WHOA That's Good Podcast - The Genius of Jesus

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

Sadie speaks with Erwin McManus, author and lead pastor at Los Angeles-based church Mosaic, about what to do with purpose anxiety driven by fear, how the genius of Jesus could have an impact on our lives 2,000 years later, and the reason he started to attend church before he knew Jesus. Erwin's latest book, “The Genius of Jesus,” is available now. - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up? Well, that's good. Thank you. Welcome back to the Well, that's good podcast. We got some good stuff today. I actually have Erwin McManus coming on the podcast and we get to talk about his new book, The Genius of Jesus. Beautiful cover. Incredible message. I'm so excited to have you on Erwin and what's so cool is that I don't even know how much even know about this or people know about this But whenever I was 17 years old I went out to LA to be on Dancing with the Stars, which was a crazy time in my life And I really wanted to get plugged into a local church and someone told me about mosaic

So I went there every single week that I was on the show for 11 weeks and God just did something so cool in my heart through y'all's church during that time and through our family's life at that time getting to be planted in your church And so we are so grateful for your ministry and what a full circle moment that you're on this podcast I'm so so grateful say the absolute God to be with you And I do remember when you were coming to mosaic And I remember when your family came and all the beards kind of stood out and I wasn't sure if they were just hipsters or regularized it was a death-hine and speed that had just an amazing face. Well they might have been doing it at your

church because there is definitely a hipster vibe. The coolest people ever are at Mosaic Church. And yeah, it was actually so funny. I remember one time. So you know, dancing with the stars, you have just like everything is rhinestone and glitter. And I had gotten in a Uber to get to Mosaic and I had these like rhinestone shoes. Like they were just completely bedazzled dance shoes.

And I left them in the Uber. And I had to get that Uber to come to Mosaic Church to bring me my rhinestone shoes. I remember running out of church, grow it, I'm going back into church. So I was in pretty good memories just being there around your family. Some of your family even went on the live original tour with us. So gotten to know you guys pretty well. And you're all just incredible people. Well, I'm so excited to talk about this book. But first I have to ask the question, ask everyone on this podcast and that is what is the best piece of advice that you've ever been given?

Wow, the best piece of advice. It's a hard one. I'm not really sure. You know, when you put things in the category, the best. I know it's a big one. It's a big one. It's a big one. It's a big one. It might have been maybe the encounter at piece of advice. I was in high school playing football.

And after I graduated, the wide receiver coach came up to me and he said, we kept waiting for you to lead, but you'd never had the confidence. And he kept saying, if you never had the confidence. And he kept saying, yeah, if you just had the confidence, it would have changed everything. And that's when I realized that my perception of my failures were really more connected to what I felt like people were keeping from me, rather than what

I was bringing to the opportunity. And so I never forgot that. And I just told myself, if I fail, from me rather than what I was bringing to the opportunity. And so I never forgot that. And I just told myself, if I fail, it's never going to be because I didn't bring everything I had. That's so good. Come on, that's awesome. It's crazy all those moments in life

that are sometimes kind of hard to hear. It can be the most pivotal moments for you. And like, what a good coach to say those words, probably not realizing the impact it was going to make. That's awesome. So I just kind of mentioned the C right before we got on the podcast, but your message, why Jesus is one of my favorite messages I've ever heard. It really just helped me with my own life with tough questions that I ask and even just helped me as I taught to other people with tough questions that they ask. And it was

even in a series that you had called like your toughest questions, which I think is so cool that you actually like think to like go and tackle the questions that are the hardest things for some people to ask and to understand. But I love how in the message you said so many times, I can't believe that I believe this. And you're just so honest, you're like, I can't even believe that I believe this. And so I wanted to just have a minute before we even start and get into the genius of Jesus. Like, where was it in your life?

Where were you in your life? Were you actually started to believe in Jesus? And what was kind of your background with that? Where did you grow up in a faith-based family? And you talk about a little bit in the book. And when was it that you're like, okay, Jesus is everything? I definitely did not grow up in a faith-based family. And I grew up in the opposite, I know based family.

We were not anti-religious in any way. I never heard my family say anything negative about religion or Christianity or Buddhism or anything, but we didn't have any specific foundation. Now I'm from El Salvador, so pretty much everyone from El Salvador begins Roman Catholic. And so that was sort of like my backdrop was if you asked me, I would have told you I was Roman Catholic, if you asked me what that meant, I would not really have not. And it's almost the same as for some people being Irish or being German or being Latin as being Roman Catholic. And I went to mass maybe three times in the first 20 years of my life.

And I didn't have a negative experience. It felt sacred, it felt mystical. I remember Euronew specifically seeing Jesus on a cross because of crucifix, so it was a central image. But I never connected the dots about who Jesus was or how that related to my life or anything like that. It was really more when I was in college. I was studying philosophy in college. My

mom had gone through a second divorce and it was pretty devastating kind of experience. It was the dad that I knew growing up, my stepdad, and she called me up one day and said, I want to tell you that I'm a Christian. I had no idea what that was. I didn't have any context at all, but she seemed happy, so I was happy for her. And in my mind, I think it was almost like I joined the Peace Corps, or I've chosen to become a humanitarian. I didn't even connect it to religion or faith, or I don't even know if I connected it to God,

to be honest with you. But I felt like my mom deserves some happiness and if it made her happy I was all for that. I went home from college and next thing I know I felt like she'd been like sucked into this cult. She was going to church they were talking about God all the time they're talking about Jesus you know as if he was like present and they got baptized and they were trying to get me to go to church. They were now like trying to proselytize me. And so I suddenly felt like, what am I, what am I? I didn't know that this was like this all-consuming terrifying kind of space. And so I popped in a few times with them, just out of guilt, you know, mom guilt.

She got me to go to church a few times, I sat in the back and then my brother started going. So then we came here for the summer to work construction and my mom was so sneaky. She helped us get a job with one of the leaders in the church because she wanted us to be influenced by this guy. And we didn't even have a car. So this guy had the construction manager pick us up every day to go to work. I mean they were the kindest, most gracious people. He paid us for a job that we had no skill to do. And I don't know if those buildings are still standing today. It's a terrifying

time. And and then out of that, my mom would go, hey, you have to come to church because I'm getting baptized. If your sister is getting baptized, your other sister is getting baptized. And I just felt like I was being manipulated. And then my brother, who was an atheist, started going to church. And that really confused me. And I felt like it was so hypocritical for an atheist to start going to church. And then he started reading the Bible which I I could not understand at all and I asked him what are you doing? You're an atheist and you're going to church and you're reading the Bible and and he said well if I ever make a decision about God

it's going to be an intellectual decision and not an emotional decision and I told him I said you're lying you're about to fall I remember telling him that I felt like coming to faith was crumbling. You fell. You gave up. And I said, you're about to fall. You're just trying to excuse what's about to happen to you.

And I said, why do you go to church? And he said, well, I trust a guy who invited me. He told me there was great volleyball and beautiful girls. And I thought, I could do the little bit of religion. People who think that churches who do things that seem quote unsecret are missing the point, they're missing the point. It was really through a volleyball that I started connecting the people who believes in Jesus. Having a good time enjoying life with them,

they treated me great. I never felt, you know, when people talk all these negative things about Christians or churches, I never experienced that. I experienced like unconditional acceptance, I experienced unconditional love. They treated me like I was a superstar. They made me feel special and no, date me

because I kept telling me that you know, I'm equal to Yoke, which I had no idea what that meant. But I thought I'm not people. I'll buy a Yoke. Just tell me the pick one of you. It's so hilarious. And then my brother came to faith and would commit my whole family gave their lives to Jesus except for me.

And that was really, I think for me, a really turbulent time. I did everything I could to try to avoid giving my life to Jesus internally. Like I flew my girlfriend down to try to like just spend time with her, maybe I could get got out of my mind when I would go to these services. I would actually listen. And who Jesus was, sorry, like making sense to me little by little, when they would open up the scriptures,

somehow it would get to me. And it was bothering me that I didn't know how they were getting to me. And I was like, how are they doing this? How is he speaking things that seem to connect to who I am as a person? And then when I gave my life to Jesus, I mean, I remember specifically,

and not everyone knows when. Some people kind of happens in a process or anything. But for me, it was like August 20th, 1978, about 8.30 pm. I mean, I know exactly when I, and I didn't, I can't say I studied the Bible all the way through. Like I never even seen a Bible. I didn't know you could own a Bible. But what it was for me is I just basically said to God, Jesus, I don't even know. Like I don't know if this is all real or all true. But if you're real and you'll have me, I'm in. And that was what happened in my life.

And I cannot explain it any other way except that I had an unexplainable encounter with Jesus. And then somebody gave me a Bible, which is crazy. The janitor of the church, he was probably the only black man in the whole church. We were probably one of the few Latinos in the church and this man came up to me and he hands me a Thompson chain reference, King James Bible

with my name and grapes on the cover. And he handed me this book right when I give my life to Jesus. He already had it. And he came up to me and he said, five years ago, someone came up to me and gave me a Bible of my name and graved on it. Five years before that, someone went to him and did the same thing.

I've been praying and asking God for the person I am supposed to do it for. And so here I am. I just gave my life to Jesus, a few minutes before this guy hands me a Bible with my name and grave Donnie goes, I need to tell you that God puts your name on my heart and you're gonna come to Jesus

and God's called you to proclaim the gospel to the world. And that's how my whole journey began. And now I never read Shakespeare, I was completely religious when you have the King James Shakespeare and Jesus meeting at the same time. And you know, I'm driving into the gospel of John. And and when I finished reading the gospel of John, I cried. Because I felt like I never had anything more beautiful in my life. And I couldn't imagine I would ever read anything again. So beautiful. And I didn't want to would ever read anything again, so beautiful.

And I didn't even want to read the rest of the Bible, I thought, it's all going to be disappointed for me. And then I was baptized the next week and then I went back to college. So I never had people disciple of me as people ask or build into me. They gave me the the five-minute version. They basically told me Pray all the time Read the scriptures and listen to God's voice do whatever he tells you tell people about Jesus and And be connected to the church and so a week later I go back to college and I just took those principles on

And so a week later I go back to college and I just took those principles on and it worked and and what's and that's why a lot of people say well where do I go get the cycle? I'm going you're trying to get changed from the outside end. The real power of this is when you're changed from the inside out and yeah, so that's how it began for me and I was 20 years old And there was no turning back after that. That is so cool. That's such an amazing story. I didn't know any of that. And so I'm so glad I got to hear that.

And just how cool that that guy, the janitor, was like praying and had your name put on his heart. And I think that's even a cool note for people. Like, you know, you don't have to be the pastor of a church or the worship leader of a church. Like you can just be a member of a church or the worship leader of a church. Like, you can just be a member of a church, the janitor of a church, and like, God can use you. And just as big ministry moments as anyone else there. If we were willing to, you know, kind of like what your coach said, like, be confident in how we lead, how we love, how we live.

And so that's the coolest thing. You kind of mentioned this about, at the end, about that simplicity of what it means like follow the gospel of like pray, read, go out, like tell people about Jesus, like all the things. And it was like the simple like, here's five minutes, go do it and you did. And you talk a little bit in your book about how people get like so paralyzed by the fear of what if I do the wrong thing or make the wrong choice with my life

and then the fear makes them not do anything with their life. And I know that like so well, because because most people my age, especially like right after college, are like living right in that paralyzing fear moment of like, what am I going to do? What if I make the wrong decision for my life? What if I go out and do the wrong thing? What if it's the wrong choice? And so they end up not doing anything. And there's like so much fear around it.

It's actually nowadays they're calling it purpose anxiety. What would you say? What would you say? What's your advice to that person right now that's like, okay fear around it. It's actually nowadays are calling it purpose anxiety. What would you say? What do you say? What's your advice to that person right now that's like, okay, I don't know what to do with all of this? Yeah, I think unfortunately a lot of times it's really sincere people who love Jesus

and want to be faithful or the most paralyzed. And it's because the way we talk about the future. It's the way we talk about purpose and intention. And because it's almost as if God's will is a tightrope, and when we fall off, we fall off, we fell off forever. And like now you're out of God's will. So now you're out of God's, what is it? Perfect plan.

And now you're part of God's like whatever, permissive plan, all the languages out there, I'm going, that's just so crazy, because if you look at the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve endless good choices and there's only one negative choice. And we act as if God only gives us one good choice and then every other choice is a destructive choice. And the truth is that God is actually the one who gives us freedom. He's not the one who actually limits us. And when I begin to realize that, you know,

what God over and over again talks about in the scriptures is what delight yourself in the Lord and give you the desires of your heart. Let me just translate that person, it says, love God and do what you want. And that we keep trying to get the details, the information God wants our heart. And once our hearts are aligned

with him, we will naturally do God's will for our lives. We will naturally do what we're created to do. You don't have to wake up one single morning and go, oh, inhale. I need, I need, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. In fact, if you start thinking about breathing, you're probably going to black out. End of a minor wedding., breathing is something that happens natural because of the way God designed you. Living in God's intention and God's will, something is supposed to happen naturally. It's like inhaling and exhaling.

And so don't focus on doing God's will, focus on loving God and living in intimacy with Him, and his will will unwrap and you like inhaling, exhale. Man, that's so good. That literally like makes me want to just take a breath myself because I feel like used to whenever I struggled so much with anxiety, like constant living in fear and I had to tell myself, which is funny,

I would tell myself like breathe because I'd forget like at times, whenever I get so anxious, I get so tense, and I'd be like, okay, I just need to like relax and breathe and actually it was somebody in L.A. that told me that whenever I was on days from the stars I was like really struggling with just um pains and aches all the things what everyone does on the show it's crazy but it was kind of weird for me to have as many injuries when I was like 17 and so the doctor was looking at me and he was like you need to relax and I was like I am relaxed he was like was looking at me and he was like, you need to relax.

And I was like, I am relaxed. He was like, your back's not touching the ground. And I realized it was laying down. And my back wasn't even touching the ground because I was so like tens. And he was like, you know how, he was a Christian man, which was so cool. And he said, you know, God, like breathe life into it.

Like the human bones went out and like, he breathed and like life came. And he was like, do the same thing for you like breathe life into your bones bring life into your muscles and so I started doing that and I felt so much more free and it's so true it's like when you don't realize like how tense you get how rigid you get and how much you actually miss out on and the freedom you miss out on by not just breathing and living in that love of God.

So I want to talk about the book. So such a great message. And I want to talk about first how you came up with this concept because I watched your YouTube video of your message from this. And I love the way your brain works. It's like me. It's back and forth with your thoughts of like this person's like your faith side and this person's like your faith side and this person's

like your doubt side and you kind of describe yourself in the book as like this man of like profound faith and also like profound doubt which I think so many people can relate to. So what was the process like coming up with this concept, the genius of Jesus? Yeah, you know this when I started thinking about writing this book, it wanted to maybe kind of nervous because writing a book about Jesus makes me nervous, because the book is never going to be good enough. It's never going to be complete enough. And so if you want to upgrade just about Jesus

to go to the gospel of John or Mark or Matthew. And but I did feel like Jesus hasn't really been seen through a filter that makes sense to people, especially 2,000 years later. So I was trying to struggle through the concept of this book and nothing was coming. It just wasn't working. And during the quarantine, I was in my back house

and I just began to have a conversation with myself that I didn't know is an elite to where the book actually came from. But I just had this thought. Isn't it weird that my life revolves around someone who lived 2000 years ago? And I thought, yeah, it is kind of odd. I mean, it is strange that here I am. My whole life is shaped by this person called Jesus and then this other thought came to a man you know, what about he isn't God? Your whole life is shaped around someone and he's not even God. And then this other voice in my head said, yeah, you can deny he's God, but you can't deny that he's changed you.

So how do you deal with that? And this is weird. I can deny the cause, but I can't deny the effect. but I can't deny the effect. And, you know, because the cause has to be there if there's an effect. And, and, and then I had this thought, well, okay, if Jesus isn't God, but He has actually changed me, then I haven't been changed by the person of Jesus, I've been changed by the idea of Jesus.

And then I thought, wow, that would be the biggest idea that has ever been expressed in human history. That would be a stroke of genius. And so then that's where the beginning of the book began was, how is it possible that the genius of Jesus could actually have an impact on my life two thousand years later? And I've been studying human Jesus genius for probably 40 years. And what occurred to me was one, Jesus is not on a single list of geniuses in the world. So I'm going, how is it possible? Jesus is an honest, I mean, Davengers on every list, Mozart's pretty much on every list, Einstein's pretty much on every list. And then you have other people who joined different lists. I didn't see list with Buddha and Mandala and Muhammad and Confucius, but never Jesus. And so then I kind of put back and I

thought, okay, is Jesus, if you take out all the divinity, if you take out all the miraculous, is Jesus a genius? Does he qualify as a historic genius? And if he is a genius, what exactly was this genius? And if he is a genius and you can identify his genius, why has he been overlooked throughout history? So this really kind of caused me to begin first to study the cats of the genius. And one of the things about genius that really struck me is that genius is not transferable. And so if you spend your life with Mozart, you're not going to become a composer that crude needs sounds that no one's ever heard. If you spend your life with Picasso, you're not going to suddenly become the next great painter in the world. If you spend your life with Bobby Fisher, you're not going to become a master

jazz player. But if you spend your life with Jesus, you didn't become more like Jesus. And so I thought, here's the unique thing about Jesus as genius. One, I do conclude in the book that Jesus actually is history's greatest genius because his genius has a canvas that is different than every other genius in history. The canvas of Jesus as genius is us. And so you can see Picasso's genius on a canvas is us. And so you can see Picasso's genius on a canvas of his art form or Mozart. You can hear his genius with the notes and musicality.

And you can see Fisher's genius when the moves on the chessboard are mapped out. But the reason Jesus' genius is so easily overlooked is that the canvas of his genius is the human spirit. And that the one thing that makes Jesus is genius different than the genius of anyone else in history is that his genius is transferable. And this for me was like such a huge,

I mean, I've been following Jesus for 40 years. It just felt like this epiphany in my own mind, because frankly, if anyone who was a genius came to me and said, Erwin, if you'll give me the next 30 years your life, I'll who was a genius came to me and said, Erwin, if you'll give me the next 30 years of your life, I'll make you a genius. I would have said absolutely, I'm in. I'm not even picky. It could be biology or botany. It could be chast or basketball. Any arena of genius ever said,

I'm in, I'm your guy. And here we have Jesus of Nazareth thing. If you will give me your life, I will transfer my genius into you. And yet people go, yeah, I don't know, I don't think so. And to me that's like, why would you turn that down? Yeah, wow, that is so cool. I love the whole thought process and I love the idea that, because you're so right, all these other people,

we can look at and be inspired by and be amazed by it, but we can never be like them. And we know that. We're painfully aware of that, you know? It's like, I'm never going to be beyond say. And that's okay, not the same gifting, you know? But when you look at Jesus and can think, wow, he can actually transform me.

I can look more like love. I can look more like joy, more like peace, more like his goodness. You know, it's an amazing thought to think that truly living our life in relationship and in close-ups with him will truly transform who we are. It's very inspiring to even have a more desire to walk closer to him. That's awesome. I love how you talk about in the book. You say this line about how all geniuses are original. And that's like our word at liver, original, obviously, just originality. And it comes from my dad.

So whenever I was younger, I know you know my dad. Well, whenever I was younger, um, he like gave all my friends a nickname. All my friends had the coolest nickname. My dad would just, I mean, just spit them out and it just always hit. And he never had a nickname for me. I was just Sadie. And it would just drive me crazy. I'd be like, Dad, give me a nickname.

I want it. You think of all these cool ones from my friends. I want a nickname. And I kind of started to think, am I not, do I not have a big enough personality that I could have something that would stick with me. I started kind of doubting myself in it. And one day he looked at me and said,

say, you don't have a nickname because you're just the original. You just are who you are. You're just original and you're just sati. And I remember thinking when I was like five, like original, I don't even know what that means. That isn't really stick. That's not a cool nickname.

But as time's gone on, I realized just the value of my dad saying that to me, that you don't have to be something or not, you don't have to be someone else, you don't have to have a new name or anything like, you were created originally, who you were created to be is enough for you to just be you and be confident in that. And so our whole ministry is telling mostly women, but men too, that you know who you were created to be is made in the image of God and original

creation meant to do great things. You don't have to be anything else, have any other name, have any other status to be who God called you to be. And so I love that you said geniuses are original. So what is it about that quality of being original that makes geniuses? Well, I think it's really a tension. I think all of us are going to struggle between the tension of being accepted or being unique. And that we don't realize that there's a tension there. And frankly, one of the great challenges for me when I came to Jesus in relating to the Church is that modern Christianity is so committed to standardizing us and conforming

us and making us the same. And discipleship was a lot of times about making people the same rather than helping people discover their uniqueness. And one of the reasons your voice, Sadie, is so fresh to so many people is that you're helping them discover that their faith doesn't mean they have to lose their uniqueness, that looking like Jesus doesn't mean looking like everyone else. And I can tell you, I've been married almost 40 years and you know, for the first at least 20 years of our life together, my wife Kim would work so hard to try to make me like everyone else. And it wasn't that she didn't love me the way I was, it's that she wanted me to be accepted

so badly. And she was, you know, could you not say that or could you not dress like that or could you not talk like that. And I spent so much energy in the first decades of my faith walk, trying to belong and become like what everyone else felt I should be. And a part of what I hope I can do, even through the genius of Jesus,

is to help people who are sincere in their faith and are really trying to become who God wants them to be, to realize it's not God that's trying to make you the same, because God didn't make you the same. So you don't even have the genetic capacity to be the same naturally. If you conform and become standardized, you're just going to become a reflection of the status quo and that's not who God created you to be. God designed you to be unique. He designed you to be quirky. You know, he designed you to be different. And it's a part of the fun of it, you know, and and you know, now I'm 63, so I'm like,

who's opinion do I really care about? You know, me, you know, what why should I limit my life based on what other people think are the limitations that we should accept. Yeah, wow, come on. This is gonna be such a breadth of fresh air for so many people to hear. And I think, you know, that's what some people that I've seen on Instagram or different social media accounts say about me is that they're like,

confused as to how I'm a Christian, but doing a dance video. That's like silly and goofy. And I'm like, it doesn't mean that you're not a Christian because but doing a dance video. That's like silly and goofy. And I'm like, it doesn't mean that you're not a Christian because you dance. Actually, like in the word, it talks about turning our morning into dancing or starting to joy. Like, when you read the word, like Christianity doesn't take away from who you are. It makes you who you are. You know, it reminds you of who you truly are. And so I love that you said that, that's so good.

Speaking of not conforming, the whole process or the whole, I guess, what was it? Research behind how we were all geniuses at five years old and then somehow things change in our life. I love how you say the quote, you say, I wrote it down, if you don't use it, you'll lose it. Talk this about that because I thought that was so interesting. Well, I mean, it's to me both fascinating and tragic

when you think about the fact that five year olds who were tested, 98% of them reflected the characteristics of genius. By the age of 10 years old, it was down to like 30%. And by the time they're 15 years old, it's down to nearly 10%. And by the time a person was an adult, it was around 2%.

And what it tells me is that every human being has the potential for a personal genius. I'm not saying that everyone's a genius like Stephen Hawking's. I'm not saying that everyone's gonna become Picasso. I'm not saying that everyone's gonna be beyond, so you know, what I am saying is that there's uniqueness in everyone and there's a genius

that can be awakened within you. A uniqueness that is your unique contribution to the world. And if you're not careful, that's going to get lost in the process. And it gets lost in a lot of ways. It gets lost because we have well-meaning parents who teach us how to color inside the lines. Because they've been taught it's drawn to color outside the lines, who focus parenting on making sure you don't do the wrong thing, rather than focusing on making sure that you actually do more of the right thing. And I have a friend who actually became an architect because he was drawing on the walls

when his parents weren't home or watching. And when his dad came home, his mom found out she was angry. She said, wait till he dad gets home. When his dad came home, he said, okay, we need to do something about this. And he went and got more paint and said, why don't you just paint the whole wall. And his dad is affirmed his artistic desire and dream

and turned the house into a mural. And that son became an architect because that artistic essence was actually affirmed rather than discipline or punish. And it's the same way in school. I mean, I don't know about girls, but boys are not created or designed to sit in the classroom eight hours a day, five days a week, you know. I mean, I'd say girls aren't either. You know, I'm going, I mean, it seems like girls develop faster, have more emotional intelligence, have more spatial intelligence,

or have more environmental intelligence. So you guys know how to thrive. Boys are just stupider. We're just dumb, I think for a long time, before we realize getting in trouble all the time is not beneficial. And our entire educational system is built around standardization. It is not built around identifying uniqueness and unlocking that. We try to make everyone good at everything. So you have to be good at geometry and good at geology and good at geography and you have to be good at

math and science and there are certain things that you should be good at. I told my kids, look, learn how to read and learn how to write and learn how to speak. Those three things will change your life. Know enough math where you can pay your bills and make sure that you're building a company. We don't have to even explain all these arenas. You just need to find the thing you love,

you're passionate about, that you're good at, and then just not be bad enough on all those other things where they pull you under. You don't have to be good at everything. Be good at one thing, and then find other people who compensate for the things you're not good at. Let your genius be your guide. That's good, that's so good.

I love that. I love just you talking about parents affirming their child because I'm a new parent. Me and Christian had our first child honey this year and I know that you are a fresh grandpa to Juneau who is honey's future best friend. They're just a few months apart. Almost at the same time you had honey.

Right around the same time, yes, I can't wait for them to meet. It's gonna be so awesome. But one of my favorite parts of your book, which is hilarious, was literally your dedication to Juno. And it was just so beautiful. It literally made me tear and I think just from the perspective of just having a child and knowing just the power of those that those words are going to hold to her one day when she reads them, it was so beautiful.

And you say this quote in the book, how we are loved as children, influences our capacity to believe in God, even in our adulthood. And I want you to kind of talk about, because I have a lot of young moms listening to this podcast. That's a huge part of our audience, because that's where I'm at in life as well. And so just one day,

I kind of talked for a second about the importance of that love and the way that we speak, and the way that we discipline our kids, and the way that we speak and the way that we discipline our kids and the way that it has the effect on how they maybe grow up to see who God is. Sure. I mean I think it's important to realize that a part of parenting is establishing healthy boundaries for your kids. The worst parents are the parents who never say no to their kids who only say no to their kids, who only say yes to their kids. Because yes, lose its its power if there is no no. And when there are clear like boundaries and

nose that are based on love, when you say that yes, it's an incredibly liberating yes, I just think what we have to realize is that we can't become so impatient that we don't explain the no. And that we have to help our kids understand the intelligence, the wisdom behind the know. So they realize, oh, they're actually for me. They're not trying to withhold life from me or freedom from me or fun from me or actually taking care of me and loving me.

But in the same way, it's also the yes. The yes needs to have intention and meaning behind the two. So they realize, even when you say yes, it's as powerful as the know. Like I have had these friends, and they speak multiple languages, and they wanted their kids to grow up speaking multiple languages. And so the dad would always speak to their kids in Spanish

whenever he was disciplining them. And he didn't realize that he was using Spanish only when he was mad or upset with them. And the little girl who was very, very smart, started saying, not that language daddy, not that language. So, and the moment they identify your language with disappointment and only negativity, they're not going to want to speak your language anymore. And even if there's not two languages, if it's only English, they're not going to want to speak your language anymore. And even if there's not two languages, if it's only English, you're not going to hear

the language of you, if that language doesn't also have affirmation and praise and love and encouragement. And it's not about getting it all right, you see, I think children are incredibly forgiving. Children never expect their parents to be perfect. They just expect their parents to be forgiving. Children never expect their parents to be perfect. They just expect their parents to be loving. And so I look back and I actually think that my grandmother, the way she loves me, and I mean, she would pick up a spoon and hit us. I mean, she's not like she was like, you know, gentle in any way. I mean, she was terrifying, but she also had this ability

to communicate and express unconditional love toward me and my brother, I think. And so for me, my grandmother became that person that I think became a pathway to believing that God could love me as well. And so it doesn't always have to be even like your mom or your dad. You just need one person in your life who you feel that loves you unconditionally. And that for me, I think opens up your soul to the narrative

that there's a God who loves you without condition. That's beautiful. That's such good advice. I ever see that for our own family. That's so good. The last thing I wanted to ask you about is the concept you talk about in this book about the truth. That's something I've been talking about a lot lately. I just preached a sermon recently about the truth, not your truth, and just how we can't just follow our relative idea of our own truth and all this stuff because it's kind of getting us lost and confused

and more confused than when we even started the journey of the truth. And so I feel like this is kind of getting us lost and confused and more confused than when we even started the journey of the truth. And so I feel like this is kind of a confusing thing for a lot of people because there's so many words out there right now in our culture that are like biblical concepts but taken and used in a worldly way. And I think it's making people a little bit confused. I know Jesus talks about this

and this is one of my favorite verses and you quote this a lot. He is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through him. So it's been something I've been really passionate about this year and a quote that you said in the book about how our search for truth always has to start and end with Jesus. I thought that was so profound and such a good base point on as we do journey through hard questions and search for truth, that that's our starting and our ending point. But what else do you want to share on that idea

of just the truth and kind of what's happening in our culture right now with this idea of truth being so relative? Well, it's kind of tricky because right now I think we're a culture that both has a high value for quote my personal truth, like living your truth. And at the same time, it's completely suspicious of any truth existing at all. So it's not like we go, okay, I have my personal truth and it's powerful, but I also believe an objective truth. It's pretty much, I don't even know if the CDC is right.

I don't know if science is right. I don't know if the Bible is right. I don't know if science is right. I don't know if the Bible's right. I don't know if anybody's right, but I'm right. And by the way, if everyone is wrong, then you're wrong too. If you're not in the course of what is actually right. And then we just think to live your truth. I'm like, I don't know. See, if your truth is that you're a sociopathic serial killer, I don't want you to live your truth. I'm like, I don't know. See, if your truth is that you're a sociopathic serial killer,

I don't want you to live your truth. No, please. No, no. If your truth is I should take from the rich because I don't have enough, I don't want you to steal people's stuff. And so living your truth is actually only works if you're a person of truth. And you have to first be, I think,

transformed by the reality of that. The best measure of truth is not whether you have the information right. The best measure of truth is whether you're trustworthy. And if you wanna like work out all the complexities of the uncertainty of truth, here's the starting point. Are you trustworthy?

Can your friends trust you with your word? Do you do what you say you're gonna do? Do you show up when you say you're gonna show up? Do you finish the assignments and commitments you've made? Are you a trustworthy person? And because if you're not trustworthy, then you shouldn't actually have confidence, quote, in living out your truth.

And because you're not even going to tell yourself to truth. You're going to lie to yourself as you live your life. And one of the things that I just really try to help people with is you think that the journey is actually a journey towards finding objective truth. But you can't identify something that you don't actually value. If truth is right in front of you, but you're not a trustworthy person,

you're not gonna recognize truth. And so you have to begin by going, I'm gonna choose to be trustworthy. And I think this is one of the things that really changed my life was that before I came to Jesus, I actually wanted to be a good human bank. Like I didn't wanna be a serial killer, I actually wanted to be a good human bank. I didn't want to be a serial killer.

I didn't want to rob banks. I didn't want to be a person who was greedy or I actually wanted to be a noble person who solved the problems of poverty in the world. I was drawn toward nobility. And I know it's sometimes as hard for Christians to understand that a person can actually not know Jesus, but actually want the things that Jesus brings.

I just didn't know how to be that person. I was trying to be that person. But when I gave my life to Jesus, suddenly I felt like I was a lot worse than I was before. And a lot of it was because before I actually had a relationship with Jesus, I didn't have the same light inside of me that was revealing to me the places that needed to change inside of me. And then when I gave my life to Jesus, as like the light came on inside of me, like, oh, wow, I'm feeling really naked right now. I lost a lot of ground, but really it was the first time I was seeing all the landmines in my soul. And I had to become,

I had to make a decision. Am I going to allow these things to change inside of me? Because you cannot change the world if you can't even change yourself. And I realized I couldn't change myself, which is what actually, I think, in the end drove me to Jesus. I felt like I wanted to change. I wanted to be a reflection of what I felt like the world should become and I couldn't do that by myself and that's what Jesus offered me was to change me so that I could become a part of the change that the world needed.

And so I think the search for truth is really a powerful and profound journey because all of us long, I think, for truth. But really, the end of what we're asking is can anyone be trusted? And I think it's important to know that truth exists because God can be trusted. And if God could be trusted, then there wouldn't be this principle, idea of truth. But all human beings inherently have this idea of truth because God is a God of truth

because God can be trusted. And it begins there. Truth is relational first and then it becomes information. Well, that's incredible. It's so good. I can't wait to even go back myself and listen to that a few more times because I love, I love exactly how you said it. And it's something that I've been diving into and trying to learn for myself. And so you just put language as something you more times because I love, I love exactly how you said it and it's something that I've been diving into and trying to learn for myself. And so you just put language as something like you said, like I said at the beginning of this, you answered people's toughest questions and that's a gift. That's a genius of yours that you answer people's toughest questions and you say the things

and such a, it's profound but it's simple enough to understand and I'm so grateful for that. And so everyone, if you've listened enough to understand and I'm so grateful for that. And so everyone, if you've listened to this podcast, I know you're so inspired, I know you have a lot to chew on, but I encourage you. There's so much more in the genius of Jesus that you wanna read and you're gonna wanna dive into. So go get this book, it's out,

anywhere books are sold, I'm assuming. This is incredible. Listen to the message online, it's so good. Everyone, I'm so thankful for you being on this podcast and Just appreciate your ministry and your family. Hey, thank you, Sadie so much. I enjoyed having a conversation with you so much Say hi to your family and I can't wait to come out and and experience duck hunting for the first time in my life Yes Come duck honey, but make sure Mariah and Juno come too. Alright, good luck. That's awesome.