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0:48
This is Undaunted Life A Man's Podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:53
Let's get into it.
0:54
All right guys, today we've got a special return guest to the podcast.
0:57
My name is John Cooper.
0:58
So he is the lead vocalist and bassist for the twice Grammy nominated and 12 time platinum
1:03
band skilled.
1:04
I might even be more than that now, but skilled is actually one of the best selling in most
1:07
streamed rock bands of the 21st century.
1:09
And a lot of you know him from his podcast Cooper stuff podcast is great podcast.
1:13
I've mentioned it a lot here on the show.
1:14
I've appeared on that podcast a couple of times.
1:16
A lot of you guys that listen to this now, you know, found me through that podcast and
1:20
he has been on our show way back on episode 187.
1:23
But the cool thing about this podcast is this is actually like a duo.
1:27
Like split episode kind of a deal.
1:29
And so essentially what was happening is they're on tour right now with theory of a dead man
1:33
and they're going all across the United States and they were coming through Tulsa.
1:37
So what we talked about, it's like, Hey, let's get together.
1:38
Let's hang out, but let's record a show and let's just release it on both of our podcasts.
1:43
And so this episode is going to be released on the Cooper stuff podcast feed and on Undaunted
1:47
Life A Man's podcast.
1:49
And so on this particular episode, we talk about a lot of different things.
1:52
Okay.
1:53
So, you know, I talked about something called delayed sanctification.
1:56
We got into a lot of cultural issues, issues within the church, within masculinity, all
2:01
the stuff we had, you know, kicked around as ideas of what we would talk about, what
2:04
he wanted to talk about, what I want to talk about.
2:06
We basically didn't do that because we just kind of let it flow where it flowed.
2:09
And you know, we flowed for a long time and we're both very happy with how it ended up.
2:12
But it was a really fun time hanging out with the folks from skill because I've gotten to
2:16
know them personally, specifically John, but really the rest of the band gotten to know
2:20
them personally been able to hang out with them a few times.
2:22
And whenever I went up there this time, you know, we just got to like, just hang out and
2:26
kick it for a little bit.
2:27
And it was kind of funny too, because some of you saw this on Instagram, you've been
2:30
calling me out about it.
2:31
So I need to talk about it.
2:32
So I, you know, they do like pushups like Corey, the, you know, that's John's wife and
2:36
she's the guitarist of the band, you know, that's one of the things they used to do right
2:39
before they would go out on stage.
2:40
They would do pushups and all that.
2:42
And so she and I joked about doing a pushup competition.
2:44
Well, John Cooper does a little bit of a physical warmup before he goes out there and does his
2:49
live show.
2:50
And so I was like, I'm not going to let you just work out alone in the green room.
2:53
And so he put on like, you know, T-25 or something like that.
2:55
And so we just got after it.
2:57
And then right after we got done, Corey walks in and it's like, okay, let's do this pushup
3:01
competition.
3:02
And the funny thing about it is she, if you don't know her, she's fairly petite.
3:07
And so she's maybe like five, one, five, two, something like that.
3:11
And you know, her arms are kind of short and I've kind of got like monkey arms for my frame.
3:15
And so when we start doing this little pushup competition, I was just going to try to match
3:18
her and do as many as she did and then kind of go from there and you know, cheer her on.
3:23
But like almost immediately, almost immediately, I was like, Oh crap.
3:26
Like her pushups are really fast because she's got those little arms.
3:28
And I was like, okay, I'm going to have to go really, really fast to keep up with her
3:31
because she just shot out of the gate.
3:32
And so what ended up happening?
3:34
I'm like looking at my form and I'm like, I'm not finishing my pushups.
3:37
I'm not going all the way out to extension.
3:39
And of course we got the, you know, PT police on Instagram, like, Oh, no, those things.
3:45
But at the end of the day, you're right.
3:48
You're absolutely right.
3:49
I didn't do good pushup reps because I was trying to catch this little gal that was on
3:53
fire, just absolutely crushing it on the pushup.
3:55
So that was kind of a fun deal that we got to do.
3:57
But yeah, I got to hang out with Jen and Seth and, you know, chat with them about the
4:01
things that they have going on after the show hung out with them on their tour bus and really
4:05
just got to talk about like, you know, some life issues, some things that are happening
4:08
in the conservative space, things that are happening in the Christian space.
4:11
And, you know, that's the thing is when you hang out with people like this, it's always
4:15
great when they're humble and when they're normal.
4:17
And that's exactly what these people are because again, they've been a band for like 30 years
4:20
or something like that.
4:22
And I think Jen is like the, the member that's been on the band, the least amount of time.
4:26
And I think she's been there like 16 or 17 years or something like that.
4:29
And so it's just such a cool group of people.
4:32
They're so unbelievably positive.
4:33
And I told John this that I was able to watch their show from the side stage and from backstage.
4:39
And when you look at the people in the crowd, they're just so happy to be there.
4:43
And it's not just because, Oh, you know, COVID shut down tours and now they're just thankful
4:47
to even have tours or things like that.
4:49
They're just thankful that there's something positive happening because if you listen to
4:52
skills, music, the lyrics are very positive.
4:55
The message is very uplifting.
4:57
And then John will go out there and share the gospel and share the love of Jesus with
4:59
people there from the stage, even if it's a mixed crowd.
5:03
And it's just such a positive environment.
5:05
And so guys, if you've never listened to skill or if you used to listen to them, have less
5:08
to them in a while, go back and support those people.
5:10
If they come on tour, they put on a fantastic show.
5:13
And if they come on tour, come, you know, go to their area or if they're come to your
5:16
area, go to make sure you buy tickets to their show, support them, follow them on Instagram.
5:21
It's just an absolutely awesome thing.
5:23
So I'm really, really glad to bring this episode to you, but I did want to do a couple things
5:27
right before we get to that.
5:28
I know it's a little bit of a long intro, but number one, I want to just go ahead and thank
5:31
the donors.
5:32
So one thing that I used to do is anytime that we would get a donation, especially with our
5:35
monthly donations that we get from people, as I would send an email to these people just
5:38
thanking them, it's become fairly cumbersome now because we have so many donors.
5:42
And so I haven't been able to like send those individual emails, but to the donors, especially
5:46
the monthly donors that listen to this, thank you so, so much for being part of what we're
5:50
doing.
5:51
Because I'm not lying to you when I say that the reason we're able to keep the doors open
5:54
and produce the content that we do is because of donors, we get a little bit of money from
5:57
advertising.
5:58
Like I didn't make hardly any money off of those hats because they were so expensive
6:02
to make those hats that sold out in one day, by the way.
6:04
So if you didn't get one of the green hats and you want some, just let me know when we
6:07
can maybe do another run.
6:09
But just thank you, thank you so much to the donors and to everybody else, guys, that is
6:12
how we're able to equipment around the globe to push back darkness because we have people
6:16
that are partnering with us.
6:17
And then one other thing, one little commercial, because there's a unique thing and I wasn't
6:20
going to be able to talk about it, you know, before it happened.
6:22
So a lot of you guys have responded very, very well to episode 435 of this podcast with Michael
6:26
Fransese.
6:27
So he used to be a mob boss and now he's a, you know, Christian and Christian speaker.
6:32
Well, he's got something that he mentioned at the end of the interview and it's called
6:34
mob ties.
6:36
And so that's kind of his mastermind, you know, business coaching, leadership coaching thing
6:41
that he's launching.
6:43
And they've got a bunch of big names, these big timers that are going to be part of their
6:46
training this year.
6:48
They're, they're going to have Jordan Peterson, they're going to have Patrick Beth David trying
6:51
to think of the other Sammy, the bull Gravano, Zubi and there's some other, some other folks
6:55
as well that are lined up to be a part of this, which again, it's going to help people
6:59
that are in business or people that are wanting to level up in the business that they're doing
7:04
or entrepreneurs or things like that.
7:06
That's kind of what this is and there's going to be a communal aspect to it.
7:09
But what I wanted to tell you about, because again, I haven't, you know, spent a lot of
7:12
time with the content, but they're actually doing a private zoom training with Michael.
7:17
Michael was telling me about this on the 23rd of this month.
7:20
Okay.
7:21
So the 23rd of March at five p.m. Pacific standard time.
7:24
And so in this private zoom meeting and there's, there's really limited spots and all that.
7:28
I'm even trying to make sure that I can get in.
7:30
They're going to be talking about, you know, the art of persuasion and negotiation, you
7:33
know, the importance of having a very strong inner circle, just business practices that
7:37
he learned over his years, even doing illegal business practices, you know, being able to
7:41
use adversity to your advantage.
7:43
Now there is a link in the show notes where you can go and sign up for this private zoom
7:47
training with Michael and then the mob ties stuff is just something that I'll put there
7:50
in the show notes as well.
7:51
So you guys can go and check out that website.
7:53
It's not going to be for everybody, but it's for those folks that are really wanting to
7:56
level up.
7:58
And again, Michael produces such fantastic content.
8:00
I've had some, you know, off air conversations with him, there's some really, really unique
8:04
and cool things that they're going to be doing.
8:06
And so I just wanted to bring that to you as an option.
8:08
Guys, if that sounds like something that you would want to do or at least kind of dip
8:11
your toe into to see if it's something that you wouldn't want to do long term, just make
8:15
sure you go to that link.
8:16
Again, it will be in the show notes and it's going to be right below that I'll put the
8:19
mob ties link in there in the show notes.
8:21
So guys, whoo, long as intro ever, but I had a great time with John Cooper.
8:26
We recorded a great episode, so without further ado, let's get into it.
8:30
What's up, everybody?
8:32
We're here.
8:33
Cooper stuff undaunted life together.
8:36
We're trying to say we're in a killer name.
8:41
Undaunted Cooper life stuff.
8:43
I'm just just mushing together the least creative, like name possible.
8:48
Undaunted Cooper.
8:49
I kind of like this.
8:50
Although Corey just did our sound check a second ago and she said we both had like,
8:53
I think the exact phrase was the world's sexiest raspy voices.
8:57
I think is what she said about both of us.
8:58
I think all her was raspy, but I'll take it.
9:01
Yours is a lot stronger than mine, so we'll see how this goes for the rest of this whole
9:05
interview.
9:06
That's not what she said, but still it's close.
9:09
So we're here, first of all, everybody needs to watch this instead of listen so they can
9:14
see the quality of chairs we're sitting on.
9:17
Look at these things.
9:18
Look at these things.
9:19
We're basically in a room right now that had to have been an antique shop at some point
9:22
in life.
9:23
Neither one of these chairs was made in the last century.
9:26
Look at this.
9:27
This is it, man.
9:28
Anyway, so yeah.
9:29
We're basically, all right, so skill is on the road.
9:32
We are in Tulsa.
9:33
Tulsa.
9:34
Tulsa, Oklahoma.
9:35
Yeah.
9:36
Tulsa, Oklahoma.
9:37
And we're playing here tonight in just a couple of hours.
9:41
And so we had to wait until sound check was done.
9:44
Long story short, we're recording in the Tulsa theater and this place is old, man.
9:49
It's really old.
9:50
It was very difficult getting up here, but we're here.
9:54
It's not the most beautiful thing, but we're making it work.
9:56
Thanks for driving down.
9:57
So you live in OKC.
9:59
Yeah.
10:00
So I lived just north of Oklahoma City.
10:01
And so like any time y'all come close, I'm going to force you to hang out with me.
10:04
So that's how that's going to work.
10:05
Yeah.
10:06
I didn't even want to, but you were like, can I please please please leave now?
10:08
I just showed up.
10:09
I figured that's the bus that they're in probably and then you answered the phone, which was
10:12
your mistake.
10:13
Yeah, we did it.
10:14
So we're doing like a combined episode here.
10:16
Yeah.
10:17
And so we're like releasing on both of our shows and I'm going to steal your thunder from the
10:20
very beginning, because there's something that I want to talk to you about that I text
10:23
you about right from the beginning.
10:25
So just see, I don't have any of that.
10:28
Like I can't just all of a sudden start singing, but like, OK, so something that I was talking
10:33
about with you a few weeks ago, I just sent you a text out of nowhere.
10:37
And I asked you, I was like, what do you think about delayed sanctification?
10:40
Right.
10:41
So it's kind of a heavy and a hard place to start here.
10:44
But I was talking about how like someone can become a Christian and then have like a super
10:49
long dry spell of, you know, maybe they're reading the Bible, maybe they're going to
10:53
church a little bit, but then like all of a sudden out of nowhere without any prompting
10:57
all of a sudden their appetite for scripture is strengthened, their appetite for expository
11:04
preaching goes through the roof.
11:05
You know, they don't see the value in starting a new show that they'll binge watch.
11:09
They're trying to like binge read, you know, books written by dead guys, and like we didn't
11:13
really have any time to, you know, really talk that through it all.
11:17
But I just wanted to kind of see where, where you were at with that, because the reason
11:20
why I'm asking is because that's where I feel like I'm at.
11:21
I was telling you, I was like, this is where I feel like I'm at in my life, where it's
11:25
like I've had these spells where it's like I didn't didn't think about the Christian
11:30
fathers and then think about reading scripture and it really came to head last year.
11:33
I read 53 books, but I don't think I read 53 chapters of the Bible.
11:38
And I was like, wait a minute.
11:40
This is a big problem.
11:41
And so this year it's like I've really toned down the number of interviews I've done that
11:44
have required books to read, you know, we added something called the forging table.
11:48
So more scriptural study, but like, have you, have you ever even even talked to someone
11:53
before that's like thought like delayed sanctification, like you're being sanctified, but it like
11:58
it didn't happen right after you were saved.
12:00
It's like, right.
12:01
It took like a 20 minute break or something like that.
12:02
Yeah.
12:03
Yeah.
12:04
I've never heard, I've never heard anybody use that word.
12:06
I thought you were saying delayed gratification at first.
12:09
So I thought maybe you said the wrong thing, you're meaning delayed gratification.
12:12
Yeah, different Asian word, which, which I don't know if you noticed, but like every
12:17
red hot chili pepper song has as a shun word, right?
12:21
You're right.
12:22
California cation.
12:23
Yeah.
12:24
Shun everything.
12:25
It works with their son.
12:26
Kind of drives me bad.
12:27
But anyway, so I'm not really heard that.
12:30
But yeah, I mean, I've definitely known a lot of people who have felt like, well, first
12:34
of all, we should say, yeah, sanctification is one of these great things in the Bible.
12:39
It's confusing, but it's such an amazing concept in that we have been sanctified.
12:46
We are being sanctified.
12:48
We will be sanctified.
12:49
So this is a process.
12:52
And so it makes sense that we have these times in our lives when all of a sudden we start
12:57
feeling something kind of ramping up.
13:00
There's a lot of change happening.
13:01
And that's why for some people, I don't know if you've ever talked to people like this,
13:05
they say, what's your testimony?
13:07
When did you give your life to Christ and some people go, well, I made a decision when
13:11
I was a kid.
13:12
But then they have all these.
13:13
I got baptized.
13:14
And then I got baptized again like 10 years later, like that kind of thing.
13:17
Yeah, you know.
13:18
And I think those are great conversations.
13:21
But true, the work of the spirit is a mystery and that there is a thing happening when you
13:25
say, I don't know.
13:26
I know the spirit was at work in my heart.
13:28
I knew I had faith.
13:29
I knew that God was beginning this regeneration in my heart.
13:33
But did I have that hunger?
13:35
You know, you don't want to say feeling close, because then all of a sudden it makes your
13:40
walk with God all about a feeling.
13:42
That's not really what you mean, but you mean an open, intimate relationship with Christ
13:47
in a way that I'm hungering for him.
13:49
I'm passionate for the word.
13:50
It's more like you're recognizing a closeness as opposed to the closeness being a point.
13:55
Like you're just recognizing like, it's almost like he's pulling me closer.
13:59
Not that he's getting closer to me, but he's pulling me closer to himself.
14:02
Maybe he's trying to show me something in this season.
14:04
But you know, then you start thinking like, why did the delay happen to begin with?
14:07
But part of it has to do like, well, you weren't reading the Bible.
14:10
You weren't reading God's Word.
14:11
You weren't spending a lot of time in prayer and your shock that you've felt far away.
14:15
It's kind of one of those things.
14:16
Yeah.
14:17
And it's definitely for me, I always find a reciprocal thing happening, hungry for the
14:23
Word of God.
14:25
And when I read the Word of God, the result is hunger for the Word of God, right?
14:31
So it's a little bit like, if people watching now might be, I know we just jumped right
14:35
in this, but people might be going like, I don't really feel hungry for the Word.
14:40
I read the Bible because I feel like I have to don't know if I'm hungry for it.
14:43
I would encourage people, love the Word of God and you're going to find that you want
14:48
more of it because all of a sudden you go, oh, this really is a lamp unto my feet.
14:53
This is an amazing thing.
14:55
So I think there probably are a lot of people like that out there.
14:59
These go to church, but not really ever gotten into that relationship with God when they're
15:04
reading the Bible, understanding it and wanting more of it.
15:08
Well, it's like your palate will change based on the stuff that you're eating.
15:11
So I'll talk to people that, you know, out of nowhere, they'll just come to this realization
15:15
and they're like, I've been going to this church for 10 years.
15:17
It's more of a secret, sensitive model church.
15:19
There's not expository preaching, but every week for years and years on end, they've been
15:24
getting skittles.
15:25
And it's like, it tastes good.
15:27
This is great.
15:28
It's very emotional.
15:29
But at the time you leave the parking lot, the skittles have worn off and now your body's
15:32
desperate for nutrition again.
15:34
And then they'll either stumble on the teachings of a expository preacher or the writings of
15:39
some dead guy that we're supposed to not pay attention to anymore.
15:42
And then all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, I feel like there's maybe something
15:44
I'm missing.
15:45
It's like, it's been skittles, skittles, skittles, and then all of a sudden it's steak.
15:49
And it's like, I think I want more of this steak.
15:52
Like as fun as skittles are, I want to make steak the prime thing that I feast on and try
15:57
to get my nutrition from.
15:58
But yeah, I'll get emails from people that listen to the show.
16:01
And they're just like, yeah, like, how do I find, do you know of any churches in my
16:05
area?
16:06
And it's like, no, like I barely know the churches that are in mind because I go to one.
16:09
But it's just kind of that thing to where it's like, there's something there that you need
16:12
to continue to explore because you're not having these thoughts for no reason.
16:17
And that doesn't mean the church you're at is the devil or leading people down the wrong
16:20
road.
16:21
It might be.
16:22
But like at the same time, it's like you have a desperate desperation for something more
16:26
nutritious than what you're getting now.
16:28
And so go look for it.
16:30
I think that's right.
16:31
I think it's an I think it's an issue of depth, you know, of and not depth of the chair.
16:36
Because as you can see, he put me in a chair, a lot lower.
16:38
If you're watching this on YouTube, like, so I'm like sinking down the entire time.
16:42
But it's roughly the same size.
16:44
Okay.
16:45
Gosh, we're not the same size.
16:46
You're a lot bigger than.
16:47
Well, like height length away from the ground.
16:50
Arms do not look like like I got stung by be on the way in one side, just one side.
16:55
So I'm really close to the camera.
16:58
But I do think it's an issue of depth.
16:59
You know, I think that I think what you get with a lot of the seeker model, you get a
17:03
lot of therapeutic stuff.
17:04
It's a lot of this is how I feel good.
17:07
This is how God wants to help me through my day to day.
17:10
And of course, God does want to help you through your day.
17:13
And that's really wonderful.
17:14
But the more you get into the depth of the word of God, what you begin to find out is
17:20
that I don't even know what I, what I need today, so in other words, the seeker model
17:26
is this, I know what I need and I need God to give it to me today.
17:30
The depth of the word of God teaches you, you actually don't know what you need.
17:33
You think you want something, but it might not actually be good for you.
17:37
God knows what you need.
17:38
So in the seeker system, all it's like, you want, here's my life.
17:41
So it's like, I'm going to do what I'm going to do, but now I'm going to ask God to bless
17:44
it.
17:45
And so you want him to be the concrete in and around all the, you know, rebar that you
17:48
put in the ground, but it's like, no, it's like, where are we putting the rebar?
17:52
Like, what direction are you going and like all that?
17:55
And then we can worry about the materials later.
17:56
So it almost feels a little bit like that to where you're just like, well, what is the
17:59
phrase like moral therapeutic deism?
18:01
Like that's what the church has become.
18:03
It's like, okay, let's make you feel not even slightly challenged.
18:06
We certainly don't want to be offensive.
18:08
And if we do that, then we've failed and we've been, we've been unloving.
18:12
And so what we do is we make sure that you don't feel challenged, you leave comfortable
18:15
in your sin.
18:16
And then there's no formation or life change at any point.
18:19
That's exactly, that's a great way to say what I was getting at.
18:24
And in fact, we'll go back to delayed gratification.
18:26
Do you see how we bring it back?
18:28
Yeah, just right back around.
18:29
Let's go.
18:30
But I think that's a, I think that's a great way to say so.
18:32
The idea of delayed gratification, you know, as a parent, you know, you want your kids to
18:37
be happy and it's sometimes it's hard to say no to your kids because you love them so much
18:40
and they're like, yeah, I want to eat ice cream and no, we're not doing that now.
18:44
You eat your peas first, right?
18:45
You eat your vegetables and whatever.
18:47
But the idea is that you need to teach your kids to do what they need to do.
18:53
And then if there's time after they do what they need to do, that's their homework, their
18:58
chores, all the things that you're supposed to do, if you have time, well, guess what?
19:03
Now you get to do what you want to do.
19:05
And they are learning to delay the things that they enjoy doing.
19:10
And that's good because if you don't do it with kids, then they just, they get spoiled,
19:14
they get what they want all the time, they don't learn disciplines and they just become
19:18
lazy and stuff and it's not good in a lot of ways.
19:22
And so I think what moralistic therapy or deism, as you said, and to some extent the
19:28
seeker model, what it teaches us is to be the sort of anti-delayed gratification.
19:35
This is what I want.
19:36
This is what I need.
19:37
But in the end, it's like the Lord is like, that's actually, that's what you think you
19:42
need, but if you were to understand, my design, this is God talking here, if you will, if
19:48
you were to understand my design, you would understand that I know it's good for you.
19:53
And so you need to understand these systems, the way the world is built and the way that
19:58
humans are built, you think you want it and it's not going to be good for you.
20:01
But I am going to taste good.
20:04
I'm going to actually be what you want.
20:06
You just don't know it.
20:07
And so I think once you get into the depth of the Word of God, I mean, when I look around
20:12
now at society, there's no stability.
20:17
People are so chaotic.
20:19
Young people a lot of times, and I'm making fun of them, I feel bad for them, don't know
20:23
how to express what they even, they can't express what they even feel.
20:28
They can't put it into words because they are so utterly confused.
20:32
And I think all of this goes back into, in terms of the church, we are not teaching this
20:39
sort of depth, the systems, the way the world is created, the created order, the way that
20:43
life is supposed to work so that we can fit into God's order and thrive.
20:47
Well, you say stability.
20:49
So if you're building a pyramid, obviously you need to make the base as wide and as strong
20:53
as possible.
20:54
And so those are the first things, right?
20:57
So when people talk about first things first, but the problem is we're trying to build the
21:00
pyramid upside down.
21:02
And so there's so much instability in people's relationships.
21:05
There's so much instability in people's theology.
21:08
And then that has downstream consequences with every other subject.
21:11
So a pastor might be, you know, banging his head against the wall.
21:13
Why can't I get the congregation to believe that, you know, we should protect human lives
21:17
in the womb?
21:18
It's like, well, they don't even have a foundational idea that human life is of infinite value,
21:24
that people are made in the image of God.
21:26
And so we're starting with the political and we're, we're not presupposing that there
21:31
are things before the political, right?
21:33
And so I used to do this thing back in the day, it's like kind of a church campy type
21:36
deal, but you get a big clear bucket and then, yeah, you're good.
21:40
But it's like, you've got a big clear bucket and it's like, Hey, here are the most important
21:44
things in your life, like your faith, your family or whatever.
21:46
And those are like softballs that you put in the bucket.
21:48
And then you start working your way down to like, okay, now baseballs, okay, now golf
21:51
balls, okay, now marbles, okay, now sand.
21:54
And you know, we talk about, you know, eventually when you fill it up with sand, you can't even
21:57
see the things that are important to you.
21:59
That's where we are now to where there's so many things to be concerned about.
22:03
We're concerned about why we got 80 likes on this Instagram post as opposed to a hundred
22:08
likes.
22:09
And we're not focused on what is God trying to show me through his word was God trying
22:12
to lead me to or point me to in a particular direction.
22:15
Yeah.
22:16
It's because we're building the pyramid upside down and it's kind of like what we were talking
22:19
about earlier a couple hours ago where it's like, we don't have our pastors are worried
22:25
so much about being offensive to people that they're forgetting the gospel or they're thinking
22:29
that there's a cuter, less offensive way to present it.
22:32
And it's like the gospel in and of itself is offensive and you should start there in
22:38
your churches.
22:39
Like every sermon should in some way point to the gospel because the entire book points
22:44
to the gospel, right?
22:45
They didn't know that whenever the Old Testament was being written as it was being lived out
22:49
in history back in the day, but kind of where we're at now it's like, no, we've seen the
22:53
end of the story.
22:54
We know where this goes.
22:55
It's like, but we don't want to, we don't want to hang our hat on that because it might,
22:58
you know, make people feel sad, which, you know, I know, I do know what you mean.
23:04
So I have so many thoughts on so many things that you just said, but, you know, I think
23:10
like, for instance, maybe I'll give an example because I think people might be able to relate
23:14
to this in some way because everybody watching just got things they want to do with their
23:18
lives, right?
23:19
Maybe they want to be a musician or whatever the story is.
23:22
But I'll just tell somebody a story about a musician and, you know, a friend of mine
23:30
that I want to play music, I feel called to play music, it's my life's dream, I've worked
23:35
for it for years, I prayed for it and God has never given me this, this, he never gave
23:42
me my dream.
23:44
I have friends like this and I remember saying to my friends, I was like, has it crossed
23:51
your mind?
23:52
No, don't be me.
23:53
Has it crossed your mind that God might not have given this to you because it's not good
23:59
for you?
24:00
It, yes, he wants to give you the eyes of your heart.
24:03
Has it crossed your mind that God works all things together for the good of those who love
24:08
Christ according to his purpose?
24:09
What if it's not actually good for you because I know people who used to live for Jesus,
24:16
they prayed for that music gig, they finally got that band and they, guess what, they even
24:21
had a radio hit and all of a sudden, and they're not walking with God anymore, they don't want
24:25
anything to do with Christ, you know, they almost denied him the first chance that they
24:29
got, right?
24:30
First time they got pushed back.
24:32
First time they got pushed back, boom, yeah, no, I'm a Christian, but boom, they're done.
24:39
And in the end, wouldn't you rather have your salvation than play in a band?
24:44
That's ridiculous.
24:45
So, some of this, I think comes down to a, as you say, the pyramid is a great example,
24:51
building a wide base.
24:52
What does God want for my life?
24:54
It's not about what I want for my life.
24:56
What does God want for my life?
24:58
How can I glorify him?
25:00
First things first, I want to glorify God.
25:03
And if there's something in my life that I want, but God knows it's going to take me
25:08
down a path where I deny Christ, or I, God forbid, you know, cheat on my spouse, or abuse my
25:17
child, or whatever that thing, I mean, that I don't want that, and I'm going to trust
25:22
the Holy Spirit, the faithfulness of God, I'm going to trust Him to keep me away from
25:26
even the things I'm praying for that I think I want if they're not good for me.
25:30
You know, I mean, all this is, this is such rich Bible truth that we should be teaching.
25:37
So the thing that you're, you're nailing right here as well, John, is that when you
25:43
start lamenting that you're not getting what you feel like you deserve, it's a very narcissistic
25:47
place of being, but you're also assuming the knowledge seat of God.
25:51
And so the way that you've probably seen, excuse me, that you've seen, you know, Christian
25:56
apologists do it before is when they're talking to an atheist, they'll say, Hey, if you had
25:59
to put a percentage on it, what percentage of all the knowledge in the universe do you
26:04
possess?
26:05
Like, and then, you know, if they answer honestly, it's like, well, less than 1%.
26:08
So if you look at it like a pie chart, like it's a little thin sliver, like you can't
26:13
even find a marker with a thin enough tip to draw the sliver of stuff that you know.
26:18
But in that sliver of stuff that you know, you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that
26:22
God doesn't exist and that his son wasn't sitting here to die for you to where you would have
26:27
propitiation for your sins so you could be before a Holy and just God.
26:30
It's not possible.
26:31
So you're saying that that possibility and that knowledge is non-existent in the other
26:36
99.999 repeating of knowledge that there is in the universe, right?
26:40
That's what you're saying.
26:42
We're presupposing the same thing when we get so disappointed that God isn't answering
26:46
our prayers with the things that we think that we want.
26:49
And that's the exact reason why because it's, you know, maybe it's that they just don't
26:53
have the skill set because you need to have skill set passion and have that confirmed
26:56
by the marketplace and the marketplace could just be your friends and family that yes,
27:01
you're good at this.
27:02
Yes, you're passionate about it.
27:03
So you're going to keep working at it.
27:05
And yes, everyone agrees that this is something that you are absolutely talented at.
27:09
But it could go to the exact place that you're saying where it's like, God knows that you're
27:13
going to deny him at the first state.
27:15
But let's say you start denying him after your single blows up.
27:19
Now you've got a few thousand dorks that are just like hanging on your every word like
27:23
trying to like, Hey, what's this?
27:24
What's my favorite guitarist or singer or artist or whatever saying now?
27:28
And then you may have created an entire generations worth of deconstructionists or people that
27:34
are just also on their faith is just going to disappear like a fart in the wind.
27:37
And it's just because you play an instrument that they like to hear through their ear holes.
27:42
And now all of a sudden, and it all goes back to God gave you what you wanted, right?
27:46
Or God allowed for free will to take place.
27:48
And now all of a sudden look at the position that you're in and the position you're creating
27:51
for other people.
27:52
Absolutely.
27:53
I mean, I think, I think all these things are so very important when we are really
27:58
talking to Christian people or non-Christian people, of course, about building our lives
28:04
upon the Word of God.
28:06
Why that matters?
28:07
And I know for people who aren't Christians, it just sounds to them like building upon
28:12
some old book, I don't really get it, but for Christians, we need to, I think we need
28:18
to reawaken to the Word of God, reawaken to the significance of this book that we have.
28:26
You know, I mean, I was reading, I was reading a story that I've read a hundred times just
28:32
this week, right?
28:33
You remember the story in the Old Testament?
28:38
They are bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to, they want to bring back to the city
28:42
of David.
28:43
Of course, you're not supposed to touch the Ark of the Covenant.
28:46
They're going down.
28:47
They're singing the whole thing and they trip when they're caring because they have like
28:51
the poles on the Ark and they trip.
28:53
And I think Yuzah, or whatever his name is, Yuzah reaches out to steady the Ark of the
28:57
Covenant.
28:58
He's going to want to hit the ground.
28:59
He touches it, which he's not supposed to do.
29:00
He dies.
29:01
I mean, I've read the story a hundred times, but I, for some reason, I never paid attention
29:08
to it right after that.
29:10
He touches it.
29:11
He dies.
29:12
David is upset.
29:14
But then it says that the fear of the Lord came on David and then he was like, I don't
29:20
want the Ark of the Covenant coming to the city of David.
29:22
I'm too afraid.
29:23
I'm afraid of the presence of God.
29:26
No.
29:27
This is David.
29:28
Right.
29:29
This is a man who's known the presence of the Lord since he's a kid in a prophetic way,
29:35
in a way that other people did it at the time.
29:39
And so you're looking at this going, he is so afraid of God that he says, I don't want
29:44
to bring the Ark back.
29:45
And they leave it.
29:46
I can't remember the guys.
29:47
They leave for three months.
29:48
And then they go back and they end up bringing in and that's when David dances, you know,
29:53
and he makes a quote unquote fool of himself the whole thing.
29:56
We know the story, but I never really read the part where he says, the fear of the Lord
30:00
came on and he said, I don't want it back.
30:02
And I remember thinking, man, we do not believe in the fear of the Lord in any way these days,
30:09
because Jesus is our friend, which is an amazing truth.
30:12
Jesus is our friend, but it is right to have this fear of the Lord.
30:16
And I think that if all you ever do is go to church meetings where we're all saying,
30:21
what does God have for me today?
30:22
He wants me to be happy and blessed and what you are not going to walk away with a reverent
30:28
fear of God.
30:30
And if you don't have a reverent fear of God, then you cannot love God properly.
30:34
There's no true love of God without fear of God.
30:37
So I think that us reawakening to what this book is is just a wonderful thing.
30:41
Well, reverence is the right ordering of things in the right way of looking at people like,
30:45
if you've ever been in a room before and you've probably experienced this because you've
30:48
ran in some different circles with celebrities and artists and all that, there's certain
30:51
other people that are around me have run with celebrities.
30:53
Yeah.
30:54
I want to be clear.
30:55
Okay.
30:56
Well, it's like that's what you're doing right now.
30:57
No, no, but like just think about like some certain people walk in a room and then everyone
31:01
gets hushed.
31:02
Oh, yeah.
31:03
And then there are other people that they're such big personalities at the moment they say
31:06
something that's even vaguely funny, everyone laughs.
31:08
And it's just like because you're reverent for that person.
31:10
And just the thing about this way is if God's not scary, like then Jesus is just your cosmic
31:17
boyfriend.
31:18
And so if he's just your cosmic boyfriend, then aren't you going to sing songs that almost
31:22
places him in the place of being a cosmic boyfriend?
31:25
Like we don't make songs about the fact that he comes back with his robe, dipped in blood
31:28
and tattoo on his leg and, you know, sword in his mouth and all the, but we don't talk
31:32
about it that way.
31:33
That's why, you know, in adult to life, we talk about the lion of Judah all the time.
31:36
And it's not because the lame of God is not important.
31:38
It's the exact opposite.
31:39
It's like, you can't really understand who Jesus is.
31:42
If you don't understand him has grace and truth, lion and lamb.
31:47
And we have so much focus on the easy stuff.
31:49
It's easy to understand the lamb to a degree.
31:52
It's easy to understand, you know, hey, we just want to, we just want to feel good and
31:56
we want grace because grace makes us feel good.
31:59
The truth part is scary.
32:01
Lion part is really scary to us.
32:03
And that, that's kind of what you and I were talking about earlier.
32:06
It's like pastors will kind of gravitate towards the stuff that's easier to talk about because
32:11
it's really hard to build a multi site church with, you know, in all you talk about is like
32:16
spiritual warfare or like, you know, obscure Old Testament stories that people don't really
32:20
care about anymore.
32:21
Cause hey, it's 2023, like why are we even talking about this?
32:23
But yes, like if you don't understand that God is scary, not scary, like, you know, horrible
32:28
scary.
32:29
He's scary.
32:30
Like if you don't do the things that he requires of you, it goes poorly for you.
32:34
He's scary for you are good and we just, we don't think of it that way.
32:39
Yeah.
32:40
Yeah.
32:41
Absolutely.
32:42
I mean, it's also funny.
32:43
I mean, we are such a product of our culture is just, it's, it's really annoying and funny.
32:49
But there are a lot of things that people go, well, yeah, because, you know, it's, we don't,
32:55
people don't like to think of God like that because, you know, people like, for instance,
32:59
let me rewind, here's what I'm trying to do, people sometimes attribute things to human
33:04
nature that are not accurate, right?
33:07
It's because your culture has made you think that one of these things would be sometimes
33:12
people that are always banging on the church, right?
33:15
They're always like, the church doesn't help the poor and it's, and they don't ever do
33:18
enough for whatever.
33:19
And, and it's always, all you got to do is read a little bit of history and you find
33:23
out actually the only, the only reason that you think that people just really want to
33:28
help the poor is because you've grown up in America, right?
33:30
Which was a, a nation built on Christian principles.
33:35
It was Christianity and, and even Yahweh, in the Old Testament, who taught people that
33:41
they should care about the poor.
33:43
It wasn't like that was, everybody was care about the poor and then, you know, Christianity
33:46
changed it.
33:47
Come on, it's, it's, it's the opposite way around.
33:50
And it's the same way, and, you know, what you see in the Old Testament when Yahweh comes
33:56
in the picture, changes, changes history.
34:00
I mean, before, before, you know, the Old Testament Scriptures, what you're dealing
34:04
with is a, a belief in polytheism, dealing with gods, gods that are terrible and mean
34:12
and violent and, you know, we hear these stories, they, they eat their children or the children,
34:19
the, the, the children wants to have sex with his mom and so he murders his own father.
34:25
I mean, these are the gods, all of creation was believed to have, have been created through
34:31
these wars between gods and, and bloodshed and rape and murder and the God of the Bible
34:38
shows up.
34:39
Yahweh shows up and, and he is a God of mercy.
34:43
He's a God whose mercies are new every single morning.
34:46
This makes no sense.
34:47
Right.
34:48
This is a God that is, that, that is personal and he, he knows your name and he calls you
34:53
by name and he wants to have a relationship with you.
34:57
And he humbles himself to make a covenant with men.
35:01
This is not something that, that the pagan gods did.
35:04
This would be way beneath them.
35:06
And so what you see in Yahweh is a God that is both, higher than the other gods, because
35:13
he is seen as a God above gods, if you will, he's the one who created them, the, the sky
35:20
and the moon and all these things that, that, that people worshiped.
35:24
So what you see is Yahweh coming and saying, yeah, you know those things you worship like
35:27
the sun.
35:28
I created those things.
35:30
So he's higher than them, but he also has humbled himself to, to be imminent and is what
35:36
they call it in theology, right?
35:38
So all these things that I know your name, I want to make a covenant with you.
35:41
Here's what I'm going to do for you.
35:43
I, you know, I will not leave you, I will not forsake you.
35:45
It's amazing stuff, but we take it for granted.
35:48
Right.
35:49
In these crazy ways that, so you know, well, of course I can relate to God as being a
35:53
nice person, but not so am I, I'm afraid of, but that's only because you've been trained
35:57
to think that because of what Christianity did, it is right.
36:01
It was in a Batman Begins, remember the movie Batman Begins, Falcone, he's like the mob
36:06
boss.
36:07
And I remember the beginning, you know, before Bruce Wayne's become Batman, he's got, he
36:12
goes into the bar and he's going to kill Falcone and he goes, he's all tough.
36:17
And if Falcone was like, Hey, you got a lot of heart, I'll give you that.
36:22
But, but you're in a world that you don't understand and you always fear what you don't
36:27
understand.
36:28
Right.
36:29
You're always going to be afraid.
36:30
And that kind of creates Batman.
36:32
That's true.
36:33
You think you're not going to be afraid of the living God?
36:36
It's a really, it's an asinine thought.
36:38
Well, it's the same thing when you see atheists make arguments about how God doesn't exist.
36:43
What they're using is a Christian framework built on a Judeo-Christian ethic to even make
36:47
their arguments because they'll say something like, what about these bad things that happened
36:52
to good people?
36:53
Right.
36:54
I was like, but if we're all just highly evolved chimps that wear clothes and talk to one another
36:58
and that we're our, you know, we're just ants, our ancestors were, you know, fish and goo
37:02
and stardust before that.
37:04
It's like, what does this matter?
37:06
Like none of this matters.
37:07
Like you're putting a value system that you learned, like so they're smuggling in Christianity.
37:12
And they're kind of, but like even think about it, why do we have hospitals?
37:17
Why do we have universities?
37:18
These are Christian institutions.
37:20
Why are all these hospitals named after Christians?
37:22
Right.
37:23
Well, I was started by Catholic.
37:24
Same thing with these universities.
37:25
Go read the founding documents of Harvard and Yale and Penn and Princeton and Cornell.
37:30
Like these were meant to be Christian institutions for the equipping of the saints and the spreading
37:34
of the gospel and things like that, not in kind of a modern theological sense.
37:38
But again, it's like, where do you think you got that idea that we matter?
37:42
Yes.
37:43
Because like, you think that matter came from non matter and I'm changing, you know, talking
37:47
about different matter now, but it's like, you know, so you're saying that time, space
37:51
and matter came from a timeless, spaceless, immaterial place.
37:57
Please explain that to me.
37:58
Right.
37:59
And don't say, well, it happened trillions of years ago.
38:00
I don't quite understand.
38:01
Yeah.
38:02
And then say, and it has to have value right because there is no value system.
38:07
No.
38:08
I always, I always say, like, I don't want any of my atheist friends, obviously, do not
38:13
want them to be nihilist.
38:16
I don't want them to kill themselves.
38:18
I don't want them to be depressed and go and get and live lives of alcoholics.
38:23
But I, if I did not believe in God, nihilism makes a lot of sense to me, right?
38:30
Because you're right.
38:31
You say, well, we exist for, for what purpose?
38:34
For what reason?
38:35
Well, there isn't a reason then why are we valuable and I can appreciate this sentimental
38:42
feeling that we want to matter and that it, your life will be better for you if you live
38:48
as if you matter.
38:49
I can appreciate that, but from an intellectual standpoint, without a creator God, I don't,
38:57
I don't see where you can find the value.
39:00
So I do think, right, I think that people are smuggling us all just this week.
39:05
We posted something on Skillet.
39:06
I think that I was at a concert.
39:08
I think I had said something to the crowd about that you matter.
39:10
You're fearfully and wonderfully made, which, of course, is a Bible verse.
39:13
But your life matters.
39:14
I don't care if you're Christian or not, where you come from, color your skin, your
39:18
life matters and I care about you.
39:21
And in people, you know, on Instagram, cool, you know, somebody said, I absolutely agree
39:24
with this because it's taken trillions of years to get the, and I don't remember his
39:30
words, the isotopes of so-and-so to align together so that we could, so, so we, so we
39:34
should make this life count.
39:36
It was his way of saying, I'm an atheist, but I do agree that we matter because it's
39:41
taken trillions of years to make all this happen and, and I appreciate his comment, but
39:45
I'm just like, like, I'm glad that, I'm glad that you can find meaning in that because
39:50
I don't, I don't want you to go down a nihilistic rage that ends in suicide.
39:55
But that's not enough for me, you know, I know that I matter because God is real.
40:00
Right.
40:01
That's what defines it.
40:02
Well, you have to granularize it a little bit to where it's like, okay, let's go to
40:05
a granular level and let's say there's a newborn child sitting here on this table and I've
40:12
heard people use a similar example to this and it's like, okay, so I take a hammer and
40:15
I bash the head of this baby in.
40:18
Good gracious.
40:19
Is that wrong?
40:20
I'm sorry.
40:21
I didn't come over the example.
40:22
I didn't come over.
40:23
Don't talk to them.
40:24
Don't ask them.
40:25
Okay.
40:26
Watch this.
40:27
Okay.
40:28
It's a teddy bear.
40:29
It's like, okay, but it's like, okay, so someone, someone ends the life of a child and
40:35
then it's like, and you would say that's wrong, correct?
40:38
And they would say, well, yeah, of course that's wrong.
40:40
Explain to me why.
40:41
Why is that wrong?
40:43
Because if we're, if we're just Darwinian, if we're just, you know, materialist or something
40:48
like that, then that is a stronger ape or stronger chimp that took something life away
40:54
from a younger chimp.
40:55
And I, if I am the stronger chimp that did that thing, I can say, well, we only have
40:58
a finite amount of resources.
41:00
It's kind of this anti-natalist position of a lot of people that push the green movement,
41:04
but it's like we have this finite set of resources.
41:07
And you know, obviously, and let's just say that the kid had some sort of abnormality,
41:11
some sort of deformity of some kind of, it's like, what?
41:13
This is perfect.
41:14
We're getting them out of the gene pool because our genes are what matter.
41:17
You know, you have someone like Dawkins saying, yeah, we dance to our DNA.
41:21
If you go by that as a worldview, you're going to eradicate anyone who has DNA that
41:26
you deem as unworthy for pro-creative purposes.
41:29
Yeah.
41:30
Right.
41:31
And so there is no next step with those people because you have to get them to the point
41:34
to where if they take their ideology to its actual end, it is, I can't say that it's
41:40
wrong.
41:41
I can just say that I don't like it.
41:42
And it's like, that's at least an intellectually honest position.
41:44
It's gross.
41:45
Like it's, that's a rough place to be, but it's like, at least it's intellectually honest.
41:49
But that's where you have to put people, I think that Christians a lot of times, John,
41:53
they feel like they feel like they're, what they need to be the ones on the defensive.
41:57
So they're always on their heels where it's like, if you have the moral position, like
42:01
if you were a, you know, a parrot of the Judeo-Christian ethic, which it, which undergirds the entirety
42:07
of society, then why don't you feel like you can ask a question of their worldview?
42:13
Because you're not being mean.
42:14
You're just saying, Hey, this doesn't make any sense to me.
42:16
If we're just highly evolved chimps, what does it matter?
42:18
Because it doesn't.
42:19
Yeah, you know, I think that's exactly where I was going in, in my mind.
42:23
We are such a product of our culture that as you say, what you will end up with were people
42:27
that say, well, no, I don't, I know it's no, I don't like it.
42:30
I don't know why.
42:31
And the reason will be because they, they've grown up in the culture they, they've grown
42:35
up in.
42:36
But I think you just hit it on the head.
42:37
I think that as we dig into the word of God, we begin to, we become so stabilized.
42:44
It's like your feeder and your feeder and some are in concrete, your feeder to the ground.
42:51
And so you're not, you're not thrown around on like, like, let me think, say it like this.
42:58
I feel so bad for young people because every week, they're going to find out the new thing
43:04
they're not allowed to say, right?
43:06
Or the new thing that they have to think in order to be perceived as a person of justice,
43:11
right?
43:12
The new thing they have to say, virtuous, yeah, I didn't think that was wrong last week,
43:16
but you're right.
43:17
I actually shouldn't say that.
43:18
So now I'm going to reform in a reshape next week.
43:21
Look at, look at the social medias.
43:23
Look at the TikToks.
43:24
What am I supposed, what am I not allowed to say this week?
43:26
And it changes again and again, and it's such a, no wonder they're so anxious.
43:31
This is a, this is such an anxiety producing culture, Christianity, the word of God teaches
43:36
you to put your feet into concrete.
43:39
And we should not, we, if there's anything I can encourage Christians to do in 2023,
43:45
it would be to stop playing defense.
43:48
As you just said, it's like, don't play David, don't feel like, well, well, you know, when
43:52
they ask you, well, do you really think that you really think abortion's, you know, wrong,
43:57
even if this, even if we were talking earlier, even in cases of, right, even in cases of this,
44:02
and the first thing the Christians do is defense, right?
44:04
They're like, well, well, they start dancing, you know, well, well, I just, no, no.
44:09
I, I think that, and they go and they go and they go instead of realizing you don't have
44:14
to play defense.
44:16
You can play nicely and lovingly.
44:19
You can play offense, put, put a positive vision for the future, which is life matters.
44:26
Bad stuff is going to happen because humans suck.
44:29
And because we do a bunch of nasty stuff, because we need Jesus, we need to be a regime.
44:34
But life absolutely matters.
44:36
And if you have the right to say that that child who is going to be born with some sort
44:43
of a health issue doesn't desert, they don't have individual rights.
44:49
But that other child does, then what's to stop you from saying that color child should
44:54
not be born.
44:55
Sure.
44:56
Of course, we've already been down this road already in eugenics and stuff 100 years ago.
45:00
But what's to stop that from happening?
45:02
So let's put a positive vision for the future, which is you matter because you're creating
45:06
the image of God, and we have to fight for that right no matter what.
45:11
That is such a better vision of the future.
45:13
And we could extrapolate that on any, any single issue, people watching, you take any
45:19
issue you wanted, political issue, ethics, education, crime, you name it.
45:25
We are the ones who have a positive vision for the future that is static, meaning that
45:29
our feet are in concrete, and it's not going to change because somebody on the Twitter
45:33
is yells at us next week, and says a whole brand new thing that we have to change.
45:38
No, no, we are the ones who are feet in concrete.
45:40
We should be the ones presenting that positive view of the future.
45:44
Well, and it's also your temptation to the Christians out there listening to this is
45:47
going to be to moderate your position to okay, let's get a little bit closer to the center
45:52
because somehow you've gotten this idea that every single subject matter has a moderate
45:57
center position.
45:58
Absolutely.
45:59
I ask you since we're talking about the abortion subject is what is the middle of the road
46:03
position on abortion?
46:04
Now what some people will say is, okay, you know, we need to have exceptions for rape,
46:09
incest, health of the mother, and a certain time period because, you know, let's make
46:13
12 weeks to cut off because before that, or after that, it gets icky.
46:17
But the reality of abortion is the further you go on in the pregnancy, the abortion is
46:21
the same.
46:22
It's just dirtier.
46:23
It's just messier.
46:24
There's just more blood and tissue that you have to pull out of the mother.
46:27
And so at the end of the day, that's why I ask people, what is the moderate position
46:30
on abortion?
46:31
Because in reality, they think it's multifaceted, but it's actually not its binary.
46:34
It's either a life worthy of protection, or it's not, or it's just, you know, it's it
46:40
is the body of the body being intellectually honest, which people don't want to be.
46:44
And so what I don't want people to hear is because obviously you and I are, our personalities
46:48
are a little bit more forward.
46:49
We like to draw straight lines and get there as quickly as possible.
46:52
That doesn't mean be a jerk.
46:53
It's not licensed to be a jerk and it's not also that you're going to open yourself
46:57
up to all these slings and arrows, but you're in a position that is the morally righteous
47:02
position.
47:03
So you shouldn't equivocate and you shouldn't try to die the death of a thousand qualifications.
47:07
Well, what about this?
47:08
And well, well, let me talk about that.
47:09
Well, well, it's either an image bearer of God or it's not.
47:14
It's either worthy of our protection or it's not.
47:17
And if you want to argue from a biblical foundation, great.
47:20
If you want to argue only using medicine and science and all that, great.
47:23
You can do it either way.
47:25
But again, we don't even know we're valuable except the fact that God basically told us
47:31
that this general revelation that we are of value and theologically, we know that's
47:35
because we were made in the image of God.
47:37
And so it's a very serious thing if you shed the blood of an innocent, you know, image
47:42
bearer and like, so that's the thing to encourage these people is like, there are some positions
47:46
like there's not a binary thing on tax policy or on immigration or all these different things
47:51
like those are good to have with debates, but like the transgenderism thing, the abortion
47:55
thing, like these are not positions where moderate is an option.
47:58
If you're going to be a Bible believing Christian.
48:00
Yeah, I think that what's happened, I think that a lot of people in the Christian world
48:05
feel like, and I understand where they're coming from.
48:09
And I know that we all get this that what they feel is this.
48:13
I don't like the way Christians have come across.
48:17
That's what they feel like.
48:18
I don't think that we, I just think that we come across me.
48:20
I think that we come across that and they think I'm going to be the one that can come
48:25
across well.
48:27
They're going to thread the needle.
48:28
I'm the one that's going to thread the needle.
48:30
And if I use enough words and I use enough gestures and I use enough like super breathy
48:37
sentences, breathy sentences, they think that they are going to convince people that there's
48:42
a third way.
48:44
And there isn't a third way that's the thing.
48:47
And in the end, what ends up happening a lot of the times, eventually, the other side will
48:53
end up finally getting mad because you've been making me think there's a third way,
48:58
but you don't actually believe in the third way, but you've been making me feel that because
49:03
it made you feel better that you were the one empathizing, right?
49:07
And so there isn't a third way, but all of this goes together, something that you talk
49:13
on your show a lot about, which I think is one of your forties, is also that we have
49:19
a positive vision.
49:22
It's kind of difficult to only talk about the abortion issue as if it's completely separate
49:29
from the just sex in general, sex, sex trafficking, pornography.
49:37
Is there even meaning in sex or is it just an animalistic thing that we do?
49:41
We just got to go have sex, that's the way it's got to be.
49:44
And no, there is a design for all of these things.
49:49
And I think what happened with Christianity, it just seems to me that the church decided
49:53
to let certain things go, sort of like, hey, we've already lost the battle on premarital
49:58
sex, so let's don't talk about that anymore.
50:01
Hey, we lost the battle on divorce.
50:04
Let's don't talk about that anymore.
50:05
We lost the battle on pornography, even a lot of Christian pastors watch the robbery
50:09
now.
50:10
We lost the battle on all of that, so we're not going to talk about it, but we're going
50:13
to keep talking about abortion.
50:15
And so what I will say, and where I will try to put, what do they call it, when you try
50:22
to send it all to us.
50:23
All of the branches.
50:24
Send it all to us.
50:25
Send it all to us.
50:26
I've been reading the Bible to us.
50:27
It's the fig tree.
50:28
That's right.
50:29
The olive branch, what I hear from a lot of my non-Christian friends, or even people who
50:34
say they're Christians, but they're really very left, they say, John, your side, all you
50:39
do is harp about abortion, but you don't care about all this other stuff.
50:42
And I'm a little bit like, that's a little bit true.
50:46
There's a lot we should be talking about.
50:48
You're right.
50:49
The church shouldn't have given up on all these other things.
50:53
They are interconnected.
50:55
And what you will find is that a lot of churches will feel comfortable talking about abortion,
51:00
but not a pornography.
51:04
They'll feel comfortable talking about sex trafficking, but not pornography, but we
51:08
all know from reading something for five minutes on the interwebs that all these things are
51:13
interconnected.
51:15
And God gives us a positive vision for this.
51:17
And so what I think, once upon a time, what you would have had were men that maybe they
51:23
didn't respect women as they ought, but they at least knew they were supposed to.
51:27
So there was a shame in not protecting women.
51:30
There was a shame in knocking someone up.
51:33
There was a shame in these things.
51:35
And now we've removed all the shame, and in fact, a lot of churches are saying, you're
51:39
not supposed to feel any shame over anything ever, which isn't true.
51:43
And now that the shame is gone, guys are like, well, I don't need to pretend that I'm supposed
51:47
to do this thing, which once more, why do we know that men are supposed to protect women
51:53
from the Christian worldview?
51:55
Well, it's the right ordering of morality.
51:56
It's the right ordering.
51:57
Yes, right.
51:58
Why do we know these things?
51:59
So earlier this year, I had Brittany Della Moore on my show.
52:02
She used to be a porn star for seven years, very, very famous porn star.
52:06
And now she's a Christian minister and like helping get women out of it.
52:09
And part of the reason that she talks about it, she's like, oh, the thing that most men
52:12
that are masturbating, looking at these women or these images or something like that, most
52:16
of them don't realize a lot of those women are being trafficked.
52:19
And so it's like for her, she had a pimp.
52:21
And so she had X amount of dollars that she had to produce daily.
52:24
And so if she shot some scenes, she would make some money.
52:27
If she didn't make enough money shooting scenes, she had to go perform sexual acts for money
52:31
on the street, right?
52:32
Because her pimp said, this is your amount that you have to get to me per day and there's
52:35
no rollover from day to day.
52:37
And it's like, that should change your outlook when you're watching someone that you think
52:40
is there because, you know, they want to live their sexually liberated life and have, you
52:46
know, this liberty and style of operating, it's like, no, that person is being forced
52:49
to be there.
52:50
They may have thought it was their option when they got in when they were 18 or 19 years
52:53
old.
52:54
Now they're stuck.
52:55
And yes, it goes into trafficking and goes into all these other different areas.
52:58
But the reality of it is, is there's a right ordering of these things for our flourishing
53:02
and for our enjoyment and for our glory?
53:04
Like I talked to people, obviously, like the sexual act, there are certain things that
53:07
are a part of that physiologically that serve no other purpose to your body other than to
53:11
make you feel good.
53:12
But a lot of people don't talk about this or think about this.
53:15
But when you eat food and enjoy it, that's because God gave you taste buds.
53:19
And like, that is an amazing thing that when you eat something, it tastes a certain way
53:23
and makes you feel a certain way.
53:25
Now the atheist would say, well, oh, yeah, that's an evolutionary outcome.
53:28
Obviously you want to seek out these things.
53:31
Okay.
53:32
Well, then when we bio hacked to make to make Doritos more valuable, you know, then then
53:35
broccoli, it's like what were we doing?
53:37
Were we messing up, you know, what what Darwin would say, but I don't want to get too too
53:40
far out in the weeds here.
53:42
The thing that people have to realize and bring themselves back to is there is an objective
53:46
morality from which they need to base their decision making in their life.
53:50
But it's what we were talking about earlier, John, the church, just we'll just use it, you
53:54
know, as a macro term has accepted the position of being downstream from culture.
53:59
And so culture said divorce isn't that big a deal.
54:03
So the church started saying divorce wasn't that big a deal.
54:05
Oh, yeah.
54:06
The culture says adultery is not really a big deal pre rental or sex is not really a big
54:09
deal.
54:10
And then it was homosexuality is not really a big deal.
54:12
Like eventually it'll be polyamory is not really that big of a deal.
54:15
And there will be these mindless sheep pastors inside Christian them that will go along to
54:21
get along with all these other different places.
54:22
And when it's when you sell off your moral position, like I remember when the church in
54:26
Ireland, the Catholic church in Ireland, when abortion became legal in Ireland, people
54:30
were like, where's the Catholic church?
54:32
It's like they were too busy hiding the rape of boys to to worry about holding their moral
54:37
position in that society.
54:38
And so the Irish people had no stomach for these, you know, priests that were coming out
54:42
saying, yeah, we shouldn't kill babies.
54:44
It's like, aren't you raping boys?
54:46
And then they just like naval gaze and then walked walked away from the fight.
54:50
And again, it's like, we're selling little parts of our Christian morality, little by
54:54
little generation after generation.
54:56
And then we look up at some point, perhaps 2023 and we realize, Oh crap, this is a position
55:00
we don't really want to be in, like this isn't a world that's sustainable in the long
55:03
term.
55:04
Yeah, I think that's right.
55:06
And I think that that some something really something really nefarious happened as well
55:13
over the, I think, I'd say probably early 2000s to now in church culture, which has been that
55:20
we are not counter culture, because what you're saying is this, we're supposed to be counter
55:24
cultural, we're supposed to be holding the line on things that, that the world, they're
55:29
unpopular to the world.
55:31
Now the truth is, is that the things that the world are going to try to do, well, they
55:34
eventually fail and they go really, really poorly.
55:38
And it should be us being like, we've been saying that because God's way works.
55:42
Right.
55:43
And you can change it and it's going to go really badly.
55:46
God's way is better and we should be holding the line.
55:49
That would be counter cultural.
55:51
But something really nefarious happened in which we started saying, okay, whatever the
55:56
world says is popular, we need to say, hey, we kind of agree with that so that they know
56:01
we love them.
56:03
And then we call that being counter cultural because it's against the old quote unquote
56:08
legalism of the old or the fundamentalists of the old. And so what you end up having
56:13
is people like, hey, we're doing counter cultural ministry. And I look, I'm like, no, you're
56:17
not. You're saying exactly, I even feel like I don't want to be too rude, but I feel like
56:23
there's a lot of Christian organizations. And I don't want to say everything that the gospel
56:30
coalition does is like the gospel coalition does some good says, they have some good things
56:34
and they have some things that are exactly like what I just said. We're holding a counter.
56:39
Here's what they did in 2020. We're holding a counter cultural position because because
56:44
we need to show the world we love them. So everybody needs to get a vaccine. I'm like,
56:50
that's not counter cultural. You're saying exactly what Dr. Fauci told you to say. That's
56:55
not counter cultural. I don't care if you get a vaccine or not. I'm just saying it's not
56:58
a counter cultural position. We need to counter cultural and keep our churches close. So what
57:03
what they mean is counter church culture. Right. They are Orthodoxy counter Orthodoxy, but
57:10
they're calling it counter cultural. It's actually the opposite. So we need to be the
57:14
ones to stand up and say, we are going to be counter cultural. Look, not for the sake
57:20
of being against if the culture is right, if the culture lines up with the word of God,
57:24
when I'm be against that, but we need to line up with the word of God, not having the moral
57:29
clarity that God's way is going to work. You're going to find that out in the, for instance,
57:36
it's not possible, but I mean, I don't know the future, but it's not possible to build
57:41
a society denying that there is a difference between men and women. Right. It's it can't
57:48
possibly last. I mean, could it maybe? Maybe we're going down full on apocalypse. I don't
57:55
know, but but you can't you can't thrive that way. Eventually you will end up in mass chaos.
58:02
Right. And so right now we're all deathly afraid because you're going to get canceled.
58:08
If you say something, you might lose your job. There are some real consequences to saying
58:13
no to this sort of madness right now. People and you get called a hater. Oh, yeah, but
58:20
we know we're not actually hating people. We're loving people because God's way works.
58:26
That's not God's created order. It's not going to work. And eventually it will collapse. And
58:31
so I think an encouraging Christians again, which this isn't what we plan on talking
58:35
about. We just ended up hitting it over and over. We were playing something completely
58:39
different than this, but I think it's for Christians have moral clarity beyond the offense. God's
58:44
way works. And it's a way to warn people of where this is going to lead to whether or
58:50
not they ever come to Jesus or not. We want people's lives to not be terrible. We want
58:54
them to enjoy life. We don't want to end up seeing America in destruction, even if they
58:59
don't come to Christ. That's where this is headed. When you don't want to be in a position
59:04
where you're seen as loving by the culture, but you're actually being hateful. Like so
59:08
you would rather be seen as being hateful, but actually be loving. And so I think about
59:13
this in the context of critical race theory, CRT, something you've talked about a lot on
59:16
your show, same thing on my show, you have all these, you know, high minded, highfalutin,
59:21
you know, Christian pastors and theologians that are like, you know, we're just going
59:25
to use critical race theory as a lens through which to understand the plight of people of
59:29
color in this country. Now, just inherent in that one statement is a bunch of presuppositions
59:33
that I don't think that you want to make. But the way that I would say it is like, if
59:37
you were to say Christianity is like a cake, and it's the perfect cake because it's a perfect
59:42
world view. It's the perfect way to look at humanity and all those types of things. And
59:46
so it's like, great, I've made this cake. Oh, hey, John, before you get a piece of this,
59:50
I put one teaspoon of diarrhea in the mix of this cake. But it's just a little bit like
59:55
it's just just a tiny little bit. The cake is fine, though. Can I go ahead and get you
59:59
a piece? The answer to anybody that has a brain is going to be absolutely not. And so
1:00:04
we keep bringing these little teaspoons of diarrhea from culture. And it's, it's critical
1:00:09
race theory. And it's a queer theory. And it's all these kinds of Marxist ideas. And
1:00:14
I know you're doing a lot of thinking and writing on those subject matters right now.
1:00:17
But it's like, it's fruit of the poisonous tree in legal circumstances. It's like, okay,
1:00:23
you got this evidence under bad auspices. And so all the evidence that came off of this,
1:00:29
it's rude to the poisonous tree, we're not going to allow it to be used. But we get to
1:00:33
critical race theory. And we don't discuss that it comes from critical theory, that it
1:00:37
comes from the Frankfurt School, that it comes from Carl Marx, which comes from Satan's
1:00:40
butthole, which comes from the pits of hell. Like, that's where this ideology comes from.
1:00:44
And it wasn't being filtered down and cleansed by the time it got to you. It didn't go through
1:00:49
a bunch, a bunch of Brita filters. It was just as nefarious the whole way. It just looked
1:00:54
less nefarious. Because people were like, Oh, yeah, Marxism, communism. That's crazy.
1:00:59
By the way, your kids are white. So their oppressors were going to put them on the side
1:01:04
of the fifth grade classroom. They're the people, the kids of color are going to be
1:01:07
on this side. And then we're going to have a Maoist struggle session. It's the exact
1:01:11
same ideology, which is it just feels less like invasive, and less damaging. And so that's
1:01:17
just kind of the way we act. And we're like, yeah, yeah, sure. This will go great.
1:01:19
I think that's right. It poisons the way you think, you know, so you like just this
1:01:23
week, you know, I'm sure you saw Colin Kaepernick is saying how is so Colin Kaepernick is adopted
1:01:31
by white parents. And he's like, I mean, I know they love me, but there was all these
1:01:35
problematic things, these racist things, you know, I'm listening to it. And so apparently,
1:01:40
so he wanted to put his hair into cornrows, right? And his white parents were like, you
1:01:44
can't do that like a thug. And he's talking about how racist it was. And I'm just thinking,
1:01:49
you know, how many times my dad told me that I looked like a thug, you know, my white
1:01:55
dad, you obviously. But what it does is it, when you put these, as they say, it's a way
1:02:01
it's an analytical tool, they say it's a lens to understand culture. You're right. It is
1:02:06
a lens that distorts everything in your life, even the good things in your life, like not
1:02:13
having to grow up without parents. That's a really good thing. You didn't have to grow
1:02:17
up with what so I made a huge sacrifice to adopt you into their family as one of their
1:02:24
own. Right. And this isn't, this is like such a, this is so insane. It's such a picture
1:02:29
of a family that had two kids die. Yeah. And after those kids passed away, they adopted
1:02:36
Colin Kaepernick because they felt avoid in their family that they feel they filled with
1:02:40
this child that was half white, half black had been abandoned by his father and then his
1:02:44
mother gave him up for adoption. And thank God she gave birth to the, that young man.
1:02:50
I think he has some major problems that he needs to deal with. But that's the thing. It's
1:02:53
like so that he can sell his new graphic novel. He's willing to throw under the bus, his parents
1:02:58
that literally saved his life. Like he could be dead in jail or he could be a CEO, but
1:03:05
he ended up being a world renowned football player and he tens of millions of dollars
1:03:09
before he became the, you know, the czar of victimhood. And so, but yeah, it's like that's
1:03:14
where we are as a culture. It's it's like anything to make a buck and he will whore himself
1:03:18
out for whatever thing he needs to do. And we live in a culture where your currency is
1:03:23
oppression, your currency is victimhood. And so again, if you're going to look, I love
1:03:28
the way that you said that. It's like, yes, it's a lens, but it's a lens that distorts.
1:03:31
And if you use that as a lens, if critical race theory is your lens, everything is a
1:03:37
nail and hear the hammers. Yeah. Everything you see is from that perspective. Rather
1:03:43
than I was adopted, that was, that's amazing. I'm sure I would not be here had and I've
1:03:49
been adopted. I would not be making this money. I would not have these talent or I wouldn't
1:03:53
have been able to learn how to use these talents, you know, whatever you want to say that.
1:03:58
It's a way to change the things that you've been through, you know, and I, people know
1:04:03
my testimony. I, I make jokes about my testimony, which is that, you know, my mom thought that
1:04:10
Christian rock music was literally the most demonic thing the devil ever did on planet
1:04:15
earth. You know, thought on her deathbed was nervous about me. I feel like Lucifer is
1:04:23
going to use John me in the earth to take people out of the kingdom. He's got to stay
1:04:29
away from rock music. I mean, I kind of make jokes about it because I don't see myself
1:04:35
through a lens of, yeah, a victimhood and my mom wanted all this and I showed her, no,
1:04:40
I would not be born again if it were not for my mom. Right. I mean, and, and I laugh about
1:04:46
it. I say, my mom loved me. I, it, it just depends on the way you look at it. So yes,
1:04:51
what we've done is we put all these lenses over the way we read the scriptures now. And
1:04:57
so social justice, of course, is one of those things, victimhood, all the things we're talking
1:05:03
about, sexuality. That's the other thing. Christians now feel like we had to feel really terrible
1:05:08
about talking about, you know, sexuality because it, it rules us as well. People didn't think
1:05:15
that before Freud. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't the defining factor of your life. That
1:05:23
is an unreality. It's an untruth. The Bible, the Bible gives us plans for what our identity,
1:05:32
who we are, why we are here. Why did you make me like this? You know, so I just think it's
1:05:37
a great encouragement to keep reminding Christians as you read the Bible, take all those filters
1:05:42
off. All this up the world is telling you, you have to do. And, and, and for the pastors
1:05:48
just saying, no, we really do need to use those filters so we can understand the world. I think
1:05:53
that is, I think it's nefarious. I really do.
1:05:57
Well, we've used the word reverence quite a bit and we were using it in the context earlier
1:06:00
of like, you know, being reverent of God, but we don't have a reverence of scripture.
1:06:04
So the last time I was in Tulsa, I was here about three or four weeks ago, hanging out
1:06:08
with Jordan Peterson because he came here to, to do a speech. And I was able to hang out
1:06:12
with him a little bit after his show and those different things. And I hate showing up empty
1:06:15
handed. So I, I got him a Bible. It's a verse, verse by verse reference Bible. Okay. So
1:06:22
he's talked about for years how the Bible is the most hyperlinked and he doesn't even
1:06:25
call it a book. He says the Bible's on a book. It's a library, but he's like, it's the most
1:06:28
hyperlinked document in history. This refers to that, which refers to these three things
1:06:32
and all that. And so I was like, I'm going to get him a physical representation of that.
1:06:37
So it's a verse by verse reference Bible. Every reference is there in the, the notes
1:06:42
in the bottom of every page. I got his name put on it, like Jordan, be Peterson. And you've
1:06:47
got it, you know, bounding. And I gave it to him as a gift. But it was like, when I explained
1:06:51
it to him, it's like you have a tremendous reverence for the scripture. And we didn't
1:06:53
get into what do you think about Jesus? Like we didn't get into that. But it's like, he
1:06:58
has a hunger and reverence for the scripture that a lot of purported Christians don't have.
1:07:02
And I think it would be fair to say that he is a non Christian. I don't think he believes
1:07:05
that it's Jesus's blood that can save him from eternal damnation. But he's got something
1:07:11
that we can really learn from because fast forward a few weeks later, I'm preaching at
1:07:16
a, you know, max security prison up in Pennsylvania. And I'm preaching to men that have no hope,
1:07:22
if you think about it in earthly terms, these are men that are never going to see the outside
1:07:26
of these walls of this prison. These are rapists, gangbangers, murderers, pedophiles, like the
1:07:32
worst of the worst. There's a reason why we separate them off from society. But I, like
1:07:35
I told those guys, it's like you can be under lock and key, but still be free. There's a
1:07:40
lot of dudes walking around, I hear that are free to drive and go where they please. But
1:07:43
they're, they're chained up like y'all, y'all crossed the lines of man, but we've all crossed
1:07:49
the lines of God. And in that way, we are brothers. And it's just like, but where do you even
1:07:53
get an idea like that? We get it from reading the scripture rightly and soberly. And so
1:07:59
I have a friend of mine who's been a Christian, very, very smart guy in business, but he's
1:08:02
only been a Christian for a few years. So he doesn't read the Bible and go, well, I wonder
1:08:07
what this means. And well, I grew up charismatic or well, I grew up Southern Baptist or well,
1:08:10
I grew up church Christ. So it kind of actually means this. He just reads it and goes, well,
1:08:13
I guess that's what we're supposed to do. Right. Like when people become Christians in North
1:08:17
Korea or Nigeria or Iraq or whatever, they're just reading and going like, well, I guess
1:08:21
this is what we're supposed to do. Not a whole lot of nuance. Like it just kind of is what
1:08:24
it is. But we as Westernized Americans that have been marinated in this Judeo Christian
1:08:28
culture for all this, like the time we think that we're smarter than what the book says.
1:08:32
You know, I love what you said about having reverence for God and reverence for the scriptures.
1:08:38
And I think that we both agree that you can't have, we believe, biblically, that you cannot
1:08:44
have reverence for God without reverence for the scriptures. Right. And I think that a
1:08:49
lot of Christians think that today. And I think it's a plague in the American church.
1:08:55
It's really bad. I spoke with somebody just last week. We had a long conversation about
1:09:00
this. And I'm just saying, I'm warning, I'm saying, look, have you heard the term red
1:09:04
letter Christianity? Yep. Okay. That's a newer terminology for me to learn within the last
1:09:09
year. I'd never heard it said that way, but I understood what it meant because I've seen
1:09:13
it for people, anybody watching what we're basically saying is it's this sort of what
1:09:18
it's doing. It's putting a hierarchy on the, on the scriptures. It's saying, whatever
1:09:22
Jesus said, which we might call the red letters, the words of Jesus are then basically that's
1:09:27
what we care about. The rest of the Bible is sort of subordinate to those words. And
1:09:31
rather than arguing about the Bible, arguing about morality and is that really what the
1:09:37
law of God says, we don't need to know about that. So just, just be like Jesus. It's in
1:09:41
the red letters. He was nice to people. He loved people. He fed the poor. So basically
1:09:45
what they're saying is is Jesus was a socialist basically. Jesus was a nice socialist. They
1:09:51
went around feeding everybody and never said anything mean because he's, he's not the
1:09:55
line Judah. He's only the lamb, right? He's Mr. Nice Pants. And so red letter Christianity
1:10:01
does not have a reverence for scriptures. It has a reverence for their version of this
1:10:06
nice Jesus in my upcoming book. I call him wimpy Jesus. He's not true Jesus. He's wimpy
1:10:12
Jesus. It's this other thing. And when we do that, we're basically changing who Jesus
1:10:18
is and you're not having reverence for the word of God. So it's the, it's the separation
1:10:23
of this idea of Christ from the word of God is not good. But the reason I think it's getting
1:10:29
so popular now is because that is, that is a way to still be a Christian and not be hated
1:10:35
by the world because the world, we're living in a time where it's popular to be a, I don't
1:10:40
want to, I'm not trying to be pejorative, but to be a socialist, to be some version of
1:10:44
socialist. Sure. Some kind of commie or one, one way or the other, to be a socialist,
1:10:49
to be sort of a pacifist, to be a social justice warrior, to want to sell all your things and
1:10:55
give it all to the poor. Well, those are just the things that are popular in culture right
1:10:59
now. And people, well, Jesus was kind of like that too. So we think we found a workaround
1:11:05
to making, we found a workaround for making the world not hate us. We're just going to
1:11:09
say everything you say and say, but that's what Jesus is like. And it's, it's not actually
1:11:14
going to work. And what you're going to find is that, is that society is going to get worse
1:11:19
and worse and worse because the Bible isn't just the red letters. All of scripture is
1:11:25
God breathed and scripture gives us plans for how to build not just your life, not just
1:11:30
your family, but how to build societies, how to build civilizations. And I think that Jordan
1:11:35
Peterson, you know, may not, may not be saved, but I think that what he sees in the Bible,
1:11:41
one of many things he sees in the Bible seems to be this is kind of a manual on how we can
1:11:46
build salvation, build civilization civilizations. I think he sees that, which is ironic because
1:11:53
a lot of Christians don't see it as that when he comes from a secular perspective and point
1:11:57
of view, and he's bringing that into his study of the scripture, which is crazy that he has
1:12:00
that amount of reverence. But as I've said before, I think he is the most important non-Christian
1:12:04
to Christian them alive today because of the people that are drawn to him that he is pointing
1:12:08
towards the father, even though he's doing it absolutely. But going back to kind of the
1:12:11
red letter Christian thing, I love what Vodie Bockam said about that. He goes, guys, if you
1:12:15
were a Trinitarian, if you believe in God, the father, God, son, and God, the Holy Spirit,
1:12:21
then there are no red letters. They're all red, or there's not some red, some black,
1:12:25
they're all red. Like they're all the words of God because you're talking about the triune
1:12:29
God, God in three persons. And so that's another thing that comes from a lack of biblical knowledge,
1:12:36
not deep theological knowledge and all those types of things, just basic Bible 101, that
1:12:43
the reason why they started doing red letter Bibles is so as you were referencing the certain
1:12:47
pages, it was easier to find when you were in the middle of a parable because a pastor
1:12:51
may be like, all right, turn to this and that random passage. And that passage is in the
1:12:56
middle of a long thing that Jesus is saying as being recorded in one of the gospels. And
1:13:01
so they were making it easier for you to reference the same thing about the section heads and
1:13:06
even verses and chapters. That's not how these things were written down. Like those things
1:13:10
were added hundreds and hundreds of years later. And they did that so that it would
1:13:14
be helpful to you. And now we're building our theology off of headings and red letters
1:13:20
and red ink versus black ink. And it's like, no, no, no, no, we need to go back to what
1:13:23
this is. That's why I love what Jordan Peterson says. This is not a book. This is a library.
1:13:28
They bound it together for your convenience, right? They put it on one app on your phone
1:13:34
for your convenience. But guess what? If you don't read it, if you just assume that you
1:13:39
know what it says because you watch veggie tales as a child, like then you're, you're
1:13:43
getting part of the story, but you're not getting all of it.
1:13:45
Yeah. I think that how I feel about red letter Christianity, I think they should call it
1:13:51
some of the red letter Christianity, because the truth is, is they don't even like all
1:13:55
the red letter, not only they even love all the Bible, they don't even love all the red
1:13:59
letters.
1:14:00
Because they'll say, you know, hey, I looked at the red letters and I never saw the word
1:14:03
gay. I never saw the word homosexual. I never saw the word abortion. So Jesus is okay with
1:14:08
all of those things. It's like, well, do you know, it was recorded that he used the word
1:14:12
like poor Naya? Well, he didn't use it because he was speaking Aramaic, but it was written
1:14:15
down as poor Naya. Well, guess what? In that time period, that meant any sex out of the
1:14:19
covenantal relationship between one man and one woman before God for life. That's what
1:14:23
it meant. Like, so that would have included homosexuality, you know, B.C. outy like polyamory
1:14:29
would have included all those things. But if you're a moron, or if you're like, you only
1:14:33
look at the first level of any analysis, you do univariate analysis, you're going to conclude
1:14:37
like, Oh, Jesus is totally fine with my lifestyle, which isn't it so funny? All agrees with the
1:14:43
secular leftist agenda. They're never going to come to a position that is at odds with
1:14:52
the culture. And that would be me. That should be your first clue that this might have been
1:14:58
that good. Now, one of the things I wrote in my first book, this just I find ironic is
1:15:04
that when I was reading the Bible as a young person, like for myself, when I was old up
1:15:08
to read, high school was at 1415 16, I'm reading the Bible for myself. I was kind of like,
1:15:17
I don't think Jesus is actually near as nice as what everyone else is saying. I actually
1:15:22
don't think he's uber friendly. I mean, sometimes I'm like, he could have more patience. I found
1:15:28
his parables to be sort of like, Will you please tell me what you're trying to say? You're
1:15:32
talking in riddles. Tell me what you're trying to say. Or somebody comes up and says, Hey,
1:15:38
I want to follow you, but I got to bury my father first. And Jesus like let the dead
1:15:43
bury their own dead. I mean, he said these things. I remember thinking, I know God is
1:15:47
good and Jesus was nice, but he's a friend of sinners. But this Jesus that I'm reading
1:15:52
about doesn't sound near as nice as what everybody is. So sometimes I think what Jesus
1:15:57
are these people reading Jesus that made the whip. No, they're not reading. That's a problem.
1:16:03
Some of the red letters, right? Yeah, there is a lot of them. Well, like, because when
1:16:06
you read about, because if you actually read the Bible, no little thing about it, we think
1:16:09
that Jesus cleared the tip of once. And we cleared it twice. When you look at the timelines
1:16:13
of when those are described in the gospels, one is roughly, you know, a little bit after
1:16:18
his first miracle, where he turned water into wine. And his last one was after he arrived
1:16:23
back in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. And so he did that twice premeditated righteous
1:16:28
violent aggression, right? Clearing out the temple of not just the animals, but all the
1:16:32
people and inherently violent act. But that's the thing is you don't get wimpy hippie Jesus.
1:16:37
If you actually read the Bible and read the New Testament, read the gospel accounts, and
1:16:41
you don't read it as if you're reading like Jesus is a spiritual robot. But if you think
1:16:46
about that's why I think, you know, and a lot of people hate the chosen, but a thing like
1:16:49
the chosen shows you that Jesus was a human with a personality surrounded by humans with
1:16:54
personalities, that they were probably joking around the people around him probably said
1:16:58
things that were rude. He had to correct some things. But then I've said a lot of incendiary
1:17:02
things in my life. And I know you have to. We've never been marched to the edge of town
1:17:06
to a cliff where somebody was going to throw us off because of words that we said, but
1:17:09
Jesus did that. He made people feel feelings like that. Call people broods of vipers and
1:17:15
these horrifically terrible things that don't sound very Christ like they sound really rude
1:17:20
and really judgmental and really aggressive. And so to these go on to get along I want
1:17:24
to be known for what I'm for not when I'm against Christians. I'm like, have you read
1:17:28
the gospels lately? Because I think your brain tends to remember the nice stuff and forget
1:17:33
all the stuff that's a little bit hard to square with your ideology that Jesus was just
1:17:38
this nice hippie guy.
1:17:40
He made me think of we should do a version of a Rod Stewart and have you read the gospels
1:17:46
lately? I don't think I want to do that version, but like I can do the tambourine in the background
1:17:51
or something like that. I'll let you handle the vocals of that. People watching might
1:17:57
not even know that. I mean, you said kids are watching and here you are, like singing
1:18:00
a song that was released 40 years ago. Who knows? Good gracious. All right. So as we're
1:18:06
in and up, tell us what you're up to, man. What do you want to?
1:18:10
So I've got some awesome stuff potentially coming to the fore. You know, a lot of guys
1:18:15
in my audience know this, but I always feel a little bit weird asking for prayers. I don't
1:18:18
know why, but I've got a vocal court surgery coming up here in the next month or so. And
1:18:22
so that doesn't put what we're doing on pause, but it's like, I've got a lot of opportunities
1:18:26
to expand the offerings with our show and to expand into other speaking engagements and
1:18:30
stuff like that. It's gonna be hard to do if I can't talk. And so gonna, you know, that's
1:18:34
happening beginning April. So I would appreciate you guys's prayers and things on that. But
1:18:38
ultimately, John, like a daunted life, as I say all the time, we're here to equipment
1:18:42
and push back darkness. I don't exactly know what that means in practice fully, right?
1:18:48
I can, I can see a little bit into the future and kind of what that looks like. You know,
1:18:51
it looks like, you know, having, you know, me being on other shows talking about that
1:18:55
philosophically, people coming to my show to kind of listen through and do those things.
1:19:00
But there needs to be a revolution that happens in the church. And you know, we're not going
1:19:03
to open up this can of worms now. But you know, a lot of men's minute, a lot of churches
1:19:08
try to focus on men's ministry, if they do anything for men at all, but they're not focusing
1:19:13
on making their churches man friendly. Right. So they're throwing events. They're, they're
1:19:18
maybe doing some sort of promise keepers type thing, but they're not creating actual change
1:19:23
with the men and their flock. And so a lot of what we're doing is like, yeah, I'll come
1:19:26
and speak at your men's event and I'll come yell at your guys for you since you don't
1:19:29
want to do it. And like I'll do all that kind of stuff. But it's almost like shifting the
1:19:33
focus to how can we make churches more man friendly in the sermon content, in the opportunities
1:19:39
for engagement and volunteerism in the music and all that. And so that's, that's kind of
1:19:45
where we're moving towards. But yeah, I'll still be doing the podcast. You know, I spoke
1:19:48
at a prison here recently, like I mentioned, so being able to do some more stuff like that.
1:19:52
But that's ultimately what we got going on. How about you? You're about to wrap up this
1:19:55
tour. And then what are you going right into the next one?
1:19:58
Yeah, so we're, we got about another two weeks on this run. And after that, we head to Europe.
1:20:04
So we're getting, we're very, very busy right now. And I think what's going on with me,
1:20:10
what I sense going on. And of course, I don't know this is, if this is for sure true, it's
1:20:15
what I sense seems to me that we're beginning to see a little bit of good news in the culture
1:20:21
right now. And a little bit of a shift towards people wanting to get along. And I think that's
1:20:27
a really good thing. Meaning that we don't have to, that we, they don't want to cancel
1:20:34
people quite as much. They're a little bit like, okay, maybe, maybe we were freaking
1:20:38
out a little bit too much. Now we obviously have a lot of, you know, a lot of the COVID
1:20:42
stuff has come out. People are like, okay, maybe we're wrong about that. You know, there's
1:20:47
a lot of things coming to life. Some people, the people that watch Cooper's up and on life
1:20:53
aren't surprised. But a lot of other people are kind of surprised like, Oh my gosh, the
1:20:56
media's been lying to us. Yeah, there are a bunch of commies. But because they're, they're
1:21:01
realizing that people are getting a little softer. And what I'm excited about personally,
1:21:07
is that we do live in a pluralistic country. And I want, I don't mind when people disagree
1:21:13
with me. I've got almost everybody that works for me is not a Christian is on the left is
1:21:22
pro choice. And it doesn't bother me. Like we talk about these, they won't hate each
1:21:27
other. And I like that. And I think that's where I'm at is where can we say real things
1:21:33
that we believe like we've said on the show today, things that we're really passionate
1:21:36
about because it's because we believe it's a moral conviction from a static belief in
1:21:43
the word of God that never changes. Can we say that without our opponents who are supposed
1:21:48
to be the ones of tolerance, wanting to fire it, get us kicked off of social media kicked
1:21:53
off of YouTube and defund it and make me lose my job. You know, can we go back to a time
1:21:58
when we can say, I know that you might disagree with this, we can have some big fights, but
1:22:03
we can live, we can live life together. I think that there's a tiny bits of good things happening.
1:22:10
And that's where I'm passionate about that. And so I'm glad to be back on the road. Because
1:22:13
I'm touring with a bunch of people who don't believe the same things I believe, who are
1:22:17
not Christians on this tour and other, and other tours we do. And I love it because you
1:22:21
get to be normal people and have meals with people that might be of a different religion,
1:22:28
might not be religious at all, live life together. And a lot of times this conversation is great
1:22:32
because people, they want to, I'm sure it's this got to be the same for your life. It's
1:22:38
got to be the same for people watching. When you are a family man and you are faithful
1:22:44
to your spouse, women watching them, you are faithful to your husbands, and you raise
1:22:50
up kids that can have conversations with adults, they don't even have to have amazing conversations.
1:22:58
Your friends will be like, what have you done? How is this possible? How is it possible that
1:23:04
you've raised kids that can have conversations that seem to even love their parents? How
1:23:08
can you say faithful to your husband? How can you say faithfully? It's such a, because
1:23:13
God's way works. That's a counterculture we were talking about? That's countercultural.
1:23:17
God's way works. And that's why we say no to these other things. So that's kind of what
1:23:23
I'm kind of quite passionate about. And I feel that I'm hopeful. I don't want to say
1:23:29
I think we're headed there, but a few things have happened that maybe maybe just maybe
1:23:34
we're headed to a place where we can still say things that might be incendiary, they might
1:23:39
be volatile, but other people might be like, I hear you, not trying to get you canceled
1:23:44
because you said it. Right. Now let's have a conversation.
1:23:47
So another thing is you keep talking about this supposed book that you're writing. Can
1:23:52
you give us an idea of when we can actually read this thing because you keep teeing it
1:23:55
up? But it's like, I don't, I don't want to think about it. I want to read it. I want
1:23:59
into my hands. I'm going to say this never going to be. Yeah. Can we actually like, can
1:24:02
you give me a date? Can you give me a time, a rough time period?
1:24:06
We were hoping July is still what I'm hoping, July 4th. That's the day I want to release
1:24:12
it. Okay. Yeah. You know, and that's the cover that would be that would be appropriate
1:24:17
time, appropriate time for it. And it's just required. I got to be honest. I think that
1:24:24
some of the changes we're making are really good. But I think that part of what's happening
1:24:30
is that culture is changing so very quickly that I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is a little
1:24:35
dated from a month ago, you know, because things are like boom, boom, boom, changing.
1:24:41
And because I think we might be coming into a time when people are a little bit more open
1:24:46
to debate and maybe a little bit more open to incendiary conversations, but to debate
1:24:51
it on a, on a good faith basis, it's sort of changed a little bit of the way I want to
1:24:57
go about it. And so I'm going back and touching up, not just some of the information that
1:25:01
three weeks ago is like, Oh my gosh, now I've got to change that. You know, um, you know,
1:25:08
what, for instance, here's a good, here's a good example. One of the examples I use in
1:25:12
the book is I'm talking about the certain kinds of privileges that we give. This is
1:25:17
way off topic. No, I don't, I'll miss you. We do not have time to get him this topic.
1:25:21
Well, you can like give us a 30,000 or you're gonna get in trouble. I mean, we just need
1:25:25
a little bit now. You're excited about it. You remember this, this school teacher in
1:25:29
Canada, you're the man that dresses like a woman and he wears the big huge prosthetic
1:25:35
breast or whatever. And my point is, is that if that was a woman, it'd be disallowed. They're
1:25:41
allowing it because it's a man. And that is a different sort of form of child abuse. What
1:25:47
you're saying is, is that it's not the principle. It's that the kids shouldn't be seeing this.
1:25:53
Now there's a new principle because he's a victim. He's a victim group. And the new
1:25:56
principles, you must look at this and tell us it's okay. Yes. And he needs to express
1:26:01
it in front of children. Even though he doesn't do that in his personal life. Well, that's
1:26:05
what changed. Right. So four weeks ago, so I wrote in my book, I'm like, I said in my
1:26:10
book, I had written it makes you, it makes you wonder if he didn't dress like this at
1:26:15
home, would it be a different story? So because it makes it seem like this has to be another
1:26:21
way to sort of be a pervert in front of children. And then guess what happens? Four weeks ago,
1:26:26
we find out, nope, he doesn't dress like that at home. And I'm like, now I gotta go back
1:26:30
and change this. And it ends up taking a day of rewording things. So the book is going
1:26:35
to come out in July. But I will say today, we talked about some of the things that are
1:26:40
in that book. It is a, it is a lot of philosophy, but a positive vision for why God's way works,
1:26:47
why all these other ways are not going to work. We should be on the front line saying
1:26:51
the Bible tells us how to build civilizations. Cause the word of God is true. Yesterday's
1:26:56
saying forever. That's awesome. Well, you started this dual episode. So I guess I'll
1:27:01
do the outro. So just don't mess it up. Well, okay, well, I always say, like, keep seeking
1:27:06
the line of Judah. And I guess this is a documented, a documented Cooper life stuff. Can you do
1:27:10
a live version of your Cooper stuff? Yell that you do? Cause I can't do it. Maybe we'll let
1:27:14
that be the outro. Okay. Do it. Don't mess it up. You do yours and then I end it. I will
1:27:18
just say, you know, keep seeking the line of Judah. Mine's lame. Yours is Cooper stuff.
1:27:22
Boo. Yeah. There you go. Guys. I hope you enjoyed our split duo, Donta Cooper life stuff
1:27:30
episode. I hope that was worth your while. But before we let you go, we are going to do
1:27:33
a quick resilience boost out on Donta life. Our mission is equipping into pushback darkness
1:27:37
with content that for just spiritual, mental and physical resilience. So I've got the links
1:27:41
to the Michael Fransee stuff that I talked about at the beginning of the show, but then
1:27:44
I've also got a link to John Cooper's website, a link to the Cooper stuff podcast and also
1:27:47
a link to where you can buy his first book, awake and alive to truth. Thank you guys
1:27:52
for listening to this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate
1:27:55
and leave us a positive five star review. If you want to come speak live at your event
1:27:58
or on your podcast, you shoot me an email to info@andonta.life. That's I N F O at and
1:28:04
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1:28:07
for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your
1:28:10
way. Just go to www dot undonta.life. And as always, we want to thank the band August
1:28:15
Burns read for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast
1:28:19
is our song cutting the tides, which is off their 10th anniversary re recording of their
1:28:22
album leveler. The links are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep
1:28:28
pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking
1:28:34
the lion of Judah.
1:29:04
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