Episode 246: The Deconstruction of Christianity: Alisa Childers & Tim Barnett

23 abr · Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef

00:58:26

Sit down with Jonathan Youssef for a compelling conversation with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, authors of The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is. Why It's Destructive. How to Respond. This discussion examines the pervasive and unsettling movement of faith deconstruction sweeping churches today. Whether it's affecting your loved ones, straining relationships, or stirring doubts within you, this episode provides crucial understanding and guidance.

Together, we will try to understand the core aspects of the Christian deconstruction movement, its origins, the meaning of deconstruction hashtags like #exvangelical, and why it attracts so many people, particularly those disenchanted with traditional church teachings.

Alisa and Tim offer strategies for thoughtfully and empathetically engaging with those questioning or abandoning their faith in Christ, emphasizing responses grounded in a biblical worldview.

Whether you are seeking to support a loved one in turmoil, understand the dramatic spiritual changes around you, or find answers to your spiritual doubts, Alisa and Tim provide valuable insights and answers that promise to enlighten, challenge, and encourage.

Listen and gain tools and confidence to address deconstruction with clarity and love, ensuring your faith and relationships can withstand the challenges of these transformative times.

ALISA CHILDERS is a popular speaker and the author of Another Gospel? and Live Your Truth and Other Lies. She has been published at the Gospel Coalition, Crosswalk, the Stream, For Every Mom, Decision magazine, and the Christian Post.

TIM BARNETT is a speaker and apologist for Stand to Reason (STR). His online presence on Red Pen Logic with Mr. B helps people assess flawed thinking using good thinking, reaching millions monthly through multiple social media platforms.

After you listen to this episode, you may have questions. We would love to hear from you! 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 246: The Deconstruction of Christianity with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett.

Jonathan: Today, we have quite a special situation. We have two of my favorite guests that we’ve had in the past, Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. And they have teamed up and have written a book together, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive and How To Respond. Thank you guys so much for taking the time. We’re all across the nation and different nations here. Thank y’all for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.

Alisa: It’s great to be back with you.

Tim: Yeah, it’s good to see you.

Jonathan: Well, I think before we jump in we’ve Alisa and I and Tim and I, we’ve separately had conversations around this area, but I love the way you break down your book into these three parts: Exvangelical, Deconstruction, and Hope. But just again for those who are new to the terminology, let’s define deconstruction and separate it and define exvangelical, and then we’ll talk about the reasons for the writing of the book.

Alisa: Which one you want to take, Tim, exvangelical or deconstruction?

Jonathan: You each get one.

Tim: All right. I’ll start with deconstruction. You know this is a tough definition to nail down. In fact, this took quite some research and quite some time. In fact, I actually changed my mind on how I was using the term. At least initially when I started teaching in deconstruction a few years ago, I thought there was a way that we could use the word deconstruction in a healthy way and there was a way we could use it in an unhealthy way. And we were seeing this kind of thing happening, especially on social media. You’d have people like Lecrae or John Mark Holmer or other notable evangelicals using deconstruction as a healthy way, here’s a good way to do deconstruction.

Tim: That’s right. And on the other hand, there’s a whole lot of this other stuff that's very unhealthy. That's how we originally thought until we did serious research into what's going on in this deconstruction space, especially on social media where we’re seeing a movement or an explosion. And what we saw there was that there isn’t anything healthy. In fact, there are defining characteristics of the deconstruction explosion that are unbiblical and just completely wrongheaded.

So at the end of the day, where we landed on this—and again, we say this is the hardest sentence we wrote in the book, but here’s where we landed on our definition of deconstruction: It’s a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring Scripture as a standard. And all those words are important in that sentence. So it’s a process, but it’s a very specific kind of process. It’s a postmodern process. Whereas where you would think (this is what many claim) is that they are on a search for truth, what we’re finding is that it’s not really about truth—in fact, by postmodern we mean that there isn’t a goal of truth; there’s actually a denial of objective truth, that objective truth cannot be known.

And so there’s that on the one hand. On the other hand, you have this rejection of Scripture as an authority. And so when we put those things together, we think these are the defining characteristics of what deconstruction is all about. And we can kind of go into more detail and give some examples of where we’ve seen that, but that's a starting point.

Alisa: Right and then the exvangelical hashtag is often used synonymously with and at least in conjunction with that deconstruction hashtag. And it’s a little bit of a tricky hashtag because it doesn’t simply mean, at face value, no longer evangelical. But it’s not like you have people who were raised Presbyterian and they become some kind of more liturgical Anglican or something and they use the ex. They are not using the exvangelical hashtag for that. What we’re seeing with the exvangelical hashtag is that, first of all, it’s very difficult to define what evangelical is. And that's kind of a word like deconstruction that's defined in a hundred different ways.

So there’s the Bevington’s Quadrilateral that characterizes the evangelical movement under four pillars of personal conversion, emphasis on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, biblical authority, and evangelism. And yet, if you ask people in the deconstruction hashtag what is evangelical, those beliefs are in the background for sure, but what they primarily see is God, guns and Trump. It’s what is perceived in their minds to be this unholy alliance between evangelicals and the political right. And so it’s all kind of mashed together, along with things like spiritual abuse and purity culture and conservative politics. It’s all kind of this ball that all gets kind of mixed together and then it all gets thrown out as exvangelical.

And so in some cases they’re conflating evangelical with the historic Christian gospel, and in other cases, they might actually be throwing out some cultural things that are Americanized that aren’t necessarily a part of the gospel. And it can be kind of like a mix of both. But it’s important like when Tim talked about the shift of authority, its’ like the only thing that matters for the exvangelical and deconstruction is that they are leaving behind what they perceive to be toxic beliefs. And so as best as I can analyze are it’s any belief outside of yourself that you would be asked to submit to, surrender to, kneel to that is not necessarily something that resonates with you inside.

Jonathan: Interesting. So you’re the ultimate authority, which goes to the deconstruction definition of Scripture being the authority.

Alisa: I do think it boils down to that, yes.

Jonathan: Do you find this is a uniquely American phenomenon? I don’t even know if phenomenon is the right word to use there.

Tim: That's a really good question. I think that there’s a few reasons why we’re seeing this in particular in North America. It’s happening in Canada, too, not just the U.S. I think that we’re seeing a culture that's dominated by a philosophy of relativism on the one hand and then on the other you have this kind of explosion of social media within the last decade or so. And I think bringing those two things together in particular—

And then maybe a third thing, and that is the American church and how we have, I think, neglected the life of the Christian mind. We used to say the church teaches what we believe really well but not why we believe it. So us apologists, we’re trying to train up the church in why we believe these things. But to be honest, when you look at the research now that's coming out in the last couple of years, people who identify as evangelical, I think it was in our book we say 42 or 43 percent of U.S., so Americans, who identify as evangelical do not believe that Jesus is god. They think He’s just a good moral teacher. Hold on a second! So these people identify as evangelical but they’re not Christian. I mean, this is crazy!

So you have, on the one hand, Christians, people who are professing to be Christians because, hey, I was born in America or I was born in Canada. That's the default, right. It’s like in your genetics or something. Yeah, so you have that on the one hand, so there’s no real understanding or foundation for what real, orthodox Christianity is. Then you have this dominant culture, I mean, it’s coming from every direction, this idea of relativism. It’s literally the water that many of your young people especially are swimming in, and they don’t even know they’re wet.

And then of course you have social media, this platform now, where I have access to, I mean, the world. I have access to memes and TikToks and these, for many, they think these are compelling arguments. I can’t tell you how many times I’m sitting here at my desk and I get a message coming in. It’s a meme or a TikTok video that someone sends me and says, “Hey, can you respond to this? I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to respond.”

And I watch the video or I read the meme and I think, Really? This is not a good argument. It’s not even close. Usually, it’s not even an argument. And so when you bring all those things together, I think that makes America susceptible to the deconstruction movement for sure.

Alisa: there’s also the Trump element in the American version of deconstruction. It’s just such a huge part of that that is so uniquely American. But as Tim said, I think deconstruction is happening everywhere. I know progressive Christianity is happening. Even in the Middle East I’ve gotten emails of people wanting my book to be translated into Farsi because it’s even coming into the Middle East. So where there is progressive Christianity, there is dn. But I suppose it’s just taking on maybe a different type of flavor here in America.

Jonathan: Well, and even the Trump effect has ripple effects around the world to where people in foreign nations see Trump and think, Oh, well, he’s their definition of Christian.

Let’s talk about the prevalence. Because I think there are some who think this is just happening out in large cities or this is not affecting everyday people. There can be a disconnect to just how much influence this is having. And it can be people who are watching and consuming these things that aren’t even talking about it with their family because they know how the family will react when there’s genuine questions and doubt. So tell us a little bit about what you’re seeing with the prevalence of both of these concepts entering into homes.

Alisa: Well, I think we’re in a different world now, so this is an interesting anecdotal piece to this. When I go out and speak I’ll often ask an audience, “How many of you have heard the word deconstruction in the context of faith?” And the older the audience, the fewer the people have even heard of it. And yet, when I go speak to students it’s 90 percent. But it blows my mind. Even at women’s conferences where women … the ages are 20 to maybe 60, 70, you might have 20 percent raise their hand that they’ve even heard of the concept.

And so what I mean by we’re in a different world is decades ago you had to get a book deal. There was major exposure with ideas. And so I think that there are some of us who are still living in that world and don’t realize the prevalence of some of these ideas on social media. For example, we have many posts documented in our book where it’s somebody that nobody’s ever heard of an probably never will know their name, but their video has millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and if you think about the reach of that versus somebody that you might have seen on TV decades ago or maybe in a Christian bookstore even or in the catalog that they would send out, that's a lot of people. But social media can reach so many people with a message where it’s not even necessarily surrounding a particular personality.

And so I think the prevalence of it is on social media, so someone’s exposure to it is probably going to be directly related to what types of social media they have and how often they engaging with it.

Tim: And the other element to this, the older folks who have exposure to it, is because they have a loved one, usually a younger loved one, who is going through it and now we’re just, as we label it, this is what it is, deconstruction, they say—it clicks. Oh, that's what my nephew is going through, or my grandchild or my son or my daughter or whatever. So it does kind of filter up to that older generation. They’re seeing the aftermath usually. It’s like why is my grandson no longer following the Lord? Well, it turns out they went through a process called deconstruction.

Jonathan: Well, and I imagine some of the reactions can be unhelpful, and that's why, again, I think it’s important that books like yours are out there and podcasts and stuff that you guys are producing is out there, so that there’s a heightened awareness but also a helpful response. Because we do have a response and a calling, but we need to make sure we’re doing it in a right and biblical way.

I wonder if we could come to the origins of this. I know Carl Lawson writes in the foreword in your book about technically the beginning is, when Demas, who fell in love with the world, abandoned Paul and the ministry and the faith. But I mean in this particular area, is it with social media? Was there a particular person or is it just postmodernism in general? Where do you find your origins to these movements?

Tim: Well, it’s true that we could trace this thing past Demas. We can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, always. But just more recently in the 1960s we see postmodern philosophers like Derrida in particular, who is the father of deconstruction. Now of course, his application of deconstruction was to textbook religion. He argued that objective meaning, objective truth, could not be known, and that there was no actual truth, so the reader could import just as much meaning as an author of a text. And what we traced in our research is we saw there is a connection here.

In fact, we discovered a book by John Caputo, who is a scholar and actually follows Derrida and applies Derrida’s philosophy not just to textbook religion in general, but in fact, to Christianity. And he wants to do this postmodern move even on the words of Jesus. And so he gives application in his book. What would Jesus think about, say, homosexuality today? Well, He would look around the world and see loving, monogamous relationships and He would be affirming. Even though Derrida says, yet, in the first century, no, Paul and Jesus, they had a certain view on this, but we’re going to bring new meaning to the text. In fact, the way Derrida describes this is Derrida says the text actually never arrives at a meaning. In fact, he has this analogy of a postman delivering a letter, and it’s like the letter never arrives at its destination, and in that sense, Christianity has not arrived. There is no set fundamental beliefs that you need to hold to—in fact, they are always changing, never arriving.

So this is kind of the history, and of course there’s lots of people who don’t know who Derrida is, they don’t know who John Caputo is, and yet, they are taking a page out of his playbook. They are thinking in terms of that kind of postmodern philosophy as they look out at religion. It’s not what is actually true corresponds to reality; instead, it’s there is something else going on. Oftentimes, it’s personal preferences are the authority, or maybe they’re looking at the culture and saying, “Yeah, look, the culture is more accepting of sexuality and so we ought to be too.”

Jonathan: Yeah, just like in the days of Noah. Help us understand who are some of the primary voices behind this today? I know we talked about how when you’re on social media it can be a lot of nameless, faceless people who just have an opinion and they want to create an argument or a non-argument that has an effect on people with their emotions. Are there any that are writing or have some influence as, you know, even by way of warning people, hey, be careful of so-and-so because it tends towards this trajectory?

[24:42] Alisa: Well, I would say there’s, in my mind, and Tim might have some others, but in my mind there’s one figure in particular that is, in my view, the most influential, although he’s not primarily promoting quote/unquote “deconstruction,” is Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr, his ideas, his universal Christ worldview, is—Interestingly, when I was researching the coaching and therapy sites, I found all the ones I could find online of people offering services to coach you through deconstruction or even offer you therapy through your deconstruction—and by the way, these therapy and coaching sites are not helping you to remain a Christian; they are not interested in where you land, they just want to help you along your subjective journey.

But even the ones that aren’t claiming to be Christians, there’s always this recommendation—I looked at all the book recommendations, and there is a Richard Rohr book there every single time, even among those that don’t claim to be Christians. And so what Rohr has done, I think, is, especially among people who want to retain the title Christian but might be more spiritual but not religious, or some sort of a New Age-y kind of Jesus is more of a mascot kind of thing, Rohr has really given them a worldview to put in place of what they’ve turned down. And he does talk about deconstruction in his book, Universal Christ, and he says it’s like the process of order, disorder, and then reorder.

Well, that sounds good at face value. You’re taught a certain thing, and then something messes it up and as an adult you have to do some digging and some work and then you reorder. But that's not exactly what he’s talking about. His order stage is what he calls “private salvation,” your private salvation project. In other words, Rohr doesn’t believe in personal salvation, he believes in universal salvation, he’s a universalist. So he’s saying that's like the kindergarten version of faith, this kind of Christianity where you have personal faith and you have this God of wrath and judgment. All of that just needs to be disordered so that ultimately you can reorder according to his worldview.

Now I bring up Rohr because he’s so influential. I mean, he makes his way into so many of the deconstruction conversations. But beyond Rohr, it’s tough because there can be platforms that swell up and get really big, and then I've seen them shut down after they have maybe 20,000, 30,000 followers, even up to hundreds of thousands of followers. I’ve seen several of these platforms just kind of get burned out and they shut down. So it’s hard to say, but I would say Derek Webb, Caedmon’s Call, is an important voice in there. You’ve got—Well, Jon Steingard was for a while when he ended up shutting down his YouTube, but he was the lead singer of Hawk Nelson. He was commenting for quite a while. Jo Luehmann is pretty influential. Who else, Tim?

Tim: Well, there’s—I put them in different categories.

Alisa: The NakedPastor.

Tim: The NakedPastor for sure. So there’s guys who, and gals who have deconstructed and posted that they’ve deconstructed online. So that would be someone like a Rhett McLaughlin, who 3 million people watched his video four years ago. He’s been keeping people updated every year; they do kind of an anniversary thing. That sparked so many people on their own deconstruction. Now what's interesting about Rhett is he didn’t necessarily tell you how to

Tim: Yeah. And that was enough for some people to say, “Maybe I should do this too.” Now there’s other platforms out there, and all they do is criticize Christianity, or they mock Christianity. Those are big on TikTok. I mean, there are massive platforms that have half a million followers and millions of views, okay, and I could go down and list some of those for you. But the point is they’re not necessarily talking about deconstruction and the process, but they’re just saying, “Hey, here’s what you guys believe, but here’s my mocking, here’s my criticism.”

Then there’s this other stream, and this is the NakedPastor or Jo Luehmann and others who aren’t just mocking Christianity or criticizing Christianity but they’re trying to advocate for a certain kind of process, okay, and that's where you’re going to get a little more detail on how this deconstruction thing works out. And so they’ve been, in fact, Jo Luehmann and the NakedPastor, David Hayward, and—

Jonathan: Joshua Harris. Didn’t he do a course through that?

Tim: That's right. Joshua Harris, when he—again, on Instagram. That blew up. There were like 7,000 comments in response to him just posting, “I’m no longer a Christian.” And you could see the responses, and I’m telling you, there were many who said, “This post is what set me on my deconstruction journey.” So there’s at least three different categories of influencers out there, and they’re all playing into the same thing, deconstruction, but they all are coming at it from a different angle.

Jonathan: Alisa, for those who are familiar with your story, how is this movement different from the path that you were on?

Alisa: This is a great question because I’ve actually changed my mind on how I talk about this. So over ten years ago I had a faith crisis that was really agonizing. It was years long. I landed fairly quickly in going through some apologetics arguments, knowing that God existed, but just the doubts that would nag at me were just years of this agonizing research, reading thousands of pages of scholarship, just trying to figure out if what I believed was actually true. And it was propelled by a progressive pastor. I didn’t know he was progressive at the time, but I was in a church where there was this class going on and it set my friends, a bunch of my friends, into deconstruction.

And so when I wrote my first book about my journey, I actually called the process that I went through deconstruction because it was horrible, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It was agonizing and I had to kind of de-con-struct. If you just take the word at face value, and then build back from the beginning.

But interestingly, when I would go online and I would talk about my deconstruction, deconstructionists would come on and say, “No, you didn’t deconstruct.” At first, that was so confusing to me. I was like, “Well, were you there?” I mean, it was like this horrible, agonizing process.

Jonathan: I’m the ultimate authority here.

Alisa: Yeah, right, I know. And they said, “Well, you didn’t deconstruct because you still hold to toxic theology. You still have toxic theological beliefs.” And that's when I realized, oh, okay, so this isn’t just—even though I knew it wasn’t a good thing, I knew it was a horrible thing because, again, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but it wasn’t about truth. It’s actually about leaving behind these beliefs that they think are toxic. And let’s say you completely do hard work of years of studying and you decide that you are a sinner and that Jesus did die on the cross for your sins, that the Bible is God’s Word and that what Jesus claimed about Himself is true and that He proved it by resurrecting from the dead, if you hold to those beliefs, along with the biblical sexual ethic, you have toxic theology and you’ve got to go back to the drawing board and start over.

So that's when I realized, okay, there’s more to this. And so I actually correct myself—

Jonathan: There’s a goal.

Alisa: Yeah. I correct myself in the new book and say I don’t actually use the language of deconstruction to describe what I went through because I was on a truth quest. I wanted to know what was true, whether I liked it or not, whether it resonated with me or not. In fact, what was interesting in the class I was in where all my friends ended up deconstructing, and I mean all that I know of, there might be two that I lost touch with that maybe didn’t, but most of the people that I know of did. And everything in that class was all about what resonates with me. I mean, we would … they would talk about Bible verses and say, “Well, that just doesn’t resonate with me,” and they would toss it aside. And I was like, “You can’t just do that.”

And so I didn’t deconstruct, and so I corrected my language on that and really changed my mind about what I think it is. And I think what I’m hoping to set the example for others is people who are wanting to use the word because it was trendy—because I really had a thing about that. Why am I using the word? Why am I hanging onto the word? And I had to realize there’s no reason for me to use that word. Because what I did was search for truth. I tested all things, held fast to what is good—that's biblical. I don’t need a postmodern word to describe that. And so that would be my journey with this word and kind of my relationship with it is that I’ve changed my mind; I didn’t deconstruct. It was—

Jonathan: You re-entrenched.

Alisa: Yeah, they just think I circled some wagons and found some people to agree with me. Which is so interesting to me, because they weren’t there. And that's the thing. Pete Ens, I’ve seen the comment from him, “Oh, Alisa doesn’t know … she doesn’t understand deconstruction, she doesn’t get it.”

And I’m just like, “Were you there? You weren’t there. You have no idea what I went through.” But it’s like they’re so quick to say, “You have to respect my lived experience,” but they are the first ones that will not respect your lived experience if you land at historic Christianity for sure.

Jonathan: That makes sense. You guys have spent hours on places like TikTok researching what leads people to deconstruct and what they all have in common. What are the common threads that you’ve noticed through that?

Tim: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, some of the factors that we’ve noticed that kind of launch people into a deconstruction are things like doubts, unanswered questions. Virtually all these stories have some instance of suffering or pain, and we’ve all been through that. There’s church hurt, there’s spiritual abuse. Now we’ve got to be careful about that a little bit, because sometimes it’s a real abuse that happens, of course, we would all want to say that is horrible and we stand against that. That is not of God. And so when a pastor engaged in that kind of thing, he needs to be held accountable for it.

But then on the other hand there is what we might call perceived abuse or perceived harm. And this is where things like teaching the doctrine of hell. In our research, we found that that's called, you know, teaching your kids, it’s child abuse. If you say that Jesus died for your sins, that's considered toxic and abusive to tell someone that, yet that's the gospel message. So we want to make sure that we distinguish between those things.

Of course, we just mentioned earlier about politics and Trump and all that stuff. So there’s these different elements that you’ll see peppered within these stories. Now we want to be quick to say that not all deconstruction stories are alike. In fact, they are often very unique, and that's because every single person is unique. So if you’ve heard one deconstruction story, then you’ve only heard one, you haven’t heard them all. But there are these common threads.

One question that we asked when we were doing our research is why is it that two people can grow up in the same house, they can go to the same church, the same youth group, they have the same parents, they experience some of the same trauma, suffering, whatever, and yet one will deconstruct and the other maybe becomes an even more faithful believer. What's going on there?

And what we found is it comes down to—at least one element—a faith foundation. What is it, what is your faith foundation? And of course, this is going to be different for different people, and what we need to be asking, we’re challenging the church to ask, is what does it mean to be a Christian? Oftentimes, you know—and this is a question I was asked when I was in university by my friends who were not believers, “Tim, why are you a Christian?” And I honestly shot back, “Because my parents are Christians.” That was my first response. I knew that ain’t right. That was embarrassing.

I’d grown up in the church. I’d done all the church stuff, and yet I did not have a strong Christian foundation and a strong Christian faith. And so I, at that point, was very susceptible to this kind of deconstruction, right, because I could—if TikTok was big at that time, I could have watched a video and, “Okay, I’m outta here. This has been refuted.”

So I think that all those things that I mentioned earlier can make you a good candidate for deconstruction, but they don’t have to lead you down the path of deconstruction. This is why it’s really, really important that the church needs to be helping to develop and disciple Christians so they have a strong foundation so when that crisis hits, they are able to stand firm in their faith.

So let me ask this question. There may be a simple answer. Is the faulty foundations that people are building on essentially, I mean, is the answer anything but Christ? Is it in the institution of the church or in the leadership in the church or your favorite Christian singer? Is it … do you find those the main threads that came back?

Alisa: That's an interesting question. I think, you know, when I think about foundation … Because I was trying to think through this question even within my own context. So one of my sisters was not a Christian until she was an adult, and she would say that openly; that's part of her testimony. She grew up in church. We grew up in the same home, we had the same discipleship, the same youth pastors, pretty much the same experiences growing up, same environment, and yet our foundation was different because I was a devoted Christian as far back as I can remember. I mean, I don’t even remember a time where I didn’t absolutely know that the Bible was God’s Word and Jesus was who He said He was. And yet, for my sister, she grew up in the same environment but had a totally different foundation. she did all the things, she cooperated with it, but She never personally trusted in Christ.

Jonathan: Going through the motions, yeah, okay.

Alisa: Yeah. And she may not have even realized that. You might have asked her at 12 years old, “Are you a Christian,” she might have said, “Well, yeah,” but she didn’t know that she wasn’t until she actually got saved as an adult. And so I think the foundation is more of a personal thing. The way I see it is the level of understanding you might have had. We have a lot of this sort of seeker-sensitive model that's over the past few decades has gotten really big. I’m not saying it’s wrong to have a large church or try to be sensitive to people who are seeking, of course. But some of those seeker-sensitive and megachurch models really watered-down the gospel, really sacrificed discipleship for numbers. And I think that that has resulted in a lot of people growing up in churches that maybe—

And I’m not … We don’t speculate on this question in the book, were they really saved, were they not because we don’t know the end of their story either, but I do think even right now we have a lot of people in our churches who maybe may not be Christians because they may not be getting the gospel, they’re not getting Bible teaching. And they might like the community and even like and believe certain things about it, but everybody’s foundation is maybe going to be a little bit different. That's kind of how I see it.

Jonathan: Well, I mean, not to steer us theologically, but I mean it has to be the work of the Spirit in the life of a person, and that's all in the sovereign timing of the Lord. I wonder if sometimes in this American evangelical mindset from an older-generation perspective we have this understanding that my children should be Christians and they should be following the ways that I direct. And then I should start seeing spiritual fruit in their life. Like, well, I don’t know. I mean, is there something wrong with that happening at a later point? Just thinking from a parental, a parent’s perspective. Maybe I’ve gone into the weeds there a little bit.

Alisa: Like Tim said, each deconstruction story is unique. I would say it like this. Every deconstruction story is unique and yet they’re kind of all the same, too, in certain points. I know we’re getting in the weeds a little bit, but as a parent, I wouldn’t want to push my kid to say they believe something they don’t really believe. I’d want them to come to that on their own. And that might come later, certainly, yeah.

Jonathan: And there’s a level of you want your child to be honest with you, and I think sometimes we can put a false expectation on your child to be going to be at a certain place when they’re just not ready for that yet. And so what they’re actually deconstructing is deconstructing whatever that false view—again, as you said, there’s different stories of deconstruction. But ultimately, if you deconstruct and never return back, to your point, there was never faith to begin with. You experienced the benefits of a covenant community or whatever it is. As Hebrews says, you were tasting but you weren’t of that, you know … not all Israel is Israel.

Do you think it’s potentially because parents are unwilling to engage in the hard questions of the faith? Or do you think perhaps there is always just people who are going to rebel against Christ? Is it all of the above? In your research, I don’t know if you’re working with people who have gone through it and then interviewing them. Are you tracing things back to a particular point? I think we all want to say, “Where does the blame lie?” Are you finding that?

Tim: I think it’s all of the above. A lot of these stories have unanswered questions. In fact, Alisa did a debate on Unbelievable with Lisa Gunger, and she makes this really tragic statement where she said, “Questioning was equivalent to sinning in our church. If you questioned the pastor, you questioned his teaching, whatever, you were in essence sinning.”

So confessing to your questions is confessing your sins. And that mentality, I mean, we wrote a whole chapter called “Questions,” In that chapter, what we’re trying to do is a little bit of a wake-up call. We’re trying to rattle the church a little bit and say, “Hey, we can do better. We ought to be the place where people feel safe to ask their questions and express their doubts.” And I hope that everyone listening to this hears that. Tim and Alisa are not against questions—in fact, we’re apologists. We travel around and we’re doing our best to answer questions, so we’re not against that, and we want the church to be a safe place.

And I mean we give an example of Tim Keller. At the end of his sermons, his services, he would do like a 40-, 45-minute Q&A time where he would just stick around and, okay, come on up. And in New York City, where you have like diversity of people, diversity of views coming in, you’re going to have skeptics, you’re going to have atheists, you’re going to have whatever coming in, asking their hard questions. And when you think about it, the way we have our churches structured, at least most of them, there isn’t really a Q&A time. That would be like a very special thing. Maybe every few months the pastor will take questions or something.

Jonathan: A special treat. Yeah, yeah.

Tim: That's right. But for the most part, that's not there, and that can give a lot of people the impression that questions aren’t allowed here. You just listen to what's spoken, do what you’re told, and that's the end of it. So I think that's part of it. But you also mentioned, yeah, maybe there’s a rebellious heart, too. You can’t read the Bible very far without seeing someone who has a rebellious heart. So we—

Tim: That's right. Just a couple of pages in. And so you end up seeing that this is a realistic element that we need to be talking about, too, and that's why we devoted an entire chapter to the deconstructor, because there are things about the deconstructor that are important to be aware of from a biblical anthropology perspective. And so there certainly are people who are seeking answers, and we want to be there to provide answers. But then there’s also these questions out there that are seeking exits. And you see lots of those. You see them in Scripture and we see—

When you’ve got Richard Dawkins saying, “Well, who made God?” Richard Dawkins should know better, you know. When my four-year-old asks that question, okay, fair enough. But when you have an academic from Oxford asking that question as if it’s legitimate of the Christian God, something else is going on.

Jonathan: I remember Keller teaching on Job, and he says Job is filled with questions, right, but the issue was that he never left God. He didn’t say, “I have questions and now I’m going to go over here and ask them.: But he kept asking the questions of the Lord in his particular situation. And he was saying that questioning can be a good thing because it’s, as we talked earlier, all truth is Christ’s truth, so there’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re not going to get an answer where it should cause difficulty. But rather, you’re sticking close to the source and you’re going to get your answers within reason. But rather than going—

And it’s interesting, because that's what these TikToks and all these things are creating is new avenues for you to go and ask questions and find a story that resonates with you, right, that’s the big terminology that we were using earlier. So that resonates with your story and how you feel, and then where did they land?

How do we invite this sort of cultivating an openness for asking of questions? Is it let’s have a Q&A session at the end of church? Is it, you know, we need to start training our parents to have them understand that your kids asking questions is a good thing because they’re coming to you versus no, everything is fine and I’m going to go to YouTube and find the answer because I think you’re going to be mad at me or whatever it is. Help us think through that from a church perspective.

Alisa: Well, I think starting with the parents is a great place to start because if we can train parents to be the first person to introduce some of these difficult topics to their kids, we know statistically the first person to introduce the topic will be viewed as an expert in the eyes of the child. So when we as parents are the first people to talk to our kids about gender and sexuality and all of these different things—and promoting an environment where we’re not weird about it, we’re not acting awkward about it, then we want to be the Google. I want to be Google for my kids. And that means I’m going to be really honest when they ask their questions and sometimes give more information than they wanted.

My daughter, she jokes with me like “I know I’ll get a straight answer from you with whatever I ask.” And so maybe even training parents to ask your kids questions like “Hey, what's your biggest question about God?”

And parents don’t need to be afraid of what their kids say, because it’s perfectly fine to say, “Wow, I’ve never really thought about that. Let’s think that through together,” and then go do some research and continue to engage with your kid about it. But I think in the home, if we can start there, that's a great place. And then the church can help come around parents with even youth groups doing Q&As and pastors doing Q&As. I think that's a huge way to promote that environment from the home, all the way through the church culture.

Jonathan: Okay, let’s do a little sort of engaging with others segment here. What would you say to those who are seeing their loved ones go through deconstruction or exvangelical. What would you say to them? Buy our book.

Tim: Yeah, that. And I mean the first thing that I would say is stay calm. It can be not just earthshattering for the person going through deconstruction, but the loved ones of those deconstructors it’s often earthshattering. We talk about this in the book, actually. To find out that my kids who I’ve raised in the church come to me and say, “Dad, I don’t believe any of this stuff anymore, I’m out,” that would be crushing.

And I would want to remind myself: stay calm. I’ve heard so many stories, and they’re actually horror stories, where a child comes to a parent and says, “I’m deconstructing” and the parent just loses it. “How could you do that?” And they overreact, and of course that's not going to help. That's the first thing.

I would want my kids right away to know that they are loved, period. That this doesn’t change my love for them. It’s not “I love you, but let me fix your theology.” It’s “I love you, period. You’re still my daughter. I’m still your dad. That's not going to change.”

And then another thing just to add is say thank you. It must have taken a lot for that individual, if they come to you and share that they’ve deconstructed, it must have been a big deal to do that. So I would say, “Thanks for sharing that with me and me being the person that can be there for you.”

So those are introductory things. Obviously, relationship is going to be so important. It’s not necessarily that you’re going to be able to maintain the relationship. We’ve heard stories of people getting no-contact letters from their loved one saying, “Your theology is toxic. I don’t want anything to do with you and so we’re done. Here’s my no-contact letter.”

But if they’re willing to stay in your life, then we want to do whatever is possible to maintain that relationship without compromising truth. Truth is absolutely necessary. But you want to be in that relationship as long as possible, because that's where you’re going to be able to have probably the best impact.

Its’ interesting you brought up Job earlier. And Job’s comforters started on the right track. They were there and they sat with Job—

Jonathan: Silent.

Tim: Silently for seven days. And then it was when they started to open their mouths they got themselves into trouble, and I think we can learn something from that. So we want to hear, “Hey, tell me your story.”

One of the first questions I would want to know is, “What do you mean by deconstruction?” If they’re using that word, I want to know if they just mean, “Hey, I’m asking some questions. Hey, I don’t know if I believe in this view of creation, baptism, and maybe I’m changing.”

Okay, that's different than what we’re seeing online, okay, this idea of a postmodern process. So I want to nail down, okay, what are you going through and what kind of process or methodology are you using to go through it? I want to be able to identify those things.

And of course, in the book we talk about this idea of triage. If you have a gunshot wound to the head but a broken finger, they’re treating the gunshot wound to the head, right, the thing that's more serious. And in a similar way, once you understand where this person’s coming from, you’ve heard their story, you’re going to be able to do some triage. Okay, what's the most important thing in this moment? Is it that I answer all these questions that I’m having? Is it that they just need me to be with them because they are going through something?

And I think that's important because sometimes we miss the mark. Especially as apologists, oh, let me answer that question. Let’s go for coffee. I’m going to fix your theology and then we’ll be back on track.

Jonathan: We’re going to fix the problem, yeah.

Tim: That's likely not going to happen. And then finally, I would just say continue to pray. We cannot underestimate the power of prayer. If someone is going through deconstruction, what they need is God. They need the Holy Spirit. And so let’s petition God on their behalf. Let’s pray that God does whatever is necessary to draw that person back to Himself.

Jonathan: All right, now thinking for the person who is considering deconstructing their faith. And again, that could be a myriad of different positions along that path, but what are the things you would want them to know?

Alisa: Well, so here’s what I would say. If someone is considering deconstruction as if it’s like an option, “Oh, maybe I’ll deconstruct my faith,” and there’s no crisis that's actually throwing you in deconstruction, I would say you don’t need to do that. There’s no biblical command to get saved, get baptized, and then deconstruct your faith. You don’t need to do that. If there are some incorrect theological views that you—maybe you grew up in a very legalistic stream of Christianity. Maybe you grew up in the Mormon church. Maybe you grew up as Jehovah’s Witness and you need to go to Scripture, make Scripture your authority, and then get rid of beliefs that were taught to you that are not biblical. I want you to know that that is a biblical process and that is what you should do.

Jonathan: This is what we call disentangling, right, that we were talking about.

Alisa: Yes. In our book, we would call it reformation. But yeah, Jinger Duggar calls it disentangling. I don’t care what you call it. I would just really encourage you to not use the word deconstruction, because deconstruction is a very specific thing that isn’t about getting your theological beliefs corrected according to the Bible, and so we want to be reforming our faith according to Scripture. And so if you need to disentangle, as Jinger would say, or reform beliefs that were unbiblical, please do that. And that can be a very long process. It can be a difficult process.

But if someone is listening who’s maybe propelled into deconstruction through some church abuse or whatever it might be, my encouragement would sort of be the same. It’s actually good for you to get rid of beliefs that led to abuse, that Jesus stands against abuse as well. But I would just encourage you not to get sucked into this sort of deconstruction movement, because it’s not based on absolute truth. It’s not based on Scripture. And it’s not going to lead you to any sort of healing and wholeness spiritually. And so whether you’re just considering it intellectually or you’re just interested, I would resist it. And that's … There’s going to be well-meaning evangelical leaders that will tell you you can deconstruct according to the bible, but I don’t think you can. And so let’s keep our language and the way we think about this biblical rather than bringing in a postmodern concept that just clouds the … muddies the water and causes confusion.

Jonathan: All right, this is good because this goes to the next level. What do you say to those who believe that Christianity is toxic or patriarchal? What's your word to them? And then the follow-up to that would be for believers. When do we engage and when do we not engage with people who are kind of promoting that sort of ideology?

Tim: I would want to ask some questions, like what do they mean by toxic, what do they do they mean by patriarchal, to nail down those definitions. Are they appealing to something objective or are they appealing to something subjective based on their own personal preferences? I think it’s really important that we start with what's true before we can look at whether or not something is toxic, or harmful, or whatever.

In the book, we give the example of you stumble upon someone who’s kind of beating on someone’s chest, and in that moment it may look like they’re being abused, but you come to find out that actually they’ve had a heart attack, and that person is not beating on their chest, they’re doing chest compressions, doing CPR. That totally changes how you see that action, right? It goes from being, hey, that's harmful and toxic to, wait, this is lifesaving, this is lifegiving.

So I think that's really important, when I see a deconstructionist talk about how hell is causing child abuse, I want to know, first of all, if there is such a place as hell. For them, it’s not even on the table; it’s not even the question, right, because it’s a totally different philosophy, a totally different worldview. I want to look at is this true?

I give the example of I told my kids not to jam a knife into the wall socket. Well, why not? Because there’s electricity in there and it could electrocute you and kill you. So any good parent warns their kids about that. Or touching the hot stove, these kinds of things. Is it harmful for me to tell them not to do that? Everyone agrees, no, that's not harmful; it’s not toxic. Now, it would be toxic if there was no such thing as electricity. If I’m just playing these games where I’m trying to torment my kids so they’re scared to do whatever, to actually make them terrified of the stove or something. No.

Okay, the reason that they need to be careful around this hot stove or not stuck, stick stuff in the wall outlet is because there are dangers. And if hell really is this kind of danger, then we ought to appropriately talk about this issue. Look, I’m not talking to my three-year-old about eternal conscious torment. You know what I’m saying? Obviously, there is some appropriate when the time is right. Sexuality, we appropriately talk with those … about those issues with our kids. But we do talk about those things, and that's because they’re true, and that's were we start.

Jonathan: That sort of answers a little bit of the next question, which is that you both dedicated the book to your children. And we’re, I think, we’ve kind of addressed it in terms of being available. But in light of everything that you know and all that is going on with deconstruction and the questions and the struggles of the next generation, how are you taking this and applying this as you raise your children?

Alisa: Well, I know that this research has definitely affected how I parent. In fact, I went through a phase in the early stages of the research where I would hear myself saying things, and I was like, “That's going to end up in their deconstruction struggle.” And I found myself almost becoming way too passive for it was probably just a couple of months when the research was so intense, and it was new. And it was like, oh my gosh, all these things i’m saying to my children is what people say they think is toxic and that's what they’re deconstructing from.

And then I swung back around and I’m like, no, it’s my job as a parent to teach my kids what's true about reality. Just because maybe culture things that 2 + 2 = 5 now doesn’t mean that I need to cower and say, “Well, you know, I’m not going to be too legalistic about 2 + 2 + 4.” No. 2 + 2 = 4. You can believe what you want, but this is what's true. And so I actually, you know, what I’ve started to do is tell my kids “Look, it’s my job as your mom to teach you what's true about reality. And what you believe about God and what you believe about morality is in the same category of science, math, logic. These are facts about reality. It’s my job to teach you. Now, you are the person who chooses to believe it or not.”

And so what I’ve tried to do is really engage my kids in conversations, but knowing also that statistically they might deconstruct one day. I have to leave a lot of that to the Holy Spirit, and also to try to model to my children what a real believer looks like. I think that's a huge, a huge element in parenting is letting our kids see us repent to them if we sin against them, in front of them. Reading our Bibles on a regular basis together, praying together as a family. Not just being Sunday Christians. Here in the South it’s real easy to just be that Sunday Christian and then—

Jonathan: Haunted by the ghost of Christ.

Alisa: That's right. And then you just live like He doesn’t exist the rest of the week. And that's the thing about the Bible Belt. Certainly, people aren’t acting … like doing pagan sacrifices during the week. They are pretty much good people. But it’s just not relevant to their lives until Sunday comes around. And just being different from that in front of our kids is something I’ve really tried to engage.

And just engaging their questions without pushing them, I think, is a huge thing. Like you mentioned earlier, is letting them have their own story and their own journey. And even as my sons wrestled with the problem of evil for about two years really intensely, I really didn’t want to push him. And I just validated that that's a good question, that's an honest question to ask, and let’s talk to the Lord about it, let’s think through some things. But trying not to push him to just settle really quickly so that he can work this out for himself, with discipleship and the guidance of parents. But that's one of the ways it’s really affected my parenting.

Tim: That's so good. Yes and amen to all of that.

Jonathan: Okay, I second that. All right, give us some hope. This is your part three. Part three. This can all sound pretty scary and off-putting and you need to block it out.

Tim: It really really does seem hopeless, especially if you spend any time kind of typing in hashtag deconstruction or hashtag exvangelical. I mean, I would go into my office here and start working and writing and I’d come out and I’d just be like … my mood has changed.

Jonathan: Spiritual warfare, for sure.

Tim: My wife knew it, oh yeah, my wife saw it and my kids could see it. It was really discouraging. And so I feel for those parents who have that loved one who’s going through this, and many do, so we wanted to make sure we end the book on a hopeful note. And one of the things that we were thinking about—in fact, I think it started with a phone call. I called Alisa, and I remember I was sitting at my dining-room table and I had a sermon that I was going to give on deconstruction. And I’m like, Alisa, I need to end this thing with something hopeful because it is so … And I had, actually, a parent reach out to me before I gave the sermon, saying, “I really hope that you’re going to give us some hope.” Because they have a child themselves, a young adult, who’s deconstructing. I’m thinking, okay, what is it Alisa? Help me out here.

And we just started talking back and forth and so I don’t know how this came up, but eventually we started thinking about Easter weekend, right, we’re coming up to it. Of course, you think about what was going on Friday night. It’s like Peter’s there; he’s seen his Savior, his Messiah being crucified, and his world is turned upside down. We could just imagine what that was like to go through this traumatic experience.

And then, of course, it jumps to Sunday and Sunday brings with it resurrected hope, right? And you have the angel shows up, tells the women, you know, go and tell His disciples AND Peter. Like Peter really needs to hear this. Friday night, he denied the Lord three times. It was a bad night for Peter. But he’s going to receive this resurrection hope on Sunday.

Well, we actually titled the last chapter “Saturday” because we think that a lot of people are living in what could be described as a Saturday. Now again, we’re not told much about that particular Easter Saturday, so we can only speculate, but really, I mean, what kind of questions were the disciples, in particular, Peter, asking? Were they starting to doubt some of the things that they had been taught, maybe like trying to explain away some of the miracles they had seen? It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, was it? And so there’s self-doubt, there’s all this trauma that they’ve experienced.

Now of course, Sunday was just around the corner. We think that, look, if that hope can come for Peter, then it can come for you and your loved one, too, right? We don’t know what that Saturday looks like. It may not be tomorrow. It may not be just one 24-hour day. It could be months down the road; it could be years down the road; but we think this is a message. Because if it can happen for Peter, it can happen for your loved one. And I think that can move us from a state of “This is completely hopeless, what good can come from this? How can this be undone,” to a state where, no, we can be hopeful. Jesus rose from the grave after being dead. And when that happened, Peter’s faith is restored.

“Do you love me?” He says, “Yeah, I love you.” Three times, kind of like paralleling the three denials.

Jonathan: Exactly.

Tim: And then the Church is built on this confession. So I mean that brings me hope, and hopefully it brings hope to others who are going through this.

Jonathan: Just one final question. Have you seen anyone who’s been restored out of this?

Alisa: You know what? I have heard a few stories, but these are people that have platforms. So I have several people that are part of my Facebook community who have said they deconstructed into progressive Christianity but have been brought back. I have had a couple of people on my personal podcast who had deconstructed. One is a guy name Dave Stovall. We actually tell his story in the book. He was in the band Audio Adrenaline, and he deconstructed into progressive Christianity and then a local pastor here in town discipled him back to the historic Christian faith and had all these difficult conversations with him and engaged him in conversation. So I think we are seeing some. We’re not seeing a lot yet, but I think a lot of the stories maybe are just more private, where people aren’t necessarily shouting it on social media. But yeah, the Lord’s at work, absolutely.

Jonathan: That's good.

Tim: Yeah, I can echo that, too. We’ve been … A I travel around teaching and speaking, I’ll have people come up to me and usually you get a lot of people saying, “Thanks for hits information. I had no idea this was going on.” But this one guy, he said, “I went through deconstruction.” And he said, “It was when you put up your definition of deconstruction that you had me because that”—

Alisa: Wow!

Tim: I thought he was going to push back and be like, “But that's not how you define it. Instead, he said, “You had me as soon as you put up your definition.” Why? “Because,” he said, “that exactly described the process that I was going through.” And yet, here he was on that Sunday morning at church kind of completely kind of turning a corner and willing to say, “No, I’m willing to follow the truth wherever it leads.”

And that led him to affirming that the Bible is God’s Word, and now he’s trying to align his beliefs. And of course, that's a journey we’re all on. I have false beliefs right now; I just don’t know which ones are false, right? I’m always trying to correct my mistaken beliefs and make them align with Scripture. And praise the Lord, that was the journey he was on.

Jonathan: Oh, amen. Well, the book is The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive and How To Respond. Alisa Childers, Tim Barnett, thank you, guys, so much for being on Candid Conversations. I’ve really enjoyed our talk today.

Alisa: Me, too. Thanks so much.

Tim: Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thanks for having us.

Jonathan: God bless.

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Episode 263: The 8 Friends You Need: Jonathan Youssef
27 ago· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
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 God’s 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 Paul’s 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:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpod
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpod
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Episode 262: Answering the Tough Questions: Navigating Sexuality & Faith with Becket Cook
13 ago· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
In this special follow-up episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan Youssef welcomes Becket Cook, author of "A Change of Affection: A Gay Man’s 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 Becket’s candid responses on topics such as navigating friendships and family dynamics after conversion, the church’s role in addressing issues of sexuality with grace and Truth, and the challenges Christians face in today’s 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
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Episode 261: A Gay Man's Incredible Story of Redemption: Becket Cook
6 ago· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
In this profound episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan Youssef sits down with Becket Cook, author of "A Change of Affection: A Gay Man’s 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. Becket’s story is a testament to the redemptive power of God’s 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: Today’s guest is a very special guest. It is Becket Cook. Becket has written a book called A Change of Affection: A Gay Man’s 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: We’ve got to start with your story. It’s profound and amazing. All salvation stories are amazing; yours is unique. I’d love it if you’d just give us a few minutes and navigate us through your testimony.
[01:39] Becket: Yeah, I mean, I’m still in shock. I’m 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 didn’t 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 wasn’t 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 can’t 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 don’t 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 didn’t even notice. God bless them, they’re 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 queens—it’s 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 Club—it 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 wouldn’t 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, “Hi, Dad.” He didn’t even say anything like “Where have you been?” 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 wasn’t out, but at this point in my life, I wouldn’t have described myself as “gay” because I just thought this was a phase. This was a phase that will probably go away and I’ll probably get married to a woman and have kids.
It wasn’t 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 didn’t really know what we wanted to do with our lives. I was premed in college, and then I realized I didn’t 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, “I don’t know if I want to do any of this.” 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, we’ll call him “Adam.” 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 didn’t think anything of it, but by the time he left, we had fallen in love, quote unquote. And so that was the first time I’d 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, “This is who I am. This is immutable.” 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., don’t tell Mom and Dad. I’ll 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 weren’t either, but my parents’ 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, “Mom, what's wrong?” And she said, “I heard you’re a homosexual.”
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, “Mom, this is not a big deal. Don’t worry about me.”
The next day, my dad came up to me, and my dad is such a man’s man; it surprised him to respond. Because he came up to me and he said, “Hey Beck, I heard you’re a homosexual, and you know”—
[11:32] JMY: Like he read it in the newspaper or something.
[11:36] Becket: Yeah, and so he said, “Is there anything I did wrong as a father? Are you angry at me for this?” He listed three things, and it was basically—I can’t remember what they were—did I not spend enough time with you? Did your brother beat you up or whatever, and I didn’t intervene? Are you angry about that?
And I was like, “Dad, no. This is not your fault. This is just who I am. It’s not a big deal.”
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, “I’m 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, “Dad, I’m moving to L.A. tomorrow.”
And he was like, “Huh?” 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 you’re watching on Netflix or whatever–
[13:51] JMY: They’re 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 all—my 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 Mansfield’s daughter, but nobody really knew her, but then she got—I drove her to her audition for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and she’s still on the show twenty-three years later. She’s made a fortune on that show. Well, I won’t tell that part about Mariska, but we’re 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 Keaton’s producing partner. So we were always invited to everything—the 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 Barrymore’s, went to Prince’s 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 wasn’t really taking off. The writing was difficult. I sold a couple of projects that didn’t 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, I’m 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 can’t 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, who’s 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 I’d 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 isn’t satisfying me anymore. I can’t just keep going to parties and fabulous things and traveling the world. Yeah, it was fun for a long time, but it’s not doing it for me anymore. And I knew that Christianity was not an option because I was gay, so I can’t 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: God’s 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 family’s 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 because—
[21:21 JMY: It’s like a compartmentalization, right? This works for you; that won’t 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 we’re 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, “Talk to them. See what they’re doing.”
And I was like, “No, I don’t want to talk to them!”
And anyway, I ended up turning to them, and I always say this, it’s like a Christian’s fantasy come true when a gay atheist turns to you and says, “Tell me all about Christianity.” And so we got into this conversation for like an hour or two. It was a long conversation. And I said, “What is your faith? Like what do you believe? I don’t remember. Just tell me what you believe.”
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 didn’t bother me. So I, of course, get to the question and I ask them, “What does your church believe about homosexuality?”
And I kind of expected this answer, so it wasn’t shocking. They said, “Well, we believe it’s a sin.” Of course, that was 2009. Now, who knows what people will say.
[24:27] JMY: It’s a grab bag now.
[24:29] Becket: I wasn’t surprised by their response, but I was surprised by mine because I just kind of accepted that, and I didn’t protest. And it’s 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, “I don’t know. Just give me the address and I’ll think about it.”
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 I’d 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 it’s just fake and what if it’s not real?
But that following Sunday I woke up and I just was like, I’m 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 don’t 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 music’s 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 didn’t 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, “This is the Gospel? This is good news!”
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 there’s 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, “Hey, I don’t know what I believe, but I’m here.” And he said, “Okay, let me pray for you.”
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, “I’m God. Jesus is my Son. Heaven is real, hell is real, the Bible is true. Welcome to my kingdom.”
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 I’ve 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 don’t 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, “Here, here’s some more Bible.”
And I just, again, I just immediately, it was so real. It was like God’s presence was right—it was there. And I burst into tears again and I was bawling in my bedroom, jumped out of my bed and was like, “God, you have my whole life, I’m yours. I’m done.”
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 didn’t care at all, because I had just met Jesus. And I’m like, I’m going with that guy, forget those guys.
And that was September 20, 2009, and I’ve never looked back. And I’ve never felt like life is unfair. Because I’m single and chaste, and I’ve never felt like life is unfair for me or like I’m being cheated out of something. I just feel like I can’t believe that God had mercy on me and I’m 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, it’s 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 don’t know what to do, they don’t 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, “Hey, I just found this prayer that your mother typed to God basically, and I found it in an old box from some of your mother’s things.” 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; it’s 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 wasn’t 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, “In the all-powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we come against the enemy with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.”
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, “Hey Becket, I’m praying for you,” it would have been a disaster because I would have been like, “Why are you praying for me? I don’t need prayer. This is who I am. Stop praying.” 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. She’s 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 I’m gay and she’s 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, “Hey Becket, you know in Leviticus 18 …” 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 he’s talking about how God sent him to preach to the Gentiles, he says, “to 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.”
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 “I want to fix this. I want to fix the problem.” That rarely, if ever, works. However, there is an exception, a caveat I’ll 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. There’s no other way. Otherwise, it’s just behavior modification.
[37:31] JMY: Praise the Lord. Praise God that it’s His work and not ours because we’d 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 body—this just makes me laugh—40 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 it’s 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 you’re a teenager just suddenly claims, “I’m LGBTQ,” or “I’m pansexual,” or “I’m nonbinary,” “I’m queer,” I think in those cases there should be, there could be some pushback from the parents in terms of saying, “Look …” Because this happened with me with a young woman, a teenage girl who came up to me at a conference and said, “I’m pansexual and nonbinary.”
And I said, “Why? Why are you?” She didn’t have an answer for me, and I said, “Are you that way because you want attention, popularity, street cred? Why do you think you’re... because when I was your age, there was no such thing, so why do you think you’re this way?”
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, “Oh, and I’m asexual.” And I was like, “You haven’t even gone through puberty yet.”
So yeah, I do think that when it is this kind of contagion aspect, I’ve 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 you’ve 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 we’ve become indoctrinated into believing the lies of the world. And it’s just so obvious to me, and it’s 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 people’s 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. Where’s 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 they’ll 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 culture—
[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 school—I say this all the time—in my high school, everyone believed it was a sin, it was wrong, in the girls’ school, in the boys’ school. Now some of those same people are like allies, LGBTQ allies, and it’s like, gee, I wonder what's happened over the last thirty years? Maybe it’s 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, “Hey, why don’t we walk through the last fifty years and see how it has shaped what we believe?” And so that can be helpful, too.
[44:17] JMY: You’re 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 wouldn’t even have you to come and speak because you’re kind of against them.
What are the things that you’re 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 there’s a level of asking good questions and pushing back, as you’ve just given us examples. But what are some ways you’re 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, He’s talking to a Samaritan woman, which is crazy for a Jewish man to do, and He’s so loving and kind to her. And she, you know, He’s like, “Oh, go get your husband.” And she’s like, “Oh, I don’t have a husband.” And He’s like, “Yeah, you were married five times.”
[46:17] JMY: “The one you’re with now isn’t your husband.”
[46:19] Becket: “And the one you’re with now isn’t your husband.” So Jesus doesn’t 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 kids—and I get it—like they love their kids so much that they suddenly change their theology and become [Overlapping voices] in their theology. And it’s like, no, that's not the answer, because if my parents had affirmed and said, “Oh, Becket, you’re fine,” 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 God’s Word by one iota. And they knew that they were going to go into a fiery furnace. They were not willing to compromise God’s Word. And so that's my main thrust to the church is don’t 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, “Oh, I don’t think it’s a sin anymore,” 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 you’ve given that talk enough times, what kind of the high points of that? If you had to kind of—maybe you haven’t 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 it’s a whole month. Pretty soon it’ll 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 they’re 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 Nineties—I mean, I’m skipping ahead of a bunch of stuff—but 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, it’s like these guys are hilarious. I mean, what could be wrong with this? So—
[51:22] JMY: Yeah, they’re approachable,
[51:23] Becket: They’re cool. What could be wrong with this? And then a significant turning point was—oh, 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 women’s bodies. This is crazy. It’s 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 time—I 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, “Oh my gosh, honey, you’ve got to watch this show; it’s brilliant!”
I remember telling a good friend of mine at the time, “This is going to change everything. This show is going to change everything.” 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 city—
So I lived right next to Beverly Hills, and Beverly Hills is very conservative because it’s mostly Persian Jews who live in Beverly Hills. They’re 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 support—
[54:24] JMY: Cities have them as well. Wow.
[54:25] Becket: They get rated by I think it’s the Human Rights Campaign, HRC. They get rated, so Beverly Hills doesn’t want to lose tourism, so they will go along with it and put a pride flag on the street. And so now it’s so ubiquitous, and I don’t even know it at this point. I don’t 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. It’s a rare thing, even for Christians now, to believe that it’s still a sin.
[55:15] JMY: it’s almost like going back to first-century Christianity, where we’re just so countercultural and so bizarre. How could you think there’s only one God in Rome? And it’s like we have all this plethora of gods? It is a sense of returning to thinking you’re so backward and all this sort of thing.
But the Lord’s in control, and He knows what He’s doing, and He’s 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 we’re so grateful for the work that the Lord’s doing in you. And so I want to say, Becket Cook, I’m so grateful for our time together and pray the Lord would bless your ministry.
[56:24] Becket: Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate it. And I’m really looking forward to coming to Atlanta and meeting you guys in person.
[56:33] JMY: Absolutely.
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Episode 260: The Battle for Truth: How Do You Stand Firm in a Culture of Feelings?: Jonathan Youssef (Reprise)
30 jul· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
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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Episode 259: What is Biblical Theology and Why Is It Important?: Nancy Guthrie (Reprise)
23 jul· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
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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Episode 258: Five Ways to Follow Christ as a Family:Jonathan Youssef (Reprise)
16 jul· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
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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Episode 257: Father, Forgive Them: One Woman's Journey to Freedom (Reprise)
9 jul· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
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!
If you have a question for Jonathan or are looking for more Candid episodes, visit https://LTW.org/Candid
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Episode 256: Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom: Os Guinness (Reprise)
2 jul· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
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 “Defender of the Faith” 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.
To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/Candid
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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. He’s written untold amounts of books. He’s 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 don’t. 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. There’s a couple of things. I’m 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 you’d tell us a little bit of your family history and then we’ll get to your own personal story.
[01:00] Os Guinness: Well, you’re right. I’m 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 Ireland’s first Sunday school, which of course, in this days was a rather radical proposition, teaching people who couldn’t 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 I’m descended from a branch of the family that’s kept the faith ever since. My great-grandfather, Arthur’s 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. He’d 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: Isn’t 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 I’m part of the family that’s 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 that’s 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 you’re thinking of just the covenantal family through that line. And so you’ve 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 it’s really a faith that has to become your own. It’s 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 Mao’s reign of terror, and in ’51, 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 I’m glad I did because the 60s was a crazy decade—drugs, 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. I’ve read some of Camus and Sartre, and I mean, they’re 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 L’Abri with Francis Schaeffer, we met people who studied under Sartre and people who had known Camus. Camus was warm, passionate. There are stories, we don’t know whether they’re true or not or just a rumor, that he was actually baptized just before he died in a car crash in January 1960. I don’t know if that’s true or not, or if that’s a kind of death-bed conversion, but certainly his philosophy is profoundly human, and that’s 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, that’s what we have in the gospel.
[07:19] JONATHAN: That’s right, and it’s 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 you’re touching into there, which is that deeply personal—there’s 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 you’ve 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 it’s a word we use a lot today. What is the passion that’s 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, David’s men or our Lord’s 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 God’s purpose in his generation. That’s an incredible idea that you so understand your generation that in some small, inadequate way we’re each serving God’s purpose of salt and light and so on in our generation.
But many Americans, and many people around the whole world, they don’t have that sense of time that you see in Scripture. I’m not quite sure why; maybe growing up in revolutionary China I’ve always had an incredible sense of time.
[09:36] JONATHAN: You know, I think that’s encouraging to hear. In our society, we get so fixated and caught up on the issues but there’s 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.
Let’s walk through some of your more recent books, and then maybe get a peek under the curtain of what’s coming, because I think you’ve 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, don’t 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 Revolution—postmodernism, 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 we’ve 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 we’ve got to understand if we know how to champion these things today.
But it’s 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 we’ve got to explore them. So the idea from a gentleman not too far from you, Jonathan, who said we’ve got to unhitch our faith from the Old Testament, that’s absolute disaster. A dear guy, but dead wrong. You’ve 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, that’s right; you can’t 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 it’s about the event of the crucifixion and the resurrection, but you don’t have those apart from Genesis 3, of course, Genesis 1, all the way through till the end of Malachi. You can’t separate these two testamental periods. It’s ludicrous, and it creates so much damage, as you’ve said.
[13:36] Os Guinness: Well you know, take some of the myths that are around today. They’re 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: That’s not right. That’s 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 there’s a link between liberty and loyalty and love. So right through the Scriptures, those who abandon the truth, apostasy, that’s equivalent to adultery. Why? To love the Lord is to be loyal to the Lord and faithful to the Lord and so on. And we’ve got to see there’s 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 shouldn’t 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 we’ve got to get back—this is all there in the Old Testament.
Did the Jews fail? Of course. That’s why our Lord. but equally the church is failing today. So we’ve 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 you’ve 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 republic—in 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 republic—in other words, Exodus and Deuteronomy. It had a tremendous impact on the rise of modern notions of freedom, and we’ve 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, we’ve got to re-explore it and realize its richness today.
[17:44] JONATHAN: Turn on the news today and it feels like we’re 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. What’s 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 it’s 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. We’re 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 Gramsci’s 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 ’68 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 here’s the point: The radicals knew that for all the radicalism in the streets, anti-Vietnam protests and so on, they wouldn’t win in the streets, so they had to do what they called, copying Mao Zedong, a long march through the institutions—in other words, not the streets. Go slowly, gradually, win the colleges and universities. Win the press and media. Win what they call the culture industry—Hollywood, 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, I’m a European still, I’m not American, people would never have believed that the radical left would influence what were called the fortresses of American conservatism—business, finance, the military—but all of those in the form of woke-ism have been profoundly affected. So America’s 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 Marcuso’s intentionality of going through the halls of academia? Or rather is it that they’ve just been raised to think that this is just the way ... that it’s the most opportune way to get your ideology out there?
[21:56] Os Guinness: No, it’s thoroughly intention. But of course, always there’s 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, “You brothers have drunk the Kool-Aid.” 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 you’ve 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 truth—and remember in the postmodern world God is dead for them, truth is completely dead following Nietzsche, so all that’s left is power. And the only possible outcome, if you think it through logically (which they don’t) is what the Romans call the peace of despotism—in other words, you have a power so unrivaled since you’ve put down every other power, you have peace. But it’s authoritarian. That’s where we’re 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 it’s not. Most people are asleep.
[23:43] JONATHAN: Well, and that’s right. That’s sort of the hinge point, isn’t it? So let’s talk just briefly about the education system. We’re 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? There’s the public school system; there’s the private, often Christian, private school system; and then there’s a home school option. And parents are all trying to navigate this. Now I’m sure you’ve 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 in—
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 it’s the first exposure they’ve 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 you’ve 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 what’s 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 what’s coming and they know some preliminary apologetics so they know how to make a good stand and be faithful without being washed away.
You’ve also—in other words, what you said is fundamental, I agree with that, but there’s also a national dimension. So the public schools, and I’m 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 doesn’t 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 that’s a disaster for the republic.
Now, take the added one that President Biden has added, immigration. As scholars put it, it’s still relatively easy to become an American: get your papers, your ID and so on. It’s 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, they’re not going to be inducted into American citizenship, so the notion of citizenship collapses through the public schools and through an open border. It’s just a folly beyond any words. It is historic, unprecedented folly, an absolute disaster.
Of course, we’ve 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. It’s very much different children. My own son, whom I adore, is a little bit of a contrarian. If he’d 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 you’re right on with that. And I think it’s 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 don’t want to talk about it, that’s 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 it’s King Charles III and there’s much talk about comments he’s 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, “Charles’s faith is more spiritual and intellectual. He’s more of a spiritual seeker.”
Is this sort of a microcosm of what’s 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 we’re 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 Graham…
[30:29] JONATHAN: John Stott.
[30:30] Os Guinness: --John Stott and so on. So her faith was very, very genuine. His? He’s 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 he’s extraordinarily open to Islam through money from Saudi Arabia. I don’t 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 mother’s position was wonderful, so it’s very much open.
Now I am an Anglican, as you are. Back in 1937, the greatest of all the Catholic historians on Western civilization predicted—this is 1937, almost a century ago—that the day would come in some future coronation when people would raise the questions, “Was 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.”
I think we’re 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. It’s a very critical moment. Will Charles go deeper or revert to the way he’s been for the last few decades? I don’t know. I’m 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: History’s Ultimatum Over Freedom and the Answer We Must Give. Let’s 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 it’s 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; they’ve abandoned the Revolution that made America. So you have a double crisis here.
Now, I am, like you, a follower of Jesus. I’m absolutely undaunted. The Christian faith, if it’s 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 they’re just spineless. If it’s true, it’s not a matter of popularity or polls. I like the old saying, “Damn the polls and think for yourself.” 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 it’s 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 let’s 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. Let’s 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 Lord’s 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 it’s 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 China—nothing to do with me—was 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 it’s 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, that’s 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. They’re not strong in most American churches today. We’ve become highly secularized, so we’ve 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 we’ve lost.
[37:33] JONATHAN: What a great reminder. Well, Os Guinness, I know you’ve got a busy schedule and we’re so grateful that you’ve taken the time to be on Candid Conversations. We’ve talked about quite a lot. We’re going to put a link to your website in our show notes, and all fantastic books that you’ve 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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Episode 255: Are You Wrestling with God?: Jonathan Youssef
25 jun· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
Are you committed to Christ but searching for guidance? In this new reflection, Jonathan Youssef explores the gripping Biblical story of Jacob—a tale of struggle, transformation, and divine engagement. Jonathan connects his own experiences with Jacob’s 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.
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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. I’ve always been intrigued by the biblical story because it has so many layers. It’s multifaceted and multidimensional. And it’s 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, I’ve 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. He’s at odds over who had the birthright in the family. He’s used trickery and deception to achieve his purposes. He’s at odds with his Uncle Laban, a master trickster himself.
But in Genesis, we begin to see the undoing of this character, Jacob. He’s being undone, and he’s being changed and transformed through these middle chapters of this book. He’s served his crooked uncle/father-in-law for twenty-some-odd years, and in many ways, he’s echoing the prodigal son here. Having come to himself, he’s leaving Laban here, and he’s 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 Jacob’s 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, “Hey! I’m coming home.” He’s really only able to do this because the Lord has told him, “The day will come that I’m 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.”
If you remember the account of Jacob’s 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, “I 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.” 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. It’s confirmation that the Lord is with him. He names the area Mahanaim, meaning “two camps.”
Now, perhaps he’s referring to the fact that it’s his camp and the Lord’s camp; the Lord’s camp will be his shield and protection. Because he’s going to need it. And the report comes back, “Hey, Esau’s coming to see you. He’s got four hundred guys with him. It’s going to be great, right?”
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, “Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.”
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 he’s stuck in a difficult situation. He cannot return to his Uncle Laban; he’s terrified to go forward to his brother, Esau, and the unknown. What's he going to do?
Well, he’s 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 he’s a different man now, and Jacob perseveres despite his hesitancy, fear, and distress—unlike my illustrious wrestling career.
And then we see Jacob do something we’ve never seen him do in Scripture. He gets on his knees, and he pleads with God. He’s praying for God’s 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. It’s evidence that the Lord is working in your heart, is it not, when you begin to call on His name, and it’s not just, “Lord, I’m in a mess. Help me out of this,” but rather, it’s “God, you promised to be with me. You promised to protect me. And so I’m coming to you, claiming on those promises.”
And that's what Jacob does, “Lord, you said that you would do good to me. Fulfill your promise to me.” You notice it’s not a panicked prayer, “God, get me out of this bind, and I’ll build a hundred churches for you.”
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. It’s an attitude of repentance. That's what’s 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, he’s scared, yes, but he’s coming behind us. He’s 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, “Because of what the Lord has done in me through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, I can come before you and serve you.”
Think of Zaccheus, “A 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, “And Jesus said, ‘I’m coming to your house for tea,’” because they all drank tea back then. But what does Zaccheus do? Does he just say, “Lord, I’m sorry. I was bad. I did wrong. Forgive me, Lord,” and then just move on?
No! He gives four times back. He repays his debts. It’s evidence of a changed man. And that's the other thing that Jacob is doing, right? He’s gifting these 550 animals. He’s saying, “Brother, I stole your blessing. I used deception and trickery for my own advantage, and now I’m giving it back to you” because I understand I need to be made right with you.”
It’s 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 I’m 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 didn’t know what to do. And he’s repenting, and he’s confessing what he’s done, and so the foreman, impressed by this, cables Henry Ford and says, “You’re not going to believe this. This guy’s come back, and he’s brought everything with him,” to which Ford cabled back, “Dam up the Detroit River and baptize the whole city.” That's what's happening here with Jacob. He’s bringing the blessing back. The blessing that the Lord has poured out on him, he’s giving it back.
Jacob returning. Then we have a second scene, which I’m sure we’re all a little more familiar with, and this is the scene of Jacob wrestling. He’s not only sent his possessions on, he’s sent his whole family ahead. Verse 22 states, “He took his wives and servants and his eleven children, and they crossed over the Jabbok at night.”
And then, in verse 24, he’s all alone, and a man grabs him in the darkness and begins to wrestle with him. My seventh-grade self’s nightmare because I didn’t like wrestling. That was the allusion to that if you’re following along.
Who do you think Jacob thinks he’s wrestling? It’s most likely that he thinks he’s 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, it’s 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 we’re left to ask the question, What will God gain from this, from wrestling with Jacob? He’s already sent all his possessions on ahead. Surely, God is finished with Jacob. He’s repentant, he’s confessed, he’s 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? It’s Jacob. It’s Jacob himself. And Jacob may think that Esau is trying to get what is his, which is to take Jacob’s life, but the reality is that God is wrestling with Jacob to take what is His—which is Jacob! And this wrestling, it’s like a father with a child. You know there’s a way I’m not a good wrestler, as we’ve illustrated, and you’re trying to catch up with me on this. But there’s a way for me to wrestle with my children while they’re young, though my son is getting to the age where I can’t keep up with him. But there’s 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 Jacob’s hip, and now Jacob has this dislocated hip, and you need your hip as a pivot to wrestle, so now he’s got nothing, he’s zero. And he’s clinging to God, and God is saying to him, “Let me go. Let me go,” and Jacob says, “I’m not going to let you go unless you bless me.”
Here’s 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 he’s still not sure who he’s wrestling with, but he’s holding on, and he sees by the power that's rendered his hip inoperable that he’s holding on to a greater being. And he’s saying, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
If you go back and look at Jacob's life, you know what you’ll see? Jacob is immensely blessed. Everything he does is blessed, right? That's what God promised to do, and that's what he’s 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 God’s blessing. And what is God’s blessing? It is that He has every part of us. And how Jacob enters into this blessing is obvious: God says to him, “What is your name?”
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: it’s 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, “Give me your heart, Jacob. That's what I want.” You see that God is prepared to dislocate Jacob’s 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 He’s touched the very thing in which you have depended on for your life, and He’s taken it away from you. That's what's happening to Jacob. The Lord draws him in to say, “Jacob, it’s not all the things in your life that I want you to give me; it’s yourself that I want.”
But you see, there’s 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 he’s not at the back of the caravan as he was before with his plan. He’s at the front now and prepared to take it all. But we’re told that he’s doing two things. One, he’s bowing down seven times, and the other is using the language of “I am the servant, and you, Esau, are the lord.”
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 power—moment by moment, day by day. But the sun has risen upon them.
I wonder if you’ve come across one of these people. And it doesn’t always have to be a physical variation of this; sometimes it’s 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, “You 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.”
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, “I want every part of you. I want your heart.” 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, “Let this cup pass from me.” And there is an equality in the wrestling. “Let 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,” which is why He says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 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 you’re on your way, like Jacob, and you’re walking through repentance and forgiveness. Are you willing to give up a little but not the whole? Perhaps you’re wrestling with God over these things at this moment, and you give a little, but then you fight for others, and it’s a give-and-take relationship, and it’s 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 He’s waiting for you to say, “Don’t let me go. I will not let you go, even if it means me having a limp for the rest of my life.”
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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Episode 254: What is Emotional Intelligence and Why Does it Matter?: Clay Kirkland
18 jun· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
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. Clay’s 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 we’ve 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, “Welcome back, Clay.”
[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 it’s 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 it’s a great topic. I’m very excited to be here to talk about it. And it’s gone through a lot of iterations in terms of its understanding. Probably in the last forty years, really, it’s been around and I’d say probably the last fifteen or twenty it’s 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. We’re leaving some things out, but across the bow, that's what we’re looking for those four quadrants. There’s a self-understanding, there’s a social understanding, then there’s a self-leadership or management, and there’s a social leadership management and understanding.
[02:55] JONATHAN: Even in just giving the categories I feel like I’m picking up on the necessity of being able to understand yourself and know yourself, being able to manage yourself, right, self-control—it’s 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 people’s body language and cues and things that are being given off? So let’s talk about the importance of just those four categories that you’ve 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 we’re really talking about when it comes to emotions. So you’ll hear people say things like, “He doesn’t have a clue what's going on.” Or “Do you realize how angry you sounded when you said that?” And that immediate defensive posture. So in interpersonal relationships, it’s 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 what’s happening with the people that are around you?
So that's the first part, right; it’s just this knowledge. And the great thing—I didn’t 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 a—
[05:09] JONATHAN: You’re not born with it.
[05:10] CLAY: —personality trait that, you’ve gotten and you’re 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: —they slide. But then outside of that awareness and knowledge, it’s what do you do with it? Do you know how to manage yourself? And again, it’s an interplay. It’s always going to blend with the knowledge. Do you know what’s 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, we’re thinking about this process of your limbic system where the seat of your emotions are, and your prefrontal cortex, where you’re 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 that—when you’re alone—or can you do that also when you’re with other people?
[06:34] JONATHAN: This is very scientific but also very practical. Let’s bring in the world of theology. How do you differentiate between spiritual maturity—or 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 anything—
[07:09] JONATHAN: They’re capable of growing.
[07:13] CLAY: And being very emotionally intelligent. So you’re 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 maturity—so 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, there’s 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 it’s 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, let’s make it real simple.
[08:56] JONATHAN: Thanks.
[08:58] CLAY: Yeah, for all of us. You’re going to have your reptilian part of your brain. That's your fight, your flight when you’re in danger. That's just kind of that aspect. If we get past that, we’re typically going to put our neural functions into two other categories. That's going to be your limbic system, and that's the “I feel” place. And then your neocortex, that prefrontal cortex, where you’re going to think rationally and you’re going to make decisions, you’re going to process them.
So what we’re trying to say is, because you get this a lot when I go around and talk to people about emotional intelligence, you’ll typically hear someone or a group of people identify and say, “I don’t have a lot of feelings. I’m not very emotional, so I don’t know if this is going to help.”
[09:59] JONATHAN: “I’m a thinker, not a feeler,” right?
[10:01] CLAY: That's correct, which just means that they’re leaning much more heavily into one area of their brain than the others. That doesn’t mean that they don’t feel. It doesn’t 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, “Hey Clay, on a scale of 1 to 10, how emotional are you,” most people then link that to when’s 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 doesn’t mean that that limbic system within my brain isn’t an active part of the brain. Because it is. For all of us it is, we’re just not leaning into it.
[11:14] JONATHAN: So is there a way—I'm sure we’re all thinking of a person that perhaps is not leaning into their limbic system, and we’re thinking, How do you exercise that? And I’m 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 exercise—and we can do both sides of that—how 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 let’s start with the person who typically is not necessarily a feeling-type person. I’ll 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, “Tell me a recent story about something that went wrong at work.”
So he tells me the story. And after he finishes, I said, “How do you feel about that?”
And he said, “Bad.”
I said, “Try something a little bit more deep, descriptive.” And he just stared at me and said, “I don’t know, it just made me feel bad.”
So I said, “Have you ever heard of the ‘emotions wheel’? It’s a very common graphic, you can google it.”
So he pulled out his phone and said, “Siri, Google,” 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, “Wow, I don’t know if he’s going to be able to do it.”
And he finally said, “Angry.”
And I said, “All right! Great! This is good. This is good.” 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 wasn’t giving airtime to. So again, people who aren’t touchy-feely or aren’t kind of the emotional types, they typically won’t feel anger. They’re aware of that frustration, but what they typically do, they’re guarding themselves. And this is where we’re going to get off on a rabbit trail, so I’m going to pause myself, but they are typically guarding themselves from certain emotions they don’t like or they don’t believe are good or not the type of person they would be. Or pain, or whatever, again, can’t 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, it’s not necessarily the end product, but we just needed to at least give some recognition.
On the flip side, someone who’s highly emotional, again, the way they would describe themselves, and they would say, “Well, I don’t really think that much,” 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 that’s where we kind of do some exercises for people in that kind of space to really pause and start to learn where they’re making their decisions from.
Why are you doing this? “Because I feel like it.” What do you feel? “Well, I feel …” 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, “If 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?” That gives them a pause to consider. Or it’s a common kind of way that we would do it, but we would debate our emotions.
So your classic, classic example for this is—and this just happened recently, so this is a true story, here in this office—I 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, “Hey, there’s a fire alarm test.” He said, “Okay, great.”
So what I didn’t 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 couldn’t 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, “Is there a reason for me to feel any other way? Is there a trigger or consequence that I’m concerned about? Is there any context that I could give myself that could perhaps change the way that I feel currently?”
And again, they are all methods. Those are all different ways—and we can get into those exercises if you want to—but 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. We’re 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 recently—I 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 we’re looking in the water and it’s just like it was emotion-driven. There’s very little rational thought process and the panic mode strikes. He’s 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 you’re talking about, and I thought, “Okay, we’ve been here before. He knows this place.” So I told my wife, I said, “Go back up to where we’re staying and check for him there.” And then I thought, “There’s a little statue that I know he likes. Let me go see maybe if he’s gone over there.” Because we hadn’t thought, “Well, he ran past us,” because we would have seen him. But I thought, “Well, we might have been engaged in conversation and missed him.”
And sure enough, as I’m 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, she’s trying to save people. That's a good thing if the fire alarm is going off.
But I see what you’re saying in terms of just taking a minute to think, “What information do I have? What am I …?”
Because I think your mind probably shuts down, you get into tunnel vision and that sort of thing.
Let’s 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: I’d say in the last twenty years or so there’s been a push to raise the importance of EQ. Not to diminish IQ, because it’s important to learn, become smart, develop that part of your brain. But this isn’t 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 you’ll 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, who’s 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 you’re 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 they’re saying—this is me trying to interpret a little bit—again, it’s not to say, “Well, that means only 20 percent is IQ.” That's not what it’s saying. It’s saying we pushed, “Be smart, be smart, be smart, be smart” 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, I’ll bring Google up in a second, but that's that pattern. We said, “IQ, IQ, IQ, IQ.” And here’s how you’re going to be measured on that, you’re going to get rewarded. You’re going to get awards, you’re going to get plaques, you’re going to get acceptance letters, you’re going to get scholarships, and you’re going to get a job.” That’s the way we measure IQ. We pushed that so much, it’s 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 “soft skills” were trumping hard skills. And they were trumping them in the sense that everyone came almost with the same hard skills—the STEM degrees that they all came with—but 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, it’s not that we should depress one in order to elevate the other as much as you’re 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 there’s 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. I’m trying to think it as it relates to us in the Christian life specifically and it’s interesting that you bring up Google. I would think coding or something in the technology field, I wouldn’t think there’s 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, it’s interesting that what they’re 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 it’s interesting. If you look at statistics back when Millennials were in the limelight, I’d 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 Z’s are infiltrating now the workplace.
So you see that push for now over half of the workforce, so regardless of what industry you’re going to find, you’re seeing that desire for camaraderie, teamwork, connections. So even post-COVID where a lot of things have gone hybrid, work models, it’s still you’re on a Teams meeting, you’re on a Zoom meeting, you’re 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 it’s 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 it’s going to be very difficult for almost any job to be a job where you’re not going to need some type of emotional intelligence skills in order to make yourself successful. Can you find it out there? Sure, there’s 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 we’re relational beings. I mean, even by our very creation.
[29:23] CLAY: Yes, absolutely. So that's that little vignette there. So I would say—you 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 there’s 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 there’s 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 there’s 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 there’s a surrender of those things that they’ve 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, it’s almost like a classic for emotional intelligence, especially the end, “Search me and know me,” right? So there’s self-awareness, I want to be known. “See if there is any hurtful way in me.” That's I want to get better. But this is my favorite part is that at the very end he says, “And then lead me in the way everlasting.” The reason that's my favorite part is because of how it’s 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, you’re good. It doesn’t mean you’re good.
[31:47] JONATHAN: There’s no way forward.
[31:50] CLAY: That's correct. Right. So David there it’s like, “Hey, I want to be aware of myself. I need to be aware of myself.” The whole psalm is basically saying, “You’re absolutely aware of me. I’m pretty much under the spotlight.” 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, “We’re going to focus on you so that then we can get you out of the way.” 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 there’s a lot of awareness. But it’s not just so that they can know themselves; it’s 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 don’t 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, you’re 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. I’ll just take one swing at it, because that's—
[34:20] JONATHAN: We’ll do a five-part episode.
[34:23] CLAY: Yeah, that's a big one. I’ll go real technical in terms of emotional intelligence [unintelligible]. In the assessment that I’m trained in and I like to administer to people, it’s got subsets. So it’s 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 you’ve 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 they’re not. They’re stuck. [unintelligible] And so in those two, when I look at volatility of our current culture and social media, it’s you see a plan so easily in those two regards. Someone has an opinion, someone has the other one, you can’t 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 didn’t 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 everybody’s life. You want to take it to a biblical place, then you go back to the words of Jesus where He said, “In this world you’ll have trouble.” He’s already told you. And everybody’s response to it. He gives you the clue, if you’re doing it from a Christian perspective, He says, “But I have overcome the world,” 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, it’ll crush you. But if you realize that that's not the weight of the world, regardless of the situation, even if it’s 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. I’ll 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 can’t remember where I came up with this, but so this is the question when you’re 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 I’m talking about. If they don’t know what I’m 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 it’s on the editing floor, then why are we treating it like it’s 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 don’t 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 you’ll 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, it’s just your habit. You’re choosing it, you just didn’t realize that your brain is in default into the choice. You’re 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. We’re talking about neural paths. You can choose a different neural pathway. Your brain would prefer to go the habitual route because then it doesn’t have to work that hard. So in all of these things, what we’re trying to do is to give ourselves pause enough to alert ourselves that we’re 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 we’re 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 it’s 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 is—and I’m just even putting myself in situations where I’m 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 you’re right; sometimes it’s like I don’t even think about it. It’s just this is just what I do.
It makes me think of sort of the enneagram thing, well, that's just who I am. I’m a fill-in-the-number, but there’s 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, it’s 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 Christ’s work and what He has done.
You’ve shared a lot of really great and helpful stories, but could you give us some examples of applied EQ principles in—and I’m going to give you three different things, and then I’ll remind you of them if you can’t remember. So one for parenting, two, the workplace, and three, the church. So we’ll start with parenting.
[43:32] CLAY: I’ll be as practical and as vulnerable as I can. What we’re trying to teach—we’ve got six kids, a major focus for us right now is just empathy, how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. A funny but revealing story is several years ago my wife was crying about a certain matter. One of my sons—
[44:02] JONATHAN: Name redacted.
[44:05] CLAY: We’ll 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, “Why are you crying?” And he said, “I’m crying because she’s crying.” And then that brother who was not crying was like, “That's the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
[44:28] JONATHAN: That doesn’t 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 you’re 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 he’s probably at an A-. There’s one little uptick and he’s 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. I’ve spent several months, almost half a year, keeping an empathy log so I can start to train my brain to think about someone else’s emotions. And it got much better, but it’s something I really had to learn.
In parenting, we’re saying regardless of your starting point, this is something that matters. It matters biblical standpoint, it’s truly what Jesus did and still does. It, from an interpersonal standpoint, if you can’t put yourself in someone else’s shoes, that's going to be very difficult for you to have compassion on someone and serve someone to even care when they’re 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, “How do you think so-and-so feels about this? Where are they in this story?” So that's our skill right now, so it’s above any other skills that we’re trying to get. One, as a family of eight, we’re hoping to do that well. If we can, have empathy, so we’re 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 don’t 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: They’ll be a good friend.
[47:31] CLAY: Absolutely. So huge piece in that one, and that's what we’ve 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 you’ve heard to other people, you can’t 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 something’s then misinterpreted and then that person is, “That's not what is said. That's not what I meant at all.” And then now they have to go have a meeting about that meeting.
[48:29] JONATHAN: I’ve been in those.
[48:30] CLAY: You’ve been in those. We’ve all been in those. So now you’re having a meeting about a meeting and then you’re 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 you’re feeling, right? You can see that every day almost in practical experiences in yourself where you’ve got your typical passive-aggressive, bless you heart type who’s lying through their teeth. They don’t have any blessings for you, but that's what they say. So that type of differentiator in the business sector is massive, it’s 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. I’ll pick one, and maybe it’s 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 people’s, 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 you’re hearing these days is burnout.
Burnout to me is when someone and they have had a moral failure, they’ve stolen money from the church, they’ve ripped their kids’ lives apart, that's not good. But typically what you see before burnout—when we say burnout, like “Hey, I just can’t do this anymore,” now they’re 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, you’re thinking about really self-control. In emotional intelligence it’s called “impulse control.” 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, it’s 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 it’s too late. So I think impulse control is real big, again in EQ, for the church to say, “Hey, 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 they’re going to believe what you say.” [Overlapping voices]
[52:43] JONATHAN: So even in thinking about each of those ones you’ve just given us for children (or parenting, rather), workplace, church, it’s interesting because all of those, I’m just thinking on the side of this in terms of protecting yourself—not 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. It’s a very communal—which, of course, emotional intelligence is about relating with others and self. And so it’s interesting in thinking about the way you’ve described or given those examples how much, if you’re setting up safeguards or even beyond safeguards you’re 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 you—sorry, this is like bucketing rain our here. A hurricane is coming to Athens. Are you—do you encourage people to work these things out, to develop these skills, within a communal setting, accountability levels? And my power’s just gone off. We’re still connected, so we’ll just keep going.
[54:42] CLAY: Absolutely. I think the—I 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: It’s the navel-gazing example you gave earlier, self-help.
[55:09] CLAY: We’re trying to gauge our self-awareness and we’re 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 you’ve 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 you’ll see it on both sides of the coin. So when people say they have blind spots, what they typically means is let’s say I’m a person with a blind spot. I almost always say that person thinks that they’re here and they’re actually here. They think they’re better—which 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 they’re much higher, they’re 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 you’re 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, you’re going to have to have people to work them out with and then people to let you know how you’re doing. Every phase has to be in community.
[56:56] JONATHAN: I’m sure people are listening to this and thinking, “I know someone who needs help with this.” Is it a subject where it’s like, “Hey, I sent you a little questionnaire you can fill out to see all your blind spots”? How do you broach the subject with—is it like, “Hey, I’m working on some self-improvement stuff. Would you want to do this with me?” 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, it’s if you’re trying to inspire—I’ll use that term—someone else to do it, yeah, that's … There’s not just one way, because you can have a relationship where you can say—
[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, “You have to do this.” They have no choice. And then there’s other people who would say, “Hey, I want to bring this up to my husband. How should I do that?” 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 isn’t to say, You’re wrong, you’re broken, you’re damaged,” as much as to say, “These are skills that both of us or all of us should learn, can we do this together?” Because it’s not, again, I’m certified in emotional intelligence and I teach it and coach it, but I still have to live it or I won’t 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, “Hey, let’s do this together.” Because no one can say, “Hey, I hope you get to this point.”
[59:13] JONATHAN: When you're like me, then you’ve 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 I’m grateful for your training and your expertise in this area, and I’m 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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Episode 253: LGBTQ Conversations: Transgender from Biblical Times to Now, Claire and Rob Smith (Reprise)
11 jun· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
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 women’s 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
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Episode 252: How 20 Minutes Can Impact Your Child's Spirituality: Tyler Van Halteren (Reprise)
4 jun· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
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 Master’s in Divinity from the Master's Seminary, has passionately shared Christ’s teachings and the Bible’s wisdom throughout his life.
Tyler’s 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 children’s 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 Tyler’s 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. It’s a joy to be here.
[02:31] JONATHAN: Well, tell us a little bit about your background, upbringing, and then we’ll transition into how you got into writing and producing kids’ literature.
[02:43] TYLER: By God’s 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 parents’ 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 Pilgrim’s 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 that’s the first memory that I have of understanding the Christian life and wanting to follow Christ. That’s the first book I remember reading in that season.
So that led, by God’s 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 children’s camp. And so I was able to teach there and saw a measure of gifting, a desire to teach, and then went on to Master’s 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 we’re 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 children’s programs, so I’d 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 up—a variety of numbness and extreme fatigue that kind of landed us back in Canada, but trusting God’s 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 God’s continuing that missionary desire through these books.
[05:44] JONATHAN: Unbelievable. Okay, so you’ve shared with us that it was Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress that set you on a particular path. I’m assuming that’s the connection to wanting to retell it through a child’s 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 I’ve 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 children’s version of Pilgrim’s 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 I’ve opened a book and my son has sort of screamed and cried in terror at the illustrations. The illustrations were so—
[06:53] JONATHAN: I have been there. Especially for a three- and four-year-old.
[07:00] TYLER: Yes, absolutely terrifying.
[07:01] JONATHAN: Here’s the Christian faith, my child.
[07:05] TYLER: Yeah, I saw that, and I thought, Okay, there’s 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 the—I think it’s more for teenage readers, maybe, and it is very graphic. Apollyon the dragon is very scary and menacing. And you’re right, there’s a lot—I mean, that’s the way Bunyan wrote it, right? I mean, it is dramatic, very. But when you’re thinking about little ones, you’ve got to tone some of that down so they’re 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 I’m coming into this somewhat naïve 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 Lord’s 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 let’s talk about that. So as a parent, it is hard to find really good—and I know it’s out there and I’ve got a lot of them. But there’s not a lot of really great Christian children’s books. It’s either for an age up, as we just talked about, or it’s kind of delves into more of a moralistic, you know, do this, behave this way, obedience—which are true things, but there are so many better, deeper truths that we need to expose our kids to. I think there’s a longing of parents—
I mean, I hear it from moms all the time, “Hey, if you can think of a kids’ book and write it, like go for it.” Because there’s a real need for that, especially at those young, really vulnerable ages, age category.
[09:44] TYLER: Yeah, and we’ve 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 that’s been an exciting part, too, seeing how much this has resonated with parents, this kind of idea. And there’s other publishers that are doing some really great, like probably in the last five years really there’s 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, “Okay, how do we get really good Gospel-centered books that hit the core of these issues for kids?”
And the fun part of that has been the allegory idea of Bunyan’s allegory and seeing how much that’s resonated with people.
[10:30] JONATHAN: So let’s talk about just the impact I mean, it’s obviously a tradition within ... it’s 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, kids’ 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, that’s 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 it’s challenging in our day and age. Generally, we’re pretty busy people and probably more busy than we need to be, so it’s hard to set aside a time. And sometimes it’s hard to get kids that aren’t wiggling during that time, or moving around, or asking, “Okay, when is it over? When is it over?”
[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 they’re winding down and they know they’re not going to bed yet, so they’re getting a little extension. And so that just became a very simple, practical tool for me. Hey, maybe I can’t do X, Y and Z with my kids, but 15 minutes before bed, that’s a pretty easy thing to do. And I’m seeing how that impacted my son was a real treat and a joy.
I’m thinking of our book, seeing Christian by the cross, his burden falling off, and him saying to me, “Yeah, God ...” Or “Dad, that’s what God does. He removes our burden of sin.” I remember reading David Helms’ Big Picture Bible, and him seeing Jesus on the cross and saying, “I want to follow Jesus. I want to be saved from my sin. I want to know Jesus.”
[12:42] JONATHAN: That’s an iconic scene, isn’t it? Bunyan’s ... I mean, even people who haven’t read the book are at least somewhat familiar with the scene of his burden falling off his back as he stands at the cross. It’s such a picturesque scene. You have talked about how he’s 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 we’re trying to help formulate in our children and what they’re getting from those 15 minutes before bed.
[13:23] TYLER: Yeah, I think a big one I’ve seen, and I’ve heard from a lot of families, is the reality of death and eternity. And I can’t think of many kids’ books that hit that on the nose.
[13:38] JONATHAN: Yeah, it’s not coming up with regularity, that’s for sure.
[13:40] TYLER: Yeah, yeah. So that’s 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 king’s city, the celestial city.
I’ve heard some very, very sweet stories from people and gotten emails that have brought me to tears where someone’s 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 we’d left family behind and now we’re going on this journey, in a sense, and that’s all done in light of eternity. So these metaphors of the celestial city and living for the king’s 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. “You do that with your kids?”
And I said, “Oh, you don’t?”
[15:20] JONATHAN: Culture shock there.
[15:21] TYLER: Yeah, and they said, “No, no. They go to bed when they go to bed, and we’re not too involved with that.”
I said, “Oh, you should try it.” 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 we’ve left he messaged me saying, “We still do that every night. We still read to our daughter before bed. And we’ve gone through these books these many times and thank you for this.”
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 God’s 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 we’ve seen that tenfold since then.
[17:08] JONATHAN: You’ve talked about how Bunyan’s 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 don’t have theological degrees like you and I, they can be overwhelmed—though having a theological degree doesn’t 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 it’s 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 that’s for anything—science, et cetera—to 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 to—
[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 God’s Word. So I love in Part 2, which is less known (his original Part 2) there’s a scene where they’re 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 that’s 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 it’s a very clear explanation of what it means that the King’s Son died in our place. He took our sin. He gave us his righteousness.
And then that, combined with different images of Christian’s 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 that’s 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 aren’t too graphic.
[20:20] TYLER: Yes, yes. That are age appropriate. And then also to have text that’s sort of clear, deep but simple and not overwhelming, and to pair that up well. We visited a friend’s house, and they had their range of kids from two to seven, and they had all the books out. They said, “We swear we’re not just...”
[20:44] JONATHAN: Not for you.
[20:45] TYLER: “... because you’re here.”
[20:48] JONATHAN: It’s normally like this. Well, you’d find that at our house, too. We’ve got both book 1 and 2 wide open on some page.
[20:55] TYLER: That’s awesome. And I will see them, just the kids were flipping through the pictures. Like they couldn’t read yet, but—
[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 that’s 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 you’ve 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 was—
[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 he’s just saying, “Write it on your doorstops. Write it on ...” Like everywhere you’re going, just have these moments. So where kids are inquisitive, kids ask. It’s a crazy amount of questions per day, I think when you actually ... when you’ve done studies of that, I’m sure.
But if you’re feeding them these biblical things, then they’re 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. We’d always have at nighttime, it would be like, “Oh, you can watch a show, but it’s going to be a Bible show.”
I know different families have different rhythms and some don’t like shows and some like shows. But first it was an easy switch to just say, “You want to watch Paw Patrol. Instead, let’s watch something else.” And a lot of those ended up being moralistic, as we kind of said. But at least it’s 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 they’re just thinking about things and things are resonating. And so my grandma had died last year, and my son said, “Can we call her?” Like after she died. “Can we video call her because I want to see God? Because she’s with God.” And so I was like, oh, that’s such an interesting ...
[23:33] JONATHAN: He’s got a deep truth with some confusion.
[23:38] TYLER: “She’s in the presence of God, why wouldn’t she have her cell phone? We used to call her. Now can’t we call her now?” So then you just have these neat opportunities when you’re just there. There’s the input, intentional biblical input, and then they’re going to be inquisitive, asking questions through the day as we experience ... “Why does this family do that? Why does my friend have a mom but no dad around?” Or “Why does this cousin not believe in Jesus?” and things like that.
[24:12] JONATHAN: Yeah. Having kids keeps you on your toes. And if you’re a believing family, then there’s 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. There’s, you know, as we kind of laughed about, I mean, kids ask a ridiculous amount of questions. And there’s times where I think sometimes I’m like, “I’m done. Done answering your questions. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
And that’s 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 there’s usually something underlying all of that. Fear, doubt, whatever it is. Or sometimes it is just curiosity. So it’s 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 don’t know the answer? Then I’m going to fail my child, or whatever it is. And it’s like, you know, kids don’t think in that category necessarily. I think it’s actually quite biblical to say, “You know what? You’re asking really good questions. Why don’t we look at this together? Why don’t we kind of use this as an opportunity to show that mom and dad don’t know everything, and they’re seeking to grow just like you are?”
So tell us a little bit about the Kingdom of God story books. This is another project that you’ve done. I don’t 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 exciting—
[26:22] JONATHAN: Yeah, taking Old and New Testament, that’s a big undertaking.
[26:28] TYLER: That was the most challenging book I’ve written, obviously, because you want to do honor to God’s Word and to be faithful. And initially it was going to be bird’s eye overview. So I thought 70 pages and we’ll 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, it’s still missing ... like there’s something ...
[26:53] JONATHAN: It’s always something.
[26:54] TYLER: ... in between these. And so that grew to 140, and then 280, and then all of a sudden it’s—
[27:01] JONATHAN: It’s summer reading.
[27:03] TYLER: Yeah, suddenly it’s 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 there’s many others. So that was an exciting challenge. And then seeing prophecies of the King to come in the Old Testament. There’s 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 God’s kingdom.
As Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is now in your midst.” He said, “I have come for this purpose: to proclaim the Kingdom of God.” So if that’s His understanding, He’s saying, “For me to come and fulfill what God has promised is to display myself as the King of God’s kingdom,” 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 God’s presence, God’s people, in God’s place, through God’s promise. And each chapter kind of has a summary in that way to connect those things.
[28:28] JONATHAN: Ah, that’s great. Books on the horizon. I think you have a third Pilgrim’s Progress book coming out. Little Pilgrim, Big Journey, I should call it. I keep calling it Pilgrim’s Progress.
[28:38] TYLER: That’s okay. Yeah, Part 3, which I’m excited about, it’s about the two brothers, Christian’s 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, we’re going across this journey and then we get to death and then it’s done. And there’s 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, they’ve taken the mantle from Evangelist.
[29:34] TYLER: Yeah. Yeah, so it’s kind of an exciting. As even Evangelist and Great-heart pass, they say, over the River of Death, they say, “You take my sword. You go on.” And so I think that’s 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 I’m excited about that book.
And then there’s also. Our tribute to Bunyan was a legacy edition of the Pilgrim’s 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 it’s just a real treat to read.
[30:17] JONATHAN: Well, my son will be excited for the third. Because he did ask why are Christiana’s 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. We’re 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 you’ll 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 asked—and they’re 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 that’s been a great tool that you guys have put together on that.
[31:24] TYLER: Yeah, that’s 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, “Would anyone find questions helpful?” And there was just a ton of response, “Yes, yes, please, please.” 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: It’s so good. So helpful. Tyler Van Halteren, I am so grateful to have met you now that I’ve 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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Episode 251: Broadcasting Hope: Farid Garas
28 mai· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
Have you ever considered the miraculous power of the Gospel message as it transcends borders, languages, and opposition? In this episode, we talk about the profound influence of Christian media in the Arab-speaking world through the compelling experiences of Farid Garas, the Senior Director of THE KINGDOM SAT satellite television and internet channel – a media outreach of Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef.
Farid's narrative is not just about spreading the Gospel; it's a journey of overcoming adversity, embracing his identity in Christ, and changing lives in a region where broadcasting Christian content can defy expectations and alter eternity.
Embark on a captivating journey with Farid, a man who once questioned Christianity but now plays a pivotal role in shaping Christian media in a region where such content has often faced significant obstacles. His encounters with authorities, far from deterring him, only reinforced his commitment to his faith and mission, making his story a testament to the power of unwavering faith in Christ.
Through this conversation, Farid highlights the strategic use of drama, film, and satellite television to spread the Christian message, reaching out to believers and those searching for Truth in tumultuous times. He discusses the growth of THE KINGDOM SAT, its impact, and the continuous efforts to foster a connection with the audience through live broadcasts and digital platforms.
This episode not only delves into Farid's personal and professional life but also provides a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities in media and ministry. Through their resilience and dedication, Farid and THE KINGDOM SAT team offer hope to millions in the Middle East, demonstrating the transformative potential of faith-based media in the face of adversity.
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 251: Broadcasting Hope: Farid Garas.
[01:28] JONATHAN: Today we have a special guest, an in-house guest here at Leading The Way. Farid Garas is the senior director of the Kingdom Sat. The Kingdom Sat is our 24/7 satellite channel for the Arab-speaking world, taking biblical teaching and different types of programming through satellite television and internet to the Arab-speaking population. He has become a good friend and I am so honored to have him joining us on Candid Conversations. Farid, thank you for joining us.
[02:06] Farid: Thank you, Jonathan, and I would say congratulations. This is the first podcast after being Dr. Jonathan Youssef. So congratulations. It’s an honor to be with you.
[02:16] JONATHAN: Well, it’s an honor to be with you. And you are doing some doctoral work yourself. And we can get into that a little bit later for those who are listening, you’re from Egypt. Tell us a little bit about growing up and your life story and then we can transition into how you got into broadcast ministry.
[02:39] Farid: Yeah. I feel I am a minority of the minority, an evangelical Christian in Egypt. And that was a great blessing. I didn’t like it in the beginning, feeling that minority I’m not like everyone else, but it was great. My father was a scientist. He studied science, and he didn’t like all the Christian religious ideas at that time, talking mainly about the traditional Coptic traditions or Christian traditions. And he always thought that those Christians are cheesy and he didn’t like that.
So his two sisters invited him to a Christian conference, and he said, “Okay, I’ll go. But after the first day I will not like it and I will go back home.” So he tried to flee from the conference three times, and those good Christians would go after him and bring him back.
[03:42] JONATHAN: Kicking and screaming.
[03:44] Farid: Yeah. So God grabbed his attention through Bible study, and also because of the witness of those Christians that went after him. He discovered that those Christians are really good people. They are professionals. They are not cheesy. They are very intellectual, they are funny, they are successful. So he was attracted to God by the witness and the Bible study. The following year, after studying the Bible for one year, he became very excited about this paradigm shift that God allowed him to go through just by knowing the Lord, and he led the conference the following year. He invited eighteen people from his family, young people, and long story short, they all became Christians. They confessed … they gave their lives to the Lord.
[04:36] JONATHAN: Were they from a Coptic background?
[04:41] Farid: Yeah, they are nominal Christians, mainly. And many of them are leaders in the Christian ministry now. And he played a great role in my life, not just by the Christian teaching, but by his example to me. And he showed me it was a balance between unconditional love and discipline. And it’s like your father played a great role in your life, and that prepared me to know the Lord more and to be ready for ministry.
[05:14] JONATHAN: Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about your upbringing. Your father’s obviously grown into leadership roles within the Christian community, the evangelical community. You’re grown up in a covenant home, where you’ve heard the Word taught. Tell us a little bit about your faith journey.
[05:37] Farid: Yeah. So my father and mother brought us in a church setting and in a covenant environment, and they prepared us to hear the word of the Lord in house and also in church. But as a teenager, even a kid in an evangelical church, you get to hear the salvation message more than one time. But one time I remember, and the teacher has related with me, it was a play about the end of days. And the last line in the play, the main character talks to the audience and says, “What if Jesus came today? Are you going to be here or there?”
And of course, it was so dramatic. And so I went home and couldn’t sleep. I was thinking of all the events of that day. Is my life really Christian? Am I up to the standard that God accepts? And do I enjoy His redemption just because I want to get released of the … get out of … get out of hell?
[06:50] JONATHAN: Yeah, sure. Get out of hell.
[06:53] Farid: If only that reason, not relationship. So I couldn’t sleep, thinking about all these things, and I had to go to the school the following day. I was so tired. So I came back after the school, had a nap, woke up, found I’m home alone; nobody’s home. So I thought, “Uh, oh.”
[07:14] JONATHAN: It’s happened.
[07:16] Farid: Yeah. So this was one of the times that God not only grabbed my attention I think He was preparing me for how media ministry could be a tool in evangelism and in Christian life.
[07:34] JONATHAN: So the impact of that performance left a mark on you that you wanted to continue to build upon that.
[07:44] Farid: Yes. After that, I was becoming like a dedicated Christian. Okay, I need to study the word. I need to practice all these things. And as a result for that, I was invited by the Christian religion teacher, in the middle school, to talk. We have those Christian classes. They separate Muslims and Christians, each group in one class, and there is a curriculum, but he would finish the curriculum and then ask me, “Okay, Farid, tell us what you think about this.”
Mainly, I’m the only evangelical. He wanted to know what those evangelicals say, so I would share. And then mostly it went all right, apart from one of my colleagues who was very rigid, very extreme, and he would say all those things, “Oh, you evangelicals say this.” “Oh, you say that.” And long story, but it ended up that we became best friends and he gave his life to the Lord. We used to study every night together and so on. And after he became Christian, he has these leadership qualities and he became also excited. And together we started this evangelistic drama team. This drama team grew very fast because it was very effective. We wrote our own plays, we performed in churches, in youth meetings. Even we started our like independent Christian theater festivals. Like we would do three plays in three nights, and it was very well received. Like most of the nights we find that we have double the number of audience, so we need to perform twice and so on. And we even came here to Atlanta in 1996, during the Olympics, to help in evangelistic campaigns for the Arabic speakers.
[09:59] JONATHAN: Wow. I don’t know what to call it. The drama bug had been captured and you’re seeing this as a tool for evangelism, for outreach even internationally., I think you start to recognize that this is only a small stage. Explain to us how the doors opened up to having a bigger reach and a bigger audience.
[10:30] Farid: Yeah, the drama bug is only like a tool in evangelism. And in the Christian media I’ve been for many years, you would find like two extremes. One extreme you would find some very interesting, exciting but shallow content. On the other side you can find very good, deep teaching, very sophisticated, spiritual, biblical but sometimes boring.
[10:57] JONATHAN: This is through television medium.
[10:59] Farid: Yeah. And the theater and radio. So, I mean what was special about this team that God showed us how He could use the good content, because the gospel is the core. And when we started presenting the gospel in the drama tool that would communicate to people in our age, we found that it needs to be like this formula. We cannot let one play to be just popular because it’s funny. And we found that God is growing the work.
So it started with theater, then we started to do some radio with TransWorld Radio, like doing drama on radio and so on. And we went to television. You know in Egypt in those years, early, until early 90s, there’s no Christian content available for public audience, even Christians. We are 10 to 15 percent. But the national television would allow a Christian Mass only on Christmas, so it’s like one hour per year.
So we said, okay, how can we break into television? And it was hard. There was no way. So we tried to read books, practice, and we started like drama schools. We don’t know anything, but we start inviting people to teach us. And I wanted to study more about media like in a professional way, so I saved money, worked for eight years, then came here to the States, studied digital filmmaking school, did some internship. Then went back to Egypt, completed more studies, did the diploma in film production and directing in the American university.
[13:00] JONATHAN: So your heart was always to go back to Egypt. Yeah.
[13:03] Farid: Yes. I mean, it was very good over here. I studied in Hawaii, then internship in San Diego. The goal is to do ministry, so I went back to Egypt and completed this study, which allowed me to be part of the cinema syndicate and also to have my own production house. So it all started from just the first play that introduced me to the Lord, and then it continued to do more. Now I have to do more work for the mainstream media and the Christian.
And this production house was very successful. God gave me favor in my vendors and producers and it went fast because mainly I learned here in America a different style than the Egyptian national television. Minimum crew doing quality work in a different way. Of course, technology and so on. And I got the hands-on experience. So I had still the main goal was to do ministry using media, but I was able to fund the Christian work from the secular work I used to do—mainly corporate videos, advertisements and documentaries and so on. So they complemented each other. And it grew like for 2003 to 2009 like for six years.
[14:44] JONATHAN: Wow. Wow. Sort of paint a picture for us. What does it look like, up to that point, before there’s television broadcasts, evangelistic broadcasts being allowed in the country? What did sort of radio and drama team, what does that kind of penetration into the population look like?
[15:07] Farid: I mean, you could easily say there is none official media for Christians. They would allow some official magazine or newspaper from the Coptic Church and some from the evangelical, but mainly they would be accepted only in a church setting. So there is no mass media, no radio. So we had Christian radio, TransWorld Radio, that was being broadcast from—
[15:40] JONATHAN: South of France, yeah. Monaco.
[15:41] Farid: So you could only receive it at like 10:30 PM to 11:30 PM, and you have to be in an area where there’s not a lot of buildings and so on. It was a great blessing. Many people knew the Lord from it. But it didn’t serve the mass, those true seekers—Muslims, Christians, nominal Christians. So that was the case until ’96 when Christian satellite was there as a technology. The government didn’t allow it, but it was there.
[16:16] JONATHAN: So that's kind of your introduction into the television world in terms of Christianity.
[16:24] Farid: Yes. I mean, it’s now available. Can we break into that? After the study and this production house, I was able to share in lots of production. And before that, God had prepared me with working in dubbing Christian media, like Jesus Film, VeggieTales, Super Book, as an actor. And it was a great experience.
[16:55] JONATHAN: And where were those being broadcast?
[16:58] Farid: In one of the production houses that actually it’s like a Christian place but also recognized as a production house. So I got some training in that, and when the satellite started, I was one of the first ones that were ready to do a part.
[17:19] JONATHAN: So let’s kind of move the timeline forward as Christian media is now being produced. And at what point does the government allow satellite broadcasting?
[17:35] Farid: You know they didn’t allow it because satellite is broadcasted from abroad. So in order to stop it, they had to stop all the bouquet of channels, so they couldn’t do that. So it first started on one of the satellites that was Europe-based, but if you have a big satellite dish and receiver, you could receive it at home.
And it’s different than here in America. I mean, satellite in the Middle East is free to own. So you just spend maybe $15 or so to have a device recorder and you receive about two thousand channels. So among them are one Christian channel, so if the government wants to stop, they have to stop everything, so they couldn’t.
[18:31] JONATHAN: Right. There’d be too much backlash. [18:48] So let’s fast-forward. It’s 2009. You’re very busy. Tell us a little bit about what's going on in that year.
[18:57] Farid: Yeah. It was a very important year. At that time, I was busy doing production with different now-Christian satellites. They are more than one now and I already started as a part time in one of the satellite ministries out there and at the same time I was having my production house. And I read a book in one of my visits to Europe and America about Muslim testimonies. You never read those in Egypt, so I thought maybe I should film some. I was naïve. I didn’t know everything is like under surveillance. So I had this studio in my production house. I was doing lots of projects, but this one I said, okay, I need to be careful just in case, so I’ll do it in a secret environment.
But it wasn’t. So I filmed those testimonies and the following day I started to get visits from the national security. And the way it was done, it wasn’t like—they didn’t come and say, “We are the national security. WE want to investigate those Christian projects.” No. First they would send like one department of some kind of police, checking the social security or checking the telephone or electricity.
[20:40] JONATHAN: They were spying on you.
[20:42] Farid: They were—I mean, in Egypt, I mean, not all the businesses would have all the papers right. So the plan was to find something wrong to make a case against this office without saying it’s religious, just to keep the face for the media in the West. So they didn’t find anything wrong. It took like five weeks, several visits. So the last one they said, “Okay, there is a censorship case against you.” Usually, those are copyrights or not using original software, which is very common in Egypt. But my software was original. I had no violations. But the case was still there.
And then the national security officer called me in his office. I mean, before all that happened, God prepared me. I had this shooting day with kids at 9:00 AM.
[21:45] JONATHAN: Filming, yeah.
[21:46] Farid: Yeah, it was prepared and everything is in place and I had a dream or vision that I woke up early, like 5:00 AM, very alert with this impression that an officer or someone from the security will come and ask about me. And I knew this was from the Lord because it came with a sense of peace. It should be scary because I know what could happen.
[22:17] JONATHAN: Yeah, right. And you’ve got a wife and kids and—
[22:20] Farid: Yeah. It’s … So I started praying, like reading the Bible and committing the day to the Lord, and I met my friend and production manager at 7:00 AM. I said I had this dream, so I smiled and he said, “What do you want to do? Do you want to cancel shooting today?” I said, “No, no. But if the officer came, please call me outside not to scare the kids.”
And we started at 9:00 AM filming. Everything went all right until 3:00 PM I got the visit. They mainly told me “There is a warrant against you. Come to the national security office at 11:00 PM” at night. That's like usual part of the environment you’re put in. And at that meeting, the officer confronted me. “Why are you filming those infidels?” according to the apostate law, they were Muslims, now they are Christians, they are supposed to be under this apostasy law. Apostasy law in Islam if someone left Islam he’s supposed to be executed. It’s not applied in Egypt, but the concept is there, so it’s not allowed by the families or by the regime or—
[23:45] JONATHAN: Right. It’s an intimidation factor, yeah.
[23:47] Farid: Yeah, for the what they call the public peace and so on. And he said, “Why did you do that?”
I said, “I'm a professional director and filming what they have to say.”
And he said, “Yeah, but tell me how much would you take, I see you produce a lot of Christian content.”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “Okay, this Christian music video,” it’s all like a lot of content from my production house. “How much do you take like to produce one?”
I said, “Yeah, like one thousand pounds.”
“Okay, what if you do like a music video, secular, mainstream one?” He said, “How much would you take?”
I said, “I will be like about fifteen.”
“Fifteen thousand to one thousand. So why would you choose to do the Christian work?”
I said, “I’d like you to watch one of those music videos, secular ones. Would you be happy to show them to your family, to your kids? I want my family to be proud about what I present.”
And he said, “Okay, why did you film those testimonies or stories. For them it’s like disaster.”
I said, “They … I mean, according to the constitution, we have freedom of speech, right?”
“Oh yeah, okay.” And he said, “Okay, do you have license for the production?”
I said, “Yes.”
And he started asking questions, and we ended up having a case of censorship. And I asked the lawyer at that time, “Okay, why is it censorship. I had nothing wrong.”
He said, “Yeah, because it’s national security, it’s classified. They cannot declare it.” And this lawyer was a Muslim. He said, “We’re going to win this.”
So God placed that lawyer after like four different lawyers, and that lawyer took maybe five months to one year, I think, until the case was resolved. And it was what was so-called Arab Spring, the revolution.
[26:00] JONATHAN: Yeah, the people will remember watching that footage back at 2011 and the revolution in the streets and the overthrow of Mubarak and then somewhat of an election that took place afterwards, yeah.
[26:18] Farid: Yes. And during that time, the case was released. And actually they had confiscated two of my editing machines. One of them had my first Christian evangelistic feature film footage and the other one had the backup, so it was unfortunate. I have many other agents witness, but then God really gave us favor in getting those back after all the police stations were burned and somehow God kept those editing suites and the footage, and this film was released and it was even screened here in America.
It’s an evangelistic movie about an immigrant who thinks that he’s persecuted because he’s Christian. He doesn’t know that his problem is he doesn’t have this relationship with God. So he comes here to America and finds that there is another set of challenges, and then he gets to know the Lord and then his life starts to take a positive turn and that film was here in cinemas in I think 2012 and it was shown in five states who have heavy Arabic-speakers population.
[27:46] JONATHAN: Well, this wasn’t your only run-in with the Egyptian authorities. You continue to produce content and then you find yourself in a similar situation—a worse situation.
[28:02] Farid: Yes. Now I have a file.
[28:06] JONATHAN: That's right.
[28:22] Farid: Yeah, during those years, God made a great awakening in Egypt after the revolution. It was both religious, ritual, biblical and also political for young people especially. And there was not a lot of control at that time, so a lot of ministries were able to go out and do more. One of them was this Christian satellite that I was part of, and God gave us a chance to do things we never were able to do before, like this prayer night, twelve-hours prayer gathering, around 35 thousand. That's like first time in Egypt. And they were gathered at the Cave Church, praying from night to morning, because police were not there. Usually, police does not allow this in the name of security and also—
[29:25] JONATHAN: I mean, just for context, this is after the election of—remind me his name.
[29:34] Farid: Sisi?
[29:35] JONATHAN: No. Before Sisi. Morsi. So this is after the election of Mohammed Morsi.
[29:41] Farid: No, this was in 2011.
[29:42] JONATHAN: In between. Okay, so this is after Mubarak has been sort of deposed.
[29:52] Farid: Yeah. I mean, the army was in control at that time, but there was no president, so there was some more freedom.
[29:59] JONATHAN: So there’s these all-night prayer meetings taking place in this Cave Church.
[30:04] Farid: Yeah. This was 11/11/2011, and it was a great night because it was from all non-official Christian leaders gathering together. And a lot of people, a lot Christians—and Muslims—gathered. Because of all what was happening, people were praying, “God, we need you in this country.”
And the satellite ministry I was in broadcasted that live. We experienced a lot of trials for interruption, but God miraculously allowed us to be alive. And a lot of the mainstream media were shocked to see what was happening with the number of people, the prayers for peace, including Al-Jazeera channel. So they called me and said, “Can we have your feed?” And I said, “Sure, of course.”
[31:01] JONATHAN: You said 35 thousand people gathered.
[31:03] Farid: Yes.
[31:04] JONATHAN: I mean, that's just hard to imagine.
[31:07] Farid: So a lot of these events took place, a lot of production, a lot of live programs on satellite, and people were all the time looking at news and they really were looking for hope. They lost trust in the government, they lose trust sometimes in their religious leaders, and they were looking for Jesus. And we presented the hope of Jesus Christ through satellite ministry.
So the regime came back in 2014 and another case was—I mean, the same scenario happened again. They came to the satellite ministry office, confiscated the machines, like a lot of people, I think there were eleven, twelve people, and they were looking for me. It was the weekend and I wasn’t there, so they called me. I went there and then direct to jail, to a case of five charges, very serious charges.
[32:12] JONATHAN: Each of them carried the penalty of fifteen to twenty-five years.
[32:15] Farid: The minimum. The minimum one of them. And of course, they were false accusations, but in those cases, it doesn’t matter.
[32:29] JONATHAN: Justice may not prevail.
[32:30] Farid: Yeah, it was serious, but the team members started praying, and actually many prayers around the world started because this time it was this Christian ministry, so it was well known. When this happened in 2009 in my office, nobody knew because it’s like my private thing. But now many people started to pray. But it wasn’t the only case at that time. I mean, the regime started to be back and there was a message through different things. Okay, the regime is back, everything needs to be back now in law and order according to our system. So those who took more freedom politically, they need to go back to their borders, to their limit. Christians who have been talking and doing a lot of ministry, no, they need to stop.
[33:25] JONATHAN: Restricted freedoms, yeah.
[33:28] Farid: Islamists need to do the same. So they closed a lot of Muslim channels and they had many cases against activists and the revolutionists. And this was the biggest satellite ministry, so this was like a statement that no one needs … everyone needs to go back to the original setup. You should know your limits. Don’t evangelize Muslims, don’t get too involved in politics and so on.
So this case was very serious, and I got very scared. Just I remember in jail that night just thinking. I read the law, and it seemed like I’ll not go out. And just thinking of my three kids and my wife and said, “Lord, what is going to happen?” I got really … it’s like a panic attack what would happen.
And the other prisoner that was in the same cell had smuggled a cell phone, so he said, “Yeah, do you want to talk to your family?” I said, “Yes.” “Okay, I’ll give you a call. Let them transfer $15 for each minute.”
So I called my wife, and she said, “We’re praying for you.” And my eleven-years daughter said, “We’re praying for you and I want to share with you the verse from Joshua, ‘Be courageous and be strong.’” And it communicated to my spirit.
In the first case, my wife was afraid. She used to walk in the streets with the kids, holding her passports in her case because it was so scary with all those visits. But this time, I was scared, she was confident, and she encouraged me. And my daughter, my kids, at that time they were very young, but somehow God gave them peace, although I was in jail.
And miraculously, God resolved this case. And you won’t believe this, Jonathan, but all the cases that were initiated at that time are not resolved till today.
[36:02] JONATHAN: Except for yours.
[36:03] Farid: Yeah. It was a miracle. I can tell you details, but it was a miracle by the hand of God. And yeah, so I—
Actually, it was a very special testimony for me during those times. I was released from jail, but the case was still there, so I had a conversation with God. And I said, “God, I am scared. I think it’s time to flee the country.”
And I felt in my spirit God is saying no. I said, “Why, God? There are biblical escapes. Joseph and Mary and the baby. Could this be one?”
[36:46] JONATHAN: Peter, Paul.
[36:47] Farid: Yeah. Can you let me go? How do I face those charges? There was no way this case is going to be resolved. And God asked me one question. He said, “Do you believe what you present on screen, or this is separate from you actually?”
[37:08] JONATHAN: Is your faith in the thing that you stand behind as a broadcast, yeah, yeah.
[37:13] Farid: “Is it only for commercial or is it real? Do you believe I can resolve this no matter what laws are there, no matter what situation?”
And I met with my mentors, I prayed with my wife, and I spent time with the Lord the same night, and I ended up saying, “God, I’m yours and I have peace to stay and I am not afraid but I trust you will take care of this, whatever happens.”
And I returned the flight ticket I had booked. Actually, my wife said, when I said that, she felt like I’m under a lot of pressure. She said, “Yeah, you can buy a ticket and we have twenty-four hours to return it for free.” And I returned the ticket and it took those five months of investigations, visiting court and all that, but it was resolved. And I spent a few more months in the same ministry and I felt it’s time to move on and I felt, okay, I need now some time to pray and see what is next. I had confidence through prayer and through checking with my leaders that it is time for me to move on. But I stayed until God said yes and got the blessing of the leaders and family and all that. And I became independent now, not knowing what to do, and spent some time to pray and ask God what's next.
[39:02] JONATHAN: And what was next? You had a special introduction, you read a book, you read another book.
[39:12] Farid: Yeah! You know I was in a trip in 2014 while being very busy with my production house and our satellite ministry, so in that trip to Lebanon, I had some free time at night. I finished meetings and I selected a book from the library, and it was Dr. Youssef’s book, Trust and Obey. And I couldn’t stop reading it until I finished it, because I could resonate with him. And now I know Dr. Youssef from satellite, I know his faithfulness to the Word of God, but I don’t know him as a person. I mean, I know him as a minister, as a speaker.
So his testimony in Trust and Obey was very fascinating for me. I could visualize what he was telling in his book about his upbringing and all his stages he went through, because of course, my journey was much shorter, different, but I could understand a lot of what he was saying from being there in this culture that he was brought in.
And I said this book should be filmed sometime, I mean this testimony. But I have no way of doing that. And so it took two years, and now I am free after 2016. I now have no job. I went to Germany, where my wife’s family are having ministry there, and we stayed there a few months to pray and seek God, and then I got an invitation from Joshua Youssef. “Why don’t you come to help us at the Kingdom Sat?”
I said, “I just moved from Egypt to Germany. I’m not sure what's coming.”
He said, “Yeah, pray about it and maybe you can start on a contractor basis, as a consultant.”
So I said, yes, that seems good. I prayed about it, of course, and I started coming here to the Kingdom Sat, Leading The Way, and started coming every month for one week or so. And after six months, I had total peace about it and I said, “Yes, Joshua, if you still feel there is a place for me.”
He said yes. I met with Dr. Youssef, of course, and they took around one more year to do the visa work and so on, and then I came and joined Kingdom Sat. That was in 2017.
[41:46] JONATHAN: Tell us about Kingdom Sat. For our listeners who maybe aren’t familiar, broadcasting started in 2009, you joined the team in 2017. Who does it reach? Where does it go? What's the fruit that’s being borne from it?
[42:07] Farid: Yeah, the Kingdom Sat is a vision of Dr. Youssef. God gave him the vision in 2004, and it took five years in the making because he wanted to have a solid, biblical channel that broadcast the best of the east and the best of the west in terms of Bible teaching. And God used Maged Atalla, my colleague, to start this. He’s an engineer. He made a great foundation following the vision of Dr. Youssef and a lot of partners who came together with Dr. Youssef to present their content on the Kingdom Sat that's being translated into Arabic. So this was a big part of what's being broadcasted on the Kingdom Sat, along with selected Bible teachers from the Middle East as well.
So it was a great foundation. So I came on a great foundation on a time where social media was coming, live broadcast was being introduced more and more, and when I joined, Joshua asked me, “What proposal do you have for the Kingdom Sat? What do you think?”
And I presented a proposal and mainline I met with him and Dr. Youssef and said, “This is what I think. I think Kingdom Sat is a great channel, but it’s more like radio. If you turn the screen off and only listen, you don’t lose anything. We have a great tool. We can present visuals. We can do more. So I think it’s great, but one of the things that we need to do is doing more formats, more genres. We need to reach more people—especially those who are underprivileged like women, kids, young people in the Middle East. And we need to reach out to the non-Christians.
He said, “Yeah, this is our vision.” And actually Dr. Youssef said, “Yeah, actually we made a survey and this is what we reached.” And he quoted one of the friends in Egypt. He told them “the Kingdom Sat is like a big, huge, elegant department store, but you enter and you found only navy blue suits, size 42.”
And he laughed at that and they said, “Yes, we want to do more.”
And I started working on that, like different lines like having broadcasting live, like have live broadcasts, especially from Church of the Apostles. And this was a continuation for the people in the Middle East to know what's this vision. Who is Dr. Youssef? Who is Jonathan? Who are those singers in the Church of the Apostles? And I think that made a great connection, especially with those who don’t have churches, like in Nigeria or those places—
[45:25] JONATHAN: Where you're isolated and—
[45:27] Farid: And they write on Facebook when we broadcast live. For example, when you’re preaching they would say, “Oh Jonathan, God bless you and God bless your father. God bless the church,” as if they are there in the church. And in the communion time, they will talk “We don’t have a church, so we’re taking communion with you now. We’re praying.”
And the first time in Easter 2018 it was the first time to do live, God encouraged us by two Arabic speakers in the Middle East giving their lives to the Lord. So it was encouragement so we started that once a month, then during the COVID time, we started to do it on a regular basis. So it’s a great blessing to have these live broadcasts. And we started to introduce a lot of digital platforms, like Apple TV, Roku, Smartphone application. We updated the website and streaming. So we started to add more genres, add more partners from the west and east, so a lot of things happened.
And today the Kingdom Sat reaches 260 million households in the Middle East, and they receive this ministry for free. And anyone with an internet connection can receive the content of the Kingdom Sat.
[46:47] JONATHAN: And let’s talk a little bit about the follow-up process, because you have people that are standing by phones to answer calls. What are some of the questions and feedback that you get from the broadcast?
[47:03] Farid: A lot of viewers are very true seekers, even those from Muslim background, and they are faithful. They really seek God. So they send questions, sometimes in a provoking way, sometimes attacking, but they keep watching. They will attack one time, and then the field team would respond to them in a graceful way and helping them, so they would come back, watch again, and raise another question. And we have great testimonies of those viewers that only watched by chance the Kingdom Sat, they watch some program, and they would keep interacting with us until they become Christians, they commit their lives to the Lord, and they get baptized. Then they join an online study group for discipleship or we would connect them with a local church. So this is one type of persons, those true seekers. And as I said, it changes from very extreme attackers to true seekers that are ready to accept Christ.
And the second persona we serve is the new believers. Some people knew the Lord through the Kingdom Sat or online or somewhere else but they don’t have a place to grow.
[48:37] JONATHAN: They need discipleship, yeah.
[48:39] Farid: Yeah, and not to compare, but the Kingdom Sat is very distinct about presenting biblical teaching, solid. Other ministries would present this shallow content that we spoke about. So that's the second persona, like new believers. Third persona is mature believers who are in ministry, for example, and they want to grow, they want to learn. And some of those viewers would write, for example, in YouTube, “I am watching the series so-and-so for Dr. Youssef. Where is episode number 15? I want to finish it tonight!”
[49:19] JONATHAN: We’re on top of you. That's right.
[49:21] Farid: So they are the three main personas. There are subcategories, but we have a great field team that is dealing 24/7 with any viewer who has a question or he wants a prayer request or they ask even other, general questions.
[49:39] JONATHAN: And what's the risk for those people that are on the ground, field team workers? I mean, you’re working in a hostile environment. It’s not like you’re in Oklahoma fielding calls. You’re in the thick of it.
[49:54] Farid: That have the same risk I faced. And yeah, I mean, but again what I experienced. They are also in the protection of God. But they could be charged, they could be persecuted, detained, or all this could happen in an indirect way by the community, by their families. But this doesn’t stop them. Most of those in the field team are coming from a Muslim background, have theology degree, so that's their life goal, their vision.
[50:39] JONATHAN: Well Farid, your story is just … it’s fascinating to me the beginning with the drama, you coming to the West, coming to America, then going back, facing the adversities, then coming back here and now you're presenting on a global stage the very thing that led you to the Lord. And we’re just so thankful for the work that you do and the work of the Kingdom Sat. And we’re so grateful that you took the time to sit with us and share your story here on Candid Conversations. Thank you for being with us.
[51:13] Farid: Thank you, Jonathan. It’s an honor to be here, and it’s great to be in the kitchen how things are done here. And I see the hand of the Lord every day in this, in your family, in the ministry of the Church of the Apostles, Leading The Way, and it’s God work and I’m very grateful to be here.
[51:35] JONATHAN: Well, we’re grateful for you. Thank you, Farid.
[51:36] Farid: Thank you.
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Episode 250: Understanding the Future Promise of Heaven: Dr. Michael Youssef
21 mai· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
Is there something more than this life? This world is full of crises, conflicts, difficulties, and troubles, but this world will not last. No matter your age, your earthly life is slowly slipping away. This is why Jesus encourages us not to store up treasures on this earth but to invest in heaven.
In this 250th episode of Candid Conversations, Dr. Michael Youssef joins Jonathan for a father-son conversation about his new book, Heaven Awaits. This book is written to help you understand the future promise of heaven in Christ Jesus. Explore what the Bible says about heaven and envision the wonders and glories awaiting those who believe in Christ.
Heaven is real, far more real than your earthly experience right now.
To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/Candid
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpod
TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 250: Understanding the Future Promise of Heaven: Dr. Michael Youssef
[00:01] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Today, we have a very special guest in Dr. Michael Youssef. And he comes on our program because he’s written another book. And we have you on quite often because you write a lot of books.
[00:17] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Thank you. And I’m glad to be in your Dr. Youssef show now, Dr. Jonathan Youssef.
[00:23] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: And we have to change the title.
[00:24] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Congratulations.
[0:25] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Thank you very much. You have written a book on heaven. This is your first book on heaven as far as I’m aware. Tell us about why.
[00:39] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF I’ve thought of heaven since I was a young man. I’ve never really been away from that thought. But also I am seeing so much confusion, so much confusion—not just in the world at large, which you can understand the devil sold us a lie in order to deceive people, but the churches are now confused, pastors are confused about heaven. And the world basically entered into their hearts, into their thinking, and everything is about this life, this life, this life, which is a very tragic situation that we find ourselves in as a Church of Jesus Christ. And my biggest concern is to alert and wake up the bride of Christ as to their greatest day, and it’s yet to come.
Where you’re going to spend eternity is so important. In fact, the very first story I open up the book with was back in 1977. In February of ’77, my wife and I and two little ones came here from Australia. But we’ve done a lot of research finding out where we’re going to live, what the country is about, what the culture is about, and so on, and this is just for a place we’re going to live for two years, which we did, in Pasadena.
And how much more should we be doing those same preparations and research for where we’re going to be forever? I mean, just think. People can’t fathom that. Because they can’t fathom it, they take it out of their mind forever and ever and ever.
[02:34] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: —Gives you a little bit of a buzz, doesn’t it, just the thought of it. Yeah, because everything we know comes to an end. This is the only thing I think we can consider has no end.
[02:44] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Exactly. And the point I make even in the early part of the book is that there is only one ticket that takes you to heaven, and that is the ticket that's stamped with the blood of Jesus. I say there are a lot of fake tickets out there. that have been handed by Satan through Hollywood, through false churches, through false teachers and false preachers.
[03:12] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Or your own mind.
[03:13] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Or your own mind. But those are the tickets that are not going to get you to heaven. Only the one that's stamped with the blood of Jesus Christ. On what basis do I have the confidence that I’m going to heaven? The blood of Jesus Christ, period. My ticket’s stamped with that blood.
[03:26] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: That leads us to the next topic, which is let’s talk a little bit about the misconceptions out there, and you can blend the two—but coming from the Hollywood mentality. Are those the same as what you see in churches that have lost their way? Are they different?
[03:53] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Slightly different, but they lead to the same hell.
[03:57] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Right. They go to the same place.
[03:58] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Because Hollywood and the New Age movement, even with this lady who supposedly died and went to heaven and came back and she was interviewed by Oprah, and she said to her, she said, “Jesus told me He’s not going to judge anybody. Live any which way you want.”
And then Oprah said, “Well, if I think Jesus is as cool as I think He is, He would have said that to you.”
[04:21] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Contradicting Himself? [overlapping voices]
[04:26] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Yeah. And so the fact that everybody is going to go to heaven is absolute lie from the pit of hell. But then you go into the other side of things in some traditional churches and some mainline churches who said if you’re good you go to heaven. Well, I’m good. Sure, I’m not perfect, but I’m good, so everybody sees themselves as good.
[04:50] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: According to whose standard, right?
[04:51] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF And they are contradicting the Bible, because the Bible said no one is good. I had an email came third-hand to me. A guy said, “I love that statement on page 47,” and I still remember it because he said, “You said only bad people in heaven. The only good person in heaven is Jesus.”
And those are the redeemed people who recognize they’re sinners and they cannot make it to heaven without Jesus. And that's what really I meant by it. But he said, “That just gave me such confidence and comfort to know that I’m redeemed by the blood of Christ and that's the only way I’m going to heaven.”
And so I’m so glad so many people are now sending me comments and saying how much this book has encouraged them in their walk with Christ. And the whole reason—not only to refute all these falsehoods—but another reason for writing the book is I want to put people on the right track to realize that heaven is not, well, in the by and by when I die, but heaven is now. Heaven influences my thoughts, decisions, investments, and money—where I put my money. Is it in heaven or is the inflation going to eat it up? And so all these are very important decisions.
C. S. Lewis made a statement years ago that impacted me, has been for nearly fifty years since I read it. He said, you know, they talk about “Oh, he’s so heavenly minded, he’s of no earthly good.” I’ve heard that so many times, even back in the sixties, seventies, and he said if you examine history, you find that only those who were heavenly minded were of any earthly good and he goes on to give examples.
I mean, I think Lord Shaftesbury, who impacted the culture in England probably like very few people said, “There was not a day went by without me thinking of heaven.” And that's what caused him to be a reformist. Wilberforce fought for forty years to outlaw slavery. That's because of the thought of heaven.
And so anybody who says, “Well, heaven is just going to be distracting from what you’re doing now,” absolutely lies.
[07:15] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: No, it’s a driving force.
[07:16] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Exactly. And I tell people all the time, unashamedly, I work, and I work harder at seventy-five than I did when I was forty-five or twenty-five, and simply because I live for one thing: hearing those words from Jesus’s lips, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
[07:36] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: There’s also the misconception that it can be earned, you can do enough good works. Not necessarily about being a good person, but that the works are sort of counterbalancing you in this either sort of a karma sense or a works righteousness from a theological mindset.
[07:56] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF This is as old as my ancestors, the ancient Egyptians.
[08:00] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: It might be as old as the Garden.
[08:03] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Probably. But I remember even growing up in Egypt and studying Egyptian pharaonic history and seeing some of the pictures that go back five thousand years, and the scale. And the scale was held by one of the gods.
[08:20] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Like a weight scale.
[08:21] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF A weight scale, yeah. And you see here’s your good deeds versus your bad deeds and you’ve got to make the good deeds outweigh the bad deeds. But again, another lie from the pit of Satan’s hell. And we need to be absolutely certain that people understand that you’re not going to heaven based on anything you’ve done, but it’s based on the grace of God that He has given you through Jesus Christ. Period.
Then the rewards in heaven are a whole different story. And that requires faithfulness if you want to be rewarded. There are five crowns in the Bible it talks about. Faithfulness, there’s a crown for those who love His appearing. There’s all kinds of crowns. And those are not crowns we will just kind of put on our heads, but the crowns that we will take and lay at the feet of Jesus in our gratitude and thanksgiving for saving us.
[09:23] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: I think a lot of people like to imagine and picture what heaven looks like. Fill in some of the gaps for people who have maybe an incomplete view. There’s the picture of the sitting on a cloud playing a harp, wearing a robe, singing nonstop, just being bored.
[09:47] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Right. It’s medieval art.
[09:49] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Exactly.
[09:51] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF The cherubic, fat kids—
[09:53] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Yeah, we’ll all be fat babies.
[09:54] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF And absolutely it is absolute falsehood. And I’m not even big on these so-called heavenly tourism. Why do I listen to somebody who says they died and came back when I—Paul himself, when he was taken into heaven, he said, “I’m not allowed to even talk about it.” And when I have the real deal, I have Jesus, who tells me exactly what heaven is like.
[10:23] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: That’s all you need.
[10:24] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF And that's what I do in the book, Heaven Awaits. I stick with the Word of God. I see people go off the rails when they deviate, and so my focus is the Word of God. I’m always having people on social media ask me, am I a Calvinist, and I Arminian, am I a dispensationalist, a postmillennialist, a premillennialist. I’m none of these. I’m a Bible-believing Christian—that is, if it’s in the book of God I’m going to believe it and preach it, but not try to be a follower of a man theory. I follow Jesus and I try to focus on that until the Lord takes me home. I will not deviate from it, no matter how much the pressure is put on me.
[11:14] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: All right, so let’s fill in some of the pictures for people. Let’s talk about our bodies. There’s a lot of concepts. We can even take a step future back, the idea of soul sleep or … Fill in a little bit of those gaps for us.
[11:35] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Sure. Well, this is again following some man’s theory, theological theory.
[11:43] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Or misinterpretation of texts.
[11:46] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF But you know when you think about this, so much thing about the end times eschatology now is driven by a theory that was devised by a man in Plymouth, England, in 1825 by the name of John Nelson Darby. Most of them would not know this, but that's what they are. They are doing only following somebody, you know, chart. I follow the Bible. I stick with the Word of God. And there is no soul sleep in the Bible. The Bible talks about sleep of the believer. This is to indicate that it’s temporary. Jesus died, but we sleep. He took our death so that when we die, we only sleep—it’s a temporary thing because immediately our soul goes into heaven, according to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and Paul says it’s not going to be floating souls in heaven. When the disciples of Jesus were in the Mount of Transfiguration, they didn’t see the soul of Elijah and the soul of Moses; they saw them in a glorified body. In fact, Peter was so ecstatic, he wanted to hang in there for a long time.
[13:02] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Let’s camp here for a bit.
[13:03] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Yeah. And so these are glorified bodies in heaven. When we die, there is a body that's prepared for us in heaven. It’s a body like Jesus’s body after the resurrection. And those are bodies that are totally righteous and holy, and therefore, we would be able to see the face of God when Moses couldn’t see the face of God, but we will. Because we can never see the face of God in this body.
[13:34] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Those bodies are indestructible and not ravaged by the effects of the Fall and sin.
[13:42] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF In fact, I think it’s the mercy of God that Moses did not see the face of God. He would be incinerated because in this sinful body we can’t do it. But in the glorified body that is immediately prepared for us as soon as we enter heaven in a glorified body, we will be able to see and do and have no physical limitation, no pain, no suffering. And all of those promises in the Scripture are very clear.
[14:12] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: I don’t remember reading it in the book, but I mean there’s a sense that there will be gardening and working and building and we’ll be active. We’re not just sitting around.
[14:25] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF No. In fact, John said in Revelation “and the servants to serve Him.” And the Bible says that we’re going to reign and rule with Christ. Think of the universe, and our God is sitting on the rim of the universe right now, ruling and reigning, and we’re going to be participating in that. It’s mindboggling. Sometimes I let my mind soar, but then I bring myself back to reality.
[14:48] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Levitate for a moment.
[14:49] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF But yeah, it’s incredible when you think about it. We will be working. We will be serving, and we’ll be doing great things for God. We’re praising Him, of course, thanking Him. I just try to imagine that moment and I get so overwhelmed I want to go.
[15:05] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Let’s talk a little bit about fears and perspectives, the things that can kind of creep in and the enemy can try and steal—
[15:14] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF One of the things that also is prevalent, particularly among those so-called “progressive” churches or liberal churches, I’ll never forget thirty-five years ago I was having a discussion with one of those so-called “liberal”—ministers in one of those churches and we were talking about heaven. And he said, “How arrogant of you to think that you’re good enough to go to heaven.”
I said, “That's exactly the falsehood that you believe, and that's you think a person is going to heaven based on his good, how good he is or she is.” But I only have the confidence because Jesus promised it. And that is really the most important thing that we need to emphasis. People don’t think that we are just full of ourselves. We think we’re better than everybody else. We’re going to heaven and you’re not. No, no, no, no, no. I’m only assured of heaven because Jesus said so. He promised it. And God keeps His promises.
[16:16] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Despite my sinful nature, despite—
[16:20] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Yeah. In fact, it’s because of my acknowledging of my sinful nature and my need for salvation.
[16:25] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Yeah. To your point, it’s not good people in heaven; it’s bad people in heaven who had the goodness of Christ because He covers us.
[16:31] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF We’re born again.
[16:32] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Yeah. And let’s move to that because you have a chapter on what does it mean to be born again and looking at Nicodemus. Talk to us a little bit about—Because the question does remain, well then, who is in heaven? And I know we talked a little bit about that earlier, but let’s fill that picture out.
[16:49] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Those who are born again. What does it mean to be born again? That's very important. That's the message I take to evangelistic events and when I preach. It’s a very important message. Because to be born physically means you’re alive physically. And so to be born spiritually, it means you are spiritually alive. How come? Because every one of us, every human being who is ever born of a woman was born spiritually dead. I mean, physically alive, running around, but spiritually dead. Not comatose, dead, dead, dead. And so when the Holy Spirit opens our eyes and then we spiritually become awake and alive, that's born again. That's when you become born of the Spirit. Jesus said you’re going to be born of the Spirit of God because God has to do something on the inside of us to change us.
And I remember that day like yesterday when my whole life changed. My views of everything just changed overnight. Of course, it’s taken me sixty years of walking with Christ to grow in the knowledge and so forth, but that day was the beginning when I knew that it was totally transformed by the power of God and I became conscious of sin and confession of my sin and the closeness with God and the thirsting for righteousness and all of that.
[18:19] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: I remember as a boy when you would preach on heaven you would always talk about that this life was like a dress rehearsal. And it’s interesting because you were talking about you remember the moment when you became spiritually awake, but in the sixty-odd years, you’ve grown in your sanctification, you’ve grown in your knowledge and love for the Lord.
They talk about the theological concept of the already and the not yet. Like you said, there’s a concept now in my mind and an understanding of the reality of heaven, and I’m now living in preparation for that, and that's what the Christian life is preparing you for.
[19:00] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Well, just as, you know, I sought to set an example for you and your siblings, I had others who set that example for me. My grandfather and my mother, they set the example of their being motivated by heaven, and therefore, they have done so much on the Earth because of their motivation of heaven. And so I am so grateful for their example, and I sought to also set an example, not just for you as my family and children, but also to congregations and people that I minister to. I told one of our pastoral care ministers one time, I said, you know, I have been privileged to teach for now fifty-two years since I was ordained to show people how to live for Christ. I don’t know how the Lord is going to take me home, whether it’s going to be sudden or not, that's in His sovereign will. Either way He does it is fine by me. But if He privileged me to have a slow death that I pray that I will be able to teach people how to die in Christ. I taught them how to live in Christ, now how to die in Christ is very important.
[20:21] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: We can’t have a conversation about heaven without having a conversation about hell. And thankfully, you do have a chapter in your book that delves into that. Let’s go there.
[20:40] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Okay, well, as you know, I have never preached on hell without tears. Sometimes I mean broken down completely, not just shedding a tear or two. And the reason I do that and the reason—actually it’s out of my control; if it was in my control, I wouldn’t cry—but the reason I do is because I know hell is real. Just as heaven is real, hell is real. It’s a place, and there is going to be suffering, the Bible called that the lake of fire. The Bible talks about the worms that do not die, and the fire that would not die, and the gnashing of teeth. And the descriptions, a dark place where you feel falling all the time but there is no bottom. And it goes on and on and on.
I try to put those descriptions that Jesus gave us, not—
[21:27] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Not your own mind or some philosopher.
[21:28] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF —or fantasies of other people. It’s what Jesus said. And the Bible makes it clear: hell was prepared for Satan and his angels. That is for whom hell was prepared. Unfortunately and sadly, there are so many who follow Satan who will end up with him in that lake of fire. And I have dedicated my life and whatever years I’ve got left, or days, it doesn’t matter, I am dedicating them to warn people why should you perish? Why should you follow Satan, who takes you straight into that eternal life of torment?
You say, “How do you know that?” Well, Jesus, again. He talked about Lazarus and the rich man. This is before His own resurrection, before His own opening paradise for the believers, where they were still in a waiting, holding pattern, as it were. But even then, before Christ’s resurrection, they were in two different places: one is a torment and pain and suffering and burning of the tongue, and the other one is a joy in what they used to call the bosom of Abraham.
And so the conversation goes on, the man cries out from Hades to Abraham and he said, “Please send Lazarus,” the guy whom he didn’t even pay a minute’s notice, he said, “Send him with a drop of water in his finger to just cool my tongue and give me relief.”
Had he said, “We have a huge gap between us. We cannot cross to you and you cannot cross to us.” And that is what really makes me cry and weep, because once you cross over to the other side, there is no return. No matter how much you try and say, “I repent, I change now.” No, no, it’s too late. It’s like the days of Noah—and Jesus said that—it’s like the days of Noah. And he kept warning, 120 years he’s been preaching—it’s so difficult for me even to comprehend. And there’s, “No, no,” and made fun of him. And then in the end, of course, when the flood came, “Okay, we’ll get in.” No, no, no. God shut the door.
God will shut the door one day, and so my longing, the longing of … the longing of my heart (and I do this in the book, especially that last chapter) is I’m pleading with people, come to Christ now. The opportunity is now. The moment is now. The hour is now. Don’t put it off. And in the end, it’s like Ezekiel says. If you warn people and they get into trouble, you’re innocent. And that's what I want to be, a watchman who’s innocent. But if I didn’t warn them and I know danger was coming, then I have their blood on my hand, and I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want blood on my hand.
[24:29] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Let’s just sort of, as we conclude, who’s the book for and why should they buy it?
[24:37] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Actually, this book is for everyone. Seldom do I say that because there are some books specifically. But this is for the believer, to encourage them and uplift them; for the non-believer to be forewarned and give them a chance to turn to Christ. So really, a believer will read it and be encouraged, but then give it to somebody who needs to know about the plan of salvation and hopefully then you—
[25:00] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Someone who has a false view of heaven.
[25:01] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Exactly. And then you, who will give that book to somebody else, will be receiving the reward, even more than me who has written, because you have been an instrument of God of handing this warning to people and telling them to wake up while it’s time.
[25:21] JONATHAN YOUSSEF: Yeah, yeah. Well, the book is Heaven Awaits: Anticipate Your Future Hope, Your Eternal Home, Your Daily Reality by Dr. Michael Youssef. Dad, thank you so much for returning and gracing us once again with your presence on Candid Conversations.
[25:38] DR. MICHAEL YOUSSEF Thank you Dr. Jonathan Youssef. Thank you for your ministry. I appreciate it.
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Episode 249: Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears That Divide Us: Dr. Michael Horton
14 mai· Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef
In this profound episode, Jonathan is joined by esteemed theologian and author Michael Horton to discuss his latest book, "Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears that Divide Us." In a world teetering on the brink of chaos—from unsettling politics to the lingering effects of the global pandemic—Horton's book offers not a typical self-help guide but a deep theological exploration of how a proper fear of God can liberate us from our myriad earthly fears.
Dr. Horton, Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary, explains what it truly means to fear God—both biblically and theologically—and how this reverential fear can effectively drive out fears of the future, others, and even death itself.
Throughout the episode, Dr. Horton discusses the different types of fears that plague our society—from cultural anxieties to personal struggles—and how these stem from a lack of genuine fear of God. He emphasizes confronting our earthly fears with the hope found in Christ, rooted in the Gospel, and the shift from self-preservation to a Christ-focused life.
This episode is a humbling, thought-provoking, and hope-igniting journey that challenges listeners to replace false securities with the profound joy of knowing Christ, who commands us, "Do not be afraid." Join us as we explore how cultivating a healthy fear of God can recover our sanity in these turbulent times.
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 249: Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears That Divide Us: Michael Horton.
[00:01] Jonathan: My very special guest is Mike Horton. He is a professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary in California, and he is the author of many books, including The Christian Faith Ordinary and Core Christianity. He also hosts the White Horse Inn radio program. He lives with his wife, Lisa, and their four children in Escondido, California, and it looks like he’s on his back patio, having a conversation with me and being very gracious with his time. Mike Horton, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.
[00:45] Michael: Thank you, Jonathan.
[00:50] Jonathan: I do thank you for your time. Now Mike, I’ve read your books, I have subscribed and I do recommend all of our listeners subscribe to the White Horse Inn. If you could just give us a quick, whirlwind tour of your story, we can talk a little bit about the podcast and some of your books as we progress through the interview.
[01:19] Michael: Well, thank you, Jonathan. Yeah, I was raised in a Christian home and came to understand the doctrines of grace partly through my older brother. Kind of had my own little, not little, my own Romans revolution and then started digging deeper into Church history and theology and biblical studies, and eventually went to Biola University, Westminster California, then to Oxford for doctoral studies and then post-doc at Yale and came back to teach at my alma mater and have been here for 25 years. Blessed to be able to have a hand, with my colleagues, in training pastors; pastors training pastors.
[02:17] Jonathan: I’ve been a recipient of many of the students of Westminster Seminary who taught me at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, and I’ve been really blessed by your work. You’ve got a very jovial, friendly, California vibe to you, but when you speak, you’re like a double-edged sword. It’s so penetrating. And I think there could be a theological issue that I’ve been struggling with for months and you’ll say it so concisely in a few sentences, and I’ll think, Where was that when I needed that?
[03:09] Michael: You’re too kind. Thank you.
[03:11] Jonathan: Tell us a little bit about the White Horse Inn. It has been on for something like thirty years.
[03:17] Michael: Yeah, thirty-plus, almost thirty-five years now. It has been such a fun thing. I’ve learned so much from my colleagues on the program. I still learn from the new team. We produce a magazine, too, Modern Reformation Magazine, which is really—I encourage people to subscribe to that. It’s a good digest of topical theology related to culture. The umbrella organization is called Sola Media, and one of the things that we do that I’m so excited about being a part of is called Theo Global, where we host theological conversations (like we do on the White Horse Inn) between Baptist, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican traditions and bring people together from a particular region. So we’ve been doing it for eleven years in India and also almost that long in Nigeria or in Kenya, in Nairobi. And then also Cairo for the Middle East. We just did one in Thailand that Pakistanis and Indians were able to come to, because they’re not able usually to see each other. And then we are, Lord willing, starting another one in Southeast Asia, probably Singapore.
So these have been so rich. Out of them are coming, a series of theology books from the global church to the global church. And so instead of having just regional theologies or theologies that pretend that they’re not culturally contextual, we want to hear the voices of people from different locations testifying to the same Gospel, and that's just really been lots of fun.
[05:42] Jonathan: Well, having ministered near that area of the world in Australia, you’re right, there can be a disconnect between the cultures. We read each other’s books and that sort of thing, and those are Western cultures, but I think we miss out on hearing about what is happening in Southeast Asia, Because they do face similar obstacles but also some quite different. As one of the points of your book is, there is still the one true God and the one Gospel that reaches across those cultures and reaches across so many of those things that we would consider barriers. And I think that's wonderful. I pray the Lord would bless that.
[06:30] Michael: Thank you. One of the things I find, Jonathan, is there is a sweet unity around the Gospel that binds us when I go to these other places. Wherever I am in the world, I don’t feel like I’m a stranger because I’m with my brothers and sisters. I wish I felt the same way in America. It’s very different here.
[06:51] Jonathan: Yeah, I was going to say it’s interesting that what you’re doing is you’re unifying and uniting across denominations, across cultural things, and yet that's working almost in the opposite direction of where we see things here, which is there’s division within denominations; there’s division within small regions. You’re undoing what is happening on a bigger scale in some of the Western parts. It’s exciting to hear that's not happening everywhere, that there’s actually some unification taking place and that's encouraging. And I know that’s going to be an aspect of what we talk about in our conversation about one of your new books.
Now, I know that you had some health issues with your heart a couple of years ago. Maybe for some of our audience who didn’t know or having heard any updates, are you healthy?
[07:54] Michael: Thanks for asking. Yes, what it was was a valve that just exploded in my heart, so it was an emergency open-heart surgery. But they said—they know my arteries and my heart better than anybody, they said, you’ll die of something, but it won’t be of heart disease. You have a good heart; you have good arteries; this was just a fluke.
[08:24] Jonathan: Unbelievable.
[08:25] Michael: So—yeah. I’m fully recovered. They said I could go bungee jumping again if I want to.
[08:32] Jonathan: Again. I’m glad that you were already doing that—I picked up your book a while ago and I’ve been wanting to have you on the podcast ever since reading it. And the book is called Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears that Divide Us. And my goodness, what a perfect title for everything we see. Give us a little bit of the reason for writing and the timing of the book.
[09:18] Michael: Well, it had been percolating for years now, actually. I wrote a book many years ago called Beyond Culture Wars: Is America a Mission Field or a Battlefield? And this is in a similar vein, but really in light of the fears that really divide us today. And the center used to be the Bible, the Gospel, getting the Gospel right and getting the Gospel out. We have our doctrinal differences across the evangelical mainstream, but basically we had different political views and those political views didn’t divide between brothers and sisters and churches.
And what I’ve seen lately has just been like a food fight in a cafeteria, and political issues and social issues raised to the level of the Trinity. And it’s like, okay, well, we can argue about that over coffee, but we don’t bring it into the church. That used to be kind of how people thought about things. These things are important, but they’re not as important as our unity in Christ. But I hear people attacking pastors, pastors attacking their flock, back and forth over these issues. And I think people don’t get this heated over the doctrine of election or justification or the Trinity. Does it suggest that these issues are deeper in our hearts than the truth of Christianity, so what really binds us?
And I looked at it and I said what really binds us is salvation, what we think we’re saved from. If we think we’re saved from the people over there who are threatening our values, or the people over there who are different from us ethnically, or the people over there who have a different view of economics and social justice? What are we really afraid of? What are our ultimate fears? And I argue that we have all these secondary fears. The real fear deep down, the mother of all fears, is the fear of death. And none of the solutions that can be offered by FOX or CNN, there is no solution to that. But we have it. Why isn’t that on our dashboard as central, getting it right and getting it out?
[13:01] Jonathan: In the book you cast a broad net in kind of what you’ve just said up here, picking out a few of the issues that you’re seeing so much division over. But then you lay out some of the theological framework to reorientate your reader to where fear should rightly be placed. And it’s away from the fear of one another and having a right fear of God.
And you use the word sublime in the book, which I found really helpful as an aspect of God. I wonder if you could give us a little bit of explanation and walk that out for us.
[13:52] Michael: Sure. I love that word. Sublime is really, I think, what we’re talking about when we talk about the fear of God. Some people will say, “Well, it’s not really fear. It’s reverence, awe.” Fear is a big part of it, but it’s a kind of fear that attracts. Think of what happens if you’ve ever stood at the mouth of a volcano, looking over it, watching the lava flow. Or I live in Southern California, so we have fires, and there’s a kind of weird attraction to going to the fire and seeing it. Or you’re out on the ocean and you’re terrified. A squall comes up you’re afraid, but you’re also kind of your heart is racing not just because you’re afraid, but also because you’re kind of in awe of what's happening. In awe of the waves.
God, you know whenever an angel shows up in the Bible, an emissary of God, what's the first thing? You know the number-one commandment throughout Scripture? The number-one command is “Be not afraid.” Because when even the mailman of God shows up, people are terrified.
[15:31] Jonathan: Yeah, or Moses’s face is a little too bright.
[15:36] Michael: Yeah. Hey, put a napkin over that or something… That's what, really, is the basis for all sublime events, encounters that we have is really the fear of God. And so it’s … A Jewish writer, John Levinson, puts it well. He says, “In the Hebrew Scriptures God beckons with one hand and repels with the other.”
So there’s a kind of don’t get too close. Even Jesus in His Resurrection, “Don’t touch me. I’m different.” God is different from us. And that sense of awe, of majesty, of even terror. Think of the disciples in the boat with Jesus. They were afraid of the storm, and then Jesus calmed the storm and they were afraid of Jesus. Who is this who has control over the winds and the waves? They were terrified. And that's the kind of Who is this? What am I dealing with here? The kind of shock and awe, the surprise is something that is missing, I think, from a lot of our experience as Christians today.
[17:11] Jonathan: Well, and I know in the book we’ve seen a lot of the statistical evidence that comes in support of what you’ve just said, which shows that evangelical Christians really don’t know what they believe. They have a complete misunderstanding of God, of the nature of Christ, of their roles.
[17:51] Michael: If the fear of God is not the beginning of our wisdom, then something else will be. We’ll fear something else. We will fear other people who are different from us and we’ll fear cancer, we’ll fear losing our job, we’ll fear environmental collapse and catastrophe, we’ll fear these other people taking over. It’s not that those … that there aren’t legitimate concerns of a political and social and cultural nature. But we have a disordered fear. And if we have disordered fears, we have disordered loves.
God is not only the source of our greatest fear, legitimate fear; He’s also the only one who conquers our fears and says, “Welcome home, prodigal. Welcome home, here’s the feast.”
[19:22] Jonathan: And deals with our, as you refer to it, the mother of all fears.
[19:27] Michael: Death. We’re dying. In California, people aren’t allowed to die; they pass away; and we put these cemeteries out, far away from view, or we turn them into parks and things. And it used to be every time you walked into a church there would be headstones, and it reminded you as you walked in why you’re going in there. The Gospel is for dying people, and we’re all on that road. And so the question is, How do we face death? … How is that ultimate anxiety relieved? We mourn, but not as those who have no hope. So what does that mean for my daily life now? I could be twelve years old and I’m dying. I could be eighty and I’m dying. So what … Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the dying and the resurrection of the dead and being attached to Jesus so that what He is in His humanity right now, glorified, we will be. Let’s talk about that. That's a lot better than anything on CNN or FOX.
[21:00] Jonathan: I love it. I think in the book you tell the story of when you went to a debate with, I might be messing this up, but I think it was with an atheist and you sort of said, “Yep. Great. Can I talk about Jesus now” and kind of put him off, and he sort of like, “I wasn’t prepared to debate that.”
[21:22] Michael: Yeah. This was years ago. Bill Nye the Science Nye.
[21:24] Jonathan: Bill Nigh, that's right.
[21:25] Michael: He was talking about how religion is based on false fears and so they develop myths and so forth.
[21:37] Jonathan: And you were like, “Well, that's true.”
[21:39] Michael: Yeah. I don’t disagree; that's a pretty fair analysis of religions. I guess you’d have to take one by one and analyze it, but as a generalization, now can I talk about Jesus and His Resurrection? Let’s keep getting back to the main business here.
[21:59] Jonathan: The main issue. Yeah. In the book you draw this distinction between naturalistic and hyper supernatural, but then you sort of carve out this third option of ordinary. Can we talk a little bit about that and how we see that playing out in our world today, particularly in the Church?
[22:23] Michael: Sure. Often what you see today is a naturalism underwriting the progressive agenda and John Lennon’s “Imagine.” On the right, you tend to have a hyper supernaturalism wedded to a conservative agenda. And so what do I mean by that? Well, a naturalistic worldview says, of course, God isn’t involved. If God exists, then He’s not involved in this world. He didn’t create it, it’s self-evolving and so forth.
A hyper-supernatural worldview says that God works miraculous. You know, to say that God did it means it’s a miracle.
[23:34] Jonathan: Yeah.
[23:35] Michael: Whereas in the Bible God does all sorts of things. Mostly, He doesn’t perform miracles. What about all the times when we cut our finger and it heals after a week? What about that? What about a child [who] has a brain bleed in NICU and it resolves in 24 hours. How about those? Those aren’t miracles. People say, “the miracle of childbirth.” There’s no miracle of childbirth; it’s just a spectacular example of God’s providence. That’s part of our problem is we’re looking for God only in the spectacular, only in the extraordinary, only in places where we can point to and say, “Oh, God did that.”
So we can’t explain how somebody recovered from cancer; we say, “Well, God did it, not the doctors.”
[24:46] Jonathan: Right.
[24:47] Michael: Well, how about God did it and the doctors did it. God did it through the doctors.
[24:52] Jonathan: How much control does God have here?
[24:55] Michael: Right. He has control of everything. It’s not just supernatural events; it’s not just miracles. God’s in control of every second, every breath. Every breath that you and I take is under His dominion.
[25:11] Jonathan: That's right. He holds all things together. You know, I hear that phrase a lot, “That was a God thing. That was a God thing,” and I always have to stop and say to them, “Everything is a God thing.” I mean, conversations. The fact that your brain works. The ability to read. The ability to understand and reason. It’s like I hate when you get that narrow scope, as you’re saying. We’ve lost the sublime. We’ve lost an understanding of how much—you know, it's almost a deistic view that, you know, God sort of—
[25:42] Michael: Yes!
[25:43] Jonathan: He’s put some things in place and then He occasionally steps in and—
[25:47] Michael: That's why I argue that actually naturalism and hyper supernaturalism unintentionally conspire with each other against Christianity—
[25:57] Jonathan: Right.
[25:58] Michael: —you know because, you know, we get to the place where we don’t see God in our ordinary, everyday existence, but only in these punctuated events, and we’ve got to raise things. I think we do a lot of pretending. We pretend that things that have an ordinary explanation are miracles because we have to have God in our life. These large swaths of our lives where there are no miracles are upheld by God’s marvelous providence.
[26:40] Jonathan: Right. Amen to that. In the book, one of the fears you mentioned is fear of losing your job. And I think in the book you helpfully distinguish between calling and vocation or job and helping us understand and distinguish the two things. I wonder if we can talk a little bit of bringing clarity to that, because we’re longing for something to put our identity in. Is it a football club? Is it a university? We’re currently, I don’t know when this will air, but we’re in the middle of March Madness. Who did you pick? What's your university? What's your background?
And vocation is very much one of those things we can put our identity in, and yet I think you talk about the ultimate and the penultimate between calling and vocation. I wonder if you could bring some clarity to that, and then we’ll turn to some of the practical outworkings of the division we see after that.
[27:53] Michael: Yeah. Well, one of the things I try to maintain throughout the book is, look, the things I’m talking about are not unimportant. They are legitimate fears. There is a legitimate anxiety. The question is, where do we go with that? But yes, let’s affirm it. It’s real, it’s a deal, but penultimate not ultimate.
For example, if I am in a circle of people I’ve never met before, we’re having breakfast, and I ask them, “Tell me about yourself,” very ordinarily they’ll say, “Well, I’m a dentist. I’m a …”
Now okay, there’s an example. That is part of our identity. Vocation is a gift of God; it’s a calling. So to say, you know, we shouldn’t place our identity in our vocations, well, not ultimately. That's the problem. It’s a part of our identity, just like being a father is part of my identity. That's a calling. And we have to realize, as Luther said, we have many callings, many vocations during our life. We’re parents, we’re spouses, we’re children, we are extended family members, we’re dentists, and cleaning movie theaters. We have all kinds of callings/vocations. Sometimes we have a vocation to suffer, to carry a cross. Sometimes we have a vocation to be a friend. We have lots of vocations, and keeping them in balance is very important.
Keeping them penultimate, not ultimate, is my point. My ultimate identity is chosen, redeemed, justified, being sanctified, will be glorified, in union with Christ. That's my identity and that's really who I am. Paul talks about himself as if he’s almost collapsed into Jesus. His identity is so bound up with Christ that he can even say his suffering is something he glories in because it shares in Christ’s suffering. That's my identity; that's where I really find who I am. The other stuff is not just stuff I do, that turns it back into a job. It is part of my identity, but it’s penultimate, not ultimate.
[30:57] Jonathan: Well, as we said at the beginning, we see division in so many different places. We’re, of course, as you know, we’re in another election year, and that—fear is going to be used as a … it’s going to be weaponized this year, particularly this year, in America. And we have an international audience, so I want to be sensitive, but I know that internationally also they see a lot of American news as well. I think you talk about how, in the book, two sides to the fear coin. You mention both in the book. One side, fear is easily exploited as a motivator. On the other, fear is a weak motivator in the long term. Why is that? Let’s kind of unpack that a little bit.
[32:07] Michael: Yeah. I use the analogy of deer who are … there is this fight or flight that God gave us and the animals as well. It’s purely instinctual, instinctive. You don’t … Whether you’re a deer or a human being, you don’t really think about, you don’t contemplate, you don’t calculate, you don’t explore what … You have a car coming towards you, you flee. You get out of its way if you can. But what happens is—
That's adrenaline. That adrenaline rush is just a marvelous gift of God’s providence. The problem is what would happen is deer had this disease of constantly being afraid, every crack of brush of another deer drove them wild running in fear? That's what I see us doing now, and what happens is it works in the short term. If you’re going to cynically use fear to get a herd of people to do what you want them to do, that might work in the short term, but long term, people can’t live like that. Long term, people actually become cynical. They won’t participate at all. They’ll just turn it off because “I’ve had this scare a thousand times and I’m not going to have it anymore. I’m tired of it.” It just runs out.
And that's what I think a lot of people are feeling right now with American politics. So I’m not an analyst of American politics by any stretch of the imagination; I’m simply looking at it on the pastoral side. What is driving us to be like the deer in the headlights every five minutes? And it’s exhausting us.
[34:33] Jonathan: Yeah.
[34:34] Michael: Each side whipping up the other side against each other. If I don’t win this election, dot, dot, dot. If the other person wins the election, dot, dot, dot. It’s apocalypse not. I especially find offensive any use of God or the Bible or Christ for that fear. Anyone who does that, particularly cynical leaders who don’t even go to church, aren’t professing Christians really, but they use the lingo to gain the nomination of particular groups. When Christians participate in that, they carry crosses to the U.S. Capitol to storm it and talk about hanging the vice president, and they’re carrying crosses with Bible verses, this is the sort of thing that must just aggravate our Lord and Savior whose name is taken in vain.
And yeah, is that a critique especially of evangelical political conservatives? Yes, it is. Because they are my brothers and sisters closest to me. The secularists aren’t really invoking the name of Jesus and Bible verses and carrying crosses. I’m more worried about evangelicals distorting the gospel than I am about who wins this next election.
[36:54] Jonathan: What is that doing to your testimony to those people who don’t know the Lord? What message is it giving them?
[37:10] Michael: That Christianity is about power.
[37:11] Jonathan: Right, exactly.
[37:12] Michael: It’s not about a cross with God who has all power becoming flesh being spat upon and then being crucified upon a cross, bleeding for our sins. It’s about basically choosing Caesar over Jesus, making Pilate our hero rather than Jesus.
[37:45] Jonathan: I found that chapter, I can’t remember if it’s the Christian nationalism chapter or the one before, but it was really helpful the way that you walked out American history in a way that probably a lot of the readers might say, “I don’t know if I understood that.” Or “I don’t know if I fully understood Thomas Jefferson and his letter to the Danbury Baptist Church in Connecticut.” Understanding separation of church and state, understanding like how we got to where we are and the creating of even thinking between the British … French revolution and those different paths that were laid out before us. And even just understanding our own history and how we got to where we are, I think a lot of it is just cast as Christian nation. And I found it helpful the way you distinguish that.
Because I hear this a lot in the church in terms of America being the new Israel, are there blessings that have come with certain things? Sure, fine. Our Constitution is well put together. I love the history of Witherspoon, the Scottish Presbyterian, and you can see some of that in the language that comes out through the Constitution. Again, I think it’s helpful to have your historical understanding rather than this reinterpretation that we have now that it’s, as you said, it’s this feeling like someone’s come in and taken this from us. And now, to use the title of your other book, now we’re at war, right? It’s not a mission field, it’s a battlefield. We’re fighting for the honor of our country. And all that's done is create us and them division and a lack of clarity and a lack of what we’re called to in a mission sense as Christians. Where was I going with that? Who knows? Anyway, I found it helpful.
[40:10] Michael: You said it better. Preach it, brother.
[40:16] Jonathan: Just random thoughts. Just reading your books and regurgitating it to the people. So later on in the book you sort of walk us through the areas where division has come in. So we have Christian nationalism has certainly seeped into churches. Then you have some really helpful, short chapters with issues with LGBTQ+ community, cancel culture, racism. Let’s just kind of walk through some of these and help Christians who are listening to this who are saying, I thought this was the right way to handle that situation but you’re saying something else. Let’s kind of walk through maybe even just one or two of those. Again, you had a really great illustration under your LGBTQ+ chapter of the young man whose family had sent him to you and you were pastoring him and what happened with all that. If you could tell us a little bit about that, just to help kind of encapsulate what we’re talking about here.
[41:35] Michael: Sure, this brother struggling with homosexuality, his dad was on the board of a prominent evangelical organization, and his pastor had told him that we basically don’t want your influence in the church, so he was considering leaving the faith. But then he read Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, a book I wrote a long time ago, and came out to work at our organization as just a pretext for just hanging out and shepherding this guy. He became a part of our church and a lot of people looked after him and we got a lot back from him.
He went back home, and his pastor said that all this reformed teaching he was getting was heresy and so forth, and no, you’ve lost your salvation. Romans says that He gave them over to a depraved mind. So he committed suicide and …
So what is it? Why do you do stuff like that? Well, you do it out of bad theology, to be sure, but also out of fear. There are a lot of churches that just don’t want to deal with it. They don’t want to have this problem. They don’t want to say that they have people in their congregation who are really, really suffering. If you’re a secularist, you don’t suffer from homosexuality. You don’t suffer with gender dysphoria. Only Christians do. And only Christians suffer with greed and envy and malice and other sins that are listed in these same sin lists in the New Testament. You don’t lose your salvation over those.
The key is repentance, right? We’re called to a life of repentance. Whatever our tendencies are towards particular sins, we’re all corrupt in heart. We’re sinners and we’re sinned against and we are in a sin-cursed world. And so where do we go with that fear? And then once that fear is solved objectively in Christ, having been justified through faith, we have peace with God. That's an objective fact. With that now as an objective fact, how do I respond to this brother or sister who’s justified just as I am, and who is being sanctified just as I am, but has propensity toward a particular sin that I think is particularly serious, particularly great? How do I love this person? How do I respond to this person?
John Calvin said a pastor needs to learn how to have two voices: one for the sheep and one for the wolves. And what I’ve seen in some very close cases to my own experience, what I’ve seen sometimes is pastors confusing the sheep for wolves and treating them as apostates or as people who, you know, if you really were a Christian, you wouldn’t be suffering with that. Well, they’re not saying, “I have a right to this sin.” They’re not saying that it’s okay. That's why they’re struggling with it—and they’re struggling with it in your church.
So one of the surveys, actually a couple of the surveys concluded that about 80 percent of people in the LGBTQ+ community were raised in conservative Roman Catholic or Protestant churches.
[46:39] Jonathan: Give that statistic again because I think we need to hear it again.
[46:42] Michael: I don’t know exact, it’s in the 80s, 80 percent.
[46:46] Jonathan: Over 80 percent.
[46:49] Michael: Right. And what's even more striking is the same percentage said that they would come back to church, even if they didn’t change their rules, but listened to them and cared for them. That's what I found amazing. I was glad that they asked … they added in that survey even if they didn’t change their beliefs but they were kind and they listened and they cared for me.
So if I’m fearful, here again the adrenaline, the deer in the headlights, that's a gift God gave us for fleeing something that is imminently threatening. This is not imminently threatening. If I come to understand that, then I’m not a deer in the headlights; instead, my brother or sister, my friend, parent, I’m someone who is looking out for the best of this person and now I can actually get ahold of myself and think and make judgments and articulate things. And ask questions and get information. That's a big part of it. It’s not all spiritual. People are suffering from mental health disorders, and that's physical, that's brain chemistry. All kinds of things.
People are suffering from sins that have been committed against them in the past. A lot of this is very complicated, and it’s not all that person’s direct fault. Again, we’re all sinners, sinned against, and live in a sin-cursed world. And all those factors play into what we have to consider when we’re not the deer in the headlights but can sit down with people over a long time, be willing to walk with them over a long time, be willing to read up on things, ask them questions, we’re that interested in them and understanding what they’re going through, understanding their pain. It’s like if they have cancer we’d be at their house with casseroles, but if they have these things, you know … So let’s … fear of the Lord drives out the fears of everyone and everything else. This is the beginning of wisdom.
[48:52] Jonathan: Exactly. Well, I think we could probably have this conversation for probably another four more hours, which we might do just because we’re having so many technical difficulties. You know, I can’t recommend this book enough. Mike Horton, Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears that Divide Us. I told my team I want to re-air this as we get closer to November so that we can all be reminded once again of what we’re called to. Mike, what are you working on at the moment?
[50:35] Michael: I’ve been kind of obsessive compulsive about a project, three volumes with Eerdmans. First volume is coming out in May, titled Shaman and Sage. This is a very different project. It’s the history of spiritual not religious. Where does this come from? You have this divine self within trying to break out of all constraints. And so I trace it all the way back to ancient Greece and to the Renaissance. And then the second volume, Renaissance to the scientific revolution. And then the third volume is covering Romanticism to the present.
[51:31] Jonathan: Oprah.
[51:32] Michael: Exactly.
[51:35] Jonathan: That’s going to be a massive help for believers, because that's the one we see a lot in those statistics. Yeah, I hear that from quite a few people, spiritual but not religious, or whatever the phrase is. But well, Mike Horton, it’s been such a privilege. I’m so grateful for your time and coming on to Candid Conversations and sharing with us.
[52:10] Michael: Jonathan, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.
[52:14] Jonathan: Thank you, brother.
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Episódios

Episode 268: The Pursuit of Truth in Modern Media: Jane Robelot

Episode 267: The Message That Launched a Movement: Dr. Michael Youssef

Episode 266: Shaman and Sage: Unveiling the Roots of "Spiritual But Not Religious": Dr. Michael Horton

Episode 265: From Rebellion to Redemption, A Testimony of Christ’s Power in the Arab World: Maged Atalla

Episode 264: How to Identify Truth in Today's World: Jonathan Youssef

Episode 263: The 8 Friends You Need: Jonathan Youssef

Episode 262: Answering the Tough Questions: Navigating Sexuality & Faith with Becket Cook

Episode 261: A Gay Man's Incredible Story of Redemption: Becket Cook

Episode 260: The Battle for Truth: How Do You Stand Firm in a Culture of Feelings?: Jonathan Youssef (Reprise)

Episode 259: What is Biblical Theology and Why Is It Important?: Nancy Guthrie (Reprise)

Episode 258: Five Ways to Follow Christ as a Family:Jonathan Youssef (Reprise)

Episode 257: Father, Forgive Them: One Woman's Journey to Freedom (Reprise)

Episode 256: Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom: Os Guinness (Reprise)

Episode 255: Are You Wrestling with God?: Jonathan Youssef

Episode 254: What is Emotional Intelligence and Why Does it Matter?: Clay Kirkland

Episode 253: LGBTQ Conversations: Transgender from Biblical Times to Now, Claire and Rob Smith (Reprise)

Episode 252: How 20 Minutes Can Impact Your Child's Spirituality: Tyler Van Halteren (Reprise)

Episode 251: Broadcasting Hope: Farid Garas

Episode 250: Understanding the Future Promise of Heaven: Dr. Michael Youssef

Episode 249: Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears That Divide Us: Dr. Michael Horton