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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree
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and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and
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the same judgment.
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That is 1 Corinthians 1 10.
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But guys, what we're going to be talking about today, it's a little bit somber because of
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kind of what we've seen in the news, some things that have happened over the last several
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weeks.
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But as I tend to do, I try to put it into something that is easily encapsulated for you
1:40
to be able to take with you and create some life changes, blah, blah, blah.
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But as of late, there have been some very high-profile deaths, okay?
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And so I want to talk about three of them here that have happened in the last several
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weeks and then we'll get into kind of why those are interesting to me.
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So the first one that I remember is John Madden.
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So John Madden died on December the 28th, 2021 at the age of 85.
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The cause of death as of the recording of this podcast is unknown.
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But John Madden, if you don't know who that is, he's a Super Bowl winning head coach
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of the Oakland Raiders.
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He is a broadcasting giant.
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He almost invented this modern NFL football broadcasting that we have.
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He's a pro football Hall of Famer, obviously, but he had a lot of great tributes to him
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as well.
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And a few of those, the current NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, had this to say, quote, nobody
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loved football more than coach.
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He was football.
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He was an incredible sounding board to me and so many others.
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There will never be another John Madden and we will forever be indebted to him for all he
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did to make football and the NFL what it is today, unquote.
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And then EA Sports came out and they released a statement because, you know, EA Sports probably
2:42
their biggest franchise ever is the Madden franchise that the, you can basically play
2:47
the NFL games and all that kind of thing.
2:48
This is what they had to say, quote, today we lost a hero.
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John Madden was synonymous with the sport of football for more than 50 years.
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His knowledge of the game was second only to his love for it and his appreciation for
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everyone that ever stepped on the gridiron, a humble champion, a willing teacher and forever
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a coach.
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Our hearts and sympathies go out to John's family, friends and millions of fans.
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He will be greatly missed, always remembered and never forgotten, unquote.
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But the one tribute that really stuck out to me was the one from the owner of the Dallas
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Cowboys, Jerry Jones, he said this, quote, I'm not aware of anyone who has made a more
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meaningful impact on the national football league than John Madden.
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And I know of no one who loved the game more.
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This is a loss that is as big as the legacy that John Madden created, a legacy of love,
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love for his family, for football and for life.
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When I think of a person who's of sports who is worthy of the term larger than life,
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I have always thought of John and I always will a life in football is a gift and a blessing.
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John lived all of his days with dignity, kindness and a sense of personal caring for everything
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and everyone. There is no one who lived a more beautiful football life than John Madden.
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Unquote. And guys, those are just a few. There were a bunch of others, but that happened
3:55
towards the end of December. But the one that happened here very, very recently was Bob
3:59
Saggot. So Bob Saggot died on January the 9th of 2022. Again, just a few weeks ago, a
4:04
couple of weeks ago at the age of 65, the cause of death as of the recording, this podcast
4:09
is unknown. So if you don't know who that is, he is a stand up comedian, actor and television
4:12
host. He's actually most known for being the host of America's funniest home videos in
4:16
the 1980s and 90s. And above everything else for his role as Danny Tanner, the dad of the
4:21
monumental hit show, Full House from the 1980s and 90s. And he actually reprised his his
4:26
role on the sequel to that show called Fuller House, which is on Netflix and has been in
4:30
recent years, I didn't catch those. But you know, he's known for those things. There were
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a lot of tributes to Bob as well. So first tribute I'll bring to you is from his onscreen
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eldest daughter DJ in Full House. Her name is Candice Cameron Burr. She said this quote,
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I don't know what to say. And then she put a broken heart emoji. I have no words. Bob
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was one of the best human beings I've ever known in my life. I loved him so much. End
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quote. And then also from Full House, the gal that played Kimmy Gibbler, that was DJ's
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best friend, Andrea Barber. She had this to say, quote, he had the biggest heart of anyone
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in Hollywood. He gave the biggest hugs. I'm gutted that I will never be able to hug him
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again. Bob ended every text, every interaction with love you. Didn't matter how long or short
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we'd been apart. He loved so deeply and so fiercely. And he never hesitated to tell you
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just how much you meant to him. Unquote. And then the last one I want to bring to you is
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from John Stamos. So he was the co star and friend on Full House. And he was Uncle Jesse
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on that show. He had this to say he had actually a lot of things to say. But I just pulled a
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quote out of one of his longer statements here at his quote. When we when he gets to the hotel
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and puts his head on the pillow, he misses his daughters, his family, his friends. God,
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he loves us so much. And he goes to sleep dreaming of when we'll all meet again. And he's smiling.
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I know in my heart, he's smiling, still hearing the laughter from the few hours before. I'm
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just not ready to say goodbye yet. Maybe tomorrow, maybe unquote. And then obviously there are
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many, many others that have come out of the woodwork really here in the last few days
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as well. But then there was the big one. So these aren't exactly in chronological order.
5:57
But the big one, the big recent death. And the reason why we're releasing this episode
6:02
on January the 17th of 2022 is because of Betty White. So Betty White died on December the
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31st of 2021 on New Year's Eve at the age of 99 years old. The cause of death was a stroke
6:15
that she actually suffered six days prior to her passing. Today, January 17th of 2022 would
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have been her 100th birthday. Okay. There were articles coming out for months leading up
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to this. You know, I talked about it on my end of year's show. Unfortunately, she passed
6:29
literally the day after I released that show. I talked about the excitement, how we could
6:33
all kind of come together and coalesce around this one woman. But if you don't know who Betty
6:36
White is, let me go and bring you up to speed. She's an actress and comedian. And she's actually
6:41
the longest serving or was the longest serving actress in Hollywood history. So she had acting
6:46
credits for almost every single year from 1945 to 2021. And that's according to Internet
6:53
movie database IMDB, just an absolutely long, crazy career of all kinds of things. She was
6:58
referred to lovingly as the first lady of television. And most people know her for her
7:02
roles on the Mary Tyler Moore show and the golden girls. But even though those shows
7:06
have been off for decades, they haven't really been on air. They've been in syndication.
7:11
There were people that knew about her, you know, teenagers that knew about her because
7:14
she was in, you know, certain movies and she was kind of in a cult following. And then
7:17
there's there's kids these days that are watching the golden girls and they're laughing
7:21
just like, you know, I did whenever I would, you know, watch it with my mom or something
7:24
like that when I was a little kid. And there's been a lot of tributes to Betty White as well.
7:28
But one of them that I found ironically enough was from Bob Saggot. So he posted this just
7:32
a couple of weeks before his own death. But he said this quote, Betty White, this amazing
7:36
woman was exactly who you wanted her to be razor sharp wit, smart, kind, hilarious, sincere
7:43
and so full of love. And quote, and also from actor Ryan Reynolds. So he actually appeared
7:47
in a movie with her, I think it was the proposal. This is what he said, quote, the world looks
7:50
different now. She was great at defying expectation. She managed to grow very old and somehow,
7:56
not old enough. We'll miss you, Betty. Now, you know, the secret unquote. And the last
8:01
one I got from from that I want to share with you guys because there was one particular
8:04
part of this statement that I thought was interesting. It's from the Star Trek actor
8:07
George, I think I didn't watch Star Trek, but it's George Taki. I don't know T. A. K.
8:11
E. I sorry guys, sorry to all the Trek he's out there. I just offended you. But this is
8:14
what he said, quote, our national treasure, Betty White has passed just before 100th birthday.
8:20
Our Sue Ann Nivens, our beloved Rose Nyland has joined the heavens to delight the stars
8:26
with her inimitable style, humor, and charm. Great loss to us all. We shall miss her dearly.
8:31
Unquote. Now we can obviously forget about the issue in the heavens, you know, flying
8:35
around, imitating certain things and being funny, you know, we don't have to really
8:38
get into that. But he called her a national treasure. And I think most people would absolutely
8:43
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But here's the thing as I was reflecting on these three deaths because you know, I was
9:18
obviously aware of the death of John Madden, then we had the death of Betty White and then
9:21
we had Bob Saggot. I noticed something in the aftermath of the deaths of those three people.
9:26
And that was universal admiration or what I'm pointing as the Betty White effect because
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you, you got to think with these people, John Madden had been in football for more than 50
9:39
years. Bob Saggot, you know, for, I think it was close to 40 years had been an entertainment
9:43
Betty White, you know, from the 40s all the way to the 2020s, right? I mean, just this
9:47
crazy long career of being in the public eye constantly having a microphone in front of
9:51
their face constantly having the opportunity to mess up. And we're not hearing anybody
9:55
say, Oh yeah, well, you're celebrating Betty White. But do you remember when she did this
10:00
or do you remember when she said that? That's not what I'm seeing. And believe me, guys,
10:04
I looked for it. Perhaps you found some or saw some, but I certainly didn't see any of
10:08
that anywhere. Universal admiration for these three people. I mean, it's just, it's crazy
10:14
because the, I guess the part of the reason why I think it's crazy is because we live
10:18
in a time of extreme cancel culture, right? And usually cancel culture is in the present,
10:23
right? So if you, I were to say something completely egregious, somebody would clip
10:26
this and they'd put it online. And you know, people would attack me and, you know, go
10:30
after some of our sponsors and go after these people and like go after anyone that knows
10:33
me. And you know, that's what they would do. That's just how these people are wired.
10:36
That's kind of this in the moment we're in cancel culture. But we even have this unbelievable
10:41
ability. I say we, but it's mainly Western culture, people that are more on the left
10:44
side of things. They'll cancel you even if you're dead. I mean, just look at it. George
10:49
Washington, you know, basically the, the father of our country, the first great general first
10:54
president, he's been canceled post death because he owns slaves, which was an egregious evil.
11:00
But we're, we're not looking at him as, you know, the sum of all of his parts, we're
11:04
looking at some of his most evil parts and judging him by it. You know, in the same vein
11:08
as George Washington, you have so many like Thomas Jefferson. So this is a guy who owned
11:12
slaves and, you know, purportedly raped his slaves and impregnated some of his slaves.
11:16
And you know, these horribly evil things, but he also gave us the declaration of independence
11:21
that allowed us to, you know, and was part of the leveraging point to get rid of slavery
11:25
later. Right. So it's, it's kind of one of those things that we look at some of all
11:27
of his parts are just his parts. And then what I even thought about recently, John Wayne.
11:32
I forget what, you know, what publication did this, but it was a couple of years ago,
11:36
they brought up these old quotes from John Wayne. Now John Wayne has been dead for a
11:40
very long time. I, I'm almost certain John Wayne died before I was even born. I was
11:45
born in 1986. So John Wayne has not been with us for a very, very long time. And yet here
11:51
we are bringing up quotes that might sound insensitive to modern ears. And some of them
11:55
are frankly, you know, these are things that I don't, I wouldn't stand up and add a pulpit
11:59
and, you know, defend, but we're canceling people even after they've passed on. But here's
12:04
the reality. Here's the reality overall. In 2022, there is no such thing as universal
12:12
admiration anymore. Because I got to tell you, as I was sitting down preparing this podcast,
12:17
and technically I've been preparing it for weeks because I've been thinking about this,
12:20
you know, after the death of John Madden, Betty White, and you know, Bob Sagar was kind of
12:23
like, okay, I definitely need to talk about this. But I tried to sit down and think of
12:27
who a universally beloved person is right now that's still alive.
12:34
And I couldn't think of one. And guys, it wasn't like, oh, I spent two seconds. I really thought
12:39
about this. I'm like, okay, of all the people, you know, whether it's in politics or entertainment
12:42
or sports or any of those types of things, who is universally beloved across the board?
12:48
And I couldn't think of anybody. Now, there are people that I perceive that are beloved
12:54
and respected by literally billions of people, not millions on tens of millions, hundreds
13:00
of millions, billions of people. So one of those people would be the pope. I would not
13:04
consider myself. Some of that thinks of the pope in such glowing terms, but some people
13:10
look at the pope as that type of a person he's beloved by billions of people. You know,
13:14
a couple of current soccer stars, you know, you have these two guys that are basically
13:17
going back and forth for who's going to end up being the goat. You have Christiana Ronaldo
13:21
and Lionel Messi, just so you know, I think Christiana Ronaldo is probably the greatest
13:24
soccer player of all time. A lot of people would disagree with me and say messy, someone
13:27
say paylay, someone say who the heck knows. But those guys are beloved and respected by
13:31
billions of people. And then the greatest sports figure and athlete of all time, Michael Jordan,
13:37
he's respected by billions of people. It's not just for the things that he did on the
13:41
court, but also his brand, the Jordan brand and the shoes and all the stuff. Those were
13:45
kind of the only people I could really think of that are beloved and respected by billions.
13:49
But that's not universal. You know, I already talked about the pope, how I obviously don't
13:53
agree with a lot of his politics and all of his ways of doing things. And don't even really
13:57
agree with most of what the Catholic faith stands for. But then also you have Christiana
14:01
Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. People love those guys, but then they also hate them if they
14:04
don't play for their team, right? People will hate them because they don't like soccer.
14:09
And then you got a guy like Michael Jordan. There are billions of people that love and
14:13
respect Michael Jordan. But let's say you're a LeBron guy. You kind of hate Michael Jordan.
14:17
You don't want to talk about Michael Jordan. Let's say you're a Pistons fan growing up
14:21
or a supersonic fan or a Knicks fan or a Utah jazz fan growing up. You're probably not
14:26
a big Michael Jordan fan. It's not universal. They're certainly beloved. They're certainly
14:30
rich. They're certainly, you know, well protected and well thought of in a lot of circles, but
14:34
they're not universally admired and loved. And guys, I feel like the reason for this lack
14:40
of universal admiration in our modern age, this lack of, you know, the Betty White effect,
14:44
I think there's twofold reasons for that in my estimation. The first is irreconcilable
14:49
differences. And the second is that there's no middle ground. So let's talk about the
14:53
first one, irreconcilable differences. The thing is is like, you normally hear that in
14:57
the context of a divorce, right? If you can't figure out an actual reason for the divorce,
15:01
you just put down irreconcilable differences, whether that's about money or parenting or
15:04
where we're going to go in vacation, and you just kind of list that and move on and, you
15:07
know, in the world of no fault divorces, you can just do that no big deal willy nilly,
15:12
right? But there are irreconcilable differences that you can't hold certain worldviews at the
15:17
same time. You can't hold to certain belief systems at the exact same time. They don't
15:23
mix their oil and water. I mean, I mean, just think about it. You can't be both Christian
15:28
and Muslim. You can't. Some people like, Oh, you can be a little bit of this a little
15:32
bit of that. The center point of Christianity is Jesus Christ, right? Or you can say the
15:37
Triune God. Well, Muslims don't believe in the Triune God. And they believe Jesus is
15:42
in the Quran, but he's just another prophet. He's just another teacher, right? They certainly
15:47
don't think that he died on a cross and was resurrected three days later. They believe
15:51
in the Swoon theory that he only pretended or he looks like he was dead, but then magically
15:56
somehow three days later, he appeared to people and he was, you know, he wasn't dead or something
16:01
like that, right? It's just kind of this big convoluted mess. So you can't hold a Christian
16:05
worldview and a Muslim worldview, you know, in America, you can't be both a Democrat
16:09
and or a Republican. And I don't mean that just from a registration standpoint, you have
16:14
to basically choose D R or I independent, right? But you can't be both. Just look at
16:20
about this way. Look at the show of abortion. We talk about abortion a lot on this podcast
16:23
and for good reason. You can't hold a Democratic view of abortion and or a Republican view
16:28
of abortion because according to the Democratic National Committee, according to the party
16:31
platform, they are okay with and would support and do support and advocate for the killing
16:37
of the unborn up until the moment of birth. Even here recently, the governor of New Jersey
16:42
is intending to sign legislation that will allow in the state of New Jersey for abortion
16:47
up to the date of birth. Well, Republicans, part of their party platform is no, we don't
16:53
like that. Now, there's a lot of convolution in the Republican party as to kind of when
16:57
the line should be cut off and what are the circumstances, but in general, Democrats are
17:00
pro abortion and Republicans are anti abortion or pro life. So you can't be both of those
17:06
things. You can't hold, you know, the Democrat side and the Republican side as your worldview.
17:10
I mean, think about it like you can't be racist and non racist. Notice how I didn't say anti
17:15
racist because in order to be anti racist, you have to be racist, but you know, I'll
17:18
divert from there. You can't be racist. You can't have the sin of partiality as something
17:22
that you do and also be non racist at the same time. They're irreconcilable. Those things
17:27
can't be reconciled together. And the last thing I are the second thing here would be
17:32
that there's no middle ground. And frankly, there's not a whole lot of respect and wiggle
17:36
room for middle ground anymore. So let's kind of go back to the religion example. You can't
17:41
actually take pieces from different religions and kind of like, you know, Frankenstein them
17:46
together into your own religion. Now people will try to do that. People will attempt to
17:52
do things like that. But that's not something that you can actually do. So you can't, you
17:56
know, again, like I said, you can't be, you know, Christian and believe in the resurrected
18:00
Christ and then be Buddhist and be like, well, there's technically no such thing as you like
18:04
you can't do those things that those don't really go together. There's no middle ground
18:08
there that we can all come to. And in politics, independence don't have much power. Like,
18:13
I know people that are registered independence. And I'm like, do you just like not voting?
18:18
Do you just like literally not having an opinion? Now you could be a Democrat and you know,
18:23
vote for Republicans. That's something you can do. But it's typically only things that
18:26
you can do in general elections, right? You can't vote for him on the party line or something
18:30
like that. Like this is not something you're able to do. And so independence, it's like,
18:34
great, you're, you're letting us know or you're signaling to us that you ideologically fall
18:38
somewhere in the middle and or you don't know which side of the fence to jump off to because
18:42
there's never been an independent, or I mean, I guess in our modern context, there's never
18:46
been an independent that is one, you know, the ticket and gone to the White House, right?
18:49
I guess Ross Pro would be our closest that we had and he's the only reason why the Clinton
18:53
family isn't any power because he basically destroyed George H. W. Bush's second term chances
18:58
at a second term to go to office. So independence don't have as much power, you know, in terms
19:03
of when we look at our entire body politic. And the last thing with the sin of partiality,
19:07
right? You see that in James chapter two, you're either committing that sin or you're
19:11
not. There is no middle ground. So if you're being racist, if you're acting racist, if
19:16
you're separating people based on their immutable characteristic of race level of melanin in
19:20
their skin, you can't do that. There's no middle ground there. You're either doing that
19:24
or you're not doing that. You can't like sort of do that. So again, the reasons we don't
19:28
have universal admiration for anybody or really for anything, any way of life is because of
19:32
irreconcilable differences and no middle ground. But guys, I just got to tell you in preparation
19:38
for this episode, I had a plan in place. Okay. And the plan was is I was going to preach
19:44
to you about unity. And I was going to leverage the death of the universally beloved Betty
19:50
White to do it, right? I was going to come at you and be positive and optimistic. And
19:54
I was going to have a very, very positive spin on the times we're living in. It was
19:58
going to be kind of my attempt at a kumbaya session. And you know, things that we could
20:02
do as people to come together and all the stuff that kind of goes counter to my own personality.
20:06
And guys, I was going to lean heavily on Paul's words that I said from the top of this episode,
20:11
I'll repeat it. First Corinthians 110, I appeal to you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus
20:15
Christ at all of you. And that there are that all of you agree and that there be no divisions
20:21
among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. I was really going
20:25
to lean heavily on that. But then the realization hit me. Universal admiration is not the goal.
20:38
And frankly, universal admiration shouldn't be the goal. The goal should be and is truth
20:46
and, and not my truth, quote, unquote, unquote, your truth. No, it's capital T truth. And
20:54
I talked about that on the ways to avoid being a crappy man episode, you know, seek, you
20:58
know, seek truth right over narrative. And if you are legitimate purveyor of the capital
21:05
T truth, the ultimate truth, you will never have universal admiration. It's not possible.
21:11
I mean, because here's the thing, if you think about it, why were John Madden and Bob Saget
21:17
and Betty White universally admired, you know, why, why do we know that? Because they were nice.
21:22
They were caring. They were successful. They were entertaining. They were easily accessible. We
21:29
could watch them any time we wanted for the most part. They were hardly ever if ever controversial.
21:34
I mean, that is if you never watched one of Bob Saget's comedy specials, you know, you would
21:39
come away thinking about that about him, right? They were always seemingly on the right side of
21:43
history. There's lots of examples, you know, about, you know, Betty White pushing back against
21:48
racism in television and, you know, being pro LGBTQ plus blah, blah, blah, you know, all those things,
21:53
right? But in order to stand for absolute and ultimate truth, you simply cannot be universally
22:02
admired. Case in point, Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ, you know, you know, the Savior of the world,
22:09
the only way to the Father, the line of Judah, the Lamb of God should be universally admired.
22:14
He is legitimately the only person. I mean, I all be at God in human form of the billions of people
22:21
that have ever existed that deserves 100% universal admiration. But even Jesus, even He can't please
22:30
everyone. And actually He would never attempt to please everyone. And guys, to be honest with you,
22:36
as I was thinking through this, there are a myriad of reasons why Jesus was hated.
22:40
Okay, so I'm actually going to list four of them here because I think it'll help kind of make
22:44
my point here and help us crescendo to something that is useful. But the first three actually came
22:48
from an article that I read by Dr. Josh, I think is pronounced as last name, Boyce,
22:52
B-U-I-C-E or Boost, whatever. Who cares? And it's from churchleaders.com from back in 2017. I'll
22:57
make sure that's in the show notes. I thought he did a good job of really summing up some of
23:01
these things. They were already thoughts that I was having. And then I'll get to the fourth one,
23:03
which I added. But the first reason that Jesus was hated is because Jesus confronted empty religion.
23:09
And He confronted it directly head on. He called this out a lot. We see that throughout the four
23:16
gospels throughout the New Testament, right? And He did so especially with the religious elite,
23:21
with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So specifically in Matthew 23, and we see this in verse 27 and 28
23:27
here, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs,
23:33
which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all unclean
23:38
or uncleanness. So you always outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of
23:43
hypocrisy and lawlessness. I mean, that's really, really harsh language that he's using with these
23:49
people. These are people that were always used to getting the utmost amount of respect from
23:54
everybody because of the station that they had acquired in life, right? They had a lot of universal
23:59
respect, at least inside of their communities and even outside their communities. And the thing
24:04
about it is, Jesus was counter to empty religion. And so in our modern age, there's a lot of that.
24:12
There's a lot of this kind of new agey postmodern, your truth is your truth. You can kind of figure
24:17
it out. Hey, let's kind of piecemeal a religion together that kind of fits with you. Hey, yeah,
24:22
you can be Christian and say you're Christian, but we're not really going to talk about the parts
24:25
of the Bible that make you uncomfortable. We're not really going to talk about the parts that are
24:28
going to, you know, look, make you look at other people as sinners. We're just going to kind of
24:32
whitewash all that. We'll focus on the Lamb of God. We'll ignore the line of Judah. We're just
24:35
going to kind of do this. But what that is, is it's empty. And Jesus was super duper against that.
24:40
And that's what our modern pastors should be super duper against. There was a quote from that
24:46
article that I mentioned just a second ago is from John Calvin. And it says this, "A pastor needs
24:50
two voices, one for gathering the sheep and the other for driving away wolves and thieves."
24:55
That's a great John Calvin quote. And all you're like, oh, is Kyle Armenian or Calvinist? You know,
25:01
we'll get into that maybe in a later episode. But that's such a great thing because it's these
25:06
individuals, these pastors that need to drive out, they literally need to drive out the wolves
25:10
and thieves that are going to try to convince people that there is this empty religion that
25:14
they should be a part of. So that's one of the reasons Jesus was hated. And another reason that
25:18
he was hated is because he loved the outcasts. He didn't care about, you know, the quote unquote
25:24
important people. He didn't care about titles and societal or religious rankings or any of that.
25:29
He hung out with the drunks. He hung out with the [inaudible]. He hung out with the tax collectors.
25:34
He hung out with the sinners. He hung out with the people that were absolutely on the outside
25:38
of culture. People that were looked down upon and spat upon and just seen as subhuman
25:43
by a lot of the important people of that age. And I see this especially in Matthew nine versus nine
25:48
through thirteens. I'll read those here in Jesus passed on from there. He saw a man called Matthew
25:53
sitting at a or sorry, let me start up as Jesus passed on from there. He saw a man called Matthew
25:58
sitting at a tax booth. And he said to him, follow me. And he rose and followed him. And as Jesus
26:04
reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining
26:09
with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples,
26:14
why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? But when he heard it, he said,
26:18
those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, go and learn what this means.
26:24
I desire mercy and not sacrifice for I come not to call the righteous, but sinners. So again,
26:30
this is Jesus that is is overhearing these important people, these Pharisees. And they're like, wait,
26:36
why is he hanging out with these people? Shouldn't this Jesus want to hang out with us?
26:40
But Jesus loved everyone, but he wasn't there for the religious people. He wasn't there for the
26:47
whitewashed tombs. He was there for the outcasts. He was there for the sick that were in need of
26:52
him that were in need of the things that he was able to provide, the living water that never ceases,
26:57
right? But also, and one of the biggest reasons why people in Jesus's day hated him
27:03
is because he forgave sinners. He forgave sin. And so one of my favorite things that Jesus did
27:10
that we see recorded in Luke five versus 17 through 26. Well, I'll just go ahead and read
27:14
that here. And then we can talk about it. So starting in verse 17, again, Luke five on one of
27:18
those days, and he was teaching Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there who had come
27:23
from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him
27:27
to heal. And behold, some of them were bringing on a man or sorry, a bed, a man who was paralyzed,
27:34
and they were seeking to bring him in the late and lay him before Jesus. Sorry, guys,
27:38
but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up to the roof and let him down
27:42
with the bed through the the tiles and myths before Jesus. And when they saw and when he saw
27:48
their faith, he said, man, your sins are forgiven. And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question
27:53
saying, who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone? When Jesus
27:59
perceived their thoughts, he answered them. Why do you question in your hearts, which is easier to
28:04
say your sins are forgiven you or to say rise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of
28:09
man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He said to the man who was paralyzed, I say to you,
28:15
rise, pick up your bed and go home. And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had
28:20
been lying on and went home glorifying God. An amazement sees them all and they glorified
28:25
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29:00
So again, this is one of my favorite stories because it shows I talked about this in the How to
29:04
Build a Godly Manly Foxhole series. These are foxhole guys. You know, they can't get through,
29:08
they can't get their paralyzed buddy to Jesus. They say screw it. They go up on the roof and they
29:12
start pulling out, you know, parts of the tiles of the roof. They basically destroy this person's
29:16
house just so that they can lower their friend down to get him before Jesus at this, you know,
29:21
because they believed that he could be healed. And he was. With a word, Jesus healed this man,
29:28
this paralyzed man, who was then able to get up and walk out of the place with his bed and toe,
29:33
right? He forgave sinners and the important people in that day, the Pharisees of that day,
29:38
those who you understood, you know, the tour and those different things, they were like,
29:42
wait a minute, wait a minute, this is blaspheming. And the blasphemy that they perceived didn't allow
29:47
them to perceive the fact that Jesus was fulfilling the prophecies that they so that they knew by
29:52
heart, they just couldn't accept it. They couldn't see it and they hated him for it.
29:56
And the last one here, and this is the one that I added to the list is Jesus preached his own
30:00
exclusivity, his own exclusivity, because we live in a world now that if you exclude anybody,
30:07
you're doing harm to them. If you exclude somebody, it's as if you're doing violence directly to them,
30:13
right? Because we look at this, we look at the intersectionality and people that are put into
30:17
these different groups. And if you exclude somebody, or if the results of a certain thing has disparate
30:22
impacts, we assume that that's a bad thing. That's something bad has occurred. But I want to look at
30:26
Jesus in terms of his own exclusivity, because we see that in John 14 versus one through seven.
30:31
So this is Jesus. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
30:36
In my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, what I have told you that I go into
30:41
prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take
30:45
you to myself that where I am, you may also, you may be also, and you know that the way and where
30:51
I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way
30:58
Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
31:04
me. If you have known me, you would have known my father also from now on, you do know him and have
31:11
seen him. And so some people will say, Hey, especially Muslims, when they're debating, they'll be like,
31:15
Hey, Jesus never claimed to be God. He never claimed to be, you know, at one with the father,
31:19
he never claimed the exclusive rights to salvation. Well, there you got it. You got it right there
31:24
in his little conversation. He was having with doubting Thomas, right? It's right there.
31:30
And so all of those things, flying the face of what we accept, even in this modern context,
31:35
because here's the deal. Jesus, because of all the things I've listed, right? Because of all
31:41
those things, because he confronted him to your religion, because he loved the outcasts and spent
31:47
time with them, because he forgave sinners and their sins. And because he preached his own exclusivity,
31:53
he was hated when he was on earth. And then he was hated through the day of his death.
32:00
And he has continued to be hated for the 2000 plus years since his resurrection.
32:07
This strong hatred has been there for him this entire time, the perfect, sinless,
32:15
ultimate man. There was no universal admiration for him. Okay. Now, I assume that all of you guys
32:22
knew that. But let's apply that to what we're talking about today with the Betty White effect.
32:26
So here's some takeaways from this episode. Okay.
32:29
In terms of the main takeaway, it's not, you know, try really hard to be a winner, like John Madden.
32:36
You know, even though I think winning is really, really important, it's not try really hard to be
32:42
warm and genuine, like Bob Saggah was, even though I obviously think that being warm and genuine is
32:47
really important as well. And the point of today's episode is it's not even try hard to be
32:52
incredibly well liked, like Betty White, even though I think in general being well liked
32:58
is an important thing. I think that's an important thing for us to have. This is the takeaway for
33:02
today's episode. Be willing to trade all earthly plaudits and admiration for the sake of Christ.
33:10
Be willing to do that. And the reason why I'm encouraging you to do that is because
33:17
I have an even as an evangelical myself. If I'm unwilling to share the gospel, to preach the gospel,
33:24
to talk about Jesus, to talk about the resurrection, to talk about how I can have hope in an afterlife.
33:30
And I'm scared because what are people going to say? Are people going to unfollow me on Instagram?
33:37
Are people going to unsubscribe from my show? Are people going to yell at me? Are my friends
33:44
going to get mad at me? Or are they going to think I'm judging them? If someone's of another
33:47
religion, are they going to think I'm being, you know, bigoted and elitist because I'm a Christian
33:52
somehow? You know, is my wife going to look at me funny? If I if I do it in public is whatever
33:57
these things are that pop up in your head, right? That's the work of the devil that he's absolutely
34:03
trying to get you to not do those things. Because again, go back to John Madden, Bob Saget and Betty
34:09
White, but especially Betty White, she was basically perfect from a public standpoint her entire life.
34:16
No one could ever come up with it. Yeah, you know, she had a really great career. But you know,
34:20
when she said that thing back in 1974, you know, that that really could have ended her career.
34:25
I couldn't find anything like that about her. But what if at any point in her life,
34:30
she had started preaching the gospel? Because I don't know Betty White's personal faith.
34:34
I don't know if she's a Christian. I don't know any of those things. But from the outside looking
34:38
in, I don't know that that's the case. But what if she had started doing that? What if she had been
34:43
denying roles because she didn't know if she could glorify Christ in them? What if she kept
34:48
pointing to herself as the reason for her success and not pointing to Christ? And you know, what if
34:53
she had flipped that and started pointing to Christ as the reason for her success? Would she
34:56
have been as big? You know, would she have been as universally admired as she was?
35:03
I don't think so. I think so clearly that she would not have been. But for all of us that are
35:09
listening to this, we have to always be willing to trade those earthly rewards in the earthly
35:15
admiration because of Christ, because what he has for us is so much greater and so much better.
35:20
Because here's reality, guys, is he was sent here to die. That was the whole point of his life
35:24
was to die so that we would have a way to have our sins taken away from us, to be washed away,
35:30
to be sanctified before a holy and just God. That's why we're here to hear the message.
35:37
All right, that's why he was brought here to bring that message to us.
35:40
But you guys are going to miss out on the beauty of that, on the beauty of the sacrifice,
35:46
on the beauty of the resurrection, if you're constantly looking to be admired.
35:51
If you want the Betty White effect to take place in your life to where people all over the globe,
35:58
regardless of their background, regardless of their religious system or political leanings,
36:03
are going to love you. Because if you put your stake in the ground and you draw a line in the
36:09
sand or use whatever, you know, allegory you want to or something like that, you know, whatever you
36:12
want to do, if you are behind Christ, if you are sanctified in Christ, if you are a Christian
36:18
and you mean it, it's going to cost you. It is going to cost you in this world.
36:24
That should be okay. Because if it's not, you may not be a Christian. This might not be the
36:31
lifestyle for you. You should probably go piecemeal together your own religion, because what's
36:37
required of you to be a Christian is something a little bit more. Because Christ has done everything
36:43
that he can in order to allow you a pathway to the Father, but you have to reach out your hand.
36:49
You have to make that decision. And for a lot of you, you want the cultural positives in your area
36:55
of being a Christian. You know, you want to say, Oh, yeah, I go to that church. Oh, people from
36:59
that church are generally nice. You want that type of thing. But when's the last time that you
37:04
spoke the truth of the gospel, even the hard parts into your child's life or into the life of his
37:10
teachers or his coaches or someone at a restaurant? When have you done that? So again,
37:15
just to repeat, the big takeaway for today, be willing to trade all earthly plaudits and admiration
37:20
for the sake of Christ. It is so much better than getting the Betty White effect after you've passed
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prolonlife.com slash now. All right, guys, before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience
37:57
boost out undaunted life. Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that
38:01
for just spiritual mental and physical resilience. I've got a couple of articles for you today.
38:05
So Megan Basham over at the Daily Wire, she wrote an article that was interesting. I didn't agree
38:08
with all of it, but I never agree with everything. It's called Bob Saggot, the man who deserved the
38:13
title of America's dad. And then also the article that I talked about earlier on churchleaders.com.
38:18
Three reasons why Jesus was hated by Dr. Josh Boyce. Sorry, I'm like slaughtering the dude's name.
38:23
I'm super sorry about that. But guys, thank you so much for listening to the show. We really do
38:27
appreciate wherever you're listening to this. Please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive
38:30
five star review. If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email
38:34
to info@undaunted.life. That's i-n-f-o @undaunted.life. You can follow us on Instagram and TikTok and
38:40
like us on Facebook. And you can also check out our website for everything else, including how to
38:44
donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undaunted.life. And we want to
38:49
also thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music
38:53
on this podcast is our song cutting the ties, which is off their 10th anniversary re-recording
38:57
of their album leveler. The links are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
39:03
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual mental and physical resilience,
39:09
keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
39:33
[Music]