On Spiritual Combat (interview with Lt. Col. Dave Grossman)

Today on the program, I am welcoming Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, internationally recognized

speaker, author, scholar, and soldier.

You do not want to miss this episode.

Conversations with a Calvinist begins right now.

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist, and I am very excited today to be

joined by my friend and one of the men that I respect most in the world, Lieutenant Colonel

Dave Grossman.

Lieutenant Colonel Grossman is an internationally recognized scholar, author, soldier, and speaker

who is one of the foremost experts in the field of human aggression and the roots of violence and

violent crime.

Colonel Grossman is a former West Point psychology professor, professor of military science, and army ranger.

He has testified before the U .S. Senate, congressional committees on three different occasions.

He has testified before numerous state legislatures, and he and his research have been cited in a national address by the

President of the United States.

More importantly, Colonel Grossman is a faithful follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He has several books, one that I'm going through right now, which is called On Spiritual Combat.

It's a daily devotional, 30 missions, that mirrors his book On Combat, and he also has

a book on marriage that we're going to talk about as well.

And on a personal note, several years ago, I reached out to Colonel Grossman.

I told him who I was, that I was a pastor.

I was also a self -defense instructor, and he welcomed me to his Bulletproof Mind seminar in

Jacksonville, Florida, where he was giving it to Jacksville Sheriff's Office, and I got to go in and sit through

eight hours of training that literally changed my life.

So I was thankful for him and all that he does, and I'm thankful for you being on the program today, sir.

Hello,.

Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman.

Praise God, and thanks, Keith.

And I'm grateful to you and to your audience.

You know what?

I always try to begin the podcast with just a minute to recognize what an amazing process is

happening right here.

When I was a kid, we had three networks, one or two newspapers in each city,

and maybe a half a dozen national magazines.

And if you didn't get in there, your voice didn't get heard.

There was this roadblock in information, or the podcast revolution has

exploded that roadblock.

And I've been on 60 Minutes, I've been on 20 -20, and they were just a total waste of time.

The three -minute soundbite, they get to choose what they say, and they move on.

You know, the podcast revolution is first about people like you who want to dig deeper and

provide more information, and mostly about your listeners who want deeper levels of

information.

They're not satisfied with the three -minute soundbite.

They're not satisfied with a little blip on the news.

They want to dig in deeper.

And this, you know, amidst all the bad things that may be happening out there, this process of the podcast is one of the

good things.

And you know, the newspaper is tomorrow's birdcage liner.

But 100 years from now, people may be listening to this.

You know, it's archived.

It's there for anybody who wants to.

So praise God for you and your listeners, and eager to be able to discuss.

This topic with you.

Amen, and I'm grateful too.

And that's a good thought.

I hadn't really thought about that.

But yeah, it's going to be archived, and Lord willing, we'll go on in perpetuity.

I also want to mention to those who are viewers, I know some of you are listening to this on the podcast.

Some of you are watching this on our video podcast, and you'll notice I'm not in my normal studio.

I'm not even in my—I have two studios.

I have one at the church, one at the rental house this week.

My wife, a shout out to her, is so gracious.

We're on our baby moon.

We're expecting our sixth child.

And we came for a week away, and my wife heard that I had an opportunity to interview Lieutenant

Colonel Dave Grossman.

And she said, you know what, bring your equipment, do it on the show, and I'll take the kids to Chick -fil -A.

So that's where she is right now.

I want to shout out to her for doing that.

And so if you're listening to this, and you hear a little bit of an echo on my side, I'm not using my normal

equipment.

I'm in my portable studio, so I do hope that you would give me a little bit of grace on that

as a listener.

I know that we want to have a quality program every time, and that's certainly what we try to accomplish.

You know, what we do with these things, too, is we give people the gift of our vulnerability.

The dogs, the kids, the away home, you know, we let them look into our lives just a little bit.

And that's one of the gifts of our vulnerability.

You know, we're not perfect in sound studio, you know, pancake makeup.

This is people, and you're getting a little bit of their lives,.

And it's a beautiful thing.

So praise God.

Absolutely.

And I notice you're in a room that is filled with things I would love to look at.

Is that your...

When the pandemic struck, we shuffled things around, and we kind of set up a studio.

You know, I really am big on the, you know, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith,

you know, and the sword of the spirit.

And so, you know, what other people think of as weapons of war, these are

tools of spiritual warfare and physical defense.

And anybody seen one of my presentations, I wrap it up at the end of the day with love.

It's all about love.

The opposite of evil is love.

Evil is the absence of love, just as darkness is the absence of light.

So we take these things that are instruments of war, you know, the

helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, and we take these things and we give them a new light.

And even when we do use actual weapons, we're using them in benevolent

violence.

We're using them to save lives and to protect lives.

And so we can take the whole perspective on a different light.

And it kind of introduces a concept that I have of the sheepdog under the authority of the great shepherd, you know.

My dog right now, if I let her loose in the yard, she'll run in the neighbor's yard.

She'll find something stinky to roll in, you know.

But I still love her.

And I know it's her nature, but God sees every bad thing we do.

He sees everything we're doing, yet He still loves us, you know.

And I think that my dog doesn't understand the vast majority of what I do.

Putting clothes on every morning, working on the laptop, on my cell phone, the dog can't even comprehend what I'm doing.

And I think that's kind of the way we are with God.

When we get up there, we're going to understand everything, and it's going to be beautiful.

But right now, it's all I can handle to barely think of myself as God's faithful sheepdog, you know.

And the analogy is power.

And George Will, Will Rogers, Will Rogers, kind of a humorist in the 30s and the 40s,

he said, if you ever get to think in your man of some importance, try telling another man's dog what to do.

So we're God's dog, you know.

And when you tell some dog, you know, it says, I'm just a dog.

I don't know much, but I know this.

I'm not your dog.

You know, when the evil one comes to us, we can look in the eyes and say, I'm not your dog.

I have given myself heart, mind, and spirit to the creator of this universe, and you have no

authority over me.

So that's the whole sheepdog warrior ethodynamic in a nutshell, and trying to manifest it here

with our little studio here.

And these are all gifts that have been given to me.

And we've got a thing in armed combat about the giving of a weapon, how it implies your desire for their well

-being, your trust in their ability, and that's kind of symbolic in all of that as well.

So thanks for asking.

Yes, sir.

Absolutely.

When I present a black belt to someone, which is a rare occasion, obviously, but when I present a

black belt to someone, I always give them a sword to go along with the belt.

And that is, again, a symbol of the trust that we're giving to that person to take the

leadership and the authority and the mantle of instructor and move forward.

So yeah.

Oh, that is so beautiful.

I love that.

Absolutely.

And that manifestation of these earthly weapons, they're important.

But you know, I'm going to be talking to Second Baptist Church in Houston on the 3rd of July,

and it's 4th of July presentation, but I'm going to be talking about God and

country.

And the chaplain's corps, the US Armed Forces, that's their motto, Latin for God and country, in that

order, you know, these spiritual weapons will rust.

Ultimately, our nation will fall, our son will die, and eternity continues.

So all the spiritual things are infinitely, and I use that word literally,

infinitely more important than any earthly things.

So the spiritual manifestations, their spiritual lessons, and everything we do in the spiritual

realm is orders of magnitude, infinitely more important than this brief, tiny period here

on earth.

And that brings us back around to that, that focusing ourselves on what's truly important,

and it's eternity.

And it's the unthinkable immensity of eternity is what's in the balance

as we try to bring the word to those who will come to the knowledge of salvation, and we

try to protect those lives while we're here on earth, manifesting Jesus' love,.

Sacrificial love for others.

Amen.

I have the opportunity to serve as a minister with a local

funeral home, and so I do two or three services a month for families that I've never met, and a

lot of those are military families.

So I've done many services at Jacksonville National Cemetery, which is a very beautiful cemetery, and I always talk about the fact that

even if a person lives a long life, even if a person lives a hundred years, that is so short

and compared to eternity.

And that little dash between the number of their day that they were born and the number of the day that they die, that little dash is

small for a reason, because it reminds us of the smallness of this life and the immensity of

eternity.

So absolutely, absolutely.

All right, my friend, well, I have a few questions that I've prepared, and I really am interested in this first one

specifically, because as a man who is acquainted with war, who is acquainted

with killing, I mean, you've wrote a book called On Killing and a book called On Combat.

A lot of people might have trouble recognizing you as a man of God, thinking that you're a man

of war, and that those two things are not compatible.

I know that they are, and again, you've already used the phrase benevolent violence.

Anybody who's ever heard me talk about the reality of personal protection and my faith know that I use that

phrase all the time, and I always give you credit for it.

But can you tell us how you came to be a believer, how you became a Christian, when that was, and how

that got integrated in your life as a soldier?

Well, you know, I married a wonderful.

Christian girl, my bride at 47 years now, my high school sweetheart.

She was 15, I was 17 when I proposed to her.

I tell people we are from Arkansas.

And two years later, she married a crazy army paratrooper, and she grew up in the church.

And she had a deep and abiding faith, and she had a grandmother who she knew was praying for her by name

every day.

And you know, when pretty girls, the Lord used pretty godly women to bring more people to the Lord than

anything else out there, I think.

I had this sense that I'm a soldier, it's all I've ever wanted to be.

I grew up in the martial arts, I turned 18, I enlisted.

You know, in the first grade, I remember the teacher saying, what are you going to be when you grow up?

And I'm going to be a soldier, you know.

And this idea that you can't be military, you can't be law enforcement,

and be a Christian.

You don't understand how much harm is done by that.

How much harm is done by thinking, well, our military is wrong, and our cops are all wrong, and this is

evil.

The harm that's done by that.

The people who think I can't be a soldier and be a Christian, I can't be a cop and be a Christian, that's terrible, harmful.

And that was in me.

I had taken this, you know, the world shows somebody waving a black book and shouting, thou shalt not kill.

So I'm a young sergeant in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

It must have been about 1975, 76.

I'm going to a night school to get my two -year degree to go to OCS.

My life's goal was to be a paratrooper, a sergeant, and to go to

OCS.

And one of the night classes I took was a philosophy class.

And the professor was a pastor at a local church.

He had a PhD in philosophy from Duke University, but he was a pastor.

And he really brought me around to my understanding that being a

Christian was the reasonable, and right, and appropriate thing.

I came to the Lord with my head, and he made it clear that it was completely appropriate to be

a cop, to be a soldier.

And he showed me the verses, you know, and how many people go to college and are drawn off to the

world by some humanist professor.

With me, it was just the opposite.

I came to the Lord with my head, and I've been following my heart for a long time, you know.

I tell people, you know, if you even think it might be true, that's a little seed of belief.

And you plant that seed of belief and ask for more belief.

And God is so clear that we're supposed to ask for more belief.

The disciple said, teach us how to have more faith, you know.

The man came to Jesus and said, please, you know, save my son.

And he said, you know, if you have sufficient faith, anything can be done.

He said, I believe.

Help my unbelief.

Boom.

That's all he asked.

That's all Jesus asked.

Boom.

He went and.

Saved the man.

That's one of my favorite verses.

I may interrupt you.

That's one of my favorite verses, and you mentioned it several times so far in the book.

I've already noticed, and I think that's exactly right.

I believe, but Lord, I also struggle, so help my unbelief.

That is very true.

I've met a few people who say there's absolutely no speck of doubt in their mind,

and I've got to believe them.

But I have trouble understanding how that could be so.

You know, our human nature, our human frailty is always pulling at us.

And that bit of doubt, you know, we know salvation waits for us, but how many people are eager to

do it?

If we knew how good eternity was, you know.

And some people are truly eager to do it.

And you see elderly people who are done with life and are eager to get there.

So this business of come to the Lord with my head, and my heart's been following ever since.

I think there's great power in that.

We've got volume two up on spiritual combat, and we talk a lot about that.

In volume one, we talk a lot about it.

You know, when you finish it, maybe we can do this again after you get through the rest of it.

I'd be tickled to talk some more about that with you.

Yeah, absolutely.

It first came with my head, and then my heart.

And this idea, you know, we've got Cornelius, a Roman centurion, the first

Gentile we know that God said, go and preach to this man in his household.

Never once has it said it's inappropriate to be a Roman centurion and to be a Christian.

Never once was it implied.

You know, people turn things inside out to try to make some different meaning than what God is saying.

You know, Jesus said, I told you before, you know, one of the last things he tells them, Luke 22, 36,

don't even take your cloak with you.

Now I tell you, sell your cloak and buy a sword.

And they said, Lord, we have two.

And he said, that's enough and moved on.

Does he mean two out of 12 is enough?

Does he mean, does he mean, you know, that's enough on this subject?

I'm moving on.

Well, there's this twisted convoluted thing that, well, he said that because you see, he knew he was

going to be arrested.

He wanted to fulfill the prophecy that they would treat him like a criminal.

And two swords were enough to prove they were criminals.

No, it's not.

It's perfectly legal to carry a sword.

It's perfectly legal to have a sword.

I mean, it's twisted convoluted pacifist that, oh, he said to carry a sword, but he didn't really mean that.

He meant it at multiple levels.

He may have meant it at multiple levels, but he's not telling you something that he didn't mean.

And, you know, we'd look through the Old Testament, you know, in the Hebrews, it says that, you know,

that Jesus was, or that David was a man after God's own heart.

And, you know, and the Bible said Saul has killed his thousands.

David has killed his tens of thousands.

Yet David was a man after God's own heart.

You know, I'm David.

I like the name David.

People point to David and say, well, well, look at all the bad things he did.

Well, you know, it's funny because there's that, that logical proof of the Bible.

You know, the Old Testament doesn't honor any living human being.

Any king would have hunted down and killed the guy that wrote that kind of bad stuff about them or bad stuff about their father or

their grandfather.

There's no other reference work from ancient history that doesn't

honor the king.

This is the only living document that honors no living human being.

It told all the bad things that David did, but also told how he got right with the Lord and how we repented.

And, you know, just multiple authors, hundreds, even

thousands of years, and complete alignment with one thing, prophesying

a future Messiah in the Old Testament.

And then, boom, the New Testament.

Again, not honoring any human being except that coming Messiah, fulfilling every one of those prophecies and his love

for us and God's love for us.

And it all flows from there.

So this logical dynamic of this, and then men don't die for a lie.

11 out of 12 disciples were murdered for their faith.

All they had to do was say, okay, it was a big con job.

We repent.

And they lived.

But men don't die for a lie.

The remaining one was John, who lived his life on tragic exile on an island of the Mediterranean.

You don't spend your last years in exile for a lie.

And then the Roman history of all of this second generation, the ones that John and

Peter and Paul brought to salvation, they died and died and died again.

Because these men physically witnessed Jesus return from the dead.

Thomas touched the wound.

They witnessed it, and they reported it.

We have four different literate witnesses who collected the information and made it to

us.

This is not Muhammad on an island, you know, writing it down himself.

I'm sorry, this is not, you know, the father of the Mormons who suddenly has a revelation and writes it down

himself.

This is actual historical fact that is recorded by God.

Nothing in that era, nothing in that era has as many witnesses.

The existence of Socrates and Aristotle is less proven and has less witnesses

than the existence of Jesus.

Just your head, when you begin to grab these things, it is the only logical, rational

choice.

So anyway, that's a long -winded answer to my coming to the Lord and this continued evolution and then trying

to put that in the book, how this is the logical, rational, and beautiful thing.

And I tell people, even if you say, I wish it was true.

I wish there was a loving God.

I wish it was Israel.

That's a seed of belief.

That's a seed of belief.

Plant that seed and ask for more faith.

And welcome, welcome to eternity in heaven as you embrace that and you follow the path that

Jesus has given us.

It's so interesting.

That you mention that because I remember my conversion.

It was after a time of difficult depression where I thought maybe God doesn't exist.

Maybe there is no meaning.

Maybe there is no hope.

And I did have a friend, a very faithful, believing friend who said, you know what, you have to trust and then spend your life

backing up that trust.

Spend your life giving, you know.

And really, I would say the heart of my preaching is an apologist's heart that

I'm preaching, defending the faith every time.

So, absolutely.

You know, one of the things in this.

On Spiritual Combat Volume 2, we say, you know, Protestants in particular spend an

awful lot of time trying to look at end times and guess when end times will be.

When we're told no man can know the hour, it's almost wasted energy and wasted time.

And we really, we say that, you know, we got a lot we can draw from the Catholic faith and their study

of the martyrs.

And I think there's a lot more value from an apologetic standpoint, from an evangelical standpoint.

There's much more value in studying these Christians who laid down their lives.

Right now, as we speak, millions of Christians are being persecuted.

Vast numbers are being murdered every year for their faith.

And men don't die for a lie.

And, you know, here we are trying to guess when the Lord comes again, which serves no real value when we should be

focusing on this proof.

And it kind of comes back to the whole pacifism issue.

To tie the knot on this pacifist, thou shalt not kill.

Well, every single Jewish translation of the original Hebrew translates, you shall not murder.

It's very clear from the context that they're talking about murder.

All of the, but one of the modern translations translates, you shall not murder.

Thou shalt not kill in the King James Bible came out in the year 1611, over 400 years ago.

Maybe a Hebrew word, maybe taken out of context and badly translated, but go to where Jesus in,

I think it's Matthew 19, 18 is running with commandments.

And Jesus says, thou shalt do no murder.

King James, translated from the original Greek.

You know, it's not about killing.

It's about murder, unlawful killing.

And we spin off with this, if you will, maybe just a little bit of a weak translation thing, horribly out

of context.

And we run with this simplistic misrepresentation when the reality is so straightforward, you shall not

murder.

And those who fight to preserve innocent lives have never received anything but the highest honor.

I use the example of World War II.

Now, did all of the pastors and priests and ministers and rabbis and chaplains in World War II, they all preached, thou shalt not kill,

thou shalt not kill.

Then the war began.

They said, oh, we changed our mind, kill those guys.

It's cool.

No, that's not what happened.

They weren't all hypocrites.

They weren't all liars.

They all knew, you shall not murder.

And they stood behind those who fought the evil of Nazi Germany.

If all those pastors and priests and ministers and rabbis had stood up and said, no, you shall not kill.

Well, the Germans would be ruling us right now.

And the truth is so much more powerful and appropriate than this simplistic Hollywood

misrepresentation.

And that's that apologetic dynamic of helping people understand the full.

Message, the full word.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I want to ask you another question.

This is a little bit of a change of topic, but continuing on the same vein.

I remember when I got to come to your Bulletproof Minds seminar, and it was such a wonderful just it

was eight hours of sitting and listening to somebody talk.

And I never got bored one time.

I never I never lost my place.

It was just wonderful.

When did that begin?

How looking in your life?

I know that it says you retired in 1998.

How quickly did you start seeing your calling to teach

men how to survive violent encounters?

Because that's the way I that's what I took away from it.

This is about survival.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you know, it goes back to my first book.

It's 1974.

Private Grossman enlisted in the Army.

I'm in the 82nd Airborne Division.

There's Vietnam veterans all around us.

And I'm a guy who spent his whole life asking questions that other people didn't want to answer.

I'm the guy looking under rocks.

I'm the guy saying, why do we do this?

You know, what's behind this?

And we wanted to know what combat was going to be like.

And they wouldn't say.

It was like this taboo.

I tell people it's like if somebody said, hey, you know, tell me about the sex life.

How you and the wife do it, you know, what position you like, how often you do it.

You wouldn't even ask that question.

But if a scholarly study was taking place and you're being surveyed,

you might tell, you might even tell the truth.

So, you know, some private, some fellow soldier asking about their combat experience, they didn't want to tell.

So fast forward, you know, I go to OCS, I get a degree.

On the Army's time, I'm doing good.

I've been selected to teach at West Point.

I've been selected to teach psychology at West Point.

This is God pounding a square pig into a round hole, you know, psychology.

I'm a military historian.

I'm an Army Ranger.

I don't want no stinking psychology.

So I said, I will study the psychology of killing.

Not homicide, but lawful killing.

Cops and military.

And the result was my book on killing.

Praise God.

Half a million copies sold in English, translated in seven languages.

Marine Corps commandants required reading.

So the book came out in 1995.

And when I was at West Point, I was part of their Speakers Bureau.

And West Point teaches you how to teach.

I mean, I'm a graduate of many military courses, but nobody taught you how to teach like West Point.

And we're psychology professors.

We know what works and why PowerPoint can be so harmful and why there's other things we can use.

And besides death by PowerPoint in my presentation, I've got the big easels and I've got the document

camera.

And so I was part of the Speakers Bureau and kind of telling chunks of my book to veterans units.

And then the book came out in 95.

I'm being asked to come and speak to various locations.

98, I got out.

And amazingly, I'm being asked to come and present to all kinds of law enforcement organizations.

And the study continues.

And what I realized was World War II, Vietnam, they were 18 -year -old kids.

And for them, the whole killing thing was hard.

For a mature individual who's prepared themselves, mind, body, and spirit, the killing side of the thing is just not

that big a deal.

And some people are offended by that.

They want people to be destroyed by killing.

Well, I'm sorry, it's not true.

The folks who came home from World War II, they weren't destroyed by what they had to do.

And prior to 9 -11, prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, the only ones in combat every

day were law enforcement.

So I'm tapping into that information and I put it all together in my book, On Combat.

An early draft of On Combat was ready.

My son deployed to the invasion of Afghanistan.

My son's Air Force backups with nine combat tours.

And the book I literally wrote for my son going into his first combat was an early draft of On

Combat.

So that's kind of my scholarly history.

That's On Combat.

And then it's always evolving.

My presentation is evolving.

Constantly new research, new data, studying other people, adding as I sit here right now, I've

got half a dozen, you know, I put things under a document reader.

And I've got half a dozen crimes happening around the world.

In France, a man with a vehicle murders 80 people and wounds 400 with a vehicle attack.

We're not even thinking about that.

We think, oh, we'll get rid of the guns, you know.

We've got a case in China where a group of people with knives murder 30 people

and wound 120 with knives.

We've got daycare attacks and we've got nursery attacks in China and Japan with knives.

We got one in Belgium.

I was called to the White House as part of President Trump's roundtable on violent video games.

I gave him a copy of my book Assassination Generation.

Really, as we sit here right now, we've just had that terrible massacre in the school in Vivaldi.

But my book, Assassination Generation, talks about that.

I was invited to the White House again and gave a copy of the book to Vice President Pence and gave him a copy of the book,

another gracious, impressive man.

And as these terrible crimes are rising across America,

I've been saying it's going to happen and why it's happening and how we teach soldiers to kill and what the

military does to teach soldiers to kill and how the video games are doing the same thing to our kids.

And suddenly, again, God pounded our square peg into a round hole and here I am talking

about all these things, teaching all the cops, they embrace what I do, constant interactive feedback loop, latest

research, continued work, and praise God.

And the capstone is on spiritual combat.

Now, I'm 65 years old.

I pray I can keep doing this for another 20 years.

Things are bad.

The wheels have come off the bus.

Violence exploded like nothing we've ever seen before.

The whole, you know, the whole defund the police is the most evil and goofy conspiracy theory of modern

history.

The idea that the cops are the bad guys, you know, Romans chapter 13, if you don't want to fear the police, then

obey the law.

I mean, it could not have been put more clearly in God's Word.

But this idea that the law is illegitimate, I don't have to obey the law, the terrible, terrible price we pay for that.

Here I am in the middle of all of this getting the latest research out there and the latest data out there.

But I hope I can do it for another 20 years, that the Lord could take me home tomorrow.

And with On Spiritual Combat out, I feel like I've been able to close the loop with what's the most

important thing, infinitely important thing, not saving lives, although there's nothing

here on this earth more important than that, but saving lives for eternity, to bring people to the knowledge of

salvation.

Again, the book On Spiritual Combat is kind of the capstone of this whole evolutionary movement for.

Me.

Does that make sense?

Does that answer the question?

Yes, absolutely.

And that leads to what I was going to ask next.

And that is how did the Bulletproof Mind turn into what you now do at

churches?

Because correct me if I'm wrong, you do seminars in churches about violent crime.

Tell us.

A little bit about that.

Well, we teach church safety.

I've always done a little bit of that.

You know, we've always had some church security people that pop in or that we talk with and communicate

with.

And a wonderful godly friend of mine by the name of Jimmy Meeks, he put me and Carl Chin together.

And Carl Chin now has got the Faith -Based Security Network.

And we did over 100 sheepdog house of worship security team training.

And Jimmy Meeks and Carl Chin and I, we tag -teamed them.

And it was really, again, God just putting me in a direction saying, here we go, we want you to go.

The door was open.

And the people who are going to provide security for a church, they need to know about slow motion

time and auditory exclusion and tunnel vision, the things my cops need to know.

You know, the killing, the stuff and non -killing is academic.

The stuff and non -combat is what's really important.

But at the same time that you talk about these physical things, slow motion time, tunnel vision,

the bad guys have tunnel vision too.

Lateral movement takes you off the radar screen.

As we apply all of those things to the church environment, we've also got to speak to the spiritual things.

And on why being a sheepdog for God's flock is a worthy and necessary thing

to get our hearts into the end, having our hearts spiritually right is infinitely more important than being physically right.

And that evolved into my book on spiritual combat.

Every step of the way, the Lord just kind of shoved me into here and said, this is what's important right now.

This is the information, put it together, put it in a book.

Every step of the way, you know, God's given me great co -authors and great co -laborers in these endeavors.

I've got a book coming out in about six months called On Hunting.

And it's really going to be the definitive book on the subject.

We'll talk about it later down the road if you're interested.

It goes in directions you wouldn't imagine.

And like on killing and on combat, on hunting, they're really woven together.

They're all the same dynamic.

And they're all reaching out to kind of draw an audience.

And then they said, well, what's Grossman going to say about on spiritual combat?

Oh, and now we've won the most important battle of all.

We've brought them to the knowledge.

Of salvation.

Yes, absolutely.

Now, I'm very curious about the hunting book now.

You're talking about like animal hunting, deer hunting, that kind of thing?

Yeah.

You know, and just give.

One angle on it.

I've got the most wonderful co -author.

And we're doing it with a Christian publisher, the ones who

publish on killing or the ones that publish on spiritual combat, bulletproof marriage, wonderful people, Broad Street publishers.

They accepted it.

And what we tried to do is make sure if you come from a faith -based perspective,

you know, we don't need to get into evolution.

We don't need to get into, you know, 500 ,000 years ago.

There's just no need go there.

We can talk about how we've moved and how we developed over time.

But we tried to make it so that somebody coming from a non -evolutionary standpoint would not be offended, could embrace it.

But one of the most important things, though, is the whole business of protecting wildlife and

preserving wilderness.

And Ducks Unlimited and other wildlife conservation movements, hunters have done

more good for wildlife conversation than any other body of individuals by far.

And when, you know, they say in the deer, you know, in Michigan or Minnesota during deer

season, the largest army on the planet is out there with loaded weapons.

And yet, you know, absolutely no harm to anybody.

And protecting wildlife and the money that they spend on their license, the money that they spend on their tags,

where does that money go?

It goes to preserving.

But one of the just amazing thing is the Kenya versus Botswana model.

In Kenya, they banned all trophy hunting.

And the game is being slaughtered.

They're just, they're being slaughtered.

They're bush hunting and poaching.

Meanwhile, Botswana has taken the village and said, all this land around the village belongs to you.

And everything in that land belongs to you.

And there's some crazy American who will come and spend $100 ,000 to shoot that lion

who's at the end of his life cycle anyway.

And oh, by the way, death by old age in nature is a slow, hideous, horrible death.

And so we take them at the end of their life cycles and we protect them.

Botswana has got vast amounts of money for game wardens to protect it.

And if you poach that elephant, Botswana is going to hunt you down like a dog because that elephant is worth vast amounts of money

to them.

And they're going to wait till the elephants at the end of their life cycle, they're going to wait till they no longer are contributing to the

herd, and they're going to call that elephant from the herd, and they're going to make incredible amounts of money doing it.

And all that money is dedicated in protecting.

So it comes back to there's nobody who will spend the amount of money to preserve the earth

like hunters will.

And they're the critical part of ecology, but it's also so critically important to our wellness, how

hunting as a species is who we are and what we do, how important it is to our wellness.

So that's just a peek into the book coming up.

All the listeners out there on hunting, Dave Grossman and Linda Miller, it's going to be.

Good stuff.

Yeah, I'm excited.

We have several people in our church that hunt.

I keep trying to get them to take their pastor with them, but nobody wants to take me.

Oh, tell them.

Just keep encouraging them, because we encourage people to take people.

And one of the things we say is the best way to prepare for combat is hunting, for many reasons.

And so just encourage them and find that right time.

And there will be a hunter who wants to teach you.

It's in their blood.

We want to pass it on to the next generation.

We yearn to do that,.

And you need to do that.

You'd be glad you did.

Yeah, absolutely.

So in regard, going back to the on spiritual combat, I'm going through it now.

It's 30 missions.

So if you did it as a daily devotional, it would take about a month to do with if you're doing it by

yourself.

I'm actually going through it one time.

And then my plan is I have a group of young men in the church that I meet with somewhat regularly.

They come over to my house.

We cook out.

We talk.

And I'm thinking about inviting them to do it with me and sort of moderating the group and trying to show

them some of the value and what you're teaching.

But I also noticed your book on marriage, or what was the title of it again?

Bulletproof Marriage.

So that's something that would be valuable for the other

groups that are in our church, and that is the married couples.

And so tell us a little bit about what got you to write that book and what the heart of that, because I.

My co -author on this, Adam Davis, really led the way on this.

And I'm in the process of reading it.

A lady who does online provider of wellness and spiritual information,

she and I are going through it a chapter at a time.

And we got 45 out of 90 days done already.

I can't even begin to describe.

And again, my co -author Adam Davis gets all the credit for this.

He just did so many good things in this.

But it takes, for example, you know, just randomly, day 38, establishing

boundaries.

Start with scripture.

Then we talk about a quick tip or just one nugget of info you can take away.

Then what that means to the sheepdog and what that means to the spouse.

Discussion questions and then a prayer.

And I'm telling you, just 10 minutes a day.

I was training a military unit.

And one of the first sergeants comes up.

I'm at the table, kind of in the book mode, you know, during a break.

And, you know, I'm an old buck sergeant.

The first sergeant's kind of a scary guy.

You know, he's the top enlisted guy in the company.

And even as a lieutenant colonel, the first sergeant's still kind of a scary guy, you know.

And the first sergeant comes and he throws a copy of this book down on the table in front of me.

Said, sir, I hold you personally responsible.

All the arguments my wife and I had over this book.

He said, now I go to Amazon, I buy them five at a time and give them all my married troops.

I mean, what greater, I mean, praise God.

Yeah, amen.

And, you know, we get people say, you know, we went through all 90 days and then we went through it again.

Because we say right up front, my co -authors says right up front, you know, there's so much in here, you won't be able to grab it all in the

first time too.

Go through the first time, you know, you get the low hanging fruit, grab the things that apply, and then go through the second time and dig in

deeper.

And you look at the reviews on Amazon, you see people saying, we did that.

And we went through it twice, you know.

And what depth of meaning it had for us.

And just a little nugget every day, just nuts and bolts of things you can't imagine

about sharing information with each other, about not speaking ill of each other, about communicating.

You know, one of the things I tell everybody is on the phone in front of all your friends, tell your spouse,

you love them.

They'll be suspicious the first couple of times.

But if you knew it was the last thing you ever said, if you knew that was the last time you're ever going to speak to them,

that's what you want to say.

So many cops die, and their last word, tell my wife I love her.

Well, tell her now.

A cop was murdered in Toledo three years ago, last word over the radio, tell my family I love them.

Well, tell them now.

Don't miss that opportunity.

Stay focused on that.

The most important thing, your job will pass.

Your kids will get up and leave.

But your spouse is there for the vast majority of your lifetime.

After salvation, there's nothing in the world more important than your spouse and your relationship with your spouse.

And you must invest in that from the very beginning.

And that's really the heart and soul of what the book is about, is getting yourself focused.

After salvation, there is nothing on this planet more important than your spouse, the only one that will be there for you

all the way through.

And children and grandchildren and wellness of those all depend on your

relationship with your spouse, and how shattered that is if your relationship with your spouse is shattered,

and how infinitely important that is.

So anyway, that's Bulletproof Marriage.

In a nutshell, and it's been a blessing.

It's interesting, you mentioned about telling your family that you love them.

My father, he's a Vietnam veteran.

But before that, he lived on the street from the age of about 13 until he went in the military.

My grandmother, unfortunately, was an addict.

My grandfather left when he was very young.

And so he spent a lot of years on the street.

And he went into the Air Force, spent time in Vietnam, came home.

And when he had me, he had me later in life, he had me around 30 -35 years old, I guess was when I was born.

But I don't remember a day that my dad didn't tell me he loved me.

And he stressed to me the importance of that I love you.

There's a song, Conway Twitty, I think saying, that's my job.

And I can't listen to it without crying, because that's my dad.

He told me when I was a kid, he said, my job is to take care of you till I die.

And I love you.

And that we have a special relationship, a special bond over that phrase.

So certainly within the bond of marriage too, but within the family.

One of the things I hear a lot of people say, they say, I have trouble thinking how God can

love me, because they didn't have a good father.

I had a good father.

And I know how God loves me, because he loves me better than my dad.

And nobody loves me better than my.

Dad.

Wow.

It comes back to what it's all about.

That's right.

Love God and love others, you know,.

That's boom, that's it.

That's our mission in a nutshell.

Amen.

Well, I want to begin to draw to a close.

I appreciate your time.

But I do have a couple of other questions I want to ask you since I have you here.

Knowing that you've given these conferences at churches, knowing that you've trained churches for the

unlikely, but still very serious threat of someone coming.

And I say unlikely only in the sense that statistically unlikely, but still very serious and potential.

It could happen anywhere.

No one thought that church in Texas was going to be attacked.

Thank God there was a shooting instructor who had the capacity to stand up, make a 20 -foot shot to the head,

stop the guy.

I always say that guy's a stud, that guy's a hero, because he didn't fear.

He took him immediately.

But what are some of the dangers that you see in churches that are either

unprepared or they're prepared the wrong way?

What's some advice you could give.

To a young church?

The best analogy in schools, and dear Lord, you know, none of these school

killers have come from a Christian school, not one.

Decade after decade across the world, these terrible crimes are being committed by children in their schools, and

not one of them come out of a Christian school.

But don't think that that doesn't mean somebody won't attack that Christian school.

There's people out there, they get double points for attacking that Christian school as far as they're concerned, and we've got to keep them

safe.

But when we talk about this, the analogy I use, and I think it's very powerful, is about how we prepare for

fire.

Every little church building has a fire extinguisher, and every modern building has fire sprinkler system.

One of the most expensive things in the building, the fire sprinkler system, under pressure for the lifetime of the building.

Electrical system brought up the fire code, double the electrical system to run wiring, every smoke alarm,

every exit sign, fireproof material for the structure of the building versus cheapest alternative, on and on.

Half the cost of a modern church goes into fire code.

Can we not spend some money on the thing that's more likely to hurt people?

We've not had a single kid killed by school fire in an American school in over half a century.

But every year, kids are killed by violence.

And every year, more people are murdered in faith -based environments

than faith -based property, than schools.

Carl Chen has faith -based security network, and I recommend it very highly, fbsinamerica

.com, faith -based security network.

And that's networking all those good people together and cross -leveling good information.

But as we prepare for fire, you know, we don't need a fire extinguisher.

God will protect us.

Turn the fire sprinkler system off.

God will protect us.

That's not how it works.

You know, God gave you the tools to protect yourself from fire.

If you don't use it and bad things happen, don't blame God.

And he's given us the tools and the skills and the information to prepare for violence.

And the fact is that the people in that church building, the people we'd lay our life down for,

are orders of magnitude more likely to be killed by violence than they are by fire.

It's still rare, but it's much, much, much greater than the probability of being killed by fire.

And can we not, as we love them, strip away denial and embrace the responsibility of those lives entrusted to

our care?

And again, I think that fire analogy is something people can wrap their mind around.

You know, we prepare for fire.

What are the chances of fire in this building?

Just non -existent.

But it's because that we prepare for it, it's non -existent.

And if it does happen, the probability of loss of life is just minimal because of all the

money and effort we dedicated as a civilization prepared for fire.

And if we love these people, we infinitely more have to prepare for violence.

And maybe the critical component is to know that if the cause of your trauma is

human in nature, the degree of trauma can be more severe and long lasting.

So a fire hits a house, puts your family in the hospital.

How do you feel about that?

Well, thank God they're all alive.

Criminals break into the house, beat your family in the hospital state.

Now you feel all the difference in the world.

Yeah, there's a personal anger and frustration.

And what could I have done and all those things.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And so that's that dynamic of not only is violence a thing far more likely to harm them,

it's far more likely to psychologically harm them.

Not to cop a pity party on it or anything, but recognizing how important it is.

To prepare for that.

Sure.

Absolutely.

And just thinking about, you know, I've spent quite a bit of my life.

It's funny, I always say that the one thing I've done longer than anything is been in self -defense.

And, you know, I've been a karate student, martial arts student, 27

years.

And I started when I was 14 years old.

And I started because I believed that one, I didn't want to be a victim.

And two, I didn't want to see other people be victims.

I had watched family members be abused.

I'd watched other people be abused.

And it's interesting that you mentioned, I remember firemen coming to the school and teaching us to stop, drop and

roll.

But I don't ever remember anyone coming to the school and teaching us how to deal with a violent assault or talking to us

about situational awareness, avoidance, verbal de -escalation, escape.

Those are the things that I teach.

So I call it SAVE, S -A -V -E, situational awareness, avoidance, verbal diffusion and escape, because

that should all take place before a physical encounter ever happens.

You know, we're recognizing in those things.

So anyhow, didn't mean to get into all that, but these are, yeah, this is my heart.

I don't want to see people injured.

I don't want to see people hurt.

I don't want to see people victims.

And the National Rifle Association, which is where I'm certified to teach firearms, does a

program called Don't Be a Victim.

And I do think that's a good program as well for individuals.

So thinking again about a church and you've got a church of people, let's say everybody does agree, OK, this is

potential.

This is dangerous.

This is something that could happen.

And I know we'd have to have you do a seminar to tell us all about it.

But what are some simple, immediate things that any church could do, maybe like a three -point action

plan?

And I hate, I know I didn't ask you this before, so I hope this isn't catching you off guard.

But something that any church could do right away to at least begin thinking

about these things.

All right.

Number one is a single point of entry.

Keep the exterior doors locked and control who comes in and out.

And be eyes on every person.

And when there's somebody there that you don't know, introduce yourself to them, find out who they are.

And if any alarm bells are ringing, you know where there should be, I tell people, you know, or similar

case, you've got a divorced family and the father comes in and sits in the pew behind

him.

You know, every child of a divorced parent wishes they could get back together.

And maybe this is going to be reconciliation, but have a big guy sitting in the pew behind him and have a big guy

sit in the pew beside them, or to just reach up and pin their arms and deal with it.

Know who everyone is.

You know, one thing I tell people is have somebody whose job it is to put their back to the wall and pray.

Immediately start praying.

You know, I'm such a believer in what prayer at the moment of truth can do, truly.

But as we go further, you know, I'm doing a lot of work now out of a recent RAND study.

Go to rand .com and look at mass shootings

or mass attacks.

That's when a group of people charge from multiple directions.

One person charging straight at them usually doesn't work.

Only one time.

But the other thing that works every single time is when there's somebody there that could shoot back.

Off -duty police officer, off -duty security guard were able to shoot back every single time, 100 % success.

So as you move your way through the continuum of being aware of who's there, of being ready, of having the big guy

ready to jump and tackle them, having a group of people who are going to jump and tackle them, the next step

up is just to have a few carefully selected individuals who are concealed carry

in your house of worship.

You know, there's a lot of debate.

Do we want people to know that?

Is it deterrent if they do?

You make your own decision.

I think letting trusted individuals know is part of the equation.

But we live in a nation where we have that right.

And with the right comes the responsibility to be well -trained and well -prepared.

You know, you don't go to a martial arts class, put on a gi, and declare yourself a black belt.

You know, carrying a guitar does not make you a musician.

Carrying a gun does not necessarily mean you're prepared.

It's better than nothing, but it does not necessarily mean you're prepared.

You've got to train.

You've got to prepare.

We encourage people to push their skills.

We talk about hojutsu, the martial art of the firearm, as kind of the next logical step in that direction.

So it begins very simple.

And the RAND study spends some time on that, about a single point of entry, knowing everybody that comes in,

having a team of people who are prepared to charge, somebody whose job it is to sit in the pew

behind them and tackle them.

You know, the little old lady that knows everybody in the church should be part of your team, because you can say, that person is

divorced, and they haven't been in this church for the last four years, and we need to keep an eye on them.

You know, that little old lady who knows everybody in the church could be one of the most valuable members for your team.

And maybe her job is put her back to the wall and start praying immediately.

And very few things happen without rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing.

You know, what do you do with the lady who's screaming loudly and gesticulating and charging the pastor,

you know, assuming you're not evangelical or Pentecostal, assuming that's not normal.

It's called the starfish.

Everybody grabs a limb, picks them up and carries them out.

And those things don't just happen.

They've got to be rehearsed.

So you've got to have a team, you've got to have a leader, you've got to hold it up in prayer.

And I really think there's great value in being part of the faith -based security network at bsnamerica .com,

and pulling up the best practices and the resources they have.

I'm speaking at their annual conference next month in Springfield, Missouri.

And certainly their conference is vetted.

Only those who are members of teams, only those who are first responders.

So you can talk to a group, knowing that you're talking to fellow believers, and

it puts together an amazing conference.

So it's a matter of degrees.

And the further you go down that continuum,.

The better you are at being able to stop it.

Awesome.

I teach in my concealed weapons classes, the last thing that I say before we go to the range,

because obviously it's two parts, it's in the classroom and it's on the range.

But the last thing I say in my class is a quote from you.

You do not rise to the occasion, you only sink to your training.

And that's just something I live by.

Like I said, when I came to that conference, you changed my life.

And that was one of the things.

I'm never going to be Rambo or Jean -Claude Van Damme in

real life if I'm not training in my real life.

And I'm never going to be those things anyway, but I'll only be as good.

As my training has been.

One of the things that I love about the martial arts is every martial art teaches the kid that

the greatest achievement was the fight you didn't have, the person you didn't have to fight with, the fight that you

avoided, the time when you left.

Unless there's, you know, most senseis will teach, unless there's an immediate unavoidable threat

of life, limb or grievous bodily harm or self or others, get out of there.

A friend of mine is Ernie Emerson, the father of the modern tactical knife and author of

many books.

I had the honor to write the foreword to his most recent book.

And one of the things Ernie spent some time talking about is the greatest achievement is a fight that you

avoided, the time that you got out of there.

And in the foreword, I talked about Sun Tzu.

And Sun Tzu, you know, thousands of years ago when China said, you know, the greatest achievement is

a fight you didn't have to fight.

And then one of the commentators, a thousand years later, but still over a thousand years ago, and I think sincerely old

Chinese said, well, if you avoid the battle, who would declare you

valorous?

Who will say you were brave?

And the answer is I do.

And Ernie Emerson does.

That the fight you avoided is the greatest achievement of all.

So when we talk about church security, the fact that you took them under your wing and you talked to them and you prayed

with them, maybe that's the fight that was avoided.

The tragic incident we had in the church in Charleston where a white kid, you know, with a

concealed weapon, you know, in their group, waited until their heads were bowed in prayer.

We teach our security team that when everybody else had bowed in prayer, your head up, eyes open.

Nothing in Scripture says you need to bow your head and close your eyes to talk to God, you know.

And we give a lot of examples.

Gideon, you know, he's like the ones who kept their eyes on the horizon and brought the water to their house, you know.

And Jesus looked up and said, Lazarus, you know, rise up.

God's up there.

He's not down there.

And so it's all about a matter of degrees and preparation and have somebody with their eyes open, you know, who

can pin this guy's arms and take him away before it becomes some terrible felony.

That you can talk to somebody and counsel them before this terrible event happens, but you're alert

and aware.

And the very fact they're there and prepared to stop it is really a deterrent.

But that's the Christian method, is if humanly possible, we don't want the incident to happen.

We want to reconcile and counsel and pray.

But if it does happen, then we need to be ready, again, to stop it before it goes to some level

where it's a horrendous felony and assault, you know.

We just pin their arms and take them away and talk to them.

We don't know what would have happened next, but we're not going to let it get to there.

So anyway, that's the martial arts mindset.

A friend of mine has a son who may be bullying.

She's not sure.

I said, well, take him to the martial arts.

You guys get involved in martial arts.

The best thing you could possibly do to teach him to use his skills appropriately

and to not be a bully.

So that's the Christian dynamic that all comes back around together with the martial arts.

It's how our greatest achievement is the person we didn't have to fight, the love that we manifested to

them.

That's right.

On our certificates of rank, we have this.

It says to win 100 victories in 100 battles is not the highest skill.

To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.

And that's Gishin Funakoshi said that, who's the father of Shotokan Karate, which is the style.

That I teach.

And actually, bless him, it's a word for word quote from Sun Tzu, who was

writing 3 ,000 years ago, 2 ,500 years ago.

So blessings to him.

But that is a word for word quote from Sun Tzu.

And deep wisdom.

And there's nothing wrong with somebody else using that, not at all.

But recognize the deep wisdom in those words and putting it on the diploma.

Boom.

That just warms my heart.

And that's the Christian spirit, isn't it?

That's completely in alignment with Christianity.

That's what Christian pacifism means.

And we don't seek the battle.

We don't seek to oppress others.

We don't seek to inflict our will on others.

But when the moment comes, we have the skills.

And so much of Christianity could be said, you know, I think we're in the early, early draft of On Spiritual

Combat Volume 3.

And I'm going to work that in there.

I'm going to weave that in.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

As they say, it's better to be a warrior in the garden than to be a gardener in war.

Absolutely.

Well, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, I want to tell you, first of all, just how grateful I am that you've come on the show

today.

And you've talked to my audience.

You've given us some real important things to think about.

You've given us some things to read.

And as I said, I'm already reading one of them.

And I'm looking forward to encouraging my wife to read The Bulletproof Marriage as well.

And so I want to thank you for coming, for taking time away from your family and your schedule to be with our

audience and sharing your wisdom, which has been gained over a lifetime of serving others.

So thank you, sir, so much for being here.

Thank you, my brother.

And all praise and honor and glory to God.

You know, we give Him the honor and glory.

Iron sharpens iron.

And He gives us love and joy and peace and a lot of other good stuff that comes with it.

And it truly is two -way street.

Praise God for this opportunity for your audiences.

And let's do it again down the road when you get your way through the book and then maybe down the

road with volume two.

Meanwhile, blessings to you and all your listeners out there.

And it's an honor, brother.

Iron sharpens iron.

Amen.

Thank you so much.

And I want to thank you again, listener, for being with us today and being a listener to the podcast.

And I want to remind you that if you have a question that you would like for me to deal with on a future episode, or if you'd

like me to to have a topic or guest on, please email me at calvinistpodcasts at gmail

.com or you can, if you're watching this on YouTube or listening to this on Facebook, you can leave a comment.

It'll go directly to me and I'll be able to respond.

And I often do that.

I look forward to those and I'm thankful for everyone who listens.

And I'm thankful for you giving your time to this podcast today to listen to us talk.

And I do pray that we would be a people who are concerned with the safety of others, concerned that others would not be

victims and that we would be those who would stand in the gap, who would stand up for others and who would be the ones who

are truly, as Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman says, civilian sheepdogs, men and women who stand out there

in the gap for those who are unable to protect themselves.

So thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist today.

My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.