#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest

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Dad had a dish bowl on the dashboard of the truck. We took this curve and the dish started sliding across the dashboard.
So he leaned over to grab it. When he did, yanked the steering wheel and went to the ditch and cut a culvert and started in cartwheels.
What advice would you have for kids who have lost parents? All this angst that we have is wrestling with the death question. We don't know when it's coming.
We know it's coming, and we can't control that. And so that terrifies us.

And so we do all these things that distract us from that.

The life of faith is really preparing for a good death.

Father Stephen Gadbury, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks a lot.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Happy to have you here.

Thanks.

But yeah, you know, I found you.

Actually, I don't remember

how i found you but i ran across your instagram profile one way or another and uh i just i saw what you're posting working out on your cycle lots of hunting shooting your bow and i just i think that's um I don't want to sound offensive. I think it's really cool that you're a priest displaying like raw masculinity like that and making it cool.
And I mean, I think that masculinity has damn near disappeared in the world over the past 10 to 15 years. And we just spoke.
We think it's making a comeback. But on top of that, you just don't see priests doing that kind of stuff.
And I think everybody, I mean, I grew up Catholic. and you just don't think of a priest out hunting big game or doing grueling workouts or shooting their bow or cycling or really any of that.
Everybody kind of thinks of them as, what do they do, pray all the time and do the rosary? But so I just, I thought that was really cool. And that's what drew my attention to you.
And so I think I've been following you for about a year, maybe a little longer. And so, yeah, I just wanted to get you on the show.
We had my friend, Father Dan Rehill on. And that was a fascinating interview.
And so, yeah, I kind of want to do a little bit of a life story on you and then dive into some of the stuff with the Catholic Church. I got a ton of questions.
But yeah, thanks for coming. Yeah, thanks for the invite.
I only work on Sundays, so I got all the time you need. Not really.
Yeah, no, it's, you know, in the Catholic Church, the pastor, the leader's called Father,

because, you know, like being the spiritual father.

You know, a father is one that generates life.

And if you're going to generate life,

you've got to have some energy in you.

And I think we have a lot of men out there who aren't fathers

because they're not generating energy.

They're just, they're stale.

They're stagnant.

They're too closed in on themselves.

But, I mean, we've got a fire in us, and God just wants us to spread that thing.

So, yeah, I just try to do that through the social media stuff and day-to-day live.

I crash and burn all the time, but it's part of the fun.

Well, it's pretty cool, man.

It's really cool to see it.

Thanks.

But, yeah, so everybody starts out here with an intro.

Actually, you want to kick it off with some prayer? Yeah, sure. All right.
Good and gracious God, we give you thanks for this day and the gift of life. Just pray that you send your spirit upon us.
Give us a double portion of your spirit that we may open our heart to you and be faithful disciples. help us to follow your word, follow your voice, to be men after the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, that we may follow his example and be willing to die, to make sacrifices for the love of others.
Amen. Amen.
And everybody gets a gift, but I'll give you one of your one of your gifts later but this would be pretty fitting so that is um my friend dom razo uh i think he collabs with a company to make these but he calls it the warrior's rosary and and uh so dom is a is a former seal team six sniper, good friend of mine. We were at SEAL Team 2 for a long time, and he's a very devout Catholic and has been a spiritual mentor of mine.
And so I gave Jim Caviezel. I used to only have one, and then I gave to jim caviezel when he came on we talked about um jesus and and the movie the passion and stuff and so he sent me a couple more and i just thought i thought you'd like that this is cool man thanks yeah yeah you're welcome awesome thank you yeah i did bring some toys for you if you want them now or later I love toys, let's do it first one is actually Bible I do a lot of stuff with Bishop Robert Barron in Word on Fire, I don't know if you've heard of him does a ton of stuff in evangelization we started this project a number of years ago with Word on Fire to create a series of the Bible and the goal in in this is not just to read the Word of God, but to experience the Word of God.
And so there is, of course, the scriptures. This is the Gospels, the four Gospels.
And then it's got commentary from the church fathers, from saints, from Bishop Barron. It's just a beautiful text.
Thank you. Wow.
Thank you. And then...
This is...

This is... I think you'll like that, hopefully.
Oh, man. I just got into making knives.
You're making knives now? Yeah. So I made that one for you.
It's kind of sharp. From scratch? I got the blade already pre like, pre-forged and treated and everything.
Heat treated, but I shaped it and did the handle. There's two engravings on there.
Aji Quodajis. We may talk about this later.
It's like a motto that I go by. Fermanacious Loyola.
It means, like, do what you're doing. That's the literal translation.
But the sense of it is don't half-ass it. Like, whatever you're going to do, just give it hell.

Like, don't half-ass it.

Go all in.

Yeah, and then the other side of that is Hebrews, I think, 412.

I don't remember the verse exactly, but it's the Word of God, sharper than a two-edged sword,

piercing the heart and soul, bones and marrow.

That's a two-edged knife, so I thought it was going to fit.

Oh, man, I'm framing this.

Enjoy it, yeah.

Yeah, thank you.

I'll make you another one that you can use.

Right on.

Got some shirts here, too.

We can, you know, you always need more gear.

Hats from our hunt group, Mayhem Hunt.

But, uh...

So...

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

You're not wearing too many T-shirts.

That's one of those... Oh, very cool.
...shirts, yeah. Thank you.
You're not wearing too many T-shirts. That's one of those.
Oh, very cool. Shirts, yeah.
Right. Yeah, thank you.
Yeah. Wear this stuff.
I appreciate it. Yeah.
Thanks, man. Yeah, enjoy it.
The Bible and the knife are really cool, man. Yeah.
So is the gear, but. Well.
Those are really good. There you go.
That's the main... Everybody gets these, except doctors.
Sometimes I don't give them to doctors, because I'm self-conscious. It's Vigilance League gummy bears made here in the USA.
They taste amazing. You're going to pass your drug test.
There's no funny business in there. I'll make you some later.
Cool, cool, but... Yeah.
They feel good. Go ahead, rip them open.
Try them. Try them.
They smell darn good. It's good.
It's a good gummy bear. I never thought I'd say that in my life.
That's a good gummy bear. Do you know who Vivek is by chance? Vivek Ramaswamy?

Yeah.

He came in here and ripped them open.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He ripped them open before I could tell him anything.

And I said, yeah, so the effects of those will kick in in about 30 minutes.

And he was like, oh, God.

It was hilarious.

But, oh, shit. But everybody starts off with a introduction.
So here we go. Father Stephen Gadbury, you were raised on a family farm in the Arkansas Delta.
After graduating high school in 2004, you enlisted in the United States Air Force and worked in logistics in Texas, Germany, and central Iraq. You entered seminary in 2008 and majored in philosophy and liberal arts at St.
Joseph's Seminary College in Louisiana. You completed your graduate and postgraduate theological studies at the Pontifical Gregorjian University and Pontifical, how do I say this? Pontifical.
Pontifical Gregorjian University and Pontifical. Augustinianum, that's a big one.
Woo! University, you have to have a master's just to read that, in Rome, Italy. You were ordained in 2016 and are currently the pastor of St.
Teresa Catholic Church and School in Little Rock, Arkansas, which is a 10,000-member church in pre-K through eighth grade school. 10,000? That's weird.
95% of your congregation is Hispanic. That's interesting.
You are an avid hunter and outdoorsman, as we covered earlier. You're an accomplished athlete, and we're on seasons 10 and 12 of American Ninja Warrior, and recently completed the Leadville 100.
Is that Leadville? Yeah. Reading's not my strong suit, obviously.
You're a part of the Mayhem Hunt crew led by Rich Frowning, where the team has combined their love for hunting and fitness to develop a hunting in backcountry-specific fitness training program. Additionally, you have two dogs.
You play the harmonica, and you recently started making knives, as we just saw. And like I said, I ran across your IG profile.
thought it was really cool like all the stuff that you're doing in addition in addition to being a priest and kind of spreading you know in a it's just a good way to spread masculinity man you just have cool hobbies uh it's cool that you're that you're doing that as a priest you're not. You're not like a lot of these guys who are like ramming masculinity down people's throats because I think that stuff is stupid.
And you're just a good example. And you seem to lead by example.
And I think that in itself is also becoming a lost art. Thanks, man.
Thank you for being there. Thanks.
I had a lot of good examples in my life. We're on this journey, and it's rough.
It's a tough... Life is brutal.
If we're going to get through it, we've got to, like, put the nose to the grindstone.

But to have the fullest life as we're going through it, like, you've got to confront reality.

You know, you only find God in reality, not in fantasy.

And by finding God, you find the fullness of life.

And so if you want the fullest life, I mean, you've got to be real.

And that requires, like, don't be fake, you know, and be real, be Be real. Be authentic.
I'll just try to share that. We were talking about hunting downstairs and I killed my first deer and then we started talking about going on an elk hunt.
I'd have a couple of invites to go elk hunting and I'd love to do it, but we were talking was like man i can't i have a real problem leaving business especially for a week i get super anxious i feel like i have to be working i think it goes back to my time in the seal teams if you're not if you're not training if you're out playing grab ass the enemy's training to kill you, and they'll be advancing while you're over here fucking around. I've kind of carried that through the rest of my adult life.
You had mentioned that you also have one pace, and it's all in. I'll just let you pick it up from there.

You had some good stuff to say about that. Just like a dog chasing the ball.
That's what I do. I wake up and just chase it.
And too fast and asleep are my two speeds. Yeah, we live in such a fast-paced life world.
And that's good. That's a good thing.
God made us to be creative. He gives us this energy.
And this productivity and this desire to work is a blessing. It's a superpower from God.
God made you to be fruitful and multiply, to have a family. And to have a family requires you to take care of them.
So the hustle here, the work that you do every day, is providing for the family. So that's good.
The most primal way of providing for the family is going out and killing an animal. And so that's just, you know, you can provide now, but getting a check and buying the stuff you need.
Another way to do that is like go out and get an animal, put some food on the table. But it's, there's so many studies out here.
You got a bunch of really cool friends and I'm sure like they could chime in on this.. I'm thinking of Huberman.
I'm sure he could. There's some science behind this, but of disconnecting for a second for the sake of productivity.
We can get so zeroed in on the stuff that we're doing that this tunnel vision can shut us off of a lot of stuff. When you rest it, you rest for a little bit, it just allows the brain and the heart to breathe a little bit.
When I go hunting, for example, because that's what we're talking about, I'll go out for a couple of weeks at a time every fall. And it's a nice disconnect.
It's terrifying. I mean, you're out there alone in the elements, maybe with a couple friends, but I do a lot of it alone too.
And so you go in those dark places that you've been putting aside for the last year, two years, your whole life, whatever. You've got to wrestle with that stuff.
But the silence is a sacred thing, man. And our culture is terrified of it.
I'm scared of it. But because it's in the silence that you wrestle with your demons, but beyond that, it's in the silence that you hear the voice of God.
And while demons will scare us, and rightly so they should, something even more terrifying is the voice of God. And what I mean is in that silence, God can ask you to do anything.
Drop your nets and follow me. And it could reveal itself.
He could ask you to do anything. Move across the world and do this project or whatever it may be.
And then the ball's in our court. And that scares us because if we truly open our heart up to the Lord, man, we don't know what he's going to ask.
We're going to lose control, but we don't really have the control to begin with. Anyhow, so many different ways we can take this, but the silence.
Hold on. So where I was going at the beginning, as you had mentioned, Satan can use that against us.
Yeah. Basically that drive.
And that's kind of where I was going. But you're talking about, and I can disconnect.
It's hard for me to make time, but I will make time. And I make time for my wife, I make time for my kids, and

stuff like that.

Making time a week to go out west, that's a little hard. I'd like to ask you about psychedelics, too, but you're talking about opening up and grounding and being in the elements and hearing the voice of God.
So I think a lot, I mean, I'm always, my relationship with Christ and God has been growing at a exponential rate. It's growing so fast and I'm really learning to lean into my gut.
And to me, that's my gut is, that is God telling me yes. And I feel like he gives me these little affirmations.
Like, that's right. That's what I'm telling you to do.
And so I'll give you an example. I talked about, I don't want to go into the whole story for time sake because I've told it a bunch of times, but I had this really big experience in Sedona, and that's kind of what brought me back to Christ.

And like I said, I had grown up Catholic, joined the SEAL teams, contracted for the CIA,

acted like a total bachelor idiot for 20 years,

and then basically pushed God and Christ and just pushed him aside and not that I didn't believe but I just didn't care sure and anyways so had this really profound experience basically it was God smacking me in the face like three times right in a row. Totally different experiences, but all within about 15 minutes.
And then I started seeing these number, these reoccurring numbers all the time. And the first one was 444.
It was everywhere I looked. And sometimes multiple times, three times at once.

Like first time it happened to me, it was 444 on the clock,

444 miles left to empty,

and four hours and 44 minutes after a conversation

that I just had with a very good friend of mine

about how guardian angels are watching over me. And I was like, whoa, okay, it just happened again.
And so now if I'm iffy about something, or here's an example. I just went and I interviewed this guy, Colleen Georgescu, in Romania.
He's running for president of Romania.

They basically shut the election down.

There's a possibility that he's under Russian influence.

There's a possibility that they're just using Russian influence

to not get him elected.

Really confusing and complicated situation.

I was like, man, am I doing the right thing by giving this guy a voice? All I'm doing is giving him a voice. And I start seeing the reoccurring numbers everywhere I look.
And to me, I'm like, I'm doing the right thing. And I had, I had sent this tweet out and it was, it was the truth is like a, set it free, and it'll defend itself.
Right as I did that, this woman comes around the corner in the airport, and she has a big, glittery lion head on her shirt. And I was just like, okay, like that's, to me, that's God's voice,'s voice or that's God telling me you're doing the right thing, Sean, just lean into it.
Like I'm showing you yes. I mean, so I'm curious when you say you get out there and you're hearing the voice of God and he's telling you to do different things.
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For me, one of the ways that it comes about is just like clarity from like all the stuff I've been going through before. So it's almost like a retrospective, like just time to reflect.
So going back to like the work stuff, it's that God's given us, like men in particular to provide, like we're the providers and we got to do stuff. And if you don't, your family dies, the village dies, society dies, the world dies.
Right. So we got to, we got to put stuff out.
We got, we got to be producers. You know, Satan likes to use that because if we can be so tasked, if we get too task oriented, then we forget about making time for the main things, for the important things.
So you were talking about these different little signs or affirmations that God would give you. Whenever you're just working too fast or too much, you're going to miss them.
I'm sure there's 444s that you walked by before,

like when you're just on a mission, just going. They were there the whole time.
But what's going

on now is you're more aware of it. And the more aware of it you become, the more you'll see them.

And you'll really realize how present God is in your life. Setting time aside to slow down,

to be still and know that God is God, it's a sacred moment. If you think about Sunday, like the Lord says, keep holy the Sabbath.
Don't do a bunch of servile labor. It doesn't mean you can't do work.
But it's the first day of the week. It's like a proper orientation to God.
If we can set aside work for a moment, it's not laziness, but it's actually an act of faith. Because what we're doing is saying, God, I can bust my ass.
But if I take this hour, this day, this week to be with you, be with my family, to do whatever, like I'm recognizing that you're God and I'm not. And so I'm capable of doing this work, capable of doing this stuff, but you know, you could end my life right now.
Like I exist because you're holding me in existence. And so whenever we take these little breaks, it's like a profession of faith that God is going to take care of us.
And so for me to bring it back to the last question that you made was like, when I'm out in the woods, out in the mountains, it's just time for me to stop and like let the dust settle from the rat race that I'm always running and then just get clarity. And for me, it doesn't take long.
I mean, it could be an afternoon hunt, like going out to hunt whitetails. It could be a drive in the truck when I have the radio off, you know, nothing at all, a 20-minute drive.
Could be working out just for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever, but a little bit of space to decompress and let the thoughts fall in line. For me, that's kind of how the Lord speaks.
I got all these puzzle pieces that I've been picking up, and whenever I take that time of silence, I can put all those little puzzle pieces in order, and then I get the big picture. So I don't know if that makes sense.
Yeah, it makes sense. I think what you're saying is clarity.
Yeah, mindfulness is all this stuff. It's all over pop culture.
It's all over the place because there's something behind it. Definitely the clarity.
What were you saying? How does Satan take advantage of this? So, simply put, he'll allow us to fall so deep into our own endeavors that we begin to believe that we're God of our own life, that we can save ourselves.

If I can work this hard and make this kind of income and do all these things, it doesn't even have to be an income.

It could be productivity of any sort.

It could be whatever you're doing.

But whenever that becomes the main thing, we end up worshiping that, an idol.

And then the lie that we begin to believe is that we're self-sustaining. I can take care of it.
I don't need God. We begin to believe that we're in control of everything, like we're God.
So that's the way that Satan will do it. It's a very tactical way of him to get us off path.
Because if he knocks on the door, Satan appears in a way that you can't deny that it's Satan. You're going to say, no, get behind me in the name of Jesus.
Be gone. Because it's going to be so obvious.
So therefore, he likes to hit us where we're strong. He goes to our talents.
And then from there, he starts, you know, up in the pride and the ego, and that's the root of all sins, pride, you know, and so that's kind of a simple way of putting how he manipulates it. Well, how can people keep a balance? How do they know when they're going too far? Yeah, I'd say look for the fruits of the spirits.
I mean, if your marriage is crumbling, or what's the most basic things?

If you're not doing the most basic things,

then you need to put stuff in order.

So marriage, if your marriage is falling apart

because this thing is now your wife,

if the work that I'm doing becomes my wife,

or if I'm a dad or a mom,

and I got kids, but I'm never with them.

That's something I'm always on the guise at the church.

I've got some hardworking people in my church. And they'll be gone Monday through Friday and then be home Saturday.
And they'll have to leave again on Sunday, Sunday evening, so they can go to their Monday through Friday job way out of town. They're spending the whole day Saturday sleeping and recovering.
And then they got basically Sunday to be with the family. Like, Yeah, you're working to provide stuff for your family, but at the end of the day, your kid just wants to be with you.
Hey, Dad, will you play with me? So what do the relationships look like? Is the work that you're doing supporting those relationships, or is it getting in the way of them?

That's kind of a simple way.

Also another way would be look at your own

vices and sins

or addictions for example.

I'd say look at those secondary signs

relationships and then just your own

virtues or the lack thereof. Do you have any vices? I got a bunch.
What are some of your vices? Man, work. Work? It's hard to stop because I love going.
I love going. That's one.
What do you do for work? I mean, what does your work consist of outside of Sunday Mass? Yeah. So outside the Sunday Mass is, you know, got this large community.
So I'm essentially in charge of all the operations for the community, for all the members of the parish, but then also all the buildings, the structures. So it's a little bit of everything.
It could be, of course, preparing for Sunday services, preparing people for marriages, doing marriage counseling, doing funerals, going to the prisons, hiring contractors to do work. We're starting a lot of development at our school right now.
We're just, the school is exploding. And so it's cool, but it's making some problems, like some good problems, but we've got to do construction.
So I'm talking to contractors and doing building plans and calls to the hospital. Finance has got to oversee all the books and everything.
I have a bookkeeper who does that, but I mean, I'm over her, so I've got to make sure that she does that.. You're a CEO.
Essentially, yeah.

That's kind of how we operate.

All the pastors, all the Catholic priests at their churches,

it's their little village.

Interesting.

You've had over 10,000 members.

It's wild, yeah.

Where at in Arkansas again?

Little Rock.

Man, that's a lot of people.

It's cool, man.

95% Hispanic? Yeah, yeah. What do you give the mass in? Spanish and in English.
We have seven masses over the weekend. Two of those are in English, and the other five are in Spanish.
Wow. Yeah, and it's still growing, man.
People are still coming. The community is growing.
What's bringing them in? Work. A lot of it's work.
I mean, just like so many other cities in the U.S. are growing, especially these conservative states.
People are leaving the more liberal states to go to these conservative places, and Arkansas is a very conservative state. That just requires the growth and development.
That's not exactly what I I meant I didn't realize Arkansas was growing. I heard Bentonville is going crazy.
But it seems to be this wave of Christianity of people coming to Christ. So don't move in there, but why are they coming to church? Are you saying that? Yeah.
Okay, I get your question now. It happened to me.
It happened to a bunch of people I know. Yeah.
We're at the point now where we realize that the juice that the world's given us doesn't satisfy our thirst. It doesn't quench our thirst.
And so we're going deeper. We're realizing that the passing things of this world, as good as they are, they're not the best thing.
We can use them as long as they take us to something higher, something greater, something outside ourself. And people are aware of that.
We live in a world now that's so divided. Everything is so polemical.
Or is that the word? Polemical? Like it's on these extremes. That, I mean, everyone's on edge all the time.
You know, and that's exhausting. It's so exhausting.
And so people are just wanting some time to breathe. And so that naturally opens up this spiritual side of people, which then leads them to ask big life questions.
And whenever you slow down in this crazy life, like you realize after all the work, after all the stuff I do, after this life that I live, I'm going to die. And ultimately, like all this angst that we have is wrestling with the death question.
We don't know when it's coming. We know it's coming, but we don't know when and we can't control that.
And so that terrifies us. And so we do all these things that distract us from that.
So the life of faith is really preparing for a good death. That's a memento mori.
I don't know if you've heard that before. I'm sure you have.
Like, remember your death. Memento mori, it's a Latin phrase.
And it's just an ancient Christian reflection. A lot of times you'll see Christian art and there'll be a skull, like in the corner of the painting or on the table or something.
And it's a reminder that you're going to be six feet under someday. And so we have to live every day so that we prepare for a good death, basically.
When we go to meet the maker and give that final account. Do you see a lot of spiritual warfare? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. It's pretty hidden.
It's not like the movie. The stuff that I see isn't like you see in the movies.
It's pretty hidden. A lot of it's marriages.
Satan is going after families. That's where he's going.
And I see that all the time, so many broken families. I've done three funerals over the last month, the last, last few months, two of them within a week and one back in November of a 17 year old, 19 year old, a 24 year old that got shot.
You know, they were just violence gangs or drug stuff or what, you know, whatever the reason. Um, like I see that, I see marriages falling apart.
I see infidelity. I see kids just losing their mind because they don't have good parents.
And the parents are just lost and confused. And so that's how Satan, he can't destroy the world.
Or, I mean, he could. But, like, he'll do it one family at a time if he's going to do it.
and to take it back to the whole work thing like he'll do it one family at a time if he's going to do it and to take it back to the whole work thing he goes after dads if a dad is not there then he's the cornerstone of the family moms are necessary of course the women are necessary so is dad, the women are necessary. So is dad, the men.

But, um, so when it comes to warfare, spiritual warfare, I see it like that. That's the biggest place where I see if families being broken apart.
I see, I think I see it. I never really thought of that as being spiritual warfare, to be honest with you.
But I think that there's a lot of things happening in the world that are coming to light that are grabbing people's attention. Like, I'll bring something up.
Like that, like the Last Supper skit at the Olympics. Did you see that? Yeah.
I mean, I feel like people see something like that and they're like, me in particular, and they look at that and they think, holy shit, okay, that is satanic. If satanic is that shit, is that prevalent? Yeah.
That means the other's real. Yeah.
And so, you know, and a lot of this stuff was really making me angry. Like last year, Easter, you know, the White House did the Trans Visibility Day.
Okay. Yeah.
Which, whatever. They said they put that in a long time ago or something, and then it just happened to fall on that day.
It conveniently fell on the day. Yeah.
But then you look at the letterhead, and it had little Easter bunnies and all this other shit on there. And to me, I'm like, wait a minute.
They're perverting the day of the resurrection. Right.
And so as much as that upsets me in seeing things like the Olympics and mutilating kids and all these other things, you know, we could line them all up here. But it almost, in a weird way, it gives me, it's almost proof that God exists.

Because if it's that bad, and it is satanic, and that's where it's coming from,

then that means that the good side exists as well.

And so now when I see stuff like that, it actually strengthens my faith. Does that make any sense? Totally, totally.
Does this stuff fall under spiritual warfare? 100%. It's all disordered, you know.
It's all disordered, yeah. Most simply put, and God created the universe and everything in it in a proper, ordered way.
Like, logic is like, like, people don't argue with numbers. Two plus two is four.
Like, there's some, like, objective truths. Like, that's a simple thing for that.
But, like, evil comes in, and he, like, Satan, he can't make stuff. He doesn't create things.
He just distorts what's already there. So, he'll manipulate the truth He'll manipulate what is real.
So he'll manipulate the way that we see identity or gender. Say, you know, this is what, for all of humanity, it's male and female.
But now it's like, no, it can be whatever you want it to be. It's like, no, you're turning something that's good into something that's bad.
You're distorting it. It's a lie.
He just flips all this stuff on its head. So one of the words that you use, like just these perversions, that's a good word for it.
It's just perverting the truth. It's twisting it around and saying two plus two is five.
It's all over. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. I mean, how much...
So that's another... This is something I think about all the time, especially with the growing existence of AI, stuff like Neuralink.
Mm-hmm. I mean, and then you...
I brought on you, Father Dan Rehill, Lee Strobel, John Burke. I'm super interested in the subject, but everybody talks about how Satan is the master of deceit.
He's the master liar. He can manipulate things and make it appear as something else.
And so I'm just curious. I mean, how much, so this makes me think, how much of everything we know today is a complete lie? How much is a lie? Are we even, you know, you hear people talk about, oh, are we in a simulation? Is this a false reality? AI.
I talked to Huberman about Neuralink. I said, well, he was talking about how it could help blind people see.
I said, well, if it could help blind people see, then could they create an entire false reality inside of your head? He said, oh oh yeah, if they can make blind see, they can manipulate all the other senses, taste, smell, touch, emotion. It's wild.
All of that stuff. And so it just makes me wonder how much of what we know today or what we think we know is a lie.
And will this all get revealed at death? Good question. It's a lot, I would bet.
It seems like there's a lot around it. Man, I just kept going back to freedom.
Freedom. All this stuff is bad in as much as it takes our freedom away.
God wants us to free to be a saint to be in the presence of god and that's perfect freedom that's the fullness of life um anything that takes away our freedom or free will or consciousness like is it gets us away from that you But freedom, that's ultimately what,

when God made Adam and Eve,

he made them perfectly free until they started doubting and questioning

and then kind of not thinking that they were free enough.

So they tried to make their own freedoms,

the forbidden fruit, like the scripture will tell us

that just the image of the forbidden fruit.

But it's about freedom.

All these other things are bad

in as much as they take our free will away from us. So AI is a good thing, man.
It's here. It's not going to go away.
So how do we move forward with it ethically and morally? And as much as it helps us with productivity and to be more free, that's great. But if it takes away our freedom, what I mean is if we rely on it so much that we're not creatively thinking and making decisions on our own, then it's bad.
Because ultimately that's what it's all about. Like God wants us to be free.
And what's the ultimate freedom? Like this radical creativity. So going back to the work conversation.
Work that's done freely and properly ordered is a creative act. That's what work is.
You're creating stuff. You're cooperating in the creation of the world.
So there's a lot of dignity in work. But, yeah, just freedom.
So in any way that all this stuff around us takes away our freedom, it's not from God. What is the freedom? The freedom is to do the right thing, to do what's right.
Not the freedom to do whatever the hell you want. It's the freedom to do what's right.
I'm not free to go out and rob 15 banks today if I want to. Like, because that's not right.
I'm not free to go out and just drink a 30-pack of beer and then drive around town.

Like, that's not good.

You know, I'm not free to kill somebody, like, just out of cold-blooded murder.

Like, that's not freedom.

If there's a, you know, you know.

You're saying you have freedom to make the choice.

Yeah.

That's kind of what it boils down to.

Is that what your definition of free will is?

Yeah, yeah. To make the right choice.
We're free to make the right choice. You have the free will of whether to choose good or to choose evil.
Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then so you mentioned psychedelics just in passing. We can jump into that a little bit later or whenever you want.
But something with that or alcohol or drugs or anything like this is it would be bad in as much as it takes our free will. Tom Sequinas talks about alcohol, for example.
And how much can you drink? He says to the point of hilarity. That's kind of like the way he just...
Because to the point of hilarity means that you still have full use of your reason. But as soon as something takes away your faculties, then you're not free in that.
And that's where Satan wants to come in. Because if we don't maintain the proper use of our faculties and reason, then that's because we've surrendered it to someone else.
And so anytime that we surrender that, like if we're under the influence of something to the point where it takes away our faculties completely, we've surrendered that free will to somebody else. And at that point, they're free to make decisions in our name.
I mean, to really simplify it, like think of a parent raising a kid. The parent's going to make decisions for the kids because it's their proper, you know, like it's their right thing to do.
You know, a power of attorney is another example. You give someone else the freedom to make decisions in your name.
But that can be a slippery slope if you give the freedom to the wrong person. They can abuse that power of attorney and just screw you.
And then if you take another step further into the spiritual realm, if you give your freedom to some spiritual being that's not God, then that's how Satan makes his way in. Is our destiny chosen for us? I don't think it's chosen.
So if God knows everything that's going to happen, then how is it not?

So God's knowledge doesn't necessarily predetermine where we'll end up.

He may know where we're going to end up.

That's not because he's predestined.

It's because he knows all things.

God's outside of space and time.

God's all-knowing. The foreknowledge of God is, I guess, kind of a simple way of understanding this.
St. Augustine or St.
Augustine, depending on how you say his name, he talks about this free will and predestination and everything. And it's like God's foreknowledge is that which guarantees us the freedom to choose rightly in that moment in the future.
So it's like he knows all this stuff, but it's just like a parent leading their kid through something in life. And you walk with the kid and you say, okay, we're here now.
Let's make the decision. I've taught you all this stuff up to this point.
Now you're going to make the decision. What do you make? If it's a wrong decision, you help your kid learn from it and then move on.
If it's the right decision, they keep going. So God's foreknowledge is kind of like a parent walking with a kid.

So, yeah, it's kind of the simplest way I could put it for, I might get too theological with it. Do you think he knows if we're going to wind up a believer or a nonbeliever? He wouldn't, yeah.
I mean, God would know. He knows all things, so he would know that.
but for him to know

if we're going to be a believer or nonbeliever, if we're going to be in heaven or hell, does not mean that he would have predestined that. God cannot predestine, or like it's not in God's nature to will something bad for somebody.
God is love. And so God would not create any of us like with the plan of sending us to hell.
It would be the choice that we freely make in that regard. What are your thoughts on psychedelics? I found a lot of healing through them a lot of my friends have

um that have been to war and you know it's always a very very controversial subject within catholic christian world a lot of people say it's demonic A lot of people say it opens up, you know, people are trying to open up their third eye and that's how demons come in. It's like a window.
A lot of people say that, you know, it's a false reality that you experience. But I've seen a lot more good than bad come from this stuff, way more good.
And so I've heard that some people use psychedelics to open people up before exorcisms. I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on psychedelics? This initial thing is how much of your free will can be maintained in that, and if it is surrendered in the use of that, who is rightly going to be your guardian during that moment? That's kind of one thing.
That's kind of a high thought or whatever. But they're doing a lot more studies.
I think with more of these studies, we'll have a clear understanding of the morality of it and the ethics of it and everything, which is good. So we have to do the studies and everything and figure out more.
The big thing is, like, can it be, like, how can you control the consistency of it? Like, in a beer, you know how much alcohol is in there. Now, like, with, yeah, do you know how much is in it? And then if you can measure it and know how much is in it, then you can control how much you take, which can control the facts.
What about from a spiritual standpoint? Yeah. You know, a lot like with people that's saying it's demonic.
It's demonic forces. You're opening yourself up to the spiritual realm.
I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Is it spiritual suicide? That's a good question. Man, I'm still learning more about it myself.
Now, if you compare psychedelics to crystal meth or something, I think those are two totally different creatures, you know, or cocaine or whatever, like one of these man-made drugs or something versus, like, something that is naturally derived. I think that in itself is an argument that needs to be explored more.
To answer your question, like, does it open you up to the demonic stuff? I think it can. I think it can.
Just in the shortest answer. Yeah.
It gives me the jibbies. I don't know if I'd want to do it.
Have you ever done it? I haven't done psychedelics. No.
Is the spiritual realm right here amongst us? Always, huh? We can't... There's so much more in this world, in this universe, in this life than what we can just sense.
You know, what would be an example? I mean, you can look up something on Wikipedia and you can read one article, but there's still all the rest of Wikipedia that's still there and exists, even though you haven't read it. We have our senses that allow us to take information in.
But think of those senses as just experiencing like one Wikipedia page of what this life is all about. That's kind of like a horizontal kind of way of understanding.
But if you take that vertically, like to the spiritual realm, yeah, I mean, it's all around us. Just the day, like life experiences will reveal, life experiences will reveal that there's more to this life than just the things we can touch and see and smell.
I mean, every human being has had a good day and a bad day. You know, we've all done stuff that has changed our mood and making us happier or sad, mad or angry, whatever it may be.
We've all had people say something to us that it's a word that we hear in our head,

but it does something inside us.

It can piss us off or it can make us feel loved and consoled.

It's all around us.

It's all around us.

We've got to be aware of it, respect it.

But at the same time, we can't get hung up on it.

What I mean is God wants us to live life, like be in reality. Do you think there's ways to access it? Prayer initially comes to mind.
I don't know, like a shortcut. I'm a redneck from the farm.
Okay. Sure, yeah, there's definitely ways to access it.
Okay. There's definitely ways to access it okay there's definitely ways to access it well let's dig into your life story so real quick one thing i forgot sorry about this um so i have a patreon account it's a subscription account and um they've been with me since the beginning we've grown quite the community in there and one of the things i offer them the

opportunity to to ask each and every guest a question and so it's a long question so i'm

going to summarize it it's from brian duff but brian was born and raised catholic and basically

he's a he's a paramedic combat veteran experienced experienced a lot of trauma, a lot of evil, a lot of inhumane stuff. He's lost a lot of friends to suicide.
And he says, after a long description, while I believe in God, I guess what I'm asking is, how do I not be angry with him? Because I'm pissed at him? If he is all-powerful as we're taught, why would he allow such things to happen? Fantastic question, Mr. Duff.
Brian, was that his name, Brian? Brian. Yeah, good question, Brian.
Man, first thing I would say is be pissed at God. He's a big boy if you're mad at God.
The only way to encounter God is in reality. I mentioned that earlier.
I think I did. If not, I was thinking it.
But yeah, the only way to encounter God is in reality, not in fantasy. So if you're pissed at God, tell him.
He already knows what you're feeling and thinking. He knows what's in your mind.
He knows what's in your heart. He knows all the stuff that you saw.
He was there with you. And that's the beauty of Christianity, that God is,

I mean, it's the message of the cross. Like God doesn't sit on some, you know, crystal throne and gaze on us like a, you know, somebody watching fish in a tank.
He was crucified. Like he's been to the depths of hell.
Like he knows better than us what that is. And so first thing is meet God at that spot.
Because it's only through reality and in reality that you're going to encounter God. So start with that stuff.
Man. And then from there, everything else just kind of snowballs.
What's the second part? So why would the last question that he said? How do I not be angry with him because I'm pissed at him? Okay. If he is all-powerful as we're taught, why would he allow such things to happen? Okay.
So, yeah. Just, it's okay to be mad at God.
I think a lot of people have never been given that freedom to be mad at God. Some of the best prayers that I've had, I've chewed him out.

And then afterwards, he brings some light to it and meaning to it.

So start there.

And then he's so good.

Why do these things happen? That's the typical question of suffering.

If God is so good, why is there evil in the world?

And it's because of his love.

And I'll explain that because it doesn't make sense.

Like, if God loves us, then how can that be the reason for the evil?

Like, love is always proposed and it's never imposed, right?

God doesn't spiritually rape us.

He always intimately invites us to a deeper relationship. He gives us the full free will to respond however we want to respond because love, again, is not forced on somebody.
It's an offer. It's an invitation that's given, and then we respond to that.
We're broken people, man, and so therefore we make dumb decisions, and those dumb decisions can be here and now, or they could be generational things that you could, I don't want to make it more than what it is, or like, kind of like, but like you could do something now. I'm thinking like the butterfly effect.
Like it's not really the butterfly effect, but you can do something now that's going to like cause like something evil 50 years or a hundred years down the road. When I started this podcast, it seemed like I had to figure it out all on my own.
It was overwhelming. When you're starting something new, it seems like your to-do list just keeps growing and it can overrun your entire life.
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So just an image that would come to mind. Let's say I'm a father, got some kids.
Let's say I had a long work week. I come home, just hammer some beers.
And then I get in a fight with my wife, and I punch her in front of my kids. And the kids start crying, and then I kick them and tell them to shut the hell up.
And then the next day, everyone's quiet. We get through the week, and then there's some reconciliation.
The wife didn't leave. I apologize and all this stuff.
The kid had some trauma. And the kid's going to grow up and go through their stuff.
And they may see something, you know, when they're in their 50s. Let's say they're in their 60s.
They got their kids now. And then some little, they got their first grandkids.
And then maybe it's the guy's daughter just had their first grandkid. and then the guy hears from his daughter that the husband was abusing him or something.
And he goes home and shoots him, goes to the house and shoots him or something. That would be an evil act, murder, and kind of like a seed was planted years before.
Does that kind of make sense? So we can do things now that have effects in the future.

You're talking about creating generational trauma

through poor decision-making.

Yeah, yeah.

And if that happens at the physical level,

it also happens at the spiritual level too.

And so the free will stuff, it's like that.

But it's here now.

It doesn't have to be a generational thing. I can make bad decisions.
I've made a ton of them. I'm going to make more of them in the future.
I don't want to. It's not like I plan on it, but I know I'm a broken human being.
And so, you know, emotions can get the better of us, and then we just do stupid stuff. And that's why, and to bring it back to the God thing, it's because he gave us free will.
We get mal-informed or we follow our emotions instead of using our reason, instead of thinking stuff through. We say stuff we don't want to say.
We do stuff we don't want to do, shouldn't do. It's because God loves us and he gives us that free will.
And whenever we make dumb decisions, it affects the whole community.

So that would be kind of the answer I'd give Brian, like kind of twofold.

First of all, the first part wasn't a question, but I would just directly respond to the anger thing.

Be mad at God.

Whatever emotion you got, bring it to God.

And then two, not to make it just too easy of an answer, but bad stuff happens because we do dumb stuff. And we do dumb stuff because God has given us free will to ultimately do the good.
But whenever we don't choose the right, there's consequences. Yeah.
Well, thank you. Well, let's dig into your story a little bit here.
So there's a lot of hard questions there. Like I got punched in the face.
I don't know if any of that made sense. No, I mean.
Some heavy stuff, all those. Did I come too hard at you? No, it's good.
I like the shock and awe. I don't know.
Catch my breath, so if I'm mumbling or stumbling, it's not the wind out of me. I'm getting warmed up, though.
So you grew up in a small town in Arkansas, correct? Wynn is the name of the town. Little bitty old town.
It was around 9,000, 8,000 people growing up, which is kind of wild going back to the church thing. I'm leading a church now at 39 years old.
That's bigger than the hometown I grew up in. Basically, like the mayor of that town.
It's kind of weird. Yeah, I grew up in Wynn, Wynn Arkansas it's a farming community I grew up on a family farm we got rice soybeans wheat um 200 acres or so just a German family grew up in this German family uh hard working family we're a poor family everyone in the family is poor just um but hard work hard workers so I although I didn't inherit wealth or anything from my family.
Everyone in the family is poor, just, but hard work, hard workers. So I didn't, although I didn't inherit wealth or anything from my family, I damn sure inherited a work ethic and just put the nose of the grindstone and get stuff done.
And that's something I learned growing up, do that work. I'm the second oldest of five kids and I'm 39.
I mentioned that earlier. I was born in 85.
When I was eight years old, my dad and older sister died in a car wreck. I was in the truck with him.
My little sister was in the truck with us. It was a one-car accident.
We stayed at my dad's parents' house the night before, and we were driving back to the house the next day to get ready for school. Dad was going to go to work, take us to school and everything.
It was about a mile and a half down the road from our house. We were coming through a curve.
Dad had a dish bowl on the dashboard of the truck. We took this curve, and the dish started sliding across the dashboard.
So he leaned over grab it when he did yank the steering wheel and went in the ditch and cut a culvert and started in cartwheels um my older sister courtney she was 11 the truck landed on her she died immediately my dad he was 32 which is wild you know think that um he'd you know i think he died in ambulance on like on the way that to the hospital um punctured lungs stuff like that i had uh just some cuts and scrapes a broken ankle my little sister she was three i was eight little sister was three she just got crushed she was sitting on my's lap. None of us were wearing seatbelts.
And she was sitting on my dad's lap. And so when they hit the culvert, she just got crushed between my dad and the steering wheel.
So everything from the waist down was just crushed. Collarbone also and her arm.
She was in a body cast. I remember that mom pulling her around in a little wagon for that.
But I remember, you know, Dad was there just kind of breathing heavy and I remember sitting on his chest and him groaning about it. Now I know why.
You know, punctured lungs. You wouldn't want someone sitting on your chest if you had a punctured lung.
And then, yeah, you know, for an 8-year-old, that's some... Do you remember that? Mm-hmm, yeah.
May 5th, 1994. It was probably around, I don't know, 6 or so, 545, 615, somewhere around there maybe.
No, probably later than that, probably around 615, 645 in the morning. It screws a little kid's brain, you know.

So talking about little signs from God,

I remember just the week before we were on the farm,

my uncle who ran the farm, just the week before,

he was saying, hey, Stephen, if you ever run on the tractor and you need to stop me, just come out, just wave your hands,

and I'll know to come check on you, come see what you need,

because I won't hear your voice.

So just wave your arm. I realized shit wasn't good.
Truck's upside down. It's like something out of a movie scene.
A war zone. So I'd hobble my way up to the side of the road.
Little cars coming, so I'd flag them down. I'd say, yeah, here's the phone number.
And then then they went up to I don't know if he called I guess he called and mom yeah answered the phone and we live you know on the we live on the farm my grandparents lived on the farm as well still yeah they're deceased now but so mom calls my grandpa and says you know they were in a they were in a wreck. And so she turns the corner and picks him up and then they come to the scene.
They wouldn't let her up there though. I mean, it's a small town.
My dad worked at the radio station, big personality, everybody knew him. So he's well known in the community, mom too, you know, because of him.
And the cops wouldn't let her come up just because they knew how bad it was.

And so, I mean, you can just imagine what would go through a mom's mind, you know, with that stuff. And my sister's airlifted to Memphis.

It was about 45 minutes away, an hour away.

And I was taken to the hospital there and then taken by ambulance to the Children's Hospital in Memphis.

Yeah. Man.
Wow. and I was taken to the hospital there and then taken by ambulance to the children's hospital in Memphis.

Yeah.

Man.

Wow.

Yeah.

I remember being at the children's hospital and they were,

mostly everyone was there.

The priest came,

drove over from,

from, you know, where we lived

and there was a nun

who was at the other church.

She was there too,

and family. And I remember them telling me like them telling me, your dad and sister died.
I didn't know what that meant, but I just remember being a little mad at it, like angry, and hitting my hands on the hospital bed. Eight years old, huh? Yeah.
Man. Mom was pregnant.
She was pregnant. She knew that her and dad knew that they were pregnant.
She goes to the doctor a couple weeks later, you know, a week later, whatever, for a checkup. It's a lot of trauma.
Didn't know. Check up for the baby and for her.
And the doctor was like, you know, I got some news for you. And she said, did I lose a baby or what is it? And the doctor said, no, you got twins.
So she was pregnant with twins, man. So then I basically helped mom raise my siblings and everything.
So the little eight-year-old boy. I remember carrying, felt like a strong kid.
To be able to carry both of the little baby, what do you call them? Baby carrier? Baby bucket? Whatever you put the little thing in. What do you call it? I don't have kids.
I don't have no wife. Baby carrier.
Maybe a bassinet? I don't know. Whatever you carry a baby around in.
Something like that. So yeah.
So that was childhood. That was a big thing.
How after after your dad and your sister died were the twins born? later that year just a couple months I mean yeah no it was it was still very they just found out they were pregnant all of us were like I think we're April so about March or April is whenever I guess mom. Six to eight months later.
It's a really fertile time. We were all born in November, December.
They were born in December, my brother. Wow.
Wow. I don't know what to say to that.
Not much you can. Yeah.
I was like, damn. I still don't know what to say.
You know, it's kind of cool. Like, we were talking about different things for ministry and suffering.
That's been a, like, it's cool how God uses that. Because whenever people come to me after the shit hits the fan in their lives, they're like, Father, I need an answer.
There's not an answer. And so it's given me the ability just to sit with them.
So, like an answer is okay. You don't have to have a reason.
And it's a, because I don't know. I'll never understand why.
And I go through waves of just being angry or indifferent or mad at God. But.
Well, who took over that role for you? Who did you look up to? Good question. My grandpa.
My mom's dad was probably the biggest one. Quiet man.
His name was Herman. Herman Joseph.
He's deceased now. Quiet, hardworking guy.
It's funny. He smoked cigarettes.
Then he had a heart attack, so he had to quit. But he was one of those guys that quit.
But he kept smoking. So he'd go to the bathroom every night and smoke cigarettes, put the bathroom open, think that we couldn't smell it in the rest of the house.
It's kind of funny. But yeah, so he, he did it.
A couple of uncles also stepped in and, and kind of took me under their wings. Different.
They all, they all fathered me in different ways. No one can replace a father.
I had a lot of good examples, but I never had a dad. One uncle taught me just a lot about hard work, physical labor, just kind of being raw.
He was the farmer. The other one, a lot about humor and just living life, having fun.
There were some other good people, too, that kind of took me under their wings, friends, parents, boy scouts. There was a scout leader, a couple scout leaders that took care of me and helped me a lot, too.
So it took the village to raise me. How long did it...
Is there anything in particular that helped you deal with that situation, or was it just time? I think just time. And even now, I'm still working through a lot of this stuff.
Going back to the work subject. I'm a typical dude.
Just bottle it up, do work, and that'll distract me from it. So I'm still processing it, to be honest with you.
I started doing some counseling stuff in January, and that's been really phenomenal, just working through a lot of different stuff. That's been helpful.

But yeah, I just put my nose to the grindstone and just kept going.

That's kind of what's got me through life.

It's kind of like fake it till you make it kind of thing.

Work until you figure something out.

How's your mom?

Good.

We're hell raisers.

But she's good.

She lives by herself.

She never remarried. Gave herself, just completed us, doing everything she could to raise us.
She lives in the same house that we grew up in. And it was a house that my grandfather built when he was in high school in the 40s.
She still lives in an old house. She still lives there.

How are the twins?

They're knuckleheads, man.

One is in Washington State.

Not much contact with him.

The other one is in Arkansas.

He is a mechanic.

He works in guidance systems on farm equipment.

Oh, okay. His sister, she lives in Detroit, just outside of Detroit.

I think Southgate's the name of the little area.

She's got a few kids.

You guys grew up Catholic?

I'm older, I'll hear challenges from people like saying, oh, well, you know, it's not right for your parents to impose that on you, or, you know, they should have given you the choice. Well, like, old kid shits in their diaper.

Like, mom's going to change the diaper. You don't ask the kid, hey, you want me to change your diaper? You know, same thing with the food.
There's some basic human needs that other people who are rightly in charge of, you're responsible for, you make decisions on your behalf for your good, your well-being. And our spiritual well-being is the same thing, you know, which would include like virtue, you know, being a virtuous person.
But we grew up, all the farmers went to this little Catholic church there. We were a faithful family.
We weren't like super holy. Like we didn't pray all the time.
I mean, we always pray before before meals. We'd try to pray the rosary every now and then.
But it usually would end up with us falling asleep or, you know, us fighting, the siblings fight. And then mom or grandma yelling at us and it just kind of unravels quickly, you know, kind of real life prayer.
Went to mass every Sunday. That was a non-negotiable.
It was just a simple, steady presence is what it was. And that's one of the graces that I took from it,

just a point of stability. And all the stuff around us that was always changing,

ebbing and flowing, it was a point of stability.

And so it set that foundation for my life, like even now.

Faith is that bedrock.

It's that place of encounter where I encounter the Lord in the midst of the storm.

So, yeah, I grew up Catholic.

What advice would you have for kids who have lost parents?

Find some good examples, some good role models,

and ask them to take you under their wing.

You don't have to explicitly ask them, but surround yourself with good people.

Now you're don't have to explicitly ask them, but surround yourself with good people. You're going to do the stuff that you see other people do.
So find a good role model. That's the simplest thing.
Okay. So moving on, what did you like doing as you got older? Just playing stuff.
I love playing. I'm just a boy.
Now I'm a big boy in a grown man's body. So we were very poor.
We didn't have internet or TV. We had TV.
We didn't have internet. We didn't have cable TV.
We didn't have video anything. We had a big farm, so I'd just go out and play with stuff,

shoot a little BB gun, shoot Robins and Cardinals and stuff,

the typical boy hunting outside.

I would just play.

I played a sandbox in the backyard, and I'd go out and play with that. I had a bunch of Legos.

They were my dad's, so I'd play with Legos a lot. Just creative stuff.
I was a good kid. I wasn't bad.
I had a lot of energy. But I was a good kid in class, good kid in school.
I was respectful. I did Boy Scouts.
I was in Boy Scouts my whole life from Tiger Cubs. I think that starts at first grade or whatever to Eagle Scout, which was in high school.
So did that. Did sports, played sports, football, track, and golf.
I wasn't really good at, because I was small. I've always been a small guy.
But I had some grit. I could just go to some dark places.
Like on the football team, I wasn't good enough to start, but I had enough grit. Coaches always call me in to run the plays against the starting offense or defense.
They knocked the tar out of me, and I'd get right back up, which was kind of fun. Friday night football in Arkansas is like a religion.
Well, it's like Tennessee here too, I think. But Mondays, we would always watch the film of the Friday football game.
And I remember one time in particular, I was on kickoff team. I was flying down the field and one of the guys on the other team, I didn't see him, he knocked the tar out of him.
He just knocked me off the side. I was right on the, I was right at the sideline anyways, and he hits me so hard that I go into all of my teammates, and I just disappear.
Then I reappear like 15 yards down the field chasing after the ball. It was just kind of funny.
Yeah, football, track. I did golf.
We didn't have a membership at the country club. We were too poor for that.
But I had a big farm, so I was always out hitting golf balls. Nice.
It was nice, yeah. Had a little green in the front yard that I mowed.
So... What got you interested in the military? I just wanted to...
I don't know. At the time, there was no reason.
I went to college for a year, and I hated that. So I didn't go to the military for college.
It wasn't to leave home because I loved being at home. There was an itch in me to go explore.
I just wanted to go explore. Had some cousins and some friends that joined the military.
And yeah, so I went into the Air Force. That's 2005 when I went in there.
I was pretty pumped. I wanted to go as fast as I could, so I went to the recruiter, and this was, yeah, height of OIF.
And so I was like, well, what can get me out of here the fastest? And they needed SEER instructors, the survival evasion, resistance, and escape guys. So I was like, okay, yeah, I'll do that.
So I did all the prep for that, the pre-training and pre-test and everything. Go to basic training.
Long story short, I get washed out of that and then get put into a logistics job. We can unpack all that.
But it was fun. The military was really, really fun.
So basic training, I would love to go back through it now. I don't know about you, but.
Yeah, just being older and knowing the mind game that it is, it was so fun. Part of my coping mechanism is humor.
And it was, yeah, that got me in so much trouble in basic. I remember our instructor, Terry Shirley, we had a lady.
There was our flight, and we had a sister flight. We did a lot of training together.
And she did a lot of instructors with us. She had a chip on her shoulder, man.
She was just like every instructor. I was like one of her favorite ones, which made it bad for me because she was just picking on me nonstop.
Jackass was the name that she gave me. And so anytime we were training, she just said Jackass.
Everyone's like, Gadbear, she's gone. You gotta go.
But she was always just on me, always. I did so many push-ups.
I was one of the fittest guys in the flight at graduation. She also knew I wanted to do this seer job, and so she knew I had to be in good shape, so she was helping me with that.
She was trying to help me with mental toughness as well. I was the guide bear, or guide on bearer, carrying the flag and everything, and up front marching.
I remember one day we were on the drill pad training, and it was just a bad day. Like, nothing was working.
And I was just, I kept messing up. And, of course, you know, you're in the front of the group, so if you take wrong step everyone behind you is off too and she um man over and over and over kept messing up and then she got my face and she's

like damn it when we go like we're gonna start marching and we're gonna turn left we're gonna

start marching and we're gonna turn left all right yes right? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.
Forward march. Left face march.
You know, so we're going. My dumb ass went right, right after she told me that.
And golly, she flipped a switch and it wasn't good there. But that was kind of a fun thing.
I just wanted an adventure.

Yeah, that's about military.

I went down that little bunny hole.

I just wanted an adventure.

I found it.

There was a lot to do there.

I'm sorry I'm backtracking, but you had mentioned you're still struggling with the loss of your father and your sister. Mm-hmm.

What are you struggling with? Mm-hmm. So when that happens, like, like, I immediately had to start providing for the family as an eight-year-old boy, so I didn't get a childhood.

So one of the ways that I'm struggling with it now is like all the,

it's kind of like the shrapnel of the bomb.

I didn't get a childhood, so I had to grow up, like overnight almost.

My mom has zero income, like a very little income.

She didn't have a college education, so she doesn't make a lot of money.

So as soon as I start working, or as soon as I could start working, I had to start working to make money for the family. I just had to provide.
As a kid, a little kid, you can't do much to provide, but I babysat, helped mom a lot of stuff in a lot of ways. As I got older, I started working.
I helped a lot financially and doing more to take care of the family. The way it's messed with me is currently now with boundaries,

like not telling people no.

It's hard to say no.

It's hard to stop working.

It's hard to turn off because I didn't really have a choice as a kid.

How does that affect your ability to say no?

I struggle with that too. Yeah.
I've gotten a lot better at it. It's tough.
It is. How does it affect my ability to say no? I'm not naive to the tight situation that we grew up in and the fact that Mom couldn't do it, so someone had to help her.
We had family that would help. But in my mind, I was like, well, that's my job to do.
I've got to stand up and do it. And so anytime I see a problem now, I feel responsible.
Yeah, yeah. And so I feel like I've got to fix it for people.
And I'm good at it. I'm really good at what I do and that's part of like the superpower but then one of the ways that it is not good is like people come to me just for an easy solution and I'll fix it and man I'm I just started this therapy stuff in January and so I'm still I'm working through all this right now it's uh it.
Why do I do it, though? So as a child, there were a lot of moments whenever I didn't have a voice.

Like I would want to go play or something, but I couldn't go play.

The answer would always be no.

I just felt like if I wanted something, I just had to do it. If I wanted something done, I had to get it done.
If there was something fun that I wanted to do, I didn't ask. I learned pretty quick to not ask to do much stuff because most of the time I couldn't.
I don't know. That's just trickled in now to what we're doing.
So, when you say, you know, it's really hard for you to say no, and that's becoming a problem, is that building resentment? Yeah, man, that's big. Yeah, the resentment can be big.
It was this last month. It's been good to work on that.
And the way that... So, like, if someone comes and, like, want help with something, I can get the resentment in there because it's, like, whenever they ask me, I feel like I have to say yes.
I feel like I can't say no. So I feel like I don't have this freedom to say what I need to say.

And also, there's some resentment there because it's like, I had to figure out life, and I'm still figuring it out on my own. Now I'm getting a lot better with doing it with friends and other people.
But as a child, I had to figure it all out on my own. And that taught me a lot.
but I get the resentment because I can judge people for being lazy or not motivated.

I just want to say, figure it out.

Wrestle with it a little bit.

Struggle with it.

I love the struggle of life.

I think a lot of people don't.

And so I get the resentment there whenever they're not willing to struggle a little bit.

Do you feel resentment for the time that it takes? Yeah. In a way, it's like going back to the work stuff.
We were talking about this earlier. It gets in the way of my other projects.
If I do stuff, I want it to be efficient. Let's get it done.
Let's be productive. Let's do it efficiently.
So therefore, it can be harder for me to do some of the stuff that just takes time with people. Some of these counseling sessions or times I'll be meeting with the family or something.
For them, the healing that they need is going to come through them just kind of telling their whole story. But in my brain, I'm just like, what are the main points? Give it to me in a minute and a half.
Let's get it done. So, yeah, the time thing is a big thing.
Well, I mean, I can relate to that big time. I've really struggled with that.
And I'll I'll tell you the one thing that's helped me is somebody told me, when you say yes to somebody, you're saying no to somebody else. Yeah, that's a good...
And so the way I took that is the same thing. I think you've listened to the show.
You know how deep we get. And I can't help everybody, and it's okay to say no.
And, you know, but I couldn't. I couldn't fucking say no.
Yeah. And then somebody told me that, and I realized every time I'm saying yes to all these people, I'm saying no to my wife, to my son, to my daughter, to my mom and dad, to everybody that I really, really love.
Yeah. And, you know, when you kind of paint it in that perspective, that helped me a lot.
That's a good. Yeah.
I like that. It's interesting whenever I would be in these situations, whenever I feel like I'm, for example, like if someone asked me a question, I feel like I have to say what they want to hear.
And so I'm not free in that. And so what happens is like psychologically and emotionally, I go back to the eight-year-old Steven.
In my mind and my heart and my brain, I'm just thinking like a kid. Now, what I'm trying to do is rationally think through the thing and say what needs to be said as a mature Steven instead of the little boy Steven.
That's hard to say what needs to be said, but I know that's the right thing. So for example, it's like, instead of saying yes to somebody, it's saying no.
What's interesting though, is that whenever I do that, a lot of times I'll see them like almost flip a switch and they'll start acting out of their child. So like the no that they hear takes them back to childhood trauma, you know, whatever sort.
And then they'll start acting a certain way or getting defensive or this excuse or whatever it may be. But it's almost like a switch being flipped.
And then they'll start acting a different way to me out of that childhood trauma. But the neat thing now with ministry is that I can then love them in that situation.
The response that they're giving is out of a trauma that they have from whenever someone didn't love them properly. And so then they respond to me out of that childhood mentality,

and then I can love them in it. And there's some healing that the Lord does through that,

if that makes sense. So it's just kind of neat to, through like, by me having healthy boundaries,

like the Lord is healing people through me, you know, because it forces them to bring to light

stuff that they're struggling with and then let the Lord into that. I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon.
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I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source.
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And I think we're at SEER training. Had a good chat downstairs about kind of diving in a little bit deeper about saying no and which morphed into psychedelics.
But I don't know. I feel weird like advocating for psychedelics to a priest.
No, it makes sense.

It makes sense.

I don't want to give definitive answers on it either way

just because I don't have all the knowledge yet.

And also I know that I'm like an authority figure

when it comes to religious things.

So this isn't a religious thing,

but people would see me as an authority figure.

So if I give an answer on something,

they'll take it as the gospel. Sort of like if you spoke about self-defense,

arms training or whatever it may be, people are going to listen to what you say because you know

what you're doing. So if I...
I understand. I mean, you have a

tremendous amount of responsibility for the people that are listening to this and 10,000 people that go to your church. I mean, I feel the same thing doing this.
I mean, we have a massive audience, and I never want to lead them in the wrong way. But also, you know, I don't know.
I mean, to me, people have to be, you know, they have to be, how do I say this? So many people are trained to just be told what to think nowadays. Yeah.
And, you know, on this show, I like to leave it up to them. Like, here's all these different things we're talking about, and it's up to you to decipher what aligns with your values and your beliefs.
And I'm not here to tell you how to think. I'm here to explore my own curiosity and take my audience with me.
But I do understand what you're saying.

There's more to explore there.

I want to know more about the psychedelics.

The reality is they're here.

More people are opening up to them.

They're starting to do studies and everything with it.

I think it's going to be good to get some objective data,

to make those choices.

But then it's a natural thing. Like, it's a fruit of the earth.
I'm just ignorant about it. I'm curious about it.
I want to learn more. I wouldn't be opposed to trying them sometime, but, like, it would be a specific context, a time and place.
I mean, we... It's very obvious that your father and your sister that have passed in the car accident, that you really struggle with that.
And I went through a couple of examples downstairs of what it's done for friends of mine, a lot of friends of mine, what it's done for me personally. and you know I mentioned I see way more

good than bad that comes out of it. And I don't, I just, you know, it has the ability to, I don't know what exactly it does in these traumatic experiences.
Some people re-experience them. I don't really re-experience them.
I might think about them when I'm there, but I think what it does is that you can get to this point where they call it an ego death, and your ego leaps.

That's a good thing.

It is, but it's...

If you lose your drive, though, it could be bad.

I wouldn't say that.

So when I did the Ibogaine experience, that was one thing.

And basically, that was like brain maintenance.

And then I did this other thing. That's like a 12-hour maintenance.
And then I did this other thing.

That's like a 12-hour thing. And then I did this other thing called 5-MeO-DMT.
It's a toad venom that you smoke. And it's a death experience.
You die. Like, in your mind, if you allow it to.
a lot of people fight it, and that's terrifying. In the first, I don't know, 15 to 30 seconds-ish, you are 100% certain in your mind that you are going to die.
and will fight that with every i mean you will fight it and then it's the most anxiety it's the most fear it is the most horrible it's the most horrible 15 to 30 seconds of your life because every when i say an ego, I mean, you're letting everything go. Does it go fast or slow? It goes, it seems, I don't know how to describe that.
It's almost like time isn't a thing. Okay.
But first you feel like you're going to die and then all these thoughts, all of your attachments to earth or the world that we live in now start coming into play. So for me, it was like, okay, I'm going to die.
This is scary, scary as fuck, but all right. But then it's, oh, shit, I'm leaving my son behind.
I'm leaving my wife behind.

Who's going to take care of them?

And you're having these conversations in your head that are going in, like, milliseconds, you know, like full conversations that are, like, milliseconds.

And that's, like, for me, that's the last part of my ego.

I am comfortable with death. I am not comfortable with leaving my wife and my kids behind without a provider.
Does that make sense? Total sense. And so you let that, you eventually,

if you want to do the crossover thing,

which is the bliss part of this,

you have to let that go.

And like I said, you are 100% sure that you're dying.

And then you do this crossover.

And that's where it seems like it's like this spiritual realm. It's like a sixth sense.
You are just so intuitive. It just seems like a spiritual world, man.
You can feel the presence of maybe people that have passed. You can feel the presence of God.
You can feel this energy. But anyways, it is the most healing thing I've ever done.
Yeah, I don't have the objective to make a definitive answer on it, but it sounds like such a sacred experience. And putting everything in perspective, like you said, it starts with death.
And pretty much from there, it's like, okay, well, I've died. So it can't get much worse than that.
And so everything else falls into line. Earlier, I was talking about this whole thing of memento mori, like remember your death.
It's the exact same principle. Like we would pray or go on a retreat or something like that, and you could come to one of these points.
This is like a medicinal way to come to that same point. And so I think, you know, I can't make the definitive answer, but I think there could be an argument in the future once we get more information or more data on it to where we could say there may be a place for it.
In people's daily life, I don't know if you want to do it daily, once or whatever, but there could be a place for it to take us to that point of putting everything in perspective. Because I'm thinking like when someone's sick,

they take medicine to get better physically, right?

Whereas you could say, well, if they were just healthy,

if they ate healthy and worked out before,

they may not have gotten sick.

But you get to a point where, okay,

you need medicine to break this sick cycle.

Like psychologically,

it sounds like the exact same thing happening.

Like it's just, you're, it's in this,

I think you mentioned it like that, like just this circuit that's just a closed circuit. Default mode network.
Yeah, and so like a defibrillator. Like it stops the heart so that then it can go back into rhythm and everything.
We would do that physically for the body with the heart, with medicines. So I think there could be a place for this in the future.
I mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm not trying to, like, push this on you or anything.
I just... I'm curious.
I want to learn more. I just don't know.
You know, it's... So kind of what I'm getting at is it might take you back to the accident.
Yeah. But it would remove your ego and the attachment to your...
It would potentially, I'm not saying this is what would happen, but it would potentially remove your ego from that day and it would shift your perspective into a way that you can look at it from an angle where you're completely detached emotionally from the situation. And it makes it, in a weird, fucked-up way, it makes it okay, and it brings this certain understanding as to why it happened or it's okay that it happened, it was supposed to happen.
Everything that has happened to you is what was supposed to happen. Yeah.
And it brings like a certain piece to things like that. At least it does for me and it does for a lot of my friends.
know the argument is i mean i and that some very good friends of mine think this uh who are also seals who've seen the benefits that it does and and some of them say it's spiritual suicide some people say it that that this is the this is the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate.

Wow.

Because what did they say?

It was like it gave them a certain knowledge or something.

Well, I mean, that's kind of maybe what I'm describing.

I don't know.

I struggle with it.

Yeah.

But I'm like, is this good?

I mean, I feel like it's good.

It's doing a lot of good things. I don't think God would have put it here if it weren't.

It's natural. It's a natural occurring substance that grows in fungus.
I mean, or the root of a tree. I don't know why.
And then there's other people that say that, you know, some of the prophets, there's parts of the Bible where they talk about, you know, I don't know it, but I've heard people say, you know, that maybe the burning bush, he ate something before, he saw that, and kind of opened the mind up to be able to, I keep mentioning it, it's almost like another realm, and I don't know, I don't know what to think of it. That's kind of what I'm more curious on your thoughts of the spiritual side of it and less on the studies.
The studies are there. Yeah.
On the spiritual side, man, if I'm in doubt, I don't mess with it. It's plain like Russian roulette.
You'd hate to get the bullet you know it's like well you may you may get a bunch of clicks but if you get the bang then you're screwed and this so this could be a similar thing like man maybe not but at this point in the future it may be different but at this point like there's just no definitive answer of saying yes it is demonic or no it's not. So, therefore, my advice on that is always just go in with caution.
I'm not saying do it or don't have it. I'm just saying just with caution and prudence.
I'm really curious about it, though. What do you think about, have you ever heard of remote viewing? Remote viewing? Like on a computer screen or something? No.
Remote viewing is, it's almost like psychic type stuff. It is psychic like stuff.
Yeah. Have you ever seen like the TV show where the guy's like thinking and he's like, oh, it happened over in the room over there and it was with a pair of scissors and he threw it in the dumpster.
Yeah. And they go in the dumpster like, holy shit, here's the scissors with the blood on it.
That's kind of like what remote viewing is. So that's a real thing.
And documented, it's real. I mean, see, I use these, it's called Project Stargate.

And it's a fascinating subject. I've had a lot of those type people on and a handful of them.
And once again, it's like, is it demonic? I don't know. I mean, the Christian crowd sure as hell doesn't like it.
I get blasted every time I talk about it. But I guess if you haven't heard from it, you don't have an opinion on it.
Yeah, no. Anyways, let's get back to SEER school.
So you went to SEER school. Yeah, finished basic, went to SEER school.
I didn't even make it to the whole course. I was just doing the NDOC before they send you off to Seattle or wherever the training, somewhere in Washington State.
Fairchild. Is that Alaska? Washington? It doesn't matter.
So before they send you off to the actual school, which is about a year and a half for that, it's a long training. You have an in-doc course.
It's sort of like BUDS. It's not that long, but it's just two weeks of getting kicked in the face.
So I started that and got to the second to last day and got washed out. It was for multiple demerits.
It was really deflating, so I was really excited about it. I was physically strong, ready to go, but mentally I wasn't strong enough, not because I was trying to be weak, but because I just hadn't gone to that spot mentally before, like to that dark of a spot.
I mean, I grew up with some dark stuff, but they were all kind of exterior things. But that internal drive to push into the point of discomfort, even though I worked hard my whole life and I still do, at that time I didn't understand what it meant to push a little bit deeper, go past that point of comfort.
It's got multiple deep matters. For example,

one night we had to make tent stakes.

I don't know if it was for buds, but

you're doing PT all day long, and then

they give us projects to do at night.

So,

you're getting sleep deprived.

Or, if you do sleep, you'll come

refreshed, but you didn't

get your work done.

You're going to pay for it somehow.

One night we had to make tent stakes,

and I didn't make them long enough. I think they had to be like

Thank you. refreshed, but you didn't get your work done.
So you're going to pay for it somehow. So one night we had to make tent stakes, and I didn't make them long enough.
I think they had to be like 16 inches long or something. Mine were 14 and 15, so that.
I had a shovel. One of my shovels had dirt on it for the morning inspection, so that was another one.
We had to make sleeping bags out of pieces of parachute. We had to sew it up at night.
I had to have six to eight stitches per inch. And if there was more or less, it would be another demerit.
And so I had some spots on there where it was, you know, it didn't meet that criteria. And it sucked because if you had this little window of stitches, let's say I had 10 of them in this inch space.
I was only supposed to have eight. They would measure it and say, oh, you got 10.
And then they would go like every little stitch in that inch and count another stitch and say, oh, you got ten demerits on this, whatever, so that. What else was it? I think those were, yeah.
The shovel, the sewing. So where'd you go? Where'd you go when you left? Got reclassed into another job.
We took maybe... You went to Iraq.
Yeah. So after that, I had to wait two weeks to get another job.
No, it was about three weeks. You just put it on cleaning detail until they put you in another school.
So I did logistics. They put me in a school to learn logistic planning.
So people and stuff had to move it. I did cargo.
Most of that time was cargo cargo movement which is really fun the that time in the middle if i got washed out of sear um which sucked man but it was a good kick in the face because i wanted to do it so so bad and i thought that i was prepared for it but it was it broke me in a good way because now it's one of the things i took out of that was like the need to like dig even deeper be more alert pay more attention get put in that logistics job while we're waiting we're just cleaning every day you probably remember that like I mean like if you don't just sit around and do nothing they make you do something so way to clean every day the same barracks over and over and over but dude idle time is like a bad thing when it comes to the troops You you can just do some dumb stuff like you don't need booze or drugs if it's just a bunch of you know meatheads together we would uh uh like overnight we'd stay up all night just being dumb asses we would do like demolition derby we'd put guys on the office chairs and one on one end of the hallway one on the other and just you'd run them and crash them into each other just stupid stuff like that one guy had a bowling ball one day and uh i don't know where the hell he got a bowling ball from but it was in the dorms and so the guys were just rolling it up and down the hallway and so i picked it up my time and i threw it and they all got out of the way and it hit the emergency exit and the fire alarm went off so i had to call them and like make up a story. I was talking to my mom, and I leaned against the door, set it off.
I was scared, man. Did logistics, did that training.
That was down in Lackland. I got assigned to Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
That was cool. That was my first time out in the real world.
Growing up, I was always in the family. Then the military, they're always watching you.
But at Ramstein, I was like, on my own. Of course, you got the base, got your work.
But I was making decisions on my own. And that was one of the first times I really feel some autonomy.
And making free choices for myself. People are big advocates of that, and that's good.

We do need to make our own choices.

But sometimes it's to the detriment of family and community life.

So growing up, the family was so close.

I didn't have a lot of freedoms.

Because, well, this is what the family's doing, so that's what you're going to do.

And it sucked as a kid, but one of the good things that it taught me was how to be a team player.

There's going to be a lot of stuff in life that you're not going to want to do, but you got to do it because that's what love requires. So just do it.
So then in the military, Germany, I get that freedom. It was really cool.
Just right out of training, I got a car, and I did quality control. When people were PCSing, I would go and be the liaison between the German moving company and the troops just to make sure everything was going well.
That was cool. Got to drive all over Germany, meet all kinds of people from E1s to OTNs and everything in between.
So that was fun. That gave me a lot of time alone, a lot of time in the car.
I'd pray, just drive in silence, just think. God really started working on me then.
How? Silence. I just shut the hell up and then like 4-4-4.
I became aware of all these little bitty things around me. And it would be little affirmations.
I can't even think of a concrete example right now, but it was just peace. I experienced a peace.
You shut the chaos off around you and my soul could breathe a little bit. And I fell in love with that.
So I wanted to do it more and more and more. I'd spend more time in silence.
Eventually got transferred out of that into the cargo side of this office. And that was a lot of fun.
I really enjoyed that because I drove a big forklift every day, worked in the warehouse.

We were knuckleheads.

There was a big tire that we were shipping one day.

My dumb ass got into it

and convinced the other guys

to roll me around the warehouse.

I was rolling around.

The chief comes out

and just chews us out.

It was one of those things

where we were good troops.

We worked hard, but we just did that kind of stuff. So he yelled at us, but he wasn't too mad.
I remember one time, this kind of guy, chief, I was like, I got in a box and he called this emergency meeting for the whole flight and they all came down. I was in this cargo box.
Nobody knew he did. So in the middle of his briefing, I jumped out and scared everybody.
I was kind of like... Sometimes we would have cargo to take to the airport.
And it would be like we'd have to take it on the forklift. And it's one of these big center pivot, 10K, 10,000-pound forklift.
So we'd drive across the base to drop the cargo off. But Me and my buddies, we would have a competition to see who could take the longest route

back. So we would be driving

back to the housing area of the base on

the big forklift. Nice.

Just doing sticky stuff.

Yeah, so that was fine.

While I was in that cargo unit,

that's when I deployed. I was at Belad Air Base.

It was a smaller compound on

Anaconda, LSA Anaconda, Belad, Iraq.

Huge base. Basically a logistic hub.
You may have passed through there. I'm sure you did.
That was fun. That was one of the funnest times of my life.
Like, I wasn't kicking in doors. So in that way, I was like, like I was blessed, you know, because that's a big thing to carry, you know, and that, you know, being out there.
That being said, man, rockets and mortars were coming in every single day. I remember the one day I walked out of the office, you know, we got those, the concrete, like, walls or barriers or whatever that around all the buildings and stuff, and I come out the front door of the office, and right there beside the door is a bullet,

you know, to hit the concrete.

You know, it's not a big deal,

but for me as a, you know, 19-year-old kid,

I see that bullet for the first time,

and I'm like, oh, wow, this is real stuff, you know?

And then so many of our guys are experiencing that.

You know, 19 years old, I'm preaching to the choir.

You know, most of the people listening, they get it.

I think most of society doesn't, though. And I think that's it.
I had a great experience in the military up to the day I left. I loved it.
But one thing I'm really frustrated with is, like, the way that a lot of veterans are treated. I mean, 19, 20, 25-year-olds, the brain is still being formed.
And the stuff that they're doing, and they're doing it proudly,

and they do a good job.

And then they'll get their discharge, or honorable discharge,

finish their enlistment or whatever.

And that's kind of like, well, you're on your own now.

I mean, like the addictions and so many veterans,

just the struggles that they have. It's kind of like a lot of promises fed to them

that aren't delivered after the fact.

That kind of frustrates me.

So like the bullet that I find doesn't compare at all

to like what so many other guys and gals have done.

I remember watching an 18-year-old kid kill his first man and cheering him on. But we all wanted to kill over there.
But... I said...
I've never been in that position. In ministry, I've been with a lot of people who've been in that position, either whether it be military troops or murderers in prisons or murderers who are maybe not caught yet, even.
But this in the military, I think it's a different, you know, you mentioned cheering them on. Like it's, I think a lot of people don't understand that, like what that means.
It's something that is done for duty, for duty's sake. And there's like not a, I don't know, I'm not in this situation, but I really don't think there's like a lot of joy in like the individual life that was taken, like the person, you know, the name.
But more so like the actions that have been stopped that they were doing, you know, and that's, I think a lot of people miss that distinction. It's no small thing.
Yeah so yeah so it was over there in iraq it was it was it was it was a good experience for me and i don't take it lightly we were shot at a lot but again what i went through doesn't compare it at all to anything but other guys and so it's just like a walk in the park. But when it came to work, we didn't stop.
It was just logistics, moving stuff all day long. So it was a neat experience.
But then also to support you guys, like the ones that were out there. Because all the cargo came through our office.
If a shipment came and it was wrapped in all black plastic, we knew, like, it went to the guys that didn't, like, that didn't have a name. Like, some guys across the flight, well, it was y'all, you know, the different special ops guys.
And, like, it would come in, and there was no questions asked. Like, you'd just call them, say, hey, we got a package, and they would over and and get it like it was it was you know mission critical stuff um a lot of it was like really big

intense stuff um you know weapons of different store sorts gear i remember one time though like

we got this big ship man and um i was wondering i was like what is in there like i'm curious i was

always wondering they bring the big flatbed truck over, and we load it all up. And then all the guys climb onto the trailer, start cutting open the boxes.
And it was like, it was pallets of gummy bears. And it wasn't chocolates, but it was a bunch of candy.
And they just drove all over the base just like Christmas to throw the stuff out. And I was like, you got to be kidding me.
But it was a lot of candy. And they just drove all over the base just like Christmas.
I was like, you got to be kidding me.

But it was a lot of fun.

So, yeah, I was over there.

That was 07.

It was just one short deployment.

I want to go back to Iraq.

You want to go back to Iraq?

Not for the sake of war, but like I just love people. I want to hear people's story.
We may get into this a little bit later, but this puts it in perspective. So when I, later on, you know, years down the road, when I'm in seminary in Rome, I had a classmate who was living just miles from the base where I was at over there.
He was a Chaldean Catholic. I think it was Chaldean Catholic.
It's part of the Catholic church, one of the lines in there. But he was from central Iraq.
And we're sitting in class learning about God, talking about putting things in perspective. Like we're sitting beside each other when eight years before, like we were within miles of each other.
Isn't that wild? That is crazy. It's wild.
And so like, when I say I want to go back to Iraq, it's like, I just want to like see people and like their lives, like the good people. There's some good ones over there.
Like the farmers, the best fruit I've ever had in my life was when I was in Iraq, the melon, some cantaloupes or watermelon. Why do you want to go back though? You want to go back for curiosity? You want to go back to talk to who? See the people.
No one in particular. There's no individual person that I met.
Just want to experience the culture there?

Hear stories, yeah.

Experience the culture, yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Do you think you'll do it?

I don't know.

I'd be open to it, but I don't know.

Probably not.

Yeah.

So that was 07, quick deployment.

This whole time I'm growing a lot in my faith

and praying a lot more, and this idea of priesthood comes. How did the idea of priesthood come? It started as just a random idea, like when I'd be in the car driving around doing the quality control stuff, around the forklift working or in the warehouse, be at the gym.
I'd be doing other stuff, and out of nowhere, this idea of being a priest would come to my mind.

Where did that come from?

It's kind of random.

And I just like wouldn't think much about it.

And I'd go back to what I was doing.

And a few days later, it would happen again.

I'm like, that's kind of random.

You know, I wouldn't be doing anything that would trigger a thought like that. Like I wasn't reading the Bible.

I wasn't at church or anything.

I was, you know, loading up munitions.

I was driving a forklift, whatever it may be. And this thought would come.
And it's sort of like the whole 444 thing. Like, it just happened more and more often.
And I was like, oh, okay, I got to pay attention to this. And once I started paying more attention, I started getting more signs, more affirmations.
Like, one thing, for example, when I was in Iraq, I went to Mass one day. It was one of the first days I was there.
Finished up Mass. There was a guy who came.
His name was Joaquin. And he comes up to me after Mass.
Never met him. He's never met me.
Didn't know each other. And he didn't say, hi, I'm Joaquin.
Good to meet you. What's your name? He just came up and said, you're thinking about being a priest, aren't you? And I was like, what? Yeah, just out of the blue, complete stranger.
And that was little things like that. You know, people making comments.
That's not a little thing. Yeah.
It's a big thing. Some random person.
Yeah. Wow.
What do you think that was? That's the Holy Spirit working through them. Yeah.
So putting all those different. Did that freak at all? Have you told anybody? Yeah, I've shared it.
Have you told anybody around that person? No. No, there's no reason why he would have known it.
I'd just gotten there. I was the only one from my unit that was deployed at that time.
So everyone else was new to me. I didn't know anybody.
They didn't know me. And that guy didn't know you.
See, this is what happened to me in Sedona. Really? Yeah.
They didn't tell me to be a priest. They said, make gummy bears.
No, this guy. So a lot of stuff was really bothering me.
I had a rough slew of interviews that were some of the heaviest ones I ever did. I interviewed this guy, Tyler Andrew Vargas.
He was blown up at Abbey Gate, 24 years old, watched him hopble up my stairs, one leg, one arm. The interview before that was this hacker, Ryan Montgomery, who had uncovered a big pedophile website and could have tried to save a 12-year-old girl, but FBI fucking blew him off.
And she got gang raped. And, yeah, and a really good friend of mine died here in Franklin that week.
God. And it was, and then all the butchering, whatever you want to call it, the trans stuff with the kids, the gender surgeries, it was like really bothering me.
And so it was like all this stuff happened at once.

Anyways, I couldn't get this shit out of my head.

I smoked a joint, told my wife, let's go for a hike, tried to get it out.

Just tried to get it out.

And I felt like I was surrendering. I was like, Sean, why do you even give a shit about this stuff? Nobody else cares.
You're the only one speaking out about this stuff. I wasn't, but that's how I felt.
I felt very alone. Like I was the only one that was trying to fight against a lot of the shit, the sex trafficking and the pedophilia and the gender surgeries that were taking place for eight-year-old kids.
And the state taking people's kids if they don't do it from the parents. And it was just like, what's happening? And anyways, I had gone on this hike and I felt like I was surrendering.
I was like, why do you even give a shit about this anymore? Nobody cares. You're the only one fighting for this stuff.
You're the only one speaking out against it. It just doesn't even affect you.
Just let it go. And I felt like I was surrendering my soul to the devil or something.
And I walked through this gate, this gate. And I'd been there for a week.
And a lot of the gate guards knew who I was from my show. They were big fans, a lot of them prior military, And so I would stop and talk to all of them and have short conversations and I walked through.
This is the last night I'm here and this guy comes out of the guard shack and I pay attention to this kind of stuff too. Like who's the...
It's just because of what I used to do. This old guy comes out, starts trying to talk to me.
I don't want to talk to him. I'm obviously in a shit mood, right? And I'm kind of like talking to him over my shoulder like this because I don't want to give him the body language that's like, oh, yeah, let's have a full-blown conversation.
Like, hey, leave me alone. I'm rude but leave me alone my wife starts talking to him so then i turn and square up to him and he he read my mind from front to back it was like all this stuff with the all the stuff with china that you're worried about that's not your fight all this stuff with gender stuff that you're worried about that's not your fight.
All the stuff with gender stuff that you're worried about, that's not your fight. And it freaked me out.
And then he went through my whole, everything that I was thinking about on that entire hike and told me that wasn't my fight. I need to let that shit go.
I don't even remember the rest of the stuff he had because I was thinking, holy shit, how the fuck is this guy inside my head right now? I've never even seen this, dude. I've been here for a week.
I know every gay guard that's been in here except this random guy that just comes up. And that was the first, I told you, I got slapped in the face like three times.
That was the first one. So, I mean, sounds like you, it reminds me of that.
Yeah. What happened to you? Yeah.
It's cool. What do you think that is? Is that an angel? Is that God? What is that? Yeah.
Have you ever seen that person again? Yeah, I've seen him again. We've been in contact, actually.
Really? Afterwards, yeah. Yeah, because he does the very beginning of the deployment.
So as the deployment went on, we talked more and established a friendship and everything. But he lives in Oregon.
Well, did you ask him how he knew? Excuse me. No.
You never asked him how he knew you were thinking about becoming a priest? He was a very holy guy, so I knew it was like the Lord put it on his heart. Was he a Catholic too? Uh-huh.
Yeah. This was right after church on one day, one of the days.
First days I went there, I went to Mass, and he was there. And so the first words out of his mouth are? You're thinking of being a priest, don't you? Wow.
Yeah. You know, I think that there's a—this stuff happens all the time, but we're just not paying attention to it.
We're all in our own little worlds. God's still working, man.
Like, he's all around. We just got to open our eyes, get out of our little bubble.
We also got to be bold. You know, I think at the very beginning, we talked about boundaries and saying no.
We've talked about it outside, too. Whenever we say that, whenever we speak the truth, like, God works through that.
So I think not only do we need to be more aware of how God is working around us, we need to be aware of how he's working in us and like be bold in the way we talk. Like you can say some stuff that's going to be awkward.
It's going to hurt. It's going to be not going to be comfortable, but it's what needs to be said.
That's a terrifying thing. So yeah, that was an example of all these, I say little things, they're big things, but they just kept adding up one after another.
And then eventually I contact the diocese of Little Rock, which is where I live, the Catholic Church. We got, if you think of it like a state, the geographical region of a group of churches would be called a diocese, which is what we call it.
So I contact the area where I live in Little Rock and tell them, hey, I'm interested in being a priest. Can I come visit and talk to you guys? So I flew back and just visited with them, went to visit the seminary.
And that kind of sealed the deal once I came and met with the bishop and everything and then visited the seminary. So I was like, this is cool.
As much fun as I was having in the military, I had so, so much fun. I'd enjoy going back in.
It'd be fun to do it again, you know? But as much fun as I was having, there was a different kind of joy that I experienced whenever I came back for that meeting it was just like a deeper peace like I was having fun before but then I experienced a peace sometimes I'll have peace in the fun that I'm having but fun being happy is just a passing emotion but the peace and that joy that's a deeper thing and I experienced it experienced it, and I was like, okay, this is it. And I went into seminary.
That was 2008. No hesitations.
No, not really. I mean, once I connected all the little dots and all the little invitations became the big invitation from God, I was like, why wait? Get off the pot.

Okay, well, God, if you're this clear with me, why would I wait?

No need to sit around and say, he loves me, he loves me not.

He loves me, he loves me not.

He's called you, Stephen, so go.

Dropped my nets and went.

That's fine.

Was there any hesitation that you could not have a intimate relationship with a woman? Yeah. It was there.
Yeah, definitely. So yeah, we don't get married.
We give our life completely to the church. Also part of that is intentionally to prefigure, to live now, life will be like in heaven, like we're just us and the Lord, like that radical intimate relationship with the Lord alone, you know? But yeah, no, that thought definitely went through my mind.
And it's probably harder now than it was then. I don't mean hard like in a way that's creating a crisis, But like all of my buddies have kids and kids and stuff, you know?

And so... it was then, I don't mean hard, like in a way that's creating a crisis, but like all of my buddies have kids and kids and stuff, you know?

And so like I'll see them and part of my brain will think like, what would it be like to

have a wife and kids, you know?

It's never in a way where I'm thinking like, oh, I want to go find a wife, you know, I

want to go make babies or something.

But it's just like, it's written on the heart.

It's, we were made for that, which is is why the desire is there. So it's good.
Yeah, so yeah, that's your question. It definitely came.
It'll still come, but the same, it's kind of like any other commitment. Like if someone is, once they get married or something, like they say their I do's, it doesn't mean you stop seeing beautiful women, like for the men or for the ladies.
It doesn't mean that she won't see other handsome guys. But you can say, wow, she's pretty.
He's a handsome guy. But the commitment's been made.
So that's kind of what it's like for me now. I've made the commitments.
And there's a lot of freedom in that. There's a lot of freedom.
So while I may see a pretty lady or something or see a family and think, oh, I wonder what it'd be like to be a family, it doesn't register as an option because it's not. It would be the same if I was married and then saw other beautiful women.
I already made my free yes to her. Interesting.
What was seminary school like? That was some of the best years of my life.

My whole life has been fun.

It's been a kick in the face every day.

What's the average age of the student body?

Yeah, so we were, some guys were 18 right out of high school.

18?

Yeah, right out of high school.

Just going straight into seminary.

Some guys like me, early 20s, just in the military. But as you know, you know, it doesn't matter what job you do.
You grow up fast in the military. So a lot of life experience there in the military.
Up to 40s, some guys in their early 40s, late 30s. Every now and then, you'll get some guys that are older in their 50s or something that'll go to seminary..
But most of the guys were between, I'd say, 18 out of high school up to late 30s.

So it's an eight-year process, four years of philosophy and four years of theology.

I did my philosophy in Louisiana.

You read that at the beginning.

It was at St. Joseph's Seminary in Covington, Louisiana, with the Benedictine monks.

That was a cool place.

Cajun country.

Have you been to southern Louisiana?

Only once.

Some cool people, man.

There's some fishing down there.

Yeah?

That's fun.

I went alligator hunting there.

Are you here to go?

What?

You need to go.

It's so fun.

How do you alligator hunt?

I use my bow. You should put an arrow at? You need to go.
It's so fun. How do you alligator hunt? I use my bow.
You? What? You should put an arrow like at the base of their skull or a pistol. You can use a pistol if you want.
Yeah, that's pretty cool. Nice.
Those things are mean. They just wake up pissed.
They're dinosaurs. But yeah, so southern Louisiana.
That's where Theo Vaughn's from. He's from Southern Louisiana? I think from Mandeville or Covington, Louisiana.
But that's where the seminary was. I didn't know it.
He just, yeah. So we were talking about him earlier.
He seems like a cool dude. He is a cool dude.
Let's all go alligator hunting together. Let's do it.
It would be fun.

Down there with the Benedictine monks,

you know, so cool.

They had this big old monastery.

You know, they were walking around in their black robes and everything.

We would just wear, you know,

we had a uniform like suits.

We'd wear a suit every day to class.

But that was fun, man.

Studying philosophy was fun.

I fell in love with education.

I fell in love with learning. So it was fun to study the philosophy, fun to be with those guys.
But it was fun to be at that place with the monks. The motto for the Benedictines is aura et labora, pray and work.
and that was really ingrained into me growing up and there it was really clarified just work and pray

work and pray if you do that

like God will provide

so That was really ingrained into me growing up. And there it was really clarified, just work and pray, work and pray.

If you do that, like, God will provide.

So bust your ass and do everything you can to stay holy, to be holy.

And, like, work hard and toe the line.

Like, it makes sense, you know, it makes sense.

There's a lot of freedom in that.

Then you don't get lost in this other stuff.

One of the good people, too, Most of the guys there were from Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, just good old boys, a bunch of foreign boys and stuff. We would do a, every year we'd have a big football game around Thanksgiving, and we would have a big bonfire, and that was always a lot of fun.
I made a, I was in charge of building the bonfire. Me and a buddy of mine, Brian Phillips, he's a priest in Austin, Texas, we were in charge of building it every year.
We'd go out, scout for trees, cut the trees down, haul the wood up, and then just start building it. The last year we did, it was 33 feet tall.
It was 20 by 20 foot, 33 feet tall. Massive.
So the day starts, we have mass.

All of us have mass together at midday.

Then we go out and play a football game.

And then after that, we just have a big meal and light the fire.

It's really cool.

The seniors are the ones that light the fire.

We all go out.

The seniors, when you're a senior, everyone marches out in this line with these big torches.

And then you put it in and just hang out until the next morning.

Do you learn the history of the Catholic Church?

Yeah.

Where did it start?

We believe with Peter, right?

Peter and the disciples.

Yeah, so with Jesus Christ.

Short answer. Can you go into the long answer? Yeah, yeah.
So the beautiful thing about the Catholic Church is the important thing that we really focus on is apostolic succession, meaning like coming from the apostles. So Jesus comes, he loved everyone, he healed everyone, but he also called a very specific group of people to follow him, to learn from him, and then to continue the mission that he started.
And he gave them gifts, anointing to continue all the things that he did. You know, the apostles, the two disciples.
And then, but we've got, you know, we can follow apostolic succession from Christ to St. Peter through all the popes up to Pope Francis right now.
So we've got the genealogy of it. Am I saying all of them are good? No, they were like corrupt times in the church.
That doesn't take away from the fact that people can be corrupt while the institution still maintains its dignity. And so, although, you know, we've had some good popes, we've had some bad popes, we've had good Christians and bad Christians, you know, everything in between.
But So it comes back to apostolic succession, you know, just that line of popes. And then the people who were- So Peter was the first pope, the apostle.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then now like apostolic union, it's like the connection to the Holy Father. And not so much him, we don't worship him, but we recognize him as the father figure of the church.
He followed Pope Benedict, who followed John Paul II, who followed John Paul I, and then Paul VI, and then John XXIII, and all the way back. And so we go back to that, to the lineage of the popes.
And then under them would be all the bishops who are in communion with the pope. And then under the popes or the bishops would be all the priests who take care of all the faithful around the world.
Every square inch of the world is delegated to some Catholic diocese, which is kind of cool. Interesting.
Yeah. It's like for the sake of salvation of souls.
Like there's somebody spiritually designated to have spiritual authority over every soul on this earth. So although there's 10,000 people in my parish, I'm a pastor of a general area.
My parish is not just my church. My parish is the whole area, the whole geographical area where I'm at.
So, I'm, of course, responsible for taking care of the Catholics at the church. But also, every other soul that lives in my area, whenever I die and I meet the Lord, one of the things that I've got to answer is like, how did I serve all the sheep in my area? And so it's like this spiritual authority would pray and make sacrifices for them and try to bring them to Jesus Christ.
That's interesting. That was one of the things that really opened my eyes up to the universality of the church.
That's a big thing. Catholic in the small C, like the big capital C, Catholic refers to like the Catholic church, but it means universal.
It's like worldwide you say that, but what does that mean? My theology after I finished seminary in Louisiana, I went to Rome. I was in Rome for four years, which was a phenomenal experience.
And I really had a universal experience or an experience of the universal church, people from all over the world. I did my graduate studies in theology at the Gregorian University.
It's the university that was founded in 1551 by St. Ignatius of Loyola.
So to go to a seminary that's that old, 500 years old, was really cool. And the people in my class, there's around 120 students, men and women from all over the world.
As I mentioned earlier, one of my classmates was from Iraq, just miles. We were miles apart.
And then we were sitting inches apart a little bit later. And little things like that.
I keep saying little things. That's a very big thing.

But it's those things that really shows the greatness of our God and like the plan of all this. Like it's, there's so much

so much to unpack. It's a big deal.

When did the

So the first pope was Peter the Apostle.

When did the Bible come in?

So the canon, as we have it, that's what we would call it, the canon of Scripture.

It's like one of the official books of the Bible.

It wasn't until around probably the 300s and 400s. Christianity wasn't legalized until 313.
So even before then, it was illegal to be a Christian. So they were killing people after night.
They didn't even have the Bible before then. So it was around the 300s and really into the 400s, not until the 400s that the actual canon of scripture as we have it now was established.
And so that in itself points out like apostolic succession. You know, a lot of people talk about just Scripture only.
Like, yeah, of course we need the Scripture, but I can't make the only thing because that was the fruit of the community's relationship with God.

And so that would, that calls in tradition.

So Catholics, for our authority, we don't just refer to the Bible,

but we also refer to, or make reference to tradition as well.

Scripture and tradition is how we, you know, where we go to for authority.

So, yeah, so the Bible, 400s. Does the Bible mention the Catholic Church at all? No, there's no reference to any of them.
There really wasn't an understanding of the Catholic Church as it is now. I mean, there was.
But it wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that there were other sects that then broke off, you know, Protestantism, than all the different churches that flow out of Protestantism.

Okay.

Yeah. So up until then, like, if you were a Christian, you were Catholic.

Okay.

Yeah. And even...

Yeah.

Okay.

Up until the 1500s. So if you were a Christian, that's what you were.
So one of the big questions I have about the Catholic Church is kind of like the middleman. And, you know, I'm no biblical scholar, so it's just questions.
But when Jesus roamed the earth, it seemed like everybody had a direct line into him. He didn't really have to go through anybody.
And it seemed to me that it was preaching that everybody has a direct relationship with God.

And so everything seemed very against the Pharisees, right? Which is what? Like a rank structure of humans to God, correct? Would that be fair to say? And so it seems like to me it's very similar to the Catholic Church. The Pharisees? Yes.
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I would argue, yeah, I would say so. I would argue against that.
So I would agree we do need a direct relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead.
How do we have that physical relationship with Jesus Christ now? It's through the church that he established. The church that he established and instituted with the apostles that he gave all authority to continue the ministry that he did to carry on the preaching of the good news, salvation, eternal life.
Through him, only through him. So how do we maintain this physical relationship with Jesus Christ? It's through the church that he established, in particular through the sacraments that are administered through that church.
So whenever the Catholic church, one of the things that we talk about all the time, it's the meat and potatoes. It's what it is.
It's the sacraments. So to celebrate the sacraments, to celebrate the Eucharist, for example, you have to be a validly ordained priest, a priest that was validly ordained by a valid bishop who is in communion with the Pope.
And he would be in communion with all the popes before him, which take us back to the lineage of, on the line, back to Jesus Christ. So what he handed on, they handed on.
Jesus walked and talked with the apostles, spent time with them, touched them. They called their successors, spent time with them, walked with them, put their hands on them for the

ordinations. That's continued for all the ordinations to the priesthood and the episcopacy

to be a bishop to now. All validly ordained bishops have been consecrated by a bishop that came before them.
All priests are validly ordained by a bishop that was validly ordained. And so there's an actual physical touch.
Like when the bishop put his hands on my head and anointed my hands in ordination, there's an actual concrete physical touch that like one hand to the next, 2,000 years. That's pretty cool.
And so how do we have this personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Yeah, we can talk to the Lord in prayer, but that's a spiritual relationship with him. If you're, earlier we talked about like going to the mountains and how that'd be hard for you to go for a week.
You know, you mentioned getting away from work, but I think more than that, I don't think you want to be away from your wife and your kids for more than a week.

You want to be with them.

So if you were around the world, you could call her every day.

You could do FaceTime with your kids,

but it's not like walking through that door and picking them up and hugging them. There has to be physical touch, which is why God became man,

because to save us completely.

God's not removed from this experience that we have. It's a physical thing.
It's raw, man. It's raw, which makes it so real, which goes back to the question that Brian had at the beginning.
Yeah, you're mad at God? Okay, be mad at God. Like, let him have it.
Like, it's only in reality that we encounter God, which includes everything that we live day in and day out. So for me, that's one of the most convicting things of the church.
Yeah, I've studied all the theology. There's so much there.
I remember a lot of it. What I don't remember, I can easily look up.
The reason I'm sticking with it is because it's so damn real. There's a physical touch to Jesus Christ through this faith that I'm living.
What is the physical touch? Through the sacraments. And the sacraments, Jesus Christ is truly present in the sacraments.
The sacraments, those celebrations or those rituals that we'll do, in which Jesus Christ becomes truly present in a supernatural and sacred way. It's like the Holy Eucharist.
We believe and we live around the fact that that's the body and blood, the soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. And the Eucharist can only be celebrated, again, through a priest who's been ordained.
The whole line that I pointed out a second ago. Can't just be Joe Schmoe that does it.
You know, it's got to be someone who is in communion with the church. So that's kind of the tradition element.
Like, it's handed on. You know, I don't know if that makes sense.
What are all the sacraments? You got seven of them. The first is baptism.
That's what cleanses us of original sin, makes us beloved sons and daughters of God. We're no longer just a creature of God, but we're a son and daughter that's greatly loved, welcoming to his family.
After that, you've got the, if you take the sacraments of initiation, you've got baptism. You've got the Holy Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ.
We just talked about that. John 6, where you can go and read about that.
The bread of life discourse. Jesus says over and over and over, I am the bread of life.
Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. At no point does he say, I'm just the image of, you know, the bread and the wine is an image of me.
He says, I am the bread of life. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.
And so like what he ended on was the Eucharist in that. Paul speaks of that.
Take this, this is my body. Take this, this is my blood.
Take and eat, take and drink. So it would be asinine for Jesus to say, you have no life in me unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood.
He doesn't make that possible. So we've got the Eucharist.
That's the second one. The third one is confirmation.
That's where we receive the fullness of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In baptism, we receive God's love, God's life in the Father.
But confirmation is kind of like what really opens up the full use of those sacraments. It's like having a bunch of firearms.
You get them at baptism. But then after all your training, then you know how to actually shoot them.
You know how to use them. So confirmation is that supernatural sacrament that God gives us to unlock all those, you know, the magazines he gives us.
So to actually use the weapons, you know.

So then you have the sacrament of reconciliation through which our sins are forgiven.

There's a lot of people argue with this one

or say, well, I can just go to God and tell God I'm sorry.

It's like, yeah, you can.

You should.

We should do that every night.

But our sins also have a communal effect.

No sin that we commit is just between me and God. Because we are people of community, there is necessarily like the healing for any wrong that we do, sin, must have a communal element to it because it affects the community.
And so that's where the sacrament of reconciliation comes in, where on behalf of Jesus Christ,

like the priest speaks those words of forgiveness, of absolution.

I absolve you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So the very minister of God's sacraments

in the name of Christ on behalf of the community

grants that pardon for the communal elements.

So that's the sacrament of reconciliation. We've got the sacrament of anointing of the sick.
So whenever people are sick physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, there's an anointing that will give them with some sacred oils, press some prayers over them. James talks about that, letter James, of sending the elders to anoint them with oil to the sick.
And what that does is allows us to unite our suffering to the cross of Christ. It gives meaning to it.
So you're not just suffering depression or physical ailment or whatever. But now through that suffering, you're united to Christ.
So therefore, your suffering is saving souls. It's a prayer that's offered up to God.
You're united to the pains of Christ on the cross, and he works through that for the sake of sanctifying the world. So then you don't become a burden to society, you become a beacon of hope and a blessing through which the Lord comes through your brokenness.
That's anointing of the sick. And the last two, and they're not in order, numerical order like this, but the last two I mentioned would be the sacraments of marriage or holy orders.

Oh. Or what? Holy orders, priesthood.
Okay. Yeah.
So both of those are sacraments of a vocation or calling. What they do is commit us to a way of life.
It gives us a vow. And so we all have free will, and God wants us to love most fully with that.
And the best way to love is to love perfectly, which would be a love till death. And a civil contract does not bind that.
There is a binding element within that, but it's through the sacrament that it becomes a supernaturally bound vow. Okay, so husband and wife, for example, or a priest, I guess, you know, till death do his part, kind of thing.
So the sacraments, you mentioned through all those, this is going to bring it back to how this started, was like that allows us to have a true actual physical contact with Christ. Because in all of those, we receive Christ himself in a very distinct way through the baptism, through anointing of the sick, through confirmation, through the holy orders, priesthood and ordination.
But there's an interesting thing with the Eucharist. These other ones, you receive it once, and it's like something that happened, kind of like it unlocks God's grace in those moments, and then you move forward.
With the Eucharist, the presence remains in the bread. The presence remains in the wine.
It's been consecrated. It becomes the body and blood of Christ, which is why all churches, Catholic churches, keep a tabernacle where we keep the Eucharist.
Kept over like a locking key because it's a sacred thing. We don't want people to do anything with it, anything sacrilegious with it or anything like that.
That presence remains. Interesting.
Sacraments. So when somebody wants forgiveness, why do they have to go through a priest to get that forgiveness? Good question.
It would be what I referenced earlier. One, for the communal element,

like the sin that's been done,

it affects the whole family,

even if it's a private sin.

But then also just the surety of hearing the forgiveness,

of knowing that the Lord's forgiven us.

I wish I could explain it better in that regard.

Do you think God forgives if they are truly sorry and they don't go through a priest?

Yeah, nothing prevents God from forgiving us.

How would you know, though? That's a very simple answer. It's not like I'm trying to make a cop-out answer or something, but what's the surety of it that it's been forgiven? We can pray it and we can believe it.
How do we know it? Of course, we can have faith that we're forgiven, but what's the actual physical guarantee? I guess to bring it back to the flesh. What's the actual physical guarantee that's been forgiven? Because you can pray about it, and it still kind of will linger in your head.
Like, well, what if I wasn't? Or maybe, you know. But through the words of the priest, like, we're physically forgiven.
Because God comes to, like, He wants to save all of us, not just our souls. Like, He wants to save, at the end of time, we'll be raised up body and soul.
But aren't we already free from, I mean, aren't we already forgiven before we even commit them? I mean, isn't that the whole reason that Jesus died on the cross? Yeah, but we still have free will, too. So, we're still capable of messing up again.
That's the mystery of salvation on the cross. It's one definitive moment when we're all forgiven.
It's been done.

It was a concrete moment in space and time 2,000 years ago. It's also a supernatural reality that's

still being played out every moment. We are being forgiven.
The very fact that we're being held

into existence is by God's sheer act of mercy and love. It's his grace that keeps us alive.
So we have been forgiven that actual event 2000 years ago. We are being forgiven like constantly because we're not worthy to live.
Like it's God's grace that's making it possible. So that could be equated to forgiveness like actually here and now.
And then we pray to be forgiven at the final judgment. So it's like all three can be true, which then just reveals to us like layers.
You were asking earlier about angels and stuff like that. There's a lot of layers.
There's a lot of layers. We can compartmentalize a lot of things in life, but you can't compartmentalize.
What do you mean layers? I mean like angels. We got the physical realm around us.
But also there's like a supernatural element around us. Like there's angels and demons around us.
There's so much stuff going on. Like what? Spiritual warfare.
Satan and all of his angels and all of our angels. There's a lot of forces at play.
We're not just roaming around this earth doing our own little jobs and living our own little lives, everyone doing their own little thing on this big ball. There's got to be something more.
There has to be something more than us just living our 80 years and then dying after 80 or 90 you know whatever, 60 and that gives meaning to life that's why we struggle that's why what are they doing in this room? I don't know what do you think they're doing? How do you envision it? Are they just sitting there chilling? No, envision all the demons just trying to get us off path, anything that they can do to get us off track, to create us to sin, to create more doubt in who God is, to have more pride, to be more independent.

And what I mean is like not depending on God.

So they're doing everything they can to distract us and separate us from God.

So the angels are doing everything they can to help us stay focused on God.

It's all about ordering everything to God.

That's what it means to live a virtuous life and struggle for holiness every day. Are they interacting with each other? Angels and demons? Mm-hmm.
It's a battle. We would see them.
But also, I don't know. I don't see angels.
I don't see demons. I know they're real, but they exist in a different realm than us.
They're not bound by space and time. And so they don't sit around a desk and try to negotiate.
We can't even fathom what that battle looks like. Sparks going against each other, I don't know.
But it's just like there's two forces pulling this world and everything in it, two different directions. Good and bad, light and dark, heaven or hell, whatever you want to call it.
Like there's two forces that are at play. Even for someone that doesn't believe in God or doesn't want to believe in anything, any kind of higher power.
If you are somewhat conscious and somewhat aware of life in the world, you would agree that there's a tension here. There's got to be something.
There's got to be more than what we're just seeing. There's's a constant pull between, you know, it's good and bad.
So I wish I could explain it better. How was the Pope chosen? It's at a conclave, that's what it's called.
And all the cardinals from around the world will come together, and they'll pray, and then they'll cast ballots. And then when a certain number of those votes are passed, then the pope is determined.
But it's through the voting process of the different cardinals. I was there in 2013 whenever Pope Benedict stepped down and Pope Francis was elected.
That was a cool experience, man. There were, I don't know, 20,000 people, 30,000 people there at St.
Peter's Square, probably maybe more than that but there were so many people. It was the most energetic thing I've experienced in my life.
It was so cool. We're all out there and, you know, whenever the Pope is elected, they're on the Sistine Chapel.
There's a bunch of movies out there. A lot of it's just, like, Hollywood stuff.
But they do go on the Sistine Chapel. They vote, and then the smoke will come out.
Either the black or the white smoke. Whenever the white smoke comes, it means, you know, a Pope has been elected.
So we're all out there, everyone hanging up, hanging around, just waiting, because they meet in the morning, and then they meet in the evening. And they continue to meet and vote until the pope is elected.
And then the white smoke will come, and they choose one. So when are they? We're meeting that evening, and it went late.
So we're like, something's going on. And finally, the white the white smoke comes, and it just went crazy.
I mean, so much energy. And then he comes out, gives his initial greeting.
It was a really cool thing. And then he said, you know, like something along these lines, I'm your Holy Father, like I'm the new Pope, but like I'm just paraphrasing it.
Basically, if you want me to, like I need your prayers. So before I I can even start this ministry to pray for you and lead you, you got to pray for me.
So we'll just do this right now. And so, like, there was dead silence.
You could hear a pin drop. It was crazy.
Everyone was just praying. Yeah, so I was there for that.
But it was through the process of the cardinals coming together from all over the world. and they'll cast their ballots until the numbers,

the numbers, like they'll cast their ballots until a number is chosen. I don't know if it's 50 plus 1 or if there's got to be a percentage, 80% or something.
I don't know. That's not my pay grade.
What was Vatican II? It was the Second Vatican Council. It was in the 60s.
The whole in the church because it is a human institution just like anything else can be politicized but the Second Vatican Council was a gathering of the bishops and the cardinals and some representatives, labor representatives of Catholics from all over the world that come together for a number of years. And with the goal of identifying the needs of the times and essentially kind of laying out what's going to be the next steps forward, realizing that Scripture and tradition, going through that again, we have to follow the word of God.
Nothing that we can do that we do can contradict the word of God. But also the way that we're living is not the way that we were living 2,000 years ago.
So Peter and Andrew, James, and John, when they were fishing at the Sea of Galilee, they weren't saying, hey, which AI do you use? Do you use Gemini or do you use Copilot or Claude? What do you use? AI wasn't even on their radar. They weren't talking about in vitro fertilization.
They weren't talking about Ibogaine. Actually, I would bet that they'd be talking about Ibogaine before AI or anything like that, because that could have been around.
But the point I'm making is we have to address things now that weren't issues a thousand years ago, that weren't an issue 20 years ago. So this was in the 60s.
So they were addressing, calling out the issues that needed to be addressed that had not been addressed before so that we can gain some understanding

from sacred scripture how to live in this world that we're living in.

Does that kind of make sense?

Yeah, so it was a gathering of...

What were some of those issues?

Let's see, there were...

I'm trying to think. There were like all sorts of stuff.

One of it was like the role of the people in the church.

One of the problems that we noticed was like, in some ways, like too many priests were getting, you know, a big head, getting power hungry.

And so I was like, well, hold on, like you are the priest.

You have been ordained for this.

This is true.

But also you got to recognize that your flock have a voice as well.

So recognizing like the role of the faithful.

That was the of the biggest things from Second Vatican Council. There's a million different, I say million, not a million.
There were a bunch of different things that came up, but the shortest, most concise way of putting it is like, it was addressing how priests need to be more pastoral in the preaching of the gospel. And whenever I say that, I don't mean like watering the gospel down to make people feel good.
What I mean is like recognizing that we have a job to preach the gospel to all people. So it was calling us, telling us to do our work.
and with the it was also pointing out the fact that the lay faithful, that means the people that aren't priests or deacons, like they have a voice and they have to go out and preach the gospel too. That's kind of the shortest way of putting it.
But it recognizes the needs of the time. That's kind of a simple way of putting it.
Some other things were like liturgical reforms. The mass used to always be completely in Latin.
Part of the, some of the changes were doing some of the stuff in the vernacular, which means the language that the people speak. And so it doesn't mean getting rid of Latin completely.
That's a beautiful thing. A lot of churches still use a lot of Latin.
But it wouldn't make sense for me to preach to my people in Latin

if they don't understand it.

I need to preach to them in English or Spanish,

whatever language they understand.

It's basically coming to the times with the gospel,

the gospel that doesn't change,

bringing that gospel to the people today

and the questions that they have. What do you think about some of the traditions that are changing in the Catholic Church? Are they taking kneelers out? Some are.
You know, what's really cool is like there's a resurgence in those. Part of, there was a, one of the unfortunate

things of the Second Vatican Council is there were some people who were out there who took it and just did what they wanted to with it. They interpreted it the way that they wanted to.
So they stripped their churches, like got rid of all these traditions, like the nailers, for example, bad or music or art

terrible liberties to interpret the stuff that they wanted to, the way they wanted to interpret it. And it went to an extreme.
So what we're seeing now is like, so for example, the liturgies, it was just like, take the nailers out, take the sacredness out of it, and make it more like a social gathering is how a lot of people responded to it. What we're seeing now, though, is more people are coming back to those traditions of saying, there is a social element, but it's got to be a sacred moment.
If we want to hang out and just listen to fun music, we can put on iTunes or something, or Spotify. or we can, we want to hear fun, like we can go to a concert, we can go out to a restaurant, go to Pizza Hut,

or... music, we can put on iTunes or something, or Spotify.
Or we can, we want to hear fun, like we can go to a concert. We can go out to a restaurant, go to Pizza Hut or something.
But if we want to encounter God, there has to be a sacred element. So people are putting the nailers back in, bringing sacred music back.
I mean, who's making these decisions in, if this goes all the way back to Peter, the apostle, and he set their traditions, and he was next to Jesus, then who are these new people 2,000 years later that are making up their own rules? Going, oh, we don't need this anymore. Get rid of that.
Well, that would be some of the priests or the bishops that were just doing what they wanted and not following the tradition. So they weren't doing what the church was teaching in those moments.
It was just disobedience. There's really no other answer to it other than that.
Just like they weren't doing what they were told to do. Are there evil forces at play within the church to take those traditions? Oh, I think so.
I think so. I mean, we're all sinners.
We're all broken people. Some people are intentionally, some people, all of us mess up.
Some people are like intentionally acting badly, you know, against those.

I don't have a lot of experience, you know, with that.

You know, let me back up.

So like I was in Rome for four years.

I was at the Vatican all the time.

Got to meet the Pope a number of times, a bunch of cardinals and bishops from all over the world and stuff.

So like I know a lot of people in power.

And I've never met anyone that's

intentionally trying to burn the place down. But there are.
I don't know who they are, but I'm not going to be naive and say they don't exist. But they're coming to light.
everything comes to the light

so they exist but But they're coming to light. Everything comes to the light.

They exist, but the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,

as Scripture says.

I have to change the subject, but I forgot.

When did you wind up on the Ninja Warrior show? Complacing or what? Yeah. Yeah, so I did it twice, 2018, 2020.
I didn't make it through the first round. They just invited me on.
I was like, well, sure, why not? I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I gave it a shot.
It was fun. One of them was in Dallas.
The other one was in St. Louis.
You know, cool thing about that. You mentioned the Instagram page earlier.
I don't put a lot of ministry stuff on there. It's not like I'm hiding the priesthood.
It's actually quite the opposite. I don't put a lot of pastoral ministry out there because the souls of the people that I'm with are sacred.
Like people, your soul is sacred, John. Like mine is like the human soul is a sacred thing.
God dwells within that. And whenever I'm privileged to have an encounter with a soul in my church, a sheep of my flock, I take that seriously.
And so like don't put that stuff on social media. I'll share some stuff every now and then, some school stuff.
I'll share some things with the school, other things in ministry. But it's not a lot because that's such a sacred thing.
I share a lot of my own personal life. I don't hesitate to share my soul with people.
So the neat thing with the Ninja Warrior, I did that. I got a lot of pushback from people, a whole bunch of pushback.
From who? Priests, some other priests. Why? Also some of the people in the church as well, because it wasn't a holy thing.
You should be doing holy stuff like praying or studying or stuff like this. You shouldn't be wasting your time going on TV and doing the Ninja Warrior thing.
But you know what was really cool about it was to bring it back full circle. This connected the Vatican II stuff.
We've got to be in the world but not of it. We have to go out and preach the gospel boldly.
So I ran the course of my clerics just like this. They had a little clip on there that told a little bit of my story.
I crashed and burned. So that was whatever.
That doesn't matter. But people saw a priest doing something that they don't see a priest doing.
And you would not believe how many phone calls and emails I got. Not people to say, hey, congratulations, good job.
Or like, oh, you're a loser, you fell in the water. But calling and say, like, calling, sending emails, sending letters in the regular mail.
Hey, Father, I saw you on Ninja Warrior. That was cool.
But my marriage is falling apart. Could, you know, this, this, and this, and this.
What advice would you give me? Hey, Father, saw you on TV. You know, that was neat.
My kid's on dope. What's a way that I can be with him? Or like, hey, I was abused as a kid.
And it's fun watching Ninja Warrior with my kids, but I'm always thinking about this trauma from my childhood. Like, how can I get healing from that? And so by me doing that, it opened up a lot of avenues of communication with people, which is really cool.
Yeah. Same thing with fitness and the hunting stuff.
Those are two things. I love CrossFit.
I love hunting. I share those stories and it's the exact same thing.
I think what's cool is we talked about the masculinity stuff a little bit, but I think what's cool is you're showing that you're a regular person. You're with the people.
You're competing. You're working out.
You're hunting. You're doing all these things, and you're with the people you're competing you're working out you're hunting you're doing all these things and and you just mentioned you know a lot of the priests that put themselves on a pedestal and i think that i think that i don't think i know that kind of stuff turns a lot of people away and and when you see somebody who is out there in that community with people doing shit that people like to do, I mean, it humanizes you.
It makes you an approachable person. It makes you somebody that people can relate to.
So to strike up a conversation about something other than the Catholic Church.

And I think that's important.

And I mean, you just said it.

It works.

I mean, Jesus was out with the people, right?

Exactly.

So why aren't the rest of the priests out with the people?

Or pastors or ministers or anybody?

Yeah. I mean, we can't sit in our little palaces.
We've got to get in the trenches with the people. And if I'm going to preach effectively, I've got to know what they're living.
I've got to be with them out there. Like you just said, that's what Jesus Christ did.
This God who is beyond all things, this God who made space and time and is beyond space and time, entered into the confines of space and time to be with us. He did miracles, yeah, but also he walked and talked with them.
He had to have cut up with them. Jonathan Rumi, he's just The Chosen.
Have you seen the TV series? I've heard of that. There's a lot of stuff in that show that's not in the Bible, but it's plausible.
Like, you could, he's joking around with them. That stuff, I think, really happened, even if it's not in Scripture.
Jesus, they had to have cut up. They had to have joke around, you know.
Sure, they got, you know, ate some, you know, I don't know, roasted lamb or something, got heartburned, or, you know, wasn't cooked enough, and diarrhea or something. I don't know, but we're humans.
We just got to continue that in ministry. What are your thoughts on...
We have a huge veteran audience. There's a suicide epidemic going on.
It's like up to 40-something a day. Yeah.
What are your thoughts on suicide? Yeah. It's, I got a lot of thoughts.
Like, there's't... There's a lot to unpack here.
First of all, no one commits suicide because things are going all right. No one does that because life is worth living.
So there's... They're broken.
There's a lot going on there. Internally, there's also problems externally, support systems that are not in place that should be.
So I recognize that element of it. But also, like, and this is like, I'm not saying this lightly, and I don't want any listener to take it lightly or anything, but I think it's a cowardly thing to do.
They've got so many burdens that are pushing them into the grave and they want to, like it's just almost too much to bear. So they'll end their life, but in doing that, that burden is handed over to someone else to sort out or figure out.
you know? And I don't know.

Like, it's just a complicated thing to unpack.

I've had people at the church commit suicide or family members, things like that.

Not my own family members, but like family members, church people, done funerals and stuff like that.

It's tough, man.

Like, I wish I could give an answer.

It's just, it's a messy thing.

do they go to heaven? God's grace is big. God's grace is big.
God can get anyone to heaven that he wants to get to heaven. And in those situations, in years past,

it's kind of like a thing from Second Vatican Council, you're asking about that. Like it was, somebody committed suicide, it was immediately like, there was a teaching for a long time that they were just immediately condemned to hell because it was murder.
You're murdering yourself. I shall not kill.
And you've killed yourself. But the act of murder happened.
You committed the act of murder even if it was yourself. Now the church recognizes it's a lot more complicated than that.
Now that we understand psychology and the human mind and everything. And so we recognize how God sees the brokenness in that person.
And that's God's desire to save broken people. It's kind of hard to say that.
Yeah, short answer, can they go to heaven? Yeah, they can definitely go to heaven. Does it definitely mean they're going to heaven? No, I don't know.
I don't know who goes to heaven or who goes to hell. It's up to God.
I don't want to sit here, though, and make it an easy out for somebody. And that's in some ways, like I don't...
This is something I'm struggling with. This may have come up on one of your recent episodes on this subject.
How do we talk about it in a way that doesn't give it a blessing but actually addresses the cause? And in a way that doesn't create like a heroism in it.

Does that?

I don't know if it makes sense.

Oh, man, I don't ever think anybody thinks there's heroism in it.

Yeah.

No, yeah.

And this is just a lack of words.

I think you talk about the burden that's been passed on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I think a lot of people do it because they feel like they are the burden. Yeah.
And that's what needs to be addressed. Like, they're not.
So how do we get to the heart of that? It's a bigger burden. Yeah.
You can kill yourself. Yeah.
But even in my own life, not to the point of suicide, but one of the reasons we were talking earlier about boundaries and stuff, it's hard for me to ask for help because I don't want to be a burden. I grew up in a poor family.
It was hard to get by with everything. And I didn't want to be another burden.
And so that's so ingrained in me that it's hard for me to ask for help. So I can understand what it like to like not want to burden somebody um so how do we tell them like you're not a burden buddy like you're not a bird you may be screwed up that doesn't mean you're a burden you still got dignity man we're all screwed up we all like fight with stuff we wrestle with stuff i say screw up in a loose way so um it's just a It's a tough thing.
People just want to be loved, man. We just need to walk with people.
A lot of the stuff we were talking about earlier, man, I'm trying to figure this thing out myself. I've been to a lot of school.
I have a lot of experiences. I don't mean I know what I'm doing.
I'm just a lost fool in this thing called life, every day waking up saying, God, help me to not be as, like, a little bit less of a loser today than I was yesterday. And any way that I can help other people around me be a little bit less of a loser today than they were yesterday, like, I'm doing what God's called me to do.
And that just means, like, I have to be willing to sit with the uncomfortable stuff. So then how do we, I think that's where we can improve, is sitting with people in those moments when we don't have an answer because we want an answer we want something to fix it we want a treatment unfortunately a bullet or a pill is like often like where the mind goes to um and gosh i think it i think it may i don't know if it was one of your episodes or not, just a recent one.
I was just listening to it on the drive over here.

But how like somebody can be under the influence of something.

You're not thinking clearly in that moment, you know?

And it's so easy to make a permanent decision in that split second, you know?

But how do you sit with somebody in that moment and say, listen, I don't have an answer for you. I can't imagine how much it sucks for you, but I want to sit with you right now.
Whatever we got to do, we'll do it. And that's hard because it requires us to surrender control because we want to fix it, especially for guys.
We like to fix stuff. We don't want to be a burden.
We want to get it done now. We don't like to ride things out.
So there's so many things that go against the way that we're built, so many things that are pushing against our own DNA, the way we operate as men. But for us to just sit there in that tension, in those crosshairs, or that crossroads, is not having an answer.

I think that's where we start.

Like, what does that look like? I don't know.

But it's a messy thing.

I wish we didn't have it.

I wish this wasn't a thing.

Yeah.

But it is.

And it's hurting a lot of people.

Yes, it is.

Anyway, yeah, if there's any way I can help anyone, I know a ton of people listen to this. Oh, yeah.
Reach out. Like I just said, I can't answer anything.
I can't be a savior, but I got some grit, and I'll just sit it out with you. Have you ever...
Do you think that your... How do I say...
Do you feel that your father or your sister has ever reached out spiritually to you? No. Have they ever tried to make contact? No, but I haven't paid attention to that.
Someone asked me a similar question a few weeks ago. Before, I'd never thought of that until they asked it.
I kind of forgot about it until just now you asked. So short answer is no.
I'm sure they have, and I just wasn't paying attention. Or maybe they have, and I was, but I didn't know it was them.
Well, we're kind of wrapping up the interview here, but I want to end on Mayhem Hunt. What is it? It's a group of us just knuckleheads that like to work out and hunt.

So, Rich Froning, one of my best friends, he's big in the CrossFit world, just lives up the road here. Is he big in the CrossFit? No.
He's good. Who's he? He's old and washed up now.
No, I'm joking. He's still a fit guy, super strong.
Ham and a few of our best friends, we started hunting a number of years ago. We've always been passionate in fitness.
From that, we just wanted to get more people ready to hunt. Hunting is a tough thing physically.
Just creating a training program to do that. It it's still new.
We're still getting off the ground and everything. But yeah, training program to get people ready to hunt.
Mayhem hunt. Right on.
You didn't ready to do any big hunts? Yeah. Hoping to do a bear hunt this late spring.
Then this fall, I'll go elk hunting again. Nice.
September. Probably Montana this year, maybe.
Nice. I want to take you.
And alligator hunting. We're going to go alligator hunting.
Let's do it. You and me and Theo Vaughn.
Let's do it. Yeah.
Yeah, the suicide thing, that's a tough one, man. Yeah.
I see it from both sides. I understand.
I don't understand any of it because I'm not in this situation, but from my perspective, I can see the broken. I should have mentioned this in the talk just a second ago.
I can see the side of the individual and their brokenness. No one does that because things are fine.
But also, I've been with the victims or the families afterwards, and I see everything that they go through too, and I see that, and it's like, it's just so much pain all around. What do you think about, what is purgatory? Yeah.
So purgatory is like we would believe whenever we die, before we have the full beatific vision, that's heaven, seeing God face to face. We're still not worthy to be in the presence of God because we still have imperfections from this own life that have to be worked out, that have to be purified of.
And so purgatory would be like that time that would, that final purification that would make us fit to see the face of God and not die, not be overwhelmed, but be freed from anything that could hold us back. So what happens there? I don't know.
Do they don't talk about it at all? No, it do. It's just, I don't know, time of purification for any wrongdoings.
I don't know. There's no formal teaching of saying, well, here's the protocols or here are the things that happen there.
I don't know. Is it like time limits? No.

Yeah, because then you'd be outside of time. It wouldn't be

the same time constraints that we have now.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel like a complete...

I've had a bunch of schooling, I promise, but

I revert to farm boy. I wish I could give some better answers for a bunch of schooling, I promise, but I revert to farm boy.

I wish I could give some better answers for a lot of this stuff.

I don't know.

Mama just said go.

I'm doing it.

Jesus said work, and so I'm working.

Right on.

Well, Father, I appreciate you coming.

It was an honor to interview you and get your story.

I just want to say God bless. Thanks, Sean.
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