Death to Life podcast
#10 Navigating Parenthood, Faith, and Unexpected Grace: The Justin Khoe Story
Summary:Join us on the Death to Life podcast as we dive into the captivating journey of Justin Koo. From his touching experiences as a new father dealing with cultural parenting differences to his profound spiritual evolution, Justin's story is one of growth, struggle, and transformation. Listen in as he shares personal insights on parenting, battles with religious expectations, and a perspective-shifting encounter while riding his electric skateboard. This episode is a testament to Justin’s inspiring journey from death to life.
View more resources on our website!
TimeStamps:
0:00 - Parenting Perspectives and Emotions
12:06 - Parenting Styles and Cultural Frameworks
24:21 - Spiritual Experience and Feelings of Inadequacy
30:50 - High School to Spiritual Transformation
41:49 - Navigating Religious Expectations and Personal Transformation
54:38 - Identity Crisis and Overcoming Depression
1:05:02 - Casey Neistat Fan Attacked, Finds Grace
1:12:43 - Discovering Grace and Forgiveness
1:26:16 - Transition From 'My Christian Vlogger
Keywords: Parenthood, Transformation, Spiritual Awakening, Justin Khoe, Journey, Renewal, Navigating, Personal Growth, Faith, Unexpected Grace, Podcast Episode, Discovery.
Looking for discipleship and fellowship? Join a Circle at lovereality.org/circles
Summary:Join us on the Death to Life podcast as we dive into the captivating journey of Justin Koo. From his touching experiences as a new father dealing with cultural parenting differences to his profound spiritual evolution, Justin's story is one of growth, struggle, and transformation. Listen in as he shares personal insights on parenting, battles with religious expectations, and a perspective-shifting encounter while riding his electric skateboard. This episode is a testament to Justin’s inspiring journey from death to life.
View more resources on our website!
TimeStamps:
0:00 - Parenting Perspectives and Emotions
12:06 - Parenting Styles and Cultural Frameworks
24:21 - Spiritual Experience and Feelings of Inadequacy
30:50 - High School to Spiritual Transformation
41:49 - Navigating Religious Expectations and Personal Transformation
54:38 - Identity Crisis and Overcoming Depression
1:05:02 - Casey Neistat Fan Attacked, Finds Grace
1:12:43 - Discovering Grace and Forgiveness
1:26:16 - Transition From 'My Christian Vlogger
Keywords: Parenthood, Transformation, Spiritual Awakening, Justin Khoe, Journey, Renewal, Navigating, Personal Growth, Faith, Unexpected Grace, Podcast Episode, Discovery.
Looking for discipleship and fellowship? Join a Circle at lovereality.org/circles
Are we starting the?
Speaker 2:podcast now or oh we've been on the podcast, my brother Yo. Welcome to the Death to Life podcast. My name is Richard Young and today's episode is a conversation with my guy, justin Koo. Justin Koo has a lot of stuff going on. He has a YouTube channel called I'm Listening where he interviews a bunch of different people that really just have different views that he does. He used to be the that Christian vlogger guy but now he's the I'm Listening guy. He is a host of the Free Flow show. He did a like a 60 to 70 episode podcast on the book of Romans with Jonathan Leonardo called the Move. He's a jet setter. He's all around the country just speaking on telling stories and listening, but I know him as just my friend that I got to know a little bit last year and his story has got some stuff that I'm really excited that you get to hear about. So, yeah, enjoy this, be blessed by this episode with Justin Koo. Appreciate y'all, love y'all. Okay, so let me answer this question and I was putting myself in your position a couple about eight years ago. And it's what is she? She's 30 weeks, or maybe that's somebody else who's 30 weeks.
Speaker 1:She's 20, 20 weeks, she's halfway, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Tony weeks my friend. My other friend is 30 weeks, so 20 weeks halfway through. What are the feelings right now, like, how are you feeling about this whole thing?
Speaker 1:I'm feeling good. This last week was kind of like the very beginning of it starting to feel real. So when Emily had the first ultrasound, I was in Washington DC or something like that it's pretty far away on a work trip. And then the second doctor's office. It was weak, I mean, it was like we didn't really have an ultrasound so I didn't get to see anything. It was just like they monitored the heart rate so I got to hear the heart rate of the baby, but it's just like it doesn't sound like anything. But this last week for the for the doctor's visit, they did like a really thorough ultrasound and actually just released a video about it. We got to see like the actual baby and see it moving and like there's this moment where they were zooming in on, like the ultrasound was coming in, like from the feet, like the bottom of the feet. And then like here are the toes. And you just see, like this hand come and like grab its toes and I was like, oh snap, like that's freaking cool. I was like this baby is real, this baby is alive and it's like an actual thing that's happening. And so, yeah man, so yeah man. I mean this week it's kind of it's kind of become a little bit more real.
Speaker 2:I think, like most people are like me, I think most people think like this and then you realize, oh, these people are not like me. So I'm going to tell you how I felt and then you tell me how exactly you're not like me. I think that for, I'll say, for guys, for rich, it was hard to develop a relationship with the ultrasound and even the baby in the belly and I didn't really get an attachment. Like when she was born and I was holding her. I was like, oh, this is cool. But for the first couple of years we were on like this strict routine and I was. If it wasn't for that routine, I would have. I don't know what I would have done, but I was just keeping her alive because Natalie was still working to after after she went back. But I didn't really develop a relationship with the child until maybe one and a half or two. And I'm wondering are you finding it Okay because she's developing a relationship with this baby, because it's in her Right and right when the baby's born she's still. She would have had this long experience with this child and you are having your first experience with the child. Are you finding it hard to connect that, or is it just like no? I think that that makes sense to me.
Speaker 1:No, it makes sense to me. Also, I'm not like a super, I'm not really in touch with my emotions if, like you know, that's one way to put it.
Speaker 2:Maybe you are.
Speaker 1:I don't get amped. Oh, I get excited, like the emotion that I feel is happiness and joy, but aside from that, like those other emotions don't really process well for whatever reason. Actually, as part of my story and I was actually thinking about it this week there's, I think I think there's connections as to why and all that, but when we get there, we get there, but the idea is like it takes a lot for me to feel moved, and this is I've just known this to be true in many stages of my life. For example, this past summer, my grandmother passed away. It wasn't a thoroughly emotional experience, though I was close to my grandmother, it was kind of like oh, you know, grandma passed away. Like that sucks, Okay, you know, like life hits me very matter of fact oftentimes, and so I'm not even really expecting to feel how the movies portray men oftentimes feel whether that's overwhelmed or excited or whatever whenever, when, like they have a child. I would like if I, if I have that moment when I first hold the baby, like cool. But I also wouldn't be surprised if I didn't have that Like just looking back on my life, marriage wasn't one of those things like standing at the altar saying I do, it was cool, like I was happy and like it's a, it's a very important thing to me, but it wasn't like this oh Justin, are you going to cry at the altar? Like no, Like why would I cry? That doesn't make any sense. Like that's this kind of how I go about life and process emotions, and so there's a lot of that when it comes to even the baby too.
Speaker 2:But there's so much pressure now put on by either our culture or media movies that you're supposed to be a specific way if you're a good dad, quote, unquote like you're supposed to feel a certain way and act a certain way. And I'm just, I feel like maybe we are similar because I. I didn't bend to that at all. I'm just like, yeah, I love this baby, but when I thought about the baby, I wanted to get past the baby stage, like I feel similar, I know that cool, like it's just like it was very difficult and I'm not good at that stuff. Like I said, the routine kept it alive and so I was able to keep her alive, but it wasn't enjoyable, outside of the fact that, oh, I love this human being, sure. And.
Speaker 1:I feel like that resonates with the way I'm seeing things now. Emily is really excited for like the zero to three. I'm like super excited for like five onward. I want it to be able to talk and to think and to do things with it. You know all that kind of stuff Wiping its butt. Not super interested. You know, bottle feeding it, like, whatever Like. I don't think. I'm really built for that and maybe that changes. Maybe I find out like I love it and if I do, great. But I also wouldn't be surprised if I don't.
Speaker 2:No, man, when I was yeah, when we were pregnant and I was thinking about the kid, I was not. I was thinking about when they're nine, oh, and we'll go to the chief's game, or, oh, I can show her stars 100%, 100%, 100%.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't like oh well, you're getting there now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, last week we. I'm going to show her ET this weekend. Just like seven is a good age for ET, Maybe not. Maybe I'll be watching it with her and I'll be like oh, there's some stuff in this movie that I didn't remember in here and I remember being afraid of ET at one point.
Speaker 1:I remember like at some point being afraid of something that happened, but I mean yeah, man.
Speaker 2:So when you're thinking of the child and then you're going back and you're thinking about your childhood and you're thinking about how you learned and how you grew and even what you learned about God, what are some things that you're thinking? I'm not going to talk about it this way and I'm not going to talk about it that way and it's kind of a segue into, like, how you grew up and things that you believed and what you're thinking about.
Speaker 1:Are we in the podcast now? Is this podcast talk? Are we still?
Speaker 2:just talking. We've been in the podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is the podcast, okay.
Speaker 3:I don't know man. This is the life with Richard yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that and I don't know if that's like naive of me and I really ought to be. Like I got to come up with a game plan, but I don't look at raising a kid right now. On this side of things Like this is completely ignorance speaking. But I don't look at it as a static thing. So I'll give you an example. Like my parents are divorced and I have a half sister on each side, so I'm the oldest of five me, my brother, my sister from my parents. Okay. They got divorced. I have a half sister on each side and I get to watch how my parents parent my half siblings, and especially with, like, my dad. My dad was trying to figure things out as a father and we'll openly admit to my face, justin, we made all of our mistakes on you. I'm like thanks, dad. That makes me feel fantastic and like. So I get to observe the difference in parenting styles and I think early on that it was something that I felt resentful of because they were really hard on me in many ways like just heavy handed in more ways than one, and so like when I think about my default predisposition, like that's obviously what I default to because it's what I'm used to, and then I get to witness that not being the case with my siblings, and then I get to witness this through living in proximity to Emily's family. That's certainly not the way that her Caucasian American kind of cultural framework, it's not the same as the Asian American framework, and so it's been both like really challenging to think well, what do we do? Like what's right then, because even what I'm used to doesn't always feel right, like you're saying, like you're predicating the question with well, what are you going to do differently? As though you assume that there were things that were done wrong, which are very likely the case. But even if they did things quote unquote right, there's also the right way that my wife was raised, and I think I'm in an Instagram post about this a while back. It's like this idea that cultures and families are very, very, very similar. Very few cultures, very few families want to raise their kids with disrespect towards elders, a lack of a work ethic, you know, lack of integrity. No, like. Everyone wants their kids to be honest, they want them to be hardworking, they want to be respectful, but the way that they even interpret the value is very different culture to culture and family to family, if not even child to child, and more specifically, the way they try and rear or develop this trait is very different from child to child. So to me, it's like highlighting the fault in attempting to, before I even know my child, come up with a framework of how I'm going to raise my child. Hmm. I don't see successful parenting as being a static thing based off of rules and principles as much as I do seeing it as, like this living, adaptable and malleable thing. That's done in direct, like unison with the child, and it takes a little bit more paying attention. It takes a little bit more thinking. It's certainly not the easiest thing, because every child's going to be different, and so that's why, like right now, I'm giving myself the pass and not really thinking about how I'm going to parent. Like this is the reason why I don't have an idea. But, my solution is like well, if God's the ultimate parents and he's truly living in me and teaching me, I believe that he's going to teach me how to parent a specific, a specific child, not to quote unquote be a good parents. Like that fits a model, because it might be that my dad's parenting style will be terrible for my first born but great for my second or third born, and it might be that Emily's parenting styles might be terrible for the second and third child, like, but you see what I'm saying, it's dynamic, it's not like a singular thing Good parenting is not a singular thing in my mind right now.
Speaker 2:Man that brings up so many things. Somebody just asked me this was last night about how what's parenting and freedom like? And I was thinking about that because so much of the time we know things don't work, yet we do them anyway. And this this guy I work with was telling me about how how he doesn't accept participation trophies for his kid. He's like oh man, my kid won this or his team was horrible. They lost all this. And then they got the participation trophies and right when they handed his, I took it and I threw it in the trash. Oh yeah, he's like this is why we don't do this. And I was just like listening and I was trying to act like I wasn't horrified because he did it in front of a whole group of people. If you would have done that in private, I would have been a little cooler with it, but he did it in front of, like, all the other parents who were like championing their kids getting these participation trophies. And then we go in a little bit deeper and I'm like, bro, you seem like you're a little angry. Can we talk about, like, like the people? Why are you like this? And he started describing his parents and how his dad and mom were just super hard on him and I was like, was that a good thing? He's like no man. It's made me like super resentful and I'm thinking like he doesn't get it. He's telling me about this thing and he doesn't realize that's why he is the way he is with his boy. But the reason why he's so hard on his boy is because his parents were hard on him, yet he knows that it caused this resentfulness in his life. But he hasn't put the two together and he doesn't understand that. It's going to create the same resentfulness, like his son might learn, like this toughness, and he might grow up to be this tough, tough guy who throws participation trophies in the trash and you don't you didn't earn it and then at the same time, be completely resentful to the person who taught him how to live that way, because we know something doesn't work, but yet that's all we know sometimes, and so we go back to it, yeah, and so they asked me what's it like parenting and freedom? And I've parented before freedom and I parented after freedom, and I guess my answer was just like it's actually about what's best for the kid, it's not what's best for your reputation, it's not what's best for how you see yourself, because sometimes you parent because that's how you are as a parent and not because that's what that kid needs to hear.
Speaker 1:You know this is like one of the never mentioned benefits of your parents being divorced. There's a lot of trauma involved in that process and I know for a lot of my peers who have been through something similar it's probably like even more traumatic. You know from stories that I've heard. But one of these silver linings is you now actually get to see two different parenting models and as a child that's like really, you know cognitive dissonance. It's like like what do I do, what is working and what's not, and it's a really challenging thing as a child. But growing up to be an adult now it's like I actually got to see three, four, five different parenting styles and there's parts of certain things that I really appreciate and parts of certain things that I don't. And so you know you grow up in a family where your parents were married. You know when they had you and have always been married and they'll always been on the same page. You know that's great and I think the statistics would bear out that that's, on average, better than not. But it also means that you only have one worldview and stepping outside of that is really tough. Who?
Speaker 2:are you telling man that's, that's I. When, when I first got married, I was like there's only one way and there's only one successful way, and it's the way my parents did it and I love my parents to death and they're amazing parents, but because of what you're talking about, that's the only way that I saw things to be done.
Speaker 1:And don't we do this with so many other aspects of our life, though, like it makes sense in parenting when I when I talk about it in this way. But with religion, to like with Adventism, adventism must be a very specific thing and depending on what part of the country or what part of the world you grew up, it might look different. Like your observance of Sabbath might be implemented differently by your family. And the problem that we do, the problem is oftentimes that we we we project our version of religion onto other people and because of an insecurity and maybe because a lack of freedom, we then think if other people aren't doing religion like we're doing it, then they're wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can be. You can grow up in Maine and then end up in medical school in Southern California and you could say what is going on with these people? And then you can grow up in Southern California and get a medical practice in Maine and you would say the same exact thing. Because it isn't. It isn't your where you grew up. It's kind of that's the way you do it and there's in it's different, moving from east to west and west to east it's. But you're right, we hold on to that. Maybe that's not it.
Speaker 1:Maybe, maybe it's not, yeah, yeah, but this is why, like, religion can become such a tumultuous thing is because we're so insecure about just letting someone be and let them be stewarded by the Holy Spirit. Like, I think this is one of the things that freedom has taught me now is that, like, not everyone has to look like me, not everyone has to live like me. It doesn't have to be the same thing. It's actually entirely possible for God to be leading them and guiding them and for their lived faith expression to be vastly different from mine, and that's okay. It doesn't actually mean that what they have is less real or what I have is less real.
Speaker 2:So why are we insecure about it? Why are we?
Speaker 1:insecure is because we oftentimes look to other people to confirm that we're in. Like, like I'm good, right, like I'm good. And you kind of like, look around, you, look to your left I'm good, right. And you're like kind of like eyes lock eyes with your friend, like I'm good, yeah, nod your head, yeah, you're good, oh, you're good, oh, yeah, I'm good. And like, as long as I look like the crowd, as long as I'm doing all the things that people are doing, then I feel good. But this is the challenge of like not actually understanding your true identity. Because if your identity is based off of your comparison with other people, well, it's great as long as you fit in. But then you go home and you realize, no, that's actually not how I live, that's actually not who I really view myself as Like. Then this is where insecurity and the imposter syndrome starts to creep in, this idea of like, oh, I'm, I'm the odd person out in this, in this church or in this classroom, or, fill in the blank, it's because we're constantly looking to the left and to the right, measuring ourselves against other people.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about what your identity was then growing up. When did you start developing what you thought was your identity?
Speaker 1:So I've been thinking about this over the last week. One. One of the most profound experiences that I had and maybe my one of my, no, my first like real spiritual experience was when I was in I want to say it was like the fifth grade. I had a teacher that just made the Bible come alive and it was just this exciting and beautiful thing and I finally get baptized. You know as kind of everyone, everyone in my class did, and actually there's how long form is this Like?
Speaker 2:how long like we go and stop going, you see the timeline on some of these Morgan was like two and a half hours, beebees was two and 15. I don't, if people are going to listen to this, they're going to listen to it. If not, then they can All right, I have no burden.
Speaker 1:Okay cool, because I'm uses telling my testimony like 15 minute chunks. because, like you, know you give a worship or a sermon or whatever it's like. Stay on the time. That's not. This is not that Okay. So I'll tell you the funny backstory of it. I was in class. I was always that kid who, like, was either my desk, was in the corner or directly across from the quiet kid, because I was always wild and out, I was always distracted just doing my own thing. And so one day I'm distracted as can be and I look around the classroom and, like, all my classmates are raising their hand now. So, of course, well, what do you do? Any logical person, you put your hand up there as well. And it turns out the principal was standing by the front door with like a clipboard or something like that, taking down names of kids who had raised their hands. As it turns out, what the question was prior to people raising their hand was how many of you guys would like to get baptized and do baptismal studies. So I'm like, oh, yeah, for sure. So I find myself in these like weekly Bible studies in the fifth grade, but like I didn't want to be there, I didn't care at that time, right? So I literally, because like they would do like the lessons and then they would do a quiz after every lesson to make sure you got the lesson down, pat, I literally cheated my way through baptismal classes. Let's go Like. I'm copying answers off my neighbor. It's just like. So I find myself getting baptized this one day and like cool it was, whatever. Like you know, I'll tell you you're in the baptismal. You're like what's going on.
Speaker 2:I guess I'm bro, bro.
Speaker 1:So, like me and like five other of my classmates, we got baptized on the same day in the same church. It's a massive church in Southern California, vallejo Drive, sanctiadena's Church. It's one of the larger churches in the conference there and I was the first of my friends to get baptized. So I get in the, in the, the baptistery, and I'm remembering my mom's story when she got baptized. She was telling me her story. It was like super cold water. So, like, the thing that I'm worried about is like, is the water going to be cold, is it going to be warm? Or what Turns out they had heated the water. So I'm like, oh, this is actually really dope. I get baptized and that was cool. But rather than have like me, go in, get baptized, go out. Next person comes in. They thought it would be cool for all of us to stay in the tank while our friends were getting baptized. So I was the first one. Then my friend comes in and she gets baptized, but I'm so absent minded and so distracted I have ADD ADHD, if you like. If it doesn't come across clearly I get so distracted I forget where I am and I'm like dropping my head under the water. I'm like blowing bubbles. I'm like starting to swim around in the baptistery like as the baptism is taking place, like I'm just not there for the right. I cheated my way through baptism classes like just clearly not supposed to be doing this. This is not a big moment in my life. So that afternoon we leave the church and I'm driving home with my family, with my I think it was my dad or mom or whoever it was and on the way home I'm picking on my brother, my brother's, two years younger than me. You know there's a I'm sure there's a million and one stories that he could tell of me like being a punk and just like picking on them all the time. And one of my parents basically turns around and like, calls me out and is like, dude, justin, like you just got baptized, like and you're already picking on your brother, like if you're going to be serious about this whole Jesus thing, like you can't be picking on your brother.
Speaker 2:Mercy.
Speaker 1:Totally reasonable thing to say, I think, like I don't think that there's any reason to think that that would cause lasting shame and guilt and like identity issues. But this is exactly what happened, mercy. From from the moment I'm driving home from church, I start to view myself as not good enough, like I'm not good enough to be baptized, I'm not good enough to consider myself a Christian, I'm not good enough to really do this whole thing because, man, I already screwed up and it's been 10 minutes and little did I know that this would color the way that I perceived God so much. I mean, you throw the challenges of being the firstborn. I was not only the first born in my family, but I was the first born of my generation on my mom's side. You add the complexity of the honor and shame culture you know of Asian immigrants. You know the pressure to perform in school. Like there's like this massive burden placed on Asian American kids, maybe heavier for the firstborn, heavier if you're male, like the whole thing is just like heaped on my shoulders and this resounding message comes through through many times in my, my upbringing that I'm not good enough, that I don't, I don't perform well enough and in fact, like that's an explicit message when report cards come home or fill in the blank. It's just this resounding like you try hard. Maybe you could have tried a little bit harder, but even then like you're not good enough, you're not measuring up and I'm not measuring up and I would, I guess, kind of impose that frame of mind to everything in life, including my walk with God.
Speaker 2:Wow. So from the beginning your parents didn't mean to do this, obviously, oh of course, of course. They heard this. If they're listening to this podcast, they'd probably be Hi, mom, my dad, not happy Because nobody wants to do that Of course. So how did that manifest itself? Like in your actions or in your? Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know I guess I mentioned earlier like imposter syndrome. I felt I felt like that a lot in my life, trying to keep up a facade that life was going good, but deep down really being unhappy with the way life was going.
Speaker 2:And like how did you do the facade. Well, what did you do to keep up that facade?
Speaker 1:Well, like you're sold a story of what makes you happy, right, and in high school the story oftentimes looks something like oh, play on a sports scene. Oh, get a girlfriend. Like, oh, do well, enough on school, go have fun, be part of the cool crowd. Like that whole narrative was was one that I had bought into, and I guess part of the problem was is that even if you have a version of that, it's still deeply on. You're still deeply dissatisfied even in the middle of all that. You know, and I found that to be. I found that to be the case and you know, I remember one year I think it was like my junior year of high school one of the ways that I'm trying to seek the approval of people is, you know, by by being one of the funny guys or whatever the case. And I remember actively thinking and observing one of my friends who it seemed like everyone really loved and liked, and you know he was really funny and I was like studying the guy in class, like what is he saying that's causing people to laugh and how do I emulate that? So I could be liked and I can. You know all these things and I started to realize that, oh, he makes a lot of jokes and kind of teases people and that's why people laugh and it's a funny thing. And so I started like trying this out for myself and I start like really you know, joking with people and teasing people, and I started noticed the more extreme that the jokes got, generally speaking, the more you allowed the laughs were. But I didn't realize in high school how do you realize that the laughs are more of a defense mechanism, like if I laugh, maybe that guy won't pick on me, as opposed to like oh, that's just an actually funny joke. And so what I found myself doing is just like really being a dick to people, hmm, like I was a jerk to so many people, and out of this attempt to be accepted by my peers, hmm, and like the very thing that I'm wanting, I found myself kind of like working against it hmm, so when, when that wasn't working out, you're still, you know, you know what doesn't work, subconsciously, but you're still trying it and it's not working.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you ever come to a point where you matured and you were comfortable, but you still kind of were just living with it? Because I'll just how I'm seeing this is I, how I've come across you and we haven't known each other for too long, but you have this long footprint on the internet and at some point I'm thinking that you had to get comfortable to start doing all of this stuff, or now your world your worldview was changing and you became the spiritual guy on the internet. How did? We go from junior year to spiritual guy on the internet yeah, so that.
Speaker 1:So my senior year of high school still kind of chasing the scene, trying to be in with people and I remember during study hall one day, overhearing some of my friends talking about what they were doing last Friday night and they were just using words oh man, so much fun, I can't wait, like they're just like talking it up, and this was normally the crowd that on Friday nights we would do poker nights and we'd you know, we'd all hang out, eat, you know whatever, just have a good time and whatever. So I'm thinking that they're playing poker and I'm, of course, I'm gonna try and like wiggle my way in, like get invited to the next game or whatever, because you know something I enjoyed doing. The story that they had told was that they were driving to the location and on the way back this is so stupid, but this is literally what appealed to me at that time. The driver had a pull over on the freeway because one of the passengers had farted in the car and it was so rank that the driver pulled over on the freeway so he gets throw up because it was so rank. Goodness, just like stupid high school things, right, like typical high school boys. I thought it was hilarious and so I'm like jumping in the conversation. I'm like, yeah, yeah, let's go like whatever. Like I'm kind of like assuming that I'm in, I come to find out the thing that they're going to was Bible study. Huh, like totally caught off guard, did not think that this was what it was about. But you know, of course I'm down for whatever. And it turns out that the Bible study was like an hour away from our school, so we would drive one hour there, do the study, drive an hour back, and in my mind I'm like, well, minimum, that's two hours of like hanging out, like that's. That's got to be worth something so hold on.
Speaker 2:It's the principal coming in and you're not realizing.
Speaker 1:And then it's the fart joke that the Holy Spirit is using so I find myself in these Bible studies, right, and like they're cool, they're whatever. I definitely paid attention because it wasn't like this stale, old, crusty person who is giving a Bible study. I'm just like dude, like what are you doing? Like I remember thinking in in high school like religion was for the stupid, the ugly or the dumb you know, like it's just the kind of thing that you use to medicate your life if you don't have things going on. But of course that's not for me, because my life is great, can't you tell? And of course I'm not actually happy. So I started going these Bible studies and the guy who's leading it out as a young dude, like he had it been in his 20s at the time and like this guy's got his life together. He seems intelligent, he seems successful and I'm just like man this is. It was the first time I had seen like faith modeled by a young person in a way that was like that's vaguely attractive, like that looks kind of cool. And so we'd come back week after week to the study hall and we would try to come up with the most absurd questions that we could think of, because after every Bible study that you would have a planned lesson or whatever oh, we're gonna study the mark of the beast, you know, whatever after the study he just like all right, whatever questions you got about, anything like have at it. And this was my favorite part about the study, because it was just like this pursuit of knowledge. And I think that this was this was what was attractive to me about this individual is that this guy had a command of a subject that seemed taboo for someone of his age, and so when we would throw out random questions like our goal literally was just come up with a random question that would stump the guy so you wouldn't have an answer. And yet every time we asked him a question, you'd be like great question, he'd like take it at face value. You'd open up the Bible and be like bam, see right here at this verse, and he'd read it out and, sure enough, it would be relevant to the question. Like dang, this guy's like a freaking walking encyclopedia. This is kind of kind of cool and it's like this whole ego play is like this guy knows stuff, like he's got the in. So we would do this, you know, for however many like towards, like throughout to the end of the year. Towards the end of the year, we had like a like a spring formal or something along those lines, like it's like prom, but Adventists, you know, and we I remember we were on a boat or something like that, all dressed up in like tuxedos and dresses and stuff like that, and there's another group of friends in a circle talking about what I from what I can tell, from what I can overhear, their plans for the summer and they're using like, oh, it's gonna be, I can't wait, it's gonna be so much fun, man, you guys gonna have a blast like yada, yada, yada. And I'm like, dude, all right, people got plans for the summer. We're gonna go out of high school. You know it's gonna be fun. So I throw myself in the middle of the conversation. I'm like, yeah, I'm down again, like kind of like assuming that I'm part of this thing turns out what they were talking about. There were two people there who the previous summer had gone canvassing. I knew it. Now you know what canvassing is, but you know it's. It's think of Mormons, think of Jehovah's Witnesses. They go door to door every day trying to like sign people up for bible studies or to preach the gospel or whatever. The case is Adventist. We have a version of this where we go door to door and we sell Christian books, literature, evangelism, literature, evangelism. And I threw myself into this conversation not knowing what it was about. Again, it's this, this kind of same theme, right? I'm like, yeah, let's go, let's go. So, sure enough, I get into the program the day after my graduation. I show up at this church, in the middle of nowhere in this facility, expecting to see like six or seven of my friends who are all like, yeah, we're about it, like let's go, and no one showed up. From that, in the immediate circle of friends, turns out there was like one or two other guys that we like weren't part of that conversation who showed up, but like not at all what I was thinking. But you know, of course I can't be a quitter, I can't do all like you know, just the shame of starting something and not finishing it. So I'm like, alright, screw it, I didn't have summer plans anyways, needed a job, I'll do this anyways. In the middle that summer, something happened, man, something clicked and and God became real in in a really powerful way and I realized, oh, this is, this is actually some version of this is what I want to do with my life.
Speaker 3:I was do you know? I told you like what I clicked?
Speaker 1:it's just I had purpose. For the first time my life had meaning outside of my own pursuit of happiness. You know, one of the questions that I was asked all the time growing up is like it's not even like oh, what are you going to be when you grow up? And like it felt like the pressure was and I don't think that my parents ever explicit no, this is not true. My dad didn't explicitly say this like he wanted me to be a dentist, my dad's a dentist, my mom's a teacher. The only way out in in like Asian culture is like you're a doctor or you're going to be a pastor or a teacher like it. There were very few alternatives and so it's like I was kind of groomed from the very beginning my dad's mind to be the eldest son who would take over the business. But I hated science class, like I literally cheated my way through every science class since like the seventh grade, except for physics, because physics had math and I happened to be good at math really stereotypical, but also happens to be true in my story and people would ask what are you going to do? And I just figured I knew this about my life, that that, no matter what I would do, I would be miserable, that there was nothing that I could think of in life that I really actually enjoyed, aside from, like, let's call it, video games. But you know, twitch wasn't a thing at the time, like that, that was not a career path. So I remember thinking like, oh, I'll be a dentist because if I'm miserable, at least I'll have money, and that was my only consolation. I resigned to myself, to a future that was very unhappy. So I'm in the summer program and, for whatever reason, I have this deep sense of purpose now that, wow, like, god's real, like, he like. These were the conclusions that during this first summer, these were the conclusions that during this first summer, god's real like and I play a part in this grand story and it's this amazing thing, and so, yeah, so I decided that that's what my life's going to be about. That was the summer of 2007, and so I remember going to college, changing up my major, ended up studying pre-seminary, religious studies, religious studies, pre-sem, and kind of setting off on this new direction. I remember coming home from that summer, uh, and my parents are so worried about me they're like this dude's straight up in a cult because I was so radically different from who, who, who they sent off in that program was not who came back and it's kind of. It's kind of silly but it's very real. The thing that they realized like, oh, this isn't a phase like Justin goes through phases where he tries a new hobby or tries a new thing, but this is like lasting was when I came home and I'm like, no, I'm gonna be a vegetarian because, you know, I'm sure it's similar in your family but, like you know, we eat meat at every meal, like breakfast was. You know, if we ate breakfast, it's rice and meat. You know, that's what it felt like all the time and like I was not the kind of person that was health conscious or whatever. I come home, I'm gonna be a vegetarian. And they knew things were serious at that point. And uh, yeah, I don't know there's a lot. I remember my mom talking to one of her best friends whose husband was a pastor, and like she tried to get me to talk to him to try and kind of steer me straight, because she was really afraid like I'm just like super extremist or whatever the case is, but in my mind I was doing all these extreme things, taking stances on such small things like really straining at a net. You know about everything. So I came back if you know ultra conservative adventists like, have you, have you ever run across these kinds of people before? From time to time it's from time like I mean, I showed up to LaSierra University, bro, and every single day of that year I wore slacks and a button-up shirt with a tie as a freshman in college, except for Fridays because I figured, oh, I'd relax, and so I wore slacks and a collar polo shirt or whatever, because I had this religious belief, because this is kind of what I was indoctrinated with at the time. That dress reform was a thing that you know God's people needed, or whatever the kid you know. Like I come back with these extreme views on the health message and like I realized that if you're not Adventist, all this sounds very culty and it that's exactly what it is. It is very culty. But like I started pursuing all these things because it was a way for me to prove to myself that my life had changed you're.
Speaker 2:You're one of the people I just saw you interview. Actually, I'll tell you who it is later um had almost a similar experience where his senior year of high school he was. He maybe he was a little more crazy than from what you're describing, but then something happens in his life and he dropped everything. He dropped the basketball team and he was a really good basketball player. He dropped all and he started like heavy. One of my friends they say in Australia the very conservative Adventists are called heavy Sevies and like that's the only way I can describe it. That's genius. I love that. They went. He went, heavy Sevie and I'm thinking of you on Los Angeles campus dressed like that.
Speaker 1:And a heavy Sevie on Los Angeles campus I'm sure sticks out like that's so 100%, oh yeah and and so, yeah, there's something um that, but but you were saying your motives, your motives to dress like this, your motives to now, after the fact, you can look back at your motives and what exactly were they yeah, because my frame of work is, my frame of mind, is that like I need to perform so that I'm not like this odd person out, like I got to fit the bill, and so I knew what my life had looked like before and to really, in my own mind, settle the fact that God had changed my life, I needed to be able to point to certain things to show that my life had changed. My diet was different, my dress was different, the kinds of people that I hung out was different, the activities that I did were different, the music that I listened to was if like. All this was like evidence to me that I had changed, that God had changed my life, and the more rigid I was, the more extreme I was with these things, the more dramatic my change had been from God. And so when it, when it came to and I guess this kind of ties into our kind of preamble earlier about like parenting styles and religion it's like in order for me to successfully pass on whatever the thing that God had done in my life, it meant that they had to look like me as well, because how else does God work? He actually changes you in this very specific format and if you don't like live up to the standards that I have, then you didn't really change, or it means that my change is kind of meaningless. Hmm, wow, does that make sense? I mean, that's super weird. I I can't imagine. There's a lot of people out there who are gonna hear this episode that are like, yeah, yeah, I'm tracking with you, dude, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of people that would actually, oh yeah, okay, I don't think that they'd be listening to this episode, but if they are listening to this episode, um, no, but that's heavy that. Um, I think that would take a toll, right? What kind of a toll did it take?
Speaker 1:it was. It was rough, man. I remember that year of college there was a young lady that she and I started talking, became friends, became more than friends. But it was very weird because in this culture, like, did you ever grow up reading the book? I'm sure you did.
Speaker 2:Uh, I kissed dating goodbye it was a movement, bro, like at art school. It wasn't just a book it was a movement and it I'm sure it comes in waves, because the movement I mean, I'm older than you was about eight years or so before. Maybe you got this movement, yeah, but it was crazy. And then last year or two years ago he got divorced and so I don't know what to right and he's no longer a Christian.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, yeah, tell me about this. So, like I inherit this book from kind of my my mentors, if you will at the time, and I'm like this is dope, this is another way for me to do my life differently, to prove that you know that I've been changed or whatever, but it was really challenged because this, this girl that I was interested in at the time, like I'm, she loved Jesus, but she wasn't like down, down, like I was, with all this crazy stuff, right, and so I'm putting all this pressure on her to live a certain way, to act a certain way. I'm showing her sermons and Bible studies about why music with drums are evil and why she shouldn't do this or that or what are the cases. And imagine trying to navigate a conversation where you're trying to like, come clean, like, and of course you're doing this as, like you know, a child. That's already awkward. The conversation of like, hey, I like you, do you like me? Like what does that mean? Like there's that, that whole thing. But then also like, dating is evil and if, if we admit to having feelings for each other, the way that it was presented, the only alternative model was to like start with marriage as the intention right away from before our first date. Before we go on our first date, I have to talk to your mother and like be clear about my intention, like it was just like this whole thing and it was terrible it doesn't stand even realistic it's not and the pieces don't fit together. But I tried really hard to make them fit together.
Speaker 2:It did not work so that tickets like that's one way that it was it was taking its toll. What else did you see?
Speaker 1:I think one of the things I started to see was that it started to alienate me from the people that I loved.
Speaker 2:Wow, um you know, people that your new life is supposed to serve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, new life is actually alienating you from them my family and my friends from high school stopped becoming the kinds of people that I looked forward to hanging out with, and it was more the kinds of people that I was skeptical about, because they weren't walking according to the truth or whatever language I used at the time, and the fear was that if I spend more time around them, then I might end up backsliding back to my old way of life, hmm, and so I treated a lot of the people that I cared about and people who cared about me at that time very, very standoffishly, if that makes sense, and I always started myself with people who were drinking the Kool-Aid, as it were, which isn't a terribly out of place analogy for this way of living.
Speaker 2:Wow. So how did you manage doing things that you knew you shouldn't be doing with your new life, from your senior year on, from your senior summer on to wherever you're at, and you're now alienating people? How would you manage when you did do something that you knew you shouldn't do?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. I think that for this season of my life, I was actually pretty good at keeping the rules, like the rules that I had established in my own mind as important. I did pretty good at that, and maybe it was like this kind of like recoil effect from the lack of structure that I had in my life prior to this moment to like. Now I finally felt like I was in control of my life. There was a clear way to do life that made sense, that led to purpose and happiness, and the cost of it was all worth it, and so I actually just withdrew into this world more.
Speaker 2:Stereotypically. That would create self-righteousness.
Speaker 1:Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2:It just seems like that would be the ingredients for self-righteousness, and so that's something you experience 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I actively thought of myself as better than other people. I would never have used my language to say that because, you know, built into this entire frame of work is this whole like no, what was me? No, I'm the lowest of the low. There's like this dual thing where it's like I'm complete crap, on one hand right, but on the other hand, like actually I'm doing all right, Like I'm doing the things, Like I'm living the life. So this whole literature evangelism phase, if you will, wasn't really a phase. It lasted 10 years. Like I've knocked on over 100,000 doors as a literature evangelist I have led, I have I have sold countless books and led programs that have maybe totaled sales over seven figures. Like I went ham on this thing, Like it was my identity, like hardcore I went in and that works, man, Like when you're firing on all cylinders and you're doing well, it works until it, until it doesn't work. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:So when did it stop working?
Speaker 1:I think the major moment that it stopped working happened my first year of marriage actually, and there was like kind of like a decline that was happening in the maybe three or so years leading up to that, where I was just it was too much of the same and it was just getting monotonous and boring and easy, honestly, like where it's like oh I'm, I'm doing really well, but I don't feel like I have to really try hard or work hard or rely on God at all, and it just became like I had developed a skill set of selling and had you started the YouTube channel by this time. No not yet. Sorry, keep going. No, you're good, you're good, but I get to first year of marriage and I'm in this funk man. I don't know what was going on. Emily and I had met and we had moved across the country. We were both starting brand new jobs. I took a job for a Columbia Union teaching at an evangelism school, and that job required a lot of travel. I think our first year of marriage I spent like 167 days out of the house traveling. We're in a city where, you know, we didn't really know anybody at like when we first moved there. We had no support system and I had found that I was really good at my job. When it was under certain parameters, like back at home, back in California, I was doing really well, but out East it felt like it was a completely different piece and work started to feel less and less like something that I can control, that I could see, that that I could do well at, which was a really big problem, because my whole identity was built on the things that I would do and my performance, and I would even interpret like no, I got to be right with God, otherwise why would he be blessing me so much in this ministry that I'm working on, but the ministry starts to not go so well and you know, there's all this other challenges of new married life and everything else and I find myself in this really weird emotional states just not knowing what's going on. And I remember one morning I was sent to the airport to pick up, kind of, one of our guest teachers for the day and this guy was telling me what he was just doing and he just got back from the super long speaking circuit this trip and he spoke X number of times. And also he's telling me about his runs, ultra marathon, and he's just like all these like an old dude, like I'm like dang man, this guy's killing, he's firing on all cylinders. And I asked him like how do you manage all this stuff? I didn't even like really have an intention with that question. It was just more me making small talk, but he basically talks from that question. He dives into this whole story about how he actually in at one point in his ministry had like a heavy season of depression where things collapsed on him and it like it wasn't working. And as he's saying, these things like it's starting to really resonate in a way that I wasn't comfortable with. So you know, I dropped them off the school later that day. I ended up talking to my boss and kind of just hey, can I process something with you? And I start to share kind of what had happened and I'm sharing a little bit about like how I'm feeling in the moment and my boss is just like I think, from the way you're describing, I think you're depressed and I'm like huh, can I never viewed myself as the kind of person that would ever be depressed? I had always viewed people who were on the emotional kind of side of the spectrum as really weak mentally speaking, and I wasn't that kind of person. I had the ability to just like mute my feelings and work hard and do all these things and it had really served me well in the previous 10 years of work and life and stuff like that. But for whatever reason, what she said just clicked and she's like would you be open to like going to counseling? And I was like, sure, yeah, that's gonna help me get out of this funk that I'm in. Heck, yeah, and like that was probably the toughest, that. That is definitely the toughest year of marriage that I've ever had and it's definitely been the toughest year of my life that I can look back on. It took like I don't know, it took like over a year to get out of depression. It was, it was rough, and in that moment, just like life kind of fell apart. All the things that I built my identity on had kind of come out underneath from me and the result was I was really unhappy, I was really discouraged and really burnt out and tired.
Speaker 2:What brought you out of the depression?
Speaker 1:I don't know that a specific thing brought me out of depression. We I kept going to counseling for like that year and that helped a lot, helped me process emotions, and counseling was really different than anything. I thought that it would be like you know the movies, like some. You're sitting lying down on a couch looking at the ceiling and how does that make you feel like right? This counselor was really dope, like she engaged with me on a like on a thinking level that I rarely feel like I get to engage with. She would ask me the kinds of questions that would cause me to reexamine like the presupposition of every idea that I had, and so it was kind of this consistent, like unraveling of well, why do I believe a certain thing and what's the impact of that? And I forget I can't remember any specific conversation, but I just remember being profoundly impressed with, like how intelligent this person was and how it was actually helping me to make sense of this broken worldview and this broken sense of identity. It became clear that I put all my identity like on my work, on my performance.
Speaker 2:It's so crazy how we can even take something that we think is good for example, literature, evangelism or ministry and our identity becomes that thing which and we have no problem saying that that's our identity and it's wrong, and we know it could, even it's probably an idol, but yet we still do it because it's a good thing. Quote, unquote. And it's still sand, though. Yeah, living from sonship is much different than living from your performance in your ministry, and we get sucked into these things and we don't keep the main thing, the main thing, and it becomes about our sermons, or how many books we sold, or how many people listen to our podcast, or how many YouTube views we have, or, and that becomes our identity. And then we wonder why things aren't going well. And it's because our house is just built on some wack stuff, and that sounds like that's a very simplistic way to say it, but it sounds like you were coming to grips with that at that time. Am I wrong?
Speaker 1:No, you're not wrong. I was talking to Chico about this actually earlier today, about how depression wasn't the kind of is never the kind of thing I wish upon anybody, or it's not the kind of thing that I would hope my enemies go through. It was the catalyst for the breakdown of a broken sister, absolutely yeah, like it was just it became clear that all of my hopes were placed in this thing and that this thing wasn't going to get me anywhere and that was good. Like that was necessary. It wasn't fun, didn't feel good, but I'm really grateful it happened. Oh, so here's a funny. So I don't know if you ever heard this story. I had a. This was around 2016 or so. This is when, like Casey Neistat had just started his first season of the vlog, which I don't know if that was a thing for you, but like for me, I was like all in on the Casey Neistat thing, like that's kind of where I drew inspiration, like the whole like idea of like doing YouTube was first started. There I was one of those fanboys. I remember like buying a boosted board because, like I wanted to ride around on an electric skateboard like Casey Neistat, you know, so I would actually change the world in some ways for many people.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah major is in major ways.
Speaker 1:So I'm, I'm chasing this down and I'm riding to school to teach on an electric skateboard back and forth. And one day after work I just finished teaching the Bible class and I'm riding on the way home and this guy out out of the middle of nowhere, as I'm riding on the skateboard, comes up and just sucker punches me in the face. I freaking get like an essence. I get jumped like as I'm on the skateboard, I fall off the skateboard. My backpack, my wallet, my phone laptop camera goes everywhere. I end up hitting the ground. My face is busted open. I actually have a video of like that night after I got back from the, from the ER. I'm getting stitches and all that kind of stuff and up dislocating my shoulder in the process, tear my labrum. I actually I'll show you because you were on the video but like these scars, I think, yeah, these ones right here, I had to have surgery because of this. I get jumped in this moment and like I don't know this guy from nobody, and boom, I get sent to the hospital, the whole thing. Like I come home, I'm okay when you fell. He was just gone, he. So the way that it happened is like I had made a left turn out of light and I'm coming down this narrow street. It's like a two way street, one lane in each direction. So I'm to the right side, in the bike lane, on the right side of these cars, I see this guy from across the street jump up like from his porch or stoop, I think is the term, and he's literally like jumping into the line lane of traffic, like there's cars that are there, and it's like playing like a in real life frogger, like dodging cars to get through. So he clearly needs to cross the street. So I kind of like wave him on, like it's cool, like yeah, go ahead, like I'll slow down for you, you can go in front of me. But he stops in between the car on my left that we're heading in the same direction, in between the car and where I would go. So I'm like okay, so I keep going. Next thing I know, bam, I get smacked in the face, I hit the ground, like the whole thing happens, and then he's gone.
Speaker 2:There's no reason.
Speaker 1:No like so. At the time there was a quote unquote game that people were playing in, like urban cities, called the knockout game, with the point of the game was, quite literally, can you knock someone out with one punch? I think that's what it was. Or it could have been that I was the only agent in the neighborhood. Yeah, I was a young person, maybe in high school or something like that. Oh, wow, yeah, it could have been that. Or it could have been that I'm the only Asian in an all black neighborhood and there's pick on that guy. I don't know. I don't know what it was, but okay, so here's the reason why I tell that story. I mean, it's an interesting story and it something that happened to me, but this is something that really, for me, was one of the most profound moments of understanding the gospel. I've been going through a funk depression for quite some time In this journey. For the first several years, man, I was really good about keeping all the rules and doing all the things that you need to do. You know, quite literally, you know spending five, six hours every day studying the Bible. You know knocking on doors, preaching, doing all the things that religious people do. But in the years leading up to it had been about three years since I had really engaged in any spiritual discipline for any other purpose than work. I had to teach a class Cool, I'd study the Bible to prepare for it, but in essence, my what I would look at what I would perceive to be my relationship with God was really weak. And when I say my relationship with God, I mean I didn't do anything. Hmm, because, like, under this framework, it's like well, how do you have a relationship with someone? You spend time and you talk to them and you listen to them. So literally, your relationship with God under this framework is measured by the amount of minutes you spend doing things. And if you spend a good amount of time studying your Bible and praying and witnessing and all the things, then your relationship with God is secure. Miss a day and no one will ever say that it's like wrong or it's a sin, but it's certainly like look down upon and you're shamed. Yeah, so I had gone like three years with none of that Kind of just running on fumes trying to like I don't know. I just it wasn't something I really was about. Well, you know, all the while, I your job right.
Speaker 2:You done is so much for your job that you're like.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm covered, right Well that wasn't the frame of mind. It was like you know, I'm doing things and they're successful up to that point, and so the fact that they're successful means that God's blessing me, means that I'm good. Okay. But you know, for this year things aren't good and so there's like this whole doubt of my identity at that point. And the reason why they're not good is because I'm not doing the things. Hmm. Okay. So I get jumped, I hit the ground and I'm like I don't have a right to do that. And I hit the ground, I'm like I'm going to dislocate my arm and like you know how you have these moments in your life, these rare moments where it's like time slows down. You have like a whole cohesive conversation where yourself, or this like fully thought out idea, in a split second, you know, prosecute him or I can, you know, get revenge or any of these things, like in that split second. The reason why I wanted him to be caught was so that I could actually have a conversation with him and so that I could forgive him. In my mind, in that moment, it reminded me of the stories of like, oh, and these are way more dramatic, like, my situation is nowhere near comparable, but the stories of like, oh, a shooter shows up to a church and offs a whole bunch of people, and at the trial, the church shows up and they tell the, the perpetrator, we forgive you. And it's like this beautiful display of grace, right, it's not an excuse of the murder, but it's like the power of what God can do, right, to change a person's heart Four or ten minutes, yeah, so, so in that split second I'm like I hope they catch this guy so I can talk to him, because I know what it's like to feel like you've got nothing going on with your life or you need to measure up to your friends and do something stupid to be cool or like like I felt like a kinship to this kid and I wanted to be able to say, hey, it's cool, like I forgive you. And all that happened in in a split second. When I would hear the stories of these radical acts of forgiveness, I always felt like that was aspirational. That's something that I wish that I could get to, that I want to be able to do. I know that in the moment I'm going to want revenge If it happens to my, to my wife or my you know, my friends or whatever. I'm going for blood, but then, after I cool down for a bit, then I'll be able to forgive, kind of a thing. But the way it happened so naturally and organically and so quickly like really caught me off guard. And the only way that something like that could happen is if God was truly at work in my life. Wow, but it, but that idea didn't make sense. How could God be at work in my life, if I'm not working on my life, and it was one of those moments that, like, gave me such a clear picture of the goodness of God. There's this there's a statement in CS Lewis that I really love. It talks about how God doesn't have any pride. He's got no ego. I think the line is something like God stoops to save. Like God will make a mockery of himself for the purpose of saving people. Like this is kind of like I think he's talking about the cross in this moment Like Jesus was openly shamed for the purpose of saving people, and like this is kind of how I apply this idea to this moment of my life. It's like I thought that I would reach God and please God with all the things that I was doing and yet in a moment, he showed me that even when I wasn't doing any of those things that he was still at work in my life, he was stooping. He didn't need all the spiritual disciplines, he didn't need the Bible study and the preaching and all that kind of like. None of that mattered. He was at work in my life when I didn't deserve it. I think it was one of the first times that I really, I really felt like I began to understand the idea of grace as far as, like this unmerited thing Because up to that point in my life I don't know like if I'm real God's grace felt like I deserved it. It felt like I was doing the things that I needed to do, like that there was a standard and I was living up to it for the most part.
Speaker 2:Shepel did his hosting of Saturday Night Live after the election, as he does, and how he finished his intro or his monologue is he said he's doing this thing where he just wants people to do random acts of kindness to black people. And he's like if you're driving through a neighborhood and you see a drug dealer posted up on the corner who's destroying his community, go up and give him an ice cream cone. He's like he'll be skeptical but he'll still eat it. But anytime you do this, anytime you do a random act of kindness for a black person, you got to make sure that they don't deserve it at all. He's like, because black people were subjected to horrible and they didn't deserve it at all. And I've just been thinking about love in this way, kind of what you're saying, just like your kid, your wife, if they ever have to ask us for forgiveness, I feel like we might have messed up, because it's almost like they would assume they would have to ask for us to forgive. And if we're really loving them. if we're really loving them, they would know they're forgiven, so they wouldn't even have to ask. And it's like it's all about this whole idea of deserving it. We can't, because in some ways everything not. In some ways we were given everything and we didn't deserve it. And then this is the way love works. Now you can go to this kid who cold cocked you and forgive him, and he doesn't deserve it and he's not going to ask you for it.
Speaker 1:He's not going to be like my bad Well so I remember hearing a podcast, maybe a couple of months ago, two guys on the internet. There's a pod actually. You should probably listen to it. So really good, it's probably one of my favorite podcasts. It's called no Dumb Questions Fascinating podcasts. I won't like sell it, but you, richard, should check it out. I think you'd enjoy it these two guys were talking about parenting strategies at one point in it, and so this is actually tying to kind of what we're talking about earlier and one of the things that he teaches his kids to do not always, but sometimes, when there's a fight amongst the kids or whatever, the standard script is I'm sorry, and then you teach the set kid number two to say I forgive you, right, and then you hug it out, right. He says every once in a while he will teach his kid the kid who was offended first, to say I forgive you, before the other kid says I'm sorry. And it's this exact lesson that you're, you're, you're trotting out. It's this idea of like sometimes it's better just to forgive without any apology, because like it actually releases you from a thing. And it's this beautiful lesson on sometimes apologies don't come. So I come home from the ER. I had stitches and I make this video and I share this thought, this idea like, like it's okay, it's good. And on the video I think I make a joke. I'm something like hey, oh, dude, like I just want to let you know that if you're out there, you know doing this like one, you should probably take some fighting lessons, because that punch was wack or something like that. I make a joke, but like, I say like, but on the real, like I just want you to know, I forgive you. It's cool. I hope that you know. We can talk sometime and have a conversation. And it's this exact like extending forgiveness even when it wasn't requested, because that's what I had realized happened to me in that moment that God had done a number on my heart from the inside out and I didn't deserve it. I didn't ask for it in that moment. Wow, so take me from there where where does.
Speaker 2:What direction are you headed? After that you were, you were in on the East Coast for a while, or what ended up changing, yeah, so I guess kind of fast forward through this section.
Speaker 1:But, like I had a had a student at the school who became a Christian, who became a Sancti Adventist, because of a YouTube video, and I was like Holy, you know, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to do that. And I was like Holy smokes, that's wild Cause I'm watching all the Casey Neistat stuff and I'm like getting real, real, like excited about just consuming YouTube content, which I had I had done at the, you know, previously, but it was always like viral videos or jokes or pranks or music videos or whatever.
Speaker 2:It wasn't changing at this point. Youtube was changing, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was. Youtube was changing to where now you could have a pseudo relationship with people, like there was like a, an interpersonality aspect to the consumer and the creator, whereas before it was just like a place to host things. But now there was this real emphasis towards like vlogging and, you know, building a community, and it was really like. It was like for me I woke up every morning at like five in the morning just like watching the next drop of the next episode or whatever, and I started to realize like man, like my life is really being discipled into use like Christian language by Casey Neistat, like I'm starting to reflect, like the hustle attitude and like I'm buying a freaking boosted board and I got the, I got the, the bendy tripod for my camera and I'm doing like all the I'm copying him and I'm like I'm realizing I'm in the church or the cult of Casey Neistat right now. And then I have this student who comes through and he became a Christian because of of YouTube and I start to put the two together. I was like, dude, how many people are out there on the internet using YouTube for ministry? And like there was no, but like there were almost nobody at the time and, quite literally, like maybe half a dozen people that I could, I could find when I was actively looking for Christian YouTubers or Christian vloggers or the cases, and so I'm like I shoot, like I'm going to go for it, like let's, let's try this. And I created a YouTube channel because to me it makes sense. I'm, I'm putting in all these hours to prepare for a class of 11 students. Like what do I got to lose? Put it out the internet and reach five. Like I you know, I just you know bumped my class by a huge percentage. You know, if I reached 20 people, a hundred people, like who knows what could happen. So I made, I started doing YouTube things and, long story short, like we ended up quitting my job and really feeling led by God, like this is the next phase, Like this is what he was actually calling me to do, like not as a hobby or just something fun, but like no, like go all in on this thing. So quit the job, end up moving back to the West coast and go to the Northwest because that's where I really wanted to be. Her families are in this. Her family is in this area.
Speaker 2:So what kind of content were you just looking for? You just felt like impressed, like this is the content. This is what I need to be talking about. What created your brain.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I thought back to that moment in high school where you know, we're doing these Bible studies with this young guy. He seems to have a bunch of answers and a part of me really wanted to do that, partially because it really made a difference in my life, like having someone who could help in a roundabout way, show that the Bible was like meaningful and relevant to my life. Like that was deeply impactful at that time and also it feels kind of good to be the know-it-all, you know, like the kind of person that people like you have insight, like let me ask you a question, and people value your opinion and your take on things. So that's the kind of content I decided to create. I just started to think of like all the questions that I had when I was in high school. What were the questions that I was asking, and make those types of videos what does the Bible say about? Fill in the blank, how do I do this? Should Christians do that? Like it's very prescriptive and like me telling you how to live your life according to my Christian worldview, and so I would make videos like that and, for what it's worth, they did. Well, you know, like apparently it was a thing that not only I was looking for, but a lot of young people at that time and maybe even still now, I don't know were looking for.
Speaker 2:You got an education while you were researching the topic of your videos, did you just? Did you feel like you were learning a ton about the subjects that you were trying to cover, or did you feel like you had all this already?
Speaker 1:A little bit of both. I think. You know I put in a lot of legwork earlier on in like really spending. You know what's that book Was like, is it at 10,000 hours or whatever? Like I felt like I put my 10,000 hours in and starting the Bible, I would, you know, of course, refresh, you know here and there, but outliers yeah, malcolm Gladwell. So I felt like I knew stuff and that the stuff that I knew would be helpful to people and so I kind of created that stuff and like it was, it was cool, it was growing, it was working in. How was this?
Speaker 2:2018 or when was this? No, this was a 2000.
Speaker 1:It was that year of depression. Actually. I started doing it while I was depressed. One of the things that I was like do things that you love. And for me at the time it was two things that I invested my time in. One was the YouTube thing. It was like oh, this is like a new hobby, something that's actually mentally stimulating. It's a little bit more hard than the job that I was doing, so it like kept me mentally engaged. And the other thing was I started playing video games again. I'd sworn off video games for like 10 years because of the whole like hyper conservative Christian thing, like feeling like it was evil to do these things. And my counselor was like no, like just do things that you love. I'm like for real. She's like yeah, two things that make you happy. I'm like bet, like all right, cool. So I started playing video games and connecting with my brother across the country and it was so that's kind of how I spent my time.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like your counselor gave you permission to be happy again. Yeah, actually, yes, yeah, it's fine to be happy Really, are you sure? Yeah, right, so where has talked to me about the journey from then you started. That Was your first name, the my Christian Vlogger, or did it? Was that later? Because that's all that. I think that you were leaving my Christian Vlogger. The first time I looked you up on YouTube, you had a video saying you weren't my Christian Vlogger anymore and I'm like oh.
Speaker 1:I'm the wrong guy here that Christian Vlogger, but yes, early on the very beginning of it was was that Christian Vlogger? The idea of it was like hey, have you heard of that one YouTuber? Oh, what's this channel? Oh, you know that Christian Vlogger? Like it was kind of like it was meant to be used as a reference point and for SEO it actually worked out pretty good yeah. So yeah, what was people knew? What they were getting into right away when they saw the name, for good or for bad. So yeah, from the very beginning. That's that's the kind of content I created and at some point it got really boring, like it was just like I made 100 videos on Christian dating advice or whatever the case is, and unfortunately and this is just the way the internet works like what you're excited about isn't always what performs the best. So I had a video that went like viral at one point and it was like should kissing, should Christians kiss before marriage? And that's not a thing that I really care to talk about or even have strong opinions about, but it was like a viewer submitted question. So I'm like, okay, cool, this is an easy idea, I won't have to think about this one, I'll just respond to your question. And it blew up and so like I chased this whole thing of like responding to people's questions all the time, but it meant more and more that I stopped talking about things that I cared about and it kind of got caught chasing the hype train like, oh, everyone wants to know about dating. Like, yeah, like I care less about how you do your dating life. It's not a big deal to me, but I think, quite literally, I've probably made like 100 videos on the subject and it was just getting tired, man, it was boring.
Speaker 2:So you're going on to this with this journey, and how did, when did you decide, Okay, I'm done with that Christian vlogger and I'm moving into something else, or so?
Speaker 1:uh, like maybe the second summer that we had moved to the Northwest, we had camp meeting, and camp meeting speaker that summer was a dude by the name of Jonathan Leonardo.
Speaker 2:He keeps coming up in my podcast. One of these days I'm gonna have to get him on here.
Speaker 1:I'll introduce you. Maybe, maybe you'll get to meet him one of these days. One of these days. One of these days, this guy's up on the stage and he's preaching some foolishness, but like I'm low key, like Whoa, like what is this mess? He's saying some crazy stuff, like I'm free from sin. Like God freed me from sin, like what it felt too good to be true, it felt blasphemous. And yet I'm like with my Bible open in front of me, reading the exact words, and I'm just like what the heck? Why have I never heard of this before? Like in all of my 10,000,. You're wrong.
Speaker 2:It's right here.
Speaker 1:It's right there. Yeah, I'm like in my 10,000 hours of starting the Bible, how was this not a thing that I paid attention to, like why did it never jump off the page? I'd spent time studying Romans, you know, I think at one point one of the classes I took I had to write like a verse by verse commentary on parts of Romans, and I remember like working through some of the, but it never stood out to me. I don't know why at the time, do you? Know why. Do I know why it didn't stand out at the time? Yeah, just probably wasn't the time. I don't know. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it.
Speaker 2:Well, like you said, it's been there, It'll be there tomorrow. It was there yesterday and I have found that it's because we don't believe what it says that it doesn't step out.
Speaker 1:Probably yeah, Because we say oh, those are cool words. What does it mean? As though it doesn't mean what it said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because we take things about Paul, paul, and I say we, I don't know who the we is some. Somewhere there's a building that says we on it and it's those people and they it's we, it's. We know, if we take things about Paul and we're like Paul's too hard to understand and I've mentioned this before I was listening to this sermon and this guy's going in on Romans five, the end of Romans five, and he's like this is much too difficult for you guys to understand. He's saying this is the congregation, so I'm not even going to go into this, it's too hard to understand. So we're just going to go from the first part of Romans five who's talking about you know how trials and endurance and all this, and then the second part of Romans five is the first Adam, the second Adam. We're going to skip that. We're going to go to Romans six, and I think a lot of people believe that, and so they don't take it at face value. And so they're sitting in a camp meeting in Oregon saying what are you talking about, while the book has been saying it for a long time? Right?
Speaker 1:Right for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't believe it. So you're sitting there. He's preaching some, he's on some crazy stuff. Whoever invited this person needs to be fired. What was going on?
Speaker 1:No, I didn't feel that way because it's it literally says that. So, like I'm not going to argue with what the text says, I have a very high commitment to try and live as best as I know how according to the text, and it literally says like you are free from sin, like this is the exact language. I'm just like this is bizarre. I remember really feeling like drawn in by this presentation, like wow, this is powerful. I want this. I want it's not even I want this. It was. I want this to be true. Hmm, that was the primary kind of emotion of that week. It was like this legit feels too good to be true, but it's plain as day on the page, like it's right there.
Speaker 2:I think everybody wants that experience. They want it to be true, but at the same time they realize if it's true then they're wrong. Yes, and that was that was clear that I was confronted with. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking like I'm freaking. You know, 10 years into this thing, I'm like the story that kept coming up in my mind as like I'm sitting in the audience, is the story of Nicodemus, Hmm. Or Jesus is like, dude, you're a teacher of Israel. Like how do you not know this? I'm just like I'm literally a teacher. Like I'm literally like I was teaching at a Bible school. I'm literally on the internet playing this role, like I know stuff, and I'm trying to guide you and teach you, and I have not really figured out how to make sense of any of this.
Speaker 2:So did you have to? What is it? Hypocrisy is acting. Did you have to act like you knew all of it? Or were you honest out front and say, nah, I didn't know this, or I didn't get this, I know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I knew to myself I don't know how to wrestle with this, like I don't know how to fit this into my existing theology, and yet I know it's right there, like it's clear that it, what he's saying, is at least being repeated from the like. Jonathan doesn't do this in his presentations anymore. I don't know why he's actually never done it. In all the, all the LRTs that I've been a part of, I've been a part of I don't know half a dozen at least that week he kept coming back to this catchphrase. I read it in the book, what he kept saying, like he had this really defensive posture and maybe because he was just a defensive person at that time, I don't know why, but the presentation was kind of couched in this defensive posture, like he knew people weren't following what he was saying and, in anticipation of the objection, he would say how do I know? Because I read it in the book and I'm like, yeah, he did read it in the book, it's right here in the book in front of me. I'm like, so, like what? Like how do I deal with all this? And so something that happened. I remember just feeling like man. I wish that I could really spend more time figuring this out, but I don't know what to do with this. I got to like meet Jonathan for the first time after the week there and he actually recognized me. He like saw me and there was like recognition on his face is like, hey, like you're that, you're the guy from the, you're that Christian of longer, like it totally played out like exactly the way that my marketing mind was like this is how it's going to work. And then when it happened, I'm like oh shoot. So of course, like I'm not going to like play this role. Like hey, hey, jonathan, can I ask you a couple questions? Like this, because that's what it would have taken at the time to try and sort things out. Like hey, I got a few questions, but because he's recognizing me as like this person, oh, yeah, man, yeah, hey, by the way, I appreciated your message, man. That was really good stuff. You know, it's kind of this like I got to pretend now because I'm a slave to this persona that I crafted on the internet. Oh mercy. Pride man. Yeah man, I wanted to know, but I didn't have the security to just say like hey, can you explain this to me? I mean, you're just like yeah man cool and you can't really really ask him the question I want to ask him.
Speaker 2:What was the question that you wanted to ask him?
Speaker 1:I don't know that I had a specific question. I just wanted to be in the space and to be able to hear more about what he's talking about, because it's kind of the first time I'd ever heard someone like on a stage, be like yo, I'm free from sin, or what's your relationship to sin like that, like that bold kind of approach to it. I've certainly heard sermons about like what is sin and you know, like why is the law important and what did Jesus do? I guess you know it's just, but like the idea of freedom from it was not something that I had really heard talked about. I think we just exchanged phone numbers or whatever, and I didn't see him for like a long time. I don't know, maybe like another six months plus or something along those lines. And one day I get a text message like yo is Jonathan I don't know if you remember me, dude from camp meeting or something like that. I'm swinging through town, figured, you know, maybe you want to grab a coffee or something like that, and I'm like, oh snap, like this is perfect, like this is exactly the kind of the setting that I wanted to be able to chat with Jonathan about that, and like had you still been thinking about it. I thought about it, but it wasn't like all encompassing. It was like, wow, that's super interesting. And then, like life happens and like you like are worried about all the other stuff you know, so we get back and Somehow I forget exactly what happened, but a whole lot of stuff happened and like the conversation was probably just like oh yeah, we'll hang out for half hour hour, whatever, you know, no biggie. I think we like spent the entire day together. It was like I think we actually chatted for like six, seven, eight hours. It just like took the entire day was like whoa, this is intense. And I got to like share my story. I got to share my testimony, I got to share some of the stories I shared with you, like the getting jumped thing and like the whole like going through depression thing and like the whole. It was actually funny because, as I'm talking about my reflections and like I think he was one of the first people that I ever told, like yeah, you know, I had really been at the time Starting my Bible or any that kind of stuff you know and like I had this profound Moment, jonathan, I think he actually use the phrase like oh yeah, like like God's stooped to reach you or something like he use that language. That was a reference to that quote that I was talking about. I was like what, wild, so something happened. From all that. I think At the end of the day we had come to an agreement or I like I was like, dude, I want to be able to support what you're doing, like I believe in what you're doing, like I think it's dope, like I got the skill set of doing things on the Internet. I'd love to apply it to what you're doing. And somehow he said yes, and it was. I mean, it was awesome. And so basically I ended up kind of shadowing him to a handful of LRTs under the guise of like all document them, I'll record them, I'll help you make a bunch of YouTube videos and hopefully this is a way for you to grow your audience. At the time, actually, it was kind of interesting because he had done his like last Series of LRT than his plan was to go back to seminary and I don't know how much of this conversation played a role into it. I know it played a role, but the idea was like no, dude, like you shouldn't do that, like you should like really give it a go like see what happens, and like I cast this vision of like it could do things, like it can reach people through the Internet and all this kind of stuff, and he's like, all right, yeah, like let's go. And this was then. There were very few things kind of on the calendar at that point, right, so yeah, ended up in Hawaii and got to see another LRT preach and its entirety filmed all that and we try to make videos. But it was rough, man, like I was like dude and I guess just the skill set of talking on a YouTube videos very different than the skill set of preaching, because we try to shoot some videos and it was rough, like it was not working just him on camera was it was rough or yeah?
Speaker 2:I got those levels somewhere, I don't know what to do with my hands. Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like eventually we just decided.
Speaker 2:Sorry, go ahead. I was just to say how was that? Was this gospel hitting at that? Point oh, yeah, yeah, yeah you just like buying into like little things here and there, or were you just like? Oh yeah, this is what I believe now.
Speaker 1:So it was. It was weird because, like I'm here on this island and I have like this kind of persona, like I like I'm a professional, I'm a teacher, I do these things, and I remember we were like hanging out with the interns of the ministry. You know, after one of the evenings, I think it was after like secret place was talked about and like Jonathan's like answering the question and like partway through the question he's like yo, justin, like like want to jump in on this, and at the time, like I had not really made sense of what he meant by secret place, the best I had come up with is like oh, like the question that the kid is asking is like well, how do I have meaningful devotionals and where do I do this? And so I'm like actually answering the question, as I misunderstand it as like, well, where should I study the Bible? Like, what's the best method on doing it? Which is all like kind of like quote unquote in my wheelhouse at that time and I'm talking about like my approach to it, and it's just like clear as day that I'm missing the question, but I'm like posturing as though like I'm answering the question and yeah, so I'm like still kind of pretending right. So one night, after one of the presentations, we end up at this diner because he would drive me to the place where I was crashing for the night. And we ended up at this diner. I don't even know the name of the diner, we're just eating food. We make it back to the, to the, to the car, and I forget how we get to this conversation, but it was some version of me asking like so it sounds like it's just as simple as like I believe it, and then it's like mine. But that just sounds too, too simple. Like am I missing something's? Like not like you got it, like it's literally you got to believe, you know. Like it was kind of one of those dumb moments Like how do I, how do I actually experience freedom? I just got to ask God and then believe it happens. He's like, yeah, that's how it happens. Oh, okay, so we pray in the car he lays hands on and we pray this prayer of faith like Holy Spirit fall and all this kind of stuff. And I had a picture of what I was expecting like something powerful would happen. Because in his testimony I don't know that he he goes to detail like this now, because maybe it's not helpful or maybe he just chooses not to use these details, but he talks about like when Holy Spirit first fell on him, as like this kind of really powerful and like I don't know even like borderline charismatic experience, right where, like there's these emotions and feelings and it's like all this stuff. So we pray this prayer of faith and then, like amen, and I kind of look up to him and I think I literally said the words like Is that it? Because nothing happened? And he's just like yeah, I guess that's it all right, and we just like go on as if, like nothing happened, like that was the end of the conversation and like we just kept going. That's where, like For me, I developed this language of like that's the night that nothing changed, but everything changed. I think I've actually been talking. When did you read? When did I realize that was the night? Yeah, I didn't realize that was the night until much later, but looking back on it, that was the night that everything changed and nothing changed. Nothing changed in the sense that, like I didn't have this profound emotion, I didn't have this sensory experience, like I didn't, all of a sudden, like Jonathan talks about this moment, like I knew I was loved by God without a shadow of a doubt, like I didn't have any of that I didn't have anything like that, and yet, when I look back, it's like that was the moment where faith took root. I prayed the prayer I invited God in. I believe that he had done it, and even if I didn't see the evidence of what he had promised, I believe that it was there and I believed it was mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's different stories and experiences on how we come to this thing and my, I think our stories are similar in that there wasn't very much emotion in it.
Speaker 1:I think you and I had a conversation about this actually at one point, our first conversation together, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You because I think you were so like testing out the whole freedom thing and you're like how do I know? And I was like bro, do you know how you know that you're free? And like I think you were trying to come up with an answer.
Speaker 3:Do you remember that moment? I remember when I was in a hotel man.
Speaker 1:I was on the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you were with a homeboy and I was surprised that because I had I had been watching the move and I had been tracking with it. And then there was episodes where I'm like I don't know what they're saying. And this was after my wife and everything had. Everything had changed for us and we started chatting on Instagram and then you videoed me and I had had a conversation with somebody and God had given me something about their life in that conversation and you said rich, do you know? How you know? You have the Holy Spirit. That's what the question was like and I was trying to think and you saw me thinking how do I know? But and you said well, the Bible says it. And there's a few conversations I've had in my life that kind of just stick out for like a moment in time in the conversation. One of these conversations is something that Eddie said to me on on a drive and we were taking that, and then that that is something that has stuck out For just the gospel. How do you know? If this is true? Well, the Bible says it. Now, at some point you have to believe that the Bible is true for this, for all of this to work out. But if you already believe that the Bible is true, then when it says you have the Holy Spirit, done you where, where are you going to disagree? Yeah. When it says you're sanctified. Where are you going to disagree? When it says you're wholly blameless and above reproach, where are you going to disagree? And if you don't divide the Bible correctly, it will say that you're wholly blameless and above reproach. And then we'll also say that you're a sinner. But if you understand what he's saying, if you understand how to divide, oh, this is this. Oh, this is this, because it's not going to contradict itself.
Speaker 1:That was my biggest like hang up. Is that, like I knew Roman six in my mind, like you have like these categories of chapters of the Bible as, oh, like, matthew 24. Oh, that's the chapter about the end of time, right, revelation 14. Oh, that's the three angels message. You know, like you have these categories of like, oh, this is kind of what's happening along the breakdown. Roman six, in my mind, was the bad news chapter, because Roman six is where you go to say hey, for, like, the wages of sin is death and like, in this kind of like, as I was at the time preaching the quote unquote gospel to people, it was a chapter that I used in like a weaponized function to say, without Jesus, you're screwed, dude, you got to repent, you got to turn your life around, you got to like, get your life together, you got to work on your relationship with God, because if you don't, what you deserve is death. Like that's. That's how I thought of Roman six. It was the bad news chapter, but, thank God, roman seven comes along and even if I screw up and I don't do the thing that I want to do, and I want to do the thing that I don't like. Thank God that God is there, like and he's gracious like. This was Roman six was bad news. Roman seven was good news. In my mind at the time.
Speaker 2:That is wild. It's so wild because the exact opposite. Roman yeah, romans five Crazy Great news. Roman six Crazy Great news. Roman seven. Let's understand what it's saying. And if we understand what Roman seven is saying, you're going to love Romans eight. But that's so wild that in yeah, I guess that's how it's preached. Yeah, I mean, that's how I preached it for years.
Speaker 1:So like, this was the challenge of like how do I make sense of this declaration of freedom in Jesus? And like this is why I wanted to have these conversations with Jonathan was because, like I see it on the paper, it says these words, but I want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding it and misinterpreting these words. It was clear as day that the words were there, but what did those words mean? And was there something along the thought process that canceled it out or lent it to mean that it didn't mean what it meant?
Speaker 2:So when did it mean what it meant? So this is where the idea night in the car.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no. So, like I mean that, that's when I reached out in faith for it, with zero understanding. But I'm still caught up with, like the word I'm caught up with, like the way to figure this out. The way to receive freedom was to understand it Like very Greek in your thinking like it's like, oh, you got to understand the stuff. Like the truth, understanding the truth is kind of how I would interpret that. If you understand the right ideas, if you believe the right things, then you'll be free. Like this is actually the kind of conversations you and I were having. It's like but what about this? And we would have. I know that especially you, me and Tyler were real like we wanted to know the theology of a thing because we thought that that's what would set people free. And what we've come to realize is like theology actually doesn't do that. Like for very few people do they actually care about the theology? Very few, like if you think about all the stories of people who have been set free, like very few have to go verse by verse by verse. But that's what I needed. So I had this brilliant idea I pitched to Jonathan hey, here's what people need, people who are out there who don't understand, like they hear what you're saying and they want it and they, they think it's good. What they need is they need a verse by verse study of the book of Romans. And so I pitched a podcast where I would quote unquote play the devil's advocate and be able to get Jonathan, with very little effort, like or forethought at least to teach through Romans, as I played the role of a seeker on the show. You see how am I couching it so like I'm still like protecting my reputation. So it's not to like 30 episodes in, because I think the season is like 60 episodes, 30 episodes in or so. Like if you watch back on the move, you'll see like there's a moment in our dialogue where things click for me and like it's no longer me just parroting things that I think I'm supposed to be saying, but like it actually takes root and I'm like like it's coming out of my mouth and I'm like you just kind of see Jonathan kind of like smirk and was like yeah, keep going, keep going. It was so fun to like have that moment in the middle of the season because it still meant I didn't have all the answers, so meant that I didn't understand all the chapters and verses, but it meant that I actually understood that it was literally simply believing and even if I didn't understand all the theology at that moment, it could be mine through faith.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like you were reading it through some black glasses and halfway through the season somebody gave you your actual prescription and you look through it and now you're reading it through the right lens and like I'm thinking about this guy who was walking you through these Bible studies and answering all these questions and how he could open up the Bible. And people ask me questions all the time. I'm sure they ask you questions all the time. I don't get nervous about questions because I know that my lens is correct, because it's a lens of belief. It's a lens of faith that just will live by faith, and so I'm not nervous about not even having the right answer. I'm just like. I know I have the right lens. And the trick with understanding the word is you have to go. If you're going to understand it and this is my opinion you have to start with God's love. God and everything that you look through. The words of the book have to be through that lens. So the bad news has to be looked at it through that lens. The good news has to be looked at it through that lens. All of the crazy stuff that happened early and all the weird stuff has to be looked at through that lens. And I'm not if I don't know the answer. I'm just like well, god is love and he loves me and I'm his kid. So how does this make sense? And I'm not nervous and I'm not scared. And one thing that you said to me in that conversation was like Richard and I know you hit on this a lot you actually don't need to need me to teach you this and I was like but I do need you to teach me, justin, and you brought up that verse and you can I don't know where it is off top, but you what?
Speaker 1:is it. It's in James.
Speaker 2:Chapter two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't need a teacher.
Speaker 2:You don't need a teacher.
Speaker 1:I don't know where it's at.
Speaker 2:And I thought it was like first John or something Maybe maybe it's in James, I don't know.
Speaker 1:He's in one of the most looked up enough times to know that it's still there.
Speaker 4:But and that blew me away, dude, you got the anointing.
Speaker 1:So you don't need anyone to teach you. I think that's what's so cool about this thing is that when you do seize it by faith and you really do have this confidence that God is with you and that he actually speaks to you, like life becomes a lot more simple, like you don't need the answers anymore. And I think I think I'm hearing what you're saying. When it's when you're talking about like I'm not afraid when people ask me questions, I actually still am like, oh, like if someone's going to ask me a theology question, because I still have, like this, these neural pathways that I've developed for years of like I need to be the answer guy. So I still feel that a little bit, but like I think I hear what you're saying is that you don't have like this anxiety anymore of not having all of your life figured out Because in like in my life now, like I actually don't have plans. Like people are like oh, where do you see yourself in five years? Like I don't know. I don't even know where I see myself in five days from now. Like, legit, like I don't have a plan for my life anymore and I'm not stressed at all about that and it's really cool to operate.
Speaker 2:That is stressful to the people.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, absolutely Like in a very real sense? I don't know what I'm doing, like maybe next week and it's in its, I've kind of just like resigned to myself to not need to know. You know what's your five year plan, what's your 10 year plan? Where do you see yourself? Like I have no clue. Guys Like I, just I really don't. Like I try to live my life with my ear to the ground, so to speak. Like, hey, god, if you want me to do anything, you want me to to zig, I'll zig. You want me to zag, I'm going to zag. Like when I was teaching at the school, I really felt like God called me to to do the YouTube thing. Right, boom, 30 days later we were moving across country. Like as soon as I got the green light from God, like we were gone. But it was also like, hey, if you want me to be here for 30 years, I'll be here. And it's this resignation that, like it's not even about, it's not even about me anymore. I just I just live my life to serve. Like it's just, it's through faith. It's just like, okay, whatever you need, whatever you want me to do, god, like cool, like I'm down for the journey. You tell me, you tell me, tomorrow, delete all the social media stuff that you've been working on for years. Like, go be a missionary in some third world country. Cool, like let's do it. You tell me to go sign it to be a janitor at the local high school. Like all right, like let's go.
Speaker 2:That's an uncomfortable way for people.
Speaker 1:It's uncomfortable for people because I think they can't do it, and so if they see you doing it, then it says more about them and they're you're a mirror and they're looking at they don't like what they're seeing back, but the truth is we already is that it's the most comfortable thing we all ever, because, like you know, when you're trying to orchestrate your own life, there's so much pressure. Because because what happens if? Like? What happens if your plans fail? Like that's one major fear. But here's another fear what happens if your plan succeed and turned out that you had the wrong plan? All to begin with? Like that's a very real world, and so to be able to give up all of that pseudo control and just to truly be like all right, god, I'll go wherever, wherever you want me to go Like, it's so freeing, it makes life so simple.
Speaker 2:And it's Dan Muller says it like this there is something you have to give up if you're going to live like this. And he says it's the thing that you've never were meant to live with. If you're going to live like that, then you're going to have to give up some stuff, and it's all garbage stuff that you're going to have to give up. So you're not, in essence, you're not giving up anything that's good. You're only giving up the trash way of thinking that you were enslaved by, or the whatever the comforts of having a lot of friends on social media or having a comfortable little life. But this thing is not about. It's not about being comfortable, and yet it's the most comfortable thing ever. Being able to say, yeah, we'll go, we'll go do whatever you want Doesn't sound comfortable, but when you really live like that, it's freedom.
Speaker 1:If you can become comfortable being uncomfortable, then you'll never be uncomfortable, yeah and it's super cool, like I mean, god's just led us through some really wild journeys and it's just been really it's been, it's been fun to see, like, how God truly does come through. I remember when, I remember when COVID just like became a thing. Right, I had like a whole year worth of travel and plans and all the stuff that I was working on, and you know it's different being an entrepreneur than it is like working for someone. Not to say that losing your job when you're working for someone is fun at all, but you know, when your own plans blow up in your face, I don't know, there's an added layer of like complexity to that. You can't blame anybody, I guess. Sure. So COVID happens is actually funny because like I think it was like two days. If the announcement of like the shutdown happened like two days later, I would have been in Nepal, like literally in the in Nepal, like on some random mountain, for like a project that I was going to shoot for. And then I find out like well, four or two nights before that, all the airlines in and out of America, like a shutdown, like no hard pass. Like I think I had my bags like halfway packed already, kind of a thing, and in like a period of like 24 hours I lost like six to eight months worth of work. Poof, Gone, Didn't know what I was going to do with it and it's like there's no one who places that income, Like there's no one to like rely on, there's no, I don't know, I don't even know how it would work. Would I be able to qualify for like unemployment at that point or something If technically like self-employed? I don't know how all that works, but the cool part was it was just like all right, cool Like God, like you got it, You'll figure something else out and like less than 24 hours later, a different thing came across my table, a better thing that replaced all of that income that was lost and also provided an opportunity for me to hire someone for this project to replace like $20,000 of income that they had lost because of COVID. And it was just like this beautiful instance. It's like this inside, it's like God's going to take care of it. And it was cool because, like it's one thing to not be stressed out once the income's replaced, Because like, oh God, thank you. But it's also like what if you just actually never had to get stressed out to begin with? And in that microcosm, that's exactly what I experienced. Just to say I never have stress or whatever, but like in that moment it was just kind of like, all right, well, things didn't happen the way I thought that they would, but God, I know you're in control and I know that you're good and I know that you got a plan for me. And you know, it's kind of like the whole Shadrach, Meshach and Ben to go like, hey, our God's able to provide, but even if he doesn't, like I'm not bound down, Like I'm going to just have faith in him. It's kind of one of those moments and so to like live life with that confidence that the details might not always work out the way that I want them to work out, but I can still have peace in the middle of it all. I can have peace that passes understanding.
Speaker 2:On the election night, I'm at work.
Speaker 1:I work at Amazon warehouse, so you're the one that's kicking my Amazon boxes.
Speaker 2:That's me and I look at my phone and it's the part of the night where Donald Trump becomes a huge betting favorite to win the election. And I look at my portfolio for my stock, my stocks that I have, and when the news that Donald Trump became the betting favorite, the stock started skyrocketing and I'm just like, oh shoot, this is good news. The next morning, the next morning I have I've made a significant amount of money and the news that Biden is probably going to win starts coming in. So I look at my stock and I have this one stock and I'm like I'd better sell this mug now because it's just going to go down when it finds out, like when the stock finds out that Biden's going to win. So I sold a significant amount of it off and the stock kept going up and up. It seemed like right after I sold it it was heading down like the Biden news and it was like oh, richard sold off a large position of his. You know, he sold it off in his position and it just was like oh, just kidding, I'm going to keep going up. And like an hour into that, this is not a way to live life. By the way, looking at your portfolio and seeing like, oh, it's still going up and after you sold off a huge percentage of it and it's just skyrocketing even more. And, as it turns out, the stock market did not care who won or lost. I did not know this and I was like banking on it. So it's going up, up, up and I'm, I'm, I'm livid. I'm like Richard, what a dummy you are. How stupid. I could have made X amount of dollars more in that day. It would have been like my largest day. And all day long I go to sleep because it's in the middle of the day. I got to sleep because I'm going to work that night, and that night I'm sitting there at Amazon again. It's Wednesday night, elections over, and God's like, stop being the CEO.
Speaker 1:Yeah, young yeah incorporated.
Speaker 2:Like all day long you've been mad because you mismanaged the company of Richard Young and family and you should probably just be my son and I'm sitting there making boxes or packing or doing whatever I'm doing at Amazon and I was like, oh, I need to stop having all of the answers, because I don't, and when I do it'll go like I was a genius. If that stock would have went down after Biden, I would have been the smartest guy on the block right. And it turns out.
Speaker 1:I was an idiot.
Speaker 2:And now, as I'm looking at it again, and the stock market's crazy, it went, went, went and then, after I started living in the sunship and this is not to say it went all the way and crashed all the way back down, back to lower than I had even bought it and I was able to buy in. But the point is we got to start living like sons and that's why this identity thing is so important. If Justin coup has to have the plans for Justin coup and this is why we talk about this stuff, because we got to remind ourselves sometimes, like you reminded me, richard, you have peace, love, joy, patience, faithfulness, kindness and on the self control. Why do you have it when the Bible says so oh, justin, you are a son. You don't have to be the CEO of Justin coup incorporated Like. You just get to be your daddy son forever. Oh, because or else we'll start taking the identity of our ministry or we'll start taking the identity of our whatever. What have you?
Speaker 1:Talking about Bible verses that are really stupid, plain but can't mean what they clearly mean. Like is Jesus take no thought for tomorrow. Like, don't even stress out about what you're going to eat or what you're going to wear. He's like because your father knows you need these things and he's got you. He's like the flowers don't even worry about these things. The bird like he sees all the neat, he knows it. Count the hair on your head. Why are you stressed out? Well, we're stressed out because we put so much trust and faith in these things. For me, it was performance. It was this idea that, like I will be good enough, I will prove that I'm good enough, and that's why I stressed out about it. And again, it makes a lot of sense that when you're performing well, it feels good. It's a great paradigm to live by while it's working, but your only ever as good as that thing that you put trust in. What is it? You know, and at some point the stock market crashes. Well then, what do you got then? What are you left with? Mercy? What would it look like to truly live life like a child, unless you become like a child? What would it be like to have that childlike faith, that just trust that God is? When he says something, he means it? It's better bro. It's been a lot of fun. This last couple of years have been great.
Speaker 2:So before I let you go and right after we're saying we don't have to worry about tomorrow, just tell people, if they haven't come across your channel, what you're doing over there and why or how. It would interest some people. Yeah, why should you Talk about that? And then we wrap this.
Speaker 1:So a large part of my journey was keeping people at arm's length with a kind of fear that by associating myself with them that I end up backsliding or something along those lines, that if I associate with them then I'm perceived differently because of the company that I keep and all these things. I think a large part of it comes because of the insecurity that I lived with and the kind of imposter syndrome that I lived under and the sense that in order to please God, I had to do the right things. So what does it mean when people aren't doing the right things? And I see that I think for a certain type of religious person who comes to my channel, my YouTube channel, it's going to be really triggering because I sit across the table from people Kind of one of the premises of the show is something like people who I disagree with, I guess. I guess the tagline that I work with the show right now is explicit conversation on belief in the stories that shape them. Right now, one of the major themes that we've been pursuing on the show is conversations with the intersection of faith and queer culture. Lgbt and faith is kind of one of the major themes and it still will be to the end of the year. These are really hard conversations to have, if you, I guess for anybody but from my perspective, really embracing a more traditional sexual ethic of the Bible, where you believe the Bible does teach certain things, that certain things are good and certain things are less than God's ideal, but also, how do you just give people the space to do their life, with all the conversation that we have in the background? It's my attempt to communicate the gospel through actions and not through words, because I think the gospel is one of those things. If I can develop a philosophy about parenting, it's one of those things that's caught and not taught. I think that's something that I'm learning about the gospel that the gospel is caught and not taught in the sense that, like sure, we can go verse by verse and do all the things, but that's not really what impacts people. Seeing it in action and experiencing it for yourself really is what makes the difference. This show is my attempt to preach the gospel by keeping my mouth shut when the conversation is like all about the gotcha moment, and it's about winning the debate and winning the argument. It's about trying to practice the ministry of presence with people who are often ostracized and often times are dehumanized. It's about validating people, not because they live a certain way or they believe a certain way, but just because they are a human being created in the image of God. That puts me in a lot of uncomfortable situations that challenge my prejudices and challenges my running narrative that I have about people and humans, but I think in a very good way. I'll give you an example. One of the episodes that I'm editing right now is with a queer Christian. She identifies as a lesbian, is a Christian, she posts a lot and one of her missions is standing up for and speaking up for gay people of faith. I think she had a statement recently on her Instagram that says something to the effect of people trying to shame me and condemn me because I'm a lesbian. She says something to the effect of and I'm paraphrasing and when they say that, I say no, I'm lesbian and I'm created in the image of God. I'm proud of that, or something along those lines. It was really confronting because what do you mean? You're gay and created in the image of God. It was like hold on full stop. Is she creating the image of God, yes or no? Yeah, why do I treat her as anything less? Sometimes the theology piece gets in the way of that. It gets in the way of actually just loving someone for being an image bearer.
Speaker 2:Because they are.
Speaker 1:We can have all the discussions about theology and all these other things, but if we're not loving people well and if we're not seeing people through the lens of value, what good is this gospel? The show is my attempt at trying to do that. I think in the climate that we're in right now, the world does not perceive the church as this hub of empathy and compassion and love, because it's like a place where vitriol and hate and all that kind of stuff is kind of spewed. And I'm finding in my life that the gospel is communicated more clearly through my silence in proximity to someone than through my perceived eloquence of words, like I'm seeing. God undo so much pain and damage, undoing the shame that people are living in, when I just let him take control and not get so up in arms like I need to do something and say something or win an argument. I don't know, I don't know. That appeals to a lot of people, if the comment sections are any indication. It's certainly misunderstood, to say the least. Yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:I just find that we should judge everything by is the comment section. Absolutely. We should judge everything by the comments. Yeah, yeah. Now, man, I'm hearing what you're saying and it makes me think of a conversation I had with my dad this week. I was taking him to the airport and he had just listened to Tyler's episodes and he says he was like you know what Tyler said? Something at the end. That's incredible. I was like what's that he said? You asked him how he received this thing and he said it's a miracle. And what you're talking about all this being caught and not taught, and winning debates and knowing the theology has not changed very many people at Finney but is when we allow room for the Holy Spirit, when we don't take it upon ourselves Like, yeah, our job is to go right, but it's not our job to change anybody, like we're cities on a hill and we're the salt of the earth. Right, that means we flavor it and that people see us. But when they're seeing us, they give glory to our father. And so, man, I've seen your ministry, I've been blessed by it, for sure. I think you're right. People get misunderstood by your silence, and that's fine. They probably just need to sit with that for a minute. I think people and are they coming from. I think they are, are they well?
Speaker 1:I know why it would make someone uncomfortable, because it's the exact kind of conversation that would have made me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable being in the conversation oftentimes, but I would have been more uncomfortable under the former kind of way of living far more. I would have felt threatened before. I feel uncomfortable now. You might have even felt threatened at loss here. Yeah, man, I feel uncomfortable, but I don't feel threatened anymore, whereas I definitely would have felt threatened before. Because how dare you feel in the blank, how dare you do this or that or whatever? Because then it calls into question what I'm doing, because I'm only measuring myself off of what you're doing and if you're doing something that's rocking the boat, then it makes me feel real uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:So it's called. I'm Listening and we can find it wherever we find all of our Wherever the YouTube is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the show's called. I'm Listening the channel is just my name, Justin Koo. Yeah, I do a handful of other shows, but that's kind of like the main hub.
Speaker 2:And I'll plug this. I don't think you're probably going to plug it. If you become a Patreon of Justin Koo, he might I don't want to promise this, he may or may not send you clothes that your wife will steal and she'll wear them all the time that's true, and you'll say stuff like that's mine, that's mine, and she says no, stop talking to me. This is my I'm Listening sweatshirt, so that may or may not if you become a patron. The Free Flow Show I think that's coming up too. That's another one of the. I mean this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're doing a whole bunch of things. We got a documentary coming out next year called the Humans of Adventism documentary. We got the Free Flow Show, which is kind of like the intersection of faith and culture You'll actually hear a bunch of. If you've been following this show. Tyler and Morgan are a piece of that. By the time this episode airs, will Joyce and Will's story have been public?
Speaker 2:Maybe, Okay. No, this will go on before Will and Joyce, but they're not too far down the line.
Speaker 1:There's a bunch of us whose lives have been changed by this gospel freedom message and try and see how does that intersect with the world of culture. And then I also do another podcast called the Growing Together podcast, which is a podcast on church growth and culture shifting specifically to help your church become a church where all generations thrive. It's kind of that idea If you ever read the Growing Young book. That's the idea.
Speaker 2:That's what's up. Well, hey, man, thanks for coming on the.
Speaker 1:Death to Life podcast. Shout out to anyone who made it through all of this. There was a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:Dude man. No, this is, I love it man For me anytime I hear about someone going from death to life and it was all involving randomly raised hand fart jokes.
Speaker 1:Three of those key moments were I wasn't planning on it.
Speaker 2:I raised my hand to get baptized didn't mean it.
Speaker 1:Farting joke got me into Bible studies and a bunch of friends who bailed on me got me into canvassing. I think God knew I was never going to be humble enough to just approach. I kind of had to be tricked into it before I give it a shot. Life's been good since then, man.
Speaker 2:But he has made you a humble. He gave you a new heart. Now you're a humble dude. It's not because you deserved it, it's just because he was like here you go, here's a new heart, my guy. All right, thanks, bro. We'll catch up again soon. Man Appreciate you.
Speaker 5:It's too late, can't stop it. It's too late, can't stop it, it's a boom. I know I cannot wait till you approve. I got people with me on the other side, spirit on me too bright. I see they tryna ride Coming out for the night. Yet it's that come alive, coming out for the fight. Yeah, we stay alive. We stay alive, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey hey.