This episode wrestles with trauma, murder, and suffering, and explains why the way you see the world—your worldview—largely determines how deeply you are wounded and how you process life’s most painful events. Drawing from real cold-case homicides and personal conversations with victims’ families, J. Warner Wallace shows how expectations about God, goodness, justice, and life itself either shatter under the weight of evil or are refined and strengthened when they match reality.
You’ll hear how an underdeveloped or shallow view of the Christian faith can collapse when tragedy strikes, and why a robust, well-thought-out Christian worldview can actually prepare you for suffering rather than promise you a pain-free life. The episode summarizes key ideas from J. Warner’s work on the problem of evil—why God might allow horrific events, how this relates to free will, eternity, and human sin, and why Christianity offers not just an explanation for suffering but hope and meaning in the middle of it.
Here is the audio podcast (the Cold-Case Christianity Weekly Podcast is located on iTunes or our RSS Feed):
For more information about how to flourish based on secular research and the ancient wisdom of the bible, please read The Truth in True Crime; What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life. This book teaches readers 15 rues for life, recognized in murder investigations. It also makes a case for the reliability of the Bible from Biblical anthropology. The book is accompanied by a sixteen-session Truth in True Crime Video Series (and Participant’s Guide) to help individuals or small groups examine the evidence and make the case.
Ian McKerracher
February 18, 2026 at 7:11 am
This is an excellent example of the difference between preaching and teaching. Lord, please give me good teachers. I am now helping a family member who is going through the trauma of watching his wife build a relationship with another woman, leaving him with their two children. His worldview is shattered. I pray this most difficult time leads him to Christ.
With his PTSD being worn on his sleeve with the newness of this mess, I can only hope to use some of this material, gently and gracefully, to help him out of this dark season.