0:00
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:21
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:23
Let's get into it.
0:24
Hi guys.
0:25
Today we've got a special guest on the podcast.
0:26
His name is Scott Box.
0:27
He is the author of a book called Heroic Disgrace, a worship hero story.
0:31
So this book goes into a lot about kind of mental health struggles.
0:35
And so there's a lot of three points of this book.
0:37
There's examples of great fathering and kind of how he created a hero figure out of his
0:42
own father, his personal obsession with kind of the overall concept of being a hero, how
0:47
that kind of led to some dissonance in his relationship with Christ and kind of how that
0:52
works within Christianity, then he kind of descended into some mental health struggles
0:56
and he finally got a diagnosis, but he was working in ministry at the time.
0:59
And if you're dealing with mental health struggles, you can't really show that if you're working
1:02
in ministry and people don't really know how to talk to you and they still get you like
1:05
you're crazy.
1:06
And guys, we get into all of that in this book.
1:07
So I'm not going to keep him from you any longer.
1:09
So without further ado, let's get into it.
1:12
Scott Box, welcome to Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
1:15
Hey, Kyle.
1:16
Thanks so much for having me looking forward to being with you.
1:19
Yeah, I will say that off air, you asked me if I lived on the West coast, which is maybe
1:23
the most offensive thing that you could ask a guy from Oklahoma because it's like I don't
1:27
sound like that.
1:28
I don't live in that area of the world.
1:30
I don't want to live in that area in the world.
1:31
How do you live there?
1:33
Dude, I was born here.
1:34
That is the only, only reason.
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And and I met the hottest chick I've ever met in my life here and her family lives here.
1:43
Well, I've got news for you now.
1:45
There's been a break in technology where they've made these things called airplanes where two
1:50
people, regardless of how hot they are, they can get on them and they can fly to anywhere
1:54
on the planet and then they can stick their flag in the ground and stay there.
1:59
Just just let you know.
2:00
I appreciate that, man.
2:02
Hey, I will say that, you know, this, this area needs some of us studly dudes to hang
2:09
out and go to battle here because my word, now, let, let the bears take out all the liberals
2:15
and let all the conservatives hang out here in the middle of fire over country.
2:19
But we need to get into the real business for today because we're getting into a book
2:22
that you wrote called heroic disgrace, a worship hero story.
2:26
Now, very, very early in the book, you tell a story that was very interesting about the
2:30
heroism of your father and it seems like like you and your dad have a very, very special
2:34
relationship.
2:35
So how about you tell us a little bit about that story and then tee up kind of the 30,000
2:39
foot view briefly of what the book is about?
2:41
Yeah, you bet.
2:43
So dad and I, I'll spoil the ending, dad dies in the end.
2:50
Yeah, yeah, and the thing that, that really was powerful for me with my journey with my
2:58
father was this, this really wasn't unspoken.
3:04
But it was this, this ever, this constant thing with heroism that we were, we were wrestling
3:11
with in our lives.
3:12
And I wanted to be a hero and the problem that I had is I wanted to be the hero just
3:20
like my dad was the hero.
3:22
And I realized for a long time that, or it took me a long time to get to that place where
3:28
I wasn't designed to be Tom box.
3:32
I'm Scott box and Tom box had his own stuff he had to deal with, he had his own things
3:39
he had to conquer, but that was a very hard thing for me to deal with.
3:45
And then to tee you up for the rest of the conversation, I suppose, is that this has to
3:50
do with my descent, if you will, into mental illness.
3:56
And my struggle to find the heroism that I to achieve the heroism that I thought I was
4:02
put here on earth to achieve, but ultimately I was just clobbering together a heroic Frankenstein
4:10
rather than Jesus Christ's way of heroism.
4:15
Well, we'll get, we'll get to all that stuff here later on in the book because that is
4:18
really kind of the hinge point of everything that you do.
4:20
I do want to spend a little more time focusing because, you know, your audience is mainly
4:23
fathers that you're going to be talking about.
4:25
And just there were, there were certain times in your dad's life where he could have zigged,
4:29
and zagging was the exact thing that he needed to do.
4:32
So there was a story of you kind of standing up for a girl that you liked.
4:35
I think you were in elementary school or maybe junior high and you ended up punching a kid.
4:38
I want to read this quote from the book and then get a little bit more feedback from you
4:41
on it.
4:42
Sure.
4:43
When I turned and walked out of the bedroom, I was a free man and restored with restored
4:46
confidence.
4:47
Instantly, I was, again, much more like the all-American Godfaring kid who picked a fight
4:51
with a bully to save a princess rather than the violent, pathetic, emasculated boy, I
4:55
believed myself to be since 3.30 p.m. the prior afternoon.
4:59
Maybe I was wrong to meet violence with violence and protecting the girl I had a crush on.
5:02
But my dad treated me as if I was in the right.
5:04
I had been the hero and he was proud of me.
5:07
What a gift my dad gave me.
5:08
Now the, the emasculated feeling you got was from all of the effeminate people that were
5:12
at your school, that basically any form of violence for any reason whatsoever is terrible
5:16
and bad and you're probably going to go to prison and get raped.
5:18
Like that, that's just kind of the idea.
5:20
But then like your dad went a very, very different route and he, he filled you with something
5:24
that you were able to carry into your adulthood.
5:26
So talk to me a little bit about that.
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Yeah.
5:29
Boy, that, that is an enormously powerful gift that my dad gave me to, to, to remind me
5:37
that I could protect myself.
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I know, look, so many of us grow up in families where, A, we don't get that in the first place
5:46
or we get some twisted form of it where we're supposed to kick everybody's butt and we don't
5:52
treat our women right.
5:53
And you know, anyway, there's dad modeled a, a dad modeled a masculinity that was, was
6:03
pretty healthy in the end.
6:06
And yes, when you say effeminate, you know, that this is one of the, this is one of the
6:12
worst things about living in the Northwest that I've realized guys like you didn't have
6:18
as, as difficult a, a ladder to climb in regards to, in my opinion, in regards to the, the
6:27
whole political correctness crap that I've had to, I was overwhelmed with as a young, young
6:38
person in on the West coast and especially in the Northwest and Seattle.
6:43
I, I've had to climb out of that.
6:45
And to this day, I struggled with saying things that I mean, but always second guessing myself.
6:52
My dad helped me slowly unpack that.
6:57
So that was attention on one side.
6:59
I was getting smashed in the public schools and all of that.
7:03
And on the other hand, I had my dad going, no, no, no, it's okay to be a butt kicker.
7:07
Well, that's, that's the thing that I think is very important because, you know, I definitely
7:11
encourage everyone to take people, take their kids out of the government schools.
7:14
They're not public schools or government schools.
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And you know, if you want to do homeschooling, that's great.
7:18
That's not really an option for a lot of people.
7:20
So doing some sort of a private school or other ways to educate your children because
7:23
the math doesn't add up because your dad may have an impact on you, but the timing doesn't
7:27
work out.
7:28
Because if your kid is at getting ready for school in the morning, at school by eight,
7:32
you know, stays at school until three, and then at home, he's got to do homework.
7:35
How much time are you really spending with your kid?
7:37
You can't make up for it on a Saturday or on a vacation once a year.
7:40
And so you need to have these moments that you leave out for them.
7:43
But before we move off the subject of your dad, even though he is a through point for
7:46
the entire book, there, there's a somewhat lengthy quote that I want to read because this
7:50
was during the Challenger disaster.
7:51
So anyone that's kind of in your age range kind of understood what it was like being a,
7:55
being a kid and seeing the Challenger disaster take place on television.
7:58
So I'm going to read this quote to you because it was another great, great thing that your
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dad did for you.
8:02
So here's the quote.
8:03
"While teachers all around the country had turned off the televisions to protect school
8:06
children from the confusion and fear of the Challenger disaster, my dad called me from
8:09
work to tell me precisely the opposite, to watch and pay attention when others were looking
8:13
away.
8:14
Dad didn't want me to close my eyes when I had the opportunity to learn something about
8:18
honor, dignity or patriotism.
8:20
He wanted to teach me I might have to make the same sacrifice someday.
8:24
Dad wanted me to know where, know there was a life on the other side of death, not to
8:28
fear death, to be watchful, listen, be courageous, take action, and fall asleep every night with
8:33
a peaceful mind with my dignity intact.
8:36
This principle was one of the greatest gifts my dad had ever gave me.
8:38
It was his way of teaching me I had to pay attention or I had to be paying attention
8:43
to know when to dive in and help others.
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If I was aware and looking, I could be one of those who bolted in when others were jumping
8:49
out.
8:50
I could be one of those who lived with my, lived my life by principle, not by emotion.
8:55
And so there were, there were a couple other things in there, you know, basically talking
8:57
about emotions, but then he kind of ended with this, with, with a statement that really
9:02
stayed with you into your adulthood, which is the boxes are hosses.
9:06
So if anybody missed your name, your last name is box.
9:09
And so when he says the boxes are hosses, that left an indolible impression.
9:12
So how he responded to the challenger disaster and how he required you to respond.
9:17
And then the boxes are hosses.
9:18
Give us a little bit more on that.
9:21
Yeah.
9:22
You remember that day, don't you?
9:27
I don't.
9:28
I was a little too young.
9:29
Okay, okay, so cause what, what year would that have been in?
9:32
I was trying to remember before, yeah, so that I was born in 86.
9:35
So for me to remember, it would be, it would be pretty tough.
9:38
No, got you.
9:39
So I, that, the way that you say it though, those who were alive, remember that day, you
9:46
know, alive and old enough, but I was 10 years old.
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And yeah, I, for whatever reason, I was homesick and I remember that phone call from my dad.
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And I, of course I didn't know what they were doing at school.
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I wasn't there, but I, later on, and since, since then, over the years, I've realized
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just how many people turned the freakin TV off that teachers were just horrified that
10:17
they, they allowed children to see something that, you know, represented the real world.
10:24
Are you kidding?
10:26
So I, I didn't know that until later.
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In the meantime, my dad's like, hey, you gotta, you gotta have eyes on, eyes on this, ears,
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ears open so that we can talk about this and we can pray about this.
10:39
And this was the chest thumping patriotic stuff that I, I was born into in my family,
10:46
which I, I really do appreciate.
10:51
As far as the boxes are hosses, this wasn't a real negative thing at the beginning.
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Haas is the, the name as even people older than way older than us would know this.
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Haas was a character in, in an old Western TV show and he was a stud.
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He was a butt kicking stud who would come to anybody's aid.
11:19
A Haas was somebody who was really a hero.
11:24
And the boxes were heroes was basically what my family was saying.
11:31
Us boxes are hosses.
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We come through always.
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And if we don't, we've got to try harder.
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And so, so whatever that did to me mentally, there was a tweak.
11:45
It wasn't a bad thing, and I'm not saying being a hero is a bad thing.
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But what I do, where, where we do need to get to eventually, and you can guide on this,
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but we need to get to the place where my understanding of heroism or hossism was, was
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completely different and upside down from Jesus Christ's method of heroism.
12:08
And there, there you go.
12:10
Yeah.
12:11
So there was, there was actually a quote later on in the book and then we'll get into some
12:14
of the mental health stuff and the quote was, I never imagined nor was I effectively taught
12:18
that I need Jesus to make me an actual hero.
12:22
So something that struck me very early in the book and kind of carried through for me
12:27
is why that would be your desire.
12:30
Because some people would call that, you know, hear that would, they would call that a complex
12:34
to where you have these people that try to force themselves into heroic situations when
12:38
they're not prepared for it, not mentally, not physically.
12:41
And then you have people that just respond to, you know, these crazy circumstances to
12:45
become a hero.
12:46
And so it's like, it's like these people that are obsessed with becoming a hero, they almost
12:49
always become a joker instead.
12:51
And so it's almost this disordered notion of this even being a goal.
12:57
And also it comes to this very self-centered view of what Christianity is, that somehow
13:02
Christianity is about us, that somehow the Bible is about us when nothing could be further
13:07
from the truth.
13:08
I've been in this several times on my show, but Steven Furdick, who is one of my least
13:11
favorite pastors in existence right now, he invited one of my favorite pastors in existence,
13:15
Matt Chandler to come speak at his church years and years and years ago, and Matt Chandler
13:19
came in there and just wrecked shop.
13:21
He basically was talking about David Glaeth and he's like, you're not David.
13:25
If you're reading the Bible and you think you're David, that you're the point, you've
13:28
got it wrong.
13:29
God is about God.
13:31
God is not about you.
13:32
God is not about, you know, your inner most thoughts and feelings and making sure you
13:35
feel good.
13:36
It's glory and if you were on the wrong side of his judgment, it's not going to be good
13:40
for you.
13:41
So talk to me a little bit more about that because this whole time I'm like, why is this
13:44
guy just obsessed with being a hero?
13:46
What is the positive outcome of that?
13:48
You know what I mean?
13:49
Yeah.
13:50
Well, here's, here's, here's, I don't know if this is another perspective on it, but
13:55
I do know that, that there's an aspect to what Christ has done that is supposed to include
14:03
us.
14:04
It's a happy thing of, of heroism.
14:07
And this is why, now let me start with this, worship for me, there was a guy in Seattle
14:13
who was a really good musician and in church language, a worship leader.
14:20
So for me, he was a good singer.
14:22
He was a great guitarist.
14:24
And he would stand up on platform every single week and lead music.
14:27
And I wanted to be that guy.
14:29
That guy, his name was Mark, Mark was, Mark was, he was a badass.
14:34
Like Mark, I wanted that.
14:37
And so for me to want that, that was whatever worship was, that was it.
14:44
And so recognizing that that kind of worship is where I was headed, I then was like, okay,
14:54
well, then if that's heroism being on platform, people cheering for you, whatever, then sign
15:00
me up.
15:01
Okay.
15:02
So on the other hand, there's this thing where I've recognized that because I've been a Christian
15:08
my whole life, I've realized that Jesus's type of heroism hasn't been, that's here.
15:14
In fact, let me read this to you just to get us on the right track.
15:19
The irony is the great hero, Jesus Christ, his disgraceful method for saving humanity
15:27
was the way to his heroic victory and crown.
15:31
So in other words, Jesus modeled what Jesus modeled was humility, not pride, submission,
15:37
not strength, slavery, not mastery, being the least, not the greatest, being the last in
15:42
line, not the first in line.
15:44
Hang with me.
15:45
He was selfless, not selfish.
15:47
He propped up the weak and the broken.
15:50
Jesus came, as we know, to serve, not be served.
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And he gave himself a way not to demand his own way.
15:59
Not inverted everything.
16:00
And then that's when I go, well, if that's heroism, I better figure my stuff out so that
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I can be that kind of hero.
16:10
And that's the thing is as much as the Bible is about Jesus, it is about us.
16:16
We were called to rule with him in the garden and in the same way, we're called to be like
16:24
Christ.
16:25
Well, it's impossible, how can we do it, but we must be like Christ.
16:31
We must love like him.
16:32
We must serve like him.
16:33
We must be heroic like him.
16:34
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17:07
Well, it's, I guess for me, it's the overwhelming focus on self because in our modern and, you
17:13
know, with with pastors basically doing TED talks with Bible versus sprinkled on top, you
17:18
know, these worship pastors who have no theological understanding of what they're singing, you
17:23
know, singing to Jesus as if he's this, you know, fair haired, light featured guy that
17:27
they can just cuddle up with and kiss on the nose whenever they whenever they're feeling
17:31
sad or something like that boyfriend Jesus is, you know, we've gotten this really, really
17:35
awkward sense of what what our relationship is to Christ and what our relationship is
17:41
to God, not relationship with what our relationship is where we stand in the cosmos because when
17:46
we read the Bible, we have been taught by these terrible pastors that read it as if you're
17:51
the person in the story and it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
17:54
God's trying to teach you something about you.
17:57
You are not the point.
17:59
And by teaching something about you, he's showing you something about himself.
18:02
Why does it give us something like marriage?
18:04
Because that is the closest thing we can understand to the sacrifice of Jesus for his bride, the
18:10
church.
18:11
Like it's the only way we even get close.
18:12
And what this all kind of seems like it works towards Scott is this this sense of calling
18:18
and this desire or complex towards heroism or something like that.
18:22
It led to stuff that you were talking about early in the show, which is the struggles
18:26
with mental health and you were eventually diagnosed with Bible bipolar two.
18:29
I didn't even know there were multiple ones.
18:31
I didn't know there was a sequel to bipolar one and then something called hypomania, which
18:35
I wasn't familiar with.
18:36
So talk a little bit about that kind of your descent into some mental health struggles and
18:41
then eventually being diagnosed sure.
18:44
So the, the bipolar journey or the descent into that really did hinge in a lot of ways
18:52
from some, whatever it was that was wrecking me.
18:57
I did not know Carrie Ann, my wife and I got married when I was 22 and she was 20.
19:02
And we, I, I, I dipped into all sorts of self medication stuff at that point in time.
19:10
I don't know if it was stress.
19:11
I don't know if it was just sickness, you know, that, that slow descent into whatever
19:16
bipolar is on the front end of things, but hypomania, hypomania is both a blessing and
19:24
a curse.
19:25
We hear a ton about depression, you know, and we have for years and years, you in for by,
19:33
if bipolar you dip down into depression, but the silver lining with bipolar disorder is
19:40
you also go up into mania or hypomania, mania sucks, full blown mania, it's this crazy overlap
19:50
of agitation, irritation, impulsivity that will just destroy relationships, destroy your
19:56
life.
19:57
You can be, yeah, it's, it's destructive.
20:01
But there's this glorious place that can last for minutes, hours, days called hypomania.
20:10
And that's when I'm the most creative.
20:12
That's when I've been the most mentally sharp.
20:15
At least I thought I was hypomania.
20:18
I call it hypomania land.
20:21
It's a lot like getting to Disneyland as a kid or Christmas morning as a kid and just
20:26
wanting to stay there.
20:29
So bipolar disorder for me was diagnosed.
20:32
I really was, I struggled between ages 25 and 30.
20:37
And then finally was diagnosed at age 30 and then went on that whole journey with counselors
20:45
and doctors to try to figure out how to medicate myself.
20:49
And by the way, I've not been afraid of medication once I knew or had a name for what was wrong
20:56
with me that there was, there was an answer.
21:00
There was a, there were strategies we could use and medication we could take.
21:05
I was all in.
21:06
So that's one thing I wanted to talk about.
21:08
And I want to leave a little bit on the bone here.
21:10
So guys have a need.
21:11
Like if this is interesting to you, you got to get the book.
21:13
We don't want to get into all the details, give away all your secrets, but you do detail
21:16
a lot of kind of those different things.
21:18
But I remember at one point in the book, it was probably around the middle where you were
21:22
talking about, I don't know if you used this word, but you became dependent on medication.
21:28
The way you described it almost reminded me of you made an idol of medication.
21:31
Like once I find the right cocktail, I will have solved the issue.
21:35
I will, you know, we've got a diagnosis now.
21:38
So let's get our cocktail going.
21:39
And I guess my struggle is I just did a debate, just a little while ago, by the time this
21:44
comes out, it will have been a long while ago, we're the most medicated society on the planet.
21:49
We take more SSRIs and more antidepressants and more mind altering drugs than the rest
21:54
of the world.
21:55
Like it is an astonishing amount.
21:57
And yet we still have this meeting crisis in the West and especially in the United States.
22:01
We have all these issues that come out of these mental problems that people have and
22:05
that we almost create.
22:07
And so part of me is like, I know people that are close to me, that they have, you know,
22:11
a three or four minute conversation with a doctor and all of a sudden they give them,
22:14
you know, orange, you know, bottle with a white cap and here's some Zoloft as if, oh,
22:18
it's not going to be a big deal.
22:19
Let's just take this for six months and pretend like we know what it's going to do on the
22:23
back end.
22:24
And then once that doesn't work the same, they're chasing the next drug or the next drug
22:28
or the next cocktail or whoops, that cocktail, you know, hurt my liver or hurt my brain or
22:32
I've lost my personality.
22:34
And it's like, I don't ever hear doctors prescribing 60 days of hard exercise and clean eating,
22:39
right?
22:40
Because at one point, you said you blew up, like you got super fat, like you talk about
22:44
that in the book.
22:45
And you know, what that did and it affected you.
22:47
So part of me was, I really struggled with your discussion of medication in your book
22:51
because I was like, man, everybody goes down this route and they all seemingly end up in
22:56
the same place.
22:57
Like if you've got something acute, like, hey, you have an infection, you have to take this
23:01
for the next seven days or you will die.
23:04
That makes sense to me.
23:05
But hey, take these mind altering drugs for an ill-defined or non-defined period of time.
23:09
And then we'll just see where it goes on the back end.
23:11
I really struggle with that.
23:12
So give me a little bit more on it because I am a little bit ignorant.
23:16
Yeah, you bet.
23:17
Well, I think that exactly what you described is what happened to me when prior to diagnosis,
23:27
if you will, proper diagnosis.
23:30
And that's a really important distinction we need to make is that I went to see my general
23:38
practice doctor and what did he do?
23:41
Sure enough, he threw antidepressants at me.
23:44
And without a proper diagnosis, antidepressants for somebody who's bipolar will actually trigger
23:51
mania.
23:52
And it triggers, it puts you into a really hellish place.
23:57
He did that to me.
24:00
And it was misery.
24:03
With a proper diagnosis, and this is where we do need to separate when somebody is actually
24:10
or has a mental chemical imbalance.
24:13
So what we're dealing with in my case is an actual chemical imbalance in the brain that
24:18
needs to be righted.
24:20
If you can get the right cocktail of medication, then you can balance out, it's like putting
24:28
a sling on your arm or putting a bandage on your arm.
24:32
If you've got it, now, that's a bad analogy because the sling or the bandage can go away.
24:37
The chemicals, I need those medications to stay balanced chemically.
24:45
So I'm all in on that as opposed to somebody, and this is where it's different.
24:50
Somebody's feeling depressed.
24:54
Doctors will just throw depression medication at them or, you know, something to help with
24:59
anxiety or I mean, that is bad.
25:02
That's the thing.
25:03
Yeah, go ahead.
25:04
I appreciate it, but I want to stay on the trail.
25:08
It's super bad because you two people could just be melancholy for a period, but when's
25:12
the last time you heard melancholy when it wasn't in the context of an old smashing pumpkins
25:15
album, no one really knows what melancholy is anymore because sometimes you have this
25:20
lull of energy and this lull of place in your life and it's an introspective time that you
25:24
should probably spend in prayer.
25:26
But I guess these people, like what you just said, it's like, I need this to keep the chemical
25:30
balance in my brain.
25:31
So there's quite a bit of data and research about people that they go the diet and exercise
25:36
route and that is what they do.
25:39
That is their medication.
25:40
And so I think medication for a lot of people becomes an easy button.
25:43
You know, it's not, it's not easy.
25:44
Again, I'm painting with a broad brush here.
25:46
Guys don't send me any emails because you're angry, but it's just like, it seems like it's,
25:50
let's find the easy button because we're Americans and if we're fat, we want to pill
25:53
to make us not fat.
25:55
If we're lazy, we want to pill to make us not lazy if we're whatever, like that, that's
25:58
kind of where I struggle to where it's like none of those people compare it.
26:01
Let's go down that route then as far as what I experienced because then I also got this
26:06
experience of losing my voice to the point like I actually, I had to get cut on.
26:11
I actually had to go get surgery and that's when I was in speech therapy of all things
26:17
as a grown man, I'm in speech therapy and my speech therapist looks at me and goes, you're
26:24
not going to get better, you're right on that line of losing what you thought you had or
26:29
would have the rest of your life.
26:31
And if you don't fix it now, it's gone.
26:34
And then her line to me was, and I have no problem sharing this, her line was bring your,
26:41
bring your running shoes.
26:43
And this was my speech therapist telling me, and so we ran, she ran me on the hills of
26:49
Portland for the next dozen meetings, appointments, I went, and she ran my fat butt up and down
26:58
those hills.
27:00
In order to prove to me what needed to happen wasn't chemical or wasn't, you know, even
27:06
vocal, it had to do with my body.
27:11
That, that right there is such a great testament to the entire, the whole, the mind, the body
27:19
and the spirit being, having to be connected.
27:24
My mind was starting to get locked in and realized that a lot of this was happening at
27:29
the same time for me.
27:30
There was overlap in all of this chaos in my life.
27:34
And I had to get myself together.
27:37
And I was doing it.
27:38
I was trusting the professionals on the medical side on all of it, including the mind and
27:46
the body, which had to do with my, my vocal cord stuff, but she was kicking my butt, get
27:52
me in shape.
27:53
And then the spirit said, I was working with my pastors who really frankly were a lot of,
27:58
a lot of them were behind the eight ball on this stuff.
28:00
They didn't understand.
28:02
They didn't understand nor did they really care because I was the crazy guy.
28:06
I was the crazy guy.
28:08
Well, what, what do you mean they didn't understand?
28:11
Like what part did they didn't.
28:12
Well, a lot of pastors, well, church, and this is, this is not condemnation.
28:18
This is a critique of the church as I experienced it.
28:23
People, they don't know what to do with somebody that has a mental diagnosis that it's, and
28:30
I appreciate the fact that the folks that I got to work with did love our family through
28:36
the season that we were in, but they didn't know how to handle it, how to talk, what questions
28:41
to ask, to do things like you and I are doing to dig in.
28:44
Let's talk about medication.
28:46
Let's talk about, you know, the other sides of trying to get healthy.
28:51
You know, let's talk about getting yourself out there and doing some freaking pushups
28:55
for goodness sakes.
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29:25
So I actually did want to talk to you about that about struggling with mental health and
29:29
kind of going on that journey while working in ministry, because you see a lot of people
29:34
especially jaded people that use hashtag ex fan gelical now.
29:38
It's like, yeah, I used to be a pastor and then I read some woke dudes book and I changed
29:42
my entire worldview because my worldview was never strong to begin with or something
29:44
like that.
29:45
But in ministry, you're a professional Christian, right?
29:50
And that is different.
29:51
You can't have a bad day.
29:52
You can't have the sads.
29:54
You can't be angry.
29:55
You can't, you know, respond to something negatively.
29:58
If you have to ask for forgiveness from somebody else, it's like double sin.
30:02
Whereas for all of us other normal Christians, it's just single sin.
30:05
It's a single serving of sin.
30:07
And so I guess what was that like being in ministry and like really kind of having to
30:11
walk through all that, you know, I guess a side to or in addition to, you know, people
30:15
not quite understanding how to talk to you about it.
30:18
Yeah, boy, I love the fact that you bring that up, Kyle, because the truth of the matter
30:24
is that when you're and I say this with tongue and cheek, but when you're the crazy one in
30:30
the room, there's a whole lot more freedom to ask for forgiveness.
30:38
This is one of the greatest blessings of my bipolar disorder.
30:45
I say this all the time, but this is the blessing of my bipolar, the miracle of my bipolar disorder
30:51
is it forced me to reach the freaking end of myself.
30:58
And in that, I didn't care.
31:00
I don't care what you think of me.
31:03
I don't care what pastor down the street thinks of me.
31:06
I don't even care.
31:08
And this is hard, but I don't care what the pastor I'm working for care thinks of me.
31:14
I want him to be honored by the work that I do, but I no longer am my identity is not
31:22
locked into the fact that he thinks I say all the right things, or I am marching the
31:28
exact same March that he's marching.
31:31
I want and need somebody to love me and appreciate what I bring to the table, period.
31:38
And that doesn't mean that I'm not willing to learn.
31:40
That doesn't mean that I'm not willing to grow, but that has offered me an enormous
31:44
amount of freedom in ministry to be Scott box.
31:49
It's a big deal.
31:51
So I do want to get back to the ministry thing, but to kind of put a bow in the book again,
31:54
the name of the book is heroic disgrace.
31:56
It will be in the show notes.
31:57
The forward was written by your cousin, who just so happens to be the guitarist at one
32:01
of the biggest rock bands of all time corn.
32:03
So Brian head Welch.
32:05
And he said this in the forward and I kind of keyed in on it.
32:07
Let me read this quote here.
32:09
There are many forms of mental sickness, but I believe a massive identity crisis is one
32:13
of the biggest causes of this depression induced dark cloud over much of humanity.
32:17
And deniably more and more people are starting to wake up and realize that chasing the wrong
32:21
things in life does not work.
32:23
I believe the antidote is found through discovery, discovering our identities in Jesus Christ
32:28
develops a strong character we need to handle the pressures of life.
32:31
I believe Jesus is the first step in combating the plague of depression and hopelessness.
32:36
And so I've talked to people before and you know, if you know anything about Brian's story,
32:40
obviously just most guys deal with whenever they're in a rock band like that, lots of
32:45
drugs, lots of booze, lots of women, lots of depression, lots of darkness, suicide, the
32:49
whole nine yards, like he's got that in his story.
32:51
And he's talked about that openly and you know, he's, you know, become a very outspoken
32:55
Christian and all that and he's been, he's been a great thing for the cause of Christ.
33:00
And what he talks about there is the exact right thing.
33:03
And so when you look at, you know, when you look out on culture and you see something
33:05
like gun violence or mass shootings or school shootings or something like that, it's like,
33:09
okay, we automatically want to focus on the instrument that was used in the evil as opposed
33:13
to where did that evil come from to begin with?
33:15
And when you live in a secular culture, you can't talk about evil because secularism doesn't
33:21
give you categories for that, because secularism can't tell you the difference between good
33:25
and evil and what it's based on, because they can't put it in a Bunsen burner or in a beaker
33:29
and figure out what it means in a lab.
33:31
They can't even explain what love is to you.
33:33
They say, oh, I love my wife.
33:34
I'm like, okay, explain that to me only using science.
33:37
They can't do it.
33:38
They have to get into philosophical.
33:39
They have to get into all these other different areas.
33:42
And so I guess my question is, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to ask after that quote.
33:46
So I just kind of left it up to my imagination.
33:48
I guess in our society, we over medicate, we over medicate people and we under spread
33:53
the gospel.
33:54
We we over prescribe, hey, you need this, you need this counseling group, which is going
33:59
to take you through 12 steps.
34:00
It's a secular group, but every now and then the main guy will quote scripture.
34:03
So I guess it's kind of Christian as opposed to just talking specifically about the Bible.
34:08
And so I agree with Brian, but this is an identity issue and it's because we're finding
34:12
our identity in our medication or in our favorite sports team or in our, you know, high school
34:16
in a particular video game or how many times we, you know, win our fantasy football league,
34:21
but that doesn't lead to a positive outcome for people.
34:24
So go.
34:25
Yeah.
34:26
So here's what Brian has blown my mind with.
34:30
And I'll just give you this one word and then I'll unpack it.
34:34
The one word is witness, yeah, witness where we have failed as men, especially has been
34:42
in our witness and I'm speaking specifically to Christian men.
34:48
And there's things that I know in my life that have taken me out in the same way they
34:52
took Brian out, not in the rock star way, but pornography.
34:56
I mean, talk about shame and I mean, the guilt and shame that blue, I mean, it, that type
35:03
of self medication was horrific to my witness.
35:08
Now there's for me this, this idea of becoming somebody who recognizes that need to let me
35:19
back up just to smidge and say that as a worship leader, what wasn't working for me was leading
35:26
people in a feminine singing on Sunday mornings, even the boyfriend, the soft little ballad
35:35
songs to Jesus, trying to rustle up the emotions.
35:39
And as good as emotion can be, it is not action.
35:43
And what we've found is that in the church as a worship leader, I wasn't changing people's
35:49
lives.
35:50
I wasn't, I wasn't guiding people into a witness.
35:54
I was just leading them in sync, song time, and keep in mind that's not bad, the connection
36:03
of all of the voices of the church is uniting and it's, it's healthy, but it is incomplete.
36:10
If worship does not lead to a witness, it is right on the verge of worthless.
36:15
And this is what Brian did for me is that Brian modeled a witness that was mind-blowing
36:23
to me.
36:24
I as a worship leader, I could not look at Brian's life and go, I recognize that.
36:30
That's, his worship was different than mine and his worship was connected to his witness.
36:37
This is what changed my life.
36:39
Brian, Brian was the rock star.
36:41
I was the worship leader.
36:42
The rock star led the worship leader.
36:45
And that's not tongue in cheek.
36:46
That is a real thing that happened.
36:49
I think that's an incredible thing.
36:50
I can't remember how you worded it, and I forgot to put it in my notes, but it was something
36:54
along the lines of Brian told you that if you, if you have something that's worth spreading,
36:58
you have to spread it all the time, or do you remember exactly how you worded it because
37:01
you were talking about how he was just constantly witnessing two people.
37:05
So he himself had a witness of his life, but it was how he was witnessing to people.
37:09
Go ahead.
37:10
Yeah.
37:11
I don't remember the quote exactly, but it has to do with, you know, he was so in love.
37:17
He couldn't just not.
37:18
Yeah, I mean, it was a, that's not negative, but it was like it was, it was overflowing
37:22
as he was not talk about it.
37:24
And that's a thing that I, that I struggle with personally, and I forget who said it first,
37:28
but it's like, look how people respond when their favorite team hits a home run or scores
37:33
a touchdown or gets a knockout versus when somebody says, I accept Christ is my personal
37:38
Lord and Savior.
37:39
And I know all the Calvinists out there is like, you can't do that.
37:41
God did it for you.
37:42
There's no such thing as free will.
37:43
We're not getting into that right now, but like, no, no, it's kind of this, this is like
37:47
this.
37:48
Oh, isn't that sweet?
37:49
Oh, little Johnny got baptized.
37:50
Oh, that's great.
37:51
Oh, if I have time, I'll go up to him after service and tell him how proud I am of him.
37:56
Ooh, but I want to make sure I get in line of golden corral so I can get the best, you
37:59
know, piece of whatever.
38:00
And so like, we don't have this overwhelming desire to spread the gospel.
38:05
Some people think it's because we're scared.
38:06
It's like, no, it's because a lot of us don't actually believe it.
38:09
Because if you actually believe it, you would scream about it from the rooftops.
38:13
But I do want to kind of transition again.
38:15
Thank you so much for sending me this book and sending it out to me.
38:17
But you've teed it up a couple of times.
38:19
So we have to go into a little bit deeper episode 176 of my podcast.
38:23
We're in the 300s now.
38:24
So why do I remember that?
38:26
That one particular episode is because I'm asked about it constantly.
38:30
The episode is called contemporary Christian music is for women and effeminate men.
38:35
And so whenever it took me 176 episodes, I think I promise on episode like three or four
38:40
that I was going to do an entire episode just about contemporary Christian music.
38:44
But I go into the massive problems with it.
38:46
And you've touched on it, the lyrical content, whenever I was talking about the lack of any
38:51
theological basis.
38:53
And as a man, if you are a man that is a little bit stunted in your emotional understanding
38:57
even of yourself, you're going to sit there with your hands in your pockets.
39:00
And you're going to be like, man, what are all these people doing with their hands in
39:03
the air?
39:04
Like, I just don't get it.
39:05
And it's because they're singing to Jesus like he's their boyfriend.
39:07
It's homoerotic.
39:08
I've loved that type of worship.
39:10
And so like, talk to me a little bit about that because you've led that, but you're also
39:14
kind of leading a rebellion to that and also manipulation is a word that I want to use.
39:20
I don't think you use a word a second ago.
39:22
You were just talking about emotion.
39:23
But when you do bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, course, bridge again, another course.
39:28
Let's do the course again.
39:29
And there's 17 people on stage only four of the mics are actually turned on, but they're
39:33
dancing and they're hooting and hollering and they're whatever and they're whatever.
39:36
And if you don't feel that way, you think, man, am I a Christian?
39:40
I had a local worship leader here in my community say, Kyle, I'm not sure you're saved because
39:45
you don't like contemporary Christian music.
39:46
And he meant it.
39:47
And he meant it.
39:48
And so talk to me a little bit about that because you've kind of been on both sides of
39:51
this issue.
39:52
Yeah.
39:53
Kyle, you're going to hell first of all.
39:54
Absolutely.
39:55
Dang it.
39:56
I knew it was going to happen.
39:58
And second of all, I think you're right.
40:01
I think that this is, we have found ourselves in one of the most unhealthy places as a church
40:07
that we could be in regard to worship because worship means singing and song time.
40:14
And that is, that is retarded.
40:16
That is absolutely behind.
40:18
And that is, that is completely, we have lost our way when our worship is not connected
40:26
to our witness.
40:27
We are in big, big trouble.
40:30
Here's the thing.
40:32
What I've found is that we must our witness, and here's, here's where this witness, I got
40:39
a double back to what we were talking about.
40:41
And I, I'm realized we're up against some time stuff here, but I want to be very clear
40:48
that witness for me has to be connected to my pain.
40:53
The reason I am so, I'm so dialed in on what this, what my work is and in talking to you
41:00
Kyle, is that I know that my bipolar disorder and my wrestling with heroism and worship,
41:07
this is part of my pain.
41:09
This is how I wrestled with God and he punched me in the freakin' growing and dislocated
41:13
my hip.
41:14
I will walk with a limp the rest of my life, but it will remind me of my purpose, which
41:20
is to witness, which is to tell my story through my pain.
41:24
That is my worship.
41:25
Jesus modeled that kind of worship.
41:28
Yes, pastors have told me, well, Jesus sang a hymn.
41:31
Yes, Jesus sang, we know of one hymn, right before he went to obey his father to go to
41:40
the cross.
41:41
The night he went to Gethsemane and Peter kicked, you know, cut somebody's ear off.
41:48
These guys were bad days.
41:51
They understood what it took to, to worship and to worship with their life and they did
41:58
it with their pain and they were driven.
42:00
They were driven to live the model that Jesus had.
42:04
Here's the thing.
42:05
Jesus modeled a type of worship that we don't seem to understand anymore.
42:11
Jesus modeled a reverence to the Father, Jesus submitted himself to the Father.
42:18
This is amazing.
42:19
If we could submit ourselves to Jesus the way he submitted himself to the Father, that
42:24
then I say is that's masculine worship.
42:29
That's if anyway, keep going.
42:30
No, no.
42:31
Scott, reverence is the key word because we look at godliness and we look at Christianity
42:36
as something that we can squeeze in our schedule.
42:39
So someone said this to me recently.
42:40
I don't know if it was, if it was in an interview or if they just said it to me randomly, they
42:44
said, it's not how many years you've been a Christian, it's how many hours.
42:47
And that's the thing that a lot of us are like, Oh, I became a Christian when I was 12 and
42:51
I'm 32 now.
42:52
So I've been a Christian for 20 years.
42:53
Yeah, yeah, but how many hours have you been a Christian, how often have you been digging
42:57
into the book, digging into prayer, spending some time listening to God, being reverent
43:01
of who he is.
43:02
And that's where I think we get it wrong is we talk about the nice God.
43:05
That's why I talk about the Lamb of God.
43:06
That's why I have a, you know, that's why I talk about the line of Judah.
43:09
That's why I have a line over my shoulders because this over emphasis on the Lamb of God
43:12
to the detriment of the line of Judah gives you an incomplete view of who Christ is.
43:17
And so when you need the line of Judah and you don't know how to call on him, that becomes
43:21
a little bit of an issue for you.
43:22
But we'll make this last question of the day because you have some experience in this.
43:27
But what would you say to any worship pastors out there or lead pastors that have direct
43:31
leadership over a worship pastor in terms of how they can turn things around?
43:35
Because after that episode, I had a worship pastor reach out to me, he's like, Kyle,
43:38
you know what?
43:39
I've never considered the lyrical content of the songs that I chose for Sundays and what
43:44
the men would think because I challenged these guys, I was like, look out on the crowd and
43:48
see what the men are doing, you know, because, you know, maybe you're not a real handsie
43:52
church or maybe you are, but just see, like if you see men with their hands in their pockets,
43:56
maybe identify one and go up to that guy after service and just be like, Hey man, I don't
44:00
want to put you on blast.
44:01
I just want to ask you, you know, personally, I didn't really see you getting into it.
44:04
Like, can you give me a little bit more behind that?
44:07
Like explain that to me, but you've probably got some good advice for people that, you
44:11
know, have the microphone in the earpiece and, you know, just tell them what they should
44:16
do to make it a better experience, a more impactful or a more real experience, not just more exciting
44:23
or more emotional.
44:24
Yeah.
44:25
No, we don't need more of that.
44:26
We don't need more lights and stage fog, you know, we don't need more of that.
44:33
I, man, you're good interviewer, man.
44:39
This is good stuff because we need the church needs these kinds of conversations.
44:44
Here's what I won't do.
44:45
I won't do is pretend like I've got it all figured out my, but I do, I've led music at
44:53
a cowboy church for seven, eight years.
44:56
And you have to understand rural America doesn't even function like that.
45:03
I have less leeway among the men of rural America than I did in suburban America.
45:11
And my recognition being on platform has been that I need to call men out by name, like
45:20
not, not personally, but I need to expect them to participate.
45:26
And so for me, the expectation is you're here, you're going to sing.
45:33
It's not, it's not about, if I've done my job and I've picked the right songs and I've
45:39
done, you know, my job is to call these men into being vocal participants.
45:46
And if I can do that, then that's, that's a big win for a Sunday morning.
45:52
But if I cannot guide them then into taking that singing to a witness, I have failed.
45:58
And so I don't know the answer completely, but the win has to be connected to the witness.
46:05
And so again, singing, I have to call men into singing and using their voice.
46:10
And I have to call them into a witness.
46:13
If we can do that as worship pastors, I think that we will have changed the church in an
46:18
amazing way and left worship in a better place for the next generation than it was left to
46:23
us.
46:24
All right.
46:25
I think that's a great place to leave it for today.
46:26
We've gone everywhere in this conversation again.
46:28
Thank you for the book.
46:29
Thank you for sending all that my way.
46:30
And thank you for your time.
46:31
But that's all for me.
46:32
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
46:34
I so appreciate you.
46:35
Thank you for your audience.
46:36
I hope that this is inspiring to them and look forward to another chat with you down
46:41
the road.
46:42
All right.
46:43
Scott box.
46:44
Thank you for coming on Undaunted Life.
46:45
A man's podcast.
46:46
Thanks, Kyle.
46:47
There you go guys.
46:48
I hope you enjoyed my time with Scott Box.
46:49
But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at Undaunted Life
46:52
or Mission is equipping men to push back dogmas with content that for just spiritual, mental
46:56
and physical resilience.
46:57
So I've got two links for you today.
46:58
I've got a link to the book where you can go and pick it up heroic disgrace, a worship
47:01
hero story.
47:02
And also I've got a link to a Christian post article that he wrote years ago called my
47:05
battle with bipolar disorder.
47:07
God makes healthy what he doesn't heal.
47:09
I thought that was a very interesting perspective.
47:10
All right, guys.
47:11
Thanks so much for listening to the show.
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We do appreciate it.
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Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five
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star review.
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If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an email
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to info@undaunted.life that's I N F O at Undaunted Life.
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Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else
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including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
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Just go to www.undaunted.life and as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red
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for allowing us to use their music for our content.
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The music on this podcast is our song cutting the ties, which is off their 10th anniversary
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re-recording of their album leveler.
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The links are in the description.
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I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
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Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
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Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
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And I know you want it, I'm sorry, it's not my fault.
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You will be revived.