The Mapp
Life is a journey, and every journey needs a guide—or at least a good story. Welcome to The Mapp, hosted by Michael Pursley, where we navigate the messy, beautiful business of being human. The podcast's name is a nod to both Michael A. Pursley Podcast and the "maps of meaning" that help us find our way in life.
Born during the stillness of the COVID-19 lockdowns, The Mapp emerged from Michael’s hunger for understanding. Inspired by long-form conversations that spark insights and refine ideas, Michael dives into deep, authentic dialogues with curiosity and humor. From life’s profound mysteries to its absurdities, nothing is off-limits.
Each episode unearths the treasure of human stories: wisdom, laughter, and moments of profound connection.
At its core, The Mapp is about the human story. It’s a place where problems shrink, purpose grows, and laughter and revelation often arrive hand in hand. For Michael, the podcast is more than a platform—it’s a mission. It’s an effort to create a space where wisdom is shared, ideas are tested, and hearts are healed. Whether through a profound insight or an unexpected laugh, Michael hopes listeners walk away from The Mapp with a sense that they, too, are part of a bigger story—one that is still being written and, in the words of another great storyteller, echoes through eternity.
The Mapp
Redemption through Pain: Forging Identity in the Shadow of Anti-Heroes
Can the flawed anti-hero teach us more about ourselves than the classic hero? Join us for an illuminating conversation with Tim Churchward as we challenge the traditional good-versus-evil narrative by examining the rise of the anti-hero archetype. We explore how these complex, morally ambiguous characters resonate deeply with modern audiences, especially Gen Z, who face unique societal and personal challenges. From contrasting The Punisher and Batman to biblical figures like David and Jacob to understanding the cyclical nature of history through philosophical lenses, this episode uncovers the evolving visions of heroism and its implications for contemporary culture.
We delve into the intricacies of progressivism and legacy, spotlighting how reconciliation and innovation can disrupt existing paradigms. Our discussion features Elon Musk's groundbreaking strategies in the electric vehicle market, illustrating how leveraging established systems can foster revolutionary change. We navigate the tension between individual significance and societal impact, examining how anti-heroes continue to challenge norms while paving new paths. This dialogue underscores the balance between forging personal identities and honoring the legacies built by previous generations.
In a heartfelt exploration of pain, growth, and relationships, we consider how past traumas shape future connections and the importance of embracing discomfort for personal maturity. We reflect on the transformative power of perseverance and faith, drawing parallels between personal narratives and broader truths of life. Highlighted by stories of endurance and triumph, we emphasize marriage as a transcendent truth—a commitment that calls for humility, sacrifice, and a shared higher purpose. Tune in to uncover the lessons of resilience and the enduring nature of traditional values amidst modern complexities.
Thank you for joining The Mapp. If this resonates with you, don’t forget to subscribe and share it with others who might find it meaningful. Subscribe, leave review, and follow us on social media to stay updated and join our community of explorers. Together we navigate life’s pathways.
All right, folks, welcome back that theme from. Welcome Back caught in my head when I say that Today we're tackling a conversation that's real, it's raw, it's packed with insights we all need to hear. I'm joined once again by the unstoppable and mildly eccentric Tim Churchward. This episode is full spectrum. We dive into forgiveness, redemption, identity, legacy and what it truly means to be a hero in a culture that is obsessed with antiheroes. And we explore the rise of the antihero, why that resonates so much with us and what that reveals about us, and how they contrast with the enduring lessons of biblical heroes, people like David and Jacob. And these aren't just stories, they're blueprints for struggle and redemption and transformative power of faith. And we also look at the ideas that play out in the challenging lives of Gen Z here in the modern age. And Tim and I unpack the reality of hookup culture, financial struggles and relationships and the growing trend of transactional mindsets, and we confront myths of hyper-individualism, the importance of pain for growth and why commitment is the cornerstone for a lasting love and purpose.
Speaker 1:This isn't about avoiding life's difficulties. It's about facing them head on and coming out stronger on the other side. We talk a bit about legacy, why it's vital to build on what's come before us instead of starting from scratch. Every single generation, and at the core of it all is the power of transcendent truths and the unshakable principles that guide us through relationships, personal challenges and the chaos of modern society. So if you're searching for meaning, clarity or just a better understanding of how to navigate some of life's tough questions, you're in the right place. Let's get after it. Welcome to the map 2, 1, 0, all engines running.
Speaker 1:Liftoff.
Speaker 3:Nice. So one of the things that you said you wanted to talk about today was continue with the theme of forgiveness, redemption, restoration theme of forgiveness, redemption, restoration and one thing that I kind of wanted to pick your brain about was just like looking at archetypes in society. Uh, like that this kind of ties into it, looking at archetypes in society. And then you're familiar, I think me and you've talked about like the fourth turning theory before before, so like most people be familiar with it of like hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times. So there's this cyclical cycle in society and I think different archetypes arrive or raise up out of those times.
Speaker 3:You were talking about redemption and restoration and one thing that I've been playing with for the last year is the idea of a anti-hero and from a biblical narrative, who are anti-heroes and so to define I'll give you my definition of anti-hero and then I'll hear Tim's definition before we move forward. So my definition of an anti-hero is somebody who is flawed, they're morally ambiguous and they often use unconventional or questionable methods to get where they need to go and they ultimately seek a greater purpose, but the means sometimes is questionable in terms of justifying the end. So that's kind of a very broad-stroking definition of that archetype. But how would you kind of define a, an anti-hero?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think I'm there, I I think. I think I always think of anti-heroes being the ones that you sympathize with the most, because they're they're kind of like these human forms of the heroic that really aren't that heroic necessarily, but they, but you can, I feel like you can. I think the rise of the anti-hero, for me at least, is because you can really, um, you can really relate to them. That's the big jam. So in the battle of good versus evil, this big Marvel narrative, actually I think people were just like getting bored of it almost. It was like this whole sense in which good and evil kind of balance each other out.
Speaker 2:That's not Christian, obviously, that's not biblical. Good is far away as evil biblically. But um, but the idea of good versus evil almost became a narrative that was boring. So the anti-hero re-circumcised, so so I think I think I'd live with your definition of that. I think the. I think the thing that I would agree the most about your definition is this is this the, the questionable means by which you become or try and become heroic or try and supersede your status in life or whatever? Yeah, and I think like the extreme examples of that would be like the joker right or like or like those, those people that you have like this they're the evil villain, but they've all almost like anti-hero aspect to them. So yeah, I'm there.
Speaker 3:I'm good with that yeah, well, the reason why I wanted to kind of like tie that in with like restoration, redemption is because there are there is this redemptive arc in anti-hero. So I was like kind of like thinking of back to our last conversation. I talked about thomas shelby a little bit, who has his own like kind of clearly, like I wouldn't necessarily put him in as the anti-hero per se, but there is a redemptive arc within, within the story of that person. Looking at the story of jacob, looking at the story of david, looking at the story of David, looking at the story of Saul of Tarsus, and what I witnessed in media, when you look at art and when you look at media, it's kind of the watermark of where we are in that fourth turning cycle. Are we in an unraveling period, are we in a crisis period, et cetera.
Speaker 3:And I think I watched in media and all the nerds who are like super into like comic-con, all that stuff, were getting upset because they're like they're killing our heroes, they're taking our heroes this or this archetype of what our hero is and they're they're twisting it and turning it, but the anti-hero, uh, in essence, is anti-establishment, uh, and it's like there's this picture of like the really polished, morally virtuous, chiseled, jawline superman, right like superman it's not with this mustache, dude, but superman. Superman, you know, could just rule the entire world but, you know, chooses to be in in hiding, refuses to kill people, that's his whole deal. I remember in the new superman series like people lost their minds because superman ended up killing general zog and then like no, that's not canon, like he would never do that. So there's kind of this desperation within the arts and within the media to question that archetype, and we'll lead into this later. But there is one hero that we can point to who was an actual hero, not an anti-hero, actual hero.
Speaker 3:Who? Who walked that out? But yeah, so I don't know where to jump in here. I threw out, I threw out jacob's story, I threw out david's story, I threw out all of tarsus story, um, but yeah, I that was one of the things I want to talk to you about. So I'll just kind of pass the ball to you and like where you want to, like, pick up exactly, and we'll tie forgiveness in there as we kind of unpack.
Speaker 2:But sorry you were.
Speaker 2:You were talking about the anti-hero aspect of it and I mean, I don't know where you were going to go or where you want to take that, that conversation, that story.
Speaker 2:But obviously, like we, we this, this, this narrative of the heroic being, so in Twinkie Marvel, like this demigod thing, so like the Herculean god slash man forming some sort of thing like Superman, or like you get bitten by a radioactive spider and you become Spider-Man, or or that, there's something, something supernatural that happens to your normal being and that has become the, the, the, the mainstay of the hero stereotype. And then, obviously, the anti-hero really doesn't have all that much, as far as I can see, supernatural ability is actually, I'm trying his best to, or her best to be, the best that she can be, on the basis that she's a human being, or like really wrestling with those inner, the inner nature of the fullness of humanity and trying to overcome that in some way. So the anti-hero isn't, isn't even just the opposite, or a new narrative, it's, it's a humanistic narrative of the we have to hear right For sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, I was just trying to look at, you know, one of the criticisms that Muslims would give to the Bible. They would say look at somebody like David. David is basically ruling over the country and he's supposed to be a mouthpiece for God. He's a man who's after God's own heart. But here's a guy who hasn't you know, basically is like a peeping Tom. He's on top of his house. He's just casually watching like women get naked bathe. There's a time of day then people be up there, so he knows what he's doing. So he's going up there watching Bathsheba bathe and then his, his lust gets to a point he's like well, I'm the king of this country, I'm just going to go after that woman, even though she's married to one of his best friends. So then they have this relationship. And in order to cover up that they're having this relationship, he has his friend sent to the front lines in a war zone where, more likely than not, he's going to be killed. And it's a way to indirectly deal with the situation, like not confront the situation head-on, but you're doing it in a really like awful way. And yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Or you look at the story of of jacob, who israel is, you know, eventually named after. Here's a guy who and I love this story I have like a different take on this story than how I'm going to say it exactly, but if you look at it on surface value, here's a guy who deceives his father and brother so that he can get his brother's birthright. In that culture, the firstborn in the family is going to get the biggest share of the inheritance, and so his brother is a little bit of a knucklehead, very impulsive, really driven by his endocrine system, so he tricks his brother out of giving him his, his birthright and like kind of causes this disruption within his family and eventually has this really profound encounter with god, which he's the only person in the bible who, when he sees the manifest presence of god, says hold, hold, my beer, I think I'm going to wrestle that thing and holds on for dear life until God blesses him essentially. But through that encounter he's crippled. He walks as a cripple for the rest of his life, or somewhat crippled, and his name has to be changed and any good hero has to take on an alias Bruce Wayne has to become Batman, frank Castle has to become the Punisher and Star-Lord Tarsus has to become Paul, and so in this scenario, jacob has to become Israel, which literally means he who wrestles with God or he who struggles with God.
Speaker 3:And so I think there's something really profound in the sense of justice, in the sense of redemption, in the sense of restoration, that culturally, what we're seeing is people say we don't believe in heroes anymore.
Speaker 3:There's several offshoots of, for example, the Boys is a comic series where it just shows super people who have like god-like superpowers, like what you're saying, but they're completely depraved, like completely like the worst part of what you would think somebody would be.
Speaker 3:So people have have we don't believe in heroes anymore, so it's left this pocket for the idea of an anti-hero to to arise, but then we're negating that there was an actual hero at some point who redeemed, uh, that broken part of humanity anyway. That's why I was. That's, that's the arc that I'm going through with this. That's why I'm like pushing into that, because I think, culturally, what we're seeing people who are oblivious anything of a christian worldview per se or biblical worldview they were in a we've went from an unraveling into a crisis period in the fourth turning. If you want to subscribe to that idea and the idea of heroes, the media wants to kill that idea because they're so what to say, what's the right word? And disturbed and jaded on the idea that something could be good, while out the other side of the mouth they just say everybody's good, good, but there could be no good.
Speaker 2:There's a thing about the anti-establishment piece as well, and so this fourth turning circle and that theory. I mean, I don't know if people will find this in any way interesting, but really it was Hegel that started all of that process. He started the idea that human history was cyclical, that there was a thesis and an antithesis, and then the two came together to make a synthesis and that was the next kind of season of human life. What's really interesting about hegel is that um marx takes him on, karl marx takes on this hegelian philosophy, this understanding that human history is cyclical, that there is this thesis and this antithesis of the antithesis, obviously, of the thesis, and then they come together in the synthesis. But Marx makes it number one economic and number two individual. That's what he does. And so, from this overarching theory about what it is to be in this cyclical nature of humanity as something as grand as ideas or governments or society or whatever else, because Marx really hones in on the individual, and actually this is my view, I'm telling you what I think. And so, karl Marx, what he does is that he brings it down to the level of the individual. And so now the level of the individual in terms of creating a new utopian or new society means that you have to be anti-establishment to your core in order to break down the synthesis I'm sorry it was break down the synthesis that has gone before you, so you become the antithesis.
Speaker 2:So so when we look at how these things evolve, I, I, I, I hear a lot of echoes in marxian philosophy, marxist philosophy, um, particularly around conflict theory. Like for anyone that thinks communism, when I'm talking about carl marx, just get rid of communism for a moment, like I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about conflict theory, the idea that, um, everybody is in conflict for limited economic resource, and he talks about it as an economic scale of class. But really, we evolve our idea of what a good person is, or what a hero is, when it isn't the person that is championed by the state, or the one that rises to the top, or the one who is the chisel jaw, captain America, the one who is the perfection of what that society is. Suddenly, in the 1800s, we have this really interesting dynamic where the re-narration of the hero is one who will go about undermining and rethinking and really coming counter to the narrative that has been created by the society beforehand.
Speaker 2:But for Marx. It's really interesting. His idea of the thesis and the antithesis coming together isn't necessarily a synthesis. He thinks that conflict is perpetual and so he is looking for the hero the anti-hero in our sense to be the revolutionary who overthrows the revolutionary, who goes against the time is coming who goes against the status quo and the standard organizational dynamics and overthrows that thing to create something new of equality for all, where everyone can be as human as each other.
Speaker 2:Now, obviously we know that that's completely failed in many communist states, and George Orwell does a great job of that at Animal Farm. And I mean we see the fact that communism and far left and far right are actually exactly the same thing in their outworking, but in terms of you get tyranny either way. But what's interesting is that Marx, I think, really builds the philosophical landscape for the antihero, which is essentially you have to be someone who stands up against the man, the patriarchy, like whatever it is, and you bring that thing tumbling down in order that you can sort of thrive or become the person you want to be or even, on a grander level, create the society you want to create. And what's really interesting about that is that that is anti-pagan heroes, which are these demigods? Is that, that is, anti-pagan heroes? Which are these demigods? It's anti-religious heroes, which are the people who look most like God.
Speaker 2:They're the ones that are most celebrated, but it actually completely sidesteps the true Judeo-Christian hero, which is your Moses or your David or whoever, who actually are the ones who they're heroic because of the pain that they endure, the mistakes that they make, but their ability to reinvent themselves through god, as opposed to themselves, or crush the, the entirety of the system that they're under, and so that the judeo-christian hero is actually a sort of anti-hero, but not the way that modernity would describe it. The Judeo-Christian hero is one that goes through suffering pain. I'm the one who is a leader but doesn't try and I don't know like divide. They try and keep everyone together, one who is massively full of failings, and Moses is a murderer, and David is an adulterer, and Solomon is like a polygamist and whatever it is.
Speaker 2:But these heroes overcome their sin, not on the basis that somehow they get better, but on the basis that they turn to God and God heals them. And so there's something really important to know that the narration of pagan, roman, greek mythology of what is heroic, the narration of Marxist heroism, the nature of our current Marvel recession with the anti-hero. Really they're all shadows of what a real hero is, which is someone who is unbelievably anti-heroic but is made heroic by God, and it's just a really interesting dynamic For me, at least that's where I see that in the grand schema of philosophical thought over the ages. But I mean, come back back to me, what do you think?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think at some point that's kind of where I was driving at is this and like recognize this within myself because I do have anti-establishment bias like that's my default and that's something because I'm self-aware of that I always have to keep myself in check of, like, if I see like a sensational, like story, my, my default would be like, yeah, screw the government, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like that, that's my, that's more so. My default is like looking at institutions and scrutinizing institutions. But like, as I've gotten older, I realized you have to keep the structure and the scaffolding in place by which society was founded and then you have to reach out into the ethos of something that has never been and you have to slowly, slowly pull it back in and figure out how do we actually integrate that?
Speaker 3:So when people label stuff as progressive or conservative, I think these terms are like lost. They mean nothing in that essence of what I'm talking about. But that would be a true conservative and a true progressive. A true conservative would be I am the guy standing on the watchtower making sure that things are not coming into the camp at night, killing everybody while we sleep. Like I'm observing the stranger who is coming in and is this person going to be a contributor or are they going to be a problem, etc. And you always have a gun.
Speaker 2:If you're a conservative, you always have a gun to kill the intruder, just in case they come in the door.
Speaker 3:So the conservative is safeguarding stories, it's the storyteller, it's the safeguarding, morals it's safeguarding. Why do we have these values in place? And, to your point, what's been pushed, even on small kids like, think about most disney films or think most about disney content, like, let's just say, like moana, for example, her dad's, like she gets celebrated because everybody else is dumb comparatively to her. She has this intuition, she has this wild streak where she wants to go out past the breaker of these waves and because she goes on this fantastical journey, she can come back and she saves everybody because she did that. Now, that, in some essence, is the heart of progressivism. But she was at the end. If you look at it through a holistic lens, she is preserving her people in that it wasn't like they threw the baby out with the bathwater. She just expanded the borders of where they could fish and where they could source food and that they would go and inhabit other islands, in a sense. But you miss the forest for the trees if you think this is all about deconstruction and deconstructing what's already established. So true progressivism and true justice because we talked about justice is reconciliation. It's like wherever we kind of find ourselves in the fence because some of us will. We all have bias, so some of us are going to be more on the conservative side of like I don't like change, I like pink staying the way they are. And there's going to be other people who will consider a little bit unhinged, they're a little bit crazy. They dance out here in the ethos of like what has not been. They fail a lot, they will fail a lot, trying to find something like of substance, pulling it back in, that we can actually integrate, and so we kind of dismiss them as they try and try and try. And you have people who are inventors and engineers and artists who like, for example, edison is famously quoted as saying I haven't found, I haven't failed 10,000 times, I found 10,000 ways that haven't worked. You have to have a very calloused mind and a kind of character, in a sense, to do that, to take that kind of failure to find something. And you absolutely need those people. You absolutely need somebody like Elon Musk who's like we need to have a satellite internet for everybody, we need to put people on Mars, we need to dig tunnels underground. You need people like that. But that that only works. That only works when you have structure to springboard off of. And I'll just finish with this thought that musk himself I was reading this article about.
Speaker 3:When he, like, started with the ev market, he actually handed over all of his patents to BMW. He gifted it to them and people thought this was like business, suicide, right. So he gifted them their patents. Why did he do that? Well, he did that because there wasn't actually enough demand.
Speaker 3:He built this entire infrastructure, found really efficient ways to do something, but people weren't bought into the idea of electric vehicles at that point. But there wasn't. People weren't bought into the idea of electric vehicles at that point. So him gifting it to them basically led them to say you idiot. And they started dumping billions of dollars into that industry having charging stations, and people got bought into the idea.
Speaker 3:And so, in essence, like he was already light years ahead, he already figured out how are we going to do charging stations? My batteries are 67% more efficient than yours. Blah, blah, blah. So he already had all that worked out, and so by the time that they started building this infrastructure, he was already in a place to capitalize on it. So what was my point there? My point is he leveraged the establishment because he had such a good idea to integrate it. He didn't say let's burn it all down and I'm not here to make a statement about electric vehicle vehicles, because it's kind of a crapshoot in some ways in terms of the grid being able to sustain that. But I'm just saying that that's a great example of taking something out of the ethos and trying to establish it and leveraging it.
Speaker 2:And I guess you're not talking about conservative, progressive politically. You're talking about this idea of protecting the story, developing the story and which leaning that you have. So it's not like you're saying I'm saying this, so I understand what you're saying, like it's not. You're not saying you're conservative, so all conservative politicians or people politically conservative, they they hold the story but they're not progressives. They try and build the story like I think.
Speaker 3:So I think this is a political conversation right well, I'm saying conservative, progressive, I guess in some senses as a philosophical worldview. I I said like politicians have completely abandoned. Like when we get into the political realm now, we just have to understand that people, people have tried to push out any idea of they want a separation of church and state, and so when you try to push out anything higher than the state, then there's nothing really defining words anymore. The state will then try to define what words and we get really into a problematic place if we look at world history, when the state can just start deciding arbitrarily to change the definitions of words. But that's what we're kind of running into. So someone will say, well, I'm a liberal, and some people say, well, I'm a classic liberal and I'm a Reagan Republican. Well, I'm a Trump Republican. So we're getting into a place where you have to really be a lot more precise and narrow down. So when I'm saying conservative and progressive, I mean more so from kind of a departure point of how risk adverse are you in life and how are you navigating things? And people, again, I think they want to be a hero. Let me say it like this People want to be significant. But feeling significant and being significant are two completely different things. Feeling significant and being significant are two completely different things. And institutions have somehow postured themselves into like symbolically making people feel significant when they've done nothing. They've done nothing and we live in a world that is driven to some degree on on competence and anyway I go go on a rant with that.
Speaker 3:But to your I mean sticking back to what you say. Like when we look at these story arcs, 100% like David has to establish, like before David nobody worshipped in the sense of how he was Worship God through music and dance in the sense of what he was trying to establish there there was no temple being built. So here's a guy the anti-hero kind of stands outside the establishment. There's no covering. It's me against the world in a secular kind of sense, like Thomas Shelby. I'm outside of the law, I'm outside of all these things or I'm in opposition of those things, even when I'm seemingly in those institutions. He was a politician but he was trying to undermine some things but he ultimately was working with the state. It's always gray with anti-heroes, but you understand what I'm saying. It's like like I'm going to stand outside the institution to burn it to the ground and then we'll figure out what to build. Later.
Speaker 3:These guys are saying I'm nobody, I'm nothing, I'm broken. And then I, I show competency in some areas. So david goes and kills goliath, but he has these character flaws. Jacob is a swindler, a con man uh, I'm not. That's not how I view him, but you could see that on a surface level. But somebody who intuitively can get what he wants from people. And then he ends up having a wrestling match with God and it was a stalemate. We can't say he won because God is God, but it's a stalemate in the sense that he said I'm not going to let go, even though it crippled him.
Speaker 3:And then Moses with the burning bush on the mountain. So you see people in their brokenness. Moses was rebellious, he struck the rock, he also complained. They come into a one-to-one, firsthand encounter with the creator of everything that exists, and then something shifts and then they get marked by that and then they co-labor with something higher than themselves in a collective to build something on top of something. There's something that's already existing, but they're building on top of it versus burn it to the ground. And then we don't know what we're going to build, but we're going to burn it to the ground and it doesn't play out well in history to your point to burn it to the ground and it doesn't play out well in history to your point to burn it to the ground.
Speaker 2:And actually the great lie of the far left liberal not trying to make it political in any way because I think if you're so conservative that you can't make any additions to a story, you end up telling a story that makes no sense anymore. But if you're so radically opposed to a story you want to kill it all, then actually, basically what you're doing is you're constantly resigning each generation to start again, as opposed to building what was gone before, which actually is basically stupid, because surely, of everything that everyone's created over the history of humanity, there must be something good about what was gone before, otherwise it wouldn't be existing in the way that we exist right now. Right? So I think that's really important and I think I think one of the one of the things with the with, with the nature of how judeo-christian mindset works, is that the legacy is very important. So so the idea that you leave an inheritance for your children's children is a really important thing, but it also goes around the other way. It's that actually what you're doing is is that you are building on your forefathers, so the idea of god being being the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob is that he is the God of the forefathers. So what they have built, you're not going to try and tear it down. You might analyze it and you might try and go hey, this worked really well, but, dude, this didn't work so great. Let's try and figure that bit out, and that's absolutely fine.
Speaker 2:But the issue is that if you want to build legacy, you can't start again every generation. You can't. It's physically impossible to do that, and so what's happening is is that we are trying to re-establish, especially gen z in this moment. Gen z in this moment, like we are trying to re-establish a, a new starting point essentially, where we get to say whatever we want to, we want to be whatever we want to be, um, and we're defined by me. I'm defined by me. I'm not defined by anything that's come before. Screw that, burn it away. I'm going to be the person I want to be. But essentially, what we're doing is I mean, this really is post-modernism, but it's really come out of gen z, because they're the first generation to be parented by purely postmodern parents, and what that's meant is that we have a bunch of children running around the earth thinking that they're adults, which they're not. But also we have a bunch of this generation who, at a foundational level, they really believe that they're starting it all over again, like they're starting civilization. But if you think about this narrative, they believe they're starting civilization again, they're renewing civilization. The institution is dying and the civilization is being re-bought through them and through their views and what they can make of themselves. I'm like guys, you, this, you would never have even got here with any level of education. You would still be like 200 years ago all of you would have no teeth because there's no dentistry. So I'm like there's, there's, there's just something really knowledge that like there is that there's no such thing as starting again. There isn't. There is no such thing as that.
Speaker 2:A eagle to an extent grappled with this idea in the thesis antithesis I'm bringing together for the synthesis, but he made that about humanity and about the progression of humanity towards utopia. Humanism grew from Hegelianism because it was like actually it's the corporate response of human consciousness that creates utopia. We know that's not true. Human consciousness screws it all up. That's what it does, because we build these stories in our head that make no sense, or at least make limited sense, if we don't combine them with a God story or transcendent truth and transcendent narrative.
Speaker 2:And what's happened is that now we have a generation that are saying we're going to restart civilization, and I'm like you can't, it's already started. You need to get over it, you need to find your place in that civilization, and every generation has this battle, but this generation, gen z, is struggling massively with it, and what I'd say is is that the, the, the attraction of the judeo-christian ethics to anybody over the age of 40, for example, um, or or actually now more and more to young people who have grown up trying to figure their lives out on their own, having been given absolutely nothing to steward their lives with, and they're thinking, oh gosh, now because, because I mean, it's an unbearable weight of responsibility to have to establish your own life with no help as a child, like it's ridiculous. And so what we're finding is now is that there's a turning point, a tide. The tide's changing where everyone's like oh, actually, maybe we should consider what's gone before, which is why now, jordan, jordan Peterson's banging about the Bible. And when new atheist stadiums were filled with new atheists 20 years ago, those exact same age group, particularly men, who would have gone there and laughed at the Bible and now go to Jordan Peterson-like events and going maybe there's something that we've missed, because actually we're doing a great job at creating civilization.
Speaker 2:Why? Because you don't understand legacy. You don't understand the fact that your fathers and their fathers and mothers have built a foundation that you get to build upon. Their ceiling is your floor, which means you get to build higher and higher and higher. But if you reject the platform, then you have to start again, and it's impossible to start again when you're young and it's impossible to start again without significant pain which you are trying to avoid at all costs. In other words, you are living an unbelievably paradoxical life if you believe that, and it's an impossible life to lead, because what you want to do is is avoid the pain of starting something, but be the starter and the establisher of a new movement, a new um, new society. It's impossible to do that. You cannot do that you.
Speaker 2:You either say I'm going to move and I'm going to live in the middle of a forest or on a desert island. I'm going to establish my society. I'm going to figure out how to make fire. Again, I'm going to figure out how to chop wood. I'm going gonna figure out how to make fire again. I'm gonna figure out how to chop wood. I'm gonna figure out how to cook. I'm gonna figure out how to do all these things that for centuries and millennia we've been taught how to do that by our forebears. You either do it that way or you accept whatever's gone before that I disagree with. It's been amazing to get me to this point, and I'm gonna see what is amazing about it and build on it for the future. You don't have any other option than that, and anything else that is told you is a freaking lie.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, people buy into, you know, when we're talking about hyper individualism, and then they buy it like I can't tell you. So where I come from, in like a rural part of west virginia, like it's it like it's like 40, like where I grew up, it's about 40 minutes or so to get to a grocery store. From where I live You're an hour out from a hospital, and where my grandparents were it's even farther out, and so they're kind of One dream that I hear of a lot of people have there is they're pretty anti-establishment for the most part people out there, so their dream is to be off the grid. A lot of people want to be off the grid, they want to have their house, but you will never be off the grid, you will never be subtracted from the collective, because if you have a kid and he gets sick and you don't know what to do, guess what you're going to do? You're going to go to the hospital.
Speaker 3:You're not off the grid, you want some autonomy and it gives you again a feeling, gives you again a feeling of significance, a feeling of I'm doing something different, a feel. It's a feeling we want those feelings to be there and I think, like again, like film. I mean, I'll admit this, like I'd be guilty of this, like I watch films like braveheart or I watch films like gladiator. I watch films like that dude, like, even as a 36 year old man, like if I watch the Patriot with Mel Gibson, I like my heart's like beating out of my chest and I'm like you. Just there's something that resonates so deeply with me with like those epic kind of films of like living a life where there was like sacrifice and pain and significance, and you and you want that in one side and you want that in one side. But the state in western countries is trying to make things always more and more and more and more and more comfortable, in a sense, and just quickly let what?
Speaker 2:let me speak, yeah, because, yeah, but what you're doing there is you're wrestling god, but the state is god right. So so we have secularized our society, which means that the anti-establishment part of that. Because I live there I'm like how can I not do what the government says right, like so? So I've got a big thing about education overstepping. I I'm like, don't, don't touch my kid. Like, don't finish my child. I, I teach them. You don't teach them. If you teach them something that I don't agree with, I'm taking them out of your school. It's that simple, and and like and so that's a strong thing.
Speaker 2:I've got young children. I introduced them to topics. That's my job. I'm their dad, like I hope I'm just gonna troll freak and I'm not someone who's like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna like, like, control my child their whole life. But I get to introduce them to things like sexuality. I get and conversations about sexuality. I'm not gonna shelter them from the world that has different views, but I'm not gonna let them have a conversation about two mums and two dads when they're four. No way, it's never going to happen on my watch, don't touch my kit.
Speaker 2:But actually there's something so powerful to know that that this, this warring. And this wrestling with the establishment is because, deep down, we all need to battle with god. All of us do and, and, and I don't think you can be a christian and believe in big government. I don't think, don't think that's possible and I'm not making this political, but I don't think that you can have the government and the education system dictating to you what family should look. I don't think like that. I don't think that's real, because I think the church and god is what, and your individual relationship with god and how, his morals and his laws, that is actually how, how you build family, how you educate. And so for me, I'm like, when I hear, like this whole patriot thing and like the braveheart thing and like your husband having a chest, I'm like, yes, because you're designed to do that, because you're designed to wrestle with God and come out with a limp, you're designed for that.
Speaker 2:The thing is that often this is my, my view. Often we misrepresent the wrestling with god as being the wrestling with the god of the age or the wrestling with the authority of or governing structure, and for me, like, like, actually the, the deep intuition within me is to wrestle with god and get my blessing. But if I misinterpret that in a secular society where government especially in my experience of America, where government plays such a huge role in the minds of all Americans and in Western Europe, but particularly in America then I can sometimes misplace my desire to wrestle with God like Jacob did, and place it on. I'm going to go off the grid and I'm like, hey, actually your wrestle is with God, your wrestle is with God. I will not let you go until you bless me. I will not let you go until I've learned this lesson, until I've walked through the limp.
Speaker 2:You never trust a leader without a limp. It's impossible to trust them because they've never wrestled with God, they've never been able to say I want to know what it is to live my life for this divine being. And if we misinterpret our innate desire to wrestle with God, to wrestle with other people, to wrestle with government, whatever it is, what we do is that we misdirect the inner nature to wrestle with the Lord and receive a blessing from him, and we look either for a blessing from the government or we look to eradicate the government. And there is something so powerful about that story that we've misrepresented in my view.
Speaker 3:So why do you think it is that people forget? You mentioned it before about, well, you mentioned before like gen z's coming in now and they're forgetting. They're taking it like we're going to recreate society. It's like let me turn off the internet, chat, gpt and smartphones and see how far you get, because you don't know what it's like to live analog. There's like these youtube videos where, like they hand kids cassette tapes and they're like what is this? And they don't know. And then they're telling them well, there's music on it. How many songs you think this holds, you know they're the coolest. Or like they give them like the old 95, like pc, and like turn this on, and they don't know how to turn on like a pc, they don't know how to get connected to, like dial up, internet and stuff, even though that that's not even really analog, that's just the digital aid and its infancy, but like really. But I guess my question is this do you think that we forget because it's by design or what? What is exact? Because if you look at, for example, we talked a lot about Moses before, so let's just start there. Let's just look at this again.
Speaker 3:In the beginning of Exodus it's talking about Egypt and the state of Egypt and Israel and Egypt. And so we talked about Jacob. So Jacob wrestles with God, gets his name changed to Israel and then that becomes a people group, like all his descendants are on that. And Joseph, one of Jacob's descendants, ends up in Egypt at some point. His family sells him out, his brother's like, throw him in a pit, sell him into slavery. He ends up in prison but like he's a really competent guy, knows how to build relationships, gets into the freaking palace with Pharaoh. Pharaoh has this dream there's seven fat cows and there's seven skinny cows. He doesn't know what it means, but he feels like something. Intuitively, it's more than just a dream. So Joseph says I believe that this is a warning from God. There's going to come a time of prosperity, seven years, like the fat cow, but we're going to have to prepare for seven years of famine where there's not going to be enough food. And in essence he saves his own family who has sold him out, reconciled them, but he saved an entire country of people who aren't his by that planning right. So he's getting this warning from God and he's planning for the seven years of famine.
Speaker 3:By the time we get to the story of Moses. It says the people of Israel, egypt got freaked out because they had a kind of like symbiotic relationship with these people, but they got too many Jews. Egypt got freaked out because they had a kind of like symbiotic relationship with these people, but they got too many Jews, they got too numerous. So they decided to put them into slavery and subjugate them so they wouldn't be overthrown and it wouldn't disrupt their way of life. And by that point, when we enter into the story of Moses, the Egyptians are then pulling the herd, so to speak, so they're gathering up all the babies, tossing them into the river to be eaten by crocodiles. And Moses avoids this.
Speaker 3:But as the story begins, it says everybody in the country had forgotten Joseph and his name. They forgot Abraham, they forgot Isaac, they forgot Jacob and, most of all, they forgot the God of whom they were. Because when you look through scripture it's very interesting. He says I'm the God of Abraham, I'm the God of Isaac, I'm the God of Jacob, why? Because each of those narratives kind of support a different journey and Peterson has its own kind of spiel on that. God of Abraham, the God who calls you to adventure and sacrifice. The of jacob, the god who calls you to to wrestle with him, so to speak.
Speaker 3:So people have forgotten all those narratives and somehow find themselves as slaves to something that's not them and they're stuck in that and so, like when we talked about the, the exodus story, it's like even even though they get delivered out of the external tyranny of slavery, it takes literally generations before the internal tyranny. And that forgetfulness has to be removed from them and they have to make their own personal experiences, encounters with God, to replace what they forgot. And I think, like, anyways, let's pause there. So, focusing purely on, I threw too much there. Focusing purely, why do people forget? Do people forget because that's because this is happening over and over and over? Like, why, why do you feel like people forget?
Speaker 2:I think that every young person or every person who's coming through in a generation doesn't experience pain. And when you experience pain, you remember there's a corporate consciousness around pain and discomfort. That means that you, as you grow older and you get more responsibilities and you learn how to fail well and get up on the horse again that you felt when you do that. Do that. What happens is is that you learn from the experience of pain. Pain is such a foundational narrative of the human existence because it draws us back to god. The reason why gen z is in such danger is because they have all the ways possible to them to avoid pain and to avoid discomfort. They numb on social media. I mean, our generation just missed this by this much. So I'm not judging here, I'm not being condemned. I'm not being condemning. I'm saying like I'm 38, you're 36, like we're millennials and like we just missed this by 10 years, 10, 15 years. And now they numb on social media. They play call of duty till 4am. They have online um access to um, to communities that they never have to meet. They agree. Agree on everything. They've got echo chambers. They can watch pornography whenever they want and have sex with themselves. They can hire people in at the age of 18 to come and do sexual favors to them. They live in a hyper-feministic society which nurtures them particularly men, nurtures them beyond belief, where they can never fully cleave from their mothers and therefore cleave to a wife. There are so many things that are happening in Generation Z where the great danger is that they are being protected and nurtured away from pain and away from discomfort.
Speaker 2:When I was 18, I flew to India with my brother and we lived there for six months. Dude, I learned, I learned more in that six months in the first 18 years of my life, because I learned that I had to cook in a foreign country. I had sickness and diarrhea and my mom was not there for me. I had people to support me. I wasn't like left in a field to die by myself, but actually like I had to figure that bit out 2 am in the morning, not knowing ifi was ever going to stop being sick. I was 18 years old. It was me and my brother.
Speaker 2:Listen, that's why we forget, because we don't encounter pain Now. We should not encounter pain too early, because it sets our trajectory to be defined by pain if we encounter pain too early. So when you think about trauma or you think about these things that happen to young children and to teenagers. It is absolutely unbelievable because you're so vulnerable in those moments that it becomes a definition of who you are and it takes a long, long time to unravel that trauma. But if you do not suffer, if you do not have trial, if you don't have pain in your life, then you will constantly forget what the sacrifice was for your parents.
Speaker 2:When you have children for the first time, you have a whole new respect for your parents because you're like mother lovers. I was like this you didn't sleep, but you didn't throw me through a window. You know, when you're like, you're that close to your kid, like, get out of my face, get out of my like. In that moment you've got. No, you're so tired, you're so angry, and then you realize your dad went through that and still brought you up to be the way you were.
Speaker 2:And what happens is you experience the pain of the generations that have gone before you and suddenly you respect them in a whole new way.
Speaker 2:But if you avoid pain until you're 40, if you avoid pain until even you're 30, you are screwed, because basically what it means is is that you have spent your whole life avoiding the thing that will grow you up, and we wonder why we have a million children in essex running around like lunatics, believing they're going to restart the new establishment, but have absolutely no idea what is about to hit them in the face.
Speaker 2:And here's the deal If we don't experience parents' comfort, if we don't go through trial and have victory over it, through Jesus Christ especially, then what we have just done is we have short-circuited our ability to mature and we have short-circuited our ability to raise good children in the next generation, because now we're going to have kids, having kids, and then their kids will have kids and we'll be in a perpetual state of childishness that will need some rescuing at some point.
Speaker 2:Or what we'll do is we will resort, as we have done in the course of history, to war. We will resort, as we have done in history, where children are given too much power and too much choice, where we will end up destroying each other, and actually the only solution to that is a belief in the transcendent truth and a belief in the incarnation of a transcendent truth. That means that we can actually imitate and become like it and have a Holy Spirit within us to supernaturally empower us to become like the incarnation of the transcendent truth. The only answer is Christianity, and we've rejected it. We must bring it it back, so a lot to unpack there.
Speaker 3:Uh, when you were talking, one of the things that kind of came up no, it's good man. So one of the things you came up like specifically because we just keep getting stuck in this narrative, but specifically so I I alluded, you know that moses is is bringing these people out of egypt. They're in, they're in the desert. God's provided for them supernaturally. There's several generations. That kind of happen here and there does come a point where they can enter into something that's going to make their lives better. They're going to go into a land of promise, they're going to go into a land where it's fertile and blah, blah, blah, blah. They can enter into that, but they actually don't get to do that initially because their dad. There comes a section of the story where the dads have a responsibility to make sure that their sons are circumcised. Okay, and they don't do that. So what ends up happening is Joshua and some helpers have to line everybody up as grown men and they have to circumcise him.
Speaker 3:I was circumcised, tmi. What's american live? Americans circumcise like it's not good. So we'll share that, all right, we're good, okay, okay. So we have like people on both sides of the fence here.
Speaker 3:So anyways, you know disclaimer I don't remember being circumcised. I don't know if that was painful or not, but I don't. It's not in my memory because it happened when I was like a week old or something like that. Now I've had people in my family who didn't get circumcised and they had to get circumcised when they were 12, 13, 14.
Speaker 3:And when I was in Germany they're strictly against that and I probably met maybe like 10 or 15 people I was there who had to get circumcised as 20 and 30 year old men, men, and I will spare you guys the gory details of, like, the guy who did my tattoos in germany, of what happened to him, uh, when he, when he, when that happened. But in short, what you're saying to him is like there is a period of time where you're supposed to be dealing with certain issues and if you're not dealing with those issues in that period of time, the longer that it gets pulled out, it's going to become more and more and more painful, more memorable for you to be able to deal with that More and more and more you will try to avoid it, because the longer you avoid it for the more it's important to avoid the pain, because you know how much it's going to hurt.
Speaker 2:You didn't do it earlier, and I mean that's intuitive, right? We do. We do this all the time. We're like and I should really have gone to the gym, but it's going to really hurt, so I'll go next week and then you get really fat and you're like man, I've got to go to the gym and you don't go the week after that and you're like man it's gonna.
Speaker 3:And then you turn into brent, and then you turn into brendan, brendan, frazier and the whale and you're on, you're, you're on tlc, you're on TLC, it's my 600 pound life. And then that that doctor has a funny accent. You're saying I don't know if you ever seen that one episode. I always see shorts of that pops up and she's like, yeah, I'm just really hungry right now. And he's like you've ate enough for the last 40 years. You could eat, not for three years and you'd be okay, trust, trust me, you've ate enough. Anyways, not ripping anybody there.
Speaker 3:But there's this period of time where pain, suffering, failure, rejection, those are all shame and guilt. I'll say this Sometimes in a church we come from streams of faith where people are really adamantly against shame and guilt. Living from a place of shame and guilt, shame is I feel bad about who I am, and guilt is I feel bad about what I've done. That's like a very oversimplified. And why we don't want to live from that place is because it will pervert and distort how our image of ourselves, but also where we're living from. But shame and guilt are natural feelings. They are feelings that would provoke you or unction you on to put yourself into a. You know, if someone threw poop in my face I wouldn't like walk around. But yeah, it's fine, like the way it is, I would go and wash my face off. I would go and like cleanse myself of, you know, poop being blown in my face. And you alluded like the last time we talked about we we ended the conversation with a rite of passage and the significance of that. That has been kind of like gone by, the, by the wayside, and when people have taken different stabs at that of like a, of a watered down version of it, like I've heard. I've heard Jewish people on social media talk about like how bar mitzvahs have just became this big thing. It's just a big party where you get money from Elvis and people. But the actual significance of it because in the past you're actually a man, when that happens you can get married.
Speaker 3:Generally, people take over the trades of their father. If my dad's a shoemaker or if he's a fisherman or if he's a carpenter, I would then be stepping into a role of responsibility within his trade. If I go to his suppliers and I say, hey, my dad Tim needs X, y and Z. It would be as if I'm an emissary, or as if my dad is standing there. That's the kind of respect that I've taken on in the community, not figuratively, but literally.
Speaker 3:And so there is this thing in Western culture where and I think it's a marketing ploy to a degree is people are trying to extend out adolescence and being a kid. Parents are kind of conditioning themselves to think, oh, I want to preserve your innocence and let you just be a kid, but being a kid, there is a buffer period of that of like, yes, you go role play and you have fun and you integrate into your social group, but then you also figure out what's my role within my family and society at large and I take on responsibility and I come up against some of those things that you're talking about in terms like failure, rejection, etc. And there's definitely like good no, no I was just saying.
Speaker 2:What's so crazy about that to me is is that we're really willing to introduce our children to concepts around sexuality and choice about who it's all stuff. But we're really willing to introduce our children to concepts around sexuality and choice about who it sort of stuff, but we're, yeah, being to introduce them to chores or we're not willing to introduce them to growing up or being a big sister or or putting too much pressure on them in terms of the family unit, and I'm like it's just so counterintuitive. It's like we want our kids to grow up really fast in some areas that are really bad for them and slow them down growing up in some areas that are really good for them. And it's all about there is no transcendent truth and there is no pain that you can learn through to get back to the transcendent truth. I mean, it is so, bro. It is so counterintuitive. Can I give you a really good example, just real quick? Is that all right? Yeah, go for it. Sorry, I feel like I'm talking a lot. This one you can talk later. You're good, you're good.
Speaker 2:What's really interesting is so I run our student community. I talk so much to people about dating and relationships and I don't know if you know this, but there's all these different stages before you become someone's girlfriend or boyfriend. Like you chat first, like you're messaging and you can message lots of different people, and then you're dating and you can date them for as long as you want and then they become your girlfriend. It's all this. It's all these really weird things, and what I say to all my guys is I'm like guys, listen, what you're doing is is that you're trying to avoid pain. That's what you're doing here. Like you're putting defense mechanisms in place so that you don't have to take a risk on a girl. I'm talking to the dudes here, and the girls do this as well, and so I mean, this is my perspective.
Speaker 2:But I'm like, when I got with my wife, when she was then my girlfriend, I was 21. She was 18. We spent time in a group together because we hung out together, we were clubbing together, like with a group of us Christian friends, all the rest of it. And after a month I was like oh, I quite like her, let's see if she likes me. I said, hey, um, I'm going away to university for a year. But you know, like, I'm really, I really like you. Like why don't we give this a go? Uh, will you be my girlfriend? She said yes, I kissed her and it was done. Four years later we got engaged and one year later we got married.
Speaker 2:I'm like it was really that simple and it's because we committed, we were like okay, so now you're like I'm not dating, like when you date someone, they are your girlfriend. That's the whole point of it. So you're not. You're not just like trying them out anymore, you're making a commitment. You're a man. Pursue your woman, pursue them hard. That's what you've got to do. And and I'm like man, everything before that point to me at least, seems like a defense mechanism about what. What if I commit and I get hurt. But that's because we're men up to like.
Speaker 2:Be these really wimpy, like non-committal people trying to figure out everything about a woman or before they even go, go anywhere near her to be in a relationship. You can't build a relationship or thing. You have to build a commitment. And so for me, I'm walking people through this journey all the time. We said 18 and 25 and they're like I don't know how to choose. There's so many people. What if I get the wrong one? I'm chatting to this girl and she's like this I'm chatting to this girl, she's like this I'm like, shut up, stop being stupid. Like just choose someone, take a risk and if it doesn't work out, you've learned from it. And then you learn in that process who you go for next time. Be a man, do something with your life. But we're like nurturing these kids into stupidity. Mate, it gets me so angry.
Speaker 3:Well, let me play like another, like departure point for you, okay. So these and I can identify a little bit of this. So so I'm not, like, by the grace of God, I did not grow up in a time where there was an app where, basically, you can just swipe and find the most attractive people in a radius and, like, try to convince them to come have sex with you. Like, by the grace of God, I did not grow in that time when I want to go out and go find, like when I was living in that period of my life and that's what I was about, you know, there was a. You had to be rejected several times face to face.
Speaker 3:And my brother he's passed now, but he was ruthless with this man. I remember I was in a bar with him one time. He went up to a girl, put his arm around around her and say, hey, I and he was like you had this real redneck boy. Hey, how you doing? And she said, ew, gross, get away from me. And then he turned around to the girl, put his right side, put his arm around her, said, hey, how you doing? And she said that's my cousin, you're disgusting. He's like you guys have a good evening and he like walked away and did it again like it was just like rap. It was a numbers game for him of like I'm just like going from woman to woman, woman. So I think like part of it now is there is an evolved form of hookup culture that has like like kind of taken over of. First of all, I need to know if you're gonna, like I'm gonna sexually attract you and you're gonna gratify me sexually. That's it and like what, like that's like all those steps before is what I kind of hear people going through with people. So there's like that element of it. But then when we get to the point which you know, obviously this is, you know, we could talk a lot about that. But then there's this other element of when you talk about commitment and like being brave and like take commitment Realistically, in the West men are much more vulnerable financially to things not working out than women are.
Speaker 3:And I knew people even in germany it was very uncommon for people to get married in their 20s like people like I knew people. They were together for eight years, they had three children together and I'm like, are you guys ever gonna get married? They're like whoa, whoa, that's a. That's a big commitment there, buddy, like pump the brakes. I'm like, what are you on about going to get married? They're like whoa, whoa, that's a big commitment there, buddy, like pump the brakes. I'm like, what are you on about?
Speaker 3:Like, my mind works differently If I married somebody, like just from a secular worldview. If I marry somebody, it's like, oh, this is not good, I leave them. It's like pretty much done outside the time that I've invested in that If I have a child with somebody, I am tethered to that person for the rest of my life. And, what's worse, I'm tethered to whoever they pick to be around and that I have no power in deciding and that person is going to be a pseudo father or stepfather to my child. And that was like a nightmare for me. So I'm just like I don't know how y'all like navigate this.
Speaker 3:But then I talked with guys I got. I knew a guy he had in Germanyany. It's quite hard to save money, it's quite hard to build wealth like considerably harder than the us. And I knew a guy who worked his butt off. He had two investment properties. Um, he's in his 30s, been with his girlfriend for years. They lived together. He, he's like dude, I love her. She's like the mother of my children, blah, blah, blah blah. She won't have kids with me until I marry her. She was turkish, she was german and and I love her. And so I was like cool, like marry her man, what's going on? He's like I don't ever think that something would happen, but because of the way the court system is, if we divorce she'll just take those two properties or like a big chunk of those prop that she had zero effort and energy to invest in. And so then you get into this gamut of like I've heard people talk about, like in Gen Z, like a lot of people will to some degree talk if they have like assets, like that. They talk about prenuptial agreements, which basically, you are getting ready for your divorce before you ever get married. And one thing that I got convicted about like cause I went through a whole my relationship with sex and my relationship with women was very, very distorted there and I could point to a lot of things that happened throughout my life and childhood, but I just take personal responsibility for a lot of it. But anyways, when I like met the Lord, I was like this needs that was at the forefront of my mind. The way that I view women has to change. The way that I view sex has to change. It's off, it's wrong. I objectify women, I use women to gratify me, and it needs to change.
Speaker 3:And when we talk about transformation and why God is often referred to as fire, it's because if you shove things in fire, there are certain things that will just burn up in fire and they're gone. They become ash and they blow away in the wind. There's other things that you shove into fire and it withstands fire and when it withstands that fire, the things that will come to the surface that don't need to be there and get off. But the thing that withstands fire generally is a precious metal or a metal that you can use in engineering or something that's useful. But that that's the cost, that's the trade-off, that's the sacrifices. If you want to be better, you got to put yourself in in fire and be burned. And being burnt is like being marked. It's like what we're talking about. It's not, it's not nice. It's like sticking your nose onto a grindstone as it's turning and like knowing that I'm going to be better for this and and one of the things that that happened out of that and I was like mon trick with prayers, dude, I'd be like God changed the way that I see women, like help me see them Like my sister and my mother and my family member, whatever, like curb this thing inside of me.
Speaker 3:And there came a point I remember where there was a girl who I met, her like I think it was in Mozambique. So I met this girl. I was there in this school and there was probably 800 people from all over the world and there was this girl. I was in groups of women. This time God pretty much redeemed my mind at that point. I just didn't even think anything about this anymore.
Speaker 3:But this girl came to me and she's like I was raped by my stepdad and I just created a pattern where somehow I was getting abused by men throughout my life and a lot of when guys come up to me and they talk to me or they put their arm around me or something, I feel that disgusting, feeling like what I felt when I was being raped and I just can't stand to be around men. But she's like I just want to let you know that when I'm around you, I just feel like like you're just a brother, like there's no, like ulterior motive here. This is completely platonic and like I just feel like god's kind of redeeming something in me with like men, because I just can't even be around men at all. And this is somebody who just like was kind of in the peripheral, wasn't anybody who I was like pursuing or somebody who I was like saying, hey, we're, we're great friends, but she I remember her saying that and then like it was just me getting kind of sucker punched of like oh, like there's this thing that I recognize that happened inside of me internally, but now like there's a residual effect on that that can actually positively impact that girl, because that girl went off and like less than a year and a half later, got married, a family. This is somebody who couldn't be touched by men and I was eight parts indirectly, not me, but what God did to me was a part of her redemption story. Same thing happened when I was in California, in Reading. I had another experience like that.
Speaker 3:So when we want to pretend that the things that we're doing are victimless crimes, that this isn't hurting anybody, you not tethering your identity and who you are to an eternal departure point and destination uh, because we talked about this before, like people want to tether their identity. Other thing when you don't do that, you're never calling yourself to something higher, you're never going to transcend. And I'll tell you like point blank to anybody listen to this I would never be able to be in a marriage the way that I was. I was so. Part of the reason that was I was so damaged was from women. I did get damaged by women. I got cheated on things. So I just like I just thought that all women were dirt bags and like so I was like I'm just going to do whatever I, whatever I want, and there's no way I would have been able to sustain a marriage. There's no way that I would have been able to father. Now I have a daughter and now, like you know all the things that you're saying about protecting her and like who's going to talk to her and who's going to introduce ideas to her. But yeah, I guess that's. That's the end of my in my spiel.
Speaker 3:If you think, like where you're at right now is okay and you you're not called to transcend. In the same way that a righteous man will leave an inheritance for his children's children, a unrighteous man will leave an inheritance for his children's children. You will impact generations that you'll never live to see. Referencing ruff's little clone gladiator, what we do in life echoes through eternity. So if you don't think that it's going to have some impact, you're fooling yourself and you're putting the burden on other people's kids and grandkids. To fix your kids and grandkids because you didn't do the work now, and for some people they have parents who, like, are too too far, like, so I'll. I'll give you one quick example of a story, because you said this and and I said a lot there, and I'll let you kind of example of a story because you said this and I said a lot there and I'll let you kind of go back. But you were talking about not being introduced to pain, rejection, failure, and it kind of cripples you in some sense. This is going to sound funny to some people.
Speaker 3:When I was a kid it was really in the time where they started giving trophies to everybody for participation, so that was happening. I was coming into that. I played for a little league baseball team who are newark brave shout out newark braves, west virginia. Okay. So I played for a little little baseball team. County is the smallest county in west virginia. This is nothing like you know, auspicious, but I played for this little team.
Speaker 3:We were. We were notoriously had this rivalry with the. We were out in the country. There's this baseball team in the town called the tigers and we had this rivalry with them. We were always generally the best two teams and it would. It would always be a shootout in the end, like we would have to play multiple games. And the coach of our team said if you guys win the championship every year, I'll rent it a big bus. And he took us to king's island, paid for everything. He paid for the whole thing. Okay, probably our parents paid too, but he made it out like he paid for everything, but anyways. So we knew if we win the championship, we're going to king's island. So I remember the one year we won, it went to king's island, pumped on it.
Speaker 3:Kids, you know, kids get older, so they stopped playing. So the the team was. You know I was in a more serious role. I was pitching, I was catching, I was playing infield, all that and we lost the last game. It was always super tight, but we lost the game. And people are crying. We're like seven, eight years old. Whatever. We're crying, we don't get to go to Kings Island Poopy pants syndrome. Then they took us to king's island anyways. Dude, I'm not trying to be whatever to you parents and whoever made that decision, but you really messed me up. Wait, because you you instilled inside like it was.
Speaker 3:It had the adverse. I wasn't happy about it, like genuinely in my heart of hearts I was like all the work that I did doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, like that's what I thought, it's like it doesn't matter. And I remember like that it tainted baseball with me. I couldn't play baseball anymore. I stopped playing baseball after that. I went and played football, american football, and in american football I ate crap.
Speaker 3:For a long time our team was like zero and 10. I don't know anybody's out there Can you play football for four years and go zero? Now it was like extreme. It was like zero and 10 and like two and something, three and something. I went from being 128 pounds to being 210 pounds. I lifted weights religiously and I just believed in my head If I just get huge and fast and I smash people as hard as I can, something has to break. And even if it doesn't, this feels pretty good.
Speaker 3:And then my senior year of school, we went six and four. It was the first winning season in 20 something years or something, 15 years, something like that. His first winning season. And then we popped the membrane. The people who came after us went to the third round of the playoffs and then we popped the membrane. The people who came after us went to, like the third round of the playoffs, the one right below the state championship.
Speaker 3:It's like putting in that work so I don't get any world champion belt, I don't get any like recognition. Nobody will remember that ever. But those two experiences instilled something so deep inside of me of like you grind in the secret place, you're grinding, nobody sees it, nobody sees, it sees it. You're getting ridiculed year after year after year. You guys suck, you lost 60 to nothing. You suck and you're just like I don't, you're just grinding, grinding, grinding. And then you pop the membrane and, irregardless of the record, like you knew, like you, the work you put in, the work that was done inside of you and your character is more substantial than like the record in that point. But it comes at the cost of dignity, it comes at the cost of pain, it comes at the cost of failure, it comes to the cost of rejection. It comes to the cost of suffering injuries, those kind of things.
Speaker 2:Sports, it's a great metaphor for for life in so many ways, but anyways, I threw a ton at you there yeah, yeah, and I just want to say that that's why christianity, the great hero, is jesus christ, not because he didn't experience pain or he was, he was, he's not. He's not the hero because he is this great looking, overcomer warrior, he's the he's, he's the ultimate hero of all creation because he experienced the worst pain you could imagine, overcame. That that's why he's the hero and I think, like just going back to that, that point about like the little league and go going to king's island, this is, this is this is tv program that our kids want to call bluey and um, and there's this episode on bluey called pass the parcel, right, and yeah, basically, have you seen this? Yeah, and so basically, yeah, the way that they do pass the parcel for the kids is that everyone gets a little prize and they pass the parcel and and he does it. His name is pat. He's an australian guy named pat who's worried about raising a nation of squibs, you know, and, and what he, what he does is we're gonna, we're playing it with the right way, that with the right rules, where there's only one massive prize in the middle. You turn away so you don't know who's getting the prize. You stop the music and whoever gets it, even if you get it three times in a row. That's just what it is. Life ain't fair. You get what you get.
Speaker 2:And what's really interesting about this narrative that's built in this seven minute gloomy episode is that the kids gradually get to celebrate the person. That's what. They start off being miserable that they didn't, or like crying to their parents that they didn't get the prize, the little sweet or the little bracelet or whatever, but eventually, the fourth and the fifth time they do it. What happens is is that they celebrate. They get way better at losing and they celebrate this amazing massive prize in the middle for the person that wins it. And I'm like such a good episode, like just a powerful episode of the, of the, the, the narration of what it is to experience pain well, be loved through it, but actually begin to celebrate those that are victorious and know your victory is around the corner. And even if you never get that, you get to celebrate alongside somewhere else. And that's the nature of transcendent truth, that's the nature of being able to celebrate something outside of yourself that you don't experience.
Speaker 2:That's not defined by you going all, looping, all the way back. This for the last. We're going to say then, because I've got run but I'm looping all the way back to the relationship stuff. The transcendent truth that you're tethering yourself to for all relationships is the concept of marriage. That's what that transcendent truth is and and and like this thing about you know, like prenups and like what if she gets the house and what, who cares? Like I know I say that having having a wife that I trust implicitly, yeah, and so I understand that like that isn't, that isn't necessarily like a. That's a journey that I've been on and it's not everyone's journey and I completely get it.
Speaker 2:But you know what? You took a risk on a woman and they screwed you over, or maybe you made a massive mistake. Who cares? Learn and grow. You know you lost two houses. Learn and grow. Go get them back. Go and do it. You know I'm like you can't let something, if something that hasn't yet happened, define your risk taking. You can't do it. You'll forever be paralyzed by something that you're not in control of, and I understand that it's a risk. You have to take the risk, but here's the deal.
Speaker 2:The reason why that marriage is the transcendent truth that you tether yourself to is because in marriage, it doesn't matter what happens, you stay together, and I'm not saying like you stay together for the kids or whatever it is. You work through your crap and you stay together because both of you is willing to go through the thing that is painful to you to prioritize the relationship. To go through the thing that is painful to you, to prioritize the relationship. You only find that transcendent truth in Christianity. You don't find it anywhere else, any other religion, any other circumstance or civilization. The marriage, the doctrine of marriage, the sacrament of marriage is so foundational because it says this that I choose you and because I've chosen you. God has also been part of this relationship, and the one that is holding us together is not somehow that we try really, really hard to love each other. Well, it's because we believe that we are put together and held together by a transcendent truth that both of us are committed to.
Speaker 2:Now, maybe your wife, your husband, decides that they're no longer going to be part of that story. Man, that is unbelievably painful and I'm never trying to minimize it, but listen to me. You grow through that situation and you overcome it and you become the person you were always called to be, whether you have the wife alongside or the husband alongside or not, and there is always a redemption story, husband alongside or not, and there is always a redemption story. Our lives cannot be defined in anything by the things that have not yet happened. They must be defined by the transcendent truth that we've been given to have something to aim for. Otherwise, all we will ever do is limit what we're able to achieve in life through the supernatural power of grace, and what we'll do is we'll limit what we can achieve to what we can strive towards.
Speaker 2:And here's the deal you might lose everything. Get up again and go again. Be a hero. The hero doesn't get it all. The hero experiences pain and death and hardship and overcomes it and gets up and crawls forward and brings people with them. You want a leader in your life. They're the people that crawl. They're the people that run the fastest, the people that experience so much pain in their life. They crawl forward. That's the hero you want to follow and that's the hero you want to be. And in marriage, that's the hero you want to be. You want to be the one that lays your life so low in humility that you actually end up being the person that everyone wants to follow, including your wife, that's what you want to be.
Speaker 2:And for me I'm like, yeah, dude, it's hard. The courts are set up for justice and equality and I completely get that. And yeah, maybe your wife might get two houses that she never worked for, maybe, but who cares, it's this big in the grand scheme of things. At least you try, at least you went for transcendent truth, at least you tethered yourself to something far greater than yourself. And if you can turn around and look at yourself in the mirror and say I did everything that I could and even though I made the mistake and even though I got cheated on, even though I got screwed, I tried. And God, I trust you, you just won Full stop Because you conquered pain. It you just won full stop because you conquered pain. It's way easier to say than it is to ever achieve and do, but we have to aim somewhere. We have to aim at transcendent utopia. We must, yeah.
Speaker 3:Like and I will wrap up because I need to go, but there is definitely a weight, there's that attention of I want to pick some, I want to make the right choice. So there's like a gravity to that that this is going to impact, you know, my life forever. Uh, there are like too many people obviously enter into marriage who, like shouldn't be married. If we have like a six, fifty, sixty, some percent divorce rate across the board, like not, it doesn't matter if you're christian, non-christian, whatever, like across the board.
Speaker 2:That's kind of like because that's because marriage is no longer what the transcendent marriage should. The idea of it is no longer that.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, people have abandoned that, like in the whole progressive conservative whatever.
Speaker 3:We've abandoned traditional vows and the traditional vows go along the lines of for better or for worse, for sickness and health, richer or poorer, I'm going to sacrifice for you and, no matter what, we're going to be together and I'm saying that in front of each other.
Speaker 3:I'm saying that in front of our friends and our family and our community, who we're plugged into, and I'm saying that in front of the creator of the universe. And I'm asking for the grace to be able to do that, because there'll be some times where I want to run away from this, like my head is on fire because it's so hard, and anybody who tells you it's not hard, they're misleading you completely. It's incredibly hard and there's things that you as an individual person, like people who are real spiritual, you go to Bali and you throw your negative emotions into a volcano and you think that you're transcended, trying being married to somebody who you never can leave. You've made the choice I'm never gonna leave. We're gonna make this work, no matter what. Then having kids with that person, then trying to navigate holidays with that person's family and your person's family or your family.
Speaker 3:Well, your children are sick and hospitals and everything like that and financial stress and and all that. That's that's going to cultivate some significant character growth. That's going to cultivate some significant spiritual growth. And you think that you've processed through your trauma. You think that you process through your deficiencies. These will raise all those deficiencies to the surface and throw them in your face. You gotta deal with the ugly and the ugly will come up you have to do it in public, in front of your wife.
Speaker 2:So, yes, and husband, yeah, because you're one, now he's dude. I can't explain to you how, how, how vital that that, that that marriage message, is to relationships and family yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, again like this is something I got convicted of a long time ago. I was driving in the car by myself and God speaks to me, sometimes through vision, sometimes through spontaneous thoughts. Thought pops into my head. Holy Spirit said you don't want a wife, you want a slave. He asked me first. He's like do you want a wife? I said yeah, I want a wife. I was like 23, 20, I don't know 24.
Speaker 3:He said you don't want a wife, you want a slave. I'm like what do you mean? And he said slaves are defined by their productivity and what they can contribute, and that's where their value is derived from. And that's how you look at women. You look at how is my life going to look with this woman and it's something that I'm going to add into my life? And you're dealing in pluses and minuses. And so you don't want a wife, you want slave. And I had to repent there. I had to accept that I, I didn't want a wife, I want a slave.
Speaker 3:And I think many people look at relationships in that lens as a departure point. Well, there's a list of plus and minuses and there's a list of check marks and pros and cons and those kind of things and there is a relevancy of core values and holding the same core values with somebody and that's going to make life and having kids together and those things simpler for sure. But if you're measuring people by that, that you're not co-laboring a person, you're not partners. One person is always going to be a slave to the other person and when that person can't contribute, then we just expel them from our lives and some some relationships are are from founded on these kind of principles.
Speaker 3:The archetype where we see men they have tons of money, they're older, and then they get with somebody who has zero life experience. They're like 19, 20 years old, beautiful girl and their kind of relationship is is going to work on a kind of transactional basis of like this is, this is what I'm, what I'm in it for. You're providing me with a certain quality of life and you're providing me the companionship of somebody who's stunningly beautiful and, uh, I think that's a good place to wrap up. Hopped off, he had to go be with his family. We ran over a little bit. But appreciate Tim, appreciate the time.
Speaker 1:All right, that's a wrap for today's episode. Huge thank you to the steadfast and slightly unpredictable Tim Churchward for once again gracing us with his wisdom and challenged us to look at life differently. If what Tim shared with you today resonated with you, I can't recommend enough that you check out his School of Transformation at chromachurchcom. It's a life-changing program and it's designed to help you grow, to heal and to step into your purpose. You can find all the details for that online and register to this school. They do it online so you don't have to be there in person. There's a link in the podcast description to make it really easy for you.
Speaker 1:Okay seriously take a moment, explore it. School of Transformation. It's impacting lives in a big way and you don't wanna miss out on a chance to be part of that. Okay, and before we go, just a quick reminder. If you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to this podcast, on whatever platform you listen to podcasts Spotify, apple, whatever I'm registered on all of them so that way you're never going to miss on episode and I'm excited to share. By popular demand, we're going to be rolling out video content. A lot of people are hitting me up. Video is king. I understand that. It just adds another layer. Post-editing sucks the life out of my body, but we'll start uploading full episodes and shorts on YouTube and be sure to check us out there too. So thanks for tuning in. I'll catch you next time. Stay curious, stay grounded and let's keep this conversation going. Cheers.
