Ep 1414 | A Child’s Tragic Death Forces This Difficult Question About God
September 4, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readA seven-year-old girl in Louisiana went swimming in a lake, contracted a rare brain-eating amoeba with a 97% fatality rate, and died days later. As the Robertson family processed this local tragedy on the Unashamed podcast, it surfaced the raw, personal question at the heart of their Hillsdale College theology course: If God is real, all-powerful, and good, why does he intervene in some situations and remain silent in others? The episode is a candid, unpolished conversation about how to hold onto faith when reason alone cannot explain suffering, and how the history of philosophy has shaped the very way modern Christians ask that question.
The Enlightenment’s Unfinished Business
The conversation centers on the Enlightenment, a period the family argues we are still living inside of. The hosts explain that the printing press, the microscope, and the telescope gave ordinary people access to information that had previously been controlled by the clergy and monarchy. This created a crisis: if you can now verify the physical world yourself, what do you do with the spiritual claims you were taught to accept on authority?
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:01) **Episode Start & Housekeeping** - Hillsdale College giveaway announcement and introduction of winners Miranda and Scott from Texas.
- 2 (01:53) **Reflecting on Heavy Episodes** - The hosts discuss the weight of recent academic episodes on philosophy and theology.
- 3 (07:32) **Acts 17 and the Intersection of Faith & Reason** - The hosts unpack the theme of God's reachability from the Hillsdale lecture.
- 4 (11:15) **Personal Doubt: The Tragedy of a Local Child** - Christian shares a raw, personal struggle with God's sovereignty after a child's death from a rare brain-eating amoeba.
- 5 (14:49) **Different Kinds of Doubt: Lifestyle vs. Existential** - Jase and Zach share their own experiences with doubt, distinguishing between moral failure and intellectual crisis.
- 6 (18:53) **John Luke's Existential Crisis & Epistemology** - John Luke recounts his own "deconstruction" and introduces the core philosophical problem of epistemology.
- 7 (20:45) **The False Dichotomy: Faith vs. Reason** - Zach explains how he was taught that faith is the opposite of reason, a belief that nearly destroyed his faith.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
John Luke opens up about deconstructing his faith after years of hearing Christians use the Bible to defend conflicting ideas. Al and Christian wrestle with a local tragedy of a child’s unexpected death and the questions it raises about grief, justice, and God’s presence. The guys trace the rise of “my truth” back through the Enlightenment, naturalism, and the split between faith and reason, then consider whether artificial intelligence could be ushering in another massive shift in how people understand truth.
In this episode: Psalm 139; Acts 17; Daniel 3:17-18; Jeremiah 20; Isaiah 55:8-11; Isaiah 1:18; Genesis 22; Hebrews 11; John 1:1-14; Job 2:3; Job 42; John 9; Romans 1; Romans 10
Today’s conversation is about Lesson 9 of Theology 101: The Western Theological Tradition taught by various Hillsdale Professors. Take the course with us at no cost to you!
More about Theology 101:
Examine the great questions of Western theology from the ancient Hebrews through today. The gift of speech, or reason, given by God to man, enables us to think about God and to worship Him.
This free online course pursues this purpose by examining the nature of God as revealed in the Bible, exploring the great theological questions and controversies of the early Christian church, studying the history of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and much more.
We invite you to join us and explore the nature of the relationship between God and man, and how a proper understanding of this relationship can lead to a free and happy life.
Sign up at http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/
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Chapters
00:00 Facing the Comment Section
03:05 90s Nihilism & the Culture That Eroded Truth
06:20 How We Arrived at “My Truth”
11:10 Christian Wrestles With Unanswered Prayers
15:20 Al’s Four-Year Walk Away From God
18:45 Two Types of Crises of Faith
24:05 Could AI Spark a New Enlightenment?
31:20 Job, Suffering & the Limits of Human Reason
37:10 John Luke Rebuilds Faith After Deconstruction
42:40 Naturalism Pushed God Out of Universities
45:00 What Happens When Everything Becomes Subjective
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Lear
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