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1:18
Thank you for joining us today.
1:31
We've got a special return guest to the podcast today, his name is Jay Warner Wallace, who
1:35
is a cold case homicide detective, popular national speaker and a best-selling author.
1:41
He is one of my favorite people to talk to on the show just because we can go into any
2:09
subject matter without having to really grease the skids very much, we can just flow from
2:14
thing to thing.
2:15
And so that's Roman the giant saying hello.
2:17
Thank you for that shake.
2:18
Roman, I appreciate you very much.
2:20
But we talked about how this book is different than a lot of his other offerings and kind
2:23
of how he got to be able to do that.
2:27
But then he has a quote in there about some of the murder cases that he hasn't been able
2:31
to solve as a cold case detective.
2:32
So I talked to him about what's that like?
2:34
Like you're sitting there at night and you're inspired yourself and you're thinking about
2:37
these murders that you haven't been able to solve like, you know, how do you deal with
2:40
that?
2:41
Then we talked about the importance of objective morality.
2:43
We talked about how in modernity we put a lot of stock in our identity, but we get our
2:48
identity from silly things like, you know, our chosen LGBTQ+ identity or how many followers
2:52
we have on Instagram or how many people listen to our show or something like that.
2:56
So we get into that.
2:57
We talk about the importance of men's community and building that community of guys around
3:02
you.
3:03
And guys, do you hear heard me talk about before the foxhole, the 3 a.m. guy, but we get his
3:06
perspective on that as well.
3:08
We talk a little bit about marriage.
3:09
We talk a little bit about like all of our capacities for potential malevolence.
3:13
Yeah.
3:14
So we really dig into certain things like there's a darkness inside of a lot of us that I think
3:17
we don't really reckon with.
3:19
We talk about something really cool.
3:20
Like what all gangsters have in common, which is a really cool thing.
3:23
That's actually the title of one of his chapters.
3:25
And then we just we float into a other a bunch of other topics, but even at the very end,
3:29
we really dug into some stuff that's very, very important for fathers, especially fathers
3:33
with young children.
3:34
So guys, you're going to want to stick around for all of that.
3:36
So without further ado, let's get into it.
3:39
Jim, welcome back.
3:40
This is your third appearance on undaunted life of man's podcast.
3:44
And I do ask this for people that have come on and been on several times.
3:48
You've had a lot of accolades, you know, you had a very, very, you know, successful writing
3:53
career and, you know, investigations and, you know, cold case and all that.
3:57
But this has got to be up there for you.
3:59
I mean, three times now you've been on this show.
4:02
I mean, that that's got to be like top tier for you.
4:04
Is it not?
4:05
Well, yeah, it is.
4:06
And I don't want to blow smoke here, but the reality of it is, is that this is the kind
4:10
of show that I'm most interested in doing, because I think it's an under, well, not underserved
4:16
maybe, but you know what I'm talking about.
4:17
I mean, that the role of men in Christianity, I think, is we have to do something and we
4:22
have to really, I think, hopefully spend time articulating why men ought to be involved
4:28
and engaged and crazy about this and just give their lives to it, form their identity
4:32
around it.
4:33
All the things that I don't see us doing in the church, and that's something that as
4:39
a cop, and now look, we get, I do a lot of work with both male and female police officers,
4:45
but it's still a dominantly male job because of the physicality of it probably.
4:50
And so this is the audience I'm trying to reach because this is, this is my career.
4:54
So yeah, that's why I would, yeah, if you have asked me to come on a fourth time, I
4:58
I'm going to come on because it feels like this is the audience we need to reach.
5:01
Well, you don't have to keep writing books to keep coming on the show, but it's just
5:04
a good reminder because when you release a new book every 17 minutes, it's like, ah,
5:08
I got to get Jim back on the show and we'll get into your latest book here in a second.
5:11
But I did want to talk about something that you said that you were doing that you mentioned
5:14
before you hopped on, but you're doing something with the Billy Graham group.
5:18
I think you said you just got back from Alaska.
5:20
You said this was on the marriage subject.
5:22
Is that correct?
5:23
Yeah.
5:24
So we just got back two days ago from the first of three sessions we'll be doing up there
5:28
two weeks sessions.
5:29
So it'll be their total of six weeks.
5:30
This is a retreat that, that BGA uniquely offers Billy Graham's evangelistic association
5:35
and uniquely offers for police officers and their spouses and all of these folks have
5:39
been involved in critical incidents, many of which they are thought they were going to
5:44
make it and were critically injured.
5:47
A lot of them get back to work.
5:49
And so we do have some that come back to work, or maybe actually still working.
5:53
A lot of them are like in the verge of medical retirement, and it shakes them.
5:58
And so a lot of it has to do with identity.
5:59
And so some of the stuff I wrote about in Truth and True Crime was really amplified.
6:03
It was the stuff that I would talk to officers about to kind of help them kind of get back
6:07
on their feet.
6:08
A lot of them come up.
6:09
They're not saved.
6:10
They're not Christians.
6:11
So it's just an opportunity to spend a week with each with four couples and is intense.
6:17
It's pretty, it's pretty involved.
6:19
But at the end of that, people find themselves in a better place, both in their marriage
6:23
and kind of in how they see the world.
6:25
So a lot of it is like Christian worldview stuff that we're doing, but it is dealing
6:28
with like, what is the nature of trauma?
6:30
How do we how do we get through trauma?
6:32
What's the best way to flourish post trauma?
6:34
We talk a lot about why we're struggling to begin with in terms of identity or where
6:39
we place our worship.
6:40
Those kinds of things matter, but I don't think a lot of people think about them seriously
6:43
until they get in a tight spot.
6:45
So that's what we're doing with them.
6:46
We go back again in two more weeks.
6:48
So we have two weeks in August, I mean, two weeks in June, two weeks in July, two weeks
6:52
in August this year, but this is our third year at this location or fourth year in total
6:56
with BGA doing this for police officers.
6:59
And we also jumped in and volunteered a little bit with the operation, heal our patriots before
7:03
that, which is from military personnel.
7:06
So they offer the same thing from military personnel.
7:09
And so it's been just a great opportunity to do this, but boy, it's a lot of work.
7:12
And it's it is draining because you have to jump in the hole with people and sometimes
7:18
it's dark, but that's just the nature of empathy, right?
7:22
So you just jump in the hole.
7:24
And so I would assume the answer to this is yes, but is it because they are in a post trauma
7:29
state that their, the soil is more fertile, I guess for you to drum up these ideas about
7:35
worldview and kind of get to the spiritual, because I notice with men, I got to kind of
7:38
break you down a little bit physically before I can start talking to your brain because
7:42
your brain's telling you to stop doing this and I'm telling you to keep going.
7:44
And then you have to break through that to even get to the spiritual conversation where
7:47
they're so exhausted and so exasperated that you can kind of hit some of those subjects.
7:51
Is that kind of what you see?
7:52
Yeah, that's a good point.
7:54
I do think that nobody eats until they're hungry.
7:58
Nobody buys a new car until the old car is not running anymore.
8:00
So there's a sense in which, yes, you look, I often think that you don't need to know
8:05
more in order to investigate this, you need to surrender more.
8:09
And that's hard for because what keeps us away from the truth sometimes is that we think
8:13
we know better.
8:14
It's a pride issue.
8:15
And I think sometimes life can bruise your pride and then you're maybe willing to listen.
8:19
So one of the things we talk about is one of the chapters of this book I just wrote as
8:22
about like, what is the one thing that makes you a better learner?
8:27
It turns out there is secular research on this.
8:30
The thing that makes you a better learner is also the thing that contributes to almost
8:33
every other aspect of recordable human flourishing from longevity, mental illness, a mental health
8:39
rather, physical health, that your committed relationships, how much you can learn, how
8:46
willing, how able you are to learn better grades, better financial achievement.
8:51
All of these markers that we typically use for human flourishing are improved by this
8:55
one thing called, according to the research in the last 35 years, humility.
9:00
No, what a shock.
9:02
It turns out that humble people learn at a higher, faster rate because they don't think
9:07
they already know the answer.
9:09
They're willing to say, you know what, maybe I'm not right.
9:12
So humility is a key to all of this.
9:14
Now, look, you can either decide that I want to flourish and adopt humility.
9:18
And by the way, that's really hard.
9:20
We can talk about that.
9:21
But or what can happen is life can punch you in the face and force you into a position
9:26
of humility.
9:27
But either way will work in terms of positioning you to learn something new.
9:34
So I do think that people come sometimes because they are now in that position of humility.
9:37
I think the other thing, though, Kyle, is that a lot of the guys I'm dealing with in
9:41
this, and this is why I feel like we need to stay in that ministry as long as they'll
9:46
have us, is that these are casemakers.
9:49
These are cops or casemakers.
9:51
They're constantly building cases in their head, everything, every interaction with somebody
9:55
on the street.
9:56
If it's going to go to an arrest, they've got to make a case in their head just why this
10:00
is going to be an arrest, why this is going to head in this direction, how am I going
10:03
to present this on my report?
10:05
How is this going to be presented to a DA?
10:07
How is it ultimately going to be presented to a jury?
10:09
This is casemaking from start to finish, and casemakers are typically the kind of people
10:14
who want you to make a case, and because of the nature of their job.
10:18
So I think we're in a position where we can say, "Well, you could make a case for this."
10:22
And that's what my early books have always tried to do, and so that's kind of, I think
10:27
it helps.
10:28
So two things.
10:29
One, they've been in a position, or we try to help them to see why humility will help
10:33
them in their marriage.
10:35
And then two, leveraging that humility, we make a case.
10:38
I think those two things are helpful together.
10:41
Yeah, the humility piece is so big because I don't think humility is modeled enough.
10:45
So that's one thing that I do with my boys.
10:47
I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old son.
10:48
And so when dad loses it for a second, flies off the handle or acts out in anger or something
10:54
like that, I try to be quick to apologize to my boys.
10:57
Yeah.
10:58
And to show them like, "Hey, I'm going to humble myself and ask you for forgiveness."
11:02
Now if you do that 17 times a day, it's just going to start to ring a little hollow.
11:07
But if you can spread that out maybe throughout a year, you're teaching your kid humility,
11:10
but that's another reason why I encourage men to do jujitsu because it's like jujitsu
11:14
is one of those few things that you can't just be an athlete and be good at it, right?
11:18
Because we all know that guy that no matter what he did, no matter what ball he picked
11:22
up.
11:23
First time he picked up a football, it was a spiral.
11:24
First time he shot a three-pointer, it was swish.
11:26
We all know guys like that.
11:27
You can't do that with jujitsu.
11:29
Like I've heard the quote, "You can't athlete out of stuff."
11:31
You're not going to accidentally try and I'll show someone the first time that you've
11:34
been on the mat.
11:35
And so you're just going to get brutalized for years and years and years.
11:39
And there's always someone better and better than you.
11:42
And so if you've got an ego problem, if you've got a humility problem like that, I'll just
11:46
knock it right out of you because it's either you're going to stick around and keep taking
11:50
the medicine or you're not.
11:52
And so I appreciate that perspective on that as well.
11:55
But I guess it would be worth our time to get into the newest book.
11:58
Again, you've written about 74 books at this point.
12:00
About the newest one, guys, is the truth and true crime.
12:02
You heard me talk about it in the intro.
12:04
What investigating death teaches us about the meaning of life.
12:07
So I want to read a quote from the preface here.
12:09
This book is different.
12:10
It contains truths about life gleaned from investigations about death.
12:14
Great line, by the way.
12:15
It also includes the surprisingly accurate description of human nature found not in the
12:19
latest scientific journals, but in the ancient pages of the Bible.
12:23
So why this book?
12:24
Why now?
12:25
Why you?
12:26
I could have written this book first, I would have, I started writing apologetics books
12:30
because I was working as a youth pastor, just finishing up as a youth pastor.
12:34
And I was with Sean McDowell training his high school students to get ready for an immersive
12:37
trip at UC Berkeley where we're going to be encountering atheists.
12:41
And I was training them on the reliability of scripture.
12:43
The way I had done my youth groups for years.
12:46
And he saw the presentation to his students and he said, you should write a book about
12:49
that.
12:50
And that ultimately became, I didn't think I had time to do that, but he helped me to
12:54
get my, you know, a lot of fire to do that.
12:57
So I owe it to John for a book called Cold Case Christianity, which was the first book
13:01
I wrote.
13:02
Now, if he just said, you know, if I'd have been teaching, if he had asked me to teach
13:06
his students about humility, then I would have written a different book first.
13:11
And in some ways, I look back at that and I say, well, I look back and I think, well,
13:16
should I, is that really, because once you start writing a book for a publishing house,
13:21
that's how they see you.
13:22
Yeah.
13:23
Okay, now we want more of those, especially if the book does well.
13:26
So, so then I ended up in a string of these books and years ago, I started pitching this
13:31
book because this is the one that I thought was the most important.
13:34
This is because by the time I had was writing Cold Case Christianity, I was probably, let's
13:39
see, I was probably six or seven years beyond being interested, not interested, but, you
13:46
know, and actually it's more than that, it's like 15 years beyond being like, I'd already
13:51
crossed that bridge, I crossed that bridge to become a Christian.
13:55
And by the time I wrote Cold Case Christianity, I was really trying to figure out how does
13:58
Christianity meet the road, like, how do we live this?
14:02
Like what does it say about how we ought to be living?
14:05
And that's the stuff that I was most interested in.
14:08
But maybe it's good that you wait till you're 62 to write a book like this, because then
14:12
you really have stubbed your toe enough times to kind of test some of these ideas out.
14:18
But, so I've been pitching this book for a while.
14:21
When I signed with Zonervin, I wanted to write this book first, but they said, no, we kind
14:28
of want something that is about Jesus in the Jesus space.
14:31
And so I thought, well, when I first did that investigation years ago, there was a bunch
14:36
of stuff I looked at that I didn't write about in Cold Case.
14:40
So I thought, what could be like a partner book to Cold Case that would cover the stuff
14:43
I didn't write about in Cold Case, that became a book called Person of Interest.
14:46
So I wrote Person of Interest first, and then I think I earned the right with Zonervin to
14:52
write this book, which is the book I really think is the most important book I've written.
14:57
It's the stuff that's most interesting to me.
15:00
I had been compiling a list of about 40 attributes of human nature that I had been watching and
15:06
experiencing as a homicide detective that I always wanted to talk about, because it's
15:10
like, wow, you see that?
15:11
You see that right there?
15:12
That's common.
15:13
What you just saw right there, I see that in 90% of our suspects.
15:16
And it turns out that I see that in us.
15:19
I see that in my partner and I.
15:21
We all share this common attribute, and then you get a chance to see what it looks like
15:26
on someone's worst day.
15:28
And it helps you, I think, to figure out, hey, how can we regulate this in some way to help
15:36
people leverage this truth to become better at whatever they're doing?
15:41
And so that's kind of what this book does.
15:43
It takes a look at 15 attributes of human nature that you find in crime scenes.
15:48
And I tell some crime stories, so it's part true crime.
15:50
It's part self-help.
15:51
There's 15 rules for life here.
15:53
And it's part, you could say there's kind of a kind of sideways apologetic, because if
15:58
Christianity is true, it ought to describe us the way we really are.
16:03
And it turns out it does.
16:04
So that's what I wanted to be able to illustrate in the book.
16:07
So that's kind of what this book's about.
16:08
It's a little different than my other apologetics books.
16:11
And I think that that's something interesting, Kyle, you had to turn corners.
16:15
And sometimes a social media world does not allow you to turn corners.
16:19
I remember when Lee Strobel first wrote a fiction novel.
16:24
He only wrote one, because it's almost like his audience didn't allow him to turn a corner.
16:30
And so if that's the case for me here, that's fine.
16:34
I see what we do for me, what we do in terms of posting content.
16:41
It's like a spiritual discipline.
16:43
The same way that I'm going to read scripture, I'm going to pray, I'm going to do all the
16:46
things that we do.
16:47
We consider spiritual disciplines.
16:48
I can't help but want to create content about Jesus.
16:52
And it's part of my every day.
16:55
Right now I'm just so obsessed with this reading scripture, but I go through seasons where
16:59
I'm more or less obsessed with it, just the nature of life.
17:03
But this is something that I feel like is a spiritual.
17:05
I had to write this book.
17:07
So that's what this book is.
17:08
Well, it is very interesting to see the difference between person of interest and the truth and
17:12
true crime.
17:13
Because person of interest was my first foray into your work.
17:15
That was your first appearance on the show, was talking about that book.
17:18
But there are similarities there as well.
17:19
But you're right.
17:20
I mean, I think I remember when Jim Carrey did like the Truman Show, everyone's like, wait,
17:23
where's Ace Ventura?
17:24
I don't want this like serious guy like doing like this dramatic thing or he tried to do
17:28
a couple of thrillers.
17:29
They're like, no, we want to see you with a bowl cut and a chip too saying stupid things.
17:32
That's what we want to see you doing.
17:33
And so you kind of get typecast a little bit.
17:36
Now this is tangentially related to the book and I do want to get into some of the different
17:40
leads because you don't call them chapters, you call them leads.
17:42
But there's a quote from the preface where you say, the murder of Kathy Jacobson remains
17:45
one of my open unsolved mysteries.
17:48
I just want to know what that's like.
17:51
Because again, you're a cold case detective, you're solving these cold cases sometimes
17:57
that are decades old, right?
17:58
So all the leads have gone cold.
18:00
There's no DNA from back in the day like it's a seemingly impossible task.
18:04
And it's also seemingly impossible to assume that you're going to solve all of them.
18:09
But I feel like we don't really reckon with the fact that when you're sitting there, you
18:12
know, watching a ballgame, having a bourbon and you're thinking about Kathy Jacobson and
18:17
you're thinking about, you know, this woman's murderer could still be out there and, you
18:21
know, I wasn't able to put this person to justice.
18:24
So just tell me a little bit more about that because I mean, for for somebody that's a
18:28
civilian that never works, cases like that or all that, like I just, I can't fathom it.
18:32
Yeah, it's interesting.
18:33
You know, I know, I'll be honest, I don't think I really much thought about the unsolveds.
18:36
I mean, I do think about the cases and there's two ways you think about them.
18:40
But number one, there's there's a bunch of cases that we didn't even get a chance to
18:44
look at that are unsolved in our agency.
18:46
And nobody worked these cases typically.
18:49
They once they go cold and that that that detective is reassigned that these things kind
18:55
of get lost unless a family continues to push and bring it to the forefront of the agency.
19:01
That's why I always tell families, victim families, hey, you just need to constantly
19:04
on every single anniversary of that dead person's life, their birthday, their death date, whatever
19:10
it may be, you need to write another letter and send it to the agency and eventually someone's
19:14
going to pick it up.
19:16
But it's the ones where families kind of move on sadly, and there are a lot of those sadly
19:21
that were where families kind of it's hopeless.
19:23
They don't re-contact the agency.
19:25
So I would say two things.
19:27
Number one, there's a pride issue.
19:29
I hate to say that, but there is.
19:30
So if you've touched a case, there's a good chance someone's eventually going to solve
19:36
it.
19:37
And then you're going to be on Dateline as the guy who didn't solve it.
19:39
So tell you what, if you're going to open it up, solve it.
19:42
Because you don't want to be the guy who's just another one of these detectives who couldn't
19:46
move the case.
19:47
I have cases like that where I picked them up, did a ton of work.
19:51
That's one of those cases where we're on those porches, swabbing potential suspects.
19:55
And eventually we run out of people to swab and then you're like, okay, what do I do with
19:59
this now?
20:00
This is an unsolved case still.
20:01
Do I think we've had some movement on that case in the last five years that it's quite
20:06
possible that it will get solved.
20:08
But it won't because of me because I never got close to figuring out who it was.
20:13
But that's a case, I think I say this in the first preface of the book, that I changed
20:18
details, dates, names on cases.
20:22
And I exchanged some of the details because I don't want especially open cases like that
20:25
one.
20:26
I don't really want people to know where it's at until it's solved.
20:30
But that's a case that is still open.
20:33
There's lots more detail to that case I could have provided, but I just don't want to go
20:36
in that direction right now.
20:38
But I do think about it.
20:39
And I don't think about it in terms of some of these cases, look, they're so old, there's
20:44
a very good chance that whoever did this has been dead for years.
20:48
You're talking about cases in the 80s.
20:51
And I've got a case, we chose 1972 by the time we solved it in 2019, I think the guy
20:57
had been dead a few years.
21:00
So some of these, I don't look at it and say, "Oh, there's a serial killer on the loose."
21:06
But could that person, if they had been caught the day they did it, could we perhaps have
21:11
prevented a few more murders?
21:13
Yes.
21:14
But probably by the time I open it, we're well past that.
21:19
But now we just want justice for the family.
21:21
And that's one of the things we're trying to do here, Kyle, is if we can't get closure.
21:25
And families want it to end, of course, it's not going to end.
21:30
I can convict the killer and not return your dead daughter.
21:34
It's not going to end.
21:36
But I do think if we work hard, we can sometimes get justice, but we're not going to get closure.
21:43
Very good.
21:44
Well, I appreciate you going into that.
21:45
Well, let's dig into some of the leads.
21:46
And let's go ahead and go into lead one or chapter one, if you will.
21:49
This one's called a pull of blood under my feet.
21:51
So I'm actually going to leave the anecdote for the reader because it's probably my favorite.
21:55
It was the first one.
21:56
It was probably my favorite story because it's just such a goofball thing.
22:00
And like whenever I think of you, Jim, I don't think of goofball.
22:02
And so guys, you'll have to, I'll save that for the book itself.
22:05
And I want to read a quote from, from lead one.
22:07
If objective transcendent wisdom is morally grounded as philosophers, theologians, and
22:12
even scientists agree, then it requires an objective transcendent source for moral truth.
22:18
That kind of wisdom is unavailable if moral truths are simply personal or collective opinions.
22:23
And so this is obviously getting into this, this postmodern ideal where you know, your
22:27
truth, your truth, mind is my truth.
22:29
There's no such thing as objective morality.
22:31
And the thing is, is people will say that, but they don't actually live that way.
22:34
They live as, as if objective morality is a real thing.
22:38
And they live as if doing the right thing is the right thing and that we can all kind
22:42
of colloquially agree to what the right thing is.
22:45
But like talk to me a little bit more about that because there are a lot of people that
22:49
have really bought into this lie that I can't tell you what you're deciding to do is wrong
22:54
because you have your own lived experience.
22:56
Yeah.
22:57
Well, so look, even if I said that I don't think, I think it's wrong for people to, to
23:03
enforce or to project their beliefs about morality on me, that's a, well, then you think
23:09
that, that, that moral belief that is wrong to project your moral beliefs is objectively
23:15
true.
23:16
You think it's true for all of us.
23:17
That, you don't have any problem at all enforcing that moral truth.
23:22
So there's no way to avoid the, the enforcement of objective, don't I say objective, what
23:27
I mean is truth, the transcend personal opinions.
23:30
In other words, is it okay to torture babies for fun?
23:34
Is that a matter of personal opinion?
23:35
Is that a matter of collective opinion that societies can decide it's okay?
23:39
Or do we think that there are some things that transcend?
23:41
I don't care who you are on planet earth, where you lived, what time you lived in history,
23:46
it was never okay to do this.
23:47
In other words, it's grounded not in you as the subject deciding if it's okay, it's grounded
23:52
in the act itself.
23:54
The object under consideration here is the moral act.
23:58
So it's grounded in the object known as the moral act, not in the subject who's evaluating
24:03
it.
24:04
It's an objective claim about morality.
24:06
Now, look, why is this important?
24:08
Because it turns out, as you study wisdom from a scientific perspective, I mean a secular
24:14
perspective, I cite a study in this book, for example, that says that at least one pillar
24:19
of wisdom, and this is a wisdom book, one pillar of wisdom is moral.
24:24
That's according to the secular philosophy.
24:26
What do they mean?
24:27
Well, so for example, if I said, is there a wise way to do a bank robbery?
24:31
Is there a wise way to do a kidnapping?
24:34
Is there a wise way to do a rape?
24:36
Okay.
24:37
What do you mean?
24:38
In other words, it seems like the act itself is unwise.
24:42
In other words, what you mean, is there a way to be more successful?
24:47
Or do you mean is it truly wise to even do a bank robbery, to even do one of these heinous
24:51
crimes?
24:52
Well, it turns out there's a moral component that you would say by its very nature.
24:57
Some things are unwise because they are immoral.
24:59
Okay.
25:00
So if wisdom has a moral component, then the question becomes, who gets to decide the moral
25:05
nature of something?
25:07
So I could say, look, there's a wise way to live in the streets as a gangster and interact
25:11
with other gangsters and shoot people who disrespect you.
25:14
And these are all things that are part of the moral code of the street.
25:19
Are we willing to say that all moral codes are just developed by groups?
25:22
Because then what do we do with street gangs?
25:24
Who hold like there's a code among thieves?
25:27
Yep.
25:28
Is that the code we ought to be living by?
25:29
So it turns out that the very first chapter of this book, I hope, demonstrates that, look,
25:33
if you really want to be wise, one of those components is going to have to be the moral
25:38
pillar that the secular researchers identify in Ivy League schools.
25:43
So if that's the case, well, you're already stuck with some kind of transcendent grounding
25:48
for morality.
25:49
And that's why your lived experience is not going to be because I guarantee you, I've
25:53
actually interviewed gangsters who have done something heinous and said, well, yeah, but
25:57
yesterday they came over and did that to us.
25:59
Look, they know how this works.
26:02
They know if they come over here and do this to us, we're just going to return the favor
26:04
tomorrow.
26:05
That's the way it works on the street.
26:07
Okay, so there's a moral code.
26:09
Okay.
26:10
And therefore we're not going to arrest you?
26:11
No, we actually think, and it's not like we're saying, well, we're a bigger group.
26:15
So our moral code matters more than yours.
26:18
If we're going to play that game of the bigger group, no, it turns out that all of us when
26:22
we write laws in the state of California or any other state, we are trying to tap into
26:27
something that transcends just our view in California.
26:32
We're actually trying to represent, to create a law that represents something that we believe
26:37
is transcendent.
26:38
Well, how do you ground those kinds of things?
26:41
Remembering that all moral codes or obligations between persons, in other words, I have no
26:47
moral obligation to this cup.
26:49
I can hit it, I can crack it, I can spit on it, there's no, it's an object.
26:56
Moral obligations are between persons.
26:58
I can't, the person who holds the cup, I can't do those things to that person because it's
27:02
a person.
27:03
So if there are objective moral obligations, and I think there are, the only question
27:09
left is who is the objective moral person to whom I'm obligated?
27:14
You see, we're going to get really close to having to adopt something that is grounded
27:20
in some form of theism where there's an objective, transcendent source of righteousness by which
27:27
we measure anything and call it unrighteous, or immoral, or evil.
27:33
So I think you're kind of stuck, right, when you start with this idea of wisdom, we need
27:36
to teach this to our kids.
27:37
Now, I think there's actually four components to wisdom, and one of the other ones also
27:40
important is just, hey, make age-appropriate mistakes, and I call these age-appropriate
27:45
mistakes.
27:46
The mistake I made in the book is a mistake I made the first time I was on a murder scene.
27:49
But if you're making that mistake 10 years in, you're an idiot.
27:52
But why?
27:53
Because it's not age-appropriate anymore.
27:54
You know, make age-appropriate mistakes like Jiu Jitsu.
27:57
You're going to fight better five years in than you do.
28:00
You can make a mistake in the first year, and everyone goes, yeah, he just never had
28:03
that move.
28:04
He never had to respond to that kind of a move before.
28:06
But if you've responded to it 10 times, and you're still making the same mistake, people
28:10
are starting to think you're unteachable.
28:11
Some's wrong.
28:12
Because not wise.
28:13
So at some point, what we're doing here is we're saying, hey, it's okay, be courageous,
28:17
be courageous, and allow yourself to readily and eagerly make age-appropriate mistakes,
28:23
because wisdom is born out of those kinds of mistakes.
28:26
To ground them in a transcendent moral view of the world, you're going to have to have
28:30
some knowledge.
28:31
So I just try to build a case, a collective case for what is the nature of wisdom, so
28:35
that hopefully, as you're reading this book, or anyone else's book, you can say, okay,
28:41
now you can actually make it, you can make a claim like that was wise, because it's grounded
28:45
in something you can define.
28:46
Well, that was always the problem with the four horsemen of which there are three left
28:50
of new atheism, because it's like, okay, if we are highly evolved chimps that evolved
28:55
from fish that evolved from goo that evolved from stardust, then none of this really matters.
29:01
This is all preferential, and no, you cannot give a scientific grounding for why it's not
29:06
okay to torture babies for fun.
29:08
That's why you have to have the moral code with which to differentiate between good and
29:12
evil, and there are ways of attaining that.
29:15
Now I want to go into lead number two.
29:17
This is where it's called fake IDs and stolen identity.
29:19
So in this chapter, Jim, you talk about identity and how it matters.
29:23
But in modernity, we derive our value from our social media identity.
29:29
We also get it from the groups that we opt into.
29:32
Maybe I'm thinking about the panoply of LGBTQ plus identities and maybe you're identifying
29:39
as a furry as an animal or something like that.
29:41
Maybe we identify with a diagnosis that we've gotten from a school counselor who is completely
29:47
qualified, obviously, to tell you that you have some sort of psychological issue going
29:51
on and that you need medication for it.
29:53
And so we're looking and we're running around, Jim, trying to find identity and something.
29:58
Some people, their identity as a Dodgers fan or as a Jacksonville Jaguars fan, we find
30:05
our identity in these groups because when our group wins, we get to win even though we
30:09
didn't do anything.
30:10
And so let's just talk more about identity because this is something that I personally
30:14
had to fight, Jim, because I used to be the biggest St. Louis Cardinals fan on the planet
30:18
and I would live and die with each pitch.
30:20
Now, 162 game season plus the playoffs, that's a lot of pitches.
30:24
So like hundreds of thousands of times a year, I was living and dying with what I wanted
30:28
to happen on a particular play and it just got your point.
30:31
I was like, what am I doing?
30:33
Like why, why am I ruining everyone's night because my favorite baseball team lost a
30:37
game in June?
30:39
Like this is the dumbest thing that could possibly happen, but it was, it was an identity.
30:42
My identity was wrapped up in it.
30:43
So go, go flow on that.
30:44
Well, then to go and it does go to show that how much your identity is tied up into things
30:48
that you've you worship, misplaced worship or whatever, but anyway, that's another chapter
30:53
of the book.
30:54
But I would just say that that I think now as I work with officers and work with just
30:58
people in general and myself, even my colleagues who work as speakers talking about Christianity,
31:03
I think identity is the biggest issue that we need to address.
31:07
Even if you think, well, I've got a, I don't have a problem with that.
31:10
No, you probably do.
31:11
And every time that you experience trauma or suffering or just a little hiccup, even in
31:17
your day, I suggest, so here's what I've noticed.
31:21
When someone suffers a trauma, almost always, well, always, they suffer also at the same
31:27
time simultaneously as shift in their identity.
31:30
So for example, if I say, I'm a jujitsu fighter and I've got a big match coming up and I suffer
31:36
a loss, maybe it's my first loss.
31:39
Well, for years, I identify myself as the undefeated master of my sport.
31:43
And now suddenly I got to rethink who I am.
31:46
Or maybe you just thought, and I see this a lot with officers, I can take this guy.
31:51
And then he takes me and I have to reassess who I think I am.
31:55
I thought I was capable at a certain level.
31:58
And now I realize I'm not.
31:59
I'm not the guy I thought I was.
32:01
I was married and now I'm divorced.
32:04
I'm not the woman I thought I was.
32:06
I was a mom and now my kids are all left the house.
32:11
Who am I now?
32:12
It turns out that every time we suffer any sense of struggle, we almost always are simultaneously
32:20
experiencing a shift in identity and it works the other way too.
32:24
So in other words, not just as trauma shift your identity, but a shift in your identity
32:29
will cause trauma.
32:30
It works both ways.
32:31
Now why does that matter?
32:33
Because if you put your identity in something that is shiftable, then get ready.
32:38
You're going to have a roller coaster life because something's always going to come along
32:41
that's going to punch your identity and shift it.
32:43
And then you're going to be like, okay, now who am I?
32:46
So if I didn't care a lick about God, a lick about Christianity, but I was just interested
32:53
in having a life with less bellies, I would say put your identity in something that doesn't
32:59
shift because if you think and men are the worst about this, let me give a shameless plug
33:05
to Joe Martin who's a biblical counselor, Dr. Joe Martin, I was having a conversation
33:10
with him about this.
33:11
And here's what he said about men.
33:12
Maybe you don't have to talk about this.
33:13
I don't know.
33:14
But he says that men are so ridiculous about identity and it's all in our conversations
33:19
that we have in the first five minutes with each other.
33:21
And it's all about the Asians in conversations.
33:25
Here's what he means.
33:26
First thing we're going to do.
33:27
Shake hands.
33:28
What do you do?
33:29
Yeah.
33:30
No, we don't care what you do.
33:31
We don't care what you do.
33:32
We're trying to figure out who you are.
33:33
Yeah.
33:34
And we know that as men that's probably the same thing, but it turns out our first identity
33:38
is locked in our occupation.
33:41
That's the first Asian.
33:42
And we're looking at that occupation, we're thinking, Oh, oh, he's a doctor.
33:47
I know what kind of an education that requires education is the second way we measure.
33:53
Oh, and he's a, he's a brain surgeon.
33:55
That's probably got some good money compensation is the next Asian, what are we doing here?
34:01
We're evaluating and every other way, all identity is comparative.
34:04
It's all comparative.
34:05
That's the bad thing about identity identity is you compared to others.
34:08
So if it's not about how rich you are, it's how rich am I compared to you, how smart you
34:13
are, how smart am I compared to you?
34:16
It's very, very notoriously divisive because it's all about comparison.
34:20
The next station he would say is why are you good at it?
34:23
Reputation is the next station.
34:25
And finally, he says for men, you could have none of those things.
34:28
You could be the poorest, least educated, less of the least reputation in the room.
34:33
But if you're six foot eight and cut like a linebacker from Arizona State, you're still
34:38
going to be the alpha dog.
34:39
Why?
34:40
Because the most important thing probably is intimidation.
34:43
That's the last station.
34:44
So I thought when we talked about that with him, I thought, Oh, that is.
34:47
So this is how men aren't the only one who do this.
34:51
We all form our identity in one of three ways.
34:54
And I try to cover these in the book.
34:55
These aren't my definitions, at least the first two aren't.
34:58
These are kind of the broad work over the last several decades related to identity.
35:04
Eric Erickson has done a lot of work on this, for example.
35:06
And the idea is you either form your identity from the outside in like the ancients did.
35:12
Your dad's a farmer, you're going to be a farmer.
35:14
Your dad is a wallace, I'm a wallace.
35:17
These things pre-existed you.
35:19
It's your tribe.
35:20
It's your nation.
35:21
It's your ethnicity.
35:22
It's your family.
35:23
It's your family occupation.
35:25
Something that pre-existed you that you look outside and you go, I'm one of those.
35:28
And you just identify with it and draw it to yourself outside in formation.
35:32
The other is inside out formation.
35:34
And that is simply the more modern version.
35:36
That is, I just have a desire of my heart, an inclination.
35:41
Maybe it's an innate skill, my own personal lived experience.
35:45
These can be the things, even your sexual preference.
35:48
These things that you hold in your heart uniquely, subjectively.
35:52
These now become the way you identify yourself and you simply tell the world, this is how
35:56
you will identify me.
35:57
It's an inside out identification.
36:01
By the way, both of those are dangerous because they can both be shifted.
36:05
Look, I have formed my identity off my job for so many years that when I finally left
36:09
the job, I struggled for probably five years.
36:12
I just changed my bios this week.
36:15
Wow.
36:16
I mean, I had cold case detective as the leading descriptor.
36:21
I had date line as my leading district.
36:23
I haven't been on date line.
36:24
I think in four years.
36:26
Okay, what am I doing?
36:28
Well, because I saw myself for so many years that way, that to stop seeing myself that
36:35
way was to kind of stop existing.
36:37
That's how strong identity formation is.
36:40
So we have to really be honest about it.
36:42
Like how do we identify?
36:44
What impact does it have on us and get real?
36:48
You need to put your identity the third way is the best way because it doesn't shift.
36:52
That simply topside down.
36:54
If there's a transcendent God who's unchanging, and my identity is now in that God, that's
37:02
a hard shift to make though, folks, because we are surrounded by the real world that is
37:07
visible to us, but you'd be far better off placing your identity in a transcendent God
37:14
who doesn't always seem like he's available to us, seems like he's hidden often.
37:19
But if you'll do that, well, then when you suffer the trauma, you won't also suffer an
37:25
identity shift.
37:27
So the value will be a little bit less deep.
37:30
And so I think for us, we have to kind of figure out before our kids.
37:34
And by the way, if you're forming your identity based on an inside out thing, desire you have,
37:40
well, then get ready.
37:41
Because sometimes people will form it based on their skills.
37:43
Like, hey, I'm a podcaster.
37:44
I see myself as a podcaster.
37:46
I sort of arm a YouTuber, or I'm a YouTuber in men's ministry.
37:50
Well, there's always going to be somebody who does it better as a bigger audience.
37:55
And then we're going to struggle with, well, who am I compared to that guy?
37:58
I do this, but I'm not the best at it.
38:01
Well, that doesn't sit well with anyone, but you want to put your identity in a place
38:05
where it turns out that you are loved in a way that cannot be matched, so that you don't
38:12
have to worry, well, yeah, you know, if I'm in Christ and you're in Christ, I'm not worried
38:16
that God loves you more in Christ than he loves me, or that I'm less, less a person
38:21
to God than than you are, or more a person to God than you are.
38:25
In other words, these are the kind of things that could actually unite us and the kinds
38:30
of things that could protect us from shifts.
38:32
Hey, guys, real quick, as you've likely heard me talk about on the show before, it took
38:36
me forever before I started taking supplements of any kind.
38:39
I was always nervous about taking like whey protein and creatine or really anything beyond
38:43
that, because I was just afraid of what was in the product and if it was going to like
38:47
give me cancer someday or something like that.
38:49
And I was always scared of these companies, these supplement companies, just cutting corners
38:53
and using low quality products and eventually putting things in their products that could
38:57
cause problems for me and my body.
38:59
So I've always wanted to partner up with an American company that uses high quality ingredients
39:03
in their supplements.
39:04
And that's why I want to remind you guys that we are partnered with Jocko Fuel.
39:08
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39:14
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39:38
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39:39
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40:04
There's something important that you actually did for me after our last call.
40:06
So the last interview we did, we were talking about the 10-year anniversary of a cold case
40:12
Christianity.
40:13
And before we got off the call, like, and this didn't come up in our conversation.
40:16
So it was just interesting that you felt the need to say this.
40:18
I don't even remember if you, you, if you remember saying this, but you go, Hey, Kyle,
40:24
no matter what, you just keep going.
40:26
Like don't look at the numbers, don't look at the followers, don't look at the responses,
40:30
don't look at the comments, don't look at any of that.
40:32
What you're doing is so vitally important.
40:34
We need guys like you out there, like don't get bogged down in what you didn't know, which
40:38
okay, Holy spirit, good for you.
40:40
But like what you didn't know was like in that moment, I was having some comparison problems
40:44
because I was like, man, look at some of these people like that.
40:48
They're not, they're not doing things the way that I would do it.
40:50
And of course I'm right.
40:51
And you know, why am I not getting the same type of plays as people like this?
40:55
And so it was helpful for me to hear that from you because you're, you're very accomplished.
41:00
You've done very, very well, but you, you can find yourself in the same exact area.
41:04
Because unless you're the greatest, the best selling author of all time and all categories,
41:09
you're always going to find someone to compare to, but that really does, it dovetails into
41:13
what you talk about in chapter three or lead three, because it's called a target, a bull's
41:17
eye and a circle of concern is you're talking about the crucial role of community.
41:21
Now I've beaten this drum for a long time about creating a foxhole of guys, guys that,
41:26
you know, your three AM friends that you know that they'll be on their way to your house
41:29
to help you do everything up to and including burying a body that, you know, Jim and his
41:33
team are going to have to find out later, you know, how we did it all, right?
41:36
And so.
41:37
Yeah.
41:38
Who do you know?
41:39
Who's that reliable, right?
41:40
Yeah.
41:41
I got to tell you, I, I found out this year, I got, I got some gangsters in my crew and
41:44
like my goodness, some of the things they offered to do, but you know, that's the, that's
41:47
a conversation for another time, but there's just such an unbelievably crucial role, role
41:52
for community and men don't take it seriously at all.
41:56
Like Jim, I know, I know some men that I just love with all my heart.
42:00
They are lonely, they are bitter, they are stiff-arming, any kind of community, because
42:05
this is the way I am, this is the way the world is, and this is just the way it's got
42:09
to be.
42:10
And I just hear these horrible stories about these men in these nursing homes that are
42:14
sitting there bitter, lonely and angry and nobody's coming to visit them because nobody
42:19
loves them and nobody will be at their funeral except for maybe their nurse and the local
42:23
priests or something like that because nobody has cared about this person because they've
42:27
not allowed anyone to care.
42:29
So talk a little bit because you have a 90% male audience you're talking to right now
42:33
because maybe if the way I've said it hasn't landed, maybe the way you'll say it's going
42:37
to land.
42:38
So ready, set, go.
42:39
Well, okay.
42:40
So just look, the studies show this.
42:42
If you wanted to flourish and live longer and when they took that happiness studies, and
42:46
probably the longest longitudinal study ever done in this area is like 60 years.
42:51
It's out of an Ivy League school in the east where they tracked men and women.
42:56
It turns out that the thing that will provide the most satisfaction in your life, the highest
43:01
degree of flourishing and happiness is relationships and not just any kind of relationship.
43:06
A certain kind of friendship like you can tell the difference between men and women just
43:11
in the way we communicate.
43:12
It's been said that men are really good about when they talk to anyone.
43:16
Their concern is the report.
43:19
Like what is what's the data?
43:20
Yeah.
43:21
What happened over here?
43:22
What's concerned about the report, the data, they're concerned about rapport, very different,
43:28
about relation.
43:29
The whole point of communication for women typically is relationship building.
43:33
That's not usually what we're after.
43:35
We're just changing data.
43:36
I want to know something from you.
43:37
You want to know something from me.
43:38
We're not looking at it like an opportunity to connect, but it turns out that if you want
43:42
to thrive, the connections are huge.
43:45
Why would that be the case?
43:46
Well, I'll get back to that.
43:47
There's a theological reason for that, I think, but more importantly, the data shows
43:51
that a certain kind of helicopter is really bad about this.
43:55
And I'm really bad about this because I often would say the reason you can handle some of
44:00
the worst crimes that are doable, you can do them if you simply draw a tight circle around
44:07
the people for whom you're willing to cry.
44:10
My circle is really tight, so I mean, I could, I could, only people on my circle are my
44:15
wife and my kids and my dog before she passed.
44:18
She was in that circle.
44:19
My cats have never been in those circles, so, you know, they're out.
44:23
But the point is, I could work a family member.
44:26
I could work a niece or a nephew.
44:28
Why?
44:29
Because I won't allow people in my circle.
44:30
And you have to, because if you're going to work as a detective, you're going to walk
44:34
into the scenes that where the victim looks like your kid, and as the age of your kid,
44:40
you're going to be able to work that?
44:41
Yeah, because that kid's not my circle.
44:43
I intentionally excluded him from my circle.
44:46
Okay.
44:47
That might be practical, but it's not wise, and, and you will eventually suffer the consequence
44:53
of that.
44:54
And it's not biblical.
44:55
And we're called to love our enemies, and we're called to let people in our circle that
44:59
we typically would not leave, let in our circle.
45:02
So it turns out that the data shows this.
45:04
If you want to flourish, certain kind of friend is necessary.
45:07
Number one, not a thousand friends, not a hundred friends.
45:10
It's a small number of friends.
45:12
That's the first criteria.
45:13
You have to have a group of people that are tight and small because that's those kind
45:19
of people you're going to go deep with.
45:20
That's the second connector.
45:21
They have to be deep divers, people who know you so well, they're like family, and you've
45:25
given them permission to say things about you that aren't flattering to call you out
45:28
when you're doing stupid things.
45:31
That's the kind of deep diver you need, somebody you're that well connected with.
45:35
And finally, you have to have virtuous friends because you, I've worked cases where the, yeah,
45:40
the woman who's killed was killed by somebody, she called her best friend.
45:44
And yeah, she only had a small number of deeply connected friends, but they weren't virtuous.
45:49
So virtue is unfortunately a criteria, and you see it in the data.
45:54
They may not call it that, but that's what it is.
45:56
And if you look at it, if you don't have a small number of deep diving virtuous friends,
46:01
then you're not going to flourish the highest possible level.
46:05
And by the way, that means that you don't have to be a Mr. Social.
46:09
You just have to have people who you consider to be family, a handful of people that you
46:14
can actually connect with that are not going to lead you astray because they have, they
46:19
hold virtue at a high, at a high regard.
46:21
So that, that is what the data shows.
46:23
And why would that be the case?
46:25
Well, look, if you are worshiping Allah, I don't know why you would think that Allah
46:29
is love.
46:30
It's that, you know, we know from scripture that Yahweh is described as love, John describes
46:35
in that way.
46:36
God is love.
46:37
Not that he can love.
46:38
He created love.
46:39
He would like to love you.
46:40
No, that God is love.
46:41
Well, why is he saying it?
46:42
It's a weird way to say it.
46:44
God is love.
46:45
Well, because under our view of God as triune, that, that, you know, Allah has no one to
46:52
love until he creates something to love.
46:55
There be not, not even an object to love until you create the universe and create the worlds
46:59
in the universe, create earth, then you create humans on now you have people to love.
47:05
But that would be a new experience.
47:07
Because you never had people before you created them.
47:10
There is a God out there, though, that has been in a love relationship from all eternity
47:14
past between the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit.
47:17
This idea of the lover, the beloved and the spirit of love between them as being a core
47:22
feature of God's nature because it's eternal.
47:25
And that means when he creates humans in his image, we have an innate inclination toward
47:31
this kind of deep diving, intimate community that's virtuous.
47:37
Why?
47:38
Because it turns out that God of the universe is in a triune, intimate, deep, diving, virtuous
47:43
relationship.
47:44
And that's why we flourish.
47:46
It's not an accident that that's the kind of thing that makes us flourish because it's
47:51
a feature of the designer that is expressed through us.
47:55
So I think this is why if you move away from that, now, look, guys, I know we're bad about
47:59
that.
48:00
We think we're pretty independent.
48:01
And we're not, from biochemistry, I think we're not designed to be as relational as
48:07
others, but we have to make that effort.
48:10
And I'm just suggesting you have at least a handful of people that you would go to bat
48:13
for you who would do whatever they're necessary.
48:16
And that is a biblical concept.
48:17
We ought to pursue it if we are Christians, especially.
48:19
Yeah.
48:20
And certainly the mistake that I've seen some guys make, and I've even made before, is if
48:24
you do welcome men into that circle into your foxhole into that 3 AM friend type of category,
48:29
but then the first time they put some relational chips in the center of the table and challenge
48:33
you on something, you stiff arm them or, you know, you don't know, you react that way
48:36
way.
48:37
Hopefully you've got a quick, quick route to your apology because that guy's probably
48:41
not going to do that again because he's like, Oh, this guy, I thought this was a safe place
48:46
to help this man, but it clearly wasn't.
48:49
Now I want to hop down to lead number 11 because this might have been my favorite chapter
48:54
of the book.
48:55
It's called the killer inside.
48:56
And it's maybe because I'm just somewhat attracted to a little bit more of the macabre,
49:00
some of the more intense type stuff like the concept that, you know, Jordan Peterson talks
49:04
about from the book Ordinary Men, where if you always assume that you were going to be
49:08
one of the righteous people in, you know, Nazi Germany, don't always just assume that you
49:13
wouldn't have been one of those Polish police officers that somehow, little by little, you
49:17
worked your way to where you were marching Jewish families into the middle of the woods,
49:21
having them dig their own graves and shooting them in the back of the head, don't always
49:24
think you would have been the hero.
49:25
So I want to read a couple of quotes from this chapter and then get you to flow on a little
49:28
bit.
49:29
"Psychiatrist Carl Jung agreed with the sentiments of Schopenhauer describing the dark side of
49:34
human nature as an undeniable shadow.
49:37
It's a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just
49:41
of little weaknesses and foibles, but of positively demonic diamondism or dynamism there it is.
49:47
Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual conscious life,
49:52
the blacker and denser it is.
49:54
If it is repressed, the isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected."
49:59
And then here's a little quote from later on in the chapter.
50:02
The real question, however, is this, do we learn how to be good because we are innately
50:07
evil or learn how to be evil because we are innately good?
50:11
We certainly seem to have the capacity for decency and compassion, but researchers find
50:16
we are fickle about goodness.
50:18
Altruism seems rare, yet it is clearly an aspect of our nature despite our propensity
50:23
towards evil.
50:24
How can this be the case?
50:26
Now I've heard people go back and forth on this even in Christian circles because there
50:30
are people that don't think that their kids are sinners.
50:33
But then you can ask them simple questions like, well, did you teach your kid to interrupt?
50:36
Did you teach your kid to be only focused on their own needs and to be supremely selfish?
50:42
But then you also see people, I see this problem in a lot of churches where a lot of women
50:48
will leave these churches thinking that they're not a depraved sinner because the pastor,
50:52
if they go at anybody, they're going at culture or they're going at the men or something like
50:57
that.
50:58
I sat in the front of class, I never got in trouble, I take care of my house, I take
51:02
care of my kids, I've never cheated on my husband, I've never cheated on my taxes.
51:06
So I'm good.
51:07
And so I think some people have a tremendously low appreciation for the darkness that actually
51:13
does exist inside of them.
51:15
Some people will find that darkness in very astonishing moments.
51:19
Maybe they'll experience trauma and the thoughts of maybe thoughts will be of suicide or of
51:25
homicide or of just like revenge, consume them.
51:29
And those feelings weren't there five minutes ago, but they're there now.
51:32
So talk to me a little bit more about that because I really think, especially for Christians,
51:36
we don't really reckon with this enough because we don't really believe in our own depravity,
51:41
if that makes sense.
51:42
Yeah, absolutely.
51:43
I mean, you're right.
51:44
I mean, it seems kind of self-evident if you have kids, right?
51:46
Like you've experienced this, you don't teach.
51:48
So one of the things about it is this, even the studies and surveys they do in which they
51:54
look at altruism, human altruism, what they discover is that yes, we have the capacity
51:59
to do great and beautiful things until resources get tight.
52:04
In other words, we do those great and beautiful things for selfish reasons, typically.
52:08
And then when resources get tight, we start hoarding toilet paper.
52:11
Yeah, we'll be the giver of toilet paper until it's between you and me.
52:15
And then I'm going to take it for myself, right?
52:17
There's research.
52:18
I've cited it in the book that shows this over and over and over again.
52:22
So even our altruism is often driven selfishly, as a matter of fact, Luther said it this way.
52:27
He said that we are so inwardly focused that even when we do something that appears to
52:31
be morally good and something that God might consider virtuous, we're doing it for all
52:36
the wrong reasons.
52:37
In other words, the person who appears to have it all together and checks every box, he's
52:41
every bit in need of a savior as the person who's doing none of it because it turns out
52:45
that dude is checking every box is doing it.
52:47
So he can number one, have a transactional relationship with God.
52:50
I'm going to earn something on God's behalf, or I've got a transactional relationship with
52:55
the other believers who are watching me, whatever it may be.
52:58
The truth of the matter is you realize this working call cases is that I work guys who
53:03
just did one murder and 30 years later, you would never guess they could ever even be
53:07
capable of doing a murder because they aren't serial killers.
53:10
They are just guys who lost it or women who lost it once.
53:14
And then they live the rest of their life in a morally upright way.
53:18
You need to make a decision about this and the data shows it.
53:23
If you define sin as just selfishness, just being self focused, then you can kind of look
53:28
at the story of Adam and Eve a little different way.
53:31
When Eve is tempted, what does the serpent say?
53:36
Did God really say that?
53:38
He just doesn't want you to know what he knows.
53:41
It's all about selfishness.
53:42
I want to be the authority.
53:43
I want to be the determiner of good.
53:45
That's a very strong temptation for all of us and so if selfishness is the source of
53:50
our fall, well, then you can see it and everything else we do, it's hard to argue that babies
53:56
are not self focused.
53:58
It's hard to argue.
53:59
That's not a birth condition because it is and that's what causes us, for example, that
54:05
even when we're altruistic to draw back at points, it's our selfishness and it's our
54:12
selfishness that causes us to want to adopt theistic systems in which we can just do
54:17
the eight things that please God or the 10 things that please God so we can say, "I'm
54:21
good.
54:22
That dude is not as good as me."
54:24
It's all selfish, self motivated behavior.
54:28
Why does this even matter?
54:30
For a couple of reasons.
54:32
If we think, for example, that humans are innately good and they just are corrupted by
54:37
their families, their environments, their cultures, or systems, well, then it's easy
54:42
to fix that.
54:43
You just got to replace their families, environments, you know, governments and systems and you
54:47
already see that work and people are already trying to do that.
54:51
On the other hand, if we determine that humans are in fact the corruptors of families and
54:56
environments, governments and systems, that's very different now.
55:00
Now you know that no matter what system I could put in place, I can try to fix something.
55:05
The dirty little humans will now inhabit that system.
55:07
We'll find a way to corrupt that one because it doesn't matter.
55:11
This is why when our government was formed, it was formed around three branches that could
55:15
self check each other.
55:17
You need that check in balance because the founders recognized this fallen nature of
55:21
humans that if you give them control, we will mess it up.
55:25
We need to have a balanced system that can hopefully somehow even if it's only slightly
55:30
mitigate our fallen nature.
55:34
So I think in the end, we have to make a decision, which is it?
55:37
Now I think the data is clear.
55:39
Even the secular data is clear and you've seen lots of people push back on it and try
55:42
to show how altruistic we are.
55:44
They're not drilling to the bottom.
55:46
We're only altruistic as it serves us.
55:50
And that's what, if you look at some of the studies I'm throwing in the book, you'll see
55:53
that's true.
55:54
Now why does that matter?
55:55
Well, here's why.
55:56
It turns out that if you, it's all about, there's a story in scripture of Jesus visiting
56:02
Simon and Simon's a Pharisee has a big dinner and who attends a woman from the city who
56:09
was a sinner according to scripture?
56:11
What was she doing?
56:12
I don't know.
56:13
But as she's lavishing Jesus and wiping his feet and Simon didn't even clean Jesus' feet
56:20
when he came in.
56:21
Simon is thinking to himself, if this dude knew, if Jesus knew who this woman was, there's
56:26
no way he'd let her touch him, Simon, Jesus knows what he's thinking.
56:31
And so he says it.
56:32
He offers a story.
56:33
He says, Simon, if two people owe a bunch of money to somebody, one owes a ton, one
56:37
owns a little, and both those debts are forgiven, who do you think is more happy to have their
56:41
debt forgiven?
56:42
And of course, Simon says the guy who owes a lot, right.
56:46
Here's the point of Jesus' story.
56:48
The least forgiving people on planet earth are the people who think they have nothing
56:52
to be forgiven for.
56:54
Simon was one of those.
56:56
The least gracious people are the people who think they don't have any need for grace.
57:01
The woman knew her need for forgiveness, and she behaved very differently.
57:06
This is true for us too.
57:07
If you think that you got it together, and this guy doesn't, if you realize you're both
57:17
completely broken, fallen, capable of the same great evil, but for situations, but for the
57:24
grace of God, it could have been me who killed my wife.
57:27
Now you might say, oh, it could never be.
57:29
Look, when you work these cases, you realize these are just regular people, kind of like
57:33
you said with Jordan Peterson.
57:35
These are just regular people who did something horrific and then had to dismember the body
57:39
and bury it.
57:40
And you think, how can anyone do that?
57:42
They never did it again.
57:43
30 years later, they're out of the deacon at your church, they're your doctor, they're
57:47
your fire captain, they're whoever they may be, because they live a regular life after
57:53
that.
57:54
How could that be?
57:55
Because they're just like us.
57:56
And if you realize that, then here's what you realize when you're sitting at a table and
57:58
you're interviewing someone at the other side of the table, some suspect was in custody,
58:02
you realize that table is not separating good from bad, righteous from evil.
58:08
No, what it's separating is probably nothing more than the proud from the humble.
58:14
And if you become humble, you'll realize, yeah, we're the same guy.
58:18
We're all the same man or woman or all the same human being.
58:21
Yeah, you can say maybe your buttons are harder to push than my buttons, but to be honest,
58:28
they're all buttons that can be pushed, because that's just who we are at our core.
58:32
And if nothing else, I think it'll help you to become more forgiving and more gracious
58:35
with others when you realize that you're not much different.
58:39
It's so funny how you say it that way.
58:41
When I spoke at Lewisburg prison, and I'm, you know, there with murderers, rapists, pedophiles,
58:47
all kinds of people, I could sense that they thought there was something different between
58:51
them and me.
58:52
And so I did two things before my talk because they were not compelled to be there.
58:55
They were, they was optional to come and hear me speak, but they hadn't had anyone come
58:58
and speak to them in years.
58:59
And so they were kind of like, all right, well, who's this random dude?
59:02
So I introduced myself to everyone that walked in the room, right?
59:04
So that caught some of them off guard.
59:06
Like I wasn't just standing in the front, my stab vest, you know, you know, hiding behind
59:10
the guards or whatever.
59:11
But then I didn't plan to do this.
59:13
But as part of my intro, I said, look, guys, you all think there's something different between
59:17
you and me because I get to leave and you have to stay.
59:19
Well, you violated the laws of man.
59:22
That's why you're here, but all of us have violated the laws of God.
59:25
So in that way, we are brothers.
59:27
So if we can put that to the side, as I talked to you guys for the next 60 minutes, I think
59:31
that would be helpful.
59:32
And you could kind of see a little bit of the tension came out of the room a little bit
59:35
because like I wasn't standing, I wasn't hovering above these guys.
59:39
It's like, look, I'm one wrong move.
59:42
I'm one conscious decision away from being exactly where you are.
59:46
We're not different.
59:47
Like we've just made different decisions and we've ended up in different places.
59:50
Now, Jim, I'm looking at the clock.
59:52
I've got way more questions than I've got time.
59:53
So we'll make a last question of the day.
59:55
I do want to give a little commercial for lead number 14 because that's kind of like
59:59
the nuts and bolts of the book.
1:00:00
You know, that's called death sentences and life without parole and you encourage everyone
1:00:04
to examine the evidence for God, examine the evidence for the soul, examine the evidence
1:00:08
for the Bible and to live with certainty.
1:00:09
So that's obviously worth the price of admission just there, but I want to back up one chapter
1:00:13
or one lead to lead number 13.
1:00:16
And that's what gangsters have in common.
1:00:18
So you were talking about how you were watching boys in the hood.
1:00:21
So a very classic movie for a lot of guys and, you know, obviously that's, that's one of
1:00:25
the movies that you would of course watch and you probably just watched that once a week.
1:00:28
You know, you rotate that in with Scarface and, you know, some other, some other movies
1:00:32
like that.
1:00:33
But here's the quote I wanted to read from that.
1:00:34
I watched that scene.
1:00:36
You were talking about specific scene in the movie and a light bulb came on.
1:00:40
Every gangster I'd met so far and every gang member I encountered afterwards suffered
1:00:44
from the same malady, lack of dad.
1:00:48
And I mean, we could have spent our entire time, Jim, just talking about the, the fatherlessness
1:00:52
that we see in our culture, what that's leading to the, the detriment and the rot of our culture.
1:00:58
If dads were in the homes, I don't know that we see a lot of the rot in the West.
1:01:03
And I don't think that's hyperbolic to say, yes, there are issues with government spending
1:01:08
and there's issues with, you know, illegal immigration, there's issues with crime, there's
1:01:11
issues with all this thing.
1:01:13
But when dad is present, the statistics are absolutely astonishing and that doesn't mean
1:01:18
the dad's good.
1:01:19
It doesn't mean the dad's theologically astute.
1:01:21
It doesn't mean the dad's even great at being a dad, just his mere presence in the home with
1:01:27
his biological children, educational, you know, a tame, it goes way through the roof.
1:01:33
Crime goes way down.
1:01:34
Team pregnancy goes way down.
1:01:35
I think we've heard all the stats at this point, but just talk to me about this whole
1:01:39
concept, because I mean, you've seen a firsthand with these gang bangers, they just don't have
1:01:43
dad around and it leads right to where they're at.
1:01:46
No, it's true.
1:01:47
And it's not a, it's not a statement about race or ethnicity or socioeconomic status
1:01:52
or any of that because I first discovered it working in a city where we had a broad variety
1:01:58
of young men involved in gangs from all sectors of our community.
1:02:03
We had multigenerational Hispanic gangs.
1:02:06
We had multigenerational black gangs.
1:02:09
We had, you know, multigenerational white gangs in the south part of our city and we
1:02:13
had a group of Korean gangsters on the west side that were probably the most active of
1:02:17
all the groups.
1:02:18
So what's going on here?
1:02:20
It's not about race.
1:02:21
It wasn't about where they were living because some of them were living in very nice homes
1:02:26
and had, you know, intact families.
1:02:28
Hmm.
1:02:29
What's going on here?
1:02:30
And then I had a partner who wanted this boys in the hood movie just came out and I
1:02:34
said, I want to watch a movie on my days off about the stuff we're doing every day at work,
1:02:39
right?
1:02:40
I'm not interested.
1:02:41
He says, no, no.
1:02:42
You need to watch this movie because it's different.
1:02:43
It's not just like a gangster movie.
1:02:44
It's a movie that really is thoughtfully addressing the issues and culture right now.
1:02:48
So I watched the movie with my wife and I remember thinking, yeah, it shook me a little
1:02:53
bit.
1:02:54
And here's why.
1:02:55
It's true.
1:02:56
It's lack of dad and lack of dad looks different depending on the group.
1:03:00
Sometimes it's that I never knew dad.
1:03:02
My mom never introduced me to dad.
1:03:04
Sometimes it's when my dad's been locked up my whole life.
1:03:07
Sometimes it's that my dad's just drunk who's not involved.
1:03:09
He's home, but he's just not, he's like a deadbeat.
1:03:12
Sometimes it's, yeah, my dad's a workaholic.
1:03:14
He never even bothered to learn the English language.
1:03:16
He's got a business.
1:03:17
We make great money.
1:03:18
He's a great provider, but he's never home.
1:03:21
It doesn't matter what version of lack of dad you're in.
1:03:25
They seem to produce the same results in the gangsters I was working.
1:03:29
And I was thinking at the time because I was really consumed by my career.
1:03:33
Like how much am I home, especially when you're working gangs?
1:03:37
It's an investigative position, at least back when I worked at our agency.
1:03:41
So we had to take it all the way from developing the case, making the arrest, filing the case
1:03:46
with the DA, walking it through the process, being in court.
1:03:49
It was like start to finish.
1:03:51
I was never home.
1:03:53
It felt like I was working 60, 70 hours a week.
1:03:56
So I'm thinking my kids were two and four.
1:04:00
And I remember thinking, oh my goodness, this is, this is me.
1:04:03
I'm in the same group.
1:04:06
I'm not home.
1:04:08
And it changed the way I did everything from that point on.
1:04:12
And yeah, it turns out that that feature of our culture right now, the number of fatherless
1:04:17
homes matters.
1:04:19
Dads matter, especially from a cop perspective, because the number of crimes you see, it seems
1:04:26
like, you know, when you have risky behavior in young men and young women, it looks slightly
1:04:31
different.
1:04:32
Now, you do see a lot of crime with young women, especially in these smashing grabs and stuff
1:04:36
we're seeing around the country.
1:04:37
They're pretty, you know, they could be both men and women doing those kinds of things,
1:04:40
but usually violent crimes, because we're driven by our testosterone.
1:04:44
Men kind of own those.
1:04:46
Risky behavior with women often takes the, you know, it could be teenage pregnancy.
1:04:50
It could be a lot of other risky drug use, a lot of other risky behavior, but violence
1:04:54
is not always at the top of that list.
1:04:57
It is for men.
1:04:58
So when you, when you are working these kinds of crimes, you got to be aware of that.
1:05:02
So, so what, why does it matter?
1:05:04
Well, and why is this the case?
1:05:05
Why is it that we are so, this is not to say anything about the benefit of moms, of course.
1:05:11
But many of the men that I was taking to jail, young men, I was taking to jail, they had
1:05:15
an intact mom at home who actually was engaged.
1:05:20
But like on the movie, boys in the hood, you know, he, she eventually, the mom drops
1:05:23
the boy off at the dad's house in the Crenshaw district and says, look, I cannot teach him
1:05:28
how to be a man.
1:05:30
That's something that a man has to do.
1:05:32
You know, it's so interesting.
1:05:33
If you are geeked out like, like, you know, I live this, you know, you fear or scroll
1:05:37
through your Instagram and you get stuck in these videos, you write like these reels
1:05:41
and you're like, a lot of my, like, I need to turn this thing off.
1:05:44
But I, I will constantly find pep talks by coaches in athletics, college, college athletics.
1:05:54
And they recorded the pep talk.
1:05:56
And you know what that pep talk is, it's, it's, it's dad stuff.
1:05:59
Yep.
1:06:00
It's often, let me tell you the stuff that your dad never told you.
1:06:03
For whatever reason, maybe he wasn't engaged.
1:06:05
Maybe he wasn't home.
1:06:06
Maybe whatever it might be, whatever lack of dad version you have, coaches find themselves
1:06:10
becoming that surrogate.
1:06:12
And by the way, it, surrogates work often.
1:06:16
Sure.
1:06:17
So a good mentor, you know, the, the person who had the biggest impact on me and I love
1:06:22
my dad.
1:06:23
I'm in his profession.
1:06:24
He was a cop before me.
1:06:26
I don't think in my family, anyone could say they love dad as much as I do.
1:06:30
But the man who changed me forever was my grandfather, because he was more available
1:06:35
to me.
1:06:37
And his name is Warner.
1:06:39
So I, I use his name, Jay Warner Wallace, because it's a tribute to the man who did
1:06:44
for me what I needed.
1:06:46
He was the kind of guy I could sit with and who would just take time with me and talk
1:06:52
about a bunch of nothing that turned out to be everything.
1:06:56
And that's what we have to do as man is just be available.
1:07:00
And what instead we try to do is we say, well, I'm not much available, but when I am, I'm
1:07:04
going to be really targeted.
1:07:06
Your kids don't want that.
1:07:08
I don't want that.
1:07:09
I don't need a lesson from you once a week.
1:07:11
I instead just need you to be present.
1:07:14
You know, we talk about this a lot as, as we work with wounded veterans and wounded police
1:07:18
officers that often they'll tell you their story and that's not, not much I can say.
1:07:24
There's not a lot of great advice I can give you.
1:07:26
I, I've not been through that, which you just described.
1:07:28
And, and I don't know that I'm even qualified to, to say anything.
1:07:32
So you know what ends up happening is I, it's, we called a ministry of presence.
1:07:37
Yeah.
1:07:38
What they need me to do is simply be present and, and to be empathetic.
1:07:43
And if your dad listening to this, I want to encourage you, yeah, it's quality, but
1:07:47
it is quantity also the lack is not a quality lack.
1:07:52
It's a time lack.
1:07:53
Lack of dad means you're just not around and you might think I'm not good at this.
1:07:57
I'm not comfortable with it.
1:07:58
Doesn't matter.
1:08:00
Just be present.
1:08:01
Whatever you're thinking about, talk about it with your son, your daughter, things change.
1:08:05
So, so it's important for us to realize that that's, and by the way, all the studies show
1:08:09
that the only studies that don't show that are biased studies in which people are trying
1:08:13
to say that any family formation will work.
1:08:16
Well, sorry, I hate to say this, but guys, it's two biological parents in a low conflict
1:08:20
setting is the secret sauce to success.
1:08:23
No, I, I wasn't raised that way.
1:08:24
My parents divorced.
1:08:25
When I was very young, three, my mom never remarried one biological parent and it wasn't
1:08:30
always in a low conflict setting, but you can't, so you can come out okay, but the best secret
1:08:36
sauce for success for kids is two biological parents in a low conflict setting.
1:08:41
And, and that means your dad's need to be, need to be available and need to be in that
1:08:45
low conflict setting.
1:08:46
Yeah.
1:08:47
I mean, sociologists usually will catch up to the Bible.
1:08:50
Sometimes it's hundreds of years late, but yeah, it's, you know, two biological parents
1:08:53
in a low conflict environment and going to church.
1:08:56
Like that, that is where you see human flourishing to an extreme degree and again, there's not
1:09:01
a particular type of church or particular denomination or particular type of dad in a
1:09:05
particular type of city making a certain amount of money.
1:09:07
Like it's just that.
1:09:08
I mean, you've probably heard it before, kids spell love T.I.M.E. and I've even here recently
1:09:14
I'm looking at the next two quarters of my business and the different times I'm going
1:09:18
to be gone and I'm like, ah, wait a minute, we got to make some changes here or there
1:09:21
because this is too much time and too short a period that I'm going to be gone too much.
1:09:26
Absolutely not.
1:09:27
We got to make that change because my boys are four and two, Jim.
1:09:29
And so like that's, that's the thing where we're in that core, yeah, we're in that core
1:09:33
time period.
1:09:34
Right.
1:09:35
Right.
1:09:36
You're seeing the same thing.
1:09:37
Well, I'm going to give you a practical, I'm going to give you a practical assessment that
1:09:40
will help you.
1:09:41
So here was my, here was my strategy before I got into my sixties.
1:09:46
It was that I would always, if I had to try it in her travel and like I did some speaking
1:09:50
when I first wrote books for 10 years, I was on the speaking circuit, but my strategy was
1:09:55
always to be able to tell Susie, I'll see you the day after tomorrow.
1:09:58
So I can't take an event in which I can't tell Susie, I'll see her the day after tomorrow.
1:10:03
Now I'm at a point where I can't, I won't take an event.
1:10:05
If I can't tell Susie, I'll see you tomorrow.
1:10:08
So here's what that means, yeah, it means if you want me to speak at a nighttime event,
1:10:12
I have to be able to fly out that day, do the event that night, fly home tomorrow morning,
1:10:16
be home by noon, because I'll be gone from Susie about 30 hours.
1:10:21
I won't do it.
1:10:22
Here's what happens, Kyle, what happens and you're going to see this too, is that we hold
1:10:26
two things at value.
1:10:27
I know we're getting short on time, two things of value.
1:10:29
It's time and money.
1:10:30
When you're young, you're willing to exchange the time you have to make the income you need
1:10:34
to support your family.
1:10:35
I get it.
1:10:36
Money is the higher value as you get old, especially if you're retired with a pension,
1:10:40
the entire thing is going to flip.
1:10:42
Now the thing of highest value is time.
1:10:45
As a matter of fact, there have been some events I signed up for a year ago, as I'm getting
1:10:49
older, I'm like, you know what, can I just pay you not to come?
1:10:52
Because it turns out the time is super important to me and I don't feel like I have a lot,
1:10:58
right?
1:10:59
Because I mean, I feel like I'm on the back three and I can see the clubhouse and I don't
1:11:01
want to waste any time.
1:11:03
So what you have to do as dads is realize that that balance, yes, you have to make income.
1:11:08
But time has value, even when you're young and you don't think about it until it's value.
1:11:13
Time value of money for sure.
1:11:15
That's right.
1:11:16
So just keep those things in mind as you're raising your own kids.
1:11:19
This time thing is valuable.
1:11:21
It's worth, by the way, when you get to be my age, if someone said, I can give you that
1:11:26
year when your son was four, I can give you a month with him at the age of four.
1:11:31
What would it be worth to you?
1:11:32
I suspect you'd give anything.
1:11:36
So don't take this for granted.
1:11:38
You know, I always think to myself, Hey, what would a day be worth with my wife 15 years
1:11:42
from now, especially if they could guarantee me I could have a day like I had in 2024?
1:11:48
Well, it turns out I have that day.
1:11:50
It's called today.
1:11:52
Right.
1:11:53
So what am I going to do with it?
1:11:54
Time matters.
1:11:56
So one more question because I have to go a little bit deeper on what you just said because
1:12:00
I think this is a very, very important thread that we're pulling out little by little.
1:12:04
So you're exactly right.
1:12:05
I am in the point of my career where I will, you know, trade the time with my wife and
1:12:11
my boys so that I can go make the money.
1:12:13
Maybe that's a speaking engagement that I'm being paid to do or maybe that's, you know,
1:12:17
maybe that's time here where I'm in my home studio, but I'm not home.
1:12:20
Like it, you do not come up here.
1:12:22
You do not knock on the door.
1:12:23
Like, you know, studio is on and the red light is on.
1:12:25
Do not come up here.
1:12:27
And so talk to me about that tension because I've heard someone who was kind of a crude
1:12:32
joke, but it made sense.
1:12:34
It's like women will complain no matter what.
1:12:36
If their man makes a ton of money, makes a really good living, but isn't home enough,
1:12:40
they'll complain about the fact that you're not home enough.
1:12:42
But if you're super present and home and you're there at all the practices and all that, but
1:12:45
you're struggling in your career, they're going to [inaudible] and moan about the fact that
1:12:48
you're not making enough money.
1:12:49
And how are we going to pay these bills?
1:12:51
Right.
1:12:52
And so I saw another meme again, I guess I think in memes.
1:12:55
There was a meme where it was like, man, only think about one thing and then it showed
1:12:58
a man and the things that he was thinking about, man, I don't want to become like my
1:13:02
father.
1:13:03
Man, how are we going to make next month mortgage payment?
1:13:04
Man, how are we going to do this?
1:13:06
And it's like, there is a pressure on a man that women just can't, they can maybe appreciate
1:13:11
but they can't understand in the same works in the opposite.
1:13:14
Okay.
1:13:15
Right.
1:13:16
It's just different kind of pressure.
1:13:17
Right.
1:13:18
Yeah, Jim, you're talking to a lot of young guys right now that are young to medium in their
1:13:21
families or young to medium in their careers.
1:13:25
And part of it is like, I have to provide like, we can't pay the bills with hopes and
1:13:30
dreams and we can't pay for college and retirement with, you know, Bible studies and prayer circles.
1:13:37
Like we, at a certain point, you've got to put pen to paper, you've got to hit the pavement,
1:13:42
you've got to knock the doors.
1:13:43
Talk to me a little bit about that tension because I'm right there where I'm like, I'm
1:13:47
saying no to certain opportunities where I can make some money because it's going to
1:13:50
be too much time away.
1:13:52
But where, where do you draw the line, Jim?
1:13:54
Well, okay.
1:13:55
So it's ending up good policies up front is important boundaries.
1:13:57
So the boundary for me was I got to see, I got to be able to tell her I'll see you the
1:14:00
day after tomorrow.
1:14:02
So that means that sometimes people will say, we can come out and do this.
1:14:05
Well, no, because I couldn't get home the day after tomorrow, but I could, if you adjust
1:14:09
the schedule slightly, then I can do it because my policy to my own, I've never ever had an
1:14:14
event planner or I said, here's my policy with my bride that they didn't honor it because
1:14:19
they get it.
1:14:20
They want to honor your policy with your bride.
1:14:23
So set that policy up front and when someone asks you to do an event or whatever it may
1:14:26
be, consider it.
1:14:27
Now, here's the second thing.
1:14:28
It's a chapter of this book, look, all of us want financial independence.
1:14:32
If you had financial independence, this wouldn't even be an issue, right?
1:14:35
Well, what is financial independence?
1:14:37
It's not the ability to buy anything.
1:14:39
It's the ability to buy anything you want.
1:14:42
And I don't want to anything.
1:14:44
So I knew when I retired, I would have financial independence because I'm not moving.
1:14:49
I've been in this house for 30 plus years.
1:14:51
I still drive Hyundai's.
1:14:54
My wife's car is 15 years old, almost 16 years old.
1:14:58
Like we're not, and I married someone who could live in the tent who would have said
1:15:02
all along, you know, if we could, if we could be home more, I'd rather live in an apartment.
1:15:06
Whatever we could afford.
1:15:08
So what it, here's the hard decision to make.
1:15:10
If you're living in an area where you feel like you can't make it and hold the schedule,
1:15:14
you need to make to be a good husband and a good father move.
1:15:18
I know that sounds brutal.
1:15:19
Yeah.
1:15:20
But you may have to, and to be honest, by the way, what am I trying to do with all this?
1:15:24
Where's this house?
1:15:25
I'm going to die.
1:15:26
It's not like I get a better spot in heaven.
1:15:29
If I die with money, I just need enough to finish.
1:15:34
I don't need to, I'm not trying to build an empire.
1:15:37
People think, oh, there's money in books.
1:15:38
Okay.
1:15:39
If you're running Christian apologetics books, I hate to wake you up here.
1:15:41
But maybe if you started before Amazon came online, you might be making some money doing
1:15:45
this, but most of the time, this is not, you should not do this because you can make
1:15:49
money doing it.
1:15:50
And besides the speaking events, I don't want to be away from home.
1:15:54
So those aren't like positives for me.
1:15:56
And I started off with a pension.
1:15:58
I live on 60% of my pension.
1:16:01
And why?
1:16:02
Because I don't want anything.
1:16:03
But we've thought about it.
1:16:04
Should we remodel the kitchen?
1:16:05
Well, why?
1:16:06
Well, what's going to be so much different about the remodeled kitchen?
1:16:11
Maybe maybe we will someday.
1:16:13
I doubt it.
1:16:14
You know, we talked about these things like what do you want out of life?
1:16:18
So it turns out that all of this is determined by the tail that wags the dog is your wants.
1:16:25
And if you're going to live in your wants, then get ready.
1:16:27
That table will wag every dog.
1:16:30
So what I've said is if what I wanted was time, well, that becomes the tail that wags
1:16:35
the dog.
1:16:36
And now I got to cut some things back.
1:16:38
You know, I got to look at all the memberships I have.
1:16:40
I got to look at all the stuff I'm spending money on.
1:16:41
What am I really doing here?
1:16:43
So what can I cut back?
1:16:45
And it's not because I look, it's not that you don't have the capacity to make a lot of
1:16:49
money.
1:16:50
You could probably, if you put your mind to it, you could do something unbelievable.
1:16:54
But you'll sacrifice something to do it largely your family and you'll sacrifice.
1:16:59
You will never, I always say this, regret does not live on anything that has to do with your
1:17:04
money making ability or your job.
1:17:07
You will never at the end of the day say, man, I wish I could have made more money.
1:17:10
Man, I tell you, I wish I could have been a better detective.
1:17:12
No, that's all in the rear view mirror.
1:17:14
Let me tell you what last is your marriage.
1:17:17
You're going to have most regret about your marriage and your family and your parenting.
1:17:21
So if I can tell you that's coming, every one of you who's in your thirties, that regret
1:17:27
is coming.
1:17:29
So why don't you head it off right now?
1:17:31
You could.
1:17:32
And it means you have to do the things that eliminate regret.
1:17:34
They're almost all time related.
1:17:37
They're not money related.
1:17:39
Regret does not really live in the money house.
1:17:41
It lives in the time house.
1:17:43
So if you want to have less regrets in the future, I attack that now.
1:17:46
And if you think, well, yeah, but right now my friends are living on a certain level.
1:17:49
Trust me, when you get to the end, they're going to be envious of you because you won't
1:17:53
have the regret that they have.
1:17:56
So now is the time to make those decisions.
1:17:59
Papa Warner Wallace, that's your new nickname after all that wisdom that you just dropped
1:18:03
on all the men on this show.
1:18:04
But hey, I really enjoyed our conversation as always, but that's all for me.
1:18:07
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:18:09
No, thanks.
1:18:10
Call for have me.
1:18:11
I really appreciate it.
1:18:12
I love the opportunity to talk about the stuff that matters most.
1:18:15
So I appreciate you.
1:18:16
Well, Jim, keep writing books.
1:18:17
We'll keep having you on until next time.
1:18:20
Thanks.
1:18:21
There you go.
1:18:22
Guys.
1:18:23
I hope you enjoyed Jim's third appearance on the show.
1:18:24
But before I let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
1:18:26
Add an adult to life.
1:18:27
Our mission is equipping men to pushback darkness with content that forges spiritual mental and
1:18:31
physical resilience.
1:18:32
So I've got links for you today.
1:18:33
I've got a link to Jim's website.
1:18:34
I've got a link to where you can buy your copy of the truth and true crime.
1:18:38
I've also got a link to Jim's YouTube channel and his two previous appearances on the show.
1:18:42
Thank you for listening to this podcast.
1:18:44
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five
1:18:47
star review.
1:18:48
If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an
1:18:51
email to info@undonton.life.
1:18:53
That's I-N-F-O at Undonton.life.
1:18:56
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,
1:18:59
including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
1:19:02
Just go to www.undonton.life and as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing
1:19:07
us to use their music for our content.
1:19:08
The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album
1:19:13
on Face Down Records.
1:19:14
The links are in the description.
1:19:15
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:19:17
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:19:24
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:19:38
[music]