What You’ve Been Searching For What Mark Driscoll Taught Us We have a new studio here at Christian Podcast Central. Why? Because we’re growing, and they said it couldn’t happen. They said we weren’t big enough, we couldn’t be an influential podcast network. We were the underdog or maybe we would say an American underdog podcast network. Maybe they should make a movie about that. Oh wait. That title’s already taken. I saw the movie. I’ve got a review for you. I’m Joel Fieri. Stay tuned. So Danny, I’m thinking Bruce Willis can play me… Oh, are we back? Oh, okay. Sorry about that. Yeah. I saw the movie American Underdog, and if you don’t know what this movie is, it’s the Kurt Warner’s story. If you don’t know who Kurt Warner is, you’ve probably been under a rock for the last 20 years or so. He’s an NFL quarterback who had a inspirational story of stocking supermarket shelves, struggling to become an NFL quarterback, which was his dream. It’s the story of his wife and how they met and how he worked hard. And somebody gave him a chance and he finally became a hall of fame quarterback. My wife and I saw the movie recently. It’s a movie by the Erwin brothers, which is a couple of Christian brothers who are directors. They’ve done I Can Only Imagine, is one movie that I saw that they did, and they did another one. I’m not quite sure what that was. They’re a little more high quality filmmakers, especially for Christian movie making. And if you’ve paid attention to my podcast at all, you know that’s one of my subjects I like to talk about is the quality of Christian media because let’s face it, I’m in Christian media. I have experience. I was co-producer on a major documentary a few years back. So this is kind of the stream I swim in. So they have a reputation for being a little bit higher quality as far as Christian filmmakers. And in this movie, they do pull that off. It’s a pretty well-shot movie. It’s pretty well-written. Again, like I said, it’s the story of Kurt Warner, takes him from his childhood where he’s dreaming of becoming an NFL quarterback through college, where he’s at a small college in Iowa. Nobody’s really looking at him. He’s kind of cocky. He doesn’t really… They play up the angle that he doesn’t know how to stay in the pocket and be a team player and follow his coaches. And eventually, nobody gives him his chance. And for five years or so, he kind of wallows. At one point, he has a chance and blows it. And then he goes stocking supermarket shelves to keep his family, or actually at the time, I think it was his girlfriend and her children, afloat. A sub-plot or a sub-story is how him and his wife met, his wife, Brenda, and him met and how their story of how she helped him reach his dream. Now they’re advertising it or it’s seen as a Christian movie. The one criticism I have of that is I didn’t get that from the movie really. I mean, it’s mentioned a couple times. For most of the movie though, it’s really… You don’t get the sense of Christianity as much part of their story at all. They meet in a bar and they eventually are living together. The movie doesn’t state it explicitly, but it is implicit that they’re living together. I think at one point, Brenda, played by I think Anna Paquin is her name, she mentions in passing that her religion is more of a relationship, which is kind of weakly says it. And then later on asked Kurt if he’d like to live together. So it didn’t really come across as a Christian message for most of the movie. And for most of the movie, Kurt doesn’t really mention his faith at all. It’s more a movie about him pursuing his dream to be an NFL quarterback and how no one will...

What You’ve Been Searching For A Review of American Underdog We have a new studio here at Christian Podcast Central. Why? Because we’re growing, and they said it couldn’t happen. They said we weren’t big enough, we couldn’t be an influential podcast network. We were the underdog or maybe we would say an American underdog podcast network. Maybe they should make a movie about that. Oh wait. That title’s already taken. I saw the movie. I’ve got a review for you. I’m Joel Fieri. Stay tuned. So Danny, I’m thinking Bruce Willis can play me… Oh, are we back? Oh, okay. Sorry about that. Yeah. I saw the movie American Underdog, and if you don’t know what this movie is, it’s the Kurt Warner’s story. If you don’t know who Kurt Warner is, you’ve probably been under a rock for the last 20 years or so. He’s an NFL quarterback who had a inspirational story of stocking supermarket shelves, struggling to become an NFL quarterback, which was his dream. It’s the story of his wife and how they met and how he worked hard. And somebody gave him a chance and he finally became a hall of fame quarterback. My wife and I saw the movie recently. It’s a movie by the Erwin brothers, which is a couple of Christian brothers who are directors. They’ve done I Can Only Imagine, is one movie that I saw that they did, and they did another one. I’m not quite sure what that was. They’re a little more high quality filmmakers, especially for Christian movie making. And if you’ve paid attention to my podcast at all, you know that’s one of my subjects I like to talk about is the quality of Christian media because let’s face it, I’m in Christian media. I have experience. I was co-producer on a major documentary a few years back. So this is kind of the stream I swim in. So they have a reputation for being a little bit higher quality as far as Christian filmmakers. And in this movie, they do pull that off. It’s a pretty well-shot movie. It’s pretty well-written. Again, like I said, it’s the story of Kurt Warner, takes him from his childhood where he’s dreaming of becoming an NFL quarterback through college, where he’s at a small college in Iowa. Nobody’s really looking at him. He’s kind of cocky. He doesn’t really… They play up the angle that he doesn’t know how to stay in the pocket and be a team player and follow his coaches. And eventually, nobody gives him his chance. And for five years or so, he kind of wallows. At one point, he has a chance and blows it. And then he goes stocking supermarket shelves to keep his family, or actually at the time, I think it was his girlfriend and her children, afloat. A sub-plot or a sub-story is how him and his wife met, his wife, Brenda, and him met and how their story of how she helped him reach his dream. Now they’re advertising it or it’s seen as a Christian movie. The one criticism I have of that is I didn’t get that from the movie really. I mean, it’s mentioned a couple times. For most of the movie though, it’s really… You don’t get the sense of Christianity as much part of their story at all. They meet in a bar and they eventually are living together. The movie doesn’t state it explicitly, but it is implicit that they’re living together. I think at one point, Brenda, played by I think Anna Paquin is her name, she mentions in passing that her religion is more of a relationship, which is kind of weakly says it. And then later on asked Kurt if he’d like to live together. So it didn’t really come across as a Christian message for most of the movie. And for most of the movie, Kurt doesn’t really mention his faith at all. It’s more a movie about him pursuing his dream to be an NFL quarterback and how no one wil...

What You’ve Been Searching For The Rise And Fall Of Mark Driscoll They’re still talking about Mark Driscoll and the fall of Mars Hill Church. This is what you’ve been searching for. It’s being talked about and searched for on the internet. I guess we’re talking about Mark Driscoll again. I’m Joel Fieri. Stay tuned. Previously, I did a podcast commenting on the first couple of episodes of the Christianity Today podcast called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Church, talking about Mark Driscoll and his church in Seattle. Again, how it rose and how it fell rather drastically and disastrously, in their view. I wanted to pick up because I’ve taken in a few more of the podcasts. I haven’t gotten through all of them yet, but I’m a busy guy trying, but through the internet you can do it on demand whenever you want, which is a great thing. It’s what we do here at Christian Podcast Central. I’m going to give you my thoughts on it, as I’ve listened to it so far. In listening to some of the episodes that have gone on, early on they mentioned boomers. How a lot of what happened at Mars Hill and was happening at church at that time is in reaction to how boomers did church. Now I’m a boomer myself. I’m a late boomer. If you don’t know what boomers are, it’s baby boomers. Those of us born from, right after the World War II, from 1946 through about mid-’60s. I was born in 1960s. I say I’m a late boomer. I’m right on the cusp between boomer and Gen X, I think. If you’re into those kind of labels, I would call myself a boomer. I do know what they’re talking about when they talk about how boomers did church, and how we changed the way America did church. I can see where they’re going with it, because what we did as boomers. We were born, like I said, to World War II parents at a time when, after World War II, our parents had just saved the world. There was this really, a sense that God had used the Western democracies for sure, and America in particular, to save the world from a couple of monstrous evils called Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Fascism. Some really horrible things happened in that war. We stopped some horrible things from happening, and really saved the world and entered an era of prosperity that, frankly, those people deserve because they did a really incredible thing. Churches, especially the mainline denomination churches, traditional churches were very popular and had a lot of World War II people going to them and raising their families in them. A lot of us were raised in traditional churches. It’s funny, the thing about boomers is, we came along at a time when that victory kicked off a huge wave of prosperity. The world really changed for us, for a lot of different reasons because of that prosperity, because of the technology that was emerging. Cars, television, modern appliances in the home. Something else that emerged was pop culture. Those things, television especially, and radio brought pop culture into our lives. Young people had never had that before. We as boomers, we had a lot of entertainment at our disposal. Because of all these modern conveniences that they talked about then, that was such a miracle to my parents and their generation, to us they were just something that was always around. We never had to worry about a lot of the things that our parents had to worry about just to survive. Survival was pretty much guaranteed to us. We weren’t Depression people. We weren’t living in an era when things were rough. We had a lot of security that previous generations didn’t have. We were young, which meant we were immature, but we were able to continue with our immaturity without any consequences because we had all of these basics of life covered and taken care of.

What You’ve Been Searching For The Chosen Christmas Special Well, I’d like to tell you that I caught the episode of The Chosen Christmas: The New Messengers, the other night, but that’s only partly true because I fell asleep. All the wonders of being old, but through the magic of the internet, I caught it, picked it up where I left off the next day. And I have a reaction and a review for you because this is what you’ve been searching for, and The Chosen is being searched for an awful lot. I’m Joel Fieri. Stay tuned. So as I said, I caught the episode of The Chosen Christmas Special called The New Messengers. And I have a review for it, going to put on my critics hat one more time, and I want to break it down because the way they presented it, if you haven’t seen it already, the way they presented The Chosen is they did it in three parts, three basic parts. One was a lot of musical presentations by a lot of Christian artists. The second was dramatic readings and presentations by members of the cast of the show The Chosen and some interviews with the musicians, which I want to touch on. I want to differentiate between the music and the musicians. And then finally, the story actual the dramatization of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem and another side story. I want to start with the music. There was an awful lot of music. That’s one of the reasons I think one of our family didn’t make it to the dramatic presentation. There was just a little bit too much music, but it was pretty darn good. The music video presentations were excellent. I think this is what The Chosen is known for. It’s the most, besides the story itself, is their fundraising. They have a budget for this show and it shows. The music, the videography and the directing of these music videos and then the music presentation was excellent. And for someone who talks a lot, who’s in Christian media and talks a lot about the quality of Christian media, The Chosen is getting it done. You can tell they got a good crew, good writing, good directing and it shows. Dallas Jenkins has done a fantastic job with this. The songs themselves were very good. Because I’m an old guy, maybe a little bit old school, I love the hymns that they did and the Christmas carols that these contemporary artists were doing, especially How Great Thy Art by a group called The Bonner Family, which is a gospel group, the most beautiful hymn in the world sung just in an out of this world manner. It just blessed me to no end. Matt Maher did Hark the Herald Angel Sing in a really folksy kind of high energy fun way that really engaged me. So for the most part, I really liked the music itself. I guess the only criticism I have, and this is probably just a prejudice or preference on my part, I mentioned the gospel groups. There was a children’s choir that did a really interesting presentation. And then, there were the contemporary Christian, I would say the pop kind of genre of contemporary Christian music, Phil Wickham was probably the one I was most familiar with and a guy named Brandon Lake and a couple others. They were very good. Don’t get me wrong. They’re very good artists. But the criticism I have or the problem I have with this kind of music, and it’s maybe just a shell thing, but they all sound the same. They all have the same kind of, the men anyways, the male vocalists in this pop genre of Christian music, they all have kind of the high tenorish breathless kind of raspy voice that I’m sure it’s been focus group and it sells a lot. Especially to the female audience or whatever who buys most of it, but I just wish that they had a little bit more variety in their voices and their presentations. It all seems to be trying to go for that same kind of dramatic thing where the gospel groups and especially Matt Maher just gave energy,

What You’ve Been Searching For Witchcraft, Violence, Yoga and Climate Change All right. As I’ve been saying, we have a new round of research here at Christian Podcast Central. We have some new questions that you, the listeners, have asked us about, and I just want to go through, like I’ve done before once or twice. These are questions that I really didn’t think I could get a full podcast out of, quite honestly, but I do have some thoughts on them and you have asked them. I want to do my best to give you some probably incomplete answers that I could probably do a lot better job at, but this is what I’ve got for you this week. I think it’s important to do this. I think it’s important to try and cover all the points that you guys have been asking about. So, no further ado, I have the questions. The first question that comes to us, I’ll start with an easy one and ease my way into it. First one is, is practicing witchcraft a sin? Yes. End of answer. There are about 18 or 20 different verses in the Bible that talk about things like witchcraft or divination or sorcery. The Bible makes it very, very clear that this is an affront to God and something that is definitely a sin and contrary to the will of God. Because it basically makes an idol or a God out of darkness, the Prince of Darkness, Satan himself, or just yourself and your own need. Most of witchcraft and these kinds of things are done by people just looking to be rebellious or somehow experience something, I don’t know, just to satisfy themselves. So, the answer to that question is yes. If you’re wondering about witchcraft, it definitely is a sin, something that’s an affront to God. Here’s an interesting one. Why is Christianity not inherently a violent religion? That’s an interesting question, because a lot of people could probably make the case that it is a violent religion. Many, many wars throughout history have been fought by Christians. It’s interesting. I could answer this question both ways. You can put a mirror up to this question and make an argument that it is a violent religion. But, as Jesus was a nonviolent person, for the most part, He only got violent when there was something He felt needed His righteous anger to cure. The most obvious one was the money changers in the temple. Jesus got very violent then. There are times when He tells His disciples to take a sword with them. He used lots of military analogies when He told parables. Christianity is not necessarily anti-violence, but as opposed to religions, say, like Islam, as some people call a muscular religion or a strong, iron-type religion, where conquest is the goal, that’s not Christianity. The goal of Christianity is to change people from within and make them new creatures. Well, if you’re going to go and kill someone, there’s not much chance of making them a new creature. The idea is to redeem. That’s what Jesus came to do. He took the violence that was coming to us, and He paid the price, and that’s what we’re supposed to project. Again, that doesn’t mean I’m a pacifist. I’m not. There are just wars. There is a time for Christians to take up arms and fight to right injustice, to save the world. Like my dad helped in World War II. But the reason it’s not inherently violent is because Jesus’ message was not inherently violent. The idea is changing from within not without. Can you lose your salvation? I haven’t really come to an answer on this one. I’ve heard it explained several different times. I tend to think, and the arguments that I’ve been told that are most convincing, is that if you are a position where you completely reject Christianity, you probably never were a Christian to begin with. That’s probably the most persuasive argument that I’ve heard. But, on the other hand,

What You’ve Been Searching For What Do Christians Get Wrong About Racial Reconciliation? New studio, new topics. As I talked about last week, we have some new research in our new studio that we’re transitioning to this week. We have another biggie that’s probably going to anger some people, offend some people, but it has to do with what you’ve been searching for. So hopefully you’ll watch comment, subscribe, all those things you’re supposed to do. I’m Joel Fieri. This is what you’ve been searching for. Stay tuned. All right. As I mentioned in our opener, we have another big question from our new research that we’ve done here at Christian Podcast Central on what you, the Christian podcast listener, have been searching for, questions and topics. If you caught last week’s or our last podcast, we talked about the Christian position towards people who are pressuring us to accept them, whether it be gay people, other religions, atheists even, and what our response to them should be. Today, I want to talk about another big question that comes to us through our research. And that is, what do we get wrong about racial reconciliation? Like I said, we’re talking about the big issues that are facing the church today. And this is definitely one of them, if not the biggest, it’s one of the biggest. So I’m going to take the question the way it is first. What do we get wrong about racial reconciliation? Okay. We, again, I like to define the terms here. It just comes to us as that question. Now if we want to define what we as Christians or we as a society, the thing that I think we get wrong about racial reconciliation is we forget what we got right about racial reconciliation. Now, what do I mean by that? I’m a baby boomer. I was born in 1960. So if you do the math, I’m 61 years old. My entire life has been lived in this cultural moment of heightened racial awareness. My early years, my childhood, high school, into college and into adult, I lived out, came of age during the time of the civil rights movement. From as long as I can remember, racial issues, civil rights, all these things were very much a part of popular culture, politics, and my upbringing, my education. Back then, it was for things like voting rights and the right to sit at a soda counter, the right to get on a bus and not move to the back, all those things. So my earliest memories are of these issues coming up and our culture deciding how we’re going to stand on this. We always did have a certain stance on it and things were changing. The people leading this change, the people advocating for civil rights were led by people like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. And notice I said, “Reverend.” That’s how he was known his whole life. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. And tellingly, we’ve kind of taken the Reverend off, but his whole motivation for his work in civil rights was his identity as a pastor and as a Christian. He saw it as his duty. Christians have always been the ones that have led the fight for racial justice, if you want to call it that. From the very beginning of our country, a lot of people say America was founded as a racist country. Actually, you could argue that it wasn’t. From the very founding of our country from the time of the Constitution, almost half the states outlawed slavery. The Founding Fathers really dealt with this idea. They’re the ones that came up with the idea that all men are created equal. They’re the ones that really put that into practice. Well, right away, they had a very big issue, a very big contradiction with slavery, and they knew it. So they were trying to figure out how do we, as this nation that’s founded under God, one nation under God, how do we deal with this obvious contradiction? And it led to things like the very,

What You’ve Been Searching For Can you be a Christian & hate Gay people, other religions and atheists? As you can see, we have a new setup here at Christian Podcast Central. We’re remodeling, we’re growing, and with that, we have some new topics that we’ve researched of what you, the Christian podcast listener are searching for. Might as well start off with the big ones and see who we can make mad and offend out there. You interested? Stay tuned. As I mentioned in the opening, we have some big questions we’re going to be tackling here on What You’ve Been Searching For. We’ve done some more research, like we always do, on what the top questions and topics that Christian podcast listeners want to hear and I’ve come up with the results. And like I said, I’m going to start off with a couple big ones here. For today’s, I’m going to tackle this question that comes to us through Reddit, “Can you be a Christian and hate gays, different religions, or atheists?” Like I said, might as well start off with a big one, one of the big ones that’s facing the church these days. And this question, to me, obviously, has more to do with our stance toward gays than the other two aspects of it, different religions or atheists. But, actually, my answer could apply to all of them actually, can you be a Christian and hate anybody who doesn’t agree with you, your stance, your standards, what you believe as a Christian? But the key phrase in this question is not gays, different religions, atheists, or any other group you can put on it in this question. The key phrase in this question is the word hate. As Christians, this is something I always say in a lot of my different podcasts I’ve done over the years or in talking to people. Christians get accused of a lot of things. We have a lot of mud thrown at us from culture and one of the things that’s often said is that we’re hateful. And this particularly, a typical response with a lot of people when you ask their opinion of Evangelicals or Christians in general, they say, “Oh well, they hate gays.” It usually goes right to the gay question and it’s usually that we hate them. And I always say, Christians don’t need to believe their own bad press. Just because the world says we’re hateful that doesn’t necessarily mean we are. Now, if we are hateful, I’ll just take the question first of all at face value, can you be a Christian and hate gays, different religions, or atheists? You can, but you have to confess that, bring it under the Lordship of Christ, confess your hatred. And again, a lot depends on how you define hatred, but if you wish ill will on people just because they’re different, and it doesn’t matter, like I said, if they’re gay, a different religion, atheist, whatever other group you want to put in there, we can hate, but we’re not supposed to so we confess that. We do a little spiritual breathing. We breathe out and we confess and we inhale forgiveness through the Holy Spirit. God gives us the power to change. That’s the whole idea of being a Christian. So, really, the answer to the question is, no, you can’t hate. You’re not supposed to hate, but if you do, you’re supposed to rectify that. Really the question is, can you be a Christian and affirm gays, other religions, and atheists, because that’s really what this question is asking, because that’s really what’s thrown at us through our culture. When we are approached by any group that disagrees with us, what they’re really saying is, “How dare you say we’re not right. How dare you say we’re not okay. How dare you say God will judge us if we’re X, Y, or Z.” That’s what I think is really being asked here. So can you be a Christian and affirm gays and tell ga...

What You’ve Been Searching For Is Online Church Similar To Pornography? Could it possibly be that online worship is just as bad as porn? Somebody thinks so. I’m Joel Fieri, This is What You’ve Been Searching For. Let’s talk about this. Stay tuned. All right. As I said in the beginning, this is a tough subject or could possibly be. I came across an article by Michael Foster on a site called, It’s Good to be a Man. He states that, “Pornography is to sex as Zoom is to worship.” And as you know, I’ve been talking in recent weeks to younger people out there because our demographics information has told us that we have a lot of young people searching and listening to our podcasts. And if there’s a problem that’s prevalent with young people today, especially young men, it’s pornography. And if there’s a trend that’s popular with young Christians, it’s online/digital/virtual worship and fellowship. So Michael Foster put these two together and it’s a provocative title linking pornography with online worship or Zoom worship, I guess he calls it. But some of the points he makes aren’t too far fetched. I think the analogy is a little far-fetched, but some of the points he makes really aren’t, and as he points out, many times in the Bible, God does draw a close analogy between whoredom and idolatry. So let’s take a look at some of the points he makes and I’ll let you decide for yourself. Pornography, first off, it does a lot of things. It deprives, especially a man, it’s mostly a man looking at erotic images and videos, things like that, of women. So many things that pornography robs a man of in terms of a relationship with a woman. Pornography is just a temporary instant gratification where the women depicted are selected for their, obviously for their attractiveness, they are perfect; it gives them a view of a perfect body and gives them a fantasy of having the perfect woman who will react just in the perfect way he wants her to. And once it’s over, it’s over. There’s none of the struggling to build a relationship. There’s not the awkward meeting. The asking out. All the things that go with a romantic relationship that put sex in a context are missing with pornography. There’s none of the struggle of an actual physical relationship between a man and a woman. It’s not an idealized thing where she reacts perfectly and it’s perfectly satisfying and then you go your own ways. Now, it only happens on porn and in movies, okay? In real life, these things can get complicated, but they’re also very rewarding. The woman is, in real life if you have this kind of relationship and you have this physical relationship with the woman, the woman is there the next morning next to you. And you’re an extrovert. Not only do you want her next to you, she wants you next to her. It’s kind of an all-encompassing relationship that is built and worked through and has its reward in real life where pornography does not. It robs men of all the depth and reality of a relationship with a woman. Much the same way in a completely different context, that online church can do that with a Christian. When you forsake actually going to a church and meeting in person, instead doing it online virtually from your couch or from your phone, wherever you are, you’re not having to get up and get dressed and make it there on time. Find that parking space, get to the building, say “hi” to people, put on at least a pleasant face. If you don’t want to see these people, maybe they don’t want to see you, but they’re putting on a pleasant face, too, and you actually go into a physical space, sit down to someone you may or may not want to sit next to, hear them sing. Maybe they sing well, maybe they don’t.

What You’ve Been Searching For A Message From A Cold Warrior in Hot Water So what’s my message today to you young people, who’ve been doing the searching here on What You’ve Been Searching For was basically this. Whatever the world, or even our leaders say, we aren’t the bad guys. We don’t suck. What do I mean? Stay tuned. As I said in our last podcast, we’re focusing now not on what you’ve been searching for, but who’s doing the searching. Our research has told us that we have a lot of younger people, people younger than me, at least, which is probably most, a large portion of our audience. Most people are younger than me. What is our message today? If you caught last time, you know that I related my experience as a young person with communism, going behind the Iron Curtain to smuggle Bibles and being caught by the communists. And the lesson I learned, that the war was pretty much already over, God was not concerned, or was not… Communism was not something that was too big for God. I learned that lesson, but I also learned the lesson recently that people told me even 40 years ago. That they had been praying, those communist Christians who were living under oppression, were praying for us in the West, that we would experience persecution so we would know what it means to be a true Christian, and suffer for Christ. And how through all those decades, those prayers may be coming true. And for you young people out there, it probably will be a part of your reality growing up, that you will experience persecution and resistance for being a Christian. Well, today… that was in a societal, a general political, societal context. Today I want to get a little more specific and talk about what it may be like within Christianity itself. Between, for you young people, as you’re moving along in your Christian faith, what is the dynamic going to be between you and other Christians? And thinking about this, I thought about this because I came across an article online in the American Reformer by a guy named John Ehrett and it’s called The Embarrassment Reflex: Evangelicals in Culture. Now this is written kind of in a higher theological style. It’s a very intellectual style. It doesn’t really lend itself to the type of podcast I like to do, but he makes some very good points and his points dovetail with what I’ve always said in my podcast, or in my teachings online. One of the things I’ve always said is that evangelicals or Christians, we’re going to get a lot of bad press from the world. Our message is offensive to the world. The Bible tells us the gospel is offensive to the world and people aren’t going to like it and they’re going to accuse us of a lot of different things. That doesn’t mean it’s true. And it doesn’t mean we have to accept it, and it doesn’t have to mean we have to believe our own bad press. We should always have an answer, but we don’t have to actually believe it. Well, the author of this article makes this point, but he kind of takes a aspect of it that I hadn’t really considered before. And it dovetails also into our current political and cultural state in this way.   The cultural conflict we’re having right now in this country can basically, one of the ways it can be broken down is, the difference of worldview between people who think that we should be ruled by an elite class, that it should be a top down, authoritarian society, versus the traditional American idea of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

What You’ve Been Searching For A Message From A Cold Warrior in Hot Water The name of the show is What You’ve Been Searching For, but sometimes it’s not what you’ve been searching for, but who’s doing the searching. Before we get started, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. I’m Joel Fieri, stay tuned. As I always tell you on this show, we do a lot of research here at Christian Podcast Central on what you’ve been searching for, what topics, what questions do you want discussed, but we also came across some information on who is watching. It turns out we have that coveted demographic, that 25 to 50-year-old audience that so many want to speak to. Well, since we have that audience, I consider that an opportunity, what would I have to say to people who are younger than me, who haven’t had my life experiences? Today I want to do something a little different. I want to play a clip that I did years ago, a little short video talking about the story of a young man who had a life-changing experience when he tried to smuggle Bibles and literature into Eastern Europe. I want to play it for you now and afterwards, I’ll tell you what my message is for you. Take a look. I’m Joel Fieri, and welcome to a special video edition of the Big Picture Podcast. On today’s show, I want to tell you a story that hopefully you’ll find interesting. It’s the story of a young Christian man, who, way back in 1982, decided to go on an overseas summer missions project with his church. He had two choices, the Philippines or Eastern Europe. As a want to be cold warrior and with the rumblings of the Solidarity movement beginning in Poland at the time, Eastern Europe was his choice. With visions of freeing the communist world for Christ in his head, off he went with his pastor and a group of like-minded friends. They joined up with a large ministry that at the time was sending thousands of Bibles and tracts, as well as young Christians, into many of the then Soviet-dominated Eastern European countries. Many of the tracts and Bibles were confiscated and some of the young people even went to jail, but the gospel was getting through and the intrepid young man wanted in on the action. Well, he finally got his chance in mid-summer, traveling through what was then Yugoslavia with a plan to smuggle Bibles into Romania, which in many ways was the darkest and worst of all the communist countries. Well, after an adventurous three-day journey in a special van equipped with compartments full of outlawed Bibles and Christian literature, they finally arrived at the Romanian border. While waiting for their turn in line for inspection, our hero had an urgent need for a restroom. Now, I mention this only because it was while he was returning to the van, after taking care of this urgent need in the foulest restroom he’d ever seen, even by Eastern European standards, his heart sank in fear as he saw Romanian border agents, the dreaded security forces, beginning to dismantle the van and discover it’s illegal cargo. Panicking, his first inclination was to run, but run where? He was in no man’s land between two communist countries. So with a lump in his throat and a prayer in his heart, realizing that he’d gotten himself into this mess, he walked fearfully back to the van. His traveling companions, a brother and sister who’d been in this situation before, were commonly standing by watching the security agents rip the van apart. Gradually, the young man’s fears began to ease as he noticed that the security agents, so feared by the oppressed people of Romania, seemed drunk. He actually had to assist one of them with a screwdriver to get a door panel open. The rest were acting pretty silly and even stumbling around. It was then that the young cold warrior realized who it was we were up against, fallen men, lost men,