 This week, pop star Dua Lipa asked late night host Stephen Colbert a question about his faith. In this video, I'm going to be responding to his answer. This video isn't intended to assess or dissect the validity of Stephen Colbert's faith as if I could do that. It's just about learning how we can effectively share the gospel and God's truth with unbelievers. With all that being said, let's jump in. So I think something that your viewers really connect with in your comedy and your hosting skills, especially in the past few years, is how open and honest and authentic you are about the role your faith plays in your life. And I was wondering, is there any, you know, does your faith in your comedy ever overlap? And does one ever win out? I think ultimately us all being mortal, the faith will win out at the end. But I certainly hope when I get to heaven, Jesus has a sense of humor. Maybe you tend to think of God as very stoic and he never cracks a smile at all. But when we look at Proverbs 17-22, it says this, a joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. I think God created us with this internal comedy that flows out of us. This joy, this laughter that flows out of us. And that's reflecting on God's character. We're created in his image. So why would that be something so core to our nature? And yet God has none of it. It wouldn't make any sense. So I do think God has a sense of humor and God laughs because joy is flowing out of him and that flows to his creation. But I'll say this, say this, someone was asking me earlier about what I, this relates to faith because my faith is involved with, I'm a Christian and a Catholic and that's always connected to the idea of love and sacrifice being somehow related and giving yourself to other people and that death is not defeat. If you can see where I'm getting at there. Stephen brings up this idea of his faith being connected to this idea of love and sacrifice. When we look to the scriptures, we can see evidence of that. Greater love has no one than this that someone laid down his life for his friend. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. So we're called to lay our lives down to sacrifice our lives in service to others. But it's important here that we not lose sight of the one who sacrificed for us. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would even dare to die. But God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The reason that we can lay our lives down in service to others and that that is not defeat is because Christ has already won. I was asking earlier what movie did I really enjoy this year and I said well I really like Belfast, which is Kenneth Branagh's story of his childhood. And one of the reasons I love it is that I'm Irish and Irish American and it's such an Irish movie. And I think this is also a Catholic thing because it's it's funny and it's sad and it's funny about being sad. In the same way that sadness is like a little bit of an emotional death, but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it. Because that laughter keeps you from having fear of it and fear is the thing that keeps you from turning to evil devices to save you from the sadness. As Robert Hayden said we must not be frightened or cajoled into accepting evil as our deliverance from evil. We must keep struggling to maintain our humanity though monsters of abstraction threaten and polices. So it seems like here he taps into a little bit more of a practical application that sadness is not defeat as long as you can laugh through it. I definitely agree on some level that our lives shouldn't be characterized by self pity or feeling bad for ourselves. At the same time though I think sadness does play an important role in each of our lives and we shouldn't discount it as just something totally negative that we should get rid of. But in fact we need to come to terms with why we're feeling this way and when we actually come to terms with the reality of the pain and the suffering that we're experiencing it could also give us a heightened joy in who God is and despite the fact that we experience these things on earth he is with us and his love is enough for us. So if there's some relationship between my faith and my comedy it's that no matter what happens you are never defeated you must understand and see this in the light of eternity and find some way to love and laugh with each other. Why can we laugh through the pain and suffering of our world? Why can we live in victory in light of eternity? I honestly would have loved for Colbert to expand a little bit more on why we can have peace in the end. Is it just because we make a choice to find hope and laughter in tough circumstances? Is it because love ultimately wins out that the suffering the trials and the pain that we experience on this earth ultimately doesn't really matter because we'll all be happy joyful and laughing in the end. This is why as a Christian I believe that we can see beauty, purpose and hope even when we're experiencing some of the most difficult challenges of our lives because love does win out but not in the disembodied oh let's just think positive thoughts and it'll all turn out okay kind of way but in the person of Jesus Christ he was love embodied when he died on the cross to free us from the shackles of sin fully God and fully man to live the life we couldn't live to die on the cross the death we deserve to die. I really hope that Stephen believes that too and that he'll have opportunities to flesh that out to the audience and some of his guests. From experience I can tell you that it is challenging to bring up the topic of sin with unbelievers it's not a fun thing to do it's much easier to say oh God wants to you know bring you peace and he's all love and he's about grace those are fun and easy things to talk about because people are receptive to them. What is not easy to bring up is our problem of sin but without bringing up that bad news the good news of Jesus won't make sense. In order to see the true beauty of God's mercy and his love we need to understand the depths of our own depravity and our rebellion against God. The reason that we can laugh and be joyful and be hopeful even amidst the pain of this world in light of eternity is because God has won he has granted us eternal life but we need to put our faith in him. You see even though Stephen didn't flesh out the heart of the message I hope that this will spur on unbelievers to ask Christians in their life why why do you say that we can have peace in light of eternity what does that mean why do you say we can laugh through the pain why what is this hope and we got to be sharing that hope with them faithfully not compromising it or watering it down at all. Thanks for watching guys and if you enjoyed this video please subscribe because I'm putting out new videos all the time I'll see you next time God bless