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Are you wrestling with beliefs that feel more like chains than freedom? Do you wonder what it means to experience a faith rooted in grace, not fear? In todayâs episode of Candid Conversations, Jinger Duggar Vuolo joins us to share her powerful journey from a life of rigid rules and public expectations to one of true spiritual freedom.
Raised in the spotlight of TLC's most popular show, 19 Kids and Counting, and within the strict teachings of Bill Gothardâs IBLP, Jingerâs story is one of courage, transformation, and rediscovering a loving, grace-filled God.
In this powerful episode of Candid Conversations, the Vuolos share insights on distinguishing between faith and fear, disentangling from unhealthy beliefs, and the difference between âdeconstructingâ and âdisentanglingâ faith.
Listeners will hear about Jingerâs experiences with the âFree Jingerâ movement and how her journey led her not to abandon Christianity but to redefine her relationship with Christ. Jingerâs story is a testament to the courage it takes to question deeply ingrained beliefs and find freedom within faith.
This heartfelt conversation is a must-listen for anyone grappling with religious teachings, seeking a genuine relationship with God, or interested in how the Gospel differs from man-made rules. Join us for an honest look at faith, freedom, and finding grace in a world of fear.
Key Topics:
Jingerâs reflections on growing up in the public eyeThe journey of disentangling faith from rigid teachingsUnderstanding âdisentanglingâ vs. âdeconstructingâ faithInsights into Bill Gothardâs teachings and their impactJeremyâs perspective as a supportive partner through Jingerâs journeyAdvice for those raised in restrictive religious environmentsTune in to explore how Jingerâs faith journey can inspire us to seek truth, freedom, and a closer relationship with God. This episode is for anyone looking to break free from limiting beliefs and experience faith as it was meant to be.
To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/Candid
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Are you facing the difficult journey of caring for an aging parent and wondering what it means to honor them in this season of life? As parents age and face cognitive or physical decline, families are often left with more questions than answers, including how to handle challenging emotions, manage difficult decisions, and stay true to their wishes and Christian faith.
In this episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan Youssef speaks with Dr. Bill Davis on the complexities of honoring aging parents through a biblical lens, especially as they face cognitive and physical decline. Dr. Davis shares insights from his research and ministry experience, exploring practical ways to navigate the emotional, financial, and spiritual challenges of caring for dependent parents. From understanding the fifth commandment to engaging in complex but vital conversations, this discussion provides guidance and encouragement for families walking this journey.
More Episodes featuring Dr. Bill Davis on Candid Conversations:
How Should We Care for Our Aging Loved Ones (Part 1): Dr. Bill Davis
How Should We Care for Our Aging Loved Ones (Part 2): Dr. Bill Davis
Roe v. Wade Conversations with Dr. Bill Davis
Building Bridges in a Cancel Culture: Dr. Bill Davis
Let's Talk About Suicide: Dr. Bill Davis
For questions or to connect with the Candid community, visit LTW.org/Candid.
Follow us on social media:
Facebook: @candidpod
Instagram: @candidpod
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On this special election day episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan addresses the balance between political engagement and spiritual grounding. As the nation watches election results roll in, Jonathan reflects on the hope, fear, and faith that often accompany these moments.
He emphasizes that while participation is essential, our ultimate peace comes from trusting Godâs sovereignty, not political leaders. Drawing from Philippians 4, we are reminded to shift our focus from fear to faith, remembering that our hopes are anchored in the eternal promises of Christ.
Join us as we navigate this election day with a reminder that our true hope lies in the Lord Jesus Christ.
To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/Candid
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpod
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpod
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In todayâs fast-paced media landscape, truth and integrity remain essential, especially for journalists who are Christians. But with todayâs divisive narratives, how can believers step into mainstream media with a commitment to honesty and faith?
Join Jonathan Youssef on Candid Conversations as he welcomes award-winning journalist and news anchor Jane Robelot. With a distinguished career that has included co-anchoring CBSâs morning show and hosting several of Leading The Wayâs media programs, Jane offers a unique perspective on living out her Christian faith in a challenging industry.
In this timely conversation, Jane shares her powerful testimony, emphasizing the importance of unbiased journalism and encouraging young Christians to be salt and lightâeven within mainstream media.
For questions or to connect with the Candid community, visit LTW.org/Candid.
Follow us on social media:
Facebook: @candidpodInstagram: @candidpodTwitter: @thecandidpod -
Do you feel intimidated by the idea of evangelism or wonder how to share your faith in todayâs world?
In this remarkable new episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan sits down with his father, Dr. Michael Youssef, to discuss the misconceptions surrounding evangelism and share this simple truthâitâs just one beggar telling another where to find bread.
During the conversation, Dr. Youssef reflects on the sermon that led him to Christ 60 years ago, a message about Godâs open door of mercy, and how that eternity-changing message now fuels his ministry at The Church of The Apostles in Atlanta, Georgia, and around the world through Leading The Way.
Listen in as one generation encourages the next to press ahead as long as the door remains open.
If you have questions or want to engage a community around this topic, connect with Jonathan and the Candid community:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpod
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpod
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Have you heard someone say, "I'm spiritual, but not religious"? It's a phrase everywhere, from casual conversations to celebrity interviews, and it might leave you wondering: What does that mean, and where does it come from? In this enlightening episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan Youssef welcomes back Dr. Michael Horton, a renowned theologian and founder of Sola Media, to answer these questions and more. Dr. Hortonâs latest book, Shaman and Sage: The Roots of 'Spiritual But Not Religious' in Antiquity, uncovers the ancient origins of these modern beliefs and their profound influence on today's culture.
If you're curious about why so many people reject organized religion yet embrace spirituality or want to understand better the challenges this mindset poses to the Christian faith, this episode is for you. With insights from history, philosophy, and theology, discover how to navigate these conversations with clarity and compassion.
Listen in as Dr. Horton helps untangle the complex threads of modern spirituality and points us back to the enduring Truth of the Gospel.
If you have questions or want to engage a community around this topic, connect with Jonathan and the Candid community:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpod
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What does it take to bring the Gospel to some of the hardest-to-reach places in the world? In this episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan Youssef sits down with longtime friend Maged Atalla, the International Director of Leading The Way, to explore that question. Maged shares his incredible journey of faith, from growing up in Egypt to playing a pivotal role in global Christian media. He recalls how a small radio project with Dr. Michael Youssef in Monte Carlo blossomed into an international ministry that now reaches millions across the Middle East and North Africa.
Maged offers inspiring insights into how the Gospel has transformed lives in Muslim-majority regions and reflects on how God led Dr. Youssef to create THE KINGDOM SAT and how this moment of obedience has led to the saving of many lives.
Tune in for an inspiring conversation filled with faith, perseverance, and the power of Godâs Word in the most unexpected places.
If you have questions or want to engage a community around this topic, connect with Jonathan and the Candid community:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpod
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Discerning the Truth can be challenging in a world where definitions are shifting and confusion is common. We're facing intense cultural shifts, from new pronouns to attempts to redefine Christianity. But as Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, âThere is nothing new under the sun.â The enemy uses old tricks. Thankfully, we have eternal Truth to guide us.
In todayâs episode of Candid, Jonathan Youssef shares four practical tips to help you navigate todayâs cultural landscape with clarity and conviction:
Be in the world, not of it.Look to the source of Truth.Beware of false teachers.Speak the Truth in love.Join Jonathan as he breaks down each point, offering Biblical insight and practical ways to stand firm in your faith while lovingly engaging the world around you. From understanding false ideologies like Progressive Christianity, Pluralism, and the Prosperity Gospel to being equipped with the unchanging Truth of Scripture, this episode will help you discern and live out the Gospel in todayâs culture.
If you have questions or want to engage a community around this topic, connect with Jonathan and the Candid community:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpod
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpod
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Are you facing a mountain of challenges? Do you need help growing in the Christian faith? In this timely reflection, Jonathan reminds us of the power of community and the essential role of friendships in fulfilling Godâs calling in life by exploring the significance of the eight friends mentioned by the Apostle Paul in Colossians 4. These friends, each with unique qualities and roles, supported Paul in his ministry while imprisoned in Rome, and the same mix of qualities is essential for the godly friends we surround ourselves with today.
Drawing from Scripture and personal experience, Jonathan emphasizes that we are not meant to walk alone in our spiritual journey. Instead, we need companions to encourage, support, and challenge us on our faith journey.
Join Jonathan to learn from Paulâs friends and reflect on the questions: What role do you play in the Body of Christ, and who are the friends you need on your journey?
Connect with Jonathan and the Candid community:
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In this special follow-up episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan Youssef welcomes Becket Cook, author of "A Change of Affection: A Gay Manâs Incredible Story of Redemption," back to the program for a compelling Q&A session. Becket returns to address listener questions and provide insight into his incredible transformation in Christ.
Listeners will hear Becketâs candid responses on topics such as navigating friendships and family dynamics after conversion, the churchâs role in addressing issues of sexuality with grace and Truth, and the challenges Christians face in todayâs culture. Becket also advises those struggling with identity and faith, offering guidance on supporting loved ones with compassion and unwavering Biblical conviction.
Connect with Jonathan and the Candid community:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpod
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpod
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In this profound episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan Youssef sits down with Becket Cook, author of "A Change of Affection: A Gay Manâs Incredible Story of Redemption" and host of The Becket Cook Show. Becket shares his powerful testimony of living a homosexual lifestyle until a radical encounter with Jesus transformed his life. Raised in a conservative Christian family in Dallas, Texas, Becket navigated the complexities of his identity and faith, eventually finding his true calling in Christ.
Join us as Becket recounts his journey from Hollywood's elite circles to a devoted follower of Jesus. He offers insight into how the church can compassionately and truthfully engage with issues of sexuality. Becketâs story is a testament to the redemptive power of Godâs love and the importance of unwavering faith.
Don't miss this inspiring conversation, a story of transformation and a guide for churches and individuals to navigate conversations about sexuality with grace and truth.
Connect with Jonathan and the Candid community:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpod
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpod
Transcript:
This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 261: A Gay Man's Incredible Story of Redemption: Becket Cook
[00:02] JMY: Todayâs guest is a very special guest. It is Becket Cook. Becket has written a book called A Change of Affection: A Gay Manâs Incredible Story of Redemption. He is the host of The Becket Cook Show, which can be found on YouTube. Raised in Dallas, Texas, Becket attended a Jesuit college preparatory school, lived the homosexual lifestyle until the Lord radically called him and drew him to Himself. And now Becket is out to help churches have the conversation about sexuality and help the church navigate. Becket, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.
[01:13] Becket: Thank you, Jonathan. Good to be here.
[01:17] JMY: Weâve got to start with your story. Itâs profound and amazing. All salvation stories are amazing; yours is unique. Iâd love it if youâd just give us a few minutes and navigate us through your testimony.
[01:39] Becket: Yeah, I mean, Iâm still in shock. Iâm still in shock that this is my story after fifteen years. So, when I was very young I started to notice that I was attracted to the same sex, which was very a disorienting thing, especially at that time when it was very much taboo in Dallas and in my family. My family were Christians and of course, all of my peers and my schoolmates unanimously believed that, I mean, we didnât even have to say it; it was known that homosexuality was just wrong or bad or weird or sinful. And so I had this kind of dark secret. But I was very social in school. I even went steady with girls in seventh and eighth grade, and in high school, I dated three girls, seriously dated them. But it was all the while I knew I wasnât attracted to the girls. It was just like a social thing for me. And so in my junior year at Jesuit, I met a sophomore, and he was dealing with the same thing. He was dealing with the same-sex attraction. So when that happened, the floodgates opened because we became friends, and then like three months or six months, I canât remember how long into our friendship, we basically came out to each other one night at this club.
And when that happened, we just started exploring gay life and gay culture in Dallas and going to gay bars. I was 15, he was 14. I donât know where my parents were, but by the time I was in high school, my parents were so checked out that I could be gone for three days, and they didnât even notice. God bless them, theyâre in heaven now.
So we were going to gay bars in Dallas, not sure how we got into these bars, but we did, and then we were going to this one nightclub called the Stark Club. I mention this because it was such a seminal moment in my life. The Starck Club was very famous in Dallas, and it was designed by Philippe Starck, the French designer, and it was beautiful. It was just so, for lack of a better word, it was very chic. And so we started going to the Starck Club, and the first time I walked in, it was just very grand. There was this grand staircase with a red carpet that went up to these giant doors, and you walked into this beautiful space. And I walked in, and there were gay people, straight people, artists, trans people, drag queensâitâs a whole mix of kind of the subculture, and the whole mix of artists.
And so I walked in and it was like, ah, these are my people!
[05:28] JMY: You felt like you belonged.
[05:29] Becket: Yeah, I belong here. And I started going. And we would go to Starck Clubâit was open Thursday through Sunday, and we would go every night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night we would go. And sometimes I wouldnât get home until 5:00 in the morning. And one time my dad was up. My dad was a lawyer. He was up at 5:00 in the morning (he would always get up at 5:00), and I walked in the front door, and he walked past me and kind of looked at me, and I was like, âHi, Dad.â He didnât even say anything like âWhere have you been?â My childhood was very permissive, for better or worse.
So then, when I went away to college, the same thing happened. I met someone at college who was same sex attracted and then we eventually came out to each other and again I had a confidant, I had someone to talk to because I still wasnât out, but at this point in my life, I wouldnât have described myself as âgayâ because I just thought this was a phase. This was a phase that will probably go away and Iâll probably get married to a woman and have kids.
It wasnât really my identity for this whole time in high school and college until after college I moved to Tokyo with my best friend from college. And we moved to Tokyo because we didnât really know what we wanted to do with our lives. I was premed in college, and then I realized I didnât want to be a doctor, which was bad after four years of studying.
[07:23] JMY: A lot of investment.
[07:25] Becket: You know it was really upsetting. And so I applied to law school, and actually, then, as kind of a backup, I applied to dental school. And so I got into law school and dental school. I was kind of like, âI donât know if I want to do any of this.â So both of us moved to Tokyo to kind of have a gap year, basically, to figure out what we wanted to do. And it was when I was in Tokyo that his friend from Texas came to stay with us, weâll call him âAdam.â Adam was part of the Christo exhibition in Japan. Christo was a very famous artist who recently died, a French artist, but he and his wife used to do these dramatic art projects like covering the Reichstadt in fabric. And they did this thing in Japan where they lined parts of Japan with umbrellas, like yellow and blue umbrellas. They did it in California and Japan.
And so anyway, this guy Adam was part of that exhibition. So he stayed with us for like a week in Tokyo. And it was weird, because when I first met Adam, I had no interest and didnât think anything of it, but by the time he left, we had fallen in love, quote unquote. And so that was the first time Iâd experienced that rush of emotion, that romantic feeling. And then we got into a relationship, and it was my first real relationship with a guy.
And so that was a game-changer, too, because that's when it became my identity, homosexuality became my identity. And I was happy to be gay. I was like, âThis is who I am. This is immutable.â I was thrilled. And while I was in Japan, my sister wrote me a letter asking if I was gay because she had had her suspicions for a long time. And so I wrote her back and I said yes and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. By the way, p.s., donât tell Mom and Dad. Iâll tell them when I get back home. And, of course, she told them immediately when she got my letter, which I was happy about because she did all the heavy lifting for me.
[10:03] JMY: Softened the blow.
[10:04] Becket: Yeah. So by the time I got home, my whole family knew. My family is very conservative, all believers, and so they, especially my siblings, were not happy about this. And my parents werenât either, but my parentsâ reaction was so loving and gracious. My mother, whom I was very close to, of course, was quite surprised, gay son, close mother, surprise, surprise. My mother cried. I walked into the kitchen that first night after I got back from Tokyo, and my mother just started crying, and I knew why she was crying.
And I said, âMom, what's wrong?â And she said, âI heard youâre a homosexual.â
And that's when AIDS was still kind of a death sentence, and so she was terrified, I was terrified about it, and so I just tried to calm her down.
I said, âMom, this is not a big deal. Donât worry about me.â
The next day, my dad came up to me, and my dad is such a manâs man; it surprised him to respond. Because he came up to me and he said, âHey Beck, I heard youâre a homosexual, and you knowââ
[11:32] JMY: Like he read it in the newspaper or something.
[11:36] Becket: Yeah, and so he said, âIs there anything I did wrong as a father? Are you angry at me for this?â He listed three things, and it was basicallyâI canât remember what they wereâdid I not spend enough time with you? Did your brother beat you up or whatever, and I didnât intervene? Are you angry about that?
And I was like, âDad, no. This is not your fault. This is just who I am. Itâs not a big deal.â
And that was kind of the end of the conversation with my parents. They never brought it up again. And what they did was so genius. Because I moved to L.A. So, when I got back from Tokyo, I realized I was not going to grad school; I was moving to Los Angeles because a lot of my friends moved here, and I was like, âIâm going to pursue writing and acting. And so I moved to L.A. My dad was so confused when I told him. It was like a couple of weeks before law school. I was enrolled in law school, and I was like, âDad, Iâm moving to L.A. tomorrow.â
And he was like, âHuh?â He was so confused. And so I moved to L.A. and I had this group of friends that were brilliant in L.A. When I got here, I had this built-in group of friends because several of my friends from high school already lived here, and they all came from Brown and Princeton and moved with all their friends to the West Coast and to L.A. to work in Hollywood, in showbiz. My group of friends were so smart and funny and brilliant and ambitious. And they all were movers and shakers. All those people, guys, girls, straight, gay, the whole mix, the same people run this town now; they run Hollywood. So whatever youâre watching on Netflix or whateverâ
[13:51] JMY: Theyâre behind it.
[13:52] Becket: And in fact, the Jeffrey Epstein whatever, Filthy Rich, was produced by one of my dear friends from back in that time. Anyway, so I had this great group of friends, I was out, and we all wanted to make it in Hollywood, which they were allâmy friends were becoming huge stars or becoming huge directors or writers overnight. I mean, it was wild to see how quickly they became successful. Minnie Driver was a dear friend, and she did Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon. Suddenly, she was a movie star, and this was happening to all of my friends. Like Mariska Hargitay was Jayne Mansfieldâs daughter, but nobody really knew her, but then she gotâI drove her to her audition for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and sheâs still on the show twenty-three years later. Sheâs made a fortune on that show. Well, I wonât tell that part about Mariska, but weâre still friends.
But this was happening to all of my friends. We all wanted to make it in Hollywood; we all wanted to find true love, and I cycled through five serious, serious boyfriends over the years in L.A., live-in boyfriends. And then we all wanted to have extraordinary experiences, which we were doing in spades because my friends were all in the business. And the guy I just talked about was Diane Keatonâs producing partner. So we were always invited to everythingâthe Grammys the Oscars, the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the afterparties, to movie premiers every week. I was kind of in the mix.
I met everyone in this town, literally everyone. I mean, name the person. I had dinner with Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and many, many other people. Hung out at Drew Barrymoreâs, went to Princeâs house where he performed a concert in his backyard for three hours, hung out with Paris Hilton at her house, and went to her wedding engagement. For years, this was my life.
And then I was successful a little bit, and I acted. I was successful at commercial acting, and I did a couple of indie films, one was at Sundance, and that wasnât really taking off. The writing was difficult. I sold a couple of projects that didnât make it to series, so then I ended up becoming a production designer in the fashion world. I just fell into it with The New York Times Magazine because my friend was the editor for it. And so that became my career, doing fashion shoots, these super-high-end fashion shoots. And I did that for a very long time, probably twenty years, seventeen years, Iâm not sure.
And so after the years of all of this and years of going to all of these fun things and experiencing all these things, I just started to feel the law of diminishing returns and I just felt like, What is this all about? I canât keep going to these dinner parties and going to these events. And it all came to a head at Paris Fashion Week in March of 2009. I used to go to Fashion Week in New York and Paris and that particular week I had gone to a bunch of the runway shows and a lot of them had afterparties, and I was at this one afterparty in this club called Regine, in the middle of Paris, a legendary place. The owner just died recently. But I was there, and everyone from the fashion world was there.
I was sitting with Rachel Zoe, whoâs a fashion girl and has a TV show, and her husband, Roger, and I just remember drinking champagne and looking out over the crowd, and everyone was dancing and having the best time of their life, and I just felt such an overwhelming sense of emptiness. I was like, whoa, where did that come from? So, I ghosted the party and went back to the apartment Iâd rented in [unintelligible] and I was up all night in a panic about my future. I was like, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? This isnât satisfying me anymore. I canât just keep going to parties and fabulous things and traveling the world. Yeah, it was fun for a long time, but itâs not doing it for me anymore. And I knew that Christianity was not an option because I was gay, so I canât pursue that, so what am I going to do? So I was very, very troubled.
[20:07] JMY: Can I ask, did that thought enter your mind, the pursuit of faith? Was that a cognizant thought or was that just sort of part of the narrative? Did you sit there and take an account and think perhaps ...?
[20:26] Becket: Well, no. I knew that from my entire life.
[20:31] JMY: It was always there as a separation.
[20:33] Becket: Godâs not an option for me. And by that time in my life I was a practical atheist. All of my friends were atheists (they still are, most of them, my old friends). And I just, by that time in my life, I really just believed or felt like the Bible was an ancient myth, like any other ancient myth. God was not real. It was weird. It was a weird kind of disconnect because I believed my familyâs faith was real, which was interesting. So when I would go home to Dallas, it was weird. They would talk about their faith, they would pray, and I could sense that it was real, but I just felt like it could never be something for me becauseâ
[21:21 JMY: Itâs like a compartmentalization, right? This works for you; that wonât work for me. Interesting.
[21:28] Becket: And so six months later in L.A. I was at a coffee shop with my best friend, who still is gay, although weâre not nearly as close, in fact, we barely see each other, if ever, because of this. But I was with my best friend, and we were chatting, hanging out at our favorite coffee shop in Silverlake, and we looked over, and there was a group of young people with Bibles on the table. There were five physical Bibles on the table, which is a shocking sight to see in L.A. But not only L.A. but Silverlake, which is a super progressive part of L.A.
We were stunned because my friend was an atheist as well. He was culturally Jewish, a secular Jew from New York, and it was just like we were shocked. But I was intrigued because of that night in Paris six months before. I was kind of intrigued about what this Christian thing was, and I wanted to explore it.
So my friend said, âTalk to them. See what theyâre doing.â
And I was like, âNo, I donât want to talk to them!â
And anyway, I ended up turning to them, and I always say this, itâs like a Christianâs fantasy come true when a gay atheist turns to you and says, âTell me all about Christianity.â And so we got into this conversation for like an hour or two. It was a long conversation. And I said, âWhat is your faith? Like what do you believe? I donât remember. Just tell me what you believe.â
And they were very competent with the Scriptures, and they knew what the Gospel was and were very knowledgeable. And they said they went to a church in Hollywood called Reality L.A., an evangelical church. And with my friends back in the day, evangelicals were the enemy. They were somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun. But it didnât bother me. So I, of course, get to the question and I ask them, âWhat does your church believe about homosexuality?â
And I kind of expected this answer, so it wasnât shocking. They said, âWell, we believe itâs a sin.â Of course, that was 2009. Now, who knows what people will say.
[24:27] JMY: Itâs a grab bag now.
[24:29] Becket: I wasnât surprised by their response, but I was surprised by mine because I just kind of accepted that, and I didnât protest. And itâs because of that night in Paris. I was open to hearing something different. I was just open at that point. God, obviously, was working with me.
So they invited me to their church the following Sunday and I said, âI donât know. Just give me the address and Iâll think about it.â
So I had a whole week to think about it. And it was kind of a big deal because if any of my other friends, all my other atheist, Hollywood friends, found out that Iâd gone to an evangelical church, it would have been super embarrassing, and they would have thought I was crazy. So I was debating all week: Should I do this? What if nothing happens? What if itâs just fake and what if itâs not real?
But that following Sunday I woke up and I just was like, Iâm going to do this. And I got in my car, drove to this high school auditorium where it meets on Sunset Boulevard, and I walked in. Before I walked in, I put the idea of homosexuality as my identity in this imaginary white box and put it on an imaginary shelf before I walked in. It was kind of weird. I donât know how that happened.
And then I heard the worship music, which kind of freaked me out a little bit a first because I was like, Oh my gosh, Christian music, because I just saw this True Blood episode where (it was an HBO show that was disgusting, but anyway they satirized evangelical Christian worship music. And so I was like, Oh, this is weird.
[26:38] JMY: That's not hard to do.
[26:39] Becket: Yeah, exactly. But then it was actually nice, the musicâs nice. And I sat down by myself, I found a seat by myself, and the pastor came out and started preaching on Romans chapter 7 for an hour, and that's when everything started happening. Everything he was saying, every word he was saying, every sentence he was saying was resonating as truth in my mind and my heart and I didnât know why. I was literally on the edge of my seat, totally riveted to the sermon and to him, his speaking. And I was just like, What? This is true. What is he saying? I remember thinking, âThis is the Gospel? This is good news!â
And then after the sermon there were people on the sides of the auditorium on the prayer ministry that you could go get prayed with, and after his sermon thereâs another thirty minutes of worship time. So I walked over to this guy, which I reluctantly walked over to this guy on the side because, again, I was embarrassed to do this because I knew the people who had invited me there were probably watching me. And so I walked over to this guy and I said, âHey, I donât know what I believe, but Iâm here.â And he said, âOkay, let me pray for you.â
And he prayed for me, and it was so loving and caring, and I was like, How does this random straight dude care about me so much?
[28:14] JMY: Right.
[28:16] Becket: Anyway, I went back to my seat and everyone else in the auditorium (there were a thousand people in the auditorium) everyone else was standing and singing and worshiping. And I sat down because I was just so overwhelmed by the sermon, by the music, by the prayer, and as soon as I sat down, the Holy Spirit just flooded me. I mean, it was like a Road to Damascus moment. God revealed Himself to me in the most powerful way. It was like God said, in my mind, God said, âIâm God. Jesus is my Son. Heaven is real, hell is real, the Bible is true. Welcome to my kingdom.â
And I just burst into tears. I was doubled over, heaving and crying and crying for twenty-five minutes. And it was the most cathartic cry Iâve ever had. Everything came out. I was crying over the conviction of sin, but also the joy of meeting the king of the universe, Jesus Christ. And then I got home after the service. I donât really know how I made it home because I was such a wreck, and I got into bed to take a nap. And again, God did it again. God was like, âHere, hereâs some more Bible.â
And I just, again, I just immediately, it was so real. It was like Godâs presence was rightâit was there. And I burst into tears again and I was bawling in my bedroom, jumped out of my bed and was like, âGod, you have my whole life, Iâm yours. Iâm done.â
In that moment I knew that homosexual behavior was a sin. I knew that it was wrong. I knew that dating guys was not my identity anymore and I knew that dating guys was not a part of my future. But I didnât care at all, because I had just met Jesus. And Iâm like, Iâm going with that guy, forget those guys.
And that was September 20, 2009, and Iâve never looked back. And Iâve never felt like life is unfair. Because Iâm single and chaste, and Iâve never felt like life is unfair for me or like Iâm being cheated out of something. I just feel like I canât believe that God had mercy on me and Iâm in the Kingdom of God. And I have, by the way, eternal life, which is cool to have. So yeah, that's the story.
[31:09] JMY: Oh, itâs such a wonderful story, just even the way you give us the snapshots of those moments of what you thought you knew what you wanted and you know now the Spirit was preparing you and doing the work of tilling the soil of your heart to culminate in that moment. But as we know, that's not the end of the story. Your story continues on. And so I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about your family, how your family interacted with you. So a number of our listeners will be people who have family members, friends who are near to them who are living this lifestyle and they donât know what to do, they donât know what to say. Do I say a lot? Do I say a little? Do I say nothing? Where do I go?
And I know some of that will be kind of case by case, but I think it will be helpful to hear what was it that the interactions of your friends and family who were believers? How did they sort of walk this out with you?
[32:35] Becket: Yeah. My family ... Well, first of all, you know, because I moved to L.A. I was very disconnected from my family. But my parents, I was very close with my mother. We talked on the phone all the time. She came out and visited many times. My family was just kind of very hands-off because there was really nothing they could do. I was an adult, I lived in L.A. What would they do, come hunt me down and drive me to church?
My parents were just brilliant. I just loved how they responded to and dealt with it. Because I did this episode on my show where I recently discovered a typed prayer that my mother did. My sister-in-law sent me a text, saying, âHey, I just found this prayer that your mother typed to God basically, and I found it in an old box from some of your motherâs things.â And she sent me this prayer. And that's what my parents did. They just loved me and prayed for me.
My mother and this prayer are amazing; itâs like twenty-four points. And the first point, because my mother knew, I guess, which was shocking to me, she just knew instinctively that she wasnât going to convince me not to be gay. So, she went straight to the throne room of the grace of God. She knew it was a spiritual battle. I wish I had the prayer with me right now. She said, âIn the all-powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we come against the enemy with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.â
And when I read this prayer recently when I got it, I was stunned because my mother was praying for me all this time, but she never told me. Because if she had told me, âHey Becket, Iâm praying for you,â it would have been a disaster because I would have been like, âWhy are you praying for me? I donât need prayer. This is who I am. Stop praying.â It would have upset me, so she never said that. My dad never said that.
My sister-in-law, who is in my book, Kim, the way she dealt with it was brilliant, too, because whenever I would go to Dallas for the holidays, she would call me. Sheâs an evangelical Christian, and I knew where she stood on this issue, too, but she would call me all the time, which I was kind of like, Why is Kim calling me? Why does she want to hang out with me? She knows Iâm gay and sheâs a super-conservative Christian. She would call me and invite me to coffee, and we would hang out. And I would talk about my boyfriends, she would talk about God and what was going on in her life, and she never once pulled out the Bible and said, âHey Becket, you know in Leviticus 18 âŠâ She never, ever once did that. She just loved me.
And then she prayed, unbeknownst to me, she was praying this verse over me for twenty years. In Acts 26:18, when Paul is in front of King Agrippa, and heâs talking about how God sent him to preach to the Gentiles, he says, âto open their eyes so that they may be turned from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. That they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those sanctified by faith in Me.â
So she was praying for me, my family members were praying for me, I get the impulse for parents, family members, friends, the immediate impulse is âI want to fix this. I want to fix the problem.â That rarely, if ever, works. However, there is an exception, a caveat Iâll get to. But the best thing you can do is just be diligent in prayer and go straight to God. Because it has to be a supernatural thing. The Holy Spirit has to convict a person. Thereâs no other way. Otherwise, itâs just behavior modification.
[37:31] JMY: Praise the Lord. Praise God that itâs His work and not ours because weâd screw it all up.
[37:37] Becket: Yeah, exactly. However, because of this new sort of generation of social contagion of LGBTQ+, you know, Brown University 40 percent of the student bodyâthis just makes me laughâ40 percent of the student body identifies as LGBTQ. I mean, that is laughable. When I was in college, it was about 1 percent.
[38:05] JMY: Now everyone is.
[38:06] Becket: Yeah, now itâs super popular. So I came out as gay at the wrong time, and now I came out as Christian at the wrong time. [unintelligible]. But anyway, so with that aspect of it, when youâre a teenager just suddenly claims, âIâm LGBTQ,â or âIâm pansexual,â or âIâm nonbinary,â âIâm queer,â I think in those cases there should be, there could be some pushback from the parents in terms of saying, âLook âŠâ Because this happened with me with a young woman, a teenage girl who came up to me at a conference and said, âIâm pansexual and nonbinary.â
And I said, âWhy? Why are you?â She didnât have an answer for me, and I said, âAre you that way because you want attention, popularity, street cred? Why do you think youâre... because when I was your age, there was no such thing, so why do you think youâre this way?â
And she just started welling up with tears, and she needed, I just sensed in that moment she needed to be pushed back on. And later that day she ended up breaking down, getting prayed for my somebody, and she came to Christ.
[39:39] JMY: It was a crisis moment for her, not a ⊠it had not become a true identity where she had been encapsulated in something. She seemed confused more than anything. I mean, obviously, you could make that argument for anyone.
[39:55] Becket: Yeah, this young teenage boy was like, âOh, and Iâm asexual.â And I was like, âYou havenât even gone through puberty yet.â
So yeah, I do think that when it is this kind of contagion aspect, Iâve done episodes on this, and I talk about this. You can trace exactly how we got to where we are in the culture from obviously from if youâve read Carl Truman, you can go back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but even going back to the sexual revolution in the Sixties or the gay movement that started in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, you can trace so clearly how weâve become indoctrinated into believing the lies of the world. And itâs just so obvious to me, and itâs like, just the TV shows, Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Brokeback Mountain and all these gay-themed shows and movies were so powerful in the culture, and it changed so many peopleâs minds on this issue.
Of course, I was thrilled at the time. When I was living that life, I was thrilled. I was friends with Sean Hayes on Will & Grace, and I was friends with many of the people who created these shows.
[41:33] JMY: They were changing the narrative.
[41:34] Becket: Yeah. And it was like Madsen and Kirk, the book After the Ball, they published. These two Harvard guys, graduates, published a book called After the Ball, and I wish I had it right here. Whereâs my copy? Anyway, the book was published in 1989, and basically, it was about how to normalize homosexuality in America. It was the subtitle of the book. And everything in that book has come true. Everything they said in that book has come true. Basically, it was like talking about homosexuality until it was thoroughly tiresome. That was one of their points. Another one of their points was to make heterosexuals feel like you are a victim, and theyâll come to your side and to your aid.
And so all these things have come to pass, and that's why, even in the church, people are falling for this and caving to it, caving to the culture and buying this lie. And again, I challenge people to, okay, would you be ⊠would you be thinking this way fifty years ago? Would you be thinking this way a hundred years ago? So obviously, the cultureâ
[43:16] JMY: Not critically thinking.
[43:117] Becket: Obviously, like the culture has influenced you. Because some of my friends, some of my high schoolâI say this all the timeâin my high school, everyone believed it was a sin, it was wrong, in the girlsâ school, in the boysâ school. Now some of those same people are like allies, LGBTQ allies, and itâs like, gee, I wonder what's happened over the last thirty years? Maybe itâs the power of persuasion from movies and TV, which I get. It is very powerful.
And so yeah, that's why I think with some cases, in some cases it is good to say, âHey, why donât we walk through the last fifty years and see how it has shaped what we believe?â And so that can be helpful, too.
[44:17] JMY: Youâre uniquely gifted, coming out of that world and into the Christian world, to have a voice to the church. We even laughed about the fact that some churches wouldnât even have you to come and speak because youâre kind of against them.
What are the things that youâre putting in front of churches and trying to coach them through or equip them with? How do we deal with the culture? How do we deal with our young people who are falling into it or our children who maybe are saying and asking these questions? It sounds like thereâs a level of asking good questions and pushing back, as youâve just given us examples. But what are some ways youâre helping the church navigate all this?
[45:27] Becket: There are so many different ways. But like Jesus was the master at balancing grace and truth publicly. I read through all four Gospels, not often, in one sitting, and I just watch what Jesus does and how He interacts with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners. And at the woman at the well, first of all, Heâs talking to a Samaritan woman, which is crazy for a Jewish man to do, and Heâs so loving and kind to her. And she, you know, Heâs like, âOh, go get your husband.â And sheâs like, âOh, I donât have a husband.â And Heâs like, âYeah, you were married five times.â
[46:17] JMY: âThe one youâre with now isnât your husband.â
[46:19] Becket: âAnd the one youâre with now isnât your husband.â So Jesus doesnât compromise the truth, but He also is super gracious and grace-full. That's what I see in the church is I see this happen all the time where parents when their kids come out, they love their kidsâand I get itâlike they love their kids so much that they suddenly change their theology and become [Overlapping voices] in their theology. And itâs like, no, that's not the answer, because if my parents had affirmed and said, âOh, Becket, youâre fine,â I would not have respected them, number one.
And my family when I got saved, the first people I contacted were my family because they never lied to me. I talk about this in my book, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; they refused to compromise Godâs Word by one iota. And they knew that they were going to go into a fiery furnace. They were not willing to compromise Godâs Word. And so that's my main thrust to the church is donât ever give up your convictions on this issue, but love your neighbor, your child as generously as you can, love them, love them. And the real key is to pray for them.
The worst thing you can do is affirm them and say, âOh, I donât think itâs a sin anymore,â because that is leading them down a path of eternal destruction. That is the meanest, cruelest thing you can ever do to a child or anyone is say that to them. And so that's partly what I try to convey to churches. Also, I try to, sometimes, talk about what I go through; I spend a very long time going through every turning point in the history of the gay movement and how it has affected the culture and affected us.
[48:48] JMY: I mean, just quickly if youâve given that talk enough times, what kind of the high points of that? If you had to kind ofâmaybe you havenât prepped for that, but if you could just hit a couple of those high points for us.
[49:02] Becket: The first high point was the Stonewall Inn in 1969, when police raided it. Because it was illegal to be gay in 1969 in the country. And so police raided the Stonewall Inn, which was a gay bar in the West Village in New York, and then there were riots, like three nights after that there were three nights of riots. That was June 28th. That's why Pride Month is in June. It used to be just one day, but now itâs a whole month. Pretty soon itâll be all year, but that's a whole thing.
[49:39] JMY: Perpetuity.
[49:40] Becket: Yeah. And so that was a huge turning point because the year following, San Francisco, L.A., New York, I think Chicago had gay pride marches. That's when the pride marches started. They used to be called marches and now theyâre parades.
[49:59] JMY: Like a protest.
[50:00] Becket: Exactly, and that was a huge turning point of the gay movement. Then the AIDS crisis was a huge turning point because that's when the culture, right or wrong, the culture started to see gay men as victims, and so that was a huge, huge turning point. And there were so many movies, like Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks in that, and there were so many movies about that issue. And, interestingly, AIDS was something that propelled the gay movement forward. You would think it would do the reverse, but it propelled it forward. And so that was a big deal.
And then in the NinetiesâI mean, Iâm skipping ahead of a bunch of stuffâbut the Nineties, Will & Grace, Ellen, the sitcom with Ellen DeGeneres, she came out as a lesbian on the show, her character came out as a lesbian. And Will & Grace, itâs like these guys are hilarious. I mean, what could be wrong with this? Soâ
[51:22] JMY: Yeah, theyâre approachable,
[51:23] Becket: Theyâre cool. What could be wrong with this? And then a significant turning point wasâoh, and then Sex and the City was a big deal in the Nineties. There was a gay character on that show. And Sex and the City was created by Darren Starr. I know Darren. And a lot of the writers on the show, the showrunner, is gay. Anyway, so what was interesting about Sex and the City is there were a lot of gay male writers on that show, and they were turning these women into gay men. The way these women had one-night stands and all this stuff. My friends and I would joke about it, like these are gay guys but in womenâs bodies. This is crazy. Itâs hilarious. So that show was a big game-changer.
And then Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, that was major because that was the first timeâI remember when that came out in 2003, I think, and it was five gay guys giving clueless straight guys makeovers. And that's when not only women and gay guys were watching, but that's when straight guys started watching because their girlfriends were like, âOh my gosh, honey, youâve got to watch this show; itâs brilliant!â
I remember telling a good friend of mine at the time, âThis is going to change everything. This show is going to change everything.â And it did.
And then you can skip to the, I mean, there were a lot of things, but you can skip to the legalization of gay marriage in 2015.
[53:18] JMY: Yeah, Obergfell, sure.
[53:19] Becket: That, of course, that's where we are now. And then now, of course, every cityâ
So I lived right next to Beverly Hills, and Beverly Hills is very conservative because itâs mostly Persian Jews who live in Beverly Hills. Theyâre a very conservative group of people. They are very family oriented. And I was riding my bike the other day, and there was a pride flag painted on the sidewalk, in the middle of the street, an intersection, a pride, yeah, just like a pride thing. And I was shocked because I was like, wow, that's interesting that Beverly Hills would do this, because I know the mayor is conservative.
But what I subsequently found out is that just like corporations have these rating systems where you have to be [Overlapping voices] you supportâ
[54:24] JMY: Cities have them as well. Wow.
[54:25] Becket: They get rated by I think itâs the Human Rights Campaign, HRC. They get rated, so Beverly Hills doesnât want to lose tourism, so they will go along with it and put a pride flag on the street. And so now itâs so ubiquitous, and I donât even know it at this point. I donât even know at this point how an unbeliever, or even some believers, can even believe that homosexual behavior is still a sin after all that's going on in the culture now. Itâs a rare thing, even for Christians now, to believe that itâs still a sin.
[55:15] JMY: itâs almost like going back to first-century Christianity, where weâre just so countercultural and so bizarre. How could you think thereâs only one God in Rome? And itâs like we have all this plethora of gods? It is a sense of returning to thinking youâre so backward and all this sort of thing.
But the Lordâs in control, and He knows what Heâs doing, and Heâs raised individuals such as yourself, and as we mentioned before, Rosaria and others, who are helping the church think critically and think helpfully and equipping and weâre so grateful for the work that the Lordâs doing in you. And so I want to say, Becket Cook, Iâm so grateful for our time together and pray the Lord would bless your ministry.
[56:24] Becket: Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate it. And Iâm really looking forward to coming to Atlanta and meeting you guys in person.
[56:33] JMY: Absolutely.
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In this thought-provoking episode of Candid Conversations, Dr. Jonathan Youssef explores the pervasive cultural narrative that prioritizes feelings, personal pleasure, and subjective truths above all else. Our malls display it, our shows advise it, our commercials glorify it, and our universities disseminate it. Every aspect of our culture proclaims that our feelings matter most in life. But how should Christians respond to this secular storm that seeks to silence the message of the Gospel?
Join Jonathan as he explores the growing pressures on Christianity in the Western world and reminds listeners of the global spread of the Christian faith that defies cultural trends.
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Jonathan sits down with renowned author and teacher Nancy Guthrie. Together, they explore the transformative benefits of studying Scripture through holistic Biblical theology, emphasizing the importance of focusing on God rather than ourselves to gain a deeper and more accurate understanding of the Bible.
Drawing from her rich personal experiences, including her publishing career and the heart-wrenching loss of two children, Nancy shares how these events deepened her love for God's Word. As a respected author, host of the Help Me Teach the Bible podcast at the Gospel Coalition, and a dedicated Bible teacher in her local Nashville church, Nancy leads her widely acclaimed Biblical Theology Workshop for Women at various conferences worldwide. Together with her husband, she founded Respite Retreats, providing solace and support to grieving couples.
In this compelling episode, we explore the diverse aspects of God's character and His steadfast love. Be inspired to shift your perspective from personal application of Scripture to discovering the profound Truth about who God is and what His attributes reveal about His essence.
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Raising children to know, love, and follow Christ in today's challenging culture is a daily endeavor. How can families stay committed to Christ and guide their children to become godly adults?
Join Jonathan in this episode of Candid Conversations, where he shares valuable insights into biblical parenting and discusses five essential Biblical principles for following Christ as a family.
Don't miss out on this meaningful episode. Listen, share, and help families deepen their relationship with our Lord and Savior.
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She faced false accusations, family betrayal, and deep loss, forcing her to abandon her entire life. Despite all this, she chose forgiveness and, through God's grace, experienced profound redemption in her darkest moments.
Jonathan's guest today had countless reasons to withhold forgiveness and remain bound by the trauma of severe abuse. Yet, she found that true freedom and forgiveness are inseparable.
In this episode, Jonathan Youssef interviews a remarkable woman who will remain anonymous to protect her identity. She bravely recounts her escape from a life of abuse and oppression in a third-world country to finding freedom in America. Through Christ, she discovered forgiveness for herself and others and God's plan for her future.
Don't miss this powerful testimony of God's relentless pursuit and redemptive power available to all believers in Christ!
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This week's engaging episode features a conversation with Os Guinness, a profound advocate for faith, freedom, truth, reason, and civility. Os is an esteemed author and social critic and the great-great-great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, the famous Dublin brewer. With a bibliography exceeding 30 books, he provides insightful perspectives on our cultural, political, and social environments.
Born in China during World War II to medical missionary parents, Os experienced the height of the Chinese revolution in 1949 and was expelled along with many foreigners in 1951. He later earned his undergraduate degree at the University of London and completed his D.Phil in the social sciences from Oriel College, Oxford. He currently resides in the United States.
In this episode, Jonathan and Os delve into Scripture and discuss Os' latest book, The Magna Carta of Humanity. They explore global perspectives, including Os' views on America's polarization crisis, the recent changes in the UK with the new King, and the evolving role of the âDefender of the Faithâ in the monarchy. Os also shares fascinating stories about his remarkable family history, from Christian brewers to pastors to his journey as a Christian author.
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TRANSCRIPT:
The following is a transcript of Episode 256: Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom: Os Guinness (Reprise) for Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef.
[00:01] JONATHAN: Today it is my special privilege to have Os Guinness on the program with us. Os is an author and social critic. Heâs written untold amounts of books. Heâs just like Dad, and it seems you have a new book out every six months or so, Os. Is that sort of the pattern, you get two out a year?
[00:24] Os Guinness: Well, usually one a year, but COVID gave me the chance to write a lot more.
[00:28] JONATHAN: Oh, well, I love it. Many of our listeners will, of course, be familiar with you, but there may be a few out there who donât. We have somewhat of an international audience, and I know that you have a very international background, having been born in China and raised in China and educated in England. Thereâs a couple of things. Iâm sure people are seeing the name Guinness and wondering is there a connection with the brewery? And of course, there is. But I wonder if youâd tell us a little bit of your family history and then weâll get to your own personal story.
[01:00] Os Guinness: Well, youâre right. Iâm descended from Arthur Guinness, the brewer. My ancestor was his youngest son. He was an evangelical. He came to Christ, to faith, under the preaching of John Wesley in the revival that took place in the late 1730s, early 1740s. So he called himself born again back in those days and founded Irelandâs first Sunday school, which of course, in this days was a rather radical proposition, teaching people who couldnât go to ordinary schools. And from the very beginning, care for the poor, for the workers and things like that were built into the brewery and the whole family status in Dublin. So that was the ancestor, and Iâm descended from a branch of the family thatâs kept the faith ever since. My great-grandfather, Arthurâs grandson, at the age of 23, was the leading preacher in the Irish revival of 1859. And we have newspaper accounts of crowds of 25,000, 30,000, and of course no microphone. Heâd climb onto the back of a carriage and preach and the Spirit would fall. Ireland was not divided in those days, but in that part of the country, in the year after the revival, there was literally only one recorded crime.
[02:33] JONATHAN: Unbelievable.
[02:34] Os Guinness: This shows you how profound revival can be.
[02:37] JONATHAN: Isnât it?
[02:39] Os Guinness: His son, my grandfather, was one of the first Western doctors to go to China. He treated the Empress Dowager, the last Emperor, and my parents were born in China so I was born in China. So Iâm part of the family thatâs kept faith ever since the first Arthur.
[03:00] JONATHAN: You had mention that this is a branch of the family. Is there a branch of the family thatâs gone a different trajectory?
[03:08] Os Guinness: Well, for a long time the brewing family was strongly Christian, but then eventually, sadly, wealth probably undermined part of the faith. But as I said, my family has kept it. They often say there are brewing Guinnesses, banking Guinnesses, and then they call them the Guinnesses for God or the poor Guinnesses.
[03:36] JONATHAN: An amazing family lineage, and youâre thinking of just the covenantal family through that line. And so youâve got a book that came out this year, The Great Quest: Invitation to the Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning. And I know in the book you share a little bit of your own search for meaning and finding, because we all know that Christianity is really the only faith you cannot be born into in terms of you can be born into a covenant home and be taught the lessons of Christ and the church, but itâs really a faith that has to become your own. Itâs not the faith that is transferred to the child. So tell us a little bit about your own story and your own coming to faith in Christ.
[04:31] Os Guinness: Well, I was born in China, as I said, and my first 10 years were pretty rough with war, famine, revolution, all sorts of things. And I was there for two years under Maoâs reign of terror, and in â51, two years after the revolution, my parents were allowed to send me home to England and they were under house arrest for another two years. So I had most of my teenage years apart from my parents, and my own coming to faith was really a kind of partly the witness of a friend at school but partly an intellectual search. I was reading on the one hand atheists like Nietzsche and Sartre, and my own hero, Albert Camus. And on the other hand, Christians like Blaise Pascal and G. K. Chesterton, and of course, C. S. Lewis.
And at the end of that time, I was thoroughly convinced the Christian faith was true. And so I became a Christian before I went to university in London, and Iâm glad I did because the 60s was a crazy decadeâdrugs, sex, rock and roll, the counterculture. Everything had to be thought back to square one. You really needed to believe what you believed and why you believed what you believed, or the whole onslaught was against, which is a bracing decade to come to faith.
[05:57] JONATHAN: It really is. I wonder if you could walk me through that a little bit. Iâve read some of Camus and Sartre, and I mean, theyâre just such polar opposites about humanity and God. What were some of the things that helped you navigate through that terrain?
[06:17] Os Guinness: Well, I personally never liked Sartre. He was a dull fish. And even later, when I went to LâAbri with Francis Schaeffer, we met people who studied under Sartre and people who had known Camus. Camus was warm, passionate. There are stories, we donât know whether theyâre true or not or just a rumor, that he was actually baptized just before he died in a car crash in January 1960. I donât know if thatâs true or not, or if thatâs a kind of death-bed conversion, but certainly his philosophy is profoundly human, and thatâs what I loved about so much of it. But at the end of the day, not adequate.
You know his famous Myth of Sisyphus. He rolls the stone up the hill and it rolls down again. Rolls up, it rolls down again, and so on. A gigantic defiance against the absurdity of the universe, but with no real answers. And of course, thatâs what we have in the gospel.
[07:19] JONATHAN: Thatâs right, and itâs sort of the meaninglessness of life, and I know a lot of high school, college students even seminary students have been deeply affected by some of his writing and have certainly felt, I think, what youâre touching into there, which is that deeply personalâthereâs a lot of reflection in there that I think resounds with people. But as you said, it leaves you with nothing at the end of the day.
So youâve written quite a number of books across quite a range of topics. What is it that sort of stokes your fire, that kind of drives you? I know the Bible uses passion in a very negative, sinful sense, but itâs a word we use a lot today. What is the passion thatâs driving you in your writings and your speaking?
[08:12] Os Guinness: Well, you can never reduce it easily, but two things above all. One, making sense of the gospel for our crazy modern world. On the other hand, trying to understand the world so that responsible people can live in the world knowing where we are. Because in terms of the second, I think one of the things in the Scriptures as a whole which is much missing in the American church today is the biblical view of time. You take the idea of the signs of the times, Davidâs men or our Lordâs rebuked His generation. they could read the weather but they missed the signs of the times. So you get that incredible notion of Saint Paul talking about King David. He served Godâs purpose in his generation. Thatâs an incredible idea that you so understand your generation that in some small, inadequate way weâre each serving Godâs purpose of salt and light and so on in our generation.
But many Americans, and many people around the whole world, they donât have that sense of time that you see in Scripture. Iâm not quite sure why; maybe growing up in revolutionary China Iâve always had an incredible sense of time.
[09:36] JONATHAN: You know, I think thatâs encouraging to hear. In our society, we get so fixated and caught up on the issues but thereâs almost this moment of needing to pull back and observe things from a higher perspective. And I think you do such a fantastic job of that.
Letâs walk through some of your more recent books, and then maybe get a peek under the curtain of whatâs coming, because I think youâve got a couple of books that are on their way out. The Magna Carta of Humanity. This idea of Sinai and French Revolution as it sort of relates to the American Revolution. Tell us a little bit about the impetus for this and the thought process towards that.
[10:25] Os Guinness: Well, the American crisis at its deepest is the great polarization today. But many people, I think, donât go down to the why. They blame it on the social media, or our former president and his tweets, or the coastals against the heartlanders and so on. But I think the deepest things are those who understand America and freedom from the perspective of the American Revolution, which was largely, sadly not completely, Christian, because it went back to the Jewish Torah, and those who understand America from the perspective of ideas coming down from the French Revolutionâpostmodernism, radical multiculturalism, the cancel culture, critical theory, all these things, the sexual revolution. They come from the ideas descended from Paris, not from anything to do with the Bible, and weâve got to understand this.
Now, the more positive way of looking at that, many Americans have no idea how the American Revolution came from the Scriptures, how notions like covenant became consitution; the consent of the governed or the separation of powers, going down the line, you have a rich, deep understanding in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. and weâve got to understand if we know how to champion these things today.
But itâs not just a matter of nostalgia or defending the past. I personally am passionately convinced this is the secret to the human future. What are the deepest views of human dignity, or of words, or of truth, or of freedom, or of justice, peace and so on? They are in the Bible. And weâve got to explore them. So the idea from a gentleman not too far from you, Jonathan, who said weâve got to unhitch our faith from the Old Testament, thatâs absolute disaster. A dear guy, but dead wrong. Youâve got to explore the Old Testament as never before, and then, of course, we can understand why the new is so wonderful.
[12:46] JONATHAN: You know, Os, just going down that track a little bit, thatâs right; you canât have the New Testament without the Old Testament. The prophecies of Christ, the fulfillment, it all falls apart, the whole argumentation, everything almost becomes meaningless at that point. And I know the argument is that itâs about the event of the crucifixion and the resurrection, but you donât have those apart from Genesis 3, of course, Genesis 1, all the way through till the end of Malachi. You canât separate these two testamental periods. Itâs ludicrous, and it creates so much damage, as youâve said.
[13:36] Os Guinness: Well you know, take some of the myths that are around today. Theyâre very common even in evangelical circles. The Old Testament is about law; the New Testament is about love.
[13:48] JONATHAN: Right.
[13:49] Os Guinness: Thatâs not right. Thatâs a slander on the Jews. Read the beginning of Deuteronomy. The Jews, the nation, they are called to love the Lord with all their heart, soul and so on. Why did the Lord choose them? Because He loved them and set His affection on them. And you can see in Deuteronomy thereâs a link between liberty and loyalty and love. So right through the Scriptures, those who abandon the truth, apostasy, thatâs equivalent to adultery. Why? To love the Lord is to be loyal to the Lord and faithful to the Lord and so on. And weâve got to see thereâs a tremendous amount about love, loyalty connected with liberty.
I mean, a couple of weeks ago, a couple of professors writing in the New York Times said the Constitution is broken and it shouldnât be reclaimed. We need to move on, scrap it and rebuild our democracy. Now the trouble is constitutions became a matter of lawyers and law courts, the rule of law only in the Supreme Court. No, it comes from covenant. Covenant is all about freely chosen consent, a morally binding pledge. So the heart of freedom is the freedom of the heart, and weâve got to get backâthis is all there in the Old Testament.
Did the Jews fail? Of course. Thatâs why our Lord. but equally the church is failing today. So weâve got so much to learn from the best and the worst of the experience of the Jews in the Old Testament. But to ignore the Old is absolute folly.
[15:35] JONATHAN: Well, and thinking about the American Revolution and the impact of men, as youâve already cited with your own family history, of Wesley and the preaching of George Whitefield in the Americas, which would have had a profound effect on the American psyche, and I think would have contributed a great deal to a lot of the writing of law and constitutional ideology.
[16:02] Os Guinness: Well, the revival had a huge impact on all who created the Revolution. But some of the ideas go back, I think, to the Reformation. Not so much to Luther at this point, but to Calvin and Swingly. In Scotland, John Knox and in England Oliver Cromwell. You know, that whole notion of covenant. I mean, Cromwell said ... A lot of weird ideas came up in the 17th Century, but the 17th Century is called the Biblical Century. Why? Because through the Reformation they discovered, rediscovered, what was called the Hebrew republicâin other words, the constitution the Lord gave to the founding of His own people.
So even someone like Thomas Hobbes, who was an atheist, they are discussing the Hebrew republicâin other words, Exodus and Deuteronomy. It had a tremendous impact on the rise of modern notions of freedom, and weâve got to understand that.
So the Mayflower Compact is a covenant. John Winthrop on the Arbella is talking about covenant. When John Adams writes the first constitution, written one, in this country, which is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, he calls it a covenant. And the American Constitution is essentially a national somewhat secularized form of covenant. And we who are heirs of that as followers of Jesus, weâve got to re-explore it and realize its richness today.
[17:44] JONATHAN: Turn on the news today and it feels like weâre quite a distance from that. Even thinking about using a word like justice, you know, all this now it seems, to your point, this ideology from the French Revolution has really come to the forefront, certainly in the 60s, but there seems to be a new revival of this. Whatâs contributing to that today in America?
[18:17] Os Guinness: Well, James Billington, the former librarian of Congress, and others, have looked at the French Revolution, and remember only lasted 10 years in France, then came dictator Napoleon. But it was like a gigantic volcanic explosion, and out of it came their main lava flows. The first one we often ignore, which is called revolutionary nationalism, in 19th-century France and so on. You can ignore that mostly except itâs very important behind the Chinese today.
But the second one is the one people are aware of. Revolutionary socialism, or in one word, communism. The Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution. Weâre actually experiencing the impact of the third lava flow, revolutionary liberationism, which is not classical Marxism, communism, but cultural Marxism or neo Marxism. And that goes back to a gentleman called Antonio Gramsci in the 1920s. Now you mentioned the 60s. it became very important in the 60s because Gramsciâs ideas were picked up by the Frankfurt School in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and the leading thinker in America in the 60s was Herbert Marcuso, who in many ways is the godfather of the new left in the 60s. I first came here in â68 as a tourist, six weeks. One hundred cities were burning, far worse than 1920, because of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Kennedy.
But hereâs the point: The radicals knew that for all the radicalism in the streets, anti-Vietnam protests and so on, they wouldnât win in the streets, so they had to do what they called, copying Mao Zedong, a long march through the institutionsâin other words, not the streets. Go slowly, gradually, win the colleges and universities. Win the press and media. Win what they call the culture industryâHollywood, entertainment. And then sweep around and win the whole culture.
Now here we are, more than 50 years later, they have done it. Now, in the early days, Iâm a European still, Iâm not American, people would never have believed that the radical left would influence what were called the fortresses of American conservatismâbusiness, finance, the militaryâbut all of those in the form of woke-ism have been profoundly affected. So Americaâs at an extraordinary point in terms of the radical left being more power even than the French Revolution.
[21:16] JONATHAN: Okay, so in thinking through that lines of reasoning, the people who are caught up in that today, the radicalism, is this just indoctrination? I guess what my point is, is it all intentional? Is it like Marcusoâs intentionality of going through the halls of academia? Or rather is it that theyâve just been raised to think that this is just the way ... that itâs the most opportune way to get your ideology out there?
[21:56] Os Guinness: No, itâs thoroughly intention. But of course, always thereâs a creative minority who eventually win over the majority who are hardly aware of it. You mentioned justice. I was on calls for a California pastor last year and I said to them, âYou brothers have drunk the Kool-Aid.â They didn't realize how much of their understanding of justice owed everything to the radical left and nothing to the Hebrew prophets.
So you know how the left operate. It analyzes discourage. How do ordinary people speak? And so you look for the majority/minority, the oppressors/the victims. When youâve found the victim, which is a group, not an individual, you weaponize them and set up a constant conflict of powers in order to subvert the status quo.
But as the Romans point out, if you only have power, no truthâand remember in the postmodern world God is dead for them, truth is completely dead following Nietzsche, so all thatâs left is power. And the only possible outcome, if you think it through logically (which they donât) is what the Romans call the peace of despotismâin other words, you have a power so unrivaled since youâve put down every other power, you have peace. But itâs authoritarian. Thatâs where weâre going increasingly today. You take the high-tech media and so on, a very dangerous moment for freedom of conscience, for freedom of speech, and for freedom of assembly. America is really fighting for its life. But sadly itâs not. Most people are asleep.
[23:43] JONATHAN: Well, and thatâs right. Thatâs sort of the hinge point, isnât it? So letâs talk just briefly about the education system. Weâre thinking sort of elementary, middle school, high school education system. So here in Atlanta there are sort of options that are presented to parents, right? Thereâs the public school system; thereâs the private, often Christian, private school system; and then thereâs a home school option. And parents are all trying to navigate this. Now Iâm sure youâve heard arguments that you can send your kids to the public school because if Christians abandon the public school, then where is the witness, where es the influence with the greater population who are just asleep or whatever it is? If you send them out to the private school, your children will be protected, but how much exposure are they getting to thoughts and philosophies that if you sort of rein them inâ
And I guess this is really more to the home school spectrum, which is almost like an over-protection. These kids go to university and itâs the first exposure theyâve had to some of these thoughts, and professors are going out of their way to convince these students that the way that they were raised was very fallen, broken; their parents were brainwashing them, etc. Just thinking about some of those differing options and thought process, how do you think through that as a thinker, as a social critic, as a Christian? How do you weigh into that?
[25:17] Os Guinness: Well, you try and sort of isolate some of the different factors. So youâve been talking rightly about the personal and the family concerns, which are fundamental absolutely. And I think that very much varies with the child. But with all of the words, home schooling, whatever, you want to keep them ahead of the game so they know whatâs coming. Francis Schaeffer often used to stress that. So people go to the secular university. Keep them ahead of the game so that they know whatâs coming and they know some preliminary apologetics so they know how to make a good stand and be faithful without being washed away.
Youâve alsoâin other words, what you said is fundamental, I agree with that, but thereâs also a national dimension. So the public schools, and Iâm not arguing that everyone has to go to them, but they were very, very important because they were the center of passing on the unum of the e pluribus unum, out of man, one. Put it this way. As the Jews put it, if any project lasts longer than a single generation, you need families, you need schools, you need history. It doesnât get passed on.
So when Moses talked about the night before Passover, he never mentioned freedom, he never mentioned the Promised Land of milk and honey. He told them how to tell their story to children so that freedom could last. Now, the public schools used to do that, so you have people from Ireland or Italy or China or Mexico, it didn't matter because the public schools gave them civic education, the unum. That was thrown out at the end of the 60s. In came Howard Zinn and his alternative views, and more recently the 1619 project. So the public school, as a way of americanizing and integrating, collapsed. And thatâs a disaster for the republic.
Now, take the added one that President Biden has added, immigration. As scholars put it, itâs still relatively easy to become an American: get your papers, your ID and so on. Itâs almost impossible now to know what it is to be American, and particularly you say the 4 million who have come in in the Biden years, theyâre not going to be inducted into American citizenship, so the notion of citizenship collapses through the public schools and through an open border. Itâs just a folly beyond any words. It is historic, unprecedented folly, an absolute disaster.
Of course, weâve got to say, back to your original question, the same is true not only of freedom but of faith. So parents handing on, transmitting to their kids, very, very important.
I would add one more thing, Jonathan. Itâs very much different children. My own son, whom I adore, is a little bit of a contrarian. If heâd gone to a Christian college, he might have become a rebel in some of the poorer things of some of them. He went to a big, public university, University of Virginia, and it cemented and deepened his faith because he stood against the tide and he came out with a much stronger faith than when he went in.
[28:59] JONATHAN: I love that. I think youâre right on with that. And I think itâs good for people to hear and know the history and have awareness of this. Now I want to make a very subtle and gentle shift, and if you donât want to talk about it, thatâs fine. But you are a British citizen. Am I correct on that?
[29:18] Os Guinness: I am.
[29:21] JONATHAN: Queen Elizabeth has passed and now itâs King Charles III and thereâs much talk about comments heâs made in the past in terms of the Defender of the Faith. I read a quote from Ian Bradley, who is a professor at the University of Saint Andrews, he says, âCharlesâs faith is more spiritual and intellectual. Heâs more of a spiritual seeker.â
Is this sort of a microcosm of whatâs happening in the UK, this sort of shift from the queen, who very much had a very Christo-centric faith, to Charles and sort of emphasis on global warming and different issues of the day? Is this sort of a microcosm of what weâre seeing?
[30:22] Os Guinness: Well, the queen had a faith that was very real and very deep, and she was enormously helped by people like Billy GrahamâŠ
[30:29] JONATHAN: John Stott.
[30:30] Os Guinness: --John Stott and so on. So her faith was very, very genuine. His? Heâs probably got more of an appreciation for the Christian faith than many European leaders today. So the Christian faith made Western civilization, and yet most of the intelligentsia in Europe have abandoned the faith that made it. So Prince Charles, as you say, a rather New Age spirituality, and heâs extraordinarily open to Islam through money from Saudi Arabia. I donât have the highest hopes for him, although I must say the challenge of being king will remind him of the best of his mother. Even when the archbishop said in the sermon that he wanted people to know that Prince Charles had a Christian faith, I felt it was a glimmer of the fact he realizes, you know, his motherâs position was wonderful, so itâs very much open.
Now I am an Anglican, as you are. Back in 1937, the greatest of all the Catholic historians on Western civilization predictedâthis is 1937, almost a century agoâthat the day would come in some future coronation when people would raise the questions, âWas it all a gigantic bluff? Because the power of the monarchy, and more importantly, the credibility of the faith, had both undermined themselves to such an extent it didn't mean anything.â
I think weâre incredibly close to that with King Charles. I also think, sadly, that the Archbishop of Canterbury, who preached wonderfully well yesterday, has done a good job in the celebrations and so on, the pageantry, but does a rotten job in leading the church as the church. And so the Church of England is in deep trouble in terms of its abandoning orthodoxy. Itâs a very critical moment. Will Charles go deeper or revert to the way heâs been for the last few decades? I donât know. Iâm watching.
[33:02] JONATHAN: And then sort of just transitioning from there to what you see as faith in the United States. I think you have a new book coming out, Zero Hour America: Historyâs Ultimatum Over Freedom and the Answer We Must Give. Letâs bridge that gap between trajectory in the UK and now in the United States. What similarities and differences are you seeing?
[33:26] Os Guinness: Well, in Europe the great rival to the Christian faith was in the 18th century, the Enlightenment. And itâs almost completely swept the intelligentsia of Europe. Until recently, America was not fully going that way, and in the last decade or so it has. The rise of the religious nones, etc. etc. So in most areas that are intellectual, America too has abandoned the faith that made it. Of course, part of the American tragedy is the intelligentsia have not only abandoned the faith that made America; theyâve abandoned the Revolution that made America. So you have a double crisis here.
Now, I am, like you, a follower of Jesus. Iâm absolutely undaunted. The Christian faith, if itâs true, would be true if no one believed it. So the lies of the nones or whatever just means a lot of people didn't realize in one sense that theyâre just spineless. If itâs true, itâs not a matter of popularity or polls. I like the old saying, âDamn the polls and think for yourself.â And Americans are far too other-directed. The polls are often badly formulated in terms of their questions. The question is, is the faith true and what are the answers it gives us to lead our lives well? And I have no question itâs not only good news, it is the best news ever in terms of where humanity is today. So this is an extraordinary moment to be a follower of Jesus. We have the guardianship and the championship of the greatest news ever.
[35:14] JONATHAN: Amen. Well, and letâs make one final link there, which is we talked a lot about Western countries, the UK, the US, but you were born and spent quite a lot of time in China. Letâs think about not necessarily specifically China, but non-Western countries. You travel quite frequently. What are you seeing in those non-Western countries that perhaps is giving you hope or positivity?
[35:47] Os Guinness: God promised to Abraham in him all the families of the Earth will be blessed. DNA is in the heart of the Scriptures, and of course our Lordâs Great Commission. But as we look around the world today, thank God Christian faith is the most populace faith on the Earth. So the one place itâs not doing well is the highly modernized West. It is flourishing in sub-Sahara Africa. Or in Asia, where I happen to be born, in Chinaânothing to do with meâwas the most rapid growth, exponential growth, of the church in 2,000 years. So I have no fear for the faith at all. And of course we believe itâs true.
But the question, Will the West return to the faith that made it? I hope that our sisters and brothers in the global south will help us come back just as we took the faith to them. And I know many African brothers and sisters and many Korean brothers and sisters, Chinese too, thatâs their passion. And we must welcome it. I know so many Koreans, what incredible people of prayer. Up at 5:00, thousands of them praying together. When I was a boy in England, prayer meetings were strong in churches. Theyâre not strong in most American churches today. Weâve become highly secularized, so weâve got a huge amount to learn from the Scriptures, of course, above all, but from our brothers and sisters in the rest of the world reminding us of what we used to believe and weâve lost.
[37:33] JONATHAN: What a great reminder. Well, Os Guinness, I know youâve got a busy schedule and weâre so grateful that youâve taken the time to be on Candid Conversations. Weâve talked about quite a lot. Weâre going to put a link to your website in our show notes, and all fantastic books that youâve put out and new ones coming out, and we look forward to hopefully having you on again in the future.
[38:00] Os Guinness: Well, thank you. Real privilege to be on with you.
[38:02] JONATHAN: God bless you. Thank you.
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Are you committed to Christ but searching for guidance? In this new reflection, Jonathan Youssef explores the gripping Biblical story of Jacobâa tale of struggle, transformation, and divine engagement. Jonathan connects his own experiences with Jacobâs journey, offering insights into the challenges of perseverance, the power of repentance, and the profound ways God works in our lives.
Listen and deepen your understanding of spiritual growth and how our trials can lead to profound blessings. This is a must-listen for anyone seeking inspiration and guidance from God.
To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/Candid
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TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 255: Wrestling with God: Jonathan Youssef
In seventh grade, I joined my middle school wrestling program. For two weeks, we ran and did all kinds of exercises, and then we would wrestle each other for the rest of the time we were there. And I did not like it. I lost to a guy who was younger than me. I lost every day. I was terrible. And I was tired of losing, and I lacked perseverance. There is little more humiliating than being wedged under the fat arm of a sweaty teenage boy, and I thought, This is as low as it gets.
Well, our reflection today is about wrestling and persevering. Iâve always been intrigued by the biblical story because it has so many layers. Itâs multifaceted and multidimensional. And itâs a little bit dangerous, meaning that there is potential to miss the main point of what the text is saying and to misunderstand or misrepresent it.
Over the years, Iâve reread it, read commentaries, listened to talks, and consumed all I can to try to understand it better. I want to know what is taking place at this really important moment in salvific history.
We have this man, Jacob. He has been at odds with his brother since birth. Even in the womb, he and Esau are wrestling with each other. He is at odds with his father over who is the favored son. He is at odds with who should be blessed. Heâs at odds over who had the birthright in the family. Heâs used trickery and deception to achieve his purposes. Heâs at odds with his Uncle Laban, a master trickster himself.
But in Genesis, we begin to see the undoing of this character, Jacob. Heâs being undone, and heâs being changed and transformed through these middle chapters of this book. Heâs served his crooked uncle/father-in-law for twenty-some-odd years, and in many ways, heâs echoing the prodigal son here. Having come to himself, heâs leaving Laban here, and heâs coming home, you might say, to the homeland of his father, to his older brother, and although God has begun to work in him, although he is a new man, as it were, spiritually, it becomes clear that God is not finished with Jacob yet.
And so this chapter unfolds with three dramatic pictures. First, in verses 1 through 21, we have the picture of Jacob returning. God has been working in his life, as we just noted. God has also been working in the lives of Jacobâs two wives, Leah and Rachel, and now Jacob has sent word to his brother, Esau, the brother who swore that he would one day kill his little brother in a very Cain and Abel-type fashion.
So Jacob sends the word, âHey! Iâm coming home.â Heâs really only able to do this because the Lord has told him, âThe day will come that Iâm going to bring you back to this land. And I am promising that I will do you good, that I will prosper you, and that I will be with you.â
If you remember the account of Jacobâs ladder, where Jacob falls asleep, and he envisions this ladder coming down from heaven, and the angels ascend and descend upon the ladder, the Lord tells him, âI will be with you. I will bring you back to this land. I will give it to you and your offspring. And the whole earth will be blessed through you and your seed.â And, of course, it reminds us of the very same promise given to Abraham.
He promises to keep and return him to that land, and now that day has come. In verses 1 and 2, we read that the angels come and meet Jacob. Itâs confirmation that the Lord is with him. He names the area Mahanaim, meaning âtwo camps.â
Now, perhaps heâs referring to the fact that itâs his camp and the Lordâs camp; the Lordâs camp will be his shield and protection. Because heâs going to need it. And the report comes back, âHey, Esauâs coming to see you. Heâs got four hundred guys with him. Itâs going to be great, right?â
Okay, either Esau is rolling out the red carpet for his little brother, or Esau has come for his vengeance, and he has not forgotten 20 years of anger and hostility. Verse 7 says, âThen Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.â
Now, when it comes to our fears and the Lord, do we find that the way that the Lord enables us through our fears is by removing the fear, removing the obstacles? Or do we find that He gives us greater reasons not to fear than to fear? Here is Jacob, and heâs stuck in a difficult situation. He cannot return to his Uncle Laban; heâs terrified to go forward to his brother, Esau, and the unknown. What's he going to do?
Well, heâs a different man now. He probably would have used skill and trickery to weasel out of this in his past life. He would have found a crafty way to save himself, even at the cost of his own family.
But heâs a different man now, and Jacob perseveres despite his hesitancy, fear, and distressâunlike my illustrious wrestling career.
And then we see Jacob do something weâve never seen him do in Scripture. He gets on his knees, and he pleads with God. Heâs praying for Godâs help in his dreadfully fearful situation. And Jacob prays the longest prayer in the book of Genesis. And the prayer shows us that he now belongs to the Lord. Itâs evidence that the Lord is working in your heart, is it not, when you begin to call on His name, and itâs not just, âLord, Iâm in a mess. Help me out of this,â but rather, itâs âGod, you promised to be with me. You promised to protect me. And so Iâm coming to you, claiming on those promises.â
And that's what Jacob does, âLord, you said that you would do good to me. Fulfill your promise to me.â You notice itâs not a panicked prayer, âGod, get me out of this bind, and Iâll build a hundred churches for you.â
No. Instead, you have a man at the end of his resources, holding onto God's promises to bless him, and then he patiently sits, trusting that the Lord will act.
Then, we see another change in Jacob: a repentant heart. Itâs an attitude of repentance. That's whatâs happening with this whole procession going out to Esau. He sends the people and the animals and tells them to give a message to Esau: These gifts are from your servant, Jacob. Now, heâs scared, yes, but heâs coming behind us. Heâs indebted himself to you. Do you want a sign of a changed life? Do you want a sign of a repentant heart? You are prepared to go to the person you have offended, and you say to them, âBecause of what the Lord has done in me through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, I can come before you and serve you.â
Think of Zaccheus, âA wee little man was he. He climbed up in the sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see. In the British version, it says, âAnd Jesus said, âIâm coming to your house for tea,ââ because they all drank tea back then. But what does Zaccheus do? Does he just say, âLord, Iâm sorry. I was bad. I did wrong. Forgive me, Lord,â and then just move on?
No! He gives four times back. He repays his debts. Itâs evidence of a changed man. And that's the other thing that Jacob is doing, right? Heâs gifting these 550 animals. Heâs saying, âBrother, I stole your blessing. I used deception and trickery for my own advantage, and now Iâm giving it back to youâ because I understand I need to be made right with you.â
Itâs more than just feeling sorry in a moment. In Scripture, repentance is God's work of grace in my heart. I am sorry for my sin and find His forgiveness, but Iâm also working towards restoration, repairing whatever damage I have caused.
The story is told of a machinist or factory worker in the Ford Motor Company in Detroit who had, over several years, borrowed tools and equipment, but never returned them. The machinist was thoroughly converted and was baptized. He wanted to put his faith into practice, so he came back to work to his boss, to the foreman, and he brought all the tools he had stolen and all the equipment he had taken, and the foreman didnât know what to do. And heâs repenting, and heâs confessing what heâs done, and so the foreman, impressed by this, cables Henry Ford and says, âYouâre not going to believe this. This guyâs come back, and heâs brought everything with him,â to which Ford cabled back, âDam up the Detroit River and baptize the whole city.â That's what's happening here with Jacob. Heâs bringing the blessing back. The blessing that the Lord has poured out on him, heâs giving it back.
Jacob returning. Then we have a second scene, which Iâm sure weâre all a little more familiar with, and this is the scene of Jacob wrestling. Heâs not only sent his possessions on, heâs sent his whole family ahead. Verse 22 states, âHe took his wives and servants and his eleven children, and they crossed over the Jabbok at night.â
And then, in verse 24, heâs all alone, and a man grabs him in the darkness and begins to wrestle with him. My seventh-grade selfâs nightmare because I didnât like wrestling. That was the allusion to that if youâre following along.
Who do you think Jacob thinks heâs wrestling? Itâs most likely that he thinks heâs wrestling with the man who swore to kill him, the man that all of this procession and all this fuss is about. At this moment, Esau is who Jacob thinks his most significant conflict is with. The one I have to wrestle with is my brother, itâs Esau.
But that is not who he wrestles with in the night, as we find out later in this passage and as we read in Hosea chapter 12, which is a little brief commentary. We find out that Jacob is, in fact, wrestling with some manifestation of God in the flesh, a pre-incarnate Christ. And so then weâre left to ask the question, What will God gain from this, from wrestling with Jacob? Heâs already sent all his possessions on ahead. Surely, God is finished with Jacob. Heâs repentant, heâs confessed, heâs done it all. There is no box left to check.
But you see, Jacob has given all he has back, but the most important thing is that he has yet to give back. Do you know what it is? Itâs Jacob. Itâs Jacob himself. And Jacob may think that Esau is trying to get what is his, which is to take Jacobâs life, but the reality is that God is wrestling with Jacob to take what is Hisâwhich is Jacob! And this wrestling, itâs like a father with a child. You know thereâs a way Iâm not a good wrestler, as weâve illustrated, and youâre trying to catch up with me on this. But thereâs a way for me to wrestle with my children while theyâre young, though my son is getting to the age where I canât keep up with him. But thereâs a way for me to wrestle with them, which keeps them engaged for a long time in which I never lose, and they never lose. That's sort of what God is doing with Jacob here.
But then He does this thing where He touches Jacobâs hip, and now Jacob has this dislocated hip, and you need your hip as a pivot to wrestle, so now heâs got nothing, heâs zero. And heâs clinging to God, and God is saying to him, âLet me go. Let me go,â and Jacob says, âIâm not going to let you go unless you bless me.â
Hereâs the context of these situations: The lesser is always blessed by the greater, so Jacob acknowledges that he is holding onto the greater being. I imagine heâs still not sure who heâs wrestling with, but heâs holding on, and he sees by the power that's rendered his hip inoperable that heâs holding on to a greater being. And heâs saying, âI will not let you go unless you bless me.â
If you go back and look at Jacob's life, you know what youâll see? Jacob is immensely blessed. Everything he does is blessed, right? That's what God promised to do, and that's what heâs receiving. Everywhere he went, every person he interacted with was blessed, just as God has blessed us immensely. If only we had eyes to see, we could have blessing upon blessing in our lives and still miss the main point.
The main point is not the blessings, plural, but Godâs blessing. And what is Godâs blessing? It is that He has every part of us. And how Jacob enters into this blessing is obvious: God says to him, âWhat is your name?â
And the response is one word: Jacob. Jakob. What's in the name? Twister is the etymology of the name Jacob. Twister, deceiver, heel-clutcher. And now God has gotten to the bottom of the issue: itâs a confession. I am unrighteous, I am a sinner. My identity was in who and how I could trick them.
God is going right for his heart, saying, âGive me your heart, Jacob. That's what I want.â You see that God is prepared to dislocate Jacobâs hip to have Jacob's heart. That may be what God is saying to you, that the way to your heart is by the divine dislocation of something you take pride in, which is a source of great strength for you. Maybe you notice Heâs touched the very thing in which you have depended on for your life, and Heâs taken it away from you. That's what's happening to Jacob. The Lord draws him in to say, âJacob, itâs not all the things in your life that I want you to give me; itâs yourself that I want.â
But you see, thereâs a third scene, a beautiful scene. Jacob returned, Jacob wrestled, and now Jacob was limping. In the next chapter, chapter 33 of Genesis, we see Jacob return to his brother Esau, but heâs not at the back of the caravan as he was before with his plan. Heâs at the front now and prepared to take it all. But weâre told that heâs doing two things. One, heâs bowing down seven times, and the other is using the language of âI am the servant, and you, Esau, are the lord.â
But I think if you were there that day to watch this encounter, those would not be the two things you would have paid attention to. I think the thing that would have captured your attention would have been this: his limp. Why is this significant? Because, beloved, this is a picture of the Christian life. Men and women who have been dislocated to different degrees because of the work of God in their lives and caused to limp, humbled under His sovereign, mighty hand; caused to limp, caused to be conscious of this for the rest of their lives of their weakness and their dependence on the Lord. Dependent on His forgiveness, dependent on His powerâmoment by moment, day by day. But the sun has risen upon them.
I wonder if youâve come across one of these people. And it doesnât always have to be a physical variation of this; sometimes itâs unseen, the wound, the dislocation. But when we were in Australia, there was a young man. He was in our Bible study, and he looked like he had been in a fire. He had an autoimmune disorder, and he received a bone marrow transplant from his sister, but the transplant caused his body to fight against itself. And so his body was covered in sores and blisters everywhere, and ulcers filled his mouth. Walking was difficult; eating was difficult.
As I said, he was in our Bible study, and so when I asked him his story, he said to me that he was a great swimmer. When he was in high school, he was actually training for the Olympics for the Australian national team. Then he started feeling strange, and his swim time started getting slower and slower, and that's when all the medical issues began in his life.
And he told me, he said, âYou know, before, I was a good kid, but I was very full of myself. I was arrogant. But God reached in and dislocated a part of me, taking away things I loved doing.â
And even through his anger, frustration, agony, and pain, he never left the Lord, and the Lord certainly never left him. He would testify to the goodness of God, despite what everybody saw physically with their eyes when they encountered them. His faith and his dependence on the Lord remained until the Lord called him home a few years ago.
This is how the Lord said to him, âI want every part of you. I want your heart.â You see, this is not just a principle of spiritual usefulness for Jacob and for us; this takes us to the heart of the gospel. For you see, there would be another night, centuries later, where two wrestlers were engaged, but this time a Son with His Heavenly Father, as He said, âLet this cup pass from me.â And there is an equality in the wrestling. âLet this cup pass from me, and yet, I will not let you go despite what is coming, the agony and the shame that will be borne on the cross. I will not let you go, Father, until you bless them,â which is why He says, âFather, forgive them, for they know not what they do.â And so He, as Paul says, upon that cross became a curse so that the blessing may come to us.
Where are you today? Perhaps youâre on your way, like Jacob, and youâre walking through repentance and forgiveness. Are you willing to give up a little but not the whole? Perhaps youâre wrestling with God over these things at this moment, and you give a little, but then you fight for others, and itâs a give-and-take relationship, and itâs very back and forth. Perhaps you want to let go, or perhaps you have let go in the past, and the Lord keeps re-engaging with you in this wrestling match, and Heâs waiting for you to say, âDonât let me go. I will not let you go, even if it means me having a limp for the rest of my life.â
Do you have a limp? Do you have a dislocation? May the Lord be gracious to us as He pursues our hearts.
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In this fast-paced world, managing our emotions and understanding those of others is more crucial than ever. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is about recognizing and managing your emotions effectively to reduce stress, communicate, empathize, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict. With high EQ, you can improve relationships, excel at work, and achieve your career and personal goals.
Today, Jonathan Youssef is joined by Clay Kirkland, a returning guest with over two decades of coaching experience and a rich background in staff development at the University of Georgia Wesley Foundation. Clay is certified in emotional intelligence and includes EQ as a vital coaching component.
Clay breaks down the concept of EQ into four crucial quadrants: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. This episode isn't just theoretical; it is filled with practical advice, from managing personal emotions to enhancing interpersonal relations in various spheres of life, such as parenting, the workplace, and within the church community.
Listeners will gain insights into how emotional intelligence intersects with spiritual maturity, the practical applications of EQ in everyday scenarios, and strategies for developing emotional resilience. Clayâs explanations bridge scientific understanding with theological perspectives, making this a must-listen for anyone seeking to enhance their emotional skills and lead a more fulfilling, empathetic life. Join us as we explore how mastering emotional intelligence can lead to profound personal growth and significantly better interactions in all areas of life.
This episode is for you, whether you're a leader, a parent, or simply someone looking to understand the emotional dynamics of the human mind.
To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/Candid
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TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 254: What is Emotional Intelligence and Why Does it Matter?: Clay Kirkland
[00:01] JONATHAN: Well, today we have a repeat guest. We like having repeat guests. We like to build up some relational collateral with our audience and so weâve brought back Clay Kirkland. Clay has spoken on a number of topics, including calling, with us on Candid Conversations, and today we are talking about emotional intelligence. Clay is a life coach with twenty-plus years of experience. He served for eighteen years as the director of staff development at the Wesley Foundation at the University of Georgia in Athens. He has a Master of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary and he is a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach. And so I will say, âWelcome back, Clay.â
[00:51] CLAY: Thank you. I appreciate it. Glad to be here.
[00:55] JONATHAN: Well, this is a topic that has always been of great interest to me, and obviously to my team as we were having this conversation and your name came up pretty much immediately, and itâs this issue of emotional intelligence, EQ, right? That's our abbreviation. So this is not IQ, a measure of general intelligence. This is EQ, emotional intelligence, and so maybe help us define emotional intelligence. Why is it important? What is it? Kind of step us through a little bit of that process.
[01:37] CLAY: Sure. Yeah. So itâs a great topic. Iâm very excited to be here to talk about it. And itâs gone through a lot of iterations in terms of its understanding. Probably in the last forty years, really, itâs been around and Iâd say probably the last fifteen or twenty itâs become a major player in conversations both in the business sector and also just in general. If we wanted to really boil it down to probably its simplest form, you would want to think about emotional intelligence in four different parts. Do you know yourself? Can you manage or read yourself? Do you know others? Can you manage and influence others? And that's about as easy as we can get it. Weâre leaving some things out, but across the bow, that's what weâre looking for those four quadrants. Thereâs a self-understanding, thereâs a social understanding, then thereâs a self-leadership or management, and thereâs a social leadership management and understanding.
[02:55] JONATHAN: Even in just giving the categories I feel like Iâm picking up on the necessity of being able to understand yourself and know yourself, being able to manage yourself, right, self-controlâitâs a fruit of the Spirit. And then on the relational spectrum, being able to relate to others, are ⊠How do you lead? How do you interpret peopleâs body language and cues and things that are being given off? So letâs talk about the importance of just those four categories that youâve given us.
[03:45] CLAY: Sure. Well, you can, if we start with knowing yourself, right, and then think about that, as it relates to knowing others, we say things in life to our family or things are said about us that lead us back to what weâre really talking about when it comes to emotions. So youâll hear people say things like, âHe doesnât have a clue what's going on.â Or âDo you realize how angry you sounded when you said that?â And that immediate defensive posture. So in interpersonal relationships, itâs pretty much there on a consistent basis, that idea of do you know what's on the other side of you? And that's the self-awareness, right? And then do you know whatâs happening with the people that are around you?
So that's the first part, right; itâs just this knowledge. And the great thingâI didnât mention this earlier, but the great thing of this kind of understanding emotional intelligence that plays into a lot of the definitions that people are putting out these days are that these are a set of skills that can be learned. This is not aâ
[05:09] JONATHAN: Youâre not born with it.
[05:10] CLAY: âpersonality trait that, youâve gotten and youâre just stuck there. This is dynamic in a good way, but also in a sobering way in the sense that you can be really good at these and then stop being good at these, or you can be not good at these and then
[05:31] CLAY: âthey slide. But then outside of that awareness and knowledge, itâs what do you do with it? Do you know how to manage yourself? And again, itâs an interplay. Itâs always going to blend with the knowledge. Do you know whatâs appropriate for the moment either for yourself, coming out of you, with others, and then, can you apply this? So when we think about the brain, weâre thinking about this process of your limbic system where the seat of your emotions are, and your prefrontal cortex, where youâre making your rational decisions. So do you have understanding of both of those? Do you have control over both of those? And can you manage thatâwhen youâre aloneâor can you do that also when youâre with other people?
[06:34] JONATHAN: This is very scientific but also very practical. Letâs bring in the world of theology. How do you differentiate between spiritual maturityâor do you differentiate between spiritual maturity and emotional intelligence? Are they one in the same?
[06:56] CLAY: I think you have to differentiate between the two, simply because someone who has no spiritual/religious anythingâ
[07:09] JONATHAN: Theyâre capable of growing.
[07:13] CLAY: And being very emotionally intelligent. So youâre not automatically emotionally intelligent because you have some type of spiritual maturity in the sense of you have a relationship with God or you do certain religious disciplines that make you, in the eyes of other people, highly religious or devout.
There has to be a difference there. But when we look at the practical applications of emotional intelligence and you look at them and the practical applications of spiritual maturityâso probably the easiest one to go to is in the New Testament, to look at the fruits of the Spirit. You start talking about love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness. You get all the way down to self-control. And then you pull those back into the outcomes that emotional intelligence is supposed to create, thereâs a lot of similarities, right? Obviously, self-control is one. Optimism is a massive one, which we can really link to joy and hope. The kindness piece would clearly cover those kind of interpersonal relationships. So itâs not a perfect overlay, but that's where you see it.
[08:32] JONATHAN: Yeah, lots of connectivity there for sure.
[08:34] CLAY: Yes, a lot.
[08:38] JONATHAN:You mentioned the limbic system, the prefrontal cortex. Talk me through a little bit of that to give some clarity here.
[08:52] CLAY: Sure. And again, letâs make it real simple.
[08:56] JONATHAN: Thanks.
[08:58] CLAY: Yeah, for all of us. Youâre going to have your reptilian part of your brain. That's your fight, your flight when youâre in danger. That's just kind of that aspect. If we get past that, weâre typically going to put our neural functions into two other categories. That's going to be your limbic system, and that's the âI feelâ place. And then your neocortex, that prefrontal cortex, where youâre going to think rationally and youâre going to make decisions, youâre going to process them.
So what weâre trying to say is, because you get this a lot when I go around and talk to people about emotional intelligence, youâll typically hear someone or a group of people identify and say, âI donât have a lot of feelings. Iâm not very emotional, so I donât know if this is going to help.â
[09:59] JONATHAN: âIâm a thinker, not a feeler,â right?
[10:01] CLAY: That's correct, which just means that theyâre leaning much more heavily into one area of their brain than the others. That doesnât mean that they donât feel. It doesnât mean that that limbic system is depressed or deformed or anything else; it just means that they are not as aware that that part of their brain is functioning and can function for them in positive, neutral or negative ways.
Again, if you were to describe me and say, âHey Clay, on a scale of 1 to 10, how emotional are you,â most people then link that to whenâs the last time you cried? Do you get chill bumps when you watch a video, or a commercial at Christmas, or whatever? And I would say, no, that's not the type of person I am. But that still doesnât mean that that limbic system within my brain isnât an active part of the brain. Because it is. For all of us it is, weâre just not leaning into it.
[11:14] JONATHAN: So is there a wayâI'm sure weâre all thinking of a person that perhaps is not leaning into their limbic system, and weâre thinking, How do you exercise that? And Iâm assuming that your goal with clients and that sort of things is to try and help find balance. I assume you want a balance between being in touch with emotions, right, because emotions can be good indicators. They can also mislead, but they can be good indicators. And then you need a rational side to help navigate that. So how do you sort of exerciseâand we can do both sides of thatâhow do you, for those who are very much a feelings-generated person, how do they exercise their thinking and vice-versa?
[12:10] CLAY: All right. So letâs start with the person who typically is not necessarily a feeling-type person. Iâll give you an example. I had a client several years ago, and he was a CEO of a company and I got brought in to work with him. We were meeting in the lobby of the hotel, like in the restaurant, and I asked him, I said, âTell me a recent story about something that went wrong at work.â
So he tells me the story. And after he finishes, I said, âHow do you feel about that?â
And he said, âBad.â
I said, âTry something a little bit more deep, descriptive.â And he just stared at me and said, âI donât know, it just made me feel bad.â
So I said, âHave you ever heard of the âemotions wheelâ? Itâs a very common graphic, you can google it.â
So he pulled out his phone and said, âSiri, Google,â and here comes the emotions wheel. It pops up on it and he stares at it. He stares at it for probably seven minutes. I was like, âWow, I donât know if heâs going to be able to do it.â
And he finally said, âAngry.â
And I said, âAll right! Great! This is good. This is good.â So we spent several months with that wheel, using exercises that would help him start to recognize that he has feelings that are coursing in and out of his brain that he just wasnât giving airtime to. So again, people who arenât touchy-feely or arenât kind of the emotional types, they typically wonât feel anger. Theyâre aware of that frustration, but what they typically do, theyâre guarding themselves. And this is where weâre going to get off on a rabbit trail, so Iâm going to pause myself, but they are typically guarding themselves from certain emotions they donât like or they donât believe are good or not the type of person they would be. Or pain, or whatever, again, canât go there. But that's typically what you see.
So we just started to do exercises that caused him to become very aware of the emotions that were coursing through his brain and body and it became helpful. Again, itâs not necessarily the end product, but we just needed to at least give some recognition.
On the flip side, someone whoâs highly emotional, again, the way they would describe themselves, and they would say, âWell, I donât really think that much,â they do think a lot; they are just thinking primarily through their emotions. And you said it earlier: they can be great indicators, but they can also be misleading. So thatâs where we kind of do some exercises for people in that kind of space to really pause and start to learn where theyâre making their decisions from.
Why are you doing this? âBecause I feel like it.â What do you feel? âWell, I feel âŠâ and they can just tell you.
And so that's when you have to do some exercises where you pause and put them in situations where you say something like, âIf your friend was about to do this, how would you tell him or her what to do? What kind of advice would you give them?â That gives them a pause to consider. Or itâs a common kind of way that we would do it, but we would debate our emotions.
So your classic, classic example for this isâand this just happened recently, so this is a true story, here in this officeâI got here early because the fire company told me they needed to come and do a test on the fire system. So 6:30 in the morning I walk through here, only saw one other person in the office and said, âHey, thereâs a fire alarm test.â He said, âOkay, great.â
So what I didnât notice was that someone was parking and then they were coming into the front doors about ninety seconds after I warned the one person that the fire alarm would go off. And this woman came running down the hallway in panic and scared, because she and I both heard the same fire alarm, but because I had certain knowledge, I had zero panic and fear, and had no emotion towards the fire alarm whatsoever. And she had incredible emotions towards it, and therefore, she was running, she was trying to save people. She was looking for people to save because she thought that we were going up in flames, and she just couldnât believe it.
So the point of that is to say when you have something that triggers emotion, you can debate it. If you know that you need to learn something about your emotions, you can debate it, again, to say, âIs there a reason for me to feel any other way? Is there a trigger or consequence that Iâm concerned about? Is there any context that I could give myself that could perhaps change the way that I feel currently?â
And again, they are all methods. Those are all different waysâand we can get into those exercises if you want toâbut the point of those exercises is to pause yourself before you push whenever that limbic system is pushing into your vision, near the forefront of your mind, to make that the only way that you can make a decision. Weâre just trying to pause you enough to give you an option to have your other parts of your brain work.
[18:31] JONATHAN: This sort of happened recentlyâI should be careful; I should use third-party examples. But my wife and I were at the beach, and our son was playing near and we were talking with friends. And we were keeping an eye on him, and then all of a sudden he was gone. And so we went into full panic mode. And weâre looking in the water and itâs just like it was emotion-driven. Thereâs very little rational thought process and the panic mode strikes. Heâs not where he was; something terrible must have happened.
And I remember after panicking for a while I finally just stopped. I did the pause, kind of what youâre talking about, and I thought, âOkay, weâve been here before. He knows this place.â So I told my wife, I said, âGo back up to where weâre staying and check for him there.â And then I thought, âThereâs a little statue that I know he likes. Let me go see maybe if heâs gone over there.â Because we hadnât thought, âWell, he ran past us,â because we would have seen him. But I thought, âWell, we might have been engaged in conversation and missed him.â
And sure enough, as Iâm running to the statue, there he is, playing in the sand. And he had run past us, chasing a seagull or something. And it was like, okay, if I just took a minute to think, all right, what are the logical things that could have happened here? But at the same time, God has given us those panic senses to where if something terrible had happened, your body is in that sort of fight, hopefully not flight, but fight mode of I need to do ⊠I need to, as the example of the lady in the office, sheâs trying to save people. That's a good thing if the fire alarm is going off.
But I see what youâre saying in terms of just taking a minute to think, âWhat information do I have? What am I âŠ?â
Because I think your mind probably shuts down, you get into tunnel vision and that sort of thing.
Letâs talk a little bit about IQ versus EQ. And in terms of the way that we look at people, the way we consider talent, children, workplace environment, hiring, all that sort of thing. How do you see the consequences of prioritizing one over the other kind of play out?
[21:04] CLAY: Iâd say in the last twenty years or so thereâs been a push to raise the importance of EQ. Not to diminish IQ, because itâs important to learn, become smart, develop that part of your brain. But this isnât a choose one over the other. Now, right, is to say we probably missed it when we were only pushing get smarter, get this score on a test, get this acceptance, then youâll be successful.
Harvard Business Review came out and said that there is ⊠the differences between good leaders and great leaders, that gap. If you were to look in that gap and see what's in there, they would say 80 percent of the contents in that gap are in the emotional intelligence sector. So that's what they would say. Daniel Goleman, whoâs one of the most popular voices on emotional intelligence, wrote Primal Leadership and several other books about it over the course of the past thirty years, he would say that if youâre looking to define success and what's going to make you successful in this day and age, he would say 80 percent of the contents of that recipe would also be in emotional intelligence.
And I think what theyâre sayingâthis is me trying to interpret a little bitâagain, itâs not to say, âWell, that means only 20 percent is IQ.â That's not what itâs saying. Itâs saying we pushed, âBe smart, be smart, be smart, be smartâ so hard, that's almost like a get it. Like when you look at people who work hard in high school, go to college, get really good grades, get a competitive job, Iâll bring Google up in a second, but that's that pattern. We said, âIQ, IQ, IQ, IQ.â And hereâs how youâre going to be measured on that, youâre going to get rewarded. Youâre going to get awards, youâre going to get plaques, youâre going to get acceptance letters, youâre going to get scholarships, and youâre going to get a job.â Thatâs the way we measure IQ. We pushed that so much, itâs almost like you have to do this. But if you also add extra, what is that extra? Well, 80 percent of that extra, I would say, would be emotional intelligence. So that's where I think that those figures are coming from.
You can google these things if you want to, but they did two what they would call projects where they studied their employees, one almost around 2000, and then twelve to thirteen years later. And they were very surprised, as was everyone else, because they had kind of the best of the best, the brightest people, the Ivy League schools and so on and so forth. And they were trying to differentiate why some teams were doing better than others and why some individuals were doing better than others.
And that's when they started to find out that their term was âsoft skillsâ were trumping hard skills. And they were trumping them in the sense that everyone came almost with the same hard skillsâthe STEM degrees that they all came withâbut then why were some doing really well and why were some not? And that's when they started to see qualities like coachability, curiosity, emotional intelligence, empathy, listening. Those things were what they saw in both individuals and teams to see where people really are being successful.
So as a parent and vocationally and all those kind of things, itâs not that we should depress one in order to elevate the other as much as youâre both working on our ability to become smarter but also your ability to be more emotional.
[25:18] JONATHAN: We see this in Scripture, apart from just fruit of the spirit. What are some of the areas? Certainly thereâs a high level of EQ that we would see, for instance, in the Psalms, which maybe explains why David was a good king and others probably were maybe lacking in those areas. Iâm trying to think it as it relates to us in the Christian life specifically and itâs interesting that you bring up Google. I would think coding or something in the technology field, I wouldnât think thereâs as much relationality in business versus like sales or pastoral ministry or something where you really need those muscles exercised.
But at the same time, itâs interesting that what theyâre finding is that even in the technology field, your success has a balanced element to those who have the soft skills, who have elements of emotional intelligence and empathy and all those sorts of things are actually helping in that plus area, as you described it. Help us detangle some of that and just thinking like from a scriptural perspective. How does something like emotional intelligence equip you for being better in all those different areas?
[27:21] CLAY: Sure. Let me stab that one real quick and then come back to some of those biblical things. You know itâs interesting. If you look at statistics back when Millennials were in the limelight, Iâd say about ten years ago, they would say at that point that 80 percent of them wanted to work in a place of collaboration; that is what they were desiring in a workplace. Those statistics have only gotten higher as Gen Zâs are infiltrating now the workplace.
So you see that push for now over half of the workforce, so regardless of what industry youâre going to find, youâre seeing that desire for camaraderie, teamwork, connections. So even post-COVID where a lot of things have gone hybrid, work models, itâs still youâre on a Teams meeting, youâre on a Zoom meeting, youâre still interacting.
And so I have several clients, current and former, in that tech space, really smart people, and they do have to code a lot by themselves, but itâs when they have to talk to the customer, when they have to talk to the teammate, when they have to interact with the boss that that's where the skills either put them into a place of advantage or [unintelligible]. So itâs going to be very difficult for almost any job to be a job where youâre not going to need some type of emotional intelligence skills in order to make yourself successful. Can you find it out there? Sure, thereâs just not that many. So most of us are going to find ourselves in positions where if we have emotional intelligence, we will succeed, stand out, excel.
[29:18] JONATHAN: And weâre relational beings. I mean, even by our very creation.
[29:23] CLAY: Yes, absolutely. So that's that little vignette there. So I would sayâyou mentioned the Psalms. I mean, the Psalms are great. I love the rhythm of Psalms. I had to take a class in the Psalms when I was in seminary, I chose to, and it was fantastic. But thereâs almost like this general rhythm of David in the Psalms because most of them from what we understand, or at least at the onset, privately written. And obviously, some of them were more for the tribe, the songs, but typically they were private.
So thereâs this process of raw, honest emotion about the good, the bad, and the ugly of life (I mean, not all of them are sad) and then some possible outcomes that either were happening or could happen. And then thereâs typically, almost in every psalm, this point to which David or the other psalmists get to where they then recognize who they are and who God is, what God might do compared to what they might do, and then thereâs a surrender of those things that theyâve felt and seen and wanted and they let go. And so that in and of itself, you could study that for a long time.
Psalm 139, right, itâs almost like a classic for emotional intelligence, especially the end, âSearch me and know me,â right? So thereâs self-awareness, I want to be known. âSee if there is any hurtful way in me.â That's I want to get better. But this is my favorite part is that at the very end he says, âAnd then lead me in the way everlasting.â The reason that's my favorite part is because of how itâs saying the self-help movement gets it wrong when it puts navel-gazing and self-awareness as the end. Just become aware and the longer you can stay aware and the more that you can stay aware, youâre good. It doesnât mean youâre good.
[31:47] JONATHAN: Thereâs no way forward.
[31:50] CLAY: That's correct. Right. So David there itâs like, âHey, I want to be aware of myself. I need to be aware of myself.â The whole psalm is basically saying, âYouâre absolutely aware of me. Iâm pretty much under the spotlight.â I want that awareness and I want you to continue to have that awareness, not so that I can be aware; so that I can then go the ways you want me to go.
When I was at Wesley, we had this phrase we would do first-year time, second-year time, third-year time [unintelligible] our second-year term. And this was the phrase that I took there. It said, âWeâre going to focus on you so that then we can get you out of the way.â So we wanted to have some quote/unquote navel-gazing time. We did strengths finder for them, we had emotional intelligence for them. Again, where thereâs a lot of awareness. But itâs not just so that they can know themselves; itâs so that they can know where they need help, where they need to get better, where they are doing well so that we can get all that out of the way so that we donât have to be in the limelight. We can actually then serve others [overlapping voices] and give ourselves over to the things that God wants us to do.
And that's why I [unintelligible]
[33:21] JONATHAN: That's right. No, youâre right on, and that's a helpful sort of thought process through that. I mean, even through that lens of emotional intelligence. We live in a day and age where everything is volatile, people are triggered by anything and everything. And then you add in a layer of social media or anonymity through the computer, which sort of exacerbates our problem. How do we develop greater emotional resilience and self-control? How do we as believers navigate that terrain.
[34:11] CLAY: Huge thought there for sure. Iâll just take one swing at it, because that'sâ
[34:20] JONATHAN: Weâll do a five-part episode.
[34:23] CLAY: Yeah, that's a big one. Iâll go real technical in terms of emotional intelligence [unintelligible]. In the assessment that Iâm trained in and I like to administer to people, itâs got subsets. So itâs got fifteen of them. Two of them, I think, speak to some of this. One of them is flexibility. And flexibility and that subset is when things change, like youâve decided something is going one way but now something out of your control has changed it, how do you respond?
On the other side of that coin, the next thing we administer is stress tolerance. Stress tolerance is you want things to change desperately and theyâre not. Theyâre stuck. [unintelligible] And so in those two, when I look at volatility of our current culture and social media, itâs you see a plan so easily in those two regards. Someone has an opinion, someone has the other one, you canât change their opinion, so what are you going to do about it? Nowadays, we just trash the other person.
[35:52] JONATHAN: Ad hominem, yeah.
[35:54] CLAY: That's our response. On the other side, when we had a plan and now everything has changed and we didnât get to choose that, how do we respond? We blame everybody. We have to find someone to blame because we think that that's going to make it better. Right now we look for someone to blame instead of moving into that place of resilience and grit and realizing that not everything is going to go our way. So part of that emotional intelligence, when you look at how you become flexible, become better at stress tolerance.
A huge part of it is just accepting the fact that things are not always going to be good; things are not always going to go your way; and that is everybodyâs life. You want to take it to a biblical place, then you go back to the words of Jesus where He said, âIn this world youâll have trouble.â Heâs already told you. And everybodyâs response to it. He gives you the clue, if youâre doing it from a Christian perspective, He says, âBut I have overcome the world,â meaning that your perspective is going to change how you respond to those situations. If the weight of the world is on that moment, you know, itâll crush you. But if you realize that that's not the weight of the world, regardless of the situation, even if itâs going to hurt, those kind of things are going to take a bite out of you, it gives you the ability to realize that you can recover, you can make it through it.
And that's a key part, I think, in all of that. Iâll give you an example, a real practical example. I use this with my kids, but I also use this with adults for sure. I use it with myself. Ask myself this all the time. I canât remember where I came up with this, but so this is the question when youâre faced with a situation that's hard, heavy, frustrating, whatever it is, and you have the option of choosing an emotional, unintelligent response, is this. This is the question I ask. Is this going to be in your book?
I can say that to my kids, and they know exactly what Iâm talking about. If they donât know what Iâm talking about, then I give them this context. At the end of your life, you get two hundred pages to write your autobiography. This situation right now, is this a chapter? Is this a page? Is this a paragraph? Is this a sentence? Or is it on the editing floor? And almost always this will be on the editing floor. And so if itâs on the editing floor, then why are we treating it like itâs a chapter? And that's the context. So that's the question I ask myself, and I give it to my kids as well and that's what I tell my people at my office.
Again, it gives you pause. That's the whole point of this is to pause. But the whole idea of emotional intelligence is this, and how they came up with this, I donât know. People smarter than me. I would say this: that you have six seconds to choose your emotional intelligence response, meaning that your brain likes to default to habits, and so youâll habitually just respond. You think about traffic. Any time I see traffic, I get angry, so shoulders go up, eyebrows go down, my tone changes, whatever, itâs just your habit. Youâre choosing it, you just didnât realize that your brain is in default into the choice. Youâre really not giving yourself that option.
But the six seconds comes into play in the sense of you can actually choose to go a different path. Weâre talking about neural paths. You can choose a different neural pathway. Your brain would prefer to go the habitual route because then it doesnât have to work that hard. So in all of these things, what weâre trying to do is to give ourselves pause enough to alert ourselves that weâre probably about to choose a default that is not the best choice, and can we train ourselves to a point where we say, ah, not to do this, probably should do this.
It's the train tracks, shifting from one track to another. That's really what weâre trying to do in any exercise that we do in emotional intelligence is to pause and then give that new skill an opportunity to get some [unintelligible] and get some legs [unintelligible]
[41:18] JONATHAN: And itâs funny, because in order to get to that position, you have to have self-awareness. You have to be aware that what's going on isâand Iâm just even putting myself in situations where Iâm like, oh, that is absolutely my mental state goes to a default position. Oh, this happened and I know that this is my reaction. And youâre right; sometimes itâs like I donât even think about it. Itâs just this is just what I do.
It makes me think of sort of the enneagram thing, well, that's just who I am. Iâm a fill-in-the-number, but thereâs no, okay, so is that your paradigm? Is that who you are and that defines you? Or are you at a position to where you can challenge yourself, and to your point, take a pause and consider, okay, do I have other options here? I absolutely do. Which is really, if you think about it from a gospel perspective, itâs like do I have to keep choosing law over injustice for people over whatever situation? Or at what point do I choose to show grace and mercy, which by definition are undeserved for those people?
And that's really where the gospel message comes in, because if God operated under our own default paradigm, if He was created in our image, then it would be law-justice, law-justice all day every day. But grace and mercy are so alien to us, and that's the beauty of Christâs work and what He has done.
Youâve shared a lot of really great and helpful stories, but could you give us some examples of applied EQ principles inâand Iâm going to give you three different things, and then Iâll remind you of them if you canât remember. So one for parenting, two, the workplace, and three, the church. So weâll start with parenting.
[43:32] CLAY: Iâll be as practical and as vulnerable as I can. What weâre trying to teachâweâve got six kids, a major focus for us right now is just empathy, how to put yourself in someone elseâs shoes. A funny but revealing story is several years ago my wife was crying about a certain matter. One of my sonsâ
[44:02] JONATHAN: Name redacted.
[44:05] CLAY: Weâll keep it redacted. One of my sons came in and saw her and immediately started crying. And then another one of my sons came in and looked at his brother and said, âWhy are you crying?â And he said, âIâm crying because sheâs crying.â And then that brother who was not crying was like, âThat's the weirdest thing Iâve ever seen.â
[44:28] JONATHAN: That doesnât make sense to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CLAY: In general, we all have starting points, and those starting points have been formed and fashioned by our personality, our family systems, I mean all of these things. So that's why I love taking these type of assessments, because they show you where youâre starting from. Then you get to know where you need to go. So again, take Son A in that story. Empathy is already off the charts. I mean, just his starting point is heâs probably at an A-. Thereâs one little uptick and heâs perfect.
The other son probably at a D or F in that area. He really needs to work on it. And that was me when I took my first assessment of emotional intelligence ten years ago, very low empathy. Iâve spent several months, almost half a year, keeping an empathy log so I can start to train my brain to think about someone elseâs emotions. And it got much better, but itâs something I really had to learn.
In parenting, weâre saying regardless of your starting point, this is something that matters. It matters biblical standpoint, itâs truly what Jesus did and still does. It, from an interpersonal standpoint, if you canât put yourself in someone elseâs shoes, that's going to be very difficult for you to have compassion on someone and serve someone to even care when theyâre not in alignment of what you want.
So we have just said this matters. So we are consistently asking our kids when they say something about one of their siblings, âHow do you think so-and-so feels about this? Where are they in this story?â So that's our skill right now, so itâs above any other skills that weâre trying to get. One, as a family of eight, weâre hoping to do that well. If we can, have empathy, so weâre working on that. When I think about our kids being released into the wild, and if they carry that skill with them, it will carry them a long way, regardless of what they do. And I donât need them to get recognized for it in the long way in the sense that they will do well if they do right by people.
[47:29] JONATHAN: Theyâll be a good friend.
[47:31] CLAY: Absolutely. So huge piece in that one, and that's what weâve worked with there. In terms of business, I would say the really big piece of business is if you can listen, understand, and then reinterpret what youâve heard to other people, you canât help but be successful, because people will flock to you because of your ability to do that. I call it the meeting after the meeting in business. And that's someone, we have a meeting and then something is lost in translation and somethingâs then misinterpreted and then that person is, âThat's not what is said. That's not what I meant at all.â And then now they have to go have a meeting about that meeting.
[48:29] JONATHAN: Iâve been in those.
[48:30] CLAY: Youâve been in those. Weâve all been in those. So now youâre having a meeting about a meeting and then youâre going to have to leave that meeting and have another meeting in order to let everybody else know what happened in that meeting after the meeting that should have happened in the meeting. And so that differentiator of active listening, being able to communicate empathetically, being able to communicate clearly. You know in emotional intelligence we would talk about emotional self-expression, to be able to clearly say what youâre feeling, right? You can see that every day almost in practical experiences in yourself where youâve got your typical passive-aggressive, bless you heart type whoâs lying through their teeth. They donât have any blessings for you, but that's what they say. So that type of differentiator in the business sector is massive, itâs just huge, huge.
Tell me the third category.
[49:40] JONATHAN: The church.
[49:42] CLAY: The church, yes. The church, the church, the church. Oh man, this one and a lot of different other places for this one. Iâll pick one, and maybe itâs probably not the most popular one, I was in ministry for, well, ran it for eighteen years and was in almost twenty years, for nineteen years. Had a lot of friends in ministry. And to see where they are now, I would say that ability to handle emotions, not just their own but other peopleâs, burden-bearing perhaps the more specific term, and then to be able to handle the stress of that, to have mechanisms to keep that at bay. The primary term youâre hearing these days is burnout.
Burnout to me is when someone and they have had a moral failure, theyâve stolen money from the church, theyâve ripped their kidsâ lives apart, that's not good. But typically what you see before burnoutâwhen we say burnout, like âHey, I just canât do this anymore,â now theyâre completely unhealthy and that's going into sexual improprieties, that's going into financial improprieties, that's going into the idea of power and where you're getting your validity and things from. So that's what you typically see before the engine hits failure and we get to see it.
And so from that emotional intelligence standpoint, youâre thinking about really self-control. In emotional intelligence itâs called âimpulse control.â Can you have a desire, and understand it, and then make the right decision? That's one of the fifteen subsets that we look at. And if you look at people in ministry, itâs so easy to get away with so many things for too long of a time, and it really comes back to [unintelligible] Scripture because [unintelligible] until itâs too late. So I think impulse control is real big, again in EQ, for the church to say, âHey, you can spend time alone with this person, you could charge this to the credit card, you could do a lot of things [unintelligible] and theyâre going to believe what you say.â [Overlapping voices]
[52:43] JONATHAN: So even in thinking about each of those ones youâve just given us for children (or parenting, rather), workplace, church, itâs interesting because all of those, Iâm just thinking on the side of this in terms of protecting yourselfânot protecting yourself in terms of I want to get away with this, but I want to prevent not having empathy. I want to be able to listen to someone and interpret and relay it back correctly to them. I want to be able to have impulse control. Those all involve, I mean, they are skills of the individual, but at the same time, it requires the assistance of others, I think. Itâs a very communalâwhich, of course, emotional intelligence is about relating with others and self. And so itâs interesting in thinking about the way youâve described or given those examples how much, if youâre setting up safeguards or even beyond safeguards youâre actually wanting to grow and develop in those skills, it requires community, it requires other around you who are committed to the same goals, so to speak. So in your work, do youâsorry, this is like bucketing rain our here. A hurricane is coming to Athens. Are youâdo you encourage people to work these things out, to develop these skills, within a communal setting, accountability levels? And my powerâs just gone off. Weâre still connected, so weâll just keep going.
[54:42] CLAY: Absolutely. I think theâI would encourage every person to have a communal component to every phase of emotional intelligence [unintelligible]. The assessment piece, you can take one by yourself on your computer and get a score and never share it with anyone what you scored and it would never be as effective as if you shared it.
[55:05] JONATHAN: Itâs the navel-gazing example you gave earlier, self-help.
[55:09] CLAY: Weâre trying to gauge our self-awareness and weâre our only judges, and what have we done? So that's why when I do these assessments, my favorite one to do is the 360, because then youâve got different people from all different parts of your life that are assessing you. So the assessment piece has to be in community, right? The understanding the good and the bad has to be verified in community.
One of the things that we do when I take people through this coaching, especially when they come in for the 360, is to look at what we call the gap analysis. And the cool thing about the gap analysis is youâll see it on both sides of the coin. So when people say they have blind spots, what they typically means is letâs say Iâm a person with a blind spot. I almost always say that person thinks that theyâre here and theyâre actually here. They think theyâre betterâwhich could be a blind spot.
On the slip side, a blind spot is that this person thinks that he or she is here and actually theyâre much higher, theyâre here. So they have a lower self-awareness or self-image of themselves in this area than actually what's coming out of them. So you get to see both sides of the gaps. Where are you doing better than youâre actually aware of and where you actually do worse? So that has to be in community.
And then as you work them out and work on the skills, youâre going to have to have people to work them out with and then people to let you know how youâre doing. Every phase has to be in community.
[56:56] JONATHAN: Iâm sure people are listening to this and thinking, âI know someone who needs help with this.â Is it a subject where itâs like, âHey, I sent you a little questionnaire you can fill out to see all your blind spotsâ? How do you broach the subject withâis it like, âHey, Iâm working on some self-improvement stuff. Would you want to do this with me?â How do you find that others engage their colleagues, friends, family members, whatever, to see this, to have some self-awareness and bring it to the forefront without crushing them or coming across judgmental, etc.?
[57:42] CLAY: Yeah, itâs if youâre trying to inspireâIâll use that termâsomeone else to do it, yeah, that's ⊠Thereâs not just one way, because you can have a relationship where you can sayâ
[57:56] JONATHAN: And it depends on the person.
[57:58] CLAY: Depends on the person. I will get called in to work with people who their bosses are saying, âYou have to do this.â They have no choice. And then thereâs other people who would say, âHey, I want to bring this up to my husband. How should I do that?â And they have to do it in a much more nuanced way. So I would definitely encourage people to get to that point where they can be honest. If you can be honest with that person, and this isnât to say, Youâre wrong, youâre broken, youâre damaged,â as much as to say, âThese are skills that both of us or all of us should learn, can we do this together?â Because itâs not, again, Iâm certified in emotional intelligence and I teach it and coach it, but I still have to live it or I wonât be emotionally intelligent. So no one arrives. You learn it, but you still have to do it. So everyone can join in. And that's what I would say the best approach to other people is to say, âHey, letâs do this together.â Because no one can say, âHey, I hope you get to this point.â
[59:13] JONATHAN: When you're like me, then youâve arrived. Well, Clay, this has been such a big help for me just even in understanding the neurological things, the neurological pathways and thinking about my own mental habits that have come in play, thinking about self-awareness, other awareness. I think these are just such important factors. We see them through Scripture. We know the heart of God. We see the sovereignty of God over all things. We can have hope in Him. And just having an awareness of this, I think, helps us to serve the body, to serve the lost in such helpful ways. And so Iâm grateful for your training and your expertise in this area, and Iâm just grateful that you were able to take the time to join us on Candid Conversations.
[01:00:13] CLAY: Glad to have done it. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
[01:00:15] JONATHAN: Of course. God bless.
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In this thought-provoking episode, the public discourse on gender and transgender issues takes center stage. What defines masculinity and femininity? Is this a contemporary debate or one that has historical roots?
Jonathan Youssef sits down with Claire and Rob Smith from Sydney, Australia, for an insightful conversation on these topics. Rob Smith, a theology, ethics, and music ministry lecturer at Sydney Missionary & Bible College, is also the Assistant Director of Ministry Training and Development for the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. He is pursuing doctoral studies focusing on the theology of sex and gender.
Claire Smith, a writer and womenâs Bible teacher with a nursing background holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Moore Theological College. She is the author of God's Good Design: What the Bible Really Says About Men and Women.
Claire and Rob are active members of St. Andrew's Anglican Cathedral in Sydney and have contributed to platforms like Desiring God and The Gospel Coalition.
To engage with Jonathan or join the Candid community, visit LTW.org/Candid
Follow us on social media:
Facebook: Candid PodcastInstagram: @candidpodTwitter: @thecandidpod -
In this inspiring episode of Candid, Jonathan Youssef hosts Tyler Van Halteren, a devoted advocate for enhancing the lives of children and youth through Christian faith and storytelling. Tyler, who holds a Masterâs in Divinity from the Master's Seminary, has passionately shared Christâs teachings and the Bibleâs wisdom throughout his life.
Tylerâs journey spans from his role as an Associate Pastor at Gorrie Bible Fellowship in Canada to teaching at Phnom Penh Bible School in Cambodia. A pivotal moment came when he realized the profound impact of 20-minute bedtime stories on his son, inspiring him to merge the charm of storytelling with Biblical teachings.
In 2020, Tyler founded Lithos Kids, embarking on a mission to create biblically faithful and beautifully illustrated childrenâs books. His first book, "Little Pilgrim's Big Journey," launched on Kickstarter, surpassed its funding goal by 500% and quickly became a beloved children's book. Following this success, "Little Pilgrim's Big Journey, Volume 2" and "Volume 3" were also released.
Now residing in southern Ontario, Canada, Tyler continues his mission as both a father and an author, dedicating his efforts to fostering Christian values in young minds.
Tune in to explore Tylerâs journey, the significance of spiritual mentorship, the creative process behind his books, and his vision for faith-based education. This episode is a must-listen for parents, educators, and anyone interested in spiritual growth and innovative approaches to Christian education.
Books by Tyler Van Halteren:
Little Pilgrim's Big Journey Volume 1
Little Pilgrim's Big Journey, Volume 2
Little Pilgrim's Big Journey, Volume 3
Kingdom of God Storybook Bible
To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/Candid
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpod
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpod
TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 252: How 20 Minutes Can Impact Your Child's Spirituality: Tyler Van Halteren (Reprise)
JONATHAN: Tyler, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.
[02:28] TYLER: Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. Itâs a joy to be here.
[02:31] JONATHAN: Well, tell us a little bit about your background, upbringing, and then weâll transition into how you got into writing and producing kidsâ literature.
[02:43] TYLER: By Godâs grace, I came from a Christian home. But one of the most significant moments, and I guess most relevant moments to this interview, was when I was beginning to explore the faith more seriously, not just walking in my parentsâ shoes but actually considering the weight of eternity, heaven, hell, my own faith, my own walk with God, and in that time I found an old 1975 version of Pilgrimâs Progress, paperback, 95 cents, that was given to my dad when he was about that age, about 15, and it just sat on the shelf. So I picked it up, read it, and thatâs the first memory that I have of understanding the Christian life and wanting to follow Christ. Thatâs the first book I remember reading in that season.
So that led, by Godâs grace, to a hunger for His Word, for sharing His Word, and then through various camps I had a great experience in high school. Our Christian high school was connected to a childrenâs camp. And so I was able to teach there and saw a measure of gifting, a desire to teach, and then went on to Masterâs Seminary and then to youth pastor Cambodia. In the midst of all that, had some kids along the way and then started brewing some of these book ideas.
[04:07] JONATHAN: Tell me ... You just sort of lobbed Cambodia into that history. Tell us a little bit about that.
[04:18] TYLER: Yeah, for about 10 years before that, my goal and desire and prayer was to go into missions. And so we set the course for that through seminary, and then even as I joined my church there was a sense of telling them weâre going to be here five years and then we want to be sent out to the mission field. So we went. The goal was to teach the Bible at a Bible school there to college students. Had some other cool opportunities, like with some friends had started childrenâs programs, so Iâd go to villages and there would be 30 kids that would just show up, 30 or 40 Buddhist kids would just come. And they listened to some English teaching, some Bible teaching, and just really neat.
But in the midst of all that, COVID happened and that shut a lot of missions down. But thankfully I was able to finish the Little Pilgrims book during that time. And then also during that time, I started having some significant health issues and that sort of ended upâa variety of numbness and extreme fatigue that kind of landed us back in Canada, but trusting Godâs providence in all that and encouraged now to see there are some of our books being translated into already in Spanish, but some being considered for the Cambodian language, Khmer language. So there is French, Vietnamese, so encouraged to see how Godâs continuing that missionary desire through these books.
[05:44] JONATHAN: Unbelievable. Okay, so youâve shared with us that it was Bunyanâs Pilgrimâs Progress that set you on a particular path. Iâm assuming thatâs the connection to wanting to retell it through a childâs perspective. Tell us a little bit about how those pieces came together.
[06:08] TYLER: Yeah, it was a neat few things that came together. So Iâve always had an entrepreneurial bent, always a desire for that. Buying and selling, doing different things. Little businesses on the side. And that gave a skill set that when my son was about three or four I started looking for, oh, is there a good childrenâs version of Pilgrimâs Progress? And at the time when I looked around, the only version was a 1985 one, Dangerous Journey. I bought that, opened it, and it was the first time Iâve opened a book and my son has sort of screamed and cried in terror at the illustrations. The illustrations were soâ
[06:53] JONATHAN: I have been there. Especially for a three- and four-year-old.
[07:00] TYLER: Yes, absolutely terrifying.
[07:01] JONATHAN: Hereâs the Christian faith, my child.
[07:05] TYLER: Yeah, I saw that, and I thought, Okay, thereâs got to be a way to do a better version, especially for younger kids.
[07:13] JONATHAN: I will say, I have seen one of theâI think itâs more for teenage readers, maybe, and it is very graphic. Apollyon the dragon is very scary and menacing. And youâre right, thereâs a lotâI mean, thatâs the way Bunyan wrote it, right? I mean, it is dramatic, very. But when youâre thinking about little ones, youâve got to tone some of that down so theyâre not actually terrified but wrestling with the core issues. And I feel like your book does that so well.
[07:46] TYLER: Yeah, that was a real delight and surprise. I was writing with my son, three or four years old, in mind. And we read it 20, 30 times together in the process of writing it, and that was all super fun as we got new illustrations and as we pieced things together to see his excitement and to see things, Gospel truths click for him in that journey.
But Iâm coming into this somewhat naĂŻve in a sense. I had no real understanding of the publishing industry and just had this goal. Write this as well as I can, with really great illustrations, for my four-year-old son. And then for whatever reason, the Lordâs taken that, and it seems to have hit that target with a lot of families who say similar things, that these truths are connecting in a special way.
[08:40] JONATHAN: Well, and letâs talk about that. So as a parent, it is hard to find really goodâand I know itâs out there and Iâve got a lot of them. But thereâs not a lot of really great Christian childrenâs books. Itâs either for an age up, as we just talked about, or itâs kind of delves into more of a moralistic, you know, do this, behave this way, obedienceâwhich are true things, but there are so many better, deeper truths that we need to expose our kids to. I think thereâs a longing of parentsâ
I mean, I hear it from moms all the time, âHey, if you can think of a kidsâ book and write it, like go for it.â Because thereâs a real need for that, especially at those young, really vulnerable ages, age category.
[09:44] TYLER: Yeah, and weâve seen a growing hunger in people, and through our social media and connecting with different people that there is this real longing for those kind of resources, and thatâs been an exciting part, too, seeing how much this has resonated with parents, this kind of idea. And thereâs other publishers that are doing some really great, like probably in the last five years really thereâs been almost a resurgence of good, solid books, Gospel-centered books. But before that it was pretty dismal, and that was about the time I started writing was when I was looking around and saying, âOkay, how do we get really good Gospel-centered books that hit the core of these issues for kids?â
And the fun part of that has been the allegory idea of Bunyanâs allegory and seeing how much thatâs resonated with people.
[10:30] JONATHAN: So letâs talk about just the impact I mean, itâs obviously a tradition within ... itâs been around forever, right? Either storytelling with your children before bed, or at a particular time, and just the impact that that has of, one, reading, just reading comprehension, storytelling, kidsâ abilities to have an imagination and picture things. Have you done any kind of research into that I mean, even in your own life and seeing the way that it relates with your own children?
[11:09] TYLER: Yeah, thatâs one of the cool things, I think, for a lot of families, the question of family discipleship, family devotions, those kind of things come up, and itâs challenging in our day and age. Generally, weâre pretty busy people and probably more busy than we need to be, so itâs hard to set aside a time. And sometimes itâs hard to get kids that arenât wiggling during that time, or moving around, or asking, âOkay, when is it over? When is it over?â
[11:36] JONATHAN: You need to draw them in, right?
[11:38] TYLER: Yeah. So for my personal life it was bedtime. They kids knew, okay, we can read. It became part of the routine. And they are also glad because that time theyâre winding down and they know theyâre not going to bed yet, so theyâre getting a little extension. And so that just became a very simple, practical tool for me. Hey, maybe I canât do X, Y and Z with my kids, but 15 minutes before bed, thatâs a pretty easy thing to do. And Iâm seeing how that impacted my son was a real treat and a joy.
Iâm thinking of our book, seeing Christian by the cross, his burden falling off, and him saying to me, âYeah, God ...â Or âDad, thatâs what God does. He removes our burden of sin.â I remember reading David Helmsâ Big Picture Bible, and him seeing Jesus on the cross and saying, âI want to follow Jesus. I want to be saved from my sin. I want to know Jesus.â
[12:42] JONATHAN: Thatâs an iconic scene, isnât it? Bunyanâs ... I mean, even people who havenât read the book are at least somewhat familiar with the scene of his burden falling off his back as he stands at the cross. Itâs such a picturesque scene. You have talked about how heâs recognizing some of these things. What are the other things that are coming through the eye of the child as parents and grandparents are probably listening to this and thinking about weâre trying to help formulate in our children and what theyâre getting from those 15 minutes before bed.
[13:23] TYLER: Yeah, I think a big one Iâve seen, and Iâve heard from a lot of families, is the reality of death and eternity. And I canât think of many kidsâ books that hit that on the nose.
[13:38] JONATHAN: Yeah, itâs not coming up with regularity, thatâs for sure.
[13:40] TYLER: Yeah, yeah. So thatâs not been dodged or snuck in. But reality is ... Yeah, people die. Kids are wrestling with some of these hard truths. They have some of these hard questions and they want answers to them. And so having this, again, the beauty of allegory are these spiritual truths told through images. The River of Death, the idea of someone crossing the River of Death, the sorrow of that and yet the joy of that for believers who enter the kingâs city, the celestial city.
Iâve heard some very, very sweet stories from people and gotten emails that have brought me to tears where someoneâs reading this with their child. Their child is going through cancer and facing death, and that River of Death bringing such a comfort both to the child, the parents, siblings. And for us, when we were in Cambodia, my son would bring that up often. Because weâd left family behind and now weâre going on this journey, in a sense, and thatâs all done in light of eternity. So these metaphors of the celestial city and living for the kingâs kingdom and things like that were all very helpful.
And then one other story from Cambodia, which was seeing the surprise in Cambodian parents, and especially dads, that I would read to my kids for 15 minutes before bed. To me, it seemed like an obvious things. To them, it was very foreign, in literally true sense. But they were surprised. âYou do that with your kids?â
And I said, âOh, you donât?â
[15:20] JONATHAN: Culture shock there.
[15:21] TYLER: Yeah, and they said, âNo, no. They go to bed when they go to bed, and weâre not too involved with that.â
I said, âOh, you should try it.â And some of them... one of the pastors could speak English, and I gave him some copies of the book. And he read it and I remember since weâve left he messaged me saying, âWe still do that every night. We still read to our daughter before bed. And weâve gone through these books these many times and thank you for this.â
I just thought that was a neat way the Lord used that.
[15:53] JONATHAN: So you started with a Kickstarter fundraiser and you blew through your numbers on that. Tell us a little bit about that.
[16:02] TYLER: Yeah, so again this was all kind of a leap of faith and partly the way Godâs wired me, willing to take a risk in that sense. So let people know this book was coming out and just kind of asked friends and family to share as widely as they could on social media and kind of leading towards this Kickstarter. So we launched, and then I was just absolutely shocked as it was within the first hour we far surpassed our initial goal. And just watching the numbers just sort of fly in was a shock and delight.
[16:43] JONATHAN: It looks like you got about 500 percent of your funding. So if you were wondering if that was a need for people, that certainly made its case.
[16:56] TYLER: Yes, it was awesome to see. Okay, we put all this work in and got it ready, and then, oh yes, this does resonate with other people. Other people are hungry for this kind of thing. And weâve seen that tenfold since then.
[17:08] JONATHAN: Youâve talked about how Bunyanâs use of allegory helps bring forth great truths through imagery and picture. Parents are always trying to communicate the Gospel in a way for children at different ages and stages to understand. But sometimes we parents can sometimes if they donât have theological degrees like you and I, they can be overwhelmedâthough having a theological degree doesnât necessarily help you in this category. It's not like how to teach children is one of the classes we get.
But how do you take complex truths and break them down for children? This is one of the primary ways of doing that. But just for you as a dad of young ones, what are some of the other methodologies that you use for breaking that down for kids, big concepts that come, whether itâs through Scripture or spiritual conversation or whatever it is. What other methodology do you use in an effective way?
[18:21] TYLER: Yeah, yeah. A lot of at least homeschoolers talk about living books, like this idea of living books being an engaging way to teach ideas. And thatâs for anythingâscience, et ceteraâto children. And allegories present this idea of a living book, which means truth is coming through in a very natural sort of conversational way. And again, I feel like Bunyan is just the master of that. So what a privilege to follow in his footsteps and toâ
[18:50] JONATHAN: And a good thing he was in prison, right?
[18:53] TYLER: He had a very vivid imagination, and the results of just certain scenes ... And he had such a deep theology and understanding of Godâs Word. So I love in Part 2, which is less known (his original Part 2) thereâs a scene where theyâre walking by the cross with Great-heart, and it just goes into four or five pages on pretty technical like substitutionary atonement. But he does it in a way thatâs so helpful and clear, and so I loved when I was going through Part 2 to take a piece of that and just simplify it. They just go at the cross and itâs a very clear explanation of what it means that the Kingâs Son died in our place. He took our sin. He gave us his righteousness.
And then that, combined with different images of Christianâs filthy clothes are removed, his burden is removed. So things like that I found super helpful. And then another big piece is that kids, especially in this generation, are visual, becoming increasingly more visual learners, so thatâs our big slogan, Biblically Faithful, Beautifully Crafted. And the idea is to have these really vivid, beautiful illustrations that draw kids in.
[20:19] JONATHAN: But they arenât too graphic.
[20:20] TYLER: Yes, yes. That are age appropriate. And then also to have text thatâs sort of clear, deep but simple and not overwhelming, and to pair that up well. We visited a friendâs house, and they had their range of kids from two to seven, and they had all the books out. They said, âWe swear weâre not just...â
[20:44] JONATHAN: Not for you.
[20:45] TYLER: â... because youâre here.â
[20:48] JONATHAN: Itâs normally like this. Well, youâd find that at our house, too. Weâve got both book 1 and 2 wide open on some page.
[20:55] TYLER: Thatâs awesome. And I will see them, just the kids were flipping through the pictures. Like they couldnât read yet, butâ
[21:03] JONATHAN: But they can remember the story associated with the picture, yeah.
[21:08] TYLER: And they just loved flipping through it and looking. And they stare at all the details. And so I think thatâs another aspect that I found very helpful is just these vivid images in books.
[21:18] JONATHAN: Apart from story time with your kids, are there rhythms or patterns or activities that you try and work in to family time that youâve found successful at your home?
[21:34] TYLER: Yeah, I wish I could have more to say. The story book has sort of been my big main one. The other wasâ
[21:42] JONATHAN: And your big emphasis for sure.
[21:44] TYLER: But the other has been sort of the Deuteronomy type of while you are going, while you are walking by the way to instruct your kids in these things. So where heâs just saying, âWrite it on your doorstops. Write it on ...â Like everywhere youâre going, just have these moments. So where kids are inquisitive, kids ask. Itâs a crazy amount of questions per day, I think when you actually ... when youâve done studies of that, Iâm sure.
But if youâre feeding them these biblical things, then theyâre going to have questions about biblical things that come up naturally. Which was another little piece. I mean, like maybe my dad [unintelligible] or something. Weâd always have at nighttime, it would be like, âOh, you can watch a show, but itâs going to be a Bible show.â
I know different families have different rhythms and some donât like shows and some like shows. But first it was an easy switch to just say, âYou want to watch Paw Patrol. Instead, letâs watch something else.â And a lot of those ended up being moralistic, as we kind of said. But at least itâs touching on biblical things.
[22:51] JONATHAN: Well, and you're able to elaborate from that and helpfully redirect them towards a cross-centric faith instead of a duty sort of centrism.
[23:07] TYLER: Yeah, definitely. And so those have led to a neat where theyâre just thinking about things and things are resonating. And so my grandma had died last year, and my son said, âCan we call her?â Like after she died. âCan we video call her because I want to see God? Because sheâs with God.â And so I was like, oh, thatâs such an interesting ...
[23:33] JONATHAN: Heâs got a deep truth with some confusion.
[23:38] TYLER: âSheâs in the presence of God, why wouldnât she have her cell phone? We used to call her. Now canât we call her now?â So then you just have these neat opportunities when youâre just there. Thereâs the input, intentional biblical input, and then theyâre going to be inquisitive, asking questions through the day as we experience ... âWhy does this family do that? Why does my friend have a mom but no dad around?â Or âWhy does this cousin not believe in Jesus?â and things like that.
[24:12] JONATHAN: Yeah. Having kids keeps you on your toes. And if youâre a believing family, then thereâs a lot of questions that I think even the greatest of us could stumble over and so you really need to be filling your own mind with helpful resources. You need to be in the Word and seeking to grow in understanding and knowledge and faith and bearing that fruit of the Spirit. Thereâs, you know, as we kind of laughed about, I mean, kids ask a ridiculous amount of questions. And thereâs times where I think sometimes Iâm like, âIâm done. Done answering your questions. I donât want to do this anymore.â
And thatâs typical selfish mentality of this is about me and not you. But you know, you kind of flip the script a little bit and start thinking, Okay, this could be a really great opportunity for them. And in all their questions thereâs usually something underlying all of that. Fear, doubt, whatever it is. Or sometimes it is just curiosity. So itâs important, I think, for parents to be as available as humanly possible, and really thinking through those things.
And I think sometimes people are afraid. What if I donât know the answer? Then Iâm going to fail my child, or whatever it is. And itâs like, you know, kids donât think in that category necessarily. I think itâs actually quite biblical to say, âYou know what? Youâre asking really good questions. Why donât we look at this together? Why donât we kind of use this as an opportunity to show that mom and dad donât know everything, and theyâre seeking to grow just like you are?â
So tell us a little bit about the Kingdom of God story books. This is another project that youâve done. I donât know if it was before or after Little Pilgrim, Big Journey, but tell us a little bit about that.
[26:12] TYLER: That was after the Pilgrim book, so that was six or seven months ago those landed. And that was a big project, and an excitingâ
[26:22] JONATHAN: Yeah, taking Old and New Testament, thatâs a big undertaking.
[26:28] TYLER: That was the most challenging book Iâve written, obviously, because you want to do honor to Godâs Word and to be faithful. And initially it was going to be birdâs eye overview. So I thought 70 pages and weâll touch on seven different kind of key moments that highlight the kingdom through the Bible. And then as I got into it, I said, Oh, itâs still missing ... like thereâs something ...
[26:53] JONATHAN: Itâs always something.
[26:54] TYLER: ... in between these. And so that grew to 140, and then 280, and then all of a sudden itâsâ
[27:01] JONATHAN: Itâs summer reading.
[27:03] TYLER: Yeah, suddenly itâs a 600-page fully illustrated 45-chapter thing. And the two big goals were one was to incorporate biblical theology, which was to have these themes that are tied through, woven through from Genesis to Revelation, and so the kingdom is one of those big themes. And thereâs many others. So that was an exciting challenge. And then seeing prophecies of the King to come in the Old Testament. Thereâs so many of those. So to highlight those in a very vivid and helpful way was an exciting piece of that. And then just to give a clear understanding of Godâs kingdom.
As Jesus said, âThe Kingdom of God is now in your midst.â He said, âI have come for this purpose: to proclaim the Kingdom of God.â So if thatâs His understanding, Heâs saying, âFor me to come and fulfill what God has promised is to display myself as the King of Godâs kingdom,â which He saw as clearly foreshadowed and set up in the Old Testament. So doing that in a kind of full way that knits. The goal was to sort of be seamless between each chapter and between each kind of scene or book.
And the summary of it was Godâs presence, Godâs people, in Godâs place, through Godâs promise. And each chapter kind of has a summary in that way to connect those things.
[28:28] JONATHAN: Ah, thatâs great. Books on the horizon. I think you have a third Pilgrimâs Progress book coming out. Little Pilgrim, Big Journey, I should call it. I keep calling it Pilgrimâs Progress.
[28:38] TYLER: Thatâs okay. Yeah, Part 3, which Iâm excited about, itâs about the two brothers, Christianâs brothers. They saw their sister cross the River of Death and the king said it was not time for them to come yet. And I thought that was kind of a neat way to extend the allegory. Because some kids have viewed it, okay, weâre going across this journey and then we get to death and then itâs done. And thereâs this bigger picture of mission and evangelism and service. So kind of a follow-up to that. This idea is the king, instead of calling them to cross the River of Death, calls them to go back to their hometown, back to the cities, to proclaim the Gospel and to proclaim that the kingdom is coming. And so these brothers go and they experience the ideas of the Great Commission, missions, evangelism.
[29:29] JONATHAN: Yeah, theyâve taken the mantle from Evangelist.
[29:34] TYLER: Yeah. Yeah, so itâs kind of an exciting. As even Evangelist and Great-heart pass, they say, over the River of Death, they say, âYou take my sword. You go on.â And so I think thatâs a neat challenge and call for kids that have professed faith in Christ now to go back to serve, to spread the Gospel to their friends. And so Iâm excited about that book.
And then thereâs also. Our tribute to Bunyan was a legacy edition of the Pilgrimâs Progress, so just a full, unabridged version more geared towards adults or older kids, teens. And has kind of 150 of the vintage illustrations and itâs just a real treat to read.
[30:17] JONATHAN: Well, my son will be excited for the third. Because he did ask why are Christianaâs brothers stuck on the other side of the river. And so I can give him good news that the third one is coming. This is great. What a helpful conversation. Weâre going to put links for your website and all your books in our show notes. So those of you who are listening, I do recommend these. These are just fantastic. The illustrations are beautiful, they are age appropriate. The story brings through great truths and youâll have great questions.
You do have questions that you ask. My son loves asking questions, and he loves answering questions as well. And so the fact that each chapter has questions that are askedâand theyâre not just recalling information, but there is some application in there as well, which really kind of speaks ... You know, because kids want to have understanding and then kind of relay that back to you. So I think thatâs been a great tool that you guys have put together on that.
[31:24] TYLER: Yeah, thatâs been exciting. Initially, again, God has been gracious in this whole process. Because the first book, I was getting ready to print it, and then I just kind of asked on social media, âWould anyone find questions helpful?â And there was just a ton of response, âYes, yes, please, please.â So I put them in.
[31:40] JONATHAN: 500 percent again.
[31:41] TYLER: Yeah, yeah. And a lot of parents have told us, yeah, these questions at the end of every chapter is such a help in our discipleship.
[31:48] JONATHAN: Itâs so good. So helpful. Tyler Van Halteren, I am so grateful to have met you now that Iâve read through your books. And I hope that they continue to be a blessing for generations, just as John Bunyan has been for many centuries. And again, thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with us on Candid Conversations.
[32:09] TYLER: Yeah, thank you.
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