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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
All right guys, I'm so excited to have Patrick Miller with us today, and he is going to talk us through, uh, a new book that he and, uh, a friend Keith is a friend. You guys have written stuff together before though, huh? Kind of a partner Yeah. In crime. Yeah. Keith and I are co-authors. We, we pastor at the same church.
We share an off this, yeah. Uh oh. So you guys are partners in crime every day? Yeah. Yeah. Thankfully we live in different houses. I, I Couldn spend that time. Cool. Well, Patrick and Keith have written a book called Joyful Outsiders that's coming out at the end of the month, and I wanted to have, um, Patrick just kind of talk us through, um, the, the theme Patrick helped me make sure I'm right.
The theme of Joyful Outsiders is. Um, embracing the kind of biblical concept of, um, not being an outcast necessarily, but being different culturally and not being in the a norm. And, um, can you, can you kind of open that up for me? That idea, like what is an outsider, what is the biblical concept of being an outsider?
Yeah. You know, we, we sometimes think about the Bible as a book that was written by insiders for insiders, and when we do that, we forget the very fact that this book was a minority report on the empire. It was by a backwater nation that no one cared about. And it was written by people who didn't fit in with their societies.
You can go through character by character, Abraham, the father of. The nation of Israel. He was called from Babylon to go live in Canaan. And I mean, imagine that he's speaking a different language. He doesn't worship the same gods. He doesn't even have a homeland. He was an outsider and it caused tremendous tension with his neighbors.
Or you could think for a second about the Hebrew slaves living in Egypt. They were hardly insiders. They were powerless. They were not in charge of the nation. Or even if you think, well, what about the nation of Israel? Surely then people are insiders. Well. The vast majority of our writings were from the prophets, and they were people who were calling Israel back to Fidelity to God.
They said, look, you guys aren't worshiping him. You're worshiping idols. And as a result, they were outcast. They were treated like outsiders, and you can run that line through to the exiles who had to live in Babylon all the way to Jesus. I mean, he could have been born anywhere. He could have been born in the Roman capital to, to one of the, you could have been one of the sons of the emperor, but he didn't choose to do that.
Instead, he chose to be born in a backwater in Galilee. He lived under the military occupation of the Roman Empire. He had to go on the run from King Herod when he was a baby. He knew what it was to be an outsider. But the really, uh, key verse for me comes in the book of Hebrews chapter 13, and it says that he was crucified outside the gates and the author's trying to draw this biblical theme right into focus for us.
He's saying, look, if you look throughout the Bible followers of God. Are outcasts, they're foreigners, they're exiles. And Jesus was the king of exiles. He was the king of outsiders. And he was crucified quite literally outside of his city, exiled by his creation, exiled by his own people, uh, even forsaken by his father as he cries out Psalm 22.
And so he knew what it meant to be an outsider. And now we have been invited into that because the author continues and he says, now you too, go outside. Camp and bear the reproach that he himself bore, and that's the invitation that he gives us. Now the deal is that's not something that anybody puts on their Amazon wishlist for Christmas.
And yet we love to talk about identity in Christ. And this is one identity that we just don't talk about, like, great, we're, we're sons and daughters of God. Amen. We're saved. Amen. We have eternal life. Amen. But what about this one? You're called to be an outsider and that's what this book is all about.
'cause I think God has abundant blessings for every dad listening to this podcast. Abundant blessings in your life and abundant blessings for your children, but you will not unwrap those. Blessings unless you received this gift, which is that you have been called to be an out, an exile and an outcast, and an outsider and a foreigner in your context.
Yeah. That's so good. So you were talking some about, um. Our cultural shifts, so like some statistics on the way in which America has changed over the last 50 or 60 years. Can you talk me through that idea of Okay. Things, things do feel a little different even, and I'm young. You're young. Even in our lifetimes, things feel a little bit different.
Oh yeah. You know, when, when I talk to people, I, I love to ask the question, why do you feel like an outsider? Because. Every dad, every Christian I talked to, they would say, I feel more like an outsider today than I did 10 or 15 years ago. And if that's the way you feel, you might think the reason you are an outsider is because of those cultural shifts.
And I have to say this, you are not a crazy person. Our culture has changed dramatically in the last 25 years. There have been 43 million people in our country who have dechurched. We're now reaching the point where historically Protestants may have the majority of the country back in the 1950, 70% of the country identified as Protestant.
Today it's less than 30%, and there's more nuns. That's N-O-N-E-S, people who don't declare any religious affiliation in our country than there are Protestants. So there's been a major demographic shift. If you're following Jesus, you're no longer in the norm. You're, you're somewhat of a weirdo. You're, you're on the outside and there's callous other ways.
We can talk about how people talk about religion and spirituality and how that's changed. About changes in, in our sexual morays and how we think about sex and sexuality that have changed, and these are all very real shifts that we have to, uh, understand so that we can be joyful outsiders in our context.
Yeah. I like the, the idea that you're playing with, of being a joyful outsider because the, I think what you're trying to highlight, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that. Sometimes when we experience the outsider, um, reality, our response might be, um, anxiety or feeling left out or feeling like we, we don't fit in or being overwhelmed with discouragement.
Is that, is that kind of what you're playing with too? Yeah, a absolutely. You know, back to the, to the previous idea for just a moment, your reaction to being an outsider. It's very much so going to be calibrated by why you think you are an outsider. Mm-hmm. And, and like you get this in marriage. Every, every husband does.
Um, I mean, I get this in marriage counseling. If, if I have a wife come in, she says, oh my gosh, I have all these marital troubles. I'll have her sit down and I'll say, Hey, tell me why you're having the troubles. And she'll always do the same thing. She say, well, my husband's lazy. Uh, he, he disappears for hours on end.
He causes all these issues in our marriage. And I say, okay, great. I'm gonna meet with him and I'm gonna ask him the same question. He says, well, you know, she's, she's, she's very unkind and she's always getting on me and griping about things, and so I just leave 'cause I can't be around someone like that.
Well, if you think that the other person is the problem, you will justify your own wrongdoing. She'll think I'm totally fine saying mean things to him because he's being a bad person. He'll think he's totally fine abandoning her because she's being mean to him. Well, the why really matters, you know, and the exact same thing applies when you think about your own calling and identity as an outsider.
You are not an outsider despite all the facts I just laid out a second ago. Because of our culture, you're an outsider because God has called you to be an outsider. Uh, this, this got hit home to me probably six years ago, seven years ago. Maybe it's longer than that. Eight years ago. Wow. Uh, back when I was in seminary and I was meeting with the Dean of students and him and I, we didn't have a lot in common.
You know, I'm, I'm just a normal American citizen. He was an Army colonel. Uh, I'm a white dude. He's a black dude. He had kids at the time. I didn't have kids at the time. And we're sitting there and I'm kind of griping to him about, gosh, college ministry is so hard. That's what I was doing at the time. All these L-G-B-T-Q issues and everybody disagrees.
Man, it'd be great to go back to the 1950s when everybody kind of agreed about Christianity. I mean, wouldn't that be an easier ministry context? And he looks at me and in the gentlest way possible says, really? You think that if you and I went back to 1950s Mississippi and preached the truth about racism, that would be an easier context.
And I, I kind of shyly smiled and said, okay, you know, I see your point. What he was trying to get at is that every generation of Christians is an outsider in a different way. We're, we're, we're outsiders today in a different way than we would've been back in 1950. And yeah, we, we have to calibrate ourselves to that particular moment in that particular context.
But the underlying truth that you're an outsider never changes. In Peter's letter to people living in the region of modern day Turkey, he opens it up by calling them, quote, elect exiles. In other words, God from his throne decided to choose you to vote for you, to elect you, to call you to be in exile. And the people he is writing to, they were not, uh, political exiles by any stretch of the imagination.
They were natives. And so he is saying, Hey, you have to recalibrate where your citizenship is. You have to recalibrate how you think about yourself. And this is so helpful to you. If, if you're not expecting to be an outsider, you will respond in the wrong way, the same way that husband and wife do. Yeah, that's really interesting.
The, um. I am, I'm thinking about as you were talking, and I, and I guess you play with this some in the book of like Babylonian exile, obviously, like Daniel pops right out at the front. Yeah. Um, and I'm just thinking like processing, like what were those emotions like as a super young guy stripped of all your kind of cultural heritage and placed right in the middle of your kind of arch nemesis of a culture?
Yeah. And at what point does he shift from discouragement, frustration. Um, anger to a place of like, ah, maybe there's a purpose in this. Like maybe there, maybe, maybe God's will is somehow being accomplished and God's going to use me. And, and is that kind of what you're getting at too, of like, okay, this is where we are.
Uh, to use the biblical metaphor, like Babylon esque, um, your, your mindset has to shift as an ambassador of the kingdom our citizens of the heaven were, but we're. In Babylon to an extent. Mm-hmm. Um, is that what you're after, like shifting, like turning that, that light switch on of like, no, there's a purpose, there's, there's a call.
Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I think we need a different paradigm for where we live. Uh, look, I, I, I'm a US citizen. I love the country of America, and so I, I don't say this with any, uh, weird bitterness towards, towards the country, but we have to accept that until we're resurrected, until we're living with God in heaven and the new creation, we are to one degree or in another.
Exiles in our own native countries. Mm-hmm. My America is in some ways, not in every way, but it is in some ways Babylon. It it, it's a place that has rejected God, that has turned from God. Yeah. And is living in a different way. And that means that you're going to be in tension with the culture around you if you want to walk in the way of Jesus and not just you.
Your family is, your children are, and you have to figure out, how do I navigate this as a dad, as a husband, as someone in the workplace? These are really challenging questions that have real world concrete, practical implications for your life. Yeah, the, okay, so when we're talking about the tension, like living within the tension, is there some sense in which we have to look at it, acknowledge it, and just get comfortable with it?
Like just embrace it, like it just is what it is, is that some of the. Yeah, the perspective, man, it's, it's tension is, is really challenging because no one likes living with cognitive dissonance. Like we, we, we don't like living in situations where we feel like there's something wrong in a relationship or a situation.
And so we're all wired to try to diffuse tension in our lives. Um, but in this instance, I think Jesus is calling us to something different. If you think your goal in life is to diffuse the tension between yourself and the world around you, I suspect you'll end up going in one of three directions.
Instead of being a joyful outsider, you might become a conformist outsider. This is someone who says. You know what, um, the world thinks differently about X, Y, Z topic, and that's causing me tension in my workplace or with my kids or with my spouse. And so I'm just gonna conform to what the world says because then I don't have any tension.
A different option that a lot of people turn to is combat. This approach is different, but it says, Hey, if I can just cow everybody else into agreeing with me into taking my perspective. Then there'll be no tension because we all agree, right? So it is almost the opposite of being the conformer. But, but, but they're both seeking the same thing.
They don't want tension. I think probably the most common one is just to become a, uh, cloistered outsider, someone who tries to separate off into the Christian subculture. And, you know, you try not to interact with people who aren't Christians or maybe you become conflict avoidant. You don't wanna have challenging conversations, so you're constantly trying to change the conversation.
And again, this is a way of avoiding and diffusing the tension. But I think that Jesus is calling us to learn to live inside of the tension, to learn to walk within it by trusting in him. I. Yeah, that's such an interesting nuance. I'm just thinking about even like, you know, kind of the joke is Thanksgiving dinner table Uhhuh and there's politics and there's L-G-B-T-Q issues and especially 2020, it was like, man, we had a lot to talk about then.
Um, and yeah, you see that there's a great SNL skip back then of Oh, really going rather Thanksgiving table. And every time someone gets into something uncomfortable, they broke into someone's song. Who was it? It was, it was a famous, uh, singer, but yes, we all feel that. Yeah. Yeah. But I think though, like you can even maybe see that in.
Um, individual church cultures, like do you just conform to the pressure or? I think sometimes in my context, like maybe my initial reaction is to combat, is to kind of find the John the Baptist Edge and wanna argue and, um, I. Yeah, those are really interesting and helpful ways to think. Yeah. Um, well the reality reality is that life is very complex.
Yeah. And how you react, it is gonna be different person to person. People can be being faithful to Jesus and take different tacks that almost seem opposite to one another. So, so one quick story. I mean, and, and by the way, this, this gets right into. To parenting and what it means to, to be a dad. Uh, it's about two years ago in our city.
Uh, we have a yearly diversity breakfast that celebrates the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. And, uh, in that event, it's, it's usually pretty, um, I. Un uninteresting. You know, they're, they're, they're talking about mm-hmm. That as life, and there might be like a choir or something, but two years ago they added a new element that had never been there before.
They added a drag performance. That's how the whole thing concluded. And so you've got people, you know, cheering and giving cash tips as these drag performers or dancing on stage. Well, here's the catch. They had bust in students from local middle schools to this, uh, particular event. And in the field trip permission form, they didn't say anything about there being a drag performance.
And so as you can imagine, these students get back and the reaction is not super positive. You've got people reacting all different kinds of ways, so, so again. Think about what, what, what would you do? Um, we had one person in our church who has a child with severe autism. He's nonverbal. He, he can't have two way conversations, and he was invited to this particular field trip precisely because he was autistic and it's a diversity breakfast.
And his mom was really excited for him to go because he is not typically allowed to go on field trips, right? He gets back and she finds out, and she can't have a conversation with him about what he saw. What do you do if you're that parent? We had other parents who said, okay, I know what to do. Uh, I, I need to, to protect my kids.
I'm, I'm gonna write an angry email to the school administrator to tell them what I think and why we can't do this. But I know other parents who said, well, you know what? These kids have access to to phones and TikTok and YouTube. They can see drag performances anytime. So don't we really kind of wreck the beauty of Jesus?
If we get all combative with people, we don't need to say anything at all. Then other people said, well, actually you're right. We can't change the public schools. So what we need to do is take our kids out of the public schools and put them into homeschooling or private schooling. And then you add into that.
You got people who are in the state who are working for the ag, what do they do? They come out with a big public statement and say, Hey, this is wrong. We're we're gonna come after you. We have people who are in the school board do they do the same thing. Each person's context is def. Determining what they should do.
You know, for us as pastors, we were navigating this, it was really tricky. Um, we're just trying to shepherd people who are asking good questions. Uh, but we knew that having poor trust between the schools and the community wasn't a great thing. And so we decided to do something we'd never done before, which is that we were gonna speak out publicly, but rather than speaking out against drag performances, what we did was write an article in the Newsweek that said, Hey, in a culture as diverse as our own, our, our culture is very 50 50 left, right?
So, I mean, we, we we're not leaning one way or the other where we're at. Um, we said, look, in. Community as diverse as ours. We can't expect everybody to agree about drag performances. What we can expect is that everyone agrees that parents should have the right of consent, that a parent should have the right to say what their kid should and shouldn't see.
Whether that's being taken to a prayer rally or being taken to a drag performance. And so that's what we put out, and the next day we met with the school superintendent and we walked in and our main goal was to make a friend. We literally wrote it on a piece of paper. Our goal is to make a friend that that's our number one goal.
Well, we get in there. And the very first thing the superintendent says to us is that we're no better than Jim Crow segregationists, and that we were causing, oh, gosh, that we were causing suicidality with our article. Now, I, I, I, I share this story to, to show how complex and fraught real life situations are.
Mm-hmm. I don't buy one size fits all shirts. You know why? Because one size fits, none. And if what you have on your table or at your church is a one size fits all solution to these complex cultural situations, it's no better than a one size fits all shirt. It's not gonna work. You have to have a diverse array of possible responses to what's happening around you based both on your context, your power, your influence, and on your personal gifts, your personal personality and how you're wired.
And we have to be the kinds of churches that can say, maybe we need both groups of people. Maybe we need some fire brands to get out and be prophetic and say the hard thing. And maybe we also need. The insiders, the advisors who aren't gonna be out there in public saying anything but are working behind the scenes to make the changes.
Those people don't tend to get along with one another because they say, oh, you profit out there, you're, you're, you're bullying people. Or the other guy says, oh, you're just a corrupt guy. He is on the inside. We need all of these people. And, and, and the story of exile shows that there are people of all diverse walks of life who are taking different approaches to the empire of Babylon.
And we need all of them. Yeah. So can you start talking me through that? Like, um, so part of the, the work and Joyful Outsider is laying out, um, different gifts, different strengths and, and against, correct me if I'm wrong, but laying out different ways that God's designed, wired each individual exile and how we should live and, um, influence.
Is that, is that. Kind of what you're, what you're trying to embody. Yeah. Yeah. But what we do in the book is, is we actually lay out six different archetypes based on biblical characters, uh, that engage their cultures in different ways. And it's my firm belief that in some sense, God's calling us to embody all six of these.
Hmm. And yet there's probably one or two that you will be particularly skilled and able to accomplish in your life. And the reason why we did this is because, again. It's the example that the Bible gives us. Uh, like you think about the diversity of responses in, in, in, in the exile. Um, you've got Daniel who's serving the, the king of Babylon and he's saying, long live the king of Babylon, right?
He's, he's, he's all for him. And then you have Shadrach, Meshach, and Bendigo. He say, I won't bend the knee to that king and to his golden idol. Well, who was right and who was wrong? Or you can think about, uh, Esther, right? She's in the Persian court. And when people are threatening her people, what does she do?
Well, well, she says, I'm gonna throw a feast to get the guy who's trying to kill my people killed. She gets, she gets ha being killed that that's the end, end result. What does Daniel do when he's threatened? He says, I'm not gonna throw a feast. You can make me into a feast for the, you can make me into a feast for the lions.
They're very different approaches or, or think about Nehemiah. He says, Hey, we've got all these threats from the outside and we need to build a wall to protect ourselves. And then Jesus comes along and says, Hey, I died to tear down the dividing wall in Ephesians two. Who's right and who's wrong? Well, I think they're all right.
And I think what it shows us is that every circumstance requires a different kind of response from us. And if we don't have the wisdom and the knowledge to know which one is the right one for the right moment, we're not gonna know what to do. And again, this is key for us as parents because during the little years of three to nine, you are modeling for your kids how they're going to think about and engage with their culture.
And then when you get to that 10 to 18 mark, now you're in the hard conversation phase and your kids are asking you, Hey, I've got a friend at school. And they're a good friend and she's trans and he's gay. And how do I react? How do I respond? How do I treat that person? And if you don't have tools in your tool belt, many of them to give to your kid to say, Hey, here, here, here's an approach you can take in this particular situation.
You're gonna be just as lost as they are. And that's not gonna be helpful to your kiddos. They're looking to you to give them wisdom for the challenging circumstances that they're living in. And it's different circumstances than you were probably living. I mean, when I was in high school, I graduated in 2006.
I remember when there was like a gay straight club that got started and this was controversial in 2006. I mean, most people couldn't believe that you'd have something like that. Well, now it would be controversial to say you shouldn't have something like that. And that just highlights our kids are in a different circumstance and if you aren't equipped, you can't equip them.
Yeah. That's so good. Um, can you, okay, so can you talk me through some of the, uh, the different archetypes and maybe some, like ones that are on the other side of this spectrum? Um, and. If there's a way, I'm sure you have some examples in the book. Can you show us how different ones would respond to different scenarios?
Yeah, yeah. Well, lemme talk about the two I've already mentioned, uh, one being what we call the protestor. I, i, I called him the prophet earlier. Uh, and the other one being the advisor. So the protestor is the person who's speaking out. They're changing the world by challenging injustice. The advisor is someone who changes the world by influencing the influential very different roles from one another.
Um, and these two groups often get opposed with each other. Let, let me give an example. Some of you might remember, this was back in 2015, uh, Bremerton High School. It was a high school where there was a famous situation. There was a coach, his name was Joe Kennedy, who for years after football games would go down the 50 yard line and take a knee and pray.
He'd only pray for 30 seconds. He wasn't praying out loud and slowly over time, sometimes people would come out there and join him, but Bremerton is close to Seattle. It's only a quarter Christian. It's not this big. Christian Mecca or anything like that? Well, in 2015, more and more people are going out to pray with him and the superintendent, a guy named Aaron Laval thinks, gosh, this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
This is messing up the divide between church and state that's supposed to exist inside the schools. And so he tells, uh, Joe Kennedy to stop and to cease and desist. And Joe Kennedy for his part refuses for the next four games. He continues to go out and the the, the situation's getting ramped up and now more people from both teams are joining him as an act of protest to say there's nothing wrong with having a prayer after a football game.
This doesn't break any laws. Finally after the fourth week, it wasn't just the, the prayers coming out, there were people coming out to rebel against them. In fact, it was such a big brawl that one of the assistant coaches said he thought he would get shot. So it's this crazy situation. Eventually, Joe Kennedy is, is kicked off the team.
He's put on a leave of absence, and this runs all the way through the Supreme Court and they find in favor of Joe Kennedy. But here's the catch that most people don't know. Aaron Laval, the superintendent and Joe Kennedy, the protestor, they both went to the same church. Hmm. These two guys were worshiping down the aisle from one another.
That had to be an awkward urinal break. I mean, I, I don't, I don't, I don't know how that goes. And, and, and, and what I hate about this is there could have been a different resolution to the story because Aaron Laval, I think, was doing his best to be a faithful insider. He, when you're an insider, when you're an advisor, you don't always have the power to, to make everything perfect.
You have to be okay with proximate justice. I mean, think about Daniel for a second. Do you think he was for everything, king Nebuchadnezzar did? No way. We know. You think he was like, yeah, that's a great idea. Go build a golden idol of yourself. No, he wasn't. But he had to be okay with proximate justice. The idea that I might not be able to get you all the way, but I can get us in the right direction.
And that's what advisors do. They're trying to slowly shift things in the right direction, closer to the kingdom. And both of them, by the way, could have made a biblical case. Joe Kennedy could have said, look, Jesus told us that if you deny him before other people, he'll deny you before the Father. What are you doing, Aaron?
Then Aaron could respond and said, Jesus also said that when you pray, don't do it in public. Like the hypocrites do. Go inside your prayer closet and do it in private. You're not doing that, are you, Mr. Kennedy? Aaron could have said, Hey, did you know that the Southern Baptist Convention celebrated the removal of school prayer back in the 1950s?
Because they didn't want schools, uh, teaching people how to pray. Like, there, there, there, there, both people could have made a case for what they were doing. And what I wanna say is. These people can learn to agree with one another and work alongside one another. That situation, it didn't work out, but in our own situation with the schools, it did work out.
We had a school board member who didn't come out publicly and people said, oh, he's corrupt. He's not saying anything. 'cause he's out there, you know, defending the drag show. But he wasn't. He was working behind the scenes to get that policy, that field trip policy overturned. And the reason he was able to do it was because there was a protestor.
Someone in the attorney general's office who was raising the red flag and applying so much heat to the school district that it allowed that guy on the inside to say, Hey guys, we really do need to make a change or else this is gonna happen. You see how in that instance, you have a protester and an advisor, but now they're working alongside one another to affect change.
Now, I'm not saying it's always gonna be that neat or that simple, but that just shows that we need both of these people in our churches. If we don't have them, we're gonna be missing something in the body of Christ. Yeah, this is just for my own clarity. So when we started the conversation and you talked about, um, some people just leaning into conformity, um, you are saying that like, alright, there's a standard in the kingdom.
Like we're to some extent like bringing, wanting to see Jesus's kingdom manifest in the earth. Um, but it seems like what you're saying is with that in mind. We're, we're not for conformity, we're not for injustice is just what it is, and we're gonna turn our heads or put our head in the sand. We, we are for change.
We are, we do have a standard that we're advocating for. It seems like what you're saying is that the, the wisdom or the discernment, the means by which we go about it, influencing has to have a little tact and different strategy. Is that where you are? Is that. Articulating Well, what you're, what you're going after.
Yeah. I, I, I think wisdom is the key word here. You know, Daniel is the wisdom warrior in the Bible. He's known for his wisdom and for his tact. In fact, that's a word that's used to describe him in Daniel too, that he acted with wisdom and tact. Mm-hmm. He understood what was possible and what wasn't possible.
He didn't push for what wasn't possible, even if what wasn't possible might be the most just thing he did. Try to trend the things in the right direction, move things in the right direction. That's not conformity. Conformity is saying, I'm gonna be a ladder climber who says, whatever Nebuchadnezzar says is good.
I'm, I'm on board. I'm pro Nebuchadnezzar all the time. Woo-hoo. The, the, the conformist won't, won't speak an objection. I have to imagine when Nebuchadnezzar said, Hey, I wanna build this idol. I bet you Daniel did say, I don't think that's a good idea. I. He got ignored. Right. In fact, we know that in a different instance he warned Nebuchadnezzar about his pride.
Yeah. It's just not, he couldn't say hard things and so that's the real challenge that we're getting into, especially when we're talking about the advisor. Again, there's so many biblical stories. One of my favorites is, is, is the story of Elijah. You know, he thinks he's the last prophet to worship God.
Mm-hmm. No one else has left. And he's angry at King Ahab. 'cause he's worshiping all these idols. And he's right. He's a prophet, he's a protestor, and he's calling out injustice. But God then invites him to go meet with a court official who's working inside of Ahab's Court as an advisor. And Elijah has to be thinking this dude's corrupt.
You know, he's working for Ahab. And when he meets with the court official, the court official tells him, you're right, this idolatry is wrong. But I protected 5,000 profits and fed them on my own. And you have to imagine he might have Judge E Light and say, you're out there, you know, yelling into the wind, but what have you done?
Because I'm the reason why there's still people worshiping Yahweh here. And again, we're, we're getting at the point of an advisor's calling is different than a protester's calling. Yeah. A protestor doesn't have room for that kind of, uh, gray space. An advisor has to have that kind of room, and we have to have the charity to, to understand when someone's in an advisor role.
To allow them to walk in that grace space and act with wisdom. Now, you can't be a coward. You can't be a conformist. You have to have lines that you won't cross. Daniel had lines. There's things he won't eat. There's things he won't do. You have to have lines if you are an advisor, but it doesn't mean that you demand perfect justice at at the precise moment.
You want it at all times. Yeah, this is probably a silly analogy, but there's so many instances where we're arguing for perfect justice to someone who hasn't, uh, received the gospel or have any, like, maybe they never even heard the gospel, and it's like, ah, maybe you should start with, um, the resurrection of Jesus before you demand, um, our sexual ethic or the perfect, um, so yeah, that, that would require tact, right?
Like that would require, it requires winning mind, knowing what's possible. Knowing what's probable and, and, and acting with wisdom and tactfulness to, to move things in the right direction, which might be slower than some people want. That again, that, that, that's what advisors are there for and, and they get a bad rap.
But what, what I always say to people, you know, 'cause you'll get this to people, like, oh, you know, maybe Christian shouldn't be in politics because politics is too dirtier. Maybe Christian shouldn't be in Hollywood 'cause Hollywood's too dirty. Or journalism or whatever it is that you think, oh, it's too dirty for Christians.
My question is always. So you're telling me that you'd rather Congress have no Christians, than have Christians that are willing to wade through the muck? Mm-hmm. You're telling me you'd rather have Hollywood have no Christians, than have Christians who are willing to wade through the muck. We have to add the word proximate to our dictionary.
It's not perfect, but this world won't be perfect until Jesus returns. Even Jesus embraced the proximate. He's the one who said, you'll always have the poor with you. Right? Yeah. He understood that there wasn't even gonna be perfect justice in his lifetime. Yeah. Okay. Can you gimme a couple more? Um, like.
I'm looking out, I made a list, but the builder, so you talked about the protestor. What do you mean by artist? Is that more of the idea of influencing through art media, that kind of thing? Yeah. Yeah. You know, the artist outta the six is the one that I will say, some people may not be called to, you may not have an artistic bone in your body.
Uh, but all people appreciate art and so, so there's something to learn for, for all individuals. And to be frank, the church has not been. The most welcoming place to the artist in our midst. They're often treated like outcast weirdos who are a little bit too strange to belong with everybody else. And so it's important even if you're not an artist, to understand the calling and an artist calling is simply to create, to change the culture by creating beauty.
They understand that when beauty is created and beauty is not this sentimental really pretty picture or something like that. Beauty is this amazing convergence between two realities, heaven and earth. Hope and despair, uh, beauty and pain. In other words, real life. And if you think about those as Venn diagrams, the artist lives right there in the middle.
He's able to speak to the hope, the despair, the death, and the pain that everybody experiences. But that's not the only word he has to say. He's not just a sad movie. He's also able to speak to the love, the truth, the boot, the beauty, and the goodness of the kingdom. And he puts those two things together in his art, whether that's music.
That's writing or that's, uh, through, through imagery and, you know, uh, painting and drawing or graphic design. That's what the artist does. And, and the artist's calling is not to be a part of a culture war, it's to be invested in culture care. There's a big difference between those two things. Yeah. Check that out for me.
Well, so, and this is not like a Christian problem. Like people talk about the culture wars, like, you know, oh, all those Christians at their culture, everybody's culture, war. Yeah, that's just a fact. Like what is a culture war? A culture war is when you have a single thing that large groups of the population disagree about the definition on.
Right? So if you see a marriage between a man and a man, what do you make of that? Is that a beautiful expression of human love and fidelity, or is that a, uh, gross abomination of god's will mm-hmm. For human marriage? Right. Right. Well, you're gonna have a culture war. If part of the culture thinks one thing and a different part of the culture thinks a different thing, they're warring over definitions.
And because that's the case, both people in the secular world and the Christian world, they're looking for artists to create. Uh, artillery. You can think a RT artillery for their battle come in here in our media organization. Yeah. In our marketing thing. And it, and it, and it might not be for the culture war, it might be for this, you know, uh, corporation.
They're trying to sell things. Everybody's looking for someone to fight their fight for them with art, because art has the power to change people's minds and hearts, and artists come along. They say, I'm not here for the propaganda war. I'm not here to create artillery. I'm here to create beautiful things that actually cultivate the world around me.
You want me to go out there and dog on this guy? You want everybody to hate is the MO and think is the most evil person in the world. Well, you know what? I think the world needs? I think the world needs humanizing portraits of those who are misunderstood. I. That, that's a kingdom type thing to show the image of God in all people.
And so you're, you're getting, you know, some of the heart of what I'm saying. And, and again, art just has this incredible power, whether it's rhetoric or music or visual arts, and give plenty of examples of this to change how people think without using the analytical side of the mind. It cuts straight to that other part of the brain.
Mm-hmm. That connects with story and imagery and beauty and imagination. Yeah. The, like when you talk about trainer, like, gimme that one just quickly. Yeah, yeah. So the, the trainer's, someone who changes culture by, uh, by, by changing people's habits, the trainer fundamentally understands that, uh, despite what the world says, the world says, Hey, we're all basically good people.
And if you just take away, you know, bad laws and bad parenting and all of these restrictions, that then people will be freed to be the good people that they are. The trainer has a Christian view of the world. They say no, ever since the fall of humanity, humans have a sin nature. Uh, we don't have a predisposition to do good.
We have a predisposition to do evil, and the only way to cultivate a predis, a predisposition to do good is by walking in the way of Jesus training people in the spiritual practices and habits that we need to embody a virtuous life. And so that's what they do. They, these, these are your disciples, these people in the church are helping people read their Bible and pray and fast and live in community and show transparency and confess their sins and authenticity like that.
That's what the trainer does. They're training people to walk in the way of Jesus so that they can live virtuous lives. Because it turns out, if you want to change a culture, you have to have virtuous people. If you wanna have virtuous people, you have to change the heart. Yeah. So good. Um, what is your goal?
So like, if. This book sells 10 million copies and is, you know, everyone loves it. Like, what would be a win for you? Like, what is the aim of the book? Well, I mean, I, I could say a lot of things. Uh. My most fundamental goal is that, uh, the church, the body of Christ, would be a, uh, loving, beautiful, unified witness to his kingdom.
That people will come into churches and say, gosh, there's such a diversity of people here. They do things differently. They think differently, and yet they're united on one thing, which is that Jesus is king, Jesus is Lord, and he is everything. And I think if we want to have that kind of witness. Again, we have to be equipped for it.
You could fill the entire Grand Canyon with books about cultural engagement, and there's probably people who have already turned this thing off at this point. They're like, oh, it's just none of these cultural engagement, because 90% of them, they're written for pastors and academics and they are so removed from everyday life.
Like, great. We can talk about your theology of X and your philosophy of X, and that's, that's all fine and dandy, but I'm trying to figure out what I do when I'm at the water cooler and someone brings up a really hard topic and I don't know how to respond. I'm trying to figure out what to do when my kid is wanting to get married to someone of the same sex, and my other kids are telling me that they'll break their relationship with me if I don't go on board with it.
That's real life. Yeah, and there are far too few books that are actually speaking to those real world issues, giving people real world equipping to know how to react. And that's really the goal of this book was to say, look, we're not here to give you a philosophical debate about how to engage culture that's behind the book.
I, I'm a thinker, you know, I've got one long footnote explaining some of my perspectives on this stuff. That's not the goal. This is a practical book to help you as a husband, as a father, as a parent, know how to actually engage the world around you and feel confident about what you're doing. You might not be a protestor.
You might not be an advisor, you might be an ambassador. Someone whose goal is to evangelize people. You might be, you might be the the trainer. You might be the artist, you might be the builder. Someone who builds businesses and institutions. 'cause institutions and businesses have the power to change the world.
You might be any of those things, and I want you to feel like, gosh, I am making a difference in my community and the way that God has designed me to do it. I don't have to go do some other person's version of this. I can do the one God designed me to do. And if people walk out feeling equipped to do that and called to do that, I think that cities will change, neighborhoods will change, states will change, and countries can change.
Yeah. I think that, you know, when you play with like the culture war idea that like we all should be, uh, like keyboard warriors on social media, um, it feels like what you're doing to some extent is liberating people to say like, no, I'm gonna keep writing songs about. You know, the beauty of life and in some way I am combating, for instance, abortion through talking about how children are beautiful in God's gift.
Like it's, it's liberating people to say, mm-hmm I'm gonna use my gifts, my personality to advocate for. The kingdom, uh, all people created in the image of God, the, the life burial, death, resurrection of Jesus, but not necessarily through the way that a protestor would online making videos or, um, I think that's cool.
I think that is maybe life giving too. I'm just thinking about my kids, right? I've got. Six and there're a plethora of personalities. And I got a couple artistic, like one of my daughters just super artistic. She wants to dance, she wants to be an Avery stinking play that they have around here. And um, yeah, to liberate her and say like, no, God designed you this way.
And there's a way to have influence and meaning and purpose without necessarily needing to be dad who might have a little bit of a protestor angst in me at times. Yeah. Um. And I think that's, that's helpful too, to say like, no, like you can be you. Um, mm-hmm. And to, to be able to see that in our kids, acknowledge what God's designed them for, and not to necessarily shove my.
Gifting and calling top of them is, I think, helpful. Yeah. Yeah. And we've, we've, we've got a little assessment at the back of the book that allows anyone who reads it to, to basically figure out which of these six fits you. You can also get that@joyfuloutsiders.com. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can take that assessment.
You can take your kits through that assessment and have them read the chapter about how that's a really cool idea, them to engage the world. Then have a conversation like, Hey, God's called you to be an artist. Can you tell me how that's going? And, and you'll actually know what to say. 'cause you might not be an artist.
But now you've got a whole chapter telling you what it's like to be an artist, and you've got these fantastic questions to ask them about their calling in that. I, I, I think at the end of the day, my big hope, there's, there's this fantastic story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, very famous anti-Nazi Christian dissident in Germany, one of the few Christians who didn't go pro-Nazi.
People don't realize this. There were Nazi swastikas on altars. Most Christians went full bore into Nazism, and you have to be able to answer the question, why wouldn't I? Because the vast majority did Dietrich Bonhoeffer didn't. And he had a friend named Wilhelm Liesle, who also didn't go in for the Nazi stuff.
Um, and, and Wilhelm nonetheless was kind of skeptical of Dietrich because at the time, Dietrich had this underground seminary and they're all like, living like monks together. It's kind of crazy. You know, they're doing hours of confession and singing of the Psalms, very monk-like, and Nestle's like, gosh, this is too Catholic.
I don't, I don't know about this. And Boners says, great, come check it out. So Niel shows up and he's like, yep, this is exactly what I thought. Like, we have to fight Nazis. We don't need a bunch of monks. And uh, Bonner says, oh, okay, I get that, but will you come with me really quick? They get into a rowboat, they row across a, a little lake called the odor sound.
He lands the rowboat on the other side of the lake and they climb up a steep hill. And once they get to the top of the hill, they're overlooking a Nazi airfield. And there's Nazi planes that are flying in and flying out. There's Nazi soldiers that are goosestepping, uh, in unison with one another. And he looks at those soldiers and he says they have been trained, they have been equipped for a kingdom of violence and hatred.
And if they're this committed. To be able to fly these planes and goose step alongside one another, if they're willing to put in this level of discipline, how much more so should our discipline be? Hmm, and I think that's what I want for the church is to have a certain level of discipline in how we engage the world around us.
And you won't know what God's calling you to do. You won't know what your marching orders are if you haven't already been equipped. If you can't answer the basic question, what's the specific way God has called you to engage your community and change it and transform it? If you don't have that question, welcome to the club.
Lots of people don't. But that's where Joyful Outsiders really steps in and says, here's here, here's your guide. Here's, here's the key. Now go forth and honor Jesus in your calling. Yeah, so cool. Patrick, do you mind telling the guys like, when's the book released? Where can they get it? Just kind of those, those basic details.
Yeah. So the book releases on January 21st. Uh, I'm not sure when this will air, so it might be before or after this date. Uh, but January 21st is the release date you can get at any major book seller. It's again called Joyful Outsider, six Ways to Live Like Jesus in a Disorienting Culture. Awesome man, and the website is joyful outsiders.com com.
Joyful outsiders.com. You can, uh, get links to the book there. And again, we have that little assessment, so if you're trying to figure out where do I fit in here? Take the assessment, you'll get a little description of, of your particular type and all the other ones. And again, this could be a great thing to do as a family and, and see how that changes your family's orientation.
You'll be amazed how much less fearful you are, how much less willing you are to conform or combat or avoid conflict if you know what you are called to do instead. Those are fear responses, but if you have a calling and you know what the direction is, you can go forward. Yeah, that's a super helpful thought.
Alright, Patrick, it was so good to connect with you, man, and, and guys, we'll, we'll touch base with you next week.