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Ep. 158 – Think January 6th, but It’s Just Naked, Giggling Mennonites w/ Marc Penner
464 Plays1 year ago
This week we’re joined by friend of the show and Discord OG, Marc Penner! Marc is a former Mennonite and graduate of Tabor College, but he left the church years ago when he came face to face with some pretty blatant hypocrisy. We discuss his alleged participation in a “cupid run,” all the cool ways in which churches exacerbate marital problems, the “kids or no kids” dilemma, and keeping a lid on the roiling torrent of rage bubbling inside of us all. It’s a great conversation with a great dude, and we were really happy to finally sit down with Marc!
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Transcript
Homoerotic Behavior at Christian Colleges
00:00:00
Speaker
Ironically, ironically, what you're describing, Sam, would not have been considered sinful, despite how homosexual that sounds. Yeah. No, it wouldn't have. That's what you would do in Christian college. You like getting it's close to the line of like gay that you could. And then you're like not. And then you yelled no homo and you think you're fine. It's just it's it's hard to even think about why
00:00:29
Speaker
That stuff existed. It feels like it's just a repression, like, release valve. Christian college boys say, I'm not gay in the same way that they say, I'm not racist, but... Yes. It's remarkably similar.
Welcoming Mark Penner and Early Podcast Memories
00:01:04
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Growing Up Christian. I'm Casey. I'm Sam. And we are joined today by a friend of the show and Wichita native, Mark Penner. And April constantly corrects me and says, you know it's Penner, right? And I'm like, I don't know that. And I will not say Penner. I will say Penner. I mean, it does sound closer to penis when you say it that way.
00:01:32
Speaker
which we know is very important to Casey. That's enough for me. True enough. I'm so excited to have you. I swear, like you, you must have been one of the first people that found our podcast. Uh, yeah, we were like pulling very few numbers at the very beginning. Somehow you stumbled across it and that, and we'd been interacting for the past almost three years.
Mennonite Brethren and Evangelical Contrasts
00:01:58
Speaker
Well, guys, I mean, it was obviously God who brought me to you. You know, that's how it happened. I distinctly remember listening to your very first episode. I was just cutting the grass and had the headphones in and you guys are talking about your liberty days. I'm going, ah, that sounds a lot like Tabor College, man. A lot. Casey knows what that is, Sam. That's just small Mennonite Brethren School in the middle of nowhere, Kansas. That's where I went. So.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yep, I was in Hillsborough this week. Yeah. I do like the Mennonites. There's a special place in my heart for Mennonites, despite probably my mostly disagreement with them on most things. But for some reason, I have a soft spot for them. And I think it's just because that was the first Christian denomination sect. I feel like they're less of a denomination, more of like, it's so specific.
00:02:58
Speaker
Yeah, we're pretty small. Denomination with asterisk and then you got to read the footnote. What's the word count? Where did you find the word definition for what we are or what I used to be, I should say?
00:03:16
Speaker
It's like Amish light kind of. Yeah. And I always appreciate it simply because when I was the big thing that pulled me out of evangelicalism was just like learning about really just like non-violence as an idea, which I have different opinions on now.
Evangelical Views Post-9/11 and Pacifism
00:03:35
Speaker
But that was very important because growing up evangelical, it's like,
00:03:39
Speaker
I grew up in the world of, as we all did, post 9-11-2001, where it's like, you know what we should do in the Middle East? We should turn it into a glass parking lot. And we all go, yeah, that's a good idea. I can't imagine that creating terrorists down the line are being a problem. But being in that world and thinking that that was the right thing to do and then being pulled out
00:04:07
Speaker
by people who were affiliated with Mennonites. So I do have a soft spot in my heart for them. And I try, I would probably denigrate them less than most denominations, despite the fact that there's probably a lot of problems there, which we can get into with your Tabor College days.
Podcast Evolution and Early Episodes
00:04:23
Speaker
But either way, I think it's crazy that you found our first episode. I feel like if I could, I might delete our first episode at this point. What do you think, Casey?
00:04:32
Speaker
Oh, I'm good. It's all out there now. I know. It is. We are who we are, but we've shifted a lot. I feel like this has taken a big change over the years. So it is funny to think back. Like, I don't know that could make it conscious effort to go back and listen to the first episode at this point. That would feel weird. Yeah. I mean, when I was listening to that, well, and that's, it was shortly after you guys set up your discord, right? I mean, yeah, you're like employee numbered one. I know. Once, once you guys go public, I'm going, I'm getting rich real fast.
00:05:02
Speaker
That makes one of us. Dude, so did you, I mean, are you?
Tabor College Traditions and Family Ties
00:05:11
Speaker
Well, I guess with your family, like is your family all from Kansas, like back as far as it matters, basically? Yeah. I mean, essentially, I mean, my last name in the Mennonite brethren world is very, very common. So where that came from is not my dad's generation, but his dad, my grandfather's generation.
00:05:33
Speaker
My grandfather set up the farm back out in Western Kansas, so Dodge City Garden City, you know where that's at, Casey. He just texted me about Dodge City this week and how amazing it is.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's amazingly something. Yeah, so that, yeah, everyone, my mom, however, grew up in Denver, but she went to Tabor College, that's where she met my dad. And so the whole Tabor connection is very family related. Half of my high school senior class went to Tabor College. I mean, it was one of those
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, it was just a very weird how my like generation and my even my two older sisters, like they went there, my younger brother went there. I mean, we all went there. It's like the family thing. And so real lineage. Extremely, extremely. And so, you know, I have an uncle who's on the board or used to be at least on the board of Tabor College. So it's just very ingrained in that. And so, yeah, it's a there's a lot of deep roots there. Did you get a discount?
College Fundraising Irony
00:06:37
Speaker
Absolutely not. Ah, colleges don't do that. They do if you like Lori Laughlin. Well, true. I didn't have a rich enough parents to skirt the system that way.
00:06:57
Speaker
No, Tabor College, if you know anything about Mennonite Brothers, we're filthy rich. I'm absolutely joking. Anytime the college needed to raise the tuition, it happened. It was not something. I walked out of there with plenty of college debt, just like anyone else would have.
00:07:20
Speaker
I remember my first year of college, I went to Hillsdale College in Southern Michigan, which is not Christian, but it's very conservative and stuff. So it's the same thing, essentially. Yeah, conservative politics, which is Christianity. But it was a big deal that
00:07:40
Speaker
I was going there and my parents were paying for the portion that my scholarship didn't cover and stuff. I remember we went to the first day orientation thing where all the new students are coming in, all the parents are there. The first 30 minutes, they asked for donations from the parents.
00:08:05
Speaker
What is this? Like, this is insane. Like, we haven't even started yet. They're all like, oh, this is insane. They're like, so how much do we need to give? Was that because that's what that's what my family would have done. We've been like, this is ridiculous, but we're going to do it anyway, because, you know, God Jesus, you know.
00:08:24
Speaker
So it's crazy that they do that for kids. Like usually you hit up alumni, people who have been there, people whose parents, the parents of kids who have been there, like there's so many ways that you reach
Liberty University and Conservative Curriculum
00:08:36
Speaker
out for money. But when you're just gearing up, when you just co-signed your 18 year olds first college loan, when you're terrified that they're going to default immediately upon graduation.
00:08:49
Speaker
They ask you for personal donations, which is incredible. You haven't even gotten to figure out how underwhelmingly dumb your son is yet. What scholarship did you go there on, by the way? I got an academic scholarship. Because you were the top of your class of 12 people.
00:09:16
Speaker
Well, no, no, no Sammy has red and yellow black and white you had all the colors he got them. All right. Yeah
00:09:24
Speaker
He answered correctly that they were all precious in his sight. So we got an academic scholarship No, like the only thing that I learned at my little Christian school is how to take tests and so I like stomped the ACT I Did it once stopped it and then I floated the rest of my college years on that with really bad grades. Yeah, I
00:09:49
Speaker
You had little work ethic, but you were great at standardized tests. That's like you summed me up, yeah. So when you guys got out of liberty, though, is liberty considered, I know they're obviously Christian or whatever, but are they considered a liberal arts school then? Or no, because that's very much taper. Like liberal arts, you're a generalist, right? You're never a specialist in anything, right?
Conflict Between Science and Faith in College
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, they, they require, they require you to take a lot of classes that were quite general. You had to do the same kind of like your math, your English is your every, so I get, is that what constitutes liberal arts essentially? I think they, they were, they called it conservative arts. Uh, for the, conservative arts for the open-minded conservative, I think is specifically how they worded it. Uh, it's like you're a math major, but you also have to take a class on why evolution isn't real.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah. They were still going really hard on evolution at that point. I mean, they still do. $600 a credit hour class. Every year at Tabor College, the environmental science class that came through, and it was always either freshmen or sophomores would come in and take that class.
00:11:05
Speaker
the the science teachers would open themselves up by doing this like two-day uh like open forum kind of thing like basically turned into a political town hall where all the students were like you're wrong because you don't believe the bible and the tea and the these teachers are i don't even know why the hell they did this like what are you thinking all you're doing is throwing gas on a fire saying no we actually do believe in evolution or whatever oh man so we just we just crucified them as
Repetitive Discussions on Sinfulness in Christian Contexts
00:11:34
Speaker
close to literally as possible it sounds like r slash christian on reddit my god i went down the rabbit hole on that recently every time you go in the toilet it's bad i think 80 of the posts are like
00:11:50
Speaker
Is it really a sin to be gay or it's really a sin to be gay? It's like it's always that and it's the first comment is always oh it's been 15 seconds since somebody made this exact same post that's crazy we made a new record like a lot of like sarcasm uh it's but that's what that sounds like to me is like the christian reddit page which is an absolute
00:12:15
Speaker
It's the Dutch city of the internet. Yeah, which I will still scroll through while I'm taking a shit sometimes. Well, sure. I mean, that's an appropriate place to be scrolling through that. Really the only place that you should, but it is pretty wild.
Influence of College Students and Professors
00:12:34
Speaker
how seriously some people take these, it's crazy to think back about taking those topics seriously, right? Like to have a real conviction about it when you are so dumb and you know nothing and you've been indoctrinated for your entire life through homeschool or Christian school. And then you hear that 98% of scientists co-sign this idea despite, you know, a lack of understanding in some areas. And you go,
00:13:03
Speaker
They're all wrong and they're all deceived. It's so funny. Hey, Satan is roaming around the world like a lion. Isn't that how it goes? Something like that. Clearly he's consuming all of these, all of these sciences. He's got them all. The greatest trick he ever pulled was convincing people that dinosaurs were real.
00:13:24
Speaker
The only way to know you're right is if everybody else thinks you're wrong. That's exactly right. Yes.
Bold English Professor's Classroom Demeanor
00:13:32
Speaker
Zoom out from like Christian college for a minute and like you think about the fact that college kids in general are kind of dumb and very annoying. Oh, so dumb. They control so much of the discourse in our country especially.
00:13:51
Speaker
It's weird to think about these people, they have so little life experience, so it doesn't temper any of their extreme ideas about it, whatever it is. Whatever they're into, it's extreme. And then you think about college professors, they've made a career out of only conversing with those things. And what kind of person does it take to do that?
00:14:20
Speaker
It's probably not a great thread to pull on. I guess there's lots of smart college professors, but you have to be resilient to be a college professor, especially at a Christian. Well, no, you know what? I'll take that back. Not necessarily at a Christian university. I'll remember my first year at community college, my English professor, hands down, one of the best professors I've ever had. Guy was fantastic. The shit he put up with.
00:14:45
Speaker
from the kids in that class. I don't know. He ended up leaving to go to a different college, which I got, uh, why he might go to a state school over a community college. But it was, I'll never forget the time that like, there's this one fuck off in the class and he would try to generate discussion. And this one kid who it was shocking. He made it to like,
Christian Students Defending Beliefs in College
00:15:15
Speaker
that he didn't just drop out within the first couple of weeks. He would always get into it with this other girl in the class. So he starts exchanging insults with her while they're trying to discuss material. And my professor stands up and points his finger at his chest. He's like, I don't want to hear another fucking word from you. You're the only one in the class who's completely failing everything.
00:15:45
Speaker
Yeah, that would have been amazing. That kid left the class after that. He's like, fuck this. I don't need this fucking bullshit leaves. I love that guy. He was one of the only professors that like, cause I was, you know, I was 18. I was still like, I'm a Christian. I had to make everybody know it. I had to really God is not dead the fuck out of that shit with my professors. So they all had to know.
00:16:09
Speaker
And he was like the chillest about it. He would instead like find little, little things within literature that related to Christianity because he clearly had a good understanding of it. And he'd be like, how do you feel about that? What do you, what are your thoughts on that?
00:16:26
Speaker
I think I'm not you know not trying to single me out in like a being offensive is like but you've made it clear that you are this person in the class so it only makes sense that we should ask you this question about how you feel about that because you you obviously care about how.
00:16:41
Speaker
you care about what other people think about how you feel about these things. And it was really like self-reflective to me. It felt a little insulting at the time, but he really just like gave me what I was asking for. Uh, but at a time I wasn't ready for it. And it was like, Oh fuck, I, this guy, I kind of owe him a debt of gratitude. Honestly, I love that guy. He was the best. I don't even remember his name. That's what's wild. I don't remember this professor's name. Otherwise I would have said it already. Fantastic professor. But it was like,
Humorous College Anecdotes
00:17:10
Speaker
But to be that age is like you because you're the you're the only one in the class that was like sober coherent and not drawing hentai characters on the workbooks. Did I or just a notebook full of penises like super bad? Yeah, I can't remember if I discussed the kid in my at my college who who would watch hentai porn in the like the lounge area, the
00:17:38
Speaker
yeah i did okay we don't need to go back into that but so that's elaine that was a very uh he was mennonite college lane he was a mennonite hey no no no mennonite brethren yeah get it straight casey what's mennonite mennonite brethren mark what's yeah um so generally speaking you have your
Mennonite Beliefs and Evangelical Influences
00:18:00
Speaker
you kind of we kind of discussed the whole like Amish light thing and in a way that's just kind of a conservative Mennonite where conservative Mennonite is you know they still have like the head coverings like a lot of the women will wear like a doily or something on their head right we are interestingly the the MB or Mennonite brethren left of that in terms of you know
00:18:22
Speaker
none of the head covering stuff, but still very, you know, Meno Simons, that's the character way back when who broke away from the whole Lutheran denomination side. And that's when he took really the pacifist route. And then from there, you have Mennonite, you have General Conference Mennonite, then you have Mennonite Brethren. And it's really smaller doctrinal issues. But generally speaking, think of it like,
00:18:48
Speaker
Southern Baptists, except your pacifist, essentially, or any more. It's almost like just straight evangelical, but your pacifist. Right. So, um, so most, most men and night brethrens would, uh, would say, well, I can't vote for Biden because he's a Democrat. So I guess I got to vote for Trump. You know, that's, that's going to be kind of their mantra and, you know, vote on the right side, all that stuff. Anti-abortion, you know, it's just the basics, not, not all, but
00:19:18
Speaker
But yeah, some of the Mennonites have gone left. Kind of like a secondary thing for them, because I would imagine that as a Mennonite, that you would almost just not vote or participate in a violent system like the United States. That would make more sense to me. Jehovah's Witnesses, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, in a way, you make a good point, but because I think Mennonite Brethren has been almost like
00:19:47
Speaker
bastardized in a way by the kind of evangelical Christian nationalism influence to the point where a lot of the doctrinal stuff, which I'm going to admit right now on the air, so to speak, that I am not the expert on Mennonite Brothers stuff anymore. So to those who might be listening, I'm not the authority. However, the differences that it used to be, we used to be much more
00:20:16
Speaker
you know, you focus on, you know, much more what you now look at, like more liberal kind of concepts of you just love your neighbor, you know, you know, care about your care about the people who are around you. And now, you know, it's really skewing more and more towards your
History of Meno Simons and Pacifism
00:20:32
Speaker
kind of your standard evangelical and sadly, you know, Christian nationalism, very patriarchal, any women in leadership in the church is very
00:20:41
Speaker
Pressed down that kind of stuff is just not part of it or when it wasn't at least when I was there So okay, that was what I feel like that's the most like Prevailing thread to pull throughout. Oh, yeah conservative aspects of or just Christianity in general is just how where where women's roles are
00:21:02
Speaker
but what stuck out to me about Mennonite is their pacifism, so it is interesting. You said Meno. Who started? Meno what? This is something I'm actually not familiar with at all. Yeah. His name was Meno Simons. Meno first name. You know what? M-E-N-N-O Simons. S-I-M-O-N-S.
00:21:20
Speaker
Not a lot of kids being named after him, so he obviously wasn't as influential as you would think. It's a sweet name. You could bring Meno back. I'll bring it back. I'm going to have another kid just so I can name him or her Meno because that's how progressive I am.
00:21:39
Speaker
I don't believe in, uh, gendering names. So just as long as the middle name is Mark, then that's all that matters. So since I'm the one that brought this to your, uh, you know, I do owe that to you. You do. You do. I feel like I've earned that. Yeah. One of the first listeners, one of the first in the discord. I mean, that's right. It was, it was the long game just so I could get my name in someone else's babies. Right.
00:22:08
Speaker
What is the the hierarchy of things that you've done that's rocked the apple cart?
Mark's Personal Journey: Tattoos, Divorce, and Beliefs
00:22:18
Speaker
within the Mennonite community, because I see that you've disfigured your temple with tattoos. It has to be a popular move. For our YouTube viewers. Well, this is literally less than a year old. So that didn't really disenfranchise myself from any sort of religion at this point. Truthfully, the...
00:22:45
Speaker
The thing that really kind of, some of the things that separated me from where, what I used to be was, well, first of all, I got a divorce. I've been married before, got a divorce. And the whole divorce thing, that's a big no-no, especially if you're the one that files. So if you're the one that's instigating the divorce, very bad, because if you're not the one instigating it, then you're the victim. It's not so much, you know, it's more accepted that way.
00:23:15
Speaker
which I find to be an interesting loophole for those who are still part of the church, right? Or in this case, the Midna Brethren Church. Oh, I didn't file. Is it as accepted? Because there are some, depending on where you are or what your denomination is. It's crazy for being biblical literalists, the evangelical communities I've been a part of,
00:23:38
Speaker
haven't really denigrated remarriage so much, even though Paul is pretty explicitly clear on remarriage being a problem. So that's one thing that they get to ignore. As long as it's not gay shit, they don't really care that much. But with you and your experience, was there any criticism about remarriage? Like, oh, you're the victim, you got divorced, sucks to suck, but now you just have to like jerk off in solitude for the rest of your life?
00:24:08
Speaker
Uh, well, yeah, well jerk off a solitude and, and absolutely not confessing that, of course. Um, sleep on your stomach. You're just not getting remarried either. Was there, but was there any concerns or problems with remarriage in your community or not really?
00:24:25
Speaker
Interestingly, no, which is always just another kind of straw in the camel's back for me that, you know, back in the day when I finally said enough is enough. But that was just one of those things like, come on. OK, this one is, you know, if I file, oh, I'm in the wrong. But if I'm not filing, then I'm not in the wrong site. OK. And then after I remarry, well, we're just going to ignore what Paul says about that. OK, no problem. So what else are we going to ignore? You know, it's it's a weird.
00:24:55
Speaker
I don't know. That kind of thing, interestingly, just never happened. Yeah, it was never something that at least the churches that I was involved with, that was never anything that was there. Weirdly that it was, they would much rather look down on this than drinking, than remarriage. Yeah, drinking, of course, sex before marriage, sex was always the weird thing that they that we were, it seemed like the churches that I was part of were so
00:25:23
Speaker
obsessive about. I'm like, man, you guys really like to get, you know, in the business of people's bedrooms or strip clubs or, it doesn't matter, or in your hand, you know, it's like, God, God, you know, really, this is what you're gonna, you know, this, this is the hill you're gonna die on. So it was,
00:25:41
Speaker
It doesn't surprise me, I guess, that all of the actual pedophiles who are being arrested and stuff have a large, some of them are somewhat affiliated with some sort of church background and things like that. Yeah, that was much a bigger problem. It's like the harder people go against certain things, the bigger the red flag. Well, we'll just see. Look, I'm not going to make an accusation based on your passions, but time
00:26:10
Speaker
Time might, and I'm here for it. When did you first get married? I was married early. That's kind of a similar vein that I've heard many times.
Marriage Challenges and Divorce
00:26:22
Speaker
I was 23 when I got married. I had never had a serious girlfriend. I say real, and I can see Casey's mind going, oh yeah, so you had your dolls and your sex doll and things like that.
00:26:35
Speaker
I'm preempting your joke, Casey. It really hit me off at the pass there. And I'm neither confirming nor denying anything.
00:26:50
Speaker
No, so never had a serious girlfriend, like in high school, in college, I met this girl who fit the mold of exactly who I'm supposed to marry, right? She was exactly the right person that, you know, God, my dad, my mom, everybody would say, oh, yes, she's perfect for you. Barbara Bush.
00:27:11
Speaker
younger version and thankfully better looking. But I will say this. It was your not real girlfriend, Alicia Lightstone. And then you found this woman. And then I found this woman. And I will say from the get go, I don't have a bad word to say against her. She's a wonderful human being, always has been. And for what I know now, very, very good person, just completely wrong for me.
00:27:41
Speaker
but we were married for a long time. We were married for 10 years. We had a, yeah, so it was a long, a long period of time in which
00:27:51
Speaker
I felt myself inside this bubble and continually trying to bumping up against the edge of that in all kinds of different ways. And it was just one of those situations where finally around the age 30 or so, things started to deteriorate. And so that was what, seven years? So three years later than that is when things ended in terms of my first marriage. So yeah.
00:28:21
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I married young, don't really know who I am, especially as a guy. I mean, we've all heard the studies how, you know, dudes coming out of college, we'd have no fucking clue who we are. Right. And I didn't know who I really was until I was 30, 35, probably. And so it's, you know, it's just, especially when you're in a, at least for me, when I was in this.
00:28:43
Speaker
ultra conservative bubble, you know, I immediately went into church volunteerism all the free labor that I could possibly give to the churches that I was part of, you know, so I just, I voluntarily put kept myself in that box as well in that bubble so it only furthered my
00:29:02
Speaker
uh you know indoctrination you might say but um it it also kind of backfired to the same degree as well at some point you know so yeah funny enough mark actually tried to to uh you know rectify differences with the church after the divorce
00:29:19
Speaker
but they saw that he had posted a black square on Instagram and that was it. They wouldn't let him back. Well, that was the first straw. The second one was the equal sign. That was the other one. Somebody spotted your coexist bumper sticker and they're like, not in my house.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yep. They snapped a picture of that, sent it to the entire church directory. And some of them had to, you know, copy it, you know, photocopy it and actually mail it because, you know, half of them didn't have email. So any of that deterioration, this is common for people who get married young and it may or may not be your story, but there is like that.
00:29:58
Speaker
When people drift apart spiritually so it's like if you're like i'm not really buying this anymore but for her it's really important was that was that a factor a difference in that and having a hard time reconciling it.
00:30:11
Speaker
Interestingly, we had a very similar outlook on the faults of the church. We kind of stopped going to church around the same time too. So weirdly, that was something that we agreed on. One of the bigger things that, and I feel perfectly safe in saying this, that we had a difference in terms of whether we wanted kids or not. And that became a bigger,
00:30:41
Speaker
Dividing point i'm there a couple other details that i'm not really gonna share here but that was a bigger a bigger thing that really.
00:30:51
Speaker
You know, when, when that finally, when I finally kind of had the balls to actually say something, because then in the past it was never, I was so conflict averse that I would, I'm like, whatever you want to do, I'm just going to be here for the ride kind of thing. But when I finally had the ball, say, look, I don't think this is what I want. That, that was a bigger problem, you know? Yeah. That's a big one.
00:31:14
Speaker
Yeah, I have I have a friend who whose story is similar. It's like that was like there was a lot of different things, but there was a real like, like boiling point around that, which, you know, it's super hard to to to shift and go your separate ways on something like that. But it's all I mean, do you want to have kids with someone?
00:31:36
Speaker
who's on the same page as you are not like it's so like that's a very important factor someone who's like all in on doing that with you and I don't know it's like I think it's just hard to admit that you've been in that's the hard thing about divorce right we know the societal pressures we know the religious pressures and you also go we've you know we made this commitment and we've been in it for this long it feel it's like there's it's so hard to make
Choosing Not to Have Children
00:32:02
Speaker
that choice, but it really can be an incredibly brave decision to just say, this is where we're at. It sounds like there's no ill will harbored. It's just like, I want you to have the best life you can have with someone who wants to have that same life. And I think that's important, I hope, societally, but mostly as within Christian circles that they can progress towards getting to that point.
00:32:28
Speaker
Especially when they put so much pressure on you get married so young when you have no fucking clue who you are Yeah, well and the pressure is to okay, you know, you're married. You've been married for a year. You've had your fun Okay, let's start popping out babies, right? Oh It is and so we got really good at saying no not yet We're not gonna have kids yet. Not yet. Not yet. And then you know, fine. It was like, uh, I
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah, we need to, you know, rubber meeting the road here because this is, this is a big deal. So I think it's, uh, I think their strategy is that like, yes, you're not a full person yet at 20 years old, but it's a little like how in Japan, you know, they'll like.
Cultural Fascinations: Japan's Watermelons
00:33:09
Speaker
Put a, uh, a fledgling watermelon sprout, like in one of those cube shaped or like, uh, you know, uh, Trump head mold and it just grows to fill it.
00:33:23
Speaker
That's kind of their philosophy on marriage, you know? Have you seen that? You can grow up together and become codependent but still hate each other. I'm waiting for the watermelon season so I can pick up my Donald Trump shaped watermelon next season. If that happens, I'm sending you like a whole fucking crate of them, Casey. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait to smash into that thing.
00:33:51
Speaker
Have you seen that, Casey, for real? People filling watermelons? I haven't seen a head, but I watched this whole thing about this weird market around shaped watermelons in Japan. It's like a real thing. They have square-shaped ones that they grow in these molds, and they're very expensive. Actually, I know a lot about watermelons. If you guys have questions, I'd be happy to take them.
00:34:19
Speaker
I mean, I'm happy to just make this the watermelon episode, Casey, if that's what you'd like. I have a very serious question about what should I, when I get a seedless watermelon and I find one of the real seeds in there, what's going on, man? I think you should eat it and then you should make your movement outside.
00:34:41
Speaker
And it's just like a bird. You just make a little like seedling torpedo that sprouts into your very own watermelon seed. That's a gift from God, if you ask me. It's almost supplying you with your own fertilizer is what you're saying.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's the natural way. Seed disperser, I think they call them. It's like monkeys in the wild. Is that what they do? Is that what happened? Monkeys eat watermelons and they just shit seeds everywhere and you get watermelon patches? I would love to watch a video of you narrated by David Attenborough explaining the seed going through your digest. I want to make sure that it's David Attenborough along with Soup Dog narrating that nature show.
00:35:25
Speaker
Have you seen the Snoop Dogg episodes of that? No. Oh, my God. You guys have got to go YouTube, Snoop Dogg, I don't know, National Geographic or something like that. It's it's it's it's gold. Yeah. Internet gold. It sounds incredible. Just want to hear him very chill like talk about motherfucking anything in the wild.
00:35:50
Speaker
It is, yeah. I mean, we've known Snoop Dogg for years and years and years. Oh, by the way, did you see he's supposedly gave up smoke? I saw that. That was not true. Is that true? No, that was... Okay, I didn't think so. Advertising a smoke-free, like, fire pit. A smoke-free fire pit was the gimmick. Nice. And that's why he gave up. What a rascal. I know. Well, the power of celebrity, man.
Snoop Dogg Narrating Nature Shows
00:36:22
Speaker
I think, uh, so on the, on the kid thing, cause obviously, you know, April and I don't have kids. We've been married for 14 years, but people still ask us quite a bit.
Implications of Not Having Children
00:36:33
Speaker
I think it's like, that's a weird one, especially if you're in that, that community or, I mean, almost any, like if you're in rural America, that's kind of what people do. And there's a part of you that suspects in your head that like.
00:36:50
Speaker
If I was to find out that my wife was pregnant, I think I would probably follow the natural order of things that men have done for years, that people have done for years and years. I got you. Yeah. No, you rise to the occasion and you grow and mature. Then 10 years later, people ask you if you regret having kids and you're like, no, that's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.
00:37:20
Speaker
because your brain is feeding you chemicals so you don't eat it. Yeah. But you know what I mean though? Like there's like a part of you that constantly second guesses that where you're like, well, you know, maybe I suspect, I was just talking to somebody about this the other day. I suspect that when I get old, not having kids is probably something that I'll regret.
00:37:50
Speaker
But I'm willing to live with that regret. You know what I mean? Not as much as you regret having a Hunter Biden type child. You're hedging your back. Which is what I would have, probably. I will also regret not going down more water slides. I'd rather regret not having children than having children I'm very disappointed in. That's right.
00:38:15
Speaker
I regret drinking so much pool water at Blizzard Beach. The idea that you regret drinking the pool water you have and you haven't talked once about all those energy drinks, but that's fine.
00:38:27
Speaker
This is just regular old vanilla Mountain Dew today. That's a new flavor of Mountain Dew vanilla. Vanilla Mountain Dew. This is a non-exciting. It's not kinky in any way. It's just regular vanilla. It's the OG Mountain Dew that I had when I was in sixth grade. I'm a purist. When I was in college, it's when we got voltage.
00:38:55
Speaker
And live wire, no, live wire was a thing before that. Code red. It's a purple and a blue one. There's purple and blue. Oh. No. Code red and orange something or other was. Live wire was orange, code red, obviously red. Those were earlier on. Then it was voltage and something else. Carcinogen flavor. Yeah.
00:39:19
Speaker
One of the positive, very funny, well, stupid, I call it stupid memories from Tabor College was my freshman year, a senior who was, because all pinners went to Tabor College, he's my second cousin and he's like, hey Mark, come
College Antics and Humor
00:39:36
Speaker
over here. You've heard of drinking eight glasses of water a day. We're gonna drink eight glasses of Mountain Dew a day. That's what we're gonna do. And I'm like,
00:39:45
Speaker
I'm like, I'm like done, especially it's Christian college because you're not we're not drinking booze or anything. We're not drinking beer or whatever. So, you know, I'm a good I'm a good kid at that point. And so I'm like, all right, let's do this.
00:39:59
Speaker
You had to drink at least two glasses of that for breakfast just to make sure you got the eight done for the whole day. We lasted a day and a half. I was like, nah, fuck this. Well, I didn't say fuck this at the time because that was also a no-no from the Midnight Brethren side.
00:40:17
Speaker
A day and a half of that, oh man. Even as a college kid with metabolism skyrocket, it still wasn't enough to process all of that, just processed corn syrup, man. The point for that is so like, there is no point. I just remember being in college being like, you know what we should all do right now? We should snort pixie sticks.
00:40:43
Speaker
Yeah. Or Kool-Aid. That was one thing we did. Because we're Kool-Aid powder. It's like, why did we do that? Because you can't do Coke. That's why we did that. Because we're virgins who can't do Coke. That's why we did that.
00:40:58
Speaker
We're preparing for the real world, Sam. I mean, we got, we got to snort what we can. So it makes me think of the time that I was hanging out with Fred. I had a friend that worked at a convenience store overnight and I would just go hang out with him. We hang out till like fucking four in the morning. All the weirdos that show up hit like my friends, friends would show up. Yeah, it's like that. And, uh, there was that one night everyone goes, you know what we should do?
00:41:22
Speaker
We should take the bone, the over the counter boner pills and the first one to pop a boner loses. And that makes me think of Christian college.
00:41:31
Speaker
And we all did it, except for me, because I put it in my mouth and immediately did the bitch move where I took it out and threw it on the floor. Wait, what did you put in your mouth? It's like the, it's like, it's basically like a wreck. I mean, it's, it keeps you hard. It keeps you hard for hours at a time, but those are, oh, I see. You're wondering if I put one of the hard cops in my mouth, basically. Okay. Good question. I didn't because I wasn't bored.
00:42:00
Speaker
a little bit of clarity was might have been necessary in that story. So I appreciate the question case. Yeah, no solid question. Apparently athletes have failed like.
00:42:13
Speaker
like drug screenings because they took those and some of them have trace amounts of hormones and stuff like that in them. Interesting. They get hanged for like HGH or something like that. That's like a 30, at least an eight-year-old podcast fact that I overheard while barely listening.
00:42:35
Speaker
Well, I'm glad I wasn't running doing the, uh, the Olympic 30 yard dash or whatever. You want a trick in those little shorts, doing it with fully torqued. I mean, he may, he may have crossed the finish line by that much ahead of his competitor. So I'm just saying.
00:43:02
Speaker
you win by a boner do that or that's what makes you vault out on your high jump yeah that's perfect uh anyway i didn't do it uh and then immediately afterwards i just remember thinking like i don't know that these pills make you hard so this first last like first one to get like last one to not get hard wins kind of thing was silly uh i'm pretty sure they just keep you hard for hours so i'm like
00:43:31
Speaker
I don't think that nothing's going to happen here unless one of you gets really horny and starts like- Were you self-reporting your boner or were there inspectors? How was this determined? What was going on here? Great question. I feel like every 30 minutes he's like, all right, squeeze check. Drop your pants, boys. I'm the boner inspector here. You're the only one who's ever asked follow-up questions on that, Mark.
00:43:57
Speaker
Hey, I'm here to ask, I'm a detail-oriented person here, so. Seeing how many funyuns you can slip on at the gas station in the middle of the night.
00:44:08
Speaker
That it's funny and ring toss at
Repression of Homoerotic Behavior in Christian Colleges
00:44:10
Speaker
3 a.m. at a gas station Ironically ironically what you're describing Sam would not have been considered sinful Despite how homosexual that sounds yeah You would do in Christian College you like it's close to the line of like gay that you could and
00:44:31
Speaker
and then you're like, ah, and then you yelled no homo and you think you're fine. It's just, it's hard to even think about why that stuff existed. It feels like it's just a repression, like, release valve. Christian college boys say, I'm not gay in the same way that they say, I'm not racist, but. Yes. Yes. Remarkably similar.
00:45:00
Speaker
OK, then you've jogged my memory, Sam. Jeez. OK, I think my freshman or sophomore year in college.
00:45:08
Speaker
Um, two things happened. So one, it was my freshman year. There was a college visit day. So you have high school kids coming in and just visiting Tabor. It was the winter. We had just had some snow. And so at like two in the morning, three in the morning, we all like decided, I don't remember who the ringleader was. I wish it were me. That would have been amazing, but it wasn't. Um, but I got brought in on this. I'm like, this is going to be great. We're all going to make these giant snow penises.
00:45:36
Speaker
And it was, I mean, we got detailed with we broke off some pine branches for the pubic hair on the balls. And it was literally right in front of the cafeteria, which was the wall is just straight glass. And so that's where they have all of these these students come in. And it's just it's too big of a thing to just like push over because you're still going to see exactly what it was.
00:45:58
Speaker
So, but but yet here we are, the dudes, the dudes of these, this college, you know, the Christian college going out and doing what we're not building boobs, no, no, no, no, no, we're, we're building giant dicks, you know, that are anatomically correct the remains and everything it was unbelievable.
00:46:18
Speaker
semi but possibly homosexual act number one or leaning act number one um and then number two was we did what was called the cupid run and uh
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah, I'm definitely going to share this story. So at Taber, when I was there, we had two quads. So a quad is simply four dorms all facing each other. That's probably fairly similar in a lot of colleges. Girls and guys, we don't have co-ed dorms or anything like that, of course, because sex.
00:46:49
Speaker
So what we did on Valentine's night or the night before, whatever it was, there were probably 20, 25 of us. We're like, all right, we're doing the cupid run. So we all gathered at this semi off-campus house. And we're like, all right, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna leave here. When we're gonna go around this building, we're all gonna get naked, grab our clothes and run through the girls' quad.
00:47:15
Speaker
you know, fully naked screaming or whatever someone to tip the girls off. So they're out there. Again, this is back in I'm going to age myself here. I'm going to date myself. This was back in like 1999, 98. So no one had like, you know, cameras here. It was our phones. I mean, it was all the old school cameras with flashes and shit. And the night sky lit up with flashes. Someone tipped them off. And I'm running through.
00:47:45
Speaker
And, you know, we all have like ski mask kind of things on, right? Like to mask our faces. But there are two things that are identifying myself. Number one, my shoes, right? Cause I'm still running shoes, you know, running with my shoes through the snow. The other thing was on my wrist and it was at the peak of the WWJD wristband craze. So here I am running through. And of course there's now photographic evidence of this.
00:48:15
Speaker
And if there's snow on the ground, we all know what that means. It's very cold out. And as men, we also know what that means. Severe shrinkage, right? So you all jerked off a little bit right before you ran to the door. I wish I had in order to not be the guy that got caught with a WWJD bracelet with a
00:48:35
Speaker
very anatomically very small penis on camera and then as as mortifying as that might have been I never admitted this this might be my confessional actually about a week or two later oh it's gonna be it's it's I hope someone's listening I hope someone listens to this from taper because they're gonna be like I remember that
00:48:59
Speaker
I denied it, by the way. I was like, oh, not me, not me. And they blamed and I think they they thought it was someone else. But they made a week or two. They made you stand out in the cold and pull your pants down. They're like, no, this guy's right. This is the right car. Yeah, we got burned those shoes. I took the David David JD bracelet off. No, no, it's not me. About two weeks later, because we every Monday night or every Monday morning, we have
Identified in a Prank: WWJD Bracelet Story
00:49:21
Speaker
convocation. It's like your worship campus gathering or whatever.
00:49:25
Speaker
And the head of like the Bible education department got up when it was giving the convocation, whatever. And he brought up the story of, you know, and I hear that we had somebody, you know, running through, you know, the girl's dorm a few weeks ago wearing a WWJD bracelet. I'm sitting there in like the second row going on.
00:49:49
Speaker
God, this is amazing. And he is addressing this. I know full well, it's me and I've denied the shit out of this thing. I'm like, Okay, well, one of these days, I'm going to confess this. And I think that's today. So that was once again, a bunch of a bunch of guys in high school in college, you know, Christian guys running through naked.
00:50:13
Speaker
having a good time not homosexual though because you know no homo i guess yeah so why did you say no homo while doing a bunch of new things together you get a pass at the right release event if you wanted to keep things keep things a little more mediocre down there you should have used the ww jd bracelet as a cock ring on a cock ring yeah yeah around your cocking balls and you would have been just fine
00:50:39
Speaker
Well, you know, Sam, had I known about a cock ring way back in the day, I certainly would have done that. But, uh, I think, I think the WWJD bracelet touching a penis is kind of like an American flag touching the ground. It's gotta be burned. Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:58
Speaker
And whoever was holding that said flag must be burned at the stake as well. Anything that touched it, anything adjacent, just set it on fire.
00:51:09
Speaker
did they have like a sense of humor about that or were they really upset because I feel like people at my church would have been like a bunch of sex criminals ran through naked yeah well the student body thought it was awesome and I'm you know so I'm like semi kind of wanting to be identified but I'm like oh I don't want to be that guy because then the whole staff faculty or whatever of the school they're all up in arms that's a bad bad thing they're like
00:51:37
Speaker
No, no, this is not this is not OK. They were genuinely upset. But as far as the student body, though, I mean, we were kind of rock stars for a couple of weeks, you know. And so but I had to kind of, you know, bring that down a bit because I didn't want to be identified at the time. Yeah, I imagine expulsion would have been on the line for anyone identified. Definitely could have been. Yeah.
00:52:02
Speaker
Thankfully, they weren't going around inspecting all of our penises afterwards. Let's be real, I could see that move happening in some places. And then all the inspectors are the ones going no homo this time. And then they run the gay conversion therapy classes later on that day.
00:52:25
Speaker
Oh, for sure. They're like that TSA agent that was like, you know, handing down that little kid. You know, that's what would have happened. The TSA agent. That's perfect. Yes. Oh,
Marital Counseling and Acceptance of Divorce
00:52:39
Speaker
my God. Oh, man. So when when you guys were hitting troubled waters, like during your first marriage, did you guys do any sort of counseling or anything like that?
00:52:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we did. And the guy that we went to go see, I mean, at the time, he was in his 80s, but a very well-respected, of course, Mennonite, right? Person from the church kind of thing. Not a part of our local church, but in that denomination. What was, I think, disappointing for her, but
00:53:24
Speaker
affirming for me was his reasoning for actually siding with the concept of divorce as a acceptable thing to do, which I was not prepared for that, honestly, because everything that I'd heard growing up up until that point was, you just do not get divorced. You never, never do that. That's just one of those things you simply,
00:53:52
Speaker
grin and bear, doesn't matter. You want to be married for 60 years, even if 50 of those were miserable, doesn't matter. That's the thing that you do. So we went through that process and because he had that door open, that's where I just kind of, I walked through it because I knew that that was what I wanted. And it wasn't what she wanted and that's why
00:54:18
Speaker
It was extremely painful to go through, even though it was something that I knew I wanted. Because the after 10 years, my God, the kind of connections and inner weavings of our lives were so connected that trying to rip all of that apart was
00:54:35
Speaker
I mean I lost lots of friends through that I lost. You know family members obviously on her side of course that never spoken to me of course since and things like that so it has its collateral damage.
00:54:50
Speaker
And rightfully so, I mean, it shouldn't be something that's so easy to just simply, no one wants to just toss it aside. But at the same time, if it's not the right thing, you've got to, you know, you're either you're going to do it or you're going to
00:55:05
Speaker
like you say, grin and bear it for 60 years and just one, you know, I would have looked back on that and wondered what if I had actually gone through with it. And I didn't want to be that guy. So yeah, when Sarah and I, my now wife, when we got married, so Casey, you had mentioned this about having the idea of you in April figuring out the pros and cons about having kids.
Life Choices Without Children
00:55:35
Speaker
We really kind of grappled with that. We read a couple of books together, just non-religious books, but just books in general about the idea of child free by choice. And we realized that with any, especially with any big decision, but basically any decision, you are choosing one set of consequences for another. We understand that because we're not having kids, we know that there's going to be a point in time where had we had kids,
00:56:02
Speaker
We are missing out on that day when, you know, Sam Christmas is coming up and your kids are going to open up their presents and they're going to be super excited. And there's going to be that, that moment, maybe not every Christmas, but there will be those times where your little kids are going to be, you know, just euphoric about Christmas. We're not going to have that experience.
00:56:21
Speaker
We're not going to have that experience when our kids come home from college and they're wanting to be home for Christmas or when they have their own kids and we have like the whole grandkids thing. That's something that we've made peace with the reality that we're not going to have that.
00:56:40
Speaker
And we've made our peace with that, knowing that that's going to happen. But for us, the choice of the life that we want to live outweighs the regret or the feeling of, maybe not regret, but the feeling of, oh, we're going to miss out on that.
00:56:55
Speaker
It's greater in that way. So that's what I tell people all the time. If they ask about, hey, why don't you guys have kids? Did you guys grapple with it? Coming to terms with the reality that there will be things that you are going to miss. Just like, Sam, you miss out on things that people who don't have kids get to experience, but you're getting things that we will never experience either. And so I think being mature about the reality that
00:57:23
Speaker
your decisions are going to have pros and cons. It doesn't matter what you choose. There are going to be pluses and minuses. So just understand what those are before you make that choice. And that's what we tried to do long ago when we made that decision.
00:57:38
Speaker
Yeah, dude, I think that's such an insightful way to look at it. I think what's challenging about having that conversation authentically in this country, especially, is we are kind of obsessed with legacy and having something to leave for whatever, which is ultimately a form of selfishness to some degree.
00:58:08
Speaker
I think people want to leave things for their kids, but I think they want to be the person who was able to leave things for their kids almost as much. I think their legacy and being able to pass on your hard work is something that people care about in this country, and it can make really shitty children, let's be honest. We've seen a lot of kids inherit shit that squander it and suck.
00:58:32
Speaker
I think sometimes we have an unknown- This is Sam slowly building a mental case for why he can spend every dollar before he dies. Yeah. This is really- My grandpa does this. All of this is about why I'm not paying for him. This is why I'm not paying for my children's college. Casey is- There it is. I ate on the record saying that several times with all of my friends. Why? Because my parents didn't pay for my college. Yeah. And look how great I turned out. I started a podcast denigrating everything that they taught me.
00:59:03
Speaker
Just kidding. And there is the legacy that Sam's parents have left him. Yeah, their legacy is a child. Their legacy is an ungrateful child. Not only one, their legacy is four children who don't subscribe to the ideology that they intentionally homeschooled them to inherit. And they all four of you? Yeah, yeah.
00:59:26
Speaker
Oh goodness. Okay. Yeah. For children that they homeschooled for the purpose of giving them a good Christian upbringing to carry on to essentially pass the torch. None of us, uh, took it in the way that they would have wanted us to. And, um, and then later of demons and reprobates.
00:59:44
Speaker
Yeah. And then one of them, you know, three of them did it privately. One of them waited a really long time before making the choice that the other siblings did. And then, you know, putting it out there for thousands and thousands of people to listen to ever. It's like, OK, well.
01:00:04
Speaker
maybe so they maybe I don't know we'll see like you know uh people who have kids might end up having some regrets
Parental Expectations vs. Reality
01:00:11
Speaker
in that right as well if you maybe ask my parents or even my in-laws who are more upset probably more upset about this than uh even my own parents my parents I truly feel love me unconditionally and despite this
01:00:24
Speaker
Even my dad said when we started it, he goes, some of that's a little bit tough to hear because it's the opposite of what we hoped for. But at the same time, he mentioned feeling like it allowed him to really get to know me for the first time. That hard relationship between a parent and a child where children don't want to ruffle feathers and you just go along and get along. But he's like, hearing you be able to talk,
01:00:52
Speaker
with people authentically about what you think without any guard up actually was appreciated, which was cool. I loved to hear that. That was one of the cooler things I heard about from family members about this. But anyway, back to you. I think what you're saying really is
01:01:15
Speaker
I don't think a lot of people do that. And I think, unfortunately, growing up in a Christian world, we don't get the opportunity to do that. It's expected that you're going to have kids. If you don't, there's something wrong with you. Yeah. Or you think you're supposed to. And then, like, years down the road, you realize one person might change their mind. And there's nothing wrong with that. But that does kind of torpedo a relationship if one person wants kids and one doesn't.
01:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, and a lot of the arguments that we thankfully haven't had this face-to-face with people, but we've read, you know, this is a common thing that people like, you know, find a subreddit that you can find. I mean, there's plenty of things like that where you can find people saying, oh, yeah, my parents or grandparents, friends, whatever, they're calling me selfish for not wanting kids.
01:02:05
Speaker
And I understand the sentiment behind that. First, before I even get into defending what the decision to not have kids, how that is equal to this decision to having kids is, is the concept of
Selfishness in Life Decisions
01:02:24
Speaker
Why is selfish always bad? Because that's not necessarily a bad thing. The truth is that, Sam, my guess is you wanted to have kids for specific reasons. Hey, I want to have kids because I want family or I want to have a family unit or whatever it is I want. That's also selfish. What's more selfish than wanting to make copies of yourself?
01:02:47
Speaker
yes exactly and pass on a legacy and but but my point is that that that is also also arguably selfish but is that necessarily wrong that's not necessarily a bad thing and so for me to be selfish and say i don't want to have kids because of xyz reason but this person over here wants to have kids for xyz reason those reasons can both
01:03:09
Speaker
be equally selfish, but also equally good. It doesn't have to be bad. But we are I was brought up at least that the the idea of being selfish was tantamount to fucking a cow. You know, it's like, nope, it's a sin. You're going to hell. You know, when you were from
01:03:30
Speaker
Yeah. That's happened before in Dodge City for sure. There are a few cows in Dodge City, yes. But it is true because it's like, selfishness really would, the idea of selfishness that people seem to have a problem with, if you're really, I think, going to get down to it is selfishness ultimately is
01:03:48
Speaker
Is taking away from somebody like you're being selfish with your time therefore you're not giving it to people who are deserving of it or you're selfish with your money therefore you're not being generous in ways that you maybe should be but I think that the irony of saying that you're being selfish about not having children is like I'm being selfish by not having someone to then be selfish again like you're
01:04:11
Speaker
you're not taking away from anybody or anything other than potentially yourselves, but you're giving that up for the sake of not investing in this cultural ideology of that this is the expected and right thing to do. So you're essentially experiencing a loss to some degree by making that choice, which is ultimately, I agree with you, not
01:04:38
Speaker
Selfish like if you the selfish thing to do we have kids but not like Invest in them appropriately, right? Like we've I see that mostly in my line of work as Working in the school you see yeah, you see parents being selfish by not
01:04:53
Speaker
It's like, oh, here's a got you a tablet. You're four years old and they spend six. They get home from school and they are on their tablet until they go to bed. Like that's selfish. And I see that pretty regularly. And it's kind of hard to stomach and you see the implications of it on children. And but it is seems strange for people to to pull that card on people who've just as adults made a choice for their life that has no impact on
01:05:23
Speaker
Anybody and certainly no impact negative impact. I guess you could argue I guess the first people would play the salvage card would be like parents who want grandchildren Yeah, I get I get that that could be tough for them. I think parents look forward to being grandparents. They should try dogs That's how I feel
01:05:45
Speaker
Well, and, you know, Elon Musk says that, you know, people who don't have kids should not be able to vote because they have nothing to invest in in the future. You know what, I just, I don't have a kid because
01:06:02
Speaker
My environment, my green footprint is offset so much by the fact that I don't have a kid that I don't need to drive one of Elon Musk's horrible cars. That's the trade-off. I can drive a gas guzzler and I can throw all of my Mountain Dew cans out the window. I'm still greener than you. You don't want one of those polygon trucks? You can't shoot an air through them.
01:06:27
Speaker
But you can throw a Campbell's soup at it and it will crack the window even though they say it won't. Did you see that? A couple of years ago. Beautiful. Beautiful. You know the iPad thing, it's like in a way, Tim Cook is all of our cold, unfeeling stepfathers.
Technology as a Surrogate Parent
01:06:47
Speaker
explain yeah you lost sorry bud you lost as well because the ipad's raising this generation right so oh yes indeed if i'm going too fast just say so no dude you're so far out of the two of us that was a terrible joke it sounded funny in my head
Karaoke Anxiety and Experiences
01:07:11
Speaker
That's all right. We're your test audience for your stand up career next, Casey. It's all good. You're just filtering the bad ones out right now. It's fine. That's the dream. Jason and I regularly talk about finding, like when we visit each other, finding an open mic.
01:07:27
Speaker
oh god please let me uh be a part of that i want to i want to be in the audience god you're no trust to be there i it's funny like i i mention it to like my my wife is mortified by the idea she goes oh really use a different name and i don't want anyone to know about it in our personal lives and i go that's fine because i am so
01:07:51
Speaker
in my
01:08:11
Speaker
And here we go, I think I'm good. He was like, I don't know if I could be there for that. And there was no way that I'd offend this person or make them think anything weird. It was just like the anxiety of bombing in front of somebody, it gives you secondhand embarrassment. And I've seen open mics and had that secondhand embarrassment where you're like, I'm not the one bombing and I want to walk out in traffic right now. No.
01:08:40
Speaker
All that preface to say, I would be more than comfortable doing in front of Casey. If there's no one, I'd rather a bomb in front of Casey. But you're the runner up, man. If you, I would not be worried about it. I would feel supported if you were there. So take that as a compliment.
01:08:57
Speaker
See, I have the same second hand, like, mortification of not just with stand up, but with karaoke. It's the same thing to me. Oh, and you'll never get you'll never get me up there either. We had one of our best friends here. Her she karaoke is her thing. And there's a bar here that does like your you reserve a room and you just have your friends for karaoke.
01:09:19
Speaker
And worse, I think strangers is better than friends completely agree, completely agree. And everyone there's drinking, have a good time. And they're all singing. And they're like, I told them weeks and weeks before I'm not doing it. I'm not getting up there. I'm not singing. I'm not doing it. I grew up like top. I grew up in church where and like high school and college, choir and everything like I can carry a tune. I'm decent.
01:09:49
Speaker
And I hate it because it's got this like, I have a PTSD kind of thing happen with standing up and doing anything performance related in front of a group of people. Because I hated doing it in church. I hated doing it in college. Hated it, hated it, hated it. And now people want to do that for fucking fun. Hell no.
01:10:10
Speaker
And so now they do this for this birthday and everyone goes around does their thing. And I'm like, no, I'm not doing it. And finally, Sarah had to tell my friend like, hey, Mark does not want to do this. Just lay off. And finally, she let go and said, fine, I'm not going to do it. But it was just one of those like, oh, just do I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Same thing with stand up. You'll never get me to do it. But I will absolutely support you guys. I've done it twice in the last month.
01:10:39
Speaker
Never done that before. Now I've done it twice. Damn. That's incredible. I would say the only thing, the perfect mix to get me to do karaoke would be, I need the right amount of alcohol in the right amount of Creed. And I will absolutely, I will be there. Big Creed guy. I could do Creed karaoke and I think that's the only, maybe
01:11:03
Speaker
Uh, God, I, there's like a lot of these like late nineties, early two thousands, but rock bands that I just think it's fun to sing and you sing it poorly intentionally. So there's like, I could, that's where I draw the line. Like, uh, Creed karaoke is like probably going to be my entrance and exit into karaoke.
01:11:26
Speaker
It's gonna be Creed Nickelback Creed. Yeah, that's that's gonna be a Little suck sandwich Puddle of mud. Give me a little Don't cold sober the other day. I had like one drink in me in Vegas and I did a Toby Keith song and then
01:11:56
Speaker
This was a birthday party thing in one of those rooms like you were talking about. What song? Was it Red Solo Cup? No, it should have been a cowboy. Oh, that's a really good one. That's one of those old 90s countries. That's good stuff. That's solid. Yeah. Yeah. And then April and I did Lady Gaga's song the other day. Together?
01:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, in public. Oh, was it the Stars Born song with Bradley Cooper, that song? No. You guys do like a whole duet thing? That would have been cool. Maybe next time. We did Bad Romance. Oh, okay. Good one. Yeah. We've screamed that one in the car together before, so.
01:12:35
Speaker
Work. See, that's the thing. I'm fully supportive of everyone else doing it. Just don't ask me to do it, man. It's tough. It's like if I touch the stage, there will be an involuntary release of urine. Yes. Maybe other fluids coming out of there, too. But, you know, I said the last all week. Do a group chat. You probably didn't see it because you don't see anything that we send you on Instagram. But there is like a sketch. I don't think it's an I think you can leave thing. I think it's one of the other sketch comedy things Tim Robinson's
Nostalgic Music Festivals
01:13:05
Speaker
done.
01:13:05
Speaker
but it's like him just continually trying to sing into a microphone and getting frustrated that every time he belts it, it sounds bad. And it's like a minute and a half of him doing that. And then finally he's like,
01:13:22
Speaker
And then after like a minute, he goes, I can't sing. And I said that I was like, Jesus Christ, this is this is me. Every time I try to sing, I feel that that's I can't do it. And you try and every time you have to like reel it in, you go, that was embarrassing. I'm not ready for it. But again, I think I can manage a Creed song or two. So I'll
01:13:46
Speaker
I'll stand by that and Casey, maybe someday you'll get me drunk enough and we'll be together and you can see it. Sounds like a great way to recover from a stand up experience. You guys can come down to St. Petersburg, Florida and I will rent the room out for you. It's going to be beautiful. I think I am coming there next year, actually. Really? St. Pete, Tampa area? Yeah, pretty sure. Okay.
01:14:12
Speaker
Yep. We got like a work thing next October. I'm going to look you up. Okay. Do it. Do it. Actually, I will be in Vegas next October, baby. Cause I spent all of my savings on a one way. You're on ticket like a total loser, but
01:14:30
Speaker
What are you doing in Vegas? I was just there last month. When were your young music festival? I have a year to pay it off now. It's like a girl jeans family reunion.
01:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. Talking old Underoath, old Emery, old Jimmy Eat World. Old God. I mean, it's everyone. It's literally like this, like out of the 50 something bands, I was like, there's 23 of these that I want to see. I'm just going to buy a ticket. And because they're all playing a full album, like they're like big hit album from like when we were young.
01:15:10
Speaker
So it was hard to pass that up. So I will be in Vegas next October.
01:15:17
Speaker
Hey, nostalgia is a powerful thing. So powerful. It's honestly manipulative and unfair. It's a spell that's been cast on all of us that we've yet to be able to break. It's witchcraft and wizardry, the two things we were warned against as children. And it's pretty. It's why I still occasionally listen to the ReliantK and Switchfoot and the occasional All-Star United. Do you guys remember them? All-Star United? No, I don't think so. OK.
01:15:46
Speaker
My dream back in like college age or so, my dream concert would have been like All Star United opening for Switchfoot. Like that would have been the thing for me. But yeah, even still to this day, have you seen some of the, oh, you probably haven't, but there are some of the, like Jonas Brothers covered one of Switchfoot songs and a couple of other artists are covering some of Switchfoot songs. And I'm like,
01:16:13
Speaker
So I start pulling them up on Spotify. I'm like, God, you know, I actually like Switchfoot more than I thought I would still. So it's like, I don't know. It's weird. It's good. There's no shade of Switchfoot. My buddy, he's got a band, A Place for Owls, Ben Soy. He's been on the podcast. Everyone can check that one out. His band just opened for Switchfoot. Switchfoot was going back around on tour and they just played for them, like opened up for them.
01:16:40
Speaker
I mean, switch foot rocks, Reliant K rocks, I have no shade to throw at some of these older Christian rock bands. That one actually got mainstream recognition. Yeah. That Mintz and Liv song was the big one. That really kind of exploded for him. Yeah. I did...
01:17:02
Speaker
I did guest vocals on a rap song that sampled that song. Jay Reid. We had a guy at our dorm named, he went by Jay Reid. He's very strange. No one knew how old he was.
01:17:24
Speaker
and he was covered he would take his shirt off and he was covered he looked like he had been like passion of the Christ beaten dude like the recipient of like automatic weapon bullet fire like can't a nine-tail stop caught between two mobs just on a turf war is what it looked like
Mysterious College Rapper and Compensation
01:17:45
Speaker
I mean, I kind of wonder if, you know, maybe you guys might be missing the boat here. I think he might have been part of some sort of sex cult or something with the whole BDSM thing. Maybe that's where those things came from.
01:17:56
Speaker
I could have been sold on the idea that that's where that happened. His nightstand was literally entirely covered with orange bottles with white caps, all prescription meds to keep him alive. I don't know what happened. Nothing worked without medication at this point. Whatever happened to this kid was gnarly.
01:18:19
Speaker
He was in college. Yeah. Yeah. He was in our dorm and he did. He was the nicest guy because he was completely inundated with drugs at this point, probably. Right. He seemed it. He seemed it was floating. Oh, yeah. But he did like he did rap stuff on the side and he like.
01:18:43
Speaker
had heard my band at the time and was like, yo, I want you to come do like some vocal, like, I want you to come scream on a song that I'm doing. And I was like, okay, what do you want me to, you want me to scream like something in particular? And he's like, just, you know, just like whatever, but I just want you to scream in this like part, like you do a verse or something. And I was like,
01:19:08
Speaker
Okay, sure. I'll do it. I want Brock to scream, with screaming at that point. Wow. Exactly. Yeah. And it was, we were meant to live, like, looped over and over again. And it was just him, the song was called Scars. And he said Scars over and over again. I don't remember what any of the other lyrics were, but, and then I come in and just like howl in the background. And we recorded it at this guy's house in like,
01:19:37
Speaker
the crappy part of Lynchburg in a closet. It was a weird experience, but it was fun. I wish that was still around, dude. I would love to get my hands on that. Oh, it was bad, dude. It was really bad. I was bad. He was bad. All of it was bad. Surely there's some recordings of that somewhere. Got to upload that shit. It was on MySpace at one point.
01:20:04
Speaker
Okay, it's still there then, maybe. I think Myspace has been scrubbed at this point, right? Oh, boy, I don't know. Well, we'll have to look into that one later. God, Casey, you reminded me of something. When I was in college, I was part of this like, kind of like a Hillsong Worship wannabe band. Basically, we were like through, so we were like the worship band or whatever. And we did like throughout the summer.
01:20:34
Speaker
you know, when we're supposed to be, you know, getting jobs, making money or whatever. No, no, no. I chose that summer to actually go through do a tour and what we would who we would tour through where like summer church camps and churches and that kind of stuff. The name of the band. God, I haven't thought about this in a long time. We were crosswise because, you know, we're very, you know, progressive with our our naming, you know,
01:20:58
Speaker
the crosswise, my God. And so the idea of, yeah, so I was, I would play guitar and I'd sing on a few things and play drums on a few things. And we were just, all we were doing is covering all these Christian bands, a bunch of cadence call stuff and, you know, things like that with it. We're worship band stuff, you know, and, um,
01:21:16
Speaker
when you say, yeah, it was bad that we were bad. It was we thought we were good. But, yeah, looking back, it's one of those like, oh, man, crosswise, that was it was fun at the time because that's, you know, I thought we were, you know, some cool shit. But did you get these churches pay you over the summer?
01:21:36
Speaker
The churches themselves did not pay us. We got compensated by the college, by Tabor. It was like a thousand a month to do that. Five ways? Yeah. Thankfully, no. Thankfully, no. Actually, that's pretty good, dude. Well, it was okay, but it was essentially a credit towards our college expenses or something. It wasn't like cash. A thousand bucks a month.
01:22:04
Speaker
intuition deduction okay yeah so so three thousand dollars you know throughout the summer that went to tuition as a scholarship basically so uh well okay that's been a long time since i've thought about those days maybe thought but that's so man crosswise crosswise and a bunch of cavemen's call stuff and uh
Derek Webb's Bold Actions in Christian Music
01:22:29
Speaker
Since you guys had Derek Webb on a while back, I've been kind of following him and a lot of the, have you guys kind of seen what's been going on with him and the whole like drag stuff and him going to double wards? Yeah, that was pretty. Honestly, I know you guys, you know, he was kind of, you know, whatever, you know, as a guest on the show or whatever, but I kind of like that he's like throwing shit in the face of the Christian music community like this. It's kind of cool.
01:22:57
Speaker
back into it. Like he was exiting from it and then was just like, yeah, you know what? Fuck you guys. I'll release a Christian album and make you guys deal with that, which I think is a nice fuck you to the devil wards and how that functions. I think anyone who can kind of throw a middle finger to that is pretty cool. Uh, and especially as an award ceremony kind of thing, it's like,
01:23:21
Speaker
to shake that up is nice. It's nice to see people trying to shake that shit up. I appreciate that. I'm curious as to you're like, I mean, you went through your first marriage, you went to a Mennonite counselor, you were still
01:23:38
Speaker
You got the license to feel okay about making a decision that was right for you, which is normally not something people get. And that's fascinating in its own right. But being in that, being with a counselor who was Mennonite, it sounds like you were still part of that world. What was a catalyst that ultimately kind of started to pull you out of it?
01:24:00
Speaker
You mean out of the church itself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And ultimately for me, it's out of the faith as a whole as well. But part of, yeah, I mean that was certainly one of the pieces that look the...
01:24:19
Speaker
This counselor gave me some of the license to exit and go through with a divorce that the church itself was still not okay with. And so, you know, I'm sitting here kind of in between those going, wait a minute, there's a dichotomy sitting here where the church that I'm supposed to be a part of is against it. But this counselor
Leaving Church and Maintaining Family Bonds
01:24:39
Speaker
who is respected among the church is saying, I'm for it. I'm like, wait a minute.
01:24:44
Speaker
And that was one of those like, you know, maybe like a crack in the ice, you might say that like, okay, there's more of these kinds of situations where
01:24:55
Speaker
the establishment is saying one thing, and then there are other people saying another thing, and no one has a really, especially on the establishment side, no one has a really good argument for this, other than to say, well, just trust God, or using whatever Christian using them you wanna use. And that, so when that, like you say, the license for me to say, okay, I'm actually okay with this, and I don't feel like I'm going to hell for it,
01:25:25
Speaker
then that also then gave me the, um, like shining the light on a lot of other things to say, okay, well, what else is there that I'm probably okay with that I'm also not going to hell with. And that kind of started a little bit of an avalanche effect of saying, well, okay.
01:25:41
Speaker
Come on, does God really act this way? Is God really that concerned about what I do with my hand, with another woman, with anybody for that matter, versus, oh, I'm gonna go ahead and let my creation bomb each other to death.
01:26:06
Speaker
I'm not going to care about that, but I am going to care about whether or not you're masturbating to Victoria's Secret when you're in seventh grade, you know. Just be plenty of your case. Yeah, or good housekeeping, right? Wholesome. I like your wholesome approach.
01:26:26
Speaker
So that kind of moved down the road of like, wait a minute. I had been raised in such a way, not just by my parents, but through Tabor College and all of the church-related stuff that whenever these arguments would show up, you would weave your way around.
01:26:45
Speaker
the arguments, you wouldn't actually directly address the arguments. You just kind of create a little loophole around it so you didn't have to actually address the reality that actually the Bible is contradictory in this way or what we teach now is in contradiction to what the Bible says. So that became a snowball effect for me and to the point where after meeting Sarah and we were dating and realizing,
01:27:14
Speaker
I don't think I believe any of this. And it's, I've been when Sam I think you reached out at one point to actually set up this time tag for me to hang out with you guys. I've always thought like
01:27:29
Speaker
I was going to tell you this that you guys have from the beginning have always been, you always said, look, we are not like angry so much at the church or we're not hostile towards, you know, towards church or Christians in general or whatever.
01:27:47
Speaker
And the first time I started listening to you guys, I'm like, yeah, I'm still pretty angry. I'm still pretty pissed off. And it's something that I admire the fact, especially you, you know, specifically you Sam, because you're still a part of a community that is it fair to call it a church? Yeah, that's fair, despite its unchurchiness, but yeah.
01:28:07
Speaker
Yeah, but the fact that you're even like you have your your your toes still in that kind of world or more than that or less now, I don't know. But the point is that for me, the idea of going to a church is so it's just leaves such a bad taste in my mouth that I admire the fact that both of you have a much softer approach to it than I do. And despite the fact that I've been separated from that world for
01:28:36
Speaker
God, 10, 11 years or so, something like that. And still, it just feels so repulsive to me. It's less so now than it was maybe a year or two ago. I think I'm moving in the right direction, but
01:28:53
Speaker
Part of it is, I think what has helped me move in that direction is, Sam, you said all of your siblings have left that kind of world, is that fair, right? Yes, definitely. All three of my siblings are still very much involved with their respective churches, with their faiths and everything. Whereas, so I'm kind of the black sheep, right?
01:29:19
Speaker
But yet they've never, well, at the beginning with the divorce and remarrying and all that, there was some relationship things that had to be mended because of that. But right now, I mean, I don't know if I've had as good of a relationship with my siblings as I've ever had. I mean, it's- That's awesome. Yeah, they've very much exemplified what I would want to see from a Christian community. My mom the same way, my dad to a lesser extent,
01:29:49
Speaker
he and I don't really have much of a relationship right now, but the siblings wise, it's been remarkable in that way that we are all still very much in communication, in relationship with each other, despite the fact that we have very, very different worldviews and in my case, specifically different religious or lack thereof views in that regard.
01:30:17
Speaker
That's
Critique of Evangelical Culture and Politics
01:30:18
Speaker
such an interesting, that's a, yeah, I like this shift. I love that you still have that connection with your siblings. I think that's really important. And so I think what's funny for me, you mentioned like still harboring a feeling or two towards the community you came from. I think what's interesting is I, as a whole, I feel like as a whole, I've, you know, well, Casey, I'm interested in your response to this, but
01:30:47
Speaker
Casey's, I think maybe because of where he lives, he's much more ingrained culturally. He's just placed in an area that culturally, that evangelical version of Christianity is extraordinarily prevalent.
01:31:06
Speaker
Yeah, I almost feel like Casey you you have a better you're better at dealing with that and accepting that and in navigating through it Then I would be like while I found Aspects of Christianity. I don't know that Christian is the right term for me maybe I feel like post Christian is something I gravitate towards because I I don't have like a strong
01:31:34
Speaker
Well, I don't have a strong opinion on the Bible being the Christian book is like, well, there's a lot to be said for that. And I think there's a lot to talk about. I think it makes more sense for your book.
01:31:50
Speaker
for the quote-unquote old testament or the jewish scriptures in the way that they navigate their faith i think that makes the most sense when it comes to grappling through scripture uh i think they navigate that better than christians do i don't christians are less new less nuanced i think what's interesting though is i while i still find
01:32:11
Speaker
a level of comfort in discussing the teachings of Jesus and why they seem to matter, why they think they can matter. If you reflect on it openly versus like in a closed loop and try to force it into an ideology or theology, I think that you can
01:32:30
Speaker
Benefit from it. I think that in the same way that you came with any other sort of self-reflective religious systems There's ways to benefit from it. And I think it as an accurate way of understanding Self-sacrifice and its impact on the world around you and there's a lot of beautiful things about it to me but I am with you if you threw me into an evangelical church, I would Want to stop breathing
01:32:57
Speaker
while I was in there. I wouldn't have a good time. I wouldn't be able to find the good in it. I would only be questioning and thinking about how much of a disservice it's doing to the people who have subscribed and how much of a circulatory reasoning and groupthink
01:33:15
Speaker
idea like it's just all of it isn't good to me and I would like to be better at like maybe gleaning some positives but I don't want to sell myself as something other than
01:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, having in the right context with the right people, in the right conversation, I can have, I can reflect on why the certain teachings of Jesus are important to me in my life personally. But when you look at evangelical culture and evangelical church,
01:33:46
Speaker
It's triggering as fuck for me. So I'm with you on that And I don't want I I don't want to misrepresent myself there and I feel like but in case I think maybe you're in it I feel like you're almost less triggered You just accept it as sort of a cultural thing to some degree like it seems to bother you a little bit less But I'm curious as to how you'd respond to that. I think
01:34:13
Speaker
part of why it doesn't bother me is my, I mean, one is just immersion, like I'm around it all the time. I think part of it too is the fact that like, I feel like over the past, I don't know, 10 years here, I've really gotten to, I've really like taken note of how little it actually means to people as opposed to like what they say it means. You know what I mean? Like your, okay, take your story for instance,
01:34:43
Speaker
You go to this counselor. He's the guy. He's 80 years old. In no other situation would you be with an 80 years old guy asking for marriage advice, but this is the guy. He's the one that you need to go see, right? He has all the credibility in the world. He's endorsed by this group of people that is so important to you.
01:35:02
Speaker
You're a part of that community, right? And you're like, please, God, help us figure this out because I don't know what I'm going to do. The guy works with you. You guys go through all this stuff and he says, I think it's reasonable for you guys to consider separating.
01:35:19
Speaker
Right? You've gotten the stamp of approval on what, you know, you're now allowed to consider that as like, maybe it's okay for me to think about doing this. Maybe this is what I want. Actually, I mean, I think, yeah, I think this is a course action that I can go forward with and I'm being told that it's okay and stuff like that. And then immediately you encounter resistance.
01:35:41
Speaker
Why? Why is there resistance? I mean, you got the guy's signature on the action, right? But it's not anything to do with you. It's the fact that like, hey, Mark, we like you. And, you know, we don't want you to feel bad or anything. But it's really important to us that we not break face with our public policy towards divorce.
01:36:07
Speaker
And I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable or if it leads you into a difficult situation, but it's most important that we stand firm in our stance that divorce bad, regardless of the situation or who signs off on it and stuff like that. It's not religious conviction. It's just, this is the policy. Did you read the handbook?
01:36:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's values, value platitudes is all it kind of is. And I think that's when you when you look around you, because there's true believers out there, where it's like a part of who they are on a daily basis, you know, by and large, like, one, I don't think there's that many of those. Really? I mean, I don't think there's that many of those. Two,
01:36:54
Speaker
you're not out here interacting with them. I've known those people throughout my life and stuff, and the people who I interact with on a regular basis who consider themselves Christian, who say it's a big part of who they are and stuff, they're culturally Christian. And maybe they adhere to some of the principles and stuff there, but it's kind of like universal law stuff, like treat others the way you want to be treated. There's the negative sides where it's like I get to kind of
01:37:25
Speaker
rationalize my dislike of this and that because, you know, the book says so. Nevermind a bunch of other things that it says, but it's just like your, your, what's your, what's your inner interfacing with on a regular basis. Isn't Christianity so much as it is just people who have like a cultural understanding of who they are.
01:37:45
Speaker
and
01:38:08
Speaker
for me to deal with is Most of the people that I have to be around all the time. I really like I don't really have to deal very much with people I don't like and if people I if I like people it's because I I feel like I know who they are and like I can I can deal with the fact that they have some weird ideas about certain things yeah, and they sure you know, but I don't know I
01:38:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's just a weird – it's just weird that the game that we're playing – it's like we always talk about like conservative politics plays a lot more of a role in who people say they are in that community than Christianity or the Bible or something. It's a secondary note for most people. And I don't know, at the end of the day, so little of any of it affects who they are on a daily basis. You know what I mean?
01:39:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that for what was one of the bigger kind of flashpoints for me has been recently with regard to how the way I was raised and especially like the family and friends that I had so close to me at the time who said, look,
01:39:22
Speaker
Jesus says, and the Bible says, this is the kind of person that you should aspire to be. And just look at the beatitudes. That's a perfect place to start, right? All these humility and all these kind of things that are like, that's what we aspired to be. That's what I was raised to look up to whenever I experienced that in people. If you experience someone in power,
01:39:49
Speaker
who has humility and cares for the people who are below that person. That is someone you want to aspire, not to aspire to, aspire to want to be, but want to be around and support. And to see that the complete antithesis of that came out in 2020, or excuse me, 2016, and the exact, the same people who were telling us, who were telling me,
01:40:19
Speaker
you want to find someone who is humble and modest but you know and you know all these wonderful things but yet i need you to vote for this guy because he's against abortion or whatever right i'm like you just painted a picture of the exact the most antichrist person
01:40:38
Speaker
And that's the person you're wanting me to vote for. And now all of these people who told me, no, no, no, you want to be like Jesus, but you need to vote for this guy because, you know, he's the Christian guy. I'm like, what happened?
01:40:53
Speaker
Where did this, where did the more go wrong here in terms of, you know, clearly the ship has turned to where, you know what, the characteristics of Jesus don't apply anymore. We're just gonna vote against the liberal dem because, you know, fuck the Democrats. Like, you completely lost me now in your faith because that's what you said you believed and taught me to believe.
01:41:20
Speaker
by completely abandoning that in favor of someone who is the exact opposite of what you say you believe. That's why I'm not going to throw
Social Media's Role in Polarization
01:41:30
Speaker
all of Christianity under the bus, but most of evangelicalism with that direction, unless I'm completely wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not. Ironically, you had more in common with, despite their
01:41:43
Speaker
They're disapproval of your divorce. You probably had more in common with Trump than any of them, which is that you had been divorced and been married. And you didn't get the same grace so they can go fuck themselves. Am I right? Yes. Yes. Not fair. Not very fair if you ask me. I think like for the most part, I think you can like you can deal with somebody genuinely being wrong about something.
01:42:14
Speaker
What's hard to deal with is like, don't tell me that like this, this, and this is important to you and then do the exact opposite. Like don't tell me that you're a Christian first above all these other things. And then all, like all you talk about is conservative politics and that's what you immerse yourself in all the time. It's Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson and this and that and the other, like you could do those things. Just be, you know.
01:42:43
Speaker
just be Rand Paul or whoever, like say that's God to you. Stop telling us that this is what's important to you and just do your thing and be honest about it. Yeah, that's just something that really has just crystallized my complete distrust at this point. That whole community is gonna have to do a hell of a lot of work
01:43:08
Speaker
to convince me that they, that they're genuine in anything. If they're not genuine in that, I don't want to hang out with you. And so that's why that statement right there, I don't even want to hang out with people who are that
01:43:28
Speaker
who are so easy to throw their supposed morals out the window. I'm like, shit, man. And that's why that's why I said early on about how I admire the fact that you guys are less
01:43:43
Speaker
you seem to be at least from the way I feel seem to be less what's the word I'm trying to think of but just combative I guess I can I can admit that I'm fairly combative when it comes to being around people who have made that complete disconnect in that world specifically the whole evangelical world you know so
01:44:12
Speaker
Which I think there's a place for that too. I mean, obviously there's a lot that goes into the idea and understanding of what changes people's minds and how they change. And unfortunately, it's not new information and good arguments that changes anybody's minds. I think the social psychology data is in on that. So I don't know. I think that's what's weird. We're in a weird spot.
01:44:37
Speaker
you know with the ex-vangelical community being so large of people who have either just they're not evangelical or they're not Christian whatever it is um or they're yeah they're just Christian but not conservative whatever there's so many different variations now people going in so many different directions
01:44:55
Speaker
We are just not, we're not really, I don't think we really know how to talk to each other. I think the way that in which you get people to change their minds is despite what you assume would be true from social media, it's not posts that denigrate the other. It's not everyone commenting relentlessly on Mark Driscoll's
01:45:20
Speaker
posts about how he's just a chauvinist sexist piece of shit if anything that makes him worse there's just it's like we're in a weird spot and social media's kind of fucked it a little bit like you know people want to take a stand on their values and I think that they you know that's virtuous in our society but in
Power of Personal Relationships in Changing Beliefs
01:45:41
Speaker
that you lose you lose status by trying to
01:45:47
Speaker
find common ground and have a discussion with people. Now you're seen as, you know, fraternizing with the enemy to some degree. So it's a weird spot in social media, in the social media landscape when we're kind of creating, we're all creating our own worst enemies, including evangelicals in the way that they're forcing people out of church and droves. Like they view them as the enemy. We view that. It's just, it's a nonstop cycle. And I think that there's a
01:46:17
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. It might be that we enter World War III, all of our infrastructures burn, and we lose the Internet. That might be the only path forward. Who knows? I don't know. You're right, though, because the reality is that
01:46:35
Speaker
If you were to actually get the people from the far left and the far right and put them in a room, they'd find that they have more in common than they have indifference, but they would never get into that room. Especially not on social media because social media is simply an echo chamber of all the likes and things that they put on their Facebook and Instagram and TikTok or whatever.
01:46:55
Speaker
So they're never gonna ever gonna find themselves in that place. But I remember growing up, I mean, I was the, you know, homosexuality is sin, you're going to hell. And then I became friends with a couple of gay people. I'm like, Nope, they're actually wonderful human beings. And I think that that whole doctrine is fucked up. And I completely reject that now. But it took me
01:47:17
Speaker
becoming a friend to someone in that world for me to change my mind. It wasn't some fact or argument or anything like, you know, to your point. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's a lot. I don't know. We're going to unpack
Expressing Gratitude and Closing Reflections
01:47:31
Speaker
it. Mark, this has been fucking awesome. I love that we finally got a chance. We talked about this for months and months and months. We brought it up a while ago and life gets crazy, hard to find a date.
01:47:44
Speaker
I fucking love that we were able to find a time to have you on and talk and just kind of, you know, just hear your story a bit. Shoot the shit. This has been a lot of fun, man. And I do want to say for everyone who's not watching this, you should watch it. Your your traps are looking incredible, my friend.
01:48:04
Speaker
Yeah. I'm not sure how to take that, but I'm going to say thank you. I wouldn't have to take a Rhino 357 from 7-11. I'm telling you that.
01:48:16
Speaker
I'm going to tell them I can go to any of these CVSs around the country and just loot them and I'm going to get away with it. Yes. I'm going to be PMing you for workout tips. Winter is when I get real schlubby. I'm trying to change that this year. I look at my friends who are coned up and I will be messing with all of you.
01:48:41
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you what provides some motivation. In June, next year, I entered my name in a lottery system where there are thousands of people who enter to do this race, and it's the escape from Alcatraz triathlon.
01:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's scaring the shit out of me. I'm extremely motivated to not die when I swim a mile and a half from basically the island of Alcatraz to San Francisco. You swim through that water,
Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon and Motivation
01:49:14
Speaker
55 degree water, and then bike 18 miles and then run eight miles. You feel if you do enough burpees, you won't get hypothermia.
01:49:26
Speaker
Yes. Yes. I'm using that. I didn't realize that. 55 degree water for you is like experiencing a new England winter for a moment. Oh, it it's, it's yeah. Yeah. So the coldest the water gets here, like, cause we're on the Gulf side, right? Not the Gulf of Mexico, not the Atlantic.
01:49:46
Speaker
Coldest it gets here, I think, is 65 degrees-ish, something like that, the water temp. Actually colder than I would have expected. But that's cold. But that's like dead a winner. And then as soon as we get a little bit more sunshine, it warms up pretty fast. So I'm not going to be ready for it in terms of the cold. But I'm highly incentivized, like I said, to not die.
01:50:09
Speaker
And that's one reason I'll tell you why we move from the good old Wichita Kansas Casey to here is I get to be outside all year round, you know? I can do that all year round. It sucks during the summer, don't get me wrong, but yeah.
01:50:25
Speaker
I love that Florida is funny because it's perfect all year round except for the summer. New England I'm just like holding out for summer trying to survive and then you get it for like a couple of months of like hot weather.
01:50:42
Speaker
You just to enjoy shorts and just stand outside in your yard, like sitting in the sun with no shirt. It's like 82. And you're like, I just want to get warmer. I like it when it's pushing 90. It's, God, it's pretty much like a holdout just to experience nice weather for a short period of time here. Much better conditions to train for the Cupid swim.
01:51:09
Speaker
Yes, the Cupid stroke. You just did a triathlon, right?
01:51:17
Speaker
Yeah, I did a, they called a sprint triathlon. So all the distances are short, right? So the swim was, it was up in Jacksonville, Florida. So the swim was what, 400 meters, uh, and then bike 12 and a half miles and then run a 5k. Okay. So I just did, I just did that in October and I'm trying to use that. I I'm now using that as kind of a springboard to just maintain that and build on that throughout the winter. So that in June, I'm hopefully knock on wood ready for that. So.
01:51:46
Speaker
Damn. We'll see. We'll see. Can't wait to follow that journey, man. Oh, go ahead, Casey. Sorry. Oh, no, no, no. Finish your thought there.
01:51:55
Speaker
I was just going to say, when you guys come down for karaoke, I'll have the room ready for you. I'll get you on video and everything. It's going to go viral. I just texted Casey literally yesterday about so many of the people we've met from doing the podcast all live in Florida. I'm like, we should really go Florida tournament. I guess some of them actually live like Orlando. And I've heard a couple of them are in the area. Yeah, good for.
01:52:19
Speaker
And it's like, oh, we should just like do little run the gamut, just do a long weekend and just like figure out a live podcast of some sorts with.
01:52:32
Speaker
I don't know. That's always hard to figure out when you're not in the area. But I feel like
Podcast Meetup Possibilities in Florida
01:52:37
Speaker
doing some sort of Florida meetup would be sick because that's I feel like a lot of the people we've gotten to know. And, you know, you I don't I mean gotten to know. I don't mean just like, oh, you've been on the podcast. Cool. It's like the people that we stayed in contact with for the past couple of years from doing this. We get a good four or five people from from Florida, where it's like that seems like the right place to for all travel hours apart, though.
01:53:06
Speaker
We can just all congregate at Mar-a-Lago, it'll be fine. Maybe it'll be a state park by that point.
01:53:19
Speaker
Oh, man. Well, Mark, thanks for joining us, man. Of course, yeah, I appreciate you guys. I told you a long time ago, you guys are my weekly therapy and that maintains, so I keep on listening to you guys, so yeah, appreciate it. All right, everybody. Well, thanks for listening, and we will see you next time.
01:53:48
Speaker
you