The Regular Man Podcast Interview (Part 1)

Probably the most obvious cost, I guess, is just the relational cost that comes with it.

Because the moment that you become the person who starts saying the normal things out loud, you instantly become target number one for everyone who knows you and who disagrees with you.

Warning. The following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished

Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies. Viewer discretion is advised. People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Hello, and welcome to the Regular Man Podcast, where we celebrate God's gift of masculinity in the life of the regular man.

I'm your host, Steve Cruz, and real quick before we jump in today's episode, I want to tell you about what's happening this month and what you can expect in the near future.

Man, I really haven't been as excited to start a new month as I am right now, and it's not just because we're finished with June like it is.

It's kind of that. But it's also because since I started the Regular Man Podcast like 10 months ago -ish,

I've never had so many amazing guests that are just back to back to back as I do in July 24.

Like yesterday, I had the nomad himself, Ross Hillier. Friday the 5th at 3 .30,

I'm going to have pastor, author, podcaster, businessman, entrepreneur, investor, like a modern -day scholar.

C .R. Wiley will be here. July 11th at 3 o 'clock, author, pastor,

Zachary Garris will be on, talking about his new book, Honor Thy Fathers. July 25th at 4, the founder and owner and CEO of Armored Republic, also a pastor, an entrepreneur, businessman, and investor,

David Reese will be here. The 29th at 10, Ben Garrett from Haunted Cosmos.

He'll be back for the second time. We'll talk about the preternatural, supernatural world and what the boys in Ogden are up to lately.

And I'm still scheduling for July and August and September. And lastly, the

Regular Man store. We just kicked it off. RegularManStuff .com. It's finally up and running. We've kicked off a brand new line inspired by real fans of the show.

Band Gear Collection, where actual fans of the podcast can get their very own personalized gear, whether it's t -shirts, names, mugs, whatever, shaker bottles, get your quote, you have a picture, whatever you want on there.

Just hit me up, check it out. That's RegularManStuff .com. You're definitely going to want to check that out if you're a fan of the show.

Now, for today, I've got two guests who share much of the same audience that I have and who don't do a lot of interviews, at least not lately.

So I'm super excited to have these guys on from the very successful and controversial

The Bible Bashed Podcast. Welcome to the show, Harrison Kerrigan, Tim Mullett.

My guys, come on. Thank you for being on the show. Thanks for having us.

Yeah, it's good to be here. This is great. We tried to work this out a while ago. Schedules can be a little difficult.

You guys have been super flexible with me. Also, making time where there isn't a lot.

We were talking about family stuff before we went online. Man, it can be a struggle just to get five minutes where you're not dealing with kids and diapers and wives and church and work and school and whatever else you got going on.

So thank you so much for coming on. I really, really am excited to talk to you guys. Yeah, when you sent the invitation a few months ago,

I thought, man, that'd be really good to get to talk to Steve. And I know I've appreciated our interactions on Twitter.

But yeah, I'm glad we were able to make it happen. Yeah, this is great. This is great.

You guys are well, we're going to get into this really shortly. But we talked before we went live.

One of my favorite intros. This is the best intro I've ever seen.

It's so cool. And it got my attention. So thanks for being on here.

And the intro is something that's so unique. Like it gets people's attention. And I'm wondering who came up with that intro.

And like, how did that happen? I think it was a bit of a joint effort in a lot of ways.

I remember, I mean, a lot of it came down to just, you know, what were we trying to do with the podcast in general?

And the intro, we knew we needed it to just be like a short, essentially like a summary of what the podcast would be for people.

And so, you know, it starts off, you know, with that very fast warning.

Almost like you're listening to one of those like medication commercials where they start listing off all of the, you know, all of the side effects.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we decided that we wanted to do something like that.

Really, just to save people a lot of time, honestly. Like if you're, you know, hey, if you fall in this list, like here's what's going to happen.

We're already going to tell you what you're going to think about what we have to say in general. So let's just save you some time there.

But, you know, a lot of it just came down to what do we want to do with the podcast in general?

And how do we communicate that in a short amount of time right up front where it'll, you know, kind of help the people understand exactly what we're trying to do overall?

And let them decide for themselves if they want to, I guess, dare listen to us. Yeah, it was a filter for us.

So, you know, part of it was that we were trying to think about a way to just get all the offense out of the way right at the outset.

So part of that was why we leaned into the trigger warning. I mean, obviously, if you include a trigger warning at the beginning, then you're allowed to say whatever you want after that.

Yes. So because it gave us permission to say whatever we wanted after that, we thought that that would be a good strategy.

So, you know, a lot of it is obviously ironic. It's meant to be ironic. We were thinking about what we were going to name our podcast.

So part of it was about like thinking, how are we going to name this? We wanted to do something that was communicating that this would be straight talk, essentially.

And we know that there's a lot of podcasts out there with that name, like straight talk or whatever. So we're trying to lean into that kind of theme and make the, we wanted to make the intro a little bit over the top.

I know that we got probably pretty carried away on the trigger warning part of it. Not at all.

I love every minute of it. It was a little out of control, honestly. I mean, I mean, it started bad and then it kept on going, you know, and then

I think we thought it would be kind of funny to camp out on the men bun theme for a little bit. Yeah. So, so no mercy there.

But then, I mean, you can't be offended by that because you're bald. So. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in good company.

You're good. But yeah, we wanted to. Yeah. I mean, we, we did, we were trying to think about what we were doing with our podcast.

And so part of it was we wanted it to have a straight talk kind of feel where we're just going to be no quarter

November, you know, all year long kind of feel. But then we did want to have a little bit of humor in it. And so a lot of our titles are meant to be somewhat, you know, funny.

And so, you know, part of it was we just, we wanted to have a little bit of a slapstick kind of feel. And then, you know, when

Harrison was putting together the music with the Western theme and all that, I think we were, we were just trying to think through what we were trying to accomplish.

And then, I mean, we obviously put the preacher clips in there to make people realize that maybe we're, you know, somewhat saying, you know,

I don't know what I just listened to, but at least maybe they're listening to some solid guys or something.

I'm going to, I'm going to steal what Greg Moore said when he hosted me on Dead Man Walking.

He said, he was talking about my wall and he said, I knew it was a great idea. And I, when, when

I, when I realized that I was jealous because I didn't think about it. And when I saw your intro,

I knew that it was a great idea because I was jealous because I didn't think about it. But if you guys are good with it,

I would like to play that because I know that most of the people who are watching and listening probably already know who you are and they love your show and they already watch it.

But there may be a segment of people who, who listened to me, who don't know who you guys are.

So you're going to be playing it right now? Yeah, go for it. Go ahead. All right. I'm going to play that intro real quick.

My banana hands take a while to get. Are you sure you want to share the screen?

All right. Can you hear it? Yeah. The issue is that humanity is insane and the wrath of almighty

God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words. They will not act upon him. And when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the father where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words. They will act upon them. And when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

That is so cool. We approve of this message.

Got me hyped up a little bit. I really like that. Right? It does. It really does. So I heard, okay, so you got

Vaati in there. You've got John MacArthur. You got Paul Washer. Who else is in there? Conrad.

However you say his last name. Yeah, I can't remember his last name. That's why I made you say it.

There's Conrad. There's Paul Washer, MacArthur, and Vaati.

So it was super fast, but the warning was, the warning, the following message will be offensive, or the following message may be offensive to some audiences.

These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their Bible, Sotomites, men with man buns, those who approve of man buns, man bun enablers, white knights are men with man buns, homemakers who finished

Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies.

Viewer discretion is advised. That's so cool. You said you both came with a combined effort with that?

Yeah, it was basically like, what are the most ridiculous ways to communicate a lot of the common issues that we see in Christianity right now?

And I think at the time it was Tim's idea to really camp out on the man bun thing.

I must have had longer hair whenever we were coming up with that or something. We were trying to get you to get a haircut.

Actually, we did have someone who did get a haircut after listening to the intro. Oh, you did your job.

They got rid of the man bun. That did happen. But it was basically just like a way to try to address a lot of the topics that we knew we were going to end up addressing with the podcast in general in a really fast and somewhat tongue -in -cheek kind of way as well that would announce to everyone, here's what you're about to listen to, basically.

Like I said at the beginning, it is meant to be a little bit of a filter for people.

If you're the kind of person who listens to that and then you think it's funny, then it's not that the podcast still isn't going to be challenging for you because I think in a lot of ways it has been for a lot of people who find the intro funny.

But then you're probably a lot closer to where we are theologically if you find it funny.

Or it's at least a sign that, hey, you're able to laugh at things and you don't instantly take offense to everything you hear, even if you might disagree with it.

We found that typically the people who get really frustrated by it are the people who get offended very easily about pretty much anything and you kind of have to walk on eggshells around them all the time.

So I don't know that it's really the intro. It's more like the intro is just in a lot of ways trying to expose things and just make sure the sides are clear,

I guess. It's interesting because at first glance it does seem like a random list of things.

And it's obviously presented in somewhat of an over -the -top and humorous way or whatever. But it does seem like a random collection of things.

But then when you really think about the nature of the errors that are happening in our society right now, most of the things that we're struggling with as a society are basically just right in the opening chapters of Genesis.

And a lot of those issues that we're talking about with that, they're just pointing to we don't know the difference between men and women anymore.

We can't even define what is a woman and what is a man. There really is a profound confusion that's happening in our society right now as it relates to how human beings relate to animals with all the pet parent kind of things and that kind of phenomenon.

That's not just a joke. That's real. You do have a significant segment of the population who've rejected marriage and children and are trying to get all their relational needs met by pets.

You have the furry phenomenon. You have effeminacy. So many men are right now influenced by effeminacy.

And then you have the utter rejection of the female role within marriage too.

And so all these things are just – they really – I know that we're saying it somewhat in a tongue -in -cheek and a humorous way, but I mean you think about that.

That's all in the opening chapters of Genesis. That's all Genesis 1 through 3, man. So who are we?

Where do we come from? Where are we going? God created man, put him in a garden to work and to keep it, right?

So he's giving him something to do. He's giving him dominion over the animals. God created

Adam first. Adam names Eve. So there's male -female relationships even within that. So in a lot of ways,

I mean these random collection of jokes, I mean they do point to something that's pretty significant. And you are living in a society right now that just doesn't know the basics about why we're here and what we're doing for sure.

Yeah, and those are very basic Christian principles that no one would have argued with 10, 15 years ago.

And now things are just so off the charts, to your point. Men don't know what a – you don't know what a woman is?

What are you talking about? We have a documentary that is wildly successful that I proudly watched and loved every second of it that's called

What is a Woman? And people went to the experts and said, What is a woman? And they can't even tell you the definition of a woman.

Sounds like an SBC meeting, right, where they're asking, What is a woman? You did read my notes.

You did. Oh, was that in there? We're just on the same wavelength.

I ruined it for you. It's okay. We'll revisit the SBC later.

So you described the podcast as the

Bible Bash podcast is a podcast focused on equipping the saints for the work of the ministry by answering questions that you're not allowed to ask.

And I want to hone in on that. We frequently discuss Golden Calf topics and are often described as guys who, quote, go there.

So, questions you're not allowed to ask, Golden Calf. I'm putting those together.

And I think you guys are pretty close to the same, you know, where I'm at, at least philosophically, theologically, with maybe some of the aumil or post -mil understanding of what the idols of today are.

And your podcast pokes idols in the eye, which is why people don't, and mine do too.

The guys in Ogden, you know, Moscow, you know, the same kind of flair.

The reason that the men's men who are Christian are attracted to people like us is because that's what a man's job is to do, is to be a

Gideon, is to stand up and destroy, to knock it down, to poke the idols in the eye, to burn it down, and to cause change where you live.

And we, I think that we are refreshing, we in the corporeal sense of guys who just aren't

Sissy's man bun wearing skinny jean Subaru drivers. Subaru, yeah.

Yeah, Subaru. The epitome of FMLC. Exactly, the

Portlanders, in other words. We understand what a man is, what a woman is, and what a man's job is, and what a woman's job is, and we don't compromise on that issue when we piss people off because we actually say it and we actually mean it.

So when I hear what you say, you're basically describing that you're just not a coward and that you're a

Christian, and voices of Christians are supposed to be cowards according to most evangelical people.

How has that been for you? Are you asking how many death threats we have?

Yeah, all of it. We're not quite in the double digits yet with all that, but we're making our way.

We're making our way, slowly but surely, in the death threat department. We have had people come after our employment, and even people who have been on our show.

We've had people come after their jobs even, just for coming on and talking about certain issues.

There is certainly that aspect to it, but I guess how has it gone?

I think it's been really interesting to see overall just because I think it kind of exposes a lot of...

I grew up as sort of a nominal Christian, I would say, in a large mega church for as long as I went to church, basically.

I wouldn't necessarily say I grew up in church, but I went for probably 10 years as a nominal

Christian in a large mega church. One of the things

I thought we had to do as Christians was we had to be this kind of walking on eggshells all the time and apologizing for everything that the

Bible teaches that offends people. That's genuinely what

I thought being a loving, patient Christian was.

But Tim, he introduced me to a lot of people who really kind of ripped that idea away from me.

For me, I kind of got to a point where I was like, man, I realized I wish we were just allowed to...

I watched guys like Doug Wilson and whatnot, and it's like, man, I wish we were just allowed to... I wish we were just allowed to talk like this all the time.

Then it turns out, oh, we are. Then it got harder and harder to bear with certain guys that you would see, especially around...

The SBC is a good example of this, where you just see all these guys who kind of...

They're either apologizing for everything that they believe, or they're constantly giving way on it because of social pressures.

I mean, you had the whole, like, the SBC is pushing this, the world is watching thing. I'm sitting there as someone who's seen other guys that are just out there, and there's people screaming at them and throwing things at them for just saying simple truth.

Then you see guys like the SBC, where it's like, hey, the world is watching. We've got to be careful what we're doing. It's like, dude, who cares?

I don't care. I don't care if the world... I don't care. I don't want to care what the world thinks.

I'm sure there's times where I still give into that temptation sometimes, but I found myself inspired by a lot of the guys that were just willing to go out there and just say it and not just be straight -up jerks about it, obviously, but just saying normal, simple truth and letting everyone else embarrass themselves over how angry they are over it and how much they hate

God. I was telling

Tim, I was talking with him one -on -one. He's my pastor, and so I'd ask him all these questions.

Over a few years, I'm like, man, Tim, you've got to put this out so other people can hear it too.

We've got to talk about these things. For me, it's been a lot of fun because it's sort of like an outlet in some way.

Part of my motivation for it, at least, is it is an outlet to just be able to communicate things that as I'm studying the

Bible, as I'm leading my family, as I'm looking at what all is going on in the world around me, it's an outlet to be able to say,

I'm just going to say normal things that are true, and I don't want to apologize for them.

Everyone else that I see seems, as far as I can tell, from a distance, to be faithful Christians.

They're doing the same thing. That's what I want to do too. That's kind of been my experience with it all.

Maybe Tim can weigh in on it a little more. You've lost some friends too. Oh, yeah.

Oh, big time. Big time. You have some hate listeners. Yeah, we do.

They're trying to actively destroy you behind the scenes. Yeah, that is going on.

They might not know that I know all of their goings on, but I do. Yeah.

I would say that the response largely has been good on our end.

I'm a little bit surprised by how well the podcast has been doing since we started.

That is a little bit surprising to me. I mean, I didn't know if we would be screaming into the void or something along those lines, or calmly discussing things into the void with no one listening.

But then it seems to have taken off a lot more than what I thought it would.

But then at the same time, yeah. I mean, it certainly is a litmus test for where people are at in general.

I mean, we have had some pretty extreme kind of responses to some of the stuff we've asked at certain points and some of the episodes that we've done too.

Meaning, it's kind of interesting because some of the things that really have triggered people and set people off have been things that we would just lease.

I mean, I didn't think that would get you. But then, yeah, this really has been a situation where I've had family members disown me, and we've had bad reviews on our church, things like that, that people have given based on our podcast.

A lot of the mental health stuff has really been triggering to people. They've really taken that pretty hard.

But then at the same time, I think we have a lot of people who listen to us but wouldn't admit it, you know, kind of thing.

I think our podcast is a little bit addictive to people. We found that if they will listen to it once...

It's the intro. Yeah, it must be. It must be meant. I mean, if they listen to it once, they'll keep on going with it.

So we've heard that from a lot of people, that they decided, yeah, we're just going to give this a try, and then they were hooked pretty quick with it.

So that's been interesting to watch, and we've had a lot of good feedback in a lot of ways. And so, yeah,

I think it's been a good experience in a lot of ways. Some of the motivation we had to do it, and maybe this is part of what you're talking about here, but some of the motivation that we had to even start doing the podcast was we realized that we're shortly after 2020 and all the madness that was associated with that.

And, you know, Harrison had been nagging me for a couple of years to do a podcast or something along those lines, and I had manfully resisted because I don't have any desire to be a public person or anything like that.

I don't have a desire to make a name for myself or anything like that. But he had said, hey, we need to do this.

We need to do this. But then when we're getting at 2020, I mean, I think it was just very apparent to both of us that we're living in a world where there really is this crisis of courage.

And so you're living in a time where people are just so afraid to say normal things. And I give this example a lot.

I remember I went in like this is during the mass mandate stuff. I went into a store to get my phone fixed.

And you see the sign there that says no mask allowed or whatever. So I went in there anyways without a mask on because I was done with it.

And I mean, we could do that. We were in Alabama. So I mean, I think we're not necessarily going to get thrown in jail. But so I mean, yeah, it doesn't take us.

But all I try to say is it doesn't take as much courage to do that in Alabama as maybe some other places. But I just kind of ignored that after a little bit and just went with it.

But then I went into the store, and there was a guy, probably my dad's age, who was sitting next to me with his mask on.

He looked over at me, and he sees that I don't have a mask on. And he got this like really frustrated look on his face, and he took his mask off, put it in his pocket, just kind of sat there and did like that, like with this smug, like self -satisfied grin on his face.

And I thought to myself, like that's like courage is contagious, and we're living in a time right now where you can't.

100%. You can't just, you can't call nonsense nonsense anymore, right?

And so then like either we're going to end up in the gulags here, right?

I'll be right behind you, brother. Start acting sane. So I think this podcast was our experiment to see like, well, if we're going to jail, man, let's just go first.

We'll be the first ones here. But I think we're at a strange point in our nation where you need a lot more people who are saying sane things.

Either the people are going to say sane things, and we're going to see positive direction, or it can go really bad.

And I mean, I think, I know we're going to talk about this later, but I think part of the

Trump phenomenon is instructive at that point to where like, you know, obviously he was a polarizing figure and he has good, good and bad.

There's good and there's bad. But I mean, I do think that you need people who are willing to wake up and call a spade a spade, quit acting like as if it's some kind of crime or unloving to say normal things.

And so part of that was what we were trying to get at with our podcast for sure. And yeah, I mean, certainly we've seen people who are just insanely mad at us, trying to dox us, destroy our lives, you know, get us fired.

And then we've had a lot of good responses too. So it's been a mixed bag there for sure. I live in,

I live in Oregon. And so Oregon, California, Washington, New York, Jersey, and Washington DC are probably the biggest

Nazis when it came to 2020. They were probably the biggest, like they came after my job.

They, they, you know, I will, I, I try really, really hard to keep my professional life separate from, from all of this because I promise you the second that I slip up,

I will get fired because I live in Oregon and the, the, the people who live in Oregon have a significant difference of opinion than I do on pretty much everything there.

There are man buns everywhere, super news and skinny jeans everywhere. Everybody has them and fur babies everywhere.

So when, when I was walking through Safeway, actually Safeway didn't do too bad.

It took them a very long time to start like waving their finger at me. But the second that I walked in into anything like Walmart, Fred Meyers, you know, anything that's a big, bigger typical more liberal kind of, kind of thing.

The second that I walked in, it was, it was finger in the face and I just didn't stop. I just walked through like, you're going to call the cops, call the cops, man.

This is what I'm going to do. And I never got thrown out one time and I even wore like Trump shirts and like some pretty vulgar things that Christians probably ought not to wear.

But I don't, I didn't care. You know, we're in the middle of the shandemic and I was pissed. And I still am upset.

I still believe that we need some accountability. You gotta forgive. You gotta forgive, man. Forgive and forget. Like we were all crazy during that time, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I hear. That's what I hear. I mean, who doesn't try to get people fired and you know, yeah, kill them, you know?

Yeah. Like literally, literally. Yeah. Yeah. I could happen to anyone.

Could happen to anyone, man. About, about all that. But to your point earlier, I was walking through a, a

Walmart without a mask and it had a, I forget what it was. It was like a, it was a pretty vulgar shirt about Hillary and, and Trump.

And I walked through and there was this like back to back to back. These just so sad looking faces of like just men, just men walking to the grocery store, trying to get food or, or tools or something.

And they were just sad looking and they turned the corner and I, and I was starting down a new aisle and every one of them did the same thing that you did,

Tim. They, they they looked at my shirt and they looked at me with a big fat, ugly smile on my face without a mask on.

And they went, just kept walking. They just ripped that mask off and they just kept walking.

And that proves to me, even in this, this godless state that I live in, in this ridiculous craziness of the sham

Demick during the COVID freakout, you still have courage. You just have to, you have to spark it.

You just have to do something like you have to be the guy, the Gideon. You have to be the guy who sparks that little bit of courage for people to, to, to, to run off of, you know, you got to be the catalyst and the things in your life that, that,

I mean, I almost got fired because I refused that garbage vaccine, the jab, the serum that they want to shove in your arm.

And they were going to do any, they weren't going to do any exemptions or accommodations or whatever they try to wiggle around with.

I was going to get fired. And it was a matter of time before enough people with courage started in the, in the said, no,

I'm not going to do it. Fire me. No, I'm not going to do it. Fire me. And it was this domino effect of, of people eventually got the governor's attention.

Then the secretary of state decided, you know, there actually is an

ORS that says, well, yeah, we've got five lawsuits that say that.

So the importance of what you're doing, the importance of what the guys in Moscow and, and Ogden and like Gabe wrench to me in the middle of that sham

Demick was a hero, man. He really was. He didn't locked up because he wouldn't wear a mask outside, outside of the police department.

You're locking this guy up. Doug Wilson is constantly berated because he just literally says what the

Bible says. And, and they just vehemently attack him because he's not apologetic.

He has no, what is it? No, no quarter of November. You said that, that Tim, no quarter of November that I'm not going to apologize.

And I'm not going to give you any, any wiggle room away from it. This is what it says.

This is what the Bible teaches. This is how you ought to act. If you're a Christian, that's it.

Uh, the guys in Ogden, um, Eric Kahn, Eric Kahn will literally just post on social media, what scripture says, like just verbatim, quote it, and then just leave the reference away from it.

And people will go crazy. They will light their hair on fire. They will call him all kinds of nasty things.

And he'll say, Oh, I, it seems like you disagree with scripture says, cause this is what Paul says. And it'll be fusions five.

And it just shows you that the little bit of courage, it can spark a trend of more men who have courage, but it also shows you the people who are your absolute enemies.

Uh, so I wanted to, that was a very, very long way of, of asking you, uh, you've gone into a little bit of it, but what are some of the most, um, impactful ways that your podcast has, has hurt you?

Like what, what's been the cost of you with your family, with your friends, with your church, with your employment, with, um, there is a cost to being

Gideon Harrison. You want to go? Well, you know, yeah, we, we talked about it some,

I mean, you know, probably the most obvious, um, cost,

I guess is just the, the relational costs that comes with it. Because the moment that you become the person who starts saying the normal things out loud, you're, you instantly become like target number one for everyone who knows you and who disagrees with you.

Uh, and so, yeah, we, we talked about the sum already, but like for me, you know, me, for example,

I mean, it, it kind of started, I think for me, it started even before the podcast.

And, um, you know, I, like I said, I had watched, Tim had turned me on to Doug Wilson.

And, uh, I, and specifically, I remember we, we, I've talked about this on the podcast, on our podcast a few times, but specifically there was a, um, uh, a lecture that Doug Wilson did.

Um, at one, I, I can't remember a sexual by design at one, one of the,

I guess the university close by them. And, uh, you know, and I watched that and everyone just screaming in his face constantly for just, you, you see this trailer, they made a trailer for it and it's just everyone's screaming at him.

And then you're wondering number one, how is he even able to like keep his train of thought? I, I can't imagine

I would ever be able to continuously speak with all these, you know, 40 people all yelling at me at once.

But, but then you wonder to yourself, what is he saying? That's so that's got people in an uproar like this.

And you watch the lecture and it's just like normal stuff. Like marriage is, is between one man and one woman.

And then everyone's just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, And so I'm watching that.

I'm watching, I watch another, a debate. I, if you even want to call it a debate,

I. Don't know that it really should be called a debate, but a debate with James White and Jeff Durbin.

They're debating these two atheists and. The atheist, good luck. They just, they embarrass them.

I mean, it's so embarrassing. If I were an atheist, I would have been embarrassed by the people that were representing the same ideas that I would hypothetically have but They're both examples of just people getting so angry at Guys that I know are

Christians who are saying all the things that they're just repeating what the Bible says

They're they're not bringing some new Message. This is the same. This is the same message

We've had for you know thousands of years at this point and they're just saying it and everyone's getting mad at them

And I'm thinking like oh, I guess well if they're saying it I should probably be saying it too, you know, and so I remember at one point.

I I had made a I Had made a post on Facebook or something. This was before we had the podcast

I think and it was basically just like hey, I'm reading a book right now. That's that's

Making an argument for why you know Homosexuality is not biblical and it dishonors

God and here's some of the points that they've brought up so far So I'm not even outright arguing that what

I'm not even directly arguing, you know saying hey it is wrong Here's why

I'm just saying here's what someone else said, even though I agree with them I was just putting it out there because you know,

I was I just thought it was interesting I wanted to I wanted people to see it. And so I put it out there and It gets it's like my most interacted with post ever on Facebook, you know

And I get hundreds of comments I it might have been thousands of comments from people that I grew up with and and people that You know people that I would have told you were my friends

And you know to to some of them to to the credit of some of them they came to my defense

You know some publicly which I was I was very appreciative of others privately, which

I was still appreciative of You know, but I I've tried to encourage them like hey if you're willing to say this privately, you know

Like even if it's not defending me like you should be willing to say the same things I'm saying publicly but then the majority of people

I mean the people that I grew up with that I had spent years You know building relationships with Becoming close friends with some of them.

They just turned that fast and and so I think that's been kind of the the

That that only that only got worse and worse as we continued to do the podcast and like I said

I mean we've had people come after Come after our jobs people that don't know us at all

They you know, they've come after our jobs they've come after our church in certain ways They've they've come after people who have dared to simply, you know, come on our show for one or two episodes

We've had people go after their jobs as well And so so I think for me the biggest thing has just been that relational aspect where all of this you know you have all these people who

Who are your friends and who you spent the majority of your life knowing and Then you say the minute that you say something that they do that.

They don't like minute you say something that they hate That's all it's like it never happened.

It's like all those years never happened. You're no longer friends They can't be associated with you.

Whatever, you know, and I even had Christians come along and tell me You know

Essentially like get on to me and private saying that I was being unloving for saying things like, you know

Hey, you know in the middle of the plan Demick, for example People are posting people are posting there

Hey, I'm going to church online or whatever and you know, and I'm basically coming along and saying hey the bot

You know, the Bible says don't neglect the gathering of believers. It sounds like we're neglecting the gathering of believers here and and Stuff like that.

Yeah, I'd have people that I knew that were Christians that would come along and say hey, you're being unloving

You know, you can't say it like that and a lot of the message boiled down to it's not what you said

It's how you said it and so and and you know to be fair like hey, look,

I'm I'm a human being I'm not perfect. I understand that, you know, I am capable of Of saying something that is true and Simultaneously unloving

I understand that I'm capable of that, you know, and so I want to be open to that critique But what I found a lot of times was

I'd have those Christians come along and they'd have that critique of me And so so I would just ask them.

Okay. Well when you say this to them, how do you say it and They don't respond

Then or or some of them might be honest enough to say well I don't I don't say this to people ever in any way and it's like well, you know

Hey, look, I appreciate the critique But if I'm gonna if I'm gonna take that kind of critique, I would like to take it from someone who's actually doing it

Who's who's actually? Confronting these things because Jesus confronted these things the

Apostles confronted these things the prophets confronted these things I want to confront these things because I love people and I want them to hear the truth and repent of their sins

So I'm gonna keep doing it and I'll learn to do it better along the way But I'm gonna learn to do it better from people who are already doing it not people sitting on the sidelines

I like the way I said it better than the way you didn't Yeah, basically and so all that to say

I think the relational aspect has been pretty huge and pretty eye -opening more so at the beginning than now now it's just kind of like You know the in terms of people

I know personally The damage is already done there. You know the side of the the lines have already been drawn

I guess but then now now it is Multiple times by the same person.

Yeah, it's kind of like a one -and -done deal, but I guess now more it's um

The people you don't know that are doing that are doing that to you people You know people that have never probably never seen any of your stuff before probably didn't even listen to Whatever it is that you just put out that they're upset about now that that's a pretty common common thing the reason

I know that is because The people who have tried to dox us in the past, you know

They'll they'll post on our on our Twitter page or whatever. They'll sit, you know They'll post things like what are these guys names so that we can get them?

It's like well, we don't hide our names I mean, they're literally and I mean in the first minute and a half of any of our episodes you will hear our names

So so that just tells me you didn't listen to whatever we just put out because it's in every episode

Part of what's happening with our podcast is most people are just getting triggered by the question itself

Yeah, like so they're just getting triggered at the title. I mean we had one of our guests who came on he

He didn't really know what to make of the Twitter account at first or whatever But then he thought it was so interesting that so many people were just getting so triggered

By the questions I can most of the time though. I mean they're yes or no questions that are I mean you they really are

Just most of the time. They're just these questions You're not really allowed to ask and so then we ask them and then in a lot of times

I mean we have a list of like people send us questions from all over the world right now So we'll just put the list out, you know, so I have a folder where I have all the list at but He was noticing again after you know again and again and again

They would just get so triggered by these questions man And then they would jump to conclusions about what your answer is based on just the question itself

And it's like well, we haven't answered it yet And so a lot of what has happened we've noticed with our podcast is that people are just getting triggered by the titles

More than anything and then they they're making a bunch of assumptions about what we're saying and they're not really even actually

Interacting with the content at all, you know So so I mean whatever critiques they have it's just about you know

The fact that you it kind of reduces to the fact that you even answered Are you even asked the question begin with like isn't this a waste of time and blah blah blah blah blah.

It's like yeah Well, I get it. Yeah, we're not allowed to ask this question We are so get over it maybe listen to the answer and give us some intelligent feedback

But I mean we rarely get that we rarely get any like intelligent thoughtful Engagement with what we're actually saying.

It's just mostly just a bunch of assumptions about people who are Scandalized by the fact that you would you know ask these normal questions that people have

But yeah, it's hard to you know, I don't I don't necessarily on my end Want to go into the nitty -gritty details about You know the relationships that have been

Broken and things along those lines. I mean in order to protect the guilty, you know, I so to speak. I mean Gossip about this cost, you know

Yeah, I mean, but it's it's one of those things where I I would say the cost has been fairly significant, you know on my end related to that but In somewhat and a lot of a lot of it has been somewhat surprising

I mean, I know that but I mean I think is like when we embarked on this journey I did look at Harrison and I basically said hey, are you you ready to you know, chuck your reputation in the trash?

And yeah, you know not And let all the respectful types know not to touch you with the 10 -foot pole

I mean basically, are you are you are you ready to sink all your future job prospects? By going in on this, you know social experiment with me

And and so I think we went into it knowing that Yeah, we were going to be touching some sacred cows and people would get upset and you know,

I mean, I think yeah, it's definitely influenced the decisions that we'll be making in the future for sure and in all that I mean,

I think we've largely had I Think I've had a lot more like I've been more surprised by the good responses then

Then what I was expecting Like meaning I I didn't know if I didn't think that so many people would be

Encouraged by it in the way that they have been and so that's been more surprising to me You know,

I I don't I don't particularly like offending people and people assume that about us like based on our

Podcasts that we just like poking people in the eye. It's like no, I'm kind of a non confrontational person I don't really like I mean,

I'm blunt. I'm as blunt as you get But I don't I don't really enjoy it You know,

I don't enjoy like offending people or and I'm not even trying to offend people most of the time

I've just found that There's certain topics you can't talk about and if you do people will get really mad and I'm just willing to do it you know and so I've just I've always been

I've been that guy in most of the scenarios in my life where it's like there's a problem that no one's talking about and it's obvious and No one's saying it, you know

And and so I guess I have to say it then I don't really want to say it but it's like there's no one else

Who's gonna say it? So I'll say it, you know And so I think a lot of the stuff that we're talking about I mean we talked about marriage we talked about relationship husband -wife relationships.

We talked about like leadership, you know, we're We talked a lot about family dynamics a lot of this is just related to my background

My background is I have an MD with biblical counseling emphasis. So I mean I see the damage of all the psychotropic drugs

I mean, I see that they we've turned a generation into drug addicts with no hope and there's no answers to that Taking away their hope and you basically

Enslaved them to some kind of substance. It's gonna alter their moods in order to try to fix spiritual problems and I mean

I see that that is like a hopeless death sentence that you've given a certain that you've given a generation of people and and I mean

I There's no one there's very few people who are willing to even say the obvious about what's actually happening with that like I mean

I get you tranquilize a person and Like they're gonna respond like a drugged elephant, you know, but they didn't you didn't fix their spiritual problem there

You know, like you didn't fix their depression, you know, you didn't fix their anxiety, you know, you just drugged them, you know into a stupor so Congratulations, like we did that with the lobotomies and we see how that worked out.

But you know, so I think there's a lot of topics like that that I'm really concerned about and and I see that there's

Really not people not very many people out there who willing to talk about them and so, you know,

I think I found though that if I can one things I've found is if I can Couch it a little in a little bit of a humorous way.

Sometimes it it Will put people's guards down a little bit get you a hearing, you know, and sometimes it'll really make a man

You know, you don't know but I mean, I think on our end. Yeah, I mean there's certainly been a lot of A lot of relational fallout from doing this.

So I mean it's been it's been like, you know, a lot of a lot of Negative reactions on the one hand and on the other and a lot of really encouraging stuff

I mean we have people who just like their lives have changed and been changed and they've told us about it That's that's really like super encouraging.

And so, you know, it's It's been a really good thing, you know having a lot of having both extremes, you know, so I feel like we're

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