And my last band, The Columbia County Coyotes, has been edging past 30 listeners a month on Spotify for some time now. It’s been a long time coming.

When we were playing live shows, from 2020 to 2024, I relentlessly promoted our stuff on Facebook and Instagram. Live shows, new recordings, new videos… the promo part of being a musician- it was a drag. Our Instagram page dissolved into a meme channel that also contained info of when our next live show was.

See below:

As a songwriter, there is a feeling you go through when you truly think you’re in the middle of writing a great song. The song usually comes hot and fast. The lyrical concept is clearly in front of you and the melody to go with it. All in all, it can be had in about ten to twenty minutes: a HIT! I’ve had more of these moments than I care to admit.

But I’m going to share one such song that was born in a moment like this.

I wrote “Dance Floor” playing a beat-up garage-sale Alverez in my dining room. It was my first house, off of Columbia Avenue in Scappoose, Oregon. Cheap carpet, cheap linoleum, barely stick built; I loved that house. I had recently heard Midland’s “Drinking Problem,” and I already had the notion that the Coyotes should try to sound more modern country-ish. As if that were possible with my voice! Ha. Anyways, I really liked how “Drinking Problem” had a section after the chorus. It wasn’t a verse. It wasn’t a chorus. It wasn’t a bridge. It was an “extra” tag . . . “They keep on talking, drawing conclusions, they call it a problem, I call it a solution.”

So, when I started grooving with a nice slower strum - the 2 minor to the 6 minor to the four to the five . . . I was inspired. I started singing a more rhythmic chorus:

“Get out on the dance floor . . . let me show you what that beat is for”

I imagined a bunch of hillbillies in a Rainier, Oregon dive bar clearing out of their booths and getting out on the dance floor, grinding the night away.

Suddenly, I was writing provocative lyrics, my Midland’s “Drinking Problem”‘s “extra” being:

“Give me some sugar, give me some sweet, stroke a little love down under my sheet”

“Write me love songs, right all my wrongs, take me all the way!”

I had it. A definitive hit. A perfect song. Groovy, lyrically competent and relevant to bar flies, repetitive with an abnormal chord in the verse to boot. Bam.

I brought it to the band and quickly started working on recording the song.

Soon, we were playing it live. I remember announcing at Wild Wood Golf Course that it was our single from our upcoming smash album. That was a joke, by the way. I loved doing that stupid stuff live. “A single!” from a complete unknown small-town band, writing their own stupid songs. (Fancy that, that venue later cancelled all of our upcoming shows for “incompatible values.”)

My dad choked on the lyrics a bit. But, I pushed through, explaining that the song was more so a metaphor for doing life with my wife. This is true.

It is not good for man to be alone. (Genesis 2:18) Life is rough. We need help mates. The “dance floor” is life. Everyone must play. Let’s do this grind together, baby.

Enter, however, my pesky little brother, the drummer in the band. He hated the song. Every practice he’d complain something like, “This tempo just sucks. It sounds like it wants to be fast, but it’s not.”

I’d tell him to lay it back, put it in the pocket; that’s where the song wants to be.

“Boring.” He’d say.

Sheesh. The pushback of being great. Of being singular . . . writing a whole freaking song, including an alternate tag chorus thing, from nothing!

But every practice I had to put up with that crap. Every Thursday night, we’d go through almost twenty plus songs and “Dance Floor” would come around, and…

“Really? Are we playing this tomorrow night?” Elliot would ask.

Dude! Shut up.

If you’re a brother, you know. There’s a shorthand. There is a straight shot to right under the skin with brothers. I can diminish and belittle my brothers in a moment with just a flick of my chin. So it goes. Every week I’d be informed on how my megahit was nothing but misaligned tempo rubbish.

And live, as I’m up in front, tongue in cheek, announcing our one and only ever single, “Dance Floor everyone!” my drummer is back there rolling his eyes.

While my guitar player is just trying to find his patch.

A few years later I had kids. One day I was driving my sweet Joella Ru to her 5th grade class and the song comes on. She asks, “Dad, what’s this song about?”

“GREATNESS” I replied in my head before confronting the reality that I’d soon be having to explain myself to my adolescent children. Oh, trust me, I had concocted some suave explanation, hoping that neither she nor any of my Christian friends ever discovered that I’m muffing a “Let’s F$^#% up this place,” over the loud speakers before ripping into the chorus.

So it goes.

The entire time we played live shows, all the promotion, the practicing, pushing five original releases across the internet, printing CDs . . . we only managed to attract an average of 9 monthly listeners on Spotify - the internet’s number one music streaming service.

We quit playing live in 2024. I sold our magnificent QSC loudspeaker system. I sold guitars and mics at garage sale prices. Then a few years later, with absolutely no effort on our end, we more than tripled our online listeners.

Our Youtube subscriptions started picking up too.

With those new ears, the top songs on our Spotify started changing. “Rolling High,” which had apparently gotten picked up by some song placement agency, shot up out of nowhere to number 1. It’s a decent song, in my humble opinion - most of our stuff is! But, it’s no “mega hit.”

It was comforting and simultaneously baffling, that only after we‘d stopped promoting did our stuff start up ticking. Thirty listeners is nothing. It is equivalent to me announcing our “hit single” to a bunch of onlooking golfers chugging Modelo Especial beside a no-name highway in a deteriorating state.

But, it is indeed, THREE TIMES ten listeners. Growth is what counts… right?

Can you imagine my joy when I started seeing “Dance Floor” climb the Spotify charts with this new mass of listeners?

Finally, my mega hit, getting the cred it deserved. All the hassle I had endured! My dad’s misgivings, my brother’s dismissal, my daughter’s (rightfully so) confusion (from my obscurification) . . . And finally, after surviving all that it went #1!

I blinked twice and then grabbed the screenshot. I’m not gonna lie. I gloated to my former bandmates, dad and bro.:

Never mind those “less than 1,000 listens,” indicators from Spotify. That’s a lie. I’ve heard Dance Floor a million times, the lyrics showing up on a daily occasion in my life’s “grind”:

Every time I have that disagreement with my wife over how to load the dishwasher. Go ahead, “Put your hip right into mine.” When I held her hand on our walk this morning, and prayed together, still after 15 years . . .“I’ve waited for so long.” When we breathe out heavy sighs to our good Lord, signaling our complete surrender, not knowing how to raise our children - “right all my wrongs.” I hear the song when we cut and stack firewood together, and in the morning - when “she walks through that door” and lights the fire in the stove - “love at first sight.” When I peer out the landscape with her by my side, knowing I’m not alone, “I’ve got a notion,” someday that it’ll be my last, “that tonight is the night,” and looking at her one last time, “take me all the way.” I’ve heard this song at least a million times.

And Elliot feels like he’s heard it twice as many as that.

What better way to celebrate than to make a long overdue music video?

Enjoy: Dance Floor

I was surprised to see a Behringer X32 Compact sound mixer in the AV booth when I first started attending. As a gigging musician and someone who is intimately familiar with church sound, I know this mixer very well. It was surprising because it is a bit advanced for such a seasoned church assembly. This last week, I talked to the senior running the console. He quickly informed me that he “has two buttons to push throughout the whole service,” and other than that, he had no idea how the thing worked.

I was pleased to see that they were running all their audio over the ethernet option these mixers provide. When I mentioned it to the AV team, they looked at me quite confused. I proceeded to explain that all the inputs for the microphones and instruments on stage are condensed and sent through that one ethernet cable to the mixer. The wonders of modern technology!

They were still confused.

During this particular Sunday, along with the acoustic guitar, acoustic piano, and electric bass, there was a cello! That wasn’t normal. And of course, there were a few ladies and men singing the songs.

I appreciated the instrumental piano and cello duet of Melody Green’s “There Is A Redeemer” while we took communion. It was lovely.

As I listened to them go through their material, I thought about how unnatural modern sound is.

Think about it. A baby grand acoustic piano playing with a cello seems pretty natural. It seems “organic,” and normal and beautiful, like an Aspen tree changing its colors in the fall. But if you really think about it, you’ll realize how contrived it all is. Take the piano for consideration. It has 88 keys. Who determined that number? And each of those keys pushes a hammer onto multiple metal strings that are stretched to a very precise tension so they create a specific pitch. Those strings are stretched, by the way, over a large slab of metal that was dug out of the earth and refined through fire and hammered into place. The cello stretches strings as well, and requires a bow with horse hair to be rubbed across the strings in a specific manner.

This doesn’t occur naturally at all. But, the wood facade of these instruments fakes us out.

The only truly “natural” instrument on hand that morning was the human voice. And by itself, it is overpowered in volume by an acoustic piano or a cello. And if you add brass instruments and percussive instruments, say a drum set, you won’t even hear the cello or piano! If you put all those instruments together and had them play, the sound balance would be chaotic, ugly, and incite more than a few old ladies to think drums are evil. I wouldn’t blame them, with all that clanking overpowering the words of the song.

So we created the mixer. The sound mixer takes in all the instruments, including the voices via microphone, and then adjusts the levels to create a balance that pleases human ears. It then broadcasts that mixed sound into loudspeakers for everyone to hear.

And do you know what particular sound we prefer to be the loudest in the mix? The quietest one: the human voice.

Looking at Behringer X32 is like looking at an airplane’s control panel. There are knobs, faders, and lights all over the place. It is very contrived, very designed, very complicated. And yet, without it, you wouldn’t hear the music at all. You’d hear noise.

Your favorite recording is meticulously designed, orchestrated, mixed, and manicured. None of it occurred “naturally.”

And God would have it so. Which is why Genesis makes so much sense.

No one would say a beautifully played cello does not honor God. Or that a sonata expertly keyed out on the 88 ivories is not awe-inspiring.

Genesis makes sense because in it we read that God created us, in his image, and placed us in the garden as stewards - to work, to create, to make it better. To refine and bring balance to nature. No other creature on the planet does this like human beings. No other creature stretches strings across a plane to create harmonious vibrations that resonate through the air.

A piano is a beautiful creation. And so is that Behringer X32. It stewards the sound; controlling it, refining it, balancing it, bringing forward what ought to be brought forth in such a way that brings pleasure to our ears. And as image bearers of God Himself, I imagine it pleases the Almighty as well.

There are a lot of reasons I am a Christian. One reason is the logical explanation of the world. Christianity explains the world better than any other worldview I’ve encountered. Once you start pondering the foundations that Genesis lays out, you’ll see it everywhere… even in a plastic, silicone riddled, affordable digital sound mixer.

Well… if you’re a good parent, that is.

My kids can do almost nothing right. Right out of the shute - as soon as they learn to talk, they start lying. We never taught them that. I didn’t teach my kids how to lie. But they did it to get what they wanted.

My boys soon learned the weight of their hands and their feet and started kicking and punching - distributing perceived justice on each other.

Just this morning one of my boys thought he’d make pancakes. He poured the pancake mix all over the place, only occasionally into the bowl. He then overmixed a ton of water into it. I had to throw it all out and clean up the mess before starting over myself.

Isn’t that how God is with us?

Even in the chaos, I smile and laugh and think to myself, “What in the world were you thinking?”

I love my kids. Even when they screw up. Even when they make horrible messes. Even when they fall off their bike or try to manipulate me. Don’t get me wrong, I punish bad behavior. And, I get irate at their mistreatment of each other and constant self centeredness.

But man, I love them. They bring so much joy - despite their inability to assist in the daily house chores. My oldest can do the laundry and help in the kitchen. The two youngest can now empty the dishwasher in about 4X the amount of time that I can. Goodness though! There is so much life with them present, squawking, messing everything up.

Just this morning one of them got up well before 6am. What in the world?! So I got up and checked on him to see what he was doing.

Isn’t this God with us? He made this glorious sandbox and he’s watching us screw it up all over the place. He also sees us building some incredible things. I bet most of the time, like I do in my house, He’s laughing and shaking His head and then taking steps to fix the mess or correct the behavior.

God loves you very much. He takes joy in you. Rest easy and try not to mix so much water in the pancake mix next time.

I have found harmony between the two scriptural admonitions - do good works AND your salvation is a gift - by looking at my relationship with my father.

When I was born into my family, I had no say in it. I became my father’s son. I will always be my father’s son. There is nothing I can do that will make me not my father’s son.

This is why Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus, “You must be born again,” is so on point. When you are born again and given God’s spirit, you became a child of God. There is nothing you can do to change your heritage. God is your father from here on out!

That is the gift of salvation, or in a more trite word: heaven.

After you die, you will be resurrected and be made anew. Welcome to the family. You escaped hell.

That’s trite. Moreso, you are a child of Life. You will not, can not die.

So why do good works?

Because there are layers and differing dimensions of relationship.

You can certainly be a bad child. You can break your parent’s hearts. It doesn’t change the fact that they are still your parents. But, how much of a relationship are you going to have if you’re sitting in jail for the next 50 years?

You’ll miss every Christmas, birthday, backyard BBQ, graduation. You’ll miss working with your dad on the house.

You want to get close to your mom or dad? Do a work project together.

And if you do a good job and the work project turns out great, and you’re responsible with the tools… you do realize your relationship will be that much better, right? Your dad will respect you. He’ll let you borrow the ladder whenever you need it.

See how that works?

When you do good works you align yourself with your Heavenly Father. You get closer to Him. And the closer you get to Him the more access you have to Him. He is the giver of Life. So the more access you have, the more Life you have. The more gifts you receive.

We live in the shadow land right now. We see but a glimpse - but make no mistake, we can see if we try - the pattern of things. You think that pattern is going to change in the new age? - The new earth where our resurrected selves will dwell after this one burns away?

Think again.

It will be more pronounced, not less. The mountains will be more mountainous, not less. The lakes will be deeper, bluer, clearer in the next age - not less. And your relationship with your Father, as you grow it today by doing good works will extend into the next Age. The gifts will be greater, not less.

So do good works - those projects that He has planned for the two of you. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

Good works don’t earn your passage to heaven, but they will make your time there that much better.

If you want to read a book about this concept, try Randy Alcorn’s “The Law of Rewards.”

The food, shelter, clothing, toys.

As the child grows the father will show the child how to provide for itself. How to tie shoes, make toast, change the oil, catch a fish, frame a wall. It takes time.

There is a gradual weaning off from the parent’s provision and a slow progression into self sustenance.

Of course, this metaphor can breakdown if we think we are sustaining ourselves. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God - Matthew 4:4

But, there is a maturing in the Christian who follows Christ for a long time. There is an arc to it. When someone first comes to Christ it’s as if God opens up the whole world anew to them. They are bewildered and excited at every little detail of God’s revelation to them. Little prayers seem to be instantly answered. They are, for the first time in their life, alive. Indeed, they have become alive in Christ, a child of God.

He provides everything for them.

As the child grows, the instruction can become painful. A father disciplines a son he loves.

“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction; for whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father in whom he delights.” Proverbs 3:11-12

But as time goes on and they receive His instruction, they start becoming less dependent on those day to day miracles. They see that the sun rising is a miracle in itself. They realize their hands are God’s gift to provide for not just themselves, but others, and they put them to work, happily, rejoicing in the father the entire time.

They learn to accept tragedy, palms open to God above, and to utter “your rod and staff comfort me.”

They bless other people - hosting, giving, instructing, bringing life to every room they walk into.

When a father succeeds in training his son, and he goes on his way carrying the family name into the future and growing the family reputation even wider, better; a new era of the relationship begins. The father and son become more like friends. The father is still a mentor and adviser, but they are more like equals, co-inhabiting the world and enjoying it together.

I think God wants his relationship with his children to mature into this realm.

One of friendship, respect, adoration - less of clinging to for infantile provision.

Moses enjoyed this type of relationship. Moses and God spoke as friends.

“You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends…. (John 15:12-17)

A culmination of the relationship is when a father and son can sit side by side, both partaking, both enjoying God’s sandbox together.

Have you ever been in a good swing of things? Working out, reading books, treating others better than yourself (ha! Good luck). It was an intentional improvement - you set goals, told your loved ones about them for accountability, and started running the race.

Your work life improves. People notice you’re losing weight, getting smarter, kinder, becoming more like Jesus.

We can accomplish a great deal when we set our minds to it.

And then… we can’t.

I’ve had many times in my life where I have had tremendous momentum only to be derailed by the flu. Getting sick is the worst!

One time I was working out at the gym, well into months of increasing my strength and toning up, and I hurt my back doing a lift. A few days later I was barely walking around - with a cane no less!

We have two cars in my family. Recently my truck went into the shop. The prognosis was worse than expected and I’ve now gone without my truck for more than a week. I have walked to work. No big deal, I love walking, but mixed up my life’s routine quite a bit.

My wife one time fainted, getting up too fast in the middle of the night. She fell in our bathroom. On the way to rocking her skull, she also lacerated her lip on our tile counter. She had a concussion and was out of it for at least a weak, swollen and quite unhappy.

We are so fragile, aren’t we?

We are a very strange cocktail of resilience, gumption, grit, and yet, complete weakness.

I remember seeing the video of Charlie Kirk being shot. It was quite clear to me he was gone. In an instant. No coming back from that.

Every now and then you see massive car wrecks, or natural disasters.

Every now and then someone you know gets terminal cancer.

Then there are the times we choose to deliberately live on the edge. We bet more money than we can lose in Las Vegas, or on a stupid crypto currency. We drive a multi-thousand pound machine 60 miles an hour after consuming alcohol. We flirt with another person’s spouse. We’re daring the unseen Powers to prove how precarious we are.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven… lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

The idea that God can lead us into temptation, or let us wander into evil is terrifying. He let Satan torment Job and destroy all of Job’s offspring.

John the Baptist, when he saw Christ, said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

John embedded tremendous sacrifice in Jesus, seeing Him for the first time!

For all the divine nature wrapped up in Christ, he maintained human fragility. He was crushed.

I don’t quite know what to do with it other than

1. Trust that I am in God’s hands

2. Trust that God is good

3. Beg for mercy!

Sometimes begging for mercy strikes me as so selfish. I want favor, right? So do you. I don’t want the consequences of my wrongs. Even more so, I don’t want mere happenchance misery striking down on my weak mortal frame. So I beg for mercy.

“... Deliver me from evil…”

And yet Christ willingly suffered. He called us to take up our cross and follow him - to lose our life.

It may be to cancer. Or from the bullet of some trans-woke activist. Or from a drunk driver coming into your lane.

Dumb ways to die! So many dumb ways to die.

The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. Beg for mercy.

We rebelled against our father, who was trying to make life go well for us. I did this many times growing up myself. A good father can teach his sons and daughters just about everything they need to know to navigate the cruel realities of the world. And for the specific niche skills the father knows nothing about, he is generally very willing to help the child acquire them.

But too often a child is stubborn and wants to go find his own way. I did this many times. My dad has a complaint about all of his sons in that we were “unteachable,” in particular the youngest. He could have taught us. Maybe he wasn’t the perfect teacher, but still, the lessons would have been much cheaper for us students if we had just gone along with our dad’s imparted knowledge.

It’s similar with God.

He’ll let us rebel and go try our own way. That way is harder. Experience can be a good teacher, but if you can get it secondhand, the tuition is much cheaper. God is there to give you all you need. Many times we look at His way, once we wrap our minds around it, and flat-out rebel. We go our own way.

The death that follows weighs us down, entangling us with a whole web of problems we most likely would have avoided.

It’s best to consider God’s way first and really make sure what we’re doing or are about to do is in alignment.

If you don’t know if it is or not, follow these simple steps:

1. Read your Bible so you know His ways

2. Go to church so you are around people who are doing step 1

3. Pray and seek His revelation

4. Ask the Christians who you trust in your community from step 2

“Our Father who art in Heaven….”

Matthew 7, verse 11 records this pungent sentence from Jesus:

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”

I have found it helpful to meditate on this type of relationship. It became ever more pertinent when I became a father myself.

I have a unique experience. I have an adopted son from a very different DNA than my own. I have a biological son as well. Two sons only 24 months apart.

I was raised in a household with three brothers and a father who loved us very much.

It is, unfortunately, worth noting that not everyone has had a good father. I’ve known many men who had terrible relationships with their dad, largely because of the dad. This can make it difficult to relate to God as a father because the earthly example falls so short - indeed, something not to emulate at all.

I am fortunate to have had a tremendous father. I think there is an inherent ideal that men can see and try to attain. It doesn’t take much searching to fill a lengthy list of attributes ascribed to an ideal father. And, with bad fathers, the sons know instinctively what not to do. Not that it makes it any easier to perform the ideal.

So, I’ve had a good dad and I’m also trying to now be a good dad. I have found it very insightful from both vantages to ponder my relationship with God.

Leading up to Father’s Day, I’ll post some of my thoughts on God being our Father.

Hope you enjoy! Stay tuned.

We started Branches in 2006. Our strategy was to have a fantastic Sunday service that changed people’s minds of what a Sunday service could be. The services were crazy circus rock shows that did their best to persuade those far from Christ that He was relevant to their life and worth considering. But the end goal was to lure people into small groups. It’s because small groups are where more permanent life change happens. It is where you learn the finer truths of God’s love for you. It is where you learn people have actually been putting up with you your whole life and you start to have the grace to put up with that unbearable person in the group.

At Branches, we immediately started facilitating small groups. I was in a small group with Cindy and Flavio Ortiz. It was amazing to connect with my lifelong mail lady over theology! And her tamales were a revelation.

Later I led a young people’s group. I called it “Judging Music.” I structured it very rigidly. Every week we had brownies. Every week we read the book Judges. Every week a few selected members showed up and shared some of their favorite songs. We listened and shared our thoughts on the music. Judging music was one of my more whacky, fun, case studies of organizing and benefitting spiritually. It was in this group Lydia Page brought her Catholic boyfriend who she’d eventually marry.

Later I did a similar group that just had young men in it, all unmarried! We’d get together down at Jordan Hart’s apartment and do Bible studies together. I remember doing a circle prayer and having all the guys pray. This was the first time I ever heard my future good friend Eric Brady pray out loud. I remember it going like,

“Hey God, if you’re up there and can hear this right now, help us to do better. Next.”

This group of guys went to Lake Billie Chinook together. Eric brought his boat. We still laugh about the time we were floating and another boat cruised up next to us full of hot young chicks. Kevin Callahan knew some of them and struck up a conversation. As they sped off Kevin yelled after them, “Yeah, lets hit it up later!”

“Let’s hit it up!” became one of our silly slogans.

When Branches started its second campus in Hillsboro, I led an “open group.” This weekly group was open to anyone who wanted to attend. This was the first group that included my future wife, Alison. Because of its open nature, we had a very diverse crowd from week to week. One night we had people share quick testimonies of what God had done for them. One guy shared how God had rescued him from gang life - how he murdered a dude in his yard and went to jail and then found Jesus. The very next guy shared how losing his job and “only” collecting six figures of unemployment paycheck(s) was tough on his psyche. When he got an even better job and more money, he felt the hand of God.

My wife and I were wide eyed at the eclectic stories.

We still laugh at Sue Setordjie’s raw response to an ice breaker question. “What would you think if you were falling from a plane and your parachute wouldn’t open?”

“Oh shit!” was her apt response.

After that group Ali and I joined a small group close to home. It was a married couples group that had been going on for a while. The Harrisons, Ekstroms, Petersons, Hafemans; we all met regularly and encouraged each other to follow Jesus.

Of that group, only two of the couples are married today - us and the Harrisons. I don’t wish divorce on anyone, but walking with people through it can really be an eye opener and a faith-building experience.

Eventually Ali and I had kids of our own. Figuring out childcare for small groups is a daunting, ever-present task. Eventually this led us to lead separate groups. Ali led groups with girls on a night and I would lead dude groups on a different night. One of us watched our kids when the other was leading their group. We maintained this flying formation for years. Our respective groups would change, adding and losing members as life changed, seasons coming and going.

I would do Bible studies, push play on sermon series and lectures, hold game nights, go on camp outs, go shooting together - dude stuff.

I would invite anyone. One time I invited a guy who had been showing up to my band, The Coyote’s, shows. Darrell came to the group a few times! As a good group leader, I privately asked Darrell if he would be comfortable praying out loud with us. He told he wasn’t.

During our next meeting, when I asked for prayer requests, Darrell had a whole slew of things we should be praying for. I still laugh at the irony. Here was a guy who told me he didn’t want to pray out loud, giving other group members prayer requests. Why I didn’t ask him right then and there to pray, out loud, for some of his requests - blame it on being slow on my leadership feet.

Evan Brady was a great contribution to these meetings because he worked for a beverage distributor. He’d bring in different flavors of beer we could all try out.

One of the craziest additions to my “dude group” years was a guy named Brad. He was going through a rough patch in his marriage so Eric (now married with kids himself) invited him to group. Down in Eric’s shop we’d listen to Brad go on and on about his failing marriage. It could be a real challenge to direct the group back to the material at hand, away from Brad’s crisis.

I had many personal talks with Brad - on the phone, and in person, and I never minced words - I was direct with him and gave him tough advice on how to love and be a better guy.

And Brad kept showing up. Like religiously. He’d rarely ever miss a group. He’d show up, he’d pray with us, partake in the games, watch the study, etc. Almost every group I’ve been a part of had a person like this - someone who may not seem like the “perfect Christian,” but who is more dedicated to small group than even the group leader.

Brad became the poster child of this. He just shows up. Everytime. He got divorced. He started a new relationship. He went through crazy emotional trauma. We’d all pray for him, give him our advice, encourage him to live for Jesus. And he just kept showing up. Other people would skip because of hunting, the baseball season, you name it… not Brad. Despite his questionable lip service to Jesus, or his crazy life - small group, whether he espoused it, his actions qualified it - was a top priority.

I wish I knew more Christians like that.

Life is incredibly messy. We’re a broken species. We are the most unique species on the planet. It is good to get together and encourage each other to live towards the ideal. Christ is the ideal manifested in human form. The point of group is not to distill theology. It isn’t to create an exclusive club where some fit and others don’t. It isn’t to foster loyalty to a local church. The point of group is to satisfy one of our God-given needs: community. We are not meant to do life alone. Christianity is an impossible solo pursuit. Groups provide the scheduled discipline you and I need. Get yourself in one as soon as you can!

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” - James 1:2-3

I have a long way to go in pursuit of the Holy, in my transformation. But, from this vantage point along the way, I’ll provide this observation: perhaps the best measurement of maturity is joy in suffering.

Once you are born again the whole world is made anew to you. Just as you were born the first time; you will gradually, slowly realize some of the hard facts. Gravity exists. You must toil nature to eat. Translated to the faith journey: resisting temptation is hard. Or, suffering produces fruit. Or… the scariest, God will test you. These are hard realities that aren’t “fun” to navigate in your relationship with the Almighty.

We hardly tell these truths to new converts, who are grinning with apple sauce smeared all over their face in their high chair. “Someday you’re going to learn how to ride a bike and in order to do so, you’re going to scrape your knee!” or to your toddler daughter, “Some dude is going to break your heart!”

Ugh. No thanks.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.’” Matthew 16:24-27

Someday your child will walk away from you, from the faith, and never talk to you again. Someday your spouse will get cancer. You’ll be rejected by all your friends; you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you’re just not invited.

You will be tempted to charge people more than you should, or lie about a contract or service, or guarantee something that should not be guaranteed - all for personal gain. And you’ll watch your fellow worker get ahead of you by being less than honorable.

You’ll watch the state crush innocent lives… Injustice upon injustice.

Go read Job. Go watch the Passion of Christ. See the suffering on display. Most all of this is lost on the infant Christian, and perhaps should be.

That is because the Christian life promises so much joy. It is the only life that actually makes sense of the world. It calls to those rational minds that can’t abide the incongruencies of every other belief system. It beckons to those who are brave enough to be honest with themselves - that they and the world are broken and need remedy. It delights those who find relief in the gifts of the Father: the Son’s reconciliation through his sacrifice and the comfort of the Holy Ghost.

So joyfully we come into the family. Sometimes we stumble off our trike or maybe skim the hot surface of a stove with our hand - our little minds growing into the realities of our newfound world. But over time, even harder challenges await.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” - James 1:2-3

The mark of maturity is being able to not only persevere through suffering, which many don’t - I’ve seen many of my friends fade away - but to have joy! while suffering.

It seems there must be a point where this is impossible. How much joy did Jesus have while being tortured to death?

A side note: Monty Python explicitly makes a joke of this at the end of their gospel satire “The Life Of Brian”. The main character, who is mistakenly taken for Jesus his whole life, finally gets crucified. As he is hanging on the cross with others, they start singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!” You have to appreciate that even Monty Python recognized the story of Christ as the most poignant example of suffering ever. Therefore, it would serve as the greatest irony and humor to belittle it.

Take Moses suffering with the Israelites through the Exodus, or David’s family troubles, or Job’s trials - none of these instances conjure up images of “happy” protagonists.

Yet, the author of Hebrews deliberately ties “joy” to Christ’s crucifixion:

“For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2b

Here, we have the ultimate suffering linked to highest joy. A paradox. A complete contradiction. And yet, isn’t that how the world is set?

No pain, no gain.

We toil so we can live. Abel’s sacrifice cost him. That was the difference between Abel’s and Cain’s sacrifice. It was painful.

The highest pain, the highest joy. That is essentially what the Hebrews verse lays out.

Having the ability to see the big picture - to peer through the pain and see the resulting bounty in yourself, others, and the world at large and then distill that vision into joy in the midst of present suffering… Well, that’s a real trick, isn’t it?

That’s a miracle and the mark of a mature Christian.

“Those adulterers!,” they’ll whisper to each other. And then recommend a divorce here and there, or a separation for a time, maybe public humiliation, or joining a therapy club.

I’ve been part of many accountability groups, as the men themselves are humiliated by this base sin - this unquenchable desire to satisfy the carnal. At least men in the church will come out and call it what it is: a sin, to their shame. Most men on the outside have no such morals.

Unfortunately, many women inside the church can’t even see that for the victory it is. They are so shell shocked by the revelation of sexual bombs going off in their house, neighborhood, city, state, country.

As a cynic, my first reaction is, “What are these women reading?! Obviously not the Bible.”

Admittedly, some more empathy from myself is due, as it would be horrifying to learn your prince charming is hiding a porn addiction, has rubber sex gadgets, went to a nude beach one summer or a strip club with the work fellas. That is the equivalent of a bomb dropping on your lovely idyllic English countryside cottage.

The cynicism arises out of the fact that nobody told these ladies that they are indeed at war, and that the Germans are consistently performing bombing raids (to keep with the English countryside theme). Surely, if you didn’t get that brief, and all of the sudden the Luftwaffe are flying overhead, you’d be alarmed. If by chance a bomb drops right on your head, your life may be devastated.

But, just like the British said during WWII when their houses were being bombed by the Germans, “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

Now, for the brief that you missed.

BRIEF: We Are at War

A quick history to get you up to speed.

God wanted people to procreate. He didn’t want his stewards of the garden to get so content stewarding that they don’t reproduce. “Be fruitful and multiply,” He says from the outset (Genesis 1:28). Not only did he mean metaphorically, but, dang, He meant, “Go reproduce yourselves.”

And, perhaps in one of the most nervous acts of the Almighty, he doubled down to make sure we did: he made us quite horny.

Have you ever seen a Bull Elk or a Buck Deer in the rut, intoxicated dumb sniffing a nearby doe? They are helpless. I once watched the show “Meat Eater” in which two hunters call a male moose with a horn that mimics a female moose in distress. That male moose traversed miles and a crazy steep ravine to have, in the end, his lung shot out by a 30.06. That should be illegal in my opinion - faking the distressed Mrs. Moose.

But alas, beer companies have been employing the same tactic since the dawn of the photograph. Sexy ladies like guys who drink our beer! an ad will imply. Just like that poor moose, in the end, the guys who drink a lot of beer get fat, out of shape, dumber, and maybe even lose their income: things females tend to avoid in mates. A metaphorical bullet through the lung.

Ladies, that raging Bull Elk is an 18 year old teenage boy. I remember in high school watching the girls play: Volleyball (can we get the uniforms tighter!?), soccer (legs!!!), cheerlead (nice skirts), clarinet (look how she blows that thing), perform algebra equations, try to lift weights, eat fruit at lunch…. IT DID NOT MATTER, I lusted.

It didn’t help that they wore: crop tops, spandex, yoga pants, no bra, black bra, sports bra!, skirt, dress, Christmas sweater, see through this, see through that, English braid, French braid, glasses, tie, long socks, short socks, no socks…..

Girls are pretty / God made men’s desire for them insatiable. Man’s ability to control this desire is quite weak.

That poor 16-22 year old male is the dumbest buck of the bunch. If you caught him at the right moment, there might not be a girl on the planet he wouldn’t procreate with.

If you are a girl marginally within your body weight index, every inch of your body has been looked at, dwelt upon, scrutinized, rated, and lusted after. By good guys. By bad guys. By young guys. By old guys. Every inch. They’ve judged your breasts, your eyes, your hair color, your hair thickness, your eyebrows, how you hold your hand, your ankle, your rear (a million times), your legs, your knees, your elbow…. EVERY INCH. Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling you short, I’m sorry to say. The difference between the crass 7th grader boy and Billy Graham is one knows how to keep his mouth shut. So we consider Billy “wise.” (Even a fool is considered wise when he keeps his mouth shut - Proverbs 17:28)

That’s not to say a man can’t mature and fight this demon. That’s not to say Billy was analyzing the female species’ form inch by inch as a mature 40 year old man. One can change, and one can improve. It is what Christ is calling us to.

So now that we’ve established these facts, let’s mine into some more technicals about this war.

HISTORY: Might Makes Right

The notion that a woman may have - men lusting after other women and its many perverted manifestations is wrong - is because that woman lives in a very Christian society.

Read a little history about Rome, Israel, Greece, Egypt, or Persia and you’ll quickly realize women had it nowhere near as good as they do now. What we deem in the modern West as sexual perversion (especially in Christian circles) was pretty commonplace throughout history.

Humanity’s hierarchy is established through might. “Might makes right,” the saying goes.

I’m not advocating for this paradigm. It is simply the way it is, as true as gravity.

Survival of the fittest; strong cultures win out. Strong men kill weaker men. Strong nations win the war.

When Israel declared its statehood in 1948, multiple nations joined together to stop it and declared war on Israel. They all failed. Israel has been a state to this day. The native Americans failed to protect their homeland. The Romans eventually failed.

Strong men kill weak men and then they take their women.

It seems lost on the adolescent youth in America as to why they enjoy the luxury they do. America won the largest two wars ever waged on the planet. We detonated the largest bomb ever made, not once, but twice, on our enemy. We went to the moon. And by and large, we’ve been quite the decent lord over the earth, unlike, say, the Mongols. Unlike, say, the African nations that sold their brothers and sisters into slavery.

Anyways, if you read your bible with an examining eye, you’ll see that Abraham had concubines. “What are those?” you may ask.

Ladies, the patriarch of the faith had a garden shed filled with women he maintained just for sex.

You should also note how Abraham marched off with 300 men (soldiers) and conquered a bunch of kings (Genesis 14). These two seem to go hand in hand - Might makes right.

When it comes to raw power, women are the weaker sex.

I don’t think the ladies who were kept in Abraham’s kingdom were frustrated by their position. It was a lot better than the alternatives. Sure, they weren’t on Sarah’s footing (Abrahams’ wife), but at least they weren’t being mutilated by a barbaric tribal king. At least their children were sheltered and fed.

You’ll notice that King David had a bunch of wives. When David’s son, Absalom, rebels and usurps the throne, he goes on top of a roof and has sex with all David’s concubines in broad daylight, in front of all Israel. (2 Samuel 16)

Solomon had over 1,000 women. Dare I say he’d make Donald Trump blush?

Hence why I say if a modern Christian woman is surprised at the sexual brokenness of her male counterpart - she hasn’t been reading her Bible much, or at the very least, fully considering the realities presented in its text. Or maybe she was just reading the New Testament, which brings me to:

“Might Makes Right” meets the mightiest man - Jesus.

Make no mistake about it, it was Jesus and men responding to his call that transformed the world. Men choosing to use their strength to serve others, like Jesus, who said he was “meek.” Strong men deciding to take just one wife and elevate her to his status is meekness. It is a Christian practice. So when America devastates Japan, we didn’t bring back all the Japanese girls and hand them out to every GI - “Here, have your victory concubine!” That’s because America is a Christian nation.

Joseph Stalin encouraged his troops to rape German women when they invaded. And boy did they. There is a reason the fleeing Germans fled west. This was “your bounty,” Stalin exclaimed, putting a godless nation in stark contrast with a nation that proclaims “In God We Trust.”

Christ, the mightiest man, shows men how to submit their strength for the greater good.

This is part of Jesus’ reconciling all things to Himself (as Paul puts it in Colossians 1:20).

He is reconciling the way things should be: for this reason a man will leave his mother and father and be joined with his wife. (Genesis 2:24) Humanity has gone very far away from God’s intended design for us. Christ is reconciling everything back, slowly and surely. Things will continue to be broken until that fateful day when Jesus returns and lights this whole earth on fire. (2 Peter 3:10) But, until then, you and I have the wonderful opportunity to partner with Christ and do our best to bring it all back to the ideal. It will go better for you if you do.

So the reason any person thinks porn, adultery - any perversion from God’s perfect standard is wrong is because they are either being convicted by the Holy Spirit or have been raised in a Christian society.

This still doesn’t take away the fact that men have been created by God Himself to want to look and be with women.

Sexual perversion isn’t some unique failure. God has given us many natural desires that we pervert and break. We break all of them!

The idea that men are not going to take some shrapnel is a pipe dream. Ladies, you need to reset your expectations.

NEW TECH: Luxury for the Masses

Technology, or, humans learning how and developing ways to do things better, has brought about amazing comforts. We used to light our houses with oil lamps. We used to ride horses. We used to not have refrigeration. And concubines, for the rich and powerful, had to be fed, kept, and stored.

For the modern man, you can buy a sex toy for a few bucks. Then, you can go online, and find the most beautiful woman taking her clothes off and doing the most insane thing(s) your perverted mind can imagine. A man can satiate himself and call it a day.

It is a perversion. It is not right. It is not a substitute for what God intended. It is harmful to the man on many levels.

I’d vote to make porn, strip clubs, and hookers illegal. It is destructive.

But, it is incredibly cheap and accessible.

Way easier than Abraham or David had it.

Their many wives weren’t right either. Solomon pretty much lost his soul because those were real woman, with real complaints, with real leverage, and they led him astray. David lost children. Jacob, ahem - “Israel”, had a huge hot mess from having kids from multiple women.

My point is, ladies, that this has been going on since the dawn of time. Today the struggle has a new wrinkle. Our modern wealth has made a digital version of what Solomon had. Carnal excess is accessible to everyone.

YOU: Helpmate

Ladies are instrumental in winning the war. It is a team task. Here are some things that will help you and your partner win.

Look good (or at least try!)

Look good and make love to him at least three times a week. That’s the first basic rule. If you’re not doing that, you are a part of the problem. Remember God made him want women. Fighting that is fighting God.

Three times a week is what Jordan Peterson recommends. Overall point: as frequently as possible!

If you are not having sex on a regular basis, trust me, your man is fulfilling his need somewhere, somehow.

Looking good means eating less, exercising, and dressing cute.

Look, if you’re not willing to try and help in this most basic of ways, then in my opinion, you have no right to be mad if he is watching porn, etc. I’m not saying he is not sinning. I’m saying you have no right to be mad about it.

It’s like a coach who never helped his athletes get in shape and then being mad when they lose.

Sure, it sucks. The team missed the mark. It is not ideal. But, you have an active role. Don’t be mad when he loses, when you don’t lift a finger to help.

You, his help mate, are not helping.

Have Sex Despite Your Feelings

A note on “not feeling like it” when it comes to having sex.

Grow up. I don’t feel like going to work. I don’t feel like exercising. I don’t feel like making my bed. I don’t feel like raising my children.

You want a man who takes you seriously and tries to stop watching porn? Look good and make love to him consistently - whether you feel like it or not.

You think it feels good to “turn the other cheek,” or “go an extra mile?!” Jesus implored us to break the negative feedback loop. He was tortured to death! He put his “money where his mouth was,” in epic fashion. Somebody has to break the chain and do something different.

So, if you don’t feel like having sex all the time because your guy is such a loser and doesn’t lean into your intimate emotions, I’m just letting you know right now, while you’re getting what you want (punishing his lack of living up to your standards with your chastity), he’s still fulfilling his God given desire with a better looking chick online, or maybe worse, some actual woman you know in your community.

Also, even if you don’t feel like you’re beautiful (you may not be), that doesn’t matter. Get kinky and do some sex with him.

Talk to him about it

Ask him if he is looking at porn / masturbating / bad stuff / struggling with “so and so.”

Create a safe space so he can confess. Which means don’t beat the living heck out of him when he confesses. When someone confesses, they inherently know they are wrong and are embarrassed. Don’t punish him by not having sex with him (brilliant!), not talking to him, shunning him, etc.

Ask him how you can help him.

Let him know it hurts!

Ask him to never do it again. This request hits a lot harder when he can clearly see you are working out, looking great, and making love to him. Give him no reason to look elsewhere, so to speak.

Align your mind with reality

Change your mindset. Do not beat yourself up about your guy looking and lusting at other women.

I’ve heard many women say “I just can’t believe he betrayed me!” or “He’s been unfaithful!” or “I thought I was all that he needed!”

Rubble like this. It’s like Disney took over your worldview and now you’re shocked to find your husband isn’t Prince Philip.

Let me tell you something: the stars did not align when you met your partner. You are not the fulfillment of all his needs. You aren’t even the fulfillment of half his fantasies.

You’re his helpmate. You’re his partner in crime. You’re there to help him realize most of his fantasies are not good dreams at all, but nightmares. If he was perfect, why did he need a helpmate?

He is a dog. He will sniff every piece of meat out there. Just because he sniffed a steak that happened to live next door doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you as his partner.

So many women are like, “Wait, am I not enough?!”

Honey, you were never enough. Only Jesus is enough, and the man is in a lifelong struggle of surrendering to his true Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. It is self sabotaging to feign this “inadequacy” as a result of his sin.

Paul (and Christ to some extent) said it’s better to never get married at all! So don’t ever say “I’m not enough.” Relatively speaking you aren’t even part of the equation when it comes to “his fulfillment.” He isn’t yours either.

If you’re reading this before marriage

Good on you. You’re getting briefed. Talk to your potential mates about this well before marriage. There are some men who don’t struggle with this as much as others, but as a whole, it’s a very safe bet they’ve seen many naked women. What hurts more than a confession of sexual perversion is lying about it. So just know, statistically, if a man tells you he doesn’t struggle with it, you’ve got a worse problem: he’s not honest.

You’d be better off marrying a painfully honest pervert than a dishonest actor.

War!?: We’re Dead!

I’m not advocating for men to look at porn or partake in any type of sexual perversion. It is sin and leads to death.

There are things that will kill you quicker than others. Actions have varying consequences.

Having an affair, for example, is pretty rough. Going to a strip club is not as bad. Watching porn is better than that. Masturbating is better than porn. Watching your neighbor jog in her tights and lusting is even better than that.

But these all miss the mark. They are all sin. They all fall short of the glory of God - that impossible metric we are all judged by, that your conscience speaks to, and that only Christ fulfilled.

These perversions all grow the same monster, slowly and surely, which in the end brings about death to the man and relationship(s) like a 30.06 to that moose. Best of all is to have nothing to do with any of it. (Colossians 3:5)

But having nothing to do with it is not the same as pretending the Luftwaffe is not constantly flying overhead, which is where the nice women of the Christian fold get into trouble. You should have a sane estimation of what the heck is going on. Bombs are being dropped. The entire world leverages man’s base desire for women against him. You think the aforementioned beer company, as an example, cares about your idyllic English countryside house (aka your family!)? It would be great if it weren’t so. It’d be great if none of us sinned.

Jesus did not stone the adulterous woman. He didn’t stone the woman at the well who had gone through 5 husbands. He asked her for a drink of water.

An overreaction to a bomb going off makes things worse.

Many women are married to men who are trying to be better and honor their commitments. They work to pay bills. They change lightbulbs. They show their kids how to set up tents, throw a ball, win a game of Halo, play the piano, do math, and all sorts of good things. It is terrible that these ladies are blindsided when they find out that same man is broken. That he is perverting one of his God given base desires. Of course he is! Don’t punish him so much that you make it hard on him to do the things he was doing well (examples above).

With all that said, there are some men who have grown so addicted to the perversion, having affairs, going to clubs, etc., that a wife could consider a divorce. There are some good arguments for it, infidelity naturally being the first, but also letting a man like that set a poor example for children could also be dangerous.

Be warned though, God hates divorce. When you pledged your fidelity and faithfulness to your partner, was it based upon their performance? I hope not. What does his failing have to do with your love or commitment to him? While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

The vast majority of people I meet who have been divorced are worse for it. Statistically, you are not the exception.

I told my wife I would love her till death. She has failed to be perfect in many ways. That was never part of the condition of my love. In many ways, my love is more about me trying the great experiment of love out for myself. Can I love this person no matter what?

Not gonna lie, though… It helps that she is a strikingly beautiful, smart, and forgiving woman!

Conclusion

Men are at war, perverting the desire God put in them to procreate. It is highly unlikely they are going to get through this war unscathed. Especially when companies, other women, and grifters are all exploiting this God given desire all the time - tempting them to sin.

Be glad we don’t live in a society where men can just go kill another man and then enjoy that man’s wife (looking at you, David.) You can thank a whole host of Christians who settled this nation and brought about a culture that thinks sexual perversions are wrong.

(The farther we get from Christianity in America, the more we see women being treated poorly and perverted sex being normalized. You are blind if you haven’t seen this trend.)

You are his help mate. Every pronouncement God made about the world when He made it was that it was good until He saw that man was alone. Then He said, “It is not good that man is alone.” (Genesis 2:18) Help your man!

Align your mind with reality: your husband as a dog is a good metaphor. I love Labrador Retrievers. Such happy, energetic dogs. But they drool. And they sniff crotches and they’ll beg for meat at every chance they get.

We call them “bad dogs” when they do. We try to get them to behave. With time, with some training, they do better.

But, the day my Labrador stops begging for my steak is the day I know something is wrong. The get up and go has gone. He won’t be long for the world.

You’ve been briefed. Good luck, Keep Calm and Carry On, and go win the war.

He’s five now. Full of testosterone and an unbridled energy for the world. Everyday I am the benefactor of a swift kick, punch, plastic sword jab, or pretend pistol shot. He’s loud, constantly drums (I wonder where he got that from?), and somehow managed to get the combined IQ of both his mother and father - so it seems.

In just five short years he is a blossoming human. And yet, so far to go. Puberty is a very distant grey cloud on the horizon. And for males in our day and age - extended adolescence: the roaming twenties is a real desert wasteland of wasted opportunity, confusion, and finding oneself. To a lesser degree this seems to be repeated almost twenty years later, right around 40. On and on it goes, right? Then there is retirement and empty nesting. I have curiously watched my parents go from a house full to a house empty - from full mobility and thought to struggles reminiscent of their first encounters with gravity and reasoning - engaging with the constraints of this world.

Paul writes,

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God-this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.” - Romans 12:1-2

The living sacrifice is something like the continual search for truth, knowledge, betterment (despite ourselves and what we might prefer). And God, being the source of all of that - the continual pursuit of Him will be a lifelong journey of sacrifice that brings about constant renewal.

From birth to birth to birth.

Paul restates this concept throughout his writings.

Ephesians 4:23-24: “...to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self...”.

Colossians 3:10: “...put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator”.

2 Corinthians 4:16: “...though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day”.

Yes, we are dying physically, slowly, but for God followers, the inner self is being made new all the time, with each pursuit of Him.

These are all types and patterns that should give us faith (as if witnesses, logical reason, and a multitude of changed lives don’t) that the actual resurrection from the dead is real. Christ is risen! We can see that same rising power in us as we are renewed and changed - foreshadows of what glorious transformation awaits, when we are born again into new bodies and a new world, following our Lord’s example.

With that, I have been pondering what it is like to be born. What a rupture! My son had no idea the world that awaited him. He hardly does now, five years in, and yet he believes he has the world by the tail. He couldn’t walk, reason, talk, or feed himself. Slowly and surely he has been able to do some of these things quite well. For instance, he can now justify his behavior, wants, and schemes. He can run about as fast as I can, and he’s well on his way to being a better drummer.

My wife and I recently made one of the most consequential decisions of my life. We decided to move from Oregon to Idaho. There are a myriad of reasons. But, there is one in particular that has repeatedly been stated to me in the quiet prayerful times. And it is simply: God is calling me out. Out of the place I’ve been my entire life. I will be born again.

And it is a scary, wonderful, exciting, unknown thing.

“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.’” Genesis 12:1

Abraham was commanded by God to leave his father’s house and go to a new place. It was only after he did this that God changed his name, made a covenant with him, and blessed him. Not that Abram wasn’t a mighty man before this. But clearly, he was renewed; born again.

I wonder what it was like for him in a foreign land. New languages, men, women!, foods, dirt, animal life, technologies…. There must have been a lot to take in. A crazy concoction of the recognizable and foreign. I’m sure at times, it was overwhelming. Yet he persisted in his pursuit. And we see Abraham go from renewal to renewal, his faith giving birth to a whole new nation - the kingdom of heaven.

Just to be sure - that’s Christianity, not Israel, folks.

And so, on this Easter, I’m full of wonder on this journey I’m on. Pursuing God, putting Him first, will lead you to uncomfortable places, out of the warm confines of a mother and into a strange new world. But it is a beautiful thing if we choose to follow, for God is good. He wants our best. So as we journey from renewal to renewal, entering strange new lands, it primes us for the greatest transition that is ahead for all of us who profess and believe in the name of Jesus. Resurrection indeed.

Anyways….

Last month, an article explaining the perils of AI and how it is going to replace everyone’s a lot of jobs went viral. On X, it spread like wildfire. As a financial advisor, for a long time now, I’ve been aware of robo advisors and computers replacing me.

In some ways, it’s nothing new. And yet, you’d have to be living under a rock, errr . . not using a computer, to realize that the advancement of AI is a real thing. Unlike the Global Climate alarmists, where their predictions are refuted regularly before our own eyes, the AI alarmists do have my attention. My own experience has seen drastic advancements in the tech.

This last week, among the financial influencers I follow on X, a new article started popping up. It detailed the cascading possibilities of a sustained Straight of Hormuz closure. The article is long. I first came upon it by way of someone I respect in the financial world, Luke Gromen. So I read most of the article. But about 70% through, I gave up. TLDR: it is a lot of “what if this happens, then this could possibly happen….”

It almost amounts to “If a butterfly lands on an uneven branch on a barely-alive Birch tree, somehow surviving atop a glacier in Alaska, and that branch then breaks; and perhaps when it lands atop the glacier fault at an 89 degree angle it could set off a chain reaction where 45% of the glacier breaks free from the rest and slides down into the valley below at an accelerated rate. And if this rate exceeds the normal rate by a factor of 3.56x, there won’t be enough time for the local scientists to gauge the rapid rise of secondary effects in the water, which could lead to complete flooding. This glacier just so happens to border a small town that provides 33.5% of Alaska’s sardine supply, which doesn’t sound like much of a dilemma until you realize that sardines are used as the main source of food for not only the fishermen but hatcheries along the coastal plains. This in turn will shut down 62.5% of the fishing business if it is not addressed within 3-4 weeks for an undetermined amount of time - which will then, in 2 to 3 months, put pressure on the oceanic/regional/natural food chain as well as on the restaurant business, most likely leading to 50%+ inflation in not just fish, but EVERYTHING that depends on those businesses. Did you know parts of fish are used in fertilizer?! FERTILIZER! cost will double or triple at the very least in month 3, which if not addressed in 4-6 months will lead to 89% inflation in the global reserve currency and by month 7?: Mass starvation and chaos.”

Holy crapola! Buy solar panels. Dig a well. Get chickens and ammo. Maybe get a pocket copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights so you know how to start over.

I scrolled a little further and what do you know - another guy I sort of respect is retweeting the article. I’d had enough. What a joke.

So, I commented on his reposting of the article:

“Please cancel your subscription to doomhub.com as it is rotting your brain and giving you an erection while no real reason is in the room.”

I’m obviously riffing on “doom porn” slang here, referencing the largest, well-known porn site in the world. Pornography works you up into a hot sweaty mess and eventually, if you grow up and quit watching it, you realize it is all fake - you’ve been alone in a room. Same thing with all this fear mongering.

Probably not my most sterling moment. I could have been less base, less nasty. But, the point was landed. Larry Lepard responded, “BYE” and promptly blocked me.

I laughed out loud.

What a grift. No debate, no reasonable response. I quickly realized that this guy isn’t into educating people or having pushback. He’s into getting clicks and growing his subscriber count. He’s at 250K.

Did he even read the article? It took me quite a while.

Or did he, like me, see Luke Gromen tweet it out? Did Larry just simply copy and paste (thinking,) “Here’s some clickbait for my followers that will surely help me look intelligent and keep them engaged.”

Ugh.

And it ain’t like Larry is above disgusting language. Dude simply cusses people out when he disagrees with them, regularly!

Peter Zeihan, another global economy / political commentator is of the same ilk as the author who wrote this latest article: Dudes who are commenting on things that are so complex even the Lord himself doesn’t know which way the cookie is going to crumble (i.e. Jesus, begging for another way in the garden).

Zeihan famously predicted Bitcoin was going to $0 on Joe Rogan, right as it was tempting $14k a coin. A few years later and it was over $100k a coin.

Did Zeihan suffer any real consequence for this insane prediction? Nope.

I still think Luke is brilliant and Larry’s probably not that bad either :).

Does Larry Lepard or Luke Gromen suffer any consequence(s) for posting complete rubbish - “what if a meteor strikes tomorrow?” doom slop? No. They gain from it.

I for one am fine with being blocked. Good riddance. Less of that in my feed is better.

And I hope you are wise enough to discern when someone is just yanking your emotional chain even if they are wearing a suit and tie and have a fancy acronym behind their name.

We just finished “Colonial America.” Now we’ve started a course on the Founders, which is a conversation between two professors.

We did lesson two last night. My wife didn’t quite make it through the lesson. After each lesson is a short quiz. Funny enough, she woke up abruptly to help me navigate the questions, albeit dreamily. She’s a funny girl.

Better than a sleeping pill, like I said, we both conked out right afterwards - 9:30ish pm!

I woke up at 4am, not able to go back to sleep. Ugh. So I opened X on my phone and saw the world going to hell. Funny how we carry these little windows; portals to the underworld sitting in our pockets, our nightstands, our kitchen tables.

It sent me into a tailspin really. I don’t think I like the war in Iran, in Ukraine, in Gaza, in the U.S.

I don’t like that our government appears to not be working anymore. Bad people are not prosecuted. Good people are. Serial murderers spend 20+ years on death row, consuming food and rent you and I pay for. Every blue state is raising taxes while people are fleeing them. There appears to be a whole swath of our country sympathetic to Islam - a horrible religion that promotes conquest and pillaging. Girls are cutting off their breasts and boys are sterilizing themselves. 60+ million aborted Americans. There is spam on the blockchain!

This world is going to hell. What should I do?

I should do what our forefathers did. I mean the ruddy people who came and settled this place. Hardline Christians, producing for themselves.

The takeaway dawned on me. You go to God and seek Him first, live humbly and do your best to produce your own means of survival. Seeking Him first, btw, means placing yourself in Christian community and meditating on scripture (the Bible!) - not just occasionally reading it. Oh, and praying. Pray without ceasing.

Don’t put your head in the sand when it comes to politics and governance. Be hard. Be steely. Don’t be weak, a victim, a parasite. Conquer the frontier, make things people want and speak the truth - not your mind or feelings. Strive for simple laws that apply to everyone - that promote peace, prosperity, and security; that don’t infringe on other people’s property and natural rights.

I’m grateful for the amazing job Hillsdale College does explaining the struggles of our ancestors. It helps me focus, prioritize; keep the north star north. Liberty and justice are worth fighting for. A Christian people is the best people on the planet. We have blessed the world tremendously. But if we grow apathetic, or worse: empathetic to what is evil, we’ll lose the whole country and maybe even worse - our soul(s).

The age of kindness, of empathy, of diversity is ending. We need to put a cold hard dagger in its heart and document its fruit well so future generations can have resources to draw on for their own battles. But, for us, this is ours, our trial, our fight - and it may just burn the union to the ground.

You may cite scripture that admonishes kindness, as a rebuttal. I would cite Ecclesiastes 3. There is a time for everything under the sun. And as God told Cain when Cain was frustrated about God’s unkind take on Cain’s sacrifice - He warned the man: “Sin is crouching at your door.” It is time to kill, time to tear down.

I’m hopeful there will be a phoenix on the other side. There is too much grift, too much distortion, too much power in the wrong places. And it has gone on for so long and become so unwieldy I’m becoming more and more convinced there is no retrieving it from the abyss. We must go through the fire.

It isn’t pretty. Just so you know where I stand, I called Candace a “shameless whore” shortly into her campaign accusing Turning Point USA of somehow being involved with the murder… less than a month after his death.

She’s a supreme grifter - the modern day National Enquirer. If proclaiming the arrival of the next Batboy got as much attention as slandering Charlie’s widow Erika Kirk, no doubt she’d be all about it.

So who cares about her.

What I want to address is what some of my friends have been saying and a lot more of us have been thinking: Erika Kirk is a bit weird.

This is partly why Candace’s grift is so explosive. The other part is Candace’s ability to confidently and enthusiastically proclaim complete nonsense. No wonder she’s Catholic.

I’ve had to tell a few of my close friends what I’m about to write here.

Of course Erika Kirk is weird.

CHARLIE KIRK WAS WEIRD!

Consider:

Charlie Kirk was on Fox News as an 18 year old pumping the political republican machine better than the paid anchors that were interviewing him.

Charlie Kirk had a super IQ and memory recall.

Charlie Kirk started a company from scratch and grew it (in less than two decades) into the most important political influence the conservative right has had in 50 years. When I say scratch - I mean solo-ito, going and propping up a $100 Bi Mart tent at colleges and having talks with college kids.

Have you ever done anything like that? Don’t kid yourself.

With all my talent and ability to crank out an article, maybe once a week, and be a dad and write some music and still maintain a great job (I’m a husband too) - I’m like a Ford F-150 going 55mph down the highway. Great utility, run of the mill, make the world go around.

Charlie Kirk was a Bugatti Barron maxed out 24/7. Dude was special. Like John the Baptist special. He was nuts. If you think I’m being overboard you haven’t One: watched his stuff, or Two: are not aware of what real talent combined with extreme discipline is.

So we have a modern day locust-eating prophet running around as fast as he can, growing the most influential political / spiritual company in the U.S., and you think he is going to marry the simple girl next door?

getOUTTAhere!

Freaks attract freaks. And Erika Kirk is by all accounts, most likely a freak. Hate to say it. But, yeah - You don’t go marry a dude who travels around the world non-stop thinking, “Gonna grow me a nice nuclear family here with this guy.”

No. You’re climbing the crazy ladder.

And I’m not at all trying to diminish what Charlie did. The guy was above me. He was better than me in all regards that I’m aware of. Super human.

I’m just pointing out the obvious… or not so obvious: super men don’t marry regular women.

So, yeah, what did we expect?

A Laura Bush to come to the forefront - be calm and collected - talk like an ever graceful mother and resume TPUSA back toward normalcy?

For the record, I think it was a mistake for Turning Point to name Erika Kirk the CEO. One, she’s a female. Two, she’s a mom. Three, she’s probably a bit nuts, as if I haven’t stated already. And maybe not the good kind of nuts that some people are that make them even better CEOs (looking at you Elon).

They should have made Tyler Bowyer or Andrew Kolvet the CEO. But, I’ll let them figure that out. Ain’t my problem.

I’m simply letting everyone know that it’s okay to think Erika is a bit crazy. You’d have to be to marry Charlie Kirk.

You know who’s even more crazy?

This guy.

Such was the case with “Bodies,” by Drowning Pool, the end of “Stairway to Heaven,” by Led Zeppelin and “Jesus Freak,” by DC Talk.

There was the season of the “Imperial March” from Star Wars as well.

Recently, we discovered “TNT” by AC/DC. Again, I usher in moderation. We generally listen to Christian music like Forest Frank. But, every now and then, we rock.

So, on a pristine family cruise along the ocean on the 101, my daughter speaks up as TNT blares over our truck’s speakers. Give it to the female to actually ponder the lyrics and inquire:

“Dad, why would you ‘lock up your daughter, lock up your wife, lock up the back door and run for your life,’ if he is ‘TNT’ ? Like what does that have to do with him exploding?”

I’m grateful to my wife; instead of immediately powering down the stereo and changing the subject, she lets me squirm. I created this mess. She is happy to let me dig my way out.

I grabbed my shovel and started explaining it, as follows.

“You see, there is a basic construct in all of humanity where might makes right. Human beings are tribal - we have groups that we get into. These groups provide protection for our weaker members, among other benefits.

Who are our weaker members? Women in particular, and children. Right? I’m stronger than mom and if I wanted to, I could overpower her and really hurt her.

Throughout all time, men have made war on other men and then, as spoils of victory, have taken the losers’ women - which includes daughters. They don’t take the boys because they don’t want those boys to grow up and become strong men and then overpower them - you see?

That is the unfortunate reality.

So, it pays to be the strong man, the alpha, the guy who can protect his women and children.”

I pause to gather some more thoughts and let my daughter dwell on what I just said. Then I holler to the back of the truck, “Hey boys - you know in Minecraft what the strongest thing is? The thing that blows up the hardest rock?”

“TNT!” They both yell in delight.

“That’s right. TNT. So, this song - this guy is using a metaphor, right? He is saying he is the strongest guy - the alpha - the ‘powerload,’ as the lyric goes. He is going to blow everything up, conquer all the other tribes.

So, lock up your daughter, lock up your wife, lock up your back door and run for your life.

Now, it may not feel like it, but we live in a tribe, don’t we?”

“Yes,” my sweet girl responds, “America.”

“That’s right! You’re so smart. We live in America. And make no mistake about it, the stronger our men are, the better it goes for us - for everyone in the tribe.

Humanity is a lot more advanced than we used to be - but despite all the progress, it is still important to be in the strong tribe. That has not gone away. It just looks different.”

“So, in terms of the world and countries,” my daughter asks, “America is ‘TNT’?”

I look out along the Pacific ocean, taking in the scene and conversation. Coast to coast, sea to sea … is not lost on me.

“Yeah, something like that,” I responded.

“This concludes our lyric educational analysis of a grade B rock song!” I laugh.

My wife looks over at me shaking her head. But I saw a smirk suggesting I had done dug good.

We lived to rock another day!

There are large swaths of the human population that have failed to develop any other measurement, so it seems. A candidate may have a brilliant exegesis on limited government, the ballooning bureaucracy, and how to fix social security. But, if they are short, fat, and look like humpty dumpty about to fall off a wall, it doesn’t matter what they say or how incredible their merit is.

Just take a quick gander at the US Presidential candidates for the last 40 some years.

WINNERS LOSERS

Reagan Carter

Reagan Mondale

Bush Dukakis

Clinton Bush

Clinton Dole

Bush Gore

Bush Kerry

Obama McCain

Obama Romney

Trump Clinton

Biden Trump

Trump Harris

There are some close ones! That is to say, some where the candidates both look good, like Obama and Romney. And, there are some close elections, like Bush vs Gore, that betray the sexy meter. GWB is way sexier than Al Gore.

Donald is a tough one. His physical appearance had been etched into the American psychosis decades earlier. His looks can leave something to be desired, but he is hilarious and knows how to make good tv. Hence his mug shot, which looks very similar to his presidential portrait - Mr. Tough Guy. He has crafted a persona over many years and dialed it up to 11. It didn’t hurt that right after being shot, he stood up, blood everywhere, raised his fist in the air and yelled “Fight!” That cemented the sexiness for sure. There’s a reason Donald spray tans (or whatever he does) and uses teeth whiteners. He lives by this simple metric.

Kamala looks good, but, again, you have to take in the full bag. The moment she talked, anyone with a brain knew it was over. Kamala is so uniquely dumb that the aforementioned large range of people who only judge by “sexiness,” became royally confused. Is she hot? Cackle cackle cackle… Uh… Nope.

Anybody with eyes can see what I’m talking about. AOC is the best looking and sounding BIPOC New Yorker out there. Her counterpart, Illhan Omar is the Somali man’s late night fantasy - which goes a long way in acquiring votes in Minnesota.

There are of course some exceptions. Ted Cruz beating Beto stands as a stark example of the people of Texas using their brains for more in depth analysis. But, for a decent-minded person, it is horrifying how often those winning elections are determined by this simple metric. Consider the election for Mayor in NYC under this microscope. Did you see what Mamdani was going against?

I actually have some hope for the Republican party.

You see, when I was a kid, in the 80s and certainly the 90s, the Democrat party was sexy. It was the blue collar job, eat right, go out in nature, artistic cool party. And, believe it or not, most of the candidates were sexier. The pinnacle, of course, was Barack Obama. But, something has happened since. The party went so far granola, the women forgot how to shave their armpits and put on makeup. They went so far left, embracing LGBTQ+4i*√, that men wear eyeliner and squeak like pubescent girls, and college chicks cut off their boobs. Talk about “girls gone wild!”

I noticed this while watching college football on tv. You should try it. Watch a Texas game, or any game in the south. Then go watch a west coast game, specifically Cal Berkley. When the camera pans the student section, quickly ask yourself: You have to procreate with someone from either student section. Which will it be?

It ain’t California. Brian Wilson is rolling in his grave. We don’t all wish they were Californian girls anymore. They look like Sasquatch’s offspring: denim over-alled hairy woodstock hippies with a touch of purple hair. And good lord, the assumption goes - if they can’t put in the effort, like those Texan blondes do, to even look remotely nice, what baggage comes with that?

This shift has been on full display the last few years. Some of it, like the “Hawk Tua” girl and the implications of it I find grotesque. Or Florida rep Anna Paulina Luna showing off her butt in a Maga swimsuit… again, not quite my father’s republican party. If the right has become the sexy party it shouldn’t be surprising that it comes with a bunch of sexual proclivities.

Take Sydney Sweeney as an example. She did her “Good Genes” commercial. She knew it would be discovered she was registered as a Republican. This is not genius. This is not “skating to where the puck is going.” Sydney used her brain for half a moment, instead of her agent’s, and saw the writing on the wall, just like I did watching a Cal Berkley game. The rationale is something like this: “The left is downright ugly. I’m not ugly. I’m not left.”

But, this beautiful actress has done gratuitous sex scenes in front of the camera. Old school conservatives would have stood up and condemned her content just a generation ago, shunning any patronage she’d offered. But not today. She was welcomed with warm arms. Other actresses (ahem, Jennifer Lawrence) quickly took notice and started saying stuff like, “I’m not getting involved in politics anymore,” during her interviews.

You know why? Because the side you’re on is ugly. I don’t mean morally bankrupt. That’s always been true. If you value fidelity, you wouldn’t want your daughter marrying Bill Clinton or John F. Kennedy. I mean, “ugly” as in, it’s a pain to look at. Ugly loses. And nobody likes losing.

I’ve lived on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon my whole life. It’s been a good decade since I’ve seen a pretty girl in that town.

I don’t know how the left is going to correct that ship.

But, right now, all the strong sexy men and curvy dolled-up ladies are on the right, and I’m pretty fine with that - especially when you consider who wins elections.

Then we noticed that the chips were cheaper in our local large grocery as well. So we looked it up and found out that there has been a recent policy shift, cutting junk food from EBT and SNAP (aka food welfare) programs. Thank RFK apparently.

The Pepsi Co. lobby, according to this article, spent $2.8 million last year to keep their stuff on food stamps. As soon as their products were taken off, they slashed prices.

I’m hoping, dear reader, that what quickly dawned on me is also suddenly illuminating upon you. Just to be sure, let’s draw it out - to get on the same page so to speak.

Even though around 40% of Americans pay no federal income tax, we are all taxed in all sorts of ways. In Oregon, where I live, for example, we pay 61 cents per gallon of gas in tax. Some of those taxes are then used to subsidize people who “can’t afford” food. The companies that get their food approved on this program then jack the prices.

So in the name of welfare, we are all lining the pockets of Pepsi Co. It couldn’t be any more obvious than finding cheaper Doritos the moment the subsidy was slashed.

Now, our first thought is perhaps to be encouraged - we should go look at every other subsidy or misuse of funds and keep the momentum going. Look, I’m happy to have Doritos and candy off of EBT. The fact that it was there in the first place - that government hacks most likely received benefits from the Pepsi lobby to put their products on the program - is ridiculous. The tax payer, we, are lining the pockets of Pepsi who in turn hands a bone to the politicians who in turn tax us more.

But, you and I need to realize this is just a drop in the bucket. The government fraud is widespread. The notion that we’re going to go through each and every corner and trim it up is crazy. The entire yard is overgrown with weeds. It is way beyond pulling up each individual weed, replanting grass, and then fertilizing.

We need to Round Up the whole landscape. Burn it down. The following meme is funny because we all know it is true:

How do you burn it down?

Well, you kill the monster that created this mess: Specifically, the government’s ability to create money out of nothing.

Imagine for a moment that you have a machine that can manufacture money out of cheap paper or even cheaper computer bits. But, you know you shouldn’t just go willy nilly because it makes everything more expensive (inflation: the most pernicious and evil tax - more on this later). Now imagine your spouse or best friend gets cancer and they need $1m for treatment.

You would most certainly print that $1m. And, you’d notice the damage had been only minimal. Prices didn’t rise that much. So then, your best friend or spouse comes to you a year later and says their friend has cancer….

And on and on it goes, little by little.

The government has that magic money printer. The Federal Reserve creates money with keystrokes of a computer - literally out of thin air - and then gives it to the US Government who then funds every crazy adventure anyone wants.

Vacant, unused US Government buildings across the world? Sure! Why not?

Fund abortions in third world countries? OF COURSE.

Fund queer dance studies abroad?

Pay dead people’s social security, raise working railroad tracks an inch for millions of dollars, billions spent on environmental studies, gladly pay social security disability to any one who feigns to have some mental glitch - on and on and on and on. Too many to even keep track of.

This didn’t happen overnight. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913. And, just like my aforementioned example, it started slow. But by now?! 100+ years later?

America spent over $20,000,000,000,000 (That is TRILLION) for the Global War On Terror. And the number keeps rising. It takes money to pay healthcare workers for the care of wounded soldiers who bravely served. Do you know what we have to show for it?

This is harsh, but, there is an argument to be made that we spent that money and have nothing but resentment to show for it.

This amount of money is spent on worthless things like a global war on terror only because the US Government prints money out of thin air. You take that ability away and you kill the monster.

The founding fathers knew this. At the start of our country, it was different. Our dollar, for one, was issued by the Treasury, not the government Federal Reserve, which is a central private bank. For two, (and) most importantly, the dollar was backed by gold. That means for every dollar the US Treasury issued, the US Government had to have gold in reserves representing that dollar.

Do you know what the inflation rate was from 1800 to 1900? - when the US Government was forced to back every dollar with gold in reserve ?

-0.2%.

Let that sink in.

That means if you had a dollar in 1800 and chose to wait 100 years to buy your Rib Eye, the Rib Eye would be CHEAPER.

Folks, Rib Eye has risen by 70% in just the last 5 years!

Fix the money, you fix the fire that is starting all the other fires. It is a waste of time to run around and put out all the little fires, such as Doritos on EBT or Somali Day Cares. As long as the government has a money printer, they will keep using it and the fires will spread.

Everyone pays inflation - the all encompassing tax. And if you measure it in things you really like, say a Rib Eye steak, it’s an annualized 19% over the last 5 years. You and I, if we eat Rib Eyes, are paying 19% tax on that Rib Eye every year. Why? Because the government prints money out of thin air.

And if Rib Eyes aren’t printed at the same rate as the dollar, that means there are more dollars chasing less Rib Eyes - which means Rib Eyes now take MORE DOLLARS TO BUY.

This evil function of our government distorts prices, markets, costs of manufacturing - more aspects of our lives than we can realize. Example: there are studies that show since the US left the gold standard, we have got fatter and sicker because of food subsidies for - ahem - junk food. That is just one area of distortion.

We would do well in using our energy to abolish the government’s money printer and regain some actual clarity.

Then I would go and try AI, and it worked and didn’t work. Another year would go by, and I would try it again, and indeed, it was better. In image creation, it was particularly easy to see the improvements. At first, AI image creation could not do hands very well at all. Now it does them fine. Now it is doing pretty amazing videos!

You can witness this yourself with different sectors of society being duped by AI videos. In my experience, the boomers were duped first. My dad would tell me some outlandish thing he saw or heard and I just knew immediately it was fake, created by AI. Then, just last night, my wife (of all people!) sends me a video of a grandma walking an alligator with a leash. I immediately knew it was fake AI, but she did not. I realized it won’t be long, and I’m next.

This week, an article written by Matt Shumer went viral: “Something Big Is Happening”—a fresh new warning that everything is about to change. Matt, for his part, works in software engineering, so he has some credentials and personal experience to talk about it I guess.

And adding in my own experience to the mix, I would say, unlike the global warming heralds, the heralds warning us about AI are probably right. Mostly. I can at least see the change with my own eyes. AI is disruptive. Most (all?) technology is.

Time will tell with how disruptive AI is.

But where I still have a hard time with some of the warnings is when they start proclaiming that “work is dead”—that in the future, no one will have to work, we’ll have universal basic income.

I wonder, when these promises are made, if the person making them looks around at the US and realizes that no one really has to work right now either, if they really don’t want to. I know multiple people who have gone diagnosis shopping and now have Social Security disability income. There is free housing all over Portland, OR, the town I’m near. There is free transit. And there is a ton of free food.

None of it is quality—or something a modern human being desires. I’m sure Andrew Jackson’s army in 1812 would have loved to have some of the free food from our food bank(s) or shelter at the “free” lodgings of today. But, alas, that was then. This is now.

So, granted, there are caveats. It’s hard to raise a family and have a nice house and not work. But that’s not what the heralds mean when they say “no one will have to work.” They don’t mean you can live in Mar-a-Lago for free, do they? They don’t mean we’ll all get our own beach house, do they.

AI seems to me to be another link in the long historical chain of human progression. In that respect, it is nothing new. Other links, like the printing press, the assembly line, harnessing electricity, were all massively disruptive. But every link has abstractly done the same thing: given us more time to do other things. That is what human progress (also known as “technology”) does. We used to wash our own clothes. Then we made the washing machine. We used to ride horses. Now we drive cars. Soon we won’t even do that. Each chain link has enabled humans to do other things with their time.

Work and progress have always been readily available for the human being. I believe they always will be. There are massive problems still to solve. Will AI give us more time to work on such things? Well, if it doesn’t, then it has failed as a technology. But, whenever some AI doomsayer or utopia proclaimer says something like, “None of us will have to work!” - a good question to ask yourself is, “Do you mean to say there will be no problems to solve?”

And as far as it solving the equity of income problem… ha, good luck!

Jesus said, in Matthew 26:11,

“The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”

Jesus wasn’t necessarily making an observation about humanity’s economic plight in this statement, but nonetheless, it was made: there will always be poor people.

That’s because “poor” is a relative term. You barely have to read some history to realize every single person in America is vastly more “wealthy” than everyone was two hundred years ago. The discrepancy is massive. And yet, we still have “poor people.” That’s because, again, “poor” is relative to those who have more. And as long as some humans choose to work, create, and steward their time and talents to solve problems and some humans choose not to, there will be discrepancy in who lives at the beach and who doesn’t. As long as there are freak accidents and random acts of nature, there will be discrepancy. As long as some people are born with innate gifts, beauty, or a whole host of other variables that enable wealth accumulation and others are not, there will be discrepancy. There will always be the haves and have nots, the rich and poor - the richer and the poorer.

AI will only give those who wield it more ability to get things done. I’m confident there will be problems to solve in the future—things that aren’t “fun” to do, but things that progress humanity’s situation. But whether AI is as disruptive (or as useful) as the cotton gin remains to be seen.