Becoming a Cheerful Warrior with AD Robles

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He literally told people he was going to destroy Striving for Eternity. And I kind of laughed because I got a couple of radio interviews out of it. I had new donors, because the thing is, people were going, I still remember a guy that I became friendly with years later, and then I got on his website and he had this forum, and he literally said, I don't know who this Andrew Rapport guy is, but man, the way he dealt with this guy, this Pharisee, was so gentle and polite, which is not the way I always handle things, but it was really funny.

Welcome to The Rapport Report with your host, Andrew Rapport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community.

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Introducing A.D. Robles and His Ministry

Welcome to another edition of The Rapport Report. We're here to give you biblical interpretations, applications for the Christian life. I am Andrew Rapport, your host, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member of one of the 50 plus heavily vetted podcasts.

So you're guaranteed to find something to listen to there. Well, even if you're an atheist, you'll find something to listen to and hate it, but it's still the truth. So go for it. Strivingforeternity .org is the one website where you could go for Striving for Eternity and ChristianPodcastCommunity .org for the Christian Podcast Community, if you want to see all of our podcasts.

So today I have with me A .D. Robles. And so we met at the Overcoming Evil conference that TruthScript put on, John Harris from Conversations That Matter. And we got to meet there for the first time. The first time I got to hear him there, I knew actually nothing about him, I don't think, before that.

We hit it off very well. I really learned a lot from this brother. And so I wanted you guys to gleam from him as well. So we're going to talk a little bit about what he talked about at that conference, but I think you're really going to get a lot out of that.

So first, A .D., if you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself, let folks know who you are and some of the things you're doing so people could start to follow you and stuff.

Absolutely. Well, thanks for inviting me on, for sure. And yeah, you might not have known anything about me, but I knew a little bit about you before the conference.

Oh, no.

I said your name a bunch of times. Always in a positive context, so I'll just lead with that. Not to keep you waiting. But I'm on YouTube. That's where most people know me. I was a pastor of a very small church in Vermont, and I just started commenting on all of the craziness with all the woke church stuff.

So I'd hear pastors that I respected talking about white privilege and things like that. And I just I had a different perspective, so I just put my opinions out there. Nobody listened to it except my mom.

And then I started commenting on a conference that the ERLC put out about Martin Luther King. And apparently that was the thing that everybody found me on because they were looking for, hey, you know, this conference sounds a little weird.

Like, let's see what other people are saying about it. And I was really one of the only ones talking about it. Well, not the only one, but one of the only ones. And so that's kind of how I became known by people.

And so I do YouTube a couple times a week. Typically, I'm also on the Fight Last Feast podcast network with the guys up in Moscow, Idaho. And I use Twitter as well, mostly for fun. So if you go there, I don't know if you necessarily be edified by what's on Twitter, but you don't go to Twitter really to be edified.

So it's more for comedy. And that's what I do now. And I basically talk about, I still talk about some of the woke church stuff, but mostly I just talk about Christianity and the way it kind of confronts and faces the culture and stuff like that.

A lot of issues of Christian nationalism, political stuff, things like that. That's what I do. So if you're interested in that, I have a very unique style, I think. And you'll definitely laugh if you watch my YouTube channel, but you might be angry too.

I mean, who knows?

There's a little bit for everybody.

Yeah. Now your podcast, I know, because that's what I follow more is the podcast. It's easier for me. And it's just AD on FLF network is the podcast.

Yeah, that's right. AD on FLF network.

So if folks want to search for that, but I think you do more on the YouTube then, because you haven't put out, you're not putting out several times a week on podcast.

I have to start being a little more consistent with that. I used to do it every single week and then it kind of switched and that's completely my fault. It's not like they're trying to get rid of me or anything like that.

At least I don't think so. That's an area for improvement. Thank you, Andrew.

But here's the thing. For folks who want to follow you on the podcast, you mentioned you have a unique style. You do. It is something where the thing I like about your podcast, at least it's coming from your YouTube channel, is the fact that you cover like a broad range of different topics.

Yeah.

You definitely don't hold back on your opinions.

Sure.

That's for sure. But they're also short. And maybe I should watch the videos because there are some where it's like, hey, I'm just out here fishing. And you're just recording something because it's like, I'm not going to get a chance to talk about this later, so I'll talk about it now.

So there's a lot of things like that that make you kind of really neat. So I've really got a lot out of that and I think others should get to know who you are, follow you. It is funny how you have something like that one conference that they were doing with the Martin Luther King and you might think, oh, I'm just doing this all on my own.

Like you said, just your mom's listening. And then all of a sudden you have a whole bunch of people. I have a friend that just had Jenna Ellison just retweeted something that he had put out against the campaign,.

He Gets Us, that's it.

Yeah, yeah.

So he shared a perspective on the He Gets Us, and now he's getting like all kinds of spam of people that are hating on him because he criticized them. A three-page tweet saying how judgmental he is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which fits very well with what we wanted to talk about. It was really refreshing. You did a talk at that conference that I appreciated. It was more, rather than being, and this is what John had asked me to do as well, instead of giving, hey, walk through a text of scripture, he wanted something more practical.

And you did a really good kind of encouragement to guys to say, hey, get into ministry, but know what you're getting into. And so for the audience, because there's probably people in our audience, I'm sure you got full-time pastors, you have people who are in full-time ministry, vocational ministry, you have people who are in no ministry at all, maybe nothing outside their church.

There's people who may be thinking, should I set up a YouTube channel? Should I do a podcast? Is that really ministry? There was a lot that you unpacked about that helps people to say, yes, do it, but know what you're getting into.

And I think my talk, I don't remember if it's online, I think it might be on John's channel, so you can go look at it. It definitely applies to people interested in ministry, but really it applies to anybody.

If you are going to be talking to people about issues that are in the culture, they're being talked about right now, like you referenced it, it's called He Gets Us. That's the campaign, He Gets Us. People are talking about that right now.

And if you're going to talk about that, it's definitely worthwhile in my opinion, whether it's in a ministry context or not, but you just need to be ready for their responses, for the pushback, for people to write three-page articles about why you're a bad person or whatever.

And I think that the whole purpose of my talk was about being able to deal with that in a cheerful and joyful way, because if you don't, there's a lot of problems that come about and you're going to be very discouraged and you're going to be, it's not going to, there's a whole bunch of things that could happen.

So that's what my talk was about. And I think that that kind of attitude of joy and cheerfulness is so necessary, especially in times like these. That's what it was about.

Getting Over Yourself in Ministry

The thing that we end up seeing, people get into ministry thinking it's going to be all rosy and everyone's going to appreciate them.

Big mistake.

Yeah.

You know, I was thinking of posting today, if you really want to know who your friends are, get into ministry and you'll find out who aren't your friends. Because man, ministry seems to be a thing with the social media where, I remember when I started out with Striving Fraternity.

I had, as you know, right, I'm a dispensationalist and I have no problem with people that disagree with me and we talk it out and have fun discussing our differences. But the thing I discovered is that there are people that don't care that you disagree.

They would rather use a minor disagreement to build a platform for themselves. And I remember the first time I saw this, there were a bunch of guys, theonomists, that were saying things about dispensationalism.

And one of the guys said, I said, dude, you know this is not what dispensationalists hold to. And he literally, his response was, he texted back, he goes, I know, but it gets clicks. And the more people that click, the more that they're responding, the more when I post something, they're going to see it.

And I'm like, so you're just doing this for algorithms. And he goes, and he's like, yeah. And I remember talking to Matt Sleck, who I know you said you listened to him years ago.

Yeah, I used to love listening to him.

And I said, Matt, like this, this is crazy. And this is what Matt literally told me, some of the best advice he gave me. He says, look, Andrew, let me explain how ministry works in this century. People look for someone that's a little bit bigger than them that has a platform.

They try to tear that person down so that they can get some of the support and the people that follow that bigger person to follow you. You get to be a little bit bigger, and then you move on to someone else to attack.

And I'm like, no, that's crazy. That can't be how ministry works. He's like, oh yeah, it is. I said, well, how do you tackle that? He goes, oh, very simple. You ignore it and keep producing good content.

And that has been some of the best advice. And much of what you said at that conference, which resonated with me, was exactly that, was just ignore the conflict, just ignore it and keep producing good content.

I think one of my main points, if I'm remembering correctly, was you got to get over yourself.

You know what I mean?

You got to get over yourself. So if somebody thinks that AD Robles is the biggest idiot of all time, which nobody definitely thinks that, nobody, you've got to be okay with that. And you got to realize that at the end of the day, as much as you think your message is important, which I think mine is, you're really not all that great.

So you're not above being lied about because sometimes people will just flat out lie, like you mentioned here, like they know that you don't believe these things, but they say you do. So that's a flat out lie.

That's not even anywhere near what a ministry should do. But sometimes it's like, it's not necessarily a lie, but they kind of twist it to make it seem so dangerous and shady and you're involved in all these secret meetings with other dispensationalists trying to get another bill to Israel or whatever it is.

You know what I mean?

And it's like, they twist it. And so it's like, again, either way though, you're not above being lied about. You're not above being slandered. You're not above your words being twisted. It shouldn't happen, but when it does happen, you shouldn't be like all surprised.

This happens all the time. And so you've got to be okay when people have called me racist many times. And at this point I laugh. It used to be like, oh, no, I'm not a racist and here's why. At this point, I just laugh about it and move on.

You know what I mean?

I'm not above being lied about in that way.

Because I mean, it was funny how you worded it actually in the conference. It wasn't just get over yourself. It was get over yourself. You're not that great.

Yeah, exactly.

And that was a really important point because, and maybe you could dig into this a little bit more, because a lot of people get into ministry thinking they are great. And you talked about that, that people think because they get a platform online or get a bunch of people that just, they think are listening to them, that they start thinking too highly of themselves.

And so that was your first point that you made on being, as you called it, becoming a cheerful warrior. What are some ways that practically people could do, I mean, you mentioned one, right? Just ignore the nonsense.

How do we get over ourselves though? And really like remind ourselves we're not that great.

Well, before I even get into that, I think like you got to look at the benefits of getting over yourself too, because the list is so great. But I think one of the biggest things that improves in your life when you get over yourself is that you start to keep really short accounts with people.

You don't hold things against people because it's like when you're not over yourself and you think you're like up here and you're getting lied about and stuff like that and you're above all that, you hold things against people forever.

And it's just, it creates this like weird bitterness and hatred inside you that you hold on to. Maybe you don't tell anybody, maybe you do. It's not going to lead to good results for you personally, but also even your content, you're going to slip in zingers here and there that are unnecessary whenever you have a chance.

Like you're going to undermine people that you shouldn't be undermining. Because here's the thing, this is the thing that you also got to realize about these ministry guys that build platforms by lying about you.

Just because they've done that does not mean that every single thing they've ever produced is tainted now, or every single thing they've ever said or done is tainted now. Look, people are a mess. I do good things, but I also do bad things.

You know what I mean?

So if every good thing that I've ever done is now null and void, or any good thing I've ever said is now null and void because I disagreed with somebody on Christian nationalism, let's say, I don't want that standard used against me, so don't use that standard against other people.

So you just have to get over yourself, right? And also it leads to this, when you don't get over yourself, it leads to this weird fight about credit, getting credit for things, right? There's a funny story that I'm not going to go into it because I don't really want to name this name right now, but he's very interested in getting credit for being the first to have noticed something, the first to have said this, the first to have done this.

And I was just joking around with him, and I was like, you know, I've got video proof that I was actually way before you. You stole it from me. And I just was joking around with him. And I just sent him this video where I was like, now I was saying this before.

He was very gracious about it and stuff like that. I was like, you know, it's really not about, I wasn't the first one to invent this either. This is all God's truth. You know, like, I'm not, I don't need credit for it.

You know, like, please stop this. This is dumb.

You know what I mean?

Anyway, so, I mean, those are just two of the benefits that I kind of highlighted in my talk. But one thing that I think, you asked about how do we get over ourselves, right? How do we do it? One thing that has been so helpful to me is I have a biological brother who's a minister in the PCA.

And because he's my biological brother, that means we grew up together, right? He knows all about me. He knows everything I've ever done. He knows every stupid thing I've ever done. He knows that I'm not that great.

He's not impressed with me at all. And it's great to have men in your life who are not impressed with you at all. And they might think you're smart. My brother thinks I'm smart. My brother thinks I'm funny.

My brother thinks I'm all these great things, but he also knows I'm not all that. And so having guys like that are in your corner, maybe they watch your content, maybe they don't, but they can keep you like in check sort of.

It's helpful if it's a family member, but it doesn't have to be. That is so good because my brother will knock me down a couple of pegs anytime he needs to. And I know he's my friend. I know he's on my side.

He's not trying to destroy me. That is so helpful. And so Andrew, I'm sure you've got people in your life like this that know you pretty well. I would argue that's probably the biggest thing that you need to have.

You cannot surround, we all hear horror stories of ministers or even leaders in the secular realm that surround themselves with yes men. And it's poisonous. You cannot operate well with just a bunch of yes men around you.

It's not the way to go.

In fact, one of the ways to get on the board at Striving Fraternity, there's two requirements we have. One, you have to have a heart for the ministry. But two, and I challenge anybody to think of another board that has this as a requirement, but we do.

You have to be able to demonstrate that you're willing to correct any of the speakers. So whether it's me as the executive director or any of our other speakers, you have to demonstrate that you would have a willingness to correct us.

So you can't come on the board and be a yes man because by the way we do it, I remember we had a guy that got on the board and all of the questions, at that time I was the only speaker, and all of the questions were, okay, if you saw Andrew do this, what if this?

And we hang up from that meeting, he calls me the next day and says, dude, you are serious about this. All of the questions were about putting him in a situation. What would you do if you saw Andrew doing this or that or this?

And the board wanted to know that he actually was going to correct me if he thought that he saw things. That was like the big thing they were grading him on or voting on him for. He was blown away by that, that we take it serious.

Don't always agree with everyone in the board, but I don't want to be surrounded by yes men.

You have to know what to do in a situation like that. And I think a lot of people know what to do, which should be done anyway, but the willingness to do it is a completely separate matter.

You know what I mean?

People know that when you have a problem with somebody, as a Christian, you got to go to them and talk it out. People know that. It's very clear in the Bible, and it's just common sense too. You know what you should do, but that so rarely actually happens.

Having the willingness to do it and go to them and talk to them, even the first step of any kind of church discipline is so often just ignored, and people don't have the willingness to do that. Instead, they go behind the scenes and do various things and undermine people.

That happens when you think you're above it. You think you're above it. You're too good for that. How could this nobody challenge me?

You know what I mean?

You think that you're above that first basic thing. That's really good that you have that as a requirement because yeah, people know what to do, but the willingness to do it is the key.

Yeah, because look, unfortunately what we see with ministries is like, I know for a fact I've had this happen where someone pulled some work that I did, and they're like, oh, well, someone came to us, someone we just trust explicitly, and yet that person never wanted and has no desire to get the full side of a story.

They have half a story that they got from a family member, and the family member I've never met, but they got that story, and it works. And now they're going around saying things. It's like, okay, so you're saying they have integrity, they're explicit, but yet they haven't checked their homework.

And it's like, oh, well, we're not interested in doing that. We don't have time. Well, if you don't have time, then you shouldn't take any actions, right?

I recently, and I can't divulge the details of this, but I recently helped broker a conversation between two guys that had, they hadn't talked in three years, and there was all this conflict in between them.

And there's a couple of reasons why this conversation never happened. But anyway, I was able to sort of broker this conversation to happen. And you know what? Everyone there was a Christian. And so guess what happened when they finally talked?

It got solved pretty quickly too. I mean, maybe not as quick as people would have liked, but it got solved, and it got, and everyone kind of realized, there were some things that I didn't know before that I can see your perspective now, and things like that.

And I think sometimes these ministries that you're talking about that kind of create these controversies in order to grow, I think sometimes that the reason these conversations don't happen is, number one, they think they're too great.

They're not over themselves. But number two, they're worried it's gonna get solved. They're worried. They don't want it to get solved, you know? There's some kind of perceived benefit there. And it's always just a perceived benefit.

There really isn't an actual benefit. It's just the perception of a benefit. So anyway, I think like in my case, it's my biological brother. That's my key guy, right? But there's other guys in my life too.

Like my pastors, for example, have zero problem pulling me aside and things like that. And they have before, you know, to talk things out. So I give them a lot of credit for that. They're good pastors.

And so the benefit of a biological brother, in my case, is that there's no temptation for me to think that my biological brother's out to get me. Because I know he's not. I mean, I've known him for 40 years, you know?

So like having a friend that they can come to you and attack something you're doing or saying, but you know they're not an enemy is so beneficial. And in the church, we should have tons of guys like that.

We know they don't have it out for me. They don't want bad things for me, but yet they're still confronting me. They're still attacking me about something that I'm doing. That's so helpful.

Why Short Accounts Matter

Let's take a very current example of this, right? With what you said. Just because someone says something wrong, you don't agree with whatever, if they've taught good things, we don't throw everything they've done out.

This is one of the complaints I've had with the handling of recently with Alistair Begg, right?

Sure.

He gives one bad advice.

Okay, and if 40 years, if like that's the only thing, then that would be really, really good, right? I mean, so you look at this and say, but there's people, I mean, I was shocked how many people are doubting his salvation over this.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm going, guys, like, chill, right?

I really hope that's not the standard that's going to be used on me.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Because I look at that, and you had a really good point about the bitterness. I think so few people understand how the bitterness ends up creeping in. And really, bitterness just stunts a Christian's growth.

Whenever that bitterness starts, you stopped growing at that point, because all you're thinking about, oh, this person, he's so bad. And meanwhile, and I've had this happen. I had a brother come to me in church, in my church.

He came three years after an event occurred to ask my forgiveness. He had been holding a grudge against something. What it was was that I became a deacon. And at the time, I was like, I was 23, 24 years old, and I became a deacon.

He was in his 30s. And he thought that somehow I was too young to be a deacon. He held a grudge because the church voted for me over him. And for three years, and everything that happened in church, he thought I was doing it because I was rubbing it in his face.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And meanwhile, I had no clue there was... Like when he brought it up, I'm like, oh, I was like, brother, I'm sorry that you were going through this. He's like, but you were thinking of it. I'm like, no, actually, I never gave it a second thought.

It shocked him that I wasn't thinking about it because he was, and he thought I always was, because he was. So bitterness is like this funny thing that it plays on us where we really get stuck in a past event, and forgiveness is the solution, but there's so many people that either, like you brought up, some ministries, these discernment ministries, I'm using air quotes, right?

These discernment ministries that say, oh, we do discernment, and yet they're not really very discerning because they don't focus on the fact that, you know, they'll cut corners and say things they know, man, might not be true, or they know it's not true just so that they could get attention.

And it's a thing where that behavior is something that I think in certain groups, like you pointed out, they don't want to get the problem fixed because if the problem gets fixed, it reveals that they might be, what's that word that Fonzie from Happy Days had a hard time saying?

Wrong. Right? Okay.

Happy Days.

Hey, my audience is just boggled that I actually got a pop culture reference. I had a guy that he wants me to wear a t-shirt on Apologetics Live that says, I don't get your movie reference, but hey, you just got a pop culture reference from the 80s.

That's about as pop culture as I could get. But what follows up with this is really your second point and your message was that we should not get defensive. And they really play hand in hand. Why, like, if we're going to be cheerful in tackling the cultural issues and doing ministry, why is it important not to get defensive?

I think getting defensive, so this is one of those things, right? If you get over yourself, you won't get defensive because someone calls me a racist. I don't care anymore. I used to. I don't anymore.

I don't get defensive over it. And here's the thing about being defensive. Oftentimes, people that are your detractors, they call you outlandish things just to get you on record denying it, right? And so they want you to be out there.

They don't expect you to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a racist. You know, they don't expect that. That's not why they said it. They said it so that you defend yourself from the charge of being a racist.

And this is twisted, but this is how it works out there. You know, pagans do this all the time. And what they want is for there to be many examples of you defending yourself against a certain charge that's outlandish, right?

If there's some truth to it, of course, you got to defend yourself. But if there's no truth to it, you got to get over yourself. I'm not above being slandered in this way. When you get defensive, it gets to the point when there's enough of this, it's like people that aren't really paying attention.

They're like, well, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire. I mean, he wouldn't be being called a racist if he wasn't one.

And look at him here.

He's defending himself. He's obviously taking this very seriously. I think getting defensive is what they hope you will do when they call you something outlandish, right? And so I think nobody, I'll never forget this one for my whole life.

You know, you know, Dr. White. Dr. White was accused of being a racist long before. It was cool to accuse people of being a racist because of some comment he made.

I don't remember.

It doesn't even matter because it was all preposterous. And so what he did was he fired up his YouTube channel and he got a bow tie on and everything. And he made like a two hour episode about why he wasn't a racist.

And it was great. I mean, he obviously isn't a racist, but it was fine. All the information was fine. But that doesn't do anything for you.

You know what I mean?

It really doesn't. Because it's not like your detractors are going to say, oh, I guess we were wrong about Dr. White. They're just going to say that's exactly what a racist would do.

You know what I mean? They're crazy.

So I'm not saying that Dr. White was getting defensive there. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. I'm not making any determination on that. But I would prefer if it was me that was being accused of being a racist, which again has never happened.

I would just laugh about it or ignore it. You can laugh or ignore it. Or I guess you could defend yourself if you want. But the thing is like when you laugh about it, your detractors are just going to get, they hate you no matter what.

So it doesn't matter. And your followers and the people that aren't really paying much attention, they're just going to be like, oh, this is preposterous. Just like every other accusation of racism I've heard in the last 10 years.

And I think that cheerful attitude about it is strategically, I think more beneficial these days than the very staunch, like I'm going to write, you know, a hundred, you know, a thousand words on why I'm not a racist.

I think strategically more often than not being cheerful about it and just kind of chuckling it off or ignoring it is usually the best course of action. Andrew, the other day is maybe a year ago at this point, some wacko on the internet said that I was an anti-Semite.

And the reason why I was an anti-Semite, a covert anti-Semite. And the reason why is because I had shared a meme on Easter with Hulk Hogan in it. And Hulk Hogan is a code for Heil Hitler, apparently.

And so anyway, that might be true. I have no idea. I was just sharing a meme with Hulk Hogan, you know? So I had two choices. Once I had this accusation, I could get really defensive over it, or I could just be like, this is a wacko.

Let's have a little fun with this. That's what I did. And I think strategically, like less people took it seriously than would have. If I said, well, here's why, you know, I had a Jewish friend and I'm talking to Andrew here and, you know what I mean?

Like, I list 10 reasons why I'm not an anti-Semite. So I don't know. I think I and also I think this does wonders for yourself too, because, you know, there's no truth to it. You know, there's nothing there.

Someone's just slandered you in a way designed to try to destroy you. And I think when you take it all seriously and get all bothered by it, that takes a lot of effort. That's painful, I think. I think when I just laughed about it, it was over in five seconds.

This guy still, of course, thinks I'm an anti-Semite, but I don't care because he's just a wacko on the internet. It's different though, Andrew, too. Like if somebody from my church said, hey, I saw you share this meme and I'm a little concerned that you're a covert anti-Semite.

I talked to him because this is someone in my real life. I talked to him, you know what I mean? But the internet, I think oftentimes it's different than interpersonal relationships. And I think the way you handle things on the internet sometimes doesn't line up with the way you would handle it if it was my brother that came to me, or you, or someone that I knew a little bit, you know what I mean?