MELISSA DOUGHERTY | Happy Lies & New Thought (Ep. 758)

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0:50 This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.

0:54 I'm your host Kyle Thompson.

0:56 Let's get into it.

0:57 All right, guys.

0:58 You've got a special guest on the podcast today.

0:59 Her name is Melissa Doherty.

1:00 She is a Christian apologist, author, and YouTuber, and she's the author of the fantastic

1:04 new book, Happy Lies, How a Movement You Probably Never Heard Of, Shaped Our Self-Obsessed

1:10 World.

1:11 And so, guys, again, I read a lot of books for the show, and I've kind of toned it down

1:14 a little bit over the years, but I still read a lot of books.

1:16 I'm basically reading a book at all times.

1:18 This book is the best book I've read so far in 2025.

1:21 So it would be crazy if they didn't end up on the best books of the year list for 2025,

1:26 but I found this book to be deeply, deeply helpful, because she goes into a long description

1:31 of new thought.

1:33 And that's going to be a phrase or an ideology that some of you guys are not really familiar

1:37 with.

1:38 Perhaps you've heard of New Age and New Age is kind of the frontal assault, whereas New

1:42 Thought is kind of like the backdoor approach to a lot of these really satanic and negative

1:46 ideologies that a lot of people have bought into.

1:49 And so in this particular interview, we talk about, "Okay, well, where does this come from?"

1:52 It comes from her believing a lot of these ideologies and philosophies that she was growing

1:57 up in her life and how that kind of stemmed from her having a lot of spiritual questions

2:01 that were not met with very good answers.

2:03 And so she thought she was finding good answers in other people that were kind of more in

2:08 this new thought way of doing things.

2:10 So we talk about that disillusionment, we talk about how new thought is kind of undergirded

2:14 by some of the she calls, "Happy Lies," what all that's about, and how the most nefarious

2:18 thing about new thought being that it really, really does look and sound Christian, even

2:23 though it is theologically bankrupt.

2:26 We talk about the remedy to some of these philosophies, which it's no spoiler alert here, but having

2:31 some sort of a biblical literacy and an understanding of how we are to import ourselves based on

2:36 the Word of God and not just pragmatic teachings from self professed gurus online.

2:41 How this is really a metaphysical thing, how a definition and redefinition is big inside

2:46 of this group.

2:47 Again, a lot of you have heard my truth about moral relativism, but that has a huge bit

2:52 to do with new thought as well.

2:54 But then we go into a discussion about the identity crisis that she herself suffered because

2:59 in chapter five of her book, she talks about how she was gender dysphoric as a teenager.

3:03 She was one of those gals that didn't feel comfortable being a girl.

3:06 And she really does an excellent job of kind of breaking down how that kind of stretched

3:11 out into some of the philosophies that she believed until she herself believed in the

3:15 good news of the gospel and started becoming a follower of Jesus.

3:20 And so we also talk about how people that do pronoun hospitality or they're okay with

3:26 people around them basically allowing their sinful desires to basically define their entire

3:30 identities, how this is a deeply unhelpful and not a very good thing.

3:34 We talk about the church growth movement and some of the issues with that.

3:37 We talk about kind of the you are enough affirmation movement.

3:40 We talk about the Enneagram, right?

3:42 So some of you Enneagram fans out there probably won't like that section, but you'll need it.

3:45 I was very much so looking forward to talking to her after I finished this book because

3:49 it's an absolute barn burner.

3:50 It is there in the show.

3:51 No, it's happy life.

3:52 So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.

3:56 Melissa Doherty.

3:57 Welcome to a dog to life of man's podcast.

3:59 Oh, thanks for having me on now.

4:01 I feel like we hit it off off air.

4:03 Are we good enough friends yet for me to just call you Mel?

4:05 Can I just call you Mel, Mel, Mel, Missy, whatever you're good, you know, you know what?

4:10 We might just change it up throughout the episode, but I saw it in your new book, which

4:13 we're going to get to because it's fantastic.

4:14 I saw you were referring to yourself as Mel.

4:16 So it's like, well, she can call herself that perhaps I can, but we need to get in right

4:20 into your new book.

4:21 Typically, I could try to find like a nice soft place to land thing, but this book, Happy

4:25 Lies that you wrote that I just finished here recently.

4:28 It's the best book I've read so far in 2025.

4:31 And I don't really do that to really blow smoke.

4:32 I was reading the first half on a plane flight and then on the plane flight back.

4:36 I finished it.

4:37 And it's just it's it's masterful.

4:39 I thought it was fantastic because I thought I knew about the stuff that you were talking

4:43 about in this book.

4:44 And I realized like, oh, no, no, I was, I was just, I had a cursory knowledge of all these

4:49 things.

4:50 And you just dove way off into the deep end on this stuff.

4:53 And so the soft place to land is why this book, why now, why you?

4:57 Yeah, you're not the only one that kind of got thrown that thrown into that realm because

5:04 I thought I had an understanding too.

5:07 And I was in these beliefs, so that should tell you how stealthy it is.

5:11 I didn't want to write a book.

5:13 It was like gross you.

5:16 Not my thing.

5:17 It's a lot of work, a lot of time.

5:20 And a few years ago, it just throat punched me.

5:23 I'm like, yeah, I got to do this.

5:24 I got to make this happen because once I saw what it really was that I was into and it

5:31 wasn't new age, it was like I couldn't, I couldn't look back.

5:35 I'm like, oh, man, dang it, I have to write a book.

5:38 And so this isn't a video.

5:41 So I ended up doing, it was two years ago, I think it was a little over two years ago

5:45 at this point, forget where we're at.

5:47 But I started doing way more research, read all the really boring history books that nobody

5:54 even knew existed about new thought.

5:57 I went into these spaces that taught new thought teachings, which they're everywhere,

6:02 by the way, unity centers, you have center for spiritual living, divine science, religious

6:07 science, all kinds of places.

6:11 And even if there's not spaces and churches or centers that teach this, it's all over

6:17 society and within the church.

6:19 And so I decided to do boots on the ground research, academic research, I would talk

6:25 to whoever would talk to me over the phone just to get as much as I could to cram into

6:31 this book, which is kind of like drinking out of a fire hose.

6:35 But I go over where it's at, new thought, where it's at in society and within the church.

6:40 You can't avoid it.

6:41 People don't think if you've never heard the term you have met before, I think that's

6:45 exactly true.

6:46 If you haven't heard the term, you're at least familiar with it because of the ubiquity of

6:49 some of the concepts that you're talking about, we're so familiar with it because we've been

6:54 marinating in it.

6:55 But you know the drill, like when you've been marinated in a particular thing, it just comes

6:58 out of you.

6:59 I've made the mention before, hanging out with Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the

7:02 Duck Dynasty family, scripture just pours out of him just like he's just talking, it's

7:07 just mid sentence because he's been marinating in scripture for half a century.

7:11 So it just comes out of him.

7:12 It's like he can't help it.

7:13 The same thing happens with things that come, you know, basically that starts with like Satan's

7:18 butthole and then we end up where we are today with like most of the stuff that we're talking

7:21 about now.

7:22 So let's go and get into that just a little bit more because very early in the book, you

7:26 talk about personally becoming disillusioned as a teen because as a lot of teens do, you've

7:32 got spiritual questions and you got a bunch of doofs that work in the church that are

7:36 say something along the lines of, you know, questioning in and of itself is bad, just

7:39 have faith or hey, just read the Bible and move on or here's a book, read it.

7:43 I'm not going to help you read it, but here's just a book move on shoe.

7:46 Get out of here.

7:47 And guys, if you don't like hearing me read out loud, you're going to hate today's episode

7:49 because I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the book, but I want to read this quote

7:51 here.

7:52 So if you're listening to this quote, I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the book

7:57 and I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the book, I'm going to read a bunch of quotes

8:01 from the book, I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the book, I'm going to read a

8:03 bunch of quotes from the book, I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the book, and

8:06 I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the book, I'm going to read a bunch of quotes

8:09 from the book, I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the book, I'm going to read a

8:12 bunch of quotes from the book, I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the book, I'm

8:14 going to read a bunch of quotes from the book, I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the

8:16 book, I'm going to read a bunch of quotes from the book, I'm going to read a bunch of

8:17 answers from people that should have been discipling you frankly, and weren't doing their biblical

8:22 duty to do so, and they ended up kind of falling into some of these beliefs that are not of

8:26 God.

8:27 Yeah, well some of that was my fault too, and I'll explain why, but first I became a Christian

8:30 at 16, I was at a party, and there was a drunk dude there who just became a Christian, I

8:35 mean he was, you know, he's a brand new Christian, getting some grace here, but he's like telling

8:40 everybody to repent, you know, and I was one of them and I believed completely 180 became

8:47 a Christian, but yeah, immediately, I was pretty annoying, because I asked a lot of questions,

8:54 I didn't just blindly, I didn't, Kyle did not fit in at a lot of women's Bible studies,

8:59 I didn't, I just, I didn't make the castle roll right, I asked too many questions, like

9:04 I actually wanted to learn the Bible, I didn't want to talk about feelings or marriage or

9:09 anything like that, I'm like, I want to know the gritty hardcore stuff, give it to me, and

9:14 so there was the women's groups, or not even all of them were like that, but the women

9:20 that I came into contact with in my early teen years didn't really have a lot of critical

9:27 thought for why they believed what they did, and I was not looked at with, you know, with

9:36 any sort of, oh, she's a good one, right, I was looked at kind of as a pariah, and then

9:42 couldn't really just go to the men, because it's like, oh, you're a female, so, so I always

9:48 like stuck in this place of how do I grow, how do I get these questions answered, but

9:54 part of the issue was, yeah, there was, there, there could have been people there, right,

9:59 I just didn't know where to go, in the church as a whole, like there was a few different

10:04 churches that I was going to, I was just trying to learn, trying to glean, and I could have

10:09 stuck it out, and there probably would have been a great group of women, of, of, you know,

10:14 pastors that were knowledgeable, anything, if I had just stuck it out, but I don't think

10:18 I had the maturity or the longevity to do that, and I didn't read my Bible on my own,

10:22 so that was my responsibility, I didn't read or study it like I should have, but I just

10:27 wasn't, I was so ignorant, but what really, what really caused a lot of issues for me

10:33 were other Christians, and so I understand, even after all these years go by, I don't

10:40 even say that as a cheap shot, I don't say that, you know, to say anything bad against

10:44 the bride of Christ or anything like that, this is a conversation that we need to be

10:49 able to put it, put our big girl undies on, you know, and have a conversation about, about

10:55 how we can look when it comes to doubts, when it comes to tough theology that maybe we have

11:04 an issue with, when it comes to emotions, I know you guys love that, you know what I mean,

11:09 when it comes to these types of intellectual, emotional doubts or whatever it is or questions

11:13 that come in, we kind of have this posture sometimes of being really rigid, I see a complete

11:20 shift in this though, and I had no idea that there was a community available of like apologists

11:25 and theologians, I just didn't, I didn't realize it at the time, and besides, the beliefs that

11:32 I grew up with, which were new thought beliefs, seemed delightfully attractive, that was

11:40 the other thing, is that I wanted answers to these questions, but the group that looked

11:47 like they were giving me questions, this cultural Christian group looked like it had the answers

11:54 and I liked what they had to say, and so that's kind of the route that I went down, and it

11:59 was easy, and it made me look really super spiritual, I had a better version of Christianity

12:04 than y'all, you guys didn't know what you were talking about, you're so close minded

12:08 that you only read the Bible, the Bible's got some truth in it, but what about these

12:13 missing books over here, what about all these, you know, all this spiritual wisdom that these

12:18 people have, you're missing out on that, and that's kind of how I saw it, was that there

12:22 was more spiritual knowledge to know, and because I had experience, supernatural experiences,

12:28 and I had access to that wisdom and knowledge, it kind of made you look like a peasant pea

12:34 on Christian, like you didn't know what you were talking about, and so yeah, that's kind

12:39 of how that's how I came into kind of transition towards these teachings, and I, it is what

12:47 it is, Christians had a big deal to do with that.

12:51 So Melissa, you brought up a bunch of things there, we're going to be digging into them

12:54 eventually, but something you said there toward the end kind of piqued my interest because

12:56 I never really thought about this way, people who have had trouble being in the in crowd

13:02 to find that for whatever you want to in terms of like K through 12 education, if you were

13:06 in the in crowd, and you want to stay in the in crowd as an adult, or if you never were

13:10 in the in crowd, but you desperately wanted to be, it's almost like this new thought kind

13:14 of squishy theology thing kind of provides that for you because you can have morality

13:19 and righteousness without having to do boring stuff, like read the Bible, get discipled

13:24 by somebody, pray like all that dumb stuff, right?

13:26 And so it almost feels a little bit like that to where it's an easy group to join, and you

13:31 get all of this clout when you did really nothing to earn it.

13:35 Is that is that kind of like a fair idea of kind of how people they just they kind of

13:39 want to be in and they don't want to be in the crowd that's taken the arrows if you if

13:42 you will.

13:43 Yeah, that's a big part of it too, is that I remember let me let me tell you what this

13:49 look like in an actual interview that I did in the book was there was one reverend that

13:54 I was talking to, and I I I'm paraphrasing this conversation, but I hypothetically asked

14:01 them, you know, like, well, what if Christianity is true, right?

14:04 Like if if Christianity is absolutely true, would you become a Christian kind of question?

14:09 And he was like, no, because he didn't want to be seen as as how the world sees Christians.

14:17 He didn't want to be looking like that kind of person, the unintellectual kind of dumb,

14:22 close minded, intolerance.

14:24 I mean, think of like the worst kind of stereotypical view of how they look at Christian, how society

14:30 and culture kind of looks at Christians.

14:31 We have a MAGA hat on, you know, we're just dumb.

14:34 We don't know what we're talking about.

14:36 We say these really weird sensational things were probably flat earthers, you know, like

14:40 we we are just behind the times and we're probably all racist.

14:45 You know what I mean?

14:46 It's like there's this this the stereotype that goes along with that.

14:51 And that's how he saw it.

14:54 And I couldn't believe it because that's a little bit how I used to see it too.

15:00 And it's just not true.

15:02 That's the best part about it is that it's just not true.

15:05 The quotes and the interviews from your book where you're talking to some of these people,

15:08 I wasn't like shocked because like, of course, they would say the things that you said they

15:13 recorded in the book, but it was just kind of like, it was almost like, what world do

15:16 I live in where someone thinks this is the logical perspective and point of view?

15:20 So we're getting a little bit far into laying back up because we do need to do a little

15:22 bit of definitional work.

15:24 So you talked about new age and so most people don't know what new age is, but they know

15:28 you're not supposed to like it and we're supposed to avoid new age like the plague.

15:31 Get away from your new age, but we don't even know what it is.

15:35 And so people certainly don't know what new thought is.

15:39 And then undergirding kind of both of those things are these happy lies, hence the name

15:43 of the book.

15:44 So let's do just a little basic definitional work and you can give some like corollaries

15:48 and anecdotes or whatever, but new age, new thought, happy lies.

15:52 Sure.

15:53 Let's start with the new age bucket.

15:54 These are two separate buckets and I'll define each and I'll explain where they come together.

16:01 First the new age bucket.

16:02 Think of more Eastern mysticism like Hinduism and Buddhism, as far as origin, okay?

16:09 And then as far as practice and teachings and things like that, think of tarot cards,

16:14 psychic mediums, transcendental meditation, Reiki, karma, yoga, chakras, star seeds, light

16:21 black, ancient aliens, you have sacred geometry, you have these things that if you were walking

16:28 into a new age store, you're like, oh, okay, this is a new age store.

16:33 It's the red dude with a pitchfork and a ponytail.

16:34 It's a very obvious and we tend to recognize that as Christians, new age is a frontal

16:43 assault, right?

16:45 When you thought if you've never heard the term, you probably know better than the new

16:51 age.

16:52 Believe it or not, new thought is actually more Gnostic in origin, okay?

16:57 It claims to be Christian.

17:00 This is why the theme for my book, the thesis is that the new thought will deceive you Christian

17:06 before the new age ever will and most people have never even heard the name before, okay?

17:12 Because it looks and sounds Christian, so it's more Gnostic in origin.

17:16 In two words, I would say it's metaphysical Christianity.

17:20 What I mean by that, metaphysical, is that it's a higher, better, more spiritual Christianity.

17:26 It's more elevated.

17:28 It's beyond the physical.

17:30 This is why they can quote scripture, talk about Jesus, how they believe the same thing

17:36 you do.

17:37 It's just being reinterpreted in a metaphysical way, in a non-literal way, all right?

17:45 So you can find yourself agreeing with somebody with these beliefs and not realize that's

17:49 what they mean and that's what you mean.

17:52 In a sentence, I would say it's the positive thinking movement in America with Jesus as

17:56 its mascot.

17:58 New thought is an actual historical movement that began probably simple origins around

18:06 16, 1700s and then it turned into this positive thinking avalanche.

18:11 It was the echo that caused the positive thinking avalanche in our country and how your mind

18:18 set the way you think affects your reality in a metaphysical spiritual way.

18:25 The material world is a response to your mind and your thoughts and your words, what you're

18:30 thinking, your feelings, especially, and teachings that are unique to new thought, are

18:37 Christ consciousness, a misuse of science.

18:40 In fact, the first name for new thought was called mind sciences, the mind, it was, yeah,

18:45 the mind care movement and the mind sciences and it was all about the way you thought could

18:53 heal you and make you prosperous, okay?

18:57 And this isn't just a proverb thing where you're just trying to become a make better

19:03 choices and do right and you will have a better life.

19:06 This isn't, it goes beyond the pragmatism, this is spiritual, okay?

19:10 It's an actual spiritual thing that your mind thoughts and feelings and words give off a

19:15 frequency and a vibration that can actually create your reality, okay?

19:19 So you have the positive thinking element to it.

19:22 You have a misuse of vibrations and frequencies.

19:24 You have manifestation, visualization, affirmations, which are new thought prayers.

19:29 The new thought movement actually, the I am affirmations, if people don't know what that

19:33 is, think of like Joel Osteen, he's really big about I am statements, declarations and

19:40 the health and wealth prosperity teachings that we actually see in the word of faith movement

19:44 began with new thought.

19:46 And so that's just a few to kind of put it aside and describe, but where new age and

19:52 new thought come together is number one, the way they define truth is up to the subject.

19:57 It's up to you.

19:58 It's objective reality, subjective truth.

20:01 New thought has the true self and the false self and the true self is your truth, like

20:07 how you define reality and that true self is actually divine, which is what new thought

20:13 would call the Christ consciousness.

20:16 This is where they separate Jesus and the word Christ, where Jesus is a human just like

20:21 us who obtained the Christ.

20:24 And so can you, it's the dormant inner divinity within all of us, you just have to awaken

20:28 to it.

20:29 This is actually the response for evil to new age has a similar perspective, everything

20:33 is divine.

20:35 And that's really where they come together.

20:36 The core identity is that you are somehow divine.

20:39 I've never met a new age or that has not adopted a lot of new thought, but a lot of

20:44 new thoughters do not necessarily adopt a lot of new age beliefs.

20:50 I was more like 70, 80% new thought and a little bit new age.

20:56 But there seems to be some overlap there, but don't be fooled.

20:59 These are two distinct movements to distinct belief systems and new thought will fool you

21:05 before the new age will.

21:07 I want to, we're going to double click on a lot of stuff that you just said, but there's

21:10 a very interesting quote that I found very appropriate for this discussion, not just in

21:14 defining what new thought is, but seeing how new thought new age, because yes, new age

21:18 is that frontal assault, whereas new thought is the, it's like with the iron fist with

21:22 a velvet glove.

21:23 It's kind of that type of a thing.

21:25 And so here's the quote.

21:26 The reason Christian or the main reason Christians are fooled is because new thought often looks

21:31 and sounds Christian, as you mentioned, new thought teachings are dangerous, not because

21:35 they look scary or dangerous, because they don't.

21:39 Deception isn't supposed to be obvious.

21:40 It's supposed to be beautiful.

21:41 I automatically thought of Lucifer and how beautiful he was described.

21:46 And I'm, he was just gorgeous.

21:47 And the thing about him is you could just tell from the narrative we get in Ezekiel that

21:51 as my, my pastor, buddy, Joby Martin has said, he was tired of being looked through to God

21:56 and wanted to be looked to.

21:58 And he was just the, this beautiful thing.

22:00 And so, and I go back to looking at the garden and when you really dig in, like, okay, serpent,

22:04 are we talking about a snake?

22:05 But then it says you will be crawling on your belly.

22:07 So it's almost like the belly crawling was a punishment.

22:09 So was this a, a winged four legged, like reptile?

22:14 Was this a dragon?

22:15 Like it's fun to kind of think in those terms, but Lucifer had to have been gorgeous in the

22:19 garden.

22:20 Right.

22:21 Otherwise the woman would have been scared because something on her heart would have

22:24 automatically, you know, had her hackles up like, wait, danger, danger.

22:27 I know this is pre sin, right.

22:29 She was not afraid at all because it's right.

22:32 She was in, I think what all this gets into is something that you talk about in a lucid

22:37 day.

22:38 Cause yes, you talk about the history, you get into all the history guys are going to have

22:40 to go pick up a copy of the book.

22:41 It's in the show notes.

22:42 If you want to get into the history, it's very, very interesting.

22:44 But you do get into discussions of theological problems.

22:48 Okay.

22:49 That this is a very theological issue.

22:51 And it's because, well, you know, we'll talk about biblical, biblical, like literacy here

22:56 in a second, but I'll read another quote from the book.

22:59 Guys, it's just going to happen.

23:00 It's just going to keep happening.

23:01 Theologically, it's spiritual chaos.

23:03 People think it's spiritual freedom, but it is a false toxic freedom.

23:06 Sadly, after a steady diet of this watered down feelings based counterfeit, even a small

23:11 taste of the true gospel can taste bitter, like bondage and hate.

23:14 This is the purpose of false gospels.

23:16 Make evil look good and good, look evil.

23:18 And I don't know if you're a Vodie Bakken fan, but I remember him describing, you know,

23:22 this father and son walking through the strawberry field and the son would be eating these strawberries.

23:26 They're so unbelievably sweet.

23:28 They're, they're great.

23:29 But then he started feeding his son artificial strawberry things, strawberry pop tarts, strawberry

23:33 suckers, strawberry slushies, those types of things.

23:36 And he got so used to the artificial that when he went back to the real thing, it didn't

23:40 taste sweet enough.

23:42 And it's almost like in modernity, we as kind of like nontheologically, non-biblically

23:47 adept Christians, we feel like it's got to be gospel plus, it's got to be the gospel,

23:51 but for $9.99 per month, you can get the actual gospel and it's cool and everyone will be

23:54 your friend and no one will think you're bigoted.

23:57 And it's just like, it's because theologically, we are bereft of anything that even resembles

24:02 spiritual and biblical death.

24:04 We'll get more into the biblical side here in a second, but go ahead.

24:07 Yeah.

24:08 No, I, that's so interesting.

24:09 You say it like that.

24:10 If you got to the part in my book where I was giving the example of Indiana Jones and

24:14 the Holy Grail.

24:15 That's right.

24:16 Yeah.

24:17 Yeah.

24:18 That's, yeah.

24:19 Vodie's exactly right.

24:20 That's kind of like my version of a Vodie-ism, if you will, is, you know, at the end of the

24:25 movie, ish, the night is sitting there and telling everybody who comes in, if they've

24:32 sold all the puzzles, you know, that only one cup is going to give them life.

24:37 And all of them are beautiful and pretty and gorgeous and golden and shiny.

24:43 And you know, people come in and of course they choose the prettiest one they can find

24:48 and they die because they bring death.

24:51 And then Indiana walks in and he points to like the simplest, this old simple clay cup,

24:59 probably dirty.

25:00 And he's like, now that's the cup of a carpenter.

25:02 And that's the beauty of the gospel is that it is simple.

25:05 And we always, we're trying to add to it, right, to make it look more shiny.

25:09 And I think that that's the ultimate issue is that whenever we look at truth, it looks

25:14 like something that's undesirable sometimes.

25:19 And that's, that's the whole irony with this whole thing.

25:21 That's why it's like happy lives.

25:22 A lie isn't going to make you feel bad in this regard when it comes to bad theology.

25:28 It's going to make you feel good.

25:30 And so that's why I, I implore, I ask people to really understand what scripture says about

25:35 these things and what falsehood actually looks like because nobody thinks they're being

25:39 duped.

25:40 No, you know, and we don't want to go on the other side of the pendulum here where we

25:44 go as far as to become what I call kind of like pitch forkers, where everybody's a false

25:49 teacher and, and oh my gosh, there's a demon under every rock and that's just as bad.

25:54 That's just as bad as a mindset than somebody who's overly gullible.

25:58 I think that there's a balance there, but the, the, there's wisdom in understanding what

26:03 these falsehoods are and that's really why I wrote the book so people can understand what

26:07 new thought is.

26:08 Hey guys, real quick, do you remember during the pandemic when you basically couldn't get

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26:21 sure that we bring manufacturing back to America and almost none of them followed through on

26:25 that promise.

26:26 But for me and for all of us here at Undaunted Life, I wanted to make sure that I partnered

26:30 with an American company that actually did want to prioritize American workers, their

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27:44 One thing that for me as I was reading the book, one undercurrent where it was like you

27:50 were shouting this is guys, we have to have more biblical literacy.

27:54 Okay.

27:55 Different pieces have been written about this, but there's a few quotes from the book that

27:58 go into this.

27:59 Charles Spurgeon is often attributed with saying discernment is not knowing the difference

28:02 between right and wrong.

28:03 It is knowing the difference between right and almost right.

28:06 And then a little bit later on the same page, you say this, if we want to grow in our ability

28:10 to spot counterfeits and lies, we need to read God's word regularly so that we can develop

28:14 a solid theological and biblical foundation.

28:17 And then Mel a little bit later in the book, you say one of Satan's best tactics is working

28:20 to keep Christians ignorant of the one spiritual weapon we have in our battle against him.

28:25 Our Bibles, the sort of the spirit.

28:27 So my partner, Joby and I, like, you know, he's a, he's a pastor, I'm more of a prophet.

28:31 You know, I'm the one screaming at culture.

28:33 He's the one leading his flock, right?

28:35 We started something in January called the daily blade because we, we felt that men, men

28:39 like us, men that are a little rough around the edges, they're okay with tattoos and fist

28:43 fights.

28:44 And you know, every now and then right, not everything, nothing in excess, right?

28:48 That these guys weren't being served by the marketplace with all these kind of whimsy,

28:51 girly, you know, a really breathy guys talking about their day.

28:55 And it's like guys don't want that when they're on the way to the job side or on the way to

28:57 the gym.

28:58 And so he and I came up with the daily blade.

29:01 That's our new show to where it's, it's five minutes, Monday through Friday, you're, man,

29:04 you got five minutes and we're going to give you a biblical nugget that you can take with

29:08 you today that hopefully leads you to a further thirsting for the sort of the spirit, which

29:13 is our primary weapon against the evil ones, plans for our lives.

29:17 But a lot of people have given their reasons as to why they think Christians don't read

29:20 the Bible, why everyone, especially in like a state like Oklahoma, we all have like seven

29:24 Bibles.

29:25 They just have like an inch of dust on the top of them because we don't read them because

29:28 we feel like we know it already.

29:30 Yeah.

29:31 Heaven, hell, angels, demons, Jesus, you know, carpenter across.

29:33 Yeah.

29:34 Yeah.

29:35 We get it.

29:36 And then whenever someone says something that is clearly not biblical, we're like, Oh, sounds

29:39 good.

29:40 Sounds pretty good.

29:41 And then we just dive into that person's ministry or whatever they're selling.

29:44 Why do you think we don't want the biblical literacy when it's sitting right here in front

29:47 of us?

29:48 Oh, I think that there's lots of reasons.

29:51 One of the reasons for me, I was biblically illiterate for number one.

29:55 I didn't understand the Bible.

29:58 Some people might be like, well, that's weird.

30:01 No, I was 16 years old with a King James Bible.

30:03 It's a 2000 year old Jewish history book in the gospels.

30:08 You know, I mean, you got to draw, you got to sit down and understand that sometimes

30:12 people need help understanding this context, especially in our culture where, I mean, you

30:19 have books that are written in a narrative sense, um, in a narrative way, like our biographies

30:25 are different.

30:26 We don't have an understanding of the cultural context, right?

30:29 So having that backdrop would have been very helpful in me understanding like what is a

30:35 wineskin, what is Jesus talking about here, what is this parable mean, um, why is this?

30:41 Why is that so much of it harmonics?

30:45 If I had just known that from the beginning, it would have been a really cool to read my

30:51 Bible.

30:52 I remember Mike hyzer.

30:53 He has a book called, I dare you not to bore me with the Bible.

30:56 And that his whole thing was like the Bible's cool guys.

30:59 Like it's weirdly cool, you know, and like that's dig into it.

31:03 I think there would have been a lot more interest in that regard with my 16 year old self, but

31:08 everything was life application to death.

31:10 A lot of pastors, God love them, pray for your pastors, um, especially if they have like

31:17 a large congregation, a lot of their sermon is bent towards how to have a better life,

31:23 how to be better, right?

31:24 Like how to be a better husband, be a better wife, and which honestly, we need some of

31:28 that, right, but there is no exegetical teaching on a whole, which I think pastors need both

31:35 of you.

31:36 If you're, if you're, if you're, if you are, uh, if you have, if you have a flock, you

31:40 are tasked with the responsibility of preaching the full word of God, right?

31:46 So that's one reason is that I just had an ignorance to it.

31:49 Um, I didn't, it felt like a history book.

31:52 I'm like, how many, I know I'm supposed to read this.

31:55 I'm going to highlight a few things in Proverbs and Psalms because they have wisdom in it,

32:00 but it was hard to go beyond that.

32:02 The second thing, yeah.

32:03 So you're talking about like junk food before, right?

32:05 Or it just tastes better and it's so much cooler.

32:08 Um, that was the, there was an appeal to other spiritual teachings that seemed to be very

32:16 pragmatic and more spiritual.

32:19 This is the allure of occultic teachings.

32:23 This is the allure is that you want to go into a, people want to go into a sense of spiritual

32:29 mysticism that they think is from God because they get results.

32:35 That's pragmatism, right?

32:36 Or it works.

32:38 Therefore it's true and it's good.

32:40 And that new thought, even early on in its history, as I'm sure you've read was very pragmatic.

32:47 It worked.

32:48 I remember it like the law of attraction.

32:49 That's a new thought teaching.

32:51 Um, you would visualize and manifest things and the creepy part is that it worked a lot

32:57 of times, you know, and so people, uh, have a tendency to be distracted by shiny things.

33:04 And the other issue we have is a lot of teachers who can misuse the Bible.

33:12 Like I don't know if you follow Mike Winger familiar with the name, but not his work.

33:17 No.

33:18 Yeah.

33:19 Yeah.

33:20 It's just stuff.

33:21 But right now he's kind of, uh, doing a series on, um, you know, he's trying to expose

33:27 a lot of the abuses that go in and a lot of like, you know, charismatic circles or, you

33:32 know, church circles in a very thorough way.

33:36 He's not just coming at him, right?

33:38 And one of them is Todd White.

33:40 And there was a sermon that Todd White was giving and, um, recently, and one of the things

33:47 that's really taught in a lot of these circles is you don't hear God with your mind.

33:51 You hear him with your heart.

33:53 Uh, there's a suppression of critical thinking.

33:56 Your mind is your enemy and I'm telling, I, okay, and I'm a female K and I have to be,

34:03 I, with my own gender, I have to just try to appeal to them that those that try to get

34:12 you emotionally charged.

34:13 And your emotions are on the forefront, okay?

34:18 If your cognitive ability to think is shut down and your emotions are put forward, you

34:22 are going to be easier to deceive and control, of course, end of story.

34:27 And if you have a teacher that is trying to tell you to rely on your heart to interpret

34:33 scripture and trust them, not your mind, turn that off.

34:37 That's your enemy.

34:38 Mm.

34:39 Mm.

34:40 You want to do the opposite.

34:42 You want to bring, because then you're breaking the first commandment, how can you love God

34:45 with all your heart and mind if this guy over here is telling you, no, take your mind out

34:50 of it?

34:51 That's just one example.

34:52 But this is actually a very new thought concept is that you are elevated as this higher spiritual

34:58 authority because of your feelings, because of, you know, your thoughts in the sense of

35:03 what you're trying to manifest and make happen, you're controlling your thoughts and what you

35:06 want.

35:07 Um, but you're also told that you're more intellectual for it.

35:11 Like that's the irony.

35:12 So I think it's a mixture of these things within church culture, within how the Bible

35:17 is interpreted.

35:20 And I think it's just so much more simple and less distracting to sit there with a cup

35:25 of coffee or tea when you're reading the scriptures, maybe with, you know, a buddy,

35:30 you know, a commentary open and you're digging in exegetically trying to understand that.

35:35 That's boring.

35:38 But it's really not, it's like it has this film of just, oh, I don't want to do that.

35:44 And here's the thing.

35:45 Here's the other thing is that you're not always going to want to do that.

35:49 You're not always going to want to do that.

35:51 And I think that we, um, and again, this is another cultural issue is that we think that

35:56 everything should just kind of be laid out where there's no work, right?

36:02 Like where it's just so easy to do, um, that we live in this mindset where it needs to

36:08 come easily.

36:09 And if I don't want to do it, then I don't have to do it.

36:11 But that's just not the case with anything that, that means that you're going to grow

36:16 spiritually, physically or whatever.

36:19 It's like your spiritual gym, nobody really wants to go and lift and run on a treadmill

36:25 for 30 minutes, but it's, we all know how good that is for you and how much better you're

36:31 going to feel when it's done.

36:32 So yeah, all of those reasons, probably more, but I'll start with those.

36:37 Well, Mel, we want spiritual olympic, right?

36:40 Because that's a whole lot easier because you can look, I mean, a lot of people that

36:43 get on out, they end up looking like melted candles, but it's like, yeah, it's a lot harder

36:46 to wake up early and to go work out and to eat real food.

36:50 Like that sucks.

36:51 That's boring.

36:52 What do you eat today?

36:53 Steak and vegetables.

36:54 Oh man, that sounds terrible.

36:55 Don't you want to go get pizza?

36:56 Yeah, but I'm not a child.

36:58 And so in the actuals actually sounds great.

37:00 Yeah.

37:01 I mean, it sounds great to me.

37:02 It tastes for it.

37:03 And then the other stuff doesn't taste so good.

37:05 And this goes in later.

37:06 Hopefully we'll have time to talk about kind of the growth move inside churches that I

37:08 just call spiritual skittles.

37:10 You go in, you get your spiritual skittles like it's like the music's so good because

37:14 the musicians are, they're so on point and gosh, the life lesson, that TED talk is awesome.

37:20 There was a little bit of Bible in there so we can keep the tax exempt status.

37:22 But like it's not really anything that's really like tangible.

37:26 You can't like seek your teeth into it.

37:28 It's skittles.

37:29 They just short circuit your brain and make you think you're getting some nutrition.

37:32 That you're not getting.

37:33 They're kind of hacking everything.

37:34 And also earlier, you mentioned something with, you know, like in terms of pursuit and morality

37:39 and all these different things that we want, none of that matters if we're just highly

37:43 evolved chimps that figured out pants, fire and language, right?

37:47 Because if that's, if that's it, it doesn't matter.

37:50 There is no morality, right?

37:52 So that actually gets into a discussion because in the book, you talk a lot about redefinition.

37:57 You mentioned earlier talking about moral relativism and my truth and I was reminded

38:01 of Isaiah 520, what to those who call evil, good and good evil, who put darkness for light

38:06 and life for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter because that's, that's

38:10 essentially what we're talking about here in these, these kind of different interactions.

38:14 And so in this new thought movement, we want to redefine things like, Hey, you should counsel

38:19 this kid who is gender confused.

38:21 Don't worry.

38:22 We'll get there.

38:23 Or this kid who thinks that they should act out on their homosexual erotic attractions

38:27 and things like that.

38:28 We should counsel that kid.

38:29 We should pray with that kid.

38:30 We should come around that family.

38:31 We should really help them.

38:32 Whereas now it's like, whoop, bizarre a world, actually that's bigoted and hateful, you see,

38:38 because we can't have a standard for morality because that's just not going to include everybody's

38:43 proclivities and the things that, that they really want to do.

38:46 And this quote here from the book here, ultimately our self authority is condensed into four statements.

38:53 Feelings are the ultimate guide, happiness is the ultimate goal, judging is the ultimate

38:57 sin and God is the ultimate guess, which sounds great if it's on a t-shirt, but you can't live

39:04 that way.

39:05 Right?

39:06 Like it's, I was rereading a John Eldridge book the other day.

39:07 It's like if you, if you read the gospels as if Jesus was just this deistic automaton,

39:12 it's like, that's like trying to fall in love with a, with a hallmark card because you just

39:16 look at Jesus, meek and mild, loving and compassionate.

39:19 It's like, you can't serve, you know, a get well card.

39:22 You have to serve the line of Judah.

39:24 There's got to be something more there that actually makes us all worth doing.

39:27 So talk, talk about how in the new thought world, my truth, moral relativism, redefinition

39:32 is such an unbelievably powerful tool to get people to buy into these philosophies.

39:37 Yes.

39:38 One major thing to understand about new thought is that the movement really took off for a

39:46 lot of reasons.

39:48 But the beliefs really took heart, like took root in the hearts of people because you could

39:54 be your own sovereign.

39:57 There was no longer this idea of, oh, there's this God outside of you that is looking down

40:03 on you, trying to tell you what to do.

40:04 It's like, that's, that's kind of what they had, the view that, that was kind of in, in

40:09 the cultural imagination, if you will, but that wasn't the, the God of scripture, right?

40:14 It just seemed that way.

40:16 And so what this gave people was a power trip.

40:19 You're the one in power.

40:21 You have the power that God has, surprise.

40:26 You have the power to co-create with God.

40:29 Great news.

40:30 Yeah, great news, you know, and it's, it's really not, but here's the problem is that

40:35 whenever you have a world of you where you are the sovereign, you're the ones calling

40:40 the shot, you're the one with the power, it means that you are the way, the truth and

40:44 the life.

40:45 In fact, that's actually how they would interpret that verse.

40:48 A lot of us think, wow, um, here's the, here's the verse I'm going to throw in the, in the

40:52 face of this person who's claiming that, you know, they're divine.

40:56 Um, they would say, you know, but Jesus says he's the way, the truth and the life, nobody

41:01 comes to the father, except through him.

41:03 Ha ha, well, they would agree.

41:06 They'd say, yeah, of course, Christ is the way, the truth and the life.

41:10 Nobody gets to truth.

41:11 Nobody gets to salvation except through him and the Christians sitting there like, hmm,

41:16 what's happening here?

41:17 Because of the way they interpret Christ, it's within, that's the truth and that truth

41:22 is within you.

41:23 See how that's twisted and so how you get to where you are the sovereign and, and where

41:30 in a lot of it is feelings, um, you have to rely on the self because that is where you

41:40 are really going to get to know who you are and what guides you.

41:44 Ralph Waldo Emerson, he's one of the people that I bring up a lot in the book as well.

41:47 He's kind of one of the people we can blame for this.

41:49 He's one of the fathers of new thought.

41:51 He's also, um, uh, he was a transcendentalist and one of the things that we hear these terms

41:57 and we're like, oh, that's something I learned about in like sophomore year high school.

42:02 That's what does that have to do with anything?

42:04 Uh, everything.

42:05 Because, um, a lot of the things that we see even on, you know, like Adidas commercials,

42:10 right?

42:11 Like things that we see on TV about you being yourself and following your heart and things

42:16 like that are a very Emersonian, very Emersonian.

42:20 He was, um, very big about, he has, he has these essays, you know, self-reliance, trusting

42:25 the self within, which is the divine within.

42:28 He scolded the Christian church for making Jesus out to be an object of worship.

42:32 When he's basically saying, no, you need to worship yourself, right?

42:36 Like you're the great.

42:37 I am kind of thing.

42:38 And so when you're told these things, you get a power trip, um, you get on this, this

42:42 frame of thinking that you are the authority and anybody that thinks otherwise, that there's

42:48 this God outside of yourself who is the authority, then you're wrong.

42:52 This is why scripture talks about submitting.

42:56 It talks about these, these words of, of submission and, and giving it to God and things

43:01 like that.

43:02 And the culture hates that they think of that as like hate link, hate language now.

43:07 So to the person who's identifying as a trans species, other can hobbit thing, you have

43:14 to accept their truth because that's what the divine within, the truth within is saying.

43:22 So it's not that you're just coming against them as a person, you're coming up against

43:25 God.

43:26 All right.

43:27 Like you're coming up against God told me.

43:30 And so this is where a lot of the emotional versus the intellect can come in because we

43:34 want to go towards logic, we want to go towards reality.

43:38 And this is why I think that we need to really know as Christians a lot about critical thinking,

43:43 what that looks like, why truth exists and how it exists in the way that it does.

43:48 And that's why I have a whole chapter on truth, because you can't understand new thought without

43:53 understanding how they view truth.

43:56 And this is not confined to just new thought.

43:59 This is throughout society and the way that it's viewed and it can really help us kind

44:04 of understand their perspective, which by the way, understanding does not equal affirmation.

44:11 If you're trying to understand somebody's mindset, you're going to get a lot farther

44:14 in that conversation than just kind of coming at them frontal force, because a lot of people

44:20 have had bad experiences with Christians.

44:22 And I think that they're not used to people kind of listening and just gathering that

44:25 intel and that information and a lot of it is the other thing I call it is the pain

44:30 point.

44:31 A lot of people have been hurt.

44:32 And so being told that you have the spiritual control that you have the power, that's a

44:39 luring for somebody who's been through a lot of pain.

44:42 And I'm sure a lot of people can understand that.

44:44 Well, and Mel, for people that have been in pain, I got this from my sales days, but I

44:48 apply it now in ministry, you don't get paid on the information you give out.

44:51 You get paid on the information you bring in.

44:53 And so the if you need to bring in information, what do you have to do?

44:56 You have to ask questions and you can't ask questions effectively.

44:59 If you're not, I honestly curious about what the answer to that question is going to be,

45:03 you can't just run the same 10 questions in your brain.

45:05 So if you're sitting someone that has experienced real trauma, not, Hey, someone spelled my name

45:08 wrong on a Starbucks cup, because my family's not from America, but like real, real trauma,

45:13 you have to gather that intel.

45:15 But under you're right, understanding does not say, okay, so now I agree you should be

45:18 able to lead this sinful lifestyle.

45:20 A lot of stuff you're saying there is what, you know, Carl Truman got into it, the rise

45:23 and triumph of the modern self.

45:25 I mean, we get into so many different areas.

45:27 And again, it's this redefinition, I've kind of gotten frustrated with this new movement

45:30 in culture.

45:31 It's kind of from the libertarian, you know, conspiracy theory, right where it's like,

45:37 Hey, I'm just asking questions.

45:38 Just asking questions like, no, you're making statements in the form of a question, which

45:42 is exactly what Satan did in the garden.

45:44 He's like, did God actually say he was not making declarative statements.

45:48 He was making you question the truth that is already written on your heart.

45:52 And he's so crafty and good at it before I lose my mind any further.

45:56 You got to get to chapter five of the book, because I felt like here's the thing with

45:59 a lot of books, Mel, and I have messaged you after I read chapter one.

46:02 I'm like, holy crap, like, because I read, I read it like a couple of weeks ago.

46:06 And then I was preparing my questions and I was like, okay, man, yeah, we're making

46:09 some progress here.

46:10 And I'm like, Oh, shoot, I'm still in chapter one with my questions.

46:12 This is a lot going on.

46:14 But guys, if you stick with it, there's a constant flow to this book that takes you to the end.

46:17 But chapter five is talking about identity and it's called identity crisis.

46:22 And it was kind of a hard jerk of the wheel, uh, in there where you describe this gal who's

46:27 growing up with these feelings and this consternation and this dissonance inside of her and you're

46:32 like, okay, this sounds like another anecdote and you're like, wait a minute, that person

46:35 was me.

46:36 And some of that dissonance had to do with your identity, just as being a female presenting

46:41 in this world, that kind of can balloon out into the larger array of LGBTQ plus, you know,

46:47 identities and things like that.

46:48 So let's talk a little bit about that because male, to be honest, you could have wrote a

46:52 banger of a book without mentioning it, you chapter five could have been deleted.

46:56 It's so much better that it was in there and not because it brings you some sort of level

46:59 of substantiation, like, no, I'm a card caring member of this organization.

47:02 That's why I can talk about it.

47:03 Like I don't care.

47:04 But like why, why go there?

47:07 Why do it in the middle of the book?

47:08 Why not make it part of your bona fides at the very beginning?

47:11 You know, let's, let's start with that.

47:13 Oh, yeah.

47:14 That's actually a great question.

47:15 I like how you postured that because it's something I've never talked about before ever.

47:21 And I didn't exactly know how to write that chapter.

47:26 I remember talking to my editor and I'm like, man, I don't know if I should even share this

47:32 because I tend to be kind of a private person.

47:35 I don't even like telling people exactly where I live.

47:38 I'm not really too forward about even where I go to church.

47:41 I'm like, man, I just personal stuff, I don't particularly enjoy that because it's personal.

47:47 And my editor, he said, stories are sacred, right?

47:51 Like the things that we have, that's ours.

47:54 And especially in like a social media age, a lot of people overshare and I just don't.

47:59 I don't.

48:00 And so I had to do a little bit of therapy for parts of this book.

48:06 And this aspect was difficult because, yeah, you have a teen or tween in mind you, this

48:12 is what's important.

48:13 This is why it got brought up because the spiritual beliefs that I had growing up, plating part

48:20 in my identity crisis, full front.

48:27 Okay.

48:28 Because I'm told that what I am, who I am, what I am on the inside, how I feel is who

48:34 I am.

48:35 Right.

48:36 And this then just, this leaked into other areas of identity that would have been more

48:41 what people identify as other kin today.

48:44 If you don't know what other kin are, let me tell you.

48:48 It is a growing group within the world of people who identify as fantasy creatures.

48:58 Like fairies or mermaids or hobbits or whatever it is, whatever the mind can conceive.

49:03 The idea is that this isn't just a cosplay thing, all right, to them.

49:07 This is their true authentic self.

49:10 This is who they are on the inside because two plus two equals four because who are you

49:16 on the inside who you are is divine.

49:20 That's the truth with a capital T.

49:23 This is very important because like I said before, it's like you can't just come up

49:28 to these people and be like, you're disconnected from reality.

49:31 They're looking at you saying, I am reality, okay?

49:35 Like I am what I am, I am that I am, I am the great I am, okay?

49:40 That's really what's happening here.

49:43 And that's other kin.

49:44 You have trans species, people who identify as other species.

49:48 And I didn't have a word for this at all.

49:51 I understood it on a spiritual sense before it was ever popular in society.

49:58 And I remember thinking on that on like a dimensional realm.

50:02 In some other dimension, I am this creature or I am that.

50:06 And so gender comes in and I wouldn't even thought of it as gender.

50:10 It was that I hated being a girl.

50:12 I was like, who am I like on the inside?

50:15 I don't feel like a girl, you know, and then really what it is is the sin of envy.

50:20 You know, you're envious of, you know, this, the identity that somebody else has.

50:26 It's like you look at a man, right?

50:29 And you're like, man, they have it so much easier.

50:31 People take them seriously, they look better, they sound better, they have more authority.

50:38 And you're envious of that, right?

50:39 That's really where it comes down to.

50:41 It's a sin thing, not an identity thing.

50:44 I just did not see that.

50:45 And so I had to kind of, I really struggled with how to kind of share that where it's

50:51 like, you know, it's like, you're kind of resisting a little bit.

50:55 I'm tying it into this thing that we're seeing today that I thought was just a phase that

51:01 I was going through, not just a physical phase or a mental phase, a spiritual phase,

51:06 like a spiritual thing that I believed that I am now seeing in society today.

51:11 And you mentioned Carl Truman before.

51:14 It was his book.

51:15 It was his book, the lay person's version, Strange New World.

51:19 I remember reading this book, Kyle, I was reading it.

51:23 And I'm like, why does this sound like new thought?

51:27 This sounds like exactly what I grew up with, especially in the beginning.

51:30 He's going over the historical roots.

51:32 He's going over so much about romanticism and Rousseau and all these names and thinkers.

51:38 And I didn't know much about that.

51:40 But I'm like, this sounds like new thought.

51:43 But I wasn't thinking new thought at the time.

51:44 I was thinking, wow, this sounds like what I grew up with.

51:48 And it was just, it took me a while to figure that out and pull up those weeds where I discovered

51:53 he's talking about, you know, like romanticism and a cross movement to that was the transcendental

52:01 movement with Emerson and thorough and or thorough and all these other people where there was

52:07 a shift from this God outside of you to this God from within, right?

52:12 And so where there's a social aspect to it in Truman's book, which by the way, is one

52:19 of the best books I've read in years.

52:21 It was so it explains so much about how and why we got to where we are.

52:28 And what I saw, it was a little different because I'm like, but there's also a spiritual

52:33 element where there's a social side on how this, this moved and went from one thing to

52:39 the next in a social way.

52:42 But I'm also saying, hey, these people aren't just, you know, it's not, it's not just a

52:47 social contagion.

52:48 It is, but there's also a spirituality that goes along with these beliefs that your true

52:55 authentic self, which is what they would call it, is divine.

53:00 So for the person that's identifying as a female, but they're actually a male, that's

53:05 their true authentic self.

53:07 That's true for them.

53:09 Therefore that truth within is their divine will, like it just made sense to me.

53:15 It just, all of that made sense to me.

53:17 So the chapter kind of goes into this, not claiming that new thought is responsible for

53:23 like the gender confusion, but oh my, with the historical mindset, with the implications

53:31 of the spirituality in those origins and where they, the natural conclusion of where it brings

53:38 you to is to just this one big happy lie that the father of lies is obviously behind.

53:44 You see that you see these waves of people believing a lie that everybody knows is wrong,

53:48 but you're, you got to believe it because that's their truth.

53:51 Well then chances are the father of lies is behind it.

53:54 Yeah.

53:55 It's fuel for the satanic fire.

53:56 That's what all that is.

53:57 And you have these individuals where again, yes, you're trying to attack this philosophy

54:02 that they've accepted and all their hearing is you are attacking me.

54:07 And again, they've also said that words are violence.

54:10 And so I might as well be holding them down and beating them in terms of their ideology

54:16 and how they're feeling, because again, we elevate feelings above facts and even though

54:20 Ben Shapiro tried to tell all of us, disabuse all of us that notion facts don't care about

54:24 your feelings.

54:25 Yeah.

54:26 But in that same book, or in that same chapter, you talk about Jesus and this is one of, it's

54:30 not misunderstood, it's, it's purposefully misapplied about how Jesus was and how he

54:35 comported himself around sinners and why he, hey, well, if Jesus wanted us to go to church,

54:40 he would have just hung out with Pharisees all the time.

54:42 It's like, could you be dumber?

54:43 I'm not sure you could be, but let's, let's keep talking because I bet I'll find some

54:46 more dumb quotes.

54:47 But here's a not dumb quote from your book, Jesus didn't eat with sinners and tax collectors

54:52 because he wanted to appear inclusive, tolerant and accepting he ate with them to call them

54:57 to repentance.

54:58 Once more for the person in the back, he ate with them to call them to repentance.

55:03 So this is where I bring this up.

55:05 I know a lot of well-meaning, softheaded Christians that do pronoun hospitality.

55:11 They know that this is a little girl, but they're allowing them to present as a boy.

55:15 Because here's the thing, Melissa, if you decide to change your name to Eric or whatever and

55:19 you get your name legally changed, I don't give a crap, I'll call you Eric.

55:22 That's fine.

55:23 Like I've called you Melissa and mail just in one conversation, sure, I'll call you Eric.

55:26 But if you're like, and I want you to use mail pronouns, it's like, well, no, you don't

55:29 get to control my tongue and control whether or not I sin on purpose.

55:33 Okay, because what you're trying to accost to me and to threaten me and then to make

55:38 me kind of bow to your whims.

55:40 So we have Christians that are doing the pronoun hospitality thing.

55:43 And even in the book, you say the only way to fight lies is to tell the truth.

55:46 But then you have the LGBTQ activism and a new thought kind of coming together in a

55:51 lot of different congregations in the United States.

55:53 I've talked about very recently and at nausea about Andy Stanley's church, about the things

55:58 being leaked internally from the things that they're doing about.

56:01 And I read an email on my show from a father and he and his wife were volunteers at North

56:05 Point Community Church.

56:07 They had a tween girl that was having some of that internal const, consternation and

56:12 dissonance that you were, and they convinced this girl, the volunteers of the church convinced

56:16 this girl that she was trans.

56:18 They were working on her transition and they were not discussing it with the parents.

56:21 This was a couple that just emailed me randomly because they're like, you're one of the only

56:25 people of any level of prominence that's talking about Andy Stanley and what he's doing

56:29 at his church.

56:30 It's so bad.

56:31 But then we also talked about earlier about people finding their entire identity and whatever

56:35 their sinful perclivity is, right?

56:37 So their sinful perclivity is to have sex with someone of the same gender as they are.

56:41 And they make that their entire identity.

56:43 Whereas if I was a raging violent alcoholic, we would not find that culturally acceptable

56:47 for me to be like, Hey, that's just my identity.

56:49 I drink and I beat people up like nobody would accept that.

56:53 And so talk to me about that because Mel, you could have been that person that said you

56:58 are attacking me and my ideology and you're violent and you could have been at the rainbow

57:03 parades and you could have got people like, Oh my gosh, she's so wow, wow, that's the

57:07 type of Christian I want to be girl.

57:09 Like you could have gotten all of that except for the gospel being real and it actually

57:14 like taking hold of your entire life.

57:17 So just just tell me about kind of bring that chapter full circle before we move on about

57:21 you had this identity crisis.

57:23 But thank God the gospel actually applies to you.

57:25 Yeah.

57:26 And that's the other thing is that as I got older, it didn't become as prominent in my

57:30 mind.

57:31 I struggled with it.

57:32 I definitely did.

57:33 And it took me a while to kind of just be like, Oh, and that's the thing, Kyle, right?

57:37 Is that it's accepting yourself for who you actually are.

57:42 Like that's the beauty.

57:45 But the thing is, is that this is a social incentive.

57:47 Okay.

57:48 There's a social incentive for you to identify with this group is a social contagion, which

57:55 means that in most spaces, there's going to be an allure to identify with this group.

58:03 And if you don't, then you're kind of the bad guy.

58:07 You're a cisgender, you know, like so gross.

58:10 So yeah, there's it a social incentive there.

58:13 So that's the second thing.

58:15 Third, the idea that your desires are good.

58:21 Because your desires are your identity is so shoved in the face of everybody right now.

58:30 And your desires are not always good.

58:32 And that's the whole idea is that your desires usually can lead to a sin.

58:36 You have to test those desires.

58:38 The other thing is that there's actually a lot of people, by the way, who are talking

58:41 about Andy Stanley.

58:42 I know that Frank Turic has Greg Cokles talked about it.

58:47 Holly Best Stucky, there was a big thing, the, oh, Mike Winger, you should probably check

58:52 out my winger.

58:53 I need to get on it.

58:54 Yeah.

58:55 Yeah.

58:56 A lot of people are talking about him because this is actually part of the issue is that

58:59 if this think, okay, you know what, play the movie forward.

59:02 Let's play a game.

59:04 Because this is what I did with so many people in the interviews that I did is I didn't go

59:08 in being like repent of your sin, you know, but the Bible teaches, they don't care what

59:12 the Bible says.

59:13 Right.

59:14 That's what they believe and what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you why you believe

59:19 what you do.

59:20 Okay.

59:21 I'm going to play that movie forward.

59:23 Greg Cokle.

59:24 I just mentioned him.

59:25 He has a tactic, a book called tactics.

59:27 We have a book list on our website, The 100 Books Every Modern Christian Manchin Readlist.

59:30 That was like the first one I put on the list.

59:32 I'm saying because he has a tactic called, it's all it is is logic and talking points

59:37 and it's, it's not gotcha or anything.

59:40 It's brilliant.

59:41 And there's something he calls taking the roof off.

59:42 It's one of my favorite things to do.

59:44 All you're doing is carrying out that point to its logical conclusion.

59:49 That's right.

59:50 Okay.

59:51 So let's play the movie forward for a second.

59:53 Let's we're talking about gender.

59:55 Okay.

59:56 So if somebody comes up to you and they like, I, I identify as a he/him, the, my pronouns

1:00:01 are he/him.

1:00:02 Okay.

1:00:03 And I would be like, all right, well, my pronouns are God goddess.

1:00:09 I identify as a goddess and you have to be hospitality, you have to practice hospitality

1:00:14 to my identity.

1:00:16 Yeah.

1:00:17 Let's take it further.

1:00:18 I identify as another species.

1:00:21 I identify as a dog.

1:00:24 And this is my true authentic self.

1:00:26 My pronouns are dog doggy.

1:00:29 Oh, and you know what?

1:00:31 Let's take it one more step further.

1:00:33 I identify as a habit.

1:00:36 My pronouns are hob it.

1:00:39 Okay.

1:00:40 Whatever.

1:00:41 You can make up anything you want.

1:00:43 Here's my point.

1:00:44 Where do we draw the line?

1:00:45 Right.

1:00:46 Where do we draw the line?

1:00:48 You can.

1:00:49 We are trying you.

1:00:50 I understand.

1:00:51 Trust me.

1:00:52 I've been there.

1:00:53 I understand people who have these identity issues, but you cannot force me to lie, to

1:01:01 believe in a lie, to be nice to you, you cannot force me to say anything that is against

1:01:10 my conscience to cater to your preference.

1:01:15 I will not do that because here's the problem.

1:01:19 People that hear that might think, well, why not?

1:01:21 It's not a big deal.

1:01:23 Elisa actually gave me and I'm probably going to butcher this.

1:01:26 Elisa gave me this example, but back in the first century, you have Christians who had

1:01:34 a saying.

1:01:35 I think it was like, no God but Caesar, right?

1:01:38 Whenever you went into somebody's home, I believe that they had this altar, this thing

1:01:47 that you had to go and bow down to before you go into the house.

1:01:53 It was nothing.

1:01:54 You just boop and you go into the house.

1:01:56 You take a little bit of the pinch of incense and you just boop and you go into the house.

1:02:01 It was culturally acceptable to do that, but if you didn't do it, there were social ramifications

1:02:09 for that.

1:02:10 There were consequences for that.

1:02:13 That's what pronoun hospitality is to me.

1:02:16 You're just doing the little bow.

1:02:17 It's not a big deal.

1:02:19 It's not a big deal.

1:02:20 You're trying to be nice.

1:02:21 You're trying to be hospitable.

1:02:23 It's just you're trying to make sure that's not contextualization.

1:02:28 That is not, Paul didn't go bow down to the altars before he went to the Tomb of the Unknown

1:02:33 God, right?

1:02:34 He just went, he contextualized it in a way that they could understand without submitting

1:02:40 to the cultural pressure.

1:02:44 I think that's really what it is, is that okay, if it's pronouns, he/him, how far are you willing

1:02:50 to go to deny reality to be empathetic and nice because that's really what it comes down

1:02:56 to, is that it's like I think of it as if you can do that, if you can do he/him, she/her.

1:03:04 Can you do God's goddess?

1:03:07 What about somebody who identifies as Jesus, all right?

1:03:10 How far would you be willing to go?

1:03:13 Where would your line be drawn and under what logic would you not have to apply what you're

1:03:19 doing now to later, right?

1:03:21 Like if you're using pronouns now, this isn't going anywhere and it's going to get worse.

1:03:26 What else are you going to compromise on?

1:03:28 Well, I think it would be interesting in those types of situations to where it's like, okay,

1:03:32 my pronouns are I'm right.

1:03:35 So what do you do with that?

1:03:36 Like, I mean, what exactly do you do, where do you take this?

1:03:38 You're not being authentic though, Kyle.

1:03:39 Oh, my gosh.

1:03:40 Oh, yeah, that's the other thing.

1:03:41 But here's the thing is if I identify as a ficus, it would not be loving for you to water

1:03:45 me.

1:03:46 And so like, I just don't understand like when these people, especially the furry thing

1:03:49 with these, these public schools, putting like litter boxes in the bathrooms and kids

1:03:52 literally taking dumps in this litter box as opposed to going in the toilet.

1:03:56 It's like, look, if a kid, if a family came to my home, I invited different dinner and

1:04:01 one of their kids identified as a dog, it would not be loving for me to put their food

1:04:06 on the floor.

1:04:08 That would not be loving to put them in the cage while the rest of us adults have a conversation.

1:04:12 But that's the thing is like, this is what, you know, Blue Jordan Peterson up back with

1:04:16 Bill C16 back in Canada is you can't compel my speech.

1:04:20 Like I'm okay with being polite, but I'm not okay with you causing me to sin.

1:04:25 He didn't use that language, but that's essentially what it was, knowing something to be false,

1:04:30 but going with it anyway for the sake of what?

1:04:33 Not wanting to burn a bridge.

1:04:34 It's like, brother, like, what do you think the gospel is?

1:04:36 If not a bridge burner, because it's burning the bridge between your sinful self and the

1:04:40 self that could be presented in front of a holy and just father, what are we talking

1:04:43 about here?

1:04:44 Like it's just like you got to pull the thread just a little bit further.

1:04:47 So as we continue to march our way through the book, Mel chapter six, you talk about

1:04:51 loving ourselves to death.

1:04:53 And I have to read and guys, this is just a trigger warning.

1:04:56 It's the most offensive quote of the entire book.

1:04:58 So take a deep breath.

1:05:00 You might want to skip ahead if you've got kids in the car, but here we go.

1:05:03 I've given you a fair warning three, two, one.

1:05:06 Let's get real here.

1:05:08 You're not enough gasp.

1:05:11 Pull the fire alarm, Mel, I've been reliably informed that I indeed am enough.

1:05:15 You know why?

1:05:16 Because a doofy pastor in Houston told me that I'm enough.

1:05:19 And as long as I look at myself in the mirror and I put money in the walls in the bathrooms,

1:05:23 that I indeed am enough.

1:05:25 How dare you take me tumbling down, Melissa?

1:05:28 How dare you?

1:05:29 What do you have to say for yourself?

1:05:31 I stand by what my past self said.

1:05:35 Okay.

1:05:36 Yeah.

1:05:37 This is my biggest problem with the self help industry.

1:05:39 I actually just did a book review on the number one self help book in America right now, which

1:05:44 is Mel Robbins book The Let Them Theory.

1:05:47 Okay.

1:05:48 And, you know, it wasn't too bad.

1:05:49 It was very practical.

1:05:50 I actually expected it to be a lot worse.

1:05:52 But you know, people can check that out if they want to know more details.

1:05:55 But in the con section of my video, the main issue that I was trying to come at is what

1:06:04 I covered here in this chapter is that you can have, well, first number one, a lot of

1:06:08 new thought authors, new thought authors were the foundation for the self help movement.

1:06:13 Okay.

1:06:14 So that should tell you a lot about the goal of self help.

1:06:18 It makes a lot of money whenever you can tell people how to how to be better and how

1:06:23 to have better lives.

1:06:25 We shouldn't gasp every time we see a self help book, you know, that can be very helpful.

1:06:30 But the idea is that that you are enough.

1:06:33 So, but the main issue I have, okay, is that it's so short changed.

1:06:39 It's short changed.

1:06:40 So you can tell somebody something that can actually help their lives.

1:06:45 But the goal of the self help industry is similar to that of the pharmaceutical company.

1:06:51 You're almost, but not, okay.

1:06:54 They want you to they actually want to keep you sick by giving you the same stuff, right.

1:06:59 And so it's not meant to cure you.

1:07:01 In other words, the self help industry cannot hear you.

1:07:04 And that's the whole point is that whenever you look at it and you think, okay, there's

1:07:08 some good advice here.

1:07:09 There's some good things here that I can actually apply to my life.

1:07:11 Like I read Mel Robbins book, I'm like, yeah, that's, that's, these are solid points, you

1:07:16 know, like how to stop being a people pleasing, you know, apathetic, you know, all these things,

1:07:24 how to stop being a control freak.

1:07:27 All these things.

1:07:28 And it was, it was really good.

1:07:29 None of that is new, none of that is new.

1:07:32 And you're going to be wanting more of that as time goes on because it's not going to

1:07:38 satisfy you.

1:07:39 This is the whole point of the gospel.

1:07:41 This is why Jesus says like he's the living what the bread of life, living water, because

1:07:45 there's a contentment in your soul in your spirit that he can give that only he can give.

1:07:51 He says that, you know, his yoke is light.

1:07:54 And I think, you know, it's really interesting about that, that verse is that he never says

1:07:58 that you shouldn't be yoked to something.

1:08:01 You are always yoked to something, life is always connected.

1:08:04 Yes.

1:08:05 Well, Mel, that's Psalm 23.

1:08:07 The point of Psalm 23 is not that God delivers you from the valley.

1:08:10 It's that he's with you in it.

1:08:11 He's with you on your way out and he's with you on your way into it.

1:08:14 That's, that's the point.

1:08:15 It is your shepherd.

1:08:16 Right.

1:08:17 We are the dumb sheep that want to go over the cliff.

1:08:18 You know what I mean?

1:08:20 And that's the whole point is like the self help saying that you are enough means that

1:08:26 you're the end game.

1:08:27 You are the answer to your problem.

1:08:29 And I'm, I, Ali Besaki, she's another person I mentioned before.

1:08:34 She has a whole book that's, that's titled You're Not Enough and That's Okay.

1:08:39 And one of the themes that she says throughout her book is you can't also be, you can't be

1:08:46 the solution.

1:08:47 No, you can't be the problem and the solution at the same time, right?

1:08:51 Like you can't be the answer to and also the problem.

1:08:55 It doesn't work like that.

1:08:56 And so the idea is that you are the problem.

1:08:59 Jesus is the answer.

1:09:01 And there's, and this is the other thing, I'd be very nuanced with this particular chapter

1:09:05 because I think that there's also a lot of cynical, critical groups that are always telling

1:09:13 you what a bad person you are, right?

1:09:14 Like you don't ever feel like you are good enough at all in a very practical, sensible

1:09:20 way, right?

1:09:21 Where you have low self esteem or low confidence.

1:09:24 I believe that there's a very healthy, fair way of looking at those concepts, right?

1:09:33 But in a scriptural sense, the way to make that stick and the way to make that last really

1:09:38 has everything to do with your soul.

1:09:40 It's your spirit.

1:09:42 It's who you are in Christ.

1:09:44 It's an identity thing, anything that's in the middle.

1:09:47 This is your core identity.

1:09:48 And if anything is there that's outside of Christ, you're going to be wanting more and

1:09:52 more and more.

1:09:54 It's not enough.

1:09:55 And to say that you are the core of that, that's what this, that's what a lot of self

1:09:59 help does is that you are at the core.

1:10:02 You are the love of your life.

1:10:04 That is setting you up to fail.

1:10:06 That is setting you up in a way to, to make you buy their next self help book.

1:10:12 Because that's not going to, that's not going to be the last book that you read.

1:10:15 There's going to be another book and another, maybe a workshop, maybe a seminar.

1:10:18 They profit from you being broken.

1:10:21 Okay.

1:10:22 So I think, I think it was in that chapter that I used the example of mother gothole

1:10:27 in Rapunzel.

1:10:28 I, I guess a lot of Disney movies, I see girls and the example was that mother gothole, if

1:10:34 nobody's seen the movie, she's the bad guy and Rapunzel is, you know, adopted more like

1:10:41 stolen from her and, and mother gothole is really an interesting villain because she's

1:10:46 really passive aggressive, very strategic, real gas lighty, but she sets up the problem.

1:10:53 Okay.

1:10:54 To become the solution to it.

1:10:56 So you're like reliant on it.

1:10:57 That's kind of the example that I used and it's probably in that chapter that I used it.

1:11:02 I hope I did.

1:11:03 Maybe I didn't misplace it.

1:11:04 But yeah, that's the whole idea like, no, you're not enough and that's a good thing.

1:11:07 That's a good thing because that's the beginning of you seeing why you're not enough.

1:11:12 What do you actually need to be whole?

1:11:15 And that's the first step to the gospel is what I say.

1:11:18 Right.

1:11:19 Well, it should be good news, right, hence gospel, good news in the good news is that

1:11:25 we aren't enough because if we were enough, that would imply that we could earn our way

1:11:29 to salvation, which some of us super type a driven dudes, right?

1:11:33 We're good with that.

1:11:34 It's like, Hey, give us an impossible task and we'll have it done by Thursday at eight

1:11:37 o'clock.

1:11:38 Like that's just kind of our idea, but it kind of takes a little bit of the sting out

1:11:41 of that.

1:11:42 I know the best place to stick this next question because there's been a lot of different areas

1:11:46 here because you didn't explicitly go into it, but there's a quote from a chapter seven.

1:11:51 It's a short one.

1:11:52 It said it works for the wrong reasons.

1:11:54 Yeah.

1:11:55 So let's talk about the Enneagram.

1:11:56 Okay.

1:11:57 I so I've, I've had some crazy opinions that I've shared publicly, like, Hey, we shouldn't

1:12:03 kill babies in the womb.

1:12:05 We shouldn't trans kids, pit bulls are basically wild animals.

1:12:07 You shouldn't be able to own them.

1:12:09 Andy Stanley's a hair tick.

1:12:10 Like I've said, some crazy stuff.

1:12:11 Okay.

1:12:12 But whenever I've talked, when I talked about the Enneagram, oh boy, oh boy, right?

1:12:17 People were just like, wait a minute, Kyle.

1:12:19 And what do you bet?

1:12:20 Mel?

1:12:21 I'm putting you on the spot here.

1:12:22 Yes.

1:12:23 What do you think their main argument for the Enneagram was?

1:12:26 It works.

1:12:27 It works.

1:12:28 It works.

1:12:29 Kyle.

1:12:30 How could it not be of God as if it works?

1:12:31 It's kind of like, okay, hey, the Enneagram may have not started Christian, but hey, we're

1:12:35 just going to put some Bible ish stuff on top of it.

1:12:39 And then we're going to release some books through Zondervin or somewhere.

1:12:41 That's going to say, you know, the Christian Enneagram thing.

1:12:43 I love Zondervin.

1:12:44 We have a lot of their authors on, but it's just like, let's just kind of weave it all

1:12:47 together and it'll be fine.

1:12:49 And then people were like, Kyle, I've heard you say before that yoga is okay.

1:12:52 I'm like, ah, hang on, I've said that stretching is okay.

1:12:56 Now if you hook your ponytail to a tree and face the east and you try to like internalize

1:13:01 your whatever, whatever, as you're stretching and doing upper dog, deeply problematic, you're

1:13:05 playing with fire here.

1:13:06 You don't need to do that.

1:13:07 But if you're a guy and you've got kind of messed up hips and you need to stretch them

1:13:10 out a little bit.

1:13:11 Sure.

1:13:12 Do a yoga routine that opens up your hips.

1:13:13 But at the end, you're crossing your feet and sticking your hands out and saying, um,

1:13:18 problematic.

1:13:19 Don't do that.

1:13:20 The thing with the Enneagram is Melissa, I used to get paid to teach the Enneagram.

1:13:25 I would do consulting for these sales businesses and corporate businesses and stuff.

1:13:28 And I'm like, Oh my gosh, Enneagram is amazing.

1:13:31 It works.

1:13:32 It's told me a lot about me and how I can, you know, what I go to and things get bad and

1:13:35 it works for my wife.

1:13:36 And then I'm giving it to the C suite level executives to understand one another.

1:13:40 And they're connecting with each other in a deeper way.

1:13:43 And I'm like, this is great.

1:13:44 This is great until someone burst my bubble and said, uh, do you know where the Enneagram

1:13:47 came from?

1:13:48 Like the, there, there was a guy who did automatic writing where basically that means

1:13:53 it's like, I think Ouija board.

1:13:55 So basically a spirit from the other world moved his pin for him when he was in a trance

1:14:01 like state and gave him the Enneagram.

1:14:03 And I did a whole episode on this where it's been 45 minutes, talk about the history and

1:14:06 all that.

1:14:07 And it's like, Oh my gosh, Enneagram is, it's literally satanic.

1:14:10 It's coming from satanic demonic forces and Christians are using it all over the place.

1:14:15 And they're, they're taking their entire church groups through it.

1:14:18 And it just seems to me like that's one of those things where it's, it looks so nice.

1:14:22 And it's put in this beautiful package, but it worked and it works, but it works for the

1:14:26 wrong reasons.

1:14:27 Why do we get caught up in this stuff and specifically something like Enneagram because

1:14:31 we get to take a test and it tells us who we are.

1:14:33 You know what I mean?

1:14:34 Yeah.

1:14:35 Yeah.

1:14:36 Oh my gosh.

1:14:37 There's so much to say.

1:14:38 She's kind of what I would consider an expert in the topic.

1:14:42 And we try to talk about, or we asked the questions about the Enneagram, like your objections

1:14:53 to the, or not objections, your best arguments for the Enneagram, that's what it was.

1:14:57 And so it's kind of fresh-ish in my head.

1:15:00 Let me ask you a question though, real quick, why did it work?

1:15:04 How did it work?

1:15:05 What do you mean by it worked for you?

1:15:07 That's a good question.

1:15:09 So there would be ways that I was trying to relate to my wife and I wasn't understanding

1:15:13 how my presentation was rubbing up against how she receives information.

1:15:18 And then all of a sudden I read my Enneagram results and you know, because you have your

1:15:22 Enneagram, which I can't remember what the number was, I've taken it out of my memory,

1:15:26 but then it relates to two other things that whenever you're tired or, or stressed out

1:15:30 or something like that, you divert to these other ideologies and personalities.

1:15:35 And that was rubbing basically right up against her and kind of where she was on the Enneagram

1:15:41 and where we were cross-secting and all that.

1:15:42 And so for the first time after reading all these, these books and having gone to counseling

1:15:47 before and doing premarital counseling, where I was like, oh my gosh, I finally understand

1:15:51 why my wife is processing my stimulus with this response.

1:15:56 And then I saw the exact same thing, Mel, and the C-suite.

1:15:58 I saw these people where they're like, I just can't get our art COO.

1:16:02 I just can't get him to like buy into what we're doing here and blah, blah, blah.

1:16:06 And then it's like, well, I read the CEOs and Enneagram results, then I read the COOs and

1:16:10 Enneagram results.

1:16:11 And I walk in and I go, Hey guys, I figured it out.

1:16:14 You communicate in this way, which is a way that he doesn't even hear things.

1:16:19 And so this becomes even more problematic.

1:16:21 So when I say it works, is I was able to give people actionable intelligence to say, Hey,

1:16:27 here isn't just something interesting because, you know, you can take a personality test

1:16:29 and it says, well, you're a rhinoceros or you're the color red.

1:16:32 And I was like, okay, well, what do you do with that?

1:16:34 And so this was something to where it's like, okay, you could basically give them a list

1:16:37 of, Hey, the next time y'all have a one on one, start with these three questions.

1:16:41 Hey, the next time you have a date night with your wife, start with conversations about

1:16:45 this and talk about them in this type of way.

1:16:47 If that makes sense, it does.

1:16:49 Okay.

1:16:50 So here's what I got to say to this.

1:16:55 God doesn't warn against occultic things because they don't work.

1:16:59 He warns against them because they do, right?

1:17:02 So the idea, it's like spiritual breadcrumbing.

1:17:08 So you get, you get results, okay, and you're going to get results if you do this thing.

1:17:13 That was given to you by other spirits, right?

1:17:16 This is why a lot of sidekick mediums, like my friend, Jen Nita, this is what really got

1:17:19 her into like tarot cards because oh my, she went to got a tarot card reading and she's

1:17:24 like, wow, hooked right away.

1:17:27 She's like, I want more, give me more, okay?

1:17:31 And what I use for this is like a cookbook theology or a example where if you're reading

1:17:39 a cookbook and you're getting recipes and you're following the recipes and you're losing

1:17:46 weight, like it's working.

1:17:47 You're not just losing weight.

1:17:48 You're building muscle.

1:17:49 You feel better.

1:17:51 But what you don't realize is it's actually under tricking you under the surface that

1:18:00 you don't realize you're following a specific diet that will kill you in six months.

1:18:06 And that diet might be called the six month life diet.

1:18:10 And but all you know is that, hey, it's working.

1:18:12 This is actually working for me.

1:18:14 And but it's not sustainable.

1:18:15 All right.

1:18:16 And that's my point is that there are things, this is just the enneagram.

1:18:21 This could be anything.

1:18:22 It could be law of attraction, tarot cards, affirmations, whatever it is.

1:18:26 It's supposed to work so that there's a reliance on it.

1:18:31 And in that working, there's actually something underneath that you are starting to accept

1:18:37 because it worked.

1:18:39 This is why people follow false teachers, by the way.

1:18:42 This is why a lot of people have a hard time seeing a lot of truth because that person

1:18:50 healed them, right?

1:18:52 Whoever it is, say that they came and because here's the thing, Jesus doesn't warn against

1:18:58 things that don't work.

1:18:59 He's warning against the false version of those things.

1:19:03 They're supposed to be false healings.

1:19:04 What does that even mean?

1:19:06 What are false healings, false miracles?

1:19:09 You know what I mean?

1:19:10 They're not fake in the sense that they didn't work.

1:19:12 It's because they did work, but the source that it's coming from is a dark source.

1:19:17 So how do you know the difference, right?

1:19:19 It's not because it works because there's lots of things that we look to scripture on,

1:19:25 prayer that doesn't work.

1:19:28 God doesn't always answer every prayer.

1:19:30 Does that mean that God is not good, right?

1:19:33 So what we do is we tend to force it, don't we?

1:19:36 We're like, ah, we don't want to weigh on God.

1:19:37 We don't want to wait on the sovereignty.

1:19:40 We don't want to do this.

1:19:41 We're going to force God's hand, okay?

1:19:43 And so there's always alternatives and that's the other thing.

1:19:45 It's like you learned a lot about your wife that there could have been other things that

1:19:50 other avenues that you could have learned that outside of an occultic personality test.

1:19:59 And here's the other thing.

1:20:00 You're right about the origins.

1:20:01 A lot of people think it's ancient and it's this and that.

1:20:03 No, no, it came through automatic writing.

1:20:06 And Richard Roar, who is the, at least I call him the Pope of progressive Christianity,

1:20:13 he wrote a whole book on the Enneagram and he is the reason why the Enneagram got so

1:20:18 popular in the Christian church is because of him and he's a flat out heretic flat out

1:20:25 heretic.

1:20:26 And so we got to think, yeah, it's not, it's not the same as the genetic fallacy because

1:20:32 it didn't matter.

1:20:33 Let's just say that that's not where it came from, right?

1:20:36 In that regard, you're still looking at this idea of what's actually working and what's

1:20:42 the underlying worldview that's being sold to me along with this thing?

1:20:48 What is actually happening to my spiritual life as I follow this thing that's working

1:20:53 for me?

1:20:55 This is such a, I have a whole section on this in my book because this is a trap that I call

1:21:00 this the it works trap.

1:21:03 Another example I'm going to use with this is Napoleon Hill, think and grow rich.

1:21:07 I want to be best self-help books that's ever existed.

1:21:11 I made a whole video on him and he's a total scam artist, right?

1:21:15 The guy is just, he's a scumbag, total scumbag and, but let's just take that aside.

1:21:22 Let's just say, you know, he's a nice guy.

1:21:24 Let's just take the book that he wrote.

1:21:27 I've had Christians recommend this book.

1:21:29 This book is popular in MLN's.

1:21:31 You have prominent Christians who have recommended this book and I'm like, why?

1:21:37 Why would you do that?

1:21:38 Well, because it works.

1:21:39 And here's the problem is that there's a lot of really good advice in that book.

1:21:44 There's a lot of good business advice.

1:21:46 There's a lot of, you know, ways of thinking that are good to help you grow a business,

1:21:53 to help you get it together and, but along with that advice, you are being sold this

1:21:59 new thought spirituality that you don't realize you're signing up for.

1:22:03 The dude is basically an occultist by chapter nine.

1:22:07 You know what I mean?

1:22:08 You can see these dead people because they're all part of the divine mind.

1:22:12 And I'm like, Christian, why isn't this a red flag?

1:22:15 Because you've already bought into the first half because it worked in the first half.

1:22:19 And so these blinders go on and you're like, oh, well, yeah, he must mean something else.

1:22:25 It's ambiguous.

1:22:26 And so we make excuses.

1:22:28 And I'm over here thinking, okay, but you are signing up for on the dotted line a spirituality

1:22:34 that you don't realize is a cultic and unbiblical because of the other stuff that worked.

1:22:39 You are compromising.

1:22:40 And that's how compromise starts.

1:22:42 So yeah, there's a lot to say about the Enneagram.

1:22:44 There's a whole video that I have on my channel on that.

1:22:47 And I actually a recommended resource is a Marsha Montenegro in Don Vino, Don enjoy Vino.

1:22:52 They wrote a book called Richard Roar and the Enneagram Secret.

1:22:55 I would be hard pressed to find any Christian that reads that book coming out of it the

1:23:00 other end thinking, wow, the Enneagram is still great.

1:23:04 Like, I would be really interested to know their thoughts after reading that.

1:23:07 Yeah.

1:23:08 I remember when my opinions on the Enneagram first started to change, Justin Briarley show,

1:23:14 which was the unbelievable podcast where you'd usually have a, you know, atheist and a theus

1:23:18 come on to debate, but they had a pro-enneagram pastor and a former new age guy.

1:23:24 I think it may have been Marsha that came on and was talking about the origins and the

1:23:30 pastor obviously worshiped at the altar of pragmatism and worshiped about the altar of

1:23:33 it works.

1:23:34 And so it must be fine.

1:23:36 And that was his only argument.

1:23:37 He was fairly feckless in the debate because she would bring up something that was factual

1:23:40 and he would be like, yeah, gotcha.

1:23:42 But we did this at my church and it worked and it becomes problematic.

1:23:45 And I guess as you were saying that, Melissa, don't you think the fruit that Eve ate in

1:23:50 Genesis three tasted good?

1:23:53 Because it probably did initially, right?

1:23:55 But it's the same thing you talked about about that diet that's eventually going to

1:23:58 kill you.

1:23:59 I've heard I've not like tried and failed at this, but I've heard that if you eat a diet

1:24:02 of only rabbits, you will eventually starve to death because of the lack of nutrients

1:24:06 that's in rabbit meat.

1:24:07 So you can literally be eating until the day that you starve to death, right?

1:24:12 It's kind of this weird concept.

1:24:14 And so guys just think the fruit from the forbidden tree had to have been sweet and not

1:24:19 sweet seeming before she took a bite, but even afterwards, right?

1:24:23 So that's kind of the it works thing.

1:24:25 Now I mentioned one to talk about earlier.

1:24:27 So we're going to get into it now as we start winding this to a close new thought in the

1:24:31 church growth movement, you go into a lot of detail in chapter 10.

1:24:34 And so I want to read a couple of quotes here, because I think this is very, very pertinent

1:24:38 in Melissa.

1:24:39 I think I think this is pertinent in our time when we've got a lot of big churches that

1:24:44 only think big, they don't think gospel, they don't think discipleship.

1:24:49 And again, as I've said before, I got to be careful.

1:24:51 There are a lot of churches with huge parking lots that take the gospel seriously that take

1:24:55 discipleship seriously that take sanctification seriously, just because you have more than

1:24:59 300 members does not mean that you're one of those big, bad mega churches.

1:25:02 You might be a good one, but a lot of them are garbage.

1:25:04 So let me read this quote here.

1:25:06 Our church wasn't heretical by any stretch you're talking about your church that you're

1:25:09 attending at the time.

1:25:10 Our church wasn't heretical by any stretch, the imagination.

1:25:12 I went weekly and was very involved.

1:25:14 I helped with community outreaches, volunteered regularly in church ministries and attended

1:25:18 some women's Bible studies.

1:25:19 I even baked a casserole or two, all right, you know, we can judge later whether or not

1:25:22 they were good Melissa.

1:25:23 You don't have to be so hard on yourself.

1:25:25 But in hindsight, it is interesting that my incorrect theology went unchallenged.

1:25:31 Never once did I have any sort of epiphany that the new thought beliefs I had were unbiblical.

1:25:37 And then a little bit later in the chapter, you say this, I want something deeper.

1:25:42 It's not that it was a terrible message.

1:25:45 The message was good, but for some reason, it felt like I was being short changed.

1:25:50 And so when you have people coming off of and I immediately in the chapter, when you

1:25:53 started the chapter, I thought about Bill Hybels and then you talk about Bill Hybels.

1:25:56 And the reason I thought of Bill Hybels is because the Bill Hybels was the mentor for

1:26:00 Craig Rochelle, who was my pastor for over 10 years because life church is here in my

1:26:04 backyard.

1:26:05 You version was created 15 minutes from my house, right?

1:26:08 And I got to the point at life church where I was like, you know, 11, 12 years in, volunteering

1:26:13 all the time, leading men's groups, like community leader, leading home groups, all this kind

1:26:18 of stuff.

1:26:19 And I was like, there's just nothing here.

1:26:22 Like it's, it feels good.

1:26:24 The concert's good.

1:26:25 The music's good.

1:26:26 The talk is good.

1:26:27 I laughed a lot, but there's no application.

1:26:30 There's no depth.

1:26:31 It is, as you mentioned in the book, the theology that is an inch deep, but a mile wide, right?

1:26:36 So it's not very offensive.

1:26:37 It's not going to really challenge you that much, but you'll come back next week for the,

1:26:42 for the hour.

1:26:43 And then by the time you leave the parking lot, it's gone again.

1:26:46 And so connect how new thought in the church growth movement kind of came together because

1:26:53 again, a lot of churches are about making new, getting new buildings and expanding their

1:27:00 footprint, increasing their real estate holdings.

1:27:03 It's like, you know, McDonald's trying to launch another McDonald's franchise is what it kind

1:27:07 of feels like.

1:27:08 And it's okay, right?

1:27:09 Because it's whatever dot church is whatever action verb dot church, right?

1:27:13 Like that's the, it's, they, they get to do whatever they want to do.

1:27:17 But man, it just becomes so problematic when, when you go there, the offering is basically

1:27:22 vapid.

1:27:23 So go.

1:27:24 Yeah.

1:27:25 This was out of all the chapters that I wrote out of, they were all hard on their own, in

1:27:31 their own way.

1:27:33 This was the hardest one to write by far because of the nuance needed and the general, the,

1:27:39 the cheap generalization that I didn't want to make, right?

1:27:42 Because the cheap shot is to say that all.

1:27:45 Yeah.

1:27:46 Church bad.

1:27:47 Yes.

1:27:48 And you do.

1:27:49 Right.

1:27:50 Mel, you do a great job in the book talking about the prose of the church growth movement

1:27:55 and those churches and you acknowledge, look, people get saved.

1:27:58 I'm trying to mirror off my head.

1:27:59 People get saved there.

1:28:00 People change their lives and regain their marriages there outreach, you know, the outreach

1:28:05 is great because they're thinking about the unbeliever, not the believer, right?

1:28:08 So they're, they're giving milk to the masses and not meat to the, to the disciples, right?

1:28:12 So go ahead.

1:28:13 That's a good way to put it.

1:28:14 I kind of like that.

1:28:15 Um, yeah, it was just the, the revisions, the, just trying to be wise and charitable.

1:28:23 Yeah.

1:28:24 And charitable.

1:28:25 Yes.

1:28:26 Um, because it's just such a cheap shot.

1:28:28 It would be so easy to take a cheap shot.

1:28:29 You know, these are brothers in Christ, you know, like you want to be careful, like talking

1:28:32 about the bride of Christ, even if you disagree.

1:28:34 Um, but the other cheap shot is to say there's no problem at all.

1:28:40 Yeah.

1:28:41 So, um, let me just start with that.

1:28:44 All right.

1:28:45 The everything you said, uh, yeah, there's, there's definitely issues there, uh, to start

1:28:51 with.

1:28:52 I'm not even sure where to start.

1:28:53 Let's start with Schuler.

1:28:54 All right.

1:28:55 Let me start with Robert Schuler.

1:28:56 Yeah.

1:28:57 Because he's really what the chapter is about.

1:28:58 Um, a lot of people may not recognize him, but he, or even the name, but he is a big

1:29:04 reason for why we do church the way and how we do church the way we do today is because

1:29:09 of one of the biggest players is Robert Schuler.

1:29:13 Robert Schuler, uh, was the pastor of the crystal cathedral, which was a huge deal in

1:29:20 like the eighties and nineties.

1:29:21 This was so big.

1:29:23 He's out of everybody's imagination, uh, today, which is so interesting to me because

1:29:28 we look at pastors today, everybody's talking about them.

1:29:31 They're going viral, they have millions of subs followers.

1:29:36 It makes me, it's so interesting to me that in 20, 30 years, nobody's going to remember

1:29:40 them.

1:29:41 It's so interesting to me.

1:29:42 Um, but yeah, Robert Schuler was a very popular prominent positive thinking new thought

1:29:49 pastor.

1:29:50 And that was the tricky thing is that he did ministry with so many people like Billy Graham,

1:29:59 um, all the way to norm, Norman Vincent Peele was like huge, uh, influence on him.

1:30:04 Norman Vincent Peele was a new thought pastor at that point.

1:30:07 In fact, uh, he adopted, uh, what's called possibility thinking from Norman Vincent Peele,

1:30:13 which is like a positive gospel.

1:30:15 In other words, it was just what was the possibility that you have as a human being?

1:30:19 What's your potential?

1:30:20 Um, and this really uprooted a lot of his doctrines when it came to the negative part

1:30:28 of Christianity, like hell, wrath, uh, the sinful nature of humanity.

1:30:34 Uh, anything that was negative was kind of looked outside of the realm as pass of possibility

1:30:41 thinking.

1:30:42 All right.

1:30:43 Um, he wanted a more, think of like a Joel Osteen, okay?

1:30:46 Think of like this kind of, of, of preaching that was very positive, very uplifting, motivating.

1:30:52 Uh, but it was also much more traditional.

1:30:56 And so Robert Schuller lived in these, he double dipped, okay?

1:31:00 He double dipped in these different Christian cultures where there was a culture, uh, of

1:31:05 Christianity that was really, uh, solid theologically that he was buds with.

1:31:10 And then there was this other culture of Christianity that he kind of helped cultivate where it

1:31:15 really was milky theology.

1:31:17 It wasn't solid, okay?

1:31:20 So there's, that's a little bit of a background in Robert Schuller, um, but he created this

1:31:26 church growth model.

1:31:27 Okay.

1:31:28 What he did, um, was he went door to door, which by the way, Rick Warren did this as well.

1:31:34 Rick Warren was somebody that he mentored directly and he mentored Bill Hybels as well.

1:31:39 They're very quiet about this today.

1:31:41 They don't talk about this a whole lot, but in, in the sense of their theology, I would

1:31:46 say that they didn't agree with Robert Schuller's theology where they agreed, in my opinion,

1:31:54 and what I think can be shown is in his methodologies, all right?

1:31:59 And this is the methodology of Robert Schuller that was informed by his new thought beliefs.

1:32:05 This is where it comes in because he's a new thought pastor thinking, Hmm, humans are inherently

1:32:10 good.

1:32:11 How do we make it?

1:32:12 Remember, it's a positive thinking movement, right?

1:32:14 He's trying to make the gospel more positive, trying to, you know, make, make scriptures

1:32:18 look a certain way and emphasize certain things over, emphasize certain things in scripture

1:32:23 in a positive light.

1:32:25 How do I get people come into church?

1:32:26 People don't want to go to church anymore.

1:32:28 So he goes door to door and he knocks on the door and asks people, Hey, are you going to

1:32:32 church?

1:32:33 And if they said, yes, great, keep going.

1:32:37 And then if they said, no, well, why not?

1:32:39 Why don't you go to church?

1:32:40 Well, it's too negative.

1:32:41 I can't wear pants.

1:32:42 I don't like this.

1:32:43 I like that.

1:32:44 The music isn't this or whatever it is, right?

1:32:46 So he created a model and I'm simplifying this.

1:32:48 Okay.

1:32:49 I'm simplifying this.

1:32:50 He created a model where it was devoted to bringing in the unbeliever.

1:32:57 It was devoted to the uncharged and in pressing them to bring them through the doors.

1:33:06 And from that, that was the genesis of the church growth model, the seeker sensitive

1:33:12 model.

1:33:13 Okay.

1:33:14 And what ended up happening is that there were mentors, people that he mentored that,

1:33:19 uh, you know, we mentioned a few of them, a few of them before, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren,

1:33:23 were the two big ones.

1:33:24 John C Maxwell was another one who took these methods and really, it really, really worked.

1:33:31 One thing that I say in the chapter is that what Disneyland did for amusement parks, Robert

1:33:39 Schuller did for the, like the church, as far as like growing the church.

1:33:44 Yeah.

1:33:45 And so, um, there's problems with this.

1:33:48 All right.

1:33:50 The first thing, let's talk about what works really well, right?

1:33:52 Speaking of what works, um, it really did work and we see this.

1:33:57 All right.

1:33:58 I want to be very clear that I have not met a, a, a, and I'm sure they're out there, but

1:34:05 I personally haven't seen or met a, a pastor that uses this model without the gospel first

1:34:13 and foremost.

1:34:14 They really do want to get the gospel out there.

1:34:16 They really do want to make disciples.

1:34:19 They really do want to make Christ known.

1:34:22 Um, so their intention is there and they know that this really works to get people through

1:34:27 the door.

1:34:28 But the problem is, is that what you win them with, you win to them too.

1:34:31 Right.

1:34:32 Right.

1:34:33 One is when at, whatever you've done to get them through the door, you got to keep doing

1:34:37 to keep them there and their front doors, their back doors are just as, as wide as their front

1:34:43 doors.

1:34:44 They have a lot of turnover.

1:34:45 So you have to wonder why, and this is statistics, right?

1:34:49 You're wondering why in the world do these churches, they boom, they have tens of thousands

1:34:54 of members, but people don't end up really staying.

1:34:58 Why?

1:34:59 Okay.

1:35:00 So there's, there's questions that we have to ask there.

1:35:03 The, the genesis for this model was not a biblical one.

1:35:07 Okay.

1:35:08 And this is something else I, I really talk about in the, in the chapter is, um, we have

1:35:12 to talk about the origins of this.

1:35:13 It works church growth model, okay, because the way that it works, um, isn't by growing

1:35:20 disciples or even teaching exegetical teaching, that's not the focus.

1:35:25 The focus is the unbeliever.

1:35:26 The focus is the marketing strategies that centers around the unbeliever.

1:35:32 I understand churches and a lot of bigger churches do this.

1:35:35 Okay.

1:35:36 A lot of, I understand churches that can, um, be sensitive to the fact that there are new

1:35:41 believers in their audience, give them a mug, give them a pat on the hand shake.

1:35:47 But that pastor knows the exegetical pastor knows that that Sunday service is aimed mostly

1:35:54 at the believer and you are delivering that biblical message at in context of scripture.

1:36:02 But you're also maybe defining words a little bit differently, understanding that, Hey, that

1:36:07 person that's sitting in the audience may not understand what hermeneutics means, right?

1:36:12 May not understand what wineskin means, right?

1:36:14 Like may not understand certain things.

1:36:16 So you, you have a, um, you have enough people skills to know how to get that down to their

1:36:21 level, but you're still teaching scripture, okay?

1:36:25 What I find at a lot of these, uh, at a, at a seeker sensitive church is that people

1:36:31 go and you have a problem of false conversion because people go and they hear a really good

1:36:37 message that they might leave crying, right?

1:36:40 Like they're in tears, um, and it, it, it served them somehow.

1:36:46 It was a message that they needed to know about, you know, how to deal with their stress or

1:36:53 maybe they're going through a hurt.

1:36:54 Maybe they're, they're going through this.

1:36:56 Maybe it's that.

1:36:57 Maybe it, and you get a lot of life application and you have, you have this, this pain inside

1:37:02 of you that's catered to you.

1:37:03 And it's a very emotional, in other words, this is a very shuler thing.

1:37:07 Meet their emotional felt needs because if you can meet that emotional need, then they

1:37:14 keep coming back for it.

1:37:16 Okay.

1:37:17 If that emotional need is met, this is a marketing strat.

1:37:20 Remember this?

1:37:21 This is a marketing strategy.

1:37:22 This is what people do in marketing.

1:37:25 This is how they get you to buy their product.

1:37:27 In this case, the product is coming back to the church, okay.

1:37:32 And it really, really works.

1:37:34 And, um, thousands of churches throughout the nation use this model and they know exactly

1:37:39 what it's called.

1:37:40 They know exactly how it works.

1:37:42 Um, you change things in your, in your church, uh, the aesthetic has to change.

1:37:46 The music has to be a certain way.

1:37:48 Um, and there's so much to say about this, but my, I'll end it with this.

1:37:54 They're very good things about these churches.

1:37:56 Okay.

1:37:57 Lovely, fair, wonderful things.

1:38:00 People get saved.

1:38:01 Um, their hearts are in the right place when it comes to these things.

1:38:04 They really do try, um, to aim for discipleship.

1:38:10 I don't think they can meet it though because the model that their church has holds them

1:38:15 back from it.

1:38:16 And I don't think there's anything wrong with having a modern church where your pastor can

1:38:21 wear pants and you can play modern music.

1:38:24 Have fun, be, have fun in the arts.

1:38:27 You know what I mean?

1:38:28 I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

1:38:30 And they do some things very, very well that I think other churches can take note on however,

1:38:37 where they go wrong.

1:38:38 Okay.

1:38:39 So the cons part of it is that the obsession with excellence, the milky theology, the therapeutic

1:38:45 theatrics, there are things that come along with this model that leave you in compromise.

1:38:52 And that's really ultimately what this chapter is about is talking about the hard things.

1:38:57 Hey, here's Shuler.

1:38:58 He's a new thought pastor and what informed that this model wasn't a biblical thing.

1:39:05 You have new thought ideas that are permeated in the genesis of this thing that so many

1:39:11 pastors are using.

1:39:13 And we have to be able to look at the fruits beyond the numbers just because your congregation

1:39:19 is growing does not mean that God is blessing you.

1:39:23 Okay, the, the, the butts in the seats doesn't mean anything.

1:39:29 What means something is what you're saying behind that pulpit.

1:39:32 Okay.

1:39:33 And that's the judge of your character that that should be that the test of, of success,

1:39:40 if you will, are you teaching the word of God?

1:39:44 Okay.

1:39:45 That's really what it is.

1:39:46 And thousands, thousands of pastors that we don't hear about do just that.

1:39:50 And they have, they have maybe a thousand or so people in their congregation that don't

1:39:54 go viral on TikTok, bless those pastors.

1:39:57 All right.

1:39:58 The ones that we hear about are in a whole different realm.

1:40:01 So that that's a lot, but that's, that's what I have to say about that.

1:40:04 Well, I want to put an exclamation point on the charitableness you, you showed in this

1:40:08 chapter.

1:40:09 I want to read because you list out the strengths of this model, strength one, intentions are

1:40:13 in the right place.

1:40:14 Strength two, church doesn't have to be boring.

1:40:17 Strength three, it's a safe place to hear the truth and it's practical.

1:40:20 Strength four, they speak modern language.

1:40:22 Strength five people do get saved.

1:40:24 So there's the charitable place I think is okay to be critical of things at the fringes

1:40:28 because over time, so pastor out of Florida, Joby Martin, obviously everyone on the show,

1:40:33 he comes on once a month.

1:40:34 We do a segment called ask pastor, everyone knows we're good buddies.

1:40:37 But before we became good buddies, when he was just another pastor that was pitched to

1:40:41 come on my show by his publisher, you know, where his and I's relationship changed was

1:40:46 he called me out of the blue mail and he said, Hey, cause he has a multi site church down there

1:40:51 in Jacksonville.

1:40:52 I think at the time, you know, 15,000 is, you know, people, I think it's around 25 or so

1:40:56 now.

1:40:57 And he goes, Hey, this is how he starts conversation.

1:40:59 Hey, what's your problem with big churches?

1:41:02 And I was just in a good mood that day and I go, whatever do you mean, pastor, Joby Martin

1:41:05 of church of William 22 in Jacksonville, Florida.

1:41:07 And he goes, every time I hear you talk about a church has a big parking lot, you automatically

1:41:11 combine that with a church that doesn't care about discipleship.

1:41:14 He's like, brother, you're inappropriate for saying things that way because this church,

1:41:19 our model is not growth.

1:41:21 It's one more.

1:41:22 And then he kind of explained what that was and I knew he was right.

1:41:25 I knew he was right.

1:41:26 I was like, I thought I was being precise in my speech.

1:41:29 I thought I was following Dr. Jordan Peterson's advice to be precise in my speech.

1:41:33 And I wasn't being precise because I didn't believe that that if your church had a big

1:41:37 parking lot, that that automatically meant they were theologically bankrupt and that

1:41:41 they were just teaching vapid nonsense.

1:41:42 I didn't believe that, but it sounded like that to the end user.

1:41:46 And then when I go and actually see his church in motion, because you would look at it, okay,

1:41:50 it used to be a Walmart now it's a church.

1:41:52 That's one sign that it's a bad, bad, super bad, you know, a church, right?

1:41:55 Because it's this big building and it costs all this money.

1:41:58 It's got multi sites, it's got multi-passers, it's got hundreds of employees.

1:42:02 The reason why they keep building spaces is because they challenge everybody to have that

1:42:07 one more, which goes back to scripture, is having opening the door for that one more

1:42:11 person to hear the, hear the good news of the gospel and to come into the kingdom.

1:42:17 But the thing is, is they're not making false converts because once you're in, it's like,

1:42:21 okay, baby, you're in, the discipleship process starts now, the sanctification process starts

1:42:27 now.

1:42:28 It's not going to be the same message, rinse and repeat next week to make you feel good.

1:42:31 The message is the gospel and how do we get there through line by line chapter through

1:42:36 chapter, book by book, teaching other word of God, not, I wanted exactly, not, hey,

1:42:42 I want to do a series on money and then I'm going to back into scripture and proof text

1:42:48 a bunch of stuff so I can sound good in terms of how money good or marriage or whatever.

1:42:53 And every now and then going top cool is fine, like I'm not anti topical, but serving the

1:42:58 sheep as a shepherd, not as a TikTok influencer, not as a YouTube star, but serving the sheep

1:43:03 as a shepherd, you do it verse by verse of the Bible, exegetically helping them to get

1:43:09 knowledge that is not rooted in pragmatism or rooted in John C Maxwell generic leadership

1:43:15 advice or rooted in Delcarnaby, how to win friends and influence people, but it's rooted

1:43:19 in the true living word of God.

1:43:22 So there are good examples of it out there, but the church growth modeling it, the one

1:43:25 mower model is though, but hey, we're already over time, Mel.

1:43:29 So like, I guess we got to cut this off at some point because believe it or not, we went

1:43:33 over an hour and a half and I still got questions.

1:43:35 Okay.

1:43:36 So we're going to have to do this again, we can continue this conversation.

1:43:39 But as of now, that is all for me.

1:43:41 Is there anything else you'd like to get off your chest?

1:43:43 No, I just think that this is a great conversation.

1:43:46 Thanks for reading it.

1:43:47 I'm glad it was helpful.

1:43:48 Anything that we didn't get to.

1:43:49 I mean, I encourage everybody to get the book because there's always more in the book.

1:43:54 I know that there's there's stuff in there that I tried my best to be, you know, strategic,

1:44:01 but also charitable and in all of these things.

1:44:04 So hopefully it helps people.

1:44:06 Well, I truly, truly and guys that listen to me for any length of time, I don't give

1:44:10 compliments cheaply, this truly is a masterful work that you provided.

1:44:14 It'll certainly end up on our end of year list as one of the best books of 2025, unless

1:44:19 there are 10 absolute bangers that I haven't read yet this year.

1:44:22 I think this is going to make it on there.

1:44:24 I really appreciate you spending some time with me and my audience will talk again soon.

1:44:27 Sure.

1:44:28 Thanks for having me.

1:44:29 There you go.

1:44:30 Guys.

1:44:31 I hope you enjoyed my time with Melissa Doherty.

1:44:32 But before that you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.

1:44:34 Add an adult to life or mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that

1:44:37 for just spiritual mental and physical resilience links I've got for you today.

1:44:40 I've got a link to where you can buy your copy of Happy Lies.

1:44:43 Also I've got a link to Melissa's website where you can check out all of our other content

1:44:46 and a direct link or direct link rather to her YouTube channel.

1:44:50 Thank you for listening to this podcast.

1:44:52 Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five

1:44:55 star review.

1:44:56 If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an

1:44:58 email to info@undontin.life.

1:45:01 That's I N F O at undontin.life.

1:45:04 Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else

1:45:07 including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.

1:45:10 Just go to www.undontin.life and as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing

1:45:14 us to use their music for our content.

1:45:16 The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album

1:45:20 on Face Down Records.

1:45:22 The links are in the description.

1:45:23 I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.

1:45:25 Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.

1:45:32 Keep seeking the lion of Judah.

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