1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:13,520
Well, welcome everyone to another episode of Faithfully Engaged.

2
00:00:13,520 --> 00:00:17,760
Today, I've got a different kind of guest here today.

3
00:00:17,760 --> 00:00:20,020
I got a really interesting story with him.

4
00:00:20,020 --> 00:00:22,180
So I have Nathan Albertson today.

5
00:00:22,180 --> 00:00:28,540
He is a church planter with Church of the King in Evansville, Indiana and creative director

6
00:00:28,540 --> 00:00:34,760
of Warhorn Media for whom he produces and appears on several podcasts, including Sanity

7
00:00:34,760 --> 00:00:38,760
at the Movies, Sound of Sanity, The Booking and the Ville.

8
00:00:38,760 --> 00:00:41,880
So Nathan, it's great to have you on today.

9
00:00:41,880 --> 00:00:42,880
Great to be here.

10
00:00:42,880 --> 00:00:44,400
How are we doing, Johnny?

11
00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:45,400
Doing great.

12
00:00:45,400 --> 00:00:46,400
Doing great.

13
00:00:46,400 --> 00:00:52,000
Yeah, kind of back behind scenes there where we're dealing with not able to hear each

14
00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:53,000
other.

15
00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:55,480
So it's great to actually hear you and we're going to have this conversation.

16
00:00:55,480 --> 00:00:56,480
That's right.

17
00:00:56,480 --> 00:00:59,360
I could have a conversation.

18
00:00:59,360 --> 00:01:06,080
Johnny's eyes because if people don't know, he's got Frodo Baggins, baby blues.

19
00:01:06,080 --> 00:01:13,120
There should be lifeguards just to watch and make sure that I don't dive into his eyes.

20
00:01:13,120 --> 00:01:17,160
I'm a happily married conservative Christian man.

21
00:01:17,160 --> 00:01:21,840
But if people only get the audio version of this, so they only know Johnny through some

22
00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:27,040
sort of non-verbal or non-... You know what I'm saying?

23
00:01:27,040 --> 00:01:28,960
They don't see him visually.

24
00:01:28,960 --> 00:01:33,400
Then I just think that that's an important detail here because if I suddenly trail off

25
00:01:33,400 --> 00:01:36,600
or something, it's because I've been hypnotized by...

26
00:01:36,600 --> 00:01:44,520
I mean, I think this guy could start his counseling practice just all based on this natural attribute

27
00:01:44,520 --> 00:01:45,520
that he's been given.

28
00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:50,480
He barely needs to say anything, but I just want to make sure that people understand that

29
00:01:50,480 --> 00:01:53,440
if they're only listening to this podcast.

30
00:01:53,440 --> 00:01:55,920
I need to make that a part of my own intro.

31
00:01:55,920 --> 00:01:56,920
Beware of eyes.

32
00:01:56,920 --> 00:01:57,920
Beware of eyes.

33
00:01:57,920 --> 00:02:04,600
You should put that in the little thing that you send out to people, your email.

34
00:02:04,600 --> 00:02:05,600
That's fantastic.

35
00:02:05,600 --> 00:02:06,600
I love it.

36
00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:12,560
So, Nathan, tell us just a little bit about your podcasting career there.

37
00:02:12,560 --> 00:02:15,360
It sounds like you got your hands and quite a few projects there.

38
00:02:15,360 --> 00:02:18,440
So can I tell the audience a little bit about what you do there?

39
00:02:18,440 --> 00:02:19,440
Yes, sir.

40
00:02:19,440 --> 00:02:23,200
I am actually more or less a professional podcaster.

41
00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:27,960
You could read that blurb and people could be forgiven for thinking, oh, he's a guy on

42
00:02:27,960 --> 00:02:29,920
the internet that says that about himself.

43
00:02:29,920 --> 00:02:33,200
I mean, there's all kinds of guys on the internet that, I'm a creative writer.

44
00:02:33,200 --> 00:02:35,760
That doesn't mean you've actually published anything.

45
00:02:35,760 --> 00:02:40,000
That just means you put the words creative writer in your bio.

46
00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:44,720
Obviously, anybody can start a podcast, which is one of the joys of the medium.

47
00:02:44,720 --> 00:02:46,720
I'm not upset about that.

48
00:02:46,720 --> 00:02:49,360
At a certain point, I was just starting one.

49
00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:54,320
I want people to understand, I get paid to do this, baby.

50
00:02:54,320 --> 00:02:59,880
So yeah, I work, I am the creative director for a ministry called Warhorn Media.

51
00:02:59,880 --> 00:03:08,000
We exist to basically bring sanity to an insane world.

52
00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:10,160
That's kind of our byline.

53
00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:14,040
So we just want to exist in spaces.

54
00:03:14,040 --> 00:03:16,200
Oh boy, listen to me.

55
00:03:16,200 --> 00:03:23,720
We just want to exist in the spaces of basically we want to do, we do culture, we do pop culture,

56
00:03:23,720 --> 00:03:30,640
we do a lot of different podcasts, we do articles, we've done some videos, stuff.

57
00:03:30,640 --> 00:03:38,040
And the goal is to bring, as I say, just normalcy.

58
00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:39,160
Normal isn't normal anymore.

59
00:03:39,160 --> 00:03:47,120
So we just want to sort of let people bask in the joy of normal thoughts about sexuality,

60
00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:53,640
about other places where the Christian witness is under attack today.

61
00:03:53,640 --> 00:04:01,160
So we try not to be people that have a chip on our shoulders or anything like that.

62
00:04:01,160 --> 00:04:07,080
But we do kind of want to occupy those spaces where things feel a little danger and where

63
00:04:07,080 --> 00:04:12,960
people are tempted to feel insane precisely because they're sane, precisely because they're

64
00:04:12,960 --> 00:04:13,960
the normal ones.

65
00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:19,000
You know, they just believe what people have always believed about men and women or things

66
00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:20,240
like that.

67
00:04:20,240 --> 00:04:25,280
And you know, you can feel very crazy just being a Christian these days.

68
00:04:25,280 --> 00:04:28,000
So I occupy that space.

69
00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:30,760
Man, why do I keep saying occupy space?

70
00:04:30,760 --> 00:04:32,680
I do not care for that language at all.

71
00:04:32,680 --> 00:04:36,640
That's like corporate speak.

72
00:04:36,640 --> 00:04:38,280
Like Bob Iger or something like that.

73
00:04:38,280 --> 00:04:39,920
We're going to occupy the space.

74
00:04:39,920 --> 00:04:41,920
But I occupy that space.

75
00:04:41,920 --> 00:04:44,920
I don't know where that's coming from.

76
00:04:44,920 --> 00:04:45,920
It's those eyes.

77
00:04:45,920 --> 00:04:46,920
They're making me nervous.

78
00:04:46,920 --> 00:04:48,520
You're drowning, man.

79
00:04:48,520 --> 00:04:49,520
I'm drowning.

80
00:04:49,520 --> 00:04:50,520
I'm drowning.

81
00:04:50,520 --> 00:04:51,640
We need to send a lifeguard.

82
00:04:51,640 --> 00:04:58,880
But yeah, so I am also a church planter here with our head pastor, his name, Jacob Menzel.

83
00:04:58,880 --> 00:05:02,880
And he also appears on many podcasts with me.

84
00:05:02,880 --> 00:05:06,280
We kind of co-founded Warhorn Media together.

85
00:05:06,280 --> 00:05:11,160
So my day job is Warhorn Media, but I also preach and help out and do some counseling

86
00:05:11,160 --> 00:05:16,320
and stuff like that for our church plant.

87
00:05:16,320 --> 00:05:20,120
If people want to listen to my podcast, I'll just go ahead and slip a plug in there like

88
00:05:20,120 --> 00:05:22,320
a real pro.

89
00:05:22,320 --> 00:05:27,720
I do one called Sound of Sanity, which again just exists to bring biblical sanity to an

90
00:05:27,720 --> 00:05:28,720
insane world.

91
00:05:28,720 --> 00:05:32,840
The one that I'm actually most excited about right now is called Sanity at the Movies.

92
00:05:32,840 --> 00:05:37,520
And the reason that I'm excited about that is because it is the best Christian movie

93
00:05:37,520 --> 00:05:39,720
podcast ever made.

94
00:05:39,720 --> 00:05:41,400
So pretty easy to be excited about.

95
00:05:41,400 --> 00:05:46,600
It's something that's the best in its field, the Mona Lisa of Christian movie podcasts.

96
00:05:46,600 --> 00:05:51,160
And by the way, when I say Christian movie podcasts, I do not mean that we review terrible

97
00:05:51,160 --> 00:05:52,160
Christian movies.

98
00:05:52,160 --> 00:05:55,920
We're not doing God is not dead or something like that.

99
00:05:55,920 --> 00:05:57,520
Two or three or whatever.

100
00:05:57,520 --> 00:06:01,720
Or yeah, any movie about like a football coach who rediscovered his faith.

101
00:06:01,720 --> 00:06:04,800
We are not reviewing that.

102
00:06:04,800 --> 00:06:11,400
But we just, I encourage anyone with an interest in movies or culture or the world you live

103
00:06:11,400 --> 00:06:12,640
in to check that out.

104
00:06:12,640 --> 00:06:13,960
We do some recent releases.

105
00:06:13,960 --> 00:06:20,000
I mean, we'll be doing Flash and Oppenheimer and the new Indiana Jones and stuff like that.

106
00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:23,320
But we also do long form deep dives into classic films.

107
00:06:23,320 --> 00:06:29,280
I mean, could be Buster Keaton, could be Charlie Chaplin, could be The Godfather, could be

108
00:06:29,280 --> 00:06:32,280
Samurai films, Kurosawa.

109
00:06:32,280 --> 00:06:38,000
But we really just use the podcast as a springboard to talk about all kinds of like, we just recorded

110
00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:45,000
an episode on Rocky classic film, Adrian Rocky, but it hasn't come out yet.

111
00:06:45,000 --> 00:06:52,000
But we actually use it as a springboard somehow to talk about boxing and blood sports and

112
00:06:52,000 --> 00:07:00,200
the way that societies from like ancient Babylon on have used and abused the masculine urge

113
00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:05,280
to dominate and to defeat their enemies and the way that it's been gamified and what's

114
00:07:05,280 --> 00:07:07,320
good about that, what's bad about that.

115
00:07:07,320 --> 00:07:11,760
And I don't know that whether our views on that would be surprising or not surprising

116
00:07:11,760 --> 00:07:13,880
to your listeners, but I thought it was interesting.

117
00:07:13,880 --> 00:07:20,000
And we got there just in a little podcast, humble podcast about Rocky.

118
00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:22,240
Got all the way from Babylon to Muhammad Ali.

119
00:07:22,240 --> 00:07:26,240
So yeah, I encourage people to check that out.

120
00:07:26,240 --> 00:07:32,480
I know I realize someone on the internet talking about movies, not really all that exciting

121
00:07:32,480 --> 00:07:35,880
to just see that, but we're the best.

122
00:07:35,880 --> 00:07:38,000
So can't beat that.

123
00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:39,400
So there's my plug.

124
00:07:39,400 --> 00:07:40,640
I got it out of the way up front.

125
00:07:40,640 --> 00:07:42,280
I'm sorry to be such a crass.

126
00:07:42,280 --> 00:07:44,920
No, that's great.

127
00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:52,000
You know, I'm interested too, just with most of my audience is going to be of a Christian

128
00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:53,000
background.

129
00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:54,000
Sure.

130
00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:59,600
And there's the temptation for Christians, especially in today's world, as you mentioned,

131
00:07:59,600 --> 00:08:04,680
we're living in an insane world that I think it's always been insane.

132
00:08:04,680 --> 00:08:09,480
But boy, here recently, we've taken it to some new levels.

133
00:08:09,480 --> 00:08:12,360
And the temptation is, well, that's all bad.

134
00:08:12,360 --> 00:08:13,360
Okay.

135
00:08:13,360 --> 00:08:14,360
Agreed.

136
00:08:14,360 --> 00:08:21,600
So let's just run away, live under a rock and just watch civilization burn and not deal

137
00:08:21,600 --> 00:08:23,600
with it at all.

138
00:08:23,600 --> 00:08:30,360
And what would be your response to that type of mindset to just completely withdraw and

139
00:08:30,360 --> 00:08:32,880
not deal with the culture at all?

140
00:08:32,880 --> 00:08:38,080
Well, you can't unless you have a rocket ship and you can breathe oxygen on Mars and your

141
00:08:38,080 --> 00:08:40,200
rocket ship will get you to Mars.

142
00:08:40,200 --> 00:08:41,200
You can't.

143
00:08:41,200 --> 00:08:47,800
You can only say that you can, but you can't escape culture because you can't escape yourself

144
00:08:47,800 --> 00:08:51,800
and you can't escape the air that you breathe and culture.

145
00:08:51,800 --> 00:08:53,200
That's all culture really is.

146
00:08:53,200 --> 00:08:56,000
That's all pop culture really is, is just the air that you breathe.

147
00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:00,840
So I think Christians fall into a couple of basic errors when it comes to movies and

148
00:09:00,840 --> 00:09:02,200
entertainment.

149
00:09:02,200 --> 00:09:07,720
One thing is they, and this one was very popular back in the 80s and 90s when I was

150
00:09:07,720 --> 00:09:09,240
coming of age.

151
00:09:09,240 --> 00:09:13,840
They draw a line in the sand, you know, they say, we do not watch any R rated movies in

152
00:09:13,840 --> 00:09:20,080
our house or we do not watch any movies made after the year 1970 in our house or whatever

153
00:09:20,080 --> 00:09:21,080
it is.

154
00:09:21,080 --> 00:09:22,240
We only watch public.

155
00:09:22,240 --> 00:09:24,800
And that can work to a degree.

156
00:09:24,800 --> 00:09:28,680
You can, you can get rid of some bad stuff that way.

157
00:09:28,680 --> 00:09:34,280
And when you say leave the world, I think that's all it really ends up equating to is,

158
00:09:34,280 --> 00:09:38,640
is people draw a line and they say everything on this side of the line is worldly.

159
00:09:38,640 --> 00:09:41,440
Everything on this side of the line is okay.

160
00:09:41,440 --> 00:09:47,600
The problem with that again is the human heart and the fact that we live in a fallen world

161
00:09:47,600 --> 00:09:48,880
and guess what?

162
00:09:48,880 --> 00:09:56,160
There's lots of PG 13 movies that are filthy that require discernment and there might even

163
00:09:56,160 --> 00:09:58,880
be some good R rated ones, you know what I mean?

164
00:09:58,880 --> 00:10:03,360
And so like I grew up in kind of a homeschooling community and people wouldn't give themselves

165
00:10:03,360 --> 00:10:05,600
to any new art.

166
00:10:05,600 --> 00:10:08,440
You know, I can remember a family that just didn't watch movies.

167
00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:09,440
Guess what?

168
00:10:09,440 --> 00:10:13,600
They had books of Renaissance paintings and you could find naked ladies in those Renaissance

169
00:10:13,600 --> 00:10:18,720
painting books and you could be enticed by the naked ladies in those Renaissance painting

170
00:10:18,720 --> 00:10:19,720
books.

171
00:10:19,720 --> 00:10:22,960
You can read the work of Homer and it can fulfill your blood less.

172
00:10:22,960 --> 00:10:24,320
I'm not saying don't read Homer.

173
00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:30,440
I love Homer, but I'm just saying wickedness is all around us and what you have to do is

174
00:10:30,440 --> 00:10:32,800
actually have discernment.

175
00:10:32,800 --> 00:10:40,120
You can't just draw a line in the sand and say, well, okay, everything's good on this

176
00:10:40,120 --> 00:10:41,120
side.

177
00:10:41,120 --> 00:10:42,120
Everything's bad on that side.

178
00:10:42,120 --> 00:10:48,360
If you just were to lock yourself in a bunker and it was just you and your spouse and your

179
00:10:48,360 --> 00:10:55,120
kids, there would be five sinners in that bunker.

180
00:10:55,120 --> 00:11:00,480
And actually, unfortunately, I mean, I could only really say this anecdotally, but I think

181
00:11:00,480 --> 00:11:05,200
it's true that a lot of sexual abuse, a lot of molestation, a lot of that sort of stuff

182
00:11:05,200 --> 00:11:13,400
actually springs up in very conservative communities where they're just kind of creating their

183
00:11:13,400 --> 00:11:20,880
own little cult of the family or their own little cult of personality and they're trying

184
00:11:20,880 --> 00:11:23,880
to shut themselves out from the world.

185
00:11:23,880 --> 00:11:28,600
But if you think that that makes you holy, then it doesn't.

186
00:11:28,600 --> 00:11:33,840
And a lot of times God's judgment on that can unfortunately be pretty severe and people

187
00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:40,040
will think, I've removed all sexual temptation, but then they still have the sexual temptation

188
00:11:40,040 --> 00:11:41,800
that's in their own heart.

189
00:11:41,800 --> 00:11:44,960
I mean, you can see this throughout Christian history in the monasteries.

190
00:11:44,960 --> 00:11:50,320
I mean, not to get into maybe a controversial subject, but you can look through human history

191
00:11:50,320 --> 00:11:56,120
and you can see people try and shut themselves out from the world and always, always, always

192
00:11:56,120 --> 00:12:00,480
they have their own human heart in there with them.

193
00:12:00,480 --> 00:12:06,080
So that's one error that I've told you one of one out of three errors that I think people

194
00:12:06,080 --> 00:12:10,760
make the second one that they make is they say, OK, I'm not going to do that.

195
00:12:10,760 --> 00:12:13,600
I'm not going to just draw an arbitrary line in the sand.

196
00:12:13,600 --> 00:12:15,040
I'm going to have discernment.

197
00:12:15,040 --> 00:12:17,240
OK, so far so good.

198
00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:25,360
But then they fall into what I perhaps uncharitably think of as the Gospel Coalition error.

199
00:12:25,360 --> 00:12:31,080
And the Gospel, I like things that the Gospel Coalition publishes.

200
00:12:31,080 --> 00:12:32,080
Don't worry.

201
00:12:32,080 --> 00:12:40,360
But one thing that can kind of happen with some of their pop culture stuff is they find

202
00:12:40,360 --> 00:12:43,800
a way to kind of baptize it a little bit.

203
00:12:43,800 --> 00:12:49,920
Like they'll say Luke Skywalker is actually a type of Jesus Christ, you know, something

204
00:12:49,920 --> 00:12:50,920
like that.

205
00:12:50,920 --> 00:12:51,920
Yeah.

206
00:12:51,920 --> 00:12:53,480
And, you know, he's a metaphor.

207
00:12:53,480 --> 00:12:57,600
And it's like, A, I'm not sure that George Lucas would actually agree with you on that.

208
00:12:57,600 --> 00:13:03,600
B, God made the world and he built a lot of Christian typology into the world.

209
00:13:03,600 --> 00:13:07,440
It turns out you'd be hard pressed not to find a metaphor for Jesus.

210
00:13:07,440 --> 00:13:08,520
And like here we are.

211
00:13:08,520 --> 00:13:09,520
We're talking.

212
00:13:09,520 --> 00:13:11,040
You're a counselor.

213
00:13:11,040 --> 00:13:12,040
You talk to people.

214
00:13:12,040 --> 00:13:15,880
That makes you a little bit like the great physician, Jesus Christ, who came to heal people.

215
00:13:15,880 --> 00:13:17,800
We can think of a Christ like metaphor for you.

216
00:13:17,800 --> 00:13:20,480
Does that necessarily mean that you're good?

217
00:13:20,480 --> 00:13:21,480
No.

218
00:13:21,480 --> 00:13:27,600
No, it just means we can, we can, no, I still have to use discernment about you and about

219
00:13:27,600 --> 00:13:28,920
your practice, right?

220
00:13:28,920 --> 00:13:32,840
But it's easy enough to sort of baptize it and say, well, he's being like Jesus.

221
00:13:32,840 --> 00:13:38,320
And I find that people have a little bit of a cheap relationship sometimes with movies

222
00:13:38,320 --> 00:13:43,720
and entertainment where they'll find these kinds of analogies between, you know, I mean,

223
00:13:43,720 --> 00:13:46,880
I don't know that anyone's ever actually, I'm sure people have done Luke Skywalker's

224
00:13:46,880 --> 00:13:52,240
Jesus, but I'll see things like that where they take a movie that is popular and they

225
00:13:52,240 --> 00:13:56,360
sort of find the Christian associations in it.

226
00:13:56,360 --> 00:14:00,280
And I think that that can be a little cheap sometimes.

227
00:14:00,280 --> 00:14:04,840
And then there's a third error that's a corollary to the second error.

228
00:14:04,840 --> 00:14:11,680
And that's among people who are even more conservative and maybe even to the right of

229
00:14:11,680 --> 00:14:14,480
something like the Gospel Coalition.

230
00:14:14,480 --> 00:14:18,800
And so they end up actually sort of doing the same thing, but they're just looking for

231
00:14:18,800 --> 00:14:23,520
different associations, different typologies.

232
00:14:23,520 --> 00:14:29,520
So they'll say, this is such a great movie about fatherhood and it has fathers and sons

233
00:14:29,520 --> 00:14:30,640
relating to each other.

234
00:14:30,640 --> 00:14:33,720
And it's not that a movie can't teach us something about Jesus.

235
00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:38,520
It's not that a movie can't teach us about fatherhood.

236
00:14:38,520 --> 00:14:44,280
It's not that I don't have movies that I respond to because I see great truth in them.

237
00:14:44,280 --> 00:14:50,120
It's just that you have to not think shallowly about these things.

238
00:14:50,120 --> 00:14:56,000
You have to actually ask, what are the filmmakers trying to say or the musicians or with any

239
00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:58,920
kind of arts?

240
00:14:58,920 --> 00:15:04,640
You have to ask, does it matter whether they would agree with what I'm pulling out of here?

241
00:15:04,640 --> 00:15:10,440
You have to ask, how are they saying it through cinema, through visual language when it comes

242
00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:11,440
to movies?

243
00:15:11,440 --> 00:15:17,000
And those are the kinds of things that we try to answer on our podcast.

244
00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:20,040
And we have great fun time doing it.

245
00:15:20,040 --> 00:15:25,480
So subscribe today, listening to Anthony at the Movies Podcast.

246
00:15:25,480 --> 00:15:33,880
I think what you're saying, though, is really important.

247
00:15:33,880 --> 00:15:40,560
Particularly as Christians, the temptation is, I mean, anybody that's grown up in church,

248
00:15:40,560 --> 00:15:43,440
there's the Sunday School Answer, it's always Jesus.

249
00:15:43,440 --> 00:15:44,440
Yeah.

250
00:15:44,440 --> 00:15:46,840
Luke Skywalker's Jesus.

251
00:15:46,840 --> 00:15:47,840
Game over.

252
00:15:47,840 --> 00:15:49,280
No more thinking.

253
00:15:49,280 --> 00:15:53,560
And there is a deeper level there, like you're saying.

254
00:15:53,560 --> 00:16:00,040
And what I'm about to draw, I'm not equating the medium of a movie, and I'm going to draw

255
00:16:00,040 --> 00:16:02,680
this to the way that we read scripture.

256
00:16:02,680 --> 00:16:10,400
Again, not the same things, but similarly, we can read scripture and, oh man, King David,

257
00:16:10,400 --> 00:16:12,400
I see myself in him.

258
00:16:12,400 --> 00:16:15,600
I'm reading scripture, I'm reading those Psalms.

259
00:16:15,600 --> 00:16:17,440
I'm just like King David.

260
00:16:17,440 --> 00:16:20,520
And there might be some truth to that.

261
00:16:20,520 --> 00:16:25,960
You may have some similarities in a phase of life, but you don't want to read yourself

262
00:16:25,960 --> 00:16:29,160
or your own shallow understanding into it.

263
00:16:29,160 --> 00:16:32,160
What is scripture saying?

264
00:16:32,160 --> 00:16:33,520
What is the meaning?

265
00:16:33,520 --> 00:16:36,760
Not my meaning, what is the meaning here?

266
00:16:36,760 --> 00:16:38,000
Same thing in culture.

267
00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:43,640
We just don't want to go at that shallow level, actually get underneath there, actually think

268
00:16:43,640 --> 00:16:47,000
about what's going on, and that takes some brain effort.

269
00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:51,360
It's not just eating the popcorn and going on with your life.

270
00:16:51,360 --> 00:16:57,760
Yeah, I remember early on when I was a little bit more abrasive, there are people who would

271
00:16:57,760 --> 00:17:02,720
say I'm abrasive on Twitter now, which I suppose we'll talk about at a certain point.

272
00:17:02,720 --> 00:17:08,680
But early on, this was around the time that the first Wonder Woman movie came out, and

273
00:17:08,680 --> 00:17:14,480
there was a lot of people going back and forth about the feminism in that movie.

274
00:17:14,480 --> 00:17:20,440
And there was a popular Christian sort of celebrity who said, who put out a tweet where

275
00:17:20,440 --> 00:17:23,160
he just said, you know what I'm going to do?

276
00:17:23,160 --> 00:17:26,760
I'm going to go to the theater and I'm going to eat my popcorn.

277
00:17:26,760 --> 00:17:29,840
And I'm going to enjoy the movie.

278
00:17:29,840 --> 00:17:32,920
And I just thought of all the responses you could have.

279
00:17:32,920 --> 00:17:37,880
I mean, if you want to say, guys, it's annoying that you're reading so much into this and

280
00:17:37,880 --> 00:17:43,120
making it to such a culture war when it's just a wonder.

281
00:17:43,120 --> 00:17:47,160
If you want to do that, and you think that you can do that, I might not agree with you,

282
00:17:47,160 --> 00:17:55,760
but that's an argument to just simply say, I'm going to intentionally disengage.

283
00:17:55,760 --> 00:17:56,760
That's not an argument.

284
00:17:56,760 --> 00:17:57,760
That's not helpful.

285
00:17:57,760 --> 00:17:58,760
We need to be engaged.

286
00:17:58,760 --> 00:18:01,480
We need to get to shut off our brains as Christians.

287
00:18:01,480 --> 00:18:08,360
I think what you say about, you use the example of King David, and it's like you can go to

288
00:18:08,360 --> 00:18:17,320
a sort of shallow church or hear a shallow sermon where someone will say effectively,

289
00:18:17,320 --> 00:18:27,160
when we see the story of David and Goliath, it is just a story of overcoming a challenge.

290
00:18:27,160 --> 00:18:32,240
I think equal and opposite to that, though, you can go to a church where they'll say,

291
00:18:32,240 --> 00:18:40,640
when you see the story of King David, remember, he's a type of Christ.

292
00:18:40,640 --> 00:18:44,520
So it's just this sort of theological point.

293
00:18:44,520 --> 00:18:47,840
Meanwhile, everyone sitting in the pew is like, I know what a David and Goliath story

294
00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:48,840
is.

295
00:18:48,840 --> 00:18:51,600
It's the story of overcoming a big challenge.

296
00:18:51,600 --> 00:18:56,280
You're going to tell me that the one thing that everybody, sports teams, David and Goliath

297
00:18:56,280 --> 00:18:59,160
stories, you're going to tell me that's nothing.

298
00:18:59,160 --> 00:19:05,800
And it's like, well, actually, we need to have the discernment and not just run to,

299
00:19:05,800 --> 00:19:13,080
it's all allegory, or just reduce it to an easy little self-help parable.

300
00:19:13,080 --> 00:19:16,960
Maybe there's something more there that we need to see.

301
00:19:16,960 --> 00:19:21,320
And I think that can be true of our preaching, that we have those kinds of problems, that

302
00:19:21,320 --> 00:19:25,960
we fall into shallow little ruts, and it can certainly be true of the way that we read

303
00:19:25,960 --> 00:19:31,320
culture and read pop culture and engage with different texts and different art and stuff

304
00:19:31,320 --> 00:19:32,640
like that.

305
00:19:32,640 --> 00:19:37,400
So what we always say about our podcasts is we don't want to teach people what to think

306
00:19:37,400 --> 00:19:38,400
necessarily.

307
00:19:38,400 --> 00:19:39,400
We want to teach them how to think.

308
00:19:39,400 --> 00:19:45,200
We want to teach them how to be engaged and how to actually be critically thinking about

309
00:19:45,200 --> 00:19:46,200
things.

310
00:19:46,200 --> 00:19:51,120
And unfortunately, not that I'm necessarily any better than anyone else, but critical

311
00:19:51,120 --> 00:19:53,200
thinking is in short supply these days.

312
00:19:53,200 --> 00:19:59,360
So you just have to learn how to do it.

313
00:19:59,360 --> 00:20:07,560
And that's something that I constantly harp on on the podcast that I don't like to take

314
00:20:07,560 --> 00:20:12,080
some of the quick pot shots on the left, not that they can't be fun.

315
00:20:12,080 --> 00:20:16,920
I understand the temptation of, did you see what AOC said?

316
00:20:16,920 --> 00:20:18,320
Well, Bernie's crazy.

317
00:20:18,320 --> 00:20:19,320
I get it.

318
00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:20,840
And don't get me wrong.

319
00:20:20,840 --> 00:20:23,040
There's times I laugh at that stuff too.

320
00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:25,200
But again, it's shallow.

321
00:20:25,200 --> 00:20:28,280
There's not much meat there.

322
00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:34,600
I find myself criticizing much more on the right, not because I agree more with the left

323
00:20:34,600 --> 00:20:35,600
than the right.

324
00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:39,840
No, there's very little I agree with the left on pretty much anything.

325
00:20:39,840 --> 00:20:46,760
But the shallowness, the shallow response, the quick like, we're just going to fix this.

326
00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:48,160
We're going to vote for this next president.

327
00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:49,600
It's all going to be gone.

328
00:20:49,600 --> 00:20:50,600
We're good to go.

329
00:20:50,600 --> 00:20:55,000
No, this is so much deeper than that.

330
00:20:55,000 --> 00:21:00,720
And two, seeing the giving up part of, oh, it doesn't matter who we vote for.

331
00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:03,120
So what's the point?

332
00:21:03,120 --> 00:21:07,600
And I'm sitting there looking at my kids and like, well, that's the point.

333
00:21:07,600 --> 00:21:10,160
I want my kids to have something to grow for.

334
00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:16,800
And I'm going to invest in them and invest in my family, including some of the politicians

335
00:21:16,800 --> 00:21:17,800
I vote for.

336
00:21:17,800 --> 00:21:19,120
But it's much more than that.

337
00:21:19,120 --> 00:21:22,160
We can't just be at that surface level.

338
00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:23,200
We got to be in it.

339
00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:27,400
If you want to fight, then you need to be in it for the long call and that's not just

340
00:21:27,400 --> 00:21:28,640
at the voting box.

341
00:21:28,640 --> 00:21:32,000
It's, it's your life, your life in general.

342
00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:33,000
Absolutely.

343
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:34,000
Absolutely.

344
00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:35,000
Absolutely.

345
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:39,080
Well, you alerted, alluded to this earlier.

346
00:21:39,080 --> 00:21:44,080
So I'm actually really curious on this because I've kind of been on the outside looking in

347
00:21:44,080 --> 00:21:52,280
the middle of this fun little Twitter issue that, yeah, I'm sure wasn't as fun for you

348
00:21:52,280 --> 00:21:53,680
being in the middle of it.

349
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:58,600
So most people listen to this, probably don't know what we're talking about.

350
00:21:58,600 --> 00:22:03,960
So would you mind kind of setting the scene of this particular viral tweet and I guess

351
00:22:03,960 --> 00:22:06,400
kind of a series of viral tweets?

352
00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:08,280
And yeah, what happened?

353
00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:09,920
What was the issue here?

354
00:22:09,920 --> 00:22:15,000
So the reason that you're having me on is because I had a couple tweets go viral recently

355
00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:22,800
and Twitter leftist sort of atheist Twitter mob came after me and, you know, I sort of

356
00:22:22,800 --> 00:22:28,960
went through being canceled or whatever you want to call it.

357
00:22:28,960 --> 00:22:33,640
But actually there's another story that you should hear first if you don't mind because

358
00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:37,680
this is actually happened to me before on a much larger scale.

359
00:22:37,680 --> 00:22:43,680
This more recent one, the one that you saw was relatively small actually compared to

360
00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:49,280
the time that they really came after me, which was several years ago now.

361
00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:52,200
I think I want to say it was around 2016.

362
00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:58,320
So we were just getting our website, Warhorn Media up and running.

363
00:22:58,320 --> 00:23:05,560
I think it had only been online for a few months and Star Wars Force Awakens had come

364
00:23:05,560 --> 00:23:06,560
out.

365
00:23:06,560 --> 00:23:12,040
So it was 2015 that that movie came out, if I'm remembering correctly.

366
00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:18,120
And I wrote a little article called, should I say the name of the article?

367
00:23:18,120 --> 00:23:19,600
Do I want people to find this?

368
00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:20,600
Sure.

369
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:21,880
And so it's called Open Letter Dere.

370
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:30,280
I'm not proud of anything necessarily in the way that the article was written, but it

371
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:41,760
was an article attacking the sort of girl boss feminism of the first Star Wars, the

372
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:46,840
first of the new trilogy of Star Wars movies where Rey is just this perfect character with

373
00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:49,080
no flaws.

374
00:23:49,080 --> 00:23:54,560
And it was written sort of in a, I guess you'd say like a humorous kind of a way.

375
00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:57,600
It was written to the character of Rey.

376
00:23:57,600 --> 00:23:58,920
It was like, dear Rey.

377
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:01,480
I don't think you're behaving in a feminine manner.

378
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:03,680
Actually, this is not how biology works.

379
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,840
You could not simply beat up all these guys.

380
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:09,760
And this is not biblical femininity.

381
00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:17,880
And I'm also addressing this letter to Sarah Connor and to all these kinds of archetypical

382
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:19,200
warrior women.

383
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:26,760
So at least in the sort of more conservative circles that I run in, they're beating up

384
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:32,680
on the idea of warrior women at this point is a pretty old, like on our movie podcast,

385
00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:37,360
sometimes we don't even mention it because it's just so like, yep, there's another annoying

386
00:24:37,360 --> 00:24:39,120
warrior woman character in this movie.

387
00:24:39,120 --> 00:24:40,520
What do you want me to say about it?

388
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:42,440
It's just constant.

389
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:47,120
But it felt a little bit more like something that was worth responding to at the time.

390
00:24:47,120 --> 00:24:51,640
And of course, it's always worth responding to, but it felt like less of a graze would

391
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:55,440
lot in terms of saying something on the internet.

392
00:24:55,440 --> 00:25:00,680
So I wrote this article and published it.

393
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:04,280
And like I said, we weren't a big thing at the time.

394
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:09,080
Not that we're huge now, but we had only just launched a few months ago.

395
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:14,920
And this article went out and my friends, my family, people in our church and some other

396
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:19,000
people that were aware of us saw the article and then it went away.

397
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:21,720
Like it, that was the end of the story.

398
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:29,040
And once again, it's important to understand just basic biblical and biological facts about

399
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:35,040
sex in this article, but it would all couched in kind of this cutesy pop culture discourse

400
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:36,040
kind of thing.

401
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:42,640
And really showing off how pop culturally savvy I was, like I was making deep cut references

402
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:45,760
to movies and stuff like that.

403
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:50,440
And nothing would have come of it except for it's the internet.

404
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:57,800
And so somehow I'll never know exactly how, but this Star Trek writer of all things gets

405
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:04,840
gets the article, publishes it on Facebook and says, wow, look at this misogynist dinosaur.

406
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:09,160
Isn't it crazy that people still think like this?

407
00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:13,040
And it was insane.

408
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:14,360
It was absolutely crazy.

409
00:26:14,360 --> 00:26:17,760
One of the crazier things that's ever happened to me, what happened next?

410
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:23,200
It was so much bigger than what you presumably observed in the second one, which we'll get

411
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:26,560
to, I'm sorry, but you wanted to hear about this sort of thing.

412
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:28,360
And this is the really exciting one.

413
00:26:28,360 --> 00:26:36,680
So we were getting hundreds, if not thousands of tweets for our company account, for my

414
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:39,800
personal account, for my pastor's account.

415
00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:46,520
We were getting hundreds of malicious login attempts to our website per day, which by

416
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:52,760
the way, at the time, I think my password was like password 123, because in terms of

417
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:55,600
tech usage, I'm a thousand years old.

418
00:26:55,600 --> 00:27:00,080
And so I felt pretty stupid when we're getting all these malicious login attempts.

419
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:07,160
I was getting, I want to be careful not to overhype it because in both of these cases,

420
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:08,320
you know, I wasn't swatted.

421
00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:12,680
I don't know that anyone actually meant me real physical harm, but they're certainly

422
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:15,400
saying things like you should die.

423
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:22,680
And the cute thing that they liked to do in this case was they'd find pictures of, if

424
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:27,320
you're familiar with the biblical story of jail putting the tent peg through the guy's

425
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:33,080
head in the book of Judges, or if you're familiar with the apocryphal story of Judith cutting

426
00:27:33,080 --> 00:27:38,200
off a dude's head, kind of a similar story in the apocrypha.

427
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:43,040
People would post those pictures and they would either say, this is biblical femininity,

428
00:27:43,040 --> 00:27:47,440
bro, or they would say, this should happen to you.

429
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:49,360
And there are a lot of funny ones.

430
00:27:49,360 --> 00:27:55,760
I really think, and we'll talk about the more recent one here in a minute, I assume, but

431
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:58,320
discourse has gone downhill even in a few years.

432
00:27:58,320 --> 00:28:00,840
People were pretty funny in the way that they made fun of me.

433
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:02,920
It hurt, but they were creative.

434
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:03,920
They were colorful.

435
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:07,600
They would say things like Daisy Ridley, who played Ray, of course.

436
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:12,880
Daisy Ridley should bench press this fool into the sun and all this kinds of stuff.

437
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:16,600
The other thing is, somewhere in that article, I made a terrible mistake.

438
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:22,040
I wrote the words, as men, we have bodies crafted for war.

439
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:29,880
Now I'm not Arnold Schwarzenegger now, but especially back then, I had a neck beard.

440
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:36,160
I was pretty severely morbidly obese, and there were some really bad pictures of me

441
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:37,160
online.

442
00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:43,280
I was in those pictures, and they just had a field day with, oh, body crafted for war.

443
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:47,960
Yeah, it looks like you've got a body crafted for lasagna and stuff like this.

444
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:54,880
And you've got a body crafted for Golden Corel, or crafted from Golden Corel.

445
00:28:54,880 --> 00:29:01,640
And I've gotten in much better shape since then, and that was one of the impetuses behind

446
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:02,880
that because I was embarrassed.

447
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:04,480
I mean, they got me.

448
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:05,480
Right?

449
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:09,920
They were nice, but they had a point.

450
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:11,520
But it was insane.

451
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:18,480
It was just days of, I meant to look up the stats because I don't remember them, but I

452
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:21,160
didn't get a chance to look them up before we started.

453
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:23,720
But it was, I mean, remember, we're nobodies.

454
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:25,560
We're nobodies.

455
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:30,200
And our website was getting hundreds of thousands of hits.

456
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:33,400
This article was huge.

457
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:38,600
And it's just like every time you check into Twitter or Facebook or any of the social media

458
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:45,760
that either I or Warhorn Media were using at the time, it would just be like more stuff

459
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:51,360
and just people going insane.

460
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:53,040
And you can find articles to this day.

461
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:54,880
You could probably Google Nathan Albertson.

462
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:59,960
You can find old blog posts, you know, Nathan Albertson, misogynist, dinosaur, Nathan Albertson

463
00:29:59,960 --> 00:30:04,080
doesn't understand women, Nathan Albertson.

464
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:07,560
And I was working not for Warhorn Media at the time.

465
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:11,680
I am now a full-time employee, but we didn't have the money for full-time employees back

466
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:12,680
then.

467
00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:13,680
So I was working at Java.

468
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:15,480
I was a supervisor at a call center.

469
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:21,560
And the one thing that I had been very bad about was sharing the faith at that call center.

470
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:27,120
I was a much more of an internet warrior and not much of a real life talker at the time.

471
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:35,160
And so I received a good, a bit of discipline from God in that this article got to my workplace.

472
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,200
And people who didn't even know that I was a Christian suddenly were confronted with

473
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:39,200
this.

474
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:43,880
And the way that I found out is I went into work or I worked a full day and then the night

475
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:46,560
shift lady came in and she was going to take over.

476
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:48,960
And I said, hey, Barbara, we'll call her Barbara.

477
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:50,920
Hey, Barbara, how are you doing?

478
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:58,400
Barbara said, Nathan, I saw some very interesting things that you put on the internet.

479
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:07,440
And I was like, oh, yeah, very interesting things, Nathan.

480
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:09,840
And I was like, oh, well, you know, we could talk.

481
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:10,840
Nope.

482
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:13,760
They were very interesting things.

483
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:19,040
And then nobody at work really talked to me about it, but I knew they had all seen it

484
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:22,640
and they were all talking about it because suddenly everybody was treating me differently,

485
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:24,480
particularly the women.

486
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:30,840
And I actually did walk in and there was a girl who worked there and she was a vegan

487
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:36,560
sort of Buddhist, exactly the kind of person that would be the most triggered by this article.

488
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:42,840
And I was like, hey, how are you doing, Alexis?

489
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:45,680
And she said, Nathan, I saw your article.

490
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:50,120
And I said, oh, well, you know, I'm actually much more complicated than you would think

491
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:51,320
from just reading that article.

492
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:52,520
Would you like to talk about that?

493
00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:56,520
And she kind of shook her head and said, I don't think you'd be interested in hearing

494
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:58,880
what I have to say and walked away.

495
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:04,160
And there were several relationships like that that I just never recovered.

496
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:11,160
And so I had my workplace intersect with this in a way that I did not expect.

497
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:15,320
And then I found out years later, actually, I found out.

498
00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:18,800
I did not know this at the time, but my work was talking about whether they should fire

499
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:26,160
me and they convened a meeting where I was in Bloomington, India.

500
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:31,000
And at the time they actually there were managers that drove in to Indianapolis where they had

501
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:32,280
their other headquarters.

502
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:38,920
So people drove two hours or three hours just to get to this meeting where they could talk

503
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:44,760
about what are we going to do about Nathan, the sexist, misogynist threat in the workplace.

504
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:52,560
And I love all the stories in the Bible about Daniel and his three friends in Babylon where

505
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:56,240
they don't want to eat the rich food.

506
00:32:56,240 --> 00:33:00,880
And they've got like a middle manager, basically, they've got the guy that's in charge of the

507
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:02,520
food and he sticks up for them.

508
00:33:02,520 --> 00:33:08,040
I love any story where there's like a pagan used by God to help God's people, somebody

509
00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:12,400
who is sympathetic to God's people.

510
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:17,000
In any case, I had a manager that was like that and he was at this meeting and he liked

511
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:19,720
me and he knew that I did a good job at my work.

512
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:22,520
So they're all going back and forth for like an hour.

513
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:23,600
Like what do we do about Nathan?

514
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:24,600
Should we fire him?

515
00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:25,600
Do we have just cause?

516
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:31,920
And he finally says, guys, if Nathan had acted on any of these things that we suspect, like

517
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:37,080
if Nathan was a horrible sexist in the workplace, if Nathan was nasty to women in the workplace,

518
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:46,400
if any of this had actually created anything, then it made Nathan anything less than a model

519
00:33:46,400 --> 00:33:49,280
employee, then we could fire him.

520
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:53,840
But this is just something that Nathan said on the internet.

521
00:33:53,840 --> 00:33:57,720
It doesn't affect anything about this job.

522
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:03,360
Is Nathan not allowed to post whatever he wants on the internet?

523
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:04,800
And this was a new thought to them.

524
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:07,920
Like they went round and round and round and round and round.

525
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:11,720
And they're like, oh, oh yeah, I guess you're right.

526
00:34:11,720 --> 00:34:12,720
It hasn't.

527
00:34:12,720 --> 00:34:16,400
We never thought of Nathan as a sexist.

528
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,640
I'm not, in fact, a sexist.

529
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:21,960
I'm happy to work with women in the workplace.

530
00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:24,440
I'm happy to have them over me and under me.

531
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:32,760
I mean, it's just like the things that they were assuming about me based on this article

532
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:36,120
just weren't true.

533
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:40,760
And so they were like, huh, we didn't think about it.

534
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:41,760
We never thought about that.

535
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:44,360
And so they let me keep my job.

536
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:52,960
And I only found out about that like years later, but that was crazy.

537
00:34:52,960 --> 00:35:01,240
The amount of hate, the amount of people just saying you should die, people saying, you

538
00:35:01,240 --> 00:35:06,680
know, like pictures of heads being cut off, like an old painting of Judith cutting off

539
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:09,520
the general, whatever's head and people saying this should happen to you.

540
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:13,640
Like the idea that it is surreal to be that hated.

541
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:16,440
Like you don't know me.

542
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:18,280
You've never met me.

543
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:22,760
You have no idea who I am.

544
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:29,720
And yet I represent everything that is evil to you.

545
00:35:29,720 --> 00:35:31,480
Everything that deserves to be destroyed to you.

546
00:35:31,480 --> 00:35:38,880
That is a very, very strange feeling.

547
00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:46,840
And I mean, I assume we'll talk about what I learned, but one thing that I very quickly

548
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:49,000
learned is it hurts.

549
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:51,360
And you might think it wouldn't.

550
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:53,400
And actually I sort of thought that it wouldn't.

551
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:54,840
Maybe you think it would, maybe you think it wouldn't.

552
00:35:54,840 --> 00:36:02,080
But it really hurts when strangers are saying you're ugly and you're fat and you deserve

553
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:05,800
to die and you represent a horrible outdated.

554
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:11,240
It's like, I sort of thought it wouldn't hurt because whatever, they don't know me and I

555
00:36:11,240 --> 00:36:13,360
don't know them.

556
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:14,520
They're not actually mad at me.

557
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:17,320
They're mad at an idea that they have about me.

558
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:23,280
Like people that know me in real life, even people that disagree with me strenuously don't

559
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:27,480
want me to die and don't think that I'm an ugly troll.

560
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:29,960
So why should I be hurt by the internet?

561
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:36,600
This vague, like these names and these fake names and these profile pictures, they don't

562
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:37,600
like me.

563
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:38,600
Who cares?

564
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:39,600
Well, I care.

565
00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:40,600
It hurt.

566
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:45,320
It really, really, really felt bad.

567
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:52,040
And so it took a long time for our website to recover from the negative reviews that we

568
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:56,520
got in various places where you can review websites.

569
00:36:56,520 --> 00:36:58,320
We had to pull.

570
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:08,400
I was basically, our ministry was in is a ministry of that local church, which is now planted

571
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:09,640
the church that I'm working for.

572
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:12,640
But be that as it may, like I was a youth, or what was I?

573
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:14,280
I was a small group leader at the time.

574
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:16,000
They had to pull my picture.

575
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:18,280
They had to pull my phone number.

576
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:21,000
Again, I don't want to overhype it.

577
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:25,880
I'm not sure my life was actually in danger or anything like that, but it's just crazy

578
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:31,440
knowing that there's like hundreds of thousands of people out there that.

579
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:34,400
H you and that was.

580
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:40,240
The first one that happened and that was however many years, I think it was 2016.

581
00:37:40,240 --> 00:37:44,880
So that was almost a decade now.

582
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:49,080
But that was my biggest time actually putting up with this kind of thing.

583
00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:50,080
Wow.

584
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:56,800
Yeah, I'd no idea about that one.

585
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:04,040
Before we get into this more recent one, some people may know this, may not.

586
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:09,600
I'm not going to equate this near to Nathan's stage.

587
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:16,840
This was a very localized fire that I dealt with back in December.

588
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:19,360
So I share this example in part.

589
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:25,520
One, I mean, I know yours went kind of more just it wasn't just a small area and went

590
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:31,000
bigger, but typically you don't think of Indiana as like, oh, well, there's where all the liberals

591
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:32,000
live.

592
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:36,400
Not that I'm sure there are plenty that are there, but you think a California or Oregon

593
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:38,920
or whatever.

594
00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:41,720
Rural Oklahoma, that's not where you think of.

595
00:38:41,720 --> 00:38:42,720
Like that.

596
00:38:42,720 --> 00:38:45,440
You think it is, you know, God's country.

597
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:47,600
There's no liberals, nothing.

598
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:50,480
You can just say you do whatever you want.

599
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:57,040
Well, and this might get into a discussion later of some other things that you've learned.

600
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:01,240
I made this blog post and also a video.

601
00:39:01,240 --> 00:39:06,320
Now mind you, I actually stand by all the content of what I said.

602
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:14,080
It was basically attacking pronoun usage and just really kind of the gender ideology, transgender

603
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:15,000
type of movement.

604
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:20,360
I did not, and I will not apologize for that content whatsoever.

605
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:25,480
And I know that's really at the heart of why people got upset because you're not supposed

606
00:39:25,480 --> 00:39:29,560
to say those things, particularly as a counselor, like you're supposed to gender firm and all

607
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:30,560
that stuff.

608
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:35,320
Well, I'm kind of like in your shoes there.

609
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:36,320
I'm just a nobody.

610
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,680
I just started Truth and Grace counseling.

611
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:45,800
It was brand spanking new and some local activist about 30 minutes away from me and a little

612
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:48,320
bit of a bigger town, like a hundred thousand.

613
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:52,120
They got ahold of that and they weren't too fond of that.

614
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:57,360
And you can see the rainbows on their profile pictures and two spirited and you know, that

615
00:39:57,360 --> 00:39:59,680
you kind of knew who you were dealing with.

616
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:07,200
And something that I learned from that, again, not apologizing for the content or the message

617
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:14,360
behind it, but I realized especially if I'm going to put my name on something, I need

618
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:20,560
to go down for something that I really believe in because this blog post and video, like

619
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:22,360
it had like Elon Musk on it.

620
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:27,520
It was right when he took over Twitter and it was it was it was cutesy.

621
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:32,280
Kind of like like yours was, it was not meant to be taken as super serious.

622
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:38,120
I said something in there, that kind of reminded me of men built for war that said something

623
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:42,080
like I clearly a masculine male can say I'm a female or whatever.

624
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,800
And again, it was a bit kind of tongue in cheek.

625
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:48,200
And I take things sarcastically.

626
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:52,920
And of course, the internet doesn't doesn't always do a good job of that.

627
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:56,960
So anyways, there's some of these local activists, they are ticked, you should lose your license,

628
00:40:56,960 --> 00:40:59,280
all that good stuff.

629
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:06,480
So I ended up tweaking the blog post, it's still up there, but it's very much more clinical

630
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:08,800
type of language.

631
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:11,320
And that's one I would not apologize for that one.

632
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:13,680
I think the structure is good.

633
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:15,840
If that makes me lose my license, then please take it.

634
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:19,200
I don't want it at that point.

635
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:26,320
But I learned that like, if I'm going to do some of these things, I don't know when if

636
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:31,640
or when something might take off, but if it does, am I going to stand behind it?

637
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:32,640
Am I going to?

638
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:39,000
I know it can't be perfect on everything, but I need to be cautious with the structure

639
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:41,040
of how things are.

640
00:41:41,040 --> 00:41:45,000
Because I know that may not be why they're going to hate it, but they're going to use

641
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:46,640
it against me.

642
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:51,000
And I'm wondering with you, particularly on this first one with that first article, which

643
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:53,920
you had no idea was going to go to that degree.

644
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:57,960
Do you feel similarly that, hey, I could have structured this differently?

645
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:02,040
Like what kind of your postmortem thoughts on the article itself?

646
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:03,200
What did you learn from that?

647
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:08,160
Well, I certainly learned that one of the weird things about the internet is that it's

648
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:15,400
for everybody unless you are, well, I thought I was writing to my audience and I was writing

649
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:16,400
to my audience.

650
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:21,880
I wasn't writing primarily a piece meant to proselytize or to explain something to someone

651
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:23,360
who didn't already agree with me.

652
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:28,640
It was basically just the, I hope the good kind of preaching to the choir, like, hey

653
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:33,960
guys, like let's, let's remember that we have the truth on their side.

654
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:38,920
Now that being said, well, A, that being said, that's not what happened.

655
00:42:38,920 --> 00:42:41,720
A bunch of people that had no context for it got ahold of it.

656
00:42:41,720 --> 00:42:45,840
And that is just one of the weird things about social media and about the internet.

657
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:49,560
And one of the, I don't want to say necessarily a bad thing, but just, you just always have

658
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:50,560
to remember.

659
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:55,360
If you don't, if you're writing for your Aunt Bertha, your old biology teacher might

660
00:42:55,360 --> 00:43:00,120
also see it and your old biology and teacher and Aunt Bertha would never naturally talk

661
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:02,800
to each other or be in the same space.

662
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:07,240
You would not sell them an idea the same way, but they might, if you just post something

663
00:43:07,240 --> 00:43:08,960
on Facebook, they're both there.

664
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:14,040
If you just post something on TikTok or whatever the kids are using these days, they might

665
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:15,440
both see it.

666
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:19,960
For some reason, your old biology teacher is on TikTok in this analogy.

667
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:23,400
So that was, that was good.

668
00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:32,160
Now on the other hand, I think I sort of learned, I always thought that I was the kind of person

669
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:37,600
that could structure things in such a way that pagans would like them, that I could

670
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:46,040
reach people by meeting them halfway, by being really savvy about my approach, by showing

671
00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:47,760
that I was one of them.

672
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:51,680
So I think in my mind, what I thought is, well, when people read this article, they'll

673
00:43:51,680 --> 00:43:53,160
see all the references.

674
00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:56,080
They'll see that I'm a movie guy, that I'm a pop culture guy.

675
00:43:56,080 --> 00:43:58,760
Actually, I'm a better pop culture guy than they are.

676
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:01,960
I know more references than they do.

677
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:08,960
And somehow having that stuff in there will perfume anything that they don't like.

678
00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:17,600
And it turns out in 2 Corinthians 2, the apostle Paul says, we are the aroma of Christ

679
00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:22,120
to God, among those who are being saved.

680
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:29,360
And for those who are being, who are perishing, we are the aroma of death.

681
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:31,560
People didn't care about any of my cutesy stuff.

682
00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:33,800
They didn't care about any of my meeting them halfway.

683
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:36,040
They didn't care about any of that.

684
00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:38,840
All they smelled was the aroma of death.

685
00:44:38,840 --> 00:44:42,560
All they sensed was God's judgment.

686
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:46,800
I mean, if you read Romans 1 and you see that everyone has the truth of God somewhere, written

687
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:53,840
on their heart, and people live in rebellion against that, and people felt violated.

688
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:57,640
They felt slapped in the face by me standing for God's truth.

689
00:44:57,640 --> 00:45:00,920
I mean, they took it really personally, and it just didn't matter.

690
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:05,000
I mean, if anybody, let me just be self-aggrandizing for a second.

691
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:11,320
If anybody was going to be able to say, hey, guys, we all speak the same language, but I

692
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:17,760
want to kind of sneak some truth into my speaking of the same language, I would have been able

693
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:18,760
to do it.

694
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:23,040
I mean, I was such a pop culture guy, such a movie guy, and I really tried to do it,

695
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:24,760
and it did not work.

696
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:31,080
So am I therefore arguing that somebody listening to this should go to their workplace and just

697
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:35,880
set themselves on fire and say everything as terribly as possible?

698
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:40,440
And if they see someone who has pronouns in their bio, they should tell that person, you

699
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:41,680
know, they're going to hell.

700
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:42,680
No, no, no, no.

701
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:44,000
None of that.

702
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:45,000
We need to be wise.

703
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:46,000
We need to be discerning.

704
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:47,400
We need to be kind.

705
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:48,480
We need to be gentle.

706
00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:51,280
These are all real things.

707
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:56,680
But we should, as we do that, we do need to remember that Christ said, if they hated me,

708
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:58,320
they'll hate you.

709
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:03,280
And the apostle Paul said, we're the aroma of death to people that are perishing.

710
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:07,400
And so I will talk to young people, young men in particular.

711
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:10,040
You know, my beat is pop culture.

712
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:14,240
So I'll talk to young men who are like, I've got to see the latest Quentin Tarantino movie

713
00:46:14,240 --> 00:46:20,080
or whatever, because then I can talk to people and we can have a dialogue.

714
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:22,840
And then I can share Jesus with them.

715
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:28,600
And I was just like, dude, if you're not sharing Jesus with them now, you're not going to suddenly

716
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:34,680
have the courage because you've accumulated some points with Quentin Tarantino.

717
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:40,720
And I'm just here to tell you, like the second you bring God's law into it, they ain't going

718
00:46:40,720 --> 00:46:43,160
to be impressed that you know your Quentin Tarantino.

719
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:45,600
They're just not.

720
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:51,880
I realize I'm wildly generalizing here, but it has been my experience that at some point

721
00:46:51,880 --> 00:46:56,560
we just have to tell the truth to people.

722
00:46:56,560 --> 00:47:04,640
And again, I want to be very clear that does not mean we have license to just be jerks.

723
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:10,080
It does not mean we carry God hates fags signs like that church did.

724
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:11,080
That was evil.

725
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:15,400
That was mean spirited, cruel.

726
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:16,840
We do not do that.

727
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:25,800
But on the other hand, again, we can't create like a camouflage that'll let us sneak the

728
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:27,400
truth into the camp.

729
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:29,040
I really wanted to do that.

730
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:35,160
I really resented growing up in a conservative, like I said, homeschool community where people

731
00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:38,040
just hated pop culture as a matter of course.

732
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:43,520
And I wanted to be the guy that could, you know, marry those two things.

733
00:47:43,520 --> 00:47:49,680
And it's not, you know, I now do a movie podcast and other things for a living.

734
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:55,440
So I guess in some sense I did, but you can't do subterfuge truth.

735
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:58,120
It just, it doesn't work that way.

736
00:47:58,120 --> 00:48:00,160
So I don't know if that even answers your question.

737
00:48:00,160 --> 00:48:07,480
No, I think it's a great, it's a great food for thought there that, again, that discernment,

738
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:09,960
that wisdom needs to be there.

739
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:13,960
I think that's something that I really learned in my own little small journey.

740
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:21,000
And I'm actually really grateful that that happened to the degree that it did because

741
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:24,240
it was a very small, like it was ugly.

742
00:48:24,240 --> 00:48:27,160
But we're talking dozens of people.

743
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:30,480
Thousands of pretty miserable people.

744
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:31,720
And it stayed there.

745
00:48:31,720 --> 00:48:38,200
And I was actually really grateful it was that size instead of the hundreds, thousands.

746
00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:41,720
I mean, you learned a lot, but that's a whole lot more intensive.

747
00:48:41,720 --> 00:48:44,520
And I was very grateful that I didn't get to that degree.

748
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:48,520
Well, I should say, before we, I'm sorry to interrupt, I should say before we get too

749
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:52,680
far afield, I think your listeners will already be able to hear that there are things I regret

750
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:57,200
about the way that I wrote that article that, you know, as long as I'm going to, like you

751
00:48:57,200 --> 00:49:00,400
said, as long as I'm going to go down, I might as well go down for something good and for

752
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:05,600
something that really represents and for something that's not just like sort of casually tossing

753
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:06,960
things off.

754
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:14,560
I do think it would have been better if my article was structured and strategic and kind

755
00:49:14,560 --> 00:49:17,040
and good in a way that it perhaps wasn't.

756
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:22,520
If I brought more maturity to it, I just don't think that that necessarily would have made

757
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:25,960
a difference to my critics, as we'll call them.

758
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:28,040
It made a difference to me.

759
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:31,720
It made, and it made a difference to the Christians that were watching me and it would have made,

760
00:49:31,720 --> 00:49:36,480
you know, it's always better to do well than to do poorly.

761
00:49:36,480 --> 00:49:38,800
So, yeah, anyway.

762
00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:45,840
But Porteck in there that, yeah, if you had the perfect article and it was just structured

763
00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:49,400
beautifully, they're still going to hate you.

764
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:54,320
That's just the reality that you have to get to, that they hate you because they hate

765
00:49:54,320 --> 00:49:55,320
God.

766
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:56,320
Yeah.

767
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:59,640
I think a lot of people want to avoid that truth because it's not a very pleasant truth.

768
00:49:59,640 --> 00:50:03,560
And because they like things, you know, if you're a movie guy, it's like, well, maybe

769
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:12,000
I can use my movie lore to reach somebody or, you know, yeah, you could make friends with

770
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:13,000
somebody and go see a movie.

771
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:18,760
There are ways you could do it, but you're not going to ever escape from just having

772
00:50:18,760 --> 00:50:24,120
to actually stand with Jesus for Jesus and for obedience to Jesus.

773
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:26,880
And people aren't going to like that necessarily.

774
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:27,880
Yeah.

775
00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:34,200
No, I think that is a truth that we have to know and be willing to deal with that up front.

776
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:39,600
Now not everyone's going to have a viral article or whatever, but you might have a family member

777
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:40,880
that hates you.

778
00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:43,560
You might have a co-worker and that's hard too.

779
00:50:43,560 --> 00:50:44,560
Yeah.

780
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:46,520
You have to come to terms with that.

781
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:51,160
There's no, and it kind of goes back to what we talked about earlier of just with stuff

782
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:52,160
and culture.

783
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:55,680
There's no quick Jesus answer that's just going to get you through that.

784
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:56,680
Yeah.

785
00:50:56,680 --> 00:50:59,680
You got to go deeper and there's no out.

786
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:00,680
Yeah, exactly.

787
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:01,680
Yeah.

788
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:02,680
Got to use your mind.

789
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:05,040
Got to have the Holy Spirit working in your heart.

790
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:11,600
I think this transitions well and I'm curious of with kind of this context of this past

791
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:17,280
bigger experience into this one that happened just a few months ago or whatever it was.

792
00:51:17,280 --> 00:51:22,240
So yeah, kind of tell us about this latest Twitter adventure that you had.

793
00:51:22,240 --> 00:51:23,240
Well, okay.

794
00:51:23,240 --> 00:51:24,680
So I was off of Twitter.

795
00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:29,880
I did not actually get off of Twitter then, but Twitter became increasingly an unpleasant

796
00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:32,920
place, especially for somebody like me.

797
00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:35,080
And I don't love social media.

798
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:40,520
I don't have a intrinsic philosophical problem with social media, which we can talk about

799
00:51:40,520 --> 00:51:46,640
at some point if you want, but I have no reason particularly to be on social media.

800
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:50,360
I'm just, you know, I don't know whether I'm a millennial or Gen X or whatever, but

801
00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:54,480
I'm just past the age of really needing to use it for not my job.

802
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:57,120
But maybe that's not true.

803
00:51:57,120 --> 00:51:58,120
I don't know.

804
00:51:58,120 --> 00:52:03,480
But in any case, I was off of Twitter for several years because, and then I thought,

805
00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:09,160
you know, I work for social media company is my job to promote these podcasts.

806
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:10,640
It is my job to promote these things.

807
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:13,560
I should be on Twitter, especially with Elon taking it over.

808
00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:16,080
It felt like there was going to be more space and less censorship.

809
00:52:16,080 --> 00:52:19,640
And I just liked what he was, I don't love everything that Elon does or everything that

810
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:25,120
he's done with Twitter, but I liked, I thought I felt like the algorithm was kinder in terms

811
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:27,760
of people actually even seeing my stuff.

812
00:52:27,760 --> 00:52:32,040
And so I was like, I'm going to get back on and I'm going to start using this.

813
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:34,680
And this was only maybe less than a year ago.

814
00:52:34,680 --> 00:52:44,880
It got on there and started tweeting again and I pre-program my tweets and I write them

815
00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:48,240
in advance and, you know, maybe spend an afternoon.

816
00:52:48,240 --> 00:52:49,520
What are some nuggets of wisdom?

817
00:52:49,520 --> 00:52:52,080
What are some provocative things?

818
00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:53,400
What are some funny things?

819
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:58,560
I mean, I have files of, I've been doing creative content work for a long time.

820
00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:01,600
So I have files of jokes and files of insights and stuff like that.

821
00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:06,120
I'm the kind of guy that organizes things into not actual notebooks, but digital notebooks.

822
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:09,080
So I just grab stuff and I tweet it.

823
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:19,440
And I'm not going to pretend like there's always great discernment in that.

824
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:24,280
Like I want there to be, but also it's like, I've got an afternoon.

825
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:29,920
I need to make this intentionally grabby and sort of a little bit provocative, but also

826
00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:33,000
not too much and, you know, I'm always trying to walk that line.

827
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:40,720
Anyway, with all that as a mea culpa, because, you know, I'm sort of thinking like your listeners

828
00:53:40,720 --> 00:53:46,040
might be like, well, you had this one experience, so how could he be dumb enough to have a second

829
00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:47,040
one?

830
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:58,080
But anyway, I wrote these tweets that got me in some hot water and the first one tells

831
00:53:58,080 --> 00:54:01,000
a literal truth in a provocative way.

832
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:09,040
So when I was getting married, I had a list of four things that I was looking for.

833
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:12,000
And I wanted somebody that I was attracted to.

834
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:16,960
Obviously anyone who tells you they don't want that is selling something to quote the

835
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:19,320
princess, right?

836
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:25,680
I wanted someone who believed in biblical femininity, someone who would who understood

837
00:54:25,680 --> 00:54:30,560
that I was looking for an Ephesians five wife that she wouldn't be surprised by the word

838
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:32,560
obedience or anything like that.

839
00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:38,000
Again, if you're a biblical Christian, that's obvious.

840
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:44,520
I wanted somebody who was willing to learn and grow and be teachable.

841
00:54:44,520 --> 00:54:47,680
That's what I always look for from hiring an employee.

842
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:52,920
If I'm choosing a friend, like you don't want somebody that's the best version of themselves

843
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:56,040
that they'll ever be because that person's not going anywhere.

844
00:54:56,040 --> 00:54:57,040
They're stuck.

845
00:54:57,040 --> 00:54:58,040
They're proud.

846
00:54:58,040 --> 00:55:04,880
You want somebody that is interested in growth and change and becoming better.

847
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:07,400
You want somebody with the humility to see their own flaws.

848
00:55:07,400 --> 00:55:11,040
That's just like, why would you hang out with anyone else if you had a choice, right?

849
00:55:11,040 --> 00:55:17,000
So those are the kind of the things that I had in mind when I hit the dating scene.

850
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:21,160
And I thought, hey, I'll do a tweet about that.

851
00:55:21,160 --> 00:55:26,080
And then I admittedly, and perhaps not wisely, perhaps not wisely, I don't know.

852
00:55:26,080 --> 00:55:31,840
But I wrote it in a way that's more provocative, I think, than what I just said.

853
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:33,640
I'll just read the tweet.

854
00:55:33,640 --> 00:55:37,080
The tweet is, quote, when I started looking for a wife, I wanted one who was pretty, who

855
00:55:37,080 --> 00:55:39,440
would be obedient and teachable, who thought I was funny.

856
00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:43,720
Oh, yeah, I also thought that I should marry somebody who thought I was funny, which might

857
00:55:43,720 --> 00:55:45,720
sound sort of proud and self-aggrandizing.

858
00:55:45,720 --> 00:55:48,080
But it's like, what do you want me to do?

859
00:55:48,080 --> 00:55:49,800
Marry somebody who doesn't think I'm funny?

860
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:52,480
You want to be miserable?

861
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:53,720
All I do is make jokes.

862
00:55:53,720 --> 00:55:54,960
That's my personality.

863
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:59,680
If I marry somebody who doesn't like my jokes, I'm just going to be sad.

864
00:55:59,680 --> 00:56:07,880
So if there's not enough women and I have to choose one, and there's one with godly characteristics

865
00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:09,760
who doesn't think I'm funny, of course I'll marry her.

866
00:56:09,760 --> 00:56:14,600
But if there's enough fish in the sea, why not find somebody who is going to appreciate

867
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:15,600
my sense of humor?

868
00:56:15,600 --> 00:56:16,600
I mean, come on.

869
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:19,760
I mean, I actually had a friend say to me, well, Nathan, you shouldn't look first.

870
00:56:19,760 --> 00:56:21,440
There's someone who thinks you're funny.

871
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:22,440
Whatever.

872
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:24,280
Let's not over-spiritualize this dude.

873
00:56:24,280 --> 00:56:29,400
Actually, I was with a pastor at the time and he said to my friend, hey, whatever, let's

874
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:31,840
not over-spiritualize this dude.

875
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:36,320
So anyway, I wrote the following tweet.

876
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:39,280
Quote, when I started looking for a wife, I wanted one who was pretty, who would be

877
00:56:39,280 --> 00:56:41,400
obedient and teachable, who thought I was funny.

878
00:56:41,400 --> 00:56:43,480
I felt embarrassed by that list.

879
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:46,360
And in some ways, I'm tempted to feel embarrassed by that list, but I shouldn't.

880
00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:48,200
Those are good things to want.

881
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:52,040
Now I just, before even reading the tweet, unquote, by the way, I gave you a little

882
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:57,160
window into my thought process about actually getting married and to some of the tension

883
00:56:57,160 --> 00:57:00,480
and neuroses that I felt about that thought process.

884
00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:04,280
Like, hey, babe, I'm hoping you will obey me.

885
00:57:04,280 --> 00:57:08,240
Who wants to be that guy?

886
00:57:08,240 --> 00:57:15,560
But I would encourage young men who are looking for wives to look for things like that, to

887
00:57:15,560 --> 00:57:16,560
look for a godly woman.

888
00:57:16,560 --> 00:57:17,760
And so that's all I really meant.

889
00:57:17,760 --> 00:57:20,120
But I did word it in a provocative way.

890
00:57:20,120 --> 00:57:25,320
And then around that same time, I wrote another tweet, which I don't really feel bad about

891
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:26,320
this one.

892
00:57:26,320 --> 00:57:27,320
I don't know.

893
00:57:27,320 --> 00:57:31,320
It says, you can spot a rebellious woman, read feminist, just by the way, she walks

894
00:57:31,320 --> 00:57:34,040
and dances and stands and goes through doorways.

895
00:57:34,040 --> 00:57:39,840
Her body language always says, quote, I don't need anybody, unquote, it's very unattractive.

896
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:45,800
Now you cannot always spot a rebellious woman, by the way, that she goes through doorways.

897
00:57:45,800 --> 00:57:48,000
I am well aware of that.

898
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:54,920
However, in this medium of pithiness that we call Twitter, you engage in hyperbole, as

899
00:57:54,920 --> 00:58:02,840
a matter of course, hyperbole is a good rhetorical strategy sometimes, or at least a venerable

900
00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:03,840
one.

901
00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:09,680
And I was engaging in hyperbole, which if anyone doesn't know, that just means exaggeration.

902
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:12,040
So I'm making a point.

903
00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:19,680
I'm saying you can kind of tell who hates God just by looking at them, which is true,

904
00:58:19,680 --> 00:58:23,120
if you have eyes to see.

905
00:58:23,120 --> 00:58:24,960
Not always true, not 100% true.

906
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:30,840
Certainly there's many nice, lovely, wonderful pagans out there who I believe will go to

907
00:58:30,840 --> 00:58:38,000
hell if they don't repent and believe in Jesus, but they're cool to hang out with.

908
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:39,320
I'm well aware of that.

909
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:42,840
In any case, I sent this tweet.

910
00:58:42,840 --> 00:58:48,240
And I, again, I'm not sure how these things work, but somehow in this case, I think I

911
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:56,840
am, I think that there is a person who is online, who simply looks for tweets like this

912
00:58:56,840 --> 00:59:05,880
to show to the mob and to try and get, like, in the Frankenstein movie, it's like the little

913
00:59:05,880 --> 00:59:10,160
boy or the woman or somebody that's in the French Revolution movie, the person that's

914
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:13,400
running ahead and says, Hey, mob, come this way.

915
00:59:13,400 --> 00:59:14,400
There's the monster.

916
00:59:14,400 --> 00:59:15,400
Get him.

917
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:17,480
Bring your torches and pitchforks and stuff.

918
00:59:17,480 --> 00:59:19,880
So somebody found these tweets.

919
00:59:19,880 --> 00:59:20,880
They tweeted them.

920
00:59:20,880 --> 00:59:25,680
Again, most of my audience is conservative as Christian isn't going to be super surprised

921
00:59:25,680 --> 00:59:26,680
by any of this.

922
00:59:26,680 --> 00:59:29,120
Maybe some of it they'll think is provocative.

923
00:59:29,120 --> 00:59:30,560
Maybe some of them that they won't.

924
00:59:30,560 --> 00:59:35,280
But by these tweets had already gone by, they'd gotten whatever likes and retweets and all

925
00:59:35,280 --> 00:59:37,120
that that they were going to get.

926
00:59:37,120 --> 00:59:40,480
And then this mob found them and descended on me.

927
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:44,120
Like I said, it wasn't anything like as bad as the other one.

928
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:51,280
This one probably lasted for a little over a weekend, but they were mocking those tweets.

929
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:56,080
I will say interestingly, you heard me say earlier that people were pretty colorful

930
00:59:56,080 --> 00:59:59,240
and funny in the way that they made fun of me the first time.

931
00:59:59,240 --> 01:00:03,960
I don't know if discourses changed or if I just attracted the wrong kinds of people

932
01:00:03,960 --> 01:00:12,520
this time, but it was all very boring and repetitive and just made me feel like, man,

933
01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:17,200
when people hate God and they hate God's truth, it just sort of saps them dry or maybe you

934
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:20,920
could make some grandiose statement about internet culture and where it's taking us.

935
01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:21,920
I don't know.

936
01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:24,880
But the point is, it was really boring.

937
01:00:24,880 --> 01:00:27,600
It was just like the same stuff.

938
01:00:27,600 --> 01:00:35,960
So for the doorway one, people would say like make jokes about going through doorways and

939
01:00:35,960 --> 01:00:40,480
just kind of do the most literal reading and then mock the most literal reading as if that's

940
01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:42,480
a valid criticism.

941
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:48,560
And for the wife one, they really centered in on the word teachable.

942
01:00:48,560 --> 01:00:51,000
And they said, Nathan, what you're really looking for is a dog.

943
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:57,640
And I got pictures of dogs and hundreds of dog tweets.

944
01:00:57,640 --> 01:01:00,280
But then I did also get, you should die.

945
01:01:00,280 --> 01:01:06,400
And I got people talking about, can we call CPS on this guy, which is pretty disturbing.

946
01:01:06,400 --> 01:01:08,000
I mean, I don't know why.

947
01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:15,880
Hey, if you met me and my wife, we wouldn't strike you as normal or provocative or anything,

948
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:21,400
such as the boring married couple, pretty happy one, I think by God's grace.

949
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:26,320
You don't know me, but somehow you've extrapolated from this obviously intentionally provocative

950
01:01:26,320 --> 01:01:32,080
tweet, like even assuming the worst of the tweet, you've decided you need to have my

951
01:01:32,080 --> 01:01:33,680
house and my children.

952
01:01:33,680 --> 01:01:36,880
It's just kind of awful.

953
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:41,520
So again, I'm hesitant to overhype these things.

954
01:01:41,520 --> 01:01:47,320
I'm hesitant to say persecution, although I suppose that word does apply to these instances.

955
01:01:47,320 --> 01:01:51,280
But in this particular case, that felt like persecution.

956
01:01:51,280 --> 01:01:53,800
That felt pretty nasty, like the whole CPS thing.

957
01:01:53,800 --> 01:01:56,160
It's like, come on, guys.

958
01:01:56,160 --> 01:01:58,040
You disagree with somebody.

959
01:01:58,040 --> 01:02:03,240
And so you want to think of a way to destroy his life.

960
01:02:03,240 --> 01:02:04,560
So that felt nasty.

961
01:02:04,560 --> 01:02:12,280
Now the fun part about this is that JK Rawling actually got a hold of the walking through

962
01:02:12,280 --> 01:02:15,920
the door tweet and she responded to it.

963
01:02:15,920 --> 01:02:22,040
I want to say compared to most of my critics, a pretty classy way.

964
01:02:22,040 --> 01:02:25,520
For one thing, she took a screenshot and she removed my name.

965
01:02:25,520 --> 01:02:30,400
So she didn't send anyone else after me, which is really nice and she did not have to do

966
01:02:30,400 --> 01:02:31,400
that.

967
01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:36,520
She wanted her power to send a much larger mob after me and maybe I'd be saying, this

968
01:02:36,520 --> 01:02:40,520
is the worst one that's ever happened to me, but she did not do that.

969
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:44,200
And she actually had a pretty funny response.

970
01:02:44,200 --> 01:02:50,280
Remember, I say you can tell a feminist, by the way, she walks through the door and it's

971
01:02:50,280 --> 01:02:51,520
not very attractive.

972
01:02:51,520 --> 01:02:56,160
And so JK Rawling says sarcastically, quote, you may scoff, but my own husband's interest

973
01:02:56,160 --> 01:03:01,320
in me was first awakened by watching me ricochet haphazardly off a door frame for half an hour

974
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:02,880
before he came to assist me.

975
01:03:02,880 --> 01:03:06,080
So that's a pretty sick burn, you know?

976
01:03:06,080 --> 01:03:09,520
And it is making fun of what's hyperbolic about my tweet.

977
01:03:09,520 --> 01:03:17,440
Obviously, demure women know how to make it through a door just as well as harpies.

978
01:03:17,440 --> 01:03:20,280
So you got me, JK Rawling.

979
01:03:20,280 --> 01:03:21,280
Good job.

980
01:03:21,280 --> 01:03:22,280
That was fun.

981
01:03:22,280 --> 01:03:23,600
I mean, I will always have that.

982
01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:30,640
I will always be able to say that JK Rawling made fun of one of my tweets, which is pretty

983
01:03:30,640 --> 01:03:31,640
great.

984
01:03:31,640 --> 01:03:34,480
She did a, what do you call it, a davra cadavera?

985
01:03:34,480 --> 01:03:36,880
Was the killing curse in Harry Potter?

986
01:03:36,880 --> 01:03:41,640
Well, she's not a part of Harry Potter anymore, so she can't do anything.

987
01:03:41,640 --> 01:03:42,640
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

988
01:03:42,640 --> 01:03:43,640
That's true.

989
01:03:43,640 --> 01:03:44,640
That's true.

990
01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:47,720
Talk about a woman who's experienced cancel culture, poor JK Rawling.

991
01:03:47,720 --> 01:03:48,960
I like JK Rawling.

992
01:03:48,960 --> 01:03:54,280
I like, I like Harry Potter just fine, although it was a little after, slightly after my time.

993
01:03:54,280 --> 01:03:57,720
I remember the younger kids reading it and I read it and I enjoyed it.

994
01:03:57,720 --> 01:04:05,240
But in any case, super fun to have been attacked and attacked fairly successfully by JK Rawling

995
01:04:05,240 --> 01:04:06,240
herself.

996
01:04:06,240 --> 01:04:12,720
Now, the other maybe interesting point of comparison just before I'm done with this

997
01:04:12,720 --> 01:04:20,000
part of the story is something has either shifted in, well, I don't know.

998
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:24,120
I don't know whether I can make any broad statements about culture or about my standing

999
01:04:24,120 --> 01:04:25,120
or about anything else.

1000
01:04:25,120 --> 01:04:31,360
I don't know why this happened, but the first time with the open letter to Ray, the really

1001
01:04:31,360 --> 01:04:39,600
big one, the thing that was actually most disheartening was that nobody defended me.

1002
01:04:39,600 --> 01:04:42,720
Nobody stepped in between me and the mob.

1003
01:04:42,720 --> 01:04:43,720
Nobody.

1004
01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:44,720
And I do mean nobody.

1005
01:04:44,720 --> 01:04:49,400
I had people reach out privately and say, I'm sorry, you are experiencing this, but nobody

1006
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:57,040
who wasn't a workmate or somebody that was part of our organization did anything.

1007
01:04:57,040 --> 01:05:02,320
And I think, I mean, if I was going to make a statement about this, I'd say, I don't know.

1008
01:05:02,320 --> 01:05:06,000
Maybe we just all have more handles for what cancel culture is.

1009
01:05:06,000 --> 01:05:07,760
We have a term cancel culture.

1010
01:05:07,760 --> 01:05:13,880
We know the mob goes after people and we don't like it by and large.

1011
01:05:13,880 --> 01:05:18,760
It's just people don't like when they see this is happening now and they see the flimsiness

1012
01:05:18,760 --> 01:05:19,760
of it.

1013
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:20,760
I don't know.

1014
01:05:20,760 --> 01:05:26,080
In any case, this time, lots of people on Twitter did stand up for me and argue with

1015
01:05:26,080 --> 01:05:27,080
people.

1016
01:05:27,080 --> 01:05:30,720
It's pretty senseless trying to argue with a Twitter mob, like a real mob.

1017
01:05:30,720 --> 01:05:31,720
All they want to do is destroy.

1018
01:05:31,720 --> 01:05:32,720
They don't want to hear arguments.

1019
01:05:32,720 --> 01:05:33,720
They don't care.

1020
01:05:33,720 --> 01:05:35,120
They're not interested.

1021
01:05:35,120 --> 01:05:40,200
But I mean, even assuming the best about them, they're not interested.

1022
01:05:40,200 --> 01:05:42,160
That's not what they're there for.

1023
01:05:42,160 --> 01:05:46,040
But in any case, lots of people actually stood up for me.

1024
01:05:46,040 --> 01:05:48,040
I felt much less alone.

1025
01:05:48,040 --> 01:05:50,360
I felt very lonely the first time.

1026
01:05:50,360 --> 01:05:56,560
I had that existential feeling that this is way too grandiose of a metaphor.

1027
01:05:56,560 --> 01:06:01,840
But Elijah, when he's hiding out in the caves and he says, I'm the only one left to serve

1028
01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:02,840
you, God.

1029
01:06:02,840 --> 01:06:06,240
God says, no, actually, there's whatever the number is.

1030
01:06:06,240 --> 01:06:08,920
There's lots of other people that have not bowed the need to bail.

1031
01:06:08,920 --> 01:06:13,200
Well, the first time I felt like I was the only one who hadn't bowed the need to bail,

1032
01:06:13,200 --> 01:06:16,720
which is, again, way too self-aggrandizing of a metaphor.

1033
01:06:16,720 --> 01:06:19,760
But I did feel pretty lonely this time I did not.

1034
01:06:19,760 --> 01:06:21,240
So that was nice.

1035
01:06:21,240 --> 01:06:26,640
And maybe that's one of the reasons I'm saying that the first one felt so much worse.

1036
01:06:26,640 --> 01:06:30,960
But in any case, that's the story.

1037
01:06:30,960 --> 01:06:35,720
That's interesting there on that last part.

1038
01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:43,680
I think that's probably a bit of encouragement for audience out there that's concerned.

1039
01:06:43,680 --> 01:06:49,040
I know, like you said, cancel culture is kind of a household term at this point of, oh,

1040
01:06:49,040 --> 01:06:51,240
my gosh, I don't want to be that person.

1041
01:06:51,240 --> 01:06:53,680
I don't want to lose my job, all that.

1042
01:06:53,680 --> 01:06:55,200
Of course, that's still a concern.

1043
01:06:55,200 --> 01:06:59,240
I'm not going to act like that doesn't happen to people.

1044
01:06:59,240 --> 01:07:08,640
But it seems to have lost some of its just nastiness that absolutely nobody will be around

1045
01:07:08,640 --> 01:07:09,640
me.

1046
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:10,920
There's enough people that are aware of it.

1047
01:07:10,920 --> 01:07:16,080
And like you're saying that it's a nasty thing that, yeah, there's still danger, but you

1048
01:07:16,080 --> 01:07:20,400
might be more likely to have people that are there on your side, kind of like your old

1049
01:07:20,400 --> 01:07:25,520
boss that was like, but yeah, Nathan's not doing anything.

1050
01:07:25,520 --> 01:07:29,520
Yeah, more of those people on the internet, but also in your real life to be able to stand

1051
01:07:29,520 --> 01:07:30,520
up.

1052
01:07:30,520 --> 01:07:33,400
Now, obviously, there's going to be a lot of nasty people on the other side.

1053
01:07:33,400 --> 01:07:40,880
But I do think that's a bit of encouragement, especially on Twitter, which, again, is a

1054
01:07:40,880 --> 01:07:41,880
good thing.

1055
01:07:41,880 --> 01:07:46,680
It's not a perfect place, but it's better than it was a couple years ago.

1056
01:07:46,680 --> 01:07:57,360
So as much as what we shared earlier of trying to craft your things online in a good manner,

1057
01:07:57,360 --> 01:08:00,880
you want things to be, you want to defend something that's good.

1058
01:08:00,880 --> 01:08:06,920
At the same hand, especially for these tweets, like, I mean, you're going to proofread every

1059
01:08:06,920 --> 01:08:14,640
single tweet, you know, like you can't make every tweet a perfect thing.

1060
01:08:14,640 --> 01:08:19,360
So not living in an amount of fear of like, oh my gosh, if I say men are men and women

1061
01:08:19,360 --> 01:08:23,440
are women, I'm going to lose everything.

1062
01:08:23,440 --> 01:08:30,200
It could, I guess, I'm not going to say that impossible, but self-censorship seems to be

1063
01:08:30,200 --> 01:08:36,360
probably a bigger problem for many people than the actual censorship.

1064
01:08:36,360 --> 01:08:37,360
Did you agree with that?

1065
01:08:37,360 --> 01:08:41,160
Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely true.

1066
01:08:41,160 --> 01:08:48,040
I mean, I think one thing that's probably changed is that there are many people, pagans,

1067
01:08:48,040 --> 01:08:54,240
Christians, left, right, whatever, who are just tired of the monolithic nature of what

1068
01:08:54,240 --> 01:09:00,640
happens in our mainstream media a lot of times, of what seems to happen in the world.

1069
01:09:00,640 --> 01:09:06,880
You know, it's just whether you agree with, like when you go to see Buzz Lightyear or

1070
01:09:06,880 --> 01:09:11,040
whatever, and there's a lesbian couple in there, whether you agree with that or you

1071
01:09:11,040 --> 01:09:15,880
think it's horrible or anything in between, it's annoying that they're pretending like

1072
01:09:15,880 --> 01:09:18,240
there's no argument to be made there.

1073
01:09:18,240 --> 01:09:20,520
Like they've just already won.

1074
01:09:20,520 --> 01:09:26,960
And I think in many ways, Donald Trump is not a good man.

1075
01:09:26,960 --> 01:09:33,320
But one thing that did happen in 2016 that I think a lot of conservatives really appreciated

1076
01:09:33,320 --> 01:09:38,880
was just having the feeling that, oh, it's not a feta complete.

1077
01:09:38,880 --> 01:09:41,400
They have not just already won.

1078
01:09:41,400 --> 01:09:47,080
There's still an argument to be had, and I'll use my favorite phrase, we can still occupy

1079
01:09:47,080 --> 01:09:48,960
space.

1080
01:09:48,960 --> 01:09:53,500
We don't have to just go and retreat to the hills yet.

1081
01:09:53,500 --> 01:09:59,080
We can just still say, hey, I don't agree with trans stuff.

1082
01:09:59,080 --> 01:10:03,400
And actually, I've got most of human history on my side, and there's no particular reason

1083
01:10:03,400 --> 01:10:05,760
for me to feel weird about that.

1084
01:10:05,760 --> 01:10:09,600
I don't have to be aggressively angry about it on the other hand either.

1085
01:10:09,600 --> 01:10:16,040
But I can just assert that I'm the normal one.

1086
01:10:16,040 --> 01:10:21,640
And I think that that has changed to some degree, and it's been good.

1087
01:10:21,640 --> 01:10:25,760
There's still a lot that's, I don't like this word very much, it's too overused.

1088
01:10:25,760 --> 01:10:32,080
There's still a lot that's toxic about culture and about the nature of discourse these days.

1089
01:10:32,080 --> 01:10:36,760
But I think a lot of people are just tired of what is toxic about it, which is a good

1090
01:10:36,760 --> 01:10:37,760
thing.

1091
01:10:37,760 --> 01:10:47,040
No, I definitely think that's a good point that certainly in Christian circles, truth

1092
01:10:47,040 --> 01:10:53,160
is, well, if it's not, it needs to be at the top of your priority.

1093
01:10:53,160 --> 01:10:55,640
We need to fight for truth.

1094
01:10:55,640 --> 01:11:01,160
But you're seeing that in some of the culture at large, which is a very good thing.

1095
01:11:01,160 --> 01:11:05,720
Not saying that everybody that's trying to fight for truth, some of the transgender stuff

1096
01:11:05,720 --> 01:11:11,240
and everything, not saying that they're all Christian, but that does show that our culture,

1097
01:11:11,240 --> 01:11:15,280
kind of they use this fight type of language there.

1098
01:11:15,280 --> 01:11:20,480
That's not completely over, that we've not completely lost all semblance of truth as

1099
01:11:20,480 --> 01:11:25,040
much as that seems like is the case sometimes.

1100
01:11:25,040 --> 01:11:27,320
God's given us enough grace that we're not done yet.

1101
01:11:27,320 --> 01:11:30,760
So let's not act like we are.

1102
01:11:30,760 --> 01:11:34,280
And even if we are all the way down, like that's not our call.

1103
01:11:34,280 --> 01:11:38,600
So just make the best of the life you have in front of you.

1104
01:11:38,600 --> 01:11:46,920
And if you're going to go down, go down swinging and go down with a great story.

1105
01:11:46,920 --> 01:11:53,280
Don't go down just kind of cowering in fear that that's, we're all going to die, but I'd

1106
01:11:53,280 --> 01:11:54,920
rather you die with a pretty cool story.

1107
01:11:54,920 --> 01:11:57,200
You get to die with JK Rowland roast in you.

1108
01:11:57,200 --> 01:11:58,200
That's pretty cool.

1109
01:11:58,200 --> 01:11:59,200
Exactly.

1110
01:11:59,200 --> 01:12:00,200
Yeah.

1111
01:12:00,200 --> 01:12:06,480
I mean, I think, and in addition to everything you're saying, which is great, we just, one

1112
01:12:06,480 --> 01:12:17,920
of the ways that we quote unquote win is by simply asserting, Hey, look at me.

1113
01:12:17,920 --> 01:12:21,960
I believe that a wife should submit to her husband.

1114
01:12:21,960 --> 01:12:23,760
Now look at my marriage.

1115
01:12:23,760 --> 01:12:26,040
It's actually very recognizable.

1116
01:12:26,040 --> 01:12:27,320
We're not monsters.

1117
01:12:27,320 --> 01:12:29,320
My wife is not bowing to me.

1118
01:12:29,320 --> 01:12:31,080
She's not calling me sir.

1119
01:12:31,080 --> 01:12:33,400
I'm not beating her.

1120
01:12:33,400 --> 01:12:34,400
She's very happy.

1121
01:12:34,400 --> 01:12:40,200
And certainly tells me what she thinks and she certainly puts her foot down and all kind

1122
01:12:40,200 --> 01:12:47,280
of like, like, look, we are in a, in a complex dance that is a married relationship and it's

1123
01:12:47,280 --> 01:12:53,000
a complex dance that you could recognize and that your parents had and that you have if

1124
01:12:53,000 --> 01:12:55,000
you're in a relationship.

1125
01:12:55,000 --> 01:13:00,200
And I happen to believe something and I happen to just be normal.

1126
01:13:00,200 --> 01:13:04,920
And so I think many Christians just live in this kind of with a perpetual sort of chip

1127
01:13:04,920 --> 01:13:07,240
on their shoulder.

1128
01:13:07,240 --> 01:13:11,040
Like they feel like they're odd and so therefore they act odd.

1129
01:13:11,040 --> 01:13:15,360
And that's where you get some of the cosplaying Christians that are like, I believe that my,

1130
01:13:15,360 --> 01:13:16,440
my wife should submit.

1131
01:13:16,440 --> 01:13:21,600
So she's going to wear a dress like she's from little house on the prairie.

1132
01:13:21,600 --> 01:13:27,640
And you get people acting weird precisely because they kind of already feel defeated.

1133
01:13:27,640 --> 01:13:30,080
And so they're like, okay, well, I guess I'm weird.

1134
01:13:30,080 --> 01:13:31,080
I'll own it.

1135
01:13:31,080 --> 01:13:32,080
I'm weird.

1136
01:13:32,080 --> 01:13:38,360
And it's like, I think just strategically speaking, it's better to say, I have these

1137
01:13:38,360 --> 01:13:44,960
beliefs that you guys are all acting like are weird, but actually I'm just a dude.

1138
01:13:44,960 --> 01:13:45,960
Look at me.

1139
01:13:45,960 --> 01:13:46,960
Yeah.

1140
01:13:46,960 --> 01:13:47,960
Look at this.

1141
01:13:47,960 --> 01:13:49,160
It's not that weird.

1142
01:13:49,160 --> 01:13:50,160
We have kids.

1143
01:13:50,160 --> 01:13:51,160
We teach our kids to obey us.

1144
01:13:51,160 --> 01:13:52,160
Our kids are happy, whatever.

1145
01:13:52,160 --> 01:13:58,800
Like, you know, I think, I think that's really, that's really important.

1146
01:13:58,800 --> 01:14:04,360
And it goes back to something you hit on earlier of unfortunately it, and I don't have any

1147
01:14:04,360 --> 01:14:09,120
stats on this, but just anecdotally, there seems to be too much, too much smoke.

1148
01:14:09,120 --> 01:14:14,000
So there's probably fire of some of these more conservative, more homeschool families,

1149
01:14:14,000 --> 01:14:20,440
which to be, you know, transparent, I'm conservative, we're homeschooling our kids.

1150
01:14:20,440 --> 01:14:25,920
I'm not saying that's bad, but particularly more old school where there, there was some

1151
01:14:25,920 --> 01:14:31,400
of that hush, hush, sexual abuse, don't say anything, living in fear.

1152
01:14:31,400 --> 01:14:35,920
And it's just because, oh, we're doing the right thing by being conservative and homeschooling.

1153
01:14:35,920 --> 01:14:37,440
And then that's it.

1154
01:14:37,440 --> 01:14:39,160
Like battles won.

1155
01:14:39,160 --> 01:14:40,160
It's all over.

1156
01:14:40,160 --> 01:14:43,400
And you're not actually living a joyful life.

1157
01:14:43,400 --> 01:14:44,920
You're not following God's commands.

1158
01:14:44,920 --> 01:14:49,120
You're just thinking you already want it and you have it.

1159
01:14:49,120 --> 01:14:55,400
And that piece there, again, not saying that, oh, people see how great our kids are and

1160
01:14:55,400 --> 01:14:56,400
our lives are.

1161
01:14:56,400 --> 01:14:58,800
Well, therefore they're going to come to Jesus.

1162
01:14:58,800 --> 01:15:05,400
But it is some good evidence there of, yeah, like we're not all monsters.

1163
01:15:05,400 --> 01:15:12,480
And I actually was thinking of this when you're talking earlier, I'd forgotten about it.

1164
01:15:12,480 --> 01:15:14,920
I don't remember what you had posted.

1165
01:15:14,920 --> 01:15:21,680
Actually, it was something along the lines of about your views on spanking of like, hey,

1166
01:15:21,680 --> 01:15:24,080
great thing about spanking is you spank them and it's over.

1167
01:15:24,080 --> 01:15:29,880
You don't have to make a big scene or whatever, which I thought was a great critique again

1168
01:15:29,880 --> 01:15:37,080
on some of the far, far right people that's like, boy, I spank my kids 50 times a day.

1169
01:15:37,080 --> 01:15:38,600
They're going to learn to respect me.

1170
01:15:38,600 --> 01:15:44,160
And it's almost kind of that cosplay type of analogy had there.

1171
01:15:44,160 --> 01:15:48,880
I said something along the lines of, and it was like, it was almost verbatim.

1172
01:15:48,880 --> 01:15:54,600
I tried to make it like a literal quote to my daughter that was acting up at the lunch

1173
01:15:54,600 --> 01:15:57,480
table and I wanted to eat my lunch.

1174
01:15:57,480 --> 01:16:00,080
Like, I don't want to discipline you.

1175
01:16:00,080 --> 01:16:04,520
And the thing that, and I said something like some of your friends were catching up with

1176
01:16:04,520 --> 01:16:09,760
me because it was like a residual of some of the tweets that you got some of the haters.

1177
01:16:09,760 --> 01:16:13,720
And I said something like, honey, I don't want to have to spank you.

1178
01:16:13,720 --> 01:16:16,000
And I said it wasn't a threat.

1179
01:16:16,000 --> 01:16:17,000
And legitimately it wasn't.

1180
01:16:17,000 --> 01:16:19,120
It was like, I want to eat my lunch.

1181
01:16:19,120 --> 01:16:20,120
Right.

1182
01:16:20,120 --> 01:16:21,960
Just leave me alone.

1183
01:16:21,960 --> 01:16:25,720
And they take that of, oh, you're abusing your daughter.

1184
01:16:25,720 --> 01:16:27,960
She's going to grow up to hate you.

1185
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:32,880
She's going to have all these scars and say, well, I need to be obedient and just nonsense

1186
01:16:32,880 --> 01:16:34,480
things.

1187
01:16:34,480 --> 01:16:39,840
And not that I'm going to convince them of anything, but I do know that I put my daughter

1188
01:16:39,840 --> 01:16:46,280
to go take a nap after that and she says I love you and she hugs me and that's great.

1189
01:16:46,280 --> 01:16:49,120
Like I don't have to prove that to anybody.

1190
01:16:49,120 --> 01:16:50,120
I have it.

1191
01:16:50,120 --> 01:16:56,200
I know I'm not a perfect father, but I have this authentic real relationship and that's

1192
01:16:56,200 --> 01:16:59,520
what you need to really invest in.

1193
01:16:59,520 --> 01:17:04,080
Not trying to do things to win points, but do it because it's good.

1194
01:17:04,080 --> 01:17:09,600
And that's going to exude from you, exude from your kids, exude from your wife.

1195
01:17:09,600 --> 01:17:12,760
Don't try to win those internet points just to win internet points.

1196
01:17:12,760 --> 01:17:15,000
It's not going to get you much.

1197
01:17:15,000 --> 01:17:18,600
Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely true.

1198
01:17:18,600 --> 01:17:27,040
I mean, like I said, I'm doing internet stuff because it is the nature of my job, but a

1199
01:17:27,040 --> 01:17:33,080
lot of people that I see that are on there that are just there to be a culture warrior.

1200
01:17:33,080 --> 01:17:35,280
I mean, I just, I don't want to be too reductive about this.

1201
01:17:35,280 --> 01:17:39,480
I think there can be some good things about that, but it's like, go outside.

1202
01:17:39,480 --> 01:17:42,360
Like smell the roses.

1203
01:17:42,360 --> 01:17:47,040
Is there, is this battle actually happening in your family, in your extended family, in

1204
01:17:47,040 --> 01:17:48,040
your workplace?

1205
01:17:48,040 --> 01:17:52,480
Do you know anyone that represents the extreme negative point of view that you're fighting

1206
01:17:52,480 --> 01:17:59,600
against or are you just fighting these weird abstract internet battles and attracting the

1207
01:17:59,600 --> 01:18:06,840
most trollish sort of opposition when instead you could be loving your neighbor and doing

1208
01:18:06,840 --> 01:18:10,880
a hundred times more good for the gospel?

1209
01:18:10,880 --> 01:18:14,040
And I engage in culture polemic.

1210
01:18:14,040 --> 01:18:16,920
I like many people that do.

1211
01:18:16,920 --> 01:18:25,160
I am not totally against it, but I do see an immature version of it that's out there.

1212
01:18:25,160 --> 01:18:26,160
Yeah.

1213
01:18:26,160 --> 01:18:33,000
Kind of getting towards just wrapping things up here, just trying to get some takeaways

1214
01:18:33,000 --> 01:18:40,520
for the audience, especially with some of your experience, both in the podcasting world

1215
01:18:40,520 --> 01:18:43,440
and kind of having the mob against you.

1216
01:18:43,440 --> 01:18:48,440
What would you say are some kind of take a home, take home some real practical things

1217
01:18:48,440 --> 01:18:55,120
the audience could do to do what you're mentioning of engaging in the culture, but not just to

1218
01:18:55,120 --> 01:18:59,680
fight these big wars and win internet tough, tough points or whatever.

1219
01:18:59,680 --> 01:19:04,640
What are some practical ways that you can engage in the culture, but in a very healthy

1220
01:19:04,640 --> 01:19:06,160
and biblical way?

1221
01:19:06,160 --> 01:19:15,320
Well, I am a great believer in the local church and in real Christian community.

1222
01:19:15,320 --> 01:19:20,440
There at an old pastor and mentor, he used to say, there's no such thing as a lone ranger

1223
01:19:20,440 --> 01:19:24,480
Christian and it is absolutely true.

1224
01:19:24,480 --> 01:19:30,000
If you're just on the internet, guns a blazing and then you don't go to church, I have no

1225
01:19:30,000 --> 01:19:31,960
respect for you.

1226
01:19:31,960 --> 01:19:40,120
If you can't actually partake of Christ's bride in a real localized way, if you don't

1227
01:19:40,120 --> 01:19:47,680
have Christian friends, if you're not part of a real community, then if you can't do

1228
01:19:47,680 --> 01:19:56,240
the 101 stuff, then why should I trust you to do the 300 level or the 400 level stuff?

1229
01:19:56,240 --> 01:20:03,360
And if you're doing it without accountability, the good thing is I've been lucky enough or

1230
01:20:03,360 --> 01:20:09,600
blessed enough to be in a job where I have a boss and he can say, no, Nathan, don't

1231
01:20:09,600 --> 01:20:10,600
tweet that.

1232
01:20:10,600 --> 01:20:11,600
That's too much.

1233
01:20:11,600 --> 01:20:13,320
People edited my article for better or worse.

1234
01:20:13,320 --> 01:20:18,480
Maybe at the end of the day, we look back and say, we didn't catch everything, but I

1235
01:20:18,480 --> 01:20:23,640
was part of a Christian community, which actually came directly out of my church and there were

1236
01:20:23,640 --> 01:20:27,560
people to encourage me, there were people to rebuke me, there were people to provide

1237
01:20:27,560 --> 01:20:31,280
accountability and you need that.

1238
01:20:31,280 --> 01:20:39,200
And you need to not sort of give into the cultural myth of found family and just surround

1239
01:20:39,200 --> 01:20:43,360
yourself with the people that you like or the people that you feel like get you, the

1240
01:20:43,360 --> 01:20:46,280
people that are going to tell you, no, that article is great.

1241
01:20:46,280 --> 01:20:47,600
That tweet is great.

1242
01:20:47,600 --> 01:20:52,360
You need to be part of a church where there's people with bad teeth and people of a different

1243
01:20:52,360 --> 01:20:56,600
socio-economic class than you and people with different backgrounds.

1244
01:20:56,600 --> 01:21:02,360
The wonderful thing about a local body is that you're not actually going to like everybody

1245
01:21:02,360 --> 01:21:07,000
and there's going to be some of your rough edges will be worn off and some of their rough

1246
01:21:07,000 --> 01:21:12,040
edges will be worn off and God works through the church.

1247
01:21:12,040 --> 01:21:16,760
Who is the great church father who said you cannot have God for your father without having

1248
01:21:16,760 --> 01:21:18,160
the church for your mother?

1249
01:21:18,160 --> 01:21:22,800
So this doesn't directly answer your question, but it is foundational.

1250
01:21:22,800 --> 01:21:30,520
If someone is not interested in simply reading their Bible and simply loving their wife,

1251
01:21:30,520 --> 01:21:37,120
loving their husband, taking care of their kids, going to church, I have zero interest

1252
01:21:37,120 --> 01:21:42,160
in anything that they have to say about the broader culture.

1253
01:21:42,160 --> 01:21:43,160
None.

1254
01:21:43,160 --> 01:21:48,120
I don't care what gifts they have of rhetoric, what gifts of insight, what gifts of discernment.

1255
01:21:48,120 --> 01:21:53,720
If you cannot do the basic stuff, it's like if you go to a church and nobody's friendly,

1256
01:21:53,720 --> 01:21:56,200
nobody shakes your hand, you're not going to go back there.

1257
01:21:56,200 --> 01:21:58,520
It doesn't matter what their doctrine is like.

1258
01:21:58,520 --> 01:22:06,000
If they can't do kindness, then you really don't care what they say about the sovereignty

1259
01:22:06,000 --> 01:22:07,000
of God.

1260
01:22:07,000 --> 01:22:10,360
It's not that the sovereignty of God isn't important.

1261
01:22:10,360 --> 01:22:14,520
It's not that doctrine isn't important, but if they can't do 101, you're not going to

1262
01:22:14,520 --> 01:22:18,480
be real interested in their 400 level stuff.

1263
01:22:18,480 --> 01:22:27,000
And so I think the most important thing that anyone can do is go to church and then sort

1264
01:22:27,000 --> 01:22:34,040
of coming out of that, love their local community, love, go to things, be part of things, have

1265
01:22:34,040 --> 01:22:35,360
friends, have neighbors.

1266
01:22:35,360 --> 01:22:36,360
Don't just be.

1267
01:22:36,360 --> 01:22:38,720
I'm not an anti-internet guy.

1268
01:22:38,720 --> 01:22:39,720
I work.

1269
01:22:39,720 --> 01:22:41,920
I literally get paid to work in new media.

1270
01:22:41,920 --> 01:22:43,240
I'm a new media guy.

1271
01:22:43,240 --> 01:22:46,320
I'm a podcaster for crying out loud.

1272
01:22:46,320 --> 01:22:51,000
But I'm telling you, if your only thing is podcasts, listening to them, creating them,

1273
01:22:51,000 --> 01:22:56,360
if you're just a content creator, then you're not living the life that God made you to live

1274
01:22:56,360 --> 01:22:57,920
as one of His body.

1275
01:22:57,920 --> 01:23:03,560
You have to be part of the body and you have to love the people where you're at.

1276
01:23:03,560 --> 01:23:10,160
It may be much more important for your wife to bake that pie and then you have to trudge

1277
01:23:10,160 --> 01:23:15,360
over to the family that just moved in and say, hey, we baked you a pie and it's an awkward,

1278
01:23:15,360 --> 01:23:16,360
terrible conversation.

1279
01:23:16,360 --> 01:23:20,280
And then you invite them to church and you feel stupid inviting them to church because

1280
01:23:20,280 --> 01:23:22,000
you don't have a good lead in.

1281
01:23:22,000 --> 01:23:27,200
And if your wife is like my wife, then she's very upfront about it.

1282
01:23:27,200 --> 01:23:29,720
And I'm like, I still want to find a way to package it.

1283
01:23:29,720 --> 01:23:31,640
But she's just like, you should come to our church.

1284
01:23:31,640 --> 01:23:38,400
But doing that, so much more important than the most awesome tweet.

1285
01:23:38,400 --> 01:23:45,840
I mean, internet, I like the, again, I don't want to sound defensive about this, but I

1286
01:23:45,840 --> 01:23:49,600
like Twitter, I like these things, but they're designed to flatter you.

1287
01:23:49,600 --> 01:23:56,160
They're designed to make you feel like you're getting likes and hits and they want you to

1288
01:23:56,160 --> 01:23:59,160
get enough, not so much serotonin that you're done.

1289
01:23:59,160 --> 01:24:03,400
And I don't know how serotonin work, you probably do with your feel, but just using

1290
01:24:03,400 --> 01:24:05,840
the pop culture way that serotonin works.

1291
01:24:05,840 --> 01:24:10,480
They want you to get enough serotonin that you don't give up and you're just happy, but

1292
01:24:10,480 --> 01:24:11,920
enough that you keep coming back.

1293
01:24:11,920 --> 01:24:14,840
So they want you to feel like you're getting engagement and like you're making a difference.

1294
01:24:14,840 --> 01:24:18,480
But usually you're not.

1295
01:24:18,480 --> 01:24:24,400
So be part of life.

1296
01:24:24,400 --> 01:24:25,400
That is the first thing.

1297
01:24:25,400 --> 01:24:35,400
And then when you engage, when you do these things, do it with accountability.

1298
01:24:35,400 --> 01:24:37,760
Do it with discernment.

1299
01:24:37,760 --> 01:24:42,560
Do it with people who can tell you, no, that's dumb or no, you know what?

1300
01:24:42,560 --> 01:24:44,920
Actually it wouldn't be wise to go.

1301
01:24:44,920 --> 01:24:51,160
We know your work now has this policy about LGBT, but we actually think it's more important

1302
01:24:51,160 --> 01:24:56,800
that you support your family right now than that you make a big statement and go down

1303
01:24:56,800 --> 01:24:58,320
in flames at your workplace.

1304
01:24:58,320 --> 01:25:04,400
Or we think as your pastors and elders, we've prayed, we've thought, we've discerned.

1305
01:25:04,400 --> 01:25:10,360
We think you're actually in a really good position to take a stand right now.

1306
01:25:10,360 --> 01:25:13,040
In other words, there's some strategy to this.

1307
01:25:13,040 --> 01:25:19,040
It's not just like you're sinning if you don't say the truth here and you're successful if

1308
01:25:19,040 --> 01:25:20,040
you say it here.

1309
01:25:20,040 --> 01:25:21,040
There's some strategy.

1310
01:25:21,040 --> 01:25:22,040
There's some discernment.

1311
01:25:22,040 --> 01:25:25,040
There's some times of life that are better than others.

1312
01:25:25,040 --> 01:25:28,800
There's some stations of life that are better than others to do things.

1313
01:25:28,800 --> 01:25:31,520
And those are decisions that are really hard to make unilaterally.

1314
01:25:31,520 --> 01:25:36,720
You need people who could hold you accountable.

1315
01:25:36,720 --> 01:25:45,280
And then finally, I've learned that attention is addicting and negative attention is addictive

1316
01:25:45,280 --> 01:25:46,780
too.

1317
01:25:46,780 --> 01:25:52,200
For all of the times where I've had these mobs after me, there is a part of me that doesn't

1318
01:25:52,200 --> 01:25:55,600
want to just block, that doesn't want it to go away.

1319
01:25:55,600 --> 01:26:02,760
There's a part of me that's gleeful about people knowing my name even when they're hating

1320
01:26:02,760 --> 01:26:03,760
it.

1321
01:26:03,760 --> 01:26:08,040
There's a part of me that, call it masochistic, but a part of me that's like, yeah, punch

1322
01:26:08,040 --> 01:26:14,800
me at least you're acknowledging that I'm alive.

1323
01:26:14,800 --> 01:26:17,520
And that could be addictive and that could be hugely destructive.

1324
01:26:17,520 --> 01:26:27,000
And obviously we all see this on the internet all the time where people just get addicted

1325
01:26:27,000 --> 01:26:34,520
to negative attention and they keep being more and more provocative and saying things

1326
01:26:34,520 --> 01:26:39,960
in the most provocative way, being rhetorically unwise just because, not because they actually

1327
01:26:39,960 --> 01:26:45,800
want to help people, but because they want to get attention.

1328
01:26:45,800 --> 01:26:53,520
When you become that person, you can inspire followers that way, but you won't actually

1329
01:26:53,520 --> 01:26:58,400
be inspiring, you won't actually be giving them anything.

1330
01:26:58,400 --> 01:27:02,720
What you'll be doing is finding people whose essences you can drain kind of empirically.

1331
01:27:02,720 --> 01:27:07,920
We've all probably worked for people like this, for a boss who, it's actually about

1332
01:27:07,920 --> 01:27:11,400
him and it's about what he can take from you.

1333
01:27:11,400 --> 01:27:17,520
It's about him making you the best you that you can be for the company or whatever it is.

1334
01:27:17,520 --> 01:27:23,240
If you become the kind of person that just exists to provoke, that just exists for attention,

1335
01:27:23,240 --> 01:27:28,120
then yeah, sure, maybe God can use a random Twitter, blog post or podcast or something

1336
01:27:28,120 --> 01:27:29,120
that you do.

1337
01:27:29,120 --> 01:27:34,280
God's in the business of using terrible things in his service, but you won't actually be

1338
01:27:34,280 --> 01:27:36,360
helping anybody by and large.

1339
01:27:36,360 --> 01:27:41,360
You'll just be sucking other people dry, just looking for followers, looking for, you know,

1340
01:27:41,360 --> 01:27:42,360
for proselytes.

1341
01:27:42,360 --> 01:27:44,880
I'll say one other thing.

1342
01:27:44,880 --> 01:27:51,760
I said that was my last one, but here's my absolute last one.

1343
01:27:51,760 --> 01:27:52,760
You got to just be wise.

1344
01:27:52,760 --> 01:27:56,000
Let me just say something about social media.

1345
01:27:56,000 --> 01:28:03,320
You need to know what social media you're using, what it exists to do, what works on

1346
01:28:03,320 --> 01:28:06,040
it, what doesn't work, who's in charge of it.

1347
01:28:06,040 --> 01:28:09,880
You can't go to Facebook and do the same thing that you can go to Twitter that you can do

1348
01:28:09,880 --> 01:28:11,840
to TikTok that you can do to Instagram.

1349
01:28:11,840 --> 01:28:13,280
They all exist for different purposes.

1350
01:28:13,280 --> 01:28:15,000
They all have different algorithms.

1351
01:28:15,000 --> 01:28:19,120
They all have different people running them.

1352
01:28:19,120 --> 01:28:25,880
I think actually the most useful way to think of them is I am walking into the town square

1353
01:28:25,880 --> 01:28:30,800
and I want to make myself heard.

1354
01:28:30,800 --> 01:28:32,840
How many people are in this town square?

1355
01:28:32,840 --> 01:28:38,760
Is it the kind of town square with a cork board where you can post, I want guitar lessons?

1356
01:28:38,760 --> 01:28:44,000
Or is it the kind of place where you can get up on a soapbox and declaim your views and

1357
01:28:44,000 --> 01:28:45,080
people will want to listen?

1358
01:28:45,080 --> 01:28:48,760
Or is it the kind of place where if you do that, it'll just be noise and everyone will

1359
01:28:48,760 --> 01:28:50,920
ignore you.

1360
01:28:50,920 --> 01:28:53,560
You need to know who's the mayor of this town?

1361
01:28:53,560 --> 01:28:54,560
What does he want?

1362
01:28:54,560 --> 01:28:56,240
Why are people coming into the town square?

1363
01:28:56,240 --> 01:28:57,320
What are they there to buy?

1364
01:28:57,320 --> 01:28:59,360
What are they there to sell?

1365
01:28:59,360 --> 01:29:04,320
Just think of it that way and I think it can discipline you.

1366
01:29:04,320 --> 01:29:08,600
One of the reasons that I don't feel that bad about my provocative tweets is because I'm

1367
01:29:08,600 --> 01:29:15,040
not actually on Twitter primarily to win people's hearts.

1368
01:29:15,040 --> 01:29:21,640
I am there to advertise podcasts and things that I do which I think are much more helpful

1369
01:29:21,640 --> 01:29:22,880
than my tweets.

1370
01:29:22,880 --> 01:29:26,080
Things that I hope will be a help to people.

1371
01:29:26,080 --> 01:29:34,120
I'm there primarily to attract conservative Christians to come and check out my stuff.

1372
01:29:34,120 --> 01:29:44,160
To my audiences, I'm using a brand that works for me as a whatever I am millennial Gen Xer,

1373
01:29:44,160 --> 01:29:48,040
one that was designed for my kind of people with my frame of reference.

1374
01:29:48,040 --> 01:29:51,320
I'm going there and I'm saying, hey, look at me.

1375
01:29:51,320 --> 01:29:52,320
You think I'm funny?

1376
01:29:52,320 --> 01:29:53,320
You think I'm neat?

1377
01:29:53,320 --> 01:29:54,320
You think I'm interesting?

1378
01:29:54,320 --> 01:29:56,520
Well, then come check out the stuff that actually matters.

1379
01:29:56,520 --> 01:30:03,800
What I'm not trying to do is change anybody's heart or mind through Twitter.

1380
01:30:03,800 --> 01:30:07,760
And so there's a sense in which I'm very intentionally preaching to the choir and I don't feel shame

1381
01:30:07,760 --> 01:30:08,760
about that.

1382
01:30:08,760 --> 01:30:12,640
That's what if I was just in my life preaching to the choir, that'd be bad.

1383
01:30:12,640 --> 01:30:16,680
But Twitter is a place where I go for five minutes a day to preach to the choir and say,

1384
01:30:16,680 --> 01:30:18,720
hey, choir, you want to learn how to be a better choir?

1385
01:30:18,720 --> 01:30:23,440
Come listen to my podcasts or whatever.

1386
01:30:23,440 --> 01:30:30,240
But if you're the kind of person that's going to write a tweet about spanking in order to

1387
01:30:30,240 --> 01:30:34,200
change someone's mind or write a blog post or whatever, that's fine.

1388
01:30:34,200 --> 01:30:39,400
If you're the kind of person that wants to make someone say, oh, that's an interesting

1389
01:30:39,400 --> 01:30:40,400
thought about spanking.

1390
01:30:40,400 --> 01:30:42,280
I should see, I should go deeper.

1391
01:30:42,280 --> 01:30:43,480
That's another kind of thing.

1392
01:30:43,480 --> 01:30:45,080
I'm not saying which one's better, which one's good.

1393
01:30:45,080 --> 01:30:52,520
I'm just saying know the difference, know which one you're doing and do it well.

1394
01:30:52,520 --> 01:30:53,800
So that's a lot.

1395
01:30:53,800 --> 01:30:56,440
I hope there's some helpful stuff in there.

1396
01:30:56,440 --> 01:31:02,360
I think there's a lot of helpful things, as I'm sure you would agree with, if on those

1397
01:31:02,360 --> 01:31:06,960
kind of takeaways, if you are a Christian, honestly, if you're not a Christian, but especially

1398
01:31:06,960 --> 01:31:13,640
if you're a Christian, there's just no excuse to not be a part of a church.

1399
01:31:13,640 --> 01:31:14,640
Yeah.

1400
01:31:14,640 --> 01:31:16,160
There just isn't.

1401
01:31:16,160 --> 01:31:19,840
You can tell me, oh, I don't like the church I go into.

1402
01:31:19,840 --> 01:31:21,440
Oh, there's this problem.

1403
01:31:21,440 --> 01:31:23,800
And you're probably right.

1404
01:31:23,800 --> 01:31:31,200
So your option is to either gut it out, try to make your church better through however

1405
01:31:31,200 --> 01:31:35,440
you can state what's going wrong or volunteering things.

1406
01:31:35,440 --> 01:31:36,840
You can do that.

1407
01:31:36,840 --> 01:31:42,760
You can go find another church or you can go be a part of planning a church elsewhere

1408
01:31:42,760 --> 01:31:46,160
or something like that moving.

1409
01:31:46,160 --> 01:31:47,720
There are no other options.

1410
01:31:47,720 --> 01:31:53,040
There's not the, I'll just go check something online for a year or two and then we'll get

1411
01:31:53,040 --> 01:31:54,040
to something else.

1412
01:31:54,040 --> 01:31:59,520
No, you got to be a part of a church that tired of hearing those type of excuses.

1413
01:31:59,520 --> 01:32:03,640
So the other stuff on, go ahead.

1414
01:32:03,640 --> 01:32:08,480
Well, I just, I really think like there's not a good church in my area, Johnny.

1415
01:32:08,480 --> 01:32:15,480
Well, at the end of the, if that's A, is it really not true or that there, is it really

1416
01:32:15,480 --> 01:32:18,160
true that there's not a good church in your area or is it just that you don't like the

1417
01:32:18,160 --> 01:32:19,160
music here?

1418
01:32:19,160 --> 01:32:25,120
You don't have a slight discus here or they wear ties and you prefer to wear sweater vests,

1419
01:32:25,120 --> 01:32:26,120
whatever.

1420
01:32:26,120 --> 01:32:28,880
There's all those kinds of things that we just need to overcome.

1421
01:32:28,880 --> 01:32:35,760
And then if there's really not a good church in your area, your soul, your soul, the soul

1422
01:32:35,760 --> 01:32:39,640
of your wife, the soul of your husband, the soul of your children, so much more important

1423
01:32:39,640 --> 01:32:42,600
than the benefits you're getting from your Fortune 500 company.

1424
01:32:42,600 --> 01:32:43,600
I mean, move.

1425
01:32:43,600 --> 01:32:44,600
Move.

1426
01:32:44,600 --> 01:32:50,920
If you really tell me there is nothing, then what I'm going to tell you is your responsibility

1427
01:32:50,920 --> 01:32:54,600
is to not live where you live.

1428
01:32:54,600 --> 01:33:01,040
If, I'm not sure I believe you when you say there's nothing, but granting that, find a

1429
01:33:01,040 --> 01:33:03,680
church so important.

1430
01:33:03,680 --> 01:33:04,600
1000%.

1431
01:33:04,600 --> 01:33:08,880
I agree with that completely.

1432
01:33:08,880 --> 01:33:15,920
I've been in situations where I've been not, not that there's no good churches, but yeah,

1433
01:33:15,920 --> 01:33:17,480
this isn't the healthiest situation.

1434
01:33:17,480 --> 01:33:18,480
I get it.

1435
01:33:18,480 --> 01:33:19,480
I get those things happen.

1436
01:33:19,480 --> 01:33:27,000
We're all messy people, but that is such a rare occurrence, especially in Oklahoma,

1437
01:33:27,000 --> 01:33:31,720
I would assume, in Indiana, but really anywhere in this country, very, very rare.

1438
01:33:31,720 --> 01:33:36,760
Like you said, if that is legitimately the case, I guarantee you you can find a church

1439
01:33:36,760 --> 01:33:37,760
somewhere.

1440
01:33:37,760 --> 01:33:40,800
And shoot, use the internet if you need to.

1441
01:33:40,800 --> 01:33:45,120
Find a pastor that you really respect and ask them, do you have a tool?

1442
01:33:45,120 --> 01:33:48,080
Do you know somebody nearby?

1443
01:33:48,080 --> 01:33:50,640
It's imperative and it is not an option.

1444
01:33:50,640 --> 01:33:54,880
It's an option to interact on Twitter or to listen to podcasts or whatever.

1445
01:33:54,880 --> 01:33:55,880
That is not.

1446
01:33:55,880 --> 01:34:00,000
If you're going to be a follower of Christ, you have to be in a church.

1447
01:34:00,000 --> 01:34:01,000
That's it.

1448
01:34:01,000 --> 01:34:02,320
Can I just say one more thing about that?

1449
01:34:02,320 --> 01:34:04,160
I'm sorry to keep interrupting.

1450
01:34:04,160 --> 01:34:11,560
I don't know how you smell and your pastor does.

1451
01:34:11,560 --> 01:34:18,440
And when he gets up, there is, and he speaks to you, God works through the preaching of

1452
01:34:18,440 --> 01:34:22,680
the word in a way that God simply does not through a podcast.

1453
01:34:22,680 --> 01:34:25,240
And I am a brilliant podcaster.

1454
01:34:25,240 --> 01:34:29,280
Listen to my podcast, subscribe, share, five stars, everything.

1455
01:34:29,280 --> 01:34:31,000
I love podcasts.

1456
01:34:31,000 --> 01:34:32,440
I love what you're doing.

1457
01:34:32,440 --> 01:34:38,240
Johnny, I'm just saying, like that can't be, that that is not, that's like a supplement.

1458
01:34:38,240 --> 01:34:39,480
It's not the meal.

1459
01:34:39,480 --> 01:34:41,720
It cannot be the meal for people.

1460
01:34:41,720 --> 01:34:42,720
Yes.

1461
01:34:42,720 --> 01:34:43,720
Absolutely.

1462
01:34:43,720 --> 01:34:46,800
So I'm really glad that you let it off with that.

1463
01:34:46,800 --> 01:34:49,800
And again, the other things you mentioned, fantastic.

1464
01:34:49,800 --> 01:34:54,920
Obviously, we both agree with podcasting and I think it's a great medium.

1465
01:34:54,920 --> 01:34:59,680
I love listening to podcasts when I'm mowing the lawn and going for a run or whatever, like

1466
01:34:59,680 --> 01:35:00,960
driving in the car.

1467
01:35:00,960 --> 01:35:03,140
There's fantastic things about podcasts.

1468
01:35:03,140 --> 01:35:04,840
It is not the church.

1469
01:35:04,840 --> 01:35:07,000
It just, it isn't, it will never.

1470
01:35:07,000 --> 01:35:14,680
And honestly, even the podcast of listening to John MacArthur or whoever that is preaching

1471
01:35:14,680 --> 01:35:18,280
an old RC Sproul sermon or something, like those are great too.

1472
01:35:18,280 --> 01:35:22,840
You should listen to those that's not the same as being in church.

1473
01:35:22,840 --> 01:35:26,360
You're going to have a pastor that's going to have far less speaking ability probably

1474
01:35:26,360 --> 01:35:30,920
in your local community, but they're going to be more important to you.

1475
01:35:30,920 --> 01:35:32,640
You absolutely have to.

1476
01:35:32,640 --> 01:35:33,640
So right.

1477
01:35:33,640 --> 01:35:38,960
John MacArthur, however wonderful he is, he's not the man that God has entrusted your soul

1478
01:35:38,960 --> 01:35:39,960
with.

1479
01:35:39,960 --> 01:35:40,960
Yes.

1480
01:35:40,960 --> 01:35:41,960
Unless you happen to go to his church.

1481
01:35:41,960 --> 01:35:42,960
Absolutely.

1482
01:35:42,960 --> 01:35:46,080
So yes, definitely please take that home.

1483
01:35:46,080 --> 01:35:51,480
I think that's probably a good idea to bring that home on maybe not every single episode,

1484
01:35:51,480 --> 01:35:59,400
bring that up, but often enough, you cannot be listening to even great voices on podcast

1485
01:35:59,400 --> 01:36:03,480
or even said, even great pastors and think that's the same thing as being in a body.

1486
01:36:03,480 --> 01:36:06,480
It's just not great.

1487
01:36:06,480 --> 01:36:11,960
Well that being said, I know you did a great job of pitching yourself earlier.

1488
01:36:11,960 --> 01:36:16,840
Let's let you have one more chance to pitch yourself and where people can find you.

1489
01:36:16,840 --> 01:36:21,120
Well folks, you can follow me at Twitter on at Nathan Albertson, of course, see wonderfully

1490
01:36:21,120 --> 01:36:30,080
provocative tweets about all kinds of things taken down those pagans with the sword of

1491
01:36:30,080 --> 01:36:31,400
justice.

1492
01:36:31,400 --> 01:36:33,600
That's me, brother.

1493
01:36:33,600 --> 01:36:34,800
They don't stand a chance.

1494
01:36:34,800 --> 01:36:36,360
I am your hero.

1495
01:36:36,360 --> 01:36:37,960
Give me your money.

1496
01:36:37,960 --> 01:36:38,960
But goat.

1497
01:36:38,960 --> 01:36:39,960
Just kidding.

1498
01:36:39,960 --> 01:36:48,280
You can follow me at Twitter at Nathan Albertson, but more importantly, as I said, I really

1499
01:36:48,280 --> 01:36:51,800
love the movie podcast that we're doing, Sanity at the Movies.

1500
01:36:51,800 --> 01:36:52,880
I encourage you to listen to that.

1501
01:36:52,880 --> 01:36:57,720
Even if you're not a big movie guy or gal, you're going to hear a lot of just general

1502
01:36:57,720 --> 01:37:01,640
truth and all in an incredibly fun package.

1503
01:37:01,640 --> 01:37:06,720
So Sanity at the Movies also Sound of Sanity, which is more broadly dealing with culture.

1504
01:37:06,720 --> 01:37:11,160
We've got a podcast called The Booking, which is on a bit of a hiatus right now, but we

1505
01:37:11,160 --> 01:37:12,520
talk about great literature.

1506
01:37:12,520 --> 01:37:18,120
At some point, we're going to record our four-hour episode on Anna Karenina, the greatest novel

1507
01:37:18,120 --> 01:37:20,520
by the greatest novelist of all time.

1508
01:37:20,520 --> 01:37:26,000
But we've got a big backlog of episodes on the great works of literature.

1509
01:37:26,000 --> 01:37:31,680
If you like that kind of thing, you can also listen to Chip and Lance, our children's

1510
01:37:31,680 --> 01:37:32,680
podcast.

1511
01:37:32,680 --> 01:37:37,440
It's like a story kind of podcast with characters and hilarious comedy and stuff like that.

1512
01:37:37,440 --> 01:37:43,440
You can also listen to The Vill, which is a drama fictional podcast.

1513
01:37:43,440 --> 01:37:45,200
These are close to my heart.

1514
01:37:45,200 --> 01:37:51,040
But if you just want an entry point into my wonderful work, you've been so inspired by

1515
01:37:51,040 --> 01:37:54,360
everything that you've heard on this podcast today, and you're just like, I want to hear

1516
01:37:54,360 --> 01:37:56,040
more of that guy.

1517
01:37:56,040 --> 01:37:57,040
He's my hero.

1518
01:37:57,040 --> 01:37:58,120
I never have to go to church again.

1519
01:37:58,120 --> 01:38:07,480
Go to listen to Sound of Sanity or Sanity at the Movies would be your first stops.

1520
01:38:07,480 --> 01:38:08,480
So there you go.

1521
01:38:08,480 --> 01:38:09,800
Is that a good enough pitch?

1522
01:38:09,800 --> 01:38:10,920
That's perfect.

1523
01:38:10,920 --> 01:38:11,920
You nailed it.

1524
01:38:11,920 --> 01:38:15,440
Everybody's not there right now.

1525
01:38:15,440 --> 01:38:16,440
I'm very disappointed in you.

1526
01:38:16,440 --> 01:38:17,840
That's a great pitch there.

1527
01:38:17,840 --> 01:38:22,560
Did I mention you're a bad person if you don't hear all that?

1528
01:38:22,560 --> 01:38:23,560
Terrible.

1529
01:38:23,560 --> 01:38:24,560
Man.

1530
01:38:24,560 --> 01:38:27,320
Well, you better be there right now.

1531
01:38:27,320 --> 01:38:31,720
I mean, seriously, if you're driving your car, you better pull off and get there right

1532
01:38:31,720 --> 01:38:32,720
now.

1533
01:38:32,720 --> 01:38:34,920
Are you still listening to this podcast when you could be listening to mine?

1534
01:38:34,920 --> 01:38:35,920
Get off.

1535
01:38:35,920 --> 01:38:36,920
No, no, no.

1536
01:38:36,920 --> 01:38:38,480
First you'll listen to Truth and Grace, Counseling Podcast.

1537
01:38:38,480 --> 01:38:40,480
Or no, sorry, Faithfully Engaged.

1538
01:38:40,480 --> 01:38:41,480
Faithfully Engaged.

1539
01:38:41,480 --> 01:38:42,480
Yeah.

1540
01:38:42,480 --> 01:38:46,800
First you finish your whole, every episode, the whole back catalog of Faithfully Engaged

1541
01:38:46,800 --> 01:38:50,640
and then, and only then, you're like, ah, no, my life is over.

1542
01:38:50,640 --> 01:38:52,520
I have no more good podcasts to listen to.

1543
01:38:52,520 --> 01:38:56,800
You go listen to Sound of Sanity or Sanity at the Movies.

1544
01:38:56,800 --> 01:39:00,440
And once again, don't have to be a big movie person to listen to our movie podcast.

1545
01:39:00,440 --> 01:39:06,600
Just have to want the best content on the internet.

1546
01:39:06,600 --> 01:39:07,600
Perfect.

1547
01:39:07,600 --> 01:39:09,600
You nailed it.

1548
01:39:09,600 --> 01:39:13,480
Well, Nathan, it's been great, great conversations here.

1549
01:39:13,480 --> 01:39:16,040
I think the audience really has a lot to glean from.

1550
01:39:16,040 --> 01:39:20,120
They got a lot of homework to do as far as podcast listening to, to get to.

1551
01:39:20,120 --> 01:39:22,880
But I really appreciate you being on today.

1552
01:39:22,880 --> 01:39:23,880
Hey, it's been a joy.

1553
01:39:23,880 --> 01:39:24,880
Thank you, Johnny.

1554
01:39:24,880 --> 01:39:25,880
All right.

1555
01:39:25,880 --> 01:39:29,160
Well, guys, I hope you, I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1556
01:39:29,160 --> 01:39:39,920
I'll catch you on the next episode.