Josh Nadeau (Sword and Pencil) on the Lie That Is Ruining Your Faith

What's up guys? Today's episode is awesome. I got to talk to Josh Nadeau. He is the artist and writer behind Sword and Pencil, his art essays and book, room for Good Things to Run Wild come from a deeply personal journey through addiction, depression and spiritual exhaustion towards recovery, beauty and a rediscovery of God and the ordinary moments of life. This was such a great conversation. It was one of my favorites that maybe I've ever had. And look, I know that I say that a lot, but truly, Josh is amazing. So deep, so creative, so gifted, so down to earth, and his story is so dang captivating. You're gonna love this. He speaks to a generation that is tired of hype and performance, and he calls us back to faith that's grounded, present, and lived out in everyday spaces. Trust me guys, you're going to want to listen to this entire thing. And look, I am so grateful that I get to have conversations like this and connect to guys like Josh and then share those conversations with you. But then I don't just get to do this as just some random dude, but I'm part of this worldwide missions organization called Steiger that is in two hundred and sixty cities around the world, and we are lifting up the name of Jesus and connecting with people who are far from God. They are encountering Jesus. They are being discipled. It's such an amazing mission and you're going to want to check it out. If you go to Steiger. Org. You can check out our brand new website and find ways to connect and get involved. And lastly, guys here as we approach the end of the year, I just feel such a gratitude for all of you who have listened so faithfully supported this show. It means the world to me and I can tell you we are more excited than ever. We are more committed than ever and we have huge plans for the next year. And so stick with it. Let others know. Bring people into this community because I believe God wants to use this as a profound and powerful voice to inspire people of all kinds to live radically for Jesus, and we need you to draw other people into this process. So thank you, and let's keep growing this thing, because I think God has amazing things in store. So all right, let's get on to the conversation with author, artist, and brilliant thinker Josh Nadeau. You're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast. Dude, I have been looking forward to this conversation for so long. You're one of those guys who everyone keeps telling me, you've got to have him on the pod. You've got to have him on the pod. So it finally happened. Josh Nadeau, thank you for coming on the Provoke and Inspire podcast, man. Dude, thank you for having me. Hope I can live up to the expectations. Well, none of us can in the end, but that's okay. That's okay. But look, as I was saying before we started recording, I absolutely love your book and I don't listen to very many books. But the second I started to interact with your book, I was like, I got to listen to this. To me, it reads like poetry. It reads like indie lyrics. It reads like everything that I love. And so just cold Minnesota winter listening to your book, I just it's been engrossing and transformational. And I really mean that. Like, I'm not flattering you. This I mean, it is flattering. I'm honored. It should be. God has used this and is using this. And right out of the gates here, I just want to tell everyone that you need to pick this up room for good things to run wild, how ordinary people become everyday saints. It is an awesome book and so go grab it. I would love to talk about it. And look, it's so enmeshed in your story. I feel like though you probably always have to kind of go down that road to tell it. I feel like you can't really almost tell it without it. So if you wouldn't mind sharing your story, as we then unpack the profound themes that your book lays out, I would love that. Yeah, totally. Um, first off, again, thanks for having me. It's going to be I'm super excited. Um, and then as far as the book is concerned, yeah. Like, I think that, um, as humans, we're all drawn to stories, so, like, I'll just give a bit of the thesis, the idea behind the book, just so everyone can be on the same page. Um, the idea is you don't get reasoned out of something you are never reasoned into. And so many of us who are struggling. I was an alcoholic, I was suicidal, um, felt like life. My Christianity wasn't pulling through. Things weren't shaping up the way that I was told they were going to shape up. And it didn't matter what I did. It didn't matter what books I read. It didn't matter what thoughts I thought. I just couldn't break free of this way of life. And so I went on this intense and wild, crazy journey. And what happened to me is I fell in love for the first time, for real. And I realized that God was after my heart, and it was my heart that transformed my living. Um, like Saint Paul talks about this. We have to be when he talks about like the love of Christ, compelling us and constraining us. Yeah. And so I just have this idea that people are there's a way to transform a person that is aimed directly at their heart. And when we fall in love, we do things that are beyond intellectual, beyond duty. We orient our whole life towards the things we love, whether they be good or bad. And so, yeah, my story is, um, I was an alcoholic. The book starts off with, um, I'm awake before work. I used to live downtown Toronto, Canada. That's like, um, where I worked was at, like, Times Square knockoff, like dollar store version, Walmart version of what Times Square is, but newly married. And I'm drunk before work. I'm staring down another, like, healthy double of bourbon at four in the morning, five in the morning. And, um, just had done it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. And so I'm cycling into work. Um, and that morning, the hangover is a bit different. Like, I just have this, like, a different kind of sick in my stomach. I'm just repulsed at where I had gotten in life, and I had the same thoughts that I'd had many times. Or just like, listen, I can't do it. But if, like, the wheel on that car blew and hit me, or this subway train derailed and took me out with it. Come on, that would just be nice to get a little bit of sleep. And, um, the reason the book starts that morning is because, I mean, I'd had those thoughts countless times, but that morning I just felt something different inside of me. And it wasn't like the heavens ripped open and Jesus was like, I'm the best way. It was just like, listen, if you're here, if you're at rock bottom, if you're already dead in one sense of the word, like there might be more. There could be more. And so that's how the book starts. I frame this thing as like the hidden music. I just had this longing, this song calling out to me external, internal. And then, um, the goal was just to say, listen, if I am going to call it quits, I can still call it quits at the end of this, but I might as well give it one last college try, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's an intense story. Um, and obviously. Yeah. And I mean, it is. And for those who who read it or listen to it as I did, I think you really feel the, the tension in exactly how you express that in the desperation. But this little pull towards what if what I've been chasing wasn't the real thing, and I don't want to give up before I know that I've at least tried to chase the real thing. And one of the things that you you talk about early on, and it really struck me, was just how mediocre so many Christians appear. This sort of. I think you describe it as like the five out of ten life. Totally. And and I think that hit me because, you know, the more dramatic Hollywood story is the one out of ten, right? And in many ways embodied by your story, which I think encompasses a bit of both. But I do think that most people just are just kind of a right. They're just they know enough. Their life might not totally be falling apart. It may be heading there, but it's not there yet. How do we how do you speak into that based on the experience that you've had and what you've gone through? And how do you think we've gotten to this place as followers of Jesus? Yeah, it's a great question. I, um, I agree with you. So, like, I think that when we write books, when people write books and we create Christian content, though I don't like calling things content. We make Christian art when we're doing the thing that we ought to be doing. We normally have two kinds of people in mind. You have the one out of ten, and it can be a one out of ten for whatever reason they might be like deep in a deconstruction phase, and they're just hating Christianity. They might be deep in addictions and like on the outs. Um, there are countless reasons to be a one out of ten. There might be like. Or we write and create and do things for like a nine out of ten. Jesus is my best friend and I've never had anything go on. And all I want to do is worship and praise. Yeah. And then I'm convinced that the vast majority of people inside our churches are at that, like four to six out of ten where they're just like, listen, I'm sick of faking it. I'm sick of forcing it. This isn't making sense. I'm doing what I'm. I think I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. But, like, I mean, I'm not a one out of ten, but if I if I was honest for a second, I think I would be there next week. And I can't keep pretending that I'm a ten out of ten. And so I thought to myself, like, hey, just, just write the book you wish you had at that time when you were consistently unmaking yourself like a death by a thousand cuts, a death by a thousand bad decisions over and over and over again. Um, and so I think what we need to do is, I think one of the things that Christians fear in the modern world, because our modern world is so socially derived, is we have a form of authenticity that is really just, um, like curated brand persona. No one wants to admit who they really are. Um, I bump into this all the time. I get to go to these conferences, I get to go to these events, and I get to sit beside, like famous Christian number four hundred and twenty two, and you watch all these people at the dinner table and they're posturing and they're telling the stories that make them look great. And you start thinking to yourself about like, hey, I think I used to be bound by that dude. I used to be there. I used to see that at the bank. I used to see that in the church. And I used to be, like, looking for my identity and validation in some external person. And so it just exists everywhere because everyone is afraid that if I showed you who I really was, would you love me? Would you care about me, right? Would you? Would you see me for who I really am? Would you accept me with all the broken bits of me being exposed? And so I think as artists. Um, so I'm an illustrator, I'm a writer. It's a great life. I think my job is to tell the truth of the human condition and the best way that I can. And, um, when we tell good stories, when we present the truth in a beautiful way, it becomes an on ramp for everybody else to start doing the same thing with their own life. So my book, for the most part, is just like words for everyone. I mean, one of the delights about writing something like this, when people when they go and they, uh, like, buy my book and they read it and they respond, they it's an honor. I don't know how to deal with it. They'll say something to me like, thank you for giving language to things I have felt and could never put into words. But that's what art exists for. And so to get these people who are in this mediocre thing, they have all these nebulous thoughts, these thoughts that are all over the place, that are scattered, that are scared, that are insecure, that are all the things we experience. And I think what we need is really good Christian art to come in and start forming it and saying, like, listen, you are. Maybe you started at a seven out of ten, eight out of ten, you get saved and you're feeling great, and then you're just doing and thinking, and life is acting on you, and you're just slowly unmaking yourself by coping, by surviving, by giving in, by relenting by all these things. But a good artist can come in and say, listen, you can have a life that will like death by a thousand cuts, but you might also live by a thousand right steps in the right direction. It's your choice. Which way will you go? The broad, the narrow, like so. Anyways, how do we do it? I think we present them. Good human art story. Interesting. Deeply rooted in the truth of the gospel. Yeah. And I think to go down the art route, I think part of it is a Christian culture that maybe would permit art that could deal with the darkness. Yeah, right. Isn't that part of it is that we have this sort of sanitized vision of what Christian art looks like. And look, I like Forrest Frank as much as the next guy, but we also need some artists. You know, I don't know, this was not supposed to be any shade at him, but I feel like where are the worship songs that are more like the Psalms I read, right? Where are where are the pieces of art that say, life sucked? And it kind of still sucks and I don't really know yet where this is going. Yeah, I think that's part of this. Yeah, I think so. One of the fallouts of like, uh, the enlightenment and then say the Protestant Reformation and this I like this modernist, um, rationalist idea of the world is that you can think yourself and reason yourself into reality. And it just totally infiltrated the church where you're like, you know what? If I'm thinking the right thoughts? And then if my art is literally propaganda and I don't mean that in a bad sense, but literally just this is the thing you should think. So you do a brainwash and I'm not dismissing what what modern worship is. I don't listen to any Forrest Frank, for example. But you have this thing where you're just like, listen, I am going to sing truths on repeat rather than a poem that is aimed at reconstituting my soul. And so I think what we have is you're right, we have this very sanitized, very Romans Road, very gospel presentation form of art that we allow into the church and certain domains. And then there are these other people who are doing all kinds of stuff. And so I have this unique blessing of, um, not being, say, connected and signing on a dotted line for a church where I can write a dark book, or I can express some of the human condition within, there's still certain boundaries. Um, but what we really need is we need to start thinking through, like, take a guy like Dostoyevsky, Russian Orthodox guy. Um, he struggled with gambling. He struggled with alcohol. He struggled with tons of stuff. When you go read his books, you can see he allows you to do the same thing, to put language to thoughts that are deep within you that you've never maybe had the courage to utter. Yeah. And if Christians used to be the best at this because we have the scriptures, because we have the Holy Spirit living within us who can elucidate and illuminate the human condition and perfect ways and then offer an antidote. And it doesn't have to be corny. It doesn't have to be kitschy. It can be what I attempted to do with my book, which is like, listen, I will tell you my story. I can't tell you anybody else's story, but I can offer my story to you as an on ramp for you to go to the darkest parts of yourself. And I wrote it in such a way like, listen, writing is my craft. I love it to death. And so there are certain ways that you write where a story becomes an on ramp, not like a self-indulgent look at me. I'm the hero. Christ is the hero of the book. And so these on ramps just become this space where people can start thinking. Thoughts for the first time, they can start. And you know what? Like, even if it's just in secret, if it's just them in my book and if that like, listen, I'm not the greatest Christian artist of all time. There are many greats. And I put them in my book for a reason. Where like as you're reading, you say like, hey, I want more of this. Be like, well, they exist. You can go read Dostoyevsky, you can go read these people who can help you down this path. And they're not sanitized. They're not sterile. They're very alive. They're very human. They have very broken, battered edges. And the beautiful thing about that is when Jesus steps in and does what he does best, which is redeem you and redeem the world, you actually have something to to be proud of, to, to tell other people about. I don't have to have a pretend life. That's all put together. I literally get to, like, say, with Paul. He his strength is made perfect in my weakness. I can tell you the weakness that his strength was made perfect in. Yeah. I think the false dilemma is that there is certainly the side of it where people don't want to be honest, but maybe there's the other side of it that people don't want to glorify weakness or they want to. Yeah, they don't want to be like, okay, I'm just self-indulgent in my perpetual weakness. And I think the false dichotomy there is that, you know, I think and it connects all the way back to what you were saying about being loved by being known. Is that the the false dilemma or the false dichotomy? And the true beauty of the paradox is that when I come to Jesus, I don't come to Jesus by hiding more of who I really am in order for him to love me. The paradox. The beautiful paradox is that despite increasingly understanding the depths of my fallenness through the lens of his perfect nature. I also at the same time recognize that he still loves me anyway, and so that doesn't create this like religious version of what the rest of the world does, which is why I think you see so much mediocrity, because we just create a religious version of what everyone else is doing. We're in reality. And you see this embodied by these great artists. They're not glorifying weaknesses, but they also are free to be honest about them because they know that they're loved despite them. And that is the mind blowing part of this, right? Oh yeah. Dude, I am one of the things, actually, that I was trying to be very careful of with the book was there are we do live in a culture that glorifies weakness, that glorifies brokenness, that has this like deep romance for an anti-hero. And, um, I wanted to make sure that, like, I mean, there's a time in my life when I see every once in a while, see pictures of myself from back in those days. And I was, like, as thin as a coyote. And my life would have looked from an external perspective what this culture would have deemed as this romantic, broken man. And, um, I got in a lot of fights and whatever I was, I was an idiot. But I was like, I can't put those things in the book, even though they might tie in in some capacity to the story, because there is a romance that people could be like, well, I kind of want the brokenness that Josh had. I'd be like, no, no, no. We do live in a time that has these rose colored glasses, that is reactionary, that is a little bit blind to what the brokenness is. And so the good artists, the reason why beauty so like beauty in order to be for a thing to be beautiful, it has to be good and true, which means it needs to be truthful and the ultimate sense of the word. And it has to correspond and be harmonious with the good, with virtue, with like the, the virtues. And so there are corrupt Forms where we elevate because of our own hierarchy of values. What an anti-hero, what brokenness looks like now there is something where someone can describe brokenness in a way that's compelling because it resonates with who we are. We feel like we're not alone, and that's good. That's what an artist should do. If an artist leads you down different paths, if a writer, if a preacher, if a singer, it doesn't matter if they lead you down a darker path or they say the solution to your brokenness is nihilism, is is like absurdism is me. Let me sell you my product. Right? These are all corrupt forms where it becomes like a spiral further downward, where you're never going to find salvation. What we're supposed to do is say, listen, you take the brokenness. It's not indulgence. And you, you tell the story of how Christ redeems it. You are not the main character of the story. So one of the things, one of the big themes in my book is I love, um, like apostolic fiction. And so apostolic fiction is like, you can take, uh, The Great Gatsby, where you have Nick Carraway. He's like, hey, let me tell you about my best friend Jay Gatsby. And Jay seems amazing until you get to know Jay and you realize he's just as broken and just as lost and just as fearful as everybody else in the world. But in my book, I got to be like, hey, let me tell you about my friend Jesus. And the best thing about Jesus is he's not weak and lost and broken. He is very strong. He is the one who finds us. Right? Uh, and he's completely put together. In fact, he put the entire universe together. And so, like, that is the way to, like, make sure that these stories, that this art has a through line. Because authenticity for authenticity's sake, for for clout, for brand persona, for marketing for what? Brand narratives or, um, like brokenness and not being healed, um, as an identity or as a mechanism to be indulgent. These things require a Christ to bring us through. Does that make sense? One hundred percent. One hundred percent. And, you know, in the absence of the gospel and the absence of Jesus, I kind of get why you'd either choose delusion or authenticity, right? Because what what alternatives do you have? You either numb it and delude yourself, or you just sort of throw your hands up in the air and sort of a coping nihilism and kind of go, well, at least I'm being honest about how much everything sucks, right? And like, and yet what I hear in your book and what I hear you saying is that honesty is having the vantage point to understand the aim of the quest. It's like, okay, this is who I am. This is reality. Now there's a beautiful vision that I can aim towards. That's the purpose of honesty. It's not just circular. Yeah, dude, I think that's amazing. So one of the big things is like when any of us develop and it does take a rare courage to be honest with where you really are, even if it has to start with like a whisper in the back of your mind, like I'm addicted to alcohol. Like I remember when I first had the thought just being like, oh man, I hope nobody heard that thought in the back of my mind. But once you say it, you're like, okay, well, I don't, I don't want that. That's not healing me. Right. What is the next step? And then you have all these other thoughts. You have all these other ways that you think might heal you, that you might have tried a million times over and over, and it got you nowhere. So then you have to start praying. You have to start asking, seeking, knocking, looking for wisdom in any place. And you start saying, okay, if I truly want to walk out of the Valley of Shadow to leave rock bottom, the metaphor in my book and I do mean this literally like, what the hell do I do? How do I get this hell out of me and off of me? Yeah, and you have to be honest with it every step of the way, because some people might come to you and they might give you the prescription that worked for them. And you have to be honest and be like, that is not going to work for me. Right. So yeah, I did my best to share in my story all of the varied things that worked for me. And, um, I wanted to make sure that people knew that, like, the next best thing is often just the only thing you need to do. If you haven't prayed for a decade, but you know, you should just do. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Pray at once. Next day, pray it twice. Pray it three times. Like just the next right thing. Right. Holiness isn't a competition, and it's not a marketable product. This is how you get to heaven. You follow the upward call of Christ every single day until, like the the traditional churches, like until you climb the ladder of ascent. And at the end of your life, you end up on the shining shores. Yeah, because that's what your heart wants. That's where you've oriented your. And listen. I'm still a very broken man. I'm not perfect. Um, but I know what direction I'm going. And I can be honest with myself to be like, okay, okay, dude, we should probably pump the brakes on a few of these things. I love how artistic and, uh, the story that just grabs you and captures you, but then it's intensely practical, too. Um, and I feel that's because you don't want to fall down the side of the ditch of the self-help five steps magic cure. But I also know that you don't want to leave people with with nothing tangible to, to to take that step. And so for someone who's in that mediocre state and let's assume step one is the willingness to be honest, which is a massive first step. From there, what, because your journey seemed to get worse before it gets better, and it feels like that might just be part of the process? I think it I think it's built in because what will happen, um, like you think about it. You have. The Israelites are liberated from captivity in Egypt, but it was a pretty stable captivity. They go through the Red sea and they wanted it back. Like, bring me back, dude, I'm sick of manna. Yeah, they wanted, like, I hate sleeping out here. And so, like, you have to pass through the wilderness. And what's crazy to say? Like, so yes, I wanted to make sure the initial the, the biggest impulse of the book is a why like a why you should be a saint. So I think the solution to rock bottom is you orient your life. I think the human calling is to become a saint. Um, to be conformed to the image of Christ. That's what that's like the theological language for it. But when you think about, like, who are those people who are most conformed to Christ, they're saints. And when we get to the other side, it'll happen in full. So I really wanted to warm people's hearts to the idea this is your identity. So at any given moment when you're struggling, you can just ask yourself the question, what would a saint do? And you get to do the proper kind of pretending that Lewis talks about. Lewis talks about there's like a fantasy that will disconnect you from reality. So I have two boys, and my oldest son loves rockets and he loves Batman, and he sees it. And then he fights a lot. He loves wrestling with his uncles and with his grandpa and stuff. And so you see him start pretending to be a man. He does things on his own. He's fighting bad guys. He he is pretending to drive rockets. And it's the good kind of pretending that points your life in a direction towards mastery and skill and development. That's what kids do. That's what we have to do. Wendell Berry says you need to imagine lives that are not yours. And so this near the end of the book, there's a chapter on crafting a holy imagination. And what you have to do is imagine who you might be as a person if you just said yes to every invitation that life offers. And now we might think the invitations are become an 80s punk band. Um, perhaps. Perhaps for some, for the lucky few amongst us. Become an illustrator, become a podcast host. But really, the invitations are. Like I said, I have two young boys and when they don't sleep all night, the invitation for me is to be patient and kind and gentle. And when I wake up the next morning having three hours of sleep, to not be a jackass, to be patient, kind and gentle with the that's what would a saint do? A saint would say, I cannot. My emotions and my spirituality cannot be mastered by a lack of sleep. And if they are, how weak am I that I can only be good when life goes easy, right? So that's like step one. This is the invitation become a saint with every situation. There are the tried classic stuff like this is the thing that I'm. So I'm writing my next book and it will be about the spiritual practices, um, how to live in them. That means we can do this again, man. Yeah, we got to do it again. I'm already excited. Yeah, I'm about like a third of the way through. And so, um, one of the things that my mind is on, especially in this book and room for Good things, is, um, you just have to do the unsexy thing of living the right way over and over. There's a reason why Christians read their Bible, why they pray, why they fast, why we seek to do battle against the spiritual forces that want to unmake us. Right? You can take, um, any conception. The East Rome, Protestantism. We have this conception of like you wage war against the world, the flesh and the devil. And so you have to prayerfully, mindfully, in, in the, in Eastern Orthodoxy, it's called sepsis or it's called watchfulness. You have to guard your life against the world and all the things the world is going to try to bring you towards. You have to guard yourself against your own passions, against your own lusts, your own greedy, selfish, sinful desires. And then lucky us, as Christians, you just have like an enemy who wants to ruin you. And so you guard yourself from these things. So you say yes to certain things, and it can be simple. Read a psalm, read a chapter in the Gospels. Say a short prayer and fast. I would just say fast once a week, just like people just don't eat for one day. Suffer just a little bit. There's a quote from, um, I think it's Pascal and Pensées where he says just about all of human problems could be solved if a person could spend an hour in a dark room alone. And he wrote this before the invention of the internet and the smartphone and you're like, dude, we would die. Um, and so you have no idea, bro. Yeah. So you just start thinking yourself about, like, what are the things I can say no to in order that I can feast more appropriately? And I would say there is this thing. I'm on purpose not saying certain things, because I really do believe that everyone enters their own wilderness. And if I give a prescription, even the way I'm writing the next book. If you give prescriptions, people don't own their spiritual life and they other it. They say, Josh told me to do this, um, rather than saying like, listen, Lord, I want to be a saint, I'm going to pray and I'm going to get your words in me and repeat your words back to you to transform me. But I'm also going to learn to say yes to to the things in your life. And so for me, I had to quit my job. That was a divine. That was a yes, I had to say, but I'm not telling everybody to quit your job. You may need to blow up your life because nothing's working. Or you might have to do what I've had to do millions of times since then, which is saying like, I wish I could blow up my life and start again or go on a crazy adventure. I need to settle. I need to put roots down. I need to be loving in places that are dry and barren and harsh against me. And so there is this openness to the what next? So yes, you have the courage to be honest. Yes. You say I want to be a saint. Um. And I will say yes to all the divine invitations to participate in your life. God. And the baseline for me is I'm going to read my Bible, I'm going to pray, and I'm going to fast, and I'm just going to be saying like, give me eyes to see how much of this is that? Very few Christians in the church have a beautiful, expansive, adventurous vision of the Christian life, like one of the things I am constantly. So I have nine, five, and seven, right? So I'm a little ahead of the game, but I hate to tell you the sleeping thing. It doesn't get much better anytime soon, just for different reasons. Yeah dude. Anyway, let me tell you stories. We'll bond over that some other time. But the point, the point is, I want them to know that. Yes. Like following Jesus. It's it's rules in a sense. Right? It's design, but it's for their best, you know, and I was I was trying to figure out how to have a good Bible study with my kids. Like, I got crazy kids. energetic, precocious, verbal like, so they don't sit still. So I was like, okay, I drive him to school every day, right? So my thing is, okay, I created this the twelve family values like boom, boom, boom, boom. And then what I do is every week I print out the next one. And in that twenty minute drive, we all talk about it. Right. And if we can do that successfully Monday through Thursday, Friday is donuts. Let's go. And it's like fun. Like we celebrate that. We got through that and we. So this whole week was that the verse in John where it talks about the thief has come to steal, kill and destroy. But I have come that you might have a rich and satisfying life. And all three of my kids are memorizing that throughout the week. And we're talking about what that means, and we're talking about like, what does it mean that your plans are for my good? And I want them to know, Josh, that following Jesus is awesome. And yet I feel like I almost had to undo a sense of the cultural expectations that, well, yeah, but it's really it's really about doing these things and these rituals and like, you're almost like a hipper, cooler compromised Christian on some levels to present that vision, which is craziness. So so talk about that as so crucial to this whole process, dude. First off, I love that you're doing that with your kids. Um, we have the same thing. And so one of the things that we have, one of our family values is like, we protect beautiful, we protect and enjoy beautiful things. And that just becomes a why can't I do that? Because we protect and enjoy beautiful things. So like, you don't hit like I have two same thing. I have wild boys. Like there's like Tarzan. They're crazy. Yeah. I ain't gonna get better, man. Yeah. So they're like, they they want to wrestle with all their uncles and their aunts. They'll be like, no, you guys are too violent. You can't punch your aunts, you can punch your uncles, you can walk up and punch your uncles any time, any place they're down to play. Yeah. Um, but it was the same thing. So Aislinn taught. She's my wife. Um, she taught the boys to stop and smell the roses. And there's a time where every rose, every flower they saw, they'd pick it up and smell it and be like, no, no, no. We protect and enjoy beautiful things. Beautiful. So I think the value system, the structures like those twelve values you have, whatever they become. I think those are key because they are an identity. That's an identity building thing for your kids. I also think about the things for me that compelled my life where it was stories, right? Like I watched, um, Gladiator when I was thirteen, and I remember being, oh yeah, dude, stranglehold on my whole life, I watched Batman. I hope you didn't watch the second one, though. Just. No, I didn't. Neither did I. Yeah, I would never, you know, better. Yeah. So, like, I watch glide. I mean, I watch Batman The Animated Series growing up, and those things spoke to my heart and my soul. And they said like, oh, you couldn't be more like being a man. You can be more than who you currently are. And when even now, as an adult, when I when you watch good stories, you get choked up because you envision a life that you could live if you only said yes to the good. And then you have Christian stories that do the same thing. You have Lord of the rings, you have Chronicles of Narnia. You have tons of other stuff that says, listen, your life is this mysterious, mystical myth. My sons, my daughters, whatever kind of kids you have, whoever you might be. Um, this is like Chesterton says, this is the myth that became fact. And so to teach it, one of the things that I want to do for my kids that I want because I've had to do it for myself, to teach myself a new language. It's another chapter in the book, um, language for a New Land is this idea that, like, it is okay to look at your life in this beautiful, mythic way to be like, yes, I am a saint and I'm on the path to glory. And so when you walk down the street, you should envision that there are enemies that want to destroy you, and you should envision that there is a king that has sent you out on a mission. And then, like for me, I have a wife. So there's like a princess, a queen that I'm rescuing. Protecting my whole life gets saturated in this language. And then I'm going to be honest, I think for the vast majority of people, the way to keep it is you just have kids that kids give you. Like dude, watching my kid enjoy his life wonder with zero apprehension, zero insecurity. He is not jaded in the slightest. Warms me up to be like, what if I did the same thing? What if I enjoyed the little things again? As for the first time, the lessons that your kids teach you man, like I. So my my nine year old had this weird episode where he was just having these night terrors and he doesn't have those very often, and he was kind of sick. And so I didn't know what it was. But, um, it was so profound because all he wanted and all he needed was for me to lay by him. That took it away. Come on. And as I'm laying there and I'm thinking about this vision of God, right? This idea that what my son needed was my presence. I didn't do anything. I didn't I didn't cure anything. But just for him to know I was there soothed him in a supernatural way. And I'm just sitting there, laying there going, this is this is what God is like for me. Yeah, dude. Like and yet, yet how beautiful is that vision, right? That my nine year old son, even as a nine year old, he's starting to get cool. And you know, he's starting to use slang I don't understand. I'm like this little alpha punk, whatever. Um, but even as a nine year old bro, he needed to know his dad was right there. And when he knew his dad was right there, he could sleep at peace. And I was like, that is just you can't get that vision in a book. No, you know what I mean? Yeah. And so most of these things. Yeah. Thank you for sharing I love that. But most of these things are you have to live them. And the thing with our modern world, um, listen, like I'm not here to slam anyone else who writes books and and is doing their thing, but a reason that a lot of them didn't. I read all of them to you write a book on formation and formation adjacent stuff. You have to read all the books, and the reason why a lot of them didn't change my life previously. Like I had my master's in theology when I was an alcoholic and suicidal. Yeah, was sink in. Yeah, it was crazy. But the reason why was a lot of it was intellectuals, just a brain in a bag. And it didn't give me the tools to live, even to voice. Like your son saying to you, dad, just lay down beside me. Right. Most of us don't even have the language for our pain because we're not honest to admit it. And then most of us don't know how to live out the next steps. We just say like, oh, I could do an I could think a new thought. I could just think this thing rather than be like, you know what, I'm going to commit myself to a practice, to a way of living, and I'm going to listen to what my body says when it's like, I hate praying. Why do I get so tired? When I pray, I'll be wide awake watching TV, eating food, and I'll be like, you know, I'm gonna take ten minutes and pray. And you're just like, eyes heavy, head spinning, distracted. And you think to yourself about those things and you'd be like, okay, so I need to begin living out this life I have. Like. And it will be when, like you said earlier, things get harder before they get better. It's because, like, we don't have the stability of all the coping mechanisms, like coping mechanisms are great until they start killing you and then you have to give up on them and then you're like, oh, I'm a weak little bird in a in a dark, vicious jungle. I need to become strong. Yeah. And I have never had to become strong. And so, um. Yeah, dude, I just think all this embody, I mean, embodiment is a huge part of the book. This embodied way of life of of, um, letting, of learning to listen to your body, and living your faith out through your body is vital. If you want transformation because you are your body, mind included. Yeah, and speaking of which, and I thought this was so profound, is you talk about this journey of boxing that you undertook in the midst of this transformation and, uh, yeah, I mean, talk about the lessons from that, because I think there's some profound lessons of discipleship and maybe a little bit of, uh, dare I say, conviction that the church needs to hear in terms of of how this crusty simple was getting it right in a way that many of our churches just aren't. Yeah. Um, so I did martial arts growing up, and when I decided to do the next right thing, when I was like, hey, I can't keep drinking myself comatose, I don't know what to do. So it was literature that was like, listen, if you just take the next step and you say yes to the right invitations and you do your best to say no. The wrong ones. You they the literature, the stories say you find life. And so I was just like, I'm gonna get back into boxing. I, I literally, for whatever reason, just had I just wanted to take the edge off. I needed to go to a place where you work so hard you can't think about your life, and they hit you so hard that if you're not paying attention and thinking about how broken your life is. But then what happened? Going going back to the boxing gym and the places that I was. I mean, it was fascinating. It was this idea that every area of my skill, or lack thereof, would be watched by a coach. So you're you're sparring and your coach comes up and he's like, you want to know why you keep getting tagged by that left hook, weak shoulders. So we need to strengthen your shoulders. You just get tired a few minutes in because you're blocking. You want to know why this? Because your left foot. And so he works with you after class. He doesn't work with I mean he does work with everyone broadly, but then he goes by everyone week by week, moment by moment, strengthening you in the specific places you're weak, and it doesn't change overnight because you have to develop a strength and a routine. So like when I talk about embodiment, I was on wrong foots, so I'm moving. I'm weaving incorrectly. It looks fine, but it's not right and it's why I keep getting tagged. So I have to unlearn everything I previously learned and I have to relearn it the right way. And after months I stopped getting tagged. So I go home with less split lips. Yeah. And then you think to yourself, you're like, whoa. He made sure that all of the mechanics were there so I wouldn't get tagged. Yeah. And I remember I would be cycling home after a class and being like, why isn't my discipleship like this, quote unquote discipleship? Why do I just go to an event and someone talks about porn for the billionth time because it'll be like a men's thing or whatever, right? And they say a few statements and they think everyone's fine, or they talk about like any of the vices, not just lust, but like gluttony and avarice and whatever. Yeah. Wrath. And like, instead of just broad things, they sit down and they meet with you. They talk to you. They're living life with you in such a way, they'd be like, hey, you see how you reacted there? Why? Like, what were you doing in that moment? What was going through your mind? Or was it just like a selfish thing where you're like, hey, this person's demanding more of my time than I thought. My wife, my kids, my friends, whatever it is, you just have someone there coaching you be like, okay, okay, we got to go back to fundamentals, you know what I mean? Like we like. So in the traditional church, they have a different view of, say, virtue. So they have levels. They'll have stuff where like the first step is stop, like slowing down sinning and then stopping sinning. Like not entirely, but stopping and then the next. So that's level one and level two. Level three is like acquiring the virtues and mastering the virtues, and then you get into these other levels that are like, we're totally okay to talk about the art. The heroes of the faith who are like the, like anyone, heroes of the faith who are like, they're they're beyond quote unquote, the acquisition of the virtues. They are now in some small semblance. They can say with Paul, follow me, for I follow Christ. And I'm like, dude, you mean square one is what I've been focused on my whole life. Slow down the sinning just a little bit. Not even the acquisition of the virtues. And so you think to yourself, you're like, oh, I do need mentorship. I need someone to watch me to be like, Josh, you keep bobbing when you should be weaving with your anger, with your apathy, with your cynicism. Where's that coming from? Let's unlearn some of these behaviors together. Oh, man. But that's so antithetical to the way we do life. Well, I mean, like, somebody has to be close enough to you to even be able to see that, let alone call it out. Yeah. And I mean, I'm going to I don't mind sharing the what I think like you also can't sell it. It's not a it's not a product. You can't go on Instagram or YouTube. Dude I'm out then I can't monetize it. I can't put that on a shirt. All right. You mean I can't sell, like, a twelve step program to ten thousand people and make a bunch of money and leave them worse off? Like, I mean, and literally like, and I'm I there's no one I'm actually throwing shade at. But my mind does go to like, Simon the Cyrene, who's like, give me the power so I can monetize it here. And, um, Peter has strong words for people like that. And so I think you're right, like there is this. So Dostoyevsky and Brothers Karamazov talks about how love and dreams is beautiful. It's easy. Everyone wants it. But love and reality is harsh and brutal. It demands your whole life. It is not up on a stage. No one will clap for you. No one will see you, but you will change people's lives. And so the difficulty for the Christian in the modern world is to say, the majority of my life is real, it's local, it's embodied. It is not virtual, it's not digital, it's not disembodied. It is a real thing, and no one will see it. So no one sees the vast majority of my life. They don't know who I meet with, the conversations that I'm having, the people I go out for coffee with, the lives that I'm trying to mesh mine in with so we can do this together. And, um, I purposefully will never post those things for two reasons. Number one, like I get really worried about what Jesus says in Matthew five, like you've received your reward in full. It's like, um, nine likes not good enough for you, bro. Yeah, dude. Um, and so and then the other thing is, like, I just, I don't think that's a thing that is a product. I think it's a way of life. And, um, between me and you and I guess however many people are going to see this, but as this conversation goes between me and you, I really think that is the solution. The antidote to these things is recapturing a vision for life as God created it. When you think of Eden and you think of the new Eden, you really don't think about YouTube megastars and brand personas. You think about people gathered around a table, gathered around a fire, walking together, working together, doing life together. Um, and the deepest, most intentional ways. And you think, like, okay, I should that that's what I was made to be. Love God, love people. There's no screens. We don't need the screens to do it, the platforms to do it. It's convicting. Man and I, I've been rereading Screwtape Letters and I, I think of like, the complexity and the layers of the strategies that are implemented. Right. And we think of it very, uh, in a very sort of binary or two dimensional way. It's like, oh, get them to do this, get them to do that. But I think Satan will take very well-meaning churches and very well-meaning ministries and very well-meaning artists, and he'll get them to to compromise in the sense that they no longer they step onto the treadmill of scalable, of, of growth, of reach of, of all these things. And it's so easy to rationalize, it's so dang easy to rationalize. And yet the real work of discipleship is not sexy. And it's not. It's hard. And in my own life. Right. And I have to fight that because it's so easily. You just kind of don't make room or time for the people that could actually know you well enough to be that boxing coach for you, that will help you to become more like Christ. Yes, dude, what a powerful scheme. Yeah, and I mean, like one of the things like, you know, how there's the, there's like the meme of, like, people say the best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing not exist. But like, the best trick you ever pulled was that melon grab that one time. Um, but one of the best tricks is just like, you need to have a platform to be anything you want to be a pastor, a worship leader. You need this many one hundred thousand followers. I mean, all the best people I know. One of the churches I was at, um, it was this two guys I used to volunteer. I work with them, so I'd go with, I mean, they were maintenance guys at the church. It was a big old church in the city, and, um, I would get to hang out with them every Saturday morning. And the reason I volunteered was I just wanted to hang out with them. And you get to do life with them. And so, like, part of the thing would be I'd spend the whole morning polishing brass in this giant one hundred year old church, all the door frames and handles and this and that. And then after we talk and you just see these guys are living their life. They're working hard. No one sees them. They're keeping a church together. They they the reason people gather is because they break their backs all week. And you sit there and be like, no one knows the trouble they like. I've watched toilets explode on them. I'd have to fix it Saturday night so people can be there or whatever. Right? And you just kind of sit there and you think to yourself and you'd be like, listen, when we're all casting our crowns before the good Lord, when we get to the other side, I think there'll be tons of pastors that will be like, here's my feeble gift. And then there will be tons of unseen pastors, unseen workers, unseen laborers that will have multiplied talents one hundred fold like they saw that the harvest is white and they went out and worked. And so, like that vision to me is like, um, listen, I'm not disparaging the the digital space is a place to do work. Um, we just have to be mindful of it. I don't think it's I don't think it's a neutral place that I think that we are an enemy occupied territory when we go online. That's my opinion. And so I think we have to keep our wits about us. I mean, like, I can't go on without being inundated with every vice at once and be like, hey, Josh, you're going to go post something about being holy. Here's everything to tear you to ribbons and you'd be like, hey, buy no more. It's like throwing a diamond in the sewer, right? It's like, good luck in finding this. Yeah, dude. To me it's again, it's all the way back. And we can wrap things up here soon, but it's all the way back to that five out of ten living. Because the lie is that the people that have the platform, that automatically means they have the eight out of ten living. And the real devastation is having what the world says looks like success and still feeling like five out of ten. Right? And so to me, it's not that what we're saying is, well, you know, following Jesus is just this humble little life. And you got to be the guy sweeping the back of the church. No, it's about it's having the veil removed from your eyes and recognizing that to do what Jesus has called you to do faithfully, to know him, to want to be like him, is actually the best. It's not like a sacrifice. It's it's the slow unmasking of the pretensions and lie that anything out there, one hundred million followers or whatever, best selling book or fill in the blanks. It does not satisfy. It does not satisfy. They're just ploys to get you measuring the wrong thing. And so the real secret is to know that the guy who's unleashed in his calling, that might be completely unknown to the world, is experiencing a soul level joy that he would not trade for some stupid platform on YouTube. That's the real change. Come on dude. Yeah. Like, I have a there's a this is a big thing in my story like this. There's a chapter in the book called The Myth of Extraordinary. And it's this idea that you have to be extraordinary to follow Christ, that your life must always be high after high, seen, always seen, always on the stage. But that's not how we were made. The most extraordinary life we can live is being in order. Like how ordinary people become everyday saints. You just do the ordinary life and your ordinary life is holy. It is a holy, ordinary life. And you can listen like this. So one of the big underlying themes is to to get out of rock bottom, to envision your life in this holy, ordinary way, you need to cultivate a framework of wonder, childlike wonder. That's why Christ says it. For such as these is the kingdom of heaven. The kids who just want my presence, the kids who look at the world as if for the first time, and they want joy again and again and again. And when we cult like so Chesterton talks about in fairy tales, the reason why rivers run with wine is so that we can imagine that they actually run on water, and that water nourishes the whole world, and we drink it and it nourishes our bodies, and it falls from the sky and it makes everything grow. And you're like, oh my gosh, we think that rivers running with wine would be amazing. But the true feast is that they run with water. Apples are made of gold and fairy tales. So we can remember that from the earth comes sweet, delicious treats that you can satisfy yourself with. And so, like cultivating this thing of wonder allows you to take this massive step back, desiring the stage. Now listen. Some people will say, yes, there are people in the world. When you say yes to invitations, it leads to platform and influence. And the warning that Paul gives is those of you who teach maybe judge more strictly. So this is not a thing that you should just go willy nilly pursuing. But this does not give me, I mean, the platform writing a book, the act of writing and talking to real people gives me joy. But the true joy of my life is my wife, my kids, my community is the real things I get to do. These are the most, and they're unseen. We get to like, I wrestled with my kid before this happened and it like, dude, I love you. This has been a great conversation, but it doesn't compete, bro, and I don't. I'm not offended. And so I think, like cultivating this view of wonder that allows us to see our ordinary lives as holy and beautiful and and because that's the gateway into the infinite, the gateway into the infinite is right under your nose. Right? This is your life. And right. If you would just say yes, changing that diaper, you might experience the presence of life. You might be remade cooking that dinner when you're gassed, driving like, whatever it is, dude, there's so many. Like, we got a hole in our car, like in one of the back wheels. So our car was running on flat and I booked a. We only have one car, so I booked an appointment. It was for a few days. So like, every time we're going out, I just anywhere we go, if I'm grocery shopping, if I'm doing this or doing that, I had to go get the tire filled. And it's just another thing. So you're like, okay, I got to get both kids in the car, and then I got to go fill the tire. So go out and I'm chatting with the guys at the shop. We have a blast. We're just chatting. And I was like, you know what? I get to go fill the car up and my kids ask questions. Well, my oldest asked questions, what are you doing? And I'm like, okay, dude, our car, there's air in our tires. The same air that you breathe in with your lungs that goes into our tires. And that's how cars drive. He loves cars. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So he's like, I'm like, yeah, dude, if you breathe that in, you could run as fast as a car. And he's just like ripping. Oh, that's. And then you go to the anyway. So there's your your life is just holy and ordinary and beautiful. And if you say yes, there's all these infinite joys just underneath the surface. But like you said, there's just like these little lies that none of that is good enough. That's all a lie. It's all a lie. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I have a weekly rhythm of, of, like, kind of holding my life's mission statement against my calendar and bank account and in evaluating the incongruence. And because I know, I know, even if my flesh and weakness pull me in wrong directions, I know that my eulogy goals are going to have nothing to do with the podcast, with the tours I've been on, with the things I've written, nothing. I just know that academically it's going to be like, did I get on that dang trampoline with my girls when I hate being on the trampoline because it's exhausting? Like, how did I do this for hours as a kid? I don't even understand. Um, it's going to be defined by those moments, and there shouldn't be a surprise that the enemy is coming hard after the things that are going to define a rich life. Right? And I think about my sense of wonder and the profundity of life and the the gratitude I have becomes more oriented to simple, not complex. Like as I get as I get older. That's the weird part, right? Is you would think it's based on these. I look, I've been to seventy five plus countries. That's cool. But none of it. None of it compares to the sweet moments that I've had with my wife or my kids. None of it and never will. And so that I think it's conversations like this, and it's discipleship that needs to remind us of that. It needs to be me saying, Josh, it's cool we had this conversation. Now get back to the things that matter most. And that's what the church should be doing for for us all is is calling us to that paradox, which is the beautiful wonder of the simple things that God created us for. Come on. That's awesome. Yes. So, dude, this is awesome. I thoroughly appreciate you. And again, as I said, everyone needs to go out and get your book. I'm gonna do a whole intro to this in the show notes and the links and all that kind of stuff. So I know you're not concerned, but that will be my big push. Not just on this platform, but just interpersonally. Yeah. When I get a book that really touches me like this, I become an evangelist for it. So I'm going to let everyone know. But thank you. I got to hit this little end record here to make sure that your file gets uploaded. Um, but Josh. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. Thank you. Man, I really appreciate you taking the time and having the conversation.

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