Welcome to the podcast! Come be part of the conversations that happen around my kitchen table. He's John Brandion and he's been a stand up comic for more than 30 years. She's a man to McKinney and she's been my daughter for her whole life. Our family believes laughter is a gift from God. We often discover it while discussing culture, faith and family. So go ahead and pull up a chair neighbor. Can I call you Carl? There's plenty of room here for you. Hey Carl, welcome to our table. What a great day we had. Played a full round at this golf. There I said it. We started it. It's so... It's such a great kick off to the spring break. And I played so well. Oh yeah, Luke. Luke has an interesting determining system. I was five under. Uh-huh. Tell Carl how you calculate. Well, I was told that you were 14 over. That's what I was told. Right, but he considers a bogey. Did I say 14 over? I think you did. Oh, that would make me four under. Oh, so that wasn't as great. Oh well. He considers a bogey over a par. A bogey is a par if you're not good at golf. So four under. This is the rule. This takes however many strokes he is over and throws him out. He just subtracts. Yeah. So the only thing that... If there's something wrong with that Carl, let me know. But it makes sense to me. As far as Luke is concerned, anytime he loses the game, he wins. It's about living with gratitude. Whenever something man deals, whenever something bad happens, I think it's good. That was what he told me. Isn't that the best way to his life? I was feeling my water in the kitchen when he literally said, I consider bogey a par and then he walked away and I looked curiously back at where he had been standing. Seriously, seriously, thank you. He's like, yeah, so four under. It's like, uh, uh, well, whenever I am losing the game, I just think of it as winning. I just think I'm ahead. I suppose that works. I got to play disc golf with my friends. I was going to win either way. Well, that is true. My new friend. That is true. And I'm not mocking the idea that you can still have fun while you're losing. That's not at all. Oh, I didn't lose. That is my boy. I mean, they might have scored better than me, but I didn't lose. Yeah, I imagine that I probably could have fun if I was losing. I didn't. I didn't. I won. Because everybody else got over par and I got four under. Everybody else has over par, which doesn't exist for me. I've never gotten over par. It's handicaps and stuff. It all makes sense to golf people. Calculus. Yeah. So, uh, we did that. That was a, that was a good thing. And I came back from, uh, the comedy workshop that I taught. You've had a couple of good weeks in comedy land. Yeah, we did a, uh, did a comedy workshop at a school. And the superintendent of that school was here because we're friends now. Yeah, he was coming through town and was like, well, I better stop at John Brainiens' house because, you know, we know each other. I know. And he wanted to play golf too. Yep. Just golf. And, uh, so we taught those kids how to be funny. Yeah. I zoomed in. I was there virtually. And I thought it went well. It did go well. They were, uh, they were enthusiastic and wanted to actually perform some stand-up, which was way more, way more than they needed to do. It's an alternative school. And it is a public school officially on paper, but it's like similar to a charter school, although it is not exactly a charter school either. It's hard to describe. And the whole purpose of it is to try to rework the education system. It's project-based rather than, you know, test and regurgitate. They don't have, they don't have letter grades. They don't get ABCD enough. They get, they, they are, they have either masters, they display mastery of the subject or they don't. And that's called a, so there's no bogies at all. No. Right. No bogies. But it is possible to not master the thing though. It is possible to be like, well, it needs to use a little more time on this. But I bring it up because it's always nice for me to have another person in the room who is interested in asking the questions and trying to solve the problems of education. Like it's complicated and- Because that's pretty rare, isn't it, for to have somebody else in the room with you? It's rare to have somebody else out of our family. How many times have you heard me- It's pretty rare that there's somebody who talks to you about education. It's rare to have somebody talking to me about education. Who's not complaining about the fact that I've once again brought it back to education? Jeremy seemed to be pretty appreciative of the things I had to say. He didn't harass me for wanting to talk about it. So that was nice. Yeah, like we always do. But you can tell a lot about a person based on the questions they're asking. And I'm not even necessarily looking for solid answers. I mentioned this when I told Jeremy about the questions I asked the teachers when we were vetting the classical school that two of the kids currently go to. And I wasn't interested in like the sales pitch as far as all of the stats with the- with the testing scores and the, you know, the I learned percentages and the SATs and how they get into these types of schools and they have all of these, you know, high performance ability in all of these areas. I wanted to ask questions that basically the answers are just- it's a case by case, we're all kind of trying to figure that out as we go because there are a lot of those in parenting and in teaching. There's a lot of questions that get asked that don't have a ready answer. Right. So when we encounter answers, we are- We go the other direction. That's right. The last thing we want is answers to- We just get suspicious that we're being fetalized. And Taby said this too because she toured the Catholic school this week last week. And she was like, I was trying to dig a little deeper and ask these- these teachers and administrators to kind of give me a little more of an inside scoop on, you know, what's the discipline like or how do- how would you handle bullying, for example? Or maybe it's not actual bullying, but maybe you just have a kid in the class who's constantly saying he's being bullied, you know, or something. As a kid who's always burst in into tears or another kid who's never completing an assignment all the way through. Like, what do you do? And the teacher apparently was like, we don't really have any problems like that. Yeah, we never have kids fail in any way. Right. Right. Or they never complain about each other. They never argue. They never complain. They never argue. They don't- they don't- there's no bullies. There's no- Right. There's never any personal conflict with any of these kids. Right. They all spend- It's explicitly Protestant problems. They spend all day, every day together in a small room and they know each other like siblings and cousins. Right. And they don't fight. And they don't fight at all. You gotta go to a- yeah, you gotta go to a Protestant school for that. Right. And so Taby's like, okay, but I've got four kids and they fight like cats and dogs. Like, are we welcome? Right. She was like, I just want to know how you would handle a similar situation to that. And she did say the teacher sort of loosened up once she realized- We really would have no idea how to do that. Once she realized Taby wasn't necessarily asking about like, what sort of reward system do you have? What star chart do you use? Let me see your sticker chart, you know. She gave her a little more, but I just, yeah, I think a lot of people are- They think they owe a period at the end of the sentence. They think they owe- it's like a fill in the blank test in this- Well, that's because a lot of people expect a period at the end of a sentence. A lot of parents are going to come in and- Yep. And they don't have any idea which questions to ask, but they expect the superintendant and the school and the teachers to have answers to all of their questions. That's because, again, traditional schools have a system where you read a book and then you take a test and the test has blanks in it and you write the word in the blank. And then you get either a check mark at the top and a smiley because you answered them right. Or a frowny finish. Read X's on the answers that you got wrong. Right. And there are right and wrong answers all the time. And so, yeah, they've been conditioned to believe that every single thing in life should have this tidy little fill in the blank. And so, yeah, it's great when you do have answers to things. But I'll tell you, math is the thing that one of our kids struggles with the most. And it is not because she doesn't know the answer or hasn't been given the correct answer. It's much more complex than that because humanity is complex. And it's usually it's an emotional rebellion that there's something- Because she hates numbers. Well, yeah, you could probably phrase it that way. She hates- She feels put upon because she doesn't want to be doing the math at all. And I'm sorry, that isn't- That is a problem that educators have to be able to deal with. But it is not really an education problem. I mean, it's not an academic thing. It's a human- Sin nature thing. And so, yeah, if you're going to send your kids to a school, you need to know how the teachers manage that when it's a problem- How they manage sin. Right, because she's- She may be struggling with, you know, her times tables on the one hand. Could you ask a public school teacher that? Could you ask a public school teacher? How will you deal with my sinful child? You could ask a Catholic teacher that, which is what tabby was doing. Yeah, you could. But I'm saying I don't think very many people really feel at- You should really have a sin problem in this school. Yeah. That doesn't happen. My guess is that probably most of the Christian school teachers would say, Well, the parents are the ones who are in charge of disciplining when it's sin, and we're just in charge of academics. We've talked over and over again about how you can't separate morality from the academics, and just- just give a neutral education to everybody and then let everything moral- Moral be added later. Well, it's a moral decision to send your kids to be educated. Right. It's a moral decision to decide their such thing as neutral. But- Oh, so is that what we're going to talk about? Yeah. You're going to talk about whiteboards? You can. Are you going to fall asleep? Because it's like nine o'clock. Yeah, I'm already asleep. It's getting late. And we just- Why is it such a late- Packed day? We have been a really packed day. And it was good. We're boarding live stock right now. We have a- Yeah, we've got a rabbit here. In a cage in our guest room. His name is Charlie, and- What's his name? Charlie the bunny. Charlie. And he's a nice rabbit, and he's going to be a guest here for a week. I don't think I've ever known any not-nice rabbits. Well, he did nibble my posterior in the office, but look at what I'm wearing. I think he thought- He thought you were a salad. I bet he punctured that dress. I bet there's a small hole now. He's trying to get behind me. He nibbled on your dress. Yeah, he was trying to get behind me. I thought there wasn't enough room between me and the cabinet. And then I said, and it was like, and he pinched me, but it was for this teeth. So it wasn't a big bite. You've got bit by Charlie the bunny already. He's only been here. Charlie bit my funny. Yeah, he did. He did. And he didn't keep going after I went out, and he was like, oh, okay, I guess I won't eat that. He fell bad. And then he hopped away. Well, but that was it. I don't know of any openly aggressive, malevolent bunnies. Yeah. Don't bite the fanny that homes you. You probably won't. You probably won't. I'll change my clothes, and then tomorrow he won't mistake me for a bit of dinner, because it's got green leaves all over it. Yeah, you do have jungle. It does. If I was a rabbit, I might take a bite out of that. That's for me. Yeah. So I don't blame him. It looks pretty lush and vegetative. Yeah. So anyway. So it might be made of herbs. I wrote a poem. I wrote poetry this week. Manny did a poem. She did. I was surprised that she wrote a poem. What did you think of it? She's not usually... She's very linguistic, but not usually artsy with it. What did you think after you got over your shock? What did you think of my poem? It was I. Now... Were you shocked? I wasn't shocked. I was surprised. It was intentional. You want to know why I... Is that list? I decided to write a poem instead of a blog post. I know why. Why? Because you've got this affinity now towards the artistic, and you think that everybody is a poet, and some people are better at it than others. Well, I heard Douglas Wilson say that a couple of years ago. So it's not new. But it is relatively new for me to try to... Art. ...let other people come to conclusions on their own. To do less of the work. You wrote a poem because it doesn't put a period at the end of a statement. Yeah. It's open to interpretation. Yes. It's open. It requires more thought on behalf of the reader, which ideally or theoretically leads to a more thorough understanding of the material. Well, this poem was pretty... It communicated your perspective pretty clearly. Well, yeah. You don't want to just write, you know, whisper-wind whisper. Why not? Because nobody cares about that. I mean, we forgot about that. Whistford-wind-whistford. Who wrote Whistford-wind-whistford? I didn't write that. You don't remember. I feel like... That was a distant memory you just unlocked. I think it was from a college class. Okay. This is my... I think... I think the chipmgrater... was telling us about the Bad Poetry Contest. And now they have one every year for your supposed intentionally right, Bad Poetry, and then they crown the winner. The general purpose. And I think that was a line from one that won one year. And that just stuck out to me. Because I was giving you guys examples later. And he read a bunch of them, but I think the line that I took away was Whistford-wind-whistford. Was Whistford-wind-whistford? Yeah. Howl-wind-howl. Yeah. I don't remember anything else about those Bad Poems, but there is a contest. I know that. Well, that may inspire me. Now, let's hear your poem, and then I may be inspired to write a really bad poem for you. Well, I didn't... I actually didn't want to spend all day writing it. That was a big part of it. It's like, I don't want to do all the work. It's a whole lot of work. I've had AI write poetry for me before. It is not good. It takes more time to get the AI to write a good poem than to just write stupid things. That's just true. Writing a prompt would take longer than writing a poem. Maybe it'll get better, but at this point, it's not worth it. But yeah, I don't want... I don't want to be the one doing most of the thinking. Just like a kid asking for homework help in math or whatever. And you get to the point where you realize, oh, you're not putting in any effort. I should get the good grade. I should get the A+. On this upcoming test of yours, because I've done the book. I've done all the heavy lifting. To the bulk of the thought here. And you're just along for the ride. And so I didn't want people to... I wanted them to come to some of their own conclusions about this. But anyways, it's called Little White Boards. Little White Boards. It also doesn't rhyme as perfectly as Luke would have written it if he had writing things. Yeah, that's what bothered me. Is that why he didn't like it? I didn't not like it. You didn't love it. It was fine. I didn't love it. And it was for that reason. Yep. You serious? I knew as I was writing it, I thought, this is not a Luke McKinney poem. Not a Luke McKinney poem, right? He knows a lot. It's not a John Thomas Luke poem. John Thomas Luke's poem. He is a very big stickler for the rhythm and the rhyme. And the perfect rhymes. Perfect rhymes. Okay, but my point was to be brief. So I think I succeeded there. Are we mass producing Little White Boards? They might be astronauts, artists or athletes, maybe you saws or silos or spreadsheets. And since they pursue any number of careers, they must fit well any number of gears. Blank slates by design from K to 12 years. Industry is Little White Boards. Don't limit them with rigid rules about morality. Can't risk offending by including theology. Heaven forbid enforcing the bigoted biology. Z is a Little White Board. Stick to the basics like science and math. Teach them to read on a neutral path. No time to wrestle with God's love and wrath. Useful Little White Boards. Don't be judgmental. You must get along. Never forget you could always be wrong. Be ready to change. Sing culture song. Tolerant Little White Boards. Take them to church to learn God's place. Right versus on their hearts and dry erase. Shocked when it wipes away without a trace. Apostate Little White Boards. Mm-hmm-hmm. And really that last answer was the entire reason that I wrote the thing. For the last answer. Yeah. That was what I was thinking was about the fact that people are trying to educate kids to be dogs that can fit in lots of different places. And then they have no real loyalty to their face. To their origin. So that was similar to what we were talking about with Jeremy this afternoon. Similar adjacent to what we were talking about. There are people who can do. He was talking about math. There are people who can do math and get the right answers on tests. But they don't understand what they're doing because they've memorized steps. Mm-hmm. And he was talking about dividing fractions. And when he goes to, he teaches teachers. And he goes to these conferences and we'll teach teachers and ask them. You know, to divide three quarters, three quarters divided by a half. And how teachers will start to panic because oh, it's fractions. I'm not going to math. I don't understand. Well, then they'll, the ones that do know how to do it will go. Well, it's the same as, you know, multiplying by the. The reciprocal. Yeah, by the reciprocal. And he goes, well, what's a reciprocal? And they go, I don't know. You flip it upside down. Yeah, but why do we do that? And they don't know. They don't understand any of the processes. Yeah. So his thing was that you have to teach so that so that there's mastery of the concept. You have to do, you have to understand the math and a lot of, a lot of kids just know how to do arithmetic. Right. It's not the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And what I told you the other day was there actually is something to the idea that humans must learn how to memorize before they can do anything else. There is a place for wrote, like just jamming in as many facts as you can into a spongy brain as you, you know, as you can get away with for the first few years. Like it's what the classical education calls the grammar stage. And so before their brains are capable of putting pieces together, you have to give them just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pieces that they will be using later and maybe don't know how. And so then it's in the logic stage, which is usually middle school where they start to realize, I can build quite a few puzzles out of this. All of these different building blocks are now capable of being structured in lots of different ways. And then it's in high school and beyond, which is called the rhetoric stage, where they're learning how to stylistically express truths. So they can do it with flair, they can do it with their own voice. And that's where they start to, you know, kind of practice with satire or things like that. And so there is something to the idea that humans need to be taught what to think. But many of them never were taught anything beyond that. Right. At some phase, you need to be taught the rules, the steps, the parts that don't change need to be taught what they are. You have to give them parameters. Right. Because a wide open playground, oh, this is what I said to you on the phone. There's research that shows that when you put a fence around a school yard, the kids will play right up to the fence. And some of them will even start climbing over it. But when you don't put a fence around it, if you leave it not fenced in at all, they tend to play closer to the building. Close to the building, you know, because they feel untethered or unsafe. And it's just too much. Same with the way you organize play rooms. There's a lot of research that shows that when you organize the toys into boxes and you put certain other toys up high where they can't out of, you know, out of reach and they can't get them. And you rotate the toys. They play with more things when there are fewer options. So when you put a shelf, you know, of toys in front of them and they're organized and easy to reach and there's not as many of them, they'll play with more than if you have this choice overload. It's too many, too many options has the opposite effect on people than you would think. And so people who are total lovers of like educational freedom or, you know, breaking all the rules and just skies the limit, go out and build and create. They won't. Your kids, if they have never been given any building blocks or they've never been taught any rules or given any parameters, they're not going to be as creative as you think they're going to be because it's just not how we're designed. But once you give them structure, once you've taught them, you know, parameters, then they have something from which to leap off of like you can from which to leap. You give them the structure, then they will do these big cool things with it. Right. Well, it's overwhelming to a lot of people because if they don't have a place to start, if they don't have something to start with, this is what we talked about in the workshop in the last week that. And a lot of people get frozen when they think about writing anything, really, but comedy, especially people are like, I just don't know what to, you know, what to talk about. I don't, I can't think of anything funny. And it's like, man, that's not the way to start. The way to start is what are you going to, what are you going to talk with your friends about it and lunch is how I put it in the workshop. Right. You know, just tell me what you're going to, what are you going to talk about? And it was amazing how asking that question. They were like frozen. And I said, come on, you're working way too hard at this. I know that you don't, I've listened to the lunchroom. You know, it's, it's just a cacophony as tabby would say. To quote tabby. It's just, everybody's having a conversation. And no one is, no one is overthinking it. No one is, is worried about choosing the right or the wrong subject or whatever you just talk about. Whatever happens to be on your mind. But just, just knowing, picking something to start with is something that, that you do with people that you're comfortable with without even thinking about it. But then for some reason, we don't do that. When it's time to write a poem or it's time to paint a picture or it's time to create a short story or it's time to do some comedy. Like, I don't know what to talk about. It's like, well, you're working too hard. Um, I think we have to interrupt this programming to ask special, to have a special segment. Are you planning to do a taste test? No, not tonight. No, no, he has sardines in front of him. He does. He has a piece of bread, a piece of toast. I'm done. You're done eating for the night. I just don't know how good of podcast fodder that would be. But anyway, but you're going to do it on the riffs. Probably save it for the video riffs session. That'll be tomorrow night. So tomorrow night, you're going to eat sardines and great. So tune in for that. It's been a while since Bridger said hi on the podcast. Say hi. Hi. Hi. I'm on the podcast. See, I'm on the podcast. No. Nope. Not now. All right. I guess now that he's close enough and we're waiting for him. Yeah. Say I'm going to go with Cammy. I don't grab the microphone. She just grabbed her. I love you. I'll see you later. Say I'm going with Cameron. I'm going with Cameron. Oh, there he goes. I can't put this on without it making a loud noise. Probably she came over here. Todd learned hard and left. Yeah, he came. He did say hi briefly. And then he mouth breathed into the microphone and pulled the cover off. Do we talk about the failure of Christians to properly to take care of people to evangelize people? Well, first I need you to know that on my blog post every time within minutes of posting, our old friend Steve still comments. Oh, is he still hovering out there every time? That's tragic. And this time in response to my poem about whiteboards, he said, free to make a decision or free will is a right according to your God. So allow your little whiteboards to grow up naturally and then decide for themselves. Oh, Steve. And all I said in response to that was I can tell who's been writing on you. That was better than the poem. He has been. He has been saying absolutely stupid things for years. But when I'm sincere in that, like because of all the conversations we've had with him and other atheists, that I can see how they've been educated. But he doesn't have any sort of, he doesn't even understand what you wrote. No. And they just have a very short list of comments that they make regardless of what you say. They're going to make the same comments. Right. But isn't that what we were talking about? Like you wrote about sponges. I wrote this poem because you wrote about sponges this week. Right. Very similar in concept. Right. The sponge just absorbs the last thing that it was placed in. Until somebody squeezes out. So this squeezes it out and puts something else. And it'll take anything without any discernment. That is the atheistic worldview. Yes. They have removed God on purpose. They don't they think they have, but they can't get away from the idea that they're going to absorb something. And so yeah, he's he is a whiteboard. He is the inspiration for the poem because the education system has caused men like him and many others that has caused him to believe that it's possible to be your own storyteller to have your own destiny. And it's like that concept itself was written on you in dry erase marker by your teachers, your administrators, your parents, whoever it was. Right. Well, I need even says it. You know, let your kids just grow up to believe whatever they want to believe. And it's like, but that we want them to grow up to know and believe the truth. Right. And that's the difference between us and what they they draw the line. It just believe whatever they feel like. Believe it. Why can't you leave them alive? They're so proud of the fact that they erased whatever Sunday school lessons they were taught as kids. And it's like, I don't believe that anymore. I don't believe in a flood. I don't believe in the creation narrative. My own person and they erased it. And it's like, great. Your atheism comes off just as easily. It's not it's nothing like everything that you they will even say they don't believe anything. And it's just a void. And I'm like, right, you're a whiteboard. And you're and and being the kind of person a sponge or a whiteboard, whatever you want to think of it as being the kind of person who is just open to being written on is so that's so tragic. Well, but they see it as open mindedness. They see it as flexible. They see just curious. We're curious people. You know, we will we will entertain any idea. I would call it gullible. And we noticed this years ago when they were complaining about how gullible Christians are it's like, oh, that's the sort of Christian you were when you were in church. The gullible one. Right. The one that we just believe in whatever. Yep. Whatever was the last thing that was said. That's the thing that I believe. Yep. And it still is the case. It just so happens that the last person to write on them was an atheist or, you know, a pagan, a godless person. That's that's the kind of marker they've got. There's some sort of permanence that happens because they're not open to being they're not open to becoming Christians again. So something is something is more permanent than. You know, their atheism is is more permanent than their faith was. I don't know. I'm starting to believe that the whole the whole free will thing is maybe not as permanent as we thought. I still think that you don't think people have free will. Yeah. I don't know. That's not like I don't have time. Is that really where you want to go now? It's not way too late. It's not going to eat sardines. We're going to talk about free will. It's way too late for that. I exercise free will to choose not to eat them tonight. Sardines would be a better segment than this. So the Sunday for less we talked about Sunday for less last week. I know that's why I don't want anybody to get a complex. I don't want anybody in our church to think that we're like the people who gossip about the behind their backs. I did share with my sister today when she was here that it's becoming clear to me. I think it's the Holy Spirit who's revealing to me how many good faithful Christians genuinely authentically want to worship God are carrying around like a burden of guilt. And yeah, this belief that they have just failed everything. We have failed to please God. We talked about it a little bit last week about the 15 extra minutes. Just put 15 extra minutes into your quiet time or 15 extra minutes reading scripture and prank. It's like they feel that about everything they feel like they should have spent 15 extra minutes talking to a stranger at the bus stop or they should have spent. Well, and I say if 15 why not 20 right. Yeah, 25. And when is it enough that was when I asked Tammy today I was like, well, what would be your definition of success here? Have you ever thought about that? What would a good day even look like? Well, she can't possibly succeed. No. It's just going to fail and fail and fail. So why would you even consider what success looks like when there's no possible way to achieve it? Well, and it's not even just what you're doing, but also how you're feeling about what you're doing while you're doing it. That's also part of the equation and you can be a total failure if you sat next to a woman on the plane and let her talk at you for like an hour and a half. You could still fail if in your heart you thought, man, this lady's love. I would rather do anything else than listen to this woman talk. This lady is super obnoxiously loud and I'm not going by myself. Well, I am so ungrateful. I'm not even sure that I am a Christian. How can God use somebody like me? An awful, dark, hateful heart. Well, and so that much I think probably could be mentioned and talked about. What I said, because I did speak up in some school today, but what I said is... She couldn't take it anymore, Carl. She had to speak up. I say I think it's interesting how many people can read a book like the one we're going through. How many Christians can go, wow, this is full of conviction for me. The whole experience really telling me I need to do better, be better, do it sooner, do it more often. I need to be better. And other Christians, and there are some like this, which I think it's hard for the doer Christians to recognize that there are others. But there's others who are like, yeah, everyone else needs to do better. Right. Like everybody else needs to feel convicted. I want my sister to read this or I want my pastor really needs to read this. And there was actually an example in the book we're reading about a guy who came to Christ in prison and was visited by a pastor. And he showed the pastor of picture he's been carrying around for like 20 years about how when he was a kid, it's a picture taken when he was a kid and there was a church right across the street from his house. And he tell the prisoner tells the pastor nobody from that church ever came and invited me in... Or told me about Jesus or loved me or paid any attention to me nobody ever came out the doors of that church and came to minister to me. And I pointed out to the people in our Sunday school class, I was like, you know, that's a guy who is purported to be a Christian now. That's a man who's supposed to be a Christian and he's still talking like he's owed something by the church. That's a very different perspective on the book and the concepts in the book than what the people in our Sunday school class were taking away, which is I need to do better, I need to be better, I could step it up. He's like, yeah, you guys really could step it up. You guys really did a bungalow. You did bad by me. You did it wrong by me when I was a kid. And so that matters. It matters to know who's reading the book. Is it a guy who's spent 20 years in prison holding a grudge against the people who he never met or who went to church across the street from him? Or is it people who are feeling bad for what they... For letting a woman talk at them for an hour and a half on a plane? That's two different personalities, two very different styles. I have to see what my baby's crying about. Take over, go! She's gonna drop that and then she's gonna... Wow, that was... After discouraging us from eating sardines. Yeah, I don't have the same opinion that those people have. I don't feel guilty about not talking to people on the plane. I have deliberately pretended to read books on the plane so that the person sitting next to me will not talk to me and leave me alone. And there have been some flights where I have engaged... Or the person who has engaged me, I rarely, rarely speak to the person on the plane. I will say hello when I sit down or how's it going? And then that's it. And if somebody engages me, so where are you from? You know, or whatever. I will have a conversation with them. But I do not usually instigate that. And I know that there are Christian people who feel like they are screwing up an opportunity to maybe sheer Jesus with people. But the thing is, people would not... Like most Christians are not going to tell you that you're a bad person. When you confess to that in Sunday school class, they all laughed and they're like, oh yeah, I can understand that. That seems like a pretty reasonable thing for you to do. They can simultaneously not judge you for making that decision and still judge themselves very, very, very harshly for making the opposite. Well, that's because they feel like they are being selfish. They feel like they're... But that doesn't make sense to me. They feel like they're being uncaring. Like they don't care. And the reason is because there have been many books and many sermons preached but don't you care about the fate of your fellow people. These people are... When they die, they're going to be... They're not going to be with God. Right. But how can they think that you aren't also a bad person then? Well, they do. To be consistent. I don't think they do because talking to Tabby, I ask her all the time. I give her personal examples of things that I've done or decisions I've made. She will never say, well, that's because you're a bad Christian or you're doing something wrong. I told you about the Ministry conference that I was out out in Seattle years ago and they wanted me to do comedy. That's the reason I was there. I did a 20-minute set in between speakers, you know, on the main stage. And after I got down off of the stage, I was back in the vendor department and one of the Bible translator ladies who was at the booth for the Bible translator, I won't tell you which one. Don't try to get me to tell you which one. She came up to me and she goes, I was watching your set. I go, oh, okay. And she goes, can I ask you why you didn't share Jesus from the stage? And I did not know what was happening at the time. And I said, you know, because I'm still in comedy mode. I said, well, you know, this is a minister's conference. I figured the word was kind of out on Jesus. And she did not think that was funny. She persisted and she said, well, but you don't know where these people are. You don't know what these people know about Jesus. And I said, well, that's true. And she goes, and what would happen if somebody leaves here and they get into a car accident? And you know, and then you haven't shared Jesus. And I immediately went from, I'm not sure what's going on here too. Okay, now I am angry with you. And I said, oh, that's a good point. That's a good point. You mean the God who has everybody's life, who knows everybody's days, he knows the number of hairs that they have and the number of days that they have, the God who told the oceans how far to go. That God is, is going to be thwarted by my lack of telling this word. That somebody who he intends to be in heaven with him is not going to be there because I neglected to tell them about it, about Jesus at the ministry conference. And she did not respond to that. She just walked away. But... If you had asked, do you think that she would say, you did wrong? John Brownian, you are guilty of a sin, and you need to repent and change everything about the way that you... Do you think she would say yes? I don't think she would. But do you? Oh, I don't know. I wasn't interested in talking to her. I basically wanted to tell her that I think she was a narrow-minded... Crazy first. Yeah, scaredy-cat. I don't think there's any joy or happiness in that sort of... No, she's racked with anxiety all this time. She's just completely afraid that God is unhappy with her for not shouting Jesus into every stranger's face. Is this the same one that said that she wished God would have given? Yes, that's the one who said, I wish God had given me the platform that he's given you. And I'm like, well, be funny. You made a big mistake. You made a big mistake there. You should be funny. You made a big mistake. Well, in my experience talking with people like that, the anxiety that they're trying to share with you, they're trying to get you to adopt the same anxiety they live with on a daily basis. And so that's why it sometimes helps when you ask them, wait a minute, do you think I need to feel shame? Are you suggesting now that I've done something wrong, sinful? And I need to repent because it's... What do you think she'd say? They usually say no. Right, she'd say no, but what would she say? Then why are you bringing this up for me? Well, that's my point. Why are you saying these things to me? I'm saying when you share a story about you doing this this way, you bring a book on the plane and you read it and you purposely avoid conversations when it all possible. When you share that story, they have a tendency of thinking, well, that's fine and good for him. But then they have a very hard time connecting the dots between, well, how come he's able to do that with peace? And I feel no peace ever at any point. Because Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me while I'm sitting there pretending to read a book, so I don't have to talk to the person next to me on the plane. It doesn't affect the way Christ feels about me at all. So I've heard you tell that story about the lady at the Ministry Conference many times. And one of my favorite responses from somebody, I don't even remember who it was now. I feel like it was like one of your comedian friends, like David Pendleton or somebody. Could have been Hawkins. Maybe. But I think it was, I think it was somebody we talked to even more often than that in a like a theological situation setting. But somebody said, did you ask her why she didn't tell you, didn't share the gospel with you right there in the lobby? That was Pendleton. Yeah. Which is such a great question. Yeah. Hey, why didn't you share Jesus with me? Yeah. Why are you climbing my tree here? But we, but that's proof that we have two different categories for people in the church. There's two different types. There are the givers and they're the takers. There are the doers and there are the you need to do more. And there are like our Sunday school classes full of people who really genuinely want to glorify God and want to please him. And I'm sure that lady at the Ministry Conference also genuinely wants to do what is right. Yes, she works for Bible Translator. Sure. But there's a disconnect there. Why did she treat you as the comedian differently than she's treating everybody else who's at that ministry conference? Why are you the one who's responsible for sharing the gospel? And she wasn't responsible for sharing the gospel with you in the lobby. Why? Why when the pastor goes to visit a convert to Christ in the present? She said it. She said it. I had the platform. I had the microphone and I had their attention. And in her mind and in many people's minds, that is a completely, that means you're responsible for proclaiming Jesus. Right. I am not responsible for proclaiming Jesus because I do not have a microphone. I do not have your platform. Right. If God had given me your platform, I would do a better job with it than you're doing. But since he did not give me the platform, shame on you for not doing everything that God expects you to do with that platform. Sure. And the pastor who visits the prisoner in prison is responsible for apologizing on behalf of all other Christians. Even though the prisoner he's visiting is also a self-proclaimed Christian. Yes. That is how that goes. Christians are all Christians love to apologize. Well, not the prisoner. That's my point. That's my point. But the Christian prisoner didn't apologize to anybody. So you suggested that he might not be a Christian. Well, I don't know. He just, he's not racked with guilt. How could he possibly be a Christian? Well, he still sees himself as an outsider who deserves an apology from Christians. He himself seems to be identifying with something other than the Christian body. Right. The church people owe me an apology. It's like, oh, I thought you considered yourself one of us. Right. I thought you were one of us. And so it's, it's, it's very narrow that this lens we look through. It tends to be if somebody's in a homeless shelter or somebody's in an orphanage or somebody's on the side of the road and they have their car. Or somebody's poor, somebody's poor, somebody's got a medical. Somebody's on in the gutter. Yes. Somebody's warming themselves by a fire. They're in prison, regardless of why they're there. If they're in prison, they are part of this category of people who deserve the apologies. And everybody in a Sunday school class in any church in any part of the country is part of the category of people who deserve to give the apologies. Everybody who's not in the homeless shelter owes an apology to those who are. Right. For not caring enough, not being... It's stressful for me. It's stressful for me seeing all the stress on my brothers and sisters who are, again, by and large, really authentic and faithful. They're doing their best. They're doing their best. And they just constantly think that the ritual on Sundays to come together and self-flagelate and talk about just what a bad job we did. I've messed everything up this week. Oh, man. Kingdom didn't get any bigger. It's terrible. Kingdom isn't any better this week than it was last week. Or if it is, it's certainly no thanks to me because I didn't do jazz. Because I just listened to all I did was listen and I had a bad attitude. Sure. I gave a bunch of money and I helped some people do some stuff but cared for a widow. But my attitude just erased all of it. I didn't even enjoy it. Yeah. And the fact that I told you about stuff that I did, well now I'm bragging. I am awful. We got to play the outro and the pagan in jail. Are we going to end this without an invitation? If you don't know Jesus. You ever seen what's James Taylor Ecos wearing that shirt? I know atheists are better Christians than the Christian people. But that works on these people. There's atheists that are better Christians than me. Wait a minute. People that rejected Jesus are more Christian than you? Well, well. Speak for yourself. Yeah, you know what you're doing. Anyway, come to Jesus' call. Thanks for visiting the comedian's house. If you want to spend more time with our family, you can follow John Braanian on YouTube and Facebook. Also, email next door at johnbraanian.com with your comments and questions. We'll see you next time. See you next time.