AARON GRAHAM | How to Stand Firm in a Culture of Lies (Ep. 917)

Let's be honest, most men drift. We wake up, we scroll, we work, and then we just rinse and repeat. And we know we're softer than we should be. That's why I built the 31-day resilience reset. This is not a devotional, it is a field manual for men ready to stop drifting and start fighting back. So, for 31 days, you'll train your spirit, mind, and body with scripture, prayer, and daily challenges that forge real resilience. Go to www.undaunted.life/31days to download this resource for free. That's undaunted.life/31days. Start your reset today. This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. All right, guys, we've got a special guest on the podcast today. His name is Aaron Graham. He's a pastor, author, and speaker. He's the founder and lead pastor of the District Church in Washington, D.C., and the author of a new book called Unshakeable Faith: How to Stand Firm in a Culture of Lies. And so, this is a very interesting book that I got to read in preparation for this show. But, he's an interesting guy because he grew up the son of missionaries. He was actually held hostage in Kuwait back in the '90s, and so he had some very interesting experiences and still went into full-time ministry. Uh he represented a church in Boston and then launched a church there, planted a church in Washington, D.C. But, we talk about in his book about how, again, you saw the subtitle, "How to Stand of Lies." And the culture just loves to lie to us, right? Loves to lie to us about what the Bible says, whether or not it's still relevant today. We talk about that. We talk about this dissonance throughout the book and also throughout this interview today, where there seems like there's a little bit of tension because of some of the phraseology that's used. Perhaps, you know, I even told him at one point I felt like he was talking out of both sides of his mouth. But, you can even see throughout the conversation, he was happy to clarify, I was happy to dig a little bit deeper and it ended up being just absolutely fantastic and I knew it would be from the beginning. But he gives us so many warnings about, you know, the wolves in sheep's clothing that Jesus warned about as we see in Matthew 7 and how progressive Christianity should be defined and also how it's having a deleterious impact on a lot of people. We also get into, you know, Screwtape Letters and how there is a spiritual component to this as well to a lot of stuff that we're seeing in modernity, how people feel like church is optional, how people feel like, "Yeah, faith is just your thing. Just make sure it's done in private." How we should be editing the Bible so it really kind of more goes along with the times. But later on the interview we we talk about some different things cuz we started talking about justice. And when you start hearing things that, you know, have very direct euphemisms, so when you start hearing about economic justice, social justice, racial justice, equity, those types of things, what does all that mean and how's that work in this conversation? And then towards the end we talk about, "Okay, let's talk about revival. Are we in a revival right now? How can we even know if we're in a revival?" And then how can we as individuals, as people listening to this show, be a bearer of revival? So, very interesting book, very interesting conversation, guys. You can check it out there in the show notes. But without further ado, let's get into it. Aaron Graham, welcome to Undaunted Life a Man's Podcast. >> Thanks for having me, Kyle. It's great to be here with you. >> Hey, I'm very excited to talk to you because you are technically the first human being that I don't really live with that had that has been able to see me in this stupid thing. So, if you're watching this on YouTube, yes, this is a sling. Yes, there's been episodes with and without it since then, but you are the first person that I'm interviewing looking like an absolute doofus. And so, are we going to be able to deal with this the entire time? It's distracting to me. I can't imagine what it's like for you. >> No, you're good, man. You're you're a man's man. You're you're pushing through. I can't believe what you've been through, but uh you're pressing on. I'm right here for you. >> Yeah, that's what all you need is steroids, nicotine pouches, right? You know, that's what the guys on the internet say anyway. So, don't worry, guys, none of that is currently in my system. But hey, we need to talk to you because uh for those of you that don't know, you are a professional Christian. You don't just do this in your late time. You are a pro at it. You got it on a business card. But uh we're going to do cuz we want to spend a lot of time in in your new book uh that is out now, guys. You can check it out there in the show notes. I talked about it in the intro. But becoming a Christ follower, give us the 30,000-ft view of that story and then what led you into vocational ministry? >> Yeah, so um grew up as a son of missionaries. Um so I was a missionary kid, grew up in Liberia and Kuwait. And had a profound experience. We can talk about that more if you like. Um but when I was about 13 years old, uh committed my life to Christ. I understood the cost of discipleship growing up um around it and committed my life to Christ. And a couple years later, when I was 15, felt called into ministry. So I was on a mission trip to Belize, had an encounter with God there. I said, "God, I'll serve you the rest of my life, but one thing I won't do is get on stage and talk to people." cuz I was very afraid to communicate and just thought I would be like a nice missionary, loving on people. And uh God had other plans over time. So I'm grateful to be here. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, God loves uh messing up our plans and our timelines, doesn't he? But hey, you can't mention you can't just bypass a profound experience and not uh dig in. So let's dig in just a little bit. >> Yeah, absolutely. So when I was um 6 years old, we moved to Liberia. And um 3 years after being there, had an incredible experience. But 3 years after being there, civil war broke out. So we lost all of our stuff and uh came back to Tennessee. I was born in Memphis. Then we lived in Nashville. And then my parents uh still wanted to be missionaries and we ended up moving to this tiny little country that nobody'd ever heard of at the time called Kuwait. And it was 1990. We were there 3 months and then Saddam Hussein and Iraqi troops invaded. So we were actually held hostage during the Persian Gulf War, my mom, my brother, and I for 6 weeks, my dad for 4 months. And so that rocked me, man. And and I was like, "God, if you get me out of this, I'll serve you the rest of my life." And there's, you know, having a gun to your back, AK-47 to your back when you're 10 years old, not knowing if you're going to see your dad again, it'll grow you up quickly. >> And so give us a little bit more on that because obviously you're old enough to reckon, but you're I mean, you're not old enough to really do a lot, right? You mean you can't really possibly know the geopolitical issues that are surrounding you, but also the theological issues, right? Because we we we don't just have this this thing between Islam and Christianity. Even within Islam, it's like, okay, it depends on which sect you follow, like which caliph you think is is the one that actually comes off of Muhammad's line, and you know, that's how you get the different ideologies within Islam. So to talk a little bit more about, okay, as a 10-year-old what you understood versus now, you know, obviously you're fully able to reckon with what happened and kind of how you've developed your hermeneutic for explaining even that time period over this time. >> Yeah, absolutely. So I was 10 years old, once again, my parents were the first Southern Baptist missionaries to Kuwait, and they ministered on this small plot of land where you could freely worship because Miss Scudder, who was a doctor in the '60s, delivered like the Amir's son, and so in exchange, he gave Christians a small place to freely worship in Kuwait. And so there was like 24/7 church from people from all over the world. My dad pastored the English-speaking congregation. And so, you know, we had a great experience, but it was it was just getting started. So I didn't really get to know Arabic culture or anything before, you know, and Saddam Hussein, the Iraq Iraqi troops, fourth largest army in the world at the time. And so they showed up on the doorstep of Kuwait, and everybody just thought it was a joke. Like they would never come into Kuwait. They would never try to take the oil. I think Kuwait had the third largest amount of oil at the time, maybe still does. And the the morning they came over, August 2nd, 1990, US sent aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf in response. And then there was a a build-up of half a million troops in Saudi Arabia from and and a coalition of 60 countries that came together to prevent Saddam Hussein from coming into Saudi Arabia and to push them back out of Kuwait cuz Kuwait didn't have an army. And so we lived right next next to like the presidential palace and so we heard bombs. We woke up on August 2nd to bombs. We had troops break into our house, harass our family. It was brutal. Our car was shot out and we had to we had to jump in the car, drive across the city. Um saw dead bodies on the road. You know, this is a 10-year-old, you know, mind. And so when women and children were released six weeks into the war, that was a diplomatic negotiation where my mom, my brother, and I came home, I was just aware that like, man, there's a lot of other kids that are in war zones that don't have the US military backing them up that's using that as pressure to get out. So I I felt grateful in that sense. Um but also responsible. Like there's a lot of other people in the world suffering. But the other thing that happened was I really grew in my prayer life because I saw the power of prayer. And so my dad was being held, used as a human shield and um to prevent the air war from starting. And so they put men in military installations all over Iraq and Kuwait. My dad was being held in the American Embassy. And people all across the US were praying specifically for Maurice Graham to be released from being a hostage. He was the only missionary there being held hostage. And um Saddam Hussein started complaining about these troubling dreams he was having at night. And that God would wake him up in the middle of the night and he couldn't sleep. This is very Nebuchadnezzar-like. I mean, Saddam Hussein actually really looked up to Nebuchadnezzar. He's from the same area. So this is like evil, wicked, you know, leader. And God was moving on their hearts, making them be like, "What's going on?" And so, he on early August December 9th, 1990, Saddam Hussein called his whole cabinet together and and said, "These these God won't stop troubling my spirit. We must release all of the hostages." So, the next day, like, I think it was a couple hundred hostages from across Kuwait and Iraq came home. My dad came home. I was reunited with them. He would My dad went back to open up the embassy, the US embassy in Kuwait after the war ended, and he was with former President George H. W. Bush, who told him, "I have There's no diplomatic rational reason for why Saddam Hussein let the hostages go. It was his only leverage. It can only be explained by God." And so, I just grew up from a young age being like, "Man, we can we can pray for like the world's most wicked leaders, and God can move in their hearts." And so, that just really shaped me. Um and I also just felt like growing up around poverty and war at a young age, I was like, "Our faith should make a difference in the big issues of the world." And so, at 10 years old, I just started wrestling with that. >> Well, I think as well, as you're mentioning dreams and Muslims. [clears throat] Isn't that so interesting? I mean, I remember when I was first made aware when I was reading the Bill Kureshy's book, the late Bill Kureshy's book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, and he's like, "Wait, wait, Jesus appeared to me in my dreams." And I was like, "Wait, is he allowed to do that?" Like, I I thought you had to stand on a street corner screaming at people uh that they should repent. That was the only way that it worked. And then you hear about people in Iran right now going from Muslim to atheist, right? And then [clears throat] Jesus visiting them in their dreams saying, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." And then they're becoming Christians. I don't know how you could possibly calculate this, but perhaps the fastest-growing church on the planet or fastest-growing body of Christ on the planet is in Iran, where you can't have a church on every street corner, where you can't have street preaching, where you can't own a Bible. Right? You know, that's that's capital offense. And so I think that that's a very incredible thing to talk about as well. I want to go ahead and get into your book here, Unshakeable Faith: How to Stand Firm in a Culture of Lies. And so I'm going to read a quick quote here. >> [cough] >> Excuse me. I've written this book because I am on a mission to help you develop an unshakeable faith. To help you discern the lies we are being fed by our culture. So just generically, we're going to spend a lot of time getting into the details and different quotes therein. But why this book, why now, why you? >> Yes, so this is my first book. I'm first book I've ever written and on top of pastoring full-time and I think I'm on the board of nine organizations. There's plenty that I'm doing. So I wasn't like in raising two kids as well. I wasn't looking for another thing to do, but I just began to see a pattern. Like over and over among friends, colleagues in ministry. I've pastored here in DC for 15 years. I pastored in Boston for 5 years. So over 20 years of ministering in what people call the mind of the beast in Boston, which is where all the schools are, you know, Harvard, MIT and other things, the mind of the beast. And then I live now in the heart of DC in what people call the belly of the beast. >> That's right. >> So, you know, there's there's real spiritual warfare. I think that happens anywhere, but I think particularly in a place like DC, which is a place of so much power, that there are ways that the enemy is at work, particularly through secular culture, that seeks us to to seeks to cause us to water down and even abandon our faith. And so I've just seen so many people in the name of doing the right thing, quietly deconstruct their faith. And I've just seen it enough pattern after pattern, I'm like, I got to speak up and and talk about this. And it's going to cause some friction. I'm probably going to lose some friendships over it, but I can't live with myself at the end of my life to say, you know what? Um I wasn't bold enough to speak the truth in love in the midst of a cultural moment when for me, I'm, you know, I'm in the very progressive city in in DC. And so, you know, learning how to communicate this in a way um has been a real opportunity and challenge. >> Well, friction is my favorite. I love that and there's a lot of tension in this book and we're going to get to that, but I want to read a quote uh several quotes from the forward, which by the way, side note, is one of the best forwards that I've I've read for a book in the long time. As I was reading it, I was uh very intrigued, but then also it kind of like really laid the groundwork for for what was to come. And like I said, a lot of distance. There were some ups and downs that we're going to get to, but I'm going to read this quote here. But here's what I learned. It doesn't matter how many people you get through the front door if you aren't concerned about how many are walking out the back. Many Christians are compromising their faith or leaving it all together. Not because they rejected Jesus outright, but because they're being shaped more by the secular culture than by historic Christian faith. In other words, they're becoming secularized Christians. Still professing Christ, but being shaped more by the culture than scripture. And while there are many places to point the blame, pastors like me have been chief among them. We have often failed to take seriously the slow subtle way the world steps in and where the church steps back. What I've come to realize is this. If the church doesn't disciple people, the world gladly will. One of my favorite things also is when people throw themselves under the bus, all right? And so you you're you're uh in this group that you threw under the bus and I have talked about this for a very long time, especially when it comes to the cultural issues. If the church continues to accept its position as being downstream from culture, it will continue to be molded by culture. And then you have pastors that are trying to be good shepherds, right? They have their own faults, but they're trying to be good shepherds, but everybody in their flock is not being discipled by the pastor directly, they're being discipled by their favorite newscaster, their favorite podcaster, their favorite influencer on Instagram or something like that. And so let's just talk a little bit more about that. >> Absolutely. Well, you know, going back to my missionary story of growing up as a missionary kid, I was taught and most people kind of my age and older were taught how to be a missionary in a pre-Christian culture, where people are maybe open to spirituality, they understand there's good and evil, they understand that we shouldn't be the center of the universe, that there's a higher power. They just have not heard the the Christian worldview. They haven't heard a biblical worldview about God sending his one and only son into this world to reconcile us to a holy God. And so when people hear that, then there's an opportunity to embrace the faith. But we are not ministering, at least here in the West and the US, in a pre-Christian culture. We are, as you know, increasingly in a post-Christian culture. And the reason that this is important to note is that for many of us, we were trained to be Christians to not colonize other cultures. Like that's like the worst thing you can do when you're like a missionary. It's like come in and impose your culture from the outside coming in. So you're kind of taught how to be relevant, raise up indigenous leaders. And so that's the playbook I planted a church in Boston with, that I planted the District Church with. But what I didn't realize is that we are ministering in this post-Christian culture that is evangelizing the church. It's deforming the church. It the church is part of the problem for many for much of secular culture. And so here we are trying not to colonize a culture, and they're colonizing us. And it's happening from people even within the church. I used to think, oh, it's like oh, it's just like secular culture out there." It's like, "No, no, no, no." Christians are increasingly adopting a secular worldview and they're using Christian language to justify it. But, what ends up happening, the fruit of it is a watered-down or abandoned faith over time. And it's not always done for the wrong reasons. It's usually done in the name of love. Um but, it's actually a very dangerous thing and I've seen it over and over and over again. And so, the the the the post-Christian culture, the god is the god of self. It's this, you know, you do you, you discern your own truth, and the ultimate authority is how I feel, how I interpret my own truth. And so, anything, any tradition, church tradition, anything in scripture, any higher power that threatens my own individual interpretation of truth has to be leveled, eliminated, you know, removed. And that that's that's the [clears throat] generation we're ministering. I used to think that this was just like a DC-Boston urban problem among urban progressives. But, what I've realized is like because of the internet in the last 5-10 years, this is not This this problem of a a secularized culture and Christians becoming secularized is not limited to Washington DC and Boston. It's now been exported through the internet across the country and it's discipling this next generation. And so, that's one of the reasons I feel so strongly about this. >> Well, you talk about you know, a lot of stuff that you just said there is going to be red meat to our audience. But again, there's there's going to be kind of a swing of the wheel left and right here even throughout this conversation. You talk about progressive Christianity and this need somehow to make the gospel more relevant as if the gospel needed sprinkling like sugar on top of it or it's like, you know, I always kind of joke it's like it's gospel plus. It's the gospel, but for $9.99 a month, you get this and this and this. It's kind of kind of like this whole extra thing. But, >> [clears throat] >> progressive Christianity, this this Well, here. I'll I'll I'll stop I'll stop there. I want to go back just a little bit and just talk about the dissonance in the book. Cuz I mentioned this to you off air. There is a tension in the book. And you do something in the book, and I don't know if it was intentional, because I was just made aware of this recently. I I just uh spoke you know, I was teaching Sunday school, and one of my buddies was like, "Man, what what Kyle does is he will turn the tension on, and then he will adjust the tension as he talks. There's never no tension, and there's never so much tension that you just absolutely burst, or like right, or have to become a pressure relief valve." But, it's like I I like to kind of carry the tension and then come to some absolution there at the end. It seems like you you did the same thing in this book. I'm just wondering if it was intentional. >> Yeah, I mean, I think that we need to live with both conviction and compassion. And I think for a lot of my ministry, I led with compassion, but didn't lead with conviction. And I think the the other side is you can have a lot of conviction, but not compassion. Jesus came full of grace and truth. We're called to speak the truth in love. And so, yeah, I'm not pulling any punches in this book. I mean, it is a manifesto in in some ways. That's what John Tyson wrote in the in the forward, that it's a it's a manifesto for our generation. And I think that that's that's what it is. But, I'm not in any way um trying to create, you know, add to the division, so to speak. Um and so, in my later chapters, I talk about things like justice, and I'm trying to take that back as a biblical word. I I talk about the tendency to to divide. Um and so, yeah. So, I think there there's there's challenge hopefully for for people from what whatever walk of life they're coming from. >> Well, the challenge is even coming from you, cuz in the forward, you talked about how at some point you realized you needed to make an individual change. Cuz one of the most annoying things is when people loudly oppose something, but they propose nothing. Right? So, they're they're not really concerned about solutions. They just want to keep banging home the fact that they disagree with something somehow. But for you, I don't know if it was a singular breaking point or if you just saw kind of the tide of your life shift a little bit, but you realize, "No, I have to be the one to make a change." Let's Let's talk a little bit more about that. >> Yeah, so in the in the introduction I talk about my mentor Steve Stroope who who's uh started Lake Pointe Church and um Strategic Launch Network. It's where Howerton is now uh Pastor Josh Howerton. And um Steve gave me my sample job description when we were starting the church. And the first uh responsibility of the lead pastor is all It was like a six-page job description, super long. The first first thing listed on my job description is to protect the church from false teaching. And I was like, "Well, at the time, 15 years ago, I was like, you know, I live and minister in the most educated city in the country. Like, our people are really smart. Like, they can they can discern that." And the more I pastored and the more false prophets that rose up and even tried to infiltrate our own church, the more I realized why that was front and center. And notice that Jesus calls them false prophets. He doesn't call them like false atheists like they're out there in the world. They're actually in the church. They're They're wolves in sheep's clothing. And so we have to learn how to be discerning. And what I realized is that clarity is kindness. And so to be able to speak the truth, even the hard truth on a hot-button issue earlier rather than later, is actually kindness, even when you're in a cultural moment that it's not received well. Um and so that's that's one of the things I've I've learned is just how to lead with clarity. And the interesting thing is is that, you know, our church has become actually more diverse the more clear I have been about our conservative theological convictions. So we have 80 nations represented in our church. And I think there's people from different parts of the world who kind of see the craziness of our secular narrative and how much we've adopted that even in churches. They can kind of see through that really quickly. And so it's been great to just have a global perspective even in our church. >> Well, Aaron, there's plenty of smart idiots out there. There are people that, you know, got 34 you know, 36s on their ACT and all that, but they don't know what to do. And it goes back to something that John Tyson actually wrote about in his in his latest book where he talked about this Andy Crouch New York Times article where there were these three big shifts, right? First bank ever was invented in the 1300s and established in Italy. So we went from land as wealth to money as wealth. Then in the 1700s, you have the invention of the steam engine. So we went from bodies do work to machines do work. But in the 1900s, there was a a paper that was released that essentially shifted everything to the information age. So it went from wisdom as knowledge, right? To information as knowledge. And so now we here we are living half century downstream of of even that that article being released, more than that. And it's like, wait, wait, we have all this information, but we have a bunch of people that don't know what to do with it. And so what I've talked about a lot on my show recently and on the Daily Blade is a I feel like we're in a crisis of discernment. And so I talked about this in the context of someone like James Tallarico. You want to talk about a wolf in sheep's clothing? This is a guy running for Senate in Texas. I think he has a fantastic chance of of winning that race and I've already said and gone on the record. I think if he wins that race, he immediately runs for president in 2028 following the Barack Obama pathway to the White House kind of a deal. But part of the part of the issue is is we don't recognize wolves in sheep's clothing because we don't recognize heresy because we don't read our Bibles. And the Ligonier Lifeway State of Theology 2025 proves that. You have self-described evangelicals that think the Bible say that the Bible's our highest authority for what they believe, but a majority of those same quote-unquote evangelicals you know, believe that God accepts the worship of all religions including Judaism and Islam. That, you know, most people are they sin a little bit, but they're generally good. And only about 65% of them even believe that God created marriage to be between one man and one woman. And so, part of this crisis that you're describing, where you have progressive Christianity leading to deconstruction, right? And not a positive kind. You know, the these wolves in sheep's clothing and how the wolves are actually in the church hunting the sheep, it's because the sheep themselves are doing nothing to protect themselves, cuz we're not girding our loins with the sword of the spirit. >> Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you're right on. I think that that's one of the things I talk about is that how people will take like a really good value, like even a biblical value that's in the Bible, like love and inclusion. Like the gospel's the most inclusive message ever preached, that Jesus died for the whole world, if you repent and put your faith in him. Like that's pretty That's pretty loving and inclusive. But they'll take that one virtue or value, and they'll make it the most dominant value in all of scripture, and then eliminate anything in scripture that's not compatible with that, such as human depravity. Such as the atonement of Christ, that Christ had to die in our place, or that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, or about eternal judgment. So, anything like that that seems like, "Oh, that doesn't sound inclusive." because the version of love or inclusion is actually more secular than it is biblical. Because a biblical definition of love is that God so loved his the world that he gave his only begotten son. It's sacrificial. It's like he literally gave the best thing he had. And so, I think that one of the things of discernment is for us to to learn how to take back important words like justice, like love, and define them biblically. Cuz that's really what it comes down to is it's an issue of biblical authority. I used to think, cuz I'd have conversations all the time around human sexuality with people like struggling with that issue that are that were coming to our church and I really I I wrote a 60-page paper about it. I would do classes on it and what I really realized at the end of the day is that that issue is downstream from the issue of biblical authority. That that's actually the issue and so do we believe that God has the authority first and foremost but that the Bible has authority because it's his word and that we should submit ourselves to it whether it makes us comfortable or not. And I think that's one of the things because we don't know our Bibles then it's very easy to take be taken advantage of and for something to sound Christian even though it's not really Christian. So just because somebody says that they're they're Christian and they're running for office or whatever it is doesn't mean you have to evaluate not only their theology but their policies as well. >> Hey guys real quick. So I remember back in high school I was training with these guys and they all got super jacked but they were training and using these supplements that they were buying online and a lot of them had crazy side effects. These were not good things. There's no telling what all was in these supplements and so I've always kind of been scared about what supplements I'm going to put in my body and I decided when I do start taking supplements I want to make sure I'm using products that are certifiably clean and also using only high quality ingredients. 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But, I also use their krill oil, I use their fish oil, creatine, vitamin D, magnesium, joint warfare, and their sleep aids. And they have new stuff coming out all the time. Guys, if you take your health and wellness seriously, then you simply cannot afford to put cheap and inconsistent and dirty supplements inside your body. Try Jocko Fuel Out today by going to jacofuel.com. That's jacofuel.com. Use the promo code Undaunted to get 10% off your order. Again, that's jacofuel.com. Promo code Undaunted to get 10% off your order. Well, and the thing about this, Aaron, there's also something that, you know, is not as explicitly mentioned in your book as it has been in maybe some other people's books, but my gosh, there is a spiritual warfare aspect to this. And your your ode to that seemingly is the beginning of every chapter. You have a quote from The Screwtape Letters, which is the the C.S. Lewis masterpiece. And so, talk a little bit and my my gosh, I feel like anymore like I'll have a quarter of the books I read every year has a C.S. Lewis something, right? Even from secularists. They're like Gregg Hurwitz, uh who's a a thriller writer, you know, part of his forward before his book even started, his latest, you know, Orphan X novel, there's a quote there from C.S. Lewis, right? And so, it's just, you know, his ubiquity is is insane. So, why specifically uh those quotes? Why specifically Screwtape Letters? >> Yes, so C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters was really an inspiration for this book because of how he was writing to a secular culture even before his time in the '40s in in England and he was describing the ways that the enemy will subtly try to tempt us to abandon our faith. It's like the playbook of of the enemy. And so, I really felt like with Unshakeable Faith that I wanted to write, you know, Screwtape Letters for our generation. Like what would that look like to be very specific? And so, you know, I so I I open each chapter with a quote. I'll just read one of them. This is the beginning of chapter 3. Um and Screwtape says this, "Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one, the gentle slope, soft underfoot without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." And so just just that as an example is just like this the the drift is subtle. People don't abandon their faith overnight. And one of the things I I talk about in the book is how progressive Christianity and and let me just define that real quick. Uh what I mean by that is reinterpreting biblical truth and the historic teachings of the church for the last 2,000 years, reinterpret them to make them more palatable to the current moment. And so progressive Christianity, not for everyone, but for many becomes a layover on the way to post-Christianity. And uh and I think that's one of the things that I've just seen over and over that I'm like, "Hey, C.S. Lewis was actually writing about that, the influence of secular culture in the church." >> Well, you have to think like he's writing this stuff about a hundred years ago and we're thinking to ourselves again and he brings up chronological snobbery. It's like, "Oh, you know, we we have so much information. We couldn't possibly be fooled by these silly little demons." It's like, "Bro, like we were having a debate on our little Bible study that we do on Sundays called the Forging Table." Like one of my buddies mentioned and and he kind of brought it back a little bit later. I understood why he said it but he's like, "Satan's an idiot." I'm like, "No, no, no. You can't be the father of lies unless you know exactly what truth is, right?" You know, Satan's not everywhere at all times and all that. He doesn't know exactly what you're going to do. He's not in the future, right? But as my pastor buddy Joby Martin says, he's got your playbook. He's got your game film, all of it. And so he has a really good idea about what [clears throat] temptation is going to lead to for you in these drifts. And you you talk about this drift and you know, I talk about this a lot, you know, in Oklahoma, uh we have something called that I've called country music theology. Trying to convince somebody in Oklahoma or Texas that says they're a Christian that they're actually not a Christian is really, really difficult to do. But, to some you like, you know, purple-haired, nose-ring secularist pagan in Washington, D.C. or Boston, it's like, well, it's pretty easy. It's a lot easier to be like, no, you're a depraved black-hearted sinner because it's more of a binary shift as opposed to a shift within the mean, right? And a lot of this goes and this really kind of cascades into chapter one of the book called When Devotion Drifts cuz you talk about There's a quote here, we begin to treat God as if he's a divine assistant rather than the sovereign king. So, God's really into us, right? Cuz I've I've heard from dorks on the internet and from pulpits that I'm the point somehow, right? That I'm David in the story of David and Goliath that, you know, the Bible, you know, God's just really into me, right? He's just so interested in me and what my needs are and my goals and he really wants me to be comfortable. He would never want me to do anything that would cause discomfort, right? You know, like those silly people in the Bible that were constantly uncomfortable for the sake of Christ. And really this this talks a lot about kind of the self-esteem movement, right? We're not sinners, we're mistakers, right? We zigged when we should have zagged, like that kind of thing. But, my goodness, repentance becomes optional, which you talk about in the book. And again, we don't even really like talking about sin cuz that's kind of like That word's a little sticky. It's a little persnickety. It's kind of got some barbs to it. And so, we just ignore it altogether. And then you just overall talk about how that's when devotion really starts to drift away from God. >> Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, when we water down calls to repentance, we we strip the gospel of its saving power. It it undermines the core One of the core truths is that we are fallen. We are sinners in need of God's grace. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. And so, when we just add, you know, Christianity on top of whatever exists, and for many of us that's just the American dream or the individualistic lifestyle, we get a gospel stripped of its power. And so, we it leads to compartmentalized faith that doesn't really impact our whole life, but just a a part of our life. But, the thing about how this has been happening, particularly in the US, and it is it's not new like progressive Christianity on the way to post-Christianity, is not like it just happened in the last 20 years. You're like, "Oh my gosh, there's all these progressive Christians that are writing books and getting book deals now." It's like, "No, this has been happening for 500 years in the West since the Enlightenment." Roger Olson writes this long book called Journey Towards modern theology. And he just goes one by one out of like enlightened thinkers who thought that they could reinterpret scripture to make it more palatable to our current moment. Thomas Jefferson's an example of that. He took scissors and a razor to the Bible and removed the parts of scripture that felt incompatible to him. So, he eliminated uh Jesus's miracles, his crucifixion, his resurrection, and his ascension. And he reduced Jesus to just a great moral teacher. And that that's a gospel that has no power. That doesn't stand Jesus apart from anybody else. He's just another prophet. He's not the son of God. And so, the stakes are high. And and what I've noticed is that um a progressive Christianity doesn't really reach anybody other than other Christians. So, the audience is always trying to get existing Christians to become more inclusive in this way. But, it doesn't because it doesn't call people to repentance, which is really the core first chapter of this book of calling people to true worship. Because that doesn't happen, there's really no conversion. There's just conversion of existing Christians. And that kind of faith doesn't reproduce to the next generation cuz it's not strong enough to call people to sacrifice. It's not strong enough to disciple your children, and especially disciple our youth today in the current challenges that they're facing. >> Yeah, and a part of this entire thing is you really flows into chapter two where we feel like, you know, church is optional, right? It's not a place that we have to go. We just kind of ignore all those passages in the Bible that talk about how either directly or indirectly that the assumption is we're going to be a part of a body of believers. And so you talk about that a lot in the book. But but honestly, there was something that you kept saying in the book Aaron that really just kind of caught me off guard. And I think it's because that you you almost treated it like it was a colloquialism, but not everybody's on the same you know, plane with you. Is you talked about church hurt, right? You just use that term church hurt. And what's funny is as as this was coming out, I actually was recording on my on the show on Undaunted talking about how church hurt like isn't a thing. Like, you know, people are hurt by people that are inside the church, right? But I use this extreme example of like a 16-year-old girl at a high school somewhere that's like sexually assaulted by her basketball coach or something like that. The news and and no one online or anyone is being like, "Oh my gosh, she experienced basketball hurt. She experienced high school sports hurt. She experienced insert name of school district hurt." We we say that she was harmed by an individual person. And again, you know, you can sue a school district if they kind of like tried to lie about it or something of all those things, but a school district can't go to prison, right? If this guy is found guilty of this heinous crime, I think he should be hung after his genitals are removed, but that's just me. I'm a little bit more extreme. But like we don't send an institution to prison, we send a person to prison. And so I'm just not super comfortable with people talking about church hurt because honestly Aaron, and I didn't come up with this, it's someone else said it, I wish I could give him credit, but I think even the term church hurt is a scheme by the devil to push people inside the church further outside away from the church, away from the body of believers. And people that are outside the church kind of preventing them from even considering becoming part of the body of believers. So what say you to that? >> Absolutely. I think the enemy's strategy is to isolate us. It's always been that from the garden to isolate Adam, you know, to in in the midst of his shame and he's going through stuff. so whatever way the enemy can use to isolate us, he'll do it. And if it's the failures of leaders in the church, which we've been very aware of of several of those over the last few years, the enemy will then create a term like this that's that's contagious in some ways where people will come together with their peers and use that as an excuse to no longer go to church. And so I think what's important for us is that we need to lead with compassion. There are people that have had really hard situations and some of them have happened in the context of the church. But the the answer to that is to lean in and help them explain more of what they mean, to not get by with just using a colloquialism or a word like this and then just move on and not define it. And so I think we need to help lean in with people in that, but I think that there's a lot of people that are using these things, oh, I read that article over here that was written by whoever as an excuse to not go to church to say all Christians are like this. The reality is when you come into church, you realize all of us are hypocrites, all of us are sinners in need of God's grace. Are there some people that need to be held accountable for their actions? Absolutely. But I think some of the narrative in secular culture can just dismiss this all together. The answer is we need not less institutions, we need better institutions. And so the answer, if you've experienced something that's hard in church before, the solution is for you to be more engaged rather than less engaged. And I think that's the posture that's going to help us resist these lies. >> Well, honestly, we we always need to ask for follow-up. It's okay to ask for follow-up because sometimes if someone's like, I experienced church hurt, well, after a few questions, you might just get down to the fact that they were like, oh, the pastor told me to stop sinning in my favorite you know, particular way of sinning. And they're like, oh, he hurt me. It's like, no, playa. Like he he was telling you that you need to stop and he was right. And so maybe you should listen or something like that. But then for other people, it's like, you You there's there's of categories of things that it's okay to ask for follow-up. You know, a lot of people say, "Hey, I'm I'm I'm spiritual. I'm not religious." But, you know, demons can be spirits. And so, can you be more specific? Like, what in the world does that even mean? I think people say things sometimes thinking it's a satisfactory answer. And a politely worded follow-up is appropriate. But, another thing that happens with all this and you kind of circle the drain down to chapter 3, you know, when faith becomes private, we've kind of bought the lie, Aaron, that love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means do all that, but do it in private. Uh you know, just do it by yourself in your own prayer closet, in your own little area, maybe near a little cohort of weirdos that get together outside the church to do extra church. Like, do it there, but don't bring it into the workplace. Don't bring it into the public sphere. Don't bring By all means, don't bring it into the political sphere. And we got people on the left and the right and Christians and non-Christians that have you know, basically propagated that lie, that somehow we can't bring our Christian morality and values into what's happening politically. It's absolute nonsense. But, man, a lot of people have allowed themselves allowed their faith to to their genuine faith, Aaron, to be pushed to the fringes and then evangelism basically becomes impossible for that person. >> Yeah. Absolutely. It's it's true that God is a personal God and he wants a personal relationship with each and every one of us, but it's a lie that our faith is to be private, that it's to be compartmentalized and confined to certain areas of our life. Jesus has given us the commission that we we will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And so, our faith is not to be compartmentalized to 1 hour on Sunday. It should influence our our our parenting. It should influence our marriage. It should influence our workplace, where we spend the majority of our time. It should influence our social circles and who we're running with and what we're talking about in those spaces. And so, I think that the enemy strategy is to isolate us and then to make us passive, to turn us into isolated men and then passive men. Because if he can cause us to be passive, then what we'll do is we'll be we'll just the older we get, the more critical we'll get of everybody else, but we'll never want to be the answers to our own critiques, our own prayers. We'll just blame everybody else, and then we won't engage. And I think Jesus is calling us to be more that Jesus is Lord of of all of our life, not just a part of it. >> Well, Aaron, as you were saying that, I was just thinking about some individual people that I even know. Passivity and bitterness become like, you know, brothers, right? And so they have this bitterness towards a person or towards an institution or whatever, and then it causes them to be passive. But they have this excuse when they're called out on their passivity. It's like, "Oh, well, I can't control that. Look at this negative stimuli that I experienced." And so it's like, again, for most guys, you have to understand, you can't always control the outcomes, you can only control your inputs. But for a lot of people, they don't even they don't even get there. Now, we get into chapter four, and I yet a great discussion about, you know, how Well, I'll just read a quote here. This really sets up chapter four nicely. Every generation faces the temptation to eliminate or ignore passages that feel inconvenient or offensive in the cultural moment. Some want to cut out what scripture says about justice and compassion for the vulnerable, others want to remove what it says about God's design for holiness, identity, and relationships, and all this selectivity is usually done in the name of love. These actions are the fruit of believing a deeper lie, that lie that the Bible is outdated. This goes back to stuff you talked about at the beginning. There's a biblical authority issue. I think it's a maybe even a step removed from that. We don't actually believe the Bible is the word of God, Aaron. We don't. We believe that somehow, some way, this this was turned from Hebrew and Aramaic and and Greek into Germanic and then into English and then into more readable modern English, but we think that's something God messed up in the translation, and there's certainly stuff in here that I don't need to pay attention to because I don't like it, right? And so I'm going to put my preferences above what this says, and I'm just not really going to do what it says. Now, everything, especially with if we're talking about C.S. Lewis's chronological snobbery, we always think that it's it's different in this generation, that we're doing it somehow worse or somehow better. >> Mhm. >> I [clears throat] don't know that we've ever experienced a cultural moment, you know, with the cascading of the ubiquity of the Bible along with incredibly high rates of biblical illiteracy, now going into AI and quantum and people not even questioning things, just going with the flow. It feels like we're getting way worse. In the in these last couple of decades, maybe even just this last decade, the temptation to eliminate or ignore passages, gosh, we're having entire, not just congregations, entire denominations that are going apostate, Aaron, that that are that are removing uh the the white um the white fabric from the cross and putting on the LGBTQ pride flag or the pride progress flag, and I just feel like we're we're reaching a moment where it's getting way way way more persistent. >> Yeah, and I think this temptation to be a selective Christian, to pick and choose what our itching ears want to hear, that's what Paul wrote to Timothy, that a time will come where people will just want to hear what their itching ears want to hear, and that we are to continue to declare uh the unadulterated, non-compromised word of God, even as even when it's unpopular, no matter what our context is culturally or politically. And so, yeah, I think that that's a a strong temptation, and that's why why in this chapter I really call us >> to biblical engagement. And you know, just one of the things I do is read through the Bible every year. I do it with a bunch of other guys, and you know, there's just something about going through the whole Bible, sitting under it, struggling with it, asking questions, seeing how the Lord speaks to you through it, that will challenge you. And and I think that this issue of biblical illiteracy is real. Um one of the things I I I about in this chapter as well of is about the study um from the center for biblical engagement about the power of four effect and you maybe talked about this on the show before but if you read the Bible four more times a week that you see exponential impact in your life but if you're just kind of getting a season in a couple days a week you go to church and then maybe group and then you maybe hear it a little bit here and there it doesn't have any transformative power and so we got to be engaged in the word daily and we got to submit ourselves to it and not be this kind of selective Christian where we just kind of read it devotionally oh it inspired me here God God will not be mocked God does not want to be used as a means to anybody's end whatever that end is even if it's a good end and and so you know one of the things I write about in here is like the good end like love and justice and that's a good end that's something I've been committed to I've been doing the work of of biblical justice for for a long time that's a good end but a lot of times people will use faith in the church just as a means to that end but God will not be mocked he is the preeminent preeminent one he is the first and the last the alpha and the omega and we have to submit to him and say hey the rest of my life how I use my time my resources how I view an issue has to come under the word of God and not what's popular at the moment >> well and also Aaron you talk about what was it the the rule of four or something like that what was the phrase you power of four >> power of four >> if you engage with the Bible three or fewer times a week it's almost statistically speaking the same as engaging with it zero times a week well like I don't know why the dam breaks between three and four but there's something about that perhaps because seven is the number of completion three is less than half of that number four is more than half of that number perhaps has something to do with it but also in chapter four you do talk about one of the main consequences of biblical illiteracy being people become susceptible to false teaching which we've talked about, but also susceptible to conspiracy theories. >> Yes. >> This goes back to my crisis of discernment. I feel like the inflection point was when Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year. Something broke in the body politic. Something snapped for a lot of people. It sent a lot of people to their knees, a lot of people to their local churches, and then it kind of removed the mask from some of the more nefarious people in society that were celebrating and championing the expansion of the assassinations of people that we disagree with politically. So, it was a very revelatory moment. But, conspiracy theories we're always drawn to the unknowable. Aaron, how is narcissism even a thing? How are these early heresies even a thing? Because we want them to be true. Like, and I feel like even for Christians, we'll spend time reading the second and third books of Enoch, right? But, we won't read Matthew, right? We're going to read the Gospel of Thomas, but but we're not going to spend any time in Exodus, right? And so, because we we we love this gnostic somehow there was Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus had all of his apostles, but he pulled Thomas to the side and said, "Let me give you the real download." And, you know, it's going to be written down well after Thomas, and it's an obvious forgery, but we want to think it's true. We want to know about aliens. We want to know about Nephilim. We want to know about these things even from the Bible that aren't knowable, like is it young earth or is it old earth? We can't know exactly for sure. And then we don't even reckon with the stuff that is knowable. That that Jesus was a a real-life Jewish Middle Eastern like uh construction worker that was an itinerant Jewish rabbi that was killed, put into a tomb, rose 3 days later. We don't like dealing with that stuff. It's all the secret stuff. And it's the conspiracy theory stuff right now where especially Christians are getting yanked into anti-Semitism. They're they're going with voices that they trust and like like a Candace Owens or a Tucker Carlson without even checking to see is there any basis for any of these claims that they're making so boldly and so publicly. So, I feel like I'm getting on to my own little diatribe here. So, save me and give me your opinion. >> No, I think it's a it's a huge issue in our current moment with AI as well, where there's so many fake images, fake videos. And so then if you can have a hypothesis about something that may sound true, like you know, it's like 70% true and then fill it with 30% lies, it's still a lie. Just because it's 70% true doesn't mean it's true. And so some of the biggest lies, like even Hitler and the Nazis justified much of what they did based on like 80-90% truth. And then they would insert that lie. And so that's what's happening right now in these What's troubling is that a lot of these conspiracy theories have a huge following. Like millions of people believing these things. And so I think it's a real crisis of discernment. And I think that we as Christians need to know the word of God. We need to be able to be discerning so that we can know what the enemy is doing in his playbook and so that we can discern quicker and not just click on something, like it and share it without demanding a level of evidence that it's actually true. >> Well, and also we become susceptible to being otherized because eventually like so you were otherized if you didn't get the jab, right? Oh, you want to kill grandma. You don't care about this pandemic being ended. And then obviously we were lied to a lot about that. Eventually it's going to be like, "Hey, just get the chip, Aaron. Just get the chip. It's going to be a small incision in the base of your brain. It's going to give you unlimited IQ. You'll understand all the languages. You'll be able to communicate with people just by sending your thoughts across you know, the ether or whatever." And so it's just we have to be okay with being otherized if being otherized means we are staying tethered to capital T truth, right? Not my truth, not the truth of our favorite political pundit, but actual capital T truth. But if we don't spend any time in the word, how can we even surmise that, right? But now let's get into to chapter five. So, this is something that you kind of signposted earlier when justice gets hijacked. >> Mhm. >> Okay? Now, this is the chapter where I really saw the dissonance that I mentioned earlier in the interview really get ramped up. >> And this is where if I'm being honest, I felt like you were speaking out of both sides of your mouth a little bit. It was almost like your time in Boston and your time in DC was showing, right? Because can you spend that much time near the beast without the beast getting all over you a little bit? Because even just you you just different terminology using you know terms like economic justice which is just a euphemism for financial confiscation of assets, you know, social justice which has a lot of you know you things attached to it. It's just a euphemism for collectivism is kind of what it ends up being. Racial equity becomes a euphemism for reparations and and those types of things. And so you didn't really spend a lot of time engaging with what you mean by all those different terms. But culturally especially if you are a Christian and a conservative, we kind of know what those things mean because we experimented with them a little bit in 2020 and we realized oh, this is nonsense. Or these things go all the way back to the pits of hell. Like even look like Black Lives Matter. Everybody thought it was a statement. No, it's an organization. An organization that has a communist leaning and even the people that invented it said it it was communist. It didn't then we obviously were made aware that it was basically just a grift for like you know, purchase of housing and and financial you know, funds and raising and all those types of things. But we can trace all these ideologies back to to to the Frankfurt School and to Karl Marx and and those things basically come straight from Satan. And so this was that chapter where I was like man, I I just didn't know if maybe there was this were some intentionality to it or maybe it's just like gosh, if I look back it's like maybe Boston and DC kind of got all over me a little bit. >> Yeah, well, um I want to be very clear. I am committed to the work of justice and I'm committed to taking back that term because I think it's a biblical term, and I think secular culture has twisted it into something it's not. So, maybe we could unpack that a little bit about >> Let's do that. >> What do we mean by justice? >> Yep. >> And I think the Bible is very clear from the Old Testament prophets to the law all the way through Jesus and the epistles that God cares about the poor, that he moves towards the suffering. It's sort of like, hey, if you have four kids and one of them has a special needs, um then you're going to spend time You're going to love all of them equally, but you're going to spend time extra time with the person with the child that has special needs. And so, I think that for me, when I use the word justice, I'm meaning it in a sense of biblical justice. And the way I define that is the Lord's Prayer, God's kingdom coming here on earth as it is in heaven. So, our starting point has to be What does heaven look like? And then, how do we partner with the spirit through God's church to see more of heaven come to earth, to be able to alleviate poverty, to be able to pursue justice, to be able to resist evil. And so, I think one of the things that was interesting, I used to talk I talked a lot about critical theory way before 2020. Cri- And even critical race theory. You can ask pastors. I was on panels talking about it. It's like, "No, but what is this? What is this?" I And I And I said, "You need to pay attention to this term because it it in a lot of ways rightly describes the history. If you just talk about the US history, doesn't always perfectly describe it, but there is a lot of racism in the US. There is slavery, chattel slave chattel human slavery. There's a lot to reckon with in our past. But the problem with critical race theory is it names the problem, but not the solution. So, it burns it down without actually tearing uh without actually building it up. And that's the work that we're called to um as Christians is to actually make the future better by being more engaged rather than less engaged. And so, biblical justice is is not enough to just change laws. Like Dr. King, you know, civil rights movement, Voting Rights Act passed in 1964, the Civil Rights Act passed in 1965, but he didn't stop organizing after that because his vision was not just to change laws, but that we would change hearts, that we would actually change the way we relate to each other as people. That's the work of the church, and there's certain stuff that government can't do. Government has a God-ordained role to pursue justice and to restrain evil, but it's a limited role. It can't play every role. And when we put when we expect the government to do certain things that we're called to first embody as a church, we'll always end up on the wrong side, going in the wrong direction historically. >> Well, let's go a little deeper on that because one of my concerns with, and you mentioned diversity earlier, is when you try to create diversity. Um and this bleeds over into standpoint epistemology, which is true change is based on your standpoint. Right, so we can all look at the same event and we can only surmise truth through our our eyes, which something has something to do with our level of melanin in our skin, has something to do with the socioeconomic status of our families, and where we immigrated from, or any of those types of things. But part of my concern is when So, for instance, I live in a very homogeneous part of a city, right? And so, if we wanted to expect the the church that I attend to look like the myriad of different races and backgrounds and cultures that are expressed in Oklahoma, that would maybe be foolhardy and very artificial, if that makes sense. Because sometimes it's just it's just the the the pot you're in, right? Like so, you talk about the melting pot, some places melt with a few more ingredients than others, right? Some people just they just got broth over there, right? And [laughter] there's not a whole lot of salt or other stuff in there. I think people are picking up what I'm laying down. But that's part of the thing for me is when we we almost infuse this superficiality into this idea as we're going to you know, attack this nebulous idea of quote unquote justice. >> Yeah. Well, that's a good example of taking a good thing like diversity, you know, heaven's diverse. Every nation, tribe, people, and tongue gather before the throne worshiping God. That's not a bad diversity is good. We learn from each other. People have different backgrounds. But then you make it the primary value and then you eliminate anything and you make that the goal and everything secondary to that. And what you do is you strip the gospel of its power. And so, for us in my context, I minister 2 miles directly north of the White House in the heart of Washington, D.C. Every embassy in the world is within about a mile or two of ours. We have 80 nationalities represented in our church. And you go to Target and shop right behind us, literally right behind where we where we meet, you'll see every nation in the world walking through there. So, why would you know, somebody come into a church and not see that same diversity? Cuz that's my context. But it's actually even rare. When you go to like New York City, Boston, D.C., it's actually rare to have a multi-ethnic church. And so, we didn't get there by making it the ultimate goal. We you know, Jesus is the only one who can bring unity. It says in Ephesians 4:3, "To make every effort to keep the unity through the bond of peace." The unity of the spirit through the bond of uh the bond of peace. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. We can't create that unity in the midst of diversity. That's only what Jesus could do. He brought Jews and Gentiles together in the early church. They had such different backgrounds. They came together. That was a work of the spirit. That was accomplished through Jesus's life, death, and resurrection. What we have to do is when we experience it, we have to protect it. Which means that people are going to come in from a lot of different walks of life. I grew up overseas. I pastored a black church in But, I've spent my most of my life where I'm the minority in the room. But, then now I get to be a bridge running in all these different circles, but we don't make it the ultimate value. It's secondary to the primary values of the gospel. And I think when the gospel's really being lived out, we see that manifest in different ways. But, I think that I think that things like what we've seen in culture with like DEI in the last 5 years where you take once again, it's good it's good to have diversity in a workplace. It's good for people to be treated equally. It's good to include other voices. That's not a bad thing. But, what's happened is that secular culture which defines me, my experience, how I interpret truth becomes the dominant value. And so, that's why we have to take these things back. There some of them are biblical concepts, which is why it causes some Christians to go astray in a desire to live that out. But, once again, we have to look at all of scripture. We have to look at creation, fall, redemption, and renewal, and not just pick our favorite parts. >> Well, it's a distillation down of people into like these these these fine little easy to define things. And so, when people talk about evil white people for instance, I'm like, "Well, when you say white, what do you mean? Do you mean Anglo? Do you mean Saxon? Do you mean Germanic? Do you mean Celtic? Do you mean Latin?" Because we have all these disparate groups and cultures and everything. But, then if you're in America and you have Well, I have no melanin. But, if you have a level of melanin that's somewhere between me and slight tan, it's like, "Ah, white." And it's just like uh and you make a really really great point that I never really thought of a very diverse place like DC or New York, you still kind of have a little bit of tribalism where people will kind of run, you know, birds of a feather will flock together. That's especially true on Sunday morning. But, we're not going to really kind of lay lay that out. Um but, speaking just doctrinally, so if we were to talk about the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, uh the resurrection, the existence of hell, the second coming of Christ, Can we at least agree that that's like core, cornerstone, like basic Yeah, that's primary Christian doctrine. We're not getting into secondary or tertiary doctrine. So, if somebody didn't believe in those things, they would just not be a Christian, right? Is that fair to say? >> you don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, for example, you're not a Christian according to scripture. >> Yeah, I would say that that's probably the at the very primary of the primaries. >> Yes. >> And so, with that in mind, and you've already brought up his name, I just described the belief system of Martin Luther King Jr. >> Mhm. >> Because if you look at the work of Chado Jackson, he Martin Luther King Jr. did not believe in the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the existence of hell, and he doesn't believe that Jesus is coming back. And so, I'm left as a Christian somewhat flummoxed because we have two people that are celebrated with federal holidays in this country, Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. Okay? And then Christians, and you did it a lot in the book, we bring up Martin Luther King Jr. as this exemplary man that did these things. And again, morally speaking, you know, cheated on his wife constantly, participated in drunken orgies, we you know, potentially even participated in a rape, which makes him basically qualified to be one of the main characters of the Bible. If you think about it that way, cuz you got your your your murderers and your rapists and all that. But I've never I can't think of a single person that is more universally, you know, iconized more by Christians that isn't a Christian than Martin Luther King Jr. And so, I feel like there's no dissonance and no tension used when we talk about Martin Luther King Jr. But every time I hear a pastor bring up Moses, they always seem to have to remind us that he was a murderer and a coward at one point. When we bring up David, we always talk about Oh, yeah, he was an adulterer and he tried to cover his tracks by murdering a guy, right? And I just feel like we don't have that same thing with Martin Luther King Jr. This gets back to a crisis of discernment. It's like, why can't we hold that man in tension just like we would slave owners like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, or, you know, paragons of virtue from the Bible like a Moses or a David. >> Yeah. Well, I you know, I'm not anyone to say that Martin I wouldn't go as far as to say Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't a wasn't a Christian. Other people can say that. That's a that's a pretty bold claim. But I think that I think that what he represented, he's definitely not a perfect man, but I think what he represented um in the moment in history that we were in the midst of Jim Crow segregation coming out of slavery, what he articulated and what he accomplished for many people of color in this country was enormous. Was it perfect? Was there still more work to do? Uh it wasn't perfect. There was still more work to do. Did he have uh a lot of sins that maybe even have been discovered later? Yes, but I don't think that we should just like completely write him off. Neither should we like deitize him and act like, you know, he's this like perfect person. I think that um I've been inspired a lot by his writing and teachings, but I don't think that everything that he wrote was scripture. So, we have to we have to wrestle with that. And we have to equally critique not only people in the Bible, but also people, you know, that we celebrate throughout throughout all of history. So, I think it's a I think it's fair to question like do we just embrace all of this without, you know, critically thinking? I think that's great. But um I think that that would be to to a lot of my African-American brothers and sisters who are very they're evangelical Christians, that would be that would be pretty challenging for them to hear that somebody didn't think that Dr. King was a Christian when he was a self-identified Christian. >> Well, just to be clear, I don't think that he should be be otherized and because he, you know, had moral failings or all that. But just specifically, again, he didn't believe this These are his own writings, his own words, that he didn't believe that Jesus rose from the dead. He didn't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. And you established earlier that that's primary of primary doctrine. And so, yeah, it may sound funny to somebody that loves the man and love what he did for this country in the civil rights movement and there's all the things that you can debate within that, but it's like, okay, in the most standard way possible, he didn't believe in the most basic thing that you have to believe in to become a Christian. And so, it's like, why can't we treat him like >> I'd never heard I'd never heard that before. So, I'd have to see the evidence of that. >> I would I look at look at Chaddo Jackson. He's he's dug into that quite a bit into his own writings and that's, you know, he's going into primary sources, not, hey, I heard from a guy who heard him say once at a mixer that that there's this that and the other thing. >> Sure. >> I think it would be more healthy, just like what you said, to hold everybody in tension because especially in this modern culture, and you already brought it up with AI and the fake videos and all that, if we put start putting our faith in fallible human beings, my God, are they going to let us down? I mean, how many pastors have fallen, you know, what pastors that have gone to prison for for doing things that people didn't know about? And so, it's like, if we can hold everyone in tension and realize that held up to the comparison of Christ that they're all going to fall short, I think that's an important thing for us to all, you know, keep in mind. >> That's good. >> Chapter seven, I really enjoyed chapter seven, especially it felt like there was a pressure relief valve that came from chapter five where we're talking about things getting hijacked and there's all this language and all that. But, then in chapter seven, you're talking about you're talking about when conflict divides. And here we are, just the stuff that we've talked about in the last 15 minutes, Aaron, that could lead to a boatload of conflict even amongst people that have, you know, a lot of the ideologies that are the same. And so, I'll read this this quote from the book here. My question for you is this, do you genuinely pray for the leader of the opposing party? And I don't mean prayers like, God, save them from their wickedness. Do you pray for their salvation? For wisdom? For blessing? And this gets into when you start talking about later on in that chapter about conflict is actually, well, you don't really say it this way, but conflict is actually good. Like, we can't speak the truth in love without there being some conflict, right? Cuz some people run straight to the truth side and leave love behind, and And people run straight to the love side and leave truth behind. But I remember doing this during the Biden administration, right? Praying for Joe Biden. Praying for him to become a believer cuz he says he's Catholic, but he doesn't even believe Catholic doctrine. I don't think there's any way you could say Joe Biden is a Christian. But I prayed for him to actually accept Christ. Because if he did, all the things that I want that are policy prescriptions like say for abortion or transgenderism or or any of those types of things, those things would start to have been enacted. Or the deep state or whoever would have had to take Joe Biden out. And so I pray for those people that are really hard to pray for. And I pray to God, help me see Joseph R. Biden the way you see him. You see him as an image bearer of you. Help me see him how you see him. And just reveal yourself to him. But my gosh, Aaron, how many people even listening to this right now are going to be hearing that for the first time? Like, no, when we say pray for your enemies, we actually mean that. >> Yes, yes, yeah. Absolutely. And it's easy to pray for like your enemies in Iran and North Korea and China and other places, but to actually pray for your enemies maybe in your family, maybe in the church, maybe of the opposing political party. And I think there's something that Jesus understood when he when he taught us, he commanded us to pray for those, pray for our enemies, to bless our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us. There's something that spiritually happens in us when we return hate with love. And it's it's there's just part of our in spiritual formation. And so I've learned a lot from from people that have that done that. And that's part of being in DC pastoring. I you know, different administrations come and go. And I have to I have to learn how to pastor people on both sides. And I have to challenge people to pray for the leadership of the opposing party when your party is not. Cuz it's just really easy to get cynical. And to it's it's a it's a high calling to be an elected official. Like it's hard. Like you you're your family comes under attack. It's just hard. It's like relentless, especially Congress. Like, you have to run a continual election campaign. The The day you get elected, you have to start running for re-election again cuz they get re-elected every 2 years. Um Senate's every 6 years. And so, it's it's a really challenging calling to be an elected official, local or national. And so, we need to pray for our mayors. We need to pray for our governors. We need to pray for our presidents. We need to be more engaged rather than less engaged. And we need to pray for the person that canceled us on social media, even though you might have unfollowed them. >> [clears throat] >> You need to pray for them as well. So. >> Well, I think a lot of people we also have to understand how susceptible, Aaron, we are to Yeah, I guess you could call it a psyop, but I don't want to give like a a dog whistle to anyone that's like really big into all that kind of stuff, but it's like we're very susceptible to being manipulated. Uh we all have these algorithms that are specific to us that they're going to send us things that will either make us buy stuff or make us really [inaudible] off about something specific, right? And so, we we and we might be [clears throat] being manipulated by someone that's not even real. Part of the reason I tell people I don't engage with my comment section on on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube is because I can't even know if this person's a person. >> Is this a bot? >> bot, yeah. >> Yeah, that's being ran from North Korea or China or Iran or somewhere like that. And then you have these people that will spend days days arguing with a robot, right? And the robot is algorithmized or, you know, set up in a way to keep you engaged in the discussion, right? Because it just feeds the beast, feeds the beast. But really, what all this gets down to, and again, guys, we gosh, have we gotten all over the map in this discussion, but as we start to wind to a close, in chapter eight, you talk about just imagine. Just imagine. And we're talking about it in the context of revival. So, a lot [clears throat] of people started to say this, especially since the uh the murder of Charlie Kirk. Are we experiencing revival? Can you know you're experiencing a revival when you're in the middle of it or can you only discern it later when you look back? You know, people can debate that. But you you talk about how all of us Erin can be a bearer of revival as an individual, right? We can be a bearer of revival. And part of that has to do with just kind of burning away nominal Christianity where you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm a Christian." But you're kind of a Christian in name only and not in action. But when you talk specifically about the how, we we've done a lot of description, now it's prescription. The how of we how we can become a bearer of revival. >> Yeah, absolutely. Well, it starts with resisting these lies that we've talked about, being discerning. Um but then it really starts with having a profound long longing for God. You know, John Tyson who wrote the forward to this book always talks about how God comes where he's wanted. And so do we have that sense of spiritual hunger? And that's what I see right now in this next generation in Gen Z. Like you ask like, is there a revival going on? I see a hunger for God and I see that only increasing. I think the devil played overplayed his hand and many people are seeing the secular narrative for what it is, which is empty. That it leads to emptiness, it leads to anxiety, it leads to depression. And they're saying, "Is there another worldview?" I was just with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and and and we were just we're on a at an event together and she was speaking and her story of leaving like the new atheist movement and her conversion was her therapist saying, "You're spiritually bankrupt." And it causing her to realize like in the midst of all my depression, like this secular worldview was not gratifying. And that's what led her to to Christian faith. And now she's out speaking about it and others. So I see this hunger in this next generation. I see hunger among men leaning in. Like our the biggest in our youth group, the the biggest group is our high school men's group. That's usually the smallest group. It's like the high school men, they're like, let's go. And they don't want some watered-down version of Christianity. And for me as a pastor, I'm like, I I can't make them think like a lot of this this this podcast I've been talking about how I I've led with compassion for so long. Now I'm leading with conviction. They got to go together. We're going to lead with conviction because I don't want to have them to have to be more bold in the classroom at school than their pastor is in the pulpit. >> Yeah. >> They're they're dealing with all this onslaught in the classroom. And so we've got to we've got to teach them in this way. But the hunger for God, that's where revival always starts with hunger and then with repentance. Like a conviction of sin, not sugarcoating sin, but on your face being like like men on their face being like, I need God. My life's a mess. And then you begin to see that manifest. Like revivals, you begin to see it noticeable. You begin to see it in your relationships, in your marriage, in your family. And you start seeing it in society. Like most historians will not call something a revival unless it's been sustained for many years and even decades. And you see it manifest in the culture in different ways. And so you look at the history of great awakenings in the US, led to the abolition of slavery, led to the women's suffrage movement, reforming child labor laws. These things um were manifestations of what was first happening in the church. >> Well, I think as well, you know, you talk about those young men, for for some of the older guys in your congregation, you may have to be dragging them along, right? They're they're on a leash. It's like, come on. Whereas with these young boys, sometimes it's like, hey bud, hey bud, you just just come back in a little bit. Like you're you're you're outrunning your wisdom right now. You got all the energy and all the vim and verve, but let's make sure we've we've got some scaffolding underneath it. But Aaron, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Again, we went all over the place and went into some sticky areas, went into some prickly areas, but I think it's all beneficial for the guys listening to this. But I'm just curious, what's next? Like what's the next thing you're working on? Like you said, this is your first book. Some people do their first book, and then they take a 10-year hiatus, if not a forever hiatus, because it's like, "That well, that sucked. I think I'd rather go do something else for right now." But, what's that next thing you're working on either uh in the media space or the ministry space? >> Yeah. Well, uh I I did sign a two-book deal with Penguin Random House, so I do have another >> baby. You got to do something else. >> So, so hopefully have me back. But, it's really around this next generation. Um it's this hunger for God that I see in this next generation, that in the midst of all the anxiety that they're experiencing, I really do believe that we are on the eve of a great awakening. And so, I want to speak to the next generation. So, what what it's called and when it comes out, it'll be a couple years. >> Okay, very good. Well, that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? >> No, I just appreciate you, Kyle. Thanks for pouring into men. I think once again, it's so easy for men to be passive, to be disengaged as husbands, as fathers, and disengaged in the church. So, thank you for calling us in to be more engaged, and for calling us to sit under the authority of scripture, even as uncomfortable as it is. So, thanks for what you do. >> I appreciate that. We'll see you again soon Aaron. >> All right, take care. >> There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed the interview. Let's go and do the quick resilience boost. At Undaunted.Life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges a spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. So, I've got an Amazon link to where you can buy your copy of Unshakeable Faith: How to Stand Firm in a Culture of Lies, and also a link to Aaron's website. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info@undaunted.life. Follow us on Instagram, and like us on Facebook, and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming. www.undaunted.life. The music on this podcast is the song Conqueror by the Christian metal band Void Awaits. Be sure to stream their music on Spotify, Apple Music, and wherever else you get your music. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience, keep seeking the lion of Judah. >> For the lion. >> [music]