The Eric Metaxas Show - Lee Habeeb (Encore)

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

Lee Habeeb, host of "Our American Stories," talks about his hard-hitting documentary for Father's Day available at SalemNOW.com, "The Streets Were My Father." (Encore Presentation)

Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to hour two of the Eric Metaxus show. If you listen to Hour 1 first, I would say you did a good thing. If you're listening to this hour first, hey, shame on you. One comes before two. What are you thinking? Albin and I were talking, we're launching a campaign for this month for Christian Solidarity International. People always say, hey, what can I do? What can I do? well, one thing you can do is give something to tremendous, tremendous causes. Christian Soliday International. They're involved in so many things.

What is your relationship with them? When the discussion about critical race theory comes up, and it's coming up everywhere, it's in your school district, it's in your church, it's in your community, it may be in your home, you're having family members argue about this, you have parents arguing with kids, everyone is discussing this right now. one of the things I love to do, Eric, is to wink at them back and say, really, what have you done to bring about social justice? And I'll just let some time pass and little pregnant pause just kind of sit there because it's funny for most of these suburban white women that are really the ones that are pushing CRT harder than anybody else in the country. There's there's like this gobsmacked look that comes over their face and they don't know what to say.

And they're like, well, what am I supposed to do? They think that by arguing about, you know, whether or not they come from racist white people, that they're doing something to actually help people of color, as they would like to call it today. You can't say colored people. So I didn't say that. People of color. Color. Colored people suddenly is a bad thing.

Even though it's the National Association for the advancement of colored people, now we're supposed to say people of color. But I love to ask them that question and watch their brain kind of explode momentarily and not have to say back. And then I say, so you think that I'm fairly conservative and you probably think I'm pretty narrow-minded in my view of the race issue and probably disagree with you on a bunch of it. But what if I could show you something that we do and my listeners do that I'm confident you could do that would make a difference? And I get to tell them about the slave liberation project in Sudan. And I actually literally turn these hate-oriented arguments into an opportunity to not only radically change their mind, but show them something that's being done. And we've talked about it

on your show before, Eric, but here in the summertime, it is not any less important to remember that after the Sudanese Civil War came to an end, there were hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese Christian women and children that had been taken into slavery and that were being held captive in northern Sudan. And when the, when the world powers that helped me govern the end of the Sudanese civil war decided to split it into two countries, they didn't do anything to address the plight of the slaves in northern Sudan. Think about that. Think about what you just said. I want my audience to think, how astonishing there was a gruesome civil war in the Sudan. And when the powers that be were able to end it, they said, oh, as part of the deal, we're not going to do

anything about the slaves ladies and gentlemen slaves in 2021 slaves they're there today we could do something about it i mean kevin it seems like this this can't be happening today but it's happening right now that's true and while christian solidarity international from the very beginning was involved in their liberation and the abolition of slavery uh from the north uh they have not been joined by any other people. In fact, it's just been everyday folks like you and I that have come alongside and said, hey, I'd like to help. I'd like to help. I'd like to help. And I know that in the last year, Eric, I believe between the combined radio shows, not just yours and mine, but other ones that banned together to help, there were more than a thousand slaves liberated, but that still leaves

about 35,000 of the original 185,000 that were there still in captivity in the north. So this is a really simple program people. It's not complicated at all. What you do is you make a gift to CSI, Christian Solidarity International. They have an operational kind of underground railroad, Arab retrievers, people that are not Christian, but that want to have good relationship with the Christian Sudanese in the South. They go up into the north. They scout out where slaves are still being held. They engage the slave masters towards the liberation of those slaves. Once they have that liberation agreed upon, they are able to bring those slaves back to South Sudan to their home. Many times they were taken as children.

They've been gone for a decade or more. Sometimes they don't know where they came from. So there's a lot of kind of deconstructing that they have to do. They get to recuperate in a camp setting, a kind of a restoration retreat for a period of time. They get medical treatment. They get psychological treatment. There are other things that they're given. And then your gift for $250, and this is probably the biggest portion of the gift,

gives them a new life. Now, what does it give them? It gives them a thing called the bag of hope. And inside this thing that's much larger than just a little sack, you've got tarps that they can create tenting and structures to live in. They've got tools to garden and to fish with. They've got the ability to have eating utensils, a Bible, blankets, other things that they need to just survive.

They'll get a year's worth of sorghum grain that will keep them sustained for the coming year. They have another year's worth of seed for sorghum grain that they can plant and grow future crops of that. And then on top of all of that, they're given a she goat that they can use to create micro-enterprise. They can get a goat, a she goat. I mean, I didn't, I forgot that so the money that we give to CSI, and by the way, folks, you can just go to metaxistalk.com. Metaxistalk.com. Right at the top, you'll see the banner and all the information is there. But I didn't realize, Kevon, that you're getting somebody out of slavery, which ladies and gentlemen, I can't even tell you,

think about that for a second. Your money can do that. But then it sets them up in life. They literally get a go, which sounds funny to us. But imagine it changes the life of somebody in that world to have a goat to provide milk and cheese. I mean, it's an amazing thing. Eric, you're talking about women that have been brutally raped,

sexually assaulted, brutally, brutally, brutally beaten, brutally treated, emotionally spoken to, given long hours of work, nothing to eat but scraps that fall off the table. They don't even own more than usually one change of clothes of any sort. And then to receive this gift called the bag of hope, which has got to be the biggest single gift they've ever received in their life, it blows them away. They can't believe it. They need some time to actually kind of take it in because they're like, how can this just be for me? But the beautiful thing about this is that it really does give them that launch pad to start their life back in their village where they came from. Now, let me just talk to you about that for a second.

Because once they've had their time of recovery, CSICs to it that they get as close to where they originally grew up or new people or what their village was to begin with as possible. And when they come home, when they come home, the whole village, the pastor of the church, the leaders of the village, they come out, they throw this cellar, It is like the prodigal son on steroids when the lost slave returns home to its to its home people, its tribe. It's its hometown. There is celebration. They have a feast that goes on for days.

They give thanks to God. These people are Christians. There are brothers and sisters. And they are so rejoicing at the sight of their loved one that they believe they would never see again. And that's what your gift provides. Not only liberation from a negative life, liberation from an. evil existence that has, you know, continually exploited them. But they are given a ticket to new life and a life of love and fellowship and a true engagement with people that have their very best at heart.

It is unlike anything I've ever seen anywhere else. And I will, I will advocate for them until God takes the breath from my lungs because I still believe in what they're doing. You know, folks, go to Metaxistalk.com. This past weekend, I was with my brother-in-law, Drew Murnes. He said to me that he and his family went on a mission trip, about 15. years ago in Africa. And when he was leaving, he gave 40 bucks to this young guy, high school student, just as a parting gift. He says that 40 bucks, he found out, which is nothing to us, changed that family forever. They were able to buy a goat. And he says it just made them completely to have different stature. And they were like it. And folks, do you understand what a little

bit you give can totally, totally change lives? I want people to know that. to hear it, be encouraged. Go to Metaxistalk.com. Give whatever you can. We need it. We need to do this. We need to give to people that are struggling. Kevin, my friend, thank you so much.

Thank you, Eric. Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone. Suits and the plans they may put an end to you. I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song. I just can't remember who to send it to. Hey there, folks. How many years have I been telling you about relief factor? What, like four?

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Don't leave your retirement to chance friends. Contact Legacy, precious metals today. That's 866-473-6204. Oh, hello there. Ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about something very important. As you know, June is not Pride Month. It is Father's Month. We specifically focus in on Father's Day,

but the whole month is about fathers. I think you know that, right? May is about mothers. You got that? Okay. Well, I'm going to bring on a friend of mine, Lee Habib, to talk about this issue. Lee, my friend, welcome. Thanks for having me here. Well, I love talking to you. I want people to understand who you are, and I don't know how to sum you up. I guess first I want to say that you founded our American story. So before we talk about the film, which is titled The Streets Were My Father, which we've been talking about on this program, already. But I want to talk about where you're coming from and our American story. So tell my audience

what that is. Sure. We started a nationally syndicated storytelling show about six years ago, Eric. And the idea was simple. No opinion, no facts and data and arguments. No news. No Trump, no Obama, no Biden. Just stories about the American people and about America. The American people of the star of our show. And America itself was the star. We do stories about history, stories about George Washington with great historians. We do stories about Arnold Palmer and Barbara Streisand. What a talent she was. She made a fortune being a singer. She owned her own intellectual property and became very wealthy. What a story of America. A young Jewish woman at Erasmus High School in Brooklyn becomes one of the biggest stars in the world. We celebrate all that is good and virtuous

and beautiful about our country. And this show is an outstanding hit. We just passed 335 affiliates. on eye heart stations, cumulus stations. And it's strange, Eric, but Americans actually agree about a lot more things than social media, the media. And by the way, I include the left and the right media on this. We're trying to bring people together on what we believe is the American creed, freedom, liberty. There are some people attacking it on the far left. There's no doubt. But I think there are good people in the center left, good people on the center right, good people all around the country who want to come together around a common American creed. And that's what we've been working hard to do.

Well, how do people find now? You've been on this program before to talk about Our American Stories, but it's been a while. So where do people find it? Just go to Our American Stories.com and you'll find it. We have a beautiful web page. Go to Apple or the podcasts. It's all there. We have about 650 hours of content.

And it's broken down by sports, entertainment. personal stories, local celebrities, our faith stories are mostly testimonies, and they're fabulous, and they're beautiful. We don't do the contentious social issues. We stay away from that. We stick to the stuff that people really can violently agree on. I used to stay away from that, and I no longer do. But I'm not going to talk about that, my friend.

Here's what I'm going to talk about. The streets were my father. This is another example of just something beautiful that everybody, unless you're a lot of they're evil, they have to think this is beautiful, they agree on this. How did you get involved in producing this film? You know, Eric, we do what we call tent pole shows. July 4th, we produce a beautiful July 4th show. We give it to free to affiliates around the country.

They take it. Then they like our show. We did the same for Mother's Day and Father's Day. The first two years we did Father's Day stories, they were mostly positive. And our audience wrote back to us. We love your show, but you need to tell more stories. about guys who, guys and gals who grew up without fathers, the pain it caused, the void it caused, and what it took to overcome that to become good fathers and mothers ourselves.

And so following that, we started to look for stories from broken people, broken people who had no fathers and how they overcame it. And we stumbled upon these stories from a prison ministry program in Chicago involving gang members who either had no fathers, Eric, or the kind of fathers where you wish you didn't have a father. Wow. I guess I want people to know, first of all, where they can get this. So if they go to SalemNow.com, folks, I talk about this on the program every day, Salem now.com.

My only question, Lee Habib, my friend, is, when is this available? Is it available now? Yes, it's available right now, and you can just go to Salem now and order it. This will be available shortly, and we're hoping people will, once they see it, the film by the discs because the testimonies of these three men of the greatest evangelical tool simply hand the disc to somebody who knows who doesn't have a father somebody who doesn't know the power of god and christ to transform a life you can't argue with these guys testimony you can't it's their story and that's the joy eric i remember your testimony at the at the national prayer

breakfast i love the jokes about your greek family they made me laugh but the heart and soul of that speech was your personal testimony. And it's what we can do best as Christians to bring people to the Lord. It's our greatest weapon. There's no doubt about that. And this is the beauty of it. Whatever problem the devil throws at us. And one of the biggest problems there is in American life today is fatherlessness. The biggest problems, God is the answer. Jesus is the answer. And if you don't believe it, watch this film and you will see three men. I mean, my goodness. the streets where my father is what it's called, folks. I want you to look it up.

It's a story of hopelessness and redemption. You got to focus on the hopelessness to make the redemption seem like what it is, which is a miracle. Because, you know, Lee, again, in the natural, apart from God, there is hopelessness. When you talk about the epidemic of fatherlessness and crime that comes out of it, the world has no answer. They don't even address it,

because it's so hopeless. They don't even deal with it. Jesus is the answer, and this film shows that in the lives of three minority men who grew up. Tell us a little bit about the film. Each of the guys, Carlos Colon grew up without a father. In fact, he learned later that his father had grown up without a father. He committed a murder, and he had a son,

and he was about to grow up without a father. And yet, God changed his life and his heart. He forgave his father and the bitterness of a son. unforgiveness. Oh, the poison of unforgiveness. Well, he's able to overcome that, Eric, and now he's walking the walk with fellow Christians. He said he's not a perfect man. He still grapples with sin. This is the other thing I don't think we do a good enough job of doing. Merely encountering Christ, as life-changing as it is, is the beginning of a long walk, grappling with sin, grappling with our own frailties. We also have the story of a guy named Leslie Williams.

He had a father, but he was always drunk and he was mean. And then Lois is a guy who had a dad who was a gang member who got shot and murdered in a drug deal gone wrong when he was 15 years old. And his way of coping with his father's death was to become his father, to become a gangster to get closer to his father. And so these stories and hearing from these men, there are no narrators in this film, Eric. It's shot sort of ESPN 30 for 30 style. And it's rugged and it's raw. And it's sometimes a little difficult to hear what these men went through. But Eric, we got a letter once from one guy who was a banker.

And he said, you know, those guys were in prison. I didn't have a father. And I created a prison cell for myself. It was in an office, in a corner office, in a big building. I had ruined my life because of my father. I couldn't sustain relationships with women with my children. I sunk myself into the prison of workaholism. and in the end, I completely identified with those guys, because we all create prisons for ourselves, Eric, and they look, prison cells are, well, this is the business Jesus is in getting us out of those prison cells that we create for ourselves by avoiding or ignoring him.

Well, that is very well said. Folks, Lee Habib is my guest. I just want to say, if you get nothing else out of this, go to Our American Stories.com and go to Salem now.com. We need hope. We need hopeful stories. We need to focus on the positive. And I love that about you, Lee. Like when you talk about Barbara Streisand a moment ago,

I think all of us who are conservative have a knee-jerk reaction today against Barbara Streisand. But I think as Christians, if we are Christians, we have a duty to see the best, whatsoever the things are beautiful, good, true. in other people because they're made in God's image. And I think it's very easy for us to either go to the negative joke or to say something negative. But I really do think that one of the ways we share our faith and where we shock people on the other side of the divide politically or otherwise is by showing them

the love of Jesus that we actually believe what we say we believe. So I think we're done with this segment guys, right? No. Oh, we've got a couple. We got one more. All right. Well, then let me ask you, before we go, I think I was putting out false information and saying that this premieres on Father's Day. You're telling me no. It is available today. It's available right now, straight through Father's Day and beyond. And to your point, Eric, about being the light. Look, in the end, the commission is to love thy neighbor as thyself, and not with an asterisk, not if there are Democrats or progressives. We must love. And in the end, think about the abolition movement. Think about the great civil rights movement. These were led by the cross. And this fatherlessness problem, which is a problem, if the church can provide a solution to this, we can love a neighbor who doesn't have a father.

We can love a kid who doesn't have a father. Our churches could get very involved in this. And in the end, Manning Mill, who leads a church of his own, a ministry of his own, has saved dozens and dozens of men. One man loving God. I want to come back to that. Folks, when we come back, I'm talking to Lee Habib. Please go to Salem Now.com and check out the streets. We're my father. Available right now. The prescription dispensing labs is a national licensed pharmacy specializing in personalized prescription and natural medicine.

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health care, not sick care. Visit their website PD LabsRX.com. for free health tips, podcasts, and their popular online store. Call 888-909-1-1-0. Ask for Ray and tell them Eric sent you. That's 888-909-0-1-1-0. Hey there, folks. It's still the Eric Mattaxas show. Remember before it was the Eric Mattax Show?

It's still, we're doing so well that they said, let it ride. Keep going, Eric. Keep going. You're doing just fine. I have a guest on a friend, Lee Habib. Lee, you are in Oxford, Mississippi, yes? I am. It's a beautiful small town, home to Faulkner and Grisham and Willie Morris and Richard Ford, some of the great writers in American life.

And it's the home to Ole Miss and SEC football and SEC sports. And you probably don't know this, but in my memoir, which just came out a couple of months ago, it's called Fish Out of Water. And I, throughout the book, make fun of William Faulkner and his pretentious, supercilious, modernist prose. But we don't have time to go into that right now. We want to talk to. Well done. I agree. No, actually, part of my book, one of the funniest scenes in the book, I can't say it on the air because it's kind of gross, but I found myself in a train compartment with an odd individual in Italy.

And it was so horrible, but to make it a thousand times worse, and you can read the chapter, I am in this train compartment with this weird situation developing, reading Faulkner. It's like you want to put a bullet through your head. I survived, but oh my gosh. I want to talk to you, though, about the streets from my father. This is the film. People go to Salem now.com. And I want to talk to you about this apologetic, that fatherhood is one of those things. Everybody deals with this. Either you have a good father or you don't.

And that affects you, even if you don't want to talk about it, if you really don't want to talk about it, it's because it's really affected you. It's inescapable. We're all created by God the Father to long for a healthy father relationship. Many of us don't have it. So the statistics, and I got this from you, the statistics on kids who grew up without a father, 90 percent, folks, 90 percent of homeless and runaway kids do not have a father. That is 32 times the national average.

85 percent of kids with behavioral disorders don't have a father. 85 percent with behavioral disorders. That's 20 times the national average. 85% of young people who are in prison don't have a father. 85%, then there's teen pregnancy, sexual abuse. So we're talking about something that you don't have to believe in God. You don't have to care about anything. You're a sociologist, and you look at this and you say, it appears as though this species,

these human beings, if they don't have a father, their lives are nine out of ten times going to be a disaster. So you don't even have to be a Christian. You just have to say, this is the sociology. These are the facts. So talk about that because most people, we don't talk about this in the culture. What could be more overwhelming than what I just quoted? I think it's why no one wants to talk about it because no one thinks there's an answer or they think more government is the answer.

But government can't love a child. And a lot of people out there believe that as the government intervened and broke the mother and father apart by allowing the mother to receive benefits without a voice. father. This made the problem worse, not just in the black community, but the white and the Hispanic community. Four out of ten kids now, Eric, grow up without a father. Four out of ten. It's 25% in the white community now, 50% in the Hispanic community, and 70% in the African American community. Okay, now that right there. I just want to say, people talk about we have a problem with black crime, black this, black that. And he'd say, yes, 70%. You just said it. Do not have a father in the home.

gentlemen, if you think Black Lives Matter, there's your answer right there. You don't even have to have an opinion on why or whatever. Just deal with the statistics, 70%. Now, if we as a culture don't deal with that, and you're rightly, the government caused this problem. Government meddling, big government always wrecks everything. What could be clearer than these statistics? It's astonishing. I mean, it's almost amazing that this isn't the, we talk about global warming, we talk about systemic racism. We talk about like these are all these big problems, white nationalist terrorists, which you and I are, we're card-carrying members. So here's my question. How can we not talk about this more?

How is it that it's because Father's Day, and I'm going to say this again, June is Father's Month, make a note of that. Father's Day is an opportunity for us to talk about what could be the biggest problem in the United States. Well, Eric, look, that's the reason we did the movie. And we have a Times Square Billboard, a USA Today full-page ad, challenging Americans and the American Church, too, to be the solution. You know, if we can love one person a million times over, 700,000 men a year come out of prison. Let's meet him at the gate the way Chuck Colson did. Let's meet him at the gate the way Manny Mill did. Let's show our love.

I mean, we can agree with the problem is. And by the way, some will say some of it's economic. Some will say this or that, but we know one thing. Poverty doesn't cause fatherlessness. We pretty much know that fatherlessness causes poverty. And so how do we get people to make better choices with their life? And how do we put love and bodies around the people who didn't? This is the question of a lifetime for the church.

I mean, look, if I were Satan, my number one goal would be to destroy fatherhood. There is nothing more effective. And let's face it, in America, since roughly the 60s, there's been a narrative out there that whatever, who's ever at the top, let's take them down. So fathers, whatever, white people, CEO, whatever it is, there's something about it which feels satanic. In other words, it says, like, we don't like anybody to be in the lead. So let's, instead of examining why fathers have traditionally been the heads of household, let's just take them down. The results have been so devastating.

And I just want to say this again, we're going to go to another break, folks. But I just want to say, if you care about people, if you care about the inner city, you have to care about fatherlessness. These statistics are astonishing. They are astonishing. They are case closed statistics. The answer is ultimately Jesus. We're going to talk more to Lee Habib. The streets were my father.

Go to Salem now.com. Folks, we're talking to talk on the street. I'm talking to my friend Lee Habib. We're talking about fatherlessness, and you can see I get emotional. There's nothing more devastating to human beings in the United States of America than the issue of fatherlessness. Nobody talks about it. Now, there's a reason for that. It's because there's a war on fathers. There's a war on men. There's a war on God's order, whatever it is. And if you want to hurt people, if you want to hurt women, you want to hurt kids, you go after the fathers. That's the story we're talking about. These statistics are astonishing. I'll say it again, 85% of kids in prison, youth's in prison, 85% don't have a father in the home. 70% of black Americans don't have a father in the home. Are you connecting the dots? It's astonishing. And if you don't care about this, you don't care about people.

This is way too important. Now, Lee, I just was going to say that what I find interesting is that God solves this problem. So the reason people avoid it is because maybe think there's no solution. Hey, it's the way it is. It's the new reality. But your film, The Streets Were My Father, available at SalemNow.com, shows that in the cases of three hard-core men who were in lives of crime, who didn't have fathers, Jesus managed to get to them. And they managed to accept God their father. So talk about that for a minute because people need to know there is a real answer.

We're not just saying this. This is very real. No, and that's why we did the movie. I mean, hopelessness without hope is nihilism. And we're not nihilists. We're the opposite of nihilists. Each of these three men encountered God through either personal testimonials. One heard the testimony of a Latin King's gang leader who had almost had his head cut off.

And that guy was teaching and preaching at the prison church. And Leslie Williams said, if God can save him, God can save me. I want more out of my life than this. God had spared me, he said, of being killed. Most of my friends in their 30s were dead or here in prison. I wanted more out of life. What could be a more universal pride than Leslie Williams? At the end of the film, he breaks down talking about the father he never had,

but that he had a father now. And it was God the father. By the way, none of these men, Eric, talked about the cops. None of them talked about systemic racism. none of them talked about any of the things that you hear on the television. It was fathers, fathers, fathers. It was gangs, gangs, gangs. And it was God, God, God.

And these are their testimonies. Nobody can argue with the story of these men. That's the true power of testimony. I was going to say, you know, what's interesting, before I was mentioning this narrative since the 60s, it's ultimately, again, we're talking about cultural Marxism. And Black Lives Matter the organization, they're cultural Marxists. And what they do is they divide. So they try to divide whites versus blacks.

They demonize whites, and they basically say that blacks are an oppressed group. They demonize whatever group they can, and then they make you part of a victim class. And they're pitting people against each other. That's not God's way. It is antithetical to scripture and to God's plan to demonize any group, whether it's women or men, whether it's blacks or whites, it doesn't matter. That's not God's way. And what I find interesting is that when you go to the scripture, you see something really beautiful

and you see that, for example, fathers serve. They serve. They put the women and children first. It's God's way. It's not a carnal idea of structure. It's God's structure that the greatest will be the servant of all. And so these men who don't have fathers, they're experiencing. experiencing a longing and a desire. And the only way, you can't go back in time and get a father,

but you can go outside of time to eternity and get God the father. He is the only solution. Let's be blunt. He's the only solution for somebody struggling through life who has this wound, they need help. And I just want to say as bluntly and loudly as I can, folks, there is hope. God is the hope of these people. and if you care about the society, even if you don't believe in God, you've got to notice this is the pattern. These men find God, they get healed, their lives are changed. Who wouldn't be for that? Who wouldn't be for that? So, Lee, I'm just grateful to you for making this film.

When did you get the idea to make this? Because I just love this. We had played the separate stories on the air and the response on secular stations. Our show is on secular stations. Heck, we followed Dr. Drew in Los Angeles. And there wasn't a complaint with these men using the word Jesus. This is the strength, right? It's their story.

It's not us proselytizing. It's us getting out of the way and showing the power of Christ through another person. And so that's how it happened. We would broadcasting these as podcasts. And then one day I said, this should be our first film. Let's get the cameras on these guys. And it was that simple. And the next thing, you know, we had a beautiful hour and 10 minute film that I'd

promise you, it'll make you weep and bring it to your friends who are on the fence as religious folks, on the fence either as Christians or on the fence in their life. Because so many Americans are on the fence, spiritually, economically, and you can have all the money in the world and be poor, and you can have not a lot of money at all and be rich. And this is the greatest Christian notion of them all. And this film proves it. These men, as Carlos Colon said, the second 10 years of his sentence when he found the Lord with the best 10 years of his life and he was in jail. I mean, when you hear stuff like that, and he's not making it up, folks, this is a fact. I got to say that there is something so beautiful about this idea.

And again, if you really care about people, I mean, I think of Ben Franklin and some of the founders, they weren't really religious in the way that we might be. But they observed that when people find God, they are. better at everything. They're better in their families. Spousal abuse goes down. Crime goes down. Alcoholism goes down. If you only care from the point of view of a sociologist, you see problems and you notice the God stuff seems to work. I remember David Wilkerson talked about this, that when they first had teen challenge and world challenge, that they noticed when they're dealing with addicts

that, I guess somebody, I think the government came in to find out why are they being so effective? and it was always Jesus. When God comes into the picture, stuff happens, but the government could not say that. So they called it the X factor. Folks, we don't care what you call it if you want to heal lives. If you care about people, this is the answer. Jesus really is the answer. It's not about religion. It's about answers to people struggling and pain. So I want to say, before we go, have a final segment, but it's called The Streets Were My Father. You can find it. at Salemnow.com. Salem now.com. I think if you use the code, Eric, there's a discount. I can't promise that. But SalemNow.com. The streets are my father.

Give it to somebody. Show it to somebody who is on the fence, who's going through some tough stuff. We'll be right back. Folks, I'm talking to Lee Habib. The film is The Streets Were My Father. Lee, this is such a hopeful, beautiful thing. It's like the Silver Bullet.

If there's trouble in the world, you realize this is a big piece of it. We're not addressing it. Your film addresses it. The streets from my father available at SalemNow.com. Let's talk about a couple of these figures just to tease this so people will want to see it. And I hope they see it. Leslie Williams, Lewis Dooley, these are the two of the three characters in the film. Talk a little bit about their lives and what they experienced.

Sure. Louis Dooley's, he had a very strange relationship with his father. In the early part, he talks about how his father never. let him smile in a picture. And he didn't know why. And he was always saying, you've got to look tough. And you got to appear tough. He didn't know that his father was leading a drug game.

And so there was never love. His father was there, but his father's model was mean. And he said there was verbal abuse and there was physical abuse. And then he was absent a lot. And then one day he gets the news at 15 that dad was murdered. And this is so raw to him. And his mother just doesn't know how to deal with it. She checks out.

And he just adopts. his dad's life. He wears his dad's clothes and takes over the role of drug dealer by the time he's 17. And of course, he knew where it would lead. He didn't care if he went to jail. He said it again and again that going to jail would be like graduate school, that he'd meet new friends, show his bonafides by getting tough. Leslie Williams' story was similar. His father was tough, and his father drank himself to sleep. And when his son did wrong, there's a great story about his son stealing from a local delivery truck. And there was a gun inside. He brought the gun to his father, lied about how he found that gun, and his father kept it. And then his father said,

don't do wrong. And he said, but I did do wrong. And my father didn't care. And then he did wrong. And so this was the ecosystem these guys grew up in. You'll have tremendous empathy for these men. You'll fall in love with these men. Because walking in another man's shoes, look, you always have to imagine your life without your father if you had a good one. What would your life be like without your dad? Ask that question. Because what a privilege. Forget white privilege, folks. The privilege that truly matters in this country and around the world is the father privilege and the God privilege. And if you know God and you have a father, your chances of landing in poverty, of being sexually abused and landing in the penitentiary is so negligible as to be a statistical anomaly.

So it is really unconscionable that people don't talk about this. Folks, you don't have to be interested in God to understand sociologically this is the deal. But you know something, Lee, I really think revival is going to come to America because people are seeing when there's total hopelessness, the only hope is God, is Jesus. And the fact is it works, it's real, it's not phony religion. And what I find interesting is that this dynamic is an apology. for God the Father. In other words, you think how interesting about these statistics, how interesting that when these lives are turned around and God comes in, good things happen, it almost would lead you to believe in the Bible and in God, because it's such a powerful

apologetic. Why do we long for a father? Why does every boy want to be like his father? There's something so powerful and so innate that we need fathers. It's an apologetic for the nuclear family for God's idea of the family. So this is very powerful stuff. And now what is the charge if people want to buy the DVD and give it to friends if they go to SalemNow.com? All the prices are on the site. It's $20 to buy.

It's $12 to rent. We're recommending that once you see the film and you're moved by the film, buy a bunch of discs. Hand them to people. It'll change their life. And you'll see why. I mean, it's a great. If you could change somebody's life for $20, folks, you do it.

It's very rare you get a tool like this. I'll be honest. I'm going to get a bunch of these and I'm going to give them. I'm already thinking about the people. Leah B, my friend, God bless you. Thank you for this. Folks, the streets were my father. I really hope that this month, father's month, you'll get a copy.

Go to salem now.com. Lee, thank you. Thanks for all you do, Eric.