#194 Father Stephen Gadberry - The Unconventional Priest

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Speaker 4 We're coming through a curve. Dad had a dish bowl like 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.

Speaker 4 When he did, yanked the steering wheel and went in the ditch and cut a culvert and started in cartwheels.

Speaker 5 What advice would you have for kids who have lost parents?

Speaker 4 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.
You know, and so that terrifies us.

Speaker 4 And so we do all these things to distract us from that. The life of faith is really preparing for a good death.

Speaker 5 Father Stephen Gadbury, welcome to the show, man.

Speaker 4 Thanks a lot. It's beautiful.
Happy to have you here. Thanks.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 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 I just

Speaker 5 saw what you're posting,

Speaker 5 working out on your cycle, lots of hunting, shooting your bow. And I just, I think that's,

Speaker 5 I don't want to sound offensive. I think it's really cool

Speaker 5 that you're a priest displaying like

Speaker 5 raw masculinity like that and making it cool. And

Speaker 5 I mean, I think that

Speaker 5 masculinity has damn near disappeared in the world over the past 10 to 15 years.

Speaker 5 And we just spoke. We think it's making a comeback.

Speaker 5 But on top of that,

Speaker 5 you just don't see priests doing that kind of stuff. And

Speaker 5 I think everybody, I mean, I grew up Catholic and

Speaker 5 you 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,

Speaker 5 what do they do? Pray Pray all the time and do the rosary? But

Speaker 5 so I just, I thought that was really cool. And that's what, 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

Speaker 5 so, yeah, I just wanted to wanted to get you on the show. We had my friend, Father Dan Rehill on.
And

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And, but, yeah, thanks for coming.

Speaker 4 Yeah, thanks for the invite. I only work on Sunday, so I got all the time you need to.

Speaker 4 Not really. Yeah, no, it's,

Speaker 4 you know, in the Catholic Church, the pastor, the leader is called father.

Speaker 4 Because, you know, like being the spiritual father, you know, father is one that generates life. And if you're going to, if you're going to generate life, you got to have some energy in you.

Speaker 4 And I think we have a lot of

Speaker 4 men out there who aren't fathers because they're not generating energy. They're just, they're stale.
They're stagnant. They're

Speaker 4 too closed in on themselves. But I mean, we got a fire in us and God just wants us to spread that thing, you know? So yeah, I just try to do that through the social media stuff and day-to-day life.

Speaker 4 I crash and burn all the time, but that's part of the fun.

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 5 you want to kick it off with some prayer?

Speaker 4 Yeah, sure. All right.

Speaker 4 Good and gracious God, we give you thanks for this day and the gift of life.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Help us to

Speaker 4 follow your word, follow your voice,

Speaker 4 to be men after

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Amen.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 everybody gets a gift, but I'll give you your main, one of your gifts later, but this will be pretty fitting. So that is

Speaker 5 my friend Dom Razzo,

Speaker 5 I think he collabs with a company to make these, but he calls it the Warrior's Rosary.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so Dom is a... is a former SEAL Team 6 sniper,

Speaker 5 good friend of mine. We were at SEAL Team 2 for a long time, and

Speaker 5 he's a very devout Catholic and has been a spiritual mentor of mine. And so

Speaker 5 I gave Jim Covezel, I used to only have one, and then I gave it to Jim Caviesel when he came on. We talked about

Speaker 5 Jesus 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.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. You're welcome.
Welcome. Thank you.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 i did bring some little toys for you if you want them now or later i love toys let's do it first one is actually you know bible but um i do a lot of stuff with bishop robert baron and word on fire i don't know if you've heard of him does a ton of stuff in evangelization

Speaker 4 uh we started this project a number of years ago with word on fire to uh create a series of the bible and what The goal in this is not just to read the word of God, but to experience the word of God.

Speaker 4 And so there is of course the scriptures this is the gospels the four gospels and then uh it's got commentary from the church fathers from saints from bishop baron

Speaker 4 um just a beautiful text thank you um wow

Speaker 5 thank you and then

Speaker 5 this is this is i think you like that hopefully oh man

Speaker 4 um

Speaker 4 I just got into making knives.

Speaker 5 You're making knives now. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So I made that one for you.

Speaker 4 It's kind of sharp.

Speaker 5 From scratch?

Speaker 4 I got the blade already like pre-forged and treated and everything. Heat treated, but I shaped it and did the handle.
There's two engravings on there.

Speaker 4 Agi quote ages. We may talk about this later.
It's like a motto that I go by from anatius loyola. It means like, do what you're doing.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then the other side of that is Hebrews, I think, 4:12. I don't remember the verse exactly.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 So I thought it was kind of fit. Oh, man.
That's, I'm framing this.

Speaker 4 Enjoy it. Yeah.
Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 4 I'll make you another one that you can use. Right.

Speaker 4 Right on. Got some shirts here, too.
We can, you know, you always need more gear, hats from our hunt group, Mayhem Hunt. But

Speaker 4 so.

Speaker 5 thank you.

Speaker 4 Can I have too many t-shirts?

Speaker 4 That's one of the very cool

Speaker 4 shirts, yeah.

Speaker 5 Brilliant. Yeah, thank you.
Yep. I'll wear this though.

Speaker 5 I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 Well, thanks, man. Yeah, enjoy it.

Speaker 5 Those are the Bible. And the knife are really cool, man.
Yeah. So is the gear, but

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Vigilance League gummy bears made here in the USA.

Speaker 5 They taste amazing. You're going to pass your drug test.
There's no funny business in there.

Speaker 4 I'm going to eat some later. Cool, cool.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 4 yeah.

Speaker 4 They feel good.

Speaker 4 Go ahead, rip them open.

Speaker 5 Try them. Try them.

Speaker 4 They smell darn good.

Speaker 4 It's good.

Speaker 4 It's a good gummy bear.

Speaker 4 I've never never thought I'd say that in my life. That's a good gummy bear.

Speaker 5 Do you know who Vivek is by chance? Vivek Ramashwami?

Speaker 5 He came in here and ripped him open. Yeah.
Yeah. He ripped him open before I could tell him anything.
And I said, yeah, so the effects of those will kick in in about 30 minutes.

Speaker 4 And he was like, oh, God. It was hilarious.

Speaker 5 But,

Speaker 4 oh, shit. But everybody.

Speaker 5 Everybody starts off with a introduction. So here we go.
Father Stephen Gadbury, you're raised on a family farm in the Arkansas Delta.

Speaker 5 After graduating high school in 2004, you enlisted in the United States Air Force and worked in logistics in Texas, Germany, and central Iraq.

Speaker 5 You entered seminary in 2008 and majored in philosophy and liberal arts at St. Joseph's Seminary College in Louisiana.

Speaker 5 You completed your graduate and postgraduate theological studies at the

Speaker 5 Pontifical.

Speaker 5 How do I say this? Pontifical. Pontifical Gregorian University and Pontifical Augustinianum.

Speaker 4 That's a big one.

Speaker 5 University. You have to have masters just to read that.
In Rome, Italy. You were ordained in 2016

Speaker 5 and are currently the pastor of St. Teresa Catholic Church.
and school in Little Rock, Arkansas, which is a 10,000-member church church and pre-K through eighth grade school. 10,000? That's weird.

Speaker 5 95% of your congregation is Hispanic. That's interesting.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Is that Leadville? Yeah.

Speaker 5 You're part of... Breeding's not my strong suit, obviously.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Additionally, you have two dogs. You play the harmonica and you recently started making knives, as we just saw.
And like I said,

Speaker 5 I ran across your IG profile. I thought it was really cool, like all the stuff that you're doing,

Speaker 5 in addition to being a priest and kind of spreading, you know, in a

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 You're not like 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

Speaker 5 you're just a good example. And

Speaker 5 I like you just

Speaker 5 you seem to lead by example. And

Speaker 5 I think that in itself is also becoming a lost art.

Speaker 5 Thanks, man. Thank you for being there.
Thanks.

Speaker 4 I had a lot of good examples in my life. And just try to, yeah, we're all on this journey and it's rough.
It's a, it's a tough, you know, life is brutal. And,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 if we're going to get through it, we got to like put the nose to the grindstone.

Speaker 4 But to have the fullest life as we're going through it, like, you've got to, to you got to confront reality you know it's 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 got to be real and that requires like like don't be fake you know and like be real be authentic you know so yeah just try to share that yeah

Speaker 5 You know, we, we were talking about hunting and

Speaker 5 downstairs and yeah, I killed my first deer and then we started talking about going on an elk hunt. And I'd have a couple of invites to go elk hunting, and I'd love to do it.

Speaker 5 But we were talking, I was like, man, I can't,

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 If you're not training, if you're out playing grab-ass, the enemy's training to kill you.

Speaker 5 And they'll be advancing while you're over here fucking around.

Speaker 5 And I've kind of carried that through the rest of my adult life. But

Speaker 5 you had mentioned that

Speaker 5 you also have

Speaker 5 one pace.

Speaker 5 And it's all in. And

Speaker 5 I'll just let you pick it up from there. You had some good stuff to say about that.

Speaker 4 Just like a dog chasing the ball. That's what I do.
I wake up and just chase it. And,

Speaker 4 you know, too fast and asleep are my two speeds.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you know, 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.

Speaker 4 And, you know, this productivity is a, and this desire to work is a blessing. It's a superpower from God.

Speaker 4 God made you to be fruitful to multiply, to have a family, and to have a family requires you to take care of them. So like the hustle here, the work that you do every day is providing for the family.

Speaker 4 So that's like, that's good. The most primal way of providing for the family is going out and killing an animal.
Like, and so that's just,

Speaker 4 you know, you can provide now by, you know, 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.

Speaker 4 But it's, there's so many studies out here. You got a bunch of really cool friends, and I'm sure like they, they could chime in on this.

Speaker 4 Like I'm thinking of Huberman, I'm sure he could, there's some science behind this, but of like disconnecting for a second

Speaker 4 for the sake of productivity. We can get so zeroed in on the stuff that we're doing that this tunnel vision,

Speaker 4 it can shut us off of a lot of stuff. And so when you rest it, like you rest for a little bit, it just allows the brain and the heart to breathe a little bit.

Speaker 4 Those, when I go hunting, for example, because that's what we were talking about, I'll go out for a couple weeks at a time every fall. And

Speaker 4 it's a nice disconnect. It's terrifying.
I mean, you're out there alone in the elements, maybe with a couple of friends, but

Speaker 4 I do a lot of it alone too.

Speaker 4 And so you just, you go into those dark places that you've been, you know, putting aside for the last year, two years, the the rest of your, you know, your whole life, whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 4 You just 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.
Yeah. You know, but

Speaker 4 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 like will scare us,

Speaker 4 and rightly so they should, something even more terrifying is the voice of God. And what I mean is like, in that silence, God can ask you to do anything.
You know, drop your nets and follow me.

Speaker 4 And it could reveal itself. He could ask you to do anything, you know, move across the world and do this project or whatever it may be.

Speaker 4 And then the ball is 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.

Speaker 4 We're going to lose control, but like, we don't really have the control to begin with. Anyhow, so many different ways we can take this, but the silence.

Speaker 4 Hold on.

Speaker 5 So where I was going at the beginning, as you had mentioned, Satan, Satan can use that against us. Yeah.
That basically that drive. And that's kind of where I was going.

Speaker 5 But you're talking about, you're, and I can disconnect.

Speaker 5 It's hard for me to

Speaker 5 make time,

Speaker 5 but I will make time. And I make time for my wife, I make time for my kids, and you know, stuff like that.
Making time a week to go out west. That's a little hard.

Speaker 5 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. And so

Speaker 4 I think a lot, I mean,

Speaker 4 I'm always,

Speaker 5 my relationship with Christ and God has been growing at an exponential rate.

Speaker 5 It's growing so fast and I'm really learning to lean into my gut. And

Speaker 5 to me, that's my gut is that is God telling me yes.

Speaker 5 And I feel like he gives me these little

Speaker 5 affirmations. Like, that's right.
That's that's what I'm telling you to do. And so, I'll give you an example.
I talked about,

Speaker 5 I don't want to go into the whole story for time's 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.

Speaker 5 And, like I said, I had grown up Catholic, joined the SEAL teams, contracted for the CIA,

Speaker 5 acted like a total

Speaker 5 bachelor idiot for

Speaker 5 20 years and then you know basically pushed God and Christ it just pushed them aside

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 not that I didn't believe but I just didn't care sure

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 anyways so had this really profound experience basically it was God smacking me in the face like three times right in a row uh totally different experiences but all within about 15 minutes And then I started seeing these numbers, these reoccurring numbers all the time.

Speaker 5 And the first one was 444. It was everywhere I looked.
And

Speaker 5 sometimes multiple times,

Speaker 5 three times at once.

Speaker 5 Like first time it happened to me, it was 444 on the clock, four

Speaker 5 hundred and forty four 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

Speaker 5 how guardian angels are watching over me. And I was like, whoa, okay, it just happened again.

Speaker 5 And so now

Speaker 5 if I'm iffy about something,

Speaker 4 or

Speaker 5 here's an example. I just went and I interviewed this guy, Colleen Georgescu, in Romania.
He's running for.

Speaker 5 He's running for president of Romania. They basically shut the election down.
There's a possibility that he's under Russian influence.

Speaker 5 There's a possibility that they're just using Russian influence to not get him elected.

Speaker 5 Really confusing,

Speaker 5 complicated situation. And I wanted to, I was like, man,

Speaker 5 am I doing the right thing by giving this guy a voice? All I'm doing is giving him a voice.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I start seeing the reoccurring numbers everywhere I look. And to me, I'm like,

Speaker 5 I'm doing the right thing. And

Speaker 5 I had sent this tweet out and it was, it was, the truth is like a lion, set it free and it'll defend itself.

Speaker 5 Right as I did that,

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 To me, that's God'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.

Speaker 5 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, what is that like?

Speaker 5 What is that to you?

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Speaker 4 Yeah. 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.

Speaker 4 So going back to like the work stuff is a superpower that God's given us, like man in particular, to provide. Like we're the providers and we got to do stuff.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We got to be producers, you know.

Speaker 4 Satan likes to use that because if we can be so task, if we get too task-oriented, then we forget about

Speaker 4 like 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

Speaker 4 too fast or too much, like you're going to miss them. I'm sure there's 444s that you walked by, you know, before, like when you're just on a mission, you're just going.
They were there the whole time.

Speaker 4 But what's what's going on now is like you're more aware of it. And the more aware of it you become, the more you'll see them.
And you'll really

Speaker 4 realize like how how present god is in your life

Speaker 4 setting time aside to to like

Speaker 4 to slow down to be still and know that god is god is like it's a sacred moment if you think about sunday like the lord says keep holy the sabbath don't do a bunch of serve all labor doesn't mean like sit you know you can't do work um

Speaker 4 but it's

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And so

Speaker 4 I'm capable of doing this work, capable of doing this stuff, but

Speaker 4 you could end my life right now.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And so for me, to bring it back to the

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And for me, it doesn't take long. I mean, it could be an afternoon hunt, like going out to hunt whitetails.

Speaker 4 It could be a drive in the truck when I have the radio off, you know, nothing at all, a 20-minute drive.

Speaker 4 Could be working out just for 20 minutes, 30 minutes an hour or 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.

Speaker 4 Like, he'll,

Speaker 4 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, then I get the big picture. So

Speaker 4 I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 5 I think what you're saying is clarity.

Speaker 4 Yeah, mindfulness. It's all the stuff.

Speaker 4 It's all over pop culture. You know, it's all over the place because there's something behind it.

Speaker 4 Definitely the clarity.

Speaker 5 What were you saying? How does Satan take advantage of this?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 most simply put is like

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 If I can work this hard and make this kind of income and do all these things,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then the lie that we begin to believe is that we're self-sustaining.

Speaker 4 I can take care of it. I don't need God.

Speaker 4 And we begin to believe that we're in control of everything.

Speaker 4 Like we're God. So that's the way that Satan will do it.

Speaker 4 It's a very

Speaker 4 tactical way of him to get us off path. Because if he knocks on the door,

Speaker 4 Satan appears in a way that you can't

Speaker 4 deny that it's Satan. You're going to say, like, no, get behind me.
You know, 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.

Speaker 4 He goes to our talents, and then from there, he starts, you know, upping the pride and the ego. And that's the root of all sins, pride, you know?

Speaker 4 And so that's kind of a simple way of putting how he manipulates it.

Speaker 5 Well, how can people keep a balance? How do they know when they're going too far?

Speaker 4 I'd say

Speaker 4 look for the fruits of the spirits. I mean, if your marriage is crumbling,

Speaker 4 or if what's the most basic things? If you're not doing the most basic things, then you need to put stuff in order.

Speaker 4 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 guys at the church.

Speaker 4 I've got some hardworking people in my church, and they'll be gone Monday through Friday and then be home Saturday and then have to leave again on Sunday, Sunday evening, so they can go to their Monday through Friday job way out of town.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 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? You know, like,

Speaker 4 so

Speaker 4 what do the relationships look like?

Speaker 4 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 like,

Speaker 4 um,

Speaker 4 like, look at your own vices and sins, or you know, addictions, for example.

Speaker 4 Um,

Speaker 4 yeah, so I'd say, look at those, those secondary signs, relationships, and then just your own, your own virtues or the lack thereof.

Speaker 5 Do you have any vices?

Speaker 4 I got a bunch. What are some of your vices? Man, work,

Speaker 4 work, it's hard to, hard to stop. I just, because i love going i love going that's one um

Speaker 4 what do you do for work other i mean what does your work consist of outside of sunday mass yeah so outside the sunday mass is uh you know got this large community so it's i'm essentially in charge of all the operations for the for the for the community for the all the members of the parish, but then also all the buildings, the structures.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 going to the prisons

Speaker 4 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 and so it's cool but it's making some some problems like some good problems but we got to do construction so I'm talking to contractors and doing building plans and

Speaker 4 calls to the hospital,

Speaker 4 finances, got to oversee all the books and everything. I have a bookkeeper who does that, but I mean, I'm over her, so I got to make sure that she does that.

Speaker 5 You're a CEO.

Speaker 4 Essentially, yeah. Yeah.
That's kind of how we operate. All the pastors, all the Catholic priests at their churches.

Speaker 4 It's our little village.

Speaker 5 Interesting.

Speaker 5 You have over 10,000 members.

Speaker 4 It's wild. Yeah.

Speaker 5 We're at in Arkansas again. Little Rock.

Speaker 5 Man, that's a

Speaker 5 that's a that's a lot of people. It's cool, man.
95% Hispanic. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 What do you give the the mass in?

Speaker 4 Spanish and in English.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 The community is growing. What's bringing them in?

Speaker 4 Work. A lot of it's work.
I mean, Little Rock, just like so many other cities in the U.S., are growing, especially these conservative states.

Speaker 4 You know, people are leaving the more liberal states to go to these conservative places. And Arkansas is a, you know, very conservative state.

Speaker 4 And so that just requires the growth and development.

Speaker 5 Well, that's not exactly what I meant. I meant I didn't realize Arkansas was growing.
I heard Bentonville is

Speaker 5 wild. It's going crazy.

Speaker 5 It seems to be this wave of Christianity of people coming to Christ.

Speaker 4 So I'm moving there while they come to church.

Speaker 5 Are you seeing that? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Okay. I get your question now.
What happened to me?

Speaker 5 Happened to a bunch of people I know.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 We're at the point now where we realize the

Speaker 4 juice that the world's given us doesn't satisfy our thirst. It doesn't quench our thirst.
And so like we're going deeper. We're realizing

Speaker 4 that like the passing things of this world, as good as they are, they're not the best thing.

Speaker 4 We can use them as long as they take us to something higher, something greater, something outside ourselves. And people are aware of that.
We live in a world now that's so divided.

Speaker 4 Everything is so polemical, or is that the word? Polemical? Like it's on these extremes.

Speaker 5 That,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We don't know when it's coming. We know it's coming,

Speaker 4 but we don't know when, and we can't control that. You know, and so that

Speaker 4 terrifies us. And so we do all these things that distract us from that.

Speaker 4 And so the life of faith is really preparing for a good death.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And it's a reminder that

Speaker 4 you're going to be six feet under someday. And so we have to live every day, like so that we

Speaker 4 prepare for a good death, basically, when we go to meet the Maker and

Speaker 4 give that final account.

Speaker 5 Do you see a lot of spiritual spiritual warfare

Speaker 4 yeah it's it's it's pretty hidden like it's not like the movie the stuff that i see isn't like you see in the movies it's pretty hidden is a lot of it's marriages satan is going after families that's where he's going um

Speaker 4 and i see that all the time so many broken families um i've been to 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 and a 24 year old that got shot you know they were just violence gangs or drug stuff or whatever the reason.

Speaker 4 Like,

Speaker 4 I see that. I see marriages falling apart.
I see infidelity. I see kids just losing their mind because they don't have

Speaker 4 good parents. And the parents are just lost and confused.
And so that's how Satan,

Speaker 4 he can't destroy the world. Or, I mean, he could.

Speaker 4 But, like,

Speaker 4 he'll do it one family at a time if he's going to do it.

Speaker 4 And to take it back to the whole work thing, like he goes after dads. You know, if a dad is not there, then it's

Speaker 4 he's the he's the cornerstone of the family, you know?

Speaker 4 Moms are necessary. Of course, the women are necessary.
So is dad, the men.

Speaker 4 So when it comes to warfare, spiritual warfare, I see it like that. That's the biggest place where I see it.
Families being broken apart.

Speaker 5 I think I see a

Speaker 5 I never really thought of that as being spiritual warfare, to be honest with you, but

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 that,

Speaker 5 like the Last Supper skid at the Olympics.

Speaker 5 Did you see that? Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, I feel like people see something like that and they're like,

Speaker 5 me in particular,

Speaker 5 and they look at that

Speaker 5 and they think, holy shit, okay,

Speaker 5 that is satanic. If there is, if satanic is that

Speaker 5 shit, is that prevalent?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Then that means the other's real. Yeah.
And so, you know,

Speaker 5 And a lot of this stuff was really making me angry. Like, like last year, Easter, you know, the White House did the Trans

Speaker 5 Day thing. Yeah.
Which, which, whatever. They said they put that in a long time ago or something, and then it just happened to fall on that day.

Speaker 4 Conveniently fell on the day. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And, but then you look at the letterhead and it had little Easter bunnies and all this other shit on there.

Speaker 5 And to me, I'm like, wait a minute, they're perverting

Speaker 5 the day of the resurrection. Right.
And so as much as that upsets me

Speaker 5 and seeing things like the Olympics and

Speaker 5 mutilating kids and all these other things, you know, we could line them all up here.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 it almost, in a weird way,

Speaker 5 it gives me,

Speaker 5 it's almost proof that God exists.

Speaker 5 Because if it's that bad, And it is satanic and that's where it's coming from, then that means that

Speaker 5 the good side exists as well. And so now when I see stuff like that,

Speaker 5 it actually

Speaker 5 strengthens my faith. Does that make any sense? Totally, totally.
Does this stuff fall under spiritual warfare? 100%.

Speaker 4 It's all disordered, you know.

Speaker 4 It's all disordered, yeah, and most simply put. And

Speaker 4 God created universe, the universe, and everything in it. like in a proper ordered way.
Like

Speaker 4 logic

Speaker 4 is like, like people don't argue with numbers. Two plus two is four.
Like there's some like objective truths. Like it's a simple thing for that.
But like

Speaker 4 evil comes in and he 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.

Speaker 4 So he'll manipulate like the way that we see identity or gender. like say, you know, this is what for all of humanity, it's male and female.
But now,

Speaker 4 now it's like, no, it can be whatever you want it to be. It's like, no, you're, you're turning something that's good into something that's bad.
You're distorting it. You know, it's a lie.

Speaker 4 It just flips all this stuff on its head. So,

Speaker 4 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. And

Speaker 4 it's all over.

Speaker 5 I mean, how much, how much, so that's another, this is something I think about all the time, you know, especially with

Speaker 5 the

Speaker 5 growing existence of AI, stuff like Neuralink.

Speaker 5 I mean, and then you, and then you see,

Speaker 5 you know, I brought on

Speaker 4 you,

Speaker 5 Father Dan Rehill, Lee Strobel, John Burke. Like, I'm super interested in the subject, but, you know, everybody talks about how Satan is

Speaker 5 the master of deceit. He's the master liar.

Speaker 5 He can

Speaker 5 manipulate things and make it appear something else. And so I'm just curious, I mean, how much,

Speaker 5 so this makes me think, how much of everything we know today is a complete lie?

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 5 AI.

Speaker 5 I talked to Huberman about about neural link

Speaker 5 and he had he had I said well he he was talking about how they it could help blind people see and I said well if it can help blind people see

Speaker 5 then could they create a

Speaker 5 an entire false reality inside of your head and he said oh yeah if they can make you if they can make blind see they can they can

Speaker 5 manipulate all the other senses taste smell touch emotion It's wild. All of that stuff.

Speaker 5 And so it makes, it just makes me wonder, you know, how much of what we know today or what we think we know is a lie. And will this all get revealed at death?

Speaker 4 Good question.

Speaker 4 It's a lot, I would bet. Is there? It seems like there's a lot around it.
Man, I just kept going back to freedom.

Speaker 4 Freedom. Like that's all this stuff is bad in as much as it takes our freedom away.
God wants us to be free, to be be a saint, to be in the presence of God, and that's perfect freedom.

Speaker 4 That's the fullness of life.

Speaker 4 Anything that takes away our freedom or free will, our consciousness, like is, it gets us away from that.

Speaker 4 You know, but freedom is, that's ultimately what, when God made Adam and Eve, he made them perfectly free until they started doubting and questioning and then

Speaker 4 kind of not thinking that they were free enough.

Speaker 4 So they tried to make their own freedoms, the forbidden fruit, you know, know, like the scripture will tell us that just the image of the forbidden fruit. That's about freedom.

Speaker 4 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. You know, it's not going to go away.

Speaker 4 So how do we move forward with it ethically and morally? Like, in as much as it helps us with productivity and to be more free, that's great.

Speaker 4 But if it takes away our freedom, What I mean is like if it, if we rely on it so much that we're not creatively thinking and making decisions on our own and

Speaker 4 then then it's bad because ultimately that's what it's all about like God wants us to be to be free and what's the ultimate freedom like this radical creativity so going back to the work conversation work

Speaker 4 that's done like freely um

Speaker 4 and properly ordered is is a creative act that's what work is it's you're you're creating stuff you're you're cooperating in the creation of the of the world so there's a lot of dignity in work.

Speaker 4 But yeah, just freedom. So any way that all this stuff around us takes away our freedom, it's not from God.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I'm not free to go out and rob 15 banks today if I want to. Like, 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.

Speaker 4 You know, I'm not free to kill somebody just out of cold-blooded murder. Like, that's not, that's not freedom.
If there's a, you know,

Speaker 5 you're saying you have freedom to make the choice.

Speaker 4 Yeah. That's, is that what

Speaker 5 your definition of free will is?

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. To make the, to make the, to make the right choice.
We're free to make the right choice.

Speaker 5 You have, you have the free will of whether to choose good or to choose evil. Correct.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And then so you mentioned psychedelics just in passing.

Speaker 4 We can jump into that a little bit later or whenever you want, but like something with that or alcohol or drugs or like anything like this is like, um,

Speaker 4 it would be bad in as much as it takes our free will. Thomas Aquinas talks about alcohol, for example,

Speaker 4 and like, you know, how much can you drink? And he says to the point of hilarity. That's kind of like the way he like just

Speaker 4 because to the point of hilarity means that like you still have full use of your reason. But as soon as something takes away your faculties, then you're not free in that.

Speaker 4 And that's where Satan wants to come in. Because if we don't maintain

Speaker 4 the proper use of our faculties and reason,

Speaker 4 then that's because we've surrendered it to someone else.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And at that point, they're free to make decisions for

Speaker 5 in our name.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 you know, like it's their right thing to do.

Speaker 4 You know, a power of attorney is another example. You give someone else the freedom to make decisions in your name.

Speaker 4 But that can be a slippery slope if you give the freedom to the wrong person. They can abuse that power of eternity and just screw you.

Speaker 4 And then if you take another step further into the spiritual realm,

Speaker 4 if you give your freedom to some spiritual being that's not God, then

Speaker 4 that's how Satan makes his way in.

Speaker 5 Is our destiny chosen for us?

Speaker 4 I don't think it's chosen.

Speaker 5 So if God knows everything that's going to happen,

Speaker 5 then how is it not?

Speaker 4 So God's knowledge

Speaker 4 doesn't necessarily predetermine

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 he knows all things. God's outside of space and time.

Speaker 5 God's all-knowing.

Speaker 4 The foreknowledge of God is, I guess, kind of a simple way of understanding this.

Speaker 4 Saint Augustine or Saint Augustine, depending on how you say his name, he talks about this free will and predestination and everything.

Speaker 4 And it's like God's foreknowledge

Speaker 4 is that which guarantees us the freedom to choose rightly in that moment in the future.

Speaker 4 So it's like if he knows all this stuff, but it's just like a parent leading their kid, you know, through something in life. And you walk with the kid and you say, okay, we're here now.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 yeah, that's the kind of simplest way I could put it for. I get too theological with it.

Speaker 5 Do you think he knows if we're going to wind up

Speaker 5 a believer or a non-believer?

Speaker 4 He wouldn't. Yeah.
I mean, God would know. He knows all things, so he would know that.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 for him to know if we're going to be a believer or a non-believer, if we're going to be in heaven or hell, does not mean that he would have predestined that.

Speaker 4 God cannot predestine,

Speaker 4 or like it's not in God's nature to to will something bad for somebody.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 What are your thoughts on psychedelics? You know, I just

Speaker 5 found a lot of healing through them. A lot of my friends have

Speaker 4 that have been to war.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it's always a very,

Speaker 5 very controversial subject within catholic christian world a lot of people say it's demonic uh a lot of people say it it it

Speaker 5 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 it's it's a false reality that you experience

Speaker 5 But I've seen a lot more good than bad come from this stuff.

Speaker 5 Way more good. And so

Speaker 5 i've heard that

Speaker 5 some people use psychedelics to open people up before exorcisms uh i'm just curious what what are your thoughts on your psychedelics and because the initial thing is like how much of your free will can be maintained in that and if it is surrendered in the use of that who is

Speaker 4 who is rightly going to be your your guardian during that moment yeah that's kind of one thing that's kind of a high like a high thought or whatever but

Speaker 4 they're doing a lot more studies i think what with with more of these studies like 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 and everything and figure out more big thing is like

Speaker 4 can it be like how can you can control the consistency of it like if like in a beer you know how much alcohol is in there now like um 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 effects.

Speaker 5 What about from a spiritual standpoint?

Speaker 5 You know, a lot like with

Speaker 5 people that's saying it's it's demonic, it's demonic forces, you're opening yourself up to us to the spiritual realm. I mean,

Speaker 5 what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 5 Is it is it spiritual suicide?

Speaker 4 That's a good question,

Speaker 4 man.

Speaker 4 I'm still, I'm still learning more about it myself, you know.

Speaker 4 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 some, like a, like one of these man-made drugs or something versus like something that is naturally derived.

Speaker 4 I think, 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,

Speaker 4 I think it can. I think it can.

Speaker 4 Just in the shortest answer. Yeah.
It gives me the jibbies.

Speaker 4 I don't know if I'd want to do it.

Speaker 5 Have you ever done it?

Speaker 4 I haven't done psychedelics.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 Is the spiritual realm right here amongst us?

Speaker 4 Always, huh?

Speaker 4 We can't.

Speaker 4 There's so much more in this world. and this universe and this life than what we can just sense.

Speaker 4 You know,

Speaker 4 what would be an example?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We have our senses that allow us to take information in,

Speaker 4 but think of those senses as just experiencing like one Wikipedia page of what this life is all about.

Speaker 4 That's kind of like the horizontal kind of way of understanding it. But if you take that vertically, like to the spiritual realm,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's all around us.

Speaker 4 It's all around us. We've got to be aware of it, respect it.

Speaker 4 But at the same time, we can't get hung up on it. What I mean is like God wants us to live life, like be in reality.

Speaker 5 Do you think there's ways to access it?

Speaker 4 Prayer?

Speaker 4 It initially comes to mind. I don't know, like a shortcut.

Speaker 4 I'm a redneck from the farm. Okay.

Speaker 4 Sure, yeah, there's definitely ways to access it.

Speaker 4 Okay. there's definitely ways to access it.

Speaker 5 Well, let's dig into your life story. So, real quick, one thing I forgot.
Sorry about this.

Speaker 5 So, I have a Patreon account. It's a subscription account.
And 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

Speaker 5 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 raised Catholic.
And basically, he's a

Speaker 5 paramedic, combat veteran, experienced a lot of trauma, a lot of evil, a lot of inhumane stuff. He's lost a lot of friends to suicide.

Speaker 5 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?

Speaker 5 If he is all-powerful, as we're taught, why would he allow such things to happen?

Speaker 4 Fantastic question, Mr. Duff.
Brian, was that his name, Brian?

Speaker 4 Brian. Yeah, good question, Brian.
Man, first thing I would say is, like, be pissed at God.

Speaker 4 He's a big boy if you're mad at God. Like, the only way to encounter God is in reality.
I mentioned that earlier. I think I did.
If not, I was thinking it.

Speaker 4 But yeah, like the only way to encounter God is in reality, not in fantasy. So if you're pissed at God, tell him.

Speaker 4 I mean, 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.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 somebody watching fish in a tank.

Speaker 4 He was crucified. Like, he's been to the depths of hell.
Like, he knows better than us what that is. And so

Speaker 4 first thing is meet God at that spot.

Speaker 4 Because it's only through reality and in reality that you're going to encounter God. So start with that stuff.

Speaker 4 Man. And then from there, everything else just kind of snowballs.
What was the second part? So

Speaker 4 why? The last question that he said?

Speaker 5 How do I not be angry with him because I'm pissed at him?

Speaker 5 If he is all-powerful, as we're taught, why would he allow such things to happen?

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So,

Speaker 4 yeah.

Speaker 4 just

Speaker 4 it's okay to be mad at God.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 chewed him out.

Speaker 4 And then afterwards, he like, he brings some light to it and meaning to it. So start there.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 he's so good. Like, why do these things happen?

Speaker 4 That's the typical question of suffering. If God is so good, why is there evil in the world?

Speaker 4 And it's because

Speaker 4 of his love. And I'll explain that because it doesn't make sense.
Like, if God loves us, then

Speaker 4 how can that be the reason for the evil? Like, love is always proposed and it's never imposed.

Speaker 4 God doesn't spiritually rape us. He always intimately invites us to a deeper relationship.

Speaker 4 He gives us the full free will to respond however we want to respond. Because love is, again, is not forced on somebody.
It's an offer.

Speaker 4 It's an invitation that's given. And And then we respond to that.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 want to make it more than what it is, or like, kind of like,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 that's going to like cause like something evil 50 years or 100 years down the road.

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Speaker 4 Like what?

Speaker 4 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 and just hammer some beers.

Speaker 4 And then I get in a fight with my wife and I punch her in front of my kids. And then the kids start crying.
And then I kick them and tell them to shut the hell up.

Speaker 4 And then like the next day, like, everyone's quiet. We get through the week.
And then like, there's some reconciliation. The wife didn't leave.
I apologize and all this stuff. The kid had some trauma.

Speaker 4 And the kid's going to grow up, 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.

Speaker 4 And then some little, they got their first grandkids. And then

Speaker 4 maybe it's the guy's daughter just has their first grandkid.

Speaker 4 And then the guy hears that from his daughter that the husband was abusing him or something. And he goes home and shoots him, goes to the house and shoot him or something.
Like

Speaker 4 that would be an evil act,

Speaker 4 you know, murder.

Speaker 4 And like, 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.

Speaker 5 You're talking about creating

Speaker 5 generational trauma through poor decision-making. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 And if that happens at the physical level, it also happens at the spiritual level, too.

Speaker 4 And so the

Speaker 4 Yeah, the free will stuff is it's like that. You know, it's but it's here now.

Speaker 4 Like it doesn't have to be a generational thing i can make a bad decision 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

Speaker 4 you know emotions can get the better of us and then we just do stupid stuff and that's why and to bring it like back to the god thing is like it's because he gave us free will we're just we'll get malinformed 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.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 it's because God loves us and He gives us that free will. And whenever we make dumb decisions, it affects the whole community.

Speaker 4 So that's that would be kind of the answer I'd give, Brian, like kind of twofold. First of all, the thing, first part wasn't a question, but I would just directly

Speaker 4 respond to the anger thing. Be mad at God.
Whatever emotion you got, bring it to God. And then two,

Speaker 4 not to make it just too easy of an answer, but

Speaker 4 like bad stuff happens because

Speaker 4 we do dumb stuff. And we do dumb stuff because God has given us free will to, you know, ultimately do the good.
But whenever we don't choose the right,

Speaker 4 there's consequences. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Well, thank you. Well, let's dig into your story a little bit here.
So

Speaker 5 there's a lot of hard questions there.

Speaker 4 Like I got punched in the face. I don't know if any of that made sense.

Speaker 5 No, I mean some heavy stuff, all those handle. Did I come too hard at you?

Speaker 4 No, it's good. i like the shock and awe

Speaker 4 catch my breath so if i'm mumbling or stumbling

Speaker 4 knock the wind out of me um i'm getting warmed up though so you grew up in small town in arkansas correct wynn is the name of the town a little bitty old town around uh 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 you go it's kind of weird um

Speaker 4 yeah i grew up in winn arkansas it's a farming community i grew up on a family farm we got rice soybeans wheat um

Speaker 4 200 acres or so just a german family grew up in this german family uh hardworking family we're a poor family everyone in the family is poor just um but hard work hard workers so i didn't although i didn't inherit wealth or anything from my family

Speaker 4 I damn sure inherited a work ethic and just put the knives to the nose of the grindstone and get stuff done. And that's something I learned growing up, do that work.

Speaker 4 I'm the second oldest of five kids and I'm 39. I mentioned that earlier.
I was born in 85.

Speaker 4 When I was eight years old, my dad and older sister died in a car wreck and I was in the truck with him. My little sister was in the truck with us.
It was a one-car accident.

Speaker 4 We stayed at my dad's parents' house the night before and we were driving back to the house

Speaker 4 the next day to get ready for school. Dad was going to go to work, take us to school and everything.
And it's about a mile and a half down the road from our house.

Speaker 4 We were coming through a curve. Dad had a dish bowl like on the dashboard of the truck and we took this curve and the dish started sliding across the dashboard.
So he leaned over to grab it.

Speaker 4 When he did, yanked the steering wheel and we went in the ditch and cut a culvert and started doing cartwheels.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 he'd,

Speaker 4 you know, I think he died in an ambulance

Speaker 4 on the way to the hospital.

Speaker 4 Punctured lungs, stuff like that.

Speaker 4 I had just some cuts and scrapes, a broken ankle. My little sister, she was

Speaker 4 three.

Speaker 4 I was eight. Little sister was three.
She just got crushed. She was sitting on my dad's lap.
None of us were wearing seatbelts.

Speaker 4 And she was sitting on my dad's lap. And so whenever we hit the culvert, she just got crushed between my dad and the steering wheel.

Speaker 4 So everything like from the waist down was just crushed, collarbone also, and her arm. She was in a body cast.
So I remember that mom, you know, pulling her around in a little wagon for that.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 You wouldn't want someone sitting on your chest if if you had a punctured lung.

Speaker 4 And then,

Speaker 4 yeah, you know, for an eight-year-old, that's an.

Speaker 4 Do you remember that? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 4 May 5th, 1994. You know, it was probably around,

Speaker 4 I don't know,

Speaker 4 six or so, 545, 6.15, somewhere around there, maybe.

Speaker 4 Probably later than that, probably around 6.15, 6.45 in the morning.

Speaker 4 It'll screw this little kid's brain, you know.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 talking about little signs from god i remember just the week before growing up on the you know we're on the farm my uncle who ran the farm he just the week before he was saying hey steven if you ever i'm on the tractor and you need to stop me just you know come out just wave your hands and i'll know to come you know come check on you come see what you need because i won't hear your voice so just wave your arms so

Speaker 4 like i realized like shit wasn't good like trucks upside down. It's like something out of a movie scene, you know, and a war zone.
And so I'd hobble my way up to the side of the road and

Speaker 4 little cars coming, so I'd flag them down and I say, yeah, here's the phone number.

Speaker 4 And then they went up to, I don't know if he called, I guess he called. And mom, yeah, I answered the phone.
And

Speaker 4 we live, you know, on the, we live on the farm. My grandparents lived on the farm as well.
Still, you know, they're deceased now.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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 was well known in the community.

Speaker 4 Mom, too, you know, because of him.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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 mom's mind, you know, with that stuff.
And

Speaker 4 my sister's airlifted to Memphis.

Speaker 4 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.
And yeah.

Speaker 5 Man.

Speaker 4 Wow. Yeah.
I remember being at the children's hospital and they were,

Speaker 4 that's when they, everyone was there. The priest came, drove over from.

Speaker 4 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, you know, your dad and sister died.

Speaker 4 And, like, I didn't know what that meant, but I just remember kind of being a little mad at that, like, angry, and like, hitting the, hitting my hands on the, on the, the hospital bed.

Speaker 5 Eight years old, huh? Yeah.

Speaker 5 Man.

Speaker 4 Mom was pregnant. She had, she was pregnant.
She knew that she,

Speaker 4 her and dad knew that. They knew they were pregnant.
She goes to the doctor a couple couple weeks later, you know, a week later, whatever, for a checkup. It's a lot of trauma.
Did no

Speaker 5 checkup for the baby and for her.

Speaker 4 And the doctor was like, you know, I got some news for you. And she's, you know, what did I lose the baby or what is it? And the doctor said, no, you got twins.
So she was pregnant with twins, man.

Speaker 4 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 whenever I, because

Speaker 4 to be able to carry both of the little baby,

Speaker 4 what do you call them? Baby carrier, baby bucket, whatever you put the little thing in, carry a baby. What do you call it? I don't like kids, but no wife, yeah, baby carrier, maybe a bassinet.

Speaker 4 I don't know, yeah, I don't know, whatever, whatever you carry a baby around, something like that.

Speaker 4 Um,

Speaker 4 so yeah, so that was childhood, that was a big, big thing. How long after

Speaker 5 your dad and your sister died were the twins born?

Speaker 4 Uh, later that year, uh,

Speaker 5 just a couple months.

Speaker 4 I mean, yeah, no, it was, it was still very, they just found out they were pregnant. All of us were like,

Speaker 4 I think we're

Speaker 4 April. So about March or April is whenever, I guess Monte Baby.

Speaker 4 That's a really fertile time. We were all born in November, December.
They were born in December. My brother.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 5 I don't know what to say to that.

Speaker 4 Not much you can. Otherwise, like, damn.

Speaker 4 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. And

Speaker 4 that's been a, like, a,

Speaker 4 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, like, I need an answer.

Speaker 4 Well, there's, like, there's not an answer. And so it's given me the ability just to sit with them.
Say, like, sometimes, like, not an answer is okay.

Speaker 4 You don't have to have a reason. And it's a, because I don't know.
I'll never understand why, you know, and I go through waves of just like being angry or indifferent or mad at God, but

Speaker 5 well, who took over that role for you? Who did you look up to?

Speaker 4 Good question.

Speaker 4 My grandpa, my mom's,

Speaker 4 my mom's dad was probably the biggest one. Quiet man.
His name was Herman, Herman Joseph.

Speaker 4 He's deceased now.

Speaker 4 Quiet, hard-working guy. So he smoked cigarettes.

Speaker 4 Then he had a heart attack, so he had to quit. But he was one of those guys that quit,

Speaker 4 but he kept smoking. So he'd go in the bathroom every night and smoke cigarettes with the bathroom open, think that we couldn't smell it in the rest of the house.
It's kind of funny.

Speaker 4 But yeah, so he did it. A couple of uncles also stepped in and kind of took me under their wings.

Speaker 4 They all fathered me in different ways.

Speaker 4 No one can replace a father. You know, I had a lot of good examples, but I never had a dad.

Speaker 4 One uncle taught me just a lot about just hard work, physical labor, just kind of being raw. He was the farmer.

Speaker 4 The other one, just a lot about like humor and just living life, having fun. You know,

Speaker 4 there were some other good people too that kind of took me under their wings, friends, parents, you know, just Boy Scouts.

Speaker 4 There's a scout leader, a couple scout leaders that took care of me and helped me a lot too.

Speaker 4 So it took the village to raise me.

Speaker 5 How long did it

Speaker 5 is there anything in particular in particular that helped you

Speaker 5 that helped you deal with that situation or was it just time?

Speaker 4 I think just time. And even now, like I'm still working through a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 4 Going back to the work subject,

Speaker 4 I'm a typical dude, like just bottle it up, do work, and that'll distract me from it.

Speaker 4 So I'm still processing it, to be honest with you.

Speaker 4 I started doing like some counseling stuff in January, and that's been really phenomenal working through, just working through a lot of different stuff.

Speaker 4 And that's been helpful. But yeah, I just put my nose to the grindstone and just kept going.
That's kind of what's that's what's got me through life.

Speaker 4 It's kind of like fake it till you make it kind of thing. Yeah.
Work until you figure something out.

Speaker 5 How's your mom?

Speaker 4 Good. We're hellraisers.

Speaker 4 But she's good.

Speaker 4 She lives by herself. She never remarried.
Gave herself, just completed us, doing everything she could to raise us.

Speaker 4 She lives in the same house that we grew up in. And

Speaker 4 it was a house that my grandfather built when he was in high school in the 40s. She still lives in it.
Old, old house.

Speaker 4 She still lives there.

Speaker 5 How are the twins?

Speaker 4 They're knuckleheads, man. One is in Washington State.
Not much contact with him. The other one is in Arkansas.
He

Speaker 4 is a mechanic. like a

Speaker 4 he works in guidance systems on farm equipment. Oh, okay.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 You guys grew up Catholic?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Born and raised.

Speaker 4 It was a non-negotiable.

Speaker 4 There was something good about that.

Speaker 4 Now that I'm older, I hear challenges from people like saying, oh, well, you know,

Speaker 4 it's not right for your parents to impose that on you or, you know, they should have given you the choice. Well, like, little kid shits in their diaper, like, mom's gonna change the diaper.

Speaker 4 Like, you don't ask the diet, you 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

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 which would include like virtue, you know, being a virtuous person.

Speaker 4 But we grew up,

Speaker 4 all the farmers went to this little Catholic church there.

Speaker 4 We were a faithful family. We weren't like super holy.
Like we didn't pray all the time. I mean, we would always pray before meals.
We'd try to pray the rosary every now and then.

Speaker 4 But it usually would end up with us falling asleep or the, 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.

Speaker 4 Went to Mass every Sunday. That was a non-negotiable.

Speaker 4 It was just a simple, steady presence is what it was. And that's one of the graces that I took from it.

Speaker 4 Just a point of stability and all the stuff around us that was always changing, ebbing and flowing.

Speaker 4 It was a point of stability.

Speaker 4 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'm grew up Catholic.

Speaker 5 What advice would you have for kids who have lost parents?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Find some good examples, some good role models, and

Speaker 4 ask them to take you under their wing. You don't have to explicitly ask them, but

Speaker 4 surround yourself with good people. You're going to do the stuff that you see other people do.
So

Speaker 4 find a good role model. That's the simplest thing.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 5 So moving on,

Speaker 5 what'd did you like doing as you got older?

Speaker 4 Just playing stuff. I love playing.
I'm just a boy. Now I'm a big boy in a grown man's body.

Speaker 4 So we were very poor. We didn't have internet or TV or we had TV, but didn't have internet, didn't have cable TV, didn't have video games or anything, but we had big farms.

Speaker 4 So I'd just go out and play with stuff, shoot a little BB gun. you know, shoot Robins and Cardinals and stuff, you know,

Speaker 4 the typical boy hunting outside.

Speaker 4 I would just play. I loved, if we had 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.

Speaker 4 I was a good kid. I wasn't bad.
I had a lot of energy.

Speaker 4 But I was a good kid in class, good kid in school. I was respectful.
I did Boy Scouts. I was in Boy Scouts.

Speaker 4 My whole life, from Tiger Cubs, I think it starts at first grade or whatever, to Eagle which was in high school.

Speaker 5 So did that, did sports, played sports, football, sports.

Speaker 4 Football, track, and golf. I wasn't real good at,

Speaker 4 because I was small. I've always been a small guy.
And, but I had some grit.

Speaker 4 I could just go to some dark places and just, like on the football team, I wasn't good enough to start, but I had enough grit to, like, I was like coaches always calling me in to run the plays against the starting offense or defense.

Speaker 4 They'd knock the tar out of me. And I'd get right back up.
And

Speaker 4 it was just kind of fun. We would always,

Speaker 4 Friday night football in Arkansas is like a religion. Well, it's like Tennessee here, too.
I think, but

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 guys on the other team I didn't see him, he knocked the tar out of me, just knocked me out off the side.

Speaker 4 I was right on the, I was on the, right at the sideline anyways, and he hits me so hard that I go into like all of my teammates and I just disappear.

Speaker 4 Then I reappear like 15 yards down the field chasing after the ball. It was just kind of funny.

Speaker 4 Yeah, football, track. I did golf.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 That was nice. Yeah.
Had a little green in the front yard that I mowed.

Speaker 5 What got you interested in the military?

Speaker 4 I just 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.

Speaker 4 It wasn't to leave home because I loved being at home. There was just, 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.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 4 yeah, so I went, went into the Air Force. It was 2005 when I went in there.

Speaker 4 I was pretty pumped. I wanted to go as fast as I could.
So I went to the the recruiter and this was, yeah, you know, height of OAF. And so I was like, well, what can get me out of here the fastest?

Speaker 4 And they needed SEER instructors, the survival evasion, resistance, and escape guys.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So basic training, I would love to go back through it now. I don't know about you, but yeah, just being like older and knowing the mind game that it is, it was so fun.

Speaker 4 Part of like my coping mechanism is humor. And

Speaker 4 it was,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And she did a lot of instructors with us. She had a chip on her shoulder, man.
She was just like every instructor. But

Speaker 4 she,

Speaker 4 I was like one of her favorite ones, which made it bad for me because she was just picking on me non-stop. She, like, jackass was the name that she gave me.

Speaker 4 And so anytime we were training, she just said jackass. Like, it was like, Gad Bear, she's gone.
You go, you got to go.

Speaker 4 But she was always just on me, always. I did so many push-ups.
I was one of the fittest guys in the in the flight at the graduation. She also knew I was wanting to do this

Speaker 4 SEER job. And so she knew I had to be in good shape.
So she was helping me with that.

Speaker 4 She was trying to help me

Speaker 4 with mental toughness as well. I was the guide bear or the guide on bear, carrying the flag and everything and up front watching.
I remember one day we were on the

Speaker 4 on the drill pad training and it was just a bad day. Like nothing was working and I was just

Speaker 4 It just was, I kept getting, I kept messing up. And of course, you know, you're in the front of the group.
So if you take a wrong step, everyone behind you is off too.

Speaker 5 And she,

Speaker 4 man,

Speaker 4 over and over and over, I kept messing up. And then she got in my face and she's like, damn it.

Speaker 4 When we go,

Speaker 4 we're going to start marching and we're going to turn left. We're going to start marching and we're going to turn left.
All right. Yes, ma'am.
Yes, ma'am. What?

Speaker 4 Modge. Left face.
Modge. You know, so we're going.
My dumb ass went right right after she told me that.

Speaker 4 And golly, she flipped a switch and it wasn't good there.

Speaker 4 But that was kind of a fun thing.

Speaker 4 I just wanted an adventure. Yes, about military.
I went down that little bunny hole. I just wanted an adventure.
I found it. There was a lot to do there.

Speaker 5 I'm sorry I'm backtracking, but you know, you had mentioned you're still struggling with the loss of your father and your sister.

Speaker 5 What are you struggling with? with?

Speaker 4 So when that happens, like

Speaker 4 I immediately had to start providing for the family. I was an eight-year-old boy, so I didn't get a childhood.

Speaker 4 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, of the bomb.

Speaker 4 I didn't get a childhood, so I had to grow up like overnight almost.

Speaker 4 My mom

Speaker 4 has zero income, like a very little income. She didn't have a college education, so she doesn't make a lot of money.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I helped a lot financially and doing more to take care of the family. The way it's messed with me is like, is currently now with boundaries, like not telling people no.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Um,

Speaker 5 and uh,

Speaker 5 how does that

Speaker 5 affect your ability to say no?

Speaker 4 Um,

Speaker 5 I struggle with that too. Yeah, I've gotten a lot better at it, but it's tough, it is.

Speaker 4 How does it affect my ability to say no?

Speaker 4 Um,

Speaker 4 Like, I'm not naive to the tight situation that we grew up in and

Speaker 4 the fact that mom couldn't do it. And 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.

Speaker 4 And so anytime I see a problem now.

Speaker 5 I feel responsible.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So I feel like I got to fix it for people. And I'm good at it.
Like I'm really good at what I do. And that's part of like the superpower.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 man, I just started this therapy stuff in January. So I'm working through all this right now.

Speaker 4 It's tough. Why do I do it, though?

Speaker 4 So as a child, there were a lot of moments whenever,

Speaker 4 like,

Speaker 4 like I didn't have a voice, like, I would want to go play or something, but I couldn't go play, or

Speaker 4 the answer would always be no, or

Speaker 4 I just felt like it,

Speaker 4 if I wanted something, I just had to do it.

Speaker 4 If I wanted something done, I had to get it done. If there was something fun that I wanted to do, like, I didn't ask.

Speaker 4 I learned pretty quick to not ask to do much stuff because most of the time I couldn't.

Speaker 4 I don't know, that's just trickled in now to what we're doing.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 when you say,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 it's really hard for you to say no, and that's becoming a problem. Is that building resentment?

Speaker 4 Yeah, man, that's big. Yeah, the resentment can be big.

Speaker 4 Well, this last month, it's been good to work on that. And the way that...

Speaker 4 So like if someone comes and like want help with something,

Speaker 4 I can get the resentment in there because it's like whenever they ask me, I feel like I have to say yes.

Speaker 4 I feel like I can't say no, so I don't, I feel like I don't have this freedom to say what I need to say.

Speaker 4 Um,

Speaker 4 and also there's some resentment there because it's like

Speaker 4 I had to figure out life and I'm still figuring it out on my own.

Speaker 4 Um, now I'm getting a lot better with like doing it with friends and other people, you know, but as a child, I had to figure it all out on my own, and uh

Speaker 4 that taught me a lot, but I get the resentment because I can

Speaker 4 judge people for being lazy or not motivated. I just want to say, figure it out, like wrestle with it a little bit, struggle with it.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 struggle a little bit.

Speaker 5 Do you feel resentment for the time that it takes?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. In a way, it's like going back to the work stuff.
We were talking about this earlier. Like it's, it's a,

Speaker 4 um,

Speaker 4 like it, it gets in the way of my other projects, or it's, it's like, uh, if I do stuff, I want it to be efficient. Let's get it done, let's be productive, let's do it efficiently.

Speaker 4 So, therefore, like, it can be harder for me to do some of the stuff that just takes time.

Speaker 4 Yeah, people, some of these counseling sessions, or times I'll be with, you know, meeting with the family or something

Speaker 4 for them, the healing that they need is going to come through them just kind of telling their whole story.

Speaker 4 And, uh,

Speaker 4 but in my brain, I'm just like,

Speaker 4 what's the, what are the, what are the main points? Give it to me in a minute and a half. Let's let's get it done.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, the time thing is a big thing.

Speaker 4 Well, I mean,

Speaker 5 I can relate to that

Speaker 5 big time. I've really struggled with that.
And I'll tell you the one thing that's that's helped me

Speaker 5 is

Speaker 5 somebody told me

Speaker 5 when you say yes to somebody, you're saying no to somebody else.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's a good.

Speaker 5 And so the way I took that is

Speaker 5 the same thing.

Speaker 5 I think you've listened to the show, you know how deep we get. And

Speaker 5 I can't help everybody. And it's okay to say no.

Speaker 5 And, you know, but I couldn't. I couldn't.
I couldn't fucking say no. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And then somebody told me that, and I realized every time I'm saying yes

Speaker 4 to

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And, you know, when you kind of paint it in that perspective,

Speaker 5 that helped me a lot.

Speaker 4 That's a good.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I like that.

Speaker 4 It's interesting whenever I would be in these situations, whatever I feel like I'm, for example, like if someone asks me a question, like I feel like I have to say what they want to hear.

Speaker 4 And so I'm not freeing that. And so what happens is like psychologically and emotionally, I go back to the eight-year-old Steven.

Speaker 4 And like in my mind and my heart and my brain, I'm just thinking like, I'm thinking like a kid.

Speaker 4 And so now what I'm trying to do is like rationally think through the thing and say what needs to be said

Speaker 4 as a mature Steven instead of the little boy Steven. And so that's hard to say what needs to be said, but I know it's the right thing.

Speaker 4 So for example, it's like instead of saying yes to somebody, it's saying no.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So like the no that they hear takes them back to a childhood trauma of, you know, whatever sort. And then they'll start acting a certain way or getting defensive or this excuse or whatever it may be.

Speaker 4 But it's almost like a... 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 is,

Speaker 4 you know, with ministry is that I can then love them in that situation.

Speaker 4 The response that they're giving is out of a trauma that they have from whenever someone didn't love them properly.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So it's just kind of neat to

Speaker 4 through like, by me having healthy boundaries, like.

Speaker 4 The Lord is healing people, 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.

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Speaker 2 I know everybody out there has to be

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world.

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Speaker 2 Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign super bad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show.

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Speaker 2 And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief.

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Links in the description or in the comments.

Speaker 5 We'll see you in the newsletter.

Speaker 5 All right, we're back from the break and

Speaker 5 I think we're at, I think we're at Sear Training. Had a good

Speaker 5 chat downstairs about kind of diving in a little bit deeper about saying no and

Speaker 5 which morphed into psychedelics.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 I don't know. I feel weird like advocating for psychedelics to a priest.

Speaker 4 No,

Speaker 4 it makes sense. It makes makes sense.

Speaker 4 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 like religious things.

Speaker 4 So like

Speaker 4 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, you know?

Speaker 4 Sort of like if you spoke about self-defense, you know, you know, arms training or whatever it may be, like people are going to listen to what you say, like you know what you're doing. so so if i if i

Speaker 4 um

Speaker 5 i understand i mean you you you have a a

Speaker 5 tremendous amount of responsibility for the people that that that are listening to this and and 10 000 people that go to your

Speaker 5 go to your church

Speaker 5 and um i mean i feel i feel the same thing doing this i mean we have a a massive audience and I never want to lead them in the wrong way,

Speaker 5 but also, you know, I don't know. I mean, to me,

Speaker 5 people have to be won't, you know, they have to be,

Speaker 5 how do I say this?

Speaker 5 So many people are trained to just be told what to think nowadays. Yeah.
And I, you know, on this show, I like to leave it up to them. Like, here's all these different things we're talking about.

Speaker 5 It's up to you to like decipher, you know, what, what, what. what aligns with your values and your beliefs.
And

Speaker 5 I'm not here to tell you how to think.

Speaker 5 I'm here to explore my own curiosity and

Speaker 5 take my audience with me.

Speaker 5 But I do understand what you're saying.

Speaker 4 There's more to explore there. Like I want to know more about the psychedelics.
I mean, the reality is like they're here.

Speaker 4 More people are opening up to them. They're starting to do studies and everything with it.

Speaker 4 I think it's going to be good to get some objective data, you know,

Speaker 4 to make those choices. But then

Speaker 4 it's a natural thing. Like it's, it's, it's a fruit of the earth.

Speaker 4 I'm, I'm just, I'm ignorant about it. I'm curious about it.
I want to learn more. Um, I wouldn't be opposed to trying them sometime, but like it, like it would be a specific context, a time and place.

Speaker 5 And I mean, we, we, it's very obvious that, that, your father and your sister that have passed in the car accident,

Speaker 5 that you really struggle with that.

Speaker 5 And, you know, I went through a lot of examples, a couple examples downstairs of what it's done for friends of mine, a lot of friends of mine, what it's done for me personally.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, I mentioned I see way more good than bad that comes out of it.

Speaker 5 And I don't, I just, you know, it has the ability to,

Speaker 5 I don't know what exactly

Speaker 5 it does in these traumatic experiences. Some people,

Speaker 5 some people re-experience them.

Speaker 5 I don't really re-experience them. I might think about them

Speaker 5 when I'm there, but

Speaker 5 I think what it does is

Speaker 5 you can get to this point where they call it an ego death, and your ego

Speaker 5 leaps.

Speaker 4 That's a good thing.

Speaker 5 It is, but it's... If you lose your drive, though, it could be bad.

Speaker 5 I wouldn't say that. So, so when I did the Ibergane experience, that was one thing.
And basically,

Speaker 5 that was like brain 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-DNT.
It's a toad venom that you smoke.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it's a death experience.

Speaker 5 You die.

Speaker 5 Like in your mind,

Speaker 5 if you allow it to.

Speaker 5 A lot of people fight it,

Speaker 5 and that's terrifying.

Speaker 5 In the first, I don't know,

Speaker 5 15 to 30 seconds-ish,

Speaker 5 you are 100%

Speaker 5 certain in your mind that you are going to die.

Speaker 5 And you 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.

Speaker 5 It's the most horrible 15 to 30 seconds of your life. Because when I say an ego death, I mean you're letting

Speaker 5 everything go.

Speaker 4 Does it go fast or slow this 15?

Speaker 5 It goes, it seems,

Speaker 5 I don't know how to describe that. It's almost like time isn't a thing.
Okay.

Speaker 5 But first you feel like you're going to die. And then all these thoughts, all of your attachments to earth or

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 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 that...

Speaker 5 these conversations in your head that are going in like milliseconds, you know, like full conversations that are like milliseconds.

Speaker 5 And by that, and that's, that's like, for me, that's the last part of my ego.

Speaker 5 I, I am

Speaker 4 comfortable

Speaker 5 with death.

Speaker 4 I am

Speaker 5 not comfortable with

Speaker 5 leaving my wife and my kids behind without. a provider.

Speaker 5 Does that make sense? Total sense. And so you let that, you eventually, eventually, if you want to do the crossover thing, which is the bliss part of this,

Speaker 5 you have to let that go. And like I said,

Speaker 5 you are 100% sure that you're dying. And

Speaker 5 then you do this crossover.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that's where it seems like it's like this spiritual realm.

Speaker 4 It's like

Speaker 5 it's like a sixth sense

Speaker 5 you are just

Speaker 5 so intuitive with

Speaker 5 with

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 you can feel this energy

Speaker 5 But anyways, it is the most healing thing I have ever done.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I don't have the objective

Speaker 4 to make a definitive answer on it, but it sounds like such a sacred experience. And

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 medicinal way to come to that same point.

Speaker 4 And so I think,

Speaker 4 you know, I can't make a definitive answer, but I think there could be an argument in the future once we get more information or more data on it to

Speaker 4 where we could say there may be a place for it, you know, in people's daily life.

Speaker 4 I don't know if you'd want to do it daily, once or whatever, but there could be a place for it

Speaker 4 to take us to that point of putting everything in perspective. Because I'm thinking like

Speaker 4 when someone's sick, sick they take medicine to get better physically right whereas you you know 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

Speaker 4 like psychologically it sounds like the exact same thing happening like it's just you're you're it's it's in this um

Speaker 4 I think you mentioned like that, like just this, this circuit that's just in the

Speaker 4 crop network. Yeah.
And so like a defibrillator. Like it's, um

Speaker 4 it stops the heart so that then it can go back into rhythm and everything.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 I mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to like push this on you or anything.
I just'm curious.

Speaker 4 I'd want, I want to learn more.

Speaker 5 I just don't know. You know, it's, it's, it's,

Speaker 5 so kind of what I'm getting at is it would, it might take you back to the, to the accident.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But it would, it would remove your ego and the attachment to your

Speaker 5 it would potentially, I'm not saying this is what would happen, but it would potentially remove your ego from that day

Speaker 5 and it would shift your perspective into a way that

Speaker 5 you can look at it from

Speaker 5 an angle where you're completely detached emotionally from the situation.

Speaker 5 It makes it in a weird, fucked up way, it makes it okay, and

Speaker 5 it brings like this certain understanding as to

Speaker 5 why it happened

Speaker 5 or it's okay that it happened. It was supposed to happen.

Speaker 5 Everything that has happened to you is

Speaker 5 what was supposed to happen.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it brings like a...

Speaker 5 It brings like a certain peace to things like that. At least it does for me and it does for a lot of my friends.
You know, the argument is,

Speaker 5 and some very good friends of mine think this,

Speaker 5 who are also

Speaker 5 seals, who've seen the benefits that it does. And some of them say it's spiritual suicide.
Some people say

Speaker 5 that

Speaker 5 this is the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 But I, you know, 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 we weren't. It's natural.

Speaker 5 It's a natural occurring substance that grows in fungus.

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 or the root of a tree. I don't know why.

Speaker 5 And then there's other people that say that, you know, some of the prophets, there's, there's parts in the Bible where they talk about, you know,

Speaker 5 I don't know it uh but I've heard people say you know that that that

Speaker 5 maybe uh the burning bush he ate something before he saw that and and kind of opened the mind up to be able to I keep mentioning it's it's 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 I'm more curious on your thoughts of of the spiritual side of it and less on the

Speaker 5 less on the the studies. The studies are there.

Speaker 4 Yeah, on the spiritual side, man, man,

Speaker 4 if I'm in doubt, I don't mess with it. Like it's, you know, I'd hate to, it's playing like Russian roulette.
You know, you'd hate to, you'd hate to get the bullet.

Speaker 4 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 it's, so this could be a similar thing.

Speaker 4 Like, man, maybe not, but at this point in the future, it may be different. But at this point, like, there's just no

Speaker 4 definitive answer of saying, yes, it is demonic or no, it's not.

Speaker 4 So so therefore, like like my my advice on that is always like just going with caution I'm not saying do it or don't do it I'm just saying like just with caution and prudence but

Speaker 4 yeah I'm really curious about it though

Speaker 5 what do you think about

Speaker 5 have you ever heard of remote viewing

Speaker 4 like

Speaker 5 remote viewing on a computer screen or something no no remote viewing is

Speaker 5 uh

Speaker 5 it's

Speaker 5 It's almost like psychic type stuff.

Speaker 5 It is psychic like stuff.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Have you ever seen like the yeah i know the tv show where the 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

Speaker 5 he threw it in the dumpster yeah and then 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 and i've so that's a real thing and um

Speaker 5 like documented it's real i mean see i use these it's called project stargate

Speaker 5 and uh it's a fascinating subject. I've had a lot of those type of people on and

Speaker 5 a handful of them. And once again, it's like, is it demonic? I don't know.
I mean,

Speaker 5 the Christian crowd sure as hell doesn't like it. I get blasted every time I talk about it.
But

Speaker 5 you have.

Speaker 5 I guess if you haven't heard from it, you don't have an opinion on it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no.

Speaker 5 Anyways, let's get back to Sears School. So you went to Sears School.

Speaker 4 Yeah, finished basic, went to Sears School. I didn't even make it to the whole course.

Speaker 4 I was just doing the NDOC before they send you off to Seattle or wherever the training, somewhere in Washington state.

Speaker 4 Fairchild. Is Alaska or Washington? It doesn't matter.
So before they send you off to

Speaker 4 the actual school, which is about a year and a half for that, it's a long training. You have an NDOC course.
It's sort of like

Speaker 4 Buds. You know, it's not that long,

Speaker 4 but it's just two weeks of getting kicked in the face. So it started that and got to the second to last day.

Speaker 4 I got washed out. It's 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.

Speaker 4 Not because I was trying to be weak, but because

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 they were all kind of exterior things. But that internal drive to push and to

Speaker 4 the point of discomfort. Even though I'd worked hard my whole life and I still do,

Speaker 4 at that time I didn't understand what it meant to push a little bit deeper, go past the point of comfort.

Speaker 4 It's got multiple DMARIs. For example,

Speaker 4 one night we had to make tent steaks. I don't know what it's like for buds, but you're doing PT all day long and then they give us projects to do at night.
So

Speaker 4 you're getting sleep deprived.

Speaker 4 Or if you do sleep, you'll come refreshed, but

Speaker 4 you didn't get your work done. So

Speaker 4 you're going to pay for it somehow.

Speaker 4 So one 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 was had dirt on it for the morning inspection so that was another one we had to make uh sleeping bags out of pieces of parachute we had to you know sew it up at night i had to have six to eight stitches per inch uh and if there was more or less it would be another demerit and so I had some spots on there where it was,

Speaker 4 you know, didn't meet that criteria. And it sucked

Speaker 4 so 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,

Speaker 4 um, 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 10 demerits on this, whatever, so that.

Speaker 4 Um,

Speaker 4 what else was it? I think, I think those were good. The shovel, the sewing.

Speaker 5 So, where did you go? Where'd you go when you left?

Speaker 4 Um,

Speaker 4 go reclass into another job. We took maybe you went to Iraq.
Yeah. So after that, I had to wait two weeks to get another job.

Speaker 4 That 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

Speaker 4 school to learn logistic planning. So people and stuff had to move it.
I did cargo. Most of that time was cargo movement, which was really fun.

Speaker 4 That time in the middle, after I got washed out of Sear,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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 dig even deeper, be more alert, pay more attention, get put in that logistics job.

Speaker 4 While we're waiting, we're just cleaning every day.

Speaker 4 You probably remember that. Like, I mean, like if you don't just sit around and do nothing, they make you do something.
So we had to clean every day, same barracks over and over and over.

Speaker 4 But dude, idle time is like a bad thing when it comes to the troops. Like, because you can just do some dumb stuff.
Like, you don't need

Speaker 4 booze or drugs if it's just a bunch of, you know, meatheads together. We would

Speaker 4 like overnight, we would stay up all night just being dumbasses. We would do like Demolition Derby.
We'd put guys on the office chairs and one on one end of the hallway and one on the other.

Speaker 4 And just you'd run them and crash me into each other. Just stupid stuff like that.

Speaker 4 One guy had a bowling ball one day, and 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Like, I was talking to my mom and I leaned against the door, set it off. I was scared, man.

Speaker 4 Did logistics, did that training. That was down in Lackland.
I got assigned to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. That was cool.

Speaker 4 That was the

Speaker 4 That was my first time out in the real world. You know, growing up, I was always in the family, then the military, they're always watching you.

Speaker 4 But at Ramstein, I was, I was like on my own, you know, of course, you got the base, got your work, but I was making decisions on my own.

Speaker 4 And that was one of the first times I really feel some autonomy and

Speaker 4 like making free choices for myself.

Speaker 4 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.
Like, so growing up, the family was so close.

Speaker 4 Um, 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.

Speaker 4 And it sucked as a kid, but one of the good things that it taught me was like, how to be a team player.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of be, 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, you know?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 quality control when people were PCSing. I would go and be the liaison between the German movement company and the troops just to make sure everything was going well.
That was cool.

Speaker 4 I got to drive all over Germany, meet all kinds of people from E1s to

Speaker 4 O10s and everything in between.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 God really started working on me then.

Speaker 4 How?

Speaker 4 Silence. I just shut the hell up and then like 444, I became aware of all these little bitty things around me.
And it would be little little affirmations.

Speaker 4 I can't even think of a concrete example right now, but it was just peace. I was experienced a peace.
You shut the chaos off around you and

Speaker 4 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, spend more time in silence. And

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Man, we, we were knuckleheads. We, there's a big tire that we were shipping one day.
My dumb ass got into it and convinced my the other guys to roll me around the warehouse. I was rolling around.

Speaker 4 The chief comes out and just chews us out.

Speaker 4 It was one of those things where like he could, like, we were good troops. We worked hard, but we just did, just did that stuff.
So he, he yelled at us, but he wasn't too mad.

Speaker 4 I remember one time we, uh,

Speaker 4 this kind of guy, Chief, I was like, um,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Nobody knew he did. And so in the middle of his briefing, I jumped out and scared everybody.

Speaker 4 Sometimes we would have cargo to take to the airport and

Speaker 4 it would be like we'd have to take it on the forklift. And it was one of these big center pivot, you know, 10, 10K, 10,000 pound torque lift.
So we drive across the base to drop the cargo off.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Nice stuff.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So, so that was fun.
While I was in that cargo unit, that's when I deployed. I was at Balad Air Base.
It was a smaller compound on Anaconda, LSA Anaconda, Balad Iraq.

Speaker 4 Huge base, basically the logistic hub.

Speaker 4 You may have passed through there. I'm sure you did.

Speaker 4 That was fun. That was one of the funnest times of my life.
Like,

Speaker 4 I wasn't kicking indoors. 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,

Speaker 4 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, got those, the concrete,

Speaker 4 like

Speaker 4 walls or barriers or whatever that around all the buildings and stuff.

Speaker 4 And I would come out the front door of the office and right there beside the door is a, is a bullet, you know, it would hit the the concrete. You know, it's not a big deal, but for me as a

Speaker 4 19 year old kid, I see that bullet for the first time and I'm like, oh, wow, like this is real, real stuff, you know? And then so many of our guys are experiencing that.

Speaker 4 You know, 19 years old, I'm preaching the choir. You, you know, most of the people listening, they get it.
I think most of society doesn't, though. And I think that's it.

Speaker 4 I had a great experience in the military up to the day I left. I loved it.

Speaker 4 But one thing I'm really frustrated frustrated with is like the way that a lot of veterans are treated i mean 19 20 25 year olds

Speaker 4 the brain is still being formed and the stuff that they're they're doing and they're doing it proudly and they do a good job and then

Speaker 4 they'll get their their discharge dishonorable or honorable discharge you know finish their enlistment or whatever and and that's kind of like well you're on your own now i mean like the

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 That kind of frustrates me. So, like the bullet that I find doesn't compare at all

Speaker 4 to

Speaker 4 like what so many other guys and gals have done. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 4 I remember

Speaker 5 watching an 18-year-old kid kill his first man

Speaker 5 and cheering him on.

Speaker 4 But we all wanted to kill over there.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 4 I said,

Speaker 4 I've never been in that position.

Speaker 4 In ministry, I've been with a lot of people who've been in that position,

Speaker 4 either, whether it be military troops or murderers, you know, in prisons or murderers who are, you know,

Speaker 4 maybe not caught yet, even.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's something that is done for duty, for duty's sake. And there's like not a,

Speaker 4 I don't know, I'm not in the situation, but I really don't think there's like a lot of joy in like

Speaker 4 like the individual life that was taken, like the person, you know, the, the name,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's no small thing.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, so I was over there in Iraq. It was,

Speaker 4 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 to at all anything that

Speaker 4 other guys. And so it's just like a walk in the park.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 when it came to work, it was just, we didn't stop. It was just logistics moving stuff all day long.
And so that was a neat experience. But then also to

Speaker 4 support you guys, like the ones that were out there. I mean, because we would get, all the cargo came through our office and we would get,

Speaker 4 if a shipment came and it was wrapped in all black plastic, we knew like it went to the guys that didn't, like they didn't have a name. Like

Speaker 4 some guys across the flight, well, it's y'all, you know, the different special ops guys. And

Speaker 4 like, it would come in and there was no questions asked. Like, you, you just call them, say, hey, we got a package.
And they would come over and get it.

Speaker 4 Like, it was, it was, you know, mission-critical stuff. Um, a lot of it was like really big, intense stuff, um,

Speaker 4 you know, weapons of different sorts, gear. I remember one time, though, like, we got this big ship, man.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 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 they load it all up.
And then

Speaker 4 all the guys climb onto the trailer, start cutting open the boxes. And it was like it was pallets of gummy bears and

Speaker 4 wasn't chocolates, but it was a bunch of candy. And they just drove all over the base just like Christmas to store the stuff out.
And I was like, you got to be kidding me. But it was a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, I was over there. That was 07.
It was just one short deployment. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I want to go back to Iraq.

Speaker 5 You want to go back to Iraq?

Speaker 4 Not for the sake of war, but like,

Speaker 4 I just love, I love people. I want to hear people's story.

Speaker 4 We might get into this a little bit later, but this puts it in perspective. Like, so when I, later on, you know, years down the road, when I'm in seminary in Rome,

Speaker 4 I had a classmate. who was living just miles from the base where I was at over there.

Speaker 4 He was a Chaldean Catholic, I think it was Chaldean, Catholic, it's part of the Catholic Church, one of the

Speaker 4 lines in there. But

Speaker 4 he was from central Iraq. And we're sitting in class learning about God, talking about putting things in perspective.

Speaker 4 Like we're sitting beside each other when eight years before, like we were within miles of each other. Isn't that wild?

Speaker 5 That is crazy.

Speaker 4 It's wild. And so like, when I say I want to go back to Iraq, it's like

Speaker 4 I just want to like see people and like

Speaker 4 their lives, like the good people.

Speaker 4 There's some good ones over there. Like here's like the farmers that had

Speaker 4 the best fruit I've ever had in my life was when I was in Iraq, the melon, some cataloupes or watermelons, something.

Speaker 5 Why do you want to go back though? You want to go back for curiosity?

Speaker 5 You want to go back to talk to who?

Speaker 4 See the people. No one in particular.
There's no individual person that I met, but just like...

Speaker 5 You just want to experience the culture there?

Speaker 4 Hear stories, yeah, and hear, experience the culture, yeah.

Speaker 5 Interesting. Yeah.
Do you think you'll do it?

Speaker 4 I don't know. I'd be open to it, but I don't know.
Probably not.

Speaker 4 But,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 How did the idea of priesthood come?

Speaker 4 Started as just a random idea. Like when I'd be in the car driving around, doing the quality control stuff or on the forklift working or in the the warehouse, be at the gym, be doing other stuff.

Speaker 4 And out of nowhere, you know, like this idea of being a priest would come to my mind. Like, where'd that come from? It's kind of random.
And then just like, wouldn't think much about it.

Speaker 4 And I'd go back to what I was doing. And a few days later, it would happen again.
I'm like, that's, that's kind of random.

Speaker 4 You know, I would be doing, I wouldn't be doing anything that would trigger a thought like that. It wasn't, like, I wasn't reading the Bible.
I wasn't at church or anything.

Speaker 4 I was, you know, loading up munitions. I was driving a forklift, whatever it may be.
And then this thought would come. And it's sort of like the whole 444 thing.

Speaker 4 Like it just happened more and more often. And I was like, okay, I got to pay attention to this.
And once I started paying more attention, I started getting more signs, more affirmations.

Speaker 4 Like one thing, for example, when I was in Iraq, I went to Mass one day. It's one of the first days I was there.

Speaker 4 Finished up Mass. There was a guy who came.
His name was Joaquin.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 He just came up and said, You're talking about being a thing about being a priest, aren't you? And I was like, What? Yeah, just out of the blue, complete stranger. And that was

Speaker 4 little things like that. You know, people making cocks.
That's not a little thing. Yeah, it's a big thing.

Speaker 5 Some random person.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 5 What do you think that was?

Speaker 4 That's the Holy Spirit working through him.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 yeah. So putting all those different.

Speaker 5 Did that freak you out at all? Have you told anybody?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I've shared it. Shared with you.

Speaker 5 No, I mean, have you told anybody before? Oh, anybody around that person?

Speaker 4 No. No, there's no reason why he would have known it.
I just gotten there. I was the only one from my unit that was deployed at that time

Speaker 4 to that, to the, you know, so everyone else was new to me. I didn't know anybody.
They didn't know me.

Speaker 5 And that guy didn't know you.

Speaker 4 Really?

Speaker 5 See, this is what happened to me in Sedona.

Speaker 4 Really? Yeah.

Speaker 5 They didn't tell me to be a priest.

Speaker 4 They said make gummy bears.

Speaker 5 This guy, no, this guy, so I'll be, so this

Speaker 5 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 Abbeygate,

Speaker 5 24 years old, watched him hobble up my stairs, one leg, one arm.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 the interview before that was this. this hacker, Ryan Montgomery, who had uncovered a big, like

Speaker 4 a big

Speaker 5 pedophile website and could have saved, tried to save a 12-year-old girl, but FBI fucking blew him off

Speaker 5 and she got gang raped. And, and, and,

Speaker 4 yeah.

Speaker 5 And a really good friend of mine died here in Franklin that week.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it was.

Speaker 5 It was, uh,

Speaker 5 and, and, and then all the

Speaker 5 butchering,

Speaker 5 whatever you want to call it, the trans stuff with the kids,

Speaker 5 the gender surgeries. It was like really bothering me.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so it was like all this stuff happened at once. Anyways,

Speaker 5 I couldn't get this shit out of my head. I

Speaker 5 smoked a joint, told my wife, let's go for a hike, tried to get it out.

Speaker 5 Just tried to like get it out. And

Speaker 5 I felt like I was like surrendering. I was like, Sean, why do you even give a shit about this stuff? Nobody else cares.
You're the only one

Speaker 5 speaking out about this stuff. I wasn't, but that's how I felt.
I felt very alone.

Speaker 5 Like I was the only one that was trying to fight against a lot of the shit that's, you know, the sex trafficking and the pedophilia and the gender surgeries that were taking place for eight-year-old kids and

Speaker 5 the state taking people's kids if they don't do it

Speaker 5 from the parents. And it was just like, like,

Speaker 5 what's happening? And,

Speaker 5 anyways,

Speaker 5 I had like gone on this hike, and

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Like, you're the only one speaking out against it. Just doesn't even affect you.
Just let it go.

Speaker 5 And I felt like I was like surrendering my soul to the devil or something.

Speaker 5 would but

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 I walked through this gate

Speaker 5 this gate

Speaker 5 and I'd been there for a week and

Speaker 5 and a lot of the gate guards knew who knew who I was from my show they're big fans a lot of them prior military da da da da

Speaker 5 and so I would stop and talk to all of them and and have convers short conversations and I walk through this is the last night I'm here this guy comes out of the guard check,

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 I pay attention to this kind of stuff too. Like, who's watching over the, it's just because of what I used to do.

Speaker 5 This old guy comes out,

Speaker 5 starts trying to talk to me. I don't want to talk to him.
I'm obviously in a shit mood, right?

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 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, yuck, let's have a full-blown conversation. Like, hey, leave me alone.

Speaker 5 I'm not trying to be rude, but leave me alone. My wife starts talking to him.
So then I turn and square up to him

Speaker 5 and he, he read my mind from front to back.

Speaker 5 And it's like, all this stuff with the,

Speaker 5 all this 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.
And it freaked me out.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 I need to let that go i don't even remember the rest of the stuff he had because i was thinking holy how the 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

Speaker 5 and um

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 5 sounds like you, it reminds me of that. Yeah.
What happened to you? Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's cool. What do you think that is? Is that an angel? Is that God? What is that? Yeah.
God bless you. Have you ever seen that person again?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I've seen him again. We've been in contact, actually.
Really? Afterwards, yeah. Yeah.
Because this is the very beginning of the deployment.

Speaker 4 So as the deployment went on, we talked more and, you know, established a friendship and everything. But he lives in Oregon.

Speaker 5 Well, did you ask him how he knew that?

Speaker 4 Excuse me.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 5 You never asked him how he knew you were thinking about becoming a priest?

Speaker 4 He was a very holy guy, so I knew it was like the Lord put it on his heart.

Speaker 5 Was he a Catholic, too? Uh-huh. Yeah.

Speaker 4 This was right after church on Monday, one of the days. First days I went there, I went to Mass, and he was there.

Speaker 5 And so the first words out of his mouth are...

Speaker 4 You're thinking about being a priest, aren't you?

Speaker 4 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 4 You know, I think that there's 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.

Speaker 4 We just got to open our eyes, get out of our little bubble. We also got to be bold.
You know,

Speaker 4 I think at the very beginning, we talked about boundaries and saying no. We've talked about it outside, too.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We need to be aware of how he's working in us and like be bold bold in the way we talk. Like you can say some stuff that's going to be awkward.
It's going to hurt.

Speaker 4 It's going to be not going to be comfortable, but it's what needs to be said.

Speaker 4 That's a terrifying thing.

Speaker 4 So yeah, so he, that was, that was an example of like all these, I say little things, they were big things, but they just kept adding up one after another.

Speaker 4 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 like a state,

Speaker 4 the geographical region of a group of churches would be called a diocese, which is what we call it.

Speaker 4 So I contact the area where I live in Little Rock and tell them, hey, I'm interested, you know, being a priest. Can I come visit and talk to you guys?

Speaker 4 So I flew back and just visited with them, went to visit the seminary. And that kind of sealed the deal.

Speaker 4 Once I came and met with the bishop and everything and then visited the seminaries, I was like, this is cool.

Speaker 4 As much fun as I was having in the military, I had so, so much fun. You know, I enjoyed going back in.
It'd be fun to do it again, you know?

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But the peace and that joy, that's a deeper thing. And I experienced it.
And I was like, okay, this is it. And I went into seminary.
That was 2008.

Speaker 5 No hesitations.

Speaker 4 No, not really. I mean,

Speaker 4 once I connected all the little dots and all the

Speaker 4 little invitations became the big invitation from God, I was like,

Speaker 4 why wait?

Speaker 4 Should get off the pot.

Speaker 4 Okay, well, God, if you're this clear with me,

Speaker 4 why would I wait? No need to sit around and say,

Speaker 4 he loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not.

Speaker 4 he's called you stephen so go and drop my nets and and went it was fun

Speaker 5 is there any hesit was there any hesitation that you could not have a intimate relationship with a woman

Speaker 4 yeah

Speaker 4 it was there yeah definitely and and and it's so yeah so we we don't get married we we give our life completely to the church and also part of that is like intentionally to pref like to prefigure to live now what life will be like in heaven like where we're it's just us and the lord like that radical intimate relationship with the lord alone you know um

Speaker 4 but yeah no that thought definitely went through my mind and it's it's probably harder now than it was then

Speaker 4 i don't mean hard like in a way that's creating a crisis but like all of my buddies i have kids and kids and stuff you know and so like i'll see them and

Speaker 4 in 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.

Speaker 4 You know, I want to go make babies or something. But it's just like, it's written on the heart.
It's, it's, we were made for that, which is why, like, the desire is there. So it's good.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So, yeah, that's your question.
It definitely came.

Speaker 4 But, and, you know, 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, they say their idos,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 but like you can it's like wow like she's pretty or like he's a handsome guy

Speaker 4 but the commitment's been made so that's kind of what it's like for me now like 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 like well no already made my free yes to her.

Speaker 5 Interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 5 What was seminary school like?

Speaker 4 That was some of the best years of my life.

Speaker 4 My whole life has been fun. It's been a kick in the face every day.

Speaker 5 What's the average age of

Speaker 4 the

Speaker 5 student body?

Speaker 4 Yeah, so we were, some guys were 18 right out of high school.

Speaker 4 18? Yeah, right out of high school.

Speaker 4 Just going straight into seminary. Some guys, like me, you know, early 20s, just in the military.
But as you know, I mean, it doesn't matter what job you do. Like, you grew up fast in the military.

Speaker 4 So, you know, a lot of life experience there in the military.

Speaker 4 Up to

Speaker 4 40s, some guys in their early 40s,

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 I'd say, 18 out of high school up to late 30s. So it's an eight-year process,

Speaker 4 four years of philosophy and four years of theology. I did my philosophy in Louisiana.
You read that at the beginning. I was at St.
Joseph Seminary

Speaker 4 in Covington, Louisiana with the Benedictine monks.

Speaker 4 That was a cool place.

Speaker 4 Cajun country. Have you been to southern Louisiana?

Speaker 5 Only once. Some cool people.
This is fishing down there.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's fun. I went alligator hunting there a year ago.

Speaker 4 You need to go. It's so fun.

Speaker 5 How do you alligator hunt?

Speaker 4 I use my bow.

Speaker 4 You

Speaker 4 put an arrow at the base of their skull or a pistol. You can use a pistol if you want.
Bam. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 4 Those things are mean.

Speaker 4 They just wake up pissed.

Speaker 4 They're dinosaurs. But yeah, so southern Louisiana.
That's where Theo Vaughn's from.

Speaker 5 He's from Southern Louisiana.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 He is a cool dude.

Speaker 4 Maybe we'll all get, let's all go alligator hunting together. Let's do it.

Speaker 5 That would be fun.

Speaker 4 Down there with the Benedictine monks, you know, so cool. They had this big old monastery.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But that was fun, man. Studying philosophy was fun.
I fell in love with education. I fell in love with learning.

Speaker 4 So it was fun to study the philosophy, fun to be with those guys. But it was fun to be at that place, you know, with the monks.
The motto for the Benedictines is

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.
And there's a lot of freedom in that.

Speaker 4 Then you don't get lost in this other

Speaker 4 stuff. One of the

Speaker 4 good people, too. Most of the guys there were from

Speaker 4 Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Georgia. Just good old boys, a bunch of foreign boys and stuff.
We would do a...

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We'd go out, scout for trees, cut the trees down,

Speaker 4 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 feet, 33 feet tall.

Speaker 5 Massive ice.

Speaker 4 So the day starts,

Speaker 4 we have mass. All of us have mass together at midday.
Then we go out and play a football game.

Speaker 4 And then after that, we just have a big meal and light the fire. It's really cool.

Speaker 4 The seniors are the ones that light the fire. We all go out.

Speaker 4 The seniors, when you're a senior, everyone marches out in this line with these big torches and then you put it in and then just hang out until

Speaker 4 the next morning.

Speaker 5 Do you learn the history of the Catholic Church? Yeah.

Speaker 5 Where did it start?

Speaker 4 We believe with Peter, right? Peter and the disciples. Yeah, so with Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 Short answer.

Speaker 5 Can you go into the long answer?

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 the beautiful thing about

Speaker 4 the Catholic Church is

Speaker 4 the important thing

Speaker 4 that we really focus on is apostolic succession, meaning like coming from the apostles. So Jesus comes.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And he gave them gifts, an anointing, to continue all the things that he did. That's the, you know, the apostles, the 12 disciples.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Am I saying that all of them are good? No, they were like corrupt times in the church. But that doesn't take away from the fact that

Speaker 4 people can be corrupt while the institution still maintains its dignity. And so, although,

Speaker 4 you know, we've had some good popes, we've had some bad pops, we've had good Christians and bad Christians, you know, everything in between. But

Speaker 4 so it comes back to apostolic succession, you know,

Speaker 4 just that line of popes. And then the people who were in the world.

Speaker 5 So Peter was the first pope, the apostle. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And then now, like, apostolic union,

Speaker 4 it's like

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Who he followed Pope Benedict, who followed John Paul II, who followed John Paul I, and then

Speaker 4 Paul VI, and then John the 23rd, and all the way back.

Speaker 4 And so we go back to that, to the lineage of the popes. And then under them would be all the bishops

Speaker 4 who are in communion with the pope.

Speaker 4 And then under the popes or the bishops would be all the priests who take care of all the faithful around the world.

Speaker 4 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 the souls. Like there's somebody spiritually

Speaker 4 designated to somebody 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.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 responsible for taking care of the Catholics at the church, but also every other soul that lives in my area.

Speaker 4 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, in my area?

Speaker 4 And so it's like, this spiritual authority, we pray and make sacrifices for them and try to bring them to Jesus Christ.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 yeah.

Speaker 4 That was one of the things that really opened my eyes up to the universality of the church. That's a big thing.

Speaker 4 Catholic in the small C, like the big capital C, Catholic, refers to like the Catholic Church, but

Speaker 4 means universal.

Speaker 4 It's like worldwide, you say that.

Speaker 4 But what does that mean?

Speaker 4 My theology, after I finished seminary in Louisiana, went to Rome. I was in Rome for four years, which was a phenomenal experience.

Speaker 4 And I really had a universal experience or an experience of the universal church, people from all over the world.

Speaker 4 I did my graduate studies and theology at the Gregorian University. It's a university that was founded in 1551 by St.
Ignatius of Loyola. So to go to a seminary that's that old, 500 years old,

Speaker 4 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 like the the classmate one of my classmates was from from iraq just miles we were miles apart and then we were sitting inches apart a little bit later uh and like little things like that

Speaker 4 i keep saying little things that's a very big thing but it's those things that really shows the greatness of our of our of our god and like the plan of all this like it's there's so much

Speaker 4 so much to unpack.

Speaker 4 It's a big deal.

Speaker 5 When did the

Speaker 5 so the so the first pope was Peter the Apostle?

Speaker 5 When did the when did the Bible come in?

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 like the canon, as we have it, that's what that's what we would call it, the canon of scriptures, like one of the official books of the Bible.

Speaker 4 It wasn't until around probably the three and four hundreds christianity wasn't legalized until 313.

Speaker 4 um so even before then it was illegal to be a christian so they were killing people left and right they didn't even have the bible before then so it's around the three and uh really into the 400s not until the 400s that the actual canon of scripture as we have it now was was established um and so that in itself points out

Speaker 4 like apostolic succession. You know,

Speaker 4 a lot of people talk about just scripture only.

Speaker 4 Like, yeah, of course, we made the scripture, but I can't make the only thing because, like, that was the fruit of the community's relationship with God.

Speaker 4 And so, that would that call in tradition. So, script Catholics, for our authority, we don't just refer to the Bible, but we also refer to or make reference to tradition as well.

Speaker 4 So, scripture and tradition is how we

Speaker 4 you know, where we go to for authority.

Speaker 4 Um,

Speaker 4 so

Speaker 4 yeah, so so the Bible, 400s

Speaker 4 or so.

Speaker 5 Does the Bible mention the Catholic Church at all?

Speaker 4 No, there's no reference to any of them. But

Speaker 4 there really wasn't an understanding of the Catholic Church as it is now. I mean,

Speaker 4 there was. But it wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that

Speaker 4 there were other sects

Speaker 4 that then broke off, you know, Protestantism. than all the different churches that flow out of Protestantism.

Speaker 4 Okay. Yeah.
So up until then, like, like, if you were a Christian, you were Catholic.

Speaker 4 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And even, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Okay. Up until the 1500s, so was you were if you were a Christian, that's that's what you were.

Speaker 5 Catholic.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 5 one of the one of the big questions I have about the Catholic Church is kind of like the middleman.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 5 I'm no biblical scholar, so it's just, it's just questions. But,

Speaker 5 you know, when Jesus roamed the earth,

Speaker 5 it seemed like everybody had direct line into him. He didn't really have to go through anybody.

Speaker 5 And it seemed to me that it was preaching that everybody has a direct relationship with God.

Speaker 5 And so,

Speaker 5 Everything seemed very against the Pharisees, right? Which is a, which is what, like a rank structure of

Speaker 5 humans to God, correct? But that would be

Speaker 5 fair to say. And so

Speaker 5 it seems like to me,

Speaker 5 it's very similar to the Catholic Church.

Speaker 4 The Pharisees?

Speaker 4 Yes. Okay.

Speaker 5 Am I wrong?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So how do we maintain this physical relationship with Jesus Christ? It's through the church that he established, and particularly through the sacraments that are administered through that church.

Speaker 4 So whenever the Catholic Church, one of the things that

Speaker 4 we talk about all the time, it's

Speaker 4 the meat and potatoes. It's what it is.
It's the sacraments. So

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 a valid bishop who is in communion with the Pope.

Speaker 4 And he would be in communion with all the popes before him, which takes us back to the lineage of back to this on the line, back to Jesus Christ. So what he handed on, they handed on.

Speaker 4 Jesus walked and talked with the apostles, spent time with them, touched them.

Speaker 4 They called their successors, spent time with him, walked with them, put their hands on them

Speaker 4 for the ordinations. That's continued for all the ordinations to the priesthood and the episcopacy to be a bishop to now.

Speaker 4 All validly ordained bishops have been consecrated by a bishop that came before them. All priests are validly ordained by a a bishop that was validly ordained.
And so there's an actual physical touch.

Speaker 4 Like when the bishop put his hands on my head and anointed my hands at ordination, there's an actual concrete physical touch that like one hand to the next,

Speaker 4 2,000 years. That's pretty cool.
And so

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 If you're

Speaker 4 earlier, we talked about like going to the mountains and how that'd be be hard for you to go for a week.

Speaker 4 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 him.

Speaker 4 So if you were around the world,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 There has to be physical touch, which is why God became man. Like, because to

Speaker 4 save us completely,

Speaker 4 God's not, he's not removed from this experience that we have.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So for me, like, that's one of the most convicting things of the church. I mean, yeah, I've studied all the theology.
You know, it's just, there's so much there.

Speaker 4 I can, you know, I remember a lot of it. What I don't remember, I can easily look up.
But like, the reason I'm sticking with it is because it's so damn real.

Speaker 4 There's a physical touch to Jesus Christ through this faith that I'm living.

Speaker 5 What is the physical touch?

Speaker 4 Through the sacraments. In the sacraments, Jesus Christ is truly present in the sacraments.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We believe and we live around the fact that that's the body and blood, the soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 the Eucharist can only be celebrated again through a priest who's been ordained.

Speaker 4 The whole line that I pointed out a second ago

Speaker 4 can't

Speaker 4 just be Joe Schmo that does it.

Speaker 4 It's got to be someone who is in communion with the church.

Speaker 4 That's the kind of the tradition element. It's handed on.

Speaker 4 I don't know if that makes sense.

Speaker 4 What are all the sacraments? You've got seven of them. The first is baptism.
That's what cleanses, washes us of original sin, makes us beloved sons and daughters of God.

Speaker 4 We're no longer just a creature of God, but we're a son and daughter that's greatly loved. Welcome into his family.

Speaker 4 After that, you've got the, you know, 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.

Speaker 4 John 6, you know,

Speaker 4 we can go and read about that.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 Like

Speaker 4 at no point does he say,

Speaker 4 I'm just the image of,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And so like what he handed on was the Eucharist

Speaker 4 in that.

Speaker 4 Paul speaks of that. Take this.
This is my body. Take this.
This is my blood. Take and eat, take and drink um

Speaker 4 so it would be asinine for jesus to say you have no life in me unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood and he doesn't make that possible

Speaker 4 so we got the eucharist that's the second one the third one is the comp is confirmation it's where we receive the the fullness of the gifts of the holy spirit um

Speaker 4 in baptism we receive god's god's love god's you know 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.

Speaker 4 You get them at baptism,

Speaker 4 but then

Speaker 4 after all your training, then you know how to actually shoot them. You know how to use them.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So then

Speaker 4 you have the sacrament of reconciliation.

Speaker 4 through which our sins are forgiven. There's a lot of people who argue with this one or say, well, I can just go to God and tell God I'm sorry.
Like, yeah, you can. You should.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Because we are people of community, there is necessarily

Speaker 4 like

Speaker 4 the healing for any wrong that we do, sin, must have a communal element to it because it affects the community.

Speaker 4 And so that's where, 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.

Speaker 4 I absolve you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 the very minister of God's sacraments

Speaker 4 in the name of Christ, on behalf of the community, like grants that pardon for the communal element. So that's the sacrament of reconciliation.

Speaker 4 We've got the sacrament of anointing of the sick. So whenever people are sick, physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, there's an

Speaker 4 anointing that we'll give them with some sacred oils, pray some prayers over them. James talks about that later James,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So you're not just suffering, you know, a depression or a physical ailment or whatever. But now through that suffering, you're united to Christ.
So therefore, your suffering is saving souls.

Speaker 4 Like 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.

Speaker 4 So then you become, 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

Speaker 4 the last two, and this isn't, they're not in order, numerical order like this, but the last two I'd mentioned would be the sacraments of marriage or holy orders.

Speaker 4 Or what? Holy orders, priesthood. Okay.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So

Speaker 4 both of those are sacraments of a vocation or calling. What they do is commit us to

Speaker 4 a way of life. It makes us, it gives us a vow.

Speaker 4 And so

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 a civil contract does not

Speaker 4 bind that. You know, there is a binding element within that, but it's through the sacrament that it it becomes a

Speaker 4 supernaturally bound vow. Okay, so husband and wife, for example, or a priest, I guess, you know, until death do his part.

Speaker 4 So the sacraments, you mentioned through all those,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 in a very distinct way through the baptism, the anointing of the sick, through confirmation,

Speaker 4 through the holy orders,

Speaker 4 priesthood and ordination. But there's an interesting thing with the Eucharist.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 With the Eucharist, the presence remains in the bread. The presence remains in the wine.
It's been consecrated.

Speaker 4 It becomes the body and blood of Christ, which is why all churches, Catholic churches, keep a tabernacle where we keep the Eucharist kept under like a lock and key because it's a sacred thing.

Speaker 4 We don't want people to, you know, do anything with it, you know,

Speaker 4 anything sacrilegious with it or anything like that.

Speaker 4 That presence remains. And,

Speaker 4 yeah.

Speaker 5 Interesting.

Speaker 4 Sacraments.

Speaker 5 So when somebody wants forgiveness.

Speaker 5 Why do they have to go through a priest to get that forgiveness?

Speaker 4 Good question.

Speaker 4 It would be what I referenced earlier:

Speaker 4 one for the communal element, like the sin that's been done,

Speaker 4 it affects the whole family, even if it's a private sin.

Speaker 4 But then also just the surety of hearing the forgiveness, of knowing that

Speaker 4 the Lord's forgiveness.

Speaker 4 Wish I could explain it better

Speaker 4 in that regard.

Speaker 5 Do you think God forgives if they

Speaker 5 are truly sorry and they don't go through a priest?

Speaker 4 Yeah, nothing prevents God from forgiving us.

Speaker 4 How would you know, though? Like,

Speaker 4 that's a very simple answer. And it's not like I'm not trying to make a cop-out answer or something, but like,

Speaker 4 what's the surety of it that it's been forgiven? You know, we can pray it and we can believe it.

Speaker 4 Like, how do we know it? Of course, we can have faith that we're forgiven, but what's the actual physical guarantee? It gets to bring it back to the flesh.

Speaker 4 What's the actual physical guarantee that it's been forgiven? Because you can pray about it and it still kind of will linger in your head. Like, well, you know, what if I wasn't?

Speaker 4 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 soul.

Speaker 4 Like, He wants to save, at the end of time, we'll be raised up, body and soul.

Speaker 5 But aren't we already free from, I mean, aren't we already forgiven before we even commit them? I mean, that's, isn't that the whole reason that Jesus died on the cross?

Speaker 4 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. Like, it's one definitive moment when we're all forgiven.

Speaker 4 It's been done.

Speaker 4 It was a concrete moment in space and time 2,000 years ago.

Speaker 4 It's also a supernatural reality that's still being played out every moment. We are being forgiven.
Like the very fact that we're being held into existence is by God's sheer act of mercy and love.

Speaker 4 It's his grace that keeps us alive. So we have been forgiven that actual event 2,000 years ago.
We are being forgiven like constantly because we're not worthy to live.

Speaker 4 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 like at the final judgment.

Speaker 4 So it's like all three can be true, which then just reveals to us like

Speaker 4 layers. You were asking earlier about angels and stuff like that.
There's a lot of layers.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of layers. We can compartmentalize a lot of things in life, but you can't compartmentalize like...

Speaker 5 What do you mean layers?

Speaker 4 I mean like

Speaker 4 angels. So we got the physical realm around us,

Speaker 4 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. And

Speaker 4 Like what?

Speaker 4 Just spiritual warfare.

Speaker 4 You know, Satan and all of his angels and all of our angels.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of forces at play.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 There's got to be something more.

Speaker 4 There has to be something more than us just

Speaker 4 living our 80 years and then dying after 80 or 90, you know, whatever, 60.

Speaker 4 And that gives meaning to life. That's why we struggle.
That's why.

Speaker 5 What are they doing in this room?

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 4 What do you think they're doing?

Speaker 5 How do you envision it? I mean, are they just sitting there chilling?

Speaker 4 No, envision like all the demons, like just trying to get us off path, anything that they can do to get us off track,

Speaker 4 to create us to sin, to create more doubt in who God is, to have more pride, to

Speaker 4 be more independent. And what I mean is like not depending on God.
So

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It's all about ordering everything to God.

Speaker 4 That's what it means to live a virtuous life and

Speaker 4 struggle for holiness every day.

Speaker 5 Do they interacting with each other?

Speaker 4 Angels and demons? Mm-hmm. That's a

Speaker 4 it's a battle. I mean, we would see them,

Speaker 4 but also like, you know, 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.
Like, it's, it's, they're not bound by space and time.

Speaker 4 And so they don't like sit around a desk and try to like negotiate. Like we can't even fathom

Speaker 4 what that battle looks like.

Speaker 4 Sparks going against each other. I don't know.
But it's just like there's two forces

Speaker 4 pulling this world and everything in it two different directions.

Speaker 4 Good and bad, light and dark, heaven or hell, whatever you want to call it. Like there's there's two forces that are at play.

Speaker 4 Even for someone that doesn't believe in God or doesn't want to believe in anything, any kind of higher power, like if you are like somewhat conscious and somewhat aware of life in the world, like

Speaker 4 you would

Speaker 4 agree that there's like

Speaker 4 there's a tension here, there's got to be something,

Speaker 4 it's got to be more than what we're just seeing, and there's a constant pull between just good and bad.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 5 I wish I could explain it better.

Speaker 5 How is the Pope chosen?

Speaker 4 Through

Speaker 4 it's the

Speaker 4 conclave, that's what it's called. And

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 the Pope is determined.

Speaker 4 But it's through a voting process of the different cardinals.

Speaker 4 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, St.

Speaker 4 Peter's Square, probably even 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,

Speaker 4 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 in the Sistine Chapel.

Speaker 4 They vote, and then the smoke will come out, either the black or the white smoke. Whenever you get the white smoke comes,

Speaker 4 it means that, you know, a pope has been elected. So we're all out there when hanging up, hanging around, just waiting.
Because

Speaker 4 they meet in the morning and then they meet in the evening.

Speaker 4 And they continue to meet and vote until the Pope is elected. And then the white smoke will come whenever they choose one.
So we knew they were meeting that evening and it went late.

Speaker 4 So we're like, something's going on. And finally, the white smoke comes and it just, it went crazy.
And I mean, so much energy.

Speaker 4 and then he comes out he gives this initial greeting it was a really cool thing and he said you know like something along these lines i'm you know i'm your holy father like i'm i'm the new pope but

Speaker 4 like i'm just paraphrasing it basically if you want me to like i need your prayers so before i can even start this ministry to pray for you and lead you you got to pray for me uh so we'll just do this do this right now and so

Speaker 4 Like there was dead silence. You could hear a pin drop.
It was crazy. Everyone was just praying.
And then, yeah, so I was there for that.

Speaker 4 But it was through the process of the cardinals coming together from all over the world, and

Speaker 4 they'll cast their ballots until

Speaker 4 a number is like until one is chosen.

Speaker 4 I don't know if it's 50 plus one or if there's going to be a percentage, 80% or something.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 4 That's not my pay grade.

Speaker 5 What was Vatican II?

Speaker 4 That was the Second Vatican Council.

Speaker 4 It was in the 60s.

Speaker 4 The whole

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 the bishops and the cardinals and some representatives, labor representatives

Speaker 4 of Catholics from all over the world that come together for a number of years and with the goal of

Speaker 4 identifying the needs of the times and

Speaker 4 essentially kind of laying out what's going to be the next steps forward. Realizing that scripture and tradition, we're going to that again.
We have to follow the word of God. Nothing that we can do,

Speaker 4 that we do can contradict the word of God.

Speaker 4 But also the way that we're living is not the way that we were living 2,000 years ago. So

Speaker 4 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 you use Google?

Speaker 4 Do you use Gemini or do you use Copilot or Claude? What do you use?

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 AI or anything like that, because

Speaker 4 that could have been around. But

Speaker 4 the point I'm making is like, We have to address things now that weren't issues a thousand years ago, that weren't an issue 20 years ago.

Speaker 4 So this was in the 60s.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Does that kind of make sense?

Speaker 4 Yeah, so it was a gathering of.

Speaker 5 What were some of those issues?

Speaker 4 Let's see, there were.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 in some ways, like too many priests were getting, you know, a big head, getting power hungry. And so it's like, well, hold on.
Like, you are the priest. You have been ordained for this.
This is true.

Speaker 4 But also, you got to recognize that your flock have a voice as well. So recognizing the role of the faithful.

Speaker 4 That was one of the biggest things from Second Vatican Council. There's a million different, I say a million, not a million.

Speaker 4 There were a bunch of different things that came up, but the shortest, most concise way of putting it is like

Speaker 4 it was addressing

Speaker 4 how priests

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 recognizing that we have a job to preach the gospel to all people.

Speaker 4 So it was calling us, telling us to do our work.

Speaker 4 And 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.

Speaker 4 That's kind of the shortest way of putting it.

Speaker 4 But it

Speaker 4 recognizes the needs of the time.

Speaker 4 That's kind of a simple way of putting it. Some other things were like liturgical reforms.

Speaker 4 The Mass used to always be completely in Latin.

Speaker 4 Part of some of the changes were doing some of the stuff in the vernacular, which means the language that the people speak.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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, you know, whatever language they understand.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's basically coming to the times with the gospel, the gospel that doesn't change.

Speaker 4 bringing that gospel to the people today and the questions that they have.

Speaker 5 What do you think about some of the traditions that are changing

Speaker 5 in the Catholic Church? Can you are they taking kneelers out?

Speaker 4 Some are you know, what's really cool is like there's a resurgence in those part of there was a

Speaker 4 one of the unfortunate things Second Vatican Council is there were some

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 So they stripped their churches, like got rid of all the, all, all these traditions, like the nailers, for example, that or music or art,

Speaker 4 took

Speaker 4 terrible liberties to interpret the stuff that they wanted to, the way they wanted to interpret it.

Speaker 4 And it went to an extreme. So what we're seeing now is like, so for example, the liturgies,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 What we're seeing now, though, is like more people are coming back to those traditions of saying, like, there is a social element, but it's got to be a sacred moment.

Speaker 4 If we want to hang out and just listen to fun music, we can put on iTunes or something or Spotify.

Speaker 4 Or if 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.

Speaker 4 So people are putting the kneelers back in,

Speaker 4 bringing sacred music back.

Speaker 5 I mean, who's making these decisions?

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 if this goes all the way back to Peter,

Speaker 5 the apostle, and he set the traditions, and he was,

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 5 next to Jesus, then who are these new people 2,000 years later that are

Speaker 5 making up their own rules, going, oh, we don't need this anymore.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Get rid of that.
Well, that would be

Speaker 4 some of the priests or the bishops that were just doing what they want and not following the tradition. So they weren't doing what the church was teaching in those moments.
It was just disobedience.

Speaker 4 There's really no other answer to it other than that. Just like they like they weren't doing what they were told to do.

Speaker 5 Are there evil forces at play within the church to take those traditions?

Speaker 4 Oh, I think so.

Speaker 4 I think so. I mean,

Speaker 4 we're all sinners. We're all broken people.
Some people are intentionally,

Speaker 4 some people, all of us mess up.

Speaker 4 Some people are like intentionally acting badly, you know,

Speaker 4 against those.

Speaker 4 Um, I don't have a

Speaker 4 lot of experience, you know, with that. Like, that,

Speaker 4 you know, let me make a couple. So, like, I was in Rome for four years.
I was at the Vatican all the time.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I've never met anyone that's like intentionally trying trying to burn the place down.

Speaker 4 There are, but there

Speaker 4 are, you know, who are they? I don't know who they are, but

Speaker 4 I'm not going to be naive and say they don't exist.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But they're coming to light.

Speaker 4 Everything comes to the light. So they exist, but

Speaker 4 the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Speaker 4 Scripture says.

Speaker 5 I have to change the subject but I forgot when did you wind up on the the ninja border show

Speaker 4 for like emplacing or what or yeah yeah so it did it twice 2018 2020 I didn't I didn't make it through the first round

Speaker 4 They just invited me on. I was like, well, sure, why not?

Speaker 4 I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but

Speaker 4 just, I gave it a shot. It It was fun.
One of them was in Dallas. The other one was in St.
Louis. You know, cool thing about that, like you mentioned the Instagram page earlier.

Speaker 4 I don't put a lot of ministry stuff on there. It's not like I'm hiding the priesthood.
It's actually like quite the opposite. I don't put a lot of pastoral ministry out there because

Speaker 4 the souls of the people that I'm with are sacred.

Speaker 4 Your soul is sacred, John. Like mine is.
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,

Speaker 4 a sheep of my flock, I take that seriously. And so like, I don't put that stuff on social media.
Like I'll share some stuff every day, like some school stuff. I'll share some things with the school,

Speaker 4 other things in ministry, but it's not a, 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.

Speaker 4 So the neat thing with the ninja warrior, I did that. I got a lot of pushback from people, a whole bunch of pushback.

Speaker 4 from who um priests some other priests why um for lay also some of the people in the church as well because it wasn't a holy thing like you should be doing holy stuff like praying or you know 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 like this connected the vatican ii stuff we got to be in the world but not of it.

Speaker 4 We have to go out and preach the gospel boldly. So I did the, I ran the course of my clerics just like this.

Speaker 4 They had a little clip on there that told a little bit of my story. You know, I crashed and burned.
You know, so that was whatever. That, that doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 But people saw a priest doing something that they don't see a priest doing.

Speaker 4 And you would not believe how many phone calls and emails I got.

Speaker 4 Not people to say, hey, congratulations, good job. Or like, oh, you're a loser.
You fell in the water. But calling to say, like, calling, sending emails, sending letters in the regular mail.

Speaker 4 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, I saw you on TV.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Um, it's fun watching Ninja Warrior with my kids, but uh, it, I'm always thinking about this trauma from my childhood. Like, how can I get healing from that?

Speaker 4 And so, by me doing that, it opened up a lot of avenues of communication with people, which is really cool.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Same thing with like fitness and the hunting stuff. Those are two things.
I love CrossFit, love hunting. And I share those stories and it's the exact same thing.

Speaker 5 Well, I mean, I think what's cool is, I mean, we talked about the masculinity stuff a little bit, but I think what's cool is you're showing that you're

Speaker 5 a regular person and

Speaker 5 you're with the people, you're competing, you're working out, you're hunting, you're doing all these things. And you just mentioned, you know, a lot of the priests that put themselves on a pedestal.

Speaker 5 And I think that, I think that, I don't think, I know that kind of stuff turns a lot of people away.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 when you see somebody who is out there in the community

Speaker 4 with people

Speaker 5 doing

Speaker 5 shit that people like to do, I mean, it, it makes you, it humanizes you. It makes you an approachable person.

Speaker 5 It's, it makes you somebody that people can relate to something to strike up a conversation about something other than

Speaker 5 the catholic church and i think that's important yeah and um i mean

Speaker 5 in and up i mean you just said it it works yeah i mean jesus was out with the people right exactly so why aren't on 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 you know we got to

Speaker 4 get in the trenches with the people, you know. And, um, and if I'm going to preach effectively, like, I got to know what they're living.
I got to be with them out there.

Speaker 4 You know, like you just said, that's what Jesus Christ did.

Speaker 4 This God who's 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.

Speaker 4 Like he was, he did miracles, yeah, but also he walked and talked with them.

Speaker 4 He had to have cut up, you know, with them. Jonathan Rumi, um,

Speaker 4 uh, he's, he's, he's just the the chosen. Have you seen the TV series? I heard of that.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 there's a lot of stuff in that show that's not in the Bible, but it's plausible.

Speaker 4 He's joking around with them. That stuff, I think, really happened, even if it's not in scripture.
Jesus, they had to cut up. They had to joke around, you know.

Speaker 4 Sure, they got, you know, ate some, you know, I don't know, roasted lamb or something, got heartburn or, you know, wasn't cooked enough and diarrhea or something. I don't know.

Speaker 4 But like, we're humans, you know, and

Speaker 4 we just got to continue that with administration, you know.

Speaker 5 What are your thoughts on

Speaker 5 we have a huge veteran audience? There's a suicide epidemic going on, it's like up to 40 something a day.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 5 what are your thoughts on suicide?

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 um,

Speaker 4 It's uh

Speaker 4 I got a lot of thoughts.

Speaker 4 Like I don't

Speaker 4 There's a lot to unpack here. Um first of all, no one commits suicide because things are going alright.
No one does that because

Speaker 4 because life is worth living, right?

Speaker 4 So there's they're they're broken. There's a lot going on there.

Speaker 4 Internally, there's also problems externally, support systems that are not in place that should be.

Speaker 4 So I recognize that element of it.

Speaker 4 But also, like,

Speaker 4 and this is like, I'm not saying this lightly, and I don't want any listener to take it lightly or anything, but like, I think it's a cowardly thing to do.

Speaker 4 They've got so many burdens that are pushing them into the grave, and they want to.

Speaker 4 Like, it's just almost too much to bear.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 I don't know. Like, it, it, it's just a

Speaker 4 complicated thing to unpack. I've had, you know, people at the church commit suicide or family members, things like that.

Speaker 4 Not my own family members, but like family members, church people done funerals and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 It's tough, man. Like, I wish I could give an answer.
It's just,

Speaker 4 it's a messy thing.

Speaker 5 Do they go to heaven?

Speaker 4 God's grace

Speaker 5 is big.

Speaker 4 God's grace is big.

Speaker 4 God can get anyone to heaven that he wants to get to heaven.

Speaker 4 And in those situations,

Speaker 4 in years past,

Speaker 4 it's kind of like a thing from 2 Vatican Council. You asked me about that.
Like it was, if somebody committed suicide, it was immediately like,

Speaker 4 there was a teaching for a long time that they were just immediately condemned to hell because it was murder. You're murdering yourself.
Thou shalt not kill. And you've killed yourself.

Speaker 4 But the act of murder happened. Like you committed that act of murder, even if it was yourself.

Speaker 4 Now the church recognizes it's a lot more complicated than that. Now that we understand psychology and

Speaker 4 the human mind and everything.

Speaker 4 And so we recognize how God sees the brokenness in that person. And that's God's desire to save broken people.
You know,

Speaker 4 it's

Speaker 4 kind of hard to say that.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 make it an easy out for somebody.

Speaker 4 You know, and that's, that's,

Speaker 4 in some ways, like, I don't,

Speaker 4 this is something I'm struggling with.

Speaker 4 This may have come up on one of your recent episodes

Speaker 4 on this subject of, like, how do we

Speaker 4 talk about it

Speaker 4 in a way that doesn't give it a blessing, but like actually addresses the cause, you know?

Speaker 4 And in a way that doesn't create like a

Speaker 4 heroism in it. Does that, I don't know if if it makes sense.
I don't know.

Speaker 5 Man, I don't ever think anybody thinks there's heroism in it.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 No, yeah. And this is just a lack of words.

Speaker 5 I think you talk about the burden that's been passed on.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Because I think a lot of people

Speaker 5 do it

Speaker 5 because they feel like they are the burden.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And that's what needs to be addressed. Like, they're not.

Speaker 4 So how do we get to the heart of that?

Speaker 5 Like, it's a bigger burden yeah, kill yourself, yeah.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 even in my own life, like, I, this is not to the point of suicide, but like, I, one of the reasons we're talking earlier about boundaries and stuff, it's hard for me to ask for help because I don't want to be a burden.

Speaker 4 I grew up in a poor family, everything like 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.

Speaker 4 So, like, I can understand what it's like to

Speaker 4 like not want to burden somebody. Um,

Speaker 4 So how do we tell them like, you're not a burden, buddy? Like

Speaker 4 you're not a burden. 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.

Speaker 4 And I say screwed up in a loose way. So

Speaker 4 it's just a tough thing. People just want to be loved, man.
We just need to walk with people. You know, how do you, this goes, a lot of the stuff we were talking about earlier, man, I'm just,

Speaker 4 I'm trying to figure this thing out myself. I've been to a lot of school, I had a lot of experiences.
That don't mean I know what I'm doing.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And that just means like I have to be willing to sit with the uncomfortable stuff. So then how do we,

Speaker 4 I think that's where the, where we can improve of 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.

Speaker 4 And unfortunately, a bullet or appeal is often where the mind goes to.

Speaker 4 And gosh, 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.

Speaker 4 But how like somebody can be under the influence of something and you're not thinking clearly in that moment, you know?

Speaker 4 And it's so easy to make a permanent decision in that split second, you know, and

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Whatever we got to do, we'll do it.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 We don't like to ride things out.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But for us to just sit there in that,

Speaker 4 in that, in that tension, in those crosshairs, or that crossroads is

Speaker 4 not having an answer.

Speaker 4 I think that's where we start. Like, what does that look like? I don't know.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 it's a messy thing. I wish we didn't have it.
I wish suicide wasn't a thing. Yeah.
But it is. And it's hurt a lot of people.
Yes, it is.

Speaker 4 Anyway, yeah, anyone,

Speaker 4 if there's any way I can help anyone, you know, I know a ton of people listening to this.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Reach out. You know,

Speaker 4 like I just said, I can't answer anything. I can't be a savior, but I'll I got some regret and I'll just sit it out with you.

Speaker 5 Have you ever

Speaker 5 do do you think that your

Speaker 5 do you feel that your father or your sister has ever reached out spiritually to you?

Speaker 5 No. Have they ever tried to make contact?

Speaker 4 No, but I haven't paid attention to that. Someone asked me a similar question.
a few weeks ago. And before I'd never thought of that until they asked it.

Speaker 4 And I kind of forgot about it until just now you asked. so short answer is no

Speaker 4 i'm sure they have and i just wasn't paying attention or maybe they have and i was and i didn't know it was them

Speaker 5 well we're kind of wrapping up the interview here but i want to i want to i want to end on mayhem hunt

Speaker 4 what is it uh it's a it's a group of us just knuckleheads that like to work out and hunt.

Speaker 4 So Rich Froening, one of my best friends, he's big in the CrossFit world.

Speaker 4 Just lives up the road. Are you big in a CrossFit? No.

Speaker 4 Who's he?

Speaker 4 He's old and washed up now.

Speaker 4 No, no, he's still a

Speaker 4 fit guy, super strong.

Speaker 4 Him and a few of our best friends, we started hunting a number of years ago. We've always been passionate in fitness.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 from that,

Speaker 4 we just wanted to get more people

Speaker 4 ready to hunt. Hunting is a tough thing physically.
And so just creating a training program to do that. And it's still new.
We're still getting it off the ground and everything.

Speaker 4 But yeah, training program to get people ready to hunt.

Speaker 5 Mayhem Hunt.

Speaker 5 Right on. You're getting ready to do any big hunts?

Speaker 4 Yeah, this

Speaker 4 open to do a bear hunt this late summer or late spring.

Speaker 4 Then this fall I'll go El Cutting again by September. Probably Montana this year, maybe.

Speaker 5 Nice.

Speaker 4 I want to take you an alligator hunt. We're going to go alligator hunting.

Speaker 5 Let's do it.

Speaker 4 You and me and Theo Vaughn.

Speaker 5 Let's do it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the suicide thing. That's a tough one, man.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Like, I see it from both sides. Like,

Speaker 4 I understand that. I don't understand any other because I'm not in a situation, but from my perspective, I can see the broke.
I should have mentioned this in the talk or just a second ago.

Speaker 4 Like, I can see the side of the individual and their brokenness. Like, No one does that because things are fun, you know?

Speaker 4 But also I've been with the victims or the family, the families afterwards, and I see all the everything that they go through too. And I see that.
And it's like,

Speaker 4 it's just so much pain all around, you know.

Speaker 5 What do you think about

Speaker 5 what is purgatory?

Speaker 4 Yeah. So purgatory is like, we would believe whenever we die, before we have the full beatific vision,

Speaker 4 that's heaven, seeing God face to face, like

Speaker 4 we're still not

Speaker 4 worthy to be in the presence of God.

Speaker 4 Because we still have imperfections from this own life that

Speaker 4 have to be worked out.

Speaker 4 We have to be purified of.

Speaker 4 And so purgatory would be like that time that would...

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 5 So what happens there?

Speaker 5 Do they not talk about it at all?

Speaker 4 No, like, no, it do. It's just,

Speaker 4 I don't know, time of purification for any wrongdoers.

Speaker 4 I don't know. There's no like formal teaching of saying like, well, here's the protocols or here are the things that happen there.
I don't know.

Speaker 5 Is it like time limits?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because then you'd be out outside of time. Like it wouldn't be like the same time constraints that we have now.

Speaker 5 Interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I feel like a complete,

Speaker 4 I've had a bunch of schooling, I promise, but like I revert to farm boy. I wish I could give some better answers for a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 4 Like, I don't know. Mama just said go.
And so I'm doing it. Jesus said work.
And so I'm working.

Speaker 5 Right on.

Speaker 5 Well, Father, I appreciate you you coming. And

Speaker 5 it was, it was, it was an honor to interview you and get your story. And

Speaker 5 I just want to say, God bless.

Speaker 4 Thanks, Sean. How about you do it?