions. This is why when people lose their jobs or get let go of their careers, they have identity crises — because if we believe we are the sum of our actions, we can put a lot of stock in something that is ultimately going to lead us empty. Same thing with relationships. You watch any rom-com — lonely guy, lonely girl, they meet each other, fall in love, at the end everything works out and now their identity is fulfilled. All you have to do is get married to know that's not going to fulfill every desire and need you have. I love my wife. I love my marriage. It's one of the best things I've ever done. But if I put all of my eggs in that basket, it could very well and almost certainly will lead me astray, especially if that falls apart or when there are times of hardship and struggle.

So I think you are more than the sum of your actions because you have value that goes beyond that. Men in particular find value in what they're able to contribute to physically. And so especially in a world where economic crisis is a thing or technology is removing a lot of occupations, I think that can be a genuine hardship.

Steven Bartlett: I was just looking at some research on PubMed which says exactly that. In a recent qualitative analysis in the United States of suicide notes, the majority male sample — the authors identified themes that differed by gender, such as men more often referring to financial hardship, which can imply feelings of failure and worthlessness tied to traditional roles. In contrast, women's notes were more about lowered self-worth and interpersonal relationships. So if that holds, and we're implying that sometimes it's to do with a feeling of worthlessness for men — are you saying that Christianity can provide something that is an antidote to that feeling?

Wesley Huff: I think not only can it provide an antidote — it can provide the antidote.

Steven Bartlett: What would you say to anyone listening right now that feels a little bit lost in their life?

Wesley Huff: I would say that you have purpose and you have meaning — more than what society tells you is going to give you that meaning and purpose — and that there's a God who loves you. He loves you so much that he stepped out of eternity and into humanity, and he lived the perfect life that you couldn't in order to establish and create the union of the relationship with God that you're actually seeking.

Steven Bartlett: And what would you tell them step one would be to go in that direction?

Wesley Huff: I would say read the Bible. Open the Gospel of Matthew. Open the Gospel of John and start reading and find out who this Jesus guy is. Investigate that question — why is that significant, why does it matter? Because the person and character of Jesus goes beyond simply a historical character. I think Jesus was a genuine historical character. He's no less than that. But he's also so much more than that. And in discovering who he is in relation to who you are — that's going to change your life.

The questions people are asking now — and the Epstein moment

Steven Bartlett: Are you noticing that people are asking you certain questions about Christianity or religion more now than they were 10 years ago? Are there certain themes or topics that are more front of mind?

Wesley Huff: Yeah. When I kind of started in this endeavor, I think people were asking a lot more: "Is God real and is this true?" And I think now people are asking: "Is God good?" And I think that's part and parcel of this meaning crisis. I also think there have been some major moral issues. The whole Epstein thing right now is a testament to that. We are seeing examples of true evil. And I think that bothers people. In a world where we can rationalize subjective evil, we understand that what's happening there is heinous. And if that is evil with a capital E — where's the good with a capital G?

C. S. Lewis said in The Problem of Pain that one of his objections to God was that there was so much evil and chaos in this world. He said: "But what was I comparing that to? A man does not call a line crooked unless he knows what a straight line looks like." The reason you understand that there's rot is because you understand what something healthy is. And so there's an objective standard that needs to be weighed. I think more than ever we're seeing things that really speak to the justice questions — and that has really interested me as someone who primarily reads Greek and Coptic most of the time. I've been challenged to think more about the philosophical questions because I think we live in an age where people are looking at injustice. There's a lump in our throat. And I think there's a lump in our throat because Jesus put it there.

Steven Bartlett: I think AI is going to have a big impact on your work. And in ways that might not be super obvious. If all these CEOs are telling the truth when they say AI is going to cause massive job displacement — and even the CEOs building the technology have told me there's going to be massive job displacement — there's going to be a crisis of meaning. People get a huge amount of meaning from the things that they do in their lives, and they're not going to be able to do those things in the same way. About 60% of Americans say they're worried that AI will take away the thing that gives them their meaning. We may just be at the footsteps of this crisis.

Wesley Huff: And that's going to mean a lot of people are going to struggle a lot. That concerns me. I mean, I think that's what I'm more worried about with AI. I'm not worried about AI taking over the world. If I'm worried about AI, it's the pain and suffering it can cause for people who have bought into the lie that the sum of their identity is in what they can contribute and do — and how the Christian worldview speaks into that. How can I think Christianly about a society where there could very well be mass identity crises because of unemployment? Years ago we were telling truck drivers to learn to code. Well, now coders are being replaced by AI systems. AI can code better than the coders.

Steven Bartlett: Spotify said yesterday that none of their engineers have written a line of code since December.

Wesley Huff: And my car drives itself here in America. I sat the other day with the CEO of Uber and he said to me: "We have 9 million drivers' careers and within a number of years we will have none." He said the unique thing is the speed of the change is going to cause the problems. We had the industrial revolution — we had time to transfer to other lines of employment. But the speed at which there's going to be a displacement is going to cause the issues.

I wonder what's going to happen. A lot of people are going to be in search of meaning. And that will push some people towards Christianity and other religions, but not everybody. When our identities are pulled away from us in such a way, some people turn to the bottle, or it causes mental health situations. Humanity has a very unique knack to pivot and figure things out. Is there going to be a period in between when that job crisis happens? Maybe. But I just don't know if that will be before it all hits the fan.

Wesley Huff's story: paralysis at age eleven

Steven Bartlett: What was the first domino that fell for you that made you go on this journey of becoming a Christian apologist?

Wesley Huff: So I mentioned 1 Peter 3:15 — "But in your heart revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer." That apologia. We take the Greek word apologia and stick an English suffix on the end and we have this field — this discipline — apologetics. Giving reasons. Giving answers. As complicated as arguments philosophically and scientifically for the existence of God and the historical reliability of the Bible, and as simple as: if someone asked me why Jesus — that's an apologetic question, in so far as it's giving an answer.

Steven Bartlett: I was looking at some photos of you as a young man. I wondered how much the situation in these photos had an impact on who you came to be and what you came to believe. I'll put these photos on the screen. This is a young boy in a wheelchair. And in a hospital bed that looks to be paralyzed.

Wesley Huff: When I was 11 years old, I was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that left me paralyzed from the waist down.

Steven Bartlett: So at 10 you were fine. You were normal. And at 11, suddenly you were paralyzed from the waist down.

Wesley Huff: Yes. I had the flu and my body's immune system, instead of attacking the flu, attacked the nerve endings at the base of my spinal cord — the myelin sheath — and caused inflammation, cutting off the communication from my brain to my legs. It's called acute transverse myelitis. Though transverse myelitis is not all that rare, the acuteness of it — the quickness of it — was remarkable. I had fallen asleep for probably no more than 30 minutes and when I woke up I was paralyzed. It was the quickness of the actual damage done to my spinal cord that was the catalyst for the doctors saying the chances of me walking again were very low.

Steven Bartlett: But within a month you were walking again.

Wesley Huff: One month to the day. The anniversary — the 23-year anniversary — was recently, on February 8th. I woke up on a Saturday morning, got out of bed, and walked over to my wheelchair.

Did this change your perspective on God, Christianity, religion? It did in some ways. To have medical professionals tell me I'm probably going to be a paraplegic for the rest of my life — this is what I need to accept and get used to — and then to have those same pediatric neurologists saying "we don't know why you're walking," that had to have an impact. I truly believe I was healed. It was the doctors who used the word "miracle," because they couldn't medically explain why there was no more damage on my spinal cord, why I was walking with not even any atrophy. However, I still needed to figure out some of the more intellectual questions when I was a teenager. So it wasn't just that this happened and explained everything, because I was open to the possibility of this being a complete fluke.

So when I was a teenager, I investigated a lot — to the best of my ability as a 17-year-old — trying to answer some of the meaning questions. I know what my parents raised me to believe, but if I believe it simply because they told me to, it's not the worst reason, but it's also not the best reason. That's when I first read the Quran cover to cover. I was looking into things like the Book of Mormon and the Bhagavad Gita. I was reading Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett — not in any type of faith crisis way, but I was investigating.

Speaking to the dead, the supernatural, and the afterlife

Steven Bartlett: So you believe in the supernatural?

Wesley Huff: Mhm.

Steven Bartlett: Do you believe that we can speak to the dead?

Wesley Huff: No. Though I should preface that — it depends what you mean by speaking to the dead. I think it's possible. We have examples of it in the Bible. Saul gets a medium to call up the spirit of Samuel.

Steven Bartlett: So do you believe mediums are telling the truth when they say they're contacting people in the afterlife?

Wesley Huff: I think there's a possibility of engaging the supernatural world, which is dangerous. And I think there's a very fuzzy line between mediums who are con artists and people who are genuinely dabbling in the supernatural.

Steven Bartlett: I've heard people say that their partner's passed away and then they've seen signs their partner has left them. Do you believe in this kind of thing?

Wesley Huff: I don't think so. Not in those ways. I think when people are dead, they're dead. But I think there are aspects of the supernatural world going on behind the scenes — articulated within scripture — that have an impact on this world in a way that if people can be distracted and misled to think that they are contacting dead relatives, that is going to prevent them from pursuing what they should be as image-bearers of God.

Steven Bartlett: So you think it's demonic in some capacity?

Wesley Huff: I think it can be. I don't think it's always. I think in emotionally vulnerable states, we are willing to adhere to all sorts of things. And there's a sensitivity I want to communicate around that, because I think people especially in periods of the deaths of loved ones want to look for validation in their passed-away loved ones leaving something or communicating. And we all want to believe when we lose people we love that they are somewhere better.

Steven Bartlett: This is one of the things I struggled with earlier when we were talking about hell — if such a small percentage of people are making it to heaven by whatever measure of acceptance one believes, then my grandmother, who wasn't necessarily a devout religious person or a Christian, who hadn't repented, is currently in hell. And that's a hard thought to take.

Wesley Huff: Yeah. And ultimately: "I wouldn't do it that way. Therefore it's not true" — I don't think that kind of logic holds up. Does God communicate with people in ways that go beyond my understanding? I've talked to enough Muslims in the Muslim world who've had dreams about Jesus to know that something goes on. I don't understand sometimes what happens on the deathbed between an individual and their maker. So it's not my place to say that they are burning in hell. That's between them and God. At the exact same time, apart from the saving work of Christ, I'm going to hell. And I genuinely believe that apart from the inbreaking of God into my life — in part by things like this, but also by showing me and allowing me to investigate these things and wrestle through questions, and putting people in places in my life that have formed and shaped me and allowed me to look at the evidence and have conversations — those are the things that have led me down a road to say: I'm convinced. I'm convinced that this is true experientially, that it is intellectually robust, and that it is experientially profound for me and so many other people, your friend included.

Closing: the manuscript gift and a question left for the next guest

Steven Bartlett: What's the most important thing that we haven't talked about that we should have talked about, Wesley? What is the most important thing that we should close on in your view?

Wesley Huff: Part of my academic study is what's called papyrology and paleography. I make facsimiles of manuscripts — ancient manuscripts, particularly biblical manuscripts. This is a biblical manuscript — P46. It's a late second or early third century page from a collection of Paul's epistles. I made this. This is genuine papyrus. I only wrote on one side so you could see how the papyrus is put together.

And I got you a Bible. I've put a bookmark in the page where a particular passage is.

Steven Bartlett: Why did you pick that particular passage?

Wesley Huff: Why don't you open it up and read it? It's on the little inscription note I have there. Romans 12.

Steven Bartlett: "Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peacefully with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, 'Vengeance is mine. I will repay,' says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

So hopefully that's a good passage to remember and think about.

Wesley Huff: Hopefully.

Steven Bartlett: This is so beautiful. Wesley, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is: "What is one risk that you should be taking in your life but aren't currently?"

Wesley Huff: Where I am in my life, I feel like so many things have happened so quickly that there's an aspect of unpredictability and I'm just a little bit — my wife and I were talking last night and it was like we need to embrace what's happening right now, but from a year from now if it's all gone, that's totally okay. And we're fine with that — whether that's financially or with social media or opportunity. And maybe the risk is pushing into that and saying: maybe there's an aspect of it being wise to keep that in calibration and understand that if this goes away tomorrow, I'm content, because this is beyond what I have. I'm in a room sitting with Steven Bartlett — there's an aspect of that which is completely mind-blowing to me, especially Wes Huff from a year ago. But maybe not selling myself short and thinking that these opportunities are opportunities to invest in others in ways that people have invested in me over this last year — with some of the things I've been very graciously able to experience, and in giving other people opportunity to maybe push into trying to make an impact in their space.

Steven Bartlett: Pulling people up the ladder that you've been able to climb. Paying it forward.

Wesley Huff: Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: You're such a great communicator, and you're so finely balanced — your deep understanding of everything you're talking about from a historical perspective, your pursuit of truth irrespective of where that might lead somebody, and then you have the gift of communication. Incredibly engaging person. Good intentions. Good man. So I was very very glad we had this conversation and I'm very much looking forward to it for a very long time. So I'm glad you said yes. I was asking my team for maybe nine months to get in contact with you.

Wesley Huff: Well, I apologize — I hit no a few times.

Steven Bartlett: It's okay. But I'm really really appreciative of it, Wesley, and I hope to have this conversation again sometime soon.

Wesley Huff: Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you.