Latest / CrossPolitic Show / Grace Agenda Live: The Return of the Drug gods w/ Will Spencer

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Grace Agenda Live: The Return of the Drug gods w/ Will Spencer · CrossPolitic Show

• Cross-Politik Begins in 3, 2, 1. I'm a heart that breaks for a dying city. Stop cursing your future. Is not true. For all intensive purposes, I am a woman. The government, the political system, has ultimate supremacy. Jesus' King of Kings and it's about time are they should return and have a submission to his lordship. You are not protecting women. You are authorizing the destruction of 500,000 little women every year. I didn't show it. I'm sure with all viewers back, that's the argument of a five-year ride. I didn't show it. When the spirit comes upon people, they go to war. They go to battle and the enemies of God are driven back and they're slaughtered. You are listening to Cross-Politik with Gabe Wretsch, the water boy. Pastor Toby Sunter and the Chocolate Knocks. Hey, oh, welcome to Cross-Politik Live at the wrench ranch. You can give a hand. Let's go. Yes. We got a live audience here in my backyard. We do this every year at Grace's agenda. This is our third or fourth year doing the after party here. So thank you guys for coming. Now, I think I've been asked so many times by the kids. So all the kids, 12 and understand up. 12 and understand up. Okay, you don't have to do this. Okay. And it's a little dark, but you go on my little pastor behind the barn and there's a sheep. Oh, boy. And if you catch the sheep, I'll give you $50. Does the sheep know this is happening right now? Right now. Run sheep. Run. Now, no one over 12 years old can do this. For sheep. 12 and under. No one, oh, if you're 12, if you're 13, no. How do you know they're gonna do that to bring it to you? They they someone needs to take a picture. Oh, you don't need to bring it. Oh, now it's doing self-suffering. You got to hold that sheep till someone gets a photo of it. Okay. This is animal. This is how this is how no, it's not sheep are made to be cut. Okay. Says the wolf says says the Lord. Do you not? Do you understand metaphors in scripture? And sometimes sheep are difficult to catch. So you try to occupy this. This is a spiritual exercise as much as it is a physical exercise. So 50 bucks. Okay. And 12 and under. You can bring a flashlight over there. It's dark. I get it. There's a couple horses out there. They're nice. They aren't going to kick you. They might rear up on you a little bit. Just don't walk behind them. All right. Listen, kids, if it growls is not a sheep. Okay. Don't don't grab that one. And disclaimer, I can't be sued and so and so forth. And I'll cross ball ticket to put us in there. I can't be sued. You can't sue my house. You can't take away my property. Okay. If you get hurt, it's on you and your dad. All right. So there you go. If anybody catches them, let me know. I'll eat 50 bucks. Has anyone ever caught them? No. I had one kid almost catch him. And I was like, good. How many sheep do you have, game? I get. So the more here's the here's the story behind Chuck the sheep. So then she's name Chuck and and what happened was about four years ago. That's how long I've been in the sheep. My fault. Yeah. My fault. I'm in the store. There you are. You're in my house. I get to tell stories. And about four years ago, we bought the sheep. We bought two sheep. Me and my brother in law, we're going to, you know, you wait about four to six months. Then you kill the sheep and the meat's good. Okay. And one morning, one of the sheep died. This is, you know, sheep or the metaphor of sheep. So good for us spiritually, right? Anyways, one morning, the sheep, one of the sheep was dead for no reason. And so we couldn't kill the other sheep because it wasn't old enough to kill, to kill and eat the meat. And so we just kind of let it well started taking to fudge the horse. We got our horse out there's named fudge. So Chuck started becoming friends with fudge. My daughter, Olivia, would ride fudge up the hill and around the, up the road and everything. And Chuck would just follow fudge and my daughter all around. And so literally Chuck follows the horses all around the pasture. And the horses will start running and Chuck will be trying to, trying to stay up with the horses. It's the funniest thing. And so the kids came to me as like, Dad, you can't kill Chuck. You can't, he's, he's our friend now. He loves fudge. You can't, you can't do it. And so in the moment, I said, okay. I should have googled it first though. And apparently sheep stay alive for about 10 to 12 years. So I got a pet sheep Chuck who refuses to say in the pasture. I don't really got a, I don't really got a pasture. It holds them in. And so we got neighbors all the time when he first had them like Chuck would just get out of the pasture and walk up the road and walk back to our house and all this stuff. And so we had neighbor, everybody in the neighborhood now knows Chuck the sheep and Chuck and fudge are good friends. And so there you go. So I got a pet sheep. Anything else Gabe? That's it. Anything else. If another story comes around, this gets us to our topic. It's like Charlotte's web for sheep. Don't ask Gabe anymore. I'm putting this down. We should introduce Will. Oh, he's our bad. Will you fit in great here, brother? So I got another story about Will. So, so he's not even joking. Will, Will's our guest, Will Spencer, love Will. I've known Will for years. You even got me, you even had me on the show after the whole COVID stuff and everything. I did. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Back when it was the Renaissance man. And now it's the Renaissance man. Yep. And now it's Will Spencer show. Will's out of Arizona. It was on in the house. Two years of Arizona folks out there. Yeah. It's a little cold for you right now, isn't it? Yeah, it's just freezing. I get tan in this weather. And so two years ago we were doing a live show here. We were doing our after party at Grace Agenda. And Will text me. Hey man, you got any girls I can meet at your party? Just like that. I'm sure I'm sure that's how it was. Literally. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because he definitely talks like that. He got any ladies that I can meet. And. Hey. And and I think maybe literally like 20 minutes before that. I get a call. I think I think I got a call from Tamra. Maybe she texted me. I can't remember. I have to go back in my history. And she's like, hey, you got any guys I can meet at your party? Just like that. Just like that. She's like, hey, Gays, you got any guys? I have not that. I can't hear you. Gays. I. I. I. I. I. So. So I think it's exactly how I think this show of this story is funnier for me than it's for you guys. I apologize for that, but it's pretty funny. And anyways, so it's our after party. Grace agenda and Tamra was here. She had some lady friends with her and and then Will came a little later, probably 20, 30 minutes after Tamra. And I knew I need to introduce him. I just felt like, you know, they need to at least know each other, meet each other and and Tamra could say no easily. I mean, because I mean, she's a strong woman. She could say no. Yeah. Of course. And so I introduce him here. And then I just leave and you can tell the rest of the story from there because I actually I just said, hey, Tamsoever will you guys need to meet each other. See you later. And then what happened besides marriage late. I mean, obviously, but a baby. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Mike, am I rushing? Yeah, yeah, no. That was a nice, maybe look like a bad matchmaker. Marriage came first. So so you guys just started talking from there and hit off and yeah, we're right over there. And when did you get married from that point? 11 months later. That's pretty good, Gabe. Yeah, there you go. And for those of you that don't have the spiritual gift of interpretation, what Gabe is basically saying, if you're single out there, and you're for somebody, hit up Gabe, he's got you. Go baptize him. Gabe was also kind enough to let us get engaged here as well. Oh, that's right. Yeah, so because we met here, so I was trying to think about where could I propose and you know, I don't live here. Didn't live here in Moscow still don't, but everyone got engaged at the Arboretum and something like, oh, I'll do it at the Arboretum. And then someone I talked to, I don't remember who's like, everybody gets engaged at the Arboretum. Can't do it there. So I call Toby and Toby, like, do you know of any places in Moscow that might be good to get engaged and he couldn't think of anything, but he did give me an idea, like maybe talk to Gabe and I was like, oh, Gabe's house, because that's where he met. So you were kind, so we got, we met right over there. We got engaged right over there. And so we got pictures and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and Camer person hiding up there. Yeah. And now there you go. Yeah. So this is kind of a little like welcome home for Will and Tamro and kind of a little my sect of tanks right here and you guysBI is just kind of gotten engaged right over to the basics with that's why we got engaged over there because I had only been here at night when it looks kind of nice and romantic like this show up during the day. It's like, hmm. Let's have the sun go down a little bit. Yeah, I am. Maybe over there. Millen more scenic. All right, let's get to the show. Let's get to the show. So in the show. Segway. We in the segway go to our topic. This is amazing show. So if you guys speaking of septic tanks, there's a lot here about. Have you heard the story about the sheep? How about the perky's? So if you guys have followed this last year, one of the things that we've done different is synodox, basically cinema style documentaries. And why have we done them different? And one reason. Why we've done them different is because we've been doing cross-politik for 10 years. Here we go. It started in 2016. That open that you heard at the beginning of the show, that is actually 10 years old. That's the original opening. That's the first opening we did. And we haven't changed it in 10 years. And it's still very relevant. Very relevant. Yeah. And so one of the reasons why we want to do synodox is because everyone has a podcast now. Everyone talks. When we started cross-politik in 2016, no one talked about faith in politics. I mean, Al Moller did his weekly briefing or weekly daily briefing, whatever. Yeah. Of course, Apologia was focusing on in abortion now, more men of politics, stuff like that. But no one was really talking just about every average American politics in 2016. I think that's one of the reasons why I got blessed the show because it's such a needed topic. But now everyone kind of has a podcast. So we hopefully in September, when we kind of normalize our schedule, we'll be doing a podcast once a week again. But the synodox, the goal of them was to try to create something, dive deeper into a topic, something a little more cinema style, something a little more visual, something a little more catching that the whole family could watch. And that was a, for the most part, just a flow of a deep dive into a topic that was done in a very cinematic way. Very well said, okay. Thank you. And so we've done seven and going on eight. This is eight. This is eight, isn't it? Eight's coming out. And so two days. In a couple days. And the topic of that show is something we haven't come to the title. We haven't finalized title yet. But pharmaceutical gods basically look looking at, it's good topic. Let's discuss it right now. Pharmacidic gods are we're going to go with other topic? You want to? Okay. What do you think? I like it. Okay. Return of the pharmaceutical gods. And drug culture. I mean, we're talking, I mean, psychiatric drug culture, medical drug culture, all the way to hard drugs kind of culture. And you know, how should Christians be thinking about everything from our medical practice and how we view drugs all the way to obviously the heavy drugs? And so this has been, I mean, I remember we had Steve McCleary. McCurdy McCurdy. I remember we interviewed him, gosh, six, seven years ago, whatever it was, 2019, maybe is what it was. And he was telling us just talking about like Ridlin for ADHD kids. And he said back in the 70s, one or two kids out of a high school would be on Ridlin. And then back in 2019, when we had them on the show, 2018, something like that, he said, now two to something like four kids out of every classroom are now on Ridlin. And just the culture, you know, I think what, something like 50% of women over 40 on some sort of antidepressant, just the default mechanism of drugs is just so prevalent in our society. But one of the things that's going on is we aren't even really defining or thinking about what it means to be human first. Well, so much of what is going on is it's actually an outworking of presuppositions we already have about what a human is. And what that is is fundamentally Darwinian. So I think we've been teaching Darwin, which means we're chemicals. Fundamentally, we're accidental chemicals, complex chemicals, whatever. But I think what this is is an outworking of that assumption that if we're just chemicals within a solution to all our problems is fundamentally well, we just got to fix those chemicals. We have a chemical imbalance. And we need chemicals to fix chemicals. Exactly. Exactly. And that's really what's going on. And then meanwhile, you have maybe what you would consider more recreational drug use or whatever. But it's really it's the same thing, just, you know, unregulated, whatever that means. You know, but you know, the idea of like, I'm going to fix my problems with, well, I'm going to try weed or I'm going to try something harder heroin. I'm going to try, I'm going to have a spiritual experience with ayahuasca. I think the whole, it's the whole thing from Rutland to antidepressants weed, all the rest of it. And, and I think for far too long, we've not really looked at it square in the face and say, what is this? And I think it's fundamentally, we have rejected the image of God. We've rejected a creationist cosmology that says that we are human because we're mating God's image, which means that we're body and soul. And so there are physical and physiological realities that we ought to reckon with. Christian science ought to actually deal with that. Christian medicine can play a part in this. And what does it take, what does it look like to take dominion over it? But, but we have to also recognize that so much of what is ailing us is a deeply spiritual problem. And rather than running off to chemicals, we really need to first of all make sure that we are right with the one who made us. Amen. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, we had you on. We actually interviewed you. We interviewed, who are the three interviews? Peter Hitchens. Peter Hitchens. Wow. Joe Rigny. Joe Rigny and Will Spencer. I'm honored. And. Your stuff was freaky, man. Yeah. Seriously, like it was. Yeah. What was freaky about it? Well, you went on places. You went to places. You, you commune with demons. I did. Yeah, that's freaky. Straight up. Yeah. Yeah. Peter Hitchens wrote a book called The War We Never Fought, which is actually all on particularly just the widespread acceptance of the, of the, the medicating of human beings, including marijuana in particular. And just, and he's just sort of throwing up a flare saying, I don't think this is a good idea. This is a bad idea. And, and he's flagging the fact that it's based on a, a pagan Darwinian, you know, anthropology and, and, and, and cosmology. Joe Rigni, of course, has a bunch of good work on, particularly, CS Lewis, which is one of the things that all three of you actually had a great appreciation for. But like Lewis in that hideous strength is, well, a profit. But he's tracing the fact that there's this convergence where science that thinks it is a, it can, it basically is a high priest. He can figure out the problem, he can solve all the problems, it can create all the solutions, it can become the savior. At some point converges with spiritual realities that are, well, what we would call demonic. And, and it was, and then talking to you, well, one of the reasons I wanted to make sure we talked to you was that you came out of that world. Yeah. And, you know, for, it was about 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. Of, of you, searching for meaning. Yes. And, and, you know, trying, you know, all of the things on offer, basically the Baskin Robbins of, you know, fixture problems here. Yeah. The whole buffet. And before coming to Christ. That's right. Um, sketch some of that for us. Just so that the audience here has a sense of like what we're talking about. I know that it's a long story, but like, yeah, maybe just an overview. How you start, how you got into it. So I got into it. So I, in high school, and when I was a kid, I was just totally straight edge, like just school, school, school all the time, you know, not a lot of social life, very much just like focused on, you know, got to get into an elite university. And you grew up, we never would have been friends. Just never. Thanks for your friends now though. Yeah, yeah. I know. I'm saying that's good. But then you like school. Yes. I still like school. You grew up kind of like atheistic Jewish. Yeah. Liberal atheists. Yeah. Okay. I mean, heavily like we would do all the Jewish things. I was bar mitzvah at 13. We would go to high holiday services, Russia, shounen, young kippur, we would celebrate Passover in Hebrew even. But it was just cultural. Very cultural. Yeah. We never really had conversations about, you know, who God is or who King David was. We never read the Psalms, but it was just this kind of like cultural atmosphere that I grew up in. So it was heavily, and I realized this later, it was heavily monotheistic. So I grew up in that kind of environment. So I think that shaped me in some really important ways, especially once I found my way into more like polytheistic worlds, because a lot of people do actually believe that. But I always had this sort of monotheistic inculturation. So as I went further out into the world, I carried that with me in ways that I don't think I recognized until recently. You told us that the first time you did drugs, your sister gave you something. Yes. Well, she took me to a rave. This is a so underground electronic music event in a warehouse in Phoenix on Y2K. So again, I totally straight edge. She got into that world and she wanted me to come with her. I was visiting Phoenix at the time. And so I had no idea like what to expect. So I'm wearing like the closest thing that I had to something that might fit in a nightclub. And she gave, which was completely not appropriate for a rave. I definitely looked out of place, but she also gave me this giant pair of feather angel wings that are like this wide. And so I'm just like, I could not feel more awkward. And she's like here, she gave me an ecstasy pill. And so that was sort of my entry into that world. Sort of this first awakening to consciousness is probably what I would have called it. And that sort of sent me on this path into what a lot of people would know as the new age psychedelic culture, stuff like that. How did you become a Christian? That's a leap. Yeah, no, it's actually, it's actually an important part of the story. So in 2015, I went to the Burning Man Festival. So it's a, for those who don't know, Burning Man is a 80,000, 100,000 person explicitly pagan festival in the desert outside of Reno, Nevada. Happens every year, the week leading up to Labor Day. So it's coming up pretty soon. And so I went out to Burning Man and through a providential sequence of events, I found my way into an underground Christian ministry that had been going for like 13 or so years. At Burning Man? At Burning Man. Wow. Yeah. So they, God's like watch this. Right. Well, when I, when I, so I had been sitting talking with them for like three hours looking around the tent, trying to figure out like there's no Hindu statues, there's no psychedelic stuff like who are these people? Were you using any drugs in that conversation? No, no, no, no, no. I totally stone sober. And so at the end, I find out that there are Christians and I'm like, what are you doing here? It was the most odd thing, but there was something about them that really landed with me. They were unlike any other Christians I'd ever met. And so I maintained a relationship with them beginning from 2015, forward and time from 2016 to 2020. I was traveling overseas, India, China, Japan, South America where I tried ayahuasca. So for the, we'll probably get into this, but I have a tattoo of an ayahuasca vine on my left arm because it was such a big part of my spiritual life at the time. And I went to the end of that road and found that there was nothing there. There were moral questions that all is one and all is God simply could not answer. And so I came back from overseas with no answers. And when I got, I had been in touch with this, this group, there actually many of them live up in Cordelaine. And we're going to go visit them and get there at my, they were at our wedding last year which was amazing. And so the day I got back to the United States from overseas, they put, they had shipped a book to a friend who picked me up at the airport. The book was simply Christian by NT Wright. It was the first book of Christian apologetics that I'd ever read. And in the book, you know, this is during COVID. So this is like February 2020. COVID's starting to happen. And I'm reading the book. And in the book, NT Wright says, Christ up on the cross, this big wave of evil is going to come and crash over him, but through his death and sacrifice, he drove back the wave of evil forever. And I was staying with my dad at the time and I was sitting on his couch and I read that and like something clicked and I got it. And so the only other book that I knew about Christianity was CS Lewis, mere Christianity. And I started reading that and I was reading CS Lewis doing something that I had always been told was impossible. I had been told it's impossible to reason your way to faith. And so he's reasoning his way to the Christian faith. And I read that and then I read the screw tape letters. I traveled up to Cordelaine Labor Day weekend 2020 and asked my friends to baptize me, which they did in the Spokane River. Wow. Praise God, man. That was that journey. Yeah. That's amazing. Well, what was it that you were looking for that you thought you had found and so because it could make the connection between the drugs and the spiritual world and what you were searching for? So psychedelic culture, there's a lot of different appeals to it. So by psychedelic culture, I mean acid, mushrooms, ayahuasca, DMT may have heard of. And so like, I don't want this to sound super fringe because these are things being promoted by Aaron Rogers, the Green Bay Packers, former quarterback Joe Rogan, Sean Ryan, one of the biggest podcasts in the world. Although Sean Ryan doesn't, he regrets it now. Well, he regrets the bad trip he had. Yeah. But he doesn't regret getting into it in the first place, which is what I'd like to hear. Maybe he'll get to that place. Yeah. Yeah. So he was talking about it. Said he'd never do it again after that bad trip. Yes. I believe him. So this is something that's happening in culture right now that I think is coming to the wider culture. It's just waiting around the corner. So what draws people to psychedelics is peak experiences, emotional inner healing, you know, secret knowledge, you know, conquest. There's just Joe Rogan was in the White House, Oval Office with Donald Trump talking about I began, which is like the manly ayahuasca. So there's something that really draws a certain kind of person to that kind of conquest. So I was looking for all of those, but mostly I was probably looking for secret knowledge and what you might call inner healing. I had it. I had a part of, I think part of the danger here is that the conversation, I mean, even RFK has talked about maybe using it for troops dealing with PTSD. Yeah. Right. But we should talk about that for sure. Yeah. And, but it's becoming normal. And it's the taboo is kind of being taken off it. It already happened weed long time ago. The taboo is weed, right? And I remember about three months ago, I had a friend who's in his fifties and he grew up a conservative Christian all his life. And he wrote on Facebook. He said, friends, you know, all my life, I've been a conservative Christian and I stayed away from drugs and everything. I finally went on a retreat and went and did, I'm not quite sure what he did. Maybe he was a Iowasca or something. Did he go to Mexico? He's something like that. Yeah. He went to Mexico. And he said, you know, I've carried this, this, you know, this, this, this, not chip. I've carried this, you know, insecurity on my life. You know, who, who am I really? And, you know, and I didn't really know myself and, you know, it kind of tells the story about himself. And then I went and I did the drugs and went on this trip and he didn't call them drugs. But the medicine, right? I can't remember, but it wasn't drugs. And then he said, and it really helped me see myself for who I was. And basically, you know, said, I'm, my take is, is like the solution of Christianity no longer has the impact on them like it did because he went through this. And now I, you know, the drugs helped him in a way that Christianity wouldn't. That's too bad. Yeah. It is too bad. But I'm just saying like that guy, 50 years old, whatever, 55, you know, it's, it's becoming so normalized that even long term Christians or some of us, I assume he's still Christian are, are looking at it as a solution for trying to fix themselves. Yeah. But part of that, go ahead, man. I'm sorry. So I've reached unxtatus and I guess it's not cool anymore. And I realized I've reached unxtatus because people look at me like I'm old. You're wearing that hat. And so, and I'm, and I'm leaning into it. I'm going to look, I got these years on me for something. You know what I mean? I've been here. I've earned every bit of unxtatus. I'm not leaning away from you. Call me like I don't, I don't care. Because I've been around long enough and I'm old enough now that I can say that. But I remember Christians used to just talk differently about everything. They used to use words like born again. They used to use words like you must become new. You need to get baptized. And I think we've, we've leaned away from that and somehow we become modern in the way that we talk and communicate so that our words don't actually mean what they, they don't mean anything anymore. They don't visualize the reality of our situations. Old Christians used to talk about baby, you need to be born again. You are dead and you need to become alive. And the only way that that can happen is through repentance and trust in Jesus. We just don't talk like that anymore. We talk like there's something for them to unlock or like we have some sort of secret knowledge and there's like, there's no secret to this, right? Trust and obey Jesus. And we don't, we just don't talk in that manner anymore. Well, you think part of this is like Christians have kind of bought into kind of the humanistic worldview. I think so. That's going on. I mean, how many Christian counselors I put it in scare quotes, but like, I mean how many of them are just kind of mimicking therapy culture with maybe some Bible verses sprinkled on top or a prayer beginning or at the end, but it's like we're going to help you like, you know, sort through your past. You know, that everything is caused by, you know, something that was done to you or, you know, these guilty feelings you have or the shame or, but it's always, it's frequently very Darwinian. Because it's about like, you're the victim. You're the, you're just sort of the result of all these other things that have happened. And maybe for some reason, and I don't even know how this is logically possible. But like if we like unpack your past, then we will somehow, you know, unlock your future. Or, you know, I just, that sounds gross. I mean, it just said that. Well, the word, the word that's sort of, by the way, I think you're, I think you're cool. Thank you. So, for on, we're both on. How old are you? 48. She thinks you're cool. He's older than me. I think you're cool. We can be cool. Yeah, we go. No, the word that's dancing around all this is the word trauma, right? So, so there's a giant fight going on right now in the biblical counseling world around trauma informed therapy. The idea is that things that happen to you in your childhood done to you, generally by your parents, you know, have shaped you into the person that you are today. So, how your life is today is as a result of what was done to you when you were a child. And so, of course, there are people that go through terrible things in their childhood. I don't mean to not deny any of that. However, the idea that your life today is a result of what someone else did to you is false. It's, it's a lie. But people, especially that is such a popular idea in the culture today, you can't really avoid it. And so, people will go to these experiences seeking to heal their trauma. The idea is that if they can, if they can heal their trauma, find out what was done to them, they will be free to then be the fullest version of themselves. And that's the promise that's made. That's probably what your friend was going looking for. And that entire premise is broken at the core. But it's so prevalent today everywhere. How's it broken at the core? What do you mean by that? If you're looking to, I am the way that I am because of what someone did to me, you're externalizing responsibility for your life, which means you can't have any control over it. Right. Instead of you say, who is the problem? I am the problem. And that's what scripture teaches. But that's a really unpopular idea to turn the mirror back on yourself and say, no, it's my sin, my choices, my rebellion that has created this. So we've embraced victim status completely. Correct. Yes. Right. Yes. That's right. And so in the biblical counseling world, there's people who counsel strictly to the scriptures. And now there's this new trauma informed counseling, which says that the scripture is not sufficient to disciple and sanctify someone into who God made them to be. We have to instead acknowledge the reality of trauma. And we will address trauma with all these different techniques. And that opens the door for psychedelics to come in because psychedelics, especially are positioned as like rapid fire therapy. You can sit and talk therapy for what months or years, or you can just do mushrooms once. And that's how it's sold to people that you can solve this problem through taking this chemical, pharmaceutical gods. So you guys are dead on without. You know, I think about this topic. I mean, obviously you're talking about like the hardcore drugs. But how do we even like analyze this or look at it? How do we explain like ibuprofen or, you know, pain killer or you know, um, things that we think are can be done well and can actually help without maybe falling into the ditch of just going on and on into the bigger drugs. Does that question make sense, Toby? Yeah. Well, I think, well, I mean, for me, the question always comes down to consciousness. You're not going to take ibuprofen and alter your consciousness. It doesn't put you in a non sober state of mind, aspirin, same. And so people will put people under for big surgeries. Well, we'll take some serious pain killer. That's a lot. Yeah, not even a demon now. We'll take, well, maybe, but we'll take some serious pain killer, you know, for a cut off my leg or whatever, my getting a car wreck and, and, and of course, you've even seen people that have actually taken those those pain killers and then get addicted to the pain killers and stuff. Sure. Like how do we, how are we, how come we're okay with this, but not with that? The biblical principle is sobriety. So, so I think, you know, when the Bible is, you know, the same principle of drunkenness is, is what's at play here. So we, we don't, we're, we're to be sober minded, we're to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We're to seek to do everything that we can to do our duty before the Lord. And so the same principle that says, um, you've got to guard your sobriety if you're going to have a little bit of scotch or you're going to have a beer fine, but not to excess, not to, um, to the point in which you're unable to carry out the responsibilities that God has given you. Um, and, and I would say the same principle is at work when we're talking about psychedelic drugs or any other drug we'd even marijuana, um, a softer, quote unquote, uh, drugs that, um, alter your state of mind that, that, that you're, you're no longer sober, you're no no longer, uh, incomplete control of, uh, your, your mind and your heart and your soul. And, and then, and then part of the warning though. So, um, one of the key words in, in scripture that, um, uh, we, we actually talk about in the, in the, in the doc is the word farm, a Kea. And farm, a Kea is actually where we get the word pharmacy from has to do with medicine. Uh, but the interesting thing is that it's also is, is, um, tied in with, um, dark powers, um, demonic powers. And so the word is used in, um, in the Odyssey, for example, um, uh, the, the witch, the evil witch, um, mixes farm, a Kea into the wine that she gives to the, to, to, uh, Dissius's men, uh, right before she then, uh, strikes them and turns them into pigs. Um, interesting. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and, um, but the same, the, the same word is, it, so it's sort of a sorcery witchcraft, um, medicine. And so I think that's a, and I think the key thing gave is, it's the difference between, um, taking dominion, uh, of a fallen world where there are headaches and cancer and things like that. Real broken things. Yeah, real broken things. And so I think the way you're taking dominion in order to do the best that you can to put it back to the way God made it or intended it to function. Yes, whereas, um, this sorcery. And it's sort of a Joe talks about this in the, in the doc some, there's, there's sort of, uh, and he's, he admission off of Lewis, but Lewis pointed out that like there's kind of two trains in history of sorcery. One tried this sort of like, um, play with, um, herbs and chemicals and, and, you know, kind of thing, oh, kind of witchcraft, which I think is re-emerged in ayahuasca. Yep. Um, and, but the other side of it was a kind of scientism. Um, so not just Christians doing good science, but people saying basically we can, we can make this world into whatever we want it to be. We can, we can actually remake the world, which is not dominion. That's a form of witchcraft. Like we can, we can bend the world to our own whims, our own desires, our own demands, and that's, that's the tower of babble all over again. That's like we're going to use technology and science or whatever else to manipulate God's world and we're going to be gods. And, and I think, so that, I think that's the key difference is like, are we in submission to God and the world he made and seeking to take dominion under his law in a lawful way, in a sober way in order to heal the world as best we can? Or are we trying to, uh, remake the world according to our own whims? Are we trying to become gods and, and solve sin basically with our own form of, you know, whatever, grace, our own, our, you know, our own magic, we can take away that guilty feeling. We can take away that trauma. We can take away, um, sin. Um, here, just take this room. Yeah. That's right. You can, not only that, you can reshape someone spiritually. Yeah. And I, rather than reshaping their body, which of course, that's transhumanism. And I said, I can give you this in a shamanic setting and the values of the container as they call it, and the approach of the shaman will reshape you spiritually. And it's, it's fundamentally nostic in like a capital G sense. Like inside, we're all just spirit and spirit is what matters. And you can take this and you can reshape your spirit in a desired direction. And you are essentially sovereign over your own soul, which is kind of a pseudo born again experience. Because they're going to say, we can, we can, we can help you be born again through this drug. But what you're born again too is your own, your own desires, your essentially your own flesh instead of being born again with transformed affections towards godly things. And that's the really important thing is that secular trauma culture, therapy culture, has no answers for how people should be. Or inner truth is what you are supposed to grow towards. So a therapist will never actually tell you right from wrong. They're not license authorized to make that judgment. And so you get to determine right from wrong. And so they'll just sit back and facilitate you arriving to that point. But there's no external standard governing, no transcendent standard governing the therapeutic interaction. There's no transcendent standard that you are accountable to and have to conform yourself to. What does your inner truth say and or inner truth is but therapists won't tell you that you're right and wrong unless you're going trans. And then like, yeah, you need to go. Definitely do that. Right. They will. Yeah. Of course, of course. Notice the, it's amazing to me how the priesthood has changed. Yeah. Right? Like I remember when somebody was out of pocket or a guy was like, I'm having problems with, you know, drinking too much or I'm having problems with lusting too much or I'm having problems with not working and being lazy. Or whatever problem that you would go see as psychiatrists for or whatever. Those just to be things that people went to see their pastors about. Yep. They used to be the pastors had that information of how to deal with that problem, right? And they, and they would counsel them in the word. There's a great book out there. Is it Jay Adams? How to help people change? That book is fantastic. I mean, I opened up that book. It was shocking because it was so basic. It was like, well, you need Jesus. I was like, well, I don't need this book. It was all the secret information. Right? I'm looking for all this deep, super spiritual hidden information about how to help people change. And he's like, if the power is not in the scriptures, then you're lost. If the power isn't in Christ, then it's over. You can forget about it. And we are trying to find some sort of other way in order to help people change outside of the true power. And it's not an accident because the Bible says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And the battle that these guys are after is the mind because they know if they can get you on their drugs, if they can control and get you from stopping and true morally, the way the world is designed to run, and they can get you to act in there. They can control you. They can put you. I think you put it in the script. It was so good. It's like, they can put you in a cell that's like eight by ten and give you everything that you need and you take no dominion. Right. It's a fundamentally dehumanizing thing. And this is all connected because you have, as you were talking earlier, if everything is outside of you and you are a victim of your circumstances, well, that's just, it's a form of determinism. And it actually is fundamentally stealing your humanity because a central part of your humanity is that you are a moral agent and you have made choices that matter. But when you're told all your life that everything is a result of everyone else and everything that was done to you, that is effectively saying, your choices don't matter. Like all the choices you've made since your childhood, no matter even, you know, even if you were mistreated and treated horribly in different ways and syndicates, you always have an option of how you respond. You always have choices. But if your choices don't matter, guess what? You don't matter. And the only thing that does matter is the drugs. Well, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, or you just how you feel. Yeah. But it's, but it's, it reduces the drugs of the solution to it. But, but fundamentally, like it's not really a solution because all it's doing is changing the way you feel. It's just changing the chemicals. But you aren't more of a person. You, you, you don't have any moral agency. Your choices don't really matter. And then to Nox's point and, and what that then is doing is creating a people, a civilization of people who all they care about is I just don't want to feel bad. And, and now you're, you're, you're a, you are a herd of pigs. Yes. Yes. And, and so, you know, yes, I'll just, Huxley, kind of paints this picture in, in Brave New World of like, if you recall, you've got 1984 from Orwell, one dystopian novel earlier in the 20th century and you've got Brave New World. 1984 pictured, you know, a dystopia of tyranny, straight forward, you know, sort of jack boot, top down domination. We're, we're going to put you in cells. We're going to, we're going to reinvent your, your dictionary. We're, we're going to do it all and we're just going to force it upon you. Whereas, all this Huxley said, you know, actually, I think the thing we need to watch out for is a dystopia that is where tyranny comes upon us, basically through pleasure. Tiktok. That's it. Um, but it's like we're, you're going to, we're going to, we need to watch out for, um, being, uh, dominated and tyrannized, um, by everybody having, you know, TVs, Tiktok, uh, dopamine hits, whenever you want them and if you're feeling kind of bad, hey, we've got mushrooms for that. We've got, we've got, we got soma. That's, that was the drug actually in, in Brave New World and, um, and, and that's part of the thing that I think we Christians need to be thinking about is, this is all connected and so a therapeutic culture that sees all, all of our solutions in, in chemicals is a setup, um, for tyranny. It's a setup for it, for a, a, a civilization that is run by the high priests who will make sure that there's always, there's always world peace because everybody's on drugs and, or at least on Tiktok. So, um, one of the, I grew up in Texas in the Southern Baptist. Oh, really? Where's my music? Where's my music? Texas comes up every show. We didn't know that every show, okay? Um, but it was a very Southern Baptist culture. Um, I grew up Presbyteria, but it's still very impacted by kind of Southern Baptist culture. Backed as a little more Presbyteria. Yeah. But I remember like going, um, my friends would not go to a restaurant and have a beer in public. And because, you know, your testimony, kind of, kind of answers, seems like a bad test. I don't, I don't want to cause the younger brother to stumble. I don't know who they are on the restaurant, you know, kind of thing. Um, but they'd have a glass of wine at home or a beer home kind of thing. Um, but I always thought and I was young and, um, you know, I wasn't even drinking age yet. When I was a, I left Texas when I was 18, 17, 18. But I always like it, to me, I was like, why aren't the church discipling the world on how to use alcohol? Why isn't the church discipling the world and how to drink and how to take joy in it? And in the same way, you know, Paul, um, uh, the earth is the Lord's and all its fullness. Uh, that's in Psalm 24. And Paul took that quote and he plied it to food specifically in, in, in, uh, first Corinthians 14, maybe, uh, Romans, Romans 14, whatever. One of those, I've heard it said, yeah. And so Paul says, the earth is Lord and all is fullness. And so, you know, eat, eat to the glory of God, eat it all, eat food, offer titles. You can do it as long as you aren't making the weaker brother stumble. That was Paul's line. And so in the same way, how do we, you know, teach the world? How do we take dominion over drugs? I don't, I mean, you know, we, we're called to take dominion over everything. And I'm sure maybe there's a good use for, you know, it's like, like people take marijuana and turn it to hemp, you know, or something like, you know, rope, like a rope. You know, it's like, I guess my question is though, like, how do we look at the earth as the Lord is in all is fullness? And how do we not, you know, just push away drugs, but actually show the world how to take dominion over it in a way that's, you know, I don't think we, I think part of it's not consuming it that way for sure. But I guess I don't want us to just say drugs, bad drugs, bad, which is true. But how do we take it and take dominion over it and show the world and the stuff of the world on how to not use it this way. Maybe this way, you know, I don't know. There's a, there's a couple of things that are important with this. One of, I was talking about this earlier, but Pastor Wilson says something that is stuck with me and said it a long time ago and he said it again just recently, but he talked about how it's important that as a father and as a leader, you control the thermostat of your home. Because in controlling the thermostat of your home, some things don't grow. And then some things flourish really well when you have it at the right temperature. And so some things you don't have to worry about because you have the thermostat set at the right place. And so when you have bad things growing, there's a way to do a cleaning and then you have to maintain it. We have to start, we can't fix this overnight, I don't believe, but we have to start at a place of having a very good biblical understanding of who we are. A biblical anthropology is necessary, which means we got to go back to having a good education again from the start. Because a lot of times we will take and we'll try and rebuild, christen them without defeating the presuppositions that we have. And so we just fall right back into the same thing that we're in again and we never get anywhere. But you have to get at the very bottom of it. And it's not a very comforting answer because it might take a lot longer than what we like. And that's part of our problem. We want the quick fix, the quick hit, hit it, get it, we're done, everything's right. And it doesn't work that way. Some of it takes time. That's why I think gardening actually gardening is important. You can't rush the seed. You can't make it do its thing. You can nurture it. You can water it over time. It develops. And you got something growing. And now you got to keep nurturing it so that you get fruit from it. And that fruit comes up and then it has seeds and you can plant it. You get more of it. So all that to say is going, getting our education right, I can't tell you how important that is. We have to make sure our children understand who they are, how they were made, who's they belong to and what they're supposed to be doing with their lives. And that comes from having a very rich catechismic education. It's amazing to me how fast, how many things could be destroyed if we just cataclycise our kids with basic stuff. So you have the Westminster Confession. I've added a few things to it. I hope they don't get mad about it. But one of the things I realized, I added a few things to the catechism of the Shannon Household. Three of them actually. I got this from Darren Dohn. So who made you God made you? Is there more than one God? No, there's only one true. Let me go. But I also ask my kids, there's no such thing as truth. And their answer to me is like, is that true? I've killed 50% of the postmodern world with just that question alone. And I said, well, there's no such thing as absolute truth. And they say is that absolutely true? And so they have already been cataclycise in a particular way to know where the truth comes from. And know that there is a truth. And that the person is speaking in a particular way that assumes that reality. So then they can't get fooled by some of the most simple things. But that's because they've been cataclyzed. And so for us, one of the things in James Adams books deals with this, do you have God's scripture, his word, hidden in your heart that you won't sin against him? If a man comes to you and says all those things I said before, it's like, oh man, I messed up my whole family. I messed up. You don't say, hey, man, let me go take you to A.A. Hey, man, let me go take you to these drugs that can help you control your... No, no, no. Here's your knees. This is the concrete. Get down there in your prayer closet and don't get up until God has saved you. And it's amazing. Preaching like Paul Washer. We've just... Yeah, it's cool. It was good for that time. It was good for that era. But there's no revival like type preaching anymore that is going after the very core in nature of a human being to say, no, it's not what's on the outside of you that is dirty and you up. It's what's on the inside of you. You're like white, washed tombs, right? They look good on the outside, but inside your full of everything dirty and unclean. And that's what we're not willing to deal with. But again, it starts with education. How do we teach our kids what God has said? There's none righteous, no not one. None who seek after God, right? You need to be baptized. You need to repent. And from that God has said, he has given you righteousness. It is... I was just thinking about this. It is the hardest thing in the world to believe the gospel. It is the hardest thing in the world. It is nearly impossible. That's why God has to save you. You mean to tell me that my sins can be forgiven, the murder, the hate I have in my heart, the fact that I am lusting, all the wickedness that I do. You mean to tell me that that can actually be wiped away and moved as far as the East is from the West? That's a reality. That's impossible. When you wrong someone and you go to them and you say, hey man, I'm sorry, the reason you can't say that is because you don't believe that they will really forgive you. And then when it happens and you're like, wow, that was... That was easier than I thought. That was amazing. That just happened. You just did that. It's like, I've been forgiven much. Why wouldn't I forgive you? We don't believe the gospel. And it's impossible. And so you got to tell people, no, Jesus does save. Jesus blood does wash away sins. He really does forgive and you can be clean if you trust in Him. Amen. Amen. We're all kind of like naming. Yes. And the prophet says, you can go wash and you're like, in that dirty water? That's right. Come on now. And then it's servants like, you know, I mean, you know, I mean, if the prophet said, you know, to wash in the water, I mean... When you've done a harder thing. When you've done a harder thing. And so I think we all, I mean, it's all pride and arrogance. And it's even that. It's like, that's a little bit of witchcraft in your heart. Because you're like, well, but I wanted to do like a ritual or something. To find witchcraft real quick. Manipulating God's world to try to trick blessing out of it, Yes. Apart from God's means. So the ways in which God says you get life and blessing, that's just obeying God, that's obedience. But witchcraft is trying to trick God's blessing out of his world, apart from his ways. So, and so I mean, this all sin is a kind of witchcraft. That's right. You know, it's like, I can lie and somehow that's going to fix this situation. Right. I can lust and that'll make this okay. I can steal and it'll be okay. No, that's witchcraft. You can't do that. You can't disobey God and get blessing. But that's what we're doing. But I think we get that way where we're like, no, we... I don't want to confess my sin. But I want to have God's blessing on my marriage. I want to have God's blessing on my kids. No, you can't have God's blessing on your marriage and on your family unless you confess your sin. Unless you... If you're aakin' and you're hiding sin in the camp, like you're not only messing up your own family, you're messing it all up for all of God's people. And but that's witchcraft. Like, that's like, Akin is like, I can do this. I'm going to hold it together. It's going to be okay. No, it's not. It's not going to be okay. And so I think we've done that for a long time. We all have that inclination. We want to do it our own way. And that's... You want to be God. That's the original offer of the serpent in the garden. Look, you can take it now. You can take the fruit now. It's magic fruit. You're going to be like God and you will know good and evil right now. That's right. That's witchcraft. That's sorcery. That's pharmacaya right in the garden. And rather than waiting and saying, no way, God is good. He will bless us if we obey Him, if we wait for Him. And if we are obedient to the things that He said, he will bless us. He's not going to withhold any good thing from us. But in that moment, the temptation is actually fundamentally to say, God is actually withholding something from you. But you can get it now. Like, He's not as good as He said He is. And that's the lie that Eve believed. That's the lie that Adam believed. And that's what plunges us into this whole mess. Men have a real temptation. I've been thinking a lot about this as regards to business where men have a real temptation where we want to do big things. We want to save the world or we want to kill the dragons. We want to do all these big things. I remember reading a table talk 2004. And in the table talk, I think it was RC's pro junior who said, you know, men want to kill all the dragons. We want to do all these things, but no one wants to change the diapers. And we want to basically get success, get it the quick way, get it without doing the hard things, get it without doing God's way. But what happened, but the reality is, is that God, I mean, the most basic command God gives us before the fall was to take the men in work. Like go work. But what God is doing there. I'm sure it was hard before the fall. I'm sure Adam had to do some hard work and to get the food to grow. He had a whole world. He has to take the meat and but the way God designed it is you obey me this way. You work hard. You till the ground and God works through us. And as we obey God, the kind of work we do should bear so much fruit in such a way, you can't even see it all. And what I mean by that is, I mean, I mean, just think, you know, I'm going to talk to men in the audience real quick. Just think like your job is to go work. And out of the abundance of your work, you feed your wife out of the abundance of your work, you feed your kids out of the abundance of your work. You go to the moon out of the abundance of your work, like your work fills, you fills the cup up so much that the water overflows to where now you're running a company of a hundred people. Now you're feeding a hundred people. Now you're like the way God has called us to work. I mean, think about the CEO who's over, you know, a thousand employees now. But I think God even wants it like even bigger than that. Which is means also like he's having us work and do things that we will never see the fruit of. Like he like I think one of the things that we fundamentally are rejecting about the way God made the world his time. Yes. Like God created time. He's outside of time. He's not bound by time. But he invented time. And it's one of the things that it's one of the gifts he gave, which means waiting. Which is, you know, God doesn't wait for anything. But he invented time. And so like he's all about like he's constantly talking about how he wants to show his mercy to a thousand generations. And I just recently. And I'll never see my thousand generations. Yeah. But like I was just recently like thinking about this. And so I, I, I asked Claude. Good on you. Because knock sometimes tells me that I should use Claude sometimes. Claude is a good servant. From all that work that Gabe was talking about, you also create Claude. Yeah. So I'm a little leery of, but I still sometimes do. And I asked Claude about how many generations there have been in the history of the world. You know how many history generations. What did he say? I want to make a guess. Oh, six thousand years. Well, no, Claude, this Claude, believe. No, I said based on biblical chronology. Oh, wow. 45. 45 generations? No. He said I'm taking number. I'm just trying to get the answer out Gabe. Yeah. 400. 1200. 150. I was close at 45. So there was, there's been about, been about 70 or 80 generations throughout from Adam to Jesus and about 70 or 80 from Jesus to now. Only about 150 generations. So God's like, come on. Like I'm going for thousands of generations. And like that's God's vision. And we're like, you know, like dinner's not ready yet. Right. You know, like, can we get the microwave to work faster? Right. And can we win the lottery? And God's like, no, I want you to work hard. And you're going to see like, you know, a few things. I've been, I've been gardening a little bit. I'm a terrible gardener. I can see it all over you though. But I have been trying a little bit. And I, so I planted strawberries a few years ago. And I think it's like three or four years ago. And last year I had my first strawberry, like three. And they were good. And this year I had like a hundred. And this year I also planted blackberries a few years ago. Let's go. And this year I had my first blackberry. It was kind of sour. But I had one. And but like God's like, you know, you get one or two. Like, I mean, that's like, that's like the really fruitful people get like, you know, a handful. But like God's like, no, but I want you to be thinking like thousands of generations. Like are you thinking thousands of generations, not get the fix now? Like no, no, you just be faithful now. Yeah. You just obey me now and you trust me. And I'm going to make, I'm going to make it fruitful. I just, I was just in Ukraine last week. And I gave a talk on the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven. And it's really remarkable that both of those, so that the parables of the kingdom and both of them are emphasizing the fact that the kingdom of God starts tiny, yeah, imperceptible. And then it inevitably grows. And and think about, I'll just use the leaven analogy, but like in Matthew's gospel, it's this leaven and it's in, oh great, I'm going to forget how many measures. Somebody asked Claude. Somebody, so many measures, three measures, I think it is, which is a ton of wheat. It's a ton. It's actually enough to make about 50 loaves. And and the only other place in the Bible where 50 loaves is used, you know, we can't ask Claude. But Jesus is when, is when Abraham is the default. It's Jesus God Bible. It's when Abraham entertains the Lord. All right. Like what you think about is you're like, Abraham is Sarah like quick, quick, let's make a feast for 50 loaves. And they made 50 loaves of bread. But that means that this leaven that's leavening all this massive load of dough is making a batch of bread fit for a feast for the king. Like God is making this for himself. Like he's making the, he's building the kingdom, he's making the feast and like and like he's the one doing it and he's going to make sure that it's a feast fit for him. And so I think like again, like like do we honestly think like in our 70 years on this planet, like like you're going to do no, like like no, like we're going to like get three strawberries. Thanks pastor. And it's going to be sweet and it's going to be glorious. Yeah. But but he is going to make sure that there's a harvest worthy for him. You know, you were talking about that, especially when we're on the time, the time thing is really hitting. You know, if you are, if you have woken up since COVID and you got your, your head about you, you start thinking about time a little differently. You start thinking about your finances a little differently. You start thinking about your debt and you start thinking about how long you have to live. And you know, it made me think about the fact that that's, that's a blessing because now you start measuring what you can actually get done in that time. Part of what the drugs and the evil forces that we're fighting against are trying to do is make sure that we don't measure our time well. Social media, I'm very grateful for it. A lot has done a lot of good. I'm happy for it. But what it does, if you misuse it or if you have not fulfilled by the scriptures, go back to that is that you are trying to, it makes you use your time in a very wasteful way. And so you don't measure it. You forget you get into this scroll, doing scrolling and you like, wow, three hours later. And so you've lost this time that wasn't fruitful, really. So the whole point of the sun mooning stars was to help us measure time. The whole part of the day, how many hours I have in a day? Okay, how many days in my life am I going to have? Okay, how many of that is work time? How much in a sleep time? How much do I need to be helped? All that is for us to measure our time so that we can get the three strawberries. And the whole goal is to fight you for your time. This is some of the stuff that I've seen on social media lately has driven me nuts because it has people fighting for the wrong things, thinking about the wrong things. That they're not measuring their time well. And then they're engaged with fights and things that don't have any fruit bearing whatsoever to them. And so you don't end up with any strawberries. Right. I like this strawberry thing. Yeah. So real quick, I want to bring this in for a landing and maybe we'll put them for Q&A here. And I want to maybe have, we'll bring this in for a landing and actually talk about some of your ayahuasca trips and contrast that with the gospel and what happened. And kind of the hero's journey into the gospel. Yeah. You know, going through your ayahuasca journeys and maybe some of the scary aspects of it all the way into what did the gospel do to you? Yeah. Yeah, it's a big question. I'll try to do, I'll try to do it justice. Ten word from less. Trust Jesus. He was going to try. It's that strawberries. Chuck the sheep. Good night, everybody. Um, so ayahuasca. Explain what it is. So I was a, it's a vine. It's a well, it's actually, it's a beverage that you drink. It's a psychedelic brew that you drink. It's made of a, a vine and a leaf. And the combination of those two plants and the Amazon produces a psychedelic effect on the brain. allows you to absorb through your stomach something that would normally be digested. So, and I can talk about that separately. So psychedelics in general, they are designed to produce altered states of consciousness, acid, mushrooms, things like that. And you'll experience what you experience on them. Not necessarily. You might encounter entities, spirits, or whatever. It's a little bit like leaving the front door of your house open. Maybe someone will walk in. Maybe not. But that's what those are for. And you'll have heightened experience of self, interrealizational of that. So ayahuasca is different because ayahuasca is explicitly about taking this brew, this beverage, an ritualistic setting with a shaman or shaman's whose goal is to guide you to an encounter with a named entity called grandmother ayahuasca, mama ayah, always referred to in the feminine. And that is the explicit goals to go have this communion with this spirit being and her plant spirit helpers. That's the purpose of it. That's the intention of it. That's all throughout the ayahuasca literature. And so when you have generations of people that don't know who they are, that haven't been passed any strong sense of identity, no sense of morality, they feel vaguely dissatisfied with their lives, probably as a result of sin, which I would like to talk about. But they don't have the language to describe that's what's going on. They've done things wrong in their life, but they don't necessarily have a concept of right and wrong. They feel this sense of something unease, something's wrong. And so ayahuasca is sold to people as well, you can go and you can take this and you can go down to Mexico, you can go down to Latin America or whatever, and you can have this experience and you can go commune with mama ayahuasca and she will give you answers for your life. It is exactly how it's sold to people. That is exactly how it's talked about in the literature. I have PDFs given from an ayahuasca retreat center. They sent them to me. And that is the explicit language that is used. You will go and you will commune and you will go on your hero's journey and you will go down, you have your confrontation or whatever. And then you'll come back renewed and you'll have your answers for your life. And so it is a false gospel. It is going to a demon in a very literal sense to find answers. And those answers feel very satisfying temporally in time. It's a shortcut. Like, oh, I got the answer from mama ayahuasca. She says I should be a traveling yoga instructor and I'm going to divorce my wife and I'm going to leave my startup and leave my business and I'm just going to go do that because that's the path to my fulfillment. And there are plenty of stories of that happening. People do not come back from ayahuasca experiences and you need to be a more moral person and be a more righteous person and you need to be a more god glorifying person. They don't say that. They go in the direction of the desires of their flesh. And so because mama ayahuasca told them to do that. And so there's many dangers wrapped up in that. Like, don't ask a demon what you should be doing with your life. Just start. Yes, just life advice. Don't do that. But the problem is it sets up this drug, this experience, this demon as the source of authority in your life. And so if you encounter another question that you can't answer, you go down, you spend another few thousand dollars and you ask again and you ask again and people and you take this mind altering chemical that begins to unwind you psychologically, let's say, then you get people going crazy and doing crazy things and changing their lives in radical ways. In addition to getting that advice in a very powerfully altered state of consciousness. So I think you asked what's what's what's the gospel instead? Yeah, because you went to that journey because something was wrong with you and then you commune because you commune with demons. Something's still wrong with me. But then later you commune with demons, no big deal. But then later you became a Christian and it was just a total, it answered, it gave you an answer in a way that fundamentally changed your heart, changed your life that contrasted with ayahuasca. Yeah, I was always a Christian, I just didn't know it. And that's really important because my life does not make sense out of God's sovereign grace. From before the foundations of the world, my life makes no sense, I should not be here. I should not be here. I went to the end of that road as far down that road as you can go and God had his hand on me the whole time. There's no reason I should, there's no reason I should be here sitting talking about, you know, reform theology with men such as yourselves. There's no reason I should be sitting here and Moscow, Idaho with all of you. But the only reason that I'm here is because of God's sovereign grace because he protected me and was with me when I had no idea who he was. And when the time was right, he called me home and it was through no goodness inherent in myself. It was always there. It was always there, perhaps waiting and that's a gift from him. And so I really need to stress that because it's a lot of people who are into drug culture will say, they'll hear me tell my story. It's like, oh, you know, you just had this realization of Jesus and that was something that you needed to do to lead you to where you were. I said, no, it has nothing to do with that. I was walking as far into the field as you can go, just like literally right up to the edge, right up to the edge. And I didn't jump not because of me, but because God kept me from jumping. And so that's really, really important because I don't want it to sound like, yeah, one of those big spirits journey. And then I decided Jesus. That's not how that works. Right. Right. So in the dog, you did talk a little bit about the sin issue. Yeah. I don't want to spoil it, but just kind of bring that back because you were looking, you were talking about sin. Sin was outside, but something happened where you started to see that it wasn't the outside thing. Yeah. So I appreciate you mentioning that because the pre-supposition that's existing in the conversation now is that people believe in sin, that they believe in objective right and wrong. And most of the world does not. They just don't. There's what I want to do. There's what I can get away with. There's what I can live with, but there's no notion. Obviously in their hearts, they know, but there's so much effort poured into trying to tell people like, whatever is going on in your heart, it doesn't know. It doesn't matter. This feeling you can just put it away and you can go just do this thing and be absolved ever guilt. That was Freud. That was young and all of that. And so the reality of sin is so important to speak into trauma and therapy culture because parents can sin against their children. And that has consequences that doesn't, that doesn't absolve the kids from their own sin. And so that's the really important part is to recognize the guests we can sin against our kids and they need to see us repenting to them for our sins against them. They absolutely need to see that because if you don't, your kids will go into the world and they will be told, your parents are terrible people. They're the ones who messed you up. Here take this and it'll make it all better. Right? That's just out there. It's just waiting. It's the most dangerous message. And just if I can add one thing. No, keep going. Keep going. What it won't tell them when you go in an ayahuasca journey or whatever and you confront the trauma that you've experienced, even if it's real, what they won't tell you is as a result of that thing that happened to you, then you went and made a dozen terrible decisions where you hurt other people that will not tell you that. And that's equally important. It's just like, oh, this was done to you and this screwed you up. And now go be in free. There's no like, oh, what you probably should go apologize to the 15 people that you insulted or whatever as a result of what was done to you. And so sin doesn't exist there either. And so that's where kids become responsible for their own sin and parents are responsible for their sin. And then the weight of the reality of sin just has to sit very heavily on people and that's where the gospel comes in. What frees us from that is real repentance and real faith and real acknowledge it like, no, I am the problem. Yes, there are lots of problems out there in the world, obviously, but I am the problem and it starts here. And I think in Christian communities, it can be really easy to take that for granted, especially faithful Christian communities. But the world needs to hear that and needs to hear that there's a way out of it. And until you start there, you're going to get a bunch of other bad messages. The good news isn't the good news that it needs to be until you actually understand the bad news. That's right. Which is that you're guilty. I mean, this is what Paul says that God, the word comes so that every mouth will be shut and everyone will become guilty before God. It's only at that point that you realize I'm lost and there's nothing I can do. And it's only at that point that God says, you're right. And that's why I sent my son for you. That's why I was saying earlier about, you guys, hell's best kept secret. Anybody, Ray Comfort fans out there? Wow, really? Nobody. Okay. Okay. So I think you need to go listen to it because this is one of the things that's been lost. I've been around so long that I remember when that was new. You must be old. You must be honest. But one of the things that he talks about in this is the fact that we don't use the law in evangelism anymore. So it and it deals with this because like you were saying, I tell us my kids, my kids are like, Dad, they did this. They did this. They did this. They did this. And I'm like, when you stand before God, he's not going to ask what they did to you. That's right. And then is before him what you've done. And so you're going to have to answer to God for your sin. And one of the things that the law does is it points out the fact that you are a liar, that you have stolen, that you have not honored God. You have not loved him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, that you haven't remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy, that you've lust after your neighbor, that you've coveted. What are you going to do about that? Forget all the stuff. We'll deal with all the stuff that they have to deal with. I remember witnessing to a, I think it was a girl at the Starbucks. It was a trance, so it was really mixed up. The surgery went horrible. So I didn't know what I was very confused. Very confusing. Yeah, very confusing. But one of the things that I did, I said, who hurt you? I think I've told you guys about this before. And the person said, well, why would you think I was hurt? I was like, well, look at somebody hurt you. Like, this isn't normal. And I said, the person who hurt you, God is going to deal heavily with them. And I want you to know that God is also going to deal with you. And so you're going to have to answer the God for your own sin, but there's great news for you. He can clean you. He can wash you and he can purify you. And it's that same holiness that cleans you, that will also defend and judge for you as well. But you won't escape it. And then I took my coffee and ran. Okay. Come back. I have a question. Okay. Talk to Jesus. We'll take a couple of questions. I can walk around the mic so you just guys raise your hands. If anybody wants to ask any questions, that's why you left us. I heard that there's a sheep. I got to catch. Kelly. Can you guys talk a little bit about how you pick the topics for these? I don't know what you're calling them documentary. How do you pick the topics? What's the process? How long do these take? How do we get a hold of these? Number seven are on YouTube. Go to CrossPolitik. Search CrossPolitik on YouTube, find our channel. And if you go to playlists, you can find 10 shots of sanity is what we're calling these 10. 10 shots of sanity. How do we pick them? Well, part of what we're trying to do is say, what are the fundamental things that Christians need to focus their attention and time on? And what are the threats that are facing them? And then how can we speak to that? So there really are around two major themes, which would be a biblical anthropology, theonomy, and cosmology. Because I think once you get those things right, you can make it. That's like the Trinity for me. Biblical law to understand how you need to act. How is the world actually designed and formed and made to function so you can live in it? And then what is a man? And I think Calvin said that you can't ask that question without asking who is God. So those things, that's what we're trying to focus on. And if we can get Christians to understand those, then they're not going to be sidetracked by all the other things that they see or the time is fought for. Focusing on those things, that's what the 10 docs are trying to do is focus on those main things. You can also download our app. We got a fight, laugh, feast app, and they're all in our app and the organizing the app and everything. So any other questions? Toby, any last comments? Docs? Watch the, have you guys, how many people have seen some of the docs already? Awesome. That's great. I hope you guys like them. We'll try and make 10 more. If so. Next year. Next year. Yeah. We got to get through these 10. So you're asking how you could help financially support us? You game, do you have anything you want to say? You're going to say it right now. So you can join our club. You can also, we actually have our fight, laugh, feast conference coming up October 1, 2nd and 3rd out in Franklin, Tennessee. So we're going to be doing Pastor Wilson, we got there Joe, Joe Rigny, Jared Longshore, Joe Boot, George Grant, Michael Foster. The topic is Holy Wars. So there's other places where you can connect with us. But we really do. They join in our club membership because a long way with what we do and everything. And then if you're a business and you want to support us, come and talk to me. So if you're single, get married. If you're married, have you a bunch of kids? You have those kids? Until next time, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Go fight, laugh, and feast. This is Cross-Politik. Thank you, guys. Thanks.