Latest / Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment) / Faith on the Front Lines: Struggles Revealed (Part 2)

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Faith on the Front Lines: Struggles Revealed (Part 2) · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:24
  Speaker 1: when I would go into that interview room.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, and at the end of it they've confessed to whatever they've done.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: We're friends, they're crying, they thank me for it.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: That relationship is not built because I'm a cool guy.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: That's built because God was involved in that conversation.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that reality that Christ died for the victim and the victimizer.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music podcast.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: My name is Aaron, I'm your host and thank you so much for coming back for another week.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I'm your host and thank you so much for coming back for another week.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: This week we're going to take on part two of the Faith on the Front Lines podcast series Because of the depth of conversation.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: That's why we had to break this series up into two different episodes.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: The first episode we dealt with the forgiveness, the issues, the struggles we've had in our own lives, and when I say we, last week I brought two of my friends on.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I'll introduce them here in a moment.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: But it was the struggles we've had, both being on the front line, being in a mega church in America, and understanding that sometimes we have to run over people to fulfill our mission.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Now, that's not the Christian way, but you're going to understand here in a moment why I'm saying that.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: The second part of this episode, which is what we're going to cover primarily today, is basically we're going to the street.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: You see, there are listeners from all over the world that have sent in questions or comments about the idea of faith and on the front lines and cops in Christianity and Christianity in the corporate world or whatever that may be.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: So this is not a podcast dedicated to just law enforcement, but literally we have people from the corporate world that say, I'm a Christian on Sunday, but when I step into that office, I don't know how to balance my Christianity, my faith and the things that I see in interactions that I deal with every day.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Or how do I allow my swearing and everything that I do because of the culture I work in?
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: How does that balance in Christianity?
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to talk about today.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: We're going to go to the street and we're going to hear it right from the listeners of the podcast.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Just like you, allow me to introduce my friends.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: One was Mr James Doyle.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Mr James Doyle is a father, a husband, all-around good friend.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: He's a current police officer in southwest Washington.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: He is a combat veteran and in 2020, he was involved in a critical incident during the George Floyd riots.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: He was involved in an officer-involved shooting in the Portland Oregon area.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: If you paid attention to the news at all during those times, you will realize that Portland Oregon was a complete, lawless dumpster fire of a city for about a year.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: The city literally burned Well early on during that George Floyd experience.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Mr Doyle was involved in this critical incident officer-involved shooting and that helped form and mold his perspective and his reality.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: You see, mr Doyle was raised in a nominal Christian household, meaning that they were Christian by name but maybe not practicing it out in every single day.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: After growing up, mr Doyle joined the army.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: When he went into the army he became a combat veteran, came on out of the army, decided to move, he and his wife to the Pacific Northwest and at that point became a police officer.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't too many years on the job that he found himself into another combat situation, but on the streets, on the front lines, wearing a police officer's badge.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Mr Doyle currently is involved in church.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: He is running a organization for first responders called Responders by Grace.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: That is a Christian organization for brothers and sisters in law enforcement, in emergency services, where they can find a safe place to talk, learn about and find counsel and guidance in Christian principles and philosophies.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Mr Doyle is a great asset to this show this week because he will bring you a perspective from.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I've been there and I've done that in combat and in law enforcement.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Yet he has a great biblical knowledge and understanding of the Bible and the way that it works in the real world right.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So oftentimes we get into church and we hear the Bible being read to us, or we read the Bible and we really don't grasp the concepts.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: It's simply like we're reading another language.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: And how does that apply to my life?
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Well, I think the perspective that James will bring to this conversation is that he's been there in those tough times and he realizes that all the negativity that he sees every single day and that absolutely tears him apart and that he hates that.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Our God hates it more than he does.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: And he finds that he has an alliance there with God.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: He has somebody walking with him during those hard times which helps keep him balanced.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: The second guest on the show I had was Mr Tim Smith.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Mr Tim Smith is a pastoral friend of mine.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: He's been involved in church for the majority of his life and in fact you guys have probably heard of Mars Hill Church.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Mr Tim Smith was one of the original members of Mars Hill.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: He was the original worship leader, went on to become a pastor with Mars Hills Church and fell into that culture that, while he's not seeing war on the front lines of the law enforcement or combat.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: He is seeing it amongst the four walls of the church, the place that is supposed to be sacred, holy and nothing goes before saving souls in the name of Jesus Christ.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Yet that wasn't the way.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Their mission was to put butts into seats in the church at all costs, meaning if you had to run over people, you ran over them.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Meaning that your soul, your relationship with God, was not the number one thing on their priority list.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Their priority list was to multiply at 50 to 200% within the 10, 15 years that they were in operation.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they had over 15,000 people involved in their church, over five states.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: And then, all of a sudden, one day his world was over.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: The church imploded.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: The amount of stress and the amount of internal combustion and implosion that was happening could no longer sustain and the church imploded.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: And that left Mr Smith having to find something else to do.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: One day he is involved in the largest church in America, or one of them, if not the largest, and the next day he's out on his head and trying to figure out man, where do I go from here?
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And, just like in my situation, god gave him time to permit reflection, to realize maybe the way things were are not the way they should have been, and that is where we're bringing Mr Tim into this conversation.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: So, with that being said, last week when we left off, the conversation was that I was talking about forgiveness and a situation in my world where somebody very near and dear to my heart was sexually abused and molested and the suspect was held accountable in our judicial system and is spent 14 years in prison.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I, because of my relationship with the victim, I want to kill him.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: I hope he gets stabbed in jail and I really want nothing to do with him.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And I realize that's not of a Christian heart, I get it, but that's where we left off.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: We left off with a conversation of me being angry, frustrated, mad, not understanding forgiveness, not understanding why I'm put in this position, why I'm put in this position, and we left off with the Bible saying that we should forgive and not bring justice into our own hands, and my final comment was does that mean I can't stab him?
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: That is where we left off and that is where we're going to pick up.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: It's okay to be angry and at times I think it's unbiblical to not be angry in those situations.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: It's what you do with anger.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: That is the difference, you know, I think that and I swear listeners, we're going to move on to these cop questions here in a second, but one of the things that first of all, tim, I want to thank you for that that three-part forgiveness, repentance, restoration.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I've never heard it put that way before and you're absolutely right.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: My idea of forgiveness was I forgive this guy, we move on with life and we pretend nothing ever happened, when really what I'm getting from what you said forgiveness is between the relationship between you and God, not the relationship with you and the offender or you and the other party.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Repentance starts to move into that relationship with you and the other person, at least where you can get to a level ground, and then restoration talks about your future and I don't see any chance of restoration or maybe even repentance, but the forgiveness is a me and God thing, and that has started speaking to me in the last five minutes.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: When there's that deep of a breach of trust, when people sin against you, I don't know.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't believe that there's a mandate to continue in trust and relationship with them.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Jesus says things like he didn't entrust himself to these other Jewish self-righteous leaders because he knew what was in the heart of man.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: We see Paul and Barnabas have such a sharp disagreement over this guy that was in their crew, who Paul felt betrayed him John Mark and Barnabas was being gracious to him that Paul and Barnabas part ways over it.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Now, in one of Paul's later letters Paul speaks well of Barnabas and it seems like maybe they reconciled, but there's no evidence in Scripture that they ever worked together again.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Maybe they did, but there's nothing in Scripture to indicate that they did.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: I think that there's examples of what I'm talking about here, where forgiveness is just is choosing not to actively like hold that against the person anymore.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean because forgiveness if forgiveness meant you got to be like besties or something like that's, that's daunting and that's just not going to happen with plenty of people.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: But I really think that that's it's a, it's a distortion of what real forgiveness is.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: What I want to do and thank you guys for all this conversation, this open conversation what I want to do is break into a little bit of the listener questions and cop questions.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: The question that was asked is if I asked a question to anybody.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: The question that was asked is as a cop or combat veteran, have you struggled with Christianity in your walk?
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: That's the question.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: So what I want to do is I want to go through these.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to read these answers verbatim and then let's just give a quick minute or two response to those.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: We're not going to sink a ton of theological time into these, but let's just kind of hit these from a 20,000 foot view and go from there.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: So the first one oh good question.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I think it's really hard to be a cop and not judgmental.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a true survival skill, but as a Christian it doesn't serve you very well and I struggled with that.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: And it's also tough to believe that all all this tragedy happens when there's a God.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: How and why does this happen?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Also, as someone who lost their partner and loved one on the job, it's very difficult to believe that God has a plan for us.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: It really makes you want to evict God from your life.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: That's what I did for two and a half years.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: God was not welcome at my house and at the time it was my opinion that God should have kept this from happening, and I struggle with that a lot.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: So that is the comment.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: What are my initial thought is?
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: I'll take the first one.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: My initial thought is oh, good question, I think it's really hard to be a cop and nonjudgmental.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a true survival skill, but as a Christian, it doesn't serve you very well.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: I'll give you my lay person thought and you guys can tell me if I'm right or wrong.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I think God gives us discernment.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I think he allows us to identify a wolf amongst the flock of sheep and identify the threats that are in the room, um, and it is a survival skill.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: It keeps us alive.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: So, yes, I, I dealt with this as well.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Um, I think it's okay at sometimes to be judgmental as a cop and a Christian, because we're using the skill of discernment, um, that God gave us.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: You guys think I'm on.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Am I on?
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Am I off?
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: What are your thoughts?
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what are?
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: your thoughts.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think people with experience in that that have been trained whether it's medical professionals, law enforcement, military.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: You develop a skill in like threat assessment and response and reaction, and I think that's key.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: I think if you're on in that mode all the time, that can become difficult, a difficult way to live.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm just even thinking out loud how do you turn it off?
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: You're not on duty but you're still looking.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: I had a friend that was a photojournalist in war zones and he developed a lot of that.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: He was embedded with military units in, like Somalia and various other places.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Pulitzer winning photojournalist and and you know to this day, like whenever you sit down in a restaurant, he's like can we switch spots?
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: I just I need to.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: I need to have clear sight lines to the exits.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: You know like, he's just, he's just that guy.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm guessing something similar with you, right.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you're over 70 years old and you're talking to a strange kid, you're a child molester.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's my world.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Right, that's my mindset.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Why is there a 70-year-old man walking up and talking to this four-year-old kid and trying to be his friend, to give him a quarter at Dairy Queen?
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Well, I know why, and that's the judgment that came from my world.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's a bad thing in my opinion, but I totally get this person struggling with it.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Tim, I'm going to ask you to take the second part.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: It's also tough to believe that all the tragedy happens when there's a God.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: How and why does this happen?
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Why does God allow these tragic things to happen in our world?
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we could certainly talk about this at least as long or longer than we talked about forgiveness, and you know short answers can sometimes seem trite, and so apologies if it seems that way.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: But the way I see this is that God doesn't do evil.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: People do evil.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Things were originally created good, perfect community between humans and their creator, but then they rebelled against God, wanting to be God and kind of take his place, and that plunged everything into pride and arrogance and selfishness.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: The next chapter in the Bible, the first man and woman, their kids, are killing each other over selfish rivalry, and that's the world we live in ever since.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: And that doesn't explain it all.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: But the reality is people do evil because they are born that way.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: We are born in active rebellion against God by nature and choice, and yet God has a way of turning.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: The word I like to use is bending evil things around for ultimate good.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: But that's tricky.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: It's tricky because that immediately gets to your perception of what is ultimate good, and when we say, like, why do bad things happen to good people?
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: It's actually loaded with presuppositions, one that we're good people and that we deserve better, which I actually don't think we do.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: And then it's also kind of ties to our perspective that if God were really God Then he would work things out to my version of ultimate good rather than his.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: And the story of Joseph in Genesis is the quintessential case study in this.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: His brothers sell him into slavery and they're finally reunited.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: You know a very summary of that story, but they're finally reunited and he makes this amazing statement because because they think he's going to kill them, but actually he forgave them and is gracious to them and he said what some meant for evil.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: God worked for good and it took him his whole life to see some of that.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: We may or may not see it in this life, but I do believe he's working in the midst of it.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: So why does God allow it?
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: It's because he allows people a measure of enough free will that they act on it and they do evil things to other people out of all kinds of motives, but he's working in and through that and working in many times for good things that we may or may not see in many times for good things that we may or may not see In the.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: that was much deeper than my initial thought.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: I appreciate your insight.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: My initial thought was and maybe this is what you said a product of a broken world.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, when sin entered the world, it changed the outcome forever.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Would you agree with that statement?
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure, yeah, okay, yeah, we're all sons of Adam and daughters of Eve and CS Lewis, language and, and, and you know, we're born with that murderous rebellion in our hearts that that Cain had against Abel, their, their kids.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Um, when he thinks that that Abel brought a better sacrifice to god, and he's jealous, and so he beats him to death with a rock in a field and buries him.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: You know like that's in mind.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: That's the beginning of the scriptures.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: It's a pretty intense story when you let it, let it sink in, and so, yeah, why does evil happen?
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: It happens, ultimately, because of sin.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: So and the third part of this person's comment essentially is that they lost their partner and loved one in the line of duty and, as a result, they evicted God from their life and did that for a couple of years.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: God wasn't welcome and with that I think we answered that in part two of this question with Tim's response.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: But what I would do is I would direct the listener to my episode, number 11 and the most the mentor of the morning.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: That is when, uh, I talk about my partner being killed in the line of duty and that weight and self blame that I held for 20 plus years that literally spiraled my life out of control.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: And it was only through a therapeutic conversation, where we couldn't overcome this, that my therapist asked you know well where who else was with John that night.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: John was my partner.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: John was working as a direct result of me.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: If it wasn't for me, john wouldn't have been there.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: It was my belief system and therefore it was me that got John killed on Christmas night, which was also his wife's birthday.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: So I held on to that for a long time.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: So I couldn't get over this in therapy.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Then the therapist says you know who was there with John that night that he was murdered.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, there was John, there was the bad guy, and there was the girlfriend, who was also a victim in this, and she was inside hiding in the house.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Well, who else was there?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Nobody, just them.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Who else was there?
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Well, god was there.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, and immediately a light bulb.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: This is part of God's plan, not my plan.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: The fact that John was working that night was already written in the books and it had nothing to do with the fact that I want to take a vacation.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Um, this is not my weight to bear.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: This is, you know, the way that.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: It was the way that God had it.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: He was there with John, he took John home that night.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: It was John's turn to go home and, uh, that is what really changed it for me.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot more detail in that, but take a listen to that episode episode 11, and you can really talk about inviting God into those situations where maybe there's some really self-blame struggle, hatred, pushing away from God.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: It's just a, it's a good message, so moving on let's see.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: We have one here that says hope you're doing well the past few years.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I think I've lost a lot of faith, so I'm probably not a good one to talk about this.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, I I guess in that I'll just throw out something quickly and you guys can add to it if you have anything.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: But in that, um, life happens and you know, even in this podcast I've pushed God away in tonight's episode in some circumstances.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: I would just hope and pray that if you find yourself in this situation, that you don't completely, you know, dismiss the possibility that God is there for a relationship.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I was struggling really bad one time in the church and somebody that goes to my church.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Now I'm struggling, I'm pushing God away, I'm pushing the church away, I'm isolating and insulating and he says Aaron, god is right behind you.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: All you have to do is turn around and talk to him, ask for his help, ask for his forgiveness.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: No matter what you've done, no matter how bad your world has become or what you've seen or what you've experienced, or the hatred or the frustration towards church, god is right there and he's always willing to have that conversation, and that was really cool for me.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: Aaron, if I could kind of caveat on a little bit of what you guys have been hitting too, that's just to encourage other listeners as well, coming from nominal Christianity, into giving my life to Christ and then now dealing with the tension of that of being in the world and exposed to the heaviness of the world but now having the Holy Spirit, I thought that tension and I think Satan and the enemy use it a lot against me of like that's a disingenuine conversion, um, because you're living with tension now with your sin and, um, it really was just trying to trust God in that.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: And, like Roman seven and eight is really where I find myself, um, very routinely, of just that, seeing even Paul, is that tension of I don't do what I want to do and I do what I don't want to do, wretched man that I am, who's going to free me of this?
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: You know dead body, essentially that's attached to me.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: And then right into Romans 8, you know there's no condemnation for those in Christ.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: And then through that, even into your listeners.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: Some of their responses is okay, I, I trust god, that he's sovereign, and you know where I'm at doctrinally in my faith then.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Um, okay for god to be sovereign?
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Now I start, you know, playing the gymnastics with that.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: Well, if he's sovereign, then why does this happen?
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: You know this.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: You know child suicide or these heavier calls that I've gone on, or these different things it's like, well, is where's he in that?
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: And you know, aaron kind of hit it on the head.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: And I too, you know, through Christian counseling, um so many times that I've seen myself on these call and God, like having my counselor asked me, like I want you to literally visualize God, where's he at in this call with you, and the only way I could do it was he's off in the corner watching and she's just like, where's that in scripture?
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: You know, if you you know the new Testament, you can cry out to him as Abba, father and Christ is now your advocate to him as your elder brother and your savior, and these things.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: And I just um, it was really hard for me to get to that point with that tension of how can I?
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: Um go to him, because I just walked around with so much guilt and shame from my nominal Christian walk through adult.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: You know life and then you know the still the struggles that I'm dealing with today through just unhealthy means of coping with PTSD and these different things.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: You know that will probably be lifelong battles for me with, just because of the way, even biologically, it's affected my body with dopamine receptors and these different things.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: You know that I've had to work through, even with my wife.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: And you know, um, like I said, christian counseling and understanding that like that I can go to the father with that and it's not like he's some kid up in heaven with a magnifying glass saying, you know I'm going to mess with these people today and figure it out that he's here with me, like Aaron said on these horrible calls embracing me as his son of like, I'm here with you to bear this for you and, like you said, I'm not trying to trivialize the answer, but just like that's the only way I can do it, period.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: And people ask me all the time how are you in law enforcement?
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: If I was not a Christian, I cannot do this and it's not by my strength.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: It's that I have to trust that.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: You know the most trivial of calls.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: You know the civil, obnoxious ones to the heavy ones.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: Those are all ordained by our Father and it's all relational.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: You know life began through relation of the Trinity and was conveyed then to us as His creation.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: It's like all these people I'm interacting with is by the will of God, whether it's, you know, a small conversation, or I have the ability to share the gospel with them in the back of my car, like that's all ordained by him and an opportunity to live that out, whether it's traumatic or not.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: And I don't want to take up too much time, aaron, but if you um time permitting, I can share a story real quick.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Um, with the um ministry group that I ran there, we were able to identify a couple other guys in my previous department that were also believers and, um, we had a pretty, pretty heavy call.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: A young boy took his life and his younger brother was one that found them.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: Parents were both gone to work and we show up to this call you know, lord willing, one of the worst ones I'll have for my career and I had the opportunity to take a step back and look and all four of us that were on that call were all Christians and it was like the biggest middle finger.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: I felt to the enemy and was just such a like encouragement.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: I will never forget that moment.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: It was a tangible moment where I was able to sit there.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: And here's this you know child that's dead, that took his own life.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: Here's his little seven year old brother that found him.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: And literally I have three brothers in Christ who, by God's will, are the three officers in this whole County that showed up to this call.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Every single one of them are Christians and it's like, yes, we are here.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: Call.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: Every single one of them are Christians and it's like, yes, we are here, but we get.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: You know, the Lord is using us in this dark um as salt and light to.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: It is awful, but like, this is the world that our savior came to fix and you know, we I now have these brothers I can bear this with, and that we are looking through a Christian approach to this trauma.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: I don't understand I never will why this happened, um, but, like you said, tim, kind of trusting with that, you know.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: However, we can love on these people while we're here for the worst day of their lives.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: It's like you know again that's it's just trying to rest in that.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: That's pretty awesome.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the biblical, uh, the biblical definition of faith is, uh, from Hebrews, it's being sure of what you hope for and confident of what you do not see.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: And you know I can definitely see where that can be shaken.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: You know You're not so sure that that's the real object of the hope.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: You're not sure if it's even there because you can't see it.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: But my perspective and this doesn't have to be everybody's, but my perspective is like man.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: I personally can relate to people that walk away from church or Christian community sometimes, because people can just be terrible.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: That's just always going to be the case, right?
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: But man, in the midst of a lot of terrible people, and the church is such a weird, messed up, bizarre and broken place.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: But man Jesus place.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: But man Jesus.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: For me he's just still good and so for me my mindset is like man.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: I've been at times wondering if I could even still engage with church, but for me it's like man.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: There is not one thing in my life that would be better by denying that God is present in the midst of everything.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: For me that would be like, just for the way I see it, the way I know him and the way I my life has gone.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: No-transcript.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: The depths, a new depth of despair for me, like I would walk away from a lot of things before I could intellectually say you know, I don't think he's even there anymore.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: I might be pissed at him, but um, uh, I guess.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: So the question I've asked people occasionally is just, like you know well, god wasn't welcome at your house.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Did that make it better?
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Uh, you know like what did that do for you?
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Did that?
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Do you feel like?
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Like the cloud of of depression and grief lifted as soon as you gave God the middle finger and told him he wasn't welcome, even though he's still there, no matter what you know?
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Like did that make it better?
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to trivialize or or or throw pain in anyone's face, but like, uh, he's my hope, and so much of my work personally in working out faith is continuing to reacquaint myself with Jesus, in sharp contrast to all the BS done in his name, because he's different than a lot of the messed up things done in his name and he is the only thing that hasn't ever let me down.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I love your honesty.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: In the church is a messed up, screwed up, challenging, upside down place.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, you know, and that is absolutely the truth, people get this perception, especially non-Christians looking in.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'm not perfect, I can't go to church, oh, you know, and the church is full of hypocrites, and you know, I'm not perfect, I can't go to church, um, you know, and the church is full of hypocrites, and you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Everybody's heard these things Right, I mean, and you're absolutely right, tim, and I don't want to go off on this, on this tangent of the church, but the church is messed up, people are not perfect.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Um, it is a playground for sinners.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: That's where you know.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: But the idea is that faith, the faith is that you ask God into your life, you believe in that, and we're not perfect.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Those people in that church is not perfect, and that's you know.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Again, if you listen to this podcast, I'm a Christian, I go to church, I serve my church.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I am not perfect, but you know, we just strive for that faith.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: So, thank you so much for that and thank you for that raw honesty.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: One of the next questions is or not a question?
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: It's a statement and we won't get into this.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: I'll just share one thing, a response not easy to discuss or think about.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I try to push it deep down.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: I try to push it down deep and not let it come up.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: I'll just say episode 14.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: It's the interview that changed everything.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Accepting, uh, what you experience is tragic, but how you handle it can even be worse.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: You know, um, we do bear a very heavy weight of the badge.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: However, um, your inability to deal with it or your desire to push it down and pretend it didn't exist, compartmentalize it and pack it away, is just going to kill you over the long term.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: You know, our brains remember everything we've ever seen, smelled, touched, tasted, felt, and all of those things are in a compartment in your box and if you don't open those up, they're going to implode.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: And it's hard, it's a lot of work and it sucks, but listen to episode 14, and it'll point you in the right direction.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: I think I do love the Lord and I found His word to be true, even if at times I don't understand it, it's still true.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: See Romans 8, 28 through 39.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Says God will work all things together for good for those who love him.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: It goes on to say that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I was just grateful the Lord did exactly that he didn't let me or any of my friends get killed in my shooting.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Good fruit has come from that event, certainly.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: I'm completely content with all of it and I only think about it if people bring it up.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: You know my thoughts are not negative.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: It's just mostly like remembering an old call that I was on.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I'm a very sinful and prideful person.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: There was maybe three days following the shooting where I was embarrassed that he didn't die, embarrassed at my performance.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: The Lord made that clear to me and I repented of my pride and later learned my performance was not all that bad.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: The Bible says that the Lord tells us every man has an appointed time with death.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I could not have changed that with my performance.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Wish I had more for you, but maybe just a word of encouragement for those struggling in life.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: The Lord is good.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: He has made the good times and the bad times.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: He will work all of those times out for good, for those he has saved Um can I speak on that real quick?
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, go for it, go, go, go go.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: Just because a big part, especially in the combat, uh, military side of it is just that imposter syndrome.
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: Um, what do you mean?
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Imposter syndrome?
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: So, uh, I can't talk about my experience, or, you know, my experience wasn't traumatic enough to weight up to your experience.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: So, comparative, yeah, exactly, and it's especially type A personalities.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: You know a lot of guys in the operator world, you know speak on this a lot more, but you know I was in an airborne infantry unit and even within my company we had three different platoons that had different experiences on our time over there and, um, it took less than 24 hours for guys to be getting in fistfights over who had it worse, and it's just like you know instead of trying to like celebrate the fact we're all still alive.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: You know we're wanting to just, uh, verbally abuse each other and you know, lord willing, no one died in my platoon.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: And so it was like, well, can I even act like I had a tough deployment in the combat I was on, because you know God got us all through it safely and just how dark and twisted that is within itself.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: But it's like that.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: I see that in law enforcement all the time and full transparency, even dealt with that with my shooting and just the context of it and having guys that I really respect making, you know, comments, probably not maliciously, but like, oh yeah, you know, based on the angle of the body camera, this, and that it's just like not a good look and it's just like you know that stuck with me and trying to just give that even over to the Lord of again, you know his will.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: Give that even over to the Lord of again, you know his will.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: I know what I felt and why I made the decision I did in the moment, with a lot of it was just natural response of um fight or flight and even working through that and my biochemistry and um the pride of that of, even as a combat veteran.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: You know those talks we got prior to that in the Academy of this, how your body's going to respond and this is how you're going to feel and it's going to respond and this is how you're going to feel.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: It's like, well, I was in combat.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: You know, being shot at with RPGs and machine guns and I can handle this, and then just how much that affected me going through that experience here and then the effects of it after on what do my coworkers think about me?
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: You know being out of work this long and did my coworkers even get the debrief that I got, where they know the full ballistics and the angles and this and that, and like really not wanting to let that go instead of and it was finally my wife that kind of confronted me on it Um, and just like, why are you like?
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: Why does it matter?
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: And it was just, it's just us, I think, as guys that are personalities.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: But again, it's like you know I'm alive, I got through it, cleared and everything else.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: Instead of moving on, it's like, no, well, what's everyone's opinion on me?
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: On it, um, and so I understand a lot of what he was talking about with that and can relate to that Um, and just yeah, giving it to the Lord, trusting him with that Um, it's bigger than me.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: I was just his vessel and tool that night, and goes on.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I definitely resonated with that comment, so I appreciate whoever that was.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: And I think that you know we'll leave it with this on that writer.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: But the writer finished his sentence with this or his paragraph with this One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your path.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: And I think that so often as combat I have not seen military but law enforcement as combat, as a warrior mentality, as the guy who's pissed off at me at the dude in jail right now for child molestation, it's easier for me to lean on my own understanding and have a lack of faith, you know.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: And I really like the way that this writer ended that Next one.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: This writer ended that Next one.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I guess I'd have to say at three different churches over the past 15 years I've struggled to relate to others in Sunday school and small groups.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: In one instance I remember a fireman telling me quote the ball is in your court end.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Quote.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: When it came to taking the next steps to getting involved in church, I just always felt like no one could possibly understand the internal rage that I was experiencing.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: I would just encourage anyone that's listening to step outside of the normal law enforcement response to stress Talk to a therapist or clergy member.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: The longer officers fail to address the issues, the more things will compound and the more they will suffer.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Eventually, their life will be a shit show of epic proportions.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: As we know, we are trained very differently.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: We were trained very differently in the 1980s and 90s.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: We were a street warrior.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Mentality Academy training is now improving about trauma and its effects on the brain.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: It's not until I spoke to my therapist that I truly understood how trauma in the brain is processed and stored and how EMDR can reprocess those traumatic events and store it correctly in the brain.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Our middle daughter is a dental hygienist.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I've brushed my teeth for years.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: However, it was not until she showed me how to do it correctly and explained why it's important to do it with purpose that I took heed and paid attention.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Something as simple as brushing your teeth a daily activity, doing it wrong, all because I didn't know how to do it with purpose.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: New officers need to be trained in how to take time to assess their exposures, trauma, and store and process those purposefully?
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: To your original question, I think faith is a very important part of living purposefully.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Christ is the best way to keep our minds straight if you don't lose the fact that God is in control.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: So when I read that, a couple things come to mind.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: First of all, bro, I totally get rage.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: I understand being the most rageful person in the room and we even spoke about it earlier in that Sunday school or in that small group when I felt like nobody can relate.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Please know that you're not the only one that feels this way and hopefully you've got something from this podcast tonight to help navigate those situations.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: When it comes to the academy training and the therapist and how trauma in the brain is processed and the therapist and how trauma in the brain is processed, go listen to episode number four, triggered and Safety.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: In there I give a huge breakdown on trauma, the brain's response to trauma, the reptilian brain, different stuff like that, and it really talks deep from a therapeutic standpoint and a scientific standpoint as to how the brain processes those traumas and stores everything in those tiny boxes that you compartmentalize and hoping to never revisit.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: But the more that you revisit them, the more free you feel, and I do believe.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: My belief is that God is not going to unpack another one of those boxes until you're ready to process it and deal with it.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: He knows where you're at, he knows where you've been, he knows the devils that are hiding there and he opens those things up as you're ready to process them.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: You know, a trauma is like any experience that we have in life Sometimes the actual event is not as big as the story that we make it, that we surround it with and the narrative that we add to it as human beings.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: I think that oftentimes things will happen in our world and we will want to I don't say sensationalize, but make them bigger than they are.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: We add to them.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: We add a story based on our experiences, our past, our training, all that type of stuff.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: And a very simple example of this is let's pretend you're at Starbucks and somebody you know you're a dude, some chick looks at you, she smiles, you know kind of winks at you and immediately you're like man, she must want me, I am hot, she is into me.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Really.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: She just looked at you, she smiled and she winked.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: It could have been a thank you for letting me go first.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: It could have been whatever.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: But in our minds sometimes, depending on where we are, we can make this into more than it is and we add a story to something that's not there.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: At one point I was teaching a class and there was a gal sitting in the back room in the back of the room and she was frowning and she was angry the entire time and she's looking at her watch and she's frustrating.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: And my teaching style that day was not terrible.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I was interactive.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: It was a fun class.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Everybody else was having a good time except this gal, and so in my mind I'm like man, what can I do to reach her?
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Why does she hate me?
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Why is she ready to get out of here?
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: You know, and it was all me, me, me, negative, negative, negative.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: And at the end of the day she was upset because the window was open and she was cold, and that's all it was.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: I asked her afterwards.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, what's going on?
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I said you know, did I strike you wrong?
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Did I trigger you?
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Did I say something?
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: She's like I was just freezing cold and I couldn't get to the window.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: So that was her whole thing.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: But for six hours in that class, I'm making this about me.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Really, we need to separate that Starbucks smile and that upset frown for what they really are they're a smile and a frown.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: They're a smile and a frown.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: They're not the story that we put with them.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: And that's what that EMDR helps do.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: It helps reprocess those situations to separate the story from really what occurred.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: All right, that's good, all right.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Here's the next one.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Some of the biggest things I struggle with are language and attitude.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: The way cops and military communicate is infused with foul language.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: At times I feel conflicted about how I communicate with coworkers.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: The attitude of a cop is hard to describe.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: It feels like other others.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Concerns or problems outside of law enforcement don't really matter.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Everything else is secondary.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it is hard to transition between work and home life, knowing when to push my faith and when to show by example.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: It's hard because the public and corporate sectors is so secular.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's difficult to talk about faith.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: I often try to set an example and proclaim faith when asked.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I'm going to let you deal with this, james.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Can you address this?
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's definitely a balance.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Um, and, like I said, we've hit on a lot of relational stuff.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: Um, I think you're going to find certain people that you're going to be able to be more comfortable with that.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah, I mean, that's something I still struggle with, especially on the language side.
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: I can do pretty well about.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: I have to actively restrain myself, especially at home around the girls, and then I get right back in to work and my shift and the team that I run.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: I'm a sergeant and you know all the my filter language comes right back to me Calls for service, I'm right there.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: If I have to yell at somebody, it's a quick result back to my, my default after my time in the infantry and it's right back there.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: So I get that.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: Um, as far as like living out your faith and being the example, I think that look goes a long ways and a lot of it is just how you treat people in general.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: Um, I, yeah, I mean I've had, I've been convicted in the same time where, you know, even within my ministry, I've had a coworker that found out about it and looked at me and said I didn't know you were a Christian, and that was pretty hard pill for me to swallow because it's like, okay, am I not conveying myself enough in the image of Christ based on how I'm carrying myself at work?
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: Is it because of the language thing?
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: Is it you know way I'm treating people on calls, um, and so I had to really self-evaluate through that, um, and it was a little bit of a gut check.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: So I get that.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: Um, I think you know finding other guys to encourage you with that or her females.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: You know, if this is a sister, um, because we are weak in our flesh and especially when we're tired, um, it's been a long week.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: You're going to be more prone in that tiredness to result back to the flesh versus spirit, um, and that's when I have to be on guard myself the most.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: Um, I noticed when I'm not in prayer, I'm not in the word, it's when I'm tired and it's just the flesh being the flesh.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Totally, Tim.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Do you have anything to add to that?
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: The one thing that just came to mind while you were just talking James is just living as a Christian is people have so many views about what that is, and there's a lot of caricatures out there about what a Christian is and isn't, and does and doesn't do, and they're strongly connected to different faith traditions, denominational traditions, different kinds of churches, but generally I don't know if you grew up hearing this, but Christians don't drink, smoke or chew or go with girls who do.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: There's this idea of a long list of all these things a Christian doesn't do, and I just think walking with Jesus is bigger than that.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: I think there is a place for strong language.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: I think there's a place for enjoying food and drink.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: I think there's a place for strong language.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: I think there's a place for enjoying food and drink.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: I think there's a place for a lot of different things, and I think it's the heart that we do them with and the way that we engage them.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: I think it's way easier to create a hands-off mentality than a mature person that engages in something with restraint and maturity.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: In Romans I think it's 14 and 15, it's talking about the mature person in Christ is the one who can partake of all kinds of things and do it in a healthy way, not the one who has to hold everything at arm's length.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: So it's the person.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: The mature Christian is the one who can enjoy alcohol as a gift but not abuse it as a numbing escape.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: There's a time for strong situations and strong language, but then if you just passively use profanity as a substitute for any other language, that will do, just because it's a part of a culture, then it's worth considering that.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: You know, uh, why, why, why would you substitute in language necessarily like that it just because everybody else is doing it?
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Um, so I think it calls for discernment and maturity and discussions amongst folk, but none of that changes.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: I guess all I'm speaking to in that is, somebody might assume a Christian would never use certain words.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: Somebody might assume a Christian would never actually drink.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: That's how I was raised and I was like had a crisis of faith when I found like a beer, uh, in the very back corner of one of my youth leaders refrigerators.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: So I'm like I thought they were a Christian.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, that was.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: That was how I was raised.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Uh, and now, if anybody who knows me knows that that is not my, my current belief Now.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: Belief now.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: I enjoy a lot of things as a gift of God, so all that to say like that doesn't totally fix what this writer is saying.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it's really hard to figure out the right time to speak and how to represent, but some of it might be deconstructing some of the caricatures about what a Christian is and isn't.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you for adding that.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: The next question, or the next statement which we've actually in reading through it, we've already answered it, so we won't spend a ton of time on it.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I think it'll be self-explanatory in a second, but here it goes.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I guess early on I questioned why God would let horrible things happen to true victims not today's shith.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: I wrote off the church and its people in a church around kids and support them under the guise of Christianity, forgiveness and faith.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: I wrote off the church and its people, but I never lost my faith in God.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Wow, I think we hit that on the head earlier.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: I mean that I did not write this, but you know, that is we hit it on the head, right, we spoke about it, so I don't know if there's anything else to say.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: The only thing I would add is just, man, I can relate to that.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: There's a reason why when somebody, oftentimes, if they leave a ministry staff position in a church and don't go directly to another ministry staff position in another church, they won't be at that church and sometimes they won't return to church Because it's hard.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: The church is, I said it, a mess.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: The only thing I would add to what I've said earlier and you guys have said as well I've said earlier and you guys have said as well is just to challenge anybody in that that when you become a Christian, you don't invite Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: That's an American, individualized, very modern, very ahistorical, very modern, very ahistorical and not biblical understanding of what salvation is.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: When you come to belong to Jesus and become a follower of Jesus, you're saved, not just into a relationship with him, but you're saved into his people.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: There is no personal savior, there's only a savior of all God's people, and so you can't love Jesus without being or be in a close, intimate relationship with Jesus the way he meant it to be.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: Without his people and man, it's hard.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: It's hard and it sucks, and that is not to invalidate anything that this person has experienced from church folk.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: They can be terrible.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: No church is perfect.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: From church folk, they can be terrible.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: No church is perfect.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: I just didn't encourage you.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Know like it baffles me why I still believe in the church.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't Just like.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you guys have plenty of data.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: You can stack up for that too.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: And yet, like, the church is the body of Christ in the world and to know him and to be connected to him is to be connected to his people, and so that's how we're meant to live it out.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: We're not meant to live it out just with a private faith.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you for adding that Anything, James.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: No, that was really good, All right brother.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to the next one.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Having to get out of law enforcement has been a struggle, as I'm sure you know.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: One Having to get out of law enforcement has been a struggle, as I'm sure you know.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: No-transcript also getting out of something that I did for 16 years.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely still figuring out, but doing much, much better, just continuing to grow and become the best person dad, husband and friend that I can be.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: I see the whole thing as a blessing now, and the only thing I'll add to that is, if that resonates with you, that is a lot of my story in a nutshell.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Go back to episode number two.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: From left, from meth labs to meditation, episode number two totally encompasses this writer's thoughts, feelings, loss of identity, who am I now?
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: And then finding the time and the space to be the best person dad, husband and friend that he can or she can be.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: I guess it'd be a husband and dad.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: It better be a he, but in today's world I'm not quite sure.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Anyway, so moving on.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: Uh, so there's that one and this one a new writer.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: In both combat and law enforcement, I struggle with anything that happened to kids.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: I always wondered how God could let something happen to such innocent little people, but then I would always come back with.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: God has a plan and a reason for what he's doing, but that didn't alleviate the impact those had on my mental health.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: A friend once told me as cops and soldiers and warriors, our eyes are forced to see things that our souls cannot bear.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: I believe that, and I also believe that God chose us to be warriors and will help us through the hard times.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: So in the end I have to put my faith in God to help me through those times.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: Anybody got anything to add to that or reflection?
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a thought of this passage earlier.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: But Jesus in Matthew 18,.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: It's a passage that is well known for the beginning of it but less known for the end.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: The disciples come to Jesus and they're arguing about who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus calls a child and he puts him in the midst of them and says, truly, I say to you, lest you become like children, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: But then he goes on and he's talking.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: He's advocating for, like a childlike faith.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: But he goes on in verse five and says whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: But whoever causes one of these little ones to believe, who believe in me, to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Justice in this world is imperfect, but Jesus cares deeply about what happens to those kids too, and everyone will give an answer for that before the ultimate judge, for whom they cannot escape.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: And even if you were left struggling for justice in this life like I, just challenge everybody to take heart that Jesus is the ultimate judge, the only inescapable judge.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: The only inescapable judge, the only one who can't get off on legal technicalities or lawyer shenanigans or all the other stuff that happens in our broken world and our broken systems.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Like, jesus feels what you feel and he wants justice and he, unlike everyone else, will get it.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you for that.
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: I was going to say that that's yeah, that's been a big contention with me, especially overseas.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: Some of the stuff I was exposed to over there just the way that culture even views children being a 19-year-old kid and just seeing what you know, sex trafficking is very prevalent over there as well.
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of that Kids getting kidnapped from the villages to be have held ransom to us as, because we're americans, they know that we're going to care.
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: Um, just evil again, that human beings can do these to other humans.
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: Um, and then magnifying that here in the states, you know, as a law enforcement, um, and again, we hit on this a little bit earlier, but it was through my christian counseling that I finally got some peace with it and tim kind kind of just hit on it.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: But my counselor essentially said to me you know the tension that you're holding with this kind of stuff, um, and God's sovereignty on how these things are allowed to happen in this world.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: You're projecting on to God what the Bible does not.
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: Um, she's like you have to rest in the character of God, because that's who he is, you know.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: First, john says that God is love, like the epitome of love, our full understanding, even through our sin filter in our flesh.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: God is the.
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: You know, the epitome of that he is, love or even our longing for justice, comes from who he is and his attributes.
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: And my tension with that that I feel as a, you know, human being on this side of eternity, um, you know it's it's not right to convey that onto him and that's.
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: I think that falls into kind of Tim, what you were hitting on, that childlike faith, and that's where I have to fall back with that.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: It's like I'm trying to reason with that and adding to stuff that scripture doesn't even add to it.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: A lot of that is just my humanity.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: Uh, I really love what you guys have added to this, and the one thing that stuck out to me in this writer's comment was his statement as cops and soldiers and warriors, our eyes are forced to see things that our souls cannot bear and that really, really resonated with me.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: And it's through the faith as a Christian, is through the faith in God and the Bible that we can find some solace and realize that we serve a sovereign God.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: And God has us no matter where we are.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Um, even in the worst situations, god has us where he wants us, when he wants us, there, you know, and, um, he can move us and put us anywhere that he wants, but he has us where he has us for a reason, and sometimes in my example, for me, I got so caught up in the moment, thinking about me.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: I was relying on my own self versus my faith in God.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: Um, and I really like how this writer put it that he just in in those times, had to rely on his faith, got two more, and this is one from a writer.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: One of my questions is how do I put my faith in God and not get distracted by all the things that come with law enforcement, like death, bad people, alcohol affairs, all of the vices and distractions of law enforcement, I'm sorry, all of the vices and distractions law enforcement so often resorts to to fill, supplement or satisfy the holes they have in their life.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: So that is, and I can relate to some of that.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: You know we get so and this is not a biblical response, this is a real life response.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: We get so wrapped up in our day to day and we work so much in the sympathetic nervous system of our brain going going, going, going going.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: We completely allow the parasympathetic side of our brain, which is the slow down, sex feed and eat sleep side of our brain.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: We let that just go to waste.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: So I think that the way to avoid that is to force yourself to create game trails on the parasympathetic side of your brain.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: Do things that slow you down.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: That can be reading your Bible, that can be reading any book.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: That can be adult coloring, that could be yoga, that could be meditation.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: That can be simply turning your phone off and leaving it off for three or four days so you're not distracted by the world.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: When you do that, you're forcing your brain to think differently.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: You're forcing it to create game trails.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: Well, crap, he's not doing what he always does.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: By running 100 miles an hour, he's slowing down to 20 miles an hour.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: We've got to create game trails through the 20 mile an hour side of his head and the deer start to split and divide and conquer and before you know it, you'll have game trails on both sides.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: You know it, you'll have game trails on both sides.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I think if you fill your time with doing things to activate the parasympathetic side, the side that slows you down, and you force yourself into that, which is going to be very uncomfortable at first, trust me, if you force yourself into that side of stimulating that side of the nervous system, those things will go away.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: You're going to because you're going to have peace.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: You're're going to because you're going to have peace.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: You're going to have joy, you're going to have fulfillment as a natural part of your life and you're not going to be seeking those quick thrills.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Any input, thoughts on that, guys?
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, yeah, that's something I've had to work through with the form of therapy that I've done for a couple of years now called neuromodulation.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: That really addresses the neurological pathways and the damage that dopamine addiction can do for years and you really see it's really powerful when you add the biblical perspective to that and you see that literally God's law, the things that he tries to protect us from, it's not just spiritual, it's also biological and you know you're saying these different vices and they're learning, even like pornography, how much it alters the male brain and your dopamine receptors and just these aspects of your life that can be damaged in ways beyond just a quick fix.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: Dopamine hit which then affects your relationships and your capacity for relationship, which is going to feed back into your work, which is the cause of it in the first place.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: So it's just a never ending cycle and really trying to slow that down, redirect those pathways, like you said, aaron, finding healthy means.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that my therapist spoke to me about was, in 21 years of being a cop and let's just take the last 11 of doing homicide child abuse Did you ever really have any time off?
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: You get off on Friday, you got a three-day weekend, but you're holding your phone, you're holding your pager and you're just waiting for that call to come in.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Every time that phone rings, your adrenaline spikes.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: You're ready to go.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: So, no matter how much you try to live in that parasympathetic nervous system, slowing things down, then the phone rings.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: It's beyond your control and all of a sudden you're right back into that sympathetic nervous system and those game trails are taking the path of least resistance.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: That's why and I say that because this has to be a conscious effort to slow yourself down and those of you who are still in the heat of battle, that is going to be very, very hard, because you are not wired or programmed that way as a cop, as a warrior, as a combat person.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: One of the things I want to end with here is episode 16.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: If you guys haven't got a chance to listen to that, it's got to be one of the most touching episodes that I've done and that is with my brother, mr John Beale.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: John Beale is a highly decorated police veteran.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: He was with LAPD, he was with the Gresham Police Department.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: He is a man that is built of family, faith, love and music.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: That was kind of the moral of his life.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: He moved his family to Oregon for a better life.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: He had several children and then one day his little girl is looking up and talks about seeing Jesus' castle in the sky.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: She got sick within.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: She might have been sick that day, but she got sick the next day.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: She woke up and couldn't move.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: He went to pick her up, to take her to the hospital and she died in his arms.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: He did CPR, took her to the hospital and she did not survive.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: So he recovers from that as much as he can.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: He goes back to work.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: A couple of years later his son wakes up, his son is sick, has some issues, takes his son to the hospital and his son dies at the doctor's office.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: This is two children in a couple of loss.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: I was struggling very, very hard with Christianity for the last six months, seven months.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: I was blaming everybody except myself and in talking to John I started to feel some conviction and you can hear those in some of my episodes.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: I come out and I talk about it and I'm in a lot better place today.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: But specifically in John's episode, even during these times of trials and tribulations and struggles and losing kids and parents' worst nightmare to lose one, much less two, right in front of you his faith was challenged.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: He struggled with suicidal thoughts, but that's when he chose to invite God into his car and he chose, instead of driving into the river and killing himself on the way to work every day, he chose to bring God into the car and ask God, god, what we have me to do today, and it was just that testament of faith that was amazing to me and it really really spoke out.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: So, as we talk about cops and Christianity, I can't imagine a more horrific situation to be in and a more.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: There's not a better situation to say screw you God and to push him away.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: But hearing John's testimony of, you know, having those thoughts but realizing that his faith was stronger and inviting God into that conversation is what got him through.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: If you guys haven't heard, it's episode 16.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: Mr John Beeland's an an amazing man and you should definitely check out his uh, his story.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome, so that's awesome.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Um so, guys, real quick, just in recap.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: I just want to thank you guys so much for your input on this yeah, thanks for the opportunity.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: I think in the last couple questions too, it's um, know, thinking about God's plan, finding better habits, avoiding some of the pitfalls of how to respond negatively to stress.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: I think all of these things in my experience and the experience of so many people I've seen they're really a process, and so if there's just one thing that I would encourage the listeners towards, it's just stay with it, stay on that path.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: It's a long.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: There's this pastor guy, eugene Peterson, who describes the Christian life as a long obedience in the same direction.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: Peterson, who describes the Christian life as a long obedience in the same direction.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: Almost all the growth metaphors in the scriptures are slow growth, they're agricultural metaphors, they're marathons, not sprints, and man, it's just downright un-American, but it is the way it is, you know, and, and so I think my encouragement would just be like you know, stay, stay on the path, like the Mandalorian.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: This is the way.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: You know like, uh, you know like um, stay on these paths.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: If you're, if you're concerned about the path, if you're concerned about not falling into these things, if you're concerned about not being too hard-hearted in your home life, if you're concerned about getting too closed off to others, you're actually on the right path, because you'd be far more dangerous if you weren't concerned at all.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: So even that, even just your concern and not knowing what to do, is probably God working in your life and convicting you.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: So just stay on the path, keep reaching out to others.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: It's a long path, it's not a short one.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: So stay on it, because Jesus is there with you.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Tim, Anything James.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I just want to thank you guys, both for the conversation and, tim, your insight.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: It's for me and Aaron from an online enforcement perspective, and I would just encourage the brothers and sisters listening to this that are still in the profession.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: We need you, we need good people in this profession still, and as much as the culture wants to tell us that our profession is dead, it's not.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: And, like Tim said, just taking it one day at a time, one call at a time, reaching out to brothers and sisters around you, find good community within your department.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: If it's not there, you know.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: If it's within your church, you know.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: There's people out there that care about us in this profession still, regardless of even here in the Pacific Northwest, and just to those that have found themselves, that have lost the profession, you guys have a lot of wisdom and insight that us younger guys and girls still in the profession need, and just that healthy relationship finding a mentor.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: Um, it's gone a long way for me, and so I just appreciate hearing what you're doing here and giving me the opportunity to come and talk.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you, guys, so much.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: You know, ladies and gentlemen, um, I really appreciate what God is doing in this podcast and, like I said earlier maybe I said it, maybe I thought, I can't remember Sometimes it's hard to get caught up in.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: What are the downloads look like?
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: What are the numbers look like?
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: Who are we reaching?
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: How many countries are we in?
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: How many cities are we in?
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: Blah, blah, blah.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: It's really not about that.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: You know, Christianity is something that's tough to talk about in the workplace.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: Imagine coming on a podcast here and talking about it to the world.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a subject that I think we need to talk about more.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: So, really, guys, I just hope this reaches you where you're at.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: If you guys want to communicate with myself or any of my guests, the email address is murders2music at gmailcom, and that is the number two murders2music at gmailcom.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: We'd love to talk to you.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: We'd love to have you on as a guest.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: We'd love to talk to you.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: We'd love to have you on as a guest.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your input good, bad or indifferent.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, that is the Murders to Music podcast.