Comparing Cultures

And so what's Charlie Kirk doing. He's going on in these college campuses, engaging, you know, in debate. You know, come one, come all, let's you know, bring your ideas and be ready to defend them. And people don't have ideas that they're ready to defend. They don't even think they think it's it's it's inhuman for you to ask that they would defend their ideas. I don't have to defend my lived experience, right, who do you think you are? I don't have to defend my identity, like, who do you think you are? Recent days have reminded us that we are at war. Though we wrestle not against flesh and blood. We face a darker adversary, principalities and powers bent on subverting truth with lies, goodness with evil, and beauty with ugliness. This is a cosmic war aimed at undermining God by marring his image. The temptation of the virtuous is to mistake themselves for mere victims in this struggle, when in reality, the war is not simply to be endured, but to be waged and won. We stand in the evil day because we bow before the throne that has neither beginning nor end. These truths are necessary because the wiles of God's enemies are ferocious and demoralizing. They manufacture a culture of death, seeking to normalize darkness, destruction, and despair. Those who dare to confront such evil are met with censorship, slander, and sometimes even bloodshed. In a world that loves lies. There is always a cost to speaking the truth, and Christians must be willing to pay it. The recent assassination of Charlie Kirk was no accident of history. It was the bitter fruit of leftist ideology, a system that sanctifies murder, theft, and sexual license while baptizing it in the language of justice and freedom. Ideas always bear consequences, life or death. Godless philosophies cultivate death, but only Christianity establishes life. Make no mistake. Leftist ideology, rooted in atheism and cultural Marxism, is an imminent threat to civility, freedom, and prosperity. Those who spread the doctrines of critical race theory, feminism, socialism, postcolonialism, and their ilk are, whether knowingly or not, proponents of death. My guest today is Vodi Bottom, husband, father, grandfather, former pastor, church Planter, best selling author, professor, and now President of Founder Seminary in Florida. He is renowned for showing the relevance of Scripture to every part of life, whether defending the historicity of the Bible and the resurrection of Christ, or teaching on biblical manhood and womanhood, marriage, family, and the social justice movement. He has helped countless people see what it means to think and live biblically in all things. He is also an accomplished martial artist. Beginning Brazilian jiu jitsu in twenty twelve for self defense, fitness and outreach, he quickly excelled in competition and in twenty nineteen opened Zambia's first Brazilian jiu Jitsu academy. And while such accolades are admirable, I prefer simply to call him uncle. I hope you enjoy our conversation well, uncle, which, yes, I'm calling you uncle for this one. It's so good to see you you too. I mean, the last time that I saw you, we were very far away from here. Just felt like we're in completely different stages and doing different things altogether. So it's just we were literally, we literally were, so I don't know. To have you here just means so much to me. I've missed your company, of missed your counsel, I've missed just everything. It's interesting because for people who are trying to get to know me in this part of the world, when I try to tell them, you know where I'm from, your name, all this seems to come up. So ill stus with something like, oh, yeah, so I'm from Zambia. You know. It's like, oh, Zambia, do you happen to know and it's like, yes, yes, yes I do. My uncle he's my uncle, speaking of which I mean I was trying to calculate this just when I first met you, and I believe that was probably two thousand and seven. Our family had just moved to Zambia from South Africa and you already preaching at the reform conferences out there my second year. That was your second year. Yeah, and so I've known you at this point eighteen years, which is just crazy to think about. And it's been it's been an amazing eighteen years. I mean, your family is like family to me. You very much are my uncle, you know, Yeah, And I want you to know just how much I treasure our friendship, your counsel, your mentorship over the years, it's really meant so much to me. Yeah, it's been mutual, it's been it's been great to watch you grow up quite literally, quite literally. Yeah, it's amazing. So Uncle, you know, this is it's interesting that you and I filming this this week. It's been a heavy week. Yeah, it's been a I can't tell you the kinds of emotions I have worked through this this whole week. It kind of started with that video of Irina Zarutska getting murdered, and I mean, there's just so much that that's just so dark and heavy. And then I suppose just the big thing this week as well was just Charlie Kirk gets assassinated. Yeah, you know, and I think for that first day I just didn't really know how to respond to that at all. But it seems like this moment has has it's going to be a defining moment in some way, and I just love to get to hear from you what sense you make of what's going on in this moment and how you think we should be faithful and the days in the years that light ahead. How do we make sense. Of all this? Well, I think a couple of things. I was born in nineteen sixty nine, so my parents came of age, you know, in the nineteen sixties, and so for them it was nineteen sixty eight. It was the political violence of that year, assassinations of that year. So you're looking at you know, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. And it's interesting how when people think about that era, there's the political upheaval and cultural upheaval that characterized that era, but it was punctuated by those assassinations. Because that that is extraordinary, right, that we just we just don't do that, We just don't see that. And here we are, and we've seen the same kind of political upheaval and cultural upheaval over the last several years short of the whole Donald Trump era, right, and then political prosecutions and you know, attempted assassinations and you know, all of the vitriol you know that's been going on, and then now a political assassination as well. And so I think when when we do have an opportunity to look back on this at some point, it will be similar to nineteen sixty, right, it will be all this stuff that was happening that was punctuated and sealed in the consciousness of the culture by acts of political violence. I think I think that's the way that this is going to be punctuated and sealed in our collective memory as well. What do we do, like, what should our response be? How should we be thinking of this, Like, what does it look like to get our heads on straight? Yeah? And go forward with a sense of purpose and hope. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I'll be talking to the students about today. I'm changing what I was doing. And you know, we're going to talk about the fact that we are strangers and aliens and about the fact that you know, Peter tells us we all know first THREWO three fifteen, right, always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you. But he starts that off that section with who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? So the context there is people who are living as strangers and aliens, who are experiencing persecution because they're strangers and aliens, and instruction as to how we're to live in the midst of that context, and I think one of the things that's interesting for us as Christians, is as Christians in the West in particular, is those passages of Scripture have been so foreign to us for so long because the reality is we haven't been the strangers and aliens. The reality is our ideology, our worldview, our religion, our faith has aped the culture in which we live, right, and so it's it's almost impossible for us to think about ourselves as strangers and aliens. But I believe that what's happened in recent years is put us back into that position. And there's always something, you know, going on that is reminding us right that that this is not our home. Right that even though we live in cultures that have been shaped by our faith, that has been shaped by the Scripture, Mangowati's book, you know, the book that made your world, even though that's real and that's true, in a broader sense, this is not our home. We're we're not meant to have that level of comfort here, and so we have to live with that tension, right that already not yet tension. We have to live with that tension of being grateful to God because of the fruit that we've seen being grateful to God because of the way that the Gospel has been able to advance, the way that culture has been able to be impacted in shaped while at the same time reminding ourselves we are strangers and aliens, and everything that the scriptures teach to us as strangers and aliens applies and the here and the now even in our context. So we have to be mindful of that because you know that that changes the way we view circumstances like the current one that we're that we're dealing with. You know, on the one hand, because of the fruit that we've seen, because of the privileges that we've had, that is unusual, it is outrageous, it is unthinkable. There are places in the world where what happened to Charlie Kirk happens every day. That's just that's a Tuesday, exactly right. But we we have not lived in that world, and so there's there's there's that reality that we have to be grateful for. But on the other hand, we're reminded we're strangers and aliens, and so we have to live as though we're strangers and aliens, which means we do have to be ready always to give an answer to anyone who asks us the reason for the whole that is within us. I think that's so profound and and I think so important for us to understand. You know, Uncle Charlie and I were born in exactly the same year. There's a sense in which we have my oldest son. That's right, That's exactly right, And I think that makes it just that much more sobering for me. I've been unspoken on some of the things that he was spoken on. He had the king interest in politics as I do. Of course, he had a much bigger platform than I've ever had. But it just really it feels personal at that level, you know, it feels like something really major just happened. And I think about this the consequence of ideas. It is what I think a lot of this boils down to the kind of ideas that I think you've exposed for so many years. Honestly, you talked about things like critical race theory. You've spoken about the evils of feminism. Your most recent book, you know, Gay is Not the New Black. It's also very insightful in that sense. Are you surprised at some of these violent expressions that we're we're starting to see now where it seems like there's this resumption, just as you refer it to this assassination. Culture, so to speak. What what was fomenting the political violence in the nineteen sixties, It was radical Marxist ideology, right, That's what was going on. It was radical Marxist ideology. And what's been fomenting the unrest that we've been dealing with and experiencing in recent years. What is critical race theory? Right, it's radical Marxist ideology. You know, what what has been our approach to everything that we've seen Israel, Palestine, post colonial you know, post colonialism, it's radical Marxist ideology. Is that that that neo Marxist cultural Marxist if you will, ideology of the oppressor oppressed paradigm and the justification of any and everything done by the oppressed against the oppressor. That that's that's one thing. The other thing is, in this current day and age, you mix that together with this kind of the mentality that says that my beliefs are rooted in my lived experience and and and it's rooted in my identity. So identity and lived experience. Well, here's what that does. If you have ideas and I have ideas, then we can debate those ideas, right, and then go grab lunch. Or we can debate them over lunch. Right, we can have a cookout and we can stand in front of the grill and just go at it over these ideas. We do it all the time. For example sports, Right, you know your team is better than my team, where this player is better than that player, and we debated, you bring up your points, bring up my counterpoints. It's what we do. Right. But when we start talking about things in the political realm and we root them and ground them. Any idea that my positions are my identity and my lived experience, then when you oppose my positions, you are attacking me at my core. It can't be a debate, right, It literally cannot be a debate because I'm not going to debate whether or not I exist and whether or not I matter. I remember, I was here in Moscow. I was doing a lecture at the University of Idaho, and you know, students invited in. I was going to do my prison and then do Q and A right with the students. And I remember, and I've thought about this vividly over the last couple of days. I remember at one point, you know, I'm introduced, I get up and I start speaking, and then students started to pop up in different parts of the room and and and yell out right and I don't remember exactly you know what they yelled out, but it was something about you know, their existence and denying their existence, and you know, it was the whole L G, B, T Q, I, you plus whatever. And then they got up and they you know, there was no violence. They they were they were ushered out, but that's what it was. It was like, we we don't want to hear what you have to We can't hear what you have to say. You cannot be allowed to say what you're about to say, because you doing that is a direct attack on our very existence. And so because of that, the idea, that of debate, I mean, it's really going by the wayside. And so what's Charlie Kirk doing. He's going on in these college campuses, engaging, you know, in debate. You know, come one, come all, let's you know, bring your ideas and be ready to defend them. And people don't have ideas that they're ready to defend. They don't even think they think it's it's it's inhuman for you to ask that they would defend their ideas. I don't have to defend my lived experience, right, who do you think you are? I don't have to defend my identity, Like, who do you think you are? And so debate is it's almost a thing of the past, you know, because of that, and you know, you put these things together and you foment this culture of justified violence. Right, speech is violence. If you really believe speech is violence, let's put these together. Right, So, my identity and my lived experience, that's who I am. Speech is violence. Your speech is violent action against my identity and my lived experience. I'm completely justified in retaliating with violence against your violence, right right. Yeah. In fact, it kind of goes back to what you're saying about Marxism. I think another one that's very closely related to this is Darwinism. So Marxism pauses this idea that life is this, Yeah, exactly, So life is this power play. Darwin suggests that life is all about survival, and therefore you do whatever it takes to attain the power or bring down whatever sort of hegemony exists in the name of survival. And you take that to its logical conclusion, that's exactly what prompts a culture of death. And there's a sense in which I think the left it and just wake up this week and start doing things. This has been happening for a long time. The murder of millions of unborn children testify to that exact fact. There is a real culture of death happening in a very real way. And the irony is to their way of thinking that statement that you just made, right, the murder of unborn children, that that's vile, right, yeah, because that's the assault, that's the affront, that's the violence, right, that's the irony, you know. Yeah, not the murder of the unborn children, but the naming, yes, the calling out of the murder of the unbortial exactly. They don't like those terms at all. One of the things that I think has has interesting It surprised me most being here the year that I've lived, is generally speaking, how influenced by Christianity, even the non Christians are. They don't even realize that you have to live in another part of the world like where we've lived, right in order to appreciate that. Just come to a four way stop. Come to a four way stop. I mean, I like people. People, they won't understand that, right, they won't get it. They just the way people tell you when they come to a four way stop. When that happens, you realize culture matters. It really does. It seems like again, it's a really really trivial thing. I've never felt more sane in my life driving on these streets. I'm almost like, I mean, I had to learn the defense of driving in that sense, because oh my goodness, you and I have seen things, We've experienced things. But it's also things like and you and I have always talked about this, like not only this. But I was talking to my children about internal locus control versus external locus and control. And we talked about this a lot when we were living in Zambia, and you know, for example, we would we would drive down the street and their speed humps everywhere where, everywhere, Yes, you know, because that's the only way you're going to control people and stop them from being reckless and ridiculous. Right, it's just having these speed humps everywhere, and when. We were unmarked by the way, oftentimes just destroyer suspension exactly. And you know, we would we would we would come back here on furlough or something, and they would notice things like that, right, all the speed humps, all the you know, and the the security officers. You know, one of the number one employers or employment segments is security. And so you go to the grocery store and the parking lot is full of security officers, you know. Just yeah, so there's just something, Yeah, exactly, you're not all just talked about sidewalks as well. Yeah, Like I'm just I'm amazed, Like people think, like sidewalk, like why is it? It really is a thing. It communicates something fundamental, that there's this understanding that human life is valued absolutely right inabsolutely the average person who moves around is a pedestrian, and they don't have those kinds of safe they don't have those kinds of safeguards at all. Now, I always said, you know, here, we live in a culture where very few people walk, but we have sidewalks. Over there, we were living in a culture where the overall majority of people walk and there's no sidewalks, you know, And again it communicates something, Yeah, it does, it really does. I mean there's so many there's so many like parallels that we could we could draw here, and one of the things I actually really wanted to get into was just with us as contrasting culture as a whole. I think you and I are firm believers in the idea that some cultures are better than others, and some people don't. They won't like it, they won't like hearing that not all cultures are equal. A culture rises and falls to a degree to which it either embraces Christ. Or rejects him. In in societies where there's a rejection of Christ, there is inevitably death and destruction. What Christianity has prompted over time is genuine freedom and prosperity. And we've seen this firsthand. You've been back in the US a year now. I'm just curious to know if you've, like, like, on one hand, some of the interesting things you noticed about culture back in Africa generally speaking. And if you've noticed that, well, they didn't even have to be back here, you know as well, living there, people who are Christians, who live their lives as Christians governed by Scripture have a very different. Value system, a very different morality, even in the African context, than people who reject that or than people who just claim Christ. But you know, are are are completely you know cultural, you know, traditional in the way they live their lives, just sort of power Christ. On top of that, there's a huge difference in the way those people live their lives and the way that they raise their children, in the way that they treat their wives, you know, in the way that they run their business. There's a there's a huge difference. So it's not even a there and here thing, right, and it's and it's the same here. You know, there's a huge difference when people's lives are more intentionally governed. You know, you made a really important point that unintentionally people's lives here are governed by uh biblical uh theology, ideology, morality, however you want to name it. You know, more than they know or are are willing to admit. But even in that context, there are people who are more intentionally governed, yes, by biblical truth. And you you see a difference there. So yeah, I mean you see a difference in northern and western Europe and eastern and southern Europe. Right, the the Reformation and the the inculcation of the theology of the Reformation is its well built the West. Yeah, And on that point, like do you have any insights about what it takes to propagate a robust understanding of truth in culture. I mean, this is kind of what you and I were doing in Zambia right, Like we're seeking to impart truth to people that they can they can live the way God wants. And there's a sense in which I mean, I guess I'm still young, so like I'm in real time trying to figure out what is what is the most effective way to translate these these rich ideas, this this rich theology, this rich heritage that we have as Christians and bring it to culture in a in a potent way, not just in a way where people pay lip service to Christ, but in a way that it really permeates every aspect of their lives, their their minds, their affections, their practices. Yeah, I suppose, like, just what are your insights about how best we can do that sort of thing. It's foundational and it's generational. It's it's not like, give you a parallel example. After nine to eleven, you know, we have you know, the wars and Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that, you know, the earlier GLF wars, and a lot of people were very interested in regime change, right, We're going to have regime change in Iraq, We're going to have regime change in Afghanistan, and we're going to prop up democratic governments and the these places. Well, no, you're not, because culturally people were not ready for that. And I think there was this massive ignorance of the potency of culture, right, and we think that somehow we can just bring a set of ideas, bring a set of rules, bring a set of governing documents, and to superpose these governing documents over a culture that's thousands of years old, and somehow they are going to be able to live in accordance with these ideas. It's just it doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. That takes generations, and it also takes deeply rooted philosophical, theological understanding, and so we have to go broad and we have to go deep. One of the reasons that I was excited about going to to Zambia and helping them to start ACU is because there is this robust, thirty year old indigenous reform Baptist movement there that had been laying foundations deep and wide, ideological foundations deep and wide, and people didn't understand that and sometimes got offended because we would get calls from all over the place, all over Africa. You know, can you guys send somebody here? Can you guys do that? You know, can can we do it here? And again that thinking, you know, I can. You've got this program, You've got this system. Can you just bring that program in that system, PLoP it down on top of this place here and any answers no. Right, it's hard enough in Zambia where there's this thirty year old robust indigenous you know, theological movement. It's hard enough in that context to go somewhere where you don't have that, It just it doesn't happen. So, you know, the answer to that is it has to go deep and wide, and it's multi generational. And this is why marriage and family have always been an important part of the thinking of anyone who wants to see long term revolutionary change. This is why the Marxists, right, they go to the heart of marriage and family. Right. We don't want women being wives and mothers. We don't want children being raised, you know, and trained and educated in the home and in the church. We don't want to see that because the family and the church are the two most influential institutions as it relates to that deep and wide inculcation of the ideologically that leads to that kind of change. Right, So we've got to get the family in the church out of the business of number one, teaching people how to think robustly, and then we got to get them out of the business of raising the next generation to have these underlying assumptions, because if you don't do that, then you're not going to be able to get your ideology in there. And it's the same for us, right, it's the same for us. If you are not able to see change in terms of you know, the family and the church multi generational inculcation of these truths, you're not going to be able to superimpose them on a culture because there are their worldview, their worldview won't tolerate it, or their worldview will completely change it. And so you know, you give them this right. And this is a problem too with sort of dry by missions. So you come in and you preach the gospel and and people are saved, and you know, you take the person who can read and you go, okay, you're going to be the pastor and here's a Bible, and you know, you go and then you leave and you come back, and there's a form of Christianity there that looks a whole lot like the animistic culture that was there before it, you know what I'm saying. And so you can't you can't do that. So yeah, deep wide, multi generational. Something I think that's very connected to all this as well is how the advance of all this, like chaotic cultures, all is preceded by weak and muted men, right, Like, like you remove men from the equation and you remove the kinds of people who are cold and designed to protect cold and designed to lead cold and designed to be virtuous. Feminism is realized by weak and muted men. Socialism is realized by weak and muted men. Or unrestrained men. Unrestrained men, right, yes, yeah. I mean Soviet the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks weren't weak and muted men. They were strong men, but they were unrestrained men. Right, So there's a ditch on both sides of the road, you know. And And what restrains men, what civilizes men, well, well, marriage and family, right, Marriage and family, That's that's what restrains and what civilizes men. And when you remove that and and what what Marxism did, what feminism does is it's the same thing, but from a different end. You're you're absolutely right, right. You you take men and you and you weaken them, and you you negate them that way by having them, by having them just sort of you know, voluntarily moving themselves aside. But on the other end, you basically remove the responsibility of men as priest, profit, provider, protector in their home. You make that the responsibility of the state. You make their families the word of the state, and then you use men as the strong arm of the state to spread this you know, ideology abroad. So yeah, it happens in both directions, it does. Yeah, the irony of it being that again, like patriarchy is inevitable in that sense, the question is what kind of patriots? Yeah? What kind of Yeah? What kind? What kind is it going to be? And we need to recover that, I think in a world of immediate gratification where we want the quick fixes. And I think we've also imbibed a sort of way before you go there, because you just you just make me think of this. You know, people they have this problem with patriarchy. But patriarchy is the only protector of women in the world, absolutely, right. If you don't have patriarchy, there's nothing to protect women and children and children, right, because what. What do you what are you going to do when men are not restrained? What what are you going to do when men who are bigger and stronger or violent, right tend to be more predatorial. What are you going to do when these men are running rampant? What is a matriarchal culture, right, yes, going to do in the midst of that. And the answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. It's going to be destroyed and women are going to be destroyed in that environment. When you have patriarchy functioning, you have men being restrained, you have men being made responsible for women and children, you have men being accountable for protecting women and children. Right, that's the environment. And so the great irony is when you remove the restraints of patriarchy, you are removing the protection that women have in the name of the liberation liberation of those same way. The name of justice and the name of freedom, the name of all this. And yeah, you see firsthand, like matriarchal societies conflourish, they languish one, yeah, exactly, name name one yeah. And a lot of times when people say, you know a major society there there can be uh matrilineal societies right where the lineage of the ruling class is through the females side of the line. But that's not matriarchal, right exactly. Yeah, you're you're absolutely right. And I think just coming back to like your point on the necessity of strong families and churches. Again, like in a world where we like this idea of immediate gratification and we want immediate quick fixes to things, we don't always have a vision for the long game, so to speak. That can be tough for people to hear, and yet there's no doing away with it. If we're going to build the kind of men who are going to stand against evil and stand for righteousness, we must teach them restraint, We must we must teach them virtue. We must teach them righteousness that primarily happens in the home, that that primarily requires fathers who assume their responsibility to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. That requires good, strong churches that preach the truth and the whole counsel of God's word with authority and with thick and robust application, and there's no escaping that. One of the things that I've been iterating a lot recently is the idea that the state of the culture is often the resume of the church, in that sense that the church's failure to be the pilearned ground of truth. And I think we need to to reawaken that, we need to we need to recover that. I don't necessarily agree with that go ahead, because you know, in this life, who will always have trouble? Not we will have trouble if the church is not doing in being. The other thing is the church is persecuted and always been persecuted, right That wasn't because the Church wasn't doing and being that it was supposed to be. You know, that was in spite of the fact, or even because the church was doing in being when it was you know. I guess I guess my point in that is that even in the wake of that persecution, God is doing something with that moment and with that fidelity, right like, in a very real way. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that when the church loses its distinction as being set apart from the world, it loses its ability to really even trouble the world. Like there's a sense in which the church has has become comfortable with, you know, accommodating all the licentiousness and all the lives, or even if even if they might have a problem with it, they're not always outspoken against it. So I think from that perspective, a faithful church is one where that is in conflict and is intention with the world, very intentionally. And I think the bigger problem that we have is a lot of what we call church today is not church. And I think that's different than saying the church is failing to do or the church is failing to be because the fact of the matter is there are a lot of goat farms out there calling themselves churches. But of course, we were promised that in second tivoty four right, that people would turn aside from following the truth and go off following myths. They would accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires. We were told that that was going to happen. And so I think one of the by products, on the unfortunate byproducts of the liberty that we've experienced in this part of the world is because there hadn't been much of a price to pay there. It's been just ripe picking for Charlatan's ripe picking for hirelings and for wolves. And we've got so many people out there gathering thousands and thousands in the name of Christ, who who are anything but shepherds, who are preaching anything but the gospel, while all the while there are thousands who have not bothered their need to bail. We just don't know them, right. The average church in America's what's seventy five members, you know, and so you know, I still believe the overwhelming majority of you know, those churches out there are faithful. You know. The problem is there's this massive disconnect between these faithful churches, faithful ministries that are doing exactly what they're supposed to do with seventy five one hundred people, and these heretical, often heretical, unfaithful ministries with thousands of people. You know, it's easy to look at that and say, look at the state of the church, right, and that that ain't the church. Man. You know, that's why I push back, you know what I mean on that idea. I just yeah, when you've had an opportunity to be in the trenches, you know. Yeah, it's encouraging. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, speaking of which, I mean, of course, like we kind of started this conversation with heavy reference to what happened with Charlie this week, and I don't know want you, but I feel just that much more invigorated and motivated to proclaim the truth. How necessary is it for us to have a high threshold of pressure and being willing to suffer in the wake of all this? I mean, one of the things that I'm praying for certainty is that this moment will spark thousands of more Charlie Kirks who are going to go out there and proclaim the truth, and them seeking to be faithful with right where God has placed them, proclaiming the truth, proclaiming the gospel right there. That I think that actually requires a willingness to be inconvenienced, the willingness to be rejected, the willingness to suffer and be persecuted. How do you speak to that? Yeah, it does have to be there. But what I worry about is the individual who's not willing to be persecuted. In smaller ways, Almost nobody is going to face an assassin's bullet as a consequence of being faithful. But there are a lot of people who are going to face the consequences of negative comments online, negative reviews from their boss, negative opinions from co workers, family members exactly. You know, I've got there's so many of my family members, man, who were reveling in Charlie Kirk's assassination. I mean, you know, especially younger, younger members of my family, and so you know, we're outsiders in that regard, even in our own family and from my wife and I we have been for a long time, you know. But but for me, you know, I don't look at this and say, yeah, you need to be able to you need to be willing to go out there and face an assassin's bullet. No, man, just just be willing to face your family members. Just be willing to face your cousin, right who talks crazy about people who believe what you believe, and be willing to identify yourself as one of those people that he talked crazy about, you know. And so that that's my hope, you know, yeah, because that that's where most of us live, you know, those. Are the places that God has placed us to be faithful and right there and there, I guess for people who asking like, Okay, I want to do that, but what does that actually look like? What does it look like to bring up the conversation just what's do you have any counsel for them? I mean, it looks like what it looks like. I mean, it looks like you being willing at all times to wear the name of Christ. It means like you being willing at all times to use the opportunities that you've been given. It means like being willing at all times to not I use this phrase, shaving off the edges of the gospel. Right. We do have this tendency to talk about what we believe in a way that gauges what bothers other people, and then shaving off that piece, right, and eventually there's nothing left, you know, but being willing to do that without shaving off the the edges, and being willing to do whatever that thing is that you know is going to cost you in terms of reputation and relationship, not foolishly right. You don't just when you when you're on your way to the family picnic. You know, you don't have a list of the topics that you're going to bring up in order to be offensive, you know, but a willingness as a student, a willingness in a classroom to question things, you know, a willingness to write a paper that that goes against the ideology that you know this professor is trying to push. You know, I think I think those are the things and there are thousands of them that we that that that we have the opportunity to be faithful in. Yeah, exactly interesting that you you you made a reference to academic institutions there of course here at New Saint Andrew's College, where like our mission is literally to graduate leaders who will go in and shape culture living faithfully under the lordship. Of Jesus Christ. There's a sense in which, like, our students are being enculturated in the ways of truth and beauty and goodness, and we're encouraging them to go and apply that in absolutely every single area of life. I know that education has been a big thing that you've been involved in for many years. I mean a lot of the work that we're involved in Zambia included education in a very big way. Just to underscore the importance of a good education to prepare for those kinds of things, like how would you encourage people who are maybe just getting out of high school. They know they want to live faithful lives for Christ. They're thinking of what's next. Just how would you come just to be good stewards? You know? Just what am I good at? What do I have? Have? Sometimes I jokingly call it, you know, Moses theology. He's standing there before the red sea, He's got to part the red sea? What do you do? Like there's there's not a tool for this, And what does God ask him? What's in your hand? Right? Not what this is made for? You know, but it's what he had in his hand. And God used what he had in his hand. And so I always I always tell people, ask yourself, what do I have in my hand? And then trust the Lord to use it? You know, do you have skills that would lend themselves to You've been a craftsman or a tradesman? Go do that? Do you do you have the mind of an engineer or a doctor? Or look? Go do that? You know? Do you just be a good steward? That The alternative is being the person who says the rules of the culture. Are you do this? Then? You do that, then you do that and that success. Right, that's that's the opposite, you know. Instead ask yourself, what has the Lord given me that I can make use of, that I can be faithful with, that I can be a good steward of and then go make the most of that thing. Yeah, yeah, that's so good. One of the opportunities that I saw you utilizing was the opportunity to wield combat for discipleship. And I say that because I have experienced the vote ballcum armbar. It's not the most comfortable thing in the world, but that was fun. You kicked off. We were part of the first Brazilian jiu jitsu club in Zambia, which was which was a lot of fun, and I think from that came just great opportunities for Yeah, well, gospel witness. We want to talk a bit about that. Yeah, not only gospel witness, but also discipleship. One of the things I learned when I started doing uh jiu jitsu, and I you know, I haven't been able to do it now in many years because of there's a man, because of a lot of things. I know, I know, I know, I know, you know. We lost our academy after COVID and all that, and but one of the things that even when I first started was I just saw this beautiful picture of masculinity. Right, it's called the gentle art. Right, it's power under control, and it's it's it's not just unbridled aggression. It's not about hitting a person or kicking a person as hard as you can. There's no there's no striking in Brazil jiu jitsu. It's about using the minimum amount of force necessary to subdue an opponent. And and it's so highly skilled that you have world class athletes who come in and get humbled, right, Like world class athletes or world class strong men come in and they get humbled by a five foot eight, one hundred and seventy five pounds, you know, guys who's learned, and they get frustrated, sometimes they'll get angry, but eventually they put themselves in the position of a disciple and they learn. Yes, And you watch men respect skill and technique and put themselves in the position of a disciple, and they keep coming back and coming back for that discipleship. And it just clicked for me, you know, because that's what men are hungry for everywhere. Right. That also opens up doors for gospel ministry. It opened up doors of gospel ministry like I couldn't believe. But on the other hand, it also helped me to really think differently about discipleship as a Christian man. You know, Christian men really want to be in the presence of men who have skills and knowledge, right, and evidence of that skill and knowledge fruit from that skill and knowledge in terms of applied Christianity, you know. And so having young men like yourself over to our home, you know, where we would just get into the nitty gritty of biblical manhood, marriage, met with my kids all around us. Right, it was the same thing. And then having you know, young couples come and young families come with their kids, and you know, in a lot of ways, it was the same thing, right, it was, here's some some skills and techniques, not to just reduce you know, we understand that that theologically, we're not just reducing it to you know, just skills and techniques. But for this, for the sake of the comparison, it's it's like when people would come into the mat, you know, and be introduced to some skills and techniques and and and know that there was so much more that they needed to know and needed to learn so much more, you know, that they needed to grow in. Yeah, it was it was always encouraging to me to see how men responded to that, you know, and also how women responded to that, because women want to learn how to defend themselves, but they want to learn how to do it in a safe place. And it's amazing how you know, in context of b j J that that that that took place. I'd also been in in places that had you know, different ideas that that that that weren't as good you know of an example of those kind of things, and so even their worldview matters, and the worldview that you bring to bear, you know, matters, And so I was very excited and grateful for the Lord to have the opportunity to do that and to see the way that it just took. Off and now there's like several ms people are trying jiu jitsu. Yeah. So, yeah, it was a it was a fun moment to be a part of. I mean, it was a it was big for me that it was big for me to learn skills that I could actually use in the real world. I'm like, you know, protection is not just one of those things that I think rides on good intentions, like it's actually important to have the necessary skills to protect those that you love. Of course, an Idaho, we love our beautiful second amendment, you know, seeking to exercise that too, But jiu jitsu just gave me a phenomenal foundation for that. Like it's exceptionally the other thing he does. And this brings us full circle. We talked about men being civilized and restrained, and one of the things that that kind of training does is it takes the edge off when it comes to masculinity. For example, a guy who's well trained in terms of self defense, you bump into him at a bar, you know, or whatever. That inclination too, I got to prove to you that I'm not weak. That's just not there. It's just not there. My bad. You know, he'll be avoiding the fight, avoiding it as much as he can, you know, because he literally does not have to prove what you know. He's not insecure, absolutely not. He is not insecure about that. And that's just another example of you know that that that restraint, you know that that men need. You know, so good uncle, if you don't know already, I love you sincerely. It's been love you too, man, really, man, it's been, it's been. It's been. Yeah, just it's been a blessing. I talk about men who have influenced me most of my life, and my my father's right up there. A close second is you, and I mean that in the most sincere way. Thank you for your influence, thank you for your faithfulness, thank you for your example. People know the vote balcom the big screen. I know my uncle Vodie. I've been in his home. I have a good relationship with every single member in your family. And it's just been a blessing. So the fact that you could come out here and do this with me today just means so much to me. So I'm so grateful. I usually, like I usually like to end these conversations with a little toast, and I'll ask you to call out the toast. I don't think you can toast with bottled water, you know. Isn't there like a rule. If you want something stronger? No? No, no, no, no, what do you want to toast it? Today? I'll let you call out the toast I think too, the body of Christ, to the beauty of the Body of Christ, and the way that he knits our lives together, because that's what he's done for us. We we yeah, we would never have met each other, and yet in the body of Christ we've been knit together. And uh, I'm grateful for that. Chas cheers. H m hm h M hmmm, h m hm m hmmmmmm