The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Steven Menking the Chaplain of PBN

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

www.limatangosurvival.com

You're listening to... to pay the end. You will pay us back the stability here. Steven men King how you been my man things are good over here James I was looking at the looking at those pickles in the pickle right now. Oh man, pickles. It can't be gone from my first 30 seconds of a broadcast for a long time and then only to show up with a bunch of pickles in one hand later on. It feels like it would be a little bit of a weird move. I think you'd get a round of applause if you showed up with a jar of pickles from our audience. Pickling is a thing.

You know what I mean? My 18-month-old or soon to be 18 month old loves, loves pickles. Sometimes I have to cut the rinds off. That's an extra snack for me. So it's all I'm all I'm all in favor of the pickling process. Yeah, man. My 13 year old fell in love with them like about a year ago. You know, I mean, they're phenomenal for you. Fermentation is always a good thing. We don't need having a fermentation in our life, right?

Didn't didn't have that in the pre-show notes, the extensive pre-show notes that we took, but I can I completely agree. I would I'm not I'm not an expert in those sorts of things. I've got you. Are you drinking coffee at this hour? No, not at all. This is this is a weird tea mix. I'd show it to you, but it's gonna like top out It's like cinnamon and lemongrass and that kind of stuff. Oh Herbal tea before bed. I like it trying to stay sharp. I got some I got some extra stuff to do after this

It's just turned into a really busy Evening for you know when you know when everybody wants something all at once Yeah, you're dead, right? Oh, yeah. Is that described most days of your life? When everybody wants something all at once? 100% man, I've been in this like sort of back and forth situation where the days where I can get a little bit of time to myself, and I know that I should be spending it on the longer term projects. Then at the end of the day, I feel like, man, I didn't get stuff done that I needed to,

but I also needed to rest and relax. So it's like, what am I spending my relaxation time on? It's enough to it's enough to why enough to wind you up. But you got to have you got to have enough good pursuits to balance it out. Oh, for sure. Hey, it's what it takes You know what? I mean, it's a it's always a battle every day It's like I wake up and say that like it's a battle Well, at least it's new, you know

Yeah wake up and be like I wonder what's gonna happen today, but it's a good It's a good litmus test of your attitude You know and for me what I've been trying to do better and still like not up to up to par on something like this is starting my day instead of rolling over and peeking at the phone, even though I can certainly justify it to myself because like, I need to know if the world's still around, like, you know, just to check just to make sure. But once you do that for 15 seconds, then you know,

it can turn into 15 minutes pretty quickly. So I'm trying to do a better job of going through my prayer list and starting things off right. I would be misrepresenting myself if I said that I am getting up an hour before the kids and doing the early morning cycle the way that you like to do it. And I haven't gotten there yet. It would, it would, it would certainly keep us,

keep us disciplined in that regard. That's for sure. A dog will make you get up or else it'll pee on the rug. So it's a good motivation to get out of bed. Like I can't lay in bed. Cause because of the dog, I mean, I probably couldn't, they'd be fine, but in my head it's like, do you feel like a hostage? Nah, no. Cause I mean, I mean, they be fine, but in my head it's like feel it. Do you feel like a hostage? No, no, cuz I mean I mean man, dude. I Stockholm syndrome, I don't even know how to do it anymore You know what? I mean, I'm so up and out of the bed when I wake up and my wife too It's the same thing. We're like immediately out of the bed. It's like a fire

The alarms go off and we're like boom boom and she's quicker than me She's in the bathroom doing hair and getting dressed. So it's, you know, it's just not our style. Dude, it's it's clean living. It's something to aspire towards because we're not always going to have that kind of energy, right? And it's not, it's the right, it's the right kind of urgency, something that comes from what the Bible talks about

as an overflow, right? You have this within you and you're not doing it because you're fearful or in a panic. It's not like this frantic energy that's misdirected and it's not a begrudging energy like, oh, I'm up so I guess I might as well do it. It's like, it's the'm up, so I guess I might as well do it. It's like, there's, it's the right kind of constructive motivation.

You can pretty easily tell, unless you're deluded in a big way, if it's gone off the rails in one way or the other. And maybe it doesn't always stay balanced for the seasons, but that's like, I know there are plenty of people, millions of people in this country who certainly do not wake up with that kind of motivation that kind of motivation that kind of mindset and like just watching videos on youtube about Doing cold plunges at 4 a.m. Is not going to change people's no

The cold plunge has eluded me forever. I mean, you know, it is what it is I'll tell you what though. One of the things I take take for granted with my wife is and she probably the same and this is weird in the age of like I don't know it's just weird in this age to say this out loud, but like And I don't know that we would judge each other but we certainly carry a sense that if we if if I were to lay in bed and like and that if I were to lay in bed and she got up and got ready and getting ready for work and doing all that, I would have a sense, like a felt sense of like, ugh. Is she looking at me like, we've been together for 20 some years, you know what I mean?

So it's not like we're in a new relationship, but I don't know what she's thinking. She probably wouldn't think anything, and I know she feels the same way. It's almost it's almost like a I don't know. I don't know exactly what it is. But it's a felt sense of like almost judgment kind of in a way. But it but it serves to make you better. I think there's a I think there's a positive take on on that. I guess it depends on how on how you internalize it, right? It's the sense of mutual mutual responsibility and maybe you're that's if you've reasoned it out you'd be less concerned with external judgment and more like this is an internal expectation that I put on myself and it's productive and it's positive it's totally positive yeah you've you've just, you've made a good habit

and it would feel inappropriate to move away from a good habit. And however you conceptualize that consequence, it can be as dramatic or as banal as you want. I mean, you're not necessarily doing the habit to avoid the emotional feeling of that accountability pressure, but it helps, any little bit helps,

because there's always gonna be, as you're going through the should I or should I not, calculus, usually it all happens instantaneously, and we're not actually thinking it through, but there are these various checkpoints, and maybe you get to base camp and you're like, I really should. But then the temptation kicks in. But then you have that extra layer, it's just like that extra little boost,

little oxygen tank to make sure that your threshold level for actually doing something is a more appropriate balance. So, you know, maybe that's a little too convoluted for getting into it like that. But I don't remember how it started. I don't think we ever really had an unhealthy relationship. So I don't think it's born out of that. And the other thing that we don't have is

like if one of us decided to lay in bed the whole morning, neither of us would be like, what the hell is going on? You know, we'd be like, oh, they're tired. You know what I mean? So they're gonna stay in bed. And that's it. But in both of our heads, I know that it's almost like we've built these expectations on ourselves to, I think really what it is, is to be proficient in the relationship and in our goals that we we've you know over 20 years of like Being 17 all the way to having being married very young having kids and you know building a whole life on top of all that You know what that takes?

Yeah And I think we just kind of built that stuff in and and when you when you're off your game you feel it You're like, oh I gotta step this up for her. You know what I mean? And vice versa It's it's a good thing That's why you know, you can you can go all the way back to Genesis to find the commentary That's not good for man that you should be alone I think is one that's one of the that's one of the core things like very easily imagine myself Like without the accountability mechanisms, I'd like to say that oh, I would be just as productive and proactive

But that's a lie. It's just a straight up lie. So we do our best with what is given to us, but man, we got a vegetation gene in us somewhere. My man all over. Oh, you're right. You're right. In 2019, I ran a marathon and I only finished that marathon because my kids and my wife are there sick. The only reason at mile 18, Stephen Menking, I had the most terrible realization and it was this. I was like, OK, well, that wasn't even it. It was I'm going to wimp out and I'm gonna walk to finish cuz I'm dying and

I started to walk and It hurt worse to walk My hips hurt so bad. Well, there's a sermon in there somewhere James. Oh, it was brutal, man So then I just ran it hurts worse to walk I'll put my I'll name my next reliance that it hurt worse to I really did it was crazy. I was like Oh, I can't walk. This is great. So yeah at that point I'd have been like Let's get the cell phone out get the uber uber back to the car and drive home at mile 20 But there's no way you can quit when your family's there waiting for you at the finish line You can't pull up in an uber and be like, I just you know, yeah

As long as you don't as long as you don't expire on the racetrack like yeah, I will make it through I'd rather I'd rather be found dead than be found at least behind them with an ice cream cone At least you come back on your shield. Yeah, exactly exactly as opposed to listen dipping dots. Yeah, you sold out My sons would never let me yeah, they would never let me live that one down But you're right. That's the power and it is a weird thing because we live in a time where so many men are alone It's becoming a thing and what's become a thing, right? It's already a thing. It's multitudes of groups of men who are reading Genesis going like, I could do it alone. You know what I mean?

And then, you know, suicide or whatever else. Terrible things tend to happen. But yeah, that's a scary realization, you know, because it just does make you better. It's always weird to run into a guy who is like 45 and has lived alone forever. And you're talking to him and you're like, whoa, you're a different creature than me. We're different. You can wake up every day and go, what do I want to do today? What do I want to eat?

What do I want to listen to? Watch, whatever. And you just become a different thing Yeah, no, and I you know I wouldn't want to necessarily communicate the dogmatic idea that anyone in that situation is there because they're trying to Exclusively fulfill selfish motives that seems like that seems like oh no No, not where we're trying to go just just so people don't get the wrong impression. But I totally understand.

It's a different thing. And I noticed this with my friends who don't have kids. It's not that they're not good people. It's that there are certain things that I have lived experience on that they don't and that I can communicate about it with them, but that there's something where there's a fundamental gap, those sorts of-

Oh yeah. They're different. They're just sort of different, like categorical existential differences, not to the point of obscuring our common humanity or anything else that- Oh, no way. That bonds together, but you know,

it's a different ball game when you're playing. And you gotta know what ball game you're playing in. And I think that's too inartfully segue into the general topic that you had floated. I think that's part of the problem that people are dealing with right now, and that is that there's a lot of whiplash and people don't know what game they're playing in. And that's, it shows up in a variety of different ways, like symptomatically, but I think that's the case

across a bunch of different domains. I can see that. And this comes out in, let's say, when I'm, when I'm working with one of my students or mentoring one of the, one of the younger adults at church, and they're in a situation where they, they studied, they did, did well in school, they're having, you know, trouble finding a job in their, in their field, even if the field is something like, for instance, cybersecurity, based off of a recent recent conversation I'm having, because they're in this sort of black hole type situation where every job posting gets flooded with hundreds and hundreds or even thousands of of applicants. And

you know, the entry level, the joke is that the entry level jobs require five years of experience and everything else like that. So it's difficult because people can feel very much a sense of the ground is moving under their feet in a variety of different domains. And you're not sure where it's going to go. And psychologically for some people, that can be even more uncomfortable than what appears to be an inevitable slippery slope

towards unmitigated disaster. Like if you're going off the cliff in that particular way, like at least you know you're going off the cliff. And sometimes people crave certainty enough where that's a more comfortable situation than something that's kind of nebulous across those lines. So that's one of the unifying themes that I'm observing. And to be fair, James, like I'm caught up on stuff,

but I am not an expert in the finer points and the ins and outs of the different narratives that are going on, in part because I don't think I structurally can be, not just because there's only 24 hours in a day, and I have other things to do with my time, although that is definitely a limiting factor. But because I think it's reasonably likely

that in order to try to figure out the truth of what's going on, we're just not gonna have access to that kind of information in a way where the filter that I'm using now is basically operating under the assumption that everything is PR to one one extent or another. And so I'm not worried about the exact mechanics of what's going on behind the scenes because me, there's sort of diminishing marginal returns when it comes to this, but what are the signals that are being sent?

Because at the very least, I can observe the narratives and the stories that are being written and told and experimented with and everything else like that. And I don't think that that is such an unwise perspective and perhaps this is me justifying my own allocation of my bandwidth across the various domains that I encounter, but it is definitely true that these days when you think about fifth generation

warfare and everything else like that, that the battle space that we're involved in, like it or not, is one of cognitive infrastructure. It's the real like hearts and minds. It's the persuasive element. So if we accept that the warfare that we're engaged in, apart from the spiritual level, in terms of the natural, is a war of narrative,

then it makes sense to pay attention to the narrative. It doesn't mean that you ignore, like, what's actually going on, like, real world, but the thing that has the more movable impact is the narrative and the way that it's absorbed. So I'm not suggesting that everyone go out and become propagandists or anything else like that. But if you accept that everything is propaganda

in one form or fashion, and that it is to a very meaningful extent designed, whether from a top-down general guidance, institutional structure atmosphere perspective, or even concretely from the bottom up, or now technologically from the side with artificial intelligence being programmed to put out various things and achieve certain objectives. Without understanding the interplay of those various factors, if you know that if someone is communicating something in whatever form,

in whatever fashion, they are doing it to evoke a certain outcome and to evoke a certain response, then if you can at least look at the narrative and say, okay, well, what is the response that is trying to be had here, then at least you're actually, you kind of know a little bit more about where people stand. And I think that's, I mean, I'm not gonna say easier because it's a different toolkit,

but I think it's a higher point of leverage than trying to figure out, oh, what is exactly going on with this, that, or the other continuing resolution, you know, election result, event overseas, latest iteration of the, you know, of the Ukraine situation or the tariffs or this, that and the other. And hopefully the whiplash is convincing more

people of that. Because if you were to try to unpack every on the ground ramification of any one of these things, by the time you're done even beginning to process it, something else is happening. So you either have to outsource your discernment to technology to process the information because of the sheer volume, or you could take a step back and try to say,

okay, I have to understand that I'm not going to quote unquote get to the bottom of this. I have to have a working paradigm that I view the big picture from and make adjustments to it on an as needed basis. But I have to certainly avoid getting a doom looped through these sorts of things, or getting rabbit trailed unnecessarily.

Let's take care of our core relational responsibilities and duties to God and to one another. And then we can have some interesting speculation with caveats, caveats advice. Like when I hear the news about, oh, there was a discovery of some really crazy stuff under the pyramids. I'm like, yeah, like, am I surprised by that? Absolutely not. Is there an interesting purpose to the disclosure of that? Maybe it certainly nudges more people in the, into the realm of things are not what they seem to be and things are not as we have been told.

So there's a semblance of institutional trust, preparation for change, limited hangout, disclosure. Regardless of what is actually there under the sands, we can decipher, okay, there's extra movement in people's perceptions. We don't have to get frustrated that, oh, someone makes a counter-argument and they're standing like this rigid, naturalistic, orthodoxy, standard timeline stuff. We don't have to get in those fights. We can observe the people as what they are and then speak the truth as we see fit, because that does move the narrative in and of itself, even if it's not on a large scale necessarily. Yeah. I wonder if people, there's something, we're in love with those stories like the pyramids when things come out and we go like, and it almost feels

like we are in love with having a little bit of room around the facts anymore. You know what I mean? That little bit of space out there to be like, hmm, maybe things aren't the way that I think they are or that I was told they are or something. I don't know if that's part of It almost feels like because we're so divided Maybe we're not so divided but because it feels like we're so divided

That when we run into something like that situation with the pyramids or however many other stories turn out to be like that That it gives us kind of like hope a little You know like it breaks the cynicism of the day, you know, and you're like, Oh, something I didn't know, you know, because we're almost programmed to feel like I know everything. I'm getting hit with news all the time. Or at least I know, I know how to, I know how I'm supposed to feel in reaction to this in terms of in terms of that manipulation. Like I, I'm totally, I'm totally there with you. I think there's a phenomenon here where there's this, there's just a crack in the door

that even though we don't know exactly what's going on, we can imagine at least that as a talking point in conversation. It's something to ask people about as a useful gauge of where they're at on some stuff. And if we think about the nature of history, and again, I'm not a historian, full disclosure, nor would I want to be.

I'm familiar with some of the tools of the trade, but I'm not a practicing historian lest we get any other ideas. I'm the humble chaplain of the Prepper Broadcasting that we're speaking here. But point being, at the very least, our knowledge of history, let's say it was, let's say it was totally accurate.

It is by definition incomplete. Even the Bible says this at the end of the book of John, like it talked about in the last reliance. If, you know, even if, like the universe is not enough to contain the books that could be written about what Jesus did and is continuing to do. And so with that in mind,

when we think about the legal disclaimer, you know, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God, there's no way that we can get the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God. There's no way that we can get the whole truth, right? About stuff, even if everything else is absolutely accurate, there are going to be things that are left out. And it's sort of trivially true to observe that.

But I don't think we've really internalized that necessarily. So even without these sort of special moments of revelation that can incite some conversation, these like viral moments that last for, I don't know, however many minutes or nanoseconds. Yeah. They move us into a conversation where we can have that kind of exchange.

And with, I don't know if you've ever read the structure of scientific revolutions and that sort of as a sociology of science, it's a very helpful work understanding how a paradigm will develop and then there's enough individual counter examples where you can't shoehorn it in anymore. And we've been in that kind of process for a while.

And it's the kind of thing where in the theory, it's basically like the people who were in charge of the gatekeeping, the high priests of the theory, regardless of where it is, they literally have to not be around anymore in order for the institutions to move in a different direction and be more open to it. And so, you know, that has to happen periodically.

And at the very least, if you zoom way out and you say, let's look at the consensus, whether you're talking about cosmology, physics, biology, natural science, natural history, all of these other things, there are enough places where you can look and say, whatever we do know, the consensus is incomplete. The center is not holding.

Like how long are we going to wait for a grand unified theory before we say maybe some of our assumptions are off. Right. And so you know, the James Webb Space Telescope goes up, right. It discovers galaxies that, according to the standard model of cosmology, shouldn't be there because it implies that galactic formation was much more rapid. So what do people say? Well, we have options. We can either say the data is bad and we, you know, junk the James Webb Space Telescope, but we've just been talking about how great it is, so that's probably not a good option. We can revise the time scale or we can say sort of vaguely there's a mystery about galactic formation, something that we didn't know before, but that

this will lead us to discover as if like, oh, we just this is fine. We just need to tighten the screw one, you know, half a rotation in this other way, and we'll have it all ironed out again. It's like, that's not quite how that works. But you know, you're not gonna apart from sensationalist headlines Which also maybe maybe incorrect. Maybe it is just tightening the screw a little bit I'm not familiar enough with the with the math of galactic formation to know to know that for what I do understand It's not quite that simple. So

You have to have to revise something And then it begs the question, if one empirical observation can change that, you know, what else does it change sort of down downstream of all that stuff? And so whether we're talking about standard model cosmology, evolutionary theory, all sorts of different things, there's this sort of lack of this lack of a foundation, it's more of there was an old foundation, the foundation as we've made, as we've made moves in different directions,

that old foundation was found to be insufficient in a variety of different ways. And those little cracks are poking, poking through in such a way that there isn't necessarily an alternative explanation that is, that is ascended. So it's this like fracturing in this idea space, but it's not as if you're going to gorilla glue

or flex steel or piece that stuff back together again. The process is already tipped. And maybe this is generationally, oh, we're gonna hold on to the bitter end. There's grant money at stake, James. So we're gonna, there's prestige, there's my, there's my career, there's my institution, etc, etc. So all of those structures, and this applies not just to the scientific realm, it applies to the political, it applies to the economics. Oh, it's happening everywhere, yeah.

The whole thing, it's like, there's the rebar is a little bit rusted, and there's a little bit too much frost, even it's kind of in and out, everybody's kind of, there's like, all these different green shoots poking their heads out and saying, is it time yet?

Like, is this whole thing gonna get washed away? Like, there's a sinkhole forming, we don't know what it's gonna look like. We don't know how to rebuild over it, because we don't know what it's gonna look like yet. But we understand that there have to, there has to be a certain set of values that goes, that carries through. And so it's best to think about what can be done for that, for that process. Because I think that people have this misapprehension

that in the collapse of something, that it's just one thing or another. To me, it feels like it's the whole thing. It's not just a physical collapse, it's an ideology, ideological collapse, psychological collapse, spiritual collapse, all of these different things are intertwined. And so isolating one to the exclusion of others

doesn't necessarily get us to where we need to be. Now, there's a question of remedy on all of that, and that's a very difficult question to begin to make progress with. But it certainly starts with getting the basics right. And one more quick anecdote before I toss it to you. No, go ahead. I was talking to the teaching pastor at our church

here in Connecticut, wonderful, wonderful man. And I was listening to Derek Prince, another fantastic Bible teacher. And they both struck me as being able to exercise their gift for teaching in a way that is simple and applicable. Like they're able to distill something to, this is what it is and this is what you can do.

They're not doing this thing where they're going 10 layers deep and caveating and all of these other like special circumstances and things like that. And to me, that is the voice of clarity and the voice of sanity. But the issue is, I don't think you can really speak that way until you yourself have explored all of those different depths so that you can speak with authority. Like, this is the most important thing. If you don't get this right, every, you

know, trying to triage and get all the rest of it right is not is not going to be either worth the effort, or it might be counterproductive. Like, make sure you have this sort of thing in line. It's like, that's the, that's the core of that kind of, that kind of teaching. And so when, when I'm saying if we, you know, conceptualize again, that rebar, the cracks, everything else like that with the potential sinkhole, well, the question ultimately is not necessarily where did all these cracks come from? How do they show themselves

in all the different fields of operations? And nor is it necessarily like, what do we do to rebuild society? It's the same stuff that you've been emphasizing for years and years now. It's who are the people around us? Where are valued relationships? What skillsets do we have?

Do other people enjoy spending time with us for the right reasons? Difficult objective. Where are we grounded spiritually? Do we have the means and the wherewithal to navigate different situations? It comes back to the foundational message of this network, not to blow smoke or anything like that.

But that's the point. Like you can do all sorts of these like deep dive explorations into different topics. But if knowledge is not distilled, spoken with the right kind of authority and practical, like it's just an in one ear out the other kind of ears tickling fascination thing for me at this point. I need a high density like mainline directly applicable of applicable knowledge

here. Otherwise, you know, it's just a diversion. And there's enough there's enough diversions I've seen I've seen my own screen time on my phone. There's enough diversions. Well, man, you're talking about. Yeah, right. Exactly. You're talking about what I think about all the time. I think I heard a guy, who was it? Sagar from, I don't know the show well enough, but he was being interviewed and he said something about media that came from I think it came from I Think came from the guy who owned Fox News and he said My dogs sick the security system. Yeah, he got spooked by the mere intimation of Rupert Murdoch. That's yeah. There he is yeah, I wanted to say Moloch because

That's yeah, there he is. Yeah, I wanted to say Moloch because If I could think of his name, but Anyway, he said that people want to they don't want to necessarily be informed They want to feel informed and I always have this like very true I always have this this is like counter to a lot of the things that I do and and that my hosts do here At PBN, you know because we are kind of like we push people, you know what I mean, to do stuff. I just had a really great email from a new lifetime member, Ryan, you know who you are. And he was talking about how that, you know, the talk of doing over, you know, like you said, tickling the ears and listening and getting the adrenaline up and oh my god

I better do something. Maybe I should do something. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't maybe I should just explore this topic more But he said it was like a gut gut punch You know what I mean, and I'm always I'm always on the fence about that lately. I'm always thinking to myself, you know What we're doing here is part informative and part, you know, that kind of thing, but it's also very strongly rooted in like, this is the thing that I do to solve this problem. You should do it, you know? And I just, I don't know. I always wonder what percentage of our audience is like, I'm not gonna do it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, like anything, I see this in my own endeavors when I'm going in to help students with test prep

and other things like that. Oh, I bet. I know proof positive that if I'm standing in front of a class of 20 people and I explain, you have me as a resource, you have free rein to ask me any questions that you want, you should be extraordinarily encouraged to reach out I

Would you know try me in this I will I will respond appropriately Test me and see if I don't get back to you in a way that is helpful and encouraging and uplifting and I know That fewer than 10% will actually ever take the time to contact me. And it's like, hmm, there's only so much I can do. I could spend my time brainstorming better ways to get that messaging across, but I'm not going to individually email them. For me, it's a good litmus test. Like who really cares?

And to me, it's helpful. Like I would love to do more to get more people to care, but I only have a limited amount of time with them. So like what is the most important thing for me to communicate? And this, you know, this gets into, you know, a little bit of behind the scenes here. I'm unplugged enough from the sort of all media, however you wanna phrase that these days, like who even knows and who cares? Like this kind of ecosystem where there is always going to be a material balance between trying to do things in a way that scales to like get the right information to as many people as possible.

And it's fair, it's fair enough. But then there's the, is that going to compromise principles, this, that, and the other thing. And there's a very real extent, and this is, I'm going against my own advice, cause this is now like, this is the, just jumping with you to like the fifth layer deep in the argument.

Is there a sense in which it is appropriate to quote unquote compromise potentially for the sake of it? Several layers down from that is this doubt that you see all this sort of fraudulent stuff getting a lot of attention and clicks and you know narrative pull and money and everything else like that. And it's not that you want to be that per se, it's that is there this inevitability to achieving that scale that requires something like that? Or is it possible that something truly valuable can be recognized as such in its own time, grown and developed organically for the right reasons and continue to bear fruit.

Because I do hate to break it to you, James, and you've probably made this observation a lot. The people who are in many cases remembered as having big ideas, helpful ideas, trendsetters, game changers. Most of that recognition across history is posthumous. Yeah, I know. Most, right? Most. Yeah. Even up to and including the ministry of Jesus himself. There you go. Not that he wasn't recognized and not that PBN is Christ-like in that sense. We're not trying to draw any false comparisons.

Let it be known. Otherwise, what need would there be for a chaplain? Only kidding. But you know, you've been in this thought process many times I'd imagine, and it's not a common one. You have to wonder, is there a sense in which doing the right thing for the right reasons? Is it inevitably trapped in obscurity

because of a failure to cater to the just the human nature that is that besets human beings on a mass scale. Is it always going to refuse or even if it achieved some semblance of mass adoption, it would be forced into dealing with temptations to change that it wasn't ready to face. I don't know the answer to that, James, but it's one of those interesting things that is half a dozen layers down the stack when you're up at night or you're looking at numbers and you're doing things like, what is the deal, man? There's so, people's lives, more people's lives should be getting changed by this stuff.

But I don't wanna sound bitter, I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna do that, there's a great impact, et cetera. It's one of these perpetual cycles. I think everybody goes through in some domain to a certain extent, if you're really trying to have a positive impact and do things the right way.

I think one thing that is a guiding light for me is the effect, we've never played with the nightmare of the SEO and the algorithm. Oh gosh. Like we've never done that dance purposefully Oh gosh. Like we've never done that dance purposefully. And the reason I've never done that dance is because I know a lot of people who have. And what we do, it can't be done that way. You know, I can't tell a host to get on and talk about what you want to talk about this week if I have to say, but first let me check the algorithm and see if we're allowed to talk about x y and z or maybe

We should talk about it in this context or me, you know And I've had writing clients who have changed entire websites You know like hardcore survival websites that all the sudden talk about hunting fishing and camping exclusively You know what? I mean and and for the implicit reason that we're not allowed to talk about guns in the algorithm or you know, we can't get the Google money and You know when you what I was always scared about and I'm not scared about it anymore And that's probably a way better way to live. Anyway, it was you know hopping on that horse and

Saying like we'll get we'll get the eyes on us for sure as long as we do what they tell us to do You know, I mean cuz that's like that's the nightmare Right. That's the nightmare for a guy like me is to wake up and be like, oh god, I fell for it Now I got all these I got a boss and I never even wanted a whole point of this thing You know what? I mean if you're gonna work for yourself, it's like what? You know, my boss is way up. Yeah, it's made of silicon. Yeah, so that's, you know, that's something I'm unwilling to bend on.

Yeah. So I have to be happy with, with what it is we are. And don't get me wrong. I mean, for a podcast and for what it is we do, we've, we've had great success, but it's just one of those things where you watch a guy He I have young kids, you know what I mean? Well, really I have a teenager and a kid who is you know preteen almost yeah and they do their share of YouTube watching and that's the kind of stuff that makes you suicidal because you watch you watch a guy put like shrimp and

Cat urine on a cheeseburger and eat it and it gets, you know, 3.5 billion views. And you're like, the world's at war. I don't know what to do. You know what I mean? It's one of those moments. Oh, yeah, no, it's it's one of those complete. It's an absurdist kind of exactly. Exactly. And I just wonder, you know, I don't think that there's anything so different about human nature that if this same technology or the same like the ability for that to happen, if that existed 200 years ago.

Definitely. You know, it would have been the same stuff. You know. It just would have been ever so slightly different niches in terms of what people were paying attention to. The question isn't what do you do to stand out, etc. Think about it. Well, think about it from the perspective of the prophets in the Bible. And zoom out one level to who ultimately had to decide, oh, I guess we should have put that in where they're being written.

And there's standards for prophets that are set out in the Old Testament, in the books of the law, in the Pentateuch. And so like words that were potentially prophecy had to be maintained with rigor in case they came true and the person was a bona fide prophet. And so almost all of them are coming from people who were outcasts and kicked out.

It was never, oh, the popular person who was the toast of the town at the temple who ended up with this scroll in the full stuff, even in terms of like pleasing the religious people. If you look at what happened to Jeremiah, like the king trusted him, but the king himself had to sneak in to see Jeremiah when he was sinking in mud to try and get a word from him

and then had to be like, oh no, I didn't go, I talked to him about other stuff. You know, it wasn't anything about what's actually going on. Like I would never do that. He's a traitor to the people, you know? So it doesn't mean that, you know, sort of deliberately seek that kind of stuff out. It just may be the natural forcing function

of valuable truth that now when our attention is commodified and our attention spans are lower, and again, like maybe it's a rerun here, but maybe one of the novel insights is to say, or at least not novel, I wouldn't claim novelty on anything like this. Like I said, I'm not a historian, but if we look at the most impactful texts

and the most impactful people, they're not necessarily accepted as such in their time in those venues, in those regions. Jesus himself said that a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown. There's very much a familiarity breeds contempt. And what matters is what lasts and as opposed to what tantalizes to a certain extent. And you know, is it more lasting to have you know

15 minutes of fame and be remembered as a piece of trivia, 50, a generation from now, or is it more impactful to have materially changed the lives of a smaller group of people by giving them the kind of confidence and empowerment to make good decisions to have that kind of balance? I mean, it's gotta be it's got to be the latter and fortunately James we are we're blessed to know that we're not the ones responsible for keeping the record books. It actually doesn't matter

where the acknowledgement comes from. If we're doing things in obedience to the will of God then that's the he's the only arbiter that makes it, that makes a difference anyway. And so the other, the other measuring sticks are instrumental. They're means to an end, if every, if anything, and there's an allure or a trap, like you could plug yourself into, you know, some quasi conservative, all, you know, all the ecosystem only to find that behind the scenes there's money and influence and people peddling and it's a shell game. And it's, you know, and it's all, it's all propaganda.

It's all, it's all PR stuff. There's a, there's a market, there's, there's attention. People are going, you know, going after that. And the answer is not to eliminate markets or, you know, attention or any, or anything else like that. We can't turn it over, but we can't accept the reality of those sorts of influence components. People are called influencers for a reason.

That's the whole design behind it. It's not a secret. And if you ask people what professions they would aspire to now, it's not necessarily, oh, I wanna be famous generically. They have a better idea of it. Like, I wanna be on social media. I wanna be that kind of a content creator,

et cetera, et cetera, with little to no appreciation for what goes into an operation like that. And how you're, depending on your structure, your boss is an unseen platform administration tech algorithm that if you can game in the right way and hit those right moments, then you have staying power. But you could also have a whiff of success and then fall off. You could have a dead channel

where you have millions of subscribers and your view count is 1% of your subscriber count on some of this stuff. Like, again, I'm not an expert in those things by any stretch of the imagination, but it's worth at the end of the day to think, well, who's doing the final and real evaluation of success or not? Because any other determination is secondary. It has to get put aside, even if it's our own determination of it. At the end of the

day, it's what does God say about these matters? And if we make those decisions right by His grace to the best of our ability, then it can't matter what other arbiters say. And that's been transformative for me in terms of following my conscience as it relates to homeschooling my kids and so many other things, especially in a

post-COVID environment. Not that I can't receive feedback from people on various things or not that people's input isn't valuable, but I just don't care the same way that I used to. I don't care the same way that I used to. I just don't. I mean, it's implicitly true that I do because there's still, you know, I can't ignore that completely. Like that's, I can't just be like, I'm a totally free and independent.

I don't care what anyone else has to say about anything. It's like, you know. Can't exist in the world that way. But we know in ourselves whether we are bending to external pressure despite what we know to be true. Like to close the loop on the simplified teaching thing, it's not in these weird edge cases and these weird gray areas where we have to plumb the depths to really get

to the meaning or the systematic nature of a doctrine of authenticity, if you were to call it that. But it's in the plain stuff where we know we should have sufficient self-awareness to know if we are, or at least sensitivity to the Holy Spirit to be corrected in something, if we know that we're doing something that we shouldn't. And we have enough to deal with

just trying to get that stuff right before we parse these super, you know, the edges of legal theory as it pertains to it. Like let's major in the majors here. And if we all do that, then we'll be able to process things better and I think be healthier as a result. Yeah, I agree with you.

I agree with you. Well, you had a great analogy about the sort of cracking foundation and our struggle to put anything on top of it, any kind of smear we can find to make that thing hold together. I'll just you know speak personally there are days when I look at that foundation and I know that the foundation of God is Underneath it, you know what I mean? Like that's the original foundation and we build a bunch of stuff on top of it

It's clearly not standing to test the time and I have days where I wake up and just think Let's let's get the demolition team out. You know what I mean? And do away with this rebar and this cracked concrete because I think it's what people need. It's what I needed, you know. It's definitely what you there's and and I think it's ten times worse for people now because they can spend 24 hours of their day listening to someone on YouTube Tell them how they're supposed to live their life You know and the Bible or God never comes up one time, right?

You know manage your time this way that way Your relationships are supposed to go like this and that and you know your job and your professional life and your career path and all that kind of stuff and you know to your point it does seem all cracked and it seems to be held together by caulk and it just feels like it all has to fall away in order for us to. You know, to me, I'll tell you what it's felt like for me with God over the last year or so, it's felt like armor. That's what it's felt like.

It's felt like all of this stuff that's going on in the world, all the kind of things that happen in a personal life and you know all that. For me there has been an armoring up I'd say probably since I don't know summer of last year something like that and it's just I just feel it Steve and I feel like the protection you know Steve and I feel like the protection, you know, it's it's I think it's probably your response also with Your you're saying it in a way that I like I care less, you know what I mean? But I feel like that's an armor also, you know what I mean? It's like all this bombardment of media and narrative like you were talking about earlier It's it's like the armor of God

It's pings off as opposed to like I know years past these things and these problems would sit in My head, you know, and I'd almost feels like you replace it It feels like you replace it with the word Like you the more you listen to or read the word the more you replace all that all those empty thoughts like that empty space In your mind. Yeah, and then it's it. Yeah, it just feels like armor. I don't know. It's very, it's very true. And I think it's apropos like we're instructed to renew our mind through the through the word of God. Yeah. And that's real, man. That is so real. It's an on it's an ongoing process. And you know, many, in many cases with, with spiritual disciplines, we can, we can check it off a, off a list,

or we can really have the longevity with it to understand that, you know, in particular, there's, there's many different teachings about the, about the Holy Spirit in the church. Again, I'd recommend Derek Prince on these sorts of things just to get down to the basics of it. And we've talked about this before about outsourcing our decision-making,

about discernment, about being still, about all of these other things and many of the different pitfalls. But I think for me, what's been sort of growing in clarity is this idea that we are not either through head knowledge or through passive absorption going to get that kind of, that kind of armor to use your picture from Ephesians. Like the Bible says, put on the whole armor of God.

It doesn't say stand there while the whole armor of God is put on you. Now, it doesn't necessarily have to. I don't wanna stretch that scripture too much, but it's an active choice that we have to make with regard to every aspect of our life. And there's a reason why there's a helmet of salvation that is guarding our minds

and establishing as that fountainhead of reason. Like in light of God's grace, in light of the salvation given to us, how should we think? Well, when we see the world around us, when we say, wouldn't it be better if this whole foundation were broken? Then the answer is yes, it would be and it will get there, but there's also a reason why God is long

suffering towards us. I mean, that the clock could have run out before I was born, before I accepted Christ, before I was saved. There are still people who, you know, who would be swept away by the floods, so to speak, who need to come to the saving knowledge of Christ. And that's one of the core reasons. And we could look at God and say, what's going on? Like there's all this evil that is allowed to be perpetuated. And I think we fail to comprehend the extent to which in the scope of eternal good,

the magnitude by which the blessings of eternal salvation swallow up the nature of evil. And I wanna be very, very careful there because in terms of the implications, because in this world, like we are commanded, we are commanded by the word of God to rejoice. And we are also tragically aware of the ongoing nature of absolute heinous evil,

the type of which is not appropriate to even be spoken about. It's so evil. And we're commanded to expose these things, which means that we need to be thoughtful about these things. We need to contemplate these things. We're supposed to be wise as serpents,

but innocent as doves. There are these sort of paradoxes that we should, at least to begin with, readily acknowledge can only be lived successfully by the supernatural power and inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Not that we are inspired to write scripture in the same way that the authors of scripture are inspired, but we can follow Christ.

We can hear the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. We can respond to it appropriately with the right kind of decisions that are in obedience to scripture. And it's only in that way can we exist in a world that is suffused with just preposterously unconscionable evil and maintain the joy that we need of the Lord psychologically in a sense to operate.

And for me, James, whether I'm thinking about this in terms of batteries or in terms of cups or in terms of containers and capacities, I always struggle with this kind of analogy. But it's almost as if we're, instead of us being empty and that being the problem, it's that we're simultaneously, if we're trying to follow God but also exist

in the world, we're being filled in an overflowing kind of way. There's such an abundance of information of evil, of things to pay attention to, of anything else. It's all too much for what we can handle. And so we have to be aware of these things and people's response mechanisms to that, in some cases can be, I'm just gonna shut myself off from all of it because of this, the sensation of being overwhelmed is too, is too much to handle on a, you know,

on a day in day out, moment by moment basis. It's stressful. Like it's, and again, this is a, this is a poor analogy. But it's almost like it's, it's got to be comparable in some way to being waterboarded. Like, that's that kind of overwhelming, you know, quasi- drowning kind of sensation that people can find themselves in spiritually, psychologically, financially, emotionally, relationally, and in that kind of situation, it is completely normal for people to just say, I will do whatever I need to do in order to stop this sensation. But it's the only thing that can combat the overflow of evil that's in the world is an overflow of God and the Holy Spirit. Because if it's both of those things,

then the armor of God will win, there will begin to be that conflict. But in that stage, whether it's for a new Christian or someone who has grown in the faith, but is sort of plateaued, or someone who's experienced a crisis, or someone who's just looking around at the world with open eyes, it can feel like,

that's just a battle that I don't need a battle that I don't want to fight. But that's the battle that that's where the front lines that's where the front lines are. And the enemy can win if there's overwhelming, not to the sake of complete destruction, but overwhelming to the sake where that battle is cut off as a means of just being like, I need a, I need a rest. I need a rest from the action. And I think we need to be able to trust that God knows when we need a break in the action. He knows when we need rest. He knows when we would be just so overwhelmed that we would be stretched. You know, Jesus, after his healing, healing ministries, like he didn't heal people and perform miracles for 24 hours a day in those stretches.

I mean, maybe he did for extremely long periods. We don't have the full scope of that, but he withdrew himself from the crowds deliberately. He withdrew himself to the wilderness to pray and to recharge for lack of a better word, to receive guidance and instruction sort of step by step. Jesus was not in his earthly ministry a machine. He had a human nature.

He became us so that he could stand in as a sacrifice and pay the price for our sins so that the atonement could happen. And as a result, we're not gonna be better able to handle these things than Jesus was. Like sure, you could certainly argue that he had a more important assignment in a unique way than we do individually.

But, you know, he got baptized when he didn't need to in order to show the pattern to us. So it stands to reason that the rest of his ministry should serve as a pattern. God knows that we need rest from these things sometimes, and we should be prepared to take advantage of that opportunity when it comes, knowing that there's gonna be a time for inaction

and a time to recharge and a time to be patient, because this overwhelming, like everything can be overwhelming. You can be overwhelmed by, you know, just trying to catch up on all of the free lawn mowing videos that exist on YouTube, you know? So in this world where, of monetized and weaponized attention,

where everything is designed to be as overwhelming and as addictive as possible You know, it's important to take a break Even if it's even if it's taking a break from what we're what we're giving you another business proposition from the folks at prep or broadcasting Well, Stephen men King we've got to wrap it up I've got some people waiting for me for our next. We're doing a little continuity meeting at 10 and planning for the end of the world. You know how it goes. Yeah, we're running a little late, but they'll be OK. It's all right. I hope so.

So I'm worried about you, James. Now, what what to worry about, you know, they can have a little faith in me, then I don't know what to tell them well tell tell them it's uh tell them it's my fault oh it's nobody's fault man I wouldn't trade it for the world yeah you know what I mean to be honest with you it's always great to talk to you and get your thoughts on this wacky wildlife we live man it is one of those isn it? We sure do live in a society, my friend. Yeah, it's a great time. For people like us who don't mind thinking and expressing ourselves, it is a great time.

Well, we'll keep at it, my friend. Always, always happy to jump on with you. We'll have to do it again a little bit sooner this time. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. It's a must. Well, thanks for everything, man. I do appreciate it.

Up and down, left and right, you's a must. Well, thanks for everything man. I do appreciate it, you know up and down left and right. It's You mean a lot? God bless you my friend love to the love to the folks love to the rest of the team pass along my regards Okay, same to you, sir. See ya. Talk to you soon Thanks for watching!