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1:05
This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
1:14
All right, guys, today we are going to be answering your questions because we have not done Q&A in a
1:18
while. So I know you guys like to have whenever your questions are answered, so we want to make
1:22
sure that we can bring those to you right now. But if you would like to have your question answered
1:26
here on the podcast, you can either email me, message me on social media, whatever that is. So
1:30
the email is just info@undaunted.life. info@undaunted.life. Or anytime we post something on Instagram,
1:37
that's the one that we're on most often of all the social media platforms. Just hit us up with a question
1:40
there. And guys, the questions can be about anything. And as you can see here, the questions today are
1:46
literally all over the map. And if you listen to any other Q&A episodes, some of them are just
1:50
kind of like preferential, some of them are just kind of funny, some of them are like really heavy
1:54
and really serious. So we're down to really get into all those things. And as some of you guys
1:58
that have reached out to us before, you've seen where we've actually taken your question, and we've
2:03
turned it into an entire podcast episode. So for some of you, you've gotten a little bit of a treat
2:07
because you got an entire episode because of something that you brought to our attention here.
2:10
And so that's that's really important to us as well. If there's something that's important to you,
2:13
we want to make sure that we cover it. And we want to make sure that the guys that are listening to
2:17
this also get a sense of what we're talking about as well. So it does not matter send us a question.
2:22
If it's a dumb question, maybe it'll never get answered. But otherwise we will kind of go from
2:26
there. So we will launch into our first question of the day. And so here we go. Should Christians
2:31
watch Game of Thrones? So this is a question that has come up a lot. And it's come up a lot in circles
2:38
that I've been in, even circles that I haven't been in. It's being chatted about online. I think
2:43
some churches are actually talking about it is, should we be watching this show? So if you have
2:47
been living under a rock for the last decade or so, Game of Thrones is a show on HBO. It's a fantasy
2:52
show. And it is pretty much the biggest show on television right now. We are right in the middle,
2:58
or I guess towards the latter end of the last season. So I think if you're listening to this
3:02
podcast on time, the actual finale of this show, I think this is at the end of season eight,
3:08
it'll be the last show of all time. And it's coming up this Sunday or something like that. I think
3:11
if you're, if you're listening to this on time, so the thing about it is even if you're not into
3:16
fantasy, even if you're not into all those things, Game of Thrones is a cultural phenomenon. And so
3:21
it is becoming part of our normal vernacular. There are things that are said and done on that
3:26
show that people are just kind of throwing into their normal conversation. And all the stars are
3:32
on all the talk shows and they're being interviewed on the podcast. And it's, it's culminating in a
3:36
lot of things for a lot of the actors and actresses, a lot of them have, where we're kind of either
3:40
not known at all or not really known for being that great before this show. And now they're getting
3:45
chances to star in their own movies and different things like that. So we've seen that. So that's
3:49
Game of Thrones. But here's the thing about Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones is an incredibly sexual
3:55
show. And it's also an incredibly violent show. Again, this is a fantasy show. So you're not really
4:00
getting that morality and all those different things. But it does have a lot of issues in terms
4:05
of those two particular things. Again, this is on HBO. This isn't on cable. You have to pay for this.
4:10
So pretty much if you're an HBO show, they have to show you boobs because that's pretty much what
4:14
HBO has to do, right? And so I had a friend of mine actually reached out to me and asked me my
4:19
opinion on this. And I had an immediate reaction, but then I held my tongue and kind of waited and
4:24
thought through it. And then I gave my full on reaction. And this is my personal opinion on whether
4:30
or not Christians should watch Game of Thrones. It's that if you have problems with seeing sexual
4:37
things on a screen and being unable to keep yourself from acting out sexually, you shouldn't watch
4:43
this show. Also, if you watch things that are violent on television or something like this show,
4:51
and it makes you want to be violent towards people in your life, you should not watch this show.
4:56
But otherwise, if we are to sanitize everything that we do, every bit of entertainment that we take
5:05
in and put it through the lens of, well, is this moral or not, there might not be any entertainment
5:11
left. And I know some of you are like, yeah, we should just only watch, you know, Christian movies
5:15
and listen to Michael W. Smith and all that. And hey, if that's your opinion, cool. Like, I'm fine
5:20
with that. Like, I don't think I would would argue with you necessarily on that. But the thing about
5:24
it is is if something leads you into temptation and that temptation actually leads you to sin,
5:29
you should avoid that thing, right? You shouldn't hang out near it. You should run away from it
5:33
entirely. And so whenever I was talking to my buddy, we were having a drink at a place here in
5:37
Edmond, Edmond, Oklahoma, and basically what we what I told him is I was like, look, and this
5:42
is a little bit crass, but this is just kind of what I said at the time. But it was like, look,
5:45
if you can't watch a sex scene in a movie or a television show without pausing it and throwing
5:50
your hand in your pants, yeah, this, this isn't the show for you. Because it's going to give you
5:55
plenty of opportunities to do that. And so here's the thing. I've watched Game of Thrones,
5:59
like it's something that I've watched before. And here's the thing about the sex scenes in
6:02
in the show. They're completely useless to the storyline. I mean, completely. And if we were to
6:08
think about it, aren't all sex scenes where, you know, body parts are actually shown? Aren't
6:13
all of those parts actually really, really useless to the overall story? I mean, the thing is back
6:19
in the day in movies, all sex was implied, right? You know, you'd have the woman undoing the guy's
6:25
shirt and all of a sudden they go go in the room and the door would close. And then the next scene
6:29
would be them waking up together the next day in bed, right? There's no question as to what happened
6:35
that evening, but we didn't need to see it, right? But you see a lot of these shows, you know, on,
6:40
on these pay first stations, so your showtimes and your HBOs and your stars and all that,
6:44
they're just showing graphic nudity and graphic sexual nudity for the sake of showing it, right?
6:50
That that's all that it is for. And another good example is one of my favorite shows of all time
6:54
is a show called Rome. It was another show on HBO. It was only two seasons long, but it basically
7:00
followed the time around Julius Caesar whenever he was assassinated and the rise of, uh, of Augusta
7:06
Caesar and all those different things. And the thing about that show is there was some gratuitous
7:10
sex in that show as well. And it was so annoying. Like, even at the time when I was watching that
7:16
show, that was at a time where, you know, sexual sin and lust and me acting out on it was something
7:21
that was like incredibly insanely more prevalent than it is for me right now since I've kind of
7:27
matured to a different area. But I remember it still being annoying at that time. Like, really?
7:32
Like, I would love to sit down and watch the show, you know, with my girlfriend at the time or my
7:37
wife or my parents or whatever the thing might be. But it's just like, man, it's just, it's just
7:41
awkward. It's just weird. And, you know, you, you fast forward and then you miss some actual dialogue
7:46
that was necessary to the story. And so the thing about it is I kind of feel like I'm getting off
7:50
the subject here a little bit. But honestly, I think this this comes down to everyone's personal
7:55
conscience on the issue. And I know I spent most of the time talking about it in a sexualized manner.
7:59
But I do know some people that whenever they are around violence or whenever they see violence,
8:03
it makes them want to be violent. It tempts them to be violent. Maybe they have a violent streak
8:08
inside of their personality. And so that's something that you got to be aware of. But the thing is,
8:13
if you can watch it for its entertainment quality and watch it and appreciate the acting or the
8:18
special effects or the story, or maybe you read the books before, and now you're actually seeing
8:22
the books come to life. And that's really exciting to you. And you're not really tempted to be a
8:26
moral for watching that show or to act out sexually or to act out physically or whatever those things
8:30
might be. In my opinion, I think you're going to be okay. But at the same time, if you think it's
8:35
not okay, if you don't want to lead yourself into temptation, if you don't want to get up
8:39
right towards that line, I understand that as well. So that's that first one. All right, guys,
8:43
next question. Why do you always talk about abortion? We get it your pro life. You don't have to talk
8:49
about it every episode. So apparently this individual is not terribly happy that I talk about abortion
8:54
every episode. But to sir, ma'am, to address this question, the reason why we talk about abortion
9:01
is because it's incredibly important. You dope. Come on. Like seriously, the reason why we talk
9:07
about it so often and that we keep everybody up to date is because most of you are not kept up
9:12
to date on this issue with the normal news that you follow. Even if that news is Fox news or right
9:17
leaning stuff, you're not really getting a lot of things that are going on within the law on this
9:22
particular issue. Because this is the issue of the sanctity of human life of the Amago day, right?
9:27
Because we're losing thousands and thousands of image bearers of God every single day to abortion
9:36
to the murder of babies. And here's the other thing. Again, a few weeks ago, I taught my Sunday
9:41
school and it's a bunch of couples that are, you know, in their 30s and early 40s or something like
9:45
that. And these are people that are well meaning Christian people that want to do right that are
9:50
moral that want to do all those different things. And they had no responses or would have had no
9:55
responses to some of the most basic fundamental objections that pro abortion people put out there.
10:02
So if they had been in a conversation with somebody that they could actually change their mind or
10:06
the minds of the people around them, they would have no idea how to respond. And again, these are
10:11
well meaning Christian people that don't think abortion is something that we should do. They don't
10:15
think we should murder babies inside the womb. But if someone says, Oh, well, it's not really
10:19
baby. It's a clump of cells. They'd be like, the Bible, right? You know, and again, the Bible
10:25
is a sufficient thing to answer that question. But they don't even know where to point to in the
10:28
Bible to say that this is what we should do. This is a standard that we have. And so the thing
10:32
about it is, is if you're tired of hearing about abortion, go listen to another podcast. I don't
10:35
care. Like the thing is, is we're going to talk about the things on this podcast that are important.
10:40
And if you don't think abortion is important, if you don't think the things that we think are
10:43
important are important, then go do something else. They're literally what tens of thousands,
10:47
if not hundreds of thousands of different podcasts out there that kind of have their own style and
10:52
have their own thing. So guys, if there's ever a time where you feel like I'm beating a dead horse
10:56
on anything, sure, you're welcome to tell me and I'm also welcome to not give a crap about your
11:00
response. Like, but that's the thing is this is one of those issues that we're going to continue
11:06
to beat this drum. Until abortion is eradicated worldwide, which I'm not sure we'll ever see in
11:11
our lifetime. I'm not sure if we'll ever see that just in the United States with the way things are
11:15
going. But until that is just completely eradicated and no longer an option, I'm going to keep talking
11:20
about it. So just get used to it. All right, guys, next question. Does God still do miracles
11:26
slash heal? So when I first got this question, I thought this was going to be one that I was
11:32
just going to kind of skip because it's like, well, duh, doesn't he kind of just do miracles? That's
11:35
something that we all kind of know. But this is actually a much deeper issue for a lot of people,
11:42
right? There are people that are non Christians. There are people that are atheists. There are
11:47
people that are Christians that kind of ask this are like, well, I don't, I don't really see miracles
11:51
around. And so, you know, I read the Bible and I hear about all these miracles and I'm thinking to
11:55
myself, well, gosh, I think it would be really good for me if I could hear one of these miracles
12:00
or see one of these miracles or or at least know someone that knew somebody that that got to witness
12:04
a miracle like this. And so why isn't God acting right now the way that he did thousands of years
12:10
ago? And so I'll kind of start with the end in mind here. And that is that yes, I still obviously
12:15
think that God does miracles and does heal people. But I remember and I can't remember if this was
12:21
Ravi Zacharias quoting someone else or if this was his quote, but it's basically like if God gave
12:25
you a thousand miracles, you'd ask for a thousand and one, right? And so that's the thing is because
12:31
there's the logical question here, which is wouldn't more people believe in God if he just did miracles.
12:36
But I think Ravi's right on there with either himself or whoever he was quoting that we would
12:40
always ask for something additional, right? And the reason that we know this to be true is because
12:46
there were hundreds, if not thousands of people that watched Jesus perform miracles like right
12:51
before their very eyes. And even they walked away not believing in him. I mean, including the apostles.
12:57
I mean, just remember those three days before the resurrection and just remember what the
13:02
apostles did running up to the point of Jesus's death in the few days thereafter. Just think about
13:08
it. They saw it. They were around him for three years every single day watching him teach and
13:13
watching him heal and watching him do miracles. And even they were like, oh man, guess we got it wrong.
13:18
So who are we to say that we wouldn't have those feelings now when we're not walking around with
13:24
Jesus? And so as I was kind of digging into this, there's a lot of different ways that I can go.
13:27
But again, this is Q&A podcast that we try to do short little chunks on different subjects.
13:32
But I found a really, really helpful article by John Piper. And so it's not exactly an article.
13:36
I think he has a weekly or monthly podcast show, which is basically Ask John Piper. And he was
13:41
asked specifically about this. And so I'm going to include the audio here at the end of the podcast,
13:47
the link anyway, so that you can go check it out. But the question that he got for that week is,
13:50
why do we see so few miracles today? And so what I want to do is I want to actually read through
13:55
his answer because it's a very well thought out answer. And again, he's just being asked and kind
14:00
of like an interview type way. So it's not like something where he just wrote it out into an essay
14:05
form or something like that. But I'm just going to go ahead and read the transcript to you here. So
14:09
you can kind of get a sense of what he would say to answer this question. So here we go.
14:12
It seems we see signs, wonders and miracles all over our Bibles. But for many of us,
14:18
we see an absence of signs, wonders and miracles in our lives and in the world around us.
14:23
So where did the wonders go? It's a question from a college student who writes into us,
14:27
quote, Pastor John, thank you for the wonderful podcast. I listened regularly. I'm a freshman
14:32
at the University of Pennsylvania. My parents are missionaries in the Republic of Georgia.
14:36
I've spent some time on the in the mission field with them as well. Living on as a very secular
14:41
or living on a very secular campus is obviously a night and day difference from the mission field,
14:45
especially as I talk to my classmates about faith, life and Christianity in general.
14:50
One question that my friends often asked me is this one. Why doesn't God work overt miracles today
14:55
in 21st century America like he did in both the Old and New Testaments? Doesn't it seem convenient
15:01
that God only worked miracles in the Bible? How would you answer this objection to the faith? Unquote.
15:06
My answer to this is fairly simple. It's this. There are fewer miracles in the Bible than you
15:11
probably think, and there are more miracles today than you probably know. And there is a good
15:16
biblical reason for why there would be a certain kind of prevalence of miracles in the Bible
15:20
that is different from today. Let me say a word about each of those three observations.
15:24
First, Old Miracles. Think about the Old Testament. Here's a typical statement. The Psalmist says in
15:29
Psalm 77 11, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
15:36
When you read the Old Testament, you realize most of the saints in most of these centuries
15:39
would have talked like that. The wonders of old. Oh, remember the wonders of old.
15:44
They would have had the same question we do. Why were there more miracles in the days of Elijah
15:49
or in the days of Moses than there are today in the day of the prophets or in the days of the kings?
15:54
It's simply a great mistake to think that there are miracles running all through the history of
15:59
God's people as the Bible records it. They were not running all through the history of God's people.
16:03
They sprung up around certain periods of time, like the Exodus and like the ministries of Elijah
16:08
and Elisha. Most of the time, the saints of the Old Testament were living by faith in the promises
16:12
of God for the future, rooted in the past wonders of God that he had worked. This is the way we live
16:18
our lives today by faith in the promises of God for a kingdom that's yet to be consummated
16:22
by looking back to the decisive work of Jesus Christ and the Bible. So now let's talk about
16:26
new miracles. When it comes to the New Testament, it is gloriously true that Jesus did miracles
16:30
perfectly and consistently, though even he raised only three people from the dead and didn't heal
16:35
people in many places where he traveled or where he didn't travel. The miracles of Jesus were clearly
16:40
not to show that the kingdom has been consummated. They showed that the kingdom had been broken into
16:44
the world, pointing to a future day when everybody would be raised from the dead and those who believed
16:49
in Jesus Christ would not be sick anymore, because that's the way Jesus is and he's showing some of
16:53
that now. Not only that, but Jesus himself explains his own miracles as pointing to his divinity.
16:59
In other words, something about these miracles attached to him and you wouldn't expect them to
17:03
attach to other people in the same way. For example, he said in John 10 37, if I am not doing the works
17:10
of my father, then do not believe me. In other words, these works are good evidence that I am in
17:15
the father and the father is in me. I'm unique. I am the son of God. This is true. Even though he
17:21
gave his disciples authority to do miracles also, they knew that there were something utterly
17:26
unique about the man and the way he did miracles. The authority and power uniquely resided in him
17:31
as the very son of God. When you turn to the book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament,
17:36
it's obvious that the apostles did some astonishing miracles, but it's also true that they suffered
17:41
much and their colleagues got sick. Paul carried a doctor around with him and they got thrown in
17:46
prison. They got killed. Even though there were gifts of miracles and gifts of healing and gifts
17:50
of exorcism that are spoken of in 1 Corinthians 12, it would be a huge stretch to think that the
17:55
Christians with those gifts in the 1st century were performing miracles the way Jesus did.
17:59
Already in the 1st century, outside the life of Jesus, things had changed. My first observation
18:04
is that we shouldn't think of the Bible times, either old or New Testament, as times in which saints
18:09
of God consistently did miracles. That would be a distortion of the biblical record. They were few
18:14
and far between in the Old Testament. They were uniquely concentrated in Jesus and his apostles
18:19
in a very special, Christ-exalting way. They are shared in part through the spiritual gifts with
18:24
all the saints. The second observation I would make is that there are probably more miracles
18:28
happening today than we realize. If we would collect all the authentic stories all over the
18:32
world from all of the missionaries and all the saints and all the countries of the world,
18:36
all the cultures of the world, if we could collect all the millions of encounters between Christians
18:40
and demons and Christians and sickness and all the so-called coincidences of the world,
18:44
we would be stunned. We would think we were living in the world of miracles, which we are.
18:49
The third observation I would make, and this is probably what I would say to the unbeliever who
18:53
is challenging me, is that the heart of Christianity is not that the kingdom has fully come and all
18:58
sin and evil is being overcome now in this age. The heart of Christianity is that Jesus Christ,
19:04
the Son of God, came into the world at a point in history in the past to reveal what God is like
19:09
and to accomplish salvation for all who believe in him by dying and rising again. Miracles cluster
19:14
around that appearance in history in Jesus and the life of the apostles to vindicate his claim
19:19
and their writings. Christianity is basically a life lived by looking back with confidence in the
19:24
work of Christ and looking forward in hope because of that pass to the consummation that's coming.
19:29
It is to be willing to suffer and love people now and call them to that faith. We live in a
19:34
period of time precisely where suffering is normal. Nevertheless, God does now and then
19:39
and sometimes regularly in periods of revival uses power to perform according to a sovereign will
19:46
miracles for his people. Why he doesn't do it more now than he does is partly perhaps owing
19:52
to our lack of expectancy and faith, but is ultimately owing to the sovereign decree.
19:56
When we call people to repent and believe we're not calling them to do this on the basis of a
20:01
miracle they saw yesterday, even if it happened, we are calling them on the basis of the glory of
20:06
Jesus Christ revealed in his death and resurrection resurrection through scripture. That's the basis.
20:11
Even if miracles were happening more today, that's where the foundation of the faith would need to
20:16
lie. And so guys, I think that's a very appropriate way to come out that question and answer it because
20:21
I got to be honest, I thought the exact same thing. I was like, you know, I've known people
20:27
that were literally dead, that were dead, heart done, no way of them coming back to life that are
20:32
coming that came back to life, no brain damage, even though there was no oxygen to their brain
20:36
for multiple minutes. So this is something that I've wondered is like, why don't we get more of that?
20:41
And if people are miraculously healed, why isn't that on the news? And so I think probably the
20:45
best point from that that I got was if we could collect all these stories, you know, from from all
20:52
over the place, if we could talk to missionaries, if we could talk to people that were spreading the
20:56
gospel in dangerous areas, if we could talk to a Muslims that have converted to Christianity,
21:00
because of dreams that they've had, if we could talk to all these people and get them into a single
21:04
book or a single volume or a single podcast or audio book or whatever the thing might be,
21:08
I think we'd be overwhelmed. I think we would absolutely be overwhelmed. And I know a lot of
21:13
your secular secularist friends or atheistic friends, or maybe even you on this podcast,
21:17
you're thinking yourself, well, yeah, a lot of these medical things can be explained though.
21:20
You know, there's the Lazarus effect. And then there's the this and then there's the stuff we
21:24
haven't even discovered yet. And here's the thing, I'll grant you some of that. I'll grant you some
21:28
of that like there's some things that people think are a miracle that is basically them having gas,
21:33
right? Oh, they couldn't find their keys. And then magically they lifted up this t-shirt that
21:38
they've never had their keys under before. And poof, there's their keys. Is that a miracle? I'm
21:43
going to say probably not. But here's the thing guys is one of the things I'm looking most forward
21:47
to in heaven is the thought that I might get some sort of a rundown of all the time, all the times
21:52
that God saved my bacon, right? That time, and I think I've talked about this before, where you're
21:57
so frustrated because you can't find your keys, you need to get out the door, you're late for a
22:00
meeting already or whatever the thing might be, and you can't find your keys. And then, you know,
22:03
it takes you two or three minutes. Oh, gosh, there they are. You cussing you, or are you screaming,
22:06
you whatever, and you storm out, you get in your car, and then you head on. Well, if you had been
22:10
able to find your keys immediately, then perhaps you would have gotten in your car and been at that
22:16
intersection where that truck was going through after they ran the red light. It's stuff like that.
22:22
And again, if we believe that God is coordinating all these things, if he's omniscient, omnipresent,
22:27
omnip everything right, if we believe that, then those are things that you have to believe could
22:31
certainly be possible that he is working things for our good. And so that's one of the things
22:37
there is I would look at that as a miracle. Whereas you're looking through your lens using,
22:42
you know, 10% of your the power of your brain, looking through your lens, and you're only seeing
22:45
that I can't find my damn keys, right? It's just a little bit different. So hopefully that gives
22:50
you a little bit more of a of a open understanding of what that could look like for us. All right,
22:54
guys, next question. Okay, our leggings pants. So yeah, thanks to whoever snuck that one in our
23:02
leggings pants. Okay, so well, leggings are not things that I wear. And for those of you that
23:08
don't understand what leggings are, those are like yoga pants, leggings are all kind of the same thing,
23:13
right? And so, I mean, I guess for for years now, there's been a lot of people that have been
23:18
wearing leggings. And to be honest, there's even a couple guys at my Jiu Jitsu school that when they
23:21
train, they're just wearing leggings and, you know, a, a top like a skin tight top. And it's a little
23:27
bit weird. It's like, dude, I can see your penis. And so it's just like a little bit like, all right,
23:31
dude, just put some shorts on or something. But the thing about it is is, well, actually,
23:35
there was a story that came up not that long ago. I forget where I heard about it. But at the
23:38
University of Notre Dame, there was like a mom. And I don't know what her connection was to Notre
23:42
Dame. If she had like a daughter or a son of the school, or if she was on staff, I really don't know.
23:47
But I think she wrote an open letter in the student paper or or something that was attached to
23:52
Notre Dame. And it was essentially saying that she thought it was very, very immodest of girls,
23:58
especially in college, to be wearing yoga pants, like to class. And you not wear it with a a shirt
24:05
or a sweatshirt that would actually cover their rump or whatever thing was. And of course, the
24:09
college students reacted like college students would, you know, basically every girl on campus
24:13
only wore yoga pants for like a week or something like that. But here's the thing at the end of the
24:18
day. Are they pants? No, in my opinion, they're underwear. I mean, that at the end of the day,
24:24
that is what they are. They are skin tight garments that should probably be worn under
24:28
something. But but here's the thing as well as I know people of some women in my life that are
24:32
very, very dear to me that wear yoga pants. But the thing about it is in my opinion, they're wearing
24:36
it in a way that is tasteful. So they're wearing it with an adorning garment at like a top that is
24:41
actually covering their butt, right? And so it's basically like them wearing, I don't know, a really
24:48
short dress, but then their their legs are absolutely covered. But if I'm being honest, there are a
24:53
lot of girls that wear yoga pants around and they're wearing it with shirts that show their midria for
24:58
wearing shirts that are skin tight that don't go down over the rest of their anatomy or whatever
25:02
thing might be. And the thing about it is guys, is it doesn't leave a whole lot to the imagination,
25:06
does it? I mean, when someone's wearing skin tight yoga pants and maybe they're maybe they're
25:12
not wearing underwear or maybe they're working out or maybe whatever the thing might is, it's like,
25:15
geez, like, come on. I mean, it's it's tempting enough walking through this world, trying to
25:20
bounce your eyes, trying to honor your wife with your eyes when she's nowhere near you,
25:24
all those things. And then you see someone walking around like that. So it is very,
25:27
very difficult. And I know for most of my friends that don't really care to bounce their eyes,
25:31
that is just something that's like, Oh, that's just something that I'm gonna have to see now.
25:34
Oh, well, there's a but I need to look at it. And so I guess my encouragement to any ladies that
25:40
are listening to this and believe it or not, there are ladies out there listening to this is,
25:43
if you're going to wear those pants because they're comfortable, I've never worn them. So I can't
25:46
imagine if they're comfortable or not, I would assume since you're wearing them all the time that
25:50
they are comfortable, perhaps wear it with an appropriate top. I guess that's the best I would
25:55
go. I mean, what am I supposed to do with this question? Our leggings pants? But no, I don't
25:58
think they're pants. I think they're underwear. I think people are wearing them around as if that
26:01
that is an okay thing to wear. I don't think it's very modest. If you're a Christian young lady
26:06
out there, if you're a father and you're raising a Christian young lady, I would maybe have a serious
26:10
talk about what they're wearing with their yoga pants. If they're covering up the rest of what
26:14
they're doing, because the thing is, is, you know, you wouldn't probably like it if, you know, somebody
26:19
were tempting your, your 14 year old son at a church camp or at a church or something like that,
26:24
wearing something like that, right? But part of that starts at home, whatever is acceptable to allow
26:29
your daughters to walk out into the world wearing. And there's only so much control we can have
26:33
over something like that. But here I am turning leggings into a really serious conversation. But
26:37
yes, I think it is a serious conversation. It's mainly has to do with parents and also for people
26:41
that are trying to take care of themselves and trying to make sure that they don't cause anyone
26:44
else to stumble in the world. I think it's important to not just wear those things by themselves. So
26:49
good grief. Hopefully we have a better, better next question. So thank you again to whoever
26:53
snuck that went in. All right. Next question. Here we go. What did your go to morning routine to
26:58
ensure a fire started to the to the day? I've been fasting until 11 a.m. And on the days I do,
27:05
I feel like I think and function better. Sorry, I jacked that up completely. But okay, essentially
27:10
asking about my morning routine. So my mornings are a little bit different. Because, you know,
27:14
I kind of create my own schedule. And there's not very many things that are like solidified on a
27:18
day to day basis. But essentially, I know that Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm going to train you
27:22
jiu-jitsu at 6 a.m. And then whenever I get home, I'm going to lift. And so those are fairly involved
27:28
days. And for me, I do intermittent fasting. And so I don't eat anything until noon. And so,
27:32
I know it's crazy for a lot of people to think of. But like on Mondays and Wednesdays when I also
27:36
wake up and lift or Fridays when I potentially lift or Saturdays when I potentially lift or,
27:40
you know, wake up and do some sort of recovery exercise or something like that. I do everything
27:45
fasted. And I mean everything. And so there's a handful of days in the week, usually like a
27:50
Thursday night and a Sunday night where I will actually work out in the evening. I try not to eat
27:56
for at least three or four hours before I go and do that for a lot of different reasons. You
27:59
know, you don't want to have gas and, you know, be doing jiu-jitsu or trying to move around and do
28:03
stuff like that. So my body has gotten insanely use to lifting and running and doing really hard
28:10
things cardio wise without any food. And then also I won't do any food for several more hours.
28:15
So if I get done lifting at like nine o'clock, well, I'm not going to be eating for another three hours.
28:19
And one of the things that it kind of has open intermittent fasting to me is that I used to believe
28:24
in the, or there was good evidence to believe in the magic hour, right? Like right after you lifted,
28:30
that was like the big hour where you had to get your protein in. So whether you were consuming food
28:35
protein or taking protein powder or something like that, then the first 30 to 60 minutes after you
28:40
lifted, that was the thing is like, this is whenever the protein absorbs the most into the body,
28:43
blah, blah, blah, had to do it. But then recently, there's been more signs that's come out that
28:48
basically said that's not really the case. That essentially, as long as you have protein, an
28:53
appropriate amount of protein in your body within a 24 hour cycle after lifting, that it's going to
28:59
absorb fine. And there's even studies to suggest that the farther away from your workout within
29:04
still within that 24 hour period, that you get that protein that it will actually absorb faster
29:10
than. And so basically what that freed me up to do since I'm a morning lift person is that I can
29:14
lift and do all those things in the knot, eat until noon. But I will tell you, once it becomes
29:19
noon time, you better get out of my way, right? Like, as soon as that food gets in front of me,
29:23
I mean, I gorge for my lunches. I mean, I really, really fill up because again, I only eat from
29:27
noon to eight o'clock. And so in order to get the amount of calories that I need to kind of keep
29:32
up with the activity level that I have, it really starts with me making sure that I can get as
29:36
enough calories in that eight hour window. So but in terms of my morning routine, I like to get a
29:40
good amount of sleep. I don't like to stay up super late. I like to get, you know, seven, eight
29:45
hours if I can, but typically really try to nail that seven hours. But I make sure I get some sort
29:50
of physical activity in first part of the day. All right, guys, next question. How do we prepare
29:55
the next generation to become the men that God has called us all to be? And so this is very similar
30:01
to a lot of questions that I've got in the past about kind of what do we do about the next
30:04
generation? What do we do with our sons, those types of things? And again, broken record. But if
30:08
you're hearing this for the first time, it's very, very important for you to think about rights of
30:11
passage. Okay. As Americans, as Westerners, we don't really have rights of passage anymore.
30:17
There's not really that time or that moment where we all knew, well, I was a man at this exact moment,
30:22
right? Whereas in other cultures, there are specific rights of passage where the young boys
30:27
know exactly at that exact moment, they are now considered a man within their community.
30:32
And so we don't do that. And so as Christian men of God, whether we're doing that solo just
30:37
in our household or in a small group or in a larger group in our area, it's very important
30:43
that we, we coax our boys into manhood and that we lead them there in a certain way.
30:48
And so that's the thing that I think is the most important thing. In addition to all those things,
30:53
is making sure that your children are reading scripture, making sure you're reading scripture
30:57
with them, making sure that you're praying together, making sure that you were living out
31:00
gospel mandates and biblical mandates and everyday life together with them, going and being charitable
31:06
for people, helping people out, praying for people, being a service to other people, sharing the gospel
31:11
with people, those are things that you need to model to our sons, because that's going to really
31:14
show them what it means to be like Christ, and it's going to help them to do that for other people.
31:20
And one thing I heard, it was interesting, I'll try to remember exactly where I heard it,
31:23
but it was in a podcast episode where this particular guy said that it was really, really important
31:29
for fathers to not be 100% a part of their son's rights of passage. And I had never heard this
31:36
before. So I'll try to tease it out in my short understanding of it. But every time I've thought
31:40
about rights of passage, I've thought about, okay, if I had a son starting at the age of like, you know,
31:44
10, and every year until they were 18, we would do like this thing or this project or go out in the
31:50
woods and, you know, every year would get progressively harder and I would teach them more things and
31:54
they would learn more about themselves and all those things. And it was always, you know, I would be
31:57
there, that was always the thing, right? But there was a sense in all these cultures where separation
32:04
is really, really important. So separation from the track or from the tribe and or from the pack
32:09
and separation from the community and separation from the family. And then whenever they come back
32:14
to the family, whenever they're brought back into the fold, it's it's a deeper level of commitment
32:19
to that family or or that household or something like that, and that it was other men because you
32:24
guys out there know this, you have your sons and daughters that you'll tell them to do something,
32:27
tell them to do something, tell them to do something, they're like, no, I don't like that. That's stupid,
32:31
whatever. And then you'll hear like a camp counselor say it or a coach say it or a preacher say,
32:35
and then all send the kids like, Oh man, this is a really good idea. I should do that. And you're
32:38
like, like, you want to kill them, right? It's kind of one of those deals. It's like, okay,
32:43
maybe if they hear dad saying it the whole time, maybe they're going to get some of it and maybe
32:47
have a different relationship with your son or your daughter, but it's just a little bit different.
32:51
But that's something that's interesting for me not having a son hoping to have a son someday,
32:55
that that would be something that would be really important to bring other guys, some of my
32:59
foxhole guys guys that I'm in the foxhole with right now, having them be a part of that process
33:04
with my son. I think that'd be awesome. All right, guys, next question. How do you decide what
33:08
topics to cover on the podcast? Okay, so this is a pretty easy one. So basically, if it's not
33:14
interesting to me or any of us here, then we're not going to talk about it, right? But the podcast
33:20
topics, I mean, I've got a whiteboard and I've got a running set of notes on my phone of topics
33:25
that I can talk about at any point ever, right? So I think what was the last week or week before,
33:29
it was like moral relativism, moral relativity or whatever thing was. And so that's something
33:33
that I had recorded months ago that it was just appropriate to kind of stick it in to this point
33:38
because there wasn't anything else that I felt like was pressing, which kind of leads to the
33:41
other thing is if there's something pressing, if there's like a moment in our culture, or if
33:46
there's something big in the news or, you know, an attack of some kind somewhere, we're going to
33:51
war, whatever the thing might be, I think it's important to talk about those things when they're
33:55
fresh on our minds. And so several times on this podcast, I've actually pushed episodes back.
34:00
I've pushed episodes into the future because they weren't time sensitive. They weren't pertinent
34:04
to what was happening in the world at that exact moment. And so again, like I said, I try to bring
34:09
these two you guys in in just bite sized chunks. I know for some of y'all are like,
34:13
dude, some of these are an hour long house out of bite size. But but again, I listened to everything
34:16
at two time speeds. So I try to, you know, speed things up to get more content in. But you know,
34:20
it's it's 30 to 60 minutes of something that's really important and really pertinent. I try to
34:24
bring it to you in a perspective that might be a little bit different than the way that you're
34:27
hearing it in the news or hearing it at church or hearing it in your circle of friends. And I
34:32
obviously want to do things to encourage you guys to be better to look at things in a different light.
34:36
And so if something is that important, and it kind of meets all those filters and circumstances,
34:41
then we'll bring it to you that way. All right, next question. What are the best podcast episodes
34:46
you've listened to recently? Okay, so I actually went through and every time I hear a really,
34:50
really good podcast, I will actually save it. So I listened to stuff on Apple iTunes. And so I'll
34:55
actually hit the hit the save episode button or whatever. And so if I'm out of podcasts or I don't
34:59
have anything new to listen to, I'll go back and listen to one of those. And so there's maybe about
35:03
10 or so or maybe a dozen that I've come up with in the last few months that I thought were really,
35:07
really fantastic. And so I'll just kind of throw them out there to you here in a list format. I'll
35:12
go ahead and provide the list at the end of this podcast as well. But unfortunately, I won't be
35:16
able to provide the links to these exact episodes because if there's too many links in the show notes,
35:20
it doesn't upload blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so one is the Matt Walsh show. This is episode 209.
35:26
When will the same majority stand up? So Matt Walsh, he's got a very, very, very, very straightforward
35:33
style. A lot of people actually don't like that very much because he doesn't really mince words.
35:38
He doesn't seem to be an incredibly emotive individual. And that's, you know, that's, that's
35:41
fine for a lot of people that doesn't really bother me. But I know his insensitivity at times
35:45
can really, really bother some folks. But in this particular episode, he was basically talking
35:49
about transgenderism. It's a topic that he talks about a lot of different points. But in most of
35:53
his episodes, he'll cover a few major topics and then he'll go over some, you know, mailbag stuff
35:59
from from individuals. So he pretty much does Q and A on every single one of his podcasts. So,
36:02
hey, he's better than me. Who cares? It is what it is. The next one was the Village Church podcast.
36:07
So again, that's Matt Chandler. And so this was the one actually from this past Sunday. So this is
36:13
May the sixth. So I'm actually recording this. I'm recording this on the Sunday after that.
36:18
But it's on May the sixth and it's called biblically serious. And so sometimes Matt Chandler drives
36:23
me insane because he doesn't really work off of an outline. Sometimes it's kind of hard to know
36:29
where he's going or even realize where he's been. It's somewhat difficult to follow him. Sometimes
36:34
he'll say kind of, Hey, here's the three things I'm going to cover today. And you're like, Oh man,
36:37
this is going to be awesome. And then he doesn't like hit any of those points. And so I felt like
36:41
this one was a really, really tight sermon. I felt like it was kind of a gauntlet being thrown down
36:46
talking about why we should be serious about the Bible. So that's a good one. The Joe Rogan
36:51
Experience Episode 1262. This is with Pat McNamara. So Pat McNamara is like a gangster. This dude is
36:57
like in his 50s. And he's like, he works out like a mad mad man. I think he was a speck ops guy in
37:04
the military until he retired, but he's had an incredibly rough life. And it was like brought
37:09
on by himself like he wanted to make himself rough and tough and some of the things he does
37:13
out in the wilderness. But that was a very, very interesting podcast. And it's got a lot of awesome
37:18
content in it. And then also it made me follow on Instagram, which has been really, really cool as
37:22
well. Now a couple of Ben Shapiro show podcast episodes. So these are actually, he does a Sunday
37:27
specials like a sit down interview with somebody. So he did one with Stephen C. Meyer. That's episode
37:32
43, which was from March the 24th. And then he did one with William Lane Craig, literally today,
37:38
the day that I'm recording this, he released it. So this is a 512 of 19. So that's Sunday
37:42
special episode number 50. So let me start with William Lane Craig. So obviously he's a well-known
37:47
philosopher and apologist. And so it's kind of interesting seeing him kind of spar a little bit
37:51
with Ben Shapiro, because Ben Shapiro is obviously an Orthodox Jew. William Lane Craig is a Christian
37:56
and an apologist for that. And so you can see Ben Shapiro at different times be a little bit
38:00
dismissive of some of Craig's points. But I thought it was very, very well done and it's incredibly
38:05
deep. So that's one that I listened to at two times speed. I was probably like, I think I'm too
38:09
dumb to listen to that one at two times speed. So I may need to go back and listen to that one at
38:12
half speed. And then Stephen C. Meyer is the author of the book Darwin's Doubt. And so this is a guy
38:18
that's basically talking from a very high level of scientific understanding about how creationism
38:24
is probably the most viable thing for us to kind of think about when it comes to how we got the
38:29
world that we got to today. So that one again, that one's not for dummy. So definitely listen to
38:33
that one. But maybe not bump that one up to two times speed. The Rubin reports that's Dave Rubin.
38:38
This one was called respectful disagreement Christianity and marriage. And this is with
38:43
Ali Stucky. And so Ali Stucky is a conservative female commentator. She has the Prager U video,
38:49
which has more views than any other Prager U video now basically talking about how strong men
38:54
don't want weak women. Because that's kind of something that we see today is, you know, all these
38:57
feminists, they want their men to basically basically be subservient weirdos, right? That are just gonna
39:02
like have feelings and sit at home cleaning the same dish over and over and making them dinner and
39:07
you know, supporting them in the only way they know how, which is basically by crying on the couch
39:10
while they're wearing a sweater. And so this is kind of one of those things is I really like
39:14
how her mind works and how she interacted with Dave Rubin. The great man podcast. That is an
39:20
episode be the vision keeper that is from what is that April the 30th. And so this was, these are
39:26
kind of bite size like five to 10 minute podcast by Stephen Mansfield. And so I don't want to really
39:30
get it too much into what that one's about because it'll kind of ruin it. So go and check that one
39:35
out from the 30th of April. Last couple here, the Jordan Peterson podcast, this is called three
39:40
lecture in Portland, Oregon from June 25th of 2018. That's the name of it. But it was actually
39:46
posted on April the 7th. And so this is a lot of this is one of his live lectures. It's about an
39:51
hour, hour and 15 minutes of lecture. And then he goes into Q and A, but probably the best podcast
39:56
that I've listened to listen to recently was an art of manliness podcast. And this was episode 505.
40:01
This was released on May six. So about a week ago or so, it's called a man's need for ritual. And
40:07
you know, okay, I remember this is actually the podcast where the guy introduced the idea of not
40:11
having, you know, direct access to your son during rites of passage, right, to have other men involved.
40:16
But this was a really, really interesting conversation about ritualized manhood and about how we need a
40:22
desire to get back to that. And this isn't a guy that was necessarily bringing that to us from a
40:26
theistic point of view. But I still think it was, it was incredibly important. So those are some
40:30
for you guys that are maybe trying to jumpstart your podcast listening, maybe only listen to two or
40:34
three, that gives you a few more options there. All right, next one here. What does it look like
40:39
to be a resilient father or father figure for kids that you mentor? Well, the thing about this
40:45
one that's really easy is again, we talk about manliness or manhood being, you know, a male that
40:49
cultivates spiritual, mental and physical resilience daily. And so if you are mentoring a kid and
40:56
your, your fat now shape, you're not exactly dispelling displaying physical resilience to that,
41:01
to that boy. And that doesn't mean you have to do jujitsu or you have to do triathlons or you have
41:07
to do crazy, like mountain ops things. It's just you need to take care of yourself. Because again,
41:12
you're modeling to your, your sons or the kids that you're mentoring, what it's like to be a
41:18
resilient person. And here's the other thing. And so the, the physical thing is the one I talk
41:22
about the most, because it's the one that you can see if somebody doesn't take care of their body,
41:25
they don't die and they don't exercise, you can obviously see that on most people, right?
41:29
Unless they're genetics are just absolutely horrific, but at which point you can still
41:33
outwork your genetics. But even beyond that, when you're going through a situation that's
41:39
difficult, whether it's emotionally difficult or physically difficult or mentally difficult,
41:45
it's good to show these young boys that, Oh, I can get through this. This is really, really hard,
41:50
but I can get through this. And you know what, son, you know what, boy, you can do this too.
41:54
And so I think the thing about it that makes this question so easy to answer is you just have to
41:58
model it. Because why would you expect your son to do something that you're not doing?
42:03
I mean, I love my dad. I feel like I had an amazing dad, but he and I have don't,
42:10
haven't done anything the same, right? I mean, he's not a reader. I read all the time, like he
42:15
doesn't listen to podcasts. That's something that's really important to me. He kind of stopped trying
42:19
to develop who he was or improve who he was years and years ago, whereas I'm trying to get better
42:25
and sharper and, and, you know, faster and all these different things. Here, when I'm in my 30s
42:31
and I've landed to do the same thing in my 40s and 50s and 60s. So it's not something that I can
42:36
model a lot of my lifestyle and the direction that I'm going after my father would have been
42:41
easier to see someone else do that and model it and just following their footsteps. Yeah.
42:44
Have I gotten some value out of just figuring it out on my own shore? But again, the question is,
42:49
is how, what does it look like to be a resilient father or father figure to the kids that you
42:52
mentor? You just have to show them. So if you haven't gotten serious about spiritual,
42:58
mental or physical resilience, don't expect your kids to and don't expect them to just
43:02
know that's what you mean for them, right? You have to show them explicitly. All right,
43:06
next question here. What is the best and worst book that you've read lately? Okay, so I actually
43:13
need to record a podcast episode specifically just on this book. But the best book that I've
43:18
read this year so far has been Professor in the cage by Jonathan Goschill. And really,
43:23
really good book, basically a shorts and options. So that book is this was a guy in his late 30s
43:28
who was an adjunct English professor at a college. And he was just basically staring out the walls
43:33
every day, just wondering if this was going to be his entire life. And so when long story short,
43:39
he ended up walking into an MMA school one day and began to train MMA. And eventually,
43:44
he wanted to go on into a fight and do a fight himself. And that's kind of the thing I've talked
43:49
about this book a little bit before. This isn't just like a memoir about a guy that was a wimp and
43:53
wanted to become a tough guy. He actually spent a lot of time thinking about why men like fighting,
43:57
why men look forward to fighting, why they like to watch fighting, all those different things. So
44:01
it was a tremendously depth. It was it had a tremendous amount of depth, a depth depth. That's
44:07
the word D E P T H tremendous amount of depth with this book. And so I wasn't really expecting
44:12
that I was expecting more of memoir, but that is the best book I've read lately. But the worst book
44:17
that I've read lately is a book that I was really sad about because I was really looking forward to
44:21
reading it. It was called God and the transgender debate by Andrew T Walker. And so there's a book
44:27
that I've been eyeing from a Christian point of view about transgenderism for a while called
44:32
understanding gender dysphoria by a guy named your house. And the thing was is the reason why I didn't
44:37
buy that is because it was like 25 bucks on ebook or something like that. And I was like, I don't
44:41
know, like this book can end up sucking. I don't want to I could buy like two other books for that
44:45
amount or maybe three other books. But this one I saw that the forward was by Albert Moller. And I
44:51
really like Albert Moller. I listened to the daily to the to the briefing every single day. That's
44:55
a daily podcast that he does. And the thing was is I was really, really disappointed in this book.
45:01
I felt like it was a lot of woo woo, like it was a lot of just like stuff that we already know,
45:07
like, Oh, even if somebody has gender dysphoria, we really are still to love them and care for them
45:13
and understand. And it was like, well, yeah, yeah, I get it. Is that it? I got that was the
45:19
thing after every chapter I was like, is that it? Like it didn't have any depth. It didn't really
45:25
give me any sense of what is really going on with these people, how I can engage them in a
45:30
conversation, how I can engage with other people who basically look at gender dysphoria is like
45:35
just a thing that happens. And absolutely a man can be a woman and a woman can be a man.
45:38
All they have to do is think it. It gave me no tangible ways to combat any of that.
45:43
So I am very, very much so looking forward to reading the other book. I would like to get that
45:47
in at some point this year, understanding gender dysphoria, because again, I would like to talk to
45:52
you guys about transgenderism because I know that's something I get asked about a lot as well. But I
45:55
haven't gotten all my arguments and all of my formulation of that fully taken care of. So those
46:01
are the best and worst that I've read just here lately. All right, next question. What book are
46:06
you reading right now? Okay, so I'm actually, I got two books going. So I typically have about
46:10
two books going one that I read slowly, because I read that with my Sunday night crew. So again,
46:14
if you're an Edmond, Oklahoma, or anywhere in Oklahoma City, come see us at the forge in Edmond
46:19
on seven o'clock on Sundays. We trained you to do some circuit workouts, but we also talk about
46:23
books. So the book that we're reading right now, we just started a couple weeks ago, it's called
46:27
no God but one a law or Jesus. So that's buying to be able to rescue that should be familiar to
46:31
you guys because I've talked about on this podcast before. I've also got it on the 100 books that
46:35
every modern Christian man should read list. So that's just go to the website undaunted dot life
46:40
backslash book list. And so this is a guy he's he's since passed away. But he basically used to be
46:46
Muslim became a Christian. And this book is more of a deep dive into the differences between what
46:52
Christians believe and what Muslims believe. And so his first book seeking a law finding Jesus that
46:57
most of you have read. That is one that is a memoir. It's a great book. It kind of gives you a good
47:01
synopsis of what people believe within Islam. But this book takes a much, much deeper dive and
47:07
it's way, way, way more specific, but it's still palatable and easy for you to digest. And so this
47:12
is the second time I will have been going going through that I'm going through that with a group.
47:15
But the book that I'm reading on my own right now that actually just started is called Jesus
47:18
among secular gods. And so that's by Rabbi Zacharias and Vince Vitale. And so those are both people that
47:23
work for Rabbi Zacharias International Ministries. And so that one is basically talking about
47:27
all the all the isms, right? Secularism, sexism, and all these other like
47:33
scientisms and basically it's comparing Jesus to the secular gods of our world. And again,
47:39
if you know anything about Zacharias or Vitale, these are guys that go all around the world basically
47:44
arguing for why the gospel is correct for why the historicity of the biblical texts are correct and
47:51
can be trusted and all these different things. And so this is not going to be a woo book. I can't
47:55
imagine it being a woo book. So I'm excited to take that one down. And then after I read those,
48:01
the next ones I'll probably read it'll be one of these two I'll either finally read the Gulag
48:06
archipelago because it's one of those things where I'm a little bit behind on my reading goal for
48:10
this year. Like I'm about, you know, three or four weeks slower or behind where I should be right
48:15
now. And so if I throw the Gulag archipelago in there, that's going to take a long, long time
48:19
to read. So but I want to take that one down. So that might be next or I'm going to read seven
48:23
days that divide the world by John Lennox. And so that kind of gets into, you know, the scientific
48:27
creationism and worldviews and stuff like that. So that's pretty interesting. All right, next
48:32
question here. What is one book that you wish would disappear from history? So when I first got
48:37
this question, this was of all the questions in this podcast episode, this was the one that I was
48:42
like, whoa, okay. Haven't heard that one before, like not even anything close to that. And so I
48:49
really had to think about this one. And I went all over the place, I thought about mine conf by
48:54
Hitler. I thought about it was funny. I actually even thought about the Bible. I was like, I wonder
49:00
what we would be doing right now if we didn't have the Bible. But guys, I'm not being a blasphemer.
49:04
I'm not saying we shouldn't have the Bible. But I just had that thought, like, what would we be
49:07
doing if we didn't have the old in the New Testament? But I just went along to, I thought about Darwin
49:12
and that big long titled book about evolution. But the one that I landed on finally, and it's one
49:19
that I feel more and more comfortable the farther I get away from the decision, is the Communist
49:23
Manifesto. So that is by Karl Marx in Friedrich Engels. And so this is something that was written,
49:30
if it wasn't even technically a book, it was actually like a political pamphlet that was
49:34
published in the 1800s. But the thing about this is this one manifesto has led to so many horrific
49:42
things. I think you can you can look at most of the atrocities of the 20th century and take them
49:49
back to this Marxist ideology, this communist ideology. And it's from this communist ideology
49:55
that we get socialism. I think you can draw a direct link to the rise of socialism back to what
50:02
was talked about by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels here. But there's a article that I just want to
50:07
read to you here that I think kind of sums up my feelings on why I think the Communist Manifesto
50:12
is so horrific. And it's one of those books that, again, if I could get rid of one book, that would
50:17
be the one. And so Ben Shapiro actually wrote an article in this back in 2018. And it was basically
50:22
saying Karl Marx, you were wrong. So it's a short article here, but I just want to read
50:26
this to you right here. Okay. This week marks the birthday of one of the history's worst human
50:30
beings, Karl Marx. Just because Marx's philosophy would lead directly to the deaths of 100 million
50:36
human beings over the course of a century, the imprisonment of tens of millions more in gulags
50:40
and reeducation camps from Russia to China to Vietnam to Cambodia to North Korea, and the oppression
50:46
of hundreds of millions more hasn't dissuaded those on the modern Western left from embracing
50:51
Marxist bloody legacy. Realizing, however, that embracing communism itself might alienate those
50:57
who remember the Berlin Wall. Today's Marxist rally instead for identity politics. In the pages of the
51:03
New York Times, the same newspaper that in the past two years has run opinion pieces endorsing
51:07
communism's impact on female empowerment and female sexual activity and its inspirational
51:12
effects on Americans. Kyung-hee University associate professor of philosophy, Jason Barker,
51:17
celebrated Marx's birthday writing. Happy birthday, Karl Marx. You were right. What exactly was Marx
51:24
right about? He wasn't right about economics. His theory of economic economics is tripe.
51:30
He wasn't right about history unfolding as a glorious Hegelian progression toward a socialist
51:34
utopia either. But according to Baker, he was right about one thing. The dispossessed of the world
51:40
would unite to change human nature by changing the system of oppression under which they lived.
51:44
Marx, says Baker, was right about class exploitation. The rich exploiting the poor.
51:50
But it's the guise of victim group based on race and sex that Marx dialect finds it's true
51:56
apotheosis. Racial and sexual oppression has been added to the dynamic of class exploitation.
52:02
Social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo owe something of an unspoken debt
52:07
to Marx through the air, unapologetic targeting of the eternal truths of our age. Such movements
52:12
recognize, as Marx did, that the ideas that rule every society are those of its ruling class and
52:18
that overturning those ideas is fundamental to true revolutionary progress. Here, Baker is merely
52:25
rehashing the writings of members of the Frankfurt School, Marxists, such as Herbert Mark Hughes,
52:30
who argued that quote, "Human beings who have lived in the shadow of this culture,
52:34
the victims of the power structure, now opposed to the music of the spheres which was the most
52:39
sublime achievement of this culture, their own music, with all their defiance and the hatred
52:44
and the joy of rebellious victims, defining their own humanity against the definitions of the masters."
52:49
Unquote. Instead of a revolution of the proletariat, then Marxism now seeks,
52:54
now, sorry, instead of the revolution of the proletariat, then Marxism now seeks a revolution
53:01
of the victim. Sorry, that was a little hard there, but here we go. The various groups of
53:04
dispossessed who feel that the systems has been stacked against them. And it is far easier to
53:09
unite such groups around intersectional themes than it is to unite them around income disparity.
53:14
There may not be any serious brotherhood between those who don't earn much money,
53:18
but pure tribalism forms lasting ties and Marxists are happy to mold those tribes into a new nation
53:24
of rebels. And so again, I think the communist manifesto is incredibly, incredibly dangerous.
53:29
I think if you read it and don't laugh a whole whole lot, there might be something wrong with
53:33
you and we might see you with a black mask over your face throwing Molotov cocktails at police
53:37
officers at some point. But again, if I could get rid of one book, that would be the one.
53:40
All right, guys, next question, just a few more left here. Do you accomplish your,
53:44
did you accomplish your goals for 2018? How did that factor into your goal setting for 2019? Okay,
53:49
so obviously I set goals every year. I do written goals. I have them up on my board at home. I check
53:54
them off as I accomplish them. Again, if you go back, I think it was episode two or three of this
53:58
podcast I talked about goal setting. And we talked about every goal that you have should be a stretch
54:02
goal and every goal that you have should be a goal that's worth it, right? So if it's worth it,
54:07
it'll probably stretch you. And if it's stretching you, it's probably worth it. And so there's some
54:11
goals that I set that are not very likely for me to actually mark off. And then there's other ones
54:16
that are a little bit more likely. So I did not accomplish all my goals for 2018. There were a
54:20
couple that kind of bothered me. I said I was going to do a deep dive into Romans and Galatians. I
54:25
ended up not doing either. And so they're not really a good excuse for that. But that was a goal I
54:29
didn't hit in 2018. I set a goal to attain my blue belt. And that was one of those stretch
54:34
goals that was kind of completely outside of my control. I mean, I can, I can train and I can
54:38
compete and I can do those things. But it's up to the black belts and the really good guys that
54:43
are Jim to determine who has reached a certain point to get to that next level. And so those
54:48
were a couple of goals that I didn't hit. But basically how that changes or how that factors
54:53
into goal setting for the next year, I basically evaluate the goals that I hit. And I evaluate if
54:59
it's worth hitting them again. And so every year, my goal is to do the Murf workout. But I try to
55:03
change that up. So those of you who don't know the Murf workout, that's after Lieutenant Michael
55:08
Murphy, it's a workout where you do a one mile run, 100 pull ups, 200 pushups, 300 air squats and
55:14
air squats and another mile run. And you do that all with a weighted vest on or a backpack or,
55:20
you know, some sort of body armor or something like that. And so that's something that I've done
55:24
every year for a lot of numbers of years. And so I always want to make sure that no matter what
55:28
I'm doing that I'm always in shape enough to do that workout, because it's a pretty tough
55:31
workout, especially if you're not used to doing those types of things. But every year I change
55:35
it up a little bit. So last year, I tried to, you know, beat my personal record. This year, I'm doing
55:39
the Murf without doing any Murf specific training leading up to it. So none of my lifting and none
55:44
of my cardio and none of my preparation is going to change the day of Memorial Day. I'm just going
55:48
to wake up and do the Murf workout. So I'm not going to do extra stuff with the weighted vest.
55:52
I'm not going to run extra. I'm not going to do any of those things just to see how my body responds.
55:55
And that'll kind of give me an idea of, of where I'm at on a normal regular live regularized basis.
56:00
But I basically look at the goals that I hit and I see if it's worth it to add them again.
56:04
And then then the goals that I missed, I kind of get to decide, was that a good goal to begin with?
56:08
Was that a goal that was way too far out beyond me? Was that a goal that I ever even really intended
56:13
to hit? Is that one that I even wanted to hit? And so that's basically what I do whenever I
56:17
do my goal setting every year, as I'm looking at where where it sits. And for me, I don't mind
56:23
taking a red marker to my goals in the middle of the year, right? Like if things change, I like to
56:28
add things, like to take things away. But I don't just take things off that's like, Oh, well,
56:31
that's going to be really difficult. So I'm just going to like scratch that off. It's just like,
56:35
Oh, you know what? I thought that was going to be something I really wanted to do. But now six months
56:38
later, that's really stupid. I'm just going to go ahead and get rid of that one. So that's essentially
56:42
how we do that. Okay, couple more questions left. Here we go. What do you think of bat flips in baseball?
56:48
Okay, so if you've been watching baseball for the last couple of years, bat flips have become a thing.
56:54
So if you don't know what a bat flip is, essentially what you do is once you make contact with a ball,
57:00
you hit the ball, this typically happens on a home run, typically normal people just set their
57:04
bat down or toss it down and start running. But this new thing in baseball is once you hit the ball
57:09
is trying to throw the bat in some sort of creative fashion. And the cool thing is, is you get way
57:14
more cool points. If it looks like just kind of like a natural thing that happened, that you didn't
57:19
throw it in any particular manner, just mowing like popped out of your hands and flew majestically
57:24
into the other dugout or hit an opposing fan or whatever thing might be. So if you haven't gotten
57:28
a sense of what I think about bat flips already, let me make it a little bit more explicitly for you.
57:32
I think it's ridiculous. It's so stupid to me. Like, okay, for those of you that I can already tell
57:38
some of you are thinking this way, because you know, I'm a Cardinals fan. So for 11 or 12 years,
57:42
I think it was 11 years that Albert Puels played for the Cardinals, he would always pimp his home
57:47
runs. So basically he would hit a home run, he'd stare at the ball, and then he'd walk a couple of
57:52
steps, toss his bat down and then start running. And that drove me insane. It drove me insane.
58:01
You're one of the best players on the planet. You might end up with 700 home runs or more by the
58:06
time you're done playing baseball. Why in the world are you staring at it like it's the first time
58:10
you've seen a ball go that far? Get to running. What do you do and go run? Like, we're waiting on
58:16
you to get back to home plate so we can put this dash on the scoreboard and move on with our lives.
58:21
I can't stand it when people pimp stuff. It's like, I don't like dancing after you score a touchdown.
58:26
I don't like celebrating on your way into the end zone. I don't like doing back flips off
58:30
off the cage once you've knocked someone out. It's like, dude, just you won. You hit the home run.
58:35
You did something good for your team. Move on with your life. And I know I sound like an old
58:39
prude at this point. And some people were like, Oh, we like the pizzazz. We like the flare. We like
58:42
all that stuff. It's just useless to me. Because again, you're you got little kids that are watching
58:46
this. And so you have kids in the little league world series flipping a bat because they make
58:50
contact with the ball. It's like these dopes can barely make contact on a regular basis.
58:54
And they're they're like pimp in a home run, really? How about you focus on maximizing your
58:59
understanding of the basics of the game? And then maybe you can move on to doing things that are at
59:03
a little bit of a higher level. So no, I'm not a fan of this whole bat flip thing. And half of the
59:09
things that I get on my phone from Bleacher report, or from ESPN or Sports Center or whatever that I
59:14
get the notifications on my phone. It's watched this yasio poi, home run and the bat flip was epic.
59:20
And it's just like, okay, like I get it. But it's just like, dude, great, you hit a home run. That's
59:25
the amazing part. You hit a spherical ball coming at you at almost 100 miles an hour with movement
59:34
with a round bat. You squared up a spherical ball with a round bat. It doesn't even make sense
59:39
when you say it out loud. And you hit a ball 400 plus feet. That is the accomplishment,
59:46
not the bat flip. So for the love of God, enough with the bat flips. And guys, last question of the
59:51
day, and this might be the most important question that we've talked about today, because we're running
59:55
up right up here at an hour. It is, how do you like your steak cooked Kyle? And that's the thing,
59:59
man. Medium rare. All you people out there eating your well done steaks, your bicycle tires with
1:00:06
ketchup, you need to stop that that is sinful. God did not give us red meat so that you could ruin
1:00:11
it like that. Cook it to medium rare, not medium, medium rare, a perfect medium rare. That's all you
1:00:16
need. All right, guys, before we let you go, we're gonna do a quick resilience boost. As you know,
1:00:20
by now we are immense ministry in our mission is cultivating manly resilience. And specifically,
1:00:24
we do that by providing content that for just spiritual mental and physical toughness. And so
1:00:28
today I want to do a little mental resilience to give you a rundown of some of the things that we
1:00:31
have talked about here on this podcast. So I gave you the article from john Piper that has the audio
1:00:36
and the transcript of why do we see so few miracles today? I've got the best podcast episodes I have
1:00:41
listened to recently. I've got the list there again, I can't provide the links or else I won't be able
1:00:45
to upload all of this audio. So go ahead and check those out. And guys, if you've got other podcasts
1:00:49
that you've listened to, like I've kind of got, you know, my my two dozen or so that I go to the
1:00:54
well most often. But if there's something that I'm definitely missing out on, please hit me up
1:00:58
info at undonton.life or hit me up on Instagram, send me a message, whatever, just hit me up. I
1:01:03
want to make sure I'm listening to good stuff. And then I've got that Shapiro article where he's
1:01:06
talking about Karl Marx. So guys, thanks as always for listening to the podcast. Please subscribe
1:01:10
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1:01:31
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1:01:35
at your conference, whatever, hit me up info at undonton.life. Again, that's info at undonton.life.
1:01:40
The website is www undonton.life. You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undonton.life
1:01:45
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1:01:54
Red for allowing us to use their music library for our content. The intro out to a track on this
1:01:58
podcast is our song King of Sorrow, which saw their latest record entitled Phantom Anthem. The
1:02:03
links to all this are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating
1:02:08
manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical toughness. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.